CHAPTER ONE

Counterculture: Past and Present - 1

As a society gradually builds a culture characterizing its way of life and embodying
its collective beliefs and ideals, it usually discards many of those which still existing cultures
hold or have held to be fundamental to their way of life. A new spiritual impulse is
appropriated by discontented, oppressed, or more primitive groups of human beings, who
often violently repudiate the old beliefs while adopting as their own new ideas and symbols
which apparently are needed for their mental and emotional development. In the same
manner, children often discover what they take to be their authentic nature by rebelling
against the beliefs and cultured behavior which their parents have tried to teach as
absolutes of truth, conduct, and morality. Later on, having grown up and, after various
crises, having developed a broader mind and more mature feeling-responses, they may
reconsider this stand and, with modifications made necessary by changes in their social and
intellectual environment, accept what they had once emotionally rebelled against as naive
childhood's beliefs.
Some of these beliefs may nevertheless have remained latent below the level of
consciousness. In his mid-forties or fifties an individual often returns to previously discarded
concepts and feelings which no longer seem so naive; these acquire a new glow, a new
meaning. A similar process occurs in the development of an entire society; and what has
been happening in the Western world suggests that our civilization is experiencing its
"change of life."
A growing number of intellectuals, and even of official representatives of the Euro-
American tradition whose task it is to transmit it to the younger generations, have finally
come to realize that, throughout the entire history of European culture, an uninterrupted
current of ideas, beliefs, and practices considered archaic, naive, and religiously or morally
heretical has existed, as it were, in counterpoint to the mainstream of official thinking and
even, in some cases, of Church-approved morality. We speak today of our "counterculture";
but the numerous secret societies which have persisted or changed from one into the other
since the days of the early Councils that hammered an orthodoxy out of the mass of
conflicting remains of ancient cults and mythological concepts, represent a persistent
counterculture movement.
Our entire Christian-European civilization has been based on the belief that the coming
of Christ established a quasi-absolute line of demarcation between what mankind was
before and what it became after this historical event. What came before Christianity was
considered pagan and unworthy of being retained, except that part of the Hebrew historical
tradition and mentality which could be interpreted as a preparation for the age of Christian
truth and glory, plus the more intellectual aspects of Greek philosophy used to provide a
rational framework for the super-rational mystery of the Incarnation and Resurrection.
Everything else had to be eradicated from the mind of a new Christian humanity — the
books burnt, the statues and temples destroyed. When such a wholesale orgy of destruction
occurs — and this often happens when a new culture is born or imposed upon a
disintegrating society — the inevitable reaction is an underground attempt to sustain and
perpetuate some at least of the more essential features of the almost entirely destroyed
past culture and cultures. Such attempts may be, and probably are, inspired and at first led
by men who have a direct connection with what may have been kept intact of the core of
the old culture.
These men and their successors have to go "underground"; and anything that is able to
maintain itself and grow under such conditions has certain inevitable characteristics. It must
develop a great deal of mental as well as physical toughness. It has to give absolute value
to the past — to the "tradition"; it must have an inbred resistance to change, a profound
spiritual as well as mental "inertia" (in the true sense of the term). In most cases a group
dedicated to the preservation of the past must remain secret and jealously guard its
secrecy. It can nevertheless, from time to time, allow some of its members to try directly or
indirectly to influence at least a section of the official culture which may contain a number of
dissatisfied and restless individuals. Perhaps under the cover of some kind of social or
cultural device — and by utilizing either a fashionable wave of enthusiasm for some unusual
idea or phenomenon or a socio-political crisis which impels people to ask disturbing
questions — "emissaries" of the secret group may be able to reintroduce into the
mainstream of the culture ideas which constitute a vital challenge to the official mentality
and the socio-educational Establishment.
If these ideas arouse the enthusiasm of even a small but dynamic section of the
people, the term "countercultural movement" is applicable, the appearance of this
phenomenon on the outer stage of history can be traced to a number of factors — social,
economic, political and, recently, industrial — with which the official historian is accustomed
to deal. But these existential factors may also be related to a deeper cause, that is, to the
hidden ("occult") fact that the time has come for a change of rhythm — a "structural" or
functional change — in the cyclic process underlying the evolution of a civilization; just as
puberty and the change of life mark basic functional changes in the biopsychic rhythm of an
individual human being, regardless of the external conditions and pressures affecting his
outer life.
We might give as an example the outstanding counterculture which for a time
flourished in Southern France during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, especially
around the town of Albi. This Albigenses culture can be considered a counterculture because
it developed on the basis of ancient near-Eastern concepts which had been repudiated by
the Catholic Church and its powerful political supporters. It was a beautiful movement
giving rise to a new and idealistic approach to womanhood and love, which for a time
influence even the Northerner's way of life. Many social and political factors — especially the
first Crusades — contributed to the development of the movement. But it was ruthlessly
destroyed during what historians call the Crusade against the Albigenses. This was
engineered by the French King and the Pope, then the two main powers in control of the
mainstream of medieval European culture. Soon after, the Templars, who had been deeply
influenced by some of the traditions of the old Mediterranean religions which Christianity
had fought against and rejected, were also relentlessly persecuted and killed.
Later on, the communalistic movement begun by the Bohemian, John Huss, was also
violently eradicated by Popes and kings. Alchemists and Rosicrucians escaped persecution
because they lived a two-level existence, keeping their beliefs and the true nature of their
work secret. The guilds of operative masons from which the Free Masonry of the eighteenth
century emerged as an influential force in the sociopolitical field were, at least to some
extent, manifestations of a countercultural trend hidden behind their "operative" activities.
Here and there this trend also produced mystical groups and outstanding individuals who,
while still accepting outwardly the religious framework of the Church and the main teachings
of the universities, actually challenged the dogmatic structures of the official European
civilization.
The Romantic movement of the nineteenth century, pioneered toward the end of the
eighteenth by men Jean-Jacques, Rousseau, Blake, the young Goethe, Beethoven, and the
more mysterious Mesmer, strongly reacted against the intellect-worshiping rationalism of
the preceding century naively calling itself "the Enlightenment." After 1840 in America the
Spiritualistic movement opened wide a mist-enshrouded door separating the world of
rationally explainable phenomena from some vast unknown realm already being catalogued
by official philosophers and psychologists as "the Unconscious." When, in 1874-75, H. P.
Blavatsky appeared on the American scene, she had to use the Spiritualists' approach in
order to gain some kind of public recognition. Soon afterward she declared herself the
emissary of a trans-Himalayan Occult Brotherhood. In this capacity, she became the
fountainhead and inspirer of a movement which, in its original form, struck at the very roots
of Euro-American orthodoxy in religion and science.
The Transcendental movement in New England had already opened a channel of
communication with the philosophy of India, which also inspired the founder of Christian
Science, Mary Baker Eddy, though she later repudiated this influence. The young disciples
who gathered in Chicago around the Parliament of Religion — close to the time of
Blavatsky's death (1891) and that of the Persian Prophet Baha'u'llah who had proclaimed
himself the Divine manifestation for the New Age (1892) — provided a multiheaded start for
the New Thought movement. Soon thereafter Swami Vivekananda who, with the young
Buddhist Anagarika Dhammaphala, brought an extraordinary vivid breath of Indian
spirituality to the Parliament, initiated the Vedanta Movement in New England. Though
Vivekananda died in 1902, the Vedanta Movement survived him, and not only developed
many branches, but became an inspiration for the growth of many more recent attempts
made by Hindu Holy Men to build ashrams or spiritual communities — the earliest being
the movement began Swami Yogananda which is still flourishing.
CHAPTER ONE
Counterculture: Past and Present - 2

The term "counterculture" has lately been used with reference to the quite
extraordinary upsurge of the American and, to some extent, European youth which has
embodied in a number of ways the deep-seated dissatisfaction and rebellion of the new
generation against the very foundations on which our official Western civilization was build.
Numerous causes for this youth-movement can be and have been advanced. The revolt
against the Viet Nam war added much fuel to the fire of discontent against an increasingly
intellectualized, technologized, automated, and hypocritical society whose religious and
political leaders still mouth sanctimonious statements belied by their everyday behavior and
greed. The spreading use of LSD and other psychedelic drugs (however deplorable some of
their effects) had undoubtedly a powerful cathartic effect, breaking open doors of the mind
and the usual ego-defenses built by our traditional culture. The sense of impending
catastrophe related to the possibility of an all out nuclear war has helped greatly to break
down a collective ego-built confidence in the values of our society. Even the ambiguous and
as yet unsolved mystery of the UFO ("flying saucers") added to the underlying psychic
unsettlement — and this exactly one hundred years after the Fox sisters episodes which
began the American Spiritualist Movement.(1)
During the last few years the young people once known as "Hippies" have to some
extent disappeared. After an orgy of senseless publicity and an invasion of drug-peddlers,
they had become food for the media's avidity for sensationalism. But to say, as some people
in positions of educational and cultural importance self-complacently do, that the
counterculture of the Sixties has faded out, or that the generation gap is now closed, is both
naive and misleading. Many youth communes are still in existence and, if overt protests
have largely stopped, it is because youth has learned that a premature revolution is not
only futile, but meaningless. What has been learned also is that the real revolution is a
revolution in consciousness, and that it can be — indeed, it must be — carried on within or
at the fringe of the official culture by quietly sapping the latter's strength and credibility.
The field of action of the present aspect of counterculture is increasingly defined by
"psychic" research of all kinds, and by the modernizing of old yoga techniques and spiritual-
mental disciplines, most of the time under the direction of individuals claiming a more or
less direct contact with — or inspiration from — occult centers in Asia or the Near East. The
fascination with magic and witchcraft — good, bad, or indifferent as the practices may be —
is certainly spreading; and the traditional mainstream of popular predictive astrology, with
its new pseudo-scientific concern for "serious" research and its — to my mind, misapplied —
statistics, is discarded or scorned by a great many youths who are looking for a more
"humanistic" and countercultural astrology or "cosmopsychology," providing psychological if
not spiritual guidance and what Dr. Carl Jung would call symbols of salvation. The number
of persons using or claiming clairvoyance and contacts with inner guides, space people, or
discarnate healers is steadily increasing. What is more, the people interested in all these
manifestations of a countercultural trend, which most definitely — even if often hesitantly
and only half-consciously — challenges the validity of our Euro-American cultural
mainstream and of all that it takes for granted, are increasingly recruited from the above-
thirty and above forty generations, and from the university and scientific field.
Counterculture is not dead; it has never been so important and significant. All the
nearly unquestioned premises on which our Christian and rationalistic Euro-American
tradition has been based are becoming increasingly empty of vital contents. Even the most
conservative Churches are in deep crisis. And behind all this intense mental-psychic
fermentation we can and should become aware that a cycle of civilization is nearing its end.
Whether this end will have a cataclysmic aspect assuredly is not certain, in spite of all the
psychic or even scientific prophecies of disaster flooding the collective mentality of a large
section of our population. Predictions of the "end of the world" have occurred before; but
though "the world" has not ended, some very recognizable kind of cycle has ended at the
times indicated, and a new cultural impetus has been given. When the Millerities of America
sold all their possessions and journeyed to Mt. Carmel near Haifa, Israel to witness the end
of the world, our new industrial society was becoming established through the spread of
telegraphic and rail communication. At exactly the expected time (May 1844), the first
Persian Prophet, the Bab, was declaring that the Islamic era had come to an end and
announcing the advent of the "Coming One" who, in 1863 proclaimed himself as Baha'u'llah,
founder of the first detailed system of world organization.
I shall presently discuss the probable meaning of Baha'u'llah's manifestation, but it was
mentioned here to point out the fact that a psychic sense of impending cataclysm marking
the beginning of a new historical and planetary cycle of human evolution can be, at the
same time, both correct and incorrect. In a similar sense, the facts of genuine Spiritualistic
manifestations, and the dates relevant to genuine sightings of UFOs are susceptible to both
correct and incorrect interpretations. When doors are open between two deeply different
realms of existence and consciousness, attempts to explain what comes in and what goes
out of the door are nearly always confused, for the explanation had to be formulated in
terms of the culture which has developed on our side of the door. This happens inevitably
when great mystics try to speak of their subliminal experiences, but also when Spiritualists
or "psychics" interpret happenings, the nature of which they want to convey and make
intelligible to their own conscious mind as well as to others. UFO experiences most likely
come into a similar category and may not deal with strictly material machines; but here also
the question may well center on what meaning we attach to the word "material."
We cannot give a really valid and historically significant meaning to all such unusual
phenomena — rationally unexplainable in terms of our Euro-American science and
intellectual tradition — if we are not willing, ready, and even mentally able to consider them
strong indications that we are living in a period of transition between the old Western
civilization, which built our Euro-American society, and a new type of culture presumably of
a global nature. What we now see at work is the "invasion" of our mainstream Euro-
American culture by all that in its origins — especially during the early period of formation of
the Catholic orthodoxy, and also during the Renaissance and Classical centuries — it had to
repudiate in order to successfully assert its essential character.
To say this does not mean that this character is basically nefarious or invalid. It has
been a necessary phase in the development of the total human person and of mankind as
an organic whole. No one should be so emotionally upset by the destructive aspects of our
Western civilization, and by its soil, air, water, and psyche polluting technology that he fails
to see the greatness of its most significant achievement — making it possible for all men to
experience their essential unity. Unfortunately however, our Western civilization has
exaggerated the specialized character of that evolutionary phase; it has developed in an
atmosphere of violence and fanaticism which probably could have been avoided.
Whether or not this is a fact is now beside the point. Our kind of scientific empirical
knowledge has been enormously successful among materialistic and technological lines; but
"nothing fails like success," and we now should know what such a statement means. It may
not be too late to apparently retrace our steps and reincorporate what Europe for so long
has branded heretic, devilish, and childishly archaic; but this should be only an "apparent"
turnabout. What is needed is not a glorification of some past "golden age" — even if it ever
existed at the physical level, which is far from certain — nor an emotional expectation of a
Utopian millennium. The direction should not be behind or ahead, but toward the center —
or, we might also say, toward a foundation that is now, ever was, and will remain until the
close of the last lifespan of the Earth.
True Occultism (I shall capitalize the word to differentiate it form all occult or pseudo-
occult doctrines and practices recently popularized) or Esotericism (which by definition
should mean only what cannot be expressed in terms of our public mainstream culture)
refers to this foundation. It is eonic because it remains what it is throughout an entire cycle
or "eon." Today we speak of a genetic code that is formed at the time of the ovum's
impregnation by a spermatozoon; this genetic code, pattern, or formula, exists at the
innermost core of every one of the millions of cells of an organism. It is and remains what it
was "in the beginning." In a biological sense it is the Word in the beginning — for that
particular organism.
Is there such a Word for humanity as a planetary organism? If there is, how can we
develop the "electron microscope" within our mind that will be able to detect its presence —
or are there other ways of recognizing this presence in terms of the various functional
activities it produces in the several organs of the great body of mankind?
Let us explore these possibilities.

1. For the meaning of the century cycle, read in Part Two, "Planetary and Social Cycles."
CHAPTER TWO
The One Planetary Tradition
and the Many Operative Traditions - 1

At certain times in the development of a society and its culture, a strong and often
very emotional appeal is made to return to "the Tradition" and to repudiate and discard
what is then given the pejorative name of "modernism." The appeal is made by religious
leaders, as well as by politicians. In a deeper and more "occult" sense it is also made by
individuals who what become involved in a variety of more or less recently formed
"exoteric" groups and perhaps wandered far afield in search of glamorous doctrines and
exotic teachers. Intellectually confused as well as emotionally disappointed and more
insecure than ever, these men and women seek — as psychologists might say — to "return
to the womb" of their ancestral religion or, in a deeper spiritual sense, to go back to a
Tradition that offers them what seems to be a well established and secure path leading
through "initiation" to supreme spiritual realizations and perhaps even to personal
immortality.
The term, Tradition, when capitalized, conveys indeed a feeling of stability and
strength. We can speak here of "root strength," partly in the same sense that the strength
of a tree, and even its capacity to produce flowers, resides in its roots, and partly because
the men who are the true custodians of the deeper, more essential and esoteric aspects of
the Tradition are invisible or at least difficult to find. They often may work in secret
underneath a purely cultural, or even socially commonplace facade. The rootlet is the first
part of the plant to come out of the seed as it breaks open. It has to be first because it is
through its functional activity that the germ can obtain the raw chemicals of the soil needed
for its sunward growth.
To go back to the source of the Tradition implied a return to the "original impulse" —
the creative Word — at the very beginning of one's small or large cycle of existence. Unity is
to be found at the source of the cycle. The fecundated ovum is but one cell; from this
original cell billions of cells of a human body will be formed by mitosis (or division). Each of
these body cells carries at its core a complex pattern (or genetic code) which defines its
particular and specific function by means of a subtle chemical (or rather "alchemical" or
superphysical) combination of open and closed channels through which the one Life-force
(prana) is allowed to operate or is restrained. But potentially the whole of the generic code
is present in every cell.
In and occult sense, this implies that Man, as an archetype — a specific pattern of
relationships and a particular set of biopsychic possibilities of development of consciousness
— is inherent in every human being. But this archetype is there occultly, as total human
potential, not as an actual existential fact in the operative world of everyday living on our
physical earth.
 This distinction between archetypal and existential, and therefore between the potential
and the actual, is of fundamental importance; yet for various reasons — some of which have
a specific temporal validity — this distinction is usually glossed over or deliberately ignored
by most esoteric groups. The general collective mentality of the West tends to ignore it and
to confuse potentiality with actuality.
In its emotional and idealistic eagerness to stress, at least in theory, the concepts of
social individualism and equalitarianism, the American mind does not accentuate
significantly enough the distinction between the spiritual identity of an individual and his
functional place and purpose in the existential world of human society.
This distinction, which I have discussed at some length in my recent book We Can
Begin Again — Together(1) is of extreme importance for a real understanding of what can
be meant by "the Tradition." This term can indeed be defined in two different levels — and
archetypal and an operative level. And the operative level branches out in a number of
specific directions in order to fill diverse, even though interrelated and presumably
interdependent, functions.
Archetypally and potentially, humanity is "one"; but existentially, functionally, and in
terms of sociocultural and religious conditioning — and also in terms of geographic locality
and historical timing — humanity is "many." It has become fashionable to state that all
religions and cultures have basic elements in common. Aldous Huxley spoke of a perennial
philosophy, but, in fact, the historical knowledge he and our historians had limited the
validity of the concept. Theosophists speak of a "Universal Tradition" and "original
Revelation," but unless these terms are understood in their archetypal meaning, I believe
they can be misleading. What they actually are meant to imply is that today we are in a
period of history in which it is spiritually essential for all men to realize that we are slowly
approaching the closing period of a planetary cycle which affords men the possibility of
experiencing — not merely dreaming of or intellectually postulating — a state of conscious
unanimity. It is this fact which gives its basic meaning to what happened during the last half
of the nineteenth century in the field of occultism, and particularly to H. P. Blavatsky's work
and The Secret Doctrine.
There are two kinds of unanimity — and the word simply means "of one soul." The
original kind is compulsive and instinctual; it operates basically in the unconscious of a
collectivity of human beings. It is the type of unanimity experienced in the pure tribal state
of society, a state in which the tribal whole and not the individual person is the unit, a state
of relative psychic undifferentiation in which life and its organic functions are the supreme
rulers. The other kind of unanimity demands of all who participate in it that they be
individually conscious and able to carry the responsibility of their function of destiny — their
dharma. The first kind refers to the alpha condition of society; the second to the omega
state. This omega state is still in the future, but the type of mental energy required for its
actualization has been operative for some time. An esotericist, Alice Bailey, personalized it
as "the Avatar of Synthesis."
 The spirit of synthesis may operate within relatively narrow limits, or globally in a
planetary sense. It may operate strongly at one level, or only in special circumstances, and
remain ineffectual in most existential situations, whether at the personal or the national
collective level. The potentiality is there — or we might say the "availability" of the energy
required for its actualization at one level or another is present. Yet this does not tell us
much about the degree or quality of the actualization. Mankind is moving toward what I call
the state of "multi-unity" — often referred to as "unity in diversity." Because of this cyclo-
historical fact (which has a concrete manifestation in the technological wonders potentially
enabling every human being to communicate with all others) individuals dream of, long for,
unification or integration at one level or another. And this dreaming inevitably evokes in the
depths of the consciousness an ancestral (perhaps genetic as well as psychospiritual) feeling
of some preindividual, thus mostly undifferentiated, condition of unity. Confused by the
separativeness, glamor, and alien quality of the variety of unprovable claims and special
techniques now made available to them, many Euro-American men and women — no longer
able to find spiritual, mental, or emotional sustenance in their churches or even in an
unorthodox type of group or community — yearn for a return to a "state of innocence," the
symbolic Edenic state before the Fall into duality and division.
If they are sincere and strong, they many find a line of approach leading them to
individuals who still represent a truly ancient and primordial Tradition unsullied by the pride
of mental achievement and the excitement of emotional cravings. But will it be, can it be,
the one Tradition? Can anything that is formulated in terms of a specific culture, however
ancient, and in a particular language and symbols be the one Tradition? One should face
such questions in very possible manner and at almost any cost; and the way one
approaches the possibility of giving them a valid answer is bound to influence the seeker's
entire spiritual life and his peace of mind and soul.
Hindu philosophers, during the great Age of Philosophy, gave us a most revealing way
of approaching such an issue. They postulated six possible basic approaches to the Self,
that is, to the essential reality of existence. Six great Schools of Philosophy were defined
and classified, each representing one of these approaches. A human Soul, in the course of
successive incarnations, was said gradually to experience all that was existentially and
intellectually implied in each of these six approaches, after which it would be ready to
experience the seventh, Atma Vidya. But this seventh approach is not to be considered a
"School." What it leads to is ineffable, unformulatable except perhaps in geometric symbols
which are but a framework for direct experience. Nothing can be put in words about it
except that it is, because any kind of definition would reduce it to a cultural level where
multiplicity is the basic fact.
This simply means that beyond, yet at the core, of all great Traditions, we can conceive
and perhaps to some extent experience, at least in its reflections, That which is in relation
to these few basic Traditions as Light is to the colors of the spectrum. Esotericists may want
to identify these several Traditions with the now much publicized "seven Rays"; but the
Rays have confused students' minds as much as, fifty years earlier, Globes, Rounds, Races,
subraces, and family-races puzzled those who read about them. The number seven is itself
the greatest of all occult enigmas because, in any sevenfold classification, it has a most
ambiguous character. In Hindu philosophy there were only six Darshanas, six approaches to
existential knowledge. The seventh is everywhere, in everything, and as well "nowhere". For
the Buddhist it is Sunya, the Nothing that, at the core of everything, simply is.
Everything that is human contains, yet is absorbed in Man. The one Tradition is in
every great occult Tradition and in the Multiplicity of lesser cultural traditions. If one is a
weary, confused, and disappointed searcher after mysterious and exotic truths, one may
long for some stabilizing, reassuring, illuminating knowledge of the one Tradition. But
looking for it in any particular place, according to any special technique, and in terms of
Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Tibetan, Greek, or Hebrew is, I believe, hardly the way to find it.
The moment one depends upon specific "traditional" techniques and particular words or
mantrams, one is outside of the one Tradition, even though there may be direct reflections
of it everywhere.
What then can one do? If one wants to clearly or at least meaningfully think about
what the Tradition is, it seems to me that the first thing to do is to understand what is not;
then one should try to envision a cosmic or planetary frame of reference in relation to which
it has a fundamental significance because it occupies a central place and function therein.
This place and function no doubt have to be considered to a large extent symbolic, but
symbols can be powerful levers to displace whatever blocks the path to inner experiences or
intuitive realizations at the level of ideas and archetypes. If the Tradition is everywhere (yet
nowhere) its presence within the human mind must have inspired great images and myths.
These can indeed be found in many mythologies and religions. They are particularly in
evidence, at least for Western individuals, in the Greek myth of Prometheus, and in the
many references in Hindu mythology to the Kumaras. H.P. Blavatsky's The Secret
Doctrine,(2) presents us with vivid imagery what we may take to be definite factual
information concerning an event that took place on this Earth millions of years ago and
which implanted in the animal-like organism of man the potentiality of self-conscious
intelligence, or what is often spoken of as a spark of the divine Fire.
In the Greek legend, Prometheus was a Titan who stole this divine Fire and, out of
compassion, gave sparks of it to human beings, allowing them potentially to become
godlike. This "theft" aroused the anger of the gods; Jupiter threw his thunderbolts at the
unhappy Prometheus and chained him to the Caucasus mountains, where a vulture
perpetually tore his breast and ate his liver, which was constantly reformed and eaten
again. This torture lasted until Hercules, the solar man, delivered Prometheus from his
chains.
While this essentially tragic Prometheus myth seems to refer more particularly to the
fate and the spiritual character of our Western humanity, which can be said to begin with
the earliest development of Greek culture, the coming of the Kumaras to our planet during
prehistoric times and on what is spoken of as the Lemurian continent, has a much more
planetary and all-human meaning. There are many ways of interpreting this coming of the
Kumaric host and particularly of the four or seven Kumaras whose leader is named Sanat
from the planet Venus, but a few points must be emphasized.
Venus may or may not be the physical planet described by our astronomers and now
being investigated by our space probes. H. P. Blavatsky speaks of it as the "alter-ego" and
spiritual twin of our Earth, on which it bestows one-third of the light it receives from the
Sun; and we are told that the Earth is not, or not yet, a "Sacred planet."
What seems implied in such statements, and in many others scattered through esoteric
and mythological literature, is that at the close of one of its cycles of development (it might
have been about eleven million years ago) the type of humanlike consciousness developed
on Venus was ready to "sow" itself into the soil of a less evolved planet — ours. The
Kumaras would then represent spiritual seeds falling into the animal soil of earthly mankind
and therefore implanting the true pattern of MAN (in a spiritual sense) in the as yet
passive and unself-conscious mentality of early mankind. In a somewhat different sense we
can also liken this process to the grafting of a cultivated tree bearing excellent fruit to a wild
tree of the same species.
All such images, and even the more occult tales of "incarnation" of some of the
Kumaras into human beings, are symbols trying to convey the meaning of a particular
phase of the vast process of evolution of mankind as a functional part of the planet Earth,
and in relation to what I call the Heliocosm (the solar system as an organic cosmic whole).
We might get a more concrete (though not exact) grasp of what such a phase of
development on a planetary scale could mean if we thought of what the crisis of puberty
means to a human adolescent. Some deep-seated change takes place which is both
biological and psychomental. New capacities begin to develop; and these may be used "for
better or for worse." They can be a curse as well as a blessing; the interesting
anagrammatic relationship between the terms Sanat and Satan is no doubt a most revealing
symbolic indication. The Secret Doctrine repeatedly refers to the concept of "Fallen
Angels" and the manner in which "Jupiterian" religions and their leaders have considered as
enemies of the gods those Promethean beings who, cycle after cycle, have sought to arouse
in the masses of men this divine Fire of self-conscious creativity and responsibility, and
have been crucified for their self-sacrificial attempts.

1. Omen Press, Tucson, 1974.

2. cf The Secret Doctrine (original or facsimile editions) II:244 et seq. and 519 et seq.
CHAPTER TWO
The One Planetary Tradition
and the Many Operative Traditions - 2

The divine Fire gives man the possibility of choosing between "good and evil," of
making at least relatively free decisions, of learning wisdom through sorrow, deprivation,
and repeated crises of growth brought about by the use of these new powers of self-
consciousness and self-will. The truly human way is, perhaps inevitably, the via negativa
spoken of by many mystics — the way that brings a person to the knowledge of what he is
as a result of revulsion from the experience of what his is-not. This is the tragic way, and
the Promethean way, for in ancient times, the liver was considered the seat of biological
urges (of the "living soul") and the vulture is the devourer of all that has died of frustration
and despair. Yet it need not always be a tragic way, because the ever-repeated sacrificial
incarnations of the Kumaraic beings keep open "the Path" that may lead the pure-in-heart
(in whom the "higher mind" also operates) to the fabled Shamballah. This is the "place"
where the "pattern of Man", at whose center the inextinguishable Flame of the divine
creative Mind burns, is to be found. This pattern of Man is the one Tradition. And because
Man is the microcosmic image of his universe, this Tradition implies also a cosmology such
as The Secret Doctrine attempted to outline.
But what really is Shamballah? If we can speak of it as a "place," it is in the same
sense in which Hindu scriptures state that Atman is in the cave of the Heart. If Central Asia
is the Heartland of our present human world — as the English and German geopoliticians of
the period between the two World Wars claimed — then Shamballah may well be located in
the Gobi Desert. But if so, it almost certainly does not have what we call a "physical"
existence — unless we extend the term "physical" to include what is usually called "etheric."
We have also to consider the possibility of fourth of fifth dimensional space and of
interpenetrating universes of "globes."(3)
We may wish to think of Sanat Kumara as a divine Person; but the term "person," even
if capitalized, is likely to produce confusion. "He" is a person to the extent that we, human
personalities, think or imagine "Him" as a Person. Is wheathood a person? Wheathood "is"
as the condition of existence of every stalk of wheat, and it specifically manifests at the core
of every seed of wheat, because the vegetable species has its "esoteric" being in the long
sequence of generations of seeds, while "exoterically" it takes the form of germinating,
growing, maturing, and decaying plants. The Kumara essence is the seedhood of Man as a
planetary being, producer of a long series of cultures, each of which focuses on a
particular aspect of life in the Earth's biosphere — an aspect which it is the culture's
task to incorporate in energy-releasing symbols and meaningful generalizations at the level
of the "higher" mind.
These symbols are the basic attitudes of mind which, at the end of the cultural cycle,
can be transferred as a seed-harvest, or grafted upon new wild growths, embody archetypal
principles of form, functional interrelationship, structural development, and personal
behavior. These are variegated manifestations of the one Tradition, for they result from
different ways of throwing light upon the various aspects of the planetary "pattern of Man."
Each aspect responds to the light in its own characteristic manner, hence the various
colorings characterizing the many human cultures.
Let me repeat that this pattern of Man represents all that is potential in humanity since
the coming of the Kumaras. Each culture has actualized, today actualizes, and in the future
will actualize an aspect of this human potential. Each culture had its exoteric traditions, and
behind at least the most significant and basic cultural-religious traditions an occult Tradition
stands — a particular aspect of the one planetary Tradition. Each cultural tradition develops
as a specific answer to the particular need of a collectively of people living in a particular
locality of the earth's surface, small or extensive as this locality may be. Every culture has a
local biospheric character, conditioned by geography, climate, telluric magnetism, flora
and fauna, as these exist at the time of its formation. Every human being born within that
culture has his or her psychic, biological, and mental capacities deeply conditioned and,
most of the time — at least at the collective-unconscious level — actually determined by the
great images, symbols and ideas of the culture, and first of all by a particular language or
mode of social communications.
When a modern individual, deeply disappointed by the fading values of his culture and
the empty verbiage used by the men charged at all costs to preserve its old institutions,
starts on a search for an occult Tradition which, he may have heard, still exists in purity
"somewhere," he may be led to its living Custodians, or to men who claim to be their
representatives. The meeting can be a radically transforming experience; it may also be an
answer to the emotional immaturity and intellectual naivete or confusion of the seeker — an
answer therefore wrapped in multicolored glamor and imaginary claims. At best the would-
be disciple may come in touch with men who truly live and think in terms of a Tradition,
occult as it may appear to be. But is it the one Tradition, even though it may accurately
incorporate an aspect of, or mental refection from, the latter.
This is certainly NOT to say that this particular occult Tradition is not valuable. It may
be precisely what the seeker needs, at least at the time of his search. But it should also be
clear that the moment the words, symbols, and the divine Names of a certain language, and
the mantrams, types of meditation, and techniques of a specific "School," are imposed upon
the seeker as conditions of his acceptance, he is dealing only with an occult Tradition. He is
dealing with a root-knowledge based upon something that has occurred in the past — an
old seed-revelation that has long ago germinated into a plant whose vitality may have been
exhausted or nearly so, and whose outer forms have perhaps become degenerated or
empty of vital energy after having been used by many generations of human beings
depending on them for spiritual food — perhaps now fermented food that excites rather
than satisfies and energies.
 One of the problems that meets the knowledgeable seeker, once the first phase of
enthrallment is past, is that a claim is nearly always made that this Tradition is the original
one, more real and effectual than any other. Such a claim may be inevitable because, by
temperament as well as because of the character of their work, the Custodians of the pure
ancient Tradition must be conservative and to some extent dogmatic. They embody a form
of spiritual inertia, because they have to resist all attempts at introducing changes in the
past "Revelation." H.P. Blavatsky spoke of the "inertia of the spirit." This means that the
original impulse at the beginning of a large cycle of existence has to be maintained during
the progress of outer growth in which an immense variety of relationships are bound to
induce centrifugal types of thinking, feeling, and behavior. The divine alpha state has to be
reproduced in the spiritual harvest of the omega state. The seedhood has to remain
invariant during growth. If there is to be a mutation it can only be during the winter period
of the seed — its pralaya. But this applies only to what, strictly speaking, one may call the
"spiritual" scheme of existence; and, as The Secret Doctrine powerfully states, there are
three basic evolutionary schemes or levels.(4)
The spiritual or "monadic" scheme is really not an evolution because the essential part
of what is called a monad does not change — and there is really but one Monad. What
occurs at that level can be symbolized by the circle. This circle becomes a spiral, thanks to
the operation of mind wedded to compassion. This is because the Promethean beings
constantly challenges the inertial circularity of "pure spirit" by exerting a centrifugal
pressure that the ever-repetitive circle becomes a spiral. This pressure should include both
love and knowledge, since these are expressions of significant and harmonious relationship
— real knowledge being based on a holistic realization of the relation of everything with
everything else, and true love being in its universal sense the encompassing of all beings in
an act of total inclusion. If the love aspect does not prevail, the knowledge element
becomes "satanic."
This satanic element has been particularly strong in our Western civilization because
since the late Greek period an unparalleled emphasis has been placed upon that aspect of
the mind that deals with material values and the concrete embodiment of form into material
organisms. As matter represents the pole of multiplicity — while spirit stands for the
principle of unity — any mind fascinated by matter, or even intent upon the transformation
of matter, must tend to become analytical and separative and, in most cases, the servant
and justifer of materialistic values and desires. The coming of Christ was evidently meant to
release the power of a universalistic and unifying divine Love that could offset the
intellectualistic search for mere knowledge which had become emphasized by Greek culture,
and as well the intellectual egocentricity and hard-headedness of the Hebraic tradition. But
Christianity lost its collective Soul during the first centuries A.D., and soon after the Papacy
succumbed to the lure of political power. Christianity lost its collective Soul because it
repudiated all that had been the spiritual tradition of Asia and Egypt in an attempt to focus
man's attention exclusively upon the new Christ Revelation. But this meant a total
dependence upon the Hebraic past, emphasized by Paul, and the Greek intellectuality of the
Alexandrian Fathers of the Church. On the one hand the emotion-rousing dogma of
salvation by divine atonement for an original Sin perverted the entire pattern of cosmic
evolution and induced a wholesale neurotic sense of guilt, and on the other hand an
Aristotelian formalism and empiricism led to the one-pointed development of a science and
technology almost exclusively concerned with materialist concepts and material well-being.
The proud exclusiveness and ruthless expansionism of our Western civilization required
a still more rigid state of secrecy. The old Traditions were forced in most places to go
underground and to hide what remained of the spiritual harvest of the past cultures of
mankind. In the "Introductory" of The Secret Doctrine (p. xxviii and following) we find
most intriguing statements as to the preservation of such a harvest in the form of hidden
libraries. Other assertions which undoubtedly appear to have a strong dogmatic character
have produced diverse reactions among readers, discouraging all but a few who tend to
become rather fanatic devotees. Theosophy was brought to the West a century ago, and
now another hundred year period is beginning.
According to H. P. Blavatsky, the new century is to be marked by a new endeavor by
the Kumaric beings to once more "fecundate" the collective mind of mankind, and it may be
possible to reinterpret these seemingly dogmatic assertions in the light of what has been
said in the preceding pages. This, however, can be done only if we try to ascertain as
objectively as possible the nature of the source of the messages and the writings which
seem to flow through HPB, as she came to be called, far more than from her unusual
person, as well as the character of her mission at the particular historical time and in the
particular places witnessing her activities. It will be especially important to discuss the
nature of the collective human need which called for the release of the far-reaching and
inclusive type of "information" that she gave, especially to the Western world, for the very
first thing to be understood and clearly realized is that any new outpouring of knowledge
from spiritual-occult sources always come in answer to a definite need, related to a
particular phase in the process of development of a culture, and seemingly now of the whole
of mankind.

3. The "globes" mentioned in The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett are not separated in
a three-dimensional space, as many illustrations erroneously suggest. They are said to be
"in co-adunation but not consubstantiality" (cf. The Secret Doctrine; I:157), whatever this
exactly means.

4.The Secret Doctrine; I:181 for a clear statement concerning "three separate schemes of
evolution which in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point . .
. the Monadic (or spiritual), the Intellectual (represented by the . . . givers of intelligence
and consciousness to man), and the Physical represented by the chhayas [or astral shadows
or webs of energy] round which Nature has concreted the present physical body . . . Each of
these three systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the
highest Dhyanis or 'Logoi.' Each is represented in the constitution of man, the Microcosm of
the great Macrocosm, and "it is the union of these three streams in him which makes him
the complete being he now is" — to this I would add in potentiality.
CHAPTER THREE
H. P. Blavatsky and the Trans-Himalayan
Occult Brotherhood and the 19th Century - 1

Helena Petrovna von Hahn was born at Ekaterinoslav in Southern Russia during the
night of August 11-12, 1831 (July 30-31 in the old style Russian calendar), probably around
2 A.M.; thus bringing the 13th or 14th degree of Cancer and the great star Sirius to the
Eastern horizon of her birth-chart — this being the celestial location of the Sun on July 4,
1776: an interesting correlation. At the time of her birth her father was a Captain in the
Horse Artillery. His family came originally from Mecklenburg, Germany. An ancestor, a
Teutonic knight, had adopted the name von Hahn (cock) because one night while fighting in
the Holy Land, the crowing of a cock had awakened him just in time to save him from
sudden enemy attack.
Helena's mother, a novelist and feminist, came from a highly placed aristocratic
Russian family. She died of tuberculosis when her daughter was eleven years old. From the
first years of her life, the young Helena displayed both a powerful will and unusual psychic
abilities. As the result of a dare, when only 17 years old, she married Nikifor Vassilyevich
Blavatsky, the elderly Vice-Governor of the Province of Erivan in the Caucasus. After three
months of resistance to the consummation of the marriage, she managed to escape, finally
arriving in Constantinople. There she began a long series of travels which led her first to
Egypt, where she studied with a renowned old Copt occultist. Her father, finally accepting
the fact that his daughter would never live with her husband (from whom, eventually, she
became divorced), supplied her with money.(1)
From childhood, Helena had had visions of the tall Rajput Indian who has become
known as the Master Morya. When in London, perhaps in 1850, she met him physically;
presumably he had come there as a member of the Nepal Embassy. According to her,
however, a more important meeting took place at Ramsgate (only a symbolic name!) on
August 12, 1851, on her twentieth birthday. As she died in May of 1891, the mission with
which she was entrusted by the powerful member of the trans-Himalayan Occult
Brotherhood lasted almost exactly forty years — a significant period. Compare, for instance,
the forty years during which Moses led the Hebrews in the Wilderness before they entered
the Promised Land; the forty years' imprisonment of Abdul Baha in the Turkish city of Akka
(a word referring to the womb) in Palestine, etc. Madame Blavatsky passed the first half of
her forty-year mission in preparation, her public work having begun only after she reached
New York in 1873.
The significance of all that this preparation entailed is not understood by most people
because they fail to distinguish between direct physical contact with planetary centers in
which occult Brotherhoods exist (a matter which I shall discuss further) and psychic or
mental communications with Adepts. The travels of Occultists, or even of individuals
definitely charged with occult (and thus at least to some extent "planetary") missions are
most revealing, for they touch certain points on the globe to which such missions may be
related and which perhaps they contact for special purposes. Helena Petrovna's travels link
Egypt (and the Coptic descendants of the ancient culture) with London, North America,
Central and South America (the Mayan and Incan centers), Java, Northern India, and Tibet
— to mention only what is publicly known. She had also, as an adolescent, studied piano in
Paris and was an excellent musician and performer. A trip by covered wagon from Chicago
to San Francisco in 1855 was a prelude to her second and successful (perhaps because she
was disguised) attempt to reach Tibet and the occult Brotherhood, a first attempt a year or
two earlier having met with insuperable obstacles.
She returned to Russia in 1858; there she displayed for her relatives and friends what
today we call powers of ESP, including clairvoyance, telepathy, telekinesis, astral projection,
and materialization of messages in locked boxes. After a mysterious illness she resumed her
travels through the Balkans, Egypt, Syria, and Italy. In 1867 she joined the forces of
Garibaldi fighting for Italy's nationhood against the French and Papal forces. She was
wounded in the bloody battle of Mentana. Some students of esotericism believe that her
body was actually killed during this battle, but that it was "resurrected" to become a focal
point for the power of her Brotherhood.
In The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett there are somewhat mysterious references
to HPB's condition of existence after the years of occult training in Tibet, references which
may throw some light not only on what, later on, became her often disconcerting
temperamental characteristics as she came under attack as the originator and teacher of
the Theosophical Movement, but also on the drastic consequences of being a "messenger"
or agent of an Occult Brotherhood. In a letter received in Simla in 1881, in the blue ink
writing of K.H., the following statement is made:

I am painfully aware of the fact that the habitual incoherence of her statements —
especially when excited — and her strange ways make her in your opinion a very
undesirable transmitter of our messages . . . . Notwithstanding that the time is not quite
ripe to let you entirely into the secret; and that you are hardly prepared to understand the
great Mystery, even if I told of it, owing to the great injustice and wrong done, I am
empowered to allow you a glimpse behind the veil. This state of hers is intimately connected
with her occult training in Tibet, and due to her being sent out alone into the world to
gradually prepare the way for others. After nearly a century of fruitless search, our chiefs
had to avail themselves of the only opportunity to send out a European body upon
European soil to serve as a connecting link between that country and our own. You do not
understand? Of course not. Please then, remember what she tried to explain, and what you
gathered tolerably well from her, namely the fact of the seven principles in the complete
human being. Now, no man or woman, unless he be an initiate of the "fifth circle," can leave
the precincts of Bod-Las and return back into the world in his integral whole — if I may use
the expression. One, at least of his seven satellites has to remain behind for two reasons:
the first to form the necessary connecting link, the wire of transmission — the second as the
safest warranter that certain things will never be divulged. She is no exception to the rule,
and you have seen another exemplars highly intellectual man who had to leave one of his
skins behind; hence, is considered highly eccentric. The bearing and status of the remaining
six depend upon the inherent qualities, the psycho-physiological peculiarities of the person,
especially upon the idiosyncrasies transmitted by what modern science calls "atavism."
Acting in accordance with my wishes, my brother M. made to you through her a certain
offer, if you remember. You had but to accept it, and at any time you liked, you would have
had for an hour or more, the real biatchooly to converse with, instead of the psychological
cripple you generally have to deal with now.(2)

Exactly what is meant by this quotation must be left to the student's intuition, bolstered up
by the proper kind of study and concentration. It may at least suggest how difficult it is to
be certain with whom one may have to deal when contacting a person whose activities and
reactions may seem, from our normal sociocultural point of view, at least relatively
irrational. This is especially true when one has reason to believe that these activities are
connected with the "occult world."
Whatever may have happened occultly to the being born as Helena von Hahn — either
in Italy or in India and Tibet where she lived for three years with her Masters — she later
found herself faced with the dark aspect of her karma, particularly in Alexandria, the city
where long ago Christianity became to a large extent distorted and dogmatized. In 1873,
while in Paris, she received definite directions from the Brotherhood, instructing her to go to
New York. It is said that on reaching her embarkation point, seeing a sobbing woman with
children who had been cheated of their fare to New York, HPB promptly exchanged her first
class ticket for steerage accommodations for herself and the defrauded family. After a
peculiar karmic episode in Philadelphia, she met Colonel Henry S. Olcott who was
investigating some spiritualistic phenomena in Chittenden, Vermont. In 1875, HPB, Colonel
Olcott, William Q. Judge, and a few others founded The Theosophical Society. Most of the
members of this new organization were deeply intrigued by HPB's occult powers and were
eager to investigate the nature of the mysterious phenomena she produced. Nevertheless,
the fundamental aim of the Society was officially stated to be the eventual formation of "the
nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood," which in time would encompass the whole of mankind.
In 1877 HPB published Isis Unveiled, which brought her at once fame and enemies.
She became an American citizen on July 8, 1878 — a fact few seem to know. But in
December of the same year she left with Colonel Olcott for India by way of England, arriving
eventually in Bombay. The magazine The Theosophist appeared in October 1879. HPB
soon made the acquaintance of A. P. Sinnett and, through him, of A. 0. Hume; and both
became the recipients of letters occultly "precipitated" by the two members of the trans-
Himalayan Brotherhood, Morya and Koot-Hoomi. It seems that these two had taken the
main responsibility for the beginning, through HPB, of the Theosophical Movement. It was
an attempt to establish a psychomental "link" between their occult level of existence and
the Western world of the materialistic nineteenth century, and thereby to allow some of the
ancient and eternal "seed ideas" of the one planetary Tradition (begun with the coming of
the Kumuras) to fecundate the collective mind of Western man.
Isis Unveiled deals particularly with the religion and the various unorthodox and
occult movements of the European world. The book sought to establish the underground
existence of a Countercultural Movement (though HPB did not use such a term) which
remained active through many more or less secret societies drawing their inspiration from
Near-Eastern traditions (Hermetic, Gnostic, Kabbalist, Sufi, Druzes, and later Alchemical,
Rosicrucian, and Masonic). The book also had the perhaps less obvious purpose of showing
the essential difference between the path of at least relatively passive mediumship and
that of positive and deliberate adeptship. It was this aspect of her constant remarks in
conversation with others, which aroused the enmity of the Spiritualists, and eventually led
to a tragic episode. This was the careless and essentially biased "investigation" of HPB's
activities at Adyar, headquarters of The Theosophical Society, by Richard Hodgson, an agent
of the Society for Psychical Research. Hodgson accepted uncritically "evidence" fabricated
by the Coulombs who were housekeepers of the Adyar building. HPB was not in India at the
time, and when she returned she found such a tense and inimical atmosphere — and
particularly hatred among the Catholic missionaries — that she returned to Europe. In
December 1885 the Proceeding of the Society for Psychical Research branded her
"one of the most accomplished, ingenious and interesting impostors of history."(3)
The last six years of HPB's life were devoted to writing The Secret Doctrine, The Key
to Theosophy, The Voice of the Silence, The Theosophical Glossary, and numerous
articles. She was ill most of the time, and at least once, when death was momentarily
expected, was miraculously healed. She died suddenly in London during an influenza
epidemic on May 8, 1891.
The foregoing outline of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky's tempestuous life is obviously most
sketchy. Nevertheless it may be sufficient to show that the one fundamental factor in trying
to reach a deep understanding of the meaning and purpose of that life is the meaning and
purpose of the occult trans-Himalayan Brotherhood whose agent she claimed to be. It may
be impossible scientifically to prove the validity of that claim; it is as impossible to prove it
was a hoax, considering the quite outstanding individuals who had firsthand experiential
knowledge of the validity of her assertions. Even more convincing is the astounding
character of the contents of her large books, especially The Secret Doctrine, which no
ordinary mind could have produced without passing dozens of years studying and collating
an immense mass of verifiable documents in many great libraries. At the same time, it is
evident that H. P. Blavatsky, the woman, spent her life away from universities and national
libraries.
1. There are several biographies of H. P. Blavatsky, but most of the material mentioned
here is taken from an excellent short biographical chapter included in a remarkable book
Damodar and the Pioneers of the Theosophical Movement compiled by Sven Eek
(Theosophical Publishing House, Adyar, 1950).

2.The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett, pp. 2034, 2nd edition; p. 201,3rd edition.

