Excerpts from
Thinking
and Destiny
by Harold W. Percival
by Harold W. Percival
With a brief account of THE DESCENT OF MAN into this Human World and How he will return to THE ETERNAL ORDER OF PROGRESSION
( 1946 / 1973 )
http://www.thewordfoundation.org
http://selfdefinition.org/yoga/Harold%20Percival%20-%20Thinking%20and%20Destiny.pdf
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupid?key=olbp36559
Excerpts re :
Reclamation
of the Light : The Great Way
( A westernized explanation of Taoist Internal Alchemy )
( A westernized explanation of Taoist Internal Alchemy )
CHAPTER
VIII
NOETIC DESTINY
NOETIC DESTINY
Section 3
The Light of the Intelligence. The Light in the knower of the Triune Self; in the thinker; in the doer. The Light that has gone into nature.
The Triune Self receives Light from the Intelligence to which it is related; that Light comes from the light faculty of the Intelligence into the noetic atmosphere of the Triune Self. The Light is not a part of the Triune Self and never becomes a part of it. It is loaned to the Triune Self so that by the use of it the Triune Self may become an Intelligence.
The Light is a Conscious Light; it is conscious that it is Light, and is conscious as Light. The Light, that which is with the Intelligence and that which is loaned to the Triune Self, is one. The Light is indivisible, though it appears to be divided. If the doer sends it into nature the Light is still one, no matter into how many different beings and things it has gone, or where it is, or in how weak a being it is, or how much it is obscured by the matter of nature. The Light of an Intelligence is the same Light irrespective of the forms in which it is. It seems to be confined in them, but it really is not.
The reality in the Triune Self above all else, except Consciousness, is the Light. The Light lets things be seen as they are, shows what should be done by the beings in whom it is, leads them to be conscious in further degrees and shows them the power to change, without itself being changed. It bears, as long as it is with the doer, the evidence of the uses to which it has been put by the doer. The fact that the Light is there causes these various processes to go on. The Light does not act, but it keeps beings in action by stimulating the active principle in them. It does not act nor does it suffer nor does it react. Its presence is the cause of all things spoken of as light. Starlight, sunlight, moonlight and earthlight are various functionings of matter made active by the Light of the Intelligences sent by the doers of their Triune Selves into nature. Human beings do not know the Light as such.
The doer is in the sphere of its Intelligence and receives a certain amount of Light from it. This is the amount the doer should have in order to acquire its education through its human beings. The amount is at times increased or decreased, depending on the thinking of the doers of the human beings, and is the outstanding feature of their noetic destiny. The Light so loaned may be sent by the doer into nature and become attached to nature units to which the doer by its thinking ties the Light.
In nature the Light is attached to units, that is, the Light is bound up and blended with them and so remains until the doer draws it back. The Light allows nature to unfold in every field and it evokes the latent sides and forces in the units. The presence of the Light makes the latent energy of nature active. In nature the Light sent out through doers is the intelligence often called God, who is supposed to have created the world and to carry it on. The doer is responsible for the Light it has sent into nature and must redeem it. Redeemed Light goes out again and again until it becomes unattachable to nature. Then it remains in the noetic atmosphere, is of the noetic world and is beyond and free from noetic destiny.
The Light is clear in all of the noetic atmosphere that does not penetrate the mental and psychic atmospheres of the human. The Light is taken into the noetic atmosphere by the noetic breath, and makes the atmosphere conscious in the degree of I-ness-and-selfness. The matter of the noetic atmosphere has the characteristic that it tends to oneness. This matter is conscious in various phases of I-ness-and-selfness and is potentially that out of which will be developed the light faculty and the I-am faculty, when the Triune Self becomes an Intelligence. In the atmosphere flows the noetic breath which is the active side of a part of the atmosphere and connects the remaining part with the knower. The knower has two aspects, passively I-ness and actively selfness. From I-ness comes the identity of the Triune Self which in the human is manifest as the feeling that it is the same today as through all past years, notwithstanding the changes in the body. Selfness is knowledge. The knower of the Triune Self is conscious in the highest phases of the degree of I-ness-and-selfness; the breath and the matter of the atmosphere are conscious in lower phases.
In the noetic atmosphere there is neither place nor time. The matter is everywhere at once. The Light is throughout, in the atmosphere, in the breath, and in the knower. The Light quickens and brings out what is potentially in the atmosphere. That which is in the atmosphere has no direct or special bearing upon the noetic destiny of the human.
That which is noetic destiny of a human is Light which is in the part of the noetic that is in the mental atmosphere of the human, (Fig. V-B); also Light that is tied up in the physical body and Light in nature which will be called on by the human.
Though Light comes in the first instance from the Intelligence, some Light comes back into the noetic atmosphere from nature when it is reclaimed and some from the mental atmosphere when a thought is balanced and so the Light in it is freed, and some when knowledge of the conscious self in the body results from thinking without creating a thought. There is a circulation of part of the Light from the noetic into the mental atmosphere, thence by means of thought into nature and thence back from food and thought into the mental and thence into the noetic atmosphere.
Light is sent by the knower into the mental atmosphere with the noetic breath. I-ness sends Light to be used in thinking, reason checks the amount that is allowed to go. Selfness sends Light to rightness when conscience speaks, and to reason as an intuition. The Light that I-ness sends becomes diffused in the mental atmosphere. The Light that selfness sends remains clear and direct. The noetic breath conveys some of the Light to the mental atmosphere, which receives it through its mental breath.
When the Light is in the matter of the mental atmosphere of the human it is diffused, modified, dimmed, dulled. The Light itself is always the same and has lost none of its character, but it appears in the mental atmosphere as though it were in a fog. This is caused by the matter of the mental atmosphere. In the lower part of this atmosphere, which is the part the human uses to think with and in which the thoughts connected with his thinking circulate and whirl, the Light is most fogged and clouded.
Whereas the Light itself, being of Intelligence and being Truth, shows in the noetic atmosphere everything as the thing is, the Light in the mental atmosphere must be freed from obstacles and interference, and must be held steadily on the subject and brought to a focus, before the Light as Truth can show what the thing is. The Light in its clear state in the noetic atmosphere cannot thence be sent into physical nature. The Light in the mental atmosphere is in a state where it can be mixed with desire and so may be sent into physical nature in that portion of a thought which is exteriorized.
The presence of the Light diffused in the mental atmosphere stimulates the matter of the atmosphere and keeps the mental breath in circulation, and the Light circulates with it and allows reason to act through its thinking. The Light in rightness is not the light of the mental atmosphere, but is clear Light that is sent in flashes from the noetic atmosphere by selfness.
No Light is in the psychic atmosphere, but there is Light in those parts of the mental and noetic atmospheres which are in it. The matter of the atmosphere is conscious in the degree of feeling-and-desire. The matter is usually dark, heavy, gross and sluggish. The psychic atmosphere pulls on and weighs down the mental and, in a lesser degree, the noetic atmosphere of the human by those parts of them which pervade it. The Light therefore is dimmed in those parts. The noetic destiny is the absence of the Light from the psychic atmosphere, from feeling-and-desire and from the psychic breath.
The chief characteristic of the psychic atmosphere is a feeling for and the desiring and rushing after something it longs for, yet fears. That something is the Light of the Intelligence and contact with the thinker and the knower. The atmosphere is not conscious of the Light. It is never quiet, but when impressions from nature, elementals or desires of other doers enter through the avenues leading from the openings of the body, it is stirred into turmoil. It pulls and it pushes, it sucks in like a whirlpool and it tries to get into everything. It surges in these ways during eating, amusement, dancing, celebrations, sermons, funerals and all trading. The atmosphere is conscious of these its activities, but is not conscious of why it has them. It has them to get Light, the Light it once had, but which was withdrawn.
The psychic atmosphere is represented in the feeling and the desire of the doer. If feeling and desire could get the Light into the atmosphere the doer would not desire to change its present condition, it would continue to seek satisfaction from nature, it would have a greater intensity of satisfaction because of the Light, and it would not advance and so it would retard the progress of the doer. Because the doer has no Light it is in the dark, it cannot tell one thing from another, cannot form a judgment, but can only feel and desire. When things are pleasant it tries to hold them and get more of them; when they are unpleasant it tries to get away from them. Not having discrimination it does this over and over again.
The feeling or the desire is so evident in the human that it seems to be all there is. The doer occupies not only certain nerves of the voluntary nervous system, but also some which belong to the thinker and the knower. No noetic reactions may be felt, and mental reactions are felt but vaguely. If the thinker and the knower are noticed at all, they are interpreted as feeling and desire. On the other hand psychic conditions, mystic trance states and visions are supposed to be what is spoken of as “spiritual.” When a human suffers he usually seeks consolation and hope in religious promises, rather than an understanding of the facts. In the psychic atmosphere feeling and desire act without the Light.
Because feeling-and-desire came into being through Light and had their greatest satisfaction while Light was with them, and because they can reach completeness only when they are in the Light, they want Light. The place where they can get it is in the mental atmosphere in the heart and principally in the lungs. Feeling cannot get beyond the heart, but desire can, and feeling gets satisfaction from desire. When the psychic atmosphere and the doer become agitated, desire rushes towards the mental atmosphere in the lungs to get Light. It cannot get into the atmosphere until it has passed rightness in the heart. Then it is in the mental atmosphere in the lungs. Desire cannot get that Light until it compels its mind to think, to gather and to focus the Light on the impression; the Light bonds the desire with the impression. The thing which is being created by thinking is a thought and is a new being. In the thought are desire of the doer and Light of the Intelligence, with which desire could not come into contact in any other way than by this admixture by thinking.
The Light is not changed, though it is bound up in the combination until the thought is balanced. Desire pushes the thought, and the Light guides it toward the first exteriorization and toward every subsequent exteriorization. When a thought is exteriorized Light goes into nature, some of it is bound up in the thought and some is diffused in the body of the human. When Light thus goes into nature it is attached to units and is part of the Light which acts as the intelligence, order and law of nature.
Only a doer can contain or direct Light of an Intelligence; no physical body, object of nature or even matter of the light world can deal with the Light, in the same sense.
The Light that is in the noetic atmospheres of the doers also illumines the light world, which is on the nature-side, and there, though not mixing with the matter, keeps that matter illuminated and in constant action. It also shows what goes on in the light world and what has been done with any of its matter while that matter was in the lower worlds. But the light world of nature does not contain the Light. The Light is there because of the atmosphere of the Triune Selves.
The Light in the mental atmospheres of the doers pervades the life world. This Light is the diffused Light in the mental atmospheres and is not mixed with desire. Light mixed with desire does not function in this way; it does not get into the life world; when it is mixed with desire and so is bound up in a thought, it remains in that thought in the mental atmosphere. The Light in the life world stimulates there the active side of the units and so starts what appears later as life on the physical plane. The Light does not illumine the form world, because there is no Light in the psychic atmosphere.
The bright lights, pictures and colors seen by psychics are matter of the physical world, for psychics cannot see into the form world, as their psychic atmospheres do not carry Light. The form plane of the physical world is not illumined by Light of the Intelligence. Its matter is lit up only in exteriorization of thoughts, not from the Light in the light or life worlds.
The physical plane of the physical world is lit by starlight coming through human nerves, by sunlight coming through hearts and lungs, moonlight coming through kidneys and adrenals, and earthlight from the sex organs and digestive systems. Starlight is diffused between the stars but is focused by the sun. Starlight, if it could be seen directly, would be seen to penetrate and to bear the other three kinds and to be more powerful than any of them. Sunlight focuses starlight into a steady stream, as thinking focuses diffused Light. Moonlight adjusts the sunlight. Earthlight takes in or passes on or throws back the other three kinds of light. All four kinds of light work together in causing a tree, a flower or an apple to be compacted or to grow. Starlight, sunlight, moonlight and earthlight are not and do not possess light themselves; what is called their light is their property of showing their active side when this reflects Light of the Intelligence. In this sense the Light of the Intelligence, which is self-luminous and self-conscious in the noetic atmosphere, is hidden in the objects of nature which were wrought by the presence of the Light. The process is not physical and cannot be coordinated with conceptions of dimensions.
Section 4
The intelligence in nature comes from human beings. The pull of nature for Light. Loss of Light into nature.
Nature needs Light from Intelligences and in the human world of time gets it through human thinking and thoughts, which convey to it Light that reaches the human beings from their noetic atmospheres. The Light does not go directly into nature. The Light from the noetic atmosphere must first go into the mental atmosphere where it becomes diffused and mixes with desire, which comes into the mental atmosphere from the psychic atmosphere. The Light is not in the desire, but is bound to it in a thought. The thought is conceived or entertained in the heart and issued from the brain. In order that the Light of the Intelligence may go into nature, an act of the body is necessary to exteriorize the thought or part of it. Without an act of the body the Light from the mental atmosphere cannot go out into nature. Nature therefore wants acts by human bodies, to get through them Light from Intelligences. To that end, nature with the swing of the breath and by an object of sense reaches through the system of one of the senses into the doer, and pulls on the desire, to get the human to perform a physical act. The Light of the Intelligence goes into nature with thinking and with thoughts, through the openings of the body.
Nature seeks Light, life, forms and desire, none of which it has. It seeks them as a dry soil seeks water, as fire seeks wood, as negative seeks positive. There is an urge of unfolding and growth by combination in all matter. Without Light and without desire nature must remain inert; with Light and desire nature units combine and advance by life through growth as forms and so become conscious in higher degrees.
Nature gets the Light from human thoughts and the desire from the embodied portions of doers. Therefore nature pulls constantly on the doers in human bodies to get what will maintain it and advance it. Desire is the driving power within the form and structure of the animal and plant. Desire and the Light are in the organisms of nature as instinct, which guides in selecting food, in self-protection and in procreation…
There are two nerve tracts or cords or tubes in the body, one for nature and the other for the doer, which in the perfect body were connected, (Fig. VI-D). In the human the nature-tract is the alimentary canal, from mouth to anus. The sense of smell has charge of this tract directly, but the three other senses are connected with it, act upon it and influence it. The other tract, the spinal cord and terminal filament, is at present for the doer of the Triune Self; it reaches from the first cervical vertebra to the tip of the terminal filament at the end of the spine; the doer does not use this tract as it might, but uses organs instead; these organs are the heart and the lungs, the kidneys and adrenals, and the male and female organs, which are go-betweens for the nature tract and the doer tract
The sections of the body are in and connect with the four worlds; the head with the light, the thoracic cavity with the life, the abdominal cavity with the form, and the pelvic cavity with the physical world. However, the head is now used for the physical world and the pelvic cavity for the light world. That is so because the knower, the thinker, and the doer as a whole, have withdrawn from the body. The brain in the head has been usurped by the portion of the doer that is in the body and the pelvic organs are devoted to and controlled by the procreative functions in the body.
The four systems are related to and run through the four sections. In this organization nature pulls on the doer for light, with and through the fourfold breath. The generative system is worked by the elemental functioning as the sense of sight. Through the generative system the sense of sight can act, indirectly, from the four planes of the physical world on nature, and on the three parts and the three atmospheres of the Triune Self, and so may get Light from the doer for nature. Some of the organs of the generative system, which connect with nature through the involuntary system, are: on the light plane the eyes and their nerves; on the life plane the heart and lungs and their nerves; on the form plane the kidneys and adrenals and their nerves; on the physical plane the generative organs and their nerves.
The Triune Self may contact organs of the generative system through the voluntary nervous system; the pituitary body may be contacted by I-ness and the pineal body by selfness; the heart and cerebellum by rightness and the lungs and cerebrum by reason; the kidneys are used by feeling and the adrenals by desire. So the Triune Self may work the generative system through the cerebellum, the heart and the kidneys, and through three brains, the cerebrum, the lungs and the adrenals. It does not do this at present, but through these organs the sense of sight now gets Light from the doer for nature.
The pull of nature is exercised from the light plane of the physical world, through the generative system, and by the sense of sight through the eyes and the male or female organs, and especially the testicles and ovaries. By means of the sight acting successively on the planes of the physical world,—on the light plane through the eyes, on the life plane through the heart and lungs, on the form plane through the kidneys and adrenals, and on the physical plane through the sex organs,—there is finally an action on the breath-form by the earth breath as it breathes out through the sex parts. The pull is transferred in the kidneys from the breath-form to the feeling of the doer, and then desire, in the adrenals, rushes to the heart.
In the heart, if rightness is overcome or does not put up any barrier, thinking is started, which draws Light from the mental atmosphere. The heart and cerebellum and the lungs and cerebrum interact, and the brain diffuses the Light which is mixed with desire in the heart and lungs for thinking and thoughts. The pull of nature is directly on the doer. Light passes out in the thoughts as they are issued from the brain, and as they are exteriorized in acts, objects or events. Or especially when there is a sexual spasm, the Light leaves, being then precipitated by the brain and drawn along the spinal cord to the small of the back and along the kidneys out into nature. The sexual brain, the testicles or ovaries, influences the psychic brain, the adrenals; that influences the mental brain, the lungs; and that influences the noetic brain, the cerebrum; and all this causes the Light of the noetic atmosphere to work for nature. Such is noetic destiny at this time. The physical human world of nature has sex and sex organs; the doer has no sex and no sex organs.
The breath-form, as the form and the breath, is used by the doer as the bridge by which it crosses over to nature and nature crosses over to it. The crossings from all planes are made on the physical plane in a human body and by means of the earth breath.
The respiratory system is worked by the sense of hearing and through that system this elemental can act, indirectly, from the four planes of the physical world upon the three parts of the Triune Self and the three atmospheres in which they are, and so may get thoughts from the doer and from them forms for nature. The respiratory system uses substantially the same organs on the respective planes of the physical world as does the generative system, namely: on the light plane the ears; on the life plane the heart and lungs; on the form plane the kidneys and adrenals; on the physical plane the generative organs, and the involuntary nerves of each of these organs. The Triune Self uses the same organs, the cerebellum, the heart and the kidneys, and the same brains, the cerebrum, the lungs and the adrenals, as when it acts in the generative system.
The pull of nature through the respiratory system is exercised from the life plane of the physical world. The pull is ultimately always on the doer and that draws on the mental atmosphere for Light. The sense of hearing cannot pull directly on the mental atmosphere. The sense of hearing acts with the earth breath in the generative parts on the breath-form; that transmits a pull, in the kidneys, to the doer in the body, and desire if aroused goes to the heart. If rightness is overcome or agrees, mental activity begins there and passive thinking results. In passive thinking there is only a playing of desire in the diffused Light of the Intelligence. Yet this is enough to carry some of the Light into nature. If the passive thinking results in active thinking or in a thought, more of the Light is mixed with desire and goes out into nature by speech or by a thought. The stages are as follows: the sense of hearing is on the life plane of the physical world and after acting on the intermediate planes and organs, acts on the breath-form in the sex parts, through the sense of smell and the earth breath; this transmits the pull to the doer, in the kidneys; then desire rushes to the heart. If rightness is overcome or agrees, thinking is started and draws Light from the mental atmosphere. So a thought is there generated, and is issued from the brain, or the Light goes out by speech through the mouth.
The circulatory system is worked by the sense of taste. When nature pulls through this sense the sense acts from the form plane of the physical world to reach the three parts of the Triune Self and their atmospheres. Nature uses the sense of taste and the circulatory system to get forms and desire. The thoughts obtained through the respiratory system are the models for the forms, and the sense of taste gets the design, the details, and the desire which fills out the models. The desire is the driving power in the form. The circulatory system uses substantially the same organs on the respective planes of the physical world as does the generative system, namely, on the light plane the tongue; on the life plane the heart and lungs; on the form plane the kidneys and adrenals; on the physical plane the generative organs; and the involuntary nerves of each of these organs. The doer of the Triune Self has the same organs, the cerebellum, the heart, and the kidneys, and the same brains, the cerebrum, the lungs and the adrenals, as it has for action through the generative system.
The pull of nature through the sense of taste is exercised from the form plane of the physical world. The pull is ultimately made on the mental atmosphere, if the pull is effective. The sense of taste exercising the pull of nature transmits it to the breath, which passes it on to the breath-form as the breath passes out through the sex parts. So the pull is passed on to the kidneys where the doer receives it. If there is a reaction it begins when the desire rushes to the heart, and the thinker receives it. If rightness is ignored or agrees, thinking uses the Light diffused in the mental atmosphere, and a thought results.
The digestive system is worked by the elemental functioning as the sense of smell. When nature pulls through the digestive system, the sense may act through any of the four planes of the physical world to reach the doer and its atmosphere to get Light. Nature pulls through the digestive system and the sense of smell to get food for its bodies. The food builds up, exteriorizes and gives physical bodies to the forms which nature has received through the sense of taste. The digestive system uses substantially the same organs on the respective planes of the physical world as the generative system, namely: on the light plane of the physical world the nose and its nerves; on the life plane the heart and lungs and their nerves; on the form plane the kidneys and adrenals and their nerves, and on the physical plane the generative organs and their nerves.
But differing from the other three systems, the digestive has a special set of organs in addition: the esophagus, the stomach and the intestinal tract, a tract which goes from the light plane, the head, to the physical plane, the anus. The Triune Self has the same organs,—the cerebellum, the heart and the kidneys, and the same brains, the cerebrum, the lungs and the adrenals,—as it has for action through the generative, respiratory and circulatory systems, but the Triune Self does not touch the digestive system with these organs and brains as directly as it uses or contacts the other three systems, because it is not as intimately related to the digestive system. In addition, the doer of the Triune Self touches the digestive system in two organs, the stomach and the liver, but it does not touch it in these organs as immediately as it touches the other systems.
The pull of nature through the digestive system is exercised from the physical plane of the physical world. The pull ultimately draws on the mental atmosphere if rightness is ignored or consents and the pull of nature becomes effective. The sense of smell, in order to exercise the pull for nature, reaches from the light plane of the physical world through the nose, from the life plane through the heart and lungs, from the form plane through the kidneys and adrenals, and on the physical plane through the urinary tract, and the anus at the end of the digestive tube. The sense of smell transmits the pull to the breath which passes it on to the breath-form as the breath goes out through the sex parts and the excretory ducts. The pull starts at the anus and the opening of the urinary tract and continues up the alimentary canal to the mouth. From the small intestine the pull is transmitted to the kidneys where the doer receives it. The pull continues to the stomach causing various secretions from the organs along the tract, like the pancreas and liver. The pull is transmitted from the kidneys through the involuntary nervous system by the breath to the stomach, where it is felt as hunger. If there is response, it begins by desire rushing to the heart.
There, if rightness is ignored or agrees, the doer may by thinking obtain some of the Light, and a thought results. The Light may pass out in a thought, and if food is consumed to satisfy the pull, some part of the thought with the Light in it is exteriorized in the tissue of the body; and other parts return to nature as excrements, which nature uses to rebuild her structure.
The pull of nature for the Light that is in the noetic atmosphere of the Triune Self begins by a pull on the breath, and at a time when the breath swings out at the sex parts. When the pull is made through the digestive system there is an additional pull at the end of the alimentary tube. This special pull of the digestive system is due to the fact that this system is on the physical plane of the physical world, the plane where all worlds touch, and through which the circulation between the Triune Self and nature is kept up. The digestive system is on the lowest plane, but it is the most powerful of the systems. All worlds of nature come in contact with the atmospheres of the Triune Self only through the digestive system, that is, through the physical plane.
The doer of the Triune Self depends on its physical body for progress and this body is of the same plane as the digestive system. The power of hunger compels the doer to furnish physical food; and food, maintaining the body, keeps the doer on the physical plane. The desire for food brings about the complex relations which compose civilization. The power of the digestive system is also shown by the fact that the alimentary tube takes up more space in the body than the other systems, and that the other systems are subsidiary to the digestion and assimilation of food, turning physical nature into skin, flesh, fat, blood, bones, marrow and nerves. The way nature works in all the systems is displayed more openly in the digestive system. There, in the working of peristalsis, it is most readily seen. Peristalsis, the involuntary contractile movements in the organs of the four systems, conveys to nature the material it needs after the material has in it some Light. In the digestive system this response to the pull of nature by the breath is most pronounced.
The connection and interrelation between nature and the doer is made by the physical breath, and more particularly by that stream of it called the digestive or earth breath. Both nature and doer work on the breath-form through the fourfold physical breath. Nature works on it through its four senses and systems, and the doer works on it through its feeling and desire.
The breath-form has two aspects, a negative and a positive. The negative is the form, the positive is the breath and the physical atmosphere. The matter of the breath of the breath-form is refined matter of the four worlds of the earth sphere. The breath-form is akin to nature and to the doer, and one side of it is the flowing breath that enables both to make their communication. While the breath-form is negative to the breath and the breath positive to it, the breath itself is positive in its outbreathing and negative in its inbreathing. This breath bathes the entire body in its tidal flow, which is imperceptible except where it carries air into and out of the lungs. Imperceptibly it moves just as much out of the eye, or any pore or any other part, as it does out of the lungs.
The physical breath has four currents, namely, the generative, respiratory, circulatory and digestive breaths, and is related by them through the four bodies to the fire, air, water and earth in the earth sphere. The psychic, mental and noetic breath streams have to work through the fourth, the current called the earth breath, to reach the doer.
When nature pulls, which she must do by one of the four senses, she reaches by means of the ingoing breath with the sense to the sense nerves, and then with the sense through its system to the corresponding current of the breath, and pulls on that when it is positive and flows out with the earth breath current through the sex parts into the physical atmosphere. This pull induces an involuntary peristaltic action in the system on which nature pulls, to get out of that system the matter and the Light that is mixed and concealed in it. The pull then goes with the breath to the breath-form and to the sex parts and the other parts which are on the physical plane, and thence to the form plane and the kidneys.
So nature pulling on the fourfold physical breath causes thereby a peristaltic action in the four systems, by which visible and invisible physical matter, in which there is hidden some Light, goes into nature directly. The pull is ceaseless as long as the breath flows, but the peristaltic results do not carry Light to nature as regularly; sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes no Light is transferred. Whatever light goes out goes with the outgoing positive breath.
Some of it goes through the twelve openings of the body and the pores of the skin. This is either Light carried out by matter which has while circulating in the body been impressed by thinking, or it is Light which is directly thought out into nature through the sense organs, as through the eye when one looks at a person or thing. The thinking is usually induced by elementals or by thoughts that enter with the incoming breath through the sex openings, the navel and nerve centers in the pelvic and abdominal cavities. The other Light that goes out does so in thoughts, when they are issued from the brain and when the person who issues them exteriorizes them by an act. Then the Light goes out through the act by sight or by word.
Through the bodies of children no Light goes out into nature until they become pubescent. The Light that is taken in from food is built into the body, particularly the bones and brain, through the thymus gland, the distribution being regulated by the pituitary body. By puberty the thymus gland is absorbed and therefore can no longer act as a stopcock. At puberty a child is connected with its noetic atmosphere. From then on the generative system assumes the function of withdrawing Light from the two nervous systems, together with the function of seed production.
The main channels through which Light is lost into nature are the sex organs. Seeing dress and movements, hearing a voice, especially in song, tasting rich food, smelling odors and touching a body of the opposite sex, all suggest sexual attraction and take hold of and dominate thinking on sex matters. Elementals come in. They are the sexual sensations. A human feels these sensations, but does not feel his feeling and mistakes the elementals he feels and nourishes, for his own feeling. The elementals excite him, he acts for them and he allows them to take the Light away.
Section 5
Automatic return of Light from nature. The lunar germ. Self-control.
The Light which a human has sent or allowed to go into nature is returned to the human. It goes out again and is returned again. This outgoing and incoming will continue until the Light is reclaimed from all admixtures and attachments and is made unattachable or freed Light. Then it goes out no more.
Light is returned to the noetic atmosphere of the human either automatically, or through self-control. Automatic reclamation is started by a Light finder or gatherer, called lunar germ, and is accomplished by the pull of the noetic breath along the nature-tract. Reclamation by self-control, which is of three degrees, is done by thinking and is aided by another germ, called solar germ, which makes a path along the tract for the Triune Self for Light to travel on.
Automatic reclamation of Light is the finding and the gathering by the lunar germ of Light that has come in with food and the carrying of the gathered Light as far as the kidneys, and then the raising of this Light to the noetic atmosphere in the head by the psychic, the mental and the noetic breaths. This automatic reclamation can be made only while the Light is in the body to which it has returned in food, and after it has been extracted from the food by organs of the four systems and by the fourfold physical breath.
The Light that has gone into nature comes back automatically in food. The Light that has gone out in the various ways mentioned never leaves the noetic atmosphere of the Triune Self. Just as thoughts never leave the mental, and desires, even if they appear as animals, never leave the psychic atmosphere, so the Light never leaves the noetic atmosphere. Earth time and dimensions have no effect upon and are no hindrance to Light of an Intelligence. The Light of an Intelligence that is in the noetic atmosphere of its Triune Self, though it goes out into physical nature, returns thence because that Light has an identity. It retains this identity however long it circulates in nature and in however many forms and places it appears there. For the Light is a part of an Intelligence, which is an ultimate unit, inseparable, indivisible.
Special parts of Light circulating in nature are summoned into food, to be thence extracted for reclamation. What of the Light is so called depends upon the thinking of the human. It may be days, months, years or lives before some of the Light is drawn back. But when it is to be reclaimed, any special part of the Light will return to the body of the doer that let it go out, though the present human is not aware of the identity and the circulation of the Light which his thinking summons to return to the body.
Not all the Light that is taken in with food is the Light of the consumer. Light from other doers is with it and affects those who eat the food. Usually there is something in common between the foreign Light and the doer that receives it. Just as the atmospheres of different people intermingle according to quality, so the Light that is with food intermingles.