3. More recently the SPR has officially affirmed that responsibility for the statements about
HPB rested solely with the author of the report (Richard Hodgson) and not with the Society
for Psychical Research.
CHAPTER THREE
H. P. Blavatsky and the Trans-Himalayan
Occult Brotherhood and the 19th Century - 2

What The Secret Doctrine primarily sought to show was that, at the core of the basic
teachings found in all or most of the world's religions which have left visible and
intelligible records, there exists a Universal Traditional so called "Wisdom Religion" — and
that, through all times and in all continents, this Tradition had been preserved by an
uninterrupted line of Custodians and interpreters organized in occult brotherhoods.
However, if one accepts this as a fundamental claim, one should be careful not to jump
to premature or unnecessary conclusions. The first and most essential realization is that a
mind trained by our Western civilization is unable to pass judgment on the validity and
implications of such claims unless it be willing to set aside its life-long conditioning by the
local point of view characteristic of our Western culture and religion, and learn to function
on an all-human, planetary level, free to judge on their own merits the ideas and values
which all cultures have contributed, and are contributing, to the evolution of mankind.
If there is a Universal Tradition, then only a universal mind can hope to adequately
understand its nature and its planetary source. This cannot be a cultural, religious source,
because — as I have tried to show — the sources of all particular cultures and
institutionalized religions (with their distinctive symbols, ideologies, practices, and dogmas)
are the manifestations of local conditions. No doubt the consciousness of the founders of the
more recent "great religions" (as we call them), especially Gautama the Buddha and Jesus
the Christ, was illumined by culture-transcending and "universal" experiences, and by divine
love and compassion. But none of these prophets or Avatars built a religion, as an
institution depending on formulas expressed in a particular language, with dogmas and
rituals answering to the specific and characteristic needs of a particular people. Their
disciples did; and the development of such religions involved endless arguments,
compromises, and pressures from political and sociocultural forces. At the same time their
religions came in answer to the disintegration or crystallization of previous religions and
cultural institutions.
A Tradition that could truly be called "universal" must therefore have its being
essentially beyond the cultural level; it must be transcultural, in the sense that while it may
operate through any culture, it is not bound to, limited by, or essentially conditioned by any
one culture or by local factors. Its custodians, just because they are "universal" or planetary
beings, aware of the need for a new release of their knowledge and intervention, are
inwardly compelled out of love for humanity to answer this particular need in whatever way
makes the answer most effectual. As this happens, what I have called the one Tradition is
seen operating in the aspect which is specifically able, ready, and willing to exteriorize the
spiritual-mental answer. It operates through an Occult Brotherhood.
 There was not only one Occult Brotherhood when, in 1883, the Mahatma K.H. wrote in
The Mahatma Letters:

As the course of the river depends upon the nature of its basin, so the channel of
communication of Knowledge must conform itself to surrounding circumstances. The
Egyptian Hierophant, the Chaldean Mage, the Arhat and the Rishi, were bound in days of
yore on the same voyage of discovery and ultimately arrived at the same goal, though by
different tracks. There are even at the present moment three centers of the Occult
Brotherhood in existence, widely separated geographically, and as widely exoterically —
the true esoteric doctrine being identical in substance, though differing in terms; all aiming
at the same grand object, but no two agreeing seemingly in the details of procedure . . . .
The only object to be striven for is the amelioration of the condition of MAN by the spread of
truth suited to the various stages of his development and that of the country he inhabits
and belongs to.(4)

From this statement, every sentence of which should be carefully studied, one can deduce
that there is but one Occult Brotherhood with three centers widely separated geographically.
But here we deal with a semantic matter. A similar issue arose when Annie Besant, after
HPB's death, seemingly took upon herself to change the wording of the first object of The
Theosophical Society from "to form the nucleus of a Universal Brotherhood of humanity" to
"to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of humanity." As it undoubtedly was Annie
Besant's purpose to popularize Theosophy all over the globe, the change may have been
valid at that time. A still deeper change in the concept of the Masters can be noted when
one compares the over-all picture that emerges from The Mahatma Letters with that
which has prevailed in theosophical circles during the 20th century. Perhaps the need to
conform to what is "suited to the various stages of (man's) development" is the deepest
reason one can present for such a change.
The nature of "the three centers" to which K.H. refers can be known only by a mind
able to operate at the truly occult level. It is nevertheless an acknowledged fact that, during
the first stage of HPB's work in America, a strong contact existed between her and what has
been referred to as the "Hungarian Lodge" directed by the Master R. and the "Egyptian
Lodge" headed by "Serapis." The former is said to have been the inspiration of secret
European societies such as the original Rosicrucians and early Free Masonry in the
eighteenth century; the latter may have been the true and original Brotherhood of Luxor of
which HPB was apparently a member.(5) Yet these "Lodges" and the trans-Himalayan
Brotherhood almost certainly were not the only centers of occult activity. One of the three
mentioned by K.H. may have been related to the Andes and the remains of the Inca and the
pre-Inca civilizations. Some time after World War I an American occultist, Brown Landone in
Florida, asserted that most of the greatest Adepts who had lived in the Himalayas and Tibet
had moved to the Andean region of Lake Titicaca. What occurred in Tibet some fifteen years
ago and the resulting disruption of the ancient Tibetan way of life give validity to the story,
which I personally had confirmed by another seemingly knowledgeable source.
In the book A Collection of Esoteric Writings by Subba Row, a very valuable book
for students, some "Notes" by HPB speak most interestingly of the "Aryan-Chaldeo-Tibetan
doctrine, or Universal WISDOM Religion," relating, and nearly identifying, the trans-
Himalayan esoteric doctrine with the Chaldeo-Tibetan traditions. There seems indeed to
have been a close connection between Chaldea (or Syria and Babylonia) and Tibet.
Recently, Sufi-oriented students taught by a Chilean occultist, Mr. Ichazo, and to some
extent related to the movement that had been started by Gurdjieff who studied with Dervish
Teachers, speak of the Hindu Kush as the seat of an Occult Brotherhood. Sufism itself may
be traced in its origin to the ancient teachings of some of the Hebrew Kabbalists; but the
Kabbalah may well have had its origin in the Jews' captivity in Babylon, which leads us
again to that region — an important one in the development of one branch of our present
humanity.
All such matters are evidently speculative; and in the Theosophical Movement and
other esoteric groups which branched from the original impulse given in 1875 by HPB and
those behind her mysterious personality, there is a tendency to provide the interested
seeker with exciting bits of information which tend to personalize currents of force,
magnetic centers of the earth, and the beginnings and ends of cycles, rather than to try to
make people "feel" and intuitively envision the vast rhythmic sweep of cosmic, planetary,
and even historical sociocultural processes. The various phases of these processes
certainly can be personified; but there is a fundamental difference between an approach to
existence according to which cyclic activities are produced by divine superhuman or human
beings, and another approach leading one to realize that these activities operate through
these beings serving as focal points for the release of the transforming energy of cosmic
evolution.
These two approaches are manifestations of what recent "philosophers of science" have
labeled atomism and holism.(6) Broadly speaking, throughout the nineteenth century, the
Western mind interpreted all experiences basically from an atomistic point of view, while the
developing trend during the twentieth century (especially after World War I) has been
toward holistic concepts. The spread of the German concept of gestalt (a word perhaps
best translated as "configuration") belongs to the latter development. It obviously had
antecedents in earlier philosophical thinking; but, at least since the Renaissance, atomism in
science and individualism in the sociopolitical and cultural fields have dominated the
consciousness of Europe and America and what I call the "Euromind." The individual ego of
human beings and the collective ego of nations — with their attendant pride and greed for
power, wealth, and material comfort — have been blatantly in the spotlight. The most basic
types of thinking and feeling have focused upon some kind of individual entity, at the
supposedly spiritual as well as the most materialistic and physical level. Distinctly
differentiated and essentially separate characteristics have been attributed to each one of
billions of monads, souls, and citizens — to each nation, atom, or element. In America,
personal emotions and opinions have come to dominate everything, including family
relationships and education. Yet in a peculiar manner these supposedly "personal" factors
and needs have proven to be most easily and collectively manipulatable by the media and
propaganda. However, these manipulations belong especially to our twentieth century with
its new emphasis on social consciousness and on "groups" endowed with a kind of mystique.

4. p. 399, 2nd ed.; p. 393, 3rd ed.

5. Afterward a group that took the name of the Brotherhood of Luxor became active in
Europe and the United States, but HPB said that it was not the ancient one rooted in the
occult past of the earliest Egyptian civilization.

6. The words, holism and holistic (from the Greek term for "whole") are now used
extensively, but to my knowledge, were not, or but very rarely, used until the publication
after World War I of a remarkable book Holism and Evolution by the great South African
statesman and thinker, General Jan Smuts. Yet his name is hardly ever mentioned by the
people using the adjective, holistic. However, I would mention here a very significant book
by Lancelot Whyte, Accent on Form (Harper and Brothers, N.Y. 1954). I might also refer
the interested reader to my books The Astrology of Personality and Person-Centered
Astrology.
CHAPTER THREE
H. P. Blavatsky and the Trans-Himalayan
Occult Brotherhood and the 19th Century - 3

If we are trying objectively to think of the esoteric movements of the last hundred
years, it is first of all most important to realize that the release of occult knowledge has
always to conform to the nature of the general mentality of the potential students of that
knowledge. For this reason, nothing can be transformed except by someone who has been
and at least externally remains a part of that which requires transformation. This is why a
great Adept who is a member of an Occult Brotherhood cannot directly and publicly operate
in a society in need of spiritual transformation, especially one as materialistic and
individualistic as our Western society was in the nineteenth century. Someone who to some
extent belongs to the two realms of knowledge (occult and cultural) must serve as an
intermediary or channel for communication. This must be an individual able to withstand
both the downflow of occult power through his organism, and the scorn, indifference, or
attacks of individuals and institutions of the society in which he was born, but from which
his consciousness and will have emerged in at least relative freedom.
Only such a person can serve as a link between an occult Brotherhood and the
collectivity whose time for transformation has come, according to some planetary cycle.
Occasionally there are individuals who prematurely attempt to introduce radically new ideas
or modes of energy-release into their society. For example, The Secret Doctrine mentions
J. W. Keely who, a hundred years ago, tried to commercialize a mysterious force through a
most ingenious motor of his invention. But such premature attempts achieve no results
because the time has not yet come for what has somehow been discovered. Even if the time
had really come, the intermediary could at first usually affect but relatively few people. All
natural processes are hierarchical.
What this all means is that, while what the Theosophical Movement released through
HPB and a few others should be considered as the direct manifestation of an aspect of the
Universal Tradition of Man, it is nevertheless only one aspect, initiated by the trans-
Himalayan Brotherhood through a Russian woman whose individual karma, as well as the
karma of European nations, inevitably gave a particular character and definite limits to the
release. Theosophy and all that has during this century, developed along related lines has
therefore necessarily a two-fold nature. It is stamped with the need of the nineteenth
century in the Western World, with some of the character of Helena Petrovna von Hahn and
(it would seem) of the main sources of her knowledge, the Brothers K.H. and M. But its
essential Source is the one occult Tradition whose spiritual origin can be referred back to
the coming of the Kumaras, and particularly to that aspect of the Kumaric "descent" to
which the name Sanat is given.
H. P. Blavatsky was selected by the trans-Himalayan Brotherhood "after nearly a
century of fruitless search" (cf. the quotation on page 32) as "the only opportunity to send
out a European body upon European soul to serve as a connecting link between that
country and our own" (i.e. the Tibetan Himalayas). She was selected from an ancestral
lineage which presumably had genetically developed certain psychic powers.(7) These
powers later on had to be brought under conscious training during her stay in Tibet, if not
before, because she had first to deal with a society and culture in which the only wide open
door to anything beyond physical matter was the spiritualistic movement. Spiritualism had
to be used, dangerous as such a use proved to be, because it established a point of contact.
In the background, another point of contact was also available — what remained of the
movement started by Anton Mesmer during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The
kind of vital energy which Mesmer was trying to reveal to the narrowly rationalistic public
(what he called "animal magnetism") had been scorned by an official Commission of learned
personages, including Benjamin Franklin, then U.S. ambassador to France, and the scientist
Lavoisier. Nevertheless disciples of Mesmer in France and in the United States carried on
along the lines of inquiry he had opened. They led not only through Phineas Quinby to
Christian Science, but also to the psychological experiments of the Nancy School in France,
which started Freud on his career. This "Mesmeric" contact was used in India by Colonel
Olcott who became widely known as a magnetic healer.
The Spiritualist movement had opened a door to the "astral" realm, but while some of
the phenomena were no doubt genuine, the interpretation given to them was, according to
HPB, erroneous. Isis Unveiled was written, at least partly, to disprove the validity of the
Spiritualists' claim to be in touch with the real spiritual individuality of departed men and
women; and this, as we have already seen, led to tragic misunderstandings and bitter
enmity which adversely affected the Theosophical Movement. An interesting and perhaps
significant fact is that the Spiritualist movement — which began with the mediumistic
phenomena produced in 1848 by the Fox sisters at Hydeville, N.Y. and soon spread wildly
throughout the States — has a parallel, almost exactly 100 years later, in the UFO
movement which, for a while at least, also gained a vast number of adherents claiming
direct experiences.
While in the nineteenth century Spiritualism sought to establish the existence of human
minds and soul-entities beyond the borderline of the physical world, the twentieth century
UFO movement — which also produced a wide variety of "communications" from "Space-
People" — attempts to show that "men" from other planets or solar systems exist. It is
maintained that these "Space-People" can break through the barrier that seemingly has
isolated our planet and its gravitational field from other cosmic regions, where other kinds
of "humanity" live and are able to develop technologies superior to our own. Both
movements therefore have a common aim: to break down man's basic sense of isolation
and loneliness — Spiritualism in terms of the possibility of communication with physically
dead human persons who nevertheless exist in a different realm, and the UFO movement in
terms of the possibility of establishing physical and mental contact with other
humanities.(8)
 Both movements represent an attempt at expanding consciousness and human
contacts, and it will be interesting to see whether, after 1975, the occult "messenger"
announced by HPB will use the UFO concept to gain public notice, and soon after also show
that the usual interpretation given to flying saucers and space-people is not the correct
one.(9)
In its most advanced form since the days of Planck and Einstein and the beginning of
our present century, Western science has experienced a most basic change of mind. Top
physicists, chemists, biologists can hardly any longer be called materialists, yet their
training and the pressure of official institutions and academic thinking often make it
impossible for them to draw certain kinds of philosophical and even metaphysical
conclusions. This is true both from the level of "material" activity which is the subject of
their studies and as concerns the essentially symbolic character of the mathematical
symbols which they use as a highly complex and actually transcendental language. The
basic problem today is that the inertia of past Euro-American sociocultural, economic, and
political institutions is obstinately resisting acceptance of the radically new approach to
man, and to cosmic, planetary, and biopsychic energies. Such a new approach alone could
repolarize the collective consciousness of the directing managerial and intellectual elite, and
establish it at a level where it could openly resonate to the universalistic concepts and
vibrations of the occult world.
This occult world can now appear in a somewhat different light to the minds of men
able to think in planetary all-human terms. As long as man's thinking was conditioned by
but a partial and local response to the basic factors in his earthly evolution, the glamour
of mythological or transcendent events and personages was necessary to allow the devotees
of particular cultures and religious institutions to transcend (literally: to take a step ahead
of) their institutionalized consciousness.
However, now that man is at least potentially able to think holistically in terms of the
whole of mankind and of the earth as a vast organism with many "globes" or levels of
existence, the world of true Occultism need not be thought of in remote, mysterious, and
utterly supernatural terms — and even less in terms of the miraculous. In its concrete,
external manifestations, it is the world of humanity-as-a-whole beyond all localisms, and
beyond (though at the core of) all cultures and organized religions. It is a world of planetary
activities dealing with the whole sweep of the cycle of evolution in the solar system. These
activities are totally inclusive; they do not select this individual or that particular tribe or
race as especially or, even less, exclusively important, except when, at a particular time, it
can serve as a focalizing lens through which new energies of a planetary character can be
released.
The true Occultist lives, thinks, and essentially acts in a planetary (and at times
superplanetary and "heliocosmic") world of forces, which constitute the true "astral" realm
— a world of energies guided by the archetypal patterns of the so-called "casual" aspect of
the cosmic and planetary Mind. He works for humanity rather than for individuals, save in
exceptional cases and for more-than-personal purposes. His work is moved by a deep
unfaltering love for mankind. Throughout The Mahatma Letters, and in countless
statements made by HPB and William Q. Judge (who was instrumental in the formation of
the then Esoteric Section of The Theosophical Society), the basic keynote for entrance upon
the path that leads to the true Occultism of the Elder Brothers is sounded forth: consecrated
service for humanity in a total surrender of the ego and its lesser goals and narrow
possessive loves. In The Mahatma Letters, in a letter from Morya, one reads: "It is he
alone who has the love of humanity at heart, who is capable of grasping thoroughly the idea
of a regenerating practical Brotherhood who is entitled to the possession of our secrets. He
alone, such a man, will never misuse his powers and there will be no fear that he should
turn them to selfish ends. A man who places not the good of mankind above his own good is
not worthy of becoming even our chela — he is not worthy of becoming brighter in
knowledge than his neighbour."(10) This is the acid test of the kind of Occultism of which
HPB became the emissary. Any other kind will sooner or later lead to the dark path of the
"Brothers of the Shadow."
Let me repeat here what has already been said concerning the Kumaras or Promethean
Spirits. In their nature, Love and Knowledge are two poles from whose interaction power is
released. If they are eager to break through the inertial Ring of Saturn and the all-too-
spiritual glory of King Jupiter so that evolution can forever go on along its essential spiral
path, and if they are ready to suffer the nearly inevitable consequences of their
compassionate involvement in the development of self-consciousness and responsibility in
Man, it is because of their boundless compassion; this compassion encompasses all who are
able to resonate to their everlasting Call. This ability to resonate and respond is inherent,
though so often undeveloped, in all human beings since the most ancient coming of these
exalted beings and the sacrificial grafting of their power of universal Love and occult
Knowledge onto the wild animal-like nature of earthbound mankind.
This power is for us all consciously to use at this crucial period of human evolution. It is
a time which, at the level of the strictly human consciousness, repeats the great
transformation that was induced at an unconscious level in the Earth's biosphere millions
of years ago under the impact of the Venusian Host. It is for Man now consciously to choose
between the way of spiritual integration through Love and that of slow gradual decay
through selfishness, fears, greed, and lust.
We are coming to the turning point. Everything depends on the clarity of our knowing
and the purity and compassion of our loving. Knowledge and Love are both essential.
Knowledge alone is dark; Love alone is possessively blind. All deep and radical spiritual
transformations able to alter the total reality of Man require an illumined mind and an all-
encompassing heart.
7. Presumably her paternal line, because her father's daughter from a second marriage
after Helena's mother had died, had also in early youth strong psychic powers which
disappeared as she grew older (cf. Damodar, p. 541).

8. The astrologer will easily relate these two movements with the character of the two
planets, Neptune and Pluto. Spiritualism is Neptunian in its ambiguity and glamour; the UFO
concept is Plutonian in all it portends, superphysically and yet concretely.

9. In this connection one would do well to read a quite fascinating article by Jacques Vallee
in the February 1974 issue of the excellent magazine PSYCHIC published in San Francisco:
"UFO: The Psychic Component."

10. p. 252, 2nd ed.; p. 248, 3rd. ed.

CHAPTER FOUR
A Planetary Frame of Reference - 1

Because the consciousness and the emotional response of most human beings
today revolve around the ego, and their minds refer most experiences to an irreducible
feeling of "I myself," it is very difficult for them to come to a vivid existential realization that
the person they "know" themselves to be is only a transient phase in a vast process of
unfoldment of human potentials — a process which can never be fully understood unless it
is seen to encompass the whole of mankind on this planet. This knowledge of being a
particular person centered around a self, definable in terms of everyday experiences, seems
to most individuals of our time fundamental and irreducible because it no longer operates
within a powerfully compelling and larger frame of reference. Even in old Europe the family,
the ancestral religion, and the national culture constituted unquestioned frames of reference
in relation to which the "I" was given some kind of function and purpose — if only that of
perpetuating the family, the racial inheritance, and the cultural and religious tradition.
Now, especially in America, the "I" has acquired a quasi-absolute character and value,
thus an unrelated significance in a pluralistic universe which to the spiritually oriented is
ultimately reducible to an immense number of independent spiritual "monads." These
monads, in some ancient metaphysical systems, are considered to be co-eternal and
absolute; but to the Christian theologian and philosopher — and still to most ordinary
people in the Euro-American world — they are created ex nihilo (out of nothing) by a
mysterious all-powerful God of Whom they are, in some sense at least, the spiritual
progeny. Thus the one essential relationship to which these centers of consciousness and
will can and should respond is their relationship to their divine Father. All other relationships
are usually regarded as transient means to "learn lessons" which most often involve conflict
and pain in the process of developing love and overcoming pride, greed, and
possessiveness.
Christianity no doubt officially believes in the Brotherhood of Man as well as the
Fatherhood of God; all men theoretically are "brothers" inasmuch as all are "sons" of God.
But the record of our Western society and of the Christian religion assuredly fails to present
a glowing picture of "brotherly love" between Christians and non-Christians, and even
between Catholics and Protestants. This is usually attributed to the still spiritually and
morally unevolved character of the immense majority of human beings or to the inherent
sinfulness of human nature since the "Fall of Man." However, back of such concepts, and
giving them power and meaning, we are actually dealing with a more basic metaphysical
belief in the irreducible separateness of individual Souls and/or monads. This belief almost
inevitably leads to and strongly supports a personalistic and sociocultural glorification of the
ego, as well as the "sovereign" state and national entity. The cult of the ego and, at least in
theory, the dogmatic assertion of the prerogatives of the individual person as a social
"atom" — the citizen — were bound to generate a collective mentality which, as soon as the
binding moral framework of family tradition and religious beliefs lost its credibility and
effectiveness, would give rise to an anguished and widespread sense of separateness and
alienation.
Perhaps this is the inevitable shadow of the light produced by the "gift of Fire" made by
the Kumaras to human beings. As self-consciousness grows in the human organism and
every experience becomes referred to a center — an interior "I" — the habitual responses of
this center becomes organized as an ego-structure. Eventually the pride of personal
achievement produces an increased reliance upon this controlling ego-structure; and, as it is
the very nature of life to expand, and the human being is still dominated by the compulsive
instincts of organic living in the earth's biosphere, this ego-structure also tends to expand.
This ego-expansion requires, and indeed receives, the services of the mind's capacity for
organization.
It is the mind that can provide frames of reference for man's experiences and impulses,
and for his aspirations and personal desires. Religions and philosophies build such frames of
reference. At the collective level of society these become the "traditions"; they always have
a local character when referring to the products of particular cultures and societies. But
there is a level which is higher, because more inclusive, than that of relatively local cultures
and even of "Races" (in the theosophical sense of the term) and continents. It is at this
level that the Promethean or Kumaric fire of self-consciousness and individual responsibility
operated when, millions of years ago, it was brought to Man; and it has never ceased to
operate at that level — the level of the earth as a planetary organism. At that level, Mind
does not operate as the servant of the egos of individuals, or of any situations in historical
time or local space. It operates in terms of the evolution of the entire solar system — or
"heliocosm" — and in relation to the galactic whole of which this heliocosm is but a small
cellular unit. It operates in terms of planetary consciousness.
The coming of the Kumaras and, according to Occultism, the special relationship
between Venus and the Earth, are factors that have meaning in terms of the evolution of
the whole solar system as an organized field of interrelated and interdependent activities.
For human beings who cannot operate beyond the planetary field of the earth (but now man
has begun to take a transcendent step in overcoming this limitation) the inplanetarization
(rather than incarnation) of the Kumaras and the start of the process of individualization of
Man are global events. They are phases of a planetary process; phases which cannot really
be understood unless the whole process is studied and its over-all structure discovered. This
requires at least the start of a planetary type of knowledge. That knowledge can be acquired
only by planetary beings. They can transmit it only to individuals who, in some manner,
have developed minds whose intuitional perceptions encompass processes of a planetary
scope.
This is the reason why The Secret Doctrine and the very existence of Adepts who
inspired HPB could not be publicly revealed — i.e. revealed to the collective mentality of our
Western humanity — before human beings had at least begun to circumnavigate and
physically experience the whole globe of the earth and become related to all the
sociocultural collectivites at present in existence. The Industrial Revolution of the first part
of the nineteenth century made such global concrete experiences possible. Thus it brought
to the fore the need for a planetary type of knowledge, and also for the kind of
"universal Love" which the humanitarian movements of the 1840s at least foreshadowed.
Blavatsky's travels around the world are ritualistic symbols of a globe encompassing all-
human awareness. They herald the actual emergence of a planetary consciousness, which
our two World Wars have precipitated under baptisms of blood.
Actually the first public impact of the new potentiality of existence of integrally
organized all-human society came with the proclamation in 1863 by the Persian Prophet-
Avatar, Baha'u'llah, of his worldwide mission as Law-giver for a New Age society. This
proclamation was sent also in the form of "Letters" to the then ruling Kings of the main
nations of the world. At the close of this book I shall try to interpret the relation between
the Theosophical Movement and the Bahai Faith. But at this point I should state that the
Theosophical Movement has essentially operated at the level of the higher Mind and in
terms of occult knowledge, rather than as a worldwide social-religious organization. The aim
of the early Theosophical Movement actually was to present a planetary-cosmic frame of
reference for the then imminent development of a new science and psychology; above all, it
has continued to stress fully conscious growth of a spirit of all-human brotherhood made
possible by the breaking down of cultural boundaries and religious dogmas.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Planetary Frame of Reference - 2

The recently developed scientific attitude deals holistically with processes more
than atomistically with isolated and unrelated entities. In its own hesitant and empirical
way it is reaching intangible and nonmaterial bodies or objects. Science even at times
abandons the very idea of "substance" as a concrete factor, and interprets existence in
terms of "pure forms," which are closely related to the archetypes of occult philosophy.
Late in life, HPB told her disciples that the task of Theosophy was to "change the mind
of the twentieth century." It is no doubt difficult to establish a causal connection between
what she taught and the progress of electronics and atomic physics and chemistry; but who
can tell how mind currents operate and which seeds hidden invisibly in the damp autumnal
soil and covered by the winter's snow become, in springtime, the causes of the emergence
of new plants?
Unfortunately the Western mind has an avid curiosity for new phenomena and for
events extending the scope of its perception or stimulating its remarkable ability to
correlate, rationally classify, and describe what the senses experience. HPB's followers were
greedy for new information and overeager to claim the capacities required to become
disciples of those whose consciousness and behavior are ineradicably rooted in the patterns
of the occult Tradition, the original answer to the need of Man and the Earth. Very few
among these would-be disciples had developed anything like a planetary consciousness.
They wanted, usually on their own terms, direct contacts with the Masters; and we can read
in The Mahatma Letters what were the results of such an attitude, particularly in the case
of Mr. A.0. Hume.(1) They wanted the kind of knowledge which the European mind has
been brilliantly able — for better or for worse — to put to use, but knowledge without
spiritual-moral responsibility, knowledge unintegrated with universal Love.
During the countless millennia of the prehistoric as well as historical past of mankind,
knowledge had always been understood as being hierarchical. It flowed from beings of a
higher type to the most devoted, intrepid, and willful members of a culture. It had a
hierarchical, secret character. It flowed through what might be called a vertical line of
transmission. The religious person of our society speaks of the "Fatherhood of God"; but the
occultist of the past received his knowledge from a quasi-divine personage who, in turn, had
received it from his guru — the long chain of transmission (guruampara) extending, at least
ideally, to Man's divine Instructors. He received more than knowledge, for its very
possession necessitates that the "divine spark" of Kumara Fire should be made to flame
forth — and the oxygen needed for this flaming forth, if the source of the transmission was
pure, was divine Love and infinite compassion for Man — the essence of what I have called
planetary consciousness.
Such a hierarchical and "vertical" kind of transmission has almost inevitably a restricted
field of application. Whoever was actually ready to receive the knowledge became drawn to
the particular aspect of the Tradition which, because of his cultural upbringing and condition
of birth, constituted an answer to his personal need and, at least to some extent, to the
needs of his society. His actual readiness was tested in all sorts of ways to safeguard so far
as possible both the knowledge and the line of transmission.
What today we call empirical and scientific knowledge has a totally different character.
It develops "horizontally" through the free sharing of information between minds able to
extract from a multiplicity of classified data and from shared new discoveries what they
need for their effective operation. These minds, even though they evidently differ in quality
and ability to organize and apply information, are nevertheless theoretically on the same
level of consciousness. The process of transmission has no longer an essentially hierarchical
character; it is "democratic" even though the vanguard of active searchers and discoverers
constitute an "elite" which tends to perpetuate itself in relative isolation from the mass of
people whom, deliberately or not, they at least indirectly control. When such a control
becomes rigid and truly aristocratic — in the traditional European sense of the term — we
see the rise of a technocracy. The typical technocrat is a man able to use a definite amount
of knowledge and technological skill with little or no consideration for the actual welfare —
and even less for the spiritual-individual development — of the persons who will be affected
by this use. It is knowledge without love for humanity — even if the knower is able to
display personal affection for one or a few intimates.
Because the Theosophical Movement of the Nineteenth century had to some extent to
deal with persons who held that type of love-deprived knowledge and merely were eager to
obtain more of the same kind, provided it was new, spectacular, and fascinating, the trans-
Himalayan adepts, working through HPB, placed the formation of a Universal Brotherhood
founded on the love of humanity as the first and most basic of their aims. At the
"horizontal" level brotherhood was to be the keynote or, one might say, the common
ground. Without such a "ground" ready to receive seeds of the higher occult knowledge, the
sowing of such seeds was neither safe nor even possible except in a very general manner.
Yet the trans-Himalayan Brothers had to formulate the concepts which they transmitted
in writing in terms of the essentially atomistic and individualistic taken for granted beliefs
held by the collective Western mentality. They had to use intellectual, analytical means to
bring credence to the vast cyclic realizations of true Occultism, which deals essentially with
forces and processes, and only secondarily with the myriad of entities of the mythological
world, whose "names" symbolize the many phases of the world-process. What HPB's The
Secret Doctrine intended to do was to show that all these mythological names and stories
(for instance, the creation myth of various cultures and the many confused references to
"Fallen Angels" and human Progenitors of various types) were derived from a common
Source of occult Knowledge; and that only that Source and those whose consciousness was
identified with it could provide modern individuals with the structural sequence of the
phases of "cyclocosmic" processes and the true character, meaning, and purposes of each
phase with reference to the whole.
 While occult knowledge is fundamentally holistic, it assuredly does not play down the
role and significance of individual entities. Yet, the concept of "monads," which presumably
originated in the mind of the German philosopher, Leibnitz, in the seventeenth century, has,
I believe, been greatly misunderstood. References can be found in The Mahatma Letters
and elsewhere to the effect that actually there is only one Monad, or that the term applies
as well to an atom as to a human individual, a solar system, or a whole universe. The term,
atma, has also been used in a confusing manner, without regard to HPB's or K.H.'s repeated
statement that atma can "exist" only in relation to buddhi. The concepts of "monadic place"
and "monadic evolution" are indeed ambiguous, as we read that the monad itself cannot be
said to "evolve."
Likewise the sketch repeated in many books purporting to show how the "life-wave"
passes from Globe to Globe in a planetary Scheme is also sure to create confusion, for the
Globes have a common center, and may even be said to exist in different "dimensions,"
whatever this exactly means! All such concepts were presented in a manner which seemed
the most acceptable to the culturally set minds of men like Sinnett and Hume; they were
conditioned by the "Euro-mind" of the time and the very words were, as K.H. once wrote,
picked out of Sinnett's mind. This is inevitable. I repeat that The Secret Doctrine as a
book is a compromise with the nineteenth century mentality. Even some of its claims, which
have offended people who have not understood the psychological reason for them, were
meant to convey the necessity of a certain approach to the study of the book, and of
Occult knowledge in general — an approach wholeheartedly accepting the inevitable
character of the vertical transmission of knowledge from the keepers of the Tradition to
those who seek to be initiated into its secrets.
For these reasons, and considering the fact that the Source of the knowledge presented
by HPB was one of the several Occult Brotherhoods operating in the nineteenth
century, and whose collective dharma it presumably was to try to establish a connection
with the Western society and in the English language, it should be clear that what HPB
wrote under direction, yet through the cerebral processes of her body, is not a
manifestation of the wholeness of knowledge within the one planetary Tradition, but only of
the aspect of It formulated in terms of a karmic relationship between a certain group of
Adept-Brothers and the need of humanity — particularly Western humanity — in the
nineteenth century. This does not make the work of HPB less important, but it may enable
one to see the whole issue of the value and character of The Secret Doctrine in a broader
perspective. This, however, is not said to justify many of the claims made since HPB's death
— claims of direct and literal transmission by the Adepts who sent her into the world.
Everything dealing with Occultism — white or black — is ambiguous and paradoxical.
HPB repeatedly stated that she was not allowed to give out the whole truth and that "blinds"
had to be used so long as Universal Brotherhood was not a realized fact. As I see it, what
really matters are not fascinating details to be memorized by the curious mind, but the
gaining of a whole view of cosmic, planetary, and human evolution. It is to be able to "see"
or even feel this evolution, with its interconnecting cycles and subcycles, microcosmic as
well as macrocosmic. As long as the mind thinks atomistically and tries to classify entities
and their many names in computerized brains, and as long as it is not able to have clear
and sequential experiences of supermental "seeing," it can only stand, confused and
befuddled, at the threshold of a "door of perception" whose transparency is impaired by fog
and dirt. Above all, what the would-be Occultist needs is the ability adequately to formulate
his superintellectual experiences or intuitions in concepts and words which at least
approximate what he has "seen" or "felt."
The formulating process is the key to whether or not what is imparted to others is
valid. For such a process to be not merely intellectual information and fascinating stories,
but an inspiration for a transformation of consciousness and greater living, it is essential
that the mind of the formulator should be able to deal directly with "whole ideas" founded
upon metaphysical and cyclocosmic principles, and thus to develop what I have called
"clairthinking." Any other process will lead to episodic formulations.
A really holistic approach must be able not only to produce concepts that embrace a
totality of data or experiences and reveal their internal "form," but it must release vibrant
and potentially transforming ideas infused with the love of Man. One can never repeat
enough that there can be no true Occultism without a "heart" filled with transpersonal and
sacrificial Love. Without this Love, woe to him who seeks to tread the path of Occultism and
to break through the threshold!

1. The contact with the Masters was broken by this remarkably proud Englishman; yet his
real abilities found their use in the more mundane political field and he became the prime
mover of the Indian Congress which played a historical role in freeing India from British
rule.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Planetary Frame of Reference - 3

I have spoken of vertically transmitted and horizontally shared knowledge. I should

like to conclude these pages by stressing again the fact that what has come to us during the
last hundred years from Occult Sources has been in answer to the newly developed and
growing possibility of using a planetary frame of reference for our conceptions. It is the time
when an Occult Messenger comes, and the environmental conditions through which he or
she has to operate are the surest clues to the meaning, validity, importance, and scope of
the mission. One should not separate The Secret Doctrine from the nineteenth century.
Only a thorough understanding of the time-space situation in which HPB's works were
produced can make us evaluate within a larger and holistic frame of reference the meaning,
not of the fundamental principles which The Secret Doctrine presents (these are "eonic"
and inherent in the Tradition and the cosmos seen from the Earth's point of view), but of
the formulation given to these principles and their effects upon the existence of Man at his
various levels.
Moreover, as HPB came and worked as an emissary of one of the several Occult
Brotherhoods, it should also be most important to understand what place this trans-
Himalayan Brotherhood occupies in the total organism of the planet, Earth, and the function
it performs — not even mentioning the even more difficult grasp of the Earth's place and
function within the heliocosm, and of the latter in our galaxy. I do not see how such an
understanding is possible without the realization that the Earth is indeed a cosmic organism,
and that it has not only a physical globe as its material body, but also an electromagnetic
"ethero-astral body," and still higher "fields of existence" in which mental and spiritual
forces and dynamic centers operate.
Such an assertion is obviously undemonstrable from a strictly scientific point of view,
though modern physics is now studying planetary currents of magnetism and the Earth's
reactions to "solar winds" and a myriad of other atomic or superatomic energies. Yet today
Occultism makes little sense without the realization that this occult world deals with
planetary forces and centers rather than with mysterious personages performing actions
which, to our perceptions and interpretative minds utterly conditioned by the prejudices of
our local culture, appear miraculous. We can no more understand the meaning of the Occult
Brotherhoods without referring them to the Earth-as-a-whole than we can grasp the
rationale of yogic exercises and modes of concentration of pranic energy without accepting
as a fact the existence of the chakras.
The chakras are pictured by clairvoyants as whorls of forces existing in the
superphysical "etheric body," which resembles the normally invisible electromagnetic field
surrounding a magnet. They are invisible to the average human eyes, but are described in
some detail by Hindu yogis and by Western clairvoyants, the number of whom seem to be
greatly increasing. HPB spoke of three systems of chakras: the exoteric ones which are
related to and permeate some large nerve plexuses (those existing along the vertebral
spine from the coccygeal region to the top of the head) and what she called "master
chakras" within the head or above. More recent information concerning the chakras speaks
mainly, or exclusively, of those along the spine and within the head.
If the Earth is a cosmic organism, it must also have within its total being (or "auric
egg"), which may extend as far as the Moon's orbit, whorls of planetary energy, planetary
chakras. Ancient as well as modern occultists have spoken of "sacred mountains" or highly
magnetic centers — perhaps "holy places" — on the Earth's surface. It seems also that high
mountains, some of which are apparently especially "sacred," are to be considered as the
Sources of invisible currents of mental-spiritual inspiration for the cultures developing below
their peaks. One can think especially of the Himalayas above India, of the Caucasus above
Persia, Mesopotamia, and Asia Minor, of the Alps above Italy, of the Carpathian mountains
above Austria-Hungary, of the Andes in relation to the Incas, and of some North American
mountains "sacred" to Indian tribes — some of them, such as Mt. Shasta and the Tetons,
having acquired quite a name in modern American esotericism. There are also high
mountains in Africa, and the two branches of the "sacred" Nile flow from some of them.
It naturally comes to mind that the Occult Brotherhoods have some definite connection
with these mountains. The activities of these Brotherhoods may well be related to the
operation of the Earth's chakras, which in turn affect changes in the Earth's biosphere and,
as a result, the evolution of human races and cultures. The idea at least seems logical and
valid provided it is not materialized by thinking of our planet merely as a mass of physical
matter. Its main value consists in the fact that it could reinterpret what to mystics appears
totally transcendent and essentially ineffable, bringing their experience to a level
comprehensible to the holistic mind for which the Earth in its total being is a vast, living,
thinking organism in which all kingdoms of life perform interrelated and interdependent
functions.
These kingdoms do not include merely the mineral, vegetable, animal, and human
kingdoms. One must add oceanic, atmospheric, and stratospheric currents, ionospheric
fields and Van Allen belts, and even less perceptible forms of energy pervading the Earth's
aura, for this aura exists within the vaster aura of the solar system which in turn operates in
the space-field of the galaxy. One should not dismiss as fairy-tales a "deva kingdom" which
seems to refer to non-individualized beings possibly related to solar forces and servants of
the "will" of a planetary or solar center of consciousness. One should also speak of a
superhuman (or "fifth") kingdom whose cosmic Source is the Kumara Host which gave to
animal man the Fire of self-consciousness and responsible will.
All these "kingdoms" and levels of energy-release or energy-control are integral and
organic parts of the Earth. Each has a definite function to perform. Humanity has a definite
organic function to perform — a function probably similar to that of the three nervous
systems of the human body (sympathetic, parasympathetic and cerebrospinal), or at least
of the brain (old and new). The Occult Brotherhoods also have definite functions to perform,
the main one at a level beyond man's normal perception. This is the level of akasha at
which a "Master" has his true "mahatmic" being, if we believe many of K.H.'s remarks in
The Mahatma Letters.
The human body operates in a hierarchical manner. Not only does it originate from one
fecundated ovum, which through a series of subdivisions produces the trillions of its cells,
but it operates under a very rigid system of controls along a hierarchical line of command.
Similarly, the esotericist, speaks of a "planetary Hierarchy" with an equally definite line of
command, or at least control. There has been a tendency of esotericism to glorify — or at
least glamorize — the Masters. But if one reads The Mahatma Letters one gets a very
different impression of what the members of an Occult Brotherhood are like. K.H. repeatedly
stresses his total obedience to his Master, the Chohan, and his inability to use more than a
certain amount of "occult power" in his dealing with the members of The Theosophical
Society unless authorized by the Chohan, who apparently is the Head of the Brotherhood —
of this particular trans-Himalayan Brotherhood, let us not forget.
It would be attractive to be able to correlate the three main chakras, the much
publicized "Rays," and the regions of the Earth; but as already stated, a higher type of
knowledge would be required. It may nevertheless seem possible, or likely, that the trans-
Himalayan Brotherhood corresponds to the Ajna center back of the human forehead which
synthesizes the operations of the "lower" spinal centers, and perhaps directs them
somewhat as the pituitary glands direct the activities of other glands by releasing powerful
hormones. One might also suggest that the fabled Shamballah may correspond to either the
heart chakra or the "Sahasrara" chakra above the head, and imagine a pulsating connection
between the Shamballah center in central Asia (the Heartland of the Earth?) and the
Himalayan center. If so, and if it is true that most of the highest members of the trans-
Himalayan center have moved to the Andes, might this not indicate a relatively imminent
(which may mean decades or even centuries away) shift in the polar axis readjusting the
relationship between perhaps immovable ethero-astral whorls of energies and continental
localities at the surface of the lobe?
These are only speculations. What may be more significant to discuss is the existence
of a certain amount of confusion in the minds of esotericists between what they call "the
planetary Hierarchy" and "the White Lodge." One can think of the Hierarchy in terms of
divine or quasi-divine "Beings" to whom names and specific characteristics are given; this is
the mythological, and also the "atomistic," because individualizing approach. If a human
being enters into relation to this Hierarchy he will presumably do so in terms of a contact, at
whatever level it may be, with some mysterious personage who may remain an ever-
present influence and guide. But one may also think of the Hierarchy as a progressively
more complex pyramidal series of "offices" or of centers of activity having a functional
character in the existence and evolution of the planet, Earth, and of Man as an organic part
of the planet. This is the "holistic" approach in which process is the most essential factor,
even though evidently each phase of the process can be personified into a great being who
has become identified with it. From this point of view Masterhood is primary; the individual
human being who, as a Master, manifests the power and activity of this Masterhood is
secondary. Fire is the essential reality, even though its existence implies flame after flame.
And it is in that sense that the one Tradition exists through and within every great Occult
tradition formulated by a particular Occult Brotherhood.
If one thinks of the Hierarchy as a planetary web or field forming the innermost
structure of the dynamic astromental body of the Earth, one will at once realize that the
great beings who "manage" these offices must have reached a basic high level of planetary
consciousness; at that level they operate — at least in their "Mahatmic" condition — in a
condition of essential unanimity. They constitute therefore a "pleroma" of beings — the
omega state of the cyclic evolution of the Earth. It is a state of multi-unity. This pleroma
state of multi-unity IS "the Great Lodge." It is a state of consciousness and power. On the
other hand, the Hierarchy is a spiritual-mental organization of offices or planetary
functions. Every member of the Hierarchy must be able to operate at the level of
consciousness which is the Great Lodge, but every member of the Great Lodge need not be
a member of the Hierarchy.
It is said that Gautama, the Buddha, "reorganized" this Lodge. This has puzzled many
students, but presumably it means that, being what has been called a "sixth-Rounder" he
brought to the planet the potentiality of manifesting the cosmic vibration of Number 6;
whereas the Kumaric Mind vibrates essentially in a fivefold rhythm, and self-conscious Man
is the Pentagram, the five-pointed star.
In The Mahatma Letters definite references are made not only to Gautama and
Sankaracharya as "Sixth Rounders," but to Gautama (and after him Tsung Ka Pa, reformer
of Buddhism in Tibet) having been the first human being able to penetrate beyond the
"Ring-Pass-Not" of the solar system.(2)
Mention is made also of "Fifth-Rounders" who are divided into three classes (The
Mahatma Letters; p. 117): "The natural-born Seers and clairvoyants of Mrs. Anna
Kingsford and Mr. Maitland's types — the great Adepts of whatever country — the geniuses,
whether in arts, politics or religious reform." These terms, Fifth-Rounders and Sixth-
Rounders, may seem very mysterious to a person unacquainted with the apparently
complex system of Schemes, Rounds, Root Races, Subraces, and Family Races taught by
K.H. to A.P. Sinnett in long letters appearing at the beginning of The Mahatma Letters —
a system on which the English writer based his book, Esoteric Buddhism. But these terms
simply refer to divisions of time — just as seconds, minutes, hours, days, years do. Time is
the structuring power which divides the universal world process into wholes within wholes
within wholes; or as a modern thinker, Julius Stulman, expresses it, "fields within fields
within fields . . . "

2. cf The Mahatma Letters, p. 43, 96-117.

CHAPTER FOUR
A Planetary Frame of Reference - 4

What many modern teachings do not clearly enough state is the manner in which
these cycles, subcycles and sub-subcycles interpenetrate. At least tentatively, to
understand this interpenetration requires the ability to think in terms of pure numerical
abstractions. This leads one to a type of consciousness, as it were, beyond the
dimensions of measurable time — which does NOT mean beyond what HPB calls "infinite
Duration." We have then to deal with numbers as implying what, for lack of better terms, I
might call "vibratory qualities."(3)
A first Round operates in such a manner that, at the core of and through all the
manifestations of existence during its vast time-span, the vibratory quality of Number 1
operates. But this same vibratory quality operates also — yet in a less fundamental
manner during the first Root Race of the second, third, fourth, etc. Rounds. And by Root
Race is meant a specific type of humanity rather than what today we call a race. In other
words, what is called "round" refers to the Fundamental Tone of the total manifestation of
existence on the planet, Earth, during an extremely long period, lasting millions or even
billions of years as we presently interpret that word. During such a period seven Root Races
are said to operate, theoretically succeeding one another, yet in many ways also
interpenetrating during a large part of their lifespan. The vibratory quality of these Root
Races does not erase the vibratory quality of the Round of which they are parts, but "tops"
the latter — just as in music overtones add themselves to the Fundamental Tones without
obliterating them.
Thus a fifth Root Race of, say, the fourth Round which is the planetary set-up defining
the character of our present humanity — reveals the operation of the vibratory quality 4 as
Fundamental, and over it and interpenetrating it, the activity of the vibratory quality 5.
This obviously is not all; for our Western civilization is also said to characterize the fifth
subrace of the fifth Root Race. Thus, in our civilization, the vibratory quality 5 of our fifth
Root Race, is reinforced by the vibratory quality 5 of the present subrace. As a result, the
total "tone" of mankind at present can be determined by a Fundamental tone 4, and two
levels of Overtones vibrating to the Number 5.
What this means is that the basic tone of Earth-nature as a whole — a tone on which
the music of China was officially based — vibrates with a quality which can be symbolized
by the Number 4. This is therefore also the basic vibration of human nature throughout this
fourth Round. Every human being inescapably vibrates to it at the genetic root of his being;
but if this human being actually is able — because of parentage, environment and, above
all, "past karma" as a spiritual Entity — to resonate to and embody in his consciousness,
feeling, and behavior, the vibratory quality 5, the root-vibrations of "human nature" become
modified by his or her individual character and consciousness. He basically remains a
Fourth-Rounder, but with an individualized Fifth Root Race consciousness; and to the latter
may be superadded a further accentuation of the five, if the individual (or a whole
collectivity) responds to it as a manifestation of what the coming of the fifth subrace has
made possible for all human beings born within it.
The coming of a new vibratory quality does not necessarily mean that all the members
of a Root Race or subrace will fully embody it; it merely opens up a new genetic and
sociocultural set of possibilities. For a similar reason, there may be individual cases
revealing that an individualized Soul-entity (not a mere personality) has somehow
anticipated the change in vibratory quality of the planet-as-a-whole and thus of human
nature-in-mass. This is possible only, it would seem, when a new vibratory quality begins to
develop as an overtone of the Fundamental 4.
For instance, the fifth Root Race in a sense began when the fifth subrace of the fourth
Root Race was in existence because the vibration of 5 of that subrace — to a very small
extent — opened up the possibility of a basic change from fourth-Root-Race-consciousness
to fifth Root-Race-consciousness. Only a few individual Souls in the fabled Atlantis (fourth
Root Race) were ready to modulate from the 4 to the 5. In a similar manner, an even
deeper "modulation" (or change of level of consciousness and spiritual-mental rhythm)
became possible when the fifth subrace vibration strengthened further the 5 of the fifth Root
Race. A few individuals, to whom the above quotation from The Mahatma Letters
referred, began to operate in their minds as Fifth Rounders. As higher Minds, they had
become able to radically change their vibratory quality from the Fundamental Tone 4 to the
Fundamental Tone 5. The change however does not imply an overt physical change,
because as bodies these Fifth-Rounders still belong to the fourth Round, still in existence at
the level of the Earth and of human nature as a whole. They are therefore, in a sense,
ahead of their planetary time. They are, as K.H. wrote, "a few drops of rain that announce
the future coming of the monsoon."
If now we think of the vibratory quality 6, it should be clear that the beginning of the
sixth subrace of the present fifth Root Race will slightly open a door through which an even
more radical transformation of human beings will be made possible. We are told, however,
that the change from a Fundamental 4 to a Fundamental 6 — that is, moving ahead more
than one number — is not possible except as a result of a "Mystery," the "Mystery of the
Buddha." What this Mystery is remains unexplained, though some have tried to explain it;
but Gautama the Buddha, and his successor, Sri Sankaracharya — who in a sense
"opposed" (that is, polarized) the exoteric doctrines of developing Buddhism — are said to
be Sixth Rounders.(4)
What this means is therefore simply that, for some "mysterious" reason, at a time of
the Earth's fourth Round at which the vibratory quality 6 was due to start operating in an
active manner (at least at the higher mental levels of the one planetary Mind) Gautama was
born with the capacity to bring to a focus in a body of Earth-matter, the Root-manifestation
of that quality. Sri Sankaracharya, founder of the Adwaita School of Hindu philosophy, was
apparently the polarizing aspect of that manifestation, and thus is also called a Sixth
Rounder. Through the Buddha, the release of this vibratory quality 6 affected "the White
Lodge" — that is, the state of consciousness of those who were to become the Pleroma, (the
spiritual Seed Harvest) of Humanity. It is also said, after he had discarded his physical
body, the "inner vehicles" of Gautama were mysteriously "kept" to become those used in
the incarnation of the Christ.
Whether or not this refers to an occult fact, it should be clear that a definite
relationship exists between the Buddha and the Christ — in whatever way one interprets
such a relationship according to one's philosophical-occult outlook. This relationship has a
simple historical and spiritual character. Buddhist missionaries were sent by the great
Buddhist king of India, Asoka, to the shores of the Dead Sea in Palestine (third century
B.C.); and it is not impossible that the community to which Jesus belonged (HPB said it was
not the Essences, but a sect called "the Poor" which refused any possessions) received its
original inspiration from these Buddhist missionaries.
In a deeper sense, Buddha in the sixth century B.C. represents the Seed of a long
precessional cycle, while Christ symbolizes the Germ of a new cycle. Buddha stands for all-
encompassing Wisdom; Christ for the Redeeming Love that alone can heal and "save"
human beings distraught by the responsibility of an individualized consciousness burdened
with the power to make "free" choices. This power implies as well the possibility and
therefore ultimately the responsibility to radically transfigure the fourth Round character of
human nature. This transformation, if it is total, begins with higher Knowledge and
individualizing power of vibration 5 (the Kumara Mind), but it needs the release of universal
love and compassion abstractly symbolized by Number 6 in order to bring an individual
human being to the level of the consciousness of the White Lodge.
The initial manifestation, public and collective, of such an exalted state of
consciousness demands the formation of a planetary type of society. This possibility of it is
now with us, and it is the reason for the development of the Western mentality and our
recent technology. The greatness of our Euro-American civilization fundamentally resides in
its ability to bring any human being anywhere in contact with all others and to escape the
gravitational pull of this physical globe of matter, thus allowing men to clearly see and
experience the Earth as an external objective entity supporting, yet not irrevocably binding,
the consciousness of Man.
I repeat that it is because of the development of the actual, concrete possibility which
Man has now acquired to become an integrated whole in conscious and physical fact that
the occult revelation of the last hundred years has taken place. This revelation, mainly
through Theosophy, has limits and a specific character conditioned by the need and as well
the relatively narrow receptivity of the people to whom it has been addressed, and of the
individuals through whom it could only be formulated; but such limitations are inescapable.
They simply have to be understood, if the revelation is to make sense and to lead to a
further release of consciousness and power which, according to HPB is now imminent.
3. This is the foundation of a true Numerology, of what I called long ago Arithmosophy.