Food is of the four elements and is taken in as solids, as liquids, in air and sunlight, and in starlight. The solid food contains the other three, just as the physical world is a precipitation of the other three worlds, as the physical plane is matter condensed from the other planes of the physical world, and as the structure elementals contain the form, the portal and the causal. The solid and liquid forms of food enter through the digestive system; the airy and some of the fiery foods enter through the respiratory system. But these are only the most apparent ways. Starlight enters also through the eyes and through the skin. With the breath food from the four elements is taken in directly from one’s physical atmosphere where it is held in suspension. No matter how the food is taken in, it all goes into the digestive system. There the other three systems also work on it.
The fourfold physical breath, as it flows in and out of the body, causes a peristaltic action in the organs and tubes of each of the four systems. Each breath causes the peristalsis in its own system, and each sense stimulates the function in its system under that peristaltic impulse.
As food is moved in the digestive system this fourfold stream of the physical breath, each stream acting with its stimulated peristalsis, affects the food. Seeing the food, what is said and heard while eating it, tasting it and smelling it, have a direct bearing on the digestion. The salivary glands add their secretions, the gastric juice is poured out from the walls of the stomach, the liver gives its bile, the pancreas its fluid, and the intestinal digestive glands their secretion. The four senses cause the activity of the juices and of the ferments in them. Thereby proper changes are made in the food, which is turned into chyme in the stomach and later into chyle and becomes ready for absorption and assimilation in the intestines.
In the circulation the kidneys strain the blood and free it from impurities, and the adrenals pour out their secretion, which empowers the red and the white blood cells, keeps the blood and lymph in circulation, invigorates the sex glands and the ductless glands. The respiratory system takes in air as food, supplies oxygen to the blood and eliminates waste matter. This system is the channel through which starry matter flows into the generative system. The seat of the generative system is the pituitary body, and it has organs and branches in all parts of the brain and throughout the body.
The generative system is the source of the other three systems. It begins in the fused cells as a point, grows into a line and a surface and becomes a circle within a sphere. The circle separates into the spine and the digestive tract. From some part of the generative system the allantois is created; that later protrudes through the amniotic sac and the chorion, fastens itself to the wall of the uterus and becomes the placenta. With the placenta are developed the kidneys and adrenals and the heart and lungs, and the circulatory and the respiratory systems are started within the divided circle. The kidneys working through the heart carry on the circulation, which is not independent until the intake of breath after birth.
The generative system is the beginning of the physical body from the fecundated cell, the carrier of vitality during the existence of the body, the governor of the nervous systems and of the ductless glands. Seed production in the adult is but one of its functions. During life the generative system regulates the secretions of the ductless glands, such as the pituitary, thyroid, thymus, spleen and adrenals. By these secretions the activities of all four systems are maintained from the pituitary body. The generative system inspirits the ferments and secretions of the organs and thereby causes digestion, absorption and assimilation. At death it cuts itself off from the other three systems which are then unable to function.
The generative system makes an extract of four grades of radiant matter from all the foods. The first is small in amount and is of radiant matter drawn directly by means of the nerves from food in the digestive system; the second grade is the largest in amount and is radiant matter drawn from food that has passed into the circulatory system; the third grade is radiant matter drawn from food in the respiratory system and the fourth and most potent grade is elaborated from starry matter that has reached the generative system itself.
The four kinds of extracts are elaborated in the testicles and the ovaries for seed and for soil. So that in the seed and in the soil are represented all parts of the body in essence. After the seed and the soil are brought to a certain point they take on independent life as spermatozoa and ova.
From these extracts of starry matter the generative system makes a tonic tincture and turns this tincture back into the other systems and into itself. The generative system is the ultimate cause of well-being and disease. It gives the tonic tincture to the involuntary and the voluntary nerves, and in this way returns to the digestive, circulatory and respiratory systems that which is made from the extract of the food that passed through them. Because of this tincture the other three systems are kept going, a life-giving quality can be taken in by respiration and sent to all parts of the body, the blood can be circulated and food can be digested.
While these transformations are going on Light is being extracted from the food in its first and subsequent forms. The digestive, the circulatory, the respiratory and the generative breaths work each upon its system in the body to take up a certain part of the food and of the Light which is in it and carry the Light into the generative system. Finally the generative breath transfers a portion of the Light connected with the food to a lunar germ. Physically these processes are controlled by the pituitary body. It controls the four systems and the four physical breaths by means of the involuntary nervous system and its involuntary actions. Light going back to the noetic atmosphere goes through the generative system.
The four grades of extract have in them Light and circulate in the generative system. While they are in the head the fire current of the fourfold breath can draw Light out. The Light that moves up and down in the generative system is Light that is contained in the radiant matter that was extracted from food.
The automatic transfer of Light to the noetic atmosphere is made by the generative system naturally to the noetic breath, when there is enough Light in the generative system. The noetic atmosphere exercises by means of the noetic breath a continuous pull for its own Light. This attempt to raise its Light out of the generative system is contrary to the pull which nature makes there for the Light. The noetic breath contacts indirectly the generative physical breath, that is, the fire current of the fourfold physical breath, in the head and there takes some of the Light off and back into the noetic atmosphere.
There is in the generative system other Light, Light which does not come out of nature, but comes through the pituitary body from the noetic atmosphere. Some of this Light is sent out monthly in the lunar germ to gather Light that has come in from nature.
A lunar germ is made of matter of the four worlds and has mingled with it essential matter of the four worlds, that is, matter which has circulated so long that it has reached ultimate states of refinement. In addition to the general matter and to this essential matter, a lunar germ bears the impress of the doer and has in it consequently Light of the Intelligence. The lunar germ is material but invisible.
Both the lunar germ and the seed or soil are builders of bodies. With the seed and the soil the outer physical body is started; with the lunar germ inner bodies may be built. The spermatozoa and ova are both as female to the lunar germ, and it is as male to them. Only the gross physical elements flow through the seed and the soil and these are deficient in finer forces of physical matter. A lunar germ supplies these deficiencies and has in it contacts for forces of the other three worlds. A lunar germ must be united to the seed or the soil to produce a body which is not entirely deficient. There ought to be for a proper human body a lunar germ in the seed and a lunar germ also in the soil.
In each month, after puberty, the generative system produces one of these lunar germs in the pituitary body, (Fig. VI-A, a). When the lunar germ has matured and has life of its own it leaves the pituitary. It starts from there in a rudimentary way, on the right side, and passes down in the involuntary nervous system, having a little Light, which attracts other Light as it descends in the nerve plexuses supplying the digestive system in the abdomen, until it reaches the lowest point, (Fig. VI-B). From that point the lunar germ, having crossed over to the left side, ascends along the involuntary nervous system and is carried by the generative breath to the region of the left kidney.
During all this time Light from food along the digestive tract, Light from blood and Light from the organs in the body attaches itself to the Light in the lunar germ for automatic reclamation. While a lunar germ is in existence and carries Light, it may be deprived of some of the Light by an outburst of anger or state of jealousy, envy or revenge, but it will always carry some Light until the germ is lost. It is lost in outgoing seed or soil. It is not connected with seed or soil until that is precipitated and lost.
If the lunar germ has risen with its diffused Light to the region of the kidneys, some of that Light is taken away by the psychic breath and carried upward in the involuntary nervous system. The psychic breath is made to do this by the mental breath acting within it and obeying the pull of the noetic breath for Light. Then the mental breath takes the Light and carries it along the thoracic vertebrae to the region of the cervical vertebrae. The mental breath is made to do this by the noetic breath acting within it. The noetic breath takes the Light along the pons and the quadrigemina to the pineal body and into the noetic atmosphere.
This return of Light to the noetic atmosphere is automatic. It is done without the knowledge of the human and usually without the possibility of interference by him, though certain habits like the consumption of alcohol or of narcotics, or excessive sexuality, may hinder even the automatic reclamation.
The purpose of automatic reclamation of a certain amount of Light is to keep enough in the mental atmosphere to furnish the human with the Light necessary to continue living and carrying on his activities as a human.
The returning of Light from nature goes on continually in every human. Only a certain amount of Light is allowed by the Triune Self to its doer, and the doer must husband and reclaim what Light is loaned to it. Without this automatic process of reclamation a doer would soon be bankrupt and lost. In the noetic atmosphere moves in regular action the noetic breath. This carries Light of the Intelligence by inspiration into the physical body within the reach of nature, and carries by aspiration the available Light from the body, reclaimed from nature, back into the noetic atmosphere.
The usual means by which Light that has been in food is raised is carriage by a lunar germ. Such a germ is produced once a month, descends on the right side and in a week reaches the region of the solar plexus; in another week it reaches the large intestine and the lowest point of its descent and during the third week ascends to the kidneys, on the left side. Usually the lunar germ, after it has ascended to the region of the kidneys with the aid of the pull exercised by the generative breath on account of the noetic breath, drops back to the sexual organs and is lost. If it were not for the automatic protection which the monthly germ receives because of the noetic breath, the germ would be lost on its path downward from the solar plexus and would never ascend to the left kidney. The run of human beings would, owing to the pull of nature, become idiots in one life, if it were not for the automatic reclamation of Light and the protection which the lunar germ usually receives. For this reason the lunar germ cannot be lost on its path from the head to the solar plexus; from the solar plexus downward and then upward towards the left kidney it is protected; but from the kidney to the head, if it goes there at all, it can go only as the result of self-control .
Section 6
Reclamation of Light by self-control. Loss of the lunar germ. Retention of the lunar germ. The solar germ. Divine, or “immaculate,” conception in the head. Regeneration of the physical body. Hiram Abiff. Origin of Christianity.
Automatic reclamation is done by the psychic breath taking Light away from the lunar germ, and along the nerves of the digestive system upward from the region of the left kidney and adrenal. The three stages of reclamation by self-control are made by the doer, the thinker, and the knower. Then these three parts of the Triune Self take off Light from the lunar germ and take the germ itself up the spinal cord of the voluntary nervous system. The basis of all four kinds of reclamation is the automatic process by which Light is, from food, prepared for the lunar germ.
The first stage of voluntary reclamation of Light that has come into the body, is the recovery of that Light due to desire to do right. This first stage has to do with taking Light away from the lunar germ, with carrying that Light into the blood and to the heart and lungs and with raising the lunar germ itself from the lowest point to about the junction of the first lumbar and the twelfth dorsal vertebrae on the left side along the voluntary nervous system. The first stage of the reclamation of Light in the body is done by a human who does not want to be led by nature into doing things he feels that nature wants; who wants to be led into doing what is best for him and who does his duties, not grudgingly, but cheerfully. This relates especially to eating and sex, to the desires for possessions, a name or fame, and for power.
If such control is the endeavor of a human his desire will, without his being conscious of it, take away some of the Light which is carried by the lunar germ when it has risen as high as the left kidney.
After the psychic and the mental breaths have there taken some Light for the noetic atmosphere, in the course of the automatic saving, desire living in the blood may bear some of the remaining Light away in the blood stream. The only time when desire can get this Light is during one to three days of each month when a lunar germ is near the kidneys. The Light which desire gets in this way mingles with it, but does not blend. The human does not know about the reclamation, except that he may feel a slight sensation of cheer.
In the blood there is bound Light and free Light. Light which was extracted from the digestive system of the body, is bound Light and cannot be taken up by desire until a lunar germ has extracted it. Light which desire has brought into the blood is free and remains free, until it is either reclaimed by thinking or until desire unites with the Light when the breath meets the circulatory system in the heart and lungs, and only when a thought is conceived or entertained.
The run of human beings lose their lunar germs within the month, and with the lunar germ goes the Light that is in it. But if some Light is taken from the germ by the automatic reclamation, that much Light is returned by the psychic breath to the atmospheres and is saved for the time. If in addition some Light is taken by desire by this unwitting reclamation into the blood, that too is saved when the germ is lost and the remaining Light in it goes back into the circulations of nature.
The second stage of the reclamation of Light that has come back into the body is reached, when a human is acquiring self-control by thinking. Pessimism, mysticism and asceticism are of no use. They hinder rather than help. It is not necessary that one should know anything about the phrases “Light of the Intelligence” or “reclamation.” It is enough that he intends what his inner One, his Father, the Light in him, shows to be right. Every human has that Light within, though he does not know it as such and does not do what it shows to be right. The second stage requires an attitude of mind akin to optimism, which favors honest and clear thinking, and an enjoyment of the pleasures of life with temperance and without hate, greed or envy. It requires as to his duties, that he should perform them willingly and understandingly.
With the desire that brings the first degree of reclamation and with this attitude of mind, he develops, though he may at times slip back, a mental set that will result in voluntary reclamation. By this mental set his thinking will without his being conscious of it, extract Light that is free in the bloodstream and some of the Light that is bound in a thought and will even balance some thoughts. It may also raise the lunar germ along the voluntary nervous system up to the highest of the thoracic vertebrae.
Thinking can get Light from circulating blood only while it is heart-blood and lung-blood, and only when rightness reigns and desire is in agreement with it.
The seasons in the body present a favorable condition when the solar germ, descending and ascending in the two hemispheres of the spinal cord, is opposite the heart. This occurs twice a year, during the three days following the twenty-first days of June and of December. Getting Light in thinking is, however, not restricted to these favorable times; it may happen at any time, provided the lunar germ has risen above the kidneys.
From heart-blood and lung-blood, thinking, by means of the mental breath acting through the respiratory breath, raises Light from the heart and from the lungs to the cerebellum and cerebrum. Thinking raises it by an effort to hold Light on a definite subject, such as who one is, and who one’s knower or Father in Heaven is. The thinking which reclaims Light is intent upon learning from the errors of the past. It is different from ordinary, haphazard, passive thinking. It is even more than active thinking on a matter of religion or philosophy. It is thinking so intended and restrained as to be active thinking on such subjects as immortality, the dweller in the body, truthfulness, chastity, honesty, the purpose of life or service and goodwill. It is active thinking with the definite aim of learning for personal moral and mental advancement. It overrides all obstacles of desires, allurements and weaknesses. It is accompanied by events in the body. When this sort of thinking goes on it prevents the Light circulating in the body from flowing out, and it empowers the lunar germ to take up more Light.
During this effort Light in the mental atmosphere claims and takes Light from the heart-blood. When the blood-Light becomes mental Light and is taken away from desire, desire tries to follow the Light and so gives force to the thinking. Thinking carries the Light to the cerebellum and the cerebrum. The Light remains in that part of the noetic atmosphere in the brain which is related to the subject of the thinking.
Thinking gets Light not only from heart-blood but also from thoughts, yet only under certain conditions. The thought must be in the heart or the lungs and the thinking must either be done in connection with the willing and understanding performance of a duty or must be thinking toward repudiation of the thought. Such thinking may produce two kinds of results. It may take away some of the Light from the thought, weakening it, and restore the Light to the mental atmosphere, or it may take away all of the Light because it balances the thought. The human is not conscious of the result produced by his thinking, but the effects of the reclaimed Light will be felt by him as lightness, airiness and vitality in the body and mental ease and the ability to see things more clearly.
Thinking may extract some of the Light that is bound in a thought while the thought is in the heart or the lungs. It does this when it disapproves of the thought, and so draws Light away from it, thus limiting and retarding it.