4. An unfortunate confusion apparently exists between the original Sankaracharya —the

first of a long series of leaders of the movement he had initiated in Southern India who all
took the same name — and a much later Sankaracharya who reformed the movement.
Orientalists insist that this latter Sankaracharya who lived in the 8th century A.D. is the
original one; but an initiated member of this branch of Hinduism, Subba Row — one of the
early members of The Theosophical Society in India brought forth a seemingly convincing
rebuttal of the Orientalists claim. He shows that the original Sankaracharya "was born in the
year 510 B.C., 51 years and two months after the date of the Buddha's Nirvana as 477 B.C.
Buddhists also refer to Buddha's nirvana and his Paranirvana at his death. cf. The Esoteric
Writings of Subba Row, p. 162 and 163 (Theosophical Publishing House, 1910).
CHAPTER FIVE
Time and the Cyclic Structure of Cosmic Process - 1

Man's most primary experience is the experience of change. It is a disturbing

experience for the mind that wants to establish itself in a secure and dependable position
from which it can objectively consider, remember, and give value to the mass of impacts,
sensations, and feelings which unceasingly reach the consciousness. In human beings
consciousness becomes what Teilhard de Chardin has called "reflective consciousness," a
consciousness able to sufficiently separate itself from the data it receives to consider that
data as something apart and thus reflect on it. Such a consciousness in order to function
adequately must acquire an at least relatively unchanging frame of reference; and no frame
of reference can appear securely stable unless it is centered around some kind of
fundamental realization or intuitive feeling — the feeling that there is an "I" which is the
experiencer of the ever-changing impressions reaching the consciousness.
In its attempts to maintain its position of at least relative changelessness while coming
to terms with its experience of unceasing change, the human I-consciousness and its tool,
the mind, devised or became receptive to the idea of "time." Time is the universal
experience of change transformed by the mind into an abstract concept. In becoming an
abstract concept time seems to refer to something within which actual, perceptible changes
occur. Thus time is made by the abstract mind to be the "container" of changing events. In
the same way, the concept of space arises in order to attribute an external "place" to sets of
experiences which it seems necessary to bind together into entities essentially different
from "I, myself". Relationships of a particular character had also to be established between
the "I" and other entities in order that the mind would know how to come to terms with
them. Space therefore was thought of as some kind of container within which relationships
with external entities occupying a definite place could be given definite values.
The concept of space is an abstraction of the experience of relationship, just as the
concept of time is an abstraction of the experience of change. As relationships also change,
man had therefore to think of change in terms of time and space. A further abstraction led
to the concept of "process." This concept refers to changes which have repeatedly been
known to occur in a clearly definable sequence in which each change is structurally and
purposefully related to all others in the series.
Strictly speaking, the concept of process implies a closed series of activities requiring a
more or less definite expenditure of energy for a definable purpose. If we speak of "life
processes" it is because we are referring to series of activities performing an organic
function within some kind of organism. The term organism, however, should be extended to
any (at least relatively) closed system of interrelated and interdependent activities having
some overall purpose — for instance, that of perpetuating its specific character and rhythm
of operation, of expanding the scope of its activities through increasing productivity, and in
most cases of reproducing itself or creating multiple reflections of its own image by
following characteristic procedures or techniques.
It should be obvious — though it does not seem to be so for some philosophers, so
confused and ambiguous is the concept of time — that there can be no sequence of
activities, thus no process, without time; that is, without one event or phase of a process
succeeding and preceding another. Change — actual, perceptible, feeling engendering
change — not only implies time; it is time in operation within some kind of field of energies
acting upon substantial units at whatever level of substance this may be — from the
grossest matter to the most subtle and imponderable "primordial stuff" which, in
comparison, we are likely to think of as "spiritual."
When the Hindu philosopher speaks of an endless series of manvantaras and pralayas
(states of cosmic manifestation and nonmanifestation), and of "the Great Breath" — the
exhalations and inhalations of a Creative God — then speaks of time and the sequence of
past, present, and future as an illusion, he is simply attempting to force the student to
modify his strictly human and experiential concept of time by confronting him with a
paradox — a technique often used in occult teaching and spiritual development. HPB's The
Secret Doctrine is full of such a procedure which is traditional and particularly used in Zen
Buddhism. We find it also in Christian Gospel, especially in the Beatitudes and related
sayings.
This technique implies that the way the mind interprets and conceptualizes its
basic experiences must be transformed when the consciousness passes from one level of
activity and organization to the next. Nothing at the level of the vibrational quality 5 can
be apprehended, understood and formulated in the same manner as at the 4 level. A
change of basic frame of reference must occur — a metanoia — and this requires "taking a
step ahead" in man's evolution. The whole of Indian philosophy and yoga is polarized by
that one purpose of taking the next step ahead. Everything else — including what we in the
West usually mean by "truth" — is secondary, in spite of many references to a capitalized
Truth. This Truth is simply the particular frame of reference as far as anything in the solar
system is concerned — unless an individual mind somehow succeeds in piercing through the
Ring-Pass-Not of our heliocosm and begins to resonate the galactic level of truth. But what
must appear "universal" for entities that are "cells" operating within this heliocosmic field of
activity, becomes a particular statement and interpretation of existential fact for Minds
that would operate at the level of galaxies.
We seem to have to pass from particular to universal values and interpretations — of
spirit, matter, time, space, process, etc. — as our consciousness expands according to its
normal and steady rhythm of expansion and always greater inclusiveness — but in fact the
change is one that leads from or narrower particular to a wider particular. Yet there are
critical points in this process leading from level to level at which the mind may suddenly
break through the boundaries of the lesser field and become illumined by the realization of
the transcending character of existence in the greater Whole. This is what most likely is
meant by satori, or the experience of "the unitive state" experienced by the mystic. It may
be a deep realization of what essentially wholeness means; or a feeling-experience (to use
inadequate terms) of the light and activity of the greater Whole flooding — or reflected upon
— the consciousness of the mystic.
What the mystic confusingly calls the timeless state, or "the instant" of illumination, is
no denial of the existence of time as normally experienced by human beings in the Earth's
biosphere. When the mystic "returns" to the normal state of the human mind in this fourth
Round of the Earth's evolution he finds that his clock has not stopped, nor has the Earth-
globe ceased rotating according to his day-night rhythm of revolving around the Sun (the
cycle of the year). Earth-time has not been affected, but the individual consciousness has
temporarily transcended it by becoming attuned and responsive to a quality of
existence far more inclusive than these Earth-rhythms. In the Bible and other Sacred
Books, it is stated that a Day of the Lord is like a thousand years of men. Thus is accepted
the fact that time exists also in the "divine" world of existence. Time must exist if this is a
world of activity; whether we call that activity cosmic, mental, or spiritual does not matter
as long as there is action and therefore change of some sort. But the character of this divine
time must evidently differ from that of our human time, and the processes operating in the
divine world inevitably have to be of a nature which it is most difficult, if not impossible, for
us, as humans, to conceive.
One may nevertheless imagine a divine world in which time would have no past, in the
sense that to the consciousness operating in that world there are only creative processes in
which what is released "in the beginning" as seed-potentiality of existence unfolds in a
straight line — or as many radii emanating from one center — in progressive stages of
actualization until what is potential in the beginning (alpha state) becomes perfectly
actualized (omega state), and therefore activity totally ceases. In such a divine time-
sequence, there would be no looking back and no regressive step. Activity would exclusively
be the exteriorization or expression of an initial impulse containing in latency all that would
gradually unfold in creative time.
We could likewise imagine a kind of space measurable only by the intensity and
direction of the divine, creative intent. If at any particular moment, God seeks relationship
with any entity in the universe (or in His universe), at once God is there. In such a space,
distance becomes determined by intention, and attention. In a sense it is a one-dimensional
space, but this dimension can operate in any desired direction. Activity is always
straightforward, even if conceivably it could be multilinear should the divine consciousness
be able to intend to act simultaneously in several directions.
In contrast to this we can think of time as absolutely cyclic and totally repetitive, and of
space as rigidly bound by unbreakable boundaries. This would be the time of Nietzsche's
Eternal Return, according to which every aspect of a one and only universal cycle of
existence would be infinitely repeated without any possibility of change. Undoubtedly some
ancient philosophers, perhaps in India and most likely in Greece, have presented such a
concept of time; but it is difficult to know the real reasons for their doing so and to what
extent they actually believed in its absolute character. It is a typically rationalistic concept
produced by a type of mind which, as it were, worships its own power of formulation and
definition. It is a mind intent upon bringing every phase of human experience to a clear and
logical focus, and dismissing any possibility not included in a definite form. This form could
be immense and cosmic, or it might be individualized by a particular set of human
circumstances and conditioning; but in either case it would be finite, definitely structured
according to rational principles (however suprarational and cosmic these might be),
measurable and inescapable.
CHAPTER FIVE
Time and the Cyclic Structure of Cosmic Process - 2

Unfortunately, when the intellectually college-trained person of our century is

confronted with the concept of "cycle,"his or her first reaction is to think of it in terms of the
Nietzschean Eternal Return, and usually to dismiss it. Since the Council of Constantinople in
the fourth century A.D. the concepts of cyclic activity and cyclic process have been
repudiated by the church and the official mentality of the Euro-American culture, having
been declared heretical. This repudiation had very grave results in the development of our
Western thought. It was part of an attempt to make the coming of Christ a unique event
dividing the history of mankind into a radically different "before" and "after." In so doing the
Fathers of the Church followed the Jewish tradition which also gave to Exodus and the
relationship between a personal God and Moses, his Lawgiver, a definitely historical
character — history being conceived as a straight line, unidirectional movement. During the
nineteenth century, as men's minds were glowing with pride in the achievements of science,
this movement took the form of irrevocable "progress" from barbarism to ever more
glorious and expansive manifestations of civilization; but unfortunately our Western world
understood and interpreted such a linear development almost exclusively in terms of
material well-being and inflated technological productivity. This interpretation made of it a
tragic shadow of the divine world of spontaneous and radiant creativity — thus evoking
satanic powers and perversions of the mind which may lead to "black magic" on a large
scale.
It became essential therefore to try to reinterpret the linear straightforward motion of
evolutionary progress at a spiritual level, and to show how that movement of the divine
time-process could be integrated with the circular movement of time. The result of this
integration is the concept of time as a logarithmic spiral which is the true representation of
the world-process. In this world-process spiritual creativity — straightforward motion
operating in many directions (many universes, many dimensions of cosmic existence) — is
constantly associated with the circularity of the formative Mind and its processes of
focalization and functional integration. Thus three fundamental types of motion, and
therefore three essential modes of activity, are found represented in man's experience of
change and process, an experience which at least reflects the basic realities of the
COSMOS.
To these three kinds (or modalities) of time, three different concepts (or modes of
apprehension) of space correspond: (1) multilinear space defined by the character and
intensity of intentional relationship, and in which distance is qualitative rather than
quantitative and measurable; (2) three dimensional space in which every existential unit
occupies a definable and measurable place and at some distance (minute as it may be) from
other units; and (3) space in which the interpenetration of everything by everything else is
an essential factor in the development of ever more inclusive and "plenary" modes of
relatedness and interdependence, the motive power of which is universal Love.
HPB in The Secret Doctrine speaks of three schemes of universal evolution: spiritual,
intellectual and physical.(1) These can be related to the three basic concepts of time and
space just mentioned; and to the experiences which have given rise to these concepts. It is
also stated that "each [of these three systems] is represented in the constitution of man,
the Microcosm of the great Macrocosm; and it is the union of these three streams which
makes him the complex being he now is."
Circularity and cyclicness are related to mind, but to the mind which establishes order
in the apparent chaos of "chance happenings" in a world in constant change. One may call
this mind cosmogenic because it generates order and also beauty (the two main meanings
of the Greek term, cosmos) in the human consciousness. It relates the confusing and
apparently irrational sequence of life-events — that is, what Western man calls and almost
worships as "chance" — to basic principles establishing a cosmic frame of reference. Science
tries to discover such principles, referring to them as "Laws of Nature" — an awkward term
for scientists who refuse to believe in a Lawgiver — but modern science shies from making
of them the expression of an overall purpose that would relate end to beginning, and
postulates an omega state to polarize an alpha state now appearing in scientific theories
as a "Big Bang" starting the universe.
It is the end of a process that makes the start of it meaningful. The value of the world
outlook presented by the eminent Jesuit philosopher-scientist, Teilhard de Chardin, resides
in his providing a meaningful end to evolution. But such an outlook essentially is a reflection
of the ancient traditional occult picture of the universe upon the inspired mind of a Catholic
thinker — and interestingly enough much of this outlook took form while Teilhard lived for
many years, as an anthropologist, in or near Central Asia.
The ancient picture of world-processes recurring at an always new level (or dimension)
gives a far greater and more enlightening meaning to human experience because it is
holistic. The vast cosmic cycle is reflected and multiplied almost ad infinitum in a myriad of
smaller cycles, which form a hierarchy of manifestations extending from the level of unity to
that of ever increasing multiplicity, until the "bottom" of the process is reached and
multiplicity is transformed into unity through a series of periodical integrations, and thus
through the gradual simplification of relationships between the Many.
Each phase of a cosmic process begins in a new though secondary, tertiary,
quaternary, etc. release of spiritual energy. Each of these releases (or "quanta") of energy
has a unitarian character, reflecting at a new level the original One that started the entire
cosmic process. It manifests or expresses a spiritual quality. This quality can be personified
as an Entity. Being a reflection of the One Source, it can be called a "Monad." A name can
be given to it symbolizing the "quality" it characterizes within the entire world-process. Thus
Occultism speaks of a multitudinous hierarchy of Beings each having specific attributes and
a sacred (and secret) Name. Yet, at a more abstract and esoteric level of understanding, it
is the phase of the process which is the essential reality. Then the cosmic Office is
emphasized rather than the Officiant who performs the activities required by the Office: the
particular type of Mastery, rather than the being who, when he occupies the position of
Master, ceases to be, strictly speaking, an "individual" in the sense that he has become
identified with a phase of the process and thus with a cosmic or planetary quality.
Nevertheless, he appears as an individual person if he has to deal with and affect men who
are still at the level of individualized egos.
The value of such an "occult" picture of the world-process resides in giving to all
activities at all levels of space and time the character of identifiable phases of processes of
different scope and length. Each of these activities, as a phase of a structure and purposeful
process, has a particular meaning. This meaning can be perceived by the mind who thinks
in terms of process and cyclic phases. Such a type of thinking brings to man's consciousness
intellectual understanding. It should be associated with an intuitive grasp of the everpresent
reality of the creative straightforward motion of spirit lest it lead to the Nietzschean concept
of everrepeating identical sequences of events. This Nietzschean concept denies that there
are infinite possibilities of solutions to the problems of existence. It denies the infinite
capacity of the Divine Mind to "imagine" always different universes for Its manifestation.
Geometrically speaking, it reduces all spirals to closed circles.
The seed that ends a cycle is always potentially susceptible of mutation. But while
there undoubtedly are wild mutations produced by a polluted environment or (at a human
level) a perversion of the spiritual power of imagination, mutations normally occur according
to a pattern of cosmic (whether microcosmic or macrocosmic) order. They significantly lead
to new phases of the process of activity according to an archetypal "plan" defining the
structural order of activity-sequences and the character of the agents able to bring to a
focus the precise quality of action required for the operation of every particular phase.
The structures of cycles are, in the occult sense of the term, archetypes. Archetypal
knowledge does not deal with events per se but with their structural sequence. It is indeed
most important to differentiate between "archetypal" and "existential." The same archetypal
structure may link — "contain" would be a rather inadequate term — very different events.
To these different events it gives the same cyclic meaning. The rose blossoming on the
rosebush in the spring 1975 is not a combination of the same molecules and atoms which
formed roses on the same bush in 1974; and if the 1975 weather is bad, the new roses may
be imperfect. Yet they will still embody the archetypal quality, Rosehood, and will still be
springtime in the year-cycle.
We should never forget these facts when we think of cycles or try to draw conclusions
from a knowledge of cycles. This knowledge does not allow us to accurately predict all
events, but only the structural relationship between events. It helps us, if we are a gardener
or botanist, to envision the oak in the seed; but too many possibilities concerning the
relationship of a particular oak to its total environment may become precipitated into
concrete events affecting the growth of the tree to allow us to be certain of the exact
character of each phase of this growth. We can be sure nevertheless that the acorn will not
grow into a plum tree.
Cyclic knowledge is mind — knowledge — however vast and encompassing the mind
may be. It is structural knowledge. It is only one mode of knowing; but this mode is all-
important in situations where disorder, confusion, and emotional biases prevail. It does not
take the place of direct experience, whether at the personal or the spiritual level; but it
enables the experiencer to place his experience in a frame of reference which reveals their
econic significance — i.e. the function they occupy within the entire life-span. And many a
mystical vision or peak-experience results in no permanent, basic transformation of the
consciousness because it cannot be formulated and assimilated. It does not "belong"
anywhere. It may turn into toxic material for the confused and unstructured consciousness.
Such a possibility became most evident as a result of the Industrial Revolution of last
century. This produced a definite psychological need, and this need has increased a
hundredfold during the last decades. The ancient concept of cyclic time which was declared
heretic some fifteen centuries ago has to be revitalized and expanded to meet that
collective need of Western humanity. As the traditional frames of reference of the Euro-
American culture are shattered by the relentless surge of new creative spiritual currents, of
which our society reveals so far mostly the dark materialistic reflection in its insane worship
of unstructured "growth" and productivity at all cost, the study of cycles can bring back to
distraught individuals a new, deeper, yet also intensely personal, sense of order.
Order, meaning, beauty and the inner sustainment arising from the conviction that one
has a place and function to perform within a vast planetary process whose essential nature
is rhythm and harmony regardless of the grinding noise of passing dissonances — what
could be more valuable for men, women and children of our civilization headed toward
chaos?

1. The Secret Doctrine I:181 "There exists in Nature a triple evolutionary scheme for the
formation of three periodical Upadhis; or rather three separate schemes of evolution, which
in our system are inextricably interwoven and interblended at every point. These are the
Monadic (or spiritual), the intellectual and the physical evolutions . . . Each of these three
systems has its own laws, and is ruled and guided by different sets of the highest Dhyanis
or Logoi." The term, intellectual, may however be confusing. It refers here to the higher
Mind and is said to be represented by the givers of intelligence — and consciousness to man
— the Promethean Spirits of Kumaras.
CHAPTER SIX
Human Cycles of Unfoldment - 1

When one deals with human beings, two basic sets of factors have to be
considered. A third no doubt exists which, however, transcends ordinary knowledge and
cannot be discussed here. A man or woman is first of all a human organism, operating at
the level of human nature, which itself has to be considered part of the Earth's biosphere
and subject to planet-wide rhythms and influences. Then this man or woman may present
characteristics indicating that an individualizing process has been operating, not merely in
terms of surface modifications of a particular type of human nature, conditioned also by
environmental sociocultural patterns, but in terms of truly individual responses to events
and everyday pressures.
In my book Fire Out of the Stone: A reformulation of the basic images of the
Christian Tradition (1960-1961), I spoke of three souls in man, or three fundamental
levels at which what we call "Soul" — the essential power of integration operating wherever
there are organic manifestations of life — can operate: living soul, individual soul, and
divine soul. The existence of these three stages of Soul-evolution which exist at least in
potentiality in the human kingdom are clearly indicated in the Bible. In Genesis 2, God
operating under the symbolic name of JHVH (Jehovah or Yahweh) endows man with a
"living soul." This living soul does not basically differ at first from the soul of animals and it
is given the same name. But in man the potentiality of a higher mode of Soul-activity was
latent even at the beginning of human evolution in the passive Edenic state.
It was latent in the ability Adam — a symbol for the early Root Races of theosophical
lore — to name everything he saw or met. This potentiality of objective consciousness
became developed through various crises in consciousness, and particularly with the coming
to the Earth of the Ben-Elohim (the "Sons of God-Elohim") who "married" the daughters of
men. These were the Promethean or Kumaric Spirits who gave to Man the fiery spark of
self-consciousness, self-determination and, therefore, moral responsibility. The result turned
out to be largely destructive, leading to the Deluge and a totally new humanity (the fifth
Root-Race, born, according to The Secret Doctrine, in central Asia a million years ago).
The development of the "individual soul" is symbolized in the Biblical tradition by
Moses' meeting with God in His aspect of "I Am That I Am" — which means God as the
spiritual-cosmic Principle of Individualization. With the coming of Christ, the possibility for
mankind as a whole to develop the "divine soul" was revealed. But very few individual
human beings have actualized such a potentiality in their lives. According to the symbolism
of number briefly mentioned in a preceding chapter, the living soul vibrates to 4, the
individual soul to 5, and the divine soul to 6. The student of Theosophy will no doubt
identify these numbers with the fourth, fifth and sixth "principles" in the constitution of man
— kama, manas, and buddhi.
 As already stated, because we are in a fourth Round — and the American Indian
traditions speak of "the fourth world" — the fundamental vibration of human nature (and of
the Earth's biosphere as a whole) is 4. It is the vibration to which life on our planet
generically responds. It is the vibration of man's living soul. And students of occult
philosophy should know that Number 4, by a process known as "Kabbalistic addition,"
becomes 10 (1+2+3+4 equals 10). At the level of the living soul 10 is therefore a highly
important number and the basis of the decimal system of measurement, soon to be
universally adopted.
Another number, 7, figures prominently in occult tradition. It is seen to be definitely
related to the most basic patterns of evolutionary unfoldment, at least in our present world
system. It can also be shown to refer to the most important cycle in the development of a
human being at all levels, as the pattern of man is a microcosmic reflection of the pattern of
the great cosmos. Around a circle, and tangent to it, six circles of the same size and tangent
to each other can be drawn. This illustrates the relationship between the six and a central
seed-unit which is the seventh — or the first, depending on the way one looks at the
situation, i.e. pastward back to the One, or futureward in terms of a synthesizing process (a
harvesting).
It is this seven-year cycle which we wish now to study. It should be stressed, however,
that such a cycle does not imply that particular events repeat themselves every seven
years; for, as already stated, cycles refer to structural patterns in the development of
specific qualities of existence and of human faculties at particular levels, but not — or at
least not essentially — to the actual events making possible or hindering this development.
We shall discuss, first, the basic character of any seven-year cycle in a human life,
according to which every year of the cycle can be given a very general, yet often most
revealing, meaning; then we shall study the series of seven-year cycles during a man's life-
span.
The length of the life-span of human beings obviously varies; yet traditionally one can
speak of an archetypal life-span, whether or not any particular human being actually lives a
shorter or longer period. We shall discuss, however, two archetypal life-spans: a 70-year
period which refers specifically to the level of development of the "living soul," and an 84-
year period in terms of the "individual soul."

The Seven-Year Pattern

In occult analysis a cycle of seven units can generally be divided into two hemicycles, each
lasting 3 1/2 units. The first hemicycle represents an involutionary sequence and the other a
symmetrical evolutionary ascent. The involutionary descent operates through the three
basic levels of cosmic energy-spirit, mind and life — and the movement of return (evolution)
passes in reverse order through these same levels.
The figure shown below schematizes this wave-process; but while it assuredly helps to
grasp something of the structure of the process, it also tends to crystallize an unfortunate
picture of up-and-down movement of spirit, mind, and life as separate layers. A better
diagram would be produced by two spirals within a circle, one centrifugal (from center to
circumference) and the other centripetal (the return movement); but it would be far more
complex and still not really adequate in two dimensions.

The first three years of the process — most of the involutionary hemicycle —
represents the progressive unfoldment outward and clarification of the new cyclic impulse,
and the gradual response of the new materials drawn into the field of energies produced by
that creative or transforming impulse. The fourth year is the turning point, the bottom of
the cycle — and this constitutes a probable critical state; the impulse may scatter itself and
lead to disintegration and failure, or it may find in the integrated materials gathered into the
field the organized concrete vehicle for complete actualization and fulfillment. The process
of concrete actualization operates through the last three years of the seven-year cycle, the
seventh year being both the seed-consummation of the cycle and the seed-foundation out
of which the new cycle will unfold.
The year-by-year analysis which follows is made in as broad terms as possible; it has
to be reformulated with reference to whatever the actual situation, heredity, and
environment of the individual are in the particular instance being considered.
First year — (the first, eighth, fifteenth, twenty-second, etc. years of a human life).
The type of development which will characterize the entire seven-year cycle manifests as a
new impulse, or a new compulsion of destiny, on the basis of what has developed in the last
year of the preceding cycle. The impulse, or new beginning, is usually not clear; even
though some definite occurrence may set the stage for it. Very often, that year is peculiarly
elusive and uncertain in character, or filled with emotional confusion. The real things which
occur take place inside, below the level of individualized consciousness. Life seems neither
one thing nor another. Yet in some cases there is great impulsiveness and emotional
intensity; perhaps a sense of freedom and of new beginnings.

Second year — (the second, ninth, sixteenth, twenty-third, etc. years). On one hand, the
new impulse and the new destiny should then begin to repolarize the life and the substance
of the person's feelings; on the other hand, a great deal of resistance against the new is
likely to manifest. What was developed in the preceding cycle may oppose the new trend; or
else the new trend has to push through the old ideas step by step. Psychological conflicts
may well occur. Decisions may have to be taken. Financial or social issues may arise.

Third year — (the third, tenth, seventeenth, twenty-fourth, etc. years). The new trend
takes on a more definite form. The mind usually receives, clearly or not, the vision of what
life offers to the individual. A definite period of exteriorization and action should begin, even
though one may feel very lonely and the ideals may seem unrealizable and one's abilities
most inadequate. This lack of technique and of adequate means is often acute; yet there is
a deep sense that one has to go on, perhaps amounting to emotional, irrational enthusiasm
or devotion.

Fourth year — (the fourth, eleventh, eighteenth, twenty-fifth, etc. years). This is
theoretically the period of "embodiment" of the impulse-idea, the leaf stage of vegetation.
But while new energies are likely to be released and new forms of living consolidated, it
may also mean conflict and struggle or at least a choice or decision at the core of a more or
less acute personal or social crisis. At three and a half (i.e. at the mid point of the fourth,
eleventh, eighteenth, etc. years of the life) a turning point may be experienced; yet it often
need not take the form of a sharply defined event. Events are not actually what count, but
rather what response we give to them; it is the quality of the response which will mean, at
the end of the cycle, relative success or failure.

Fifth year — (the fifth, twelfth, nineteenth, etc. years). This is the symbolical stage of the
flower. Theoretically, the "vision" phase of the third year now comes to a phase of actual
manifestation and enjoyment — provided the growth has proceeded healthily! 5 on the 6
"evolutionary" ascent balances 3 on the "involutionary" descent. If the process is completely
negative, the five-pointed star is inverted, a symbol of destruction.

Sixth year — (the sixth, thirteenth, twentieth, etc. years). This is the symbolic stage of the
fruit. The seeding process has begun within the flower; now the consciousness should begin
to be aware of a "mystery," of deeper depths, of a center of spiritual energy, of the "(God
within." The urge should be to feed this transcendent realization, to "sacrifice" the past to
the future. The creative impulse of the cycle, which has built the "plant" organism of
consciousness and individuality (only with reference to this particular seven-year cycle of
course!), is now drawn inward, towards the mothering of the seed of the future.
Compassion and understanding should be cultivated at whatever level one is operating, and
if difficult experiences come, they should be faced with inner strength and peace.
Seventh year — (the seventh, fourteenth, twenty-first, etc. years). This is the seed period
when a particular seven year cycle is being concluded and the need for some new life-values
and a new phase of destiny or character development should be felt. It may be experienced
with poignant intensity, or in a confused way, or not at all if growth has been arrested or
dormant. It could be a year of consummation witnessing some high points of consciousness,
but in many cases negative factors may be as apparent as the positive ones, if the original
impulse of the cycle has been weak and the pressure of family, group, society has been
oppressive or repressive. This seventh-year is both an end and the implied promise (or at
least possibility) of a new beginnings synthesis and a prelude evoking or at least suggesting
the main theme of the coming seven-year period. It is an important year because it requires
at the same time the willingness to bring some past to a conclusion — as perfect and
liberating a one as is possible under the circumstances — and a consciousness open, in
inner expectancy and faith, to whatever prompting or intuition of possible development may
appear upon the stilled and receptive mind.
CHAPTER SIX
Human Cycles of Unfoldment - 2

Three Score and Ten Years

When one speaks of the "natural" life-span of man, one refers to the conditions prevailing at
the particular stage of evolution in which our present mankind is unfolding its powers. In a
sense the three score and ten year period (seventy years) often mentioned as the length of
an archetypal human life, is a "myth"; that is to say, it expresses the symbolic, yet
essential, relationship between human beings and the nature of the Earth's biosphere in
which these beings live and from which they draw their sustenance and their strictly
"natural" powers. But the nature of the biosphere undergoes gradual changes, and
sometimes these are quite radical. It is also possible that, as H. P. Blavatsky stated in
letters to A.P. Sinnett, the length of the year has been decreasing considerably since very
ancient times, because our planet has been coming gradually closer to the sun. In terms of
existential values — i.e. of sequences of concrete events — the year cycle should be
considered a relative measure of time; yet the archetypal pattern — the seventy-year
measure — could still be thought of as a permanent factor characterizing mankind at the
generic biological level of activity. It can also be related to the ten lunar months of the
gestation period — a lunar factor as it occurs within the mother's womb which, in this
connection, reflects the broader solar pattern of ten. This pattern constitutes a formula of
human development at the level of the "living soul" — that is, in terms of organic living in a
natural state of existence in the biosphere. Organic living includes also the psychic
overtones of the functional activities of man's organs, glands and nerves — and of currents
of energies undertoning these activities.
This pattern, just as that of the simpler seven-year cycle which is its basic unit, must
be wisely applied if it has to serve any purpose at all. As it is both a general and generic
frame of reference, it does not deal with "particulars," but only with "universals." It can be
used to relate events to one another as they follow one another; but not to predict any one
particular actual event. It is a tool for understanding and for the discovery of meaning —
and thus for the understanding of what either has already happened, is happening, or is just
about to occur as the result of preceding causes which one can perceive and analyze. It
could be used as we use a clock when we have to get ready to leave our office in time to get
a good place in a restaurant at lunch time; but looking at the clock will not tell us what will
happen on the way to the restaurant and who will sit at the table next to ours.
While the seven-year pattern is applicable to various stages of the development of
man's life, the seventy-year cycle refers specifically to the factor of age. Because of social
prejudices, which differ in various cultures and even at various times in the cyclic
development of one culture, "age" is often a not clearly understood factor. At the level of
human nature — thus as a factor in the life of every individual person, however
"individualized" and unique he or she may be or consider himself or herself to be — age
refers to what is now often called the "biological clock" whose rhythms control the
interrelationship between all the constituent organs and cells of the organism. The way the
clock works is moreover deeply affected by what occurs in the organism's environment; and
today more than ever one must consider the sociocultural and political as well as the
biospheric environment.
Nevertheless if one thinks of age only in terms of biological and environmental factors
one misses the whole point which a study of the seventy-year cycle and even more of the
eighty-four-year cycle — presently to be discussed — should reveal. What one does is to
regard man as merely an animal organism. Yet the character of man's existence far
transcends strictly animal biological values. Man's life on this Earth, even at the level of
what I once called "man's common humanity"(1) is a process whose purpose it is to
extract meaning from all conceivable types of activities. It can be regarded as a
"seasonal" process, the entire lifespan being then divided into a number of "seasons of
growth" and each of these having an archetypal character of its own.
It is to this archetypal character of the several seasons of growth that, at least in the
occult sense, age refers. We are therefore not dealing here with the more or less appealing
and socially or personally highly valued character of a certain age period. We are dealing
with the specific character of ten basic age-periods whose archetypal functions are to
contribute in specific ways to a total and final "harvest of meanings" to be gathered and
assimilated by the Soul. Each age-period should provide its own characteristic contribution
to this harvest, just as each human "culture-whole" contributes its own harvest of values
and meanings expressed through symbols, creative works and institutions — to the
planetary consciousness and the one Mind of Man. Every human being, just because he is
human, passes through ten stages of potential development — then different personal
"cultures," each of which vibrates to a basic keynote of human possibility of growth. Each
should be evaluated in the light of its potential contribution to the whole life process,
without any abnormally glorified or scorned value being given to it because of sociocultural
preconception or bias.
If we consider the life of an individual person we undoubtedly will observe an
individualized series of events and developments which may considerably differ from the
merely human archetype or generic norm. Growth may be accelerated or retarded in many
ways and for many karmic reasons (both personal and social-collective karma), some of
them producing dramatic or even spectacular results of a positive or negative character. But
cyclic patterns do not directly refer to these results, except in the sense that they can help
us to understand their meaning in terms of the karma and dharma (the "truth-of-being" or
individual selfhood) of the individual Soul to which, generally speaking, the human organism
has been karmically drawn through some kind of magnetic resonance. A deviation from the
norm has a positive significance if it strengthens, steadies, or increases the individual's
ability to actualize his birth-potential; it is negative if it hinders, weakens or disorients and
perhaps perverts the process of actualization.
 This process of actualization of the birth-potential is not accomplished by denying,
ignoring, or trying to escape from the karma of both the individual past and the past of the
racial-cultural community in which one is born and educated, but by using this karmic
conditioning in an individualized and significant manner. Karma and dharma — the past and
the future-in-the-making — are actually the two sides of the same coin. Dharma can be
fulfilled only through the experience of karma. Spiritual living implies going through the
karmic remains of the past and, very often, becoming what one is meant to be in spite of
what one has been. Man can neutralize karma only by creating a new chain of causes, but
such a creation has optimum results when performed in the clarity of a consciousness about
to evaluate the archetypal meaning of the time and the season of the performance; and this
with reference to the entire life-cycle.
Spiritual creation is always a response to a need. Such a response can be unconscious
and spontaneous; but what we call spontaneity is very often only the expression of a
superficial mood or emotion, conditioned either by the pressures of our society and its
patterns of thinking, feeling, and behavior so long impressed upon our consciousness and
our nervous system, or by the memories of our previous responses to life-challenges. This
kind of spontaneity may also be purely instinctual and strictly determined by biopsychic
factors referring to the common aspects of human nature. These are not to be denied
without clearly individualized and conscious reasons; but they should be used, as any of our
personal and social possessions have to be used, as our knowledge has to be used. It is
always the use we make of knowledge — especially of occult and cyclic knowledge which
proves its validity to us as individuals.

1. cf The Faith that Give Meaning to Victory (N.Y., 1942).

CHAPTER SIX
Human Cycles of Unfoldment - 3

All life-cycles should first be divided into two halves. The first hemicycle considered
from the point of view of the creative power of spirit, can be called involutionary because
(at whatever level it may be) it refers to the gradual actualization and embodiment in some
kind of concrete substance (not necessarily physical substance) of an originating initial
impulse, a creative Word. The first hemicycle is essentially a period of activity — activity
leading, if all goes well, to the incorporation of the quality released by the original impulse
in some kind of organism; and by organism is meant here any organized system of
interrelated and interdependent activities having a definable purpose and life span.

The second hemicycle is evolutionary, if seen from the point of view of the
consciousness having developed within the organism. If all goes well, this consciousness
then radiates in and through mental constructs: ideas, symbols, conceptual systems and
theories, and any sociocultural manifestations. Through these and the harvest of meaning
they bring to focus, the human being gathers the material which will reach a point of
synthesis at what the Hindus call "the last thought in death." This "thought" — or rather this
moment of synthesized consciousness — is said to condition the karma of a future cycle of
existence in a new human body.
According to such a cyclic pattern, the thirty-fifth birthday is the turning point. At that
point in time the human being should normally reach maturity as a "living soul" able to
focus its energies and its generic consciousness in a mind at least relatively well integrated,
and thus able to participate in a mature and emotionally steady manner in the building of
the higher sociocultural aspect of his community, tribe, or nation. This man or woman may
not be truly individualized in the sense of having actually transferred the center of his or her
consciousness from the biopsychic to the mental-spiritual level; yet he or she can act as a
mature person with a clearly distinct character in the fulfillment of whatever place and
function he or she occupies in the social environment. The term "personality" is used here to
mean the capacity a human being has to take a distinctive stand among the crowd and
more or less forcefully and effectively to impress upon others the quality of thinking,
feeling, or behavior this stand implies.
Theoretically, and indeed in most instances after thirty-five, the biological forces acting
through the physical organism begin to lose some of their power. A slow process of
devolution becomes set and eventually leads to crystallization and deterioration in old age,
and perhaps to senility. But another process may and should begin to operate in an opposite
and polar direction, and at another level. If it takes place at all, this process represents a
building in consciousness, succeeding at a mental-social-cultural level the earlier process
of building a concrete organism of personality, which theoretically reaches some kind of
apex in the vicinity of the thirty-fifth birthday. Thus, during the first thirty-five years, the
building forces in man operate biologically and psychologically at the physical-personal
level; then, if the momentum has reached a proper basis of operation, they become
repolarized at the sociocultural communal level along lines of forces established in the
mind-field of human activity.
This repolarization could lead to a continual process of development until bodily death
occurs, but if this should be the case it would be because the human being has been able to
transfer the very center of his consciousness, the focus, from the biopsychic level of natural
man vibrating to the planetary 4 to the mental-spiritual level of a definitely individualized
person in whom the vibration 5 has become dominant. Such a dominance is needed if the
entropy (or disintegrative trend) of the body energies and cellular substance is to be
effectively counteracted after the age of fifty-six; but even then the counteraction may only
be partial and fade out. If it succeeds in keeping the bodily instrumentality of consciousness
— mainly the brain, but also the endocrine glands and the heart-responsive to the
expanding and self-clarifying consciousness, this is ample proof that the person's life has
become reorganized in mid-life and shifted to the rhythm of the eighty-four-year cycle.
Such a shift undoubtedly was potential at birth, but the definite evidence of its having
actually occurred in most cases should be looked for at some time during the late thirties —
perhaps around the turning-point of the seven-year cycle from thirty-five to forty-two. Very
often at that time some event or decision can be found pointing to a further change during
"the dangerous forties."
If we should try to ascertain the character of each of the ten seven-year cycles within
the whole life-span of the human being we should once more be sure to realize that only
general trends or principles can be stated. These should help us to understand the meaning
of actual events in a person's life but in no way should serve as a reliable basis for
prediction.
The first seven years constitute above all a period of body-building but, in a deeper
sense, they are concerned with the original and most basic adjustment of the innate
potential of the newborn to the pressures of the environment. What at birth is a field of
"pure potentiality" faces the constant challenge to define its main lines of response to body
functions, family, society, school, etc. The child tries to find out how far he can go and
retain his base of operation — this with reference to whatever he touches or experiences,
especially with the parents whom he absolutely needs, yet whose psychological pressures
he tries to resist at every step.
The second cycle (seven to fourteen) reveals the child normally more sure of himself
(unless the environmental pressures have been unbearable) and eager to assert his urge to
active self-expression. He is still one of the tribe, yet the energies of his nature demand
to be released in their own way. The child not only responds to changing stimuli and
pressures in a differentiated manner, he seeks to affirm his own biopsychic rhythm (which,
however, must not be confused with the true individuality). We spoke of this level as that of
power because it deals with the building of the ego as a focus for the release of life-power.
The third cycle (fourteen to twenty-one) starts with puberty and the rise of the sex
urge. A mostly unconscious yet disturbing feeling of incompleteness forces the adolescent to
seek a new orientation toward his associates, toward society in general, and the knowledge
and traditions of his culture (high school and college years). This is the period during which
the emotions dominate and control the ego-center of power.
The fourth cycle (twenty-one to twenty-eight) is one of attempted consolidation and
fulfillment of expectation — or of great restlessness and rebellion against family and
social demands. If the latter prevails, whether outwardly or within the consciousness stirred
by the ego, the stage is set for the process of individualization. However, real
individualization is not proved by one's eagerness to repudiate the past and assert one's
ego-will in emotional outbursts against unbearable sociocultural situations. It can manifest
in one's ability to transform oneself and to transfer one's center of consciousness to a
conscious mind-level in at least relative freedom from biological and emotional compulsions.
We shall presently see the importance of age twenty-eight in the eighty-four-year long
life-cycle, but in the seven year pattern it marks the possibility of focusing the results of
one's experiences at the sociocultural level as a foundation for the building of a personal
status, or even stature. The twenty-one to twenty-eight period is theoretically the one
during which a human being finds himself attracted to, or deliberately selects the type of
associates, comrades or companions with whom he feels he will be able to develop and
stabilize his personality as a functional unit in the larger social process — and therefore this
fourth seven-year period (twenty-one to twenty-eight) archetypally represents the natural
time for marriage or its present-day equivalents. If, as is now so often the case, such a
union of boy and girl occurs before age twenty-one, this tends to mean that the basic tone-
quality of the marriage or steady companionship is conditioned by psychological factors and
emotional needs or impulses rather than by the realization that the union has a procreative
and/or sociocultural purpose, i.e. the perpetuation of the human race and/or of one's
culture, religion, and family-tradition. Here again, from the point of view of such a study of
life-cycles, what matters is not the actual events in the associative process, but the quality
of the performance and the character of the purpose with which it is associated.
 With the fifth seven-year period (twenty-eight to thirty five) the creative potentiality
inherent in the outcome of the four preceding periods should be released. However, there
may be no creative or transforming release whatever, and the still young person simply
becomes gradually more set as a replica — with only superficial modifications — of a
particular human type and of the social pattern which his parents exemplified before him.
Whatever happens conditions the second half of the life. If maturity in the mid-thirties
brings at least a relatively important development of the personalized consciousness in
terms of the traditional and quasi-official structure of culture and society, the human being
is able to go on with that process, whose field of action is the mind associated with feeling
responses. Such a person may make a real contribution to his or her society. At least he
may effectively fill a role determined or conditioned by his or her karma. Yet that
contribution usually has a crystallizing effect upon the character. In other cases, the period
thirty-five to forty-two may witness some cathartic experiences, especially during the thirty-
ninth year (after the thirty-eighth birthday), which may contain in germ the crisis of the
mid-forties.
During the "dangerous forties," either the individual settles to routine and a resigned
acceptation of a life pattern which he or she seems unable or unwilling to alter, or a sharp
revision of attitude may occur, especially toward one's intimates or one's religious beliefs.
This very often leads to an emotional and often confused attempt to make a new start, or
merely to an escape from a seemingly unbearable situation. This is the age period which
used to send most people to psychiatrists and analysts; and it still does, except that now
every age period seems to reveal a similar need for psychological problems and more or
less real emotional crises.
After forty-nine mental crystallization often sets in, at least to a degree and as a
limitation to the power of changing one's self image and accepting the possibility of radical
life changes. On the other hand, the socially successful person may then assume greater
collective responsibility as a managerial figure or executive. The physical condition of the
body and the state of the vital forces largely determine what occurs after fifty-six and
especially sixty-three. Each particular case differs, the more so the more the human being
has experienced, even to a small extent, the transforming power of the process of
individualization. One point nevertheless is worth mentioning for, in many instances, it may
help one to a deeper understanding of what is taking place after thirty-five.
The basic concept is that the thirty-fifth birthday is like a kind of hinge. What happens
afterward can be said to reflect the karmic imprint of what occurred from thirty-five back to
birth. This means that at thirty-six and thirty-seven the life reflects some of the karma of
what occurred at thirty-four and thirty-three. Seven years after thirty-five is related to
seven years before thirty-five. Thus the eighteenth birthday is reflected in the fifty-second
birthday; the seventeenth in the fifty-third; the sixteenth in the fifty-fourth, etc. At forty-
nine one reacts to the karma of what occurred at twenty-one, because forty-nine is fourteen
years after thirty-five; and twenty-one, fourteen years before thirty-five. Age sixty-three
reflects age seven; and seventy reflects birth, as the end of a cycle reflects its beginning.
There is no question at all here of similar events. The connection between after thirty-
five and before thirty-five is subtle and can easily elude the mind conditioned by thinking
only of very specific, actual events. What is involved is the quality of the living, and the
manner in which past experiences and, even more, events which failed to happen
(man's "unlived life," as a psychologist would say), affect the development of the later life.
This must not be taken as a general rule applying to every year and every person's life, but
many significant examples could be given.
Here the difficulty is that only a very intimate knowledge of the life of a person could
reveal this type of connection. It is mostly a technique to be used by the person himself in
order to gain a more holistic picture of his entire life and understand in a new way the
complex ramifications interrelating its various phases. Moreover this seventy-year
archetypal pattern tends to be modified or overshadowed by the rhythm of the eighty-four-
year long life-cycle when, as is the case in our modern civilization glorifying individualism,
the mid-point of the cycle shifts from age thirty-five to age forty-two.
This eighty-four-year cycle theoretically refers to the level of development of the
individual soul; its basically mental rhythm at birth is merely a potentiality which in most
instances develops only progressively. The numerical basis of this rhythm differs from that
of the "living soul" (seventy-year) cycle. The eighty-four-year cycle — which turns out to be
the length of a complete revolution of the planet, Uranus, around the Sun should be divided
into three twenty-eight-year sections. The cycle proceeds according to a three-phase
rhythm, whereas the seventy-year pattern is basically twofold in structure. A two-beats
rhythm is primarily biological; and at the level of the "living soul" in the Earth's biosphere
the numbers 2, 4, and 10 are dominant. At the level of the mind, at which the process of
individualization operates, numbers 3, 7, and 28 are the essential factors — and 7, by
Kabbalistic addition, gives 28 (1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 = 28) which, occult tradition
claims, is the number of Man.
CHAPTER SIX
Human Cycles of Unfoldment - 4

The Uranian Cycle of Individualizing Transformations

The meaning of the eighty-four-year cycle as an archetype of man's life span has been
discussed in various books to which the reader is referred.(2) Thus, during the first thirty-
five years, the building forces in man operate biologically and psychologically at the
physical-personal level. What should be emphasized here is the transformative character of
the cycle. It becomes operative wherever man is either ready and willing to raise, at least to
some extent, the level of the foundations of his consciousness, or is driven by the pressure
of a civilization stressing intellectual faculties and artificial city-living to changes which his
mind may not actually understand. When the vibrational quality of the 5 becomes
accentuated as an overtone of the basic natural rhythm of the Earth's biosphere, the
tendency consciously, or only half-consciously, to accept the Uranian-Promethean principle
of transformation as a dominant factor is bound to appear. But it may take many forms.
The Vedas, whose earliest origin should be traced to the source of our Fifth Root-Race
in central Asia — even if the recorded version known today was written at a much later date
— are coded witnesses to the appearance of this principle of transformation; but they must
be understood in the manner suggested by the modern Indian Seer, yogi, and poet, Sri
Aurobindo, in his fascinating book On the Veda. In the Upanishads and subsequent
writings, we see an intense drive toward biopsychic transformation and the emergence of
consciousness at a transcendental level taking many forms, some quite extreme and based
on a misunderstanding of what is to be accomplished — an accomplishment in which the
whole of mankind should be involved in so far as that is possible.
Our Western civilization, since its origins in ancient Greece, has followed an approach
to transformation which polarizes, and in this sense complements, the Aryan-Hindu
approach. By stressing the development of the rational mind and of an aggressive
individualism, European culture has aimed at effecting a theoretically universal
transformation of natural man. The development of the typically American way of life,
feverishly taking hold of the vast resources of a sparsely inhabited continent — and in the
process destroying most of its natives — accentuated the European drive toward this
universal transformation by glorifying ego-aggressiveness, material success, and in general
all the transferable products of the operations of an intellect intent upon subjugating
nature in order to satisfy man's craving for comfort and power. Money is transferable social
power; and an education stressing the "how to" kind of knowledge — matter bent, earth-
bound, analytical and statistical, then computerized knowledge — is also transferable in the
form of textbooks, and university degrees.
The whole atmosphere of American living has been blatant with an ever accelerated
drive for change and instant fulfillment at the material-social level; but it is an intoxicating
atmosphere which has spread around an increasingly polluted and often devastated
biosphere. Intoxication and pollution are inseparable; and so is the artificial prolongation of
man's natural life-span inseparable from overpopulation and the exhaustion of natural
resources. Considering our present state of affairs it certainly would seem that mass-
individualization — as we have sought it — is not the solution. The kind of equalitarianism
which actually turns out to be equality between egos, does not usually reflect the ideal of
spiritual equality of which Buddha and Christ spoke. The transformation of humanity
inevitably must have a hierarchical character, if it is based on individual efforts and
understanding, and is not dependent upon transferable recipes for every one sheepishly to
memorize and apply in a spirit of competition and greed for success and social prestige.
Individual transformation operates, exceptions notwithstanding, in a dialectical
sequence of three phases. These phases, archetypally considered, last twenty-eight years;
and, as already stated, 28 is the number of Man for it expands at the level of the conscious
mind the implications inherent in number 7. Twenty-eight is also four times 7, and eighty-
four is twelve times 7 — 12 being the symbol of cosmic completion, whether one deals with
macrocosmic or microcosmic processes.
The first twenty-eight years begin with physical birth and the embodiment of
consciousness in a world of bodies. The second twenty-eight years begins with a more or
less accentuated kind of rebirth, and we may speak of "birth in individuality." However, in a
great many cases, the human person is not able to experience such a rebirth; if so, the
rhythm of the seventy-year pattern is the only one worth considering. Even if the process of
individualization has begun, the natural rhythm of generic man still keeps operating at the
biopsychic level of unconscious activities, but the individualizing mind and the ego-will
nevertheless can begin to gain strength as overtones of the fundamental vibrations of
human nature. Gradually they are able to assert their power of transformation and to offset
to some extent the entropy of natural processes.
Around the age of twenty-eight, two important astrological cycles are concluded: the
cycle of the "progressed Moon" (twenty-seven and one-third years long) and that of
Saturn's revolution around the Sun (twenty-nine and one-half years long). Both refer to the
parental past, the Moon being the Mother-symbol, the Sun the symbol of the Father-image
— that is, the image which a person makes of his or her father as a result of experiences in
family-living. These experiences may be either positive (fulfilling the natural need for a
father) or negative (frustrating the fulfillment of the need). What this means is that from
age twenty-seven to age thirty the "would-be-individual" is potentially able to become
completely objective toward his physical parents, his racial ancestry, and even his culture;
and being objective, he can be free from the compulsive pull of the past. He can act as a
creative source of the future.
This does not mean that he has to (or that he may want to) entirely repudiate all
natural attachments to his past. He may even cease, at that time, to indulge in a subjective
and emotionally compulsive rebellion fashionable or ego-motivated against this past,
because, having become more objective to the situation, he may be able to gain a better
perspective on the actions of the protagonists involved in it. Nevertheless we can speak of
the second twenty-eight-year period of the gradually self-transforming and consciousness
repolarizing individual person as the "antithesis succeeding the thesis represented by the
first period of his life." The thesis is human nature in its generic mass vibration, or the
collective tradition, the particular society, culture, and religion in which the individual has
grown up. The antithesis represents an attempt at a basic differentiation and
individualization of consciousness, feelings, and behavior. Such an attempt inevitably
implies a separation from what the individual is emerging from; but the separation need not
be physical for it refers essentially to the level of consciousness and self-realization.
The stage of "synthesis" theoretically occurs with the start, at age fifty-six, of the third
twenty-eight-year period, though evidently in most cases the new emergence (third birth) is
a gradual process requiring a gestation period. I have spoken of it as "birth in light" for in
the white light of the sun all the colors exist in a state of unity or multi-unity.
In the light of the spiritualized consciousness, the preceding phases of thesis and
antithesis are seen to interpenetrate and interblend. The person is no less an individual for
realizing then more clearly and vibrantly his dedication to humanity. In this realization, the
ego surrenders its opacity and becomes a clear lens focusing into personalized
consciousness and activity the quality of existence (or, one might say, the mission or
dharma) which, from the very beginning of his existence as a particular human organism, it
has been his potential destiny to actualize.
Most human beings are not able to experience a truly effectual "third birth." Indeed,
even those whose minds are repolarized through a really individual process of rebirth
around the age of twenty-eight still constitute a relatively small minority if one considers the
entire population of the globe. Yet, in some manner, what remains a potentiality may cast
fleeting and at times perhaps quite definite reflections upon the consciousness of still
opaque and rigidly bound egos. The Saturnian father-image that took form during childhood
and adolescence can be transmuted into the inner center of a personality to some extent
responding to the still clouded presence of the Father within of whom Jesus spoke, and that
Presence may be increasingly felt during the second Saturn cycle from age twenty-nine to
fifty-eight or fifty-nine.
At the age of about sixty, Saturn and Jupiter return to the approximate zodiacal
positions they occupied at birth; and because these two planets symbolize the social
consciousness of a person — and, at a higher level, his approach to religion and the
integrative energies of his psyche — their joint cyclic reappearance at their natal places
evokes the possibility of a new beginning at a new level of mind and soul activity. As the
possibility of establishing the center of his being at the level of the "divine soul" is inherent
in every man — remote as this possibility is for most human beings in our present society
that age of sixty may witness the hesitant beginnings of such a spiritualizing process, open
to individuals of all races and cultures. It may of course begin much earlier in supernormal
cases.
 Many persons after sixty — and not a few before display crystallizing tendencies in
mind and feelings, together with a loss of vitality and organic resilience. These are natural
tendencies; but these manifestations of biological entropy can be given a harder and more
actively negative form if there has been a real degree of individualization during the second
twenty-eight-year cycle and if this individualization has allowed the shadow aspect of
egocentricity to take control or has led to frustrating and embittering experiences. Then "old
age" can lose the glow of radiance of wisdom it so often has in a society and culture built on
the overtones of natural living; it can lead to depression, hostility, and tragic sense of
futility, emptiness, boredom, and alienation from the life that still surges ever fresh in the
new generations. This then is the negative or shadow aspect of the spiritualizing possibility
available to all human beings.

2. cf Rudhyar's New Mansions for New Men, Part One; The Astrology of Personality
(p. 212-222 Doubleday edition); The Astrological Houses (p. 144-150).
CHAPTER SIX
Human Cycles of Unfoldment - 5

Each of the three twenty-eight-year periods in this archetypal eighty-four-year

life-cycle not only unfolds its potential in four seven-year subcycles, but the patterns of the
latter often display revealing correspondences. In other words, the internal structure of the
subcycle from birth to age seven finds itself potentially repeated in the one from twenty-
eight to thirty-five at the new level of individualization. In a usually less noticeable manner
the period from fifty-six to sixty-three may also reveal corresponding developments at the
new level of synthesis of ancestral-collective and individual values. There is also an often
clearly recognizable connection between age fourteen and age forty-two (twenty-eight plus
fourteen). One can truly think of the much publicized "change of life" (psychological even
more than biological, and in males as well as females) as a kind of puberty in reverse.
The emotional tensions which had followed puberty often are reflected at the level of the
mentalized consciousness by an equally emotional crisis in the mid or late forties.
At twenty-one a young person is — or at least was until recently — "coming of age;"
and at forty-nine or fifty the active member of society may see his life socially realized,
perhaps as an executive. In the third twenty-eight-year cycle this corresponds to age
seventy-seven. Death may be impending; but in some instances these last years of the
archetypal life-pattern may witness spiritual experiences and the transcendence of death at
the level of a mind totally free from the natural entropy which dominates our biosphere.
Correspondences may or may not be revealing to the mind studying the archetypal
patterns revealing, that is, in terms of the meaning they can give to specific remembered
events. But even if there are no apparently significant correlations and reflections, the very
attempt to think of one's life in such cyclic terms should help to develop an objective
approach and a consciousness of this life-as-a-whole. This whole may be experienced as an
unfolding melody, whose tonality reveals the essential character and quality of the purpose
of having been born in a particular time and place.
Natal astrology can also be a means to reach a revelatory experience of the meaning of
one's life-as-a-whole. Astrology deals with individual cases, and it can help us to follow year
by year, or even month by month, the manner in which the basic functional activities in a
man's biopsychic organism operate in their constant interrelationships and interblendings.
These basic functional activities are symbolized by the ten astrological planets (including the
apparently moving Sun and the Moon), each of which moves at a different speed because
their orbits occupy different places in the solar system (or heliocosm). It is these places
which fundamentally determine the symbolical meanings of the planets, either from a
heliocentric or a geocentric point of view, or both.
Astrology can deal with actual events far better than the type of cyclic symbology
discussed in this chapter, because it deals with functional activities at the existential
level. Cyclic patterns that refer to human life in its most universal aspect have, I repeat,
the character of archetypes. They show what is possible for every human being simply
because of the fact that he or she is human — a representative of the genus homo sapiens,
but from the occult point of view, even more a microcosm of the universal macrocosm.
The study of these all-human cycles can also throw some very basic light upon the
character and significance or purpose of important events — markers in the pattern of
destiny — merely because of their occurring at a particular age. One of such events might
be marriage, childbearing for a woman, or even death itself. The fact that such an event
occurs during the first, second, or fourth, or seventh year of any one of the seven-year
cycles can be highly significant. The numerological meaning of the year will normally
undertone the meaning each partner gives to the marriage. Marriage during the twenty-
fifth year (after the twenty-fourth birthday) may be seen to carry the deep impress of
vibration 4. It may lead to a critical revaluation of the partner's consciousness and life, also
perhaps to conflicts which nevertheless can be harmonized and become the foundation for a
self-transformative process. Marriage during a seventh year carries the meaning of "seed"
realization, out of which a new life can assuredly be expected sooner or later to emerge.
In most cases the ages of the partners vibrate to different cyclic notes. Today,
however, because of our type of school education in which boys and girls of the same age
are thrown together in daily contacts, marriage whether legal or extralegal often unites two
partners of the same age. Thus the numerical vibration undertoning the marriage is
reinforced. This occurs also when two people marry who are seven years — or a multiple of
seven years — apart. These usually are quite significant cases because every new year
alters in the same way the character of the union, especially if the birthdays are close to
each other.
If marriage occurs before twenty-one it is likely to have a more "psychological"
meaning than if it occurs between twenty-one and twenty-eight, the "social" level in the
seven-year cycle. If it occurs after thirty-five it may well be an answer to some life-
development which took place as many years before thirty-five. Marriage at forty-nine
would tend to reflect what, at twenty-one, brought either psychological pressures and
frustrations or some achievement which eventually made this marriage possible. When an
eighty-four-year life-pattern applies, such a marriage at forty-nine may resonate to what
occurred in the individualized life at age twenty-one — because forty-nine equals twenty-
eight plus twenty-one.
This is not the place to discuss individual case histories which, I repeat, generally
speaking are only for the individual person to study and evaluate; and what was said about
marriage can be applied to any event deeply affecting the manner in which the life-pattern
becomes filled with existential and perhaps transforming events. The main purpose of this
chapter is to show how a whole life can be scrutinized from an objective and detached point
of view — an approach which should clarify and intensify the meaning of basic changes in
one's life experience, if pursued in a constructive spirit and not with a literal mind. This
discussion was also meant to stress the importance of the age factor to contemporary men
and women, whose attitude towards themselves as well as towards others is mainly
personal and hypnotized by facts, small occurrences, and strictly existential values.
In our youth-glorifying American society and with children and adolescents rushing
feverishly toward experiences which their nervous system and emotional nature are not able
to handle significantly and constructively, or even less assimilate, the values inherent in
every age-period are most often forgotten, or thought of in a culturally biased and morally
prejudiced manner. By trying to see everything at every time through the heavily colored
glasses of equalitarianism denying the functional differences which allow for harmonic
interaction of individuals within an organic society and culture, modern men and women,
young and old, have lost the most basic sense of human and planetary value.
In the operation of any whole organism, every function is essential and valuable. There
should be no question of "superior" or "inferior," whether racial or functional. In an organic
democracy every cell and organ — every individual and every healthfully operating group
and institution — is equally important, necessary, and to be protected as well as valued. But
every function is different. No individual should be compelled, urged, or subtly forced to
occupy a function which is not his or her own by right of individual destiny (dharma or
truth-of-being); yet in a well organized society every individual should consider the welfare
of the whole above his own individual welfare. Childhood, adolescence, maturity, old age
have different functions; and it is tragic to see any of these ignored, over-praised or
scorned, and above all confused.
To grasp the significance of every phase of the age-pattern has indeed become an
urgent task in order to bring sanity to our social, educational, and business processes. This
however is assuredly not a call for a return to old traditional patterns of family or social
behavior! One should always look ahead and be intent on creating the future. Yet creation
demands understanding: understanding requires wisdom rather than the kind of knowledge
our factories of learning provide for a high price. And there can be no wisdom where the
mind is not able to operate in terms of universal principles intuitively sensed and reverently
applied.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Planetary and Social Cycles - 1

The study of cycles is very complex and elusive. Cyclic activities are found at all levels
of existence, from the cosmic to the atomic level. The physicist and the ecologist concerned
with fall-out and atomic waste products speak of the "half-cycle" of radioactive materials;
the biologist studies what is now called the biological clocks establishing the rhythms of all
life-species; the astrologer analyzes the patterns of unfoldment of planetary cycles, of which
there are many and of different types; historians who are not content with collecting
information seek to outline the cyclic rhythm of growth, maturation, and decay of human
societies; and, should he be following a hint given by H. P. Blavatsky, the theosophically
oriented student of occult processes concerning the activities of at least the trans-
Himalayan Brotherhood pays attention to the century cycle.
All these cycles are of different lengths. Because they refer to very different kinds of
processes, they unfold presumably according to different rhythmic patterns. We have
already spoken of a seven-fold rhythm in the lives of human beings; and, according to The
Secret Doctrine and other occult treatises, this sevenfold division of cycles is basic in the
operations of what has been called "the life-wave." It defines the succession of Rounds,
Races, sub-races, etc.
On the other hand, in many instances, particularly in the case of seasonal activity
during the year-cycle, the process of cyclic activity is best understood in terms of a fourfold
operation. Because the zodiac essentially is a projection of the year-pattern upon the sky,
as seen by human beings living in relatively temperate zones of the Earth's surface, it has
primarily a fourfold character. But a threefold division of cycles is also well known, which in
combination with the fourfold pattern produces a rhythm of twelve beats, from which we
draw the measure of the months of the year and the zodiacal signs.
The periods of revolution of the planets around the Sun — when considered in relation
to that of the Earth's revolution, let us not forget — in several instances reveal such
simple rhythms at work. Jupiter's revolution lasts close to twelve of our years; Saturn, thirty
years; Uranus, eighty-four (7 x 12) years. The revolution of the Moon around the Earth lasts
close to twenty-eight (4 x 7) days. If one takes Uranus' period as a unit, Neptune's cycle
has twice, and Pluto's cycle three times its length. However, these figures are not strictly
exact, and no cycle at the existential level seems ever to be measurable in terms of
precisely an integral number of shorter cycles; a coefficient of uncertainty always exists
wherever a relationship between two cosmic factors is at stake. Simple numbers and
geometrical figures belong only to the realm of archetypes.
The second of the "Three Fundamental Propositions" on which, according to HPB, the
Secret Doctrine of Occultism is based, refers to the universality of cycles(1). She writes:
The Secret Doctrine affirms: (2) The Eternity of the Universe in toto as a boundless plane . .
. the absolute universality of that law of periodicity, of flux and reflux, ebb and flow, which
physical science has observed and recorded in all departments of nature. An alternation
such as that of Day and Night, Life and Death, Sleeping and Waking, is a fact so common,
so perfectly universal and without exception, that it is easy to comprehend that in it we see
the absolutely fundamental law of the universe. (PROEM, p. 16-17)

This universal pattern of periodical flux and reflux refers to the already mentioned
differentiation of an involutionary hemicycle — the descent of Spirit, level after level, into
ever more crudely material conditions of concretization — and an evolutionary hemicycle
representing an ascent of consciousness through a differentiated form or material structure
(i.e. a "body" at the level of the Earth's biosphere). Such a twofold pattern is essentially
dualistic and demonstrates the operation of two principles, which Chinese philosophy names
Yang and Yin. These principles alternatively wax and wane within an at least relatively
closed system of activity (an organism), one of them waxing as the other wanes.
This type of dualistic pattern is typified by the cycle of the year. In my book The Pulse
of Life (Shambala Publications, Berkeley, California), I have spoken of the two Yang and Yin
principles as the "Day-Force" and the "Night-Force," because during six months of the year
(from the winter solstice around December 21 to the summer solstice around June 21) the
length of the day increases as that of the night decreases; and the reverse process operates
during the six months from the summer to the winter solstices. Such a rhythm produces
four characteristic moments dividing the course of the entire cyclic process into four
sections. In the year cycle there are the four seasons respectively beginning at the four
crucial moments of the year, the two solstices and the two equinoxes. The solstices are
times of greatest disequilibrium between the day force and the night force; while at the
equinoxes of spring and autumn these two forces are of equal strength. However, at the
vernal equinox the day force is mounting in power and thus is the dynamic and dominant
force, as far as all external manifestations of life are concerned; while at the fall equinox
this day force has a subsiding negative character, and it is the night force which is the
positively dynamic factor.
The equinoctial and solstitial moments of the year cycle establish the fourfold pattern
which most typically characterizes the zodiac. A similar fourfold pattern referring essentially
— though this is not usually understood — to the space surrounding the newborn is shown
in the birth-chart with its four "Angles" produced by the horizon and the meridian.(2)
Though it is a space pattern, it can also be referred (and is most often related by
astrologers) to the daily rotation of the Earth around its axis — a rotation which produces
the alternation of days and nights, of the waking and the sleeping (and dreaming) states of
consciousness. Night consciousness is "subjective"; day consciousness, "objective." There
again we can speak of two polar principles, subjectivity and objectivity, which can also be
referred to the coupling, darkness and light — or again, in the Chinese world-view, Yin and
Yang.
1. cf. The Secret Doctrine I:174. "Metaphysically speaking, it is of course an absurdity to
talk of the 'development' of a Monad, or to say that it becomes 'Man.' But any attempt to
preserve metaphysical accuracy of language in the use of such a tongue as English would
necessitate at least three extra volumes of this work and would entail an amount of verbal
repetition which would be wearisome in the extreme. It stands to reason that a Monad
cannot either progress or develop, or even be affected by the changes it passes through..."

Yet HPB differentiates "three great classes" of Monads and the "stages" they pass through.
Later on (I:177) she writes: "As the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and
Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form what we, to our ignorance, call the "Individual
Monad" of men ... It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity
trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, etc." (I:178) Yet it is
what many books seem to describe.

2. For a discussion of the astrological Houses, read my book The Astrological Houses:
The Spectrum of Individual Experience (Doubleday, N.Y. 1972).
CHAPTER SEVEN
Planetary and Social Cycles - 2

The daily rhythm has been "cosmified" by India's vulgarizers of the esoteric
doctrines into the Days and Nights of Brahma, the Creator. These refer to immensely long
periods of cosmic Manifestation, and equally long periods (though here one can no longer
speak of time in our human sense) of non-Manifestation. The state of Manifestation
(Manvantara) constitutes what we call "existence." All existence ceases during non-
Manifestation (Pralaya). Yet the mind can make a conceptual picture of a process, no longer
of existence, but of "in-istence," referring to the Pralaya state, the cosmic Sleep, which can
also be symbolized at the biological level by the state of hibernation.
At a more transcendentally human level, we can also consider as a Pralaya condition of
the human consciousness, the period between death to the physically objective world of
bodies and a new birth defined by the karma (positive as well as negative) of the past.
"Existence" refers to the exteriorization of consciousness as the result of a particular
relationship between (1) a Soul and (2) a human body produced by the long evolution of
material organisms on the biosphere. This particular relationship is made possible by (3) the
integrative power of a monadic spark of the Divine. Therefore the Occultist speaks of man's
threefold nature, and more generally of three schemes of evolution.
When this relationship is dissolved, the Soul and the body each goes its own way — the
Soul to a condition of subjectivity, the body (and this includes all its psychic overtones) to a
condition of reabsorption into the material (the "humus") of the biospheric "ground", the
matter of which is not only physical-molecular, but also includes a kind of planetary
psychic stuff filled with the decay of all strictly "personal" and nonspiritualizable aspects of
the human being during the life just ended. Death therefore brings about a definitely
dualistic state of affairs in which Spirit and matter are seemingly completely separated. That
separation, however, can only be temporary in a world founded upon the harmony of two
polar principles. After a relatively subjective state of consciousness in which the Soul
experiences itself within itself (the Devachan state of theosophical literature), it is
compulsively drawn by the Law of Harmony (which is what karma is) toward a new
manifestation, that is, a new relationship to a new human organism.
Mythological cosmologies speak of Brahma's "desire to be" as the cause of the creation
of a new universe, but this is personalizing what to the Occultist is simply the operation of
an impersonal metacosmic principle of absolute Harmony, whose polarities are Subjectivity
and Objectivity. Likewise, it is sometimes said that the Soul "chooses" a new personality
before it is embryonic in a human mother's womb. Very likely at a relatively high level of
spiritual development such a possibility of "choice" may exist, but back of it stands the
karmic Law, which simply refers to the momentum of past successes and failures and the
unexpended energy involved in them. It is only as this momentum is exhausted that the
condition of Nirvana may be reached. But then another and more inclusive type of dualism
arises, opposing those who succeed in reaching that state and those who fail and drop along
the path — or who became positive expressions of Darkness, while the Nirvanee merged
into the Light of pure subjectivity.
This same basic process operates everywhere and at every level, but evidently in
infinitely varied forms. It is, for the Hindu mystic, a Play — the lila of Brahma. To the
Western mind it seems more like a drama; or to the ancient Greek, a tragedy. Each drama
or tragedy has a certain number of acts. If complete, it has also a prologue and an epilogue,
because nothing begins except it be born out of some past, and it leads toward a more or
less distant future. The dramatist selects a specific situation as the main theme of the play.
He starts the action at a certain moment, when the personages of the play have reached a
definite and potentially dramatic (or hilarious, if it is a comic farce) condition of
interrelationship. Yet somehow he has to explain how everyone in the cast came to that
significant moment in their interconnecting lives, and this is stated in the prologue.
The student of cyclic processes faces a related problem when he is attempting to
understand the character and meaning of the cosmic, natural, or historical events or
situations which he is able to perceive as phases of a cyclic process. This problem is the
determination of what is to be considered the beginning of a cycle. The nature of such a
problem can most easily be understood when we consider the cycle produced by the yearly
revolution of the Earth around the Sun, and the manner in which such a cycle affects the
type of vegetation which most characteristically reflects this seasonal rhythm of change.
When should we say that the year cycle begins?
We have only to look at the various calendars in existence today to realize that the
question can be answered in several ways. It seems, however, that most of the answers use
one of the four cardinal moments of the year as the at least approximate starting point of
the year cycle; yet I personally do not know of any society using the summer solstice, or a
day near it, as New Year. In our Western world the year begins after the winter solstice; the
Jewish year starts around the fall equinox, and many ancient countries and the recent Bahai
Movement — together with the astrologers of today and of old — use the spring equinox as
New Year day, speaking of it usually as the beginning of "Nature's year."
The meanings attributed to the various phases of cycles inevitably reflect the character
of the collective experience of the people whose culture formulated and symbolized such
meanings. Human beings find in the vegetable kingdom their basic sustenance, either
directly in the vegetarian mode, or indirectly by eating animals which have fed on products
of the vegetable kingdom. The trees of that kingdom have also been responsible for the
development of an oxygen-rich atmosphere needed for man's breathing. The vegetable
kingdom is the foundation of biospheric activity, and this activity is dominated by the
rhythm of the seasons, and of related atmospheric and climatic changes of a cyclic
character. The cycle of life on Earth can therefore significantly be symbolized by the
seasonal changes in vegetation; but in order to understand these changes and what they
symbolize one has to realize that the life of a plant — and more characteristically an annual
or deciduous plant manifests in two modes, represented by the seed and the leaf.
Every aspect of the plant's life outside of the seed can be referred to the leaf and the
development of its pattern. Even the trees which develop trunk and branches, and a
complex root system balancing them underground, are essentially modifications of the leaf
pattern. The seed, on the other hand, has a character and shape all of its own. It serves a
function totally different from that of the leaf and its derivatives, which include the flowers
and fruits. Seeds are mostly invisible except for a very brief period when they drop upon the
soil; leaves and flowers are visible and have a direct relationship with the sunlight and all
the lives that use them as food. The leafs chlorophyll, which gives a basic green tonality to
the biosphere, fulfills through the process of photosynthesis an absolutely fundamental
function in the development of the biosphere of our planet. The leaf becomes transfigured
into the flower, whose color and fragrance attracts insects who help in the fertilizing
process, insuring the perpetuation of the species. After fertilization, the new seed is
reformed under the protection of various enveloping membranes, which in many cases
develop into succulent fruits. As the fruit decays, the seeds contained within its womb are
released, some falling heavily upon the ground; others, endowed with wings, are carried by
the wind to give them a better chance to fall on fertile soil.
The realm of the leaf and all its derivatives is the realm of existential manifestation.
The realm of the seed refers to at least relatively unmanifested essence. The seed is an
agency through which the archetypal reality of a vegetable species reaches and is able to
affect the existential world of the Earth's biosphere. Through the seed the species acts,
focusing the specific type of energy and structuring forces which characterize this generic
form of life. Within the seed a tiny reflection of a transcendent reality vibrates.
Whatever belongs to the realm of the leaf must disintegrate at the close of the cycle,
but the seed has the power to retain its identity and remain as a potentiality of creative
renewal after the cycle's end. Eventually it will perform the sacrifice of the seed to the new
vegetation. It will die so that new life once more may arise and ascend toward the Sun; but
that kind of death is a victory over nature's entropy, of Spirit over all material forms. New
leaves will unfold and in turn become the flowery womb for a multiplied harvest of seeds.
This should not be interpreted as a picture of exact cyclic recurrence insofar as
existential realities are concerned. The molecules and atoms in the rose that grew on a bush
in 1974 will not be the same atoms as those in the rose of spring 1975. Besides, from one
seed germinating into a plant a vastly increased number of seeds may grow; and on this
power of self-multiplication all agriculture, and also cattle-breeding, is based. The
archetypal structure of the process remains the same, but the existential products
structured by it may not only produce an increase of substance — an increase affecting the
whole environment — but they may lead to creative mutations.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Planetary and Social Cycles - 3

Mutations occur only in the seed — perhaps at the time of the symbolical Christmas,
when the Sun begins to "move Northward" (in declination) and days gradually lengthen.
Some mutations are the answer of the species-as-a-whole to new challenges of the
environment and are constructive; others reflect the onslaught of destructive forces upon
the integrity of the biosphere. The patterns of change are never exactly repeated, for forces
are constantly at work produced by the essentially unpredictable results of various types of
existential relationships; "vertical" relationships between lesser wholes that are organic
parts of greater wholes — and "horizontal" relationships between wholes operating at the
same level.
It is by establishing the distinction between the seed realm and the leaf-realm that we
can gain a deeper understanding of why certain societies felt the urge to begin their year
with the onset of spring, fall, or winter. Cultures which sought to attune themselves fully to
the natural biospheric rhythm of annual transformation, and to glorify existential realities as
direct reflections of a divine Power projecting itself and fecundating them, chose the
symbolic time of germination — the beginning of spring — as their most sacred time for a
celebration of life. Other cultures (for instance, the Hebrew) use the fall equinox as their
approximate New Year because they sought deeply to respond to the occult potency of
the seed in Man; and that seed is the mind and its power of symbolic self-multiplication in
an ever increasing harvest of ideas and social forms. This seed-mind is the foundation of the
sense of personal identity — thus, of the realization "I am" and of the process of
individualization and intellectual analysis which has dominated our Western civilization since
the days of Moses and ancient Greece.
Yet European culture, under the influence of Christianity, has used as the start of the
year the days following the winter solstice — the time when the Promise of a future rebirth
of life and vegetation is given by the rising arc of the Sun's motion across the sky; a
Promise only and one which Christianity, invaded by the ghosts of the Roman empire and
torn by the old Hebraic sense of guilt and sinfulness, actually was not able to fulfill.
Christianity was intended to compensate for, balance and illumine the new evolutionary
trend toward individualistic and intellectual self-assertion, and indeed autarchy; yet it was
unable to significantly offset the fateful power of such a trend. Still, the attempt remains
alive in the symbol of a New Year associated with the winter solstice and the symbolic birth
of the solar Christ.
H.P. Blavatsky stated that January 4 should be considered the esotericist's New Year,
and to my knowledge little has been added to this statement. It nevertheless seems
probable that in some manner that day has a direct or indirect reference to the coming of
the Kumaras and thus the beginning in man of "reflective consciousness" or the
consciousness of being conscious — truly a momentous "mutation." It is, moreover,
significant that the polar opposite of January 4 is July 4, celebrated as the birthday of the
American nation. And, according to at least some of its true Founders, the United States of
America was not to be merely another nation in the European style, but the beginning of a
new kind of society exemplifying a new way of living — Novum Ordo Seclorum — a new
order of the centuries(1).
Whether or not America has succeeded in being true to her essential or archetypal
destiny is a highly disputable matter; but the cyclic connection between January 4 and July
4 is deeply significant and an unmet spiritual challenge. The two dates are related as the
Ascendant of an astrological birth-chart is related to the principle of relatedness; this also
means the beginning of a cycle is related to the mid-point (or "bottom") of the cycle. The
occult solar promise in the zodiacal sign Capricorn is related to the building in Cancer of
both the home and the concretely integrated personality. What is occultly envisioned within
the "Christed" consciousness in darkness of winter (the "midnight Sun" of Masonry) should
become fully actualized in early summer. Then within the small fruit developing at the
center of what had been a beautiful flower the seed is being reconstituted. It could become
the symbolical Child, the Body of Immortality — also called the Diamond Body or the Body
of Resurrection — in whom man would experience his seed-victory over natural entropy and
death.
The symbolism which has been attached to the yearly process of vegetation has had
the most profound influence on the development of man's consciousness since the ancient
days of what has been called the Vitalistic Age, when human society was completely
polarized in everyday living by agriculture and/or cattle-raising, and the ritualistic worship
of the two poles of the life-energy, male and female, gave collective forms to man's
aspirations toward a creative state of total survival in self-multiplication and self-
transcendence through attunement with biospheric and solar-lunar rhythms.
Astrology was, if not born, at least codified in its multiple forms during the millennia of
such a vitalistic evolution — and evolution not yet completed in most places — and took
from the dominant preoccupation of the epoch its basic tenets, including the starting point
of the year cycle at the vernal equinox, "Nature's birthday." This became "the first Point in
Aries," the beginning of the zodiac. Yet there seem to have been regions in which the time
of the harvest and possibly the star Spica were given precedence, because of the climatic
and harvest conditions prevailing in such regions less susceptible to the changes in seasons
of the temperate zone of the Northern Hemisphere.
It is evident that a correct solution given to the problem of ascertaining the most
significant starting point in a complete cyclic process — which in an archetypal sense has no
beginning or end — is required for a correct evaluation of the phase of any cycle at which a
particular event occurs or situation arises. Are we today at the beginning of a new cycle, or
near the middle, or somewhere before the end of one started centuries ago? We have first
of all to determine the length and the character of the cycle we are considering. But a
situation of extreme complexity confronts us, for we must realize that small cycles occur
within larger ones, and these within still vaster cosmic periods, and any cycle includes
subcycles. What makes the situation more confusing is the fact that Occultism (as presented
by H.P. Blavatsky who, more than any other writer dealt with cycles) not only keeps the
secret of the exact lengths and actual beginnings of cosmic and planetary cycles well
guarded, but uses "blinds." This may be required in order to test the student's intuition and
the purity of his motive, but it makes the determination of any date difficult, if not
impossible. Not only do the dates, or even centuries, remain uncertain, as sometimes
several dates are given for one event, but also the level at which the cycle being
mentioned operates is often not clearly stated; and this of course is of capital importance.
For instance, one may apparently refer quite precisely to the time of "birth"; but it may
not always mean physical birth out of the mother's womb. This problem occurs in astrology,
and astrologers sometimes feel that the birth chart should be calculated from the moment
at which the male sperm penetrates the female ovum; thus "conception charts" are erected
which are deduced from the actual physical birth-moment according to rhythmic patterns
which may not always be correctly applied or even applicable. Some occultist-astrologers
even claim that they can calculate a "solar epoch" preceding actual conception.
For similar reasons it is indeed difficult to state when the Great Cycle of the precession
of the equinoxes actually began, or when one of its twelve subcycles, the Aquarian Age, will
begin; or perhaps it has already begun at some level. As we have already seen, the first half
of a cycle refers to a descent of power, or, we might also say, to the gradual actualization of
a set of spiritual potentialities released by the divine or cosmic creative Act — the Biblical
"Let there be Light!" But the originating release occurs at a cosmic level and in terms of
energies, vibrations, or qualities of being whose nature far transcends those we can
experience at our physical or even mental level of awareness. Even if a man's consciousness
could in some way become reflectively aware of the creative release, the inertia of Earth
matter and that of the collective mind of mankind would oppose an intense resistance to the
new downflowing tide; and this means that it takes time for the new impulse to overcome
the resistance and to become clearly manifest in mental, social, and physical changes. The
time it takes represents the transition period between the old and the new (in Sanskrit,
sandhya).
According to the Hindu tradition the transition between two cycles normally lasts one
tenth of the length of the cycle at its close — I have called it the seed period — and a period
of the same length after the start of the new cycle — the germinal period. If, then, a cycle
lasts 2160 years, which is the average length of one of the twelve Ages (Arian, Piscean,
Aquarian, etc.) dividing the Great Cycle of the precession of the equinoxes, the last 216
years of one of these Ages form its seed period, and the first 216 years of the next Age its
germinal period. This means that one-fifth of the time, in a succession of cycles, is occupied
by transitional activities.
It also means that the creative Impulse initiating a new precessional Age must have
begun already to operate when, at the Earth-level to which these Ages apply, the upsetting
effect of the seed-transition period can be felt. It is an upsetting effect because the new tide
of energy is then exerting pressure upon all that the past has produced and that usually has
become rigid and uncreative. Thus, when the last tenth of a cycle starts, the creative
beginning of the next cycle has already occurred at a "high" spiritual-cosmic level. The two
cycles, which can be said to succeed each other, if only one level of activity is considered,
actually interpenetrate if several levels are considered. The downward trend of the
closing cycle calls forth and polarizes the descent of the creative Impulse of the
succeeding cycle. One may visualize such a process if one thinks of the way wind arises:
as a region of low atmospheric pressure develops, air from surrounding regions of high
pressure automatically flows, as wind, into it.
Wind, in Greek, is pneuma, which also means "spirit." When the spirituality of a society
falls to a low level, a rush of a new spirit begins to be felt. This is an automatic action; yet
because we live at the level of matter which displays both objectivity and solidity — and, in
so far as human beings are concerned, personality — this automatic action of the creative
Spirit has to be focused in and to radiate through a human Personage, an Avatar,
and also through lesser avataric beings — as we shall see in the following chapter and Part
Four of this book. It is for the same reason that we think of God as a person; "It" becomes
"He" when in relation to a human person. Thus great philosopher seers such as Sri
Aurobindo state that Brahman has both a personal and an impersonal aspect, and the
Christian mystic, Eckhart, differentiates between "God," the divine Person, and an utterly
transcendent "Godhead."

1. cf. my last book The Astrology of America's Destiny (Random House, N.Y. 1974).
CHAPTER SEVEN
Planetary and Social Cycles - 4

The creative Power acts through human persons when the time for a new release
of power has struck on the cosmic clock of evolution. It also starts into operation a
multitude of less focalized transforming activities. The seed period of transition has then
begun; but at the material and sociocultural level, the New Age has not really dawned. It is
"conceived," yet not yet "born." The Avatar is the Logos Spermatikos known to the Greek
philosophers. He impregnates the planetary ovum within the placental biosphere; and it is
such an Act that the fecundation by the Holy Spirit of Mary, the immaculately conceived
Virgin, symbolizes. Gautama's mother was also called Maya — a term which designates the
personifying power of existence in the world of "name and form" (nama and rupa), a world
which to the purely spiritual consciousness must appear as an illusion, an imaginative
daydream.
These general remarks were necessary to establish what, to me, is a sound approach
to the study of all cyclic processes. It is impossible here to deal with the many cycles
considered significant by both the Occultist and the astrologer concerned with planetary
changes, the growth of nations and the various periods marking the development of human
civilizations. In my book Astrological Timing: The Transition to a New Age (Harper and
Row, N.Y., paperback) the cycle of the precession of the equinoxes (with its twelve Ages)
and the cycles of relationship established by the successive conjunctions of the larger
planets (beginning with Jupiter and Saturn, and stressing more particularly the complex
interplay between the revolutions of Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto) have been studied with
their historical correlations. The interested reader has to be referred to this book, as the
subject is much too vast to be discussed here.
It seems valuable nevertheless to point out that the precessional cycle (lasting around
25,900 years — a length that presumably varies slightly with each cycle) constitutes the
third of the main cyclic motions of our globe — the two others being its daily rotation
around the polar axis, and its yearly revolution around the Sun. This precessional cycle, as
usually described in astrology, refers to the retrograde displacement of the equinoxes with
reference to zodiacal constellations, which are supposed to be "fixed" (the fixed stars) but
actually change shape very slowly. As the equinoxes represent the two moments during the
year when the Sun sets exactly west and when days and nights are of equal length, this
means that, at the spring equinox, the Sun today has moved away from a star with which
it was in exact conjunction several centuries ago.
Actually, however, this movement of the equinoxes in relation to the fixed stars is only
the secondary result of a cyclic motion of the polar axis of the Earth, a gyrating motion,
because of which the North pole points successively to stars forming a cosmic circle. In
other words, the orientation of the polar axis slowly changes during a period
approximating that of the cycle of precession of the equinoxes; it is also a cyclic change,
and evidently a very significant one because it is along the line of a prolonged polar axis
that galactic forces are said to enter the electromagnetic field of our planet's organism.
This polar axis may be compared to the erect spine of man; and any student of esoteric
philosophy and yoga has heard of the importance of this spinal axis in the occult process of
development of consciousness, called in India Kundalini Yoga. The North and South poles
of the Earth can thus be compared to the ends of the human spine, the Root Chakra in the
region of the coccyx and the center at the top of the cranium, while the Earth's equator
refers to the diaphragm and the region of the solar plexus.
Changes in the orientation of the polar axis bring this spinal column of our globe in
direct alignment with a succession of "pole stars," and thus with a specific region of the
galaxy — which, for man, represents at least symbolically the Spiritual World, the world of
divine Hierarchies(4). As I stated in my first book on astrology, The Astrology of
Personality (first edition, 1936: A Key to Astrological Symbolism pp. 179 and 191 et seq.)
it may be that the Great Polar cycle is most significantly divided into 7 periods of close to
3700 years each. Another possible division is also suggested in The Secret Doctrine (first
edition, I:505): a division of the Great Cycle (often referred to as "the great Tropical Year")
into 370 "Days," each lasting seventy normal years. However, as astrology, at least in its
popular aspect, deals primarily with the vital forces represented by the Sun, and as the
zodiac — a creation of the apparent motion of the Sun — is the basis for most astrological
measurements, the gyration of the polar axis has remained mostly unnoticed, even though
it is the most basic movement. And not only has the whole attention of the people been
focused on the precession of the equinoxes, but the peculiar idea that, as a new Age opens,
the Sun successively "enters" Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn, etc. has become popularized,
though if stated in such a simplistic and inaccurate manner, it makes no sense whatever.
There are other less important or secondary motions of the globe; moreover the shape
of the orbit of the Earth undergoes some very slow periodical alterations. But these periods
are very large and are not used because it is not possible to experience them, or even their
subdivisions. A celestial phenomenon which cannot be measured in terms of an easily
available frame of reference, whose recurrence is too rare to be a collective human
experience, cannot serve a useful purpose as a "word" in the symbolic "language" of
astrology. Yet to the Occultist it could be a most meaningful indication of a cosmic or
planetary process, if it has been so regarded in the accumulated group-wisdom of an occult
Brotherhood existing for millennia.
As I see it, a Great Cycle for the precession of the equinoxes began around 100 B.C.,
and as it lasts some 2160 years it will end in less than a century around 2060 A.D. Its seed
period, being a tenth of the cycle, began around 1844. That was the year in which a young
Persian Prophet announced the end of the Islamic era and the beginning of a New Age of
which the Avatar (or "Divine Manifestation") was about to reveal himself — a revelation
which came nineteen years later when one of his original followers proclaimed himself
Baha'u'llah (meaning the Glory of God), the Expected One. In 1846 Neptune was discovered
and in 1848 the Communist manifesto began the movement that has changed human
history; American Spiritualism also began, and the Industrial Revolution, through the spread
of the railroads and the invention of the telegraph, reached a more concrete and world
transforming stage.
Thus the transition that at the existential level will eventually lead to the new Aquarian
Age has begun. Yet, referring to what has already been stated, this means that at the
spiritual-archetypal level the new cycle itself has already started with a release of cosmic
power and archetypal Images. That release of power is slowly making its way "downward,"
producing a radical upheaval in all institutions and cultural forms which had been developing
during the Piscean Age, especially since the mid-point of that Age, around 980 A.D. and
after the great crisis of the year 1000.(5)
We shall once more consider the character of this "descent" of creative, transforming
power in the chapter concluding this book, but now we have briefly to discuss another kind
of cycle, a cycle whose origin is no longer based on a motion of the Earth, but on a socio-
cultural-religious factor, the calendar: the Century Cycle.

4. According to some occult traditions the galaxy is the cosmic Womb of Souls, and each
human Soul has its cosmic-divine counterpart in a particular star — its "Father in heaven."

5. As the cycle of precession of the equinoxes derives from the retrograde movement of not
only the spring equinox but of both equinoctial points, the Piscean Age should actually be
called the "Pisces-Virgo Age." The Pisces polarity dominates during approximately the first
half of the cycle, but thereafter the Virgo polarity and the qualities it characterizes
(particularly the faculty of intellectual analysis and critical objectivity) gain an increasing
power. It dominates the sociocultural stage during the last fourth of the cycle, thus after
1520 — the Renaissance period and, with Francis Bacon, the rise of the modern scientific
spirit. Much that today is considered an expression of the Aquarian Age is rather the
manifestation of a protest against this Virgo influence and a nostalgic return to the Piscean
spirit of early Christianity — and also, in political Fascism, to the ideal of the Roman Empire
and its Administrators who foreshadowed some of our modern "technocrats" at the centers
of political power.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Planetary and Social Cycles - 5

It should be clear that when we speak of the nineteenth or twentieth century, we

have reference to periods the beginning of which depends on the kind of calendar being
used. These are solar and lunar calendars, and each calendar is made to begin on a certain
date in the more or less distant past. That memorable date usually refers to some event of
a religious nature or, in some cultures, to a specific cosmic event. However, the date is
always selected after the event occurs. By selecting it, a particular religion and culture, as it
were, returns to its actual or symbolical source, that is, to the original creative Impulse from
which it claims to descend. The figure characterizing a particular century indicates therefore
how distant from this point of origin a society and its culture find themselves — and perhaps
how spiritually remote from the creative moment they are.
We are dealing here, in a sense at least, with the occult power of numbers. What is
important is the number the century carries — whether it is the sixteenth or the nineteenth
after the point of origin. The meaning of these numbers has also much to do with the
expectable length of the total cycle, or life span, of the society. One hundred years for a
cosmic entity lasting a million of years is a very short period; but for a civilization whose life
span may be only two or three millennia, the century period may have a meaning similar to
that which the year cycle has for the living organisms of the Earth's biosphere. The
biospheric cycle of the year is a basic period for all that refers to the vegetable kingdom,
and particularly for all that concerns the cultivation of living organisms. Similarly the
century cycle appears to have much importance in the development of human cultures at
the level of social institutions, styles of life and artistic creation, and collective psychological
trends. What we call "culture" is the product of the "cultivation" of human traits and special
values; both processes, biological and (collectively) psychological, aim at improving the type
of organism they deal with — whether it be the production of beautiful roses and large
chrysanthemums through breeding and the use of special chemicals, or the formation of a
social aristocracy with refined manners, esthetic tastes, keener minds and, at the religious
level, more spiritual aspirations and controlled instinctual urges.(6)
It is in this sense that we should think of the value of a century-long period of
sociocultural development, and of the possibility of significantly subdividing it so that every
decade of the century may be given some sort of general archetypal meaning — just as any
year of the seven year cycle in an individual life acquires some basic significance from the
mere fact of its being a first, fourth, or seventh year.
If we look back at the development of European culture we may readily see that each
century can be broadly characterized by a few typical movements and features of the
collective Euro-mind. The fifteenth century witnessed the growth of Humanism and the
beginning of great voyages which established the global reality of mankind. The sixteenth
century produced the the Reformation, the seventeenth century, Classicism and the
rationalistic and mathematical foundations of modern science. The eighteenth century was
the Age of Enlightenment, of Free Masonry and the Revolutionary Spirit; and the nineteenth
century gave birth to Romanticism, Humanitarianism, and the Industrial Revolution. Our
twentieth century is the epoch of the World Wars, of the Electronic Revolution and atomic
power — an epoch now coming to a still uncertain seed culmination as the last quarter of
the century begins.
Each century the basic attitude of our Western society has changed quite radically, and
new concepts and social-cultural institutions have developed. The line of demarcation
between successive centuries is certainly not clear-cut; yet if one tries to see through and
beyond, and at the core of, the complexity of outer happenings and changes of fashion, one
should be able to discover a seed reality (or archetype) underlying and undertoning the
most characteristic developments in each century.
One really can speak here of a "seed" if one compares the development of a century
culture to that of the yearly vegetation. A spiritual and (at least in our Euro-American
civilization) occult power is released that is to the culture what the seed is to the annual
plant. It is a power, a keynote. A particular quality of "being-in-the-world," a typical
approach to interpersonal and social relationships and to religion and morality, emerges out
of that key-vibration, as grains of sand spread uniformly on a thin metal plate form into
geometrical patterns when the plate is made to vibrate under the impact of a tone. A
culture is the product of the collective mind of a racial or national organism; and this mind
is set in vibration by a few creative individuals. These in turn often are the conscious, half-
conscious, or unconscious "agents" of higher Forces and Intelligences which are set in
operation by the need of the time; that is to say, by the fact that a time has come in
mankind's evolution for certain qualities, faculties, and powers to come to the fore. Such
creative individuals are "seed men," releasing "seed ideas" to fecundate the minds of their
or succeeding generations — and we shall speak further of them. These seed ideas, at the
proper time, germinate and manifest as cultural forms and institutions.
If we understand such a process in its essential structural time sequence, we can then
relate it to the statement made by H. P. Blavatsky that, at least since the fourteenth
century, the Occult Brotherhoods — or some of them — have made a definite effort during
the last quarter of each century to fecundate the collective consciousness of Western
mankind with specific types of transforming spiritual energy and with related seed ideas. If
HPB is correct and the last quarter of each century has been the time of sowing spiritual
seeds at the level of man's culture, then it follows that the last quarter corresponds to the
Fall in the year cycle. We can therefore divide the century cycle in four "seasons," each
lasting twenty-five years; and the century can be said to begin at the moment when the
new vibration, which its main number indicates, takes hold of the collective mentality of our
Western men and women. The century's "winter" lasts from January 1, 1900 to January 1,
1925; then its "spring" extends from 1925 to 1950, its summer from 1950 to 1975, and its
fall from 1975 to January 1, 2000. It was in 1900, and not as some would say 1901, that
the twentieth century began because what counts is the focusing of the collective mind
upon the number 19. Besides, there never was a Year 1, as the Christian Era was
established long after that year would have occurred.
The correspondence between the seasons of the year and the four quarters of the
century is logical so far as our Western world is concerned, for we begin the year after the
winter solstice; thus we should also start our centuries with their winter period. It is also
just before Christmas that a line drawn from the Earth to the Sun would point to the center
of the galaxy — the astrological symbol of the divine Creative Power.(7)

6 Aristocracy however, means "the rule of the best" and the term best may refer to diverse
qualities, those that are most needed in any particular phase of the development of
a society. Thus, there may be an aristocracy of physical strength and daring, one of
knowledge and skill, one of spiritual dedication, etc.