Thinking may also take all the Light out of a thought. When a thought has been conceived and is not yet issued, it is being gestated in the cerebellum and the cerebrum. There is a communication between the thought and the heart in which it was conceived. The thought is nourished by active and by passive thinking. If during this time the human determines to abandon the aim and the object of the thought, the thought is drawn back into the heart, and the Light is separated from the desire by thinking and is returned to the mental atmosphere from the heart and lungs.
Light may also be reclaimed from a thought after the thought has been issued, but before it is exteriorized. The thought has then left the head through the frontal sinuses and is in the mental atmosphere. If the human decides to abandon the aim and the object, the thought goes to the part of the mental atmosphere which is in the heart and lungs. There thinking separates the Light from the desire, and the Light is transferred to the mental and the desire to the psychic atmosphere.
It may be that the thought was not exteriorized as a whole, but that only the design was exteriorized wholly, partially or in a modified form. In this case no Light is extracted. If the thought as a whole is exteriorized with the first exteriorization all the Light is extracted, otherwise the Light is extracted when the thought is balanced, which may not be until after many exteriorizations.
A thought is balanced by thinking when feeling-and-desire are in agreement with each other and both are in agreement with rightness and that and reason are in agreement with selfness concerning the act, object or event, which had been witnessed by I-ness. Then the thinking extracts Light from the thought and transfers it to the pineal body where it is restored to the noetic atmosphere.
The Light can be extracted only when the thought is in the heart and lungs. In the first and second cases the decision to abandon the aim and object sends the thought there. In the third case, when the thought is balanced at the first exteriorization because of the mental attitude, this attitude calls it to the heart and lungs.
It is different in cases which are reactions to results of the law of thought. There the balancing is done at a time when a thought cycle has brought the thought back to the heart and lungs for balancing, or when circumstances like mental associations, memories or an event cause the thought to be drawn suddenly into the heart and lungs, or when an abstract subject is thought of, such as destiny, living forever, service, or being conscious of the desire for self-knowledge. Then something affects the heart and lungs and compels the human to question.
This probing and searching is the beginning of the third stage of voluntary reclamation, which is intentional and knowing. Sometimes the searcher finds what he looks for, sometimes he discovers what he did not expect. His thinking opens up the thought and by the Light it uses and the Light that is in the thought, shows him the feelings and desires in the thought as they truly are. When he acknowledges these to be as the Light shows that they are, and determines that he will make them as they should be, the Light of that thought goes with the Light in the mental atmosphere to the pineal body and is thence transferred to the noetic atmosphere, and the thought is balanced.
The third stage of the reclamation of Light which has come into the body from nature is the recovery of the Light due to knowledge gained in the previous two stages. This knowledge is that he should not by his thinking attach himself to anything or attach anything to himself. The third stage is reached when a human applies this knowledge in his living. As he continues, encumbrances and interferences fall gradually away. He acquires confidence in action, strength in purpose, penetration in looking at a thing or a condition. Neither friends nor strangers influence him. Money, possessions and attainments cease to have attraction for him. He eats and drinks what will keep his body in health, he enjoys his food although he does not eat for the pleasure of eating. He is not bitter or sour any more than he is a hedonist. He attends to his occupations because they are his work. But all his effort in whatever he thinks or does or omits is to reclaim Light and not to bind it up again.
With such a one, too, the automatic reclamation works better and is more effective than with one who knows or cares nothing about it. The voluntary reclamation is based on a more steady desire which controls all other desires, and on a mental set to reclaim Light, intentionally and intelligently. Thoughts that are balanced are one of two main sources of the Light that is reclaimed, although this is not known to the one who balances them and so obtains the Light that was in them. The other source is Light that is carried by a lunar germ into the head.
The automatic protection of a lunar germ ends when it has come up as high as the left kidney; and the germ is lost, usually through sexual occupations, after the psychic breath has taken off some Light automatically. It may, however, be raised along the spinal cord in the region of the dorsal and the cervical vertebrae until it reaches the midbrain. There it arrives as a physically matured germ, and can when united with seed or soil, be used in the generation of a physical body, superior in health and strength to those that crowd the world. However, if it is preserved, it will unite with the next monthly germ which merges into it. Then it will descend and make a second round through the body, being automatically protected up to the left kidney. It will, if it is not lost, arrive at the head for the second time, at the end of the second lunar month, strengthened by additional Light it has gathered.
While it is possible for one who has developed a lunar germ of higher degrees, that is, one carried for two, three or four months, to beget a body in which a doer more perfect than those in the bodies of the run of human beings may enter, and while indeed there have been men on the earth who were born from seeds containing lunar germs preserved for many lunations, it is also possible to retain the lunar germ into which the subsequent monthly lunar germs have merged, for the regeneration of the body, for self-impregnation and for the building of three inner bodies, in which the three parts of the Triune Self will live also in the form, life, and light worlds. When all of the subsequent lunar germs have been merged with the first, there is a divine conception in the head, because of the presence of the solar germ.
The solar germ is a portion of the doer and it represents the Triune Self, and has with it some of the clear Light. It has no body of nature-matter, such as the lunar germ has. There is only one solar germ for each life, though the germ renews itself every year. It appears at puberty, in the pituitary body and descends in the right side of the spinal cord until, after about six months, it reaches the end of the cord proper at about the first lumbar vertebra, (Fig. VI-A, d). Then it turns and ascends in the left side, during about six months, and arrives at the pineal body. While it is in the head it renews itself and then starts on the next descent. It continues this through life. At the death of the body it becomes again one with the doer.
The solar germ by its journeys, south and north in the spinal cord, patrols The Way. It keeps open the dwelling place of the Triune Self, while the three parts of the Triune Self, as at present, do not dwell in the spinal cord. With the run of human beings the solar germ does nothing more.
Its potential activities depend upon the presence of a lunar germ in its field of operation. Every lunar germ must pass the solar germ at least once a year, that is, while the lunar germ is going down. With the run of human beings it does not pass the solar germ a second time.
If a lunar germ is not lost, but on the return path to the head rises higher than the station at the lumbar vertebrae where the psychic breath takes off Light in the course of the automatic reclamation, it is near the path of the solar germ and within the field of its influence. The solar germ then assists the lunar germ, by giving it strength as well as a push or pull upwards. If a lunar germ is preserved so as to make the second round it receives additional assistance. So it is in each succeeding round. When a lunar germ has completed thirteen rounds within twelve months, having of course with it the twelve successive monthly germs which have merged into it, and having the Light it received each time it passed the solar germ, and returns to the head, it is met there by the solar germ and receives Light from it. With that Light is a direct ray of Light of the Intelligence. This is a self-impregnation or divine, immaculate, virgin conception, and from it begins the rebuilding of the physical body into an immortal physical body. With the rebuilding of the body is achieved the reclamation of all Light that has gone into and was outstanding in nature. Reclamation of all the Light cannot be accomplished except in a rebuilt physical body. In the measure that a human reclaims Light he becomes conscious of the Light in him, and with that conscious of himself as the doer.
The rebuilding is begun by the lunar germ which has been preserved during thirteen lunations. It is accomplished when the body is two-columned and sexless. Not until then can all the Light from nature be reclaimed, and even then some Light in thoughts will still be outstanding. Human beings living in one-columned bodies cannot reclaim all the outstanding Light because such bodies have not the necessary organization.
The only indication in any school or tradition of a rebuilding of the physical body into an immortal body is found in the Masonic teachings about Hiram Abiff, which is the lunar germ; about the broken column, which refers to the part missing below the sternum, (Fig. VI-E), and about the temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, which is the rebuilt, regenerated physical body.
It is likely that about the time the Christian teachings originated, one man had succeeded in retaining a lunar germ for thirteen lunations, had consequently reclaimed Light and had become conscious of and as the Light of his Triune Self, his “Father in Heaven.” They could have given out teachings of how others could achieve this result. This event probably occurred at a time when a lesser cycle swung in, when men’s thoughts were stirred by Greek philosophy, doubt and dissatisfaction, when men were expecting something new and were made to prepare an atmosphere for its appearance.
p 480
The man must himself preserve the lunar germs, as well as his seed. If he does not preserve his seed he cannot preserve the lunar germ, which will be lost after the second week. The simple precepts of chastity and decency are all that is required as subjects of thinking and rules of conduct, in order to save the lunar germ and the seed. The age-old and always new revelations, books, mystic teachings, cults, brotherhoods and sisterhoods that present love and sex as anything else than matters of chastity and decency, are blinds for corruption. They have helped to bring on the noetic night...
p 554
The flesh body is unstable, of short life and weak, when compared with nature and the doer, both of whom it serves. Its time of service is short. Soon upon its youth and vigor follows death. It is too feeble to stand the strain which nature and the doer put upon it. The doer should use it in the reclamation of the Light of the Intelligence from nature. When it is no longer capable of reclaiming Light automatically, its days are usually numbered. When the Light available to a human has been used up the body grows weaker and dies. The Light is as a tincture that gives vitality. The chief cause of the shortness of life and of the feebleness of the body is the absence of enough Light of the Intelligence. In this short time the body has hardly begun its life before it is withered by age or destroyed by disease...
p 577
It is not a misuse of Light to send it out into nature to maintain its higher forms as plants, trees, animals or rocks, but it is a desecration of the Light to appropriate it to the vermin, pests and scourges of nature as does the run of human beings. If one’s thoughts put the Light which is loaned to the doer to legitimate uses, it is returned and sooner or later he learns from it what it went through while out in nature. That Light will enlighten him when he is thinking upon the subject with which the Light was connected. It will so show him the stupendous wonders of plant life and the molecular and atomic marvels of organic and inorganic nature, the actions of which it guided. The Light reclaimed will also affect his destiny more quickly than any other power. The Light shows one his destiny, how to deal with it, how to accept it and thereby to make the most of it.
Nature seeks the doer for several purposes. It tries to get Light of the Intelligence which the doer has the use of, and to get the doer into nature, so as to have an association with feeling-and-desire, and with thinking from which it gets forms. Nature seeks this association so as to keep its units in circulation. It does this by having the doer transform elementals into sensations and then identifying itself with them while they are sensations. Human beings would not allow themselves to be so used if they were conscious of the true state of facts and of the illusion under which they live. So the illusion is allowed to continue until the doer is sufficiently advanced to perform its duties to nature and raise it, without being under any illusion.
The illusion is produced by letting the doer feel that the four senses are part of itself and that other elementals either entering the body through these or already in the body are also part of itself, when it feels them as sensations...
p 645
The essential thing in life is to preserve, reclaim and free his Light and to think without creating thoughts, that is, without attachment. He must find out what he is not. He must find out what and who he is. He must rebuild his body into one that is deathless. He cannot be lost. He is never forgotten, never forsaken, never without the care and protection which he will allow himself to receive. He can feel and think of himself through all discomforts and troubles as being guarded and judged by his administrator, the thinker, known by his knower, guided by the Light of the Intelligence, and loved, cared for and supported by the Supreme Triune Self of the worlds under the Light of Supreme Intelligence...
CHAPTER
XI
THE GREAT WAY
THE GREAT WAY
Section 1
The “Descent” of man. There is no evolution without, first, involution. The mystery of germ cell development. The future of the human. The Great Way. Brotherhoods. Ancient Mysteries. Initiations. Alchemists. Rosicrucians.
In every age a few individuals do find The Great Way. They do conquer death by regenerating and restoring their bodies to the Realm of Permanence. But this is an individual and private affair of each such doer. The world does not know; other human beings do not know it. The world does not know because public opinion and the weight of the world would be opposed to it, and would hold back the doers who choose to regenerate their bodies and restore them to the Realm of Permanence.
Before a human will even agree to the idea of a “Way” to a “Realm of Permanence,” he will have become estranged to the concept of an “ascent of man” or “evolution”; that is, that man, with his great gifts, has ascended from a mere speck of matter. On the contrary, he will have become convinced of the “descent” of man, from a higher estate to his present low condition in a perishable human body.
Evolution is preceded by involution. There cannot be an evolution unless there has been an involution of what is to be evolved.
It is not merely unreasonable, it is unscientific to suppose that any form of life can evolve from a germ cell that was not involved into that cell. An oak tree cannot evolve from the germ of a cabbage or a fern, even through countless developments from those germs. There must be the involution of an oak into its acorn in order that there can be the evolution from that acorn into an oak tree.
Likewise every man or woman has descended into this human world of change from an ancestral sexless being of the Realm of Permanence. The descent has been made by variation, modification, mutation, and division. The evidence of this procedure is shown by spermatogenesis and by ovulation, of the spermatozoon and the ovum into gametes, marriageable cells. Each cell must be changed from its original state or condition, and be modified and divided, until it is a distinctly male or female sex cell. These changes and divisions re-enact the biological records of the history of the cells, from the time of the ancestral type of sexlessness until they become male or female sex cells.
Heretofore no definite explanation has been given to account for these mysterious facts, but an understanding that the development of the sexes is the degeneration and departure from a former state of deathlessness into the lower human world of birth and death and re-existence, will explain the facts and open the way for understanding that there will be the return from the human to the former higher state. Here is part of the evidence:
Science has furnished evidence that in both spermatogenesis and ovulation the germ cells must divide twice before the spermatozoon can enter into the ovum and begin the generation of a new male or female body. The reason is that the spermatozoon is at first a sexless cell. By its first division it puts off that of itself which is sexless and is transformed into a male-female part; but as such it is not yet fit to marry. By its second division it throws off its female part and is then a gamete, a marriageable cell, and is ready for copulation. Similarly, the ovum is at first sexless; it must be changed into a sex cell before it can marry. By its first division it rids itself of its sexless part and is then a female-male cell, unfit for marriage. By its second division the male part is discarded and it is then the female sex cell ready for marriage.
For each life the history of the transition from an ancestral sexless body is re-enacted by each of the two germ cells. The changes which take place are determined by the thinking inscribed on the breath-form or living soul of the body through long series of lives of crucifixions and resurrections, each life being a crucifixion, followed by a return or resurrection. The breath-form has on it the original type of the sexless perfect body, but is changed into male or female according to the thinking of feeling-and-desire.
The conscious self in the body is feeling-and-desire, which is symbolically nailed through the body of sex to its cross.
Its cross is the invisible breath-form of the visible body. The body is the fleshly material of the body-cross.
Feeling-and-desire is bound into the body-cross by nerves, desire is bound into the body-cross by blood.
Sight, hearing, taste, and smell, are the four senses which are themselves a cross and which are the symbolical nails with which the conscious self is nailed to its breath-form cross.
By breathing, the self of feeling-and-desire is kept on its breath-form cross throughout the life of its body-cross.
When the self of feeling-and-desire gives up the breath, the body is dead. Then the self leaves the body-cross.
But, as the conscious self, it continues with its breath-form cross through its after death states, (Fig. V-D).
With its breath-form cross, the self will take on another body-cross of flesh and blood:—to be prepared for it for its next life on earth.
The conscious self of feeling-and-desire will again take on the body-cross of flesh and blood, and will be nailed to the objects of nature by sight and hearing, and by taste and smell.