7.The following should be of interest in this connection: "Babylon, in 2,250 B.C., celebrated
New Year at the Vernal Equinox, with an 11-day festival, Zagmuk, in honor of their patron
deity, Marduk. The Egyptians, Phoenicians and Persians celebrated it at the time of the
Autumnal Equinox. Until the fifth century B.C., the Greeks celebrated it at the Winter
Solstice, as did the Romans with a festival dedicated to Saturn — the Saturnalia. To
counteract this revelry the early Christians celebrated it in commemoration of the birth of
Jesus with prayer and acts of charity. When the year was made to begin on January 1st,
Christmas was shifted to December 25th, the octave of New Year's Day, the while Pagan
Rome made sacrifices to Janus, after whom January was named. Janus, guardian deity of
gates, was represented with two faces, watching both entering and departing wayfarers: the
going out of the old year and the coming in of the new." Encyclopedia of Astrology, by
Nicholas Devove, now in a paperback edition, (P. 44).
CHAPTER SEVEN
Planetary and Social Cycles - 6

HPB's claim that at the beginning of the last quarter of each century a "Messenger"
from the Occult Lodge has appeared and sought to influence the mind of Europe is rather
difficult to prove; yet if we look back to what happened at the corresponding time in
preceding centuries we can perceive significant traces of such developments.
The Theosophical Society was formed in N.Y. in 1875 and marked the definite
beginning of HPB's public work as an emissary of the trans-Himalayan Brotherhood.
France's defeat in 1871 and the rise of a powerful Germany produced one of the most
fundamental factors in the future development of the Western world during the twentieth
century, as it led directly to our two World Wars. Before the nineteenth century ended, the
discovery of X-Rays and radium, then Planck's Quantum Theory and, at the psychological
level, Freud's revolutionary ideas, also set the stage for the two other most significant
developments in our present century: (1) the Electronic Revolution and Atomic Power, and
(2) the fantastic growth of concern with man's neuropsychological problems and the
development and/or transcendence of his ego.
In 1776 the Declaration of Independence and France's Revolution struck the keynotes
of various attempts at transforming the social-political life. This fall period of the eighteenth
century saw the earliest application of new discoveries on which the Industrial Revolution of
the nineteenth century was based. According to H. P. B. and some of her later disciples, the
mysterious Comte de Saint-Germain was the main guide in the occult operations which took
place at that time; and he has been considered the head of the Hungarian Lodge of Adepts,
whose earlier work was related to the original Rosicrucian Movement. Anton Mesmer, as we
already saw, also started a movement of great importance that influenced a number of
leaders during the nineteenth century.
What occurred at an occult level during the last quarter of the seventeenth century is
not too clear, but Locke in England brought forth new ideas in political theory which greatly
affected the attitude of the French Encyclopedists and American leaders. The Masonic
Movement may have been planned in some secret groups, leading to its public emergence
in 1717 as a powerful sociocultural force. And there were most important years in the
earliest development of the American Colonies (King Philip's War, William Penn in
Pennsylvania, etc.).
The last quarter of the sixteenth century was the last part of the Elizabethan Age, in
which Francis Bacon and Shakespeare were reaching maturity, while France was torn by
religious war between Catholics and Huguenots. The first unsuccessful English attempts to
colonize the East coast of America failed, but soon afterward the Virginia Colony was a
success (1607).
 The last quarter of the fifteenth century saw the beginning of the Italian Renaissance
and, at its close, the "discovery" of America and other "great voyages." And, according to
the occult tradition, the Rosicrucian Movement began at the end of the fourteenth century.
When we deal with the seed which falls into the ground at the theoretical fall equinox
we refer, by definition, to a more or less hidden or occult process. The more materialistic a
civilization and the more dominated it is by powerful and oppressive religious or political
institutions, the more difficult it is for spiritual impulses to take public forms. They have to
operate through the minds, and even the passions, of individual leaders or creative persons
who are normally not conscious of the source of their inspiration; they also affect the
collective mind of the society in a less focused manner.
As the new century begins, what has been started at the mental or occult level
becomes affected by two types or trends: the seed ideas become popularized and often
vulgarized and their consequences are being applied, at least in the more progressive
circles; on the other hand, the karmic momentum of the collective forces released during
the now ended century relentlessly pursue their course. Thus, in our century we have the
Russo-Japanese war, symbol of the rise of the non-European people, and World War I which
resulted from the conflict between the great national entities who, during the nineteenth
century, had been impelled by the results of the Industrial Revolution to expand in a
competitive egocentric manner in search of raw materials and new markets for their
industrial products.
A century earlier, the Napoleonic era marked an expansion of the forces that triumphed
in the French Revolution under the leadership of a great military and managerial genius who
became a model for what later became the powerful Executive type in politics or business —
the Caesar type of national leader. Such a type replaced that of the "King of divine right" or
the divinely appointed Emperor of the medieval tradition — religious authority having now
become secular power, yet power linked, in the mind of the person wielding it, with a "star,"
a celestial or evolutionary Destiny.
The spring quarter of the century seems to bring out a collective, emotional reaction to
what has just occurred. After the fall of Napoleon Europe witnessed a regressive and
conservative political movement; but the seed-ideas of the 18th century began to pierce
this heavy reactionary trend, leading to an upsurge of Romantic and revolutionary fervor
climaxing in the late forties. Romantic poets, novelists, musicians, artists flourished. And
the frustrated revolutionary mass-movement of the popular aspect of the French
Revolution, transformed eventually by the impact of the now spreading Industrial
Revolution, was reborn into the Proletarian Movement of Marxist Communism just before
the "summer" period of the 19th century began.
In our present century, 1925 saw the emotional revolt against Puritanism and the
traditional position of women resulting in what is often called the Jazz Age. The power of
American industry and finance soared to new heights. Soviet Russia began its amazing rise
to power after nearly total devastation. China and India had begun to move toward a
completely new future, and Japan dominated East Asia.
The Theosophical Movement as such may seem to have no connection whatsoever with
Asia's awakening; its founder had been discredited in the eyes of many, and the
organization she inspired had split into several fragments. Yet the seed also splits as
germination occurs. What is important is that in the last part of the nineteenth century, a
spotlight of consciousness had been aimed at the occult wisdom and power of Asia, and that
some of the seed concepts released at that time had begun to take root in the collective
Euro-American mind. The second World War increasingly involved America's youth in Asia.
At the same time the earlier revolutionary ideals of eighteenth century America and of the
beginnings of Communist Russia became crystallized, and these two nations, armed with
atomic power, faced each other in the cold war — somewhat as France under Napoleon III
faced Prussia under Bismarck before 1870.
Ghastly as atomic power is in its destructive aspect, this very fact has, during recent
crises, prevented a global repetition of the Franco-German war. Atomic power is an occult
form of power, as it deals with normally invisible forces which, unnoticed, can destroy all life
(radioactivity, fallout, genetic mutation, etc.). But it is not the only danger confronting the
world, as we now are beginning to realize. More subtle, because more widespread and more
difficult to control, are the effects of pollution at two levels: the pollution of the biosphere
(air, water, soil), and that of the mind and feeling responses of the masses of mankind
under the deleterious pressures of masterful propaganda directed by intellectuals and
technocrats without moral responsibility and sense of spiritual values.
Polarizing this official type of thinking and the immense power of vested interests all
over the world, we find the often confused and unsteady protest of youth, and the growth of
a vast number of groups intensely (but usually not too discriminatingly) concerned with
supernormal, parapsychological, occult and mystical phenomena. As this "summer" season
of the twentieth century is ending, the most significant conflict is taking place in the field of
consciousness. It is an occult conflict which can best be characterized and symbolized by the
biological fact that, as the seed takes form within the fruit, the annual plant begins to
crystallize and die. The presence of the seed kills the plant. The future destroys the
rigidly institutionalized power-patterns of a past which refuses to realize its obsolescence.
This occurred in the eighteenth century when, just before the "fall" season of the
century began in 1775, the old privileged classes were unable to face the impending
revolutionary spirit. The American War of Independence was a special case in that it was
officially — but, alas, not too realistically — waged in the name of an ideal new society.
Freedom was won, but many of the old patterns of the past remained in great strength —
not only slavery, but the aggressive drive to conquer and recklessly use the vast "real
estate" of our continent, after destroying most of its nature-worshipping inhabitants. A new
class everywhere was rising to power: the bourgeoisie of wealth fascinated by intellectual
games and technique, and brutally materialistic in its desire for power, comfort, and
glamour.
During the last quarter of the nineteenth century this growth of the industrial,
commercial, and financial elements of our society reached a point at which counterbalancing
forces had to increase in power — mainly the forces of Labor, but also subtler forces
challenging the materialistic-scientific approach. These had actually begun to grow — as
seeds do — around the "summer solstice" of the century, and mainly during the late forties.
I am referring to Spiritualism (an inchoate attempt to break through the boundaries of
bodily consciousness), Marxist Communism (a passionate and millennium-oriented attempt
to force, through total anti-religious despair, the violent rising of the working masses), and
the Bahai Movement (at least the first phase of it, begun by the Bab in 1844), a religious
attempt to organize the whole of mankind on a global scale through the power of faith and
all-inclusive love.
We probably lack the perspective required to understand what, in this century, began
in the hidden seed around or just before 1950. But the generation of young men and
women who became the new rebels, the hippies entranced with psychedelic visions and
"flower power," were born after the end of World War II and Hiroshima. They were born in
our affluent suburban culture, in an atmosphere of total permissiveness and spiritual
emptiness and, during the cold war and under the menace of a nuclear holocaust, of
insecurity. Under the inspiration of some of their elders, they developed a countercultural
approach to life. They have represented the seed as yet surrounded by the fruit.
Now seeding time is at hand. A still very confused call for a new kind of metanoia — a
going beyond the individual and rational soul (nous) — is being heard from many places.
The greed and jockeying for power on a world scale, alarmingly revealed by the energy
situation, as these pages are written, have explosive potentiality. Autumn begins in the
harvesting and self-sowing of the seed, but ends in storms and the decaying of the leaves.
1789 saw the beginning of the United States as a strongly organized federal nation; but, a
few months later, the French Revolution exploded. The two developments represented two
ways of dealing with the past, neither of which led to spiritual success, in spite of
America's tremendous material achievements — nay more, because of them — and of the
highly significant Napoleonic vision of a united Europe, which, alas, personal ambition and
insecurity vitiated and destroyed.
Soon 1989 will come; and with it a massing of planets in the zodiacal sign of political
large-scale organization, Capricorn. We will consider various possibilities presented by this
"autumnal" situation. But first of all we should discuss some of the characteristics associated
with the capacity in men to act as transforming agents for the creative forces leading
mankind along its evolutionary path toward a New Age.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Polarities of Spiritual Life - 1

Within the last few years, especially since Anthony Sutich and his associates in Palo Alto,
California, began the publication of the Journal of Transpersonal Psychology in 1969,
the term "transpersonal" is frequently heard in psychological circles; and Carl lung had used
it occasionally, probably not for the first time. It now is mainly used with reference to what
exists beyond, or to the process of reaching beyond and transcending the level of actions,
drives, feelings, and realizations which are usually regarded as being personal. Moreover, in
most instances, the word "personal" has rather pejorative connotations, even though Carl
Jung used the term "personality" in a positive sense which contrasts with the meaning given
to it in theosophy and related types of thinking.
Unfortunately the word "transpersonal" is ambiguous, and its use can be confusing
unless one clearly states what meaning one gives to it. The ambiguity arises from the
double meaning of the prefix "trans" in the formation of words derived from the Latin.
Trans means both through and beyond, and the former is more basic and common than
the latter. The words, transparent, transpierce, or transaction, imply a process of through or
across: on the other hand, the terms, trans-Himalayan or trans-Alpine usually refer to what
exists beyond or "the other side of" these mountains. Their opposites are "cis-Himalayan"
and "cis-Alpine."
In the meaning of "beyond," the prefix trans duplicates the Greek root meta; but the
psychologists who are using the word, transpersonal, apparently felt that "metapersonal"
would constitute an awkward blend of Greek and Latin, and might establish an unwanted
link with "metaphysical." In the fall 1929, I began to use the word transpersonal; but it was
used to characterize the release of a power operating through the personal.(1) The source
of that power, consciousness, or activity could certainly be considered as existing beyond
the realm of personality, but the activity itself is transpersonal because its most significant
feature is its using a person as an instrumentality or agent through which the activity is
released in a focused condition. Because such a meaning of the word transpersonal implies
the existence of a source of activity in a realm beyond, above, or even deep within that of
the personal and normal consciousness of human beings as at present constituted, it
evidently has suspicious and unwelcome implications for the typical scientist who refuses to
deal with entities existing outside the fields of sense perception and strictly rational
conceptualization. If, however, a transpersonal type of activity implies a reaching beyond
the limitations and the concreteness or rationality of what is still considered by most people
the normal state of consciousness and feeling-experiences, then it is much more acceptable
to the scientific mentality. It refers to religious aspirations and to man's devotion to
transcendent and either superhuman or collectively held superpersonal ideals. Evolution is
seen as an "ascent" and the great individual is thought to be "superior" to the human
average.
 On the other hand, if one thinks of transpersonal activity as a going through a person
who then becomes an agent for the exteriorization of a cosmic force or a spiritual entity,
one has to accept the world-outlook characterizing true Occultism. One of the most
essential principles of Occultism, as stated in H.P.B.'s The Secret Doctrine (I:224), is that
"the Universe is worked and guided from within outward, controlled and animated by
almost endless series of Hierarchies of sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform,
and who — whether we give to them one name or another, and call them Dhyan-Chohans
or Angels — are "messengers" in the sense only that they are the agents of Karmic and
Cosmic Laws. None of these Beings, high or low, have either individuality or personality as
separate Entities, i.e. they have no individuality in the sense in which a man says 'I am
myself and no one else'; in other words, they are conscious of no such distinct separateness
as men and things have on earth. Individuality is the characteristic of their respective
Hierarchies, not of their units."
If at the cosmic-spiritual levels at which such Hierarchies operate, there is, strictly
speaking, no individuality it seems logical to accept the idea that, in order to act in a
precisely focused manner at the level of human existence, these superindividual Beings
require an agent, emissary or messenger among men in order to produce a strongly
focalized release of energy — just as sunlight requires a focusing lens to generate sufficient
heat to set paper on fire. This focusing activity of energy or creative (that is, transforming
and transfiguring) power is what I mean by the term, transpersonal, whenever I am using
it. It refers to a descent of power — an action from the spirit (or God) through an individual
person.
Some transpersonal psychologists would probably accept the possibility of such an
action from some transcendental source, for their approach to the universe and man is
broad enough; nevertheless they insist on taking an empirical attitude and on looking at
what happens from an experiential standpoint; and as a result the main field of their
research is the study of these phenomena which extend, elevate, intensify and transform or
transfigure human consciousness along lines usually interpreted as mystical, or at least
quasi-mystical and subliminal. What is perceived thus are the varied manifestations of an
upreaching sense-transcending and perhaps ego-surrendering consciousness — the "peak-
experiences" studied by Abraham Maslow, the bliss, the wonder, the ecstasy of the self-
actualizing and self-transcending individual — the drop of water on its way to merging with
the sea.(2)
The path of the true mystic has often been outlined and the several stations it crosses
have been explained, symbolized, sung in inspiring poetry, whether in India or Medieval
Europe, by Sufis, Christian Gnostics, or even more recently by various types of illumined
minds which have reached from the darkness of human emotionality and egocentricity to
the light of a state of supernal revelation. But there is another path, another kind of light-
revealing consciousness that operates in another direction, because it is differently
polarized. This is the path of the Avatar, the Divine Manifestation or Incarnation — and at a
lesser level of operation, also the path of the creative genius and of the cultural hero. A
spiritual, cosmic, or divine power acts in and through these men. Whether in total
consciousness, half-consciously, or even unconsciously, they have become agents of forces
of spiritual Beings or Occult Brotherhoods that use them as focalizing instrumentalities —
and in another sense, as "junior associates" or messengers — for the performance of
actions demanded at certain times by the state of evolution of humanity, or only of a culture
and community of human beings. These actions are "performed" — i.e. done through a form
— and that form is the personality of the Avatar, the creative genius, or the hero whose
deeds become symbols and examples for a whole culture or nation.
We shall return to this type of inspirited human beings, but before doing so a third type
of persons should be mentioned, the great ascetics who, with intense and persistent will,
fight against the biopsychic drives and passions of human nature in an attempt totally to
control, dominate, subjugate, and even "paralyze" them. India has witnessed and still
witnesses the self-imposed disciplines and even tortures used by such individuals. In that
land of tropical exuberance these men seek to reach supernatural states of consciousness
and power by the most violent forms of denial of all that, in their body, seeks gratification —
all except perhaps the ego in its subtler aspects!
Asceticism undoubtedly is an integral component of the mystical life, especially in its
first stages of "Purification," and mysticism and asceticism can be characterized as
counterpersonal modes of activity. They operate in counterpoint to all that feeds,
satisfies, and expresses a "personal" way of life. One could use also the term
"counternatural," because these men and women work in opposition to the natural functions
and tendencies of their biological organism and also of its psychological overtones. The main
difference between the true mystic and the typical ascetic is that the former seeks a state of
union with the Divine through love and/or utter devotion, while the latter tends to consider
the means for reaching a supernatural state as ends in themselves and, consciously or not,
remains attached to his self-will and the manifestation of the supernormal powers he has
attained.
In the lives of some of the Avatars there are also early periods of intense self-
deprivation and self-disciplining, and they do reach at times moments of mystical
consciousness and a fervent devotion to whatever they know or feel is acting through them;
but the direction or orientation of the essential life-activity is opposed to that of the mystic,
at least until the great mystic himself becomes a center of radiation for "That" with which he
has become united in love and total ego-surrender. Thus in attempting to define the
characteristics of these modes of activity — reaching beyond and fighting against the
personal nature, or consciously allowing the personality to be used for supernatural
purposes — I do not mean to set rigid categories of behavior and goals. If one can speak of
categories then there certainly are nonexclusive ones; they interblend at many points. They
represent basic attitudes and goals which should be differentiated if one is to understand
and properly evaluate what each of them characteristically implies and outwardly projects.
 The ambivalence and ambiguity of the prefix trans in the term, transpersonal, are an
excellent index to the difference between the mystic and, not only the great Avatar or
Divine Manifestation, but the lesser types of human personages represented by the creative
genius and the cultural hero. In order to avoid this ambiguity I prefer therefore to use two
terms, counterpersonal and transpersonal.

1. This use appeared in the magazine THE GLASS HIVE, edited by the then well-known
writer, Will Levington Comfort, and in a series of articles, entitled Mountain Talks with
Rudhyar —
Instead of impersonal, let us use another word more telling transpersonal. A personal type
of behavior (or feeling or thought) is one rooted in the substance and conditioned form of
the personality. A transpersonal type of behavior is one starting from the universal
unconditioned self in Man and using merely the personality as an instrument. Such a type of
behavior will be colored obviously by the personality — but not so much the personality of
the actor as of the one toward whom the act is directed. It will be conditioned by the race,
time and locality. The keynote of the spiritual life is transpersonal adaptability.
Transpersonal love is protean. It shines upon all; but is concentrated upon each according
to each need. In some cases it may seem to all most personal, most like ordinary human
love. And what of it? Who can recognize what is or is not super-personal, save one whose
level of being is established beyond the realm of substantial form; who is free from clinging
to form and name, from vanity; whose consciousness deals fundamentally with tides of
Energy, the same through multitudes of forms? (from the article "On Personal and
Impersonal").

2. In the first issue of The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology (spring 1969) we find
the following under the subheading "Transpersonal Definitions" (p. 15-16):
The emerging Transpersonal Psychology is concerned specifically with the empirical,
scientific study of, and responsible implementation of the findings relevant to, becoming,
individual and species-wide, meta-needs, ultimate values, unitive consciousness, peak
experience, B-values, ecstasy, mystical experience, awe, being, self-actualization, essence,
bliss, wonder, ultimate meaning, transcendence of the self, spirit, oneness, cosmic
awareness, individual and species-wide synergy, maximal interpersonal encounter,
sacralization of everyday life, transcendental phenomena, cosmic self-humor and
playfulness; maximal sensory awareness, responsiveness and expression; and related
concepts, experiences and activities. As a definition, this formulation is to be understood as
subject to optional individual or group interpretations, either wholly or in part, with regard
to the acceptance of its contents as essentially naturalistic, theistic, supernaturalistic, or any
other designated classification.
This evidently covers a vast variety of possible data and interpretations; but the italicized
word empirical, gives the general direction. In order to be acceptable to the vast majority of
the college-trained, science-oriented psychologists and medical men — such an empiricism
is required; and this fact already conditioned Carl Jung's basic attitude, at least in his public
works.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Polarities of Spiritual Life - 2

The mystic — generally speaking and as a characteristic type — deliberately leads

a life and tries to reach a mode of consciousness which separate him from what the society
in which he is born considers "normal." The mystic, just as the true Occultist, is a
manifestation of a countercultural trend polarizing the basic vibration of the culture of his
community and race. Even in old India, a land which we tend to associate with mystics and
yogic feats of supernatural power, these manifestations, though generally accepted and
revered as supremely valuable, stood in sharp contrast with the jungle-like character of the
people's biological and psychic passions and the undisguised violence of the political life, at
least during a great deal of India's history.(1)
The four-fold pattern of development of a human life which the ancient Laws of Manu
established, or at least codified, had the great advantage of integrating the search for
mystical realizations within the total lifespan. Each of the four age periods was given a
definite task: the task of learning the tradition (Brahmachara stage); the task of
perpetuating the race by producing a progeny and insuring its physical welfare by some
productive work (Grihastha stage); the task of unremunerated service to the sociocultural
community (Vanaprasha stage); and finally the task of preparing oneself for death, but
death considered as a transition toward a more spiritual form of subjective existence leading
eventually to a new birth the character of that new birth depending on "the last thought in
death" (Sannyasa stage).
This last stage, already to some extent prepared for by the third, represented a
complete reversal of consciousness, because while the first stages implied a fundamental
attachment to and identification with the life energies of nature and the traditional culture of
a rigidly planned society, this fourth stage demanded of the individual total detachment
from all that to which he had been previously attached. The aging person in many instances
withdrew from the village — the social unit of India's culture — and lived in the surrounding
forest, devoting most of his time to meditation. It seems to have been out of such
meditations on detachment and death that the ancient "Forest Philosophers" derived the
teachings of the Upanishads proclaiming the possibility of merging the individualized
consciousness with the universal "ocean of being," even while retaining the same
physical body. This meant the possibility of experiencing "death" — total detachment —
and of returning to the consciousness of personality in a transfigured state and with a
transformed understanding of the life-death-life cycle. Yoga most likely was at first a
technique ultimately leading to an experience of death followed by the return to full
consciousness, and we find this death-experience an essential part of Judo and other forms
of training — not forgetting the Gospel episode of Lazarus and his return from three days of
the death-state. The state of Samadhi is in a sense a death-condition as far as the personal
consciousness is concerned, and at the last stage of the raising of the Kundalini force the
vital energy of every cell of the body is raised to a point in the head, leaving the body itself
in a death-like state followed by a rebirth resulting from a descent of spiritual energy.
The true mystic also comes to experience a death of the natural person in him and a
rebirth in a new state illumined by the memory — and ideally the possibility of re-
experiencing at will — an ecstatic condition of being and/or consciousness. Ecstasy literally
means a going out of oneself, thus a reaching out to and attaining not only an illumination
of the individualized consciousness but a transcendent state of being in which separation,
distinctions, and differences are absorbed in a feeling experience of the unity underlying
them.
Such an experience in many instances may be a reflection of the power and quality of
the "field of consciousness" of a much greater Being upon the stilled and expectant mind of
the mystic. It may come as the result of a temporary opening of doors of perception — the
letting in of a supernal light — through the action of some personage who has become
repolarized at that transcendental level. It may even be produced by psychedelic drugs
tearing down for a few brief moments the protective membranes and safeguards built by
the ego and by one's culture and religions dangerous way, for the protective agencies may
remain permanently impaired and they are needed for the operation of the effective mind in
our everyday world. In all these cases what is primarily affected and revolutionized is the
feeling aspect of consciousness. And this is why most of the great mystics, trying to transfer
to others something of the quality of their experience, had to use experiences of human
love and physical union as symbols.
Because of its rationalistic and dogmatically theological approach to human experience,
European culture could not truly integrate the mystical state in its regular patterns of
human development. Monasteries and convents became the only acceptable forms of
counterpersonal activity; but that activity was totally contained within the collective
boundaries of the religious spirit, and it operated through intense devotion to and worship of
a divine Person, be it Christ or Mary, the Virgin-mother. A similar, yet more fragmented and
pluralistic approach to transcendent realization developed also in medieval India in the great
bhakti movement and the Radhakrishna cults, and persisted in the typically Hindu
relationship linking chela and guru.
I apply the term counterpersonal to such manifestations of the apparently deeply
human urge for self-transcendence expressing itself as intense devotion, and (at our
individualistic state of evolution) as a longing to return to a primordial condition of unity and
"spirituality," because for some twenty-five centuries the mainstream of human
development has been flowing in the opposite direction. Mankind on the whole has sought
to develop the individualizing and atomizing mind; and that mind operates best with almost
infinitely divisible and strictly measurable matter. Man's consciousness has therefore been
unfolding its latent capacities in a matter-ward direction. It has been concerned with an
ever increasing multiplicity of data, always more complex and refined sensations, and a
myriad of intellectual variations on the basic themes of sexual enjoyment, bodily comfort,
and nervous excitement. These are the foundations on which our Western civilization has
been built, especially during the last 500 years, and before that time the same trends
operated in varied forms in other cultures, though not with the same character of near-
exclusiveness. Thus every movement working against this evolutionary mainstream can
rightly be called, at least to some extent, countercultural and, particularly in our American
society, counterpersonal.

1. cf. Heinrich Zimmer The Philosophies a India (paperback, Meridian Books, N.Y.) Part
Two: The Philosophy of Success, and the Philosophy of Pleasure. Particularly interesting is
his reference to Kautilya's Arthashastra, the treatise on government written by the super-
Machiavelli of India.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Polarities of Spiritual Life - 3

The path of the Avatar, the hero and the creative genius leads those who tread it in
a direction which actually is that of the evolutionary mainstream; but in most cases these
men act against the inertia of this mainstream — an inertia which manifests in the
institutions, the unquestioned paradigms, the standardized patterns of feeling and behavior
and the intellectual stereotypes of a particular society built at a particular time, in a
particular locality, and for a particular evolutionary purpose. These men are transformers
and, if not destroyers, at least relentless critics and reformers of sclerotic social organisms.
Yet, though they are considered "movers and shakers" of self-complacent and over-
ritualized societies, they nevertheless are themselves moved by cosmic Powers and perhaps
superpersonal Beings who not only inspire but "in-spirit" them. They are agents of
destiny. Around them and through them everything begins to move and to change,
seemingly perhaps of its own accord, yet impelled by a contagion of change, a will whose
fire burns until the physical organism itself is totally consume the energy that flows through
it and often leaves the personality shaken and empty. These men essentially belong to the
line of the Promethean spirits. They are the manifestations of those great karma yogins
who had to assume much of the almost unavoidable consequences of their gift of fire to
human beings who were not ready, not willing, and therefore not able to act as cocreators
with these divine "Flames."
The Avatars come to a race, a country, or a nation in which a poignant need has arisen
for the experience of death-rebirth, because the old structures have become empty of vital
and compelling meaning, and a combination of inertia at one level and chaos at the other
dominates everything. They come when the time is ready. They are creatures of time (Kala
in Sanskrit), because time is the structural aspect of change, and these men are haunted by
the will to change and the urge to transform all they touch.
This will, this unquenchable, relentless urge is not "theirs" as individual persons. Their
will to destiny is the only will they really know — the will to perform the acts that must be
done, regardless of consequences to their earthly personal vehicles. That Will to Destiny is
the very power that moves them, often toward a tragic consummation. It essentially
operates beyond what ordinary men name good and evil, because death polarizes rebirth,
and tragedy is the dark brother of every release of new potentiality.
These Promethean beings should not be considered mystics, though the source of their
activity is in a realm that transcends the personal and the merely human. The source is in
that realm, and to that source we may give a more or less glamorous name: higher Self,
Master, Lord of Karma, God — and in some cases their negative counterparts on the path of
total disintegration beyond the possibility of rebirth in this world-scheme, for there are also
avatars of Evil. The source may be personified and the avataric personage may feel himself
identified with it and those who follow him may proclaim him as a "divine Incarnation"; yet
a more accurate term would be a transcarnation. The fire of transformation burns through
the flesh (carne) until its work is done or at least until the disciples attracted to the flame
have exhausted their capacity to respond to the fire and the light it radiates.
The mystic characteristically is an individual Who has reached a phase in his Soul-
unfoldment permitting him to experience, in the light of an intense desire for union with the
Divine and of a love that accepts no limits, the unitive state. The Soul of a being
manifesting as an avataric personage may have reached such a unitive state in a past
existence or he may be on the way to reach it in a future life, but his life as an avatar (or
a creative genius and a cultural hero) is polarized by a totally different purpose. This life is,
I repeat, a performance, a ritual of transforming activity — and creativity implies the power
to transform that upon which one concentrates one's attention. This activity is an answer
to a collective need. It is a particular answer conditioned by a particular need, a particular
place and time.
In a sense, therefore, the deeds being performed, or the creative work being produced,
when considered in themselves, can be called "personal." They are determined by what
occurs in the realm of human personalities, even though the occurrence follows a cosmic
cyclic rhythm far beyond merely human personalities, as such. Because the results of the
avatar's work refer to the transformation of a collective group of persons, and (in the case
of great Avatars) of humanity and the planet as a whole, they inevitably are conditioned by
the type of consciousness and the possibility of feeling-responses relevant to the basic level
at which, at the time, mankind or a community is operating. The avatar accepts what is at
the time of his appearance; he uses it in order to be able to transform it. One can transform
only that to which one either belongs or has belonged — that is, from the inside. One has
therefore to have experienced this inside and to some extent to act as if one belongs to it —
thus as if one were merely a human personality.
The avataric being can be considered as the earth terminal of a line of transmission of
power. He is a magical instrumentality, a mask used in a collective ritual. This metamorphic
ritual may deal only with a narrowly defined racial-cultural situation at the very close of a
small cycle of which the avataric being is the mutating seed; or it may refer to a large
evolutionary cycle. Thus there are avataric beings of several levels. The difficulty in
determining the level of any one of them is that the beginning of even a small cycle may
coincide with that of one or several larger ones. The line of transmission of power may
reach much farther toward the galactic center, symbol of our cosmic God or Logos, than
would seem to be in the case considering the character of the mask — the personal
instrumentality, the ritualistic officiant.
What it is essential to understand is that the true character of the avataric being
resides not in himself as an individual person, but in the quality of his acts or his creations.
He actually is the enactment of a quality. He lives in the act he performs, in the message he
reveals. He was born for that purpose, and in many cases his life is a sacrifice, simply
because it is not really "his" life. This does not mean that he should be considered a
medium in the usual sense of the term. One could perhaps speak of him as a "mediator." He
performs "trans-actions" between a cosmic or divine Source of power and those who need
the release of that power to be able to become more than they are. He is as much conscious
of the purpose of the performance as his personal biopsychic organism is capable of clearly
responding to the consciousness and intent of the source and the nature of the power
released through him; and the higher the evolved condition of his biological ancestry and of
the collectivity to which he has to address himself according to the pattern of his destiny,
the greater and more precise his consciousness of the purpose he is fulfilling. Yet if there is
consciousness it is consciousness revealed in the act and through the performance.
The terms clairvoyance and clairaudience today are commonly used. One should also
speak of "clairthinking" and "clairacting" when one refers to a quality of thinking and acting
which implies far more than what is usually meant by thinking and acting. In clairthinking
there is very little, if any, cogitative activity; and therefore an occultist like Sri Aurobindo, or
an inspired philosopher-scientist like Teilhard de Chardin, have stressed the superiority of a
certain kind of internal "seeing" over the rationalizing processes of analytical and conceptual
brain-thinking. What appears to be a "seeing" is rather an immediate identification of the
mind with an idea of a cosmic principle upon which a spotlight of certainty is focused.
Likewise "clairacting" refers to a performance the inevitability of which is evident as the will-
to-act mobilizes the required organs of action. What we call instinct in the animal kingdom
is clairacting at the level of a generic, nonself-conscious consciousness. But in the avataric
personage consciousness pervades the act; even if it does not precede it. A truly avataric
action is not deliberative. It is spontaneous; but the source of the act is beyond the
personality and its ego-consciousness. The act is transpersonal because the power it
releases uses the person as a lens to focus the release.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Polarities of Spiritual Life - 4

The creative artist, who does not merely imitate and, with a relatively few superficial
and personal modifications, reproduce the patterns which his culture and his teachers in
school have impressed upon his mind, can be considered an avataric being at the
sociocultural level. He is one insofar as a power transcending the ego-controlled field of his
personality inspires or truly in-spirits him; and this means insofar as he exteriorizes in
concrete forms-musical, plastic, or literary — what is actually needed at that particular time
and place. These forms have to be acceptable at least to the most open minds and feeling-
natures of his contemporaries or their progeny; and they are acceptable if they truly answer
such a need, and when at least a few persons have become, or can be made to become,
aware of what the need is. Nothing can be poured into a vessel totally full. Unless a group of
individuals in a community have experienced some degree of inner emptiness, their
collective consciousness cannot be filled with the power of a new aspect of the spirit. They
must have been ploughed and harrowed by anxiety, loneliness, alienation, and deep
suffering — even if such suffering has no apparent cause — in order to be able to receive
the new seed.
There are creative artists whose mission it is to make concrete and give public form to
a style of living, feeling, and thinking that through them, rather than in them, finds its
perfect flowering. They indeed represent the flowering of a culture. They essentialize its
fundamental character. They abstract its purest quality out of the perhaps heavily obscured
or confused patterns of their society's way of life; they extract its meaning by selecting and
emphasizing its most revealing features. They may be able to evoke the "soul" of the
culture; and great art is always evocative rather than descriptive. Johann Sebastian Bach is
an outstanding example of such a type of creative personality.
Only men of a lesser stature are content merely to faithfully depict in a quasi-
photographic manner what is; they may be outstanding craftsmen, but they cannot be
considered avataric beings, even though — or perhaps just because — they receive great
and immediate applause. They may be outstanding personalities, but not transpersonal
beings. In the same manner, a religious personage at the head or within the rank of an
organized religious institution can be a great personality, a perfect exemplar of the ideal
promoted by the religion, an excellent organizer; but this would not make him an avatar,
unless he came in the midst of a widespread crisis, as one needed to restate the perverted
ideal in its purity and to purify and reorganize a drastically shaken institution, whose cycle
of validity is not yet exhausted. This would imply a transformation, but one that would
specifically come under the category of "reform."
It is usually stated that the great Avatar is entirely self-taught and is born with an
innate knowledge of his function and destiny; but a good deal of glamour and incomplete
understanding may be involved in such a claim. The Avatar's mind, being widely open to the
collective consciousness of the race of society which, at his birth, has reached the end of its
cycle, is able to use whatever is required by the actions he is meant to perform. He does not
know and learn simply for the sake of knowing of or achieving a social position. His actions
"know" what they need to know in order to proceed according to the intrinsic rhythm of
the Avatar's destiny. As an "emissary" of Manu or some cosmic spiritual Power beyond the
field of the Earth, or even of the solar system — all that he needs is available, but not to
him as a personal possession. It is available to the power that expresses itself through him.
That knowledge may not be repeatable. It really does not involve memory, any more than
does an animal's instinctual knowledge of how to build a nest or paralyze an insect which its
progeny will require as food.
The believer in a personal kind of reincarnation process will say that any obviously
inborn knowledge "proves" that the avataric person — including the child prodigy who is a
born composer, mathematician, or chess player — had acquired in a past incarnation that
knowledge and the ability effectively to use it. This is undoubtedly a way of explaining the
phenomenon. Yet is it the only and the deeper way? It is a way which individualizes a
process that most likely has its root in a special relationship between the abnormally
knowledgeable youth and the one Mind of Man. In the life of any avataric being it is Man —
or rather one of the many aspects of Man's multidimensional potentials of being — that
acts, speaks or intones the keynote of a new cycle of the planetary evolution of humanity-
as-a-whole.
It is also Manu — the particular aspect of Man that a particular race or emerging
community of human beings needs for survival or expansion — that acts through the
performer of great deeds, making of him a "hero" for generations yet to come. In the most
general sense of the term, a hero is a man (or a woman) who, in a totally consistent and
significant "style," performs the acts of destiny which, at the deepest level of his being
(though most often not in his ego-consciousness) he has accepted and assumed. A heroic
performance is at least relatively a "Perfect" (i.e. achieved through and through) act or
series of acts. It is the performance of a role which releases the creative potentiality
inherent in a specific moment in the great play of man's evolution. In this performance the
performer, having totally identified himself with the role, is pouring his life-substance into
the action. He is the action as well as the actor; and he is also, in a sense, that which is
acted upon, because spiritually speaking the three are one. The need, the perfected adapted
answer, and the answering constitute but one moment in the cyclic drama of existence,
however large or small this cycle is conceived or realized to be.
Often the hero displays not only great courage, indomitable persistence in the face of
ever renewed obstacles, and strength of character and magnanimity in victory, but also
intense passions and what, in lesser men, would be called pride. Yet these seemingly
negative or personal characteristics should be seen in somewhat different light than when
present in ordinary human beings who are not open, as the true hero is, to relatively
boundless horizons of power and, in some cases, knowledge. If there is pride in the
performance that produced results of major collective significance, this pride may hide a
profound humility before the inner Source whence flowed the energy that not only powered
the deed, but steeled the stubborn resistance and loyalty to the envisioned goal. It is only in
the more banal type of actors that the proud evaluation of the value of the performance
spills upon the ego of the person playing the role. In any performer who realizes that he
himself and his entire life are but a form or ritual mask through which a "god" (or focusing
center for the universal Life force) operates, there can only be an exalted sense of vicarious
glory — a feeling of participation in a sacred drama or rite, before whose greatness the
small quasi-organic pride of work well done reverently bows.
Reverence is the very soul of true heroism; reverence before the supreme and always
mysterious Source of the power and the intensity that makes the actor vibrate often
seemingly far beyond any conceivable natural strength. The true hero, either at the moment
of doing or in a deep, unexplainable but constant manner, is aware of a mystery within. He
may not want to acknowledge before others what to him is the quintessence and sacred
center of his whole being; but without such a deep awareness of that which, in him, is
divine root strength, he would not be able to go on acting in a world which he knows he
must transform and, to this end, in which he must ceaselessly fight the institutionalized
inertia, so that a new life may surge on the ruins of prejudices and tradition-worshipping
fears.
After his death, the hero's deeds, his life and his appearance may become immortalized
into a style of behavior. He may remain an ever-inspiring example of revelatory thinking
filled with the contagious fervor of living consecrated to an ideal or divine Presence. As this
occurs the avataric being has become himself a Word of power, a mantram which millions of
others may intone in moments of crisis, anguish, or uncontrollable despair. But while
ordinary men glorify and perhaps worship the hero as a person, he himself has always
known, by a kind of uncontrovertible knowing, that he is only a ritual mask, a personage, in
the great lila of the universe, and a servant of cyclic purpose, an answer to a collective
human need.
Avatars, heroes, creative geniuses, cannot be regarded as saints, even less as mystics;
nor are they occultists or Masters in the usual sense of these much abused terms. They do
not claim impersonality or the kind of purity that obeys the laws established for the sake of
structuring a particular society or perpetuating institutions. They are not "fallen Angels" or
gods in disguise. They are links between the divine and the human. They are channels of
communication and transmission, and as such they are like the words of any language, the
great symbols of any culture. They are utterances of destiny through human bodies and
individual minds that — genetically as well as the end-result of a long line of incarnation —
have the capacity to respond to a divine will and to form means of communication through
which the human masses may be reached.
Theirs is the transpersonal way, the way through, the way of sacramental deeds and
power-condensing utterances. It is also the way of compassion; for only the love of mankind
can give them the warmth that fascinates others — unless they have fallen into the tragic
and essentially desperate way of those magnificently dark egos whose cosmic destiny it is to
destroy those that resist even the fascination radiated by the avatars and, unable to love,
bind themselves to the divine by the power of absolute hatred.
Hate too is relatedness. Every release of potentiality has its dark aspect. But he that is
rooted in love fulfills time and destiny, while time crushes whoever has repudiated love and
refuses to acknowledge and revere the divine Source whence flow all noble deeds and
beautiful loves.
CHAPTER NINE
The Greater Faith - 1

As far as records of human thinking and human society reach into the past we find
mention of the concept of law. At least, we find words which we translate today in that
term, and we note social practices which resemble outwardly what we now refer to as law
and its enforcement. However, words and records of behavior can be very deceiving. The
men of thousands of years ago may have acted outwardly in ways which we assume were
quite similar to ours; the actions may be similar, but the feeling-quality back of those
actions and their essential meaning in terms of inner values may have been very different
from those which we usually encounter in our time and society.
Such a possibility has interest not only for the historian; for today philosophies and
religions of the past are being revived, and quite a few of their unfamiliar concepts and
ideas are being absorbed by our minds. As ancient hieroglyphs, Oriental scriptures and
alchemical manuscripts are being translated, we cannot be certain that our modern words
carry for us the same meaning that apparently similar terms did for the people of the past.
Do the words we use today have the same meaning and convey the same "feeling-tone" to
all people who now read them? Obviously they do not.
All systems of philosophy, theology, metaphysics and even science at the abstract
level, are essentially attempts at defining, in different ways, words such as: reality, God,
matter, spirit, force, space, time, ego, soul, self-surrender. If it is true that humanity is
entering a new cycle of civilizations — a "New Age" — a fundamental change of values is
inevitable. The meaning of the words we use is changing, slowly but steadily. The meaning
may not be essentially new, for in past centuries a few men or groups here and there may
have already thought and felt in this, to most of us, new manner; but what was an
exception in the past may become a fairly common fact in the future of man's thinking and
man's experience of value. Thus, the occultism of yesterday may be gradually becoming the
science of tomorrow; and what but a few mystics have realized is probably touching the
consciousness of an increasing number of sincere seekers after ultimates.
Here again we should beware lest we use glibly such words as occult, mystic, scientific,
religious. Not really understanding what we are talking about, or with an understanding
biased by set traditional use or personal complexes, we may produce more confusion than
ever. Because most of those who have sought for years to overcome their narrow and
dogmatic religious or moral traditions and to reach a new and higher or broader experience
of "reality" are confused, one of the most important tasks today for the true philosopher is
to seek to clear up as much of this confusion as is possible. Thus as this little word "law" is
a fertile field for confusion, emotionally colored prejudices and superficial, all-too-easy
(because nicely memorizable) statements, let us try to enquire into its various meanings.
Law is primarily defined (Funk and Wagnell's College Dictionary) as: "A rule of action
established by recognized authority to enforce justice and prescribe duty and obligation,"
and as "a system of rules and regulations recognized by men or nations." This definition
applies mainly at the social and political level. Later, another one follows according to which
the "rule of action, as for governing human conduct" is understood to be "emanating from,
or attributed to the Deity"; thus, "the commandments or revelations of God taken
collectively."
The main concepts in such definitions imply or presuppose that there are "established
rules" of action. What is the "recognized authority" establishing them? At one level we
would normally say that it is the State and its ruler or the Legislature and the common or
majority will of the people (or at least of the voters). At another level it is the Deity
conceived as operating through, or in the person of, a Law-giver — for instance, the fabled
Manu in India and Moses for the Hebraic people.
However, the word "authority" is a very interesting and little understood term. What it
literally means is simply the status of being an author. An author has authority over what
he is producing or creating; he can alter what comes out of him. A novelist has authority
over the personages of his novel; an architect has authority over the building, the blueprints
of which he is drafting. Once the blueprints are accepted and the foundations are laid down,
basic alterations become nearly impossible unless the whole process is stopped and begun
again from the beginning. Yet the owner or future tenants of the building may ask the
architect to make many detailed changes — the more so the longer the building process
lasts, making it possible for new emergencies and needs, or improved concepts of space-
utilization, to arise. Other contingencies — labor strikes, sabotage, waste or sudden scarcity
of rare materials — may also demand numerous modifications of the initial plan. Translating
all this at the cosmic level may help us to understand many factors of a cosmological and
social nature.
A number of religions, and today esoteric groups, are stressing the concept of plan,
following a similar emphasis in politics, economics, even home economics (the famous
"family budget" required every month to meet all installment payments — our karma!).
Christian fundamentalists speak of "God's Plan of Salvation" in a way which probably would
have startled and saddened Jesus; and some modern prophets are disclosing what "God's
Plan" is, according to some "revelation" from some great Personage who is said to be close
enough to divine Headquarters to know about the blueprints of the Great Architect of the
Universe. The symbolism of Architect and Plan is taken bodily from Masonry, as is also the
concept of the "Lodge." A related concept, that of the Hierarchy, is obviously influenced by
the Catholic Church's organization and perhaps by experiences with the Army. It should not
be confused with the references to "Celestial Hierarchies of Builders of the Cosmos"
(Cosmocratores) which H.P. Blavatsky and others have made, following archaic traditions.
The important point in any discussion of the concept of "law" is whether or not the
"system of rules and regulations" is external to that which is being ruled, or inherent in
whatever follows the rules. Unfortunately, in our misuse of words — which in turn has
largely been produced by a deviation or perversion of the principle of conduct expressed by
the earliest archaic words — we make no difference between a rule imposed from the
outside and an inherent or instinctive compulsion to act according to a structural
order. Neither do we most of the time clearly distinguish between "ruling power" and
"authority"; and the results of such confusion are far-reaching.
Whenever one speaks of law one should have in mind a ruling power — but not an
authority. The author does not make the law for the personages he imagines and creates in
his novel; they are his creatures and therefore they obviously act according to the way he
has imagined them to act. The romantic idea dear to many a novelist that the characters of
his stories acquire an entity of their own and make him develop the story in their own way,
is simply an instance of inaccurate thinking; the novelist who makes such a statement may
be correct insofar as his conscious ego is concerned, but the fact that this conscious ego is
forced by the inherent logic of development of a situation and a character to make
things happen in a way he at first had not thought of simply means that the real author-
creator is not the novelist's ego, but a superconscious power in him beyond the ego. That
creative power is the real author. This author "sees" rather than rationally thinks or plans.
He emanates seed-ideas which are both ideas and forces (idée-forces in French). They are
archetypes, i.e. definite sets of organized potentialities, which contain inherently the
energy necessary for their spontaneous actualization.
After having had a more or less clear mental picture (or flash of inspiration), the
novelist's ego writes down, or engineers, the story. Usually the mental picture is imprecise
and full of holes; therefore, as the story proceeds, the writer is often surprised by the way it
appears to unfold with a will of its own. It is not that the story has a will of its own, but that
what the true "author" has emanated into the seed ideas of the story and the characters
must unfold with an inherent logic of growth, just as an oak tree unfolds out of an acorn.
The seed ideas must unfold; there is compulsion — but an inherent compulsion. There is
nothing that, from the outside and through the use of some ruling power, forces anything to
happen.
Compulsion does not mean coercion, but rather a state of "being driven together," a
pulsing together. The cells of a body are compelled to act following a principle of organic
order unless and until destructive and anarchistic forces break down the integrational
power of "com-pulsing." Any forcible pressure from the outside cannot accurately be called
a compulsion. If it could, that would mean that the seemingly compelled individual has
ceased to be an individual entity and has become a unit within a larger whole, permanent or
impermanent. For instance, it is impermanent in the case of a mob moved by a single
violent passion, a mob of which the component persons cease for a time to feet, think and
act as individuals; then they pulse together; compelled by the mob spirit.
In other words, the law is a system of rules and regulations which must be established
just because the real sense of authority is lost. Laws are necessary when and where the
inherent principle of structural order fails to operate adequately. Seen from this point of
view, to speak of a cosmic law or of natural law is to show that one has actually lost the
immediate feeling-intuition of the immanent presence of the Author of the cosmos and of
nature. One thinks as an ego fallen from a state of grace; one has so lost the sense of the
divine order operating in and through the World-Process (the building of the cosmos) that
one must interpret the evident regularity and amazing intelligence displayed in natural
phenomena (including one's own bodies) as a law established by some ruler outside of the
World-Process. A Big Boss is ruling the whole show. A Big Ego is setting down the law
policing the world and human souls by the use of rigid decrees, sanctions, and all the
paraphernalia of earthly states transposed to an imagined cosmic level.
Modern science speaks of laws; and the dictionary defines the term at the level of
scientific inquiry as "the uniform occurrence of natural phenomena in the same way or order
under the same conditions so far as human knowledge goes; a rule of the universe" — rule
meaning here a "common or regular course of procedure." Scientifically speaking, what is
meant therefore by natural or cosmic law is simply the fact that, as far as we know, natural
phenomena occur in ways that are dependable and predictable; thus they can be foreseen
and controlled for our use. Nothing is said or implied as to why they are so dependable.
CHAPTER NINE
The Greater Faith - 2

But why the word, law? Why take this word from a certain field of human experience
where it applies — the king or the legislature making "systems of rules and regulations" —
to a field where we have no reason to believe it makes sense in the same manner?
Of course the theologian says it makes sense, for God is the King of the world and He
establishes the laws of the universe. Does He? Does the architect establish laws as he draws
the blueprints of the temple he has visualized in imagination? He does not! He projects a
form, a system of relationships between the many component parts of a whole which will
gradually unfold and actualize the original vision of the architect; but relationship does not
mean laws. To establish a form is not to set down a "system of rules and regulations"; such
a system becomes necessary only when the form is no longer perceived by the builders —
when spiritually blind, "stiff-necked and proud" egos (cf. Jehovah's estimation of His people
in the Bible) are the only type of workers available. Let every worker be a true builder able
to see or feel as an immanent compulsion the whole image of the building and
particularly his place and his job in the building process — and there would be no need of
rules and regulations by a managing boss. Each worker would identify himself with his work
of destiny, whatever it be, and perform it to the best of his ability. He would fulfill his
dharma — but not obey a law imposed upon him by a thundering Boss, such as we see
pictured as Yahweh in much of the Bible.
Some of the students will exclaim that dharma means law in Sanskrit. Yes, it does for
the modern mind (whether of 100 B.C. in India or of our day); but it also means "truth" and
its primary, essential meaning was and remains the fundamental nature of anything.
When the Hindu says that it is the dharma of the fire to burn, he certainly does not imply
that some personal God has decreed that Mr. Fire will have to burn whether he likes it or
not! It is the fundamental nature of fire to burn, and (in the Bhagavad Gita) that of Arjuna,
a member of the Warrior Caste, to fight and kill enemies. These are their respective
functions or places in the World-Process. The fire cannot help burning; but on the eve of the
battle, Arjuna, as an ego, can feel dejected and ready to give up his natural function — thus
to betray his fundamental nature, the very quality and form of his being in that particular
incarnation.
It is Arjuna's congenital temperament to fight; he is made for that. He does not obey
anything when he does fight; but he betrays his fundamental nature (thus, his destiny and
his individuality) when, as an ego, he is overcome by weakness, confusion, and doubt.
Krishna (the incarnate God) does not actually command him to fight, as a policeman would
order someone to move on, or a fiscal agent demand income tax. He simply reawakens in
him the realization of his dharma and presents to him a picture of the universal Whole. The
gods who command or dictate messages are not the higher gods.
 Modern science is actually coming at times very close to such an attitude toward the
concept of law. Some years ago it was written in an article that Einstein, in his effort to
formulate mathematically a single law that would unify all laws of nature, had come to
realize that it might be most simply expressed by stating that everything tends to follow the
path of least effort. But, such a law is no "law" at all, any more than the all-inclusive
precept which Jesus gave to his disciples: "Love ye one another as I have loved you" can
be called a law. In the small book, The Voice of the Silence, which H.P. Blavatsky
transcribed from old Buddhist texts, is written: "Compassion, the LAW of Laws." But this
"LAW" (the capitals are H.P.B.'s) is not a law either!
All such statements present a concept of universal order which utterly transcends all
normal meanings to be given to the term law. They simply show that as the statements are
made to human beings who are predominantly egos, jealous of their prerogatives and of
their peculiar ability to do the wrong thing (our so-called precious freedom!), these egos
have to be led out of the level of existence at which the idea of law operates and to a sense
of reality and truth where systems of rules and regulations are no longer necessary,
because the consciousness is irrevocably attuned to and one with the essential Quality of its
being — its dharma, its fundamental nature.
Nevertheless, this identification of the ego with the dharma and essential truth-of-self
cannot be accomplished by evading or escaping from laws. Gautama the Buddha sought
perhaps more than anything else to free man's consciousness from the sense of obedience
to the rules and regulations (castes, rituals, etc.) supposed to have been given by Manu,
the Law Giver, who received them from this God. Yet Gautama did insist on a strict
observance of his "dharma"; he made of this dharma a kind of substitute for the personal
God idea, in much the same sense in which Thomas Paine, the "Father of Democracy," said:
"In America the Law is king."
Men must be led on step by step; and for this reason the discipline in Buddhist
monasteries, including Zen monasteries, is most rigid. But it is rigid discipline aimed at
"compelling" the monks to overcome in group unison all sense of external laws, as well as
eradicate the urges and appetites that feed the ego. One overcomes the need for obedience
only through implicit readiness to obey. Then, when there is no longer any ego-block
against utter obedience — and against humility or even humiliation — what was ego within
the mind becomes a clear lens focusing the quality of the Soul into acts of destiny in which
the dharma-individuality radiates as a transforming and illumining power.
Then the state of illusory freedom of the ego is superseded by a state in which right
action becomes inevitable right because exteriorizing the adequate solution to the need of
every conceivable situation. This state of being is one of absolute wakefulness and lucidity;
the necessary act is done consciously. In this respect it is the polar opposite of the typical
instinctual act of the "natural" creature who also does the right thing in any of the
emergencies belonging to a particular epoch and locality, but does it unconsciously. The
animal is inwardly compelled to act rightfully, but does not know why; the Sage is also
inwardly compelled to exteriorize in acts the spiritual quality he focuses into earthly
existence, but he knows why he does so — and up to a certain stage of unfoldment, until all
traces of ego-desire have vanished, there is still a possibility he may fail and fall.
At the tribal state of society in its original purity (the Edenic state), man, as a passive
reflection of the inherent harmony of a divinely emanated nature, is compelled to act
righteously, but he cannot help doing so. Even in later-day tribal societies the tribesman
cannot break the taboos; they are inherent structures within his generic Unconscious, his
utterly unfree psychic depths. Taboos are not laws any more than the stomach, liver, and
intestines can be said to obey laws of metabolism! It is the nature of the tribesman to act in
a traditional way because he is psychically structured so to act. Only when the ego gains
power and can challenge the root-tradition of his tribal nature is man free — free to act
regardless of what his fundamental nature is.
From the tribal point of view such an ego is a cancerlike cell in the body of the tribe;
and it has to be ruthlessly cast away or destroyed. Yet with this act of independence a new
stage of human evolution begins. The "gods" are confronted by the great "rebels." Zeus
faces Prometheus who steals the divine fire to ensoul men with the god-seed of freedom
and will; and the god's reaction is terrible.
Zeus-Jupiter "rules" the liver, the alchemical crucible in the human body; thus the
Karma of Prometheus is to have his liver periodically devoured by a vulture. What he stole,
he must surrender in sacrifice; but his gift gave to men the potential of self-consciousness,
and self-consciousness requires for its growth the state of freedom to will and act as an
independent self — spiritually blind, yes, but independent! Eventually the spiritual
blindness which the Buddha called Ignorance or Maya, will be healed by the compassion of
those who, in another way, sacrifice their peace so that men may consciously see and,
seeing, realize their dharma and become identified with it in essence and in act.
Until this occurs, it is evident that society cannot endure without laws; and men's
minds, hypnotized by their own need for laws, project that need upon the universe. They
picture a universe of material atoms which look as solid and rigid as egos feel. These atoms
therefore also require laws to keep them in order. This concept of rigid laws and
determinism is now breaking down. Atoms are neither irreducible bits of solid stuff nor do
they act individually in absolutely predictable ways. The rigid causal laws of nineteenth
century science have become this century's statistical averages. No God or cosmic Law is
there to force the atoms to obey their dictates; yet in some as yet unclear way, things even
themselves up. The average results are dependable and predictable, at least within the
limits of human sense-perception. What makes them predictable, however, should no longer
be called a law.
CHAPTER NINE
The Greater Faith - 3

"In the beginning" a solution is emanated out of the Infinite Potential (which is the
ultimate reality of what we call SPACE) to answer the need of a closing cycle. This solution
balances and harmonizes the need, as the need of a family for a home is satisfied or
neutralized by the architect's blueprints of the house they will be able to live in. Every need
is always and forever balanced by a solution, and the power of this potential solution is
"spirit." Spirit is the energy of the infinite potential of SPACE . We live within an infinite
ocean of potentiality. The protean activity of this ocean of potentiality is spirit in
manifestation. To experience this ever-present potential is to know Reality; it is to sense
infinite "Love." But being blind, we can only think of "laws"!
There is only one Supreme Law: Everything is as the need for harmony requires.
Everything acts in order to satisfy what, at the time and to the best of its
knowledge, it feels it needs. Everything seeks to act according to its fundamental
nature. Any other path of action increases the need, because it intensifies the resistance to
the action and this calls for a greater effort and exertion.
Man's nature, however, is to be conscious of the meaning of the infinite and cyclic
interaction of need and solution; for only thus can he be what he essentially is: a Localizing
agent for the power of the metacosmic Principle of Individual Existence which I have called
simply (in capital letters) ONE. This Principle or Essence (the words are most inadequate,
alas!) is what is at the root of eternal, cyclic MOTION. Always and everywhere harmonic
MOTION animates SPACE — and the results are an infinity of universes in which
individualization produces basic needs and these draw out of the infinite potential of SPACE
wave upon wave of spirit.
To feel, sense and experience this immediate response of spirit to individual need; to
become oneself the channel or instrumentality for the release of such a response of spirit, is
to realize the superficiality of the concept of law. Everything is possible that an
essential need requires.
However, as long as men behave, feel and think as egos who have no sense of infinite
potentiality, no realization of the cyclic picture as a whole, no awareness of the Great
Architect's vision and of his divine formative Mind (whence emanates the archetypal form of
the cycle of which He is origin, source and guiding Intelligence), and no impulse toward
absolute harmony, save as the latter is dimly reflected on the agitated surface of their
passion for what they call love — to such egos laws must appear necessary.
They will indeed be necessary in societies forever disrupted by the chaotic desires and
the free will of our egos. It is the ego which calls for kings; and its karma requires tyrants
and dictators, generals and atom bombs, to be worked out up to some Gotterddmmerung
finale.
 It is the ego which places its faith in laws, because its shaky faith must be bolstered by
something rigid, unchangeable, rational, and never upset by passion or caprice: the law. It
is the ego which worships law-givers, human or divine, because the shadow of such a faith,
fear, must cling desperately to some awesome but magnificent Countenance that seems to
the ego "authority," but in sober fact is only "ruling power."
The creation of the universe by "authority" is that creation of which the first chapter of
Genesis speaks. The Author is ELOHIM and He Creates with "Light" the essential Ideas of
the universe of which He is the multiune Seed. It is a creation in Harmony; the harmonizing
solution to the need of "the Deep," of Chaos. By contrast, the second chapter of Genesis
tells of a "secondary creation" by one aspect of the ELOHIM-"JHVH Elohim" (Jehovah or
Yahweh) who fashions man from earth and water, then animates the statue which He
produced with the "breath of life." This divine producer of natural man is the manager and
ruler of the realm of life (the biosphere); and it is from this realm of foundations and of
unconscious shapes that man must emerge. He is faced with a command: "Thou shalt not
eat of the fruit"; but where there is command, man must break the order. The command
and the breaking are two sides of the same coin; law and anarchy are inseparable polar
opposites.
Let me state once more that the realm of law and lawbreaking is the realm of egos. A
Big Ego rules over it. That He must so rule is His ordeal and His karma; for He performs
there the cosmic task of forcing individual men to rebel against His will in order that,
through the tragedy and trials which He must, as Lawgiver, focus upon those who break the
law, these rebels may in time rise above this tragic realm of laws and of the possibility to
be free to break laws.
As human beings so rise, they emerge eventually into the realm of the "primary
creation" by ELOHIM; they have the vision of the Temple-to-be as emanated by the Mind of
ELOHIM, the Great Architect. In full wakefulness they know, through total attunement and
identification with the clear mind that reveals to them their destiny, their dharma, their
truth-of-self. This perfectly clear, egoless, unobstructed state of dharma fulfillment is
nirvana-in-action; it is exemplified by the Buddha who, having experienced nirvana,
returned to teach and work among men for forty years of a perfect and illumined life.
Having reached this state man no longer needs to place his faith in the laws of nature
or of the cosmos. He experiences a "greater Faith" — the faith in the inexhaustible
potentiality of SPACE and in the omnipresence and all-harmonizing potency of spirit.
The lesser faith in laws belongs to the ego always seeking to use something to its own
advantage, for self-assurance or self-aggrandizement. The ego is like the corporation lawyer
whose job it is to be so conversant with all the systems of rules and regulations imposed by
the State to coerce people into the superficialities of a well ordered society that he may find
ways and means safely to circumvent the law.
Our modern engineers are merely lawyers! They find out what natural laws allow within
a more or less safe margin of risk; then they proudly use their knowledge of laws to gain
their ends. But anyone who thinks of gaining his end is still an ego. Anyone who "uses the
law" is bound to the concept of law; he is self-imprisoned in the realm of legality — social or
cosmic. His allegiance is to the realm of the ego, of separativeness and of fear — the fear
that is masquerading under boastful arrogance, cocksure optimism, and human pride, or
under a feigned humility before the Big Brother or the "jealous God" that rules the world of
laws.
This faith in laws is indeed the "lesser faith" because it is faith in some power that is, in
the last analysis, always outside of the self. It is the child's faith, once his faith ceases to be
an absolutely unconscious and instinctive reliance upon the mother and has turned into a
conditional faith in his ability to get the parents to give him what he wants if he obeys
enough of the parents' laws to be able to break them safely by cajoling, prayer, or ruse. The
child accepts punishment as part of the bargain. One must risk, must one not, when one is
an ego bent upon achieving success and pleasure? Some impetuous egos go in for foolish
and daring risks — whether or not karmic spanking is more or less inevitable. Others, grown
wiser and more calculating, plan carefully in terms of what military men and our State
Department call calculated risks. But there is no essential difference between the foolish and
the wise when they act in terms of this lesser faith.
Yet, such a faith is certainly not to be belittled, as it represents a necessary phase of
development just as the ego does. But beyond the narrowly focused consciousness of the
ego, and reaching toward a condition of essential openness to whatever may stream forth
out of the ocean of Infinite Potentiality, a higher stage of human development should
appear to the ego-weary mind. A greater faith, a faith in the spirit which, in a kind of
sublime "automatism," provides all existences with the answer to all essential needs, can
dawn at the horizon of man's consciousness. Such a faith is crucially needed as man strives
toward a transcendent state of being and consciousness in which he becomes his living
truth-of-self.
"Openness" here does not mean passivity or mediumship, or the unconscious
inevitability of animal instinct. It means first of all total wakefulness and utter lucidity. It
means an unglamored evaluation of the past, a profound historical sense of cyclic
processes, a disciplined mind that can form itself into a translucent lens through which the
Light-energy of spirit can be focused in a perfectly formed revelation of meaning.
What will be revealed is the essential meaning. The precise formulation and the action
which the individual will produce will be "his", but not his in terms of ego desire or ability to
use the law cleverly. It will be his in terms of the particular destiny, individuality, or dharma
that he essentially is — in terms of his fundamental nature. Spirit does not dictate, it
reveals; it makes the deeper, higher consciousness see. Then the flash of vision is given
form by the mind of the perceiver in terms of what is needed — needed by the individual, or
by those he or she may serve by sharing with them what can be made understandable of
the vision.
 Alas! Something often occurs to a person who has had but fleeting experiences of the
greater faith. He finds himself confronted with needs that seem crucial and immediate, the
solution of the spirit does not appear; the vision is clouded; the lens of the mind is barren of
forms, symbols, or meaning. Then the panicky individual falls back on his old lesser faith, as
Moses did when he struck the rock several times in his impatience for seemingly so badly
needed water. Fear reawakens the ego-will. The eagerness for a solution — for a sign from
God, the Christian mystic would say — is so desperate, so emotional, that the individual's
consciousness slips into the old realm of laws and regulations. There someone is always
available to answer the need in the way of the legalistic mind. In the realm of ego there is
always some Big Ego to tell you, the little confused ego, exactly what to do or say . . . "for
better or worse."
This may be necessary; the individual's failure of faith will have made it necessary.
When the greater faith fails, it is probably good to depend upon the lesser faith. Yet in an
ultimate sense a thorough crisis, even a breakdown, may at times be better than a
comfortable solution, or another kind of orthodoxy to confuse a little more, even while it
helps, for a while, the mind and the will.
This is where the difficult discrimination concerning when and how to help others
comes in. The eagerness to "save," whether oneself or others, may be a sign that the
would-be savior knows only of the lesser faith. It may be a lovely glamour with which the
ego masks its real desire for being a Big Brother to some little ego, an "old soul" well ready
to take care of "just a beginner"; and how often this is the case in so-called occult or
religious organizations Yet, even a sincere reliance upon the greater faith may also turn into
a "spiritual" excuse for not helping those who ask for needed assistance; it may become a
kind of soul-weariness, or rapturous selfishness.
No one can tell another what his faith should be. Indeed there is no question of what it
should be, but only of what it can be. There is no ideal or path absolutely valid for all
people. All that one can do is to exteriorize whatever way has been revealed by an
experiencer is known through a basic inner awareness of one's fundamental nature. There is
no law greater than one's fundamental nature. There is no religion or system of laws greater
than dharma.
CHAPTER TEN
Love on the Transpersonal Way - 1

Everybody speaks of love; but how few are consciously aware of the higher
possibilities of the love between man and woman! There are many kinds of love; but we
should at least distinguish two basic levels at which today love can operate. It may operate
as an unconscious biological, social, and psychological compulsion, or else as a consciously
acknowledged, polarized, and transfigured power, used by mature personalities, in the
service of a freely accepted superpersonal purpose. As man and woman come to see and to
evaluate one another in the light of new ideals of manhood and womanhood, as their sense
of purposeful and productive participation in the social and universal Whole increases
intensity and inclusiveness, the love which gives substance and fire to their togetherness
must necessarily assume a new character, a new quality. This quality should be understood
and defined today as clearly and vitally, as inclusively and convincingly as possible, for upon
its cultivation and generalized expression in the New Age will depend on the fundamental
quality of all basic human relationships, of marriages and social interchanges, of culture and
manners. The essential quality of any human society is derived from the quality of
the love which unites its men and women.
When the tribal law operates with unchallenged instinctual compulsion because there is
no individuality as yet developed in the tribesman to challenge it — the union of man and
woman is completely conditioned by biocultural purposes. The man tills the soil and is happy
in the feeling of muscular release of energy and of fruitful work. The man likewise
"husbands" the woman's earth-nature, and is happy in sexual release and in his progeny.
He is deeply attached to the productive substance he fecundates with seed — be it the dark
soil or the vibrant body. This attachment is functional and instinctual; it has deep roots in
the collective unconscious of all human beings. It is a compulsive force operating at a level
where there is no freedom of decision or choice, no personality. It is, nevertheless, a
productive force. Its one goal is the fullest possible increase of seed and substance; and, at
a later stage of social evolution, of usable wares and cultured products.
When transcendent ideals begin to superimpose themselves upon the goals of biological
and cultural productivity, and eventually seek to reduce the latter to a low valuation —
when the devotional intensity of the mystic or the saint feeds on asceticism and subliminal
ecstasies or martyrdom — then a new type of love emerges which is given a "spiritual"
valuation. Yet such a love remains essentially a compulsive type of emotion, even though it
be the love of God, or some deified person or image. The passion for the beyond can be as
tyrannical a force as the hunger for sex; its roots as deeply submerged in unconsciousness
and fate. The green leaves of a plant are drawn irresistibly to the light of the sun
("heliotropism" — from helios, sun and trope, turning) in order that they may perform their
vital function of photosynthesis (the conversion under their impact of light rays of the
carbon dioxide of the air and water into sugars and starches). In a similar manner, the
devotee turns his emotional nature toward a transcendent image in the "theotropism" of a
love which aspires to capture the effulgence of divinity and to fix it in the "leaf-substance"
of a humanity still far away collectively, from the condition of mature "seed-personality."
When, in a later period, the trend toward individualism asserts itself; when the rational
intellect and its analytical outlook atomizes society and isolates every ego from every other
ego; when, as a result, personal complexes, fears, and passionate yearnings toward some
experience of union with, and self-loss in, others harrow the distracted soul, a new type of
compulsive love develops. It is love based on psychological emptiness and need. It is the
love of the romanticist; the love of adolescent egos frightened with the responsibility of
conscious and productive selfhood. It is the "erotropism" of insecure personalities seeking to
warm themselves at, or be consumed by, the fire of universalized and unpersonalized Eros.
The initial purpose of this type of love is to stir the soul-substance into activity, to release
emotional fire, to transpierce — as with lightning — the inertia of the flesh and of the
unconscious earth-bound psyche. To vibrate, to feel alive and in a state of inner motion, in a
flaming state: these are the needs of the adolescent type of personality, just as it is the
need of the virginal soul of the devotee and mystic to experience the ecstasy of divine love,
the glowing state of self-surrender to the inrush of universal light-substance.
In both cases, the purpose of the love is lost in the thrill or rapture of the experience of
love. The participants are inwardly forced into the tormenting fire or the blinding light of
such a love. Of conscious choice, there is practically none. The individual is in love with
love. He does not consciously perform acts of love for, and together with, another being —
be the being human or divine. He does not share, deliberately and purposefully, his fullness
with another, simply because he is not yet a mature personality, because his love is
conditioned by scarcity and bondage. It is a passionate and irrational attempt to
compensate for a youthful, or later crystallized, egocentricity, to burn the binding structures
of the individual ego, to become free from self and one with all life and, first of all, with the
beloved. In some cases, it is a vehement rebellion of human beings seeking to assert their
individual egos against the taboos of tribal life or the traditions, allegiances, and shams of
society.
In any case, this love, which is the nature of fire, seeks liberation and emergence into a
wider realm of power and activity. It consumes limits and boundaries; it is a revolutionary
force, an emotional fervor which yearns for transcendent beyonds. It stands thus in sharp
contrast against the tribal love of men and women which is the glow surrounding work well
done in common, the natural perfume of common accomplishment in an instinctual-cultural
sense, the happy feeling of joint participation in a collective organism, whose structural law
is unquestioned and never felt as bondage. This biological-social love is an expression of the
will to increased productivity. It serves and glorifies the seed. The love of the Christian
mystic, or of Tristan and Isolde, or of Dante for Beatrice, is a consuming fire which stirs,
uproots, liberates, and transfigures, or maddens men and women craving for freedom from
ego and from social rules, yearning for the infinite sea of "cosmic consciousness."
 The fire of this love surges, in most cases, from sex; but sex, here, must be
understood not in terms of seed-producing functions as much as in terms of the release of a
basic power, electromagnetic in essence and with very strong psychic overtones. It is not
sex for the purpose of producing a progeny (procreative sex), but sexual union as a means
to overcome differentiation and the polarized state, to stir in the soul the will to merge with
another in a conquest of individual separativeness, personal isolation, and loneliness. Under
the burning psychic "heat" produced by this sexual but nonprocreative love, the molecular
and atomic patterns of individual selfhood become deeply altered. The personality can
become "ionized," stripped of nonessentials, free to unite in ecstasy with other individuals
under the compulsive power of the energies which surge from the common root in which all
men are one in unconscious unity.
This ego-transcending and difference-obliterating love, when finally disassociated with
the last thought of sex, can be interpreted and experienced as the urge for union with the
One or, through a one, with the Whole. The transcendent lover may seek inward union with
God, or an outwardly expressed communion with humanity. But whenever the former quest
reaches its goal, it always must lead to the type of life exemplified by a Buddha or Christ.
He who has become one with God must assume the spiritual burdens of a distracted and
earth-bound humanity. He must forever strive to transform unconsciousness and the dark
compulsions of instinct into conscious illumination. He must demonstrate the radiant charity
which transfigures the service of the poor or the wounded into an act of love for all
mankind.
Such a compassionate love is not productive of seed; but it gradually releases
humanity as a whole from bondage to the thought of separateness and to the seeming
inevitability of conflict and war. It is a unifying power. It integrates the essential realities of
individuals, groups, and nations by consuming in its fire the nonessentials which produce
division and hatred. It seeks to reconstitute at the conscious level of mature personalities
the primordial unconscious unity of the tribe state, and to reconstitute it in total
inclusiveness. Tribal unanimity was exclusive of all other tribes; but transcendent love is
boundary-transcending, culture-transcending, creed-transcending. Its goal is the "One
World" of a truly organized, global humanity. In this goal it finds itself a partner of modern
science and technology, thanks to which world unity has become an actual, concretely
experienceable fact that no honest and intelligent man can ignore.
CHAPTER TEN
Love on the Transpersonal Way - 2

Science, in its multipersonal and cooperative attempts to establish a body of

truths acceptable to all men because self-evident, like transcendent love overcomes the
rigid barriers with which traditional cultures, organized religions, and racial pride have
hemmed in the differentiated human collectivities. Science's techniques could build
generalized means required for mutual understanding and personal interchange on a very
large scale, if they were spiritually handled. Science too is a releaser of fire; the fire within
the atom which could establish the foundation necessary for the integration of all peoples.
And if atomic energy potentially is destructive of antiquated structures and regressive
nationalism, so is the love that is a consuming fire, an iconoclastic force burning away
personal crystallizations and goals made obsolete by the pull of creative tomorrows. Until
man is established individually and collectively on the plane of conscious intelligence and
mature responsiveness to universal creative principles; until man has reached the spiritual
status possible only to a truly individualized person, there must be destruction by fire; there
must be transcendence and overcoming.
The day comes however, when, at long last, love once more operates as the servant of
productivity: productivity no longer conditioned by instinctual and unconscious compulsion,
no longer biological and tribal in character — but instead, the co-productivity of mature
persons in and through whom God, as the Universal Creative, acts. The type of "seed"
which this coproductivity seeks to increase by an earth-transcending kind of cultivation is an
ideospiritual or, symbolically speaking, "celestial" type of seed — the seed of man's personal
immortality, as well as the seed of a new culture established in the fullness of conscious
human interchange.
The co-productivity of mature personalities in and through whom God acts — God the
Universal Creative: these two phrases establish the only foundation upon which a new
image of love may develop, which our modern humanity so poignantly needs to see
exteriorized in the fabric of its marriages and of all the social activities bringing together
men and women as coparticipants and, potentially, as "companions." These phrases may
have a mystical ring which makes them sound strange and elusive, or meaningless, to the
modern intellectual of either sex. Yet they refer to the deepest realities of human
consciousness and love. Any one can fathom the meaning of these realities who has
relinquished his or her reliance upon the superficialities or the transcendent idealism of a
society yearning for fullness of life while, at the same time, opposing incessant obstacles to
the inrush of power and vision which alone can give man fulfillment, peace, and the sense of
participation in immortal values.
There is co-productivity of mature personalities when man and woman come together
as individual persons in order deliberately to perform, in fully conscious cooperation and
love, productive activities. This is production from personality; whereas the instinctual,
unconscious production of man and woman bound to biopsychic patterns of behavior and
feeling — or helplessly driven by their yearning to transcend and deny these patterns — is
production toward the eventual attainment of mature personality. The state of truly mature
personality, however, is never realized until the individualized person is able to relax what
C. G. Jung called graphically "the cramp in the conscious," and to accept a transpersonal
way of life; until the individual person, whether man or woman, overcomes the tightness of
an ego haunted by the preoccupation of keeping its structure so rigidly what it is, that it
finds itself completely shut to any influx of power.
A truly mature personality operates within the structural framework of a relaxed ego.
The center of this relaxed ego is able and eager to open to the downpour of universal
energy and ideospiritual realizations. In another sense, it is like a lens through which the
vast tides of the universal mind are brought to sharp focus and given operative form as
ideas and words, as emotionally stirring images and symbols. The first alternative — the
open centrum — if not taken too literally, pictures what the transpersonal way
archetypally means for a woman who is a conscious individualized person. The second
alternative — the crystal-clear lens — gives a basic clue to the inner nature of the man
who has reached a similar level of development. In both cases the essential fact is that the
universal spirit is able to act through the individual ego, to permeate the total organism of
personality with the purpose and the power of God.
Through the "crystal-clear lens" at the core of the man's ego, God's purpose is focused
as a formulated idea, an operative structure (blueprints and schedule of work). Through the
"open centrum" at the core of the woman's conscious and individualized personality the
potent tide of the Holy Spirit flows. As the man and woman unite their beings in the ritual of
a consciously all-inclusive, transpersonal love, the bipolar emanation of the Divine becomes
a concretely creative and transforming act of power. This is accomplished through the love
of man and woman. This love is consciously coproductive — not compulsive and
unconscious. It is not rooted in biopsychic instinct. It is instead a deliberate answer to the
need of humanity, whatever this need might be.
At the biopsychic level, male and female are brought together, under the compulsive
thrust of instinct, to provide a bipolar agency through which life can operate. In such a type
of union man and woman act as carriers of ovum and sperm — not as individual persons.
Even when the purely instinctual act develops potent overtones of feelings, of personalized
emotions and ideals; even when passionate love surges as an all-consuming flame from the
furnace of aroused sex and seeks to deny its biological source; even then, unless artificially
blocked, the meeting of sperm and ovum occurs under the control of the impersonal generic
life that animates the human species and assures its perpetuation in spite of personal
human wishes or superficial plans. Life is the Actor through men and women unaware of its
plans.
When men and women are able to operate at the ideospiritual level, life is superseded
by the divine creative Spirit. In and through the consecrated man and woman who
consciously and purposefully unite their beings in order that the need of humanity might be
answered, and their voluntarily assumed shares in the great planetary purpose might be
completely fulfilled, this divine Spirit acts. In that creative act of the Spirit, through the
man and the woman, love reaches its most perfect expression. It is, then, divinity in act.
God is love — love, not as a vaguely idealistic sentiment or feeling of unity, or a poignant
burning passion that yearns for unattainable ecstasy of self-forgetfulness and transcendent
bliss, but love as a clear creative answer to the need of the world.
Spirit, I repeat, is always a creative answer to the need of the world. Creation is not a
"play" — as Hindu philosophers who sought to react against the functionalism and
totalitarianism of the Brahminical society would have us believe. Creation is God's answer to
a world in chaos, to the need of that which has come to experience total disintegration and
the atomizing of matter utterly unillumined by spirit. Creation is a perpetual reestablishment
of universal Harmony. It is an act of integrative Ideation by the divine Intelligence that is
absolute Harmony.
Man and woman can partake in this ever renewed act of divine Creation consciously
and in the full productiveness of their total humanity. They can do so, in an incomplete
manner, as single personalities, because in every individual person the whole of the
universe and the full essence of divinity is latent. Yet, in order to bring that which is latent
and only potential to a condition of total actuality and complete efficiency, the individual
person must reach beyond the boundaries of his ego, to those with whom, in
interdependence and joint consecration, he can perform the ritual of the Spirit. Man reaches
toward woman; woman reaches toward man. And both man and woman can know
themselves as participants in a vast Company of consecrated persons who, together, are
building out of the root of man's common humanity the ultimate and global Seed Man. In
that Man, God's creative purpose is fulfilled, insofar as humanity on this earth is concerned.
In that bipolar Man, the divine Word that was "in the beginning" is made fully concrete, and
the power of divine Nature is condensed; as in the seed, archetypal structure and potency
of life are combined.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Repotentialization and the Virgin State - 1

In physics two states of energy are considered: potential and kinetic energy.
Energy is defined as "the capacity to perform work." More generally, it is the capacity to act.
There can be no activity without a release of energy, but this release can occur at several
levels of existence. To exist is to use energy. Energy being used is kinetic energy, whether it
be at a cosmic or a biological level. Any cycle of existence begins in a release of energy.
Such a release occurs when potential energy becomes kinetic energy.
A wound up spring, a stone balanced on top of a high wall, have potential energy. They
have a latent capacity to generate activity, the spring by unwinding, the stone by falling. A
seed during winter months has potential energy. When spring comes, it is stirred into
activity; the latent potentiality of growth as a plant manifests as a release of biological
energy. The emergence of the rootlet and the germ begins the yearly cycle of existence for
that plant.
If we try to imagine the beginning of a universe in the most metaphysical way possible
to the human mind, we can say that this universe emerges into existential being when the
cosmic energy that moves the very first type of material later to manifest as stars and
galaxies passes from the state of metacosmic potentiality to that of cosmic actuality.
How such a passage operates is the great enigma. The religious mind solves for itself this
enigma by speaking of God's Creative Act: "Let there be Light!" But the problem is merely
shifted to the need to elucidate what is meant by "God."
However God, the Creator, may be pictured by the human mind, this picture has to
include a tremendous reservoir of potential energy. God, as the Prime Mover — if he be "the
One without a Second" — has to be, or to contain, potential energy on a metacosmic scale.
This being so, one might simply say that the beginning of any universe constitutes the
emergence of a cosmogonic tide of kinetic energy out of a vast reservoir of metacosmic
potential energy. This metacosmic reservoir of potential energy may be significantly
symbolized as an infinite Ocean of Potentiality.
We have, however, to be very careful of how consciously or unconsciously our mind
pictures the state of potentiality at the metacosmic level. When one speaks of the potential
energy within a seed deep in wintry soil, one has something concrete and tangible: a seed,
serving as the container of, or basis for, the potential energy. The seed objectively exists,
even though in a condition of biological latency. But when we try to think of a metacosmic
ocean of potentiality, we have to somehow transcend what we call existence (ex-istence).
Potentiality does not "exist"; latency is not existence — nor should it be called nonexistence.
It is the possibility of existence; and we may well postulate that whatever is possible will
exist at some time or does exist in some dimension or region of infinite space. In an acorn
a very limited and clearly definable possibility of existence — existence as an oak tree —
inheres. But "inhering" is not the same as "existing." We should say that the potentiality of
existence as an oak in-ists in the acorn. The state of potentiality is one of "inistence," not
of either existence or nonexistence.
Hindu cosmology speaks of periods during which Brahman manifests as the cosmos,
and periods of nonmanifestation — manvantara and pralaya. In a more popular and
anthropomorphic sense, mention is made of the "outbreathing and inbreathing" of Brahma,
the Creative God. But the concept of nonmanifestation (pralaya) is usually formulated in
terms of negative statement. It is conceived as the negation of everything and every value
we associate with existence in our dualistic world. "Not this, not that" — a void (Sunya),
utter darkness. Because we live in a world filled with a multiplicity of entities in a state of
constant change and transformation, we must postulate nonmultiplicity in the state of
nonmanifestation; in this state unity prevails. All is one in a timeless condition, and space is
reduced to the nondimensional point — a condition of mere subjectivity.
But if the state of nonmanifestation implies unity, we should not speak of absolute
unity, for the concept of absolute unity precludes the possibility of multiplicity or even
duality. And the very fact that I am thinking and writing implies duality. Everything may be
withdrawn into the unmanifested Brahman in the pralaya state, but the desire for eventual
manifestation must remain in the One, at least as a possibility; otherwise there could be no
universe.
The confusion comes from the ambiguous meaning of the term, unity. When one
speaks of "unity in diversity" one actually means by unity integration or wholeness: diverse
entities realize that they are parts or at least that they have emerged from an original One
in whom they can and eventually must be reabsorbed or reintegrated. When Sri
Sankaracharya, the great Hindu philosopher whom his disciples have considered a major
Avatar, long ago originated his Adwaita system, he spoke of the nondual character of the
supreme Reality (a-dwaita). In so doing he was following the old tradition which had as its
essential purpose to impel human beings to free themselves from the dualistic oscillations
between pleasure and pain, and from dependence upon the external powers of life
(instincts, desires for expansion, passions) which compulsively operate in a polar (thus,
dualistic) rhythm. Hindu philosophy, even at its seemingly most metaphysical level, is
eminently purposeful. It intends above all to show people how to take the next step in the
development of their consciousness, thus to trans-cend the existential state in which they
live.
Nondualism is a conceptual means to transcend the attachment to the life-force and
the processes of the mind which serve as a foundation for ego-structures. It seeks to
achieve this very practical result by devaluating all that belongs to the world of existence
and its myriad of attractions — thus, by presenting them as mere illusions, the products of
ignorance. What really is absolute is the character of this devaluation or repudiation of all
aspects of existence; and it has led millions of Hindus to seek an escape from existence —
escape into a condition of pure subjectivity from which they believed there would be no
return.
 Yet there always is return, as Gautama the Buddha clearly showed in his own life — a
return moved by compassion. There is return in time, but what returns may be a being
whose consciousness has become transfigured and who no longer is only a part of the
cosmic whole, but is the Whole focused through him in order to perform deeds of wholeness
and compassionate love.
To put it differently, potentiality and actuality are the two poles of "That" which
includes them both — somewhat as, in Chinese philosophy, Tao includes the two principles
Yang and Yin. These principles wax and wane in turn. If we think of them in terms of
objective existential realities, we associate them with the polarities of life, male and female,
light and darkness, expansion and contraction. But we also can think of these two principles
in terms of actuality and potentiality. If we do so, a different world-picture emerges,
presenting us with two fundamental trends: the trend toward ever more objective and
concrete actualization, and the trend toward repotentialization. This latter trend represents
an attempt so to transform any particularized or individualized form of existence that it
becomes more inclusive, ever more open to a flow of new possibilities, and more able to
begin again through fresh creative, that is, originating and/or transforming, acts.
From this point of view, the "illusion" which the Hindu philosophies associate with
existence itself should be related only to the inertial character of most of its forms. There
must be forms, at whatever level we may think of them — be they physical bodies,
psychic structures, of habitual feeling-responses, mental concepts, or cosmic existences.
Existence is a state in which kinetic energy operates within some kind of field, each
existential field having more or less definite boundaries and a characteristic rhythm of
operation (or "tone"). Every release of energy occurs in "quanta", and that "package of
energy" manifests concretely as a form or structure — as an entity (ideas and the
structured products of mental activity are also entities at the mind level). Every entity
occupies some kind of dimensional space and the energy which flows through it will wear
out according to a more or less definite time schedule. It has a specific or individual
character and some kind of consciousness, diffuse as it may be. It has a cosmic purpose or
function, a dharma or "destiny."
Most forms of existence pass through a set schedule of concrete transformation, and
the schedule is quite rigid. It resists radical change which would alter its natural character
and its function within a well defined environment. When this function reaches its normal
operative capacity — that is, when the process of actualization of this very limited aspect of
the total potentiality released at the beginning of the universe has reached its apex —
degeneration and sclerosis set in, leading to death.
Death simply marks the triumph of the trend toward potentiality, because the death of
the formed organism releases the energy potential in the substance of its body into the
immense ocean of potentiality. It is released toward some more or less distant rebeginning,
as some future "springtime" occurs. In the vegetable kingdom it is released both as seed
and as decaying leaves which will be humus to seed the future germ.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Repotentialization and the Virgin State - 2

As the human kingdom is reached in the world-process a new situation slowly

develops. Man acquires reflective consciousness, a consciousness centered around an "I"
subjectively aware of being both center and consciousness. Any living organism is a whole,
a limited field of activity; but while it has a life-center this is not an individualized center of
consciousness, a Self. The form of the entity characterizes a species of life, not an
individual center of I-consciousness.
This is a tremendous difference. It implies that in man the trend toward actualization
and objectivity has reached a point at which it is increasingly pervaded with the opposite
trend toward repotentialization and subjectivity. Man's presence announces the nearness of
a symbolical equinox point, as at the equinoxes, day and night are of equal duration. In
man, actuality and potentiality are coming close to a condition of equilibrium. Because of
this, man has the at least latent capacity to repotentialize his consciousness, and to some
extent his physical organism. Even when this organism can no longer be renewed, death
can be a conscious and deliberate act of repotentialization. It can be a conscious entrance
into a realm of relative nonmanifestation and subjectivity in which potentiality has won over
actuality. It can mark the beginning of a seed state at the level of mind-consciousness. In
that state an equally conscious mutation can be subjectively experienced, polarized toward
a new birth, a new beginning.
It can be, but it need not be and perhaps rarely is. Most human beings are still
operating mainly at the level of biological energies and their psychic overtones. Because the
I-consciousness in them is most of the time identified with one or another body function,
encased in sociocultural forms, and focused in the ego, (a socialbiological compound which
people usually think of as "I-myself") this consciousness is no longer able to envision totally
new beginnings. It has lost what may be called "originability" — the ability to envision, and
then to perform acts which can be origins of new developments — acts which release new
potentialities not strictly implied in a person's birth, and especially which were not defined
by the limitations of physical ancestry and social-geographical environment.
In order to envision such new possibilities, a man does not have to think of existence
itself as illusion; and while the Hindu term, maya, is usually translated "illusion," Maya was
also the name of Gautama the Buddha's mother. Existence at the human level implies the
possibility to be born out of it and to transcend its fate as the Buddha did. And the word
"fate" simply refers to the inertia of existential forms and the entropy of energies that
operate through all biological-emotional, social-cultural and ego-controlled forms of living.
The human condition so tragically depicted by self-defeated men of a civilization stifled by
inertial institutions and fears, actually is a condition of allowing conscious and deliberate
self-renewal through the creation of always new forms, or at least through the radical
alteration, expansion, and recharging of the form of an individual selfhood refusing to bend
to the pressure of the past and accept defeat.
How can such a recharging, repotentialization or creative rebeginning be accomplished?
The first condition is to believe in the possibility of it; then to dare be open to new images
that may well up from the deepest center of being. Through that center a new influx of
potentiality may surface into the consciousness of the existential mind.
The belief in the possibility of rebeginning or rebirth has evidently to take a form
consonant with the individual's metaphysical or religious beliefs. The way the process of
repotentialization is described and the names and symbols used in this description vary, but
essentially what is experienced is an attunement of the consciousness to "That" which to the
mind represents an infinite potentiality of as yet unknown modes of existence — cosmic,
spiritual, psychic, human, cellular, or molecular as these modes may be according to the
level at which the consciousness operates.
If one believes totally in the validity of the great images of the Christian tradition, one
undoubtedly tends to picture to oneself a personal all-loving and all-powerful God. One will
believe that, as the Gospel states, "With God all things are possible." One also believes in
the infinite power of God's "Grace." We have to believe without any shadow of a doubt that
in our life, God is a constant Presence aware of all our needs and ready to assist our
disenthrallment or redemption from the dualistic oscillations, the fears and passions of our
biological and egocentric existence. We must be willing to let Him point to us the new goal,
the vibrant way of life, which follows our rebirth.
This divine Grace gives us the potency to neutralize the karmic tendencies of our past
— the residue of the unfinished business of past cycles and the negative cosmic imprints of
ancient unremembered acts. We have first of all to empty our consciousness of all ghostly
presences and unconscious tendencies before we can be radically repotentialized. To the
disciples of Sri Aurobindo this divine Grace is presented as the Mother-Force — and even to
Christians Mary the Mother appears as the Mediatrix who channels down to weary and
distraught humans the "living water" of Christ's immense love. According to ancient Hindu
traditions the guru who has experienced his divine state is able to assume the karma of his
disciples' past lives — a karma operating at the unconscious level — just as the Christ was
born to wipe away the stigma of an Original Sin deeply rooted in man's collective
unconscious. But the disciple has always to take care by himself of all that he is
conscious of — thus, of the karma of his present life.
An individual person may have developed his mind and his courage to the point where
he can assume without fear the totality of his own karma, and deliberately seek to attune
his whole being and his boundless imagination to the rhythms of the infinite ocean of
potentiality. Yet this would be a lonely way if constantly pursued without the help and love
of other human beings, and also without the realization that there are presences that,
invisibly in most cases though often not without voice, surround the wayfarer and guide his
or her confused steps in the darkness of a materialistic, competitive, and lustful society.
Christianity speaks of "Guardian Angels"; other religions refer to them under other names.
In many cultures, since patriarchal times, and even more since the great movement of
chivalry and particularly in Southern France during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the
capacity to be attuned in feelings and intuition to a vast reservoir of spiritual inspiration
and/or healing love has been considered a natural role for a woman, provided she is true to
the highest and purest potentiality of her nature; for woman may also be pictured as the
Temptress, la femme fatale, who embodies the entropy of material energies and leads to
passionate disintegration. Today, the modern woman is confused and , in her demand for
equality and liberation — such ambiguous and deceptive ideals! — she tries hard to identify
herself often unreservedly with the great gods of Productivity and social success, while
relying increasingly upon an asexualized intellect able to memorize data, handle computers,
and manage systems. By so doing she almost inevitably becomes, like most men, a mere
mechanism in the production lines of factories and managerial offices. Just because she
demands to be fully "actualized," she tends to lose her contact with the great ocean of
potentiality.
To use Jungian terms, she loses the capacity to act as an anima figure, as a mediatrix
between the vast realm of the unconscious (or superconscious) and the actively
exteriorizing and systematizing mind characteristic of the male sex, at least during the last
millennia of human evolution. As this happens, the men she tries to emulate and socially
compete with may tend to develop the contrasexual aspect of their nature. Theoretically this
may be a valid trend and it may be related to the emergence of a new kind of humanity —
the sixth sub-race of which H.P. Blavatsky announces the gradual but slow development.
Nevertheless the immediate result is very often emotional confusion and mental instability
— all of which is caused by a disturbing feeling of lack of functional purpose and by the
ambiguity of unclearly defined roles in interpersonal relationships.
One may refuse to accept traditional roles, but one should also be able to understand
that these roles, especially if based upon biological imperatives and functional
differentiation, are the reflections of great archetypes. New archetypes may be brought to
act on the stage of human evolution, but until they are truly understood and actualized,
they may remain a deeply disturbing potentiality within the unconscious of individuals who
are not yet free enough of the past — or, just as important! — of an emotional rebellion
against this past, to envision new modes of relationships, and have not yet the strength and
courage required to compel society to accept them.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Repotentialization and the Virgin State - 3

In the preceding chapter the possibility of raising the level of productivity of an

interpersonal relationship dynamized by love from the biological to the ideospiritual level of
creativity was evoked. I should now like to speak of an archetypal image of womanhood
that is closely associated to the concept and ideal of repotentialization, the image of the
Eternal Virgin — an image that is also embodied in a still more life-transcending manner in
the great examples of the Kumaras, the Virgin-ascetics.
To the Occultist, SPACE, abstractly considered as the infinite ocean of potentiality,
takes the idealized and mythic character of the Eternal Virgin, for the virginal state
symbolizes the possibility of any future manifestation. The woman virgin, traditionally
speaking, can be whatever the beloved who will dynamize and fecundate her field of
creative possibilities demands of her; for the archetypal Woman is the sacred vessel ready
to receive the Logos spermatikos, the creative Word that fecundates, and that fecundative
act transforms potentiality into emergent actuality. Before fecundation she is SPACE, the
infinite possibility of any and all cosmic modes of existence. Once fecundation has occurred,
woman becomes the mother; and the mother's existence, symbolically speaking, is utterly
oriented toward her progeny. The mother's rhythm of existence has been set. She is no
longer free; that is, unconditioned. Actuality, in her, has absorbed — for a time at least —
potentiality.
The Virgin and the Mother represent therefore two fundamental images or archetypes
of womanhood. They are two basic aspects of the Eternal Feminine — symbols of
potentiality and actuality. At this present stage of human evolution, the Mother represents
productive energy and the capacity to guide and manage the early biological and even
sociocultural, stages of her children's life. Without children there is no state of motherhood.
When the religious devotee worships the Great Mother, or the Mother Force, he or she
acknowledges being a child. On the other hand, the man who bows before the image of "the
Virgin of the World" accepts the power and responsibility to become a "father" — a creative
origin, a "logos." He comes to the virgin, as a mind and will yearning for a new field for his
activity. His capacity to fecundate may be only latent; he too may be potentiality far more
than actuality. Yet this potentiality is polarized toward the creative act.
For him, the virgin girl may still be represented by a sister because the time —
biologically or socially — has not yet come to actualize his creative potential. Yet a
polarization already exists. If that polarization is too strong, the brother may keep seeing in
every woman he later meets, a sister; and this may interfere with his normal love-
relationships. Yet at a higher level of consciousness, the woman may appear to him as the
Soror Mystica, the Sister participating in the Great Work of true, spiritual alchemy. She is
then the Holy Virgin who, like him, has been self-consecrated to the service of the Divine in
man — and therefore to the service of those who are building Man's future state of
existence, the "Brothers" of the essentially hidden, yet at times revealed Great Lodge —
the Seed-Pleroma of Humanity.
An entire society may be characterized by whether it emphasizes the mother aspect of
women, rather than the Virgin of Light. In America today the cult of the mother has
achieved world recognition, and often world notoriety. The Mom who "knows best" and
makes a nondescript Daddy work hard for boudoirized Cadillacs and pastel Frigidaires has
been the subject of endless discussions, psychological analyses, and comic strips. Often
frustrated in her life or love with a business-engrossed husband whom she takes for
granted, fascinated by her newly won intellectual and social independence from home and
husband, self-consciously assuming an important place in the daily patterns of our
economic, cultural and political life, the American Mom is most often torn by psychological
conflicts. Caught as she is in a fever of self-exteriorization, she tends to ignore and deny her
deeper femininity, and to live, tensely and relentlessly, and with much intellectual pride (a
mask for insecurity!), at the very surface of the exteriorized portion of her nature.
Yet the very dependence of the typical American male on his mother and the quasi-
matriarchal character of some aspects of our society have engendered in men and women a
more or less conscious yearning for youthfulness. Just because our society has become
mechanized and automated, and we officially worship the formalistic intellect of the
technician hemmed in by written formulas and of the lawyer hypnotized by the need for
success through cleverness, there is a nearly poignant longing once more to be
unconditioned, as-yet-nonautomated once more to be young and at least in a deep spiritual
sense virginal.
Thus the mature man and woman of Suburbia dress young, try to act young, and to
make believe they are not the slaves of a system which, rigidly even if subtly, determines
their manner of thinking, feeling, and behavior so that they will be "liked," accepted by
everybody who counts, and successful in an indistinct and nonindividualized way. When the
young generation rebelled and desperately tried to actualize their inner repudiation and
protest by different clothes, hair-styles and loose way of relationships, the older people —
upset as they were — quickly tried to imitate the countercultural fashions.
Alas, the process of "revirgination" or true repotentialization cannot be real if it means
only the imitation of what is chaos rather than true virginity. In the deepest sense of the
term, chaos is also a state of potentiality. The cosmos condition has broken down in the
year cycle; the plant has lost its leaves which now are disintegrating into mere chemicals.
These chemicals may be used in any new process of germination; but they will be used in a
condition of unconscious absorption into the new germ. Today our society has not yet
produced pure chaos, even (most often and exceptions notwithstanding) among younger
generations who are still very much attached to their Western civilization even if only by
their emotional rebellion against it. Chaos no longer rebels against anything; it is a passive
condition.
 The virginal state of which I am speaking here is totally oriented toward the future, but
a future which as yet might have any form. In contrast to it the state of motherhood is
completely determined by the need of what it has produced. Yet in some way the two states
can be integrated within the life and the consciousness of women; and it presumably is
what, at the deepest level, constitutes the new possibility toward the actualization of which
many modern women more or less unconsciously and emotionally are striving.
Actually this possibility can be seen symbolized in the Catholic symbol of Mary, the
Virgin Mother. What is implied in the symbol is the possibility for a woman who has a child
to function as a mother without being exclusively committed to that function and to the man
who fecundated her. The Virgin Mother knows in her deeper consciousness that it is the
universal and impersonal power of Life (or God) that impregnated her virginal field of
existence, and that regardless of what her future relationships to any man might be, she
remains the servant of the creative Spirit, and thus a channel through which a fresh spring
of potentiality may always emerge through her. Even in relation to her child she knows
herself as a focus of love and intelligence guiding the child toward self-fulfillment, but what
is concentrated by and passes through the focus of her body and her whole person is Spirit
— not the will, love, or intelligence of a particular man who was merely the carrier of sperm
to impregnate her ovum, or even whose ego and personal character sought to make her in
his own image and possess her.
In this sense, virginity does not refer strictly to the fact of not having been "deflorated"
by a male; it does not actually exclude sexual experience. It simply refers to a state of
being in which the natural condition of productivity for exclusivistic goals implying
possessiveness is transcended. Whether there is biological productivity in terms of child-
bearing or not, the woman's consciousness is not fundamentally affected. Her body, for a
time, may be caught in a current of biological procreation; yet even as this happens, her
consciousness and life-purpose remain unattached to that current, because they do not
expect anything personal from this life-process. The process passes through the woman
who neither desires nor will claim rewards of any kind from her role as progenitor. She gives
love to the baby, as she gave her body to the man — in the Name of the Divine that equally
dwells in him, her and the child.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Repotentialization and the Virgin State - 4