So the conscious feeling-and-desire must continue its crucifixions life after life in this world of birth and death, until it regenerates its body of death into an everlasting body of life. Then, as the Son, it ascends and unites with its thinker and knower as the Father, the Triune Self complete in The Realm of Permanence from which it originally descended.
Teachings about the mysteries and initiations were not about The Great Way.
Information about The Great Way could not be made known to the rulers and conquerors, and the people who have made up the civilizations have been too savage and brutal. The civilizations have been based on conquest through murder.
This is the first time in any historic period when, it is said, there is freedom of speech; and that one may choose to be, to think, and to do what he thinks best, especially if it is for the benefit of others. That is why information about The Great Way is now given—for those who choose and will.
When The Great Way is made known to the few, they will make it known to the people. When it becomes generally known, those of the people who are weary of the treadmill of human life, who want something more than the glory of possessions and fame and pageantry and power, will rejoice at the good news of The Great Way. Then the few individuals who have made their destiny for The Way will be free to give the information to those who desire and choose to be on The Way.
In the past, growths into the inner worlds were not unusual; in fact, that was the normal course of progress. And unless this civilization is brought to an end by continued rapacity and sexual indulgence out of season, they will in the future become frequent again. Then human beings will not have to go against the whole of nature, because their physical bodies will be developed along the lines here indicated. They will begin to rebuild a vertebrate column in front, (Fig. VI-D), containing a front- or nature-cord. Into this front-cord are blended the right and the left cords of the present involuntary nervous system. The cord branches out laterally and into the pelvis, abdomen, and thorax, replacing the internal organs there at present; its ramifications fill these cavities with nervous structures somewhat as the cephalic brain now fills the cavity of the skull. So there will eventually be four brains,—a brain, each, in the pelvis for the perfect body, in the abdomen for the doer, in the thorax for the thinker, and in the head for the knower. The bodies will have forms in which matter will become conscious in higher degrees more easily than it does at present.
The doer-in-the-body is conscious mainly of feeling-and-desire and, to a lesser degree, of thinking, but it is not conscious as feeling-and-desire, nor as thinking; still less is it conscious as its identity. It is conscious of a difference between feeling and desiring, but not conscious of a difference between rightness-and-reason, as two different aspects of the thinker of the Triune Self. Nor is it conscious of its three minds of which human beings use chiefly the body-mind. Of conscience, which comes from selfness speaking through rightness, it is not conscious as coming from the higher source. It is not conscious of the three parts of its Triune Self and is not conscious of the Light of the Intelligence. It is conscious of nature as reported by the four senses, but is not conscious as nature, or even of nature in the flesh in which it dwells. It feels aches or comfort in parts of the body, but then it is conscious of feeling a sensation and not conscious as nature or as feeling. When there are sensations, that is, elementals playing on the nerves in which the feeling aspect of the doer is, the human is not conscious of or as the elementals, or that they are elementals, or even as feeling apart from these elementals, but he is conscious of the feeling as sensations. One does not know how to distinguish between himself as feeling and the sensations which he feels, and he must therefore become conscious of himself as that which feels, as distinct from the impression of nature that is made on feeling. To overcome these limitations the human must become conscious of his breath-form, of the way in which it operates, and of the actions of the four senses. When these limitations are overcome, the doer portion is conscious as feeling-and-desire, but the feeling-and-desire are heightened and refined. They take in the feeling-and-desire in all humanity, in nature in the body, and through that in nature outside.
In the present age the stages in which human beings are conscious are so low that special training is required. They themselves must prepare themselves; they cannot get anyone to teach them or to do the work for them. They do this by learning from their experiences, through thinking.
But what of the teachers, initiations, brotherhoods and lodges of which so much is heard? What of secret symbols, cryptic language and “The Way”? The answer is that these are not concerned with The Great Way here spoken of, which is found and traveled by the aid of the Light of the Intelligence. They are concerned with the legendary path, which at its best is only a related part of what is The Great Way. They have to do with symbols and language referring to the lunar germs, though not by that name, and to transformations in the physical body which the preservation of these germs brings about..
From the state in which each doer is at present, it must go on until it opens and travels the path which will lead it to the end of its re-existences. To determine to find The Way is simple, but is a most momentous undertaking. Every doer must some day enter upon The Way. The Great Way is a name here given to a Threefold Way: a certain Way in the physical body; a Way of thinking for the development of the human by thinking; and a Way on which the human travels inside the earth during this development. These three Ways are traveled together and at the same time, not separately and at different times; but they will be treated here as though separate and distinct.
Each of these three Ways has three sections, called the form path, the life path, and the light path. On The Way in the body, the form path reaches from the end of the terminal filament to the beginning of the spinal cord proper; the life path reaches from there to the seventh cervical vertebra; and the light path reaches from there to the first cervical vertebra, (Fig. VI-D). On The Way of thinking, the form path ends with the ability to use the feeling-mind and the desire-mind; the life path ends with the ability to use the minds of rightness and of reason; and the light path is completed with the ability to use the minds of I-ness and of selfness. On The Way in the earth, the form path reaches from the entrance into the earth to the end of the first third of half the circumference of the inner crust; the life path ends when the second third has been traveled; the light path is the completion of half of the circumference of the inner earth.
The Way in the body, though it leads to immortal life, is a closed road and must be opened by a lunar germ bearing Light. The form path of The Way in the body is the hollow within the terminal filament, which at present is a tubular thread from the coccyx to the spinal cord proper. This tube is now choked and sealed wholly or in part and can be opened only by a light bearer, a lunar germ, (Fig. VI-A, d).
When a lunar germ, after descending on the right side, in the involuntary nervous system, generally speaking along the digestive tract, is not lost and has, by way of the coccygeal ganglion, ascended in the left side of the involuntary system to the region of the kidney, and passes upward, it will go to the head and complete its first round. As it descends again it is, if not lost, accompanied by the succeeding lunar germs, and is reinforced by the Light they carry and by Light of the solar germ. When the lunar germ returns to the head at the completion of its thirteenth round, Light issues from the solar into the lunar germ and there is a divine, a true “immaculate” conception. This is the initial step and factual basis of the development of the three embryonic bodies; it is analogous to the physical process, the lunar germ—in the female as well as the male—representing the ovum and the solar germ the spermatozoon. The lunar germ developing towards an embryonic form body, descends again in the right side of the involuntary nervous system along the digestive tract. After it has reached the lowest point in the pelvis it does not ascend on the left side to the region of the kidneys. It builds a bridge from what is now the coccygeal ganglion at the junction of the two cords of the involuntary nervous system, to the tip of the filament of the spinal cord, by way of nerves belonging to the voluntary system, goes across the bridge, opens the seal of the terminal filament and enters the filament through the opening, (Fig. VI-C).
The lunar germ then is on the form path and travels through the terminal filament. The path leads to the central canal of the spinal cord proper, about the junction of the first lumbar and twelfth dorsal vertebrae. When the lunar germ has reached that point, the solar germ which went down in the right hemisphere of the spinal cord, meets it and both germs blend and go through the central canal of the spinal cord to the head. When the lunar germ has entered the central canal of the spinal cord the human has eternal life, that is, obligatory deaths and rebirths are at an end.
What is here called the lunar germ ceases to be a mere germ after its impregnation in the head. In its descent along the nerves of the digestive system it begins to develop and when it enters through the opened seal into the filament it is ready to become the embryonic form body. So what was called the lunar germ traveling along the path, is a living embryonic form body traveling in the filament towards the central canal of the spinal cord, that is, towards eternal life. This will become in time the form body, the body of the doer, the psychic part of the Triune Self complete. When this embryonic body has reached the central canal of the spinal cord at about the upper level of the first lumbar vertebra, it has come to the end of the form path of The Way in the body. It is here that it is met by the solar germ. This is no longer a mere germ but it began to develop during its downward course in the right hemisphere of the spinal cord, and, after it had entered the central canal of the spinal cord and met there the form body, finally grew up into an embryonic life body, the body to be, of the thinker, the mental part of the Triune Self. Both these entities then ascend the central canal together, from the first lumbar to the seventh cervical vertebra.
When the embryonic form body and the embryonic life body enter the cervical part of the central canal of the spinal cord, they are met there at the seventh cervical vertebra by a light germ from the pituitary body, which is to the solar germ what the solar germ is to the lunar germ; this is the beginning of the light path in the body and of the embryonic light body. This light germ started from the pituitary body, descended through the third and fourth ventricles to the pons and medulla oblongata, and into the central canal of the spinal cord which runs through the canal of the vertebrae. The light germ is always there, but its descent and consequent development into the light body depend upon the rising and coming of the life and form bodies to meet it in the central canal of the spinal cord at the seventh cervical vertebra. The light germ developing into the embryonic light body, accompanied by the embryonic life and form bodies, advances through the medulla oblongata and pons to the pineal body, (Fig. VI-A, a).
At that time the pituitary sends a stream of Light through the canal of the infundibulum to the pineal body. The Light stream opens the pineal, the embryonic light body enters it and the head is filled with Light. Later, when the embryonic form, life and light bodies reach their full growth, are raised and issue, and the three parts of the Triune Self are in them, the doer has reached perfection, is of the complete Triune Self in a perfected, sexless, immortal, physical body and is at the end of The Great Way. The cause of these processes is the development of the doer, the psychic part of the Triune Self.
Section 3
The Way of thinking. Honesty and truthfulness as the foundation of progress. Physical, psychic, mental requirements. Changes in the body in the process of regeneration.
The second of the three Ways of The Great Way, The Way of thinking, begins when the human has run the gamut and is through with pleasure and pain, when the doer has reached the saturation point of experiences, and when the human inquires into the causes of human action and inaction, into the purpose of living, of health and disease, riches and poverty, virtues and vices, life and death. He then discovers a futility in human effort. Though discontent and restlessness are experienced by everyone, and though at times despondency comes and weariness and indifference, these states are not what is meant by that discovery.
The discovery of the vanity, the emptiness of life, the discovery that no human possession is worth while, is a mental insight and is made when the human has reached the saturation point of human experiences. The desire of the doer can never be satisfied with physical things; but it can be gorged and surfeited with experiences of them, so that feeling cannot get anything more out of experiences. Still, feeling-and-desire are not satisfied and continue to drive the body-mind over the range of things that might satisfy. Then the body-mind, still driven by desire, makes the discovery to the doer of the futility of human effort.
By a flash of interior Light the human sees the world as a whirligig. He sees that the objects and the situations which men desire revolve; that they have appeared and disappeared to him many times. He sees that these things are toys which attract people and hold the attention and interests in life. One set of toys gives place to another. The toys, though seemingly innumerable, are of a few types and patterns. They return endlessly and seem new when they come. The types are sex and its four desire generals, food, possessions, fame, and power. They spring from feeling-and-desire, which are never satisfied. Thereby feeling-and-desire cause the change and keep the whirligig going, make the toys, give them movement and color and ruin them. This goes on until feeling and desire each seeks the other in itself. The whirligig stops.
With the discovery the castles, dungeons, playgrounds and workshops of the world break down and disappear, so far as value, attraction or repulsion goes.
The discovery of the futility of all efforts and the state of emptiness that follows, eventually force the human to question who he is and to search into the recesses of his being for a way out of the emptiness. By hearing or reading or a flash from within, he becomes conscious that there is a way, and he desires to find it. This is a distinct understanding and a choice. He discovers that there are many things to be done and many things that must not be done, before he can find the way. The saturation disappears when there is a desire for the new way, the true way which lies beyond, past human events. Singleness of desire, and purpose to find and walk on the true way, start the feeling-mind and the desire-mind, before little used, and these bring more Light of the Intelligence.
In the ordinary man, feelings, started by nature, influence desires; these compel rightness, which starts reason, and that reacts to feeling. Thus the rounds continue with passive and active thinking. But in the case of one who desires to follow his knower, from whom the Light comes, the round is reversed. The feelings are not started by nature from the outside, but the desires are started by rightness acting on feeling from within. Therefore, the Light which selfness sends to rightness rules the desires which cause the feelings to appeal to reason; so that the desires are more passive and the feelings are more active than in the run of human beings. Then reason goes to I-ness for Light and I-ness causes selfness to send Light to rightness. And so the rounds continue. This is the government from within, instead of the government from without which obtains with the run of human beings, (Fig. IV-B).
The human then lives and works by the Light from within. He does not get that Light, which is a direct Light from his knower, continuously, but only in flashes and in response to his own efforts. After complying with the necessary requirements he has, eventually, an illumination and during that, finds that he is on The Way.
The period from the time when a human first discovers the futility of human effort for the things of the world to the time he enters The Way, sees many changes in his environment, in his occupation, in his associations, in his inner life and in his physical body. The period covers the time it takes to save thirteen lunar germs which have become one, and for it to reach the coccygeal ganglion for the building of the bridge. There may have to be many re-existences of the doer after the choice is once made.
A human may be in any environment when he makes the great discovery. He may be in a vast city, a small town, a hamlet or a lonely place; he may be engaged in any occupation, he may be a pork butcher, a jail guard or a party politician; he may have all sorts of acquaintances, associates and friends; his family ties may be close or loose; and his possessions may be great or small. All this will change; but not by a violent effort on his part. That is not to say he should be unconcerned about the duties which these connections impose on him, but means that he must not be attached by liking or disliking.
One’s surroundings, his work and his ties will change naturally, as his thinking changes, after he has made the choice. It is not for him to decide for changes and to move by his own efforts out of present conditions. He must wait, wait until opportunities for change present themselves. He should not make opportunities. He lives in a certain environment and is held by the various ties of and duties to locality, nation, race, friendship, family, marriage, position and possessions, because there is a purpose. Ties cannot be broken; they must be worn away or must fall away. Even possessions should not be done away with to be rid of them; one has them for a purpose; they mean responsibilities and trust and one must answer for them and his stewardship. They, too, will disappear naturally if they are in the way of his advance. There is in these outward conditions no mark, no criterion by which the world can distinguish from the run of human beings one who has made the great discovery and has made his choice for an inward life.
As he progresses by thinking and by leading the life, his body will change and he will gradually retire from the world, inconspicuously and without attracting any attention.
Though there is no standard in outward things, in the scenery in which he lives, there are standards to which he must have attained in his psychic nature, in his mental set and activities and in his physical make-up before he can enter The Great Way.
The stages through which one passes before he reaches the psychic standard to enter The Way, vary with different persons, but this standard which must be reached by all is substantially the same for all. Honesty and truthfulness must be the foundation of his character. His unequivocal feeling-and-desire must be to see things as they are, else preferences and prejudices will unseat his judgment and lead him astray.
The standard for his psychic nature is that feeling-and-desire are in agreement to gain The Great Way, above all things. Ordinarily feeling-and-desire are not in agreement; before they are in agreement he has to go a long way, and many things will happen to him.
When after his great discovery he desires to look for the Light within, the saturation ceases. To be cloyed and to choose to get out of the world is one thing, to be free from it so that it has no claim, is quite another. The saturation is a saturation with the world, with its outward life and gifts and attractions, a world-sickness. It chokes up the cloyed feelings and desires. When they are turned towards an inward life new realms of experience are opened and new objects are to be attained. The cloyed feelings and desires go into the new realms and as they find objects there the saturation ceases.
The feelings and desires had not overcome the old things which cloyed them. They are still slaves of nature when they go away from it and turn to an inward life; they are slaves, although slaves who demand their freedom.
The old things have renewed attractions and new attractions; renewed attractions because the old ones were not overcome, and new ones because things are looked at from a new point of view. Both of these attractions are great, greater than they would be with an ordinary person. Formerly he went along with them and now he fights them; now the pull of nature behind and through its things is stronger, as nature can now get more Light than from the ordinary person. Therefore as one seeks The Way and accumulates a little Light he is apt to make missteps. However often he fails, if he continues his efforts for an inward life, he will go on.
The psychic standard requires, second, certain moral qualifications. The moral aspect of his psychic nature is of course interlinked with the rightness of the mental part, the thinker. Ingratitude, malice, rancor, hatred, envy, anger, vindictiveness; jealousy, meanness, greed, fretfulness, restlessness, gloom, despondency, discontent, fear, cowardice, voluptuousness and cruelty must be strangers to him. He must have become estranged so that they are not his usual, or occasional or recurring visitors. It means that if they approach they are unwelcome because he has grown to be out of touch with them. They are now not natural to him, there is no room for them because he is surcharged with a power that comes from his new method of living. He is chaste, friendly, kindly, brave, temperate and firm.
The psychic standard requires, third, with all this, a fineness of feeling. It also requires, fourth, that psychic powers and the finer side of the four senses be not employed and that though one be sensitive to astral impressions he is not influenced by them.
The mental standard one must have reached before he can enter The Way relates to mental quality, mental attitude and a mental set, all of which will manifest in a certain kind of thinking which will produce the psychic and the physical standards. His mental quality must be such that dishonesty and untruthfulness are abhorrent to him. Deceit, hypocrisy, pride, vanity and arrogance must be strangers. He must be honest with himself, self-restrained, self-contained, and modest withal. His mental attitude must present friendliness generally, that is, the recognition that he is a related part of the whole; a readiness to perform his duties with joy if they relate to The Way and with willingness if they relate to other things; a determination to respond to rightness; and a reverence for and an eagerness to receive Light of the Intelligence. His mental set must be for one point only and that is, to be on The Way.
The standard for the body is that it has preserved the germs of thirteen lunar months. Ordinary nerve matter cannot hold a lunar germ much more than one month. To preserve thirteen a new, special, finer, fourfold nervous structure has to be grown within the old. At any time while this new structure grows it may be broken down. Malice and malcontent encrust, rancor tears, hatred withers, envy rots, jealousy, greed and salaciousness eat into, anger consumes, vindictiveness contracts, meanness dries up, fretfulness and restlessness unsteady, sullenness stifles, gloom deadens, despondency wears away, fear paralyzes, cowardice shrinks, voluptuousness wastes, licentiousness softens, lust burns, cruelty scars the finer nervous structure, and ingratitude shuts off the Light and leaves one in ignorance of his relation to his Triune Self and to humanity.
The body must be healthy and strong. Any food will do if it supplies what the body needs for health. Food should not be a fad and has little or nothing to do with the goal, that is, the preservation of the thirteen lightbearers, except that one should be temperate and should not eat too little or too much. Beverages, whatever they are, must be free from alcohol. The body must not sleep too much, or too little. It must not be abused by fasting, discomforts or other kinds of asceticism. Torturing the flesh will not bring anyone to or near The Great Way. The body must be kept healthy and strong, and all that is necessary for this is the steady living of a simple, temperate and chaste life. The body must not be governed from without by nature, but from within by thinking.
During the thinking, the living and the striving, which is the special preparation for entrance upon The Great Way, the body undergoes certain changes. The thymus gland becomes active and works with the thyroid. The gut will be less of a sewer. The stomach, duodenum, jejunum, ileum and colon become shorter and smaller. During the rounds of the lunar germs in the body the nervous currents are regulated by the lunar germs and gradually strengthened, so that a new and inner nervous structure grows up. The involuntary nerves of the digestive system begin to form a structure which eventually will be similar to that of the voluntary nervous system.
The length of time it takes from the discovery that the world has been a whirligig for countless years and ever disappoints expectation, to the entering upon The Way, varies with human beings. After the discovery and the choice for an inward life there is usually a steady progress, for a time. Then the world, which is nature, exercises its pull effectively, because some of the thoughts which have not been balanced by the human, aid nature when their cycles tend toward exteriorization. The human may get discouraged and may fall back into the world. When he is again sick of the world, he looks again for an inward life.
When death has intervened between his flounderings, he is reborn with an inclination to recognize the futility of an outward life. He will at some time in that or in the next life make the discovery again, and it will not strike him as being strange; he will make the choice and seek to attain to The Way and perhaps fail again. In a new life it is natural for him to see that life is empty; when the time comes he will again make the choice for the road that will lead to The Way. Once one has made the discovery and made the choice, he will be led towards The Way, even though he does not again make the discovery. Failures cannot prevent, they will only delay the finding of The Way. Failures are incidents, and sometimes they are unavoidable because of past thoughts; they are often blessings in disguise and cannot hold back one who is determined to strive for The Way, after he has once made his choice.
Having now in it a lightbearer, that is, a lunar germ into which will merge the germs of the next twelve months and which has now begun to grow, the human eventually enters The Way when the lightbearer opens the seal and enters the filament, (Fig. VI-C, D).
Section 4
Entering The Way. A new life opens. Advances on the form, life, and light paths. The lunar, solar, and light germs. Bridge between the two nervous systems. Further changes in the body. The perfect, immortal, physical body. The three inner bodies for the doer, the thinker, the knower of the Triune Self, within the perfect physical body.
When one enters The Way he is away from all his connections and associations. The world in which he has lived is left behind. The human, by the opening of the seal and entrance on The Way, feels a great joy, such as he has never before felt. The joy is not thrilling, spasmodic or ecstatic; it is steady and from a source within. All things seem to reflect that joy. The joy is feeling progressively safety, permanence and assurance that he will come into his own. The joy can last for months.
Gradually a new life opens. It extends from within and reaches the outer world. Everything is different from what it seemed before. The world has not changed, but it looks different because he and his body are different, he knows himself to be a being distinct from nature and from his body. He identifies feeling, if he has not done so before.
He seems to be in the heart of the world. Before, he felt its pull, now he feels its pulse. Before, only the outer world could act on him, now an inner world, the form world, begins from within to open to him. There is a direct interplay between the doer-in-the-body and the non-embodied portions of the doer. The psychic atmosphere is felt; and through the physical atmosphere is felt the form world.
By feeling this new world he is able to feel nature in the physical world and how things act and move as they do.
He feels the crystallization of minerals, the seeding, feeding, growing and dying of plants, the impulses and instincts of animals, the movements of the earth, of the water and of the air, the influences coming from and going to the sun and the moon, the interaction of the planets and the beings on the earth, and the relation of the stars to mankind and the universe. He feels all these in their four zones working within the four systems of his fourfold body and he feels the organs of his systems working in the universe.
There comes a tendency to be clairvoyant and clairaudient. Scenes and persons flash across the view. If he thinks of anyone, that one is seen and his voice is heard, without intention or effort to see or hear. The tasting or smelling of objects comes without seeking, when they are thought of. The inner side of the four senses seeks to manifest. The senses begin to act in the fluid, airy and radiant states as they did in the subdivisions of the solid state. These phenomena must be disregarded; this inner side of the senses must not be allowed to develop, else the inner life will flow outward.
At this period the wish for possessions or the wish to see or communicate with elementals will be fulfilled at once, because elemental beings which obey the powers working within him carry out his wishes. These elementals are hidden from him unless he wants to see them and command them. He has not yet transformed malice, anger, hatred, lust and the other vices into higher powers though he has control of their physical expression; if he should allow an old dislike to make him wish harm to anyone, or allow a liking to cause him to wish a gift to someone, he would unleash nature forces which he had controlled and they would throw him off The Way. Longing for or attachment to anything he has left behind will pull him back and away from The Way.
The feeling-mind and the desire-mind gradually control the body-mind, as these develop. New mental activities develop. The man on The Way now deals with the constituents, combinations and solvents of the matter of the different planes of the physical world and of the planes up to the life plane of the form world. He can deal with this matter as it is, as a fact, and not in a theoretical manner. He need use no instruments other than the organs of his fourfold body and the three minds. By this mental working he changes the matter of his body and aids the growing form body.
During this advance there are periods of exaltation, depression and illumination. They are caused by the exclusion of the surrounding chaos and the infusion of life into the growing form body. He no longer feels himself out into the world, but feels the outer world within his fourfold body. The beings, colors and sounds of thousandfold nature are within this body. The elemental matter of the earth, the water, the air and the starlight, flows through his body and he is conscious of it. He becomes accustomed to and intimate with nature. If he allows himself to be tempted to wield the forces which move through his body or to command nature outside of him by the power within him, he is off The Way.
He must not feel temptation. It must be a stranger to him. When the fullness of nature is within him and there is no inducement for him to interfere with it and to exercise his power over it, except to exclude influences adverse to the development of the form body, nature falls away. Then he is alone and in darkness.
The mental standard one must have reached before he can enter The Way relates to mental quality, mental attitude and a mental set, all of which will manifest in a certain kind of thinking which will produce the psychic and the physical standards. His mental quality must be such that dishonesty and untruthfulness are abhorrent to him. Deceit, hypocrisy, pride, vanity and arrogance must be strangers. He must be honest with himself, self-restrained, self-contained, and modest withal. His mental attitude must present friendliness generally, that is, the recognition that he is a related part of the whole; a readiness to perform his duties with joy if they relate to The Way and with willingness if they relate to other things; a determination to respond to rightness; and a reverence for and an eagerness to receive Light of the Intelligence. His mental set must be for one point only and that is, to be on The Way.
The standard for the body is that it has preserved the germs of thirteen lunar months. Ordinary nerve matter cannot hold a lunar germ much more than one month. To preserve thirteen a new, special, finer, fourfold nervous structure has to be grown within the old. At any time while this new structure grows it may be broken down. Malice and malcontent encrust, rancor tears, hatred withers, envy rots, jealousy, greed and salaciousness eat into, anger consumes, vindictiveness contracts, meanness dries up, fretfulness and restlessness unsteady, sullenness stifles, gloom deadens, despondency wears away, fear paralyzes, cowardice shrinks, voluptuousness wastes, licentiousness softens, lust burns, cruelty scars the finer nervous structure, and ingratitude shuts off the Light and leaves one in ignorance of his relation to his Triune Self and to humanity.
The body must be healthy and strong. Any food will do if it supplies what the body needs for health. Food should not be a fad and has little or nothing to do with the goal, that is, the preservation of the thirteen lightbearers, except that one should be temperate and should not eat too little or too much. Beverages, whatever they are, must be free from alcohol. The body must not sleep too much, or too little. It must not be abused by fasting, discomforts or other kinds of asceticism. Torturing the flesh will not bring anyone to or near The Great Way. The body must be kept healthy and strong, and all that is necessary for this is the steady living of a simple, temperate and chaste life. The body must not be governed from without by nature, but from within by thinking.
During the thinking, the living and the striving, which is the special preparation for entrance upon The Great Way, the body undergoes certain changes. The thymus gland becomes active and works with the thyroid. The gut will be less of a sewer. The stomach, duodenum, jejunum, ileum and colon become shorter and smaller. During the rounds of the lunar germs in the body the nervous currents are regulated by the lunar germs and gradually strengthened, so that a new and inner nervous structure grows up. The involuntary nerves of the digestive system begin to form a structure which eventually will be similar to that of the voluntary nervous system.
The length of time it takes from the discovery that the world has been a whirligig for countless years and ever disappoints expectation, to the entering upon The Way, varies with human beings. After the discovery and the choice for an inward life there is usually a steady progress, for a time. Then the world, which is nature, exercises its pull effectively, because some of the thoughts which have not been balanced by the human, aid nature when their cycles tend toward exteriorization. The human may get discouraged and may fall back into the world. When he is again sick of the world, he looks again for an inward life.
When death has intervened between his flounderings, he is reborn with an inclination to recognize the futility of an outward life. He will at some time in that or in the next life make the discovery again, and it will not strike him as being strange; he will make the choice and seek to attain to The Way and perhaps fail again. In a new life it is natural for him to see that life is empty; when the time comes he will again make the choice for the road that will lead to The Way. Once one has made the discovery and made the choice, he will be led towards The Way, even though he does not again make the discovery. Failures cannot prevent, they will only delay the finding of The Way. Failures are incidents, and sometimes they are unavoidable because of past thoughts; they are often blessings in disguise and cannot hold back one who is determined to strive for The Way, after he has once made his choice.
Having now in it a lightbearer, that is, a lunar germ into which will merge the germs of the next twelve months and which has now begun to grow, the human eventually enters The Way when the lightbearer opens the seal and enters the filament, (Fig. VI-C, D).
Section 4
Entering The Way. A new life opens. Advances on the form, life, and light paths. The lunar, solar, and light germs. Bridge between the two nervous systems. Further changes in the body. The perfect, immortal, physical body. The three inner bodies for the doer, the thinker, the knower of the Triune Self, within the perfect physical body.
When one enters The Way he is away from all his connections and associations. The world in which he has lived is left behind. The human, by the opening of the seal and entrance on The Way, feels a great joy, such as he has never before felt. The joy is not thrilling, spasmodic or ecstatic; it is steady and from a source within. All things seem to reflect that joy. The joy is feeling progressively safety, permanence and assurance that he will come into his own. The joy can last for months.
Gradually a new life opens. It extends from within and reaches the outer world. Everything is different from what it seemed before. The world has not changed, but it looks different because he and his body are different, he knows himself to be a being distinct from nature and from his body. He identifies feeling, if he has not done so before.
He seems to be in the heart of the world. Before, he felt its pull, now he feels its pulse. Before, only the outer world could act on him, now an inner world, the form world, begins from within to open to him. There is a direct interplay between the doer-in-the-body and the non-embodied portions of the doer. The psychic atmosphere is felt; and through the physical atmosphere is felt the form world.
By feeling this new world he is able to feel nature in the physical world and how things act and move as they do.
He feels the crystallization of minerals, the seeding, feeding, growing and dying of plants, the impulses and instincts of animals, the movements of the earth, of the water and of the air, the influences coming from and going to the sun and the moon, the interaction of the planets and the beings on the earth, and the relation of the stars to mankind and the universe. He feels all these in their four zones working within the four systems of his fourfold body and he feels the organs of his systems working in the universe.
There comes a tendency to be clairvoyant and clairaudient. Scenes and persons flash across the view. If he thinks of anyone, that one is seen and his voice is heard, without intention or effort to see or hear. The tasting or smelling of objects comes without seeking, when they are thought of. The inner side of the four senses seeks to manifest. The senses begin to act in the fluid, airy and radiant states as they did in the subdivisions of the solid state. These phenomena must be disregarded; this inner side of the senses must not be allowed to develop, else the inner life will flow outward.
At this period the wish for possessions or the wish to see or communicate with elementals will be fulfilled at once, because elemental beings which obey the powers working within him carry out his wishes. These elementals are hidden from him unless he wants to see them and command them. He has not yet transformed malice, anger, hatred, lust and the other vices into higher powers though he has control of their physical expression; if he should allow an old dislike to make him wish harm to anyone, or allow a liking to cause him to wish a gift to someone, he would unleash nature forces which he had controlled and they would throw him off The Way. Longing for or attachment to anything he has left behind will pull him back and away from The Way.
The feeling-mind and the desire-mind gradually control the body-mind, as these develop. New mental activities develop. The man on The Way now deals with the constituents, combinations and solvents of the matter of the different planes of the physical world and of the planes up to the life plane of the form world. He can deal with this matter as it is, as a fact, and not in a theoretical manner. He need use no instruments other than the organs of his fourfold body and the three minds. By this mental working he changes the matter of his body and aids the growing form body.
During this advance there are periods of exaltation, depression and illumination. They are caused by the exclusion of the surrounding chaos and the infusion of life into the growing form body. He no longer feels himself out into the world, but feels the outer world within his fourfold body. The beings, colors and sounds of thousandfold nature are within this body. The elemental matter of the earth, the water, the air and the starlight, flows through his body and he is conscious of it. He becomes accustomed to and intimate with nature. If he allows himself to be tempted to wield the forces which move through his body or to command nature outside of him by the power within him, he is off The Way.
He must not feel temptation. It must be a stranger to him. When the fullness of nature is within him and there is no inducement for him to interfere with it and to exercise his power over it, except to exclude influences adverse to the development of the form body, nature falls away. Then he is alone and in darkness.
Section 5
The Way in the earth. The ongoer leaves the world. The form path; what he sees there. Shades of the dead. “Lost” portions of doers. The choice.
Having described The Way in the body and The Way of thinking, there remains to be treated the third of The Threefold Way, The Way in the earth, on which the progress described in the foregoing sections is enacted.
When the ties have fallen away, when there are no obligations to family, community and country, and when he feels no attachment, the human leaves and is lost sight of by his associates in the world. At that time he feels a desire to go away and has the means for so doing. He becomes an ongoer and prepares for the form path. The manner of his going is inconspicuous and natural. He goes to live among simple people, not to be a hermit or ascetic, but to lead a simple, orderly, unnoticed life. There he is in an atmosphere of simplicity and adjusts his body to the gradual changes which his thinking and feeling bring about. His work, his business, his study is thinking, only thinking, to obtain the use and control of his body-mind, feeling-mind, and desire-mind. He will encounter dangers, not as spectacular trials, but in the ordinary course of his life, to establish confidence and equanimity. Though he moves among the people of a tribe or village, he has little commerce with them. He has only one associate and that is a companion.
It may be that the companion meets the ongoer before the ties have fallen away or after the travels have begun or while the stay among the simple people lasts. From the time the companion meets the ongoer, he is with him and travels with him.
The companion is a human being but one acquainted with the forces of the four planes of the earth and with human nature. He usually belongs to a fraternity whose purpose is to study and use forces of nature and that has an understanding of the history of the doer. It is made up of men who live in the world, but in secluded places. They are outposts in different parts of the globe; some of them lived in America before the Spaniards came. Many of them can command some elemental beings and have rare psychic and mental powers. They know and can make use of certain laws of nature of which science, comparatively speaking, knows little or nothing. While they are secluded they may, when necessary, move among throngs; they have played a part in all crises in history; if mentioned they are usually called names meaning skill in control of forces or objects of nature. This fraternity, with different orders, is a way station and outpost where ongoers towards The Great Way, who cannot go on, remain and learn. Among the duties of a member of this fraternity is that of being a companion to an ongoer when necessary. The companion, though he may live hundreds of years, will die sometime, but the ongoer will conquer death.
When the companion meets the ongoer and makes himself known, he may ask what his destination is and on being told, he may say: “I am here to help you on a part of the journey. Are you ready to go on and to have me as your guide? If you take me you must trust me and go where I shall lead you. If you do not, you will not find the way alone and you will fall back into the world.” The ongoer accepts the companion, understanding that he is sent by those who know, and with the approval of his own knower.
The companion informs him about the form and structure of the outer earth crust, about states of matter, how they interpenetrate, about racial developments and external nature, about the cycles of religions and about the fraternity to which the companion belongs. Together the companion and the ongoer go from place to place. Their journeys may be less than a hundred miles or they may take in a large part of the surface of the earth and consume weeks or years, until the ongoer is familiar with the earth, and his nerves are so tested and under control that he can continue his journey.
When the time comes the companion leads the ongoer to an opening into the earth. It may be in a forest, in a mountain or under a building where no opening is seen. It may be under water or where gases issue or in a volcano. The companion bids his friend, who knows he may never see him again, farewell, and a new guide appears.
The ongoer and his guide leave the surface and enter the earth. That is, for the ongoer, the beginning of the form path. Shortly before this time or soon after, the lunar germ enters the filament.
The guide has the human form, has usually a moon colored body, is neither man or woman. He belongs to another race of beings, speaks the language of the ongoer and has an understanding far beyond that of a human being. The ongoer feels strange and the guide knows it. There is no announcement. They go on together from daylight into darkness. Gradually the ongoer becomes accustomed to the darkness and sees by a new kind of light. The guide points out, here and there, sections through which they are passing, and the ongoer develops the ability to see outlines and then distinct forms and colors, in the dark. This requires the training of the eye as an instrument, of the nervous systems as a whole, and of the breath-form.
They come to a new world, inside the earth crust, a world existing on many levels. At first the ongoer is limited by the one dimension, on-ness, which is a barrier to perception as on the outer crust, where one cannot see within surfaces. Slowly he develops the power to perceive a second dimension, in-ness, to see within and between surfaces.
The new world is like spaces in a sponge; but some of the chambers, passages and labyrinths are vast in size, hundreds of miles long and high, and some only small pockets. The structure of the floors and walls ranges in density from that of metal to porosity and the lightness of foam. Some of them are drab, others are colored similarly to but often more delicately or brilliantly than landscapes on the outer surface. The ongoer sees great mountains, vast plains, cauldrons of fluids churning and lashing where earth currents coming in meet the outgoing earth forces. He sees where currents of air strike fluid substances and burst into flame, forming rivers of fire. He sees strange things in many colors, among them an immense desert of what looks like a white powder, amidst which cliffs, some of crystal, rise. He sees quiet surfaces of water and of other fluids, in lakes hundreds of miles in length.
No sun, no moon and no stars are seen. There is no visible central source of light, but he sees either the distant roofs of the chambers or limitless air lit by an inner earth light, which is made by a mingling of transient units. There is no night and no day. There are no shadows, except at the outer limits of the inner earth light, and even they have no distinct outline.
In some chambers are fierce winds, in others a calm. The air is colder in some districts than anything known on the crust. In some places the heat is so severe that human flesh could not endure it, but ordinarily the temperature is agreeable to the body. He travels on foot or at times in vehicles made of metal or compositions drawn from the air, and gliding with speed over the ground.
Two regions he cannot cross, one because the ground holds him, as a magnet holds a needle, the other because the ground repels his body. The vehicle glides like a sled over the magnetic ground, but the repellent ground cannot be traveled by him. He has to cross and recross the magnetic ground in his sled until it loses its attraction for him. Then he approaches the repellent ground and attempts to cross it, returning after each failure to the magnetic ground to get strength, until the matter has no longer power to attract or repel him. The overcoming of these forces regulates the structure of the cells in his body so that they are neither male nor female.
He travels on water in a boat propelled by a water force; he crosses oceans, one below the other, greater than the Atlantic and much deeper. The ongoer sees forests, single trees and plants, arranged as they grow on the earth, but there is much that would seem strange to human beings. Green is not the prevailing color. In some sections it is absent. In different districts and on different levels different colors predominate. The foliage is red, blue, green, pink, black or shining white, and some of it is many colored. Some leaves are geometrical in form, some are globular, some twenty feet long. There are edible flowers, fruits, grains; some are cultivated, some grow wild.
He sees animals, some of them like those on the outer crust and many of strange types. On the levels nearest to the outer crust are some ferocious beasts. They live where there are degenerate tribes and fierce races. In the regions farther inside the animals are strange, but docile and friendly. Few of them have tails. Many have no teeth. In shape some of them are graceful. The types of the animal forms are furnished by thoughts of the human races inside; what animates these creatures are parts of the cast-off feelings and desires of those human races.
As the eyes of the ongoer are being trained to focus, he sees that there are no sharp lines separating objects, but that all are connected by an interplay of the matter that composes them. So he sees the water element in the chambers and that it is flowing matter, and that some of it is passing through solid walls which retain particles of it and let go some of their own matter to be carried on in the flow. He thus becomes familiar with in-ness and his sight reaches into and he sees inside and between the surfaces of objects.
In some places he sees the shades of persons whose life on the earth crust death has ended. The shades are such as are no longer attracted to their earthly haunts or decaying bodies. The shades are the breath-form, the four senses and the embodied portion of the doer, without the Light of the Intelligence. They are dreaming over scenes of the life that has passed. Their thoughts are the matrices into which the flowing matter passes and to which it gives body and so makes the scenery and the persons of their dreams. The shades move, drone, ponder and wander in their chambers. Sometimes they float through each other, but each is unconscious of the others and of everything except its dream. Now and then a shade disappears, when it is wakened by a strong desire evoked through necromancy. The shades called to mediumistic seances may remain a while in the atmospheres of the living, before they are drawn back to go on with their after death states. The shades disturbed by necromancy cannot return to their dream; they may wait in a dazed condition or go on with the after death states.
In other places he sees the portions of doers working out the decrees which were pronounced in their Halls of Judgment. He sees the doers enacting the scenes of the past life according to the thoughts they had had. He could not see this if he were not on The Way and had not left the world. The thoughts of these doers are the molds into which the flow of matter is shaped, over and over again. The doers have their breath-forms, which are like the former personalities, and see, hear, taste, smell and feel somewhat as they did on the outer crust. The doers themselves cannot be seen, any more than they can be seen in life.
In a special place he sees “lost” portions of doers, some lost untold years ago, and some who failed even within his own time. Some of them are ape-like forms without hair, their skin grey, clay-colored, their eyes bleary, their mouths big and slimy; others are large, whitish worms with little hands and feet; others are like leeches with little human heads and long arms and legs with which they cling; and others appear in various forms — but all exhibiting most disgusting features. These things are male and female and have periods of orgies and of deathly silence. Sometimes they disappear, blending into the landscape, and leave an atmosphere of death behind. Then they reappear with hollow roaring, with echoing wails and shrieks, and begin their orgies. But these are empty; there is no sensation.
Among the “lost” doers he sees are those lost because of their selfishness and enmity to the human race. They are separated from the lustful. Some are like great spiders with wicked eyes, some like vampires or crabs with human faces and devilish eyes, some like snakes with legs and wings. Each of them lives separately among the brush or hanging from the rocky roofs or hiding among the stones on the ground. The spiders can leap fifty feet, the bats sail noiselessly, wolf-like forms with horns and bristly heads prowl about, cruel cat-like things with long snaky bodies spring, all to kill. But for some the killing is not the sole object; they want blood or the pleasure of torturing. Many attack each other. But none of them get any satisfaction. There is an aching, an emptiness in them at all times, which causes them to search for something, and that they cannot find.
He sees other things which have come from the outer crust; doers lost through an unwise religious devotion, who are called the “ancient dead.” They have devoted themselves to a personal God or Gods or to nature and have wished to be absorbed in or to identify themselves with their deities or with nature. Most of these doers belong to former ages, but some belong to more recent times. They have worshipped their Gods devotedly, irrespective of a reasonable, universal moral code to which they had access in their religious system, and often against what reason showed and conscience forbade. They sought the favor of their deities from selfish motives. They performed nature rites and ceremonies and offered their thoughts in praise and flattery and in prayer for material gifts and for absorption in the almighty deities. They prayed for favors and did not conquer themselves. In their thinking and their thoughts went out the Light of the Intelligences. The deities were insatiable.
When all the Light available in their mental atmospheres had been sent out, the human beings thereby cut themselves off from the Light of their Intelligences. After death they did not return to the non-embodied portions of their doers, but went into their nature gods. They lost their identity temporarily, because nature gods have no identity except such as they get from the thoughts of the doer portions in human bodies; and they were not absorbed because doer portions can never again become part of nature. So after death they went into a form in one of the four elements or they passed from form to form.
The ongoer sees them in stones, in water, in winds and in fire. They are conscious and dissatisfied, like maniacs trying to find out who they are. Sometimes he hears cries coming from a rock or tree or water: “Who?,” or “Where?” or “Lost, Lost.”
The guide takes him through many countries, in which are varieties of human beings. They travel along different layers and from one layer to others. Different conditions exist on the different layers. Thus the force of gravitation is strongest near the outer crust and after that point is passed, decreases gradually as they advance into the crust, and finally ceases.
The ongoer sees many peoples. Nearest to the crust the races are wild and degenerate; they eat raw flesh and drink strong intoxicants. But farther in the people are peaceable and cultured. Nearly all the races are white. Some of them are acquainted with the earth and have power over its forces. In an instant they can melt, split and make or dissipate rocks. They can remove weight from an object or give it weight. They can develop new kinds of plants and fruits. In many of the layers some can fly as easily as they can move on a surface. Sometimes many join and rise into the air, where their thinking, because of the adaptability of the matter, tints the air in shining waves of color. Some of the people in some races can see into and through objects in the layer in which they are, but usually they cannot see into the layer on either side. Some can see through the earth crust and see the matter on either side of the crust. Others can hear in the same way, and still others can both see and hear.
The people in the earth crust are human beings, but who are not akin to any human races now on the crust. Some have never left the interior. The ongoer meets people of the race to which his guide belongs.
Some of the people he meets from time to time warn him against his guide; some invite him to leave his guide and to stay with them, offering him the peace, plenty and power they enjoy, or promising to show him wonders and reveal mysteries greater than any his guide will or can show him; some threaten him. The guide often absents himself, but if present offers no objection or inducement. Should any ongoer yield to the allurements he will not see the guide again, and he fails to reach the end of The Way.
During these wanderings the guide explains the structure of the inner earth, its forces and history, the phenomena and their causes and reactions, and the changes as history and the nature of the entities encountered. He explains the illusions of time and of the dimensions of matter and the relative reality of all these things, which are seen as illusions. He explains the powers and behavior of feeling-and-desire, what it means to travel the form path and issue into the form world as a being of that world. He explains that the ongoer must balance his thoughts, and that the end of The Way is in the balancing.
At length the ongoer is left alone. Darkness settles upon him, reaches into him and fills him. He would like to escape, but he does not. He seems to be dead, but he is conscious. His senses are not active. Gradually beings appear, human and non-human. He denounces them, but cannot drive them away. They look into him and reach into him and he knows they are a part of him. He sees their purpose. They want to continue to live by getting their life from him. Then he knows they are his thoughts. He balances them one by one as they come. More of them come. He can see that they are equal to physical events. He withdraws from them the power to become physical. He pronounces judgment upon them in relation to himself. This judgment dissipates them. A calm comes to him. His guide reappears and greets him.