What has just been said in terms of the procreation of a new body can as well apply to
creative processes at the ideological-mental-cultural level. Every creative person is, or
rather should be, a Virgin Mother in relation to his or her creations, be the works of art and
literature, scientific theories or the organization of sociocultural institutions. In such a
creative activity there should be no personal-emotional possessiveness or the type of
intellectual pride which binds the creator to his work. The creator "pro-duces" (brings forth)
that which is the result of the fecundation of his mind by a power that, in its noblest form,
transcends the mind acting only as a womb. A creative process occurs through him, rather
than from him. If he does not remain attached to, and possessive of it, he remains virginal.
New flows of potentiality again and again will occur through him.
At the social level, money is a profound and vital symbol of potentiality. A dollar bill is
ever-virgin, for it can be used for a multitude of purposes. With money (nearly) all things
are possible — it would seem today. A modern bank should be a vast field of social
possibilities, but a field exacting no price for the flow of its credit — a symbol of trust, which
is "social love." The whole social process is vitiated and turns destructive of human values
when exclusive possession is attached to money; and a constant increase of productivity in
terms of material goods, on an Earth swarming with ever more bodies, is the one overriding
goal of society.
The goal of productivity can be transferred to an ideospiritual level at which the needs
of minds and souls is of far greater importance than the need of bodies. Yet even there the
patterns of productivity will always tend to become rigid and resist transformation.
Therefore to the inertia of every form that at any cost seeks to maintain itself and to
expand, a new surge of potentiality must answer. No cyclic process must be allowed to turn
into exact circles. Creativity alone can inject into the process a new spirit of creativity, and
where creativity and spontaneity have been defeated by habit, technical routine and
automatism, then repotentialization is the only way to spiritual transformation even though
it means confrontation with the past and crisis.
It has often been remarked that women tend to be conservative in social matters and
politics, because they are basically concerned with their offsprings security; and crises of
social transformation inevitably challenge what has until then appeared as security. Let me
repeat that the mother-type of woman is geared to what has been. Her natural function at
the biological level is to transfer to her progeny the patterns of instinctual behavior required
for physical survival. In the same manner the natural function of woman at the sociocultural
level is to teach her children the behavior, the traditional types of emotional (and later
ethical) beliefs and responses, and the simple basic skills that will insure the child's
acceptance in society.
 Thus, for a man who, after growing up, seeks refuge in the past, is afraid of changes
and the big wide world, and whose mother has been psychically possessive and
overprotective, the desired woman, be she wife or mistress, will be asked to carry the
image and function of a mother. It may be a mother function at the sexual and emotional
and home level; it may also be that function raised to the spiritual level of divine
Motherhood.
On the other hand, men who are servants of the future and are consecrated to the
ever-renewed possibility of creating unrepetitive tomorrows, will seek women who, to them
at least — and they may be misled by temporary stirrings of sexual desires — can be
embodiments of the virgin spirit; women who will seem to hold the everglowing promise of
the actualization of as-yet-unknown possibilities, even possibilities beyond this earth,
beyond the natural realm of loving and begetting progeny.
To such men, woman as the ever-Virgin can be the romantic "Muse," the inspirer, the
Beatrice of Dante in search of the center of ever higher perfection rooted in the experience
of ever deeper abysses of human tragedy. She can also be the companion of the true
alchemist, traveling with him as a Holy Sister upon the mystical Path. Such a dedicated
companionship may not necessarily exclude sex; if sex can be consciously ritualized and
attuned to the interplay of the great cosmic Powers, that is the foundation of all existence.
But it should not be, except in rare occasions, sex based on unconscious instinct, thus on
compulsive biological and mere organic satisfaction. It should be a purposeful sexual
togetherness freed of animal excitement. In this togetherness, the fire surging from the
depths of the two harmonized human fields of forces may be transmuted into a light glowing
within the field of the united vessels of life, united but open to the beyond that is also the ".
. . within; open and free, free of each other as well as of the all-too-human patterns of our
present humanity."
Such an alchemical, deeply quiet and unemotional process is, however, most difficult to
accept or even to understand for vitally exuberant persons avid for orgiastic release, or for
individuals tense with frustrations, tragic hurts, and perhaps guilt complexes. It is not only
difficult; it is often quite dangerous — thus the usual emphasis upon absolute chastity in the
relationships between the brothers and sisters who have become consecrated to the Divine
within themselves and within humanity, the "Great Orphan" (a traditional occult
designation.) And there may be such a consecration outside of official religious orders!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Repotentialization and the Virgin State - 5

Chastity is actually only an exaggerated emphasis upon the principle of proper

"spacing" in all relationships that do not seek to reconstitute the original Egg (the male-
female whole) and thus to close a cycle. The French speak of "I'egoisme a deux," a phrase
difficult to translate tersely, but which refers to the fact that the male and female in
productive union (or in a short circuited state of involved bliss, lost in each other) actually
build jointly a larger and more final ego. All egos long for finality, for the closed cycle within
which all is perfect, finished — the successful person, the happy home!
Such an ideal can produce beautiful and wholesome results, as far as they go; but it
can only bring to a conclusion what has been released in the beginning of the relationship.
Then the cycle closes and a new one, of the same kind and at the same level, must begin.
This is Samsara, the ever-resurgent urge to repeat the past, whether individually as a
separate individual self, or collectively as a generation compelling the following generation
by unconscious pressures and semi-hypnotic example to repeat its patterns or to rush
rebelliously to the exact opposite, which is as compulsive and binding a procedure as
unconscious imitation.
The only other solution — besides some form or other of self-destruction (and there are
so many of these forms) begins with a refusal to close the cycle in exhaustion of vital
energy and inner weariness; it is a breakthrough into the realm of those who, as brothers
and sisters, exist in a state of ever-renewed potentiality and essential virginity which is
indeed Nirvana, the condition of infinite latency from which all is possible and nothing is
ever final or finished.
This does not mean leaving this world or reaching the timeless and unconditioned.
Gautama the Buddha accepted the time, the place, and the conditions of India's society,
culture, and climate in the sixth century B.C. After having become liberated from the desire
to bring his cycle of existence to a final close through yoga practices and starvation, and
having been revitalized by the milk given him by a simple milkmaid, he understood ("stood
under") the World-Process. For forty more years of radiant peaceful living he presented to
his society an infinitely noble, beautiful, and self-contained example of freedom and of
peace. He transformed his society and the whole of Asia.
We are not Buddhas, of course. Yet we can rise beyond the compulsive living which
must end in exhausted power and pattern — frozen consciousness; we can awaken in us the
Virgin-potency that is exhaustless and unbound by repetitive actions. This is perhaps what
mystics try to say when they speak of living in the Now, unconditioned by precedents and
unburdened by expectations. But to call this state timeless is just as fictitious and
glamorous a statement as to speak of and to desire the end of time (as in Biblical
eschatology).
 There are forever cycles. This moment is within one of them. Each man exists at this
moment, in this cycle. Even denying time must necessarily take time, must occur in time.
We should live this moment, because it is what we are essentially. We are not different from
it in the living of it. We have to live it, to love it; because indeed it alone exists for us now,
because we are its fulfillment. We are time. Consciousness is time, cyclic, rhythmic,
harmonic, whole in its divine condition, as an Eon; partial, biased, tormented by conflicts in
the human mind. The real fallacy is to think that we are only a small part of a cycle of
existence and that this now fulfillment is all there is of us. We potentially are the whole
cycle; more still we have in us the potentiality of always breaking through the fulfillment of
any cycle into the vast measureless Movement which unceasingly calls forth new potential
out of the infinite expanse of Virgin SPACE, within and from which all is possible.
Yet one should not think of escaping into this ineffable, nameless ocean of
possibilities, this ever-Virgin Nirvana. The gates to Nirvana are seen only within the
fulfillment of now, but in a fulfillment which does not close anything, which leaves the
quest, the movement, the ascent unresolved. Nothing is ever resolved. No cycle ends in
total perfection, for the very search for perfection rises by stepping upon one's own and
mankind's rejected imperfections. The rejected must again be met, absorbed in love,
integrated; this forever and ever.
Why? Because there are always greater possibilities; always the Virgin — Alaya, Soul
of unbounded Space — calls, with new dreams, with her infinite latency, her inexhaustible
potency of form-releases, of time and cycles. Possibilities are exhaustless; Cosmic Motion is
unceasing. If we aspire toward a final condition, an end of process and the absorption of
time into a timeless ecstasy, we merely create illusion for ourselves. Our passion for a
formless state is as binding a form of desire as any narrow dogma freezing the Virgin within
us into a set pattern of consciousness. Every existence has form; and it is powered by the
as-yet-unformed Virgin-potency, ever ready for any and all possibilities of formation and
transformation. It is all here, now; yet this "here and now" are but one moment in the
infinite Movement that releases forever new potentialities into eventually inevitable
actualities, in whose fulfillment lies the seed of future cycles. Cling to the moment, and you
have lost it. Escape into the Movement, and you are lost, only to be found again and
institutionalized in a future, more rigid framework of karma.
It really is all so simple! One should not have to talk about it, which is like trying to
catch atoms with a butterfly net, or painting the iridescent ever-moving panoply of northern
lights with thick oil paint and coarse brush. All that one can do is to call, to stir, to awaken
to the ever new possible, to evoke and to move on before the vision sets and the ever-
Virgin becomes impregnated, patterned-out by the male "fact," caught into the mesh of
productivity, compelled to repeat words which repetition makes meaningless because
familiar.
Familiarity is the negation of spirituality. Promiscuity, lack of bearing, sloppiness, are
insults to the Virgin. There should always be distance, proportion, form, effective focusing of
attention, self-discipline and a vast, deep quietness of emotional vibrancy. And yet all this
not definitive, not final, not binding.
Acts do not need to bind the actors. The Avatar is both Eon and man; Krishna is the
lover of the Gopis as well as the "beginning, middle and end" of the universal cycle. The
now, lived in full concentration on the potentiality it is called upon to release as one phase
of a vast cycle, is one with the cycle — IF the wholeness of the cycle is evoked and focused
in the act here and now. This is avatarhood, divine manifestation. This is the transpersonal
way.
All living is a "performance." What is essential is not to be bound by the form. Use this
form. Pour yourself unreservedly, utterly, into that form and into the releasing act. Then,
pass on; walk on. Now is always with us, always demanding to be lived as if it alone
existed; but also to be lived in the consciousness that it is but one among the infinitude of
drops in the ocean of potentiality, but one of the many smiles of the Virgin of all possible
worlds.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Through Crises, New Beginnings - 1

One of the little understood and advertised aspects of the relationship between a
real guru and his disciple is that through such a relationship the disciple is made to face a
deep crisis. His entire future depends on how he (or she) meets the crisis, on the quality of
the emotional attitude, the depth of understanding, and the character of the will he brings
to it.
A crisis is almost unavoidable, because as the disciple meets his spiritual Guide he
brings to the meeting not only an eagerness for inner growth, or perhaps only an intense
and fascinated devotion to the guru, but also the karmic residual of his past — and not only
the past of his present life. In his aspiration for a more spiritual life and consciousness, the
disciple has forgotten this past. In fact he probably has never realized the heaviness of this
karmic past, and unconsciously he is quite eager not to meet it at this time when all he
aspires to is light and divinity. The ego of any individual either is not aware of the ancient
past, or he half-consciously finds ways of getting around it and to evade harsh
confrontations with his old sins of commission and even more omission. He is like a lawyer
trying to circumvent the law, even though he would be amazed if he were told that he was
doing so deliberately. By meeting his guru and earnestly asking for spiritual guidance, the
disciple, unbeknown to himself, sets in motion an equally spiritual reaction.
The presence of the guru, even more than what he actually may do, say, or suggest,
focuses upon the disciple the karmic harvest of the latter's past. Impersonally, and perhaps
with some deep sadness and compassion, the guru brings about situations which force the
disciple, who probably is eagerly waiting for revelations and illumination, to squarely or
frontally face the darkness of a perhaps long-forgotten past of indolence, selfishness, or
spiritual bankruptcy. The disciple comes face to face with what, in the most extreme
instances, has been pictured (in Bulwer Lytton's famous novel, Zanoni) as the monstrous
Dweller on the Threshold. In any case he faces a crisis; and the word, crisis, from a Greek
root which means "to decide." This root can be traced to the still more universal radical Kri
which we find in the names of the great Avatar of India's tradition, Krishna, and of our
Western divine Manifestation, the Christos. In Javanese the so often used dagger or
specially shaped small sword is called "kris."
Christ brought to men, not peace — as he himself stated — but the "sword of
severance." Krishna originally was known in India as a great statesman who, through his
consummate diplomacy, brought face to face and with equal strength the two great clans of
the Warrior caste who had made of the land a constant battlefield. On the plain of
Kurukshetra, the two clans met and destroyed each other. This ended the power of the
Warrior caste and marked the rise of India's great Age of Philosophy, dominated by the
power of the Brahmin caste.
 Whether this be fact or myth it should bring to us the realization that the divine Guru,
in whatever form and according to whatever circumstances it may be, brings to the people
among whom he is born, a some time fearsome crisis, forcing men to "decide." In the
Bhagavad Gita, on the eve of the great battle of Kurukshetra, Krishna faces his pupil, Arjuna
who, seeing friends and relatives in both camps, is ready to evade the issue and refuse to
fight. Krishna confronts him with his dharma as a warrior and Arjuna makes his great
decision, and the battle is "won." But who wins it? Not the victorious army that is also
decimated; not the victorious ego of Arjuna the warrior. Spirit alone wins — within
Arjuna's Soul and inner consciousness, and within an India relatively freed for a time at
least from the conflicts and passions of the Warrior caste.
The divine Spirit — the Christos — also won through the courage and endurance of
Jesus, Son of Man. But it was victory as yet only in the realm of Archetypes: the Great War
has been raging ever since in the planetary consciousness of mankind and in the innermost
heart of all men, who swear by the name of Christ, yet remain asleep and betray the Christ
spirit, as the apostle, Peter, and the Church founded on his symbolic name, betrayed the
master they pretended to worship. The Great War may still wait for its climactic
Kurukshetra. The radical decision is not yet made, except by a few individuals here and
there.
Assuredly many small and valid decisions are made by individuals and groups at one
time or another; but unless the issue is truly focal the decision may not be "radical"
enough; it may not reach the very root of the individual person. It may not demand as yet
the irreversible crucifixion of the individual as an ego and lord of whatever comes under the
sway of its autocratic power.
The strong individual whose mind is open and wise may not need a guru to force him to
meet his karma. To the strong, life itself answers with compelling and ineluctable
circumstances. The disciple who relies on his inner center and his potential divinity may
himself precipitate the confrontations generating one crisis after another. The ever-present
danger is that, under strain and stress, he may make what appears to be the wrong
decision or that, unable to make any decision at all, out of sheer inner exhaustion, he may
slide into insanity or premature dying. Yet there are perhaps no wrong decisions, if they are
sincere and open to whatever may come; if the results are placed on the inner altar of one's
dedication to the Divine, for God to accept or reject.
The guru is nevertheless always present behind the scene, even though in the
awesome abysses of the "Dark Night of the Soul," of which many mystics have spoken his
presence is not felt, his voice not heard. The disciple is left with only one weapon: the sword
of his pure, unadulterated will. He alone can wield this sword, not to cut a mythical Gordian
Knot, as the youthful Alexander, the conqueror, is said to have done with his sword, but to
cut the rope his own ego had made to tie the ship of his consciousness to some safe,
secure, and comfortable haven. As the ship is left loose to brace the currents and storms of
the immense sea of an astral realm that one can only reach through as well as beyond the
solid physicality of our everyday world, the life of the self-consecrated individual produces
radical crises.
Crises are thresholds which one must pass through; what counts is the essential quality
of the movement through. That we may stumble, fall and get badly hurt, or make tragic
mistakes or blunders and hurt others this is in most cases unavoidable. The main difference
between victory and at least temporary defeat resides in the quality of our being. This
quality of being goes deeper than mere conscious motive — for is it not said "Hell is paved
with good intentions"? By quality of being I mean what we cannot help doing, feeling, or
thinking, because we are that. Victory comes, ultimately, because everything in us and
beyond us — the whole balance-of-power within the field of actualization of the Soul in
which our personal self participates — everything comes to a focus in some essential "Yes"
or "No" saying.
The ransom of spiritual victories almost unavoidably is suffering; but here again all
depends on the quality of the suffering or, one might say, on what suffering is geared to. It
may be geared to a will to victory over the domination of the ego or to a stubborn decision
by the ego to gain control over whatever challenges its power, or even to a feeling of defeat
and impotency which in some instances may turn into a semiconscious will for self-
annihilation.
Suffering should be differentiated from pain. Any living organism experiences pain
when some of its vital functions or the integrity of the body is interfered with. Nature inflicts
pain upon all living organisms caught in its more or less violent processes, its storms, its
droughts or flood, its fires, its extremes of heat or cold. The implacable law of the
biosphere, "Eat or be eaten," produces everywhere pain; a pain which under certain
conditions, even in the vegetable kingdom — as recent experiments by Cleve Baxter have
shown can be shared by other organisms vibrating in sympathy.
Human beings also experience physical pain in natural circumstances affecting the
nervous system. But with suffering we reach another level of feeling, because suffering
implies a more or less individualized consciousness of pain — not only physically felt, but
pain referred to the personal desires, the goals, the expectations, and the potentiality of
self-unfoldment and spiritual growth of the individual person. As an individual severs his
bondage to his society and to the instinctual rhythm of his participation in nature; as he
places a priority on the development of mind and of social power, prestige, fame, and
wealth in a competitive society, regardless of what this will do to the natural harmony and
smooth-workings of his biological functions and emotional drives, he invites suffering. He
who is following the transpersonal Way and is definitely ready and intent upon entering the
Path — the path of total transformation — can expect to travel with suffering as his
companion. He has deliberately entered a process of transition. He has placed himself "out
of gears" in order to be able to change to a higher gear; and the change is very rarely
smooth, because, unlike a well-engineered car, each position of the gears resists change;
instead of some kind of lubricant to facilitate the displacement, each gear is surrounded
with a mass of particles opposing the shifting. The result is an often harsh and potentially
destructive grinding noise, especially if there is no experienced driver to teach the novice.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Through Crises, New Beginnings - 2

Every transition between two states results in suffering; and the suffering is greatest
when fear, a clinging to the past, or an exuberant eagerness to race ahead introduces
tensions, inner conflicts, or false expectations into the process; and this is by far the most
common state of affairs in our modern world. The individual in our Western society is
caught into a collective process of transition, the historical transition between the archaic
tribal state of natural living in tune with the rhythms of the biosphere — a state in which the
whole tribe has a common psyche and a common will as it faces basic issues — and the
state of at least relative individualization of each theoretically independent person,
responsible for his or her own growth toward some kind of transcendent ideal.
Individualization leads to conflicts between supposedly self-sufficient individuals proud of
their difference and eager to expand and to conquer all obstacles; and conflicts produce the
type of suffering based on inferiority, fear, deprivation, and a humiliating sense of failure —
or the disappointment and emptiness which often follow success and fame.
The individual moving ahead on the transpersonal Way may not only experience all the
suffering which these feelings at one time or another are bound to cause at the psychic and
psychosomatic levels, but he has stepped out at least partially from the wheel of social
success and failure into another kind of transition which is just as radical. In the depth of his
consciousness he has left both the biological and the social levels at which his will can no
longer exclusively and naturally function; yet he still operates as a biological organism
and, try as he may to deny the fact, he is still conditioned by the culture that has provided
him with a specific language and patterns of thinking-feeling, and even of behavior if he still
lives among men. Three levels of consciousness, of activity and will speak their own
language to the disciple on the Path. How can he fail to experience inner discords and
suffering until he has, as the Buddhists say "reached the other shore." A difficult crossing!
It most likely is impossible to achieve this crossing unless in one way or another the
aspirant has been prepared for it by those who have already passed to the other shore and
who, after having left instructions to the novice, watch and are ready to proffer guidance
and perhaps assistance, even if unnoticed by and unknown to the traveler. Yet, helped as
he undoubtedly is, he alone must do the crossing; he alone must fight against the powerful
current of material entropy, against overwhelming weariness, loneliness, and an insidious
sense of futility. He has to accept pain and overcome its thrust against nerves taut and
ready to break.
Any individual person can follow the wide road of planetary evolution caught in the
swaying slow movement of the masses of mankind. This movement displays a cyclic but
eminently repetitive character. There must be repetition because the person advancing —
or it could be regressing — on this road too often is passively swayed by the up and down
motions of the evolutionary tide. At best he uses his will in order to try to remain at the
crest of the waves when there are waves that crest. Cycles come and cycles go. One person
succeeds another person; and though the Soul to which they are linked by magnetic threads
watches and tries to establish a closer intimacy, these successive personalities respond but
feebly. The fire of the divine will burns low within their tepid, ever so normal emotions; or
else it rages but for a moment and is gone, overwhelmed by the pressure of surrounding
mediocrity, unable to carry through a half-hearted and fleeting commitment.
Then it must all begin again, alas, so often repeating the past that left so much
unfinished business. It is so difficult at times for circles to turn into spirals! They can do so
only if a centrifugal force steadily acts to overcome the inertia of circular motion; that force
is the Promethean will. It is the will that every rebeginning should be a new beginning, a
fresh, original, spontaneous release of new potentiality. There is no worse defeat than
defeat by sameness and repetitiveness; no more monstrous concept than that of the
"Eternal Return" imagined by the tragic mind of Nietzsche. The Ocean of Potentiality of
which I have spoken is infinite. When the Christian repeats: "With God all things are
possible," what he does is to personalize this infinite Ocean of Spirit, for spirit is the
possibility to meet every need with a fresh, ever renascent will through which a new
potentiality of answer is being mobilized and focused. The new possibility is always
present; but the individual has to be ready with his unsheathed will. His hand does hold the
sword, but the spirit, God, will move the hand if the man's consciousness is ready and
willing to let go. Then the goal will be struck.
We must ever be ready to accept the totally unexpected, the miraculous. We never
have to feel totally defeated. A new dawn can always occur, in some way unlike any
previous dawn; but we must have faith. Faith is the intuitive, unchallengeable, even if
intellectually unexplainable feeling-realization that the Ocean of Infinite Potentiality
surrounds us; we live, move and have our being in it, but most of us refuse to feel, refuse
to see, so wrapt are we in our frantic agitation, our fear, our masochistic concentration on
how much we suffer. Such a suffering is in vain and calls for endless repetition.
We must become still, and "feel" the soundless sound of the vast tides of spirit lapping
at the shores of our consciousness, or perhaps beating at the jagged rocks of our pride and
our greed. We must turn our consciousness toward this inner sea and try to sense the end
of a cycle of experience peacefully moving into the yet imprecise and unfocused beginning
of a new cycle. We must dare to summon the potentiality of an essentially new and, for us,
unprecedented beginning. We should become the altar and the sacrifice; and the perfume of
the burnt offering of our past, and even of the most fragrant memories, will rise to the
gods; and the gods will answer, for they are the glowing forms which new potentialities take
when they appear to our open eyes. They are our luminous tomorrows, should they accept
the descent and take birth within our inmost being.
These words may sound oversymbolic, mystical, and remote to the reader whose
consciousness is caught in the seemingly hopeless entanglements of modern city living; yet
everyone should find it possible to translate their generality into the particular language of
his or her personal circumstances. It should not be difficult to think of people we have met
who, in early or mid-life, or as old age comes near, are being or have been confronted with
a crisis altering radically the pattern of their lives — the sudden or painful death of the
marriage partner, a divorce, a crippling illness or accident, the loss of home, children
leaving for marriage, or simply retirement after a life of intense business activity. Of crises
there is no end. To every person they come in different circumstances. All have this in
common: they challenge in us the desire, the power of imagination, and the will to make
afresh start.
We may refuse the challenge and, in the acute feeling that now life has become empty
and meaningless, settle to die more or less comfortably, perhaps at somebody else's
expense of money or happiness, perhaps taking an unconscious revenge on others for our
own failure of faith. Or we may move to some kind of California or Riviera and enjoy
sunshine, play bridge, sip drinks while gossiping at some fashionable hotel. If we do, what
of the energy, or talent, or wealth and influence have we? Will we let these go to waste?
Will we stop actualizing our inherent potentialities of consciousness and personality
unfoldment, defeated by circumstances? But these circumstances have called upon us
simply and solely to offer us rebirth!
Anyone who is not born anew with a new faith and a new sense of potentiality after a
basic crisis has accepted defeat. To return to the status quo, to "pre-war boundaries" or
"the good old days," is defeat, even if celebrated with pomp as a victory. The Prodigal Son
has returned home — with what? for what? I am not referring to goods and treasures, but
to how transformed — how radically and permanently transformed — he is as he returns.
Yes, defeat is the only word for these revivals of ghosts, these political and
international compromises fostered by the legalistic minds, the unimaginative "old men,"
the frightened holders of privileges. How many such defeats have we not seen after the
tragic crises of our World Wars, in our debacle of policy in the Near East and the Far East. It
is the same kind of defeat our modern psychiatrists perpetrate by way of brain-surgery
(lobotomy), or less irrevocably, yet essentially with the same attitude, when pushing back
the energies of an aroused, exploding mind into the subtle straightjacket of conformism:
"You go home now, and you will be very good and blandly smile; it may not be very
pleasant, but, you know, that's what living in society means." And so, one more crisis will
have been in vain; one more war fought to no purpose . . . or was it perhaps to pave the
way to a more total conflict between more exactly matched forces, as it occurred on the
battlefield of Kurukshetra some 5,000 years ago!
Why is it so hard to summon the new potentialities of existence, to begin again with
faith in "tomorrows that sing," to be once more virginal under the dawn that calls for
expansive newness?
We don't know how to offer the New — ritualistically, in sacrifice — the fruits of our
past to which we remain so attached; or we do not dare, because the ghosts of the closing
cycle crowd upon us, oppress us, and block the door to the new possibility. How we love the
dear old ghosts! We could never say a really good thing about our husband, but now that
poor old John is gone, why, we are lost: "He was such a wonderful person, you know!" We
weep, and John reappears as Paul, in whom the ghost comfortably settles. And the wheel
whirls on — birth, decay, death, birth, decay, death, forever and ever the same. O
Conformism, the religion of ghosts! . . . with the greatest ghost of all, the "Almighty God" of
our Churches, enthroned in the ever more inclusive Past, whose servants refuse to even
consider the possibility of an unprecedented Future.
Yet, I repeat, Jesus came to bring us the sword of severance! The Heaven within us of
which he spoke is the field of infinite potentiality and creative abundance. He came "to
baptize with fire." His apparent peacefulness was a scourge for all ghosts. He told us to
leave behind and hate all that the conformism of his day and race taught to worship, to take
our Cross and follow him. His way led to the most total crisis; thus potentially, to the most
complete victory. How stubbornly has the Church that enthroned his name been recrucifying
him throughout three long cycles of hell on earth, so perhaps to be terminated, as a New
Age dawns! It is "religion," most of all, that has made us afraid, as it pictured God as a
tremendous Personage far away; as it fed us forcibly with passionate emotions of guilt,
sinfulness, and spiritual impotency. And the modernized rationalistic and social Churches
that make Jesus safely human replace one kind of impotency with another, one type of
conformism with another!
Courage is the need: the courage to have faith in man's inalienable right and
responsibility to make new and unprecedented beginnings; the courage to dismiss and
forget the ghosts; the courage to face the awesome darkness of the Night of the Soul in
certainty of dawn; the courage to allow one's consciousness and ego to be ground like a
lens to the perfect form that will enable the creative light of the new potentiality to become
precisely, effectively, and accurately focused upon one's innermost center of being, and
thence released in love for all. Courage, faith, and throughout the whole way, love, and
clarity of mind: these are the essential requirements for whoever dares to enter the Path,
the path of ever-renewed transformation.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Avatars and Seed Men for a New Civilization - 1

If we are to make sense out of the chaotic situation in which, in this year 1975,
mankind is blindly and emotionally struggling, we need to obtain a broad perspective
unclouded by momentary local issues and partisanship. We need above all an awareness of
the rhythmic processes undertoning historical events, thus of planetary as well as
sociocultural patterns of change. We need to realize that any process of transformation
challenging the validity of the long taken-for-granted symbols and myths that have
ensouled and integrated an entire society, and its religious and cultural institutions,
necessarily implies a "descent" from a region of cosmic-spiritual being and activity to the
level of sociocultural events. It is a progressive descent which touches one level after
another, inducing in each field of collective and planet-wide human activity potentially
radical changes. The nature and outcome of these changes depend upon the state of affairs
and the character of man's collective consciousness and the nature of the personalities
through which such potentialities for transformation become focused, actualized in mental
images, and released into society.
The future possibility and ideal image becomes the present fact in terms of inherent
ability to overcome the inertia of the past. The features of the present moment inevitably
are the results of the meeting of the future and the past, of what should be because the
time for its actualization in a cyclic process has come, and what has been. In this meeting
the possibility that has come to maturity not only encounters, but has to accept and interact
with the human situation which it has radically to transform. This interaction of the future
with the past is what is meant by the term karma. Karma basically means action; and no
action operates in a vacuum. No creation is ex nihilo (out of nothing) — the creation of a
universe as well as that of a work of art. The results of a release of kinetic energy at any
point of space and time depend as much on what the situation and evolutionary state of
affairs was at that place and at that moment as on the power and character of the power
being released.
Everything in the universe is what it has been able to become when a new evolutionary
potentiality which has reached the state of spiritual maturity struck with fecund energy at
structures that, at that very moment, had proved to be fundamentally obsolete. The
reactions or responses of these structures — personal egos structures or social institutions
— reveal the karma of the individual or the collective person, of a man or a nation. What is
popularly called "bad karma" simply means a strong inertial resistance of the past to the
transforming action of the future possibility. A set of negative images based on past actions
or refusals to act either tries to block the descending power of the transformative spirit, or
to deviate and pervert it so that it can be made to operate along the old grooves of some
past institution or personal complex.
 An Avatar appears as a divine transformative answer to a human collectivity which has
reached in its cycle a crisis of growth. Crisis etymologically means "decision." A decision has
to be made; a definite expansion or a basic repolarization of consciousness is needed,
perhaps in order to break the stranglehold of institutions and sociocultural habits and
traditions which, useful as they may have been in the past, are now obstacles to essential
growth. The Avatar answers the need by bringing to at least a few human beings whose
consciousness has become dissatisfied and expectant the fascinating embodiment and
radiation of a future for which they have yearned, dimly perhaps or without real hope of its
actualization. Now, for them, the ideal, the new way of life, the revolutionary quality of
feeling and/or thinking, have become man — the inner vision, concrete and adorable reality.
But ready as these few may be to resonate to the divine, because transformative,
manifestation, their readiness is nevertheless still conditioned by the culture and religion in
which they were born, or (and this can be as determinant and binding a factor) by their
revulsion against the Old, now that they have beheld the New. In any case, these few are a
very small minority. The masses still respond to the old emotional slogans; they still
worship the ancient images though they have become empty of real spiritual vitality and
meaning. The Avatar must speak their language. He must be human. He must have
experienced the need of the human collectivity, personally, in himself; he may have been
tempted and overcome the then expectable human ego-responses. He may then radiate
his own victory upon the people around him; he becomes an exemplar of victory.
All spiritual living is a constant victory over the inertia of the past. The racial or group
karma must be accepted, faced and absorbed into the dharma's victory. The divine destiny
is fulfilled, but it can only be fulfilled in relation to all that in man represents the past up to
that point. It is fulfilled through the past which, sensing it is being challenged, always
tends to renew its vigor and increase its hold upon the masses. The Avatar meets his
"shadow" — which is the shadow of the human race, or of a particular culture — in men who
fanatically, because fearfully, persecute him, or twist his message so as to make it sound
ridiculous.
These things have been said before, but how few realize their importance and their
implications! It is because the fighting clans of ancient India were ravaging the country in
their perpetual wars that the Avatar, Krishna, became a statesman of consummate skill who
managed to induce the rival armies to meet with equal strength at the Battle of Kurukshetra
so that they would destroy each other, a destruction which marked the end of the rule of
the Warrior caste. Then, and only then, could the rise of the Brahmins produce the great
Age of Philosophy which lasted until after Gautama the Buddha. An old way of life had to be
superseded by a new one; or perhaps the perverted forms of a once pure system had to be
eradicated, at least for a time. Krishna, as often great gurus do, set the stage so that the
antagonistic passions of mankind could destroy each other. But, according to the tradition,
at the eve of the great battle, he gave to his disciple, Arjuna, the great discourses of the
Bhagavad Gita, establishing what presumably was the first complete statement of an all-
inclusive theistic and devotional religious philosophy which foreshadowed the spiritual needs
of a humanity about to experience a gradual process of individualization and ego-
centralization.
It was also the past failure of mankind — or at least of what H.P.B. called the Fifth
Root-Race — which gave form and a tragic character to the manifestation of the Christ-spirit
of universal Love in the person of an at least partly Jewish man; this because the Jewish
people, as a sociocultural whole, embodied the most specific need that many inadequate
and perverting responses or actual failures had produced in mankind.
Western mankind was pathetically unready to accept or even understand what the
transformation of man's feeling-responses and essential being implied. But are we any more
ready to accept, or even to recognize, the new Avataric descent whose time has now come?
It is this descent of spiritual planetary power that, acting at first at high spiritual levels,
precipitated or induced the present-day crisis of a world-wide transformation of human
society. This crisis has taken and is still taking the form required to meet the many failures
and perversions of Western civilization. "God" creates through the Avatar, but man's past
is the material available for the creation. Because of this, the creative process takes a long
time. The present crisis of transformation has not yet reached its climax at the level of
human collectivities. It is a process which involves more than one great divine
manifestation, more than one avataric being.
Some fifty-five years ago, in a book long ago discarded, I wrote about what I called
"the Avataric Cycle," suggesting that such a transformation had to include many phases,
each affecting a particular level of human activity. Each level has a basic rhythm of its own,
and corresponds to a specific type of event or manifestation. As this is a time in which
several cycles are interacting, the human situation is particularly complex. I have already
spoken of these cycles (cf. the chapter "Planetary and Social Cycles"), but we may now
discuss the relation of great avataric events to them, century after century. It is
nevertheless essential for us to hold clearly in mind the idea that we are dealing with one
great planetary movement which constitutes the gradual process of actualization in various
forms — each responding to the essential nature of one level of Man's activity — of a new
quality of consciousness, and a potentially new way of collective living for a regenerated
humanity.
The Avatar essentially is a process. It is a "rite of passage" for mankind. It announces
the coming of a new vibration, the beginning of a new way of life. One may wish to think by
comparison of human biosocial periods of transition such as puberty, coming of age, change
of life; but correspondences usually are dangerous, or at least confusing, if literally applied.
If a very general analogy were to be established it probably would be best to compare
mankind's present situation to the change of life during the "dangerous forties"; yet this
would tell only part of the story. Whatever it be compared with, the planetary crisis mankind
is now experiencing, if seen from an occult-spiritual point of view, is truly a vast ritual. In
this planetary ritual, great personages, some visible but many more invisible, are
performing their acts of destiny according to cyclic rhythms. Unfortunately to most human
beings these rhythms are unknown or unclear and the performances are ambiguous or
ambivalent. They have to be, because they take place on a human stage nearly totally
obscured by either the doctrinarian or the intellectual concepts of our tragic European-
American civilization whose gods are the ego and the rationalistic mind, though in name we
may worship God as a superego and His Biblical revelation as a supermind.
The Age is dark with blatant pride, violence and greed. Passions are wild, after a period
of artificial containment. We worship success, comfort, material possessions. Confusion is in
every soul and mind. How could the great "rite of passage" to a new humanity, or at least a
new consciousness of the meaning of being human, be anything but a mysterious
performance in the crypt of the human temple, while on the floor above nations as well as
individuals indulge in mock trials, and devastating and absurd wars? Yet the ritual unfolds
its potentialities of human renewal as ineluctably cosmic time moves on toward its
fulfillment.
Something will be fulfilled. At least the multifarious seeds of future collective
developments will have been sown upon the Earth. Some individuals will perform their roles
of destiny, even though they falter and stumble in the darkness and against the powers of
darkness. What mankind as a whole will accomplish, how the crisis will reach its apex and
what will follow, who can really tell? One should go on, regardless; for man's essential duty
in such a time of crisis is to walk on, in faith and patience, with a mind open to the future
and uncluttered by ghosts or memories, and, in one's deepest being, with love to illumine,
however faintly, the roughness of the path.
As we saw in the chapter, "Planetary and Social Cycles," three clearly defined cycles
are operating at this time; and undoubtedly there are larger ones of which we have no
working knowledge. The widely publicized transition between the so-called Piscean and
Aquarian Ages began with the spread of the Industrial Revolution in the forties of last
century; it is a phase of the nearly 26,000 year-long cycle of the precession of the
equinoxes. Because that cycle refers to one of the slow rhythms of our planet, Earth, it
affects the entire biosphere; and within this biosphere, mankind as a whole. As we have
already seen at the close of the chapter, "A Planetary Frame of Reference" the fundamental
vibration or tone of the Earth in our present evolutionary period can be symbolized by
number 4. We are in a fourth Round, or a "fourth world." This number gives the key to all
natural processes on this planet. It defines the characteristic quality of Earth nature.
Inasmuch as mankind operates within the Earth's biosphere, it too generically is
responding en masse to this vibration 4. But Man as cosmic archetype represents on this
planet the potentiality as it were, to fecundate the 4-controlled biosphere with the vibration
5 which refers to the transformative Mind. It is therefore man's Great Work, in the
alchemical sense of these words, to transform Earth nature by pervading it with the type of
consciousness vibrating to the 5. It is to raise his biological and psychic nature to the level
of the creative Mind. Man's archetypal image is the five-pointed star, the pentagram.
 When this star points upward, the human mind is reaching toward the realm where the
vibration 6 operates — the realm of spiritual being — and of a holistic and unanimous
consciousness which includes all in a realization of divine Unity, or one should rather say of
all-encompassing wholeness and synthesis. When, on the other hand, the five-pointed star
of Man points downward, the great reversal has occurred and SANAT has become SATAN.
The mind, instead of being illumined by the light of the unitive spirit (manas tajasi), is
overcome by the entropy of all natural processes within the biosphere; it is being quartered
on the cross of matter, and the spiritually fecund power latent in the highest chakras is
supplanted by the generative, then degenerative, passions rooted in the lowest centers.
The vibration 5 pervades what should be strictly called civilization," in contrast to
"culture" which refers to the natural process of cultivation (biological and psychological)
operating under the vibration 4. The word civilization comes from the Latin, civitas, which
means "a city." It may be related, at least symbolically, to the Sanskrit, Shiva, the god of
transformative processes, which may mean spiritual rebirth, or merely death. The German
historian, Oswald Spengler, opposed civilization to culture (Kultur), praising the latter and
presenting the former in its most degenerative aspect, the modern metropolis, symbolized
in the Gospel by Babylon. But civilization is as ambivalent as the human mind. It can lead to
the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, which desends from the spiritual-archetypal realm, or to
Babylon. To the true "Fifth-Rounder" the "black magician" answers in the darkness of the
netherworld.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Avatars and Seed Men for a New Civilization - 2

The realm of mind apparently unfolds its inherent potentialities in cycles whose
common denominator is a 500-year period. A large cycle of 10,000 years is mentioned in
The Mahatma Letters (p. 117) which is said to refer to the reappearance of the Buddha.
As Buddha essentially symbolizes the power and wisdom of vibration 6, this 10,000 year
cycle may refer to periodical attempts by him or by great beings related to him to focus a
strong spiritual "Light" upon those whose work is attuned to the higher aspect of the Mind.
We have seen that conjunctions of Neptune and Pluto occur close to every five hundred
years. I believe that these conjunctions, and the periods during which Pluto moves within
Neptune's orbit, are very important indicators, clocking, as it were, the process of
civilization in a global sense. There was such a conjunction in 1891-92 and in a very few
years and until the end of the century, Pluto will be closer to the Sun, and thus move a little
faster than Neptune. Fifty years — a tenth of the whole cycle — had elapsed since the
Neptune-Pluto conjunction when the U.S. entered World War II and the atom bomb project
was started; and the idea of atomic fission can be traced to the discovery by Roentgen of X-
rays, a discovery soon followed by that of radium by the Curies. We can refer to these fifty
years as the germinal period of transition of the 500-year cycle; the seed period of the cycle
began fifty years before in the early forties of the nineteenth century. And this was also the
time (1844 to 1848) when the seed-period of the Piscean Age began.
According to Hindu chronology, the Kali Yuga (or Iron Age) began in 3102 B.C. If we
add five thousand years (ten 500-year periods) we come to the last years of last century.
H.P. Blavatsky died in May 1891, and Baha'u'llah on May 29, 1892. William Q. Judge, who
worked devotedly and in close spiritual contact with H.P.B. and was instrumental in starting
the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, died in 1896. A new phase in Western
occultism seems to have begun with the new century.
This leads us to a consideration of the century which, by its very nature, refers to
sociocultural processes, inasmuch as it depends for its start on the calendar adopted by a
particular society and religion. A century constitutes one-fifth of the 500-year cycle of
civilization and of the development of the mind — as a principle of activity at least relatively
independent (or susceptible of becoming independent) from the vibration of nature in the
Earth's biosphere. As a new 500-year cycle began in the 1890's, the preceding one started
at the close of the fourteenth century. And a number of theosophists believe that this was
the time when the trans-Himalayan Brotherhood (and perhaps other Brotherhoods as well)
planned to attempt during the last quarter of every century to bring to the Western world as
much of the ancient planetary and "Kumaric" knowledge as Western people could respond
to and assimilate. It is said that the true Rosicrucian Movement began with Christian
Rosenkrantz in the last quarter of the fourteenth century. This period was also the
beginning of the Humanistic Movement which led to the Renaissance and the development
of the modern mentality.
A very interesting fact is that, if we consider the five centuries which, broadly speaking,
began in 1400, we can establish a very suggestive relation between the specific character of
these centuries — at least at the level of the transformative Mind of Man — and the
sequence of planets in the solar system.
We will start with the Earth, as the foundation of civilization, and relate it to the
fourteenth century (1300 to 1400), when the need for a new vision and new social concepts
was arising, leading to the formation of modern nations. Mars then corresponds to the
fifteenth century which ended with the start of the great voyages that enabled at least a few
men to circumnavigate the globe and thus to experience — the fundamental nature and
shape of the Earth. The sixteenth century can be symbolized by Jupiter. It witnessed the
Renaissance and the creative activities of visionaries and many-sided men who sought to
expand man's cosmic vision and to build a new Europe. It also saw the birth of
Protestantism.
Saturn solidifies what Jupiter has expanded; and with that planet we come to the
seventeenth century, with its cruel religious wars, solidifying a division in the Western mind,
and the triumph of Classical formalism and rigorous ritualism (the French king, Louis XIV
and his Versailles Court). The seventeenth century also began with Francis Bacon's Novum
Organum which established the principles of the scientific method and of objective,
rationalistic thinking-principles which gained full control of the official Western mind after
Descartes, Newton, and in sociopolitical matters, Locke.
The eighteenth century is the Uranian century, the century of the Enlightenment, of
Free Masonry and of the Revolutionary Era. What had begun in the Mars century with
Humanism, the birth of a national consciousness, the discovery of America and the first
attempts at breaking the stranglehold of the "one and indivisible Medieval Catholic Order,"
reached a powerful new stage of manifestation after 1700, partly in opposition to the
formalism and autocratic rigor of the Saturn century. The transformative operation of the
vibration 5 associated with Uranus nevertheless was confined to the level of intellectual
abstractions. Democracy, freedom, equality, fraternity were mainly ideals embodied in great
slogans and declarations of individual or collective independence. They had to face the
crucial test of how to meet and respond to the availability of the vast new powers released
by the Industrial Revolution and by the need for the world expansion in order to obtain raw
materials for industry.
The European and American nations failed quite miserably to meet that difficult test;
and the nineteenth century is largely the story of that failure. It was the Neptune century;
and as Neptune is the universal solvent of alchemical lore, so that century witnessed the
dissolution of the old aristocratic and feudal traditions and the rise of both a mercantile
materialistic bourgeoisie and an increasingly desperate proletariat, progeny of the new
industrial order. But this was also the century of Romanticism and Christian socialism and
humanitarianism, of Utopian communities and the Red Cross.
During the forties of the century, as Neptune was discovered, two great religious
movements — one of which was atheistic —were started which envisioned a totally new and
global society: the Bahai Faith in its initial form, and the Communist Movement as
introduced by Karl Marx and Frederick Engles. Because these two movements have not been
seen in a truly significant, not only historical but planetary perspective, and their very
special polar relationship — spiritual and material — has never been understood or even
less referred to the seed period between the Piscean and Aquarian Ages — I feel it is
important for me here to discuss them at some length.
The Bahai Movement began in Persia in 1844 with the proclamation by an inspired and
soon martyred youth (the Bab, a descendant of Mohammed), that the Islamic era had
ended and that a new age was beginning, whose source would be a great "divine
Manifestation." In 1863 one of the Bab's main disciples (the son of one of the ministers of
the Shah of Persia), after experiencing harsh persecution and exile, proclaimed himself "He
who was to come," taking the name of Baha'u'llah (the Glory of Allah). Soon after, while a
prisoner in the pestilential Turkish town of Akka (in what is now Israel), in his "Letters to
Kings" and in many Tablets, he set down basic principles for a new World-Order and a
detailed body of directives for its practical social and political organization. The concept of
unity (or integration) is basic in such an organization. Twelve basic principles are
formulated: (1) the oneness of mankind, (2) the independent investigation of truth, (3) the
foundation of all religions are one (4) religion must be a cause of unity, (5) religion must be
in accord with science and reason, (7) prejudices of all kinds must be forgotten, (8)
universal peace is the goal, (9) universal education must prevail, (10) a spiritual solution of
the economic problem must be found,(11) a universal language, and (12) a universal
tribunal must be established.(1)
These principles — let us not forget — were proclaimed by a prisoner of the Turkish
government just after 1863 without any contact with Western society. Some of them are
very idealistic, as was the Uranian slogan of the French revolution: liberty, equality,
fraternity. But the Bahai's were first in Asia to demand and to practice the full liberation of
women, their equal participation with men in all social and religious matters, a complete
lack of race and color discrimination, and their Faith has no room for any kind of priesthood.
Marxian world-communism also aimed at establishing a planetary society free from
conflicts and from what Marx and Engels considered to be the fundamental cause of
international, interclass, and interpersonal warfare: but it believed in achieving ends by
violent and (whenever necessary) deceitful and utterly ruthless means. It has sought to
foster hatred between social classes and to induce in the proletariat and the oppressed
people of the world total despair by denying them even the consolation of religious other-
world beliefs, so that being desperate they would risk everything to achieve physical and
materialistic social victory over the privileged and oppressing classes — an important point
often forgotten.
In these two movements, the Bahai Faith and at least original Communism, the ideal
end in view is a world-society in which all human beings would live in peace — thus one
might say, Millennium, a New Age global world. But for the Bahai's this new world is seen as
the outer manifestation on Earth, at a time dictated by the vast cyclic processes of a God-
created universe, of a divinely appointed World-Order embodying the perfection of justice
and moved by all-encompassing Love. In contrast, Communism thinks of human freedom
and social equality only in terms of material power, wealth, and opportunity; and its
philosophical and evolutionary philosophy was and still is determined by the concepts of a
materialistic and godless nineteenth century science.
For the Bahais, the means to actualize the ideal vision and the Divine Plan can only be
love and utter faith in the Divine Manifestation, Baha'u'llah, which implies total surrender to
the will of God and social unanimity achieved through such a surrender. For the materialistic
Communist, the only surrender is to a Cause that forces upon its adherents obedience and
the use of violence and deceit in a prolonged ruthless conflict aiming at unanimity only
through the brutal suppression of opponents and dissent in all its forms.
Communism has achieved great political victories during the twentieth century,
dominating vast countries and populations. The Bahai Faith has spread to nearly all
countries of the Earth with its small "local assemblies" and, since 1963, its international
"House of Justice" in Haifa, Israel where its headquarters are located, close to the tombs
where the bodies of the Bab and Baha'u'llah rest, protected from still violent Mohammedan
fanaticism by the Israeli state.
In view of the expansion of the Bahai Faith, of its most remarkable history and its
possible future, it may seem strange that so few people concerned with "spiritual" values
and believing in a divine Plan gave any real attention to and study all that is implied in the
Bahai phenomenon — certainly the most significant, dramatic and compelling religious event
since the birth and spread of Islam in the seventh century; but there are several reasons for
this. The most obvious one is the manner in which Baha'u'llah expressed himself, using the
involved, metaphoric, and apocalyptic language of Persian and Sufi mysticism, and even
now the way his followers present his teachings to a humanity conditioned by scientific
rationalism and the practical down-to-earth demands and problems of our present society.
People today, either are still very much depending upon the Western Christian tradition and
its basic symbols and concepts, or else they seek to avoid any absolute commitment to any
doctrine based on suprarational claims, unless these claims are made by living persons who
can provide them with directly experienceable manifestations of their supernatural
wisdom and power. Most Bahais today, passionately certain as they are of the divine
character of Baha'u'llah's mission, can only radiate their often dogmatic fervor and the
absoluteness of their beliefs. Moreover, the Bahai way of life makes certain demands on the
individualistic men and women of our time which are not too easy to accept, for individual
opinions not based on the revealed "Truth" are usually not favored in Bahai communities.
Such opinions have been and are even less acceptable in doctrinarian Communist cells.
With the Bahai Faith (in a spiritual God-enthralled sense) as with the strict Communist
Movement, (in a materialistic and destruction-oriented way), we deal with forms of
totalitarianism — subtle yet powerful in the first case, and harsh and deadly in the second —
because the compulsive pressure of the need to achieve unanimity requires monolithic
features and policies. Mankind has been subjected to such pressures throughout the
centuries and millennia, but the Uranian revolution of the eighteenth century, stressing the
value of the individual and of "free" scientific inquiry, has brought to a focus in our society
the individualizing process, and therefore also the inevitability of strong centrifugal forces.
Even then, how free is scientific inquiry, and how devoid of compulsive pressures, financial
or psychological, is our democracy? While democratic individualism is an attempt to give
free expression to the character of the vibration 5 which has now great power, this power
very often lacks a truly spiritual foundation, simply because the fundamental character of
the stage of evolution at which the masses of mankind and Earth nature as a whole operate
remains, as I have already stressed, the vibration 4. And both the Bahai Faith and World-
Communism essentially are mass movements, as are all organized and institutionalized
religions.
Nevertheless, there are many levels at which this vibration can and does operate. It is
at least possible, and even probable, that at this time in human evolution the Bahai Faith
represents the highest possibility of organizing mankind as a whole on a divinely inspired
basis. On the other hand, Marxian communism, even in its most idealistic and "religious"
(even if atheistic) form, represents a matter-bound, spirit-denying response to this mass
vibration of the Earth and mankind. To the individualistic mind eager for freedom and self-
determination, both movements are difficult to accept, at least in their entirety. Other paths
are therefore provided for such minds to follow.