The guide says that he will help him if he wishes to enter the form world in the new body he has within; but that if he decides to take the life path, he will lead him to another guide. The ongoer, though sorry to part with his guide, declares he will go on.
The path was hitherto within the earth crust and stretched for a distance which is about a third of half of the circumference of the earth. While the ongoer went along the form path his body changed in structure and in nature. It now has little or no weight and does not require solid food. It has lines so perfect and proportionate that in nobility and grace it excels any body on the crust. The intestinal canal has become a short columnar passage and the bridge has been built connecting the involuntary nervous structure within that columnar passage directly with the voluntary system at the coccyx. Within the filament has been developed an embryonic form body.
Section 6
The ongoer on the life path; on the light path, in the earth. He knows who he is. Another choice.
When the ongoer has announced his choice for the life path, the guide and he pass through a hall. The guide leads him to a crystal rock from which a fountain of clearest water falls in sparkling sheets and spray into a basin in the rock. The guide tells him that these are cleansing waters; that they will fit him to draw from the fountain of life or will dissolve his body and wash it away; that one who is prepared will have no fear. “Enter the water if you will and it will enter you.”
The ongoer walks into the pool under the fountain. His whole body drinks in the welcome draft. He feels himself gliding into the pool. The rock, the guide, the chamber disappear as he feels himself going out with the water into the great ocean where all the waters meet. He expands into the ocean, yet feels the current that carries him. The ocean is through the rocks, the water, the plants, the animal life and the bodies of all human beings. It is feeling, desiring and emotional humanity. He feels himself through it and as it, in the present and the past. He is conscious of mankind extending as the ocean to the stars. These are the crossings of the nerves of human beings. He is extended to the farthest stars. Mankind goes out to the stars and they come into mankind. They are like the crossings in a spider’s web. He sees the crossings but he does not see the lines, yet is conscious where they are. He draws himself together, after having been so spread out. He now feels the humanity which is in bodies on earth and that which is without bodies; these are the re-existing doers of Triune Selves. He went out to mankind, now mankind comes into him. He is conscious that he will continue on The Way. The feelings of human beings reaching into the form world rush into him and urge him to come to them, to help them and lead them out of their troubles. They show him that if he leaves them to themselves they will not find their way. The “ancient dead” in their nature prisons appeal to him to liberate them. “Lost” portions of doers are reminded by his presence in them that they are lost and that they want to get back. Their appeal is so strong and his desire to help so great that he would give himself to them. But the Light shows his duty to go on. He looks into the Light and affirms his choice for the life path. He is in the pool under the fountain, and steps out, cleansed. The guide is where he left him, and it is as if he had just stepped in and come out.
There is no effort in moving through the hall as the body has no weight and will go in the direction of the desire. Desire is its direct motive power, as it was the indirect motive power while he was on the earth. When the guide has taken him as far as he can he departs at the end of the form path and a teacher is there to meet the ongoer at the beginning of the life path.
The teacher is quite human in appearance, simple and unassuming, but there is the sublime in his presence. The color of his physical body is somewhat like that of a being of the form world, but he is a being of the form, life, and light worlds. Yet the teacher, notwithstanding his greatness, does not seem strange to the ongoer.
The life path, along which the ongoer now passes, continues within the earth crust and extends over the second third of half of the inner circumference of the crust. On the life path he so increases his power to think with his feeling-mind and desire-mind that he can use the speech of thinking to speak with the thinker of the Triune Self through the mind of rightness and the mind of reason. He achieves the powers to examine, penetrate, dissect, compare, construct, create and dissipate by speech with his body-mind. He learns how to use these powers, but he does not use them. Merely thinking of a subject now solves the problems which were only perceived before. He understands the causes of forms and of types, as prepared from age to age. He learns the law of thought, as destiny; he comprehends the cycling of thoughts and the causes and methods of their exteriorizations. During all this growth the teacher has not actually instructed him. By bringing up problems he has merely given him the opportunity to solve them himself; thus the ongoer learns how to find the solution of his own problems. In this way the ongoer has put himself into communication with rightness-and-reason. So he comes to the end of the life path.
As they are walking through a hall, the teacher sings: O-E-A-O-E-HA. Rushing wind descends, enfolds the ongoer and breathes into him. That air of life goes through his nerves, pervades him, and each unit of his body sings. It sings his own story from the beginning to the coming of the living air. It sings the songs of life. All nature units outside join in the songs. The doers in mortal bodies sing each its song of sorrow, bitterness and pain. He understands each sound and song. The air within him puts him in tune with all that lives, and he has understanding of that. He is conscious that the teacher knows that he can now hear and answer any call.
The teacher tells him that this is as far as he goes and asks if he will issue into the life world, a being of that world, or if he will go on to the light path, for if so he must go on alone. The ongoer says: “I will go on alone.”
What he has heretofore considered and solved has developed for him the mental power to know without the process of thinking, which is the connection to the knower of the Triune Self. When the ongoer said “I will go on alone,” he thereby found in himself a Light. That is the Light by which he knows The Way.
He finds the light path because he knows it when he comes to it. The path continues still within the earth crust for the remainder of the half of the circumference. To reach the end he goes through a white fire. When he enters it the remaining fabrics of illusion he has made by thinking are burnt away.
The partitions separating him from age to age, from life to life, from place to place, from state to state, are dissipated. The fire that burns down the veils within is the essential fire of the four elements in the earth sphere. He sees everywhere and is present in all parts of physical nature.
He knows himself as being that Triune Self which is identity-and-knowledge in the Eternal in the presence and in the Light of his Intelligence.
He knows himself, by that Light, to be the knower of a Triune Self in his noetic atmosphere within that Light. He knows himself to be the thinker, his mental part, within his mental atmosphere, and of the forming of the mental atmosphere by the thinking of his thinker. He knows of the processes of contemplation by his thinker concerning the things of the light world and of the life world. He knows of the feeling-and-desire of the psychic part, his doer, and of the forming of the psychic atmosphere, by the thinking of his thinker. He knows the twelve portions of his doer, that re-existed successively and yet were one.
He knows of the first existence of the doer in the body, of existence in it in a happy state within the earth, and of the apparent separation of feeling from desire at the putting forth of the twin body. He knows that that should have been the beginning of The Way and that he wandered off The Way with the twin. He knows of the flight to the outer crust, of the death of his body and of the twin, and of all his re-existences and their incidents. He knows of his present embodiment and the incidents attending his taking The Way, the same old Way that he once failed to take and which has led him through the three worlds to the end of his re-existences. He knows of the illusion of the separateness of the three parts of the Triune Self. He knows that the Triune Self is One. He knows that he has never left the Eternal, and that his re-embodiments were illusions in time thrown up by the thinking of his feeling-and-desire. When the fire has burnt out all that can be consumed, it has no further effect.
The knowledge he has gives him being into the Light. Now in his perfected physical body, he is at once in the form, the life, and the light worlds, and he is and knows himself to be a Triune Self complete; a being of the three worlds in the Light and the presence of his Intelligence, and in the presence of the Great Triune Self of the worlds.
Through the Great Triune Self of the worlds acts the Supreme Intelligence. The Supreme Intelligence needs such a Great Triune Self through which to act, a Triune Self which is all-feeling, all-thinking and all-knowing; a Triune Self that is omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient. The Great Triune Self feels through all grades of Triune Selves, from the beings of the light world down to the portions of doers in human bodies and even down to the portions of doers that are in the state that is called lost.
The Great Triune Self of the worlds thinks through all these, from the high to the low; and it knows all that they know. Its feeling, its thinking and its knowledge are one. It knows the state of each human being and the collective state of all human beings at any time, that is, the state of humanity. It knows also the states of the super-human doers, singly and together. Human beings are not conscious that the Great Triune Self feels and thinks with them and knows what they know. The beings of the form world can feel it, the beings of the life world can think it, but only a being of the light world, one who has stood in the presence of it and has been attuned to it, can know it. A being of the light world is always in communication with it and is a high officer, a conscious agent of the law of thought, as destiny. The Great Triune Self is the coordinator for the Intelligences and of the interactions of their doers on the physical plane.
The ongoer who has arrived before the Great Triune Self of the worlds knows that that was at one time a doer of its Triune Self, and knows that that has not given up its relation to humanity in order to pass on and become an Intelligence; and knows, further, that it has retained this relation so that it may be a link between all mankind. The ongoer knows that the Great Triune Self is the exemplification of relationship. He knows that there is this relation, the sameness in kind of all doers. They are actually related and connected by this sameness, on the unmanifested side of their knowers, though they appear as different when portions of them are in fleshly bodies. The difference is built up by thinking and feeling. During embodiments the differences are seen and thought about, but the sameness is unknown. Yet even there is found a semblance of sameness, because all have like feelings and desires and like thoughts, which make the general types in nature and fashion the world in which they live together.
The ongoer sees into the Light of his Intelligence, which is an Intelligence of the highest order, a Knower, an Intelligence of the sphere of fire, and through that Light sees into the Light of Supreme Intelligence, whose Light is Truth. Thus he stands in the presence of Truth. The Intelligences partake of that Light, and the Light of the Intelligence which is loaned to the Triune Self is Truth, though it is obscured and beclouded when it is in the mental atmosphere of the human. This is the Light used by the human being, and is all that he can stand of Truth. He sees that nothing that has anything to conceal can stand in the undimmed Light which is Truth, and which dissipates deceit and darkness and illusion.
The ongoer who has arrived before the Great Triune Self of the worlds knows the beauty in the law that works throughout the earth sphere adjusting the thoughts of each doer, its relations with other doers and the operation of all thoughts of all doers in nature. He comprehends the details of that law, and he feels it working through all doers. He knows, comprehends and feels the world as made by all doers and as kept in adjustment by the Great Triune Self of the worlds and its agents of the law. He knows he is free to do what he pleases, but comprehending the broad sweep of the action of the law, he chooses and desires to take part in the administration of affairs for the benefit of the doers who keep themselves in darkness.
He leaves the presence of the Great Triune Self of the worlds and returns to his perfected physical body through the light, the life, the form and the physical worlds, yet he is in them all, for he is conscious in them, being himself in the Light. It is during this return that the life body and the form body cease to be embryonic, and issue. The thinker and the doer enter in these inner bodies as a being of the life world and as a being of the form world. The knower is in the light body.
During these events, the perfect physical body had been left at the end of the path in the inner earth crust. The Triune Self enters through the top of the skull. It is a threefold being though One, in a perfected and immortal physical body. As a being of the form world he inhabits the abdominal region where there is now a brain in place of the suprarenals, the kidneys and the solar plexus. Below that, in the pelvis, is another brain for the perfect body and the physical world. As a being of the life world he lives in the thoracic region, where the heart and lungs have become a brain. As a being of the light world he is within the cervical vertebrae and the cephalic brain in the head. This is his embodiment.
When he has entered the body he finds the teacher whom he had left at the end of the life path, and who had, though unseen, accompanied him to the place where the ongoer had left his body. He recognizes the teacher as being a being of the three worlds who had before done what the ongoer has just accomplished.
The perfected physical body is brought to its high state so that it may be an instrument for the operation of the elemental forces in the four worlds of nature. All parts of nature can be reached through the nerves of such a body. Through the eye the doer that lives in such a body could set fire to a leaf or to a city. Anything that can be done by nature forces can be done by directing the forces through the nerves of such a body. The thoughts and the emotions of humans can also be reached through such a body, and so a riot, a war, a religious enthusiasm and a mental trend or attitude can be generated and sustained or abated. The four brains are the centers from which the nerves are operated.
A perfect body, always in the Realm of Permanence, affords to the units passing through it, a straight road of progress, according to the Eternal Order of Progression, (Fig. II G, H). Each such unit eventually becomes an aia, then a Triune Self, and then an Intelligence. The doer part of every Triune Self must undergo the trial and test to bring its feeling-and-desire into balanced union, as heretofore mentioned. If it passes that test, as the majority of units do, the Triune Self is complete. If the doer fails in that test, it passes temporarily out of the straight road and takes a circuitous route by way of re-existences in human bodies in this world of change.
When a Triune Self complete in a perfect body acts in the physical world it acts through the pelvic brain. When the doer acts in the form world it acts through the brain in the abdominal region. In a similar way the thinker in such a body, when acting in the life world, uses the brain in the thorax. When acting in the light world the knower in such a body uses the brain in the upper spine and the head. Such a Triune Self can act in each of these worlds, independently of the body, but it uses the body when it wants to relate any one of these worlds to the physical world or to affect doers in human bodies, because its physical body is common ground for all the worlds and is perfectly aligned with them.
Such Triune Selves complete are high officers of the law of thought, as destiny. They have complied with its requirements concerning themselves, and are free from it. They have no motives similar to those of human beings. They feel the mass of human suffering; they desire only to act according to the law. They comprehend the thoughts, ideals and aspirations of human beings and carry out the law of thought in relation thereto. But they do not interfere with the choice or the responsibility of any human.
Having entered its perfect body the complete Triune Self is among other Triune Selves who are beings of the light, life and form worlds. They are in the noetic world, which is a term to designate the knowledge which is in the noetic atmospheres of all knowers and is common and available to each. They are beyond time and the changes which are time; they are in the state of permanence which persists through the changes of time.
Again a choice is open to and must now be made by the Triune Self. Its doer having balanced its thoughts and, therefore, being free from the necessity to re-exist; having reclaimed, freed and restored to its Intelligence the Light which had been loaned to it; having no claim upon or attachment to the Light of its Intelligence: the relation between it, as a Triune Self, and its Intelligence, is outgrown and ceases. The Triune Self may choose one of three courses. But the proper course, which it will choose, is: it becomes an Intelligence, evokes its own potential Light, raises its aia to be a Triune Self, and remains with that Triune Self in the earth sphere.
Section 7
Preparing oneself to enter upon The Way. Honesty and truthfulness. The regenerative breath. The four stages in thinking.
This section is written for those who feel that they would like to find and be on The Way. Here first principles only are considered. The system of thinking at the end of the book is more extensive; it leads from the beginning to the end of The Way.
The Way which leads the human to Self-conscious immortality cannot be traveled by everyone. It is the destiny for everyone, ultimately, but not immediately. Comparatively few will consider it before it is recognized as a public topic. It is not for the disbeliever. One who does not feel reasonably sure: that there is The Way, that there is the Triune Self, and that he is the doer part of such a Triune Self, ought not to undertake the quest.
The quest is to find oneself in the body, and one’s greater Self when on The Way.
To prepare oneself for The Way involves a definite decision to do so, and is a far reaching step. The sooner one begins the work, the fewer lives are needed. Once the choice is made, it acts for the eleven doer portions not in the body. The decision is one’s own private affair and should be considered as such. No one should advise him.
One should not decide for The Way until he has given due consideration to the marriage relation; to its duties and its consequences. One who is married may decide to be on The Way. In which case the relation will be mutually and naturally adjusted in due time. But one who is unmarried