1. The only Westerner to see Baba'u'llah in his later years was Edward G. Browne, an
Orientalist from Cambridge University. Browne had several audiences in 1890 near Haifa
and his description of Baba'u'llah's features almost suggests those attributed by some
Theosophists to the archetypal Manu of our Fifth Root-Race: "The face of him on whom I
gazed I can never forget, though I cannot describe it. Those piercing eyes seemed to read
one's very soul; power and authority sat on that ample brow; while the deep lines on the
forehead and face implied an age which the jet-black hair and beard flowing down in
indistinguishable luxuriance almost to the waist seemed to belie. No need to ask in whose
presence I stood, as I bowed myself before One who is the object of a devotion and love
which kings might enjoy and emperors sigh for in vain!"
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Avatars and Seed Men for a New Civilization - 3

To get a deeper, more "occult" grasp of what is involved at this present critical
time of history, I shall once more refer to the dynamic relationship between the numbers
involved in a septenary system of evolution. The fourth stage (Round or "world") constitutes
the bottom section of the cycle. As we begin with number 1 on the top, we see the
evolutionary process "descending" through stages 2 and 3, reaching bottom with 4,
ascending through 5 and 6, and with number 7 reaching again the top — or rather reaching
above the original starting point when we deal with a spiral and not merely an abstract
circle. Number 7 symbolizes in this septenary formula the Seed which is both a cycle's
culmination and the potential beginning of a new one.
There is, therefore, a definite vertical connection between the numbers 1 and 4. What
was "the First" can reflect itself into the fourth stage of the cycle. It can, in a very real
sense, do more than reflect itself; it can project its power (shakti, Holy Ghost) through a
fourth stage person, who becomes not only illumined by it, but transfigured and even
transsubstantiated — that is, who becomes an Avatar of-the Creative God, the Root of the
entire cycle.(2)
What this means is that we may see in Baha'u'llah the Avatar for the new cycle in his
manifestation in the very depth of Earth nature and as an embodiment of the Root-
power of our present Fourth Round humanity — the power that was in the beginning of that
particular phase of the evolution of the whole planet, Earth. We may give to that Root-
power any name we wish; it represents the God of Nature in this particular aspect of the
Earth's total evolution. And, significantly, the Bahai calendar begins with the spring equinox,
the time of the rebirth of nature. This calendar divides the year into nineteen months of
nineteen days, plus four days of festivities just before the spring equinox.(3)
On the other hand, Karl Marx and world communism represent the process of
"chaotization" of the past, thus, a culture-destroying return to the state of non-
differentiation in matter. And we must not forget that the humus of the soil represents
"virgin potentiality" as it exists in the Earth's biosphere. Thus many men having given up
hope of seeing their ideal vision triumph over the stubborn inertia and conservatism of an
obsolete social system can conceive no other way but that of bringing about total chaos, in
the hope that mankind may thus become revirginized and repotentialized, and a new world
may emerge. However, this is not the way of seed men; for seed-men have faith in (and
Avatars fully realize) their ability to serve as focusing agents for a new descent of the
creative and transforming power of the spirit.
Allow me to repeat that this spiritual descent of power does not operate only at the
level of Earth's nature, even if it may find there its most complete personal formulation
and human incorporation. Because the vibration 5 of the mind has been strongly
stressed, especially in the European races, a large number of human beings have succeeded
in developing an at least minimal response to the opportunity to experience directly and
manipulate creative forces at the level of archetypal principles. Our Western civilization as a
whole since the sixth century B.C. is oriented toward mental activities beyond the realm of
biopsychic urges and needs. Therefore the Avataric Descent of our seed-period of history
had also to take form at that level of the transformative Mind.
It is at that level that the great Occult Brotherhoods make contact with humanity as
a whole, because the "more-than-men" who form these Brotherhoods are "Fifth Rounders,"
though they are also illumined and empowered by the vibrations of a still higher level, the
level at which vibration 6 operates. Their point of public contact with mankind last century
was essentially the person whom we know as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky — a lens through
which the Brotherhood poured some of its mind-transforming knowledge.
Baha'u'llah did not claim to be an "incarnation" of God whom his followers revere as El
Abha. He said only that in one of his two "stations" — the station of divine unity — he was
an Image of, and a mouthpiece for the Divine.(4) In a similar though probably different
manner, H.P.B. also was a dual manifestation — the vehicle for the Brothers, and a human
body. In that sense, she can also be considered an Avataric personage in terms of the
level at which her mission was to operate. The heavy karma of the collective mentality
of the Western civilization was also a part of her being, defining its limitations and special
character. The Avataric descent and the circumstances surrounding the release of the Mind-
power had to be conditioned by the at times unbearable pressure of the vibrations of the
perverted and obtuse mentality of the West and by the satanic impact of institutions bent
on preserving their privileges at all costs. The "revelation" expressed in The Mahatma
Letters was not only the manifestation of the trans-Himalayan Brotherhood's mind and the
formulation of its knowledge; it was rather the outcome of the relationship between the
Mahatma K. H. and Mr. A. P. Sinnett. Always the Avatar is God-man; but actually he takes
the form that the relationship between man and God makes possible at the time.
Tragic misunderstandings and often violent partisanship result from most people's
inability to accept this as a fact. God speaks to every kind or group of human beings in the
way this kind or group is able to understand the words spoken. Thus, I repeat that every
divine revelation is partly divine and partly human; it is a "revelation" — the One cosmic
Truth is "veiled again" so that it may not blind the consciousness receiving the message. It
is only in the Seventh Race, "a race of Buddhas and Christs" (H.P.B. wrote in The Secret
Doctrine) that men's minds, having become totally clear and pure, will be able to "see God
face to face," to use a traditional expression. Yet the more the consciousness becomes open
and clear, the more it may hold and understand the illumination, formulating it in the
increasingly adequate words of a gradually more flexible, multidimensional and spirit-
oriented language.
Every race or nation has its culture and language, and the language reveals the
character of the culture. What we are witnessing in our Plutonian twentieth century — and
to a lesser extent this occurred also toward the close of last century — is the coming of
human beings who incorporate within themselves the seed harvest of the culture of the race
or nation in which they have been born, and in some creative manner who release this
harvest to those who, by dharmic connection, will become attracted to, or fascinated by it.
They are seed men, and in nations like India where the identity of atman and brahman has
been for so many centuries a powerful belief — and in a sense, an experience — these men
are prone to say "I am God" and not only call themselves avatars, but claim to be the
Avatar.
A number of men are living today who make or have recently made this claim — in
India, in Korea, in France, and in other lands. Lesser claims of a similar nature are also
heard; and they all may to some extent be based on real experience and on the existence
of a more or less direct, pure, and effectual line of descent whose origin is in the realm of
the transformative Mind of Man. In different ways, the individuals making such claims
attempt to convey to others who are attuned to them at least the quality of their responses
to the planetary Avataric descent which is still moving along its path of destiny marked by
the combination of culminating or starting cycles.
The nineteenth century was, I believe, the century during which the spiritual (or shall
we say "monadic"?) release of Avataric power occurred in terms of the planet as a whole.
Power was released, the fundamental Tone of the future Age. But power is not
consciousness, any more than spirit is the same as mind! It was only in the last quarter of
the century that the seeds of a new Mind and a new civilization were released, and these
seeds still pertained mostly to what had inevitably to assume an "occult" character because
of the collective mentality of our leading and ruthlessly dominating Western world. The
nineteenth century constituted a period during which the divine Fatherhood was at work;
but the fecundative act does not mean birth. It even takes time for an awareness of
pregnancy to rise in the mother-to-be. Because of this, the twentieth century spiritually is
the era of divine Sonship — or at least that of the intimation and revelation of a new
progeny, a New Age. There might also be a miscarriage; but in terms of planetary evolution,
I do not believe that a total miscarriage of what the divine Power initiated can take place.
What may happen is the birth of a deformed child, perhaps a spastic one — and certainly
our Christian European Piscean Age culture had features and behavior suggesting spasticity!
It seems that we are approaching a moment of crisis; and perhaps the coming of Pluto
closer to the Sun than Neptune may soon signal the beginning of the crisis. The last quarter
of the century is now beginning. A century ago the Theosophical Movement was started in
New York. Two centuries ago the Declaration of Independence proclaimed to the world of
nations the birth of a collective person, the United States of America, whose destiny it was
to demonstrate a new type of society and political operation. Did these two departures, so
different in character and importance, yet based on similar principles, achieve what it was
their archetypal destiny to achieve? Hardly so. From the very first, both have groaned under
the burden of the heavy karma of Western society and of an early perversion and
dogmatization of the great Christ-Impulse that was the source of the Avataric descent of
nearly two thousand years ago.
Then, the Fathers of the Church persecuted the different groups of Gnostics who
sought to fecundate with the Christ spirit the seed harvest of by then disintegrating
societies and religions. Unfortunately the Gnostics were too pervaded with the
intellectualism of the Greek tradition, and their integrative synthesizing endeavors were
defeated by ambitious men who knew how to play with the emotions of the masses and
were not averse to resorting to deceit and destruction. In our present time, Occultists, (or
esotericists) are in a very real sense the Gnostics of this cycle. Will the Second Coming of
the Christ that so many hope for or expect, illumine the spiritual and intellectual confusion
of our humanity and stabilize the minds of so many seekers and devotees? Are we to
expect, after 1975, only a century-cycle manifestation in and through a new agent and
mouthpiece of Occult Brotherhoods, or can we hope for the culmination of the entire Piscean
Age in a truly divine Personage? Has this culmination already occurred, as Bahais believe, in
the person of Baha'u'llah — or did he, as some have said, belong to some still larger cycle,
as probably Krishna did?
A number of esotericists seem to believe that the Christ is not to reappear in a physical
body, but that of human beings who will channel forth his power as the new sixth subrace
begins to manifest, so that the energy of the vibration 6 may be strengthened and brought
to focus in and through a number of "germinal" personages. The development of a strong
interest in Buddhism, especially since Tibetan monks fled from Tibet and found refuge
mainly in America, may be a significant part of the strengthening of the vibration. Moreover,
we must not forget that the spiritual power of evolutionary currents may also take
seemingly destructive forms, and especially that whoever may now function as a public
agent for the Brotherhood may be found in places where the typical student of esoteric
knowledge does not expect him or her. He might operate in any country, even in or behind
the political scene.

2. Most interestingly, Baha'u'llah came to realize fully his mission when chained with
criminals on the floor of an empty cistern — this floor being reached by three steps
downward (the "three days in hell" after the Christian Crucifixion?). This symbolizes a
complete (number 3) descent into the underground, the realm of roots and of decaying
humus (the criminals). It was while in this dreadful state that he became fully aware of his
mission; the revelation of it coming to his consciousness in the form of a "heavenly maiden"
who brought back to him the remembrance of his "true Name."

3. The number nineteen was the sacred number of the movement started with the Bab in
1844, prelude to the Bahai Faith. It is a soli-lunar symbol, for the Moon's Nodes have a
nearly nineteen year cycle, and the Nodes represent the potential integration of solar and
lunar forces as their axis is the intersection of the planes of the ecliptic and of the Moon's
revolution around the Earth.

4 In a second station (or character) he was essentially human and limited by his "mission"
which in turn was conditioned by the need of his time. Baha'u'llah writes in the Kitab-i-
Iqan (the Baba'i Book of the Law): "Each Manifestation of God hath a distinct individuality,
a definitely prescribed mission, a predestined Revelation and specially designated limitation.
Each one of them is known by a different name . . . Viewed from the standpoint of their
oneness and sublime detachment, the attributes of Godhead, Divinity, Supreme Singleness
and Inmost Essence have been and are applicable to those Essences of being, in as much as
they are above on the throne of divine Revelation and are established upon the seat of
divine Concealment, Through their appearance, the Revelation of God is made manifest and
by their countenance the Beauty of God is revealed. Thus it is that the accents of God
Himself have been heard, uttered by these Manifestations of the divine Being."

"Viewed in the light of their second station — the station of distinction, differentiation,
temporal limitations, characteristics and standards they manifest absolute servitude, utter
destitution and complete self-effacement. Even as He said: 'I am the servant of God. I am
but a man like you.'" (Quoted in S.E. Esslemont's book p. 51-52.) This is a very clear
statement of the dual nature of the Avatar.

We may note in this connection the reversal of letters in the words Abha and Baha. In all
alphabets the letter A (the First Point, in the Koran; the Greek alpha) represents the divine
fecundating principle (the Greek Logos Spermatikos); while the letter B refers to the
receptive feminine principle. "Abha" is God in His unconditioned eternal realm; "Baha"
means His Glory or the Holy Spirit. The basic question, of course, is always, what actually a
person means by "God."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Avatars and Seed Men for a New Civilization - 4

If the celestial symbol for this twentieth century is Pluto, it is a rather mysterious
and ambiguous one. In my book New Mansions for New Men (written in 1935-36) I
spoke of this remote planet as a cosmic symbol of the Seed. It undoubtedly may be related
to various kinds of underground manifestations and to decay; but above all it represents the
power that destroys all superficial glamour and all illusions. It leaves whatever it touches
stark naked, void of all external attributes, but also strictly and purely what it essentially
is. The whole life-species and its power of persistence and also mutation are condensed in
the seed. But only what is essential is there; no superfluity can exist within the hard shell of
the seed. In this sense the Plutonian century, now in its autumnal season, is a period during
which many seedmen are living in whom an immense potency of futurity operates, in
whatever field of activity they may perform their perhaps hidden (occult) task. One might
say that, in the nineteenth century a great planetary mutation occurred in the occult world
of the seed of Man, and that in this present century the transformation-in-depth has
reached the level of the conscious mind in those human beings who were born ready for the
focalization and formulation of the new vision and the new hope. In many people, and
especially in today's young people this is still only an intuitive and difficult to express
feeling-realization; but before the year 2000 something should occur to give a more
tangible and evident character to the expectation of a fundamental change in human affairs,
both at the level of consciousness and psychology and in terms of at least a preliminary
start in social organization at a global level.(5)
In 1891-92 a new 500-year cycle began. I related symbolically the preceding five
centuries to Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. The new 500-year series of five
century units could then be said to start under the rulership of Pluto. Perhaps new and
distant planets may be discovered; the existence of at least one more seems certain. What
this may mean is that, with Pluto, we definitely enter a realm that is the foundation of a
definite relationship with the cosmic forces and principles operating in a truly "galactic"
manner. The fact that mankind's collective attention has recently been strongly focused on
space-travel and unmanned investigations of the planets of the solar system now provides
us with a set of publicly accepted facts and even of scientifically acceptable expectations
which are conditioning our new approach to the problem of establishing a path leading from
the sensation conditioned and intellectually limited world of knowledge of Western man to a
transcendent realm not only of consciousness, but of actual experience.
Last century the fascinating possibility of transcending our everyday awareness of
reality and contacting the "spirits" of the dead gave form to the Spiritualistic Movement;
and H. P. B. and those behind her activities used this fascinating possibility to gain the
public attention required for the dissemination of her message. As already stated in the
third chapter of this book, one hundred years from the date of the rapid spread of
Spiritualistic phenomena across the United States and the formation of groups of people
involved in séances of various types, the UFO phenomena began to attract the attention of
the media and a large public. The Spiritualistic Movement is definitely Neptunian in
character; the UFO phenomena and the fast spreading "communications" claimed to
originate in "Space people" have far more a Plutonian significance, for they deal with what is
supposed to be physical beings living in material conditions in other solar systems or
galaxies. The UFO flying saucers may or may not be actual facts related to galactic space or
pointing to new dimensions of space-time; but at least they form the substance of a new
"myth," by means of which harassed and confused modern man can release some of his
subconscious or superconscious longings for some new kind of "beyond." This century that
beyond is Plutonian, while one hundred years ago it was the Neptunian beyond of psychic
research, astral plane experiences, and communications with "Masters" through sensitives
or trance mediums.
The question almost inevitably comes to mind whether the Occult Brotherhoods, if they
are indeed trying to establish a new public contact with mankind during the last quarter of
this twentieth century, may not be ready to use the UFO myth for their purpose, just as
they used — with quite unhappy results, alas — Spiritualistic and psychic phenomena in
order to impress a transcendent kind of knowledge upon the collective mentality of our
Western world, and through it, of mankind as a whole. I tentatively evoked such a
possibility in the above mentioned third chapter; and at this point in our discussion the
suggestion may take a slightly more definite form.
At the time I write these pages, I personally have had no experience with flying
saucers or balls of fire in the sky; and my mind is open, but not quite ready to fully accept
any one of the theories advanced to explain sightings and phenomena, at least a fair
number of which are based on unimpeachable evidence. It seems rather probable however,
that the Unidentified Flying Objects are physical in a sense that transcends what we know
on earth as strictly material. They undoubtedly can and do dematerialize. The belief in the
possibility of human beings dematerializing and rematerializing is part not only of
theosophical Occultism but also of the Christian tradition; only in the latter case the Christ
(or Jesus) alone is considered to have been endowed with this power. Modern scientific
minds attempt to explain such a performance in terms of a fourth dimension (which H. P. B.
defined as that of "interpenetration") or even of multiple parallel or interpenetrating
universes. In The Mahatma Letters it is stated that the several "globes" constituting the
total reality of any planet, our Earth included, are in "coadunation but not cosubstantiality."
This seems to mean that they form one whole, the several globes interpenetrating and
perhaps (yet not necessarily) having a common center. This is the basic concept of a holistic
and hierarchical universe which is now held by a number of prominent scientists.(6)
The most practical corollary of this concept is the evident fact that in order to reach
galactic space a man has not to go to "heaven" or anywhere. Galactic space, as well as solar
system space pervades every cell of a human being. He has not to change space physically
to be in galactic — space or to be subjected to galactic forces. We live in the galaxy as
fishes live in the sea. If we are not aware of this fact it is because our consciousness is
earthbound; and if galactic forces are not noticeably affecting the behavior, growth, or
decay of our bodies and their cells it can only be because the materials of these bodies
vibrate at a rate which make them unresponsive to the much higher or faster vibrations of
galactic energies. Likewise we do not see X-ray vibrations and radar waves or hear
ultrasounds. Awareness depends solely on attunement, which may be blocked or altered by
external
If we understand well such now evident facts, the problem of UFOs may take a
different character, especially as several cases have been reported of UFO sightings and
near-presence which were followed by (and may be said to have "caused") some form of
physical healing or change in consciousness in the witnesses.(7) The UFOs may normally
operate in galactic space, yet under the direction of the entities who built them may be able
to radiate waves causing the witnesses to become temporarily attuned, or to resonate in
their consciousness and even cellular-atomic rhythms to the higher galactic vibrations
somewhat as we control the operations of our satellites and space-probing mechanisms;
likewise a Hindu guru can temporarily arouse psychic vision in his chela. It is also
conceivable that the reason for the appearance of so many UFOs is to raise the vibrations
not only of people seeing them, but of the materials of our planet — in other words, to
induce a slow, gradual yet basic mutation in the matter of the Earth and therefore of
our bodies, and perhaps more specifically of man's capacity to consciously respond to the
higher galactic forces.
This would mean that UFOs do not necessarily come from a distant "place" in the
universe, star or planet — or from the hollow core of the Earth, as some people have
claimed. They are here with and among us, just as Adepts and Masters are with and among
us. Their appearance may involve or seem to involve a certain amount of physical
displacement, yet this is more likely to mean the mere appearance of displacement in our
physical plane. Various testimonies of individuals able to "travel" outside of their physical
body indicate that, by merely thinking of where they wanted to be, they were there, either
immediately, or what to them seemed to be immediately.
Passing from one kind of space to another may involve what, to us at least, is "no-
time", but this does NOT mean that each kind of level of space does not have a time of its
own. Time may be concentrated into one moment (or "instant," in a philosophical sense),
just as infinite space may be concentrated in the mathematical nondimensional point. Yet if
there is a sequence of moments of concentration and of dimensional expansion, there must
inevitably be if not what we today mostly mean when speaking of time ("I have no time for
that"), at least what H. P. B. called "infinite Duration."
What I am speaking of here is a conception of time and space which parallels the
relationship between potentiality and actuality. Both polarities must be postulated as the
Chinese postulated the balanced yet dynamic opposition and interaction of Yin and Yang. In
a holistic and hierarchical universe, everything interacts and interpenetrates within cyclically
evolving wholes of experience. The greater encompasses the lesser, yet this lesser is an
integral functional part of the greater which both pervades and sustains it. As the lesser
whole develops its power and its awareness of its role in the greater, what unavoidably
happens in due time is that its "gears ratio" of organic existence and mental consciousness
changes. And we know how a change of gears can produce harsh noises, if the driver's hand
is shaking or if his mind is untrained or preoccupied.
The grating noise of mankind's present change of gears is indeed very harsh and
frightening. If we could concentrate on the movement producing the change, rather than
on the successive positions which the gear-shifting operation requires, we would be far
more likely to effectuate the change in a smooth and easy manner. But the hand and the
foot controlling the gear-changing apparatus (mankind has not yet reached the stage of
"automatic" change!) are not only unsteady; they are afraid and emotionally attached to the
position they have held for a long time. Mankind it seems, is just learning how mentally to
drive, and sooner or later the result might be near-catastrophic if man fails to rely on what
may well be his "instructor's" guidance.
It would be most unwise here to speculate on what the near-results of the present
crisis might be; but at least to my mind the end results should be thought of as positive and
exalting, even though we certainly cannot predict the concrete forms they will take. Did
Jesus actually know and visualize the slow roasting of Protestants attached to spikes turned
over a low burning fire during the wars of religion of the seventeenth century — this being
done "in His Name" to save the souls of the unfortunate dissidents?
It is probable that during the stay of Pluto "within the orbit" of Neptune and especially
around 1989-91 when a massing of six planets repeatedly occurs in the sign of Capricorn (in
Sanskrit, Makara) (which, according to The Secret Doctrine, has some connection with the
descent of the Kumaras) world-events of major importance will take place; but the level at
which they may occur cannot be safely determined, in spite of often conflicting psychic
predictions. A change in the orientation of the Earth's polar axis does not seem impossible;
but no one can definitely say what this would mean or physically produce.
What seems evident is that a repotentialization of man's collective consciousness is
already occurring, slow as it evidently is, and harsh and possibly disastrous as the
resistance of the holders of social privileges and possessors of wealth (and of the frightened
masses) might be to any radical and widespread transformation of our society. Whether the
Second Coming of Christ which many yearn for and confidently expect will occur, and if so
what form it may take, is not for me to say. Glowing expectations of a millennial all-spiritual
Aquarian Age appear naive and unrealistic, unless they be limited to small relatively isolated
sections of mankind; and such an isolation would require at first some kind of world-
catastrophe and a much smaller world population.
The vision of a seed remnant of human beings who are guided to safety and allowed to
re-begin mankind's history in at least relative peace under "divine" inspiration should not be
difficult to accept by minds familiar with Biblical tradition; yet it is not at all certain that we
have to expect a new Deluge, be it of water or fire and atomic radiations. A relatively
smooth transition to a New Age may be a possibility. This possibility, however, would
require a repotentialization of the consciousness of at least a large minority of human
beings in positions of influence, and a persistent, steady and unalterable willingness by
these people to assume collective as well as individual responsibility for the transition, in the
clear realization of what this may entail in terms of everyday living and relationship with the
masses of mankind. The idea that any revolution is "popular" makes little sense. The
masses provide the necessary conditioning without which any large-scale collective and
social change is impossible; but only a few individuals ever become the focusing agents for
the mutation whose time has matured. And maturity here means that the possibility of the
transformation has been deeply felt and clearly — even obsessimgly — imagined by the self-
consecrated few as having reached the momentum required for the actualization of a new
quality of mind and feeling, of a new sense of interpersonal and intergroup relationship, and
new principles of social organization.
Imaginators with a clear, powerfully visualizing and unprejudiced mind are needed
today, but also human beings whose egos have become purified and whose biopsychic
emotional drives have been transmuted in the alchemical fires provided by life-experiences
unreservedly and uncompromisingly open to the potential of transformation. The keynote is
repotentialization. Man's attention has to be focused on potentiality rather than actuality.
What is possible is today far more important than what now is, in depleted, past-
worshipping, utterly concrete and sellable actuality. What is has to be known and evaluated,
but known and evaluated in the perspective of the advance of new and untried possibilities.
To gain such a perspective in clarity of mind and determination of the purified will, this is
the task for all seedmen. Upon them rests the avataric responsibility for the future of Man.

5. Astrologers speak of the "great mutation" of the year 1842, when Jupiter and Saturn
were conjunct in an "earth" sign. Such mutations, however, occur about every 200 years.

7. cf. the book Hierarchical Structure (Elsevier, N. Y. 1969) edited by L. L. Whyte and
Albert and Donna Wilson. The concept of level of organization is also discussed in this book;
this was the result of a symposium under the sponsorship of the Douglas Advanced
Research Laboratories and the University of California at Irvine which was "to bring together
scientists, engineers, designers and others interested in the function of hierarchical
structures in nature, concept and design."

6. cf. The already mentioned article of Jean Vallee in Psychic magazine.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the Thresehold of Occult Knowledge - 1

The impetus given by a quantitative mathematics has led to the development of a quantitatively minded
world; it is an essential task for the future to develop the qualitative aspect of mathematics, so that the
generations to come may in time achieve a true science of the living, conscious aspect of the world.

Olive Whicher
Emerson College Sussex, England
Author of Projective Geometry, etc.

In this century, the main focus of the transformative process is the mind. It was to "change
the mind of the twentieth century" that — as she herself stated — H. P. Blavatsky was sent
among the proud and egocentric individualists of our Western society by those who were
able to work through her. From 1775 to 1875 the basic change in the physical and social
way of life had already begun to occur in its initial germinative developments. But at the
mental level these hundred years represent essentially a spiritually negative, because
materialistic phase dominated by a narrow and inflated sense of cultural-intellectual and
racial superiority. That phase was meant to destroy the foundation of the European
Medieval order with its religious dogmatism and obscurantism; but it also fostered a
dogmatism of its own. It produced a somewhat fanatical reliance upon the empirical method
exclusively concerned with sense-data totally dominated by an Aristotelian rationalism and
an intellectual equalitarianism according to which no fact was admissible unless it could be
validated by the laboratory experiments of any trained observers whenever and wherever
performed.
As matters today stand, the collective mentality of our Western peoples and of all other
races which have accepted Western indoctrination (which of course includes also all
Communist countries) is still deeply conditioned by the basic concepts and methodology of
nineteenth century science. These concepts and methods still determine our present
"official" approach to knowledge; they determine not only our education, but also our
academic priorities and governmental regulations of many sensitive professions allowed to
control basic social and biological processes. Recent discoveries and electronic technology,
on the one hand, have given far more power and virulence to the Establishment's ability to
control these processes and various aspects of our individual lives; on the other hand, these
new discoveries, especially in atomic physics, biology, and psychology, have compelled the
most progressive scientists in many fields to at least tentatively develop various "meta-
sciences" which are leading to the very threshold of occult knowledge.
It is not the purpose of this book, nor do I feel qualified, to discuss in any detail what
has been happening in many fields of scientific research, as well as of philosophical or
psychic speculation attempting to explain all the data revolutionizing last century concepts
and our "common sense" view of the world. It seems necessary, however, to point to
perhaps the most fundamental changes having occurred in Western man's approach to
knowledge and the methods for obtaining that knowledge, because it inevitably is in
response to these changes and to the possibilities that have opened up that a new influx (or
"descent") of occult knowledge will take form, granted that such an influx is to be expected
during the next two decades.
It was in response to what the Industrial Revolution and science and technology
developed between 1825 and 1875 that H.P.B.'s message was given its particular form,
from Isis Unveiled to The Secret Doctrine. It was in response to what had been achieved
by the pioneering and critical minds of the Enlightenment and the Masonic Lodges that the
new American nation and the French Revolution took their respective forms; and the
apparent failure of the work of Mesmer and others was conditioned by the narrowness of
the official eighteenth century rationalism. We now may think that we have already
witnessed a great transformation of Western man's collective mentality, but actually what
has occurred. even in the most advanced scientific fields is only the prelude to the
expectable transformation which will come as an answer to the ineffectual because biased
approach to knowledge which has characterized and still officially characterizes our new
globally spread Western civilization.
In spite of recent developments the most basic characteristic of our modern scientific
approach is still a rigid empiricism which refuses to admit as evidence anything but
perceptions based on sense data, augmented now by an immense variety of instruments.
Sense data are accepted solely as facts-proving or disproving theories; and these theories
are structured along strictly quantitative and rationalistic either/or lines. The analytical and
reductionistic mind with its atomistic outlook is still in control of by far the larger body of
official thinking, even though a holistic way of thinking (and of feeling or intuiting)
concerning man and his relation to the universe has recently spread among progressive
scientists. These scientists nevertheless form still a relatively uneasy minority, usually on
the defensive. In order gradually to convince the old guard of official thinkers in control of
most social and educational processes, and particularly of the distribution of grants for
research, they feel obliged to compromise and tone down their direct intuitive realizations
by using indirect techniques in order to quantitatively and empirically prove the validity of
their hypotheses. References to metaphysical principles unfamiliar to the European tradition
are avoided. What this actually means is that the equally undemonstrable postulates on
which much of our Western science has been based since Bacon early in the seventeenth
century remain unchallenged. They constitute the sacrosanct paradigms of our European
type of culture.
The type of knowledge characterizing true Occultism — which I repeat is not to be
confused with what popular magazines and many psychics today call occultism — is
essentially based upon the realization that a realm of energy undertones, directs, controls,
or guides the phenomena, events, and changes which we perceive with our senses and
which the Western mind attributes to a physically material world of objective entities. In
The Mahatma Letters this occult realm is called "the world of force." It is the dynamic
world which opens to the consciousness of the individual who either is led into it through
Initiation or, of his own accord and at his own risks (and dangerous risks they are!)
manages to force his way into it. What we feel and perceive as our ordinary physical world
is the concretized and material projection of such an "occult" realm of forces.
The Secret Doctrine asserts that "the Universe is worked and guided from within
outwards." (The Secret Doctrine II:274) The intuitive American philosopher, Oliver
Reiser, speaks in all his books of "guiding fields" which pervade, sustain, and control every
material body and, at the cosmic level, the whole universe itself. Occultists — and the
popularizers who often confuse terms and materialize concepts — speak of an "etheric
body" permeating and directing the functional activities of all living organisms. In the early
days of The Theosophical Society it was often spoken of as the "astral" realm, using the
term astral in its original meaning, the world of light and radiations. This is really the more
adequate term which can be related to the Sanskrit word, akasha, the essence of which is
"vibration" or, as Hindu philosophy asserts, SOUND (in its inaudible far more than in its
audible form). By developing the concept of field modern physicists actually have begun to
think of the universe in astral terms. The atomic physicist hardly thinks of matter any
longer, but only of energy and of their equivalence according to the famous Einstein
formula, e = MC2, where c represents the speed of light which is supposed to be a constant.
(Is it necessarily constant in all phases of cosmic evolution if we give to light its broadest
meaning?)
The physicist faces various difficulties if he considers energy as an ultimate. Acting
through, and in a sense "beyond" (a confusing term), the astral fields of energy is the realm
of what the word Mind can only awkwardly suggest. In its ultimate sense, The Secret
Doctrine speaks of "Cosmic Ideation" (also in Sanskrit, Mahat) and states that "the whole
Kosmos is guided, controlled and animated by almost endless series of Hierarchies, each
having a mission to perform . . . (as) the agents of karmic and Cosmic Laws." What this
means is that we are confronted in the universe, as in man, with three fundamental levels
of being: mind, life-energy in all its modes of operation (prana, now spoken of in scientific
research as bioenergy), and molecular substance (matter).
The atoms of modern science probably are only condensations of astral energy
according to laws of formation which follow universal principles of harmonic relationship
resulting in specific wave-patterns. Where the waves interfere (nodes) matter appears and
takes geometric shapes. What we call atoms may thus belong to the world of forces and
have correlations with transcendent or semi-transcendent sound formations, or chords of
energy. A scientist, Donald Hatch Andrews in his book The Symphony of Life, said that
the universe is not made of matter, but of music — linking modern thought to the
periodically revived ideas of Pythagoras, some twenty-five centuries ago.(1)
1. This type of thinking in terms of principles of harmony and form is often found expressed
in many articles in the excellent and highly respected magazine Main Currents in Modem
Thought founded by F. L. Kunz and now directed by Dr. Henry Margenau, a prominent
physicist and "philosopher of science" who taught at Yale University.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the Thresehold of Occult Knowledge - 2

When one speaks of Mind one should refer to a universal principle of formation.
Wherever we witness form, there Mind is at work. Many progressive scientists today insist
that what science ultimately deals with is form rather than matter or even energy-matter.
The German physicist Schrodinger, in his well-known little book What is Life?, pointed out
that in modern physics the stuff of what is observed tends to vanish, the only essential
factor being its structure (or gestalt), and he ends by evoking a universe that is Mind rather
than matter. Other physicists with holistic leanings have stressed the overwhelming
importance of the concept of form;(2) and form implies relatedness. It is by the
intermediary of form that potentiality becomes actuality. There can be no actual existence
without some kind of form. Out of form consciousness arises, because consciousness at any
level is the product of relationship, the relationship between what we call spirit and matter,
or what the Chinese call Yang and Yin, being the ultimate cosmic relationship.
Because the process of actualization of potentiality necessitates forms, the
quality of this process depends upon the adequacy, purity, and perfection of the
forms it uses. It is this fact which gives its true significance to the concept of "the
Beautiful," in the purest and universal sense of the word; because whatever perfectly serves
the purpose of actualizing a new potentiality is by this very fact beautiful. If the
mathematician speaks of the "elegant solution" of a problem, and the German philosopher
Count Keyserling stresses that the value and impact of an idea depends essentially upon its
formulation, it is because form is first of all a product of the activity of the Mind. However,
what is meant here by Mind is the creative Mind, mind in its involutionary aspect. It must
be differentiated from the classifying, interpreting, generalizing cogitative mind which
operates in response to the forces active in terms of the evolutionary development of
living organisms.
Unfortunately the word form in the past has most often referred to the external shape
of an object; and modern writers on esoteric matters still use it in that sense while they
should speak of "particular shapes," the shape of a body. A mathematical equation has
form. The shape of a living organism is a projection and concretization of a form by a
creative Mind. At planetary or cosmic levels, forms in what we call the Divine Mind may be
spoken of as "archetypes."
The paradigms and symbolic images of any culture reflect these archetypes. They are
projections upon the collective consciousness of a human collectivity of archetypal forms
which, by "defining" the release of biopsychic energies determine the character of the
culture. Likewise, it is the material end result — or the concretization and actualization — of
this defining process at the level of the life-force which biologists see at work in the
"genetic code" impressed at the core of all the cells of a living organism. In all cases, we are
dealing with a process of "information," to use a currently fashionable term. The
involutionary creative Mind gives form to currents of energy; the evolutionary organic mind
"informs" every component part of an organism with its function in the whole.
The great images, forms, and paradigms of a culture succumb to the entropy operating
in whatever becomes involved in the frictions and clashes experienced by material bodies.
They lose the sharpness of the defining outlines; the original information becomes blurred
by loss of magnetic tension between the material units which carry this information (as we
see in magnetic recording tapes) or perverted and confused by external interferences and
statics.
Cultural decadence sets in; and, in individual bodies, organic decay. Fascism or Neo-
classicism in a culture corresponds to sclerosis in a living organism and sclerosis is the
desperate attempt to counteract the gradual loss of the cell's ability to adequately respond
to the genetic "information" and to substitute rigidity (congestive processes and impairment
in the circulation of the prana and blood) for flexible response and the capacity for self-
recuperation through the free absorption of biopsychic energy.
Once we truly think in terms of formative principles in mental activity and of
information processes, we have to accept a holistic approach to existence, thus to man, to
the universe, and to the relationship between them. This does not mean that there is no
longer any place for analysis and an atomistic approach to objective material entities,
which, being material, are, according to the definition of the word, matter, almost infinitely
divisible. It means that "the new image of man" has to include more than that which can be
divided, analyzed in its operation, and dealt with as an isolated entity. It means that in the
case of ill-health no organ of the human body can be significantly treated except in terms of
its functional relationship to the whole organism and no disease should be seen as an entity
in itself, for it involves the whole man and not merely local symptoms.
Man is not merely material substance within an organized system of functional
activities, but also the activity itself (and the energy making it possible), and whatever
organizes the system: the formative-creative Mind. What has definitely to be overcome
and eradicated from the scientific mind is the "reductionism" which has dominated many
basic concepts in our Western society. Baconian empiricism and the abstract equalitarianism
of the eighteenth century political theorists and leaders are products of the same
reductionist trend according to which everything must be reduced to what can be seen and
touched; thought could be explained only in terms of "secretions" (now electric currents)
from the brain and no concept could be valid unless its rationally logical corollaries could be
proved by facts revealing laboratory experiments. The same type of attitude made us
proclaim at the political level that all human beings are equal, because somehow they have
a similar bodily form and similar bodily functions that can be seen, touched, analyzed, and
reduced to abstract voting units — mere numbers in statistics.
Both the Baconian methodology and political equalitarianism have an uncontrovertible
validity and practical usefulness; nevertheless they are materializations or
intellectualizations of what is true, but true only at a holistic or spiritual level. It is evidently
true that theories should be justified by relevant facts; but not only one kind of facts
artificially produced and analyzed in laboratories and purified by the Aristotelian logic of a
sense-built three dimensional universe postulated to be "nothing but" matter, as we know
matter to be in our earth-bound human experience. It is also true that spiritually all men
are equal and brothers, in the sense in which all the cells of a living organism contain at the
core of their nuclei the same genetic code because the had their origin in only one
fecundated ovum. But every cell (or at least group of cells) has a different function, and
these functions are not of equal importance in the development, maintenance, expansion,
and multiplication (or self-transcendence) of the organism-as-a-whole.
Scientists know that the cells of a human body all originated in the subdivision of the
one original cell, yet they so fanatically believe in the exclusive materiality of the universes
materiality now modified by the realization that matter and energy may be interchangeable
according to Einstein's equation — that of course the universe must have begun in an
explosive release of this energy-matter at terrific heat. If modern scientists thought along
the lines of a cosmic vitalism regarding the whole cosmos as an immense, but finite,
organism (or we might say today energy field) they might rather picture the birth of the
universe in the form of a cosmic egg emerging from an infinite ocean of potential energy.
What would follow is the expansion of this egg or force-field with its primordial cosmic
substance differentiating into galaxies and various star systems, each with its own potential
of functional activity according to a pattern defined by a metacosmic Mind, a "Logos," to use
the term so strongly featured in Greek influenced Gnosticism.
Here we have two cosmic theories, or let us say hypotheses, and there is absolutely no
absolute or logical reason for the first to be superior to the second. Yet most Western
scientists have postulated that the "vitalistic" theory is absurd, and that life can only be the
result of the chance confluence and coactivity of chemical molecules having cooled down.
Actually there is no proof for the validity of such a postulate because man with his brief life-
span has no way of experiencing the "heart beats" of the sun. (H. P. B. relates the 11-year
sun-spots cycle to a cosmic, or rather heliocosmic, rhythm which may be analogical and
relatively as rapid as man's heartbeats.) How can man with his short period of observation
perceive any significant indication of the function of a galaxy in the cosmos; or rather, how
could he possibly know it has no function and the cosmos is not a living organism? Must
terrestrial forms of life be the only conceivable life-forms and life as we know it in our
biosphere the only manifestation of what can be called in a broader sense Life? We have
just discovered that the matter of our ancestors believed to be so dense, solid, and
essentially indestructible in its molecular or even atomic form can be dematerialized into
energy. Why can we not at least imagine that life too may be a condensation of some
cosmic element which might simply be in its ultimate essence pure, eternal motion? Can we
not metaphysically conceive of this motion as the whirling of Yin and Yang within the forever
contracting and expanding circle of Tao — Tao that at the limit could be conceived as both
infinite Space and mathematical point, yet never is either one of the two, neither being nor
not-being, but the cyclically active rhythm of their interplay?
In saying this I had no intention of introducing a system of metaphysics — indeed a
very ancient system. I wanted only to state that by ruling out the possibility of such a
world-picture, which is based on our experience of life processes rather than on our premise
that nothing but matter-energy exists, the science that was born in Europe some five
hundred years ago is the result of only one of various possibilities of approach to
knowledge. To speak of it as SCIENCE is as much the sign of a culture-bound European
mentality and intellectual blindness as to regard Renaissance art as the one and only
manifestation of true ART.

2. cf Lancelot L. Whyte's book Accent on Form, p. 28 (Harper: N. Y. 19S4). "The normal

states of physical systems display definite spatial patterns, such as the linear arrays of
atoms and molecules in a crystal, the chain of atoms in fibers and the still obscure but
highly significant arrangements in genes, viruses and all working parts of organisms. Here it
is the pattern or arrangement which counts for most purposes. The individual particles are
indistinguishable and may come and go at random. Indeed apparently the only function of
the particles is to build up the patterns, for it is the latter which we actually observe . . . The
'form", in the new sense of underlying structural pattern, is more important than its
material components, which lack individuality. " Also "structure is a name for the effective
pattern of relationship in any situation . . . This idea, structure . . . is the creation of this
century as far as human understanding is concerned."
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
At the Thresehold of Occult Knowledge - 3

Once we sufficiently free ourselves from this mental illusion and cultural
provincialism and accept the implications of being at the threshold of a global civilization,
two main possibilities nevertheless arise: either we can try so to extend the field of
investigation of the present-day scientific mind that it will burst out of its five-century-old
self-imposed (and also at first Church-imposed) limitations and lead us to a new realm of
undismissable facts, or else we could try to start from postulates which we accept as basic
metaphysical and even metacosmic Principles which older civilizations have considered to be
self-evident and upon which their greatness was founded. Then by synthesizing essentials
and forgetting superficialities, we could deductively and intuitively build up the kind of
methodology which would lead us not only to the direct experience of superphysical facts,
but also to experiencing in a new light already known physical facts.
The first alternative is being pursued by many progressive and dedicated scientists who
are working in groups along the lines of parapsychology and metapsychiatry as well as in
the field where atomic physics slides into metaphysics and mathematics into mysticism. The
second alternative brings us to the threshold of ancient Occultism by way of a study of
concepts and symbols hidden under the chaotic, distorted, and often bewildering remains of
ancient religious, alchemical, and metaphysical traditions. It is the way which was
incorporated in The Secret Doctrine nearly one hundred years ago.
This incorporation, considering the condition of the society to which it was addressed,
could be only partially successful. Yet, at the core of its often confusing complexity and lack
of over-all philosophical clarity, definite foundations for the development of a new type of
non-Western, or trans-Western, knowledge are apparent. A way of knowledge is outlined
that directly and unequivocally challenged and still challenges our Euro-American mentality.
The essential characteristic of a way or path is that one has to walk and proceed along
the course it reveals. It is something to go through, not to dwell in. But "going through"
means to keep one's perceptions clear, one's mind alert to the possibility of taking
apparently similar by-ways which actually represent branchings-out and lead to long
detours if not disaster. He who treads the occult way, even in its earliest stages, has to
keep his sense of direction steady; and perhaps to carefully study a map he has been given
for the journey. Singleness of purpose and an essential ineradicable self-dedication and
undeviating will are needed. Yet, at this time of human history, also required is the ability to
understand the character of the way and the nature of the goal to which it is to lead. A
new light of understanding should now be shed on this occult path to knowledge and, above
all on the one source of that knowledge. It is an integrated and indeed organic kind of
knowledge, and all that can be called organic had its origin in one germinating wholeness of
being. Failing to understand this fact is to court eventual disaster as one proceeds on the
transphysical as well as transpersonal way.
 Knowledge is of the mind. Occult knowledge belongs to an archetypal realm where
ideas are like cells of a vast organism of mind. Whoever enters that realm can directly
contact, experience or "see" ideas as functional parts of an integrated whole. There, the
knower is the seer, and the light with which he sees is the basically one, yet functionally
multicolored, radiance of a primordial revelation. It is a revelation inasmuch as it covers and
differentiates the spiritual unity of the original divine Impulse, the Creative Word, by means
of multicolored veils that are as many "principles of formation."
These principles can be known, but such a knowledge is inevitably dangerous in that it
deals with the early manifestation of the one central Power from which a multitude of
structured currents of energies have flown, passing through ever more differentiated forms,
each representing a specific mode of release of power. Each of these modes has its
functional place and purpose within the whole, somewhat as every life-form in the Earth's
biosphere has its temporary function in the cyclically transformed ecology of the whole as
representative of a particular type of vegetable, animal, human, and superhuman or
extrahuman mode of activity and consciousness.
It is because man's mind has the latent possibility to reflect and respond to all these
modes of activity and consciousness, at least within the total organism of one planet, Earth,
that it is dangerous for him to ascend consciously to a realm that is close to the one
source of all powers released in all the Earth's spheres (lithosphere, biosphere, noosphere,
pneumosphere). If he could operate willfully in that realm he would be able to act upon
currents of energy which would affect an immense variety of lower and far more
differentiated modes of power release. Whoever pollutes the source of a river can destroy
all lives that, in the plains, drink of its water. To put it differently: because cosmic processes
are hierarchical, the closer to the summit of the pyramidal structure of "idea-forces" that
control these processes, the greater the possibility, either constantly to adjust and readjust
the dynamic manifestations of essential cosmic Harmony and Equilibrium, or to introduce
discord and conflict. This means the possibility of being godlike, or a devil.
We should nevertheless understand that the introduction of widely destructive
possibilities in any field of planetary or cosmic activity implies that the time is soon coming
when the cyclic pattern according to which such a field operates has become saturated with
waste products and its original and functional purpose on this Earth is no longer able to
vitalize and inspire the new generations. Whatever it was possible to accomplish in this
particular type of field has become by then self-defeating even if it can be considered a
great intellectual and social achievement. Too many opportunities have been missed, too
many wrong turns taken because of pride, greed, or insecurity. And this is where mankind
in general, and especially our Western society, stands today. Our civilization seems to be
fast reaching a point of no-return. Darkness has fallen and it is no longer possible to retrace
our collective steps, because in the dark we could not find the old way and we would die of
exhaustion and spiritual cold.
 As we follow the first above-mentioned alternatives, science extends further its field of
investigation until it bursts out of its limitations — he new discoveries unavoidably are
being used by power-greedy men in control of the basic mechanisms of our society in such
a way that the process of destruction of that society is accelerated. Should we deplore such
an acceleration? Let us rather realize that this accelerated process also unavoidably
polarizes a new Avataric descent. This realization may be the only thing that can save the
sensitive and perceptive individual from a sense of futility if not despair.
The great problem nevertheless is: what will mankind do with what this new Avataric
focusing of power — this new revelation — will bring?
What any individual or group of individuals will do with it largely depends on how they
understand its character and its source. The quality of this understanding will condition
mankind's over-all responses to what is being revealed and thus, spectacularly or not,
brought out into the collective field of human consciousness.
The quality of our understanding: this is the decisive, indeed the crucial, factor in the
impending world situation. Transformative forces are at work. Cathartic events have come;
more intense ones may be ahead. But the essential issue is, and during this last quarter of
the century will remain, the quality of our mental understanding and our emotional
response to them. Love and Knowledge: how we relate to other beings, and on what basis
or knowledge our understanding of what changing, freer, more open modes of relating and
cooperating in a vital awareness of the meaning of togetherness mean and are meant to
accomplish.
Everything depends on meaning and understanding. Tomorrow we may meet a divine
personage and never realize it or, if we dimly sense his power, fall worshipful at his feet.
The meaning of such a meeting would be that we, individually or collectively, have reached
the threshold of a new world of reality, and that the opportunity finally has come for us to
walk, erect and strong, through that threshold as a link between what was — our past and
mankind's past in us — and what must and will be. Always, everywhere and at any level,
the one essential question is: How much of the new potentiality whose time for
manifestation has come, can we actualize, and what will be the quality and scope of our
actualization?
The basic character of the occult way and of truly transpersonal living is that it brings
us in contact at an accelerated pace with the potentiality of periodically renewing our
consciousness, our feeling responses, and our capacity for action by resonating to new
potentialities latent in the planetary (and eventually galactic) archetype, Man. It is indeed a
question of "resonance" and the future science will come to learn that power can and should
be released by resonating to various modalities of cosmic power, rather than by destroying
matter. Destruction inevitably leaves toxic waste products, but he whose whole being has
become attuned, and therefore can resonate, to the great rhythms of universal Motion (only
an aspect of which we know as life) he alone can act as a focusing agent for the Creative
word. At whatever level he operates, he is an Avataric being; and it is the togetherness of
all such seed men that factually is the living Presence of the Avatar.
This Presence is active, here and now, in this era of transition toward a New Age. It is
around us, above us, deep within us if we let it operate. We need not prostrate ourselves to
worship it; it needs no worshippers. It needs only powerful, clear, understanding minds,
feelings free from self and possessiveness, and the capacity to stand, erect and tall. Then its
power radiating from behind us will be able to pass through our being, and move our
hands, our tongue, the whole of us, in blessings to emergent tomorrows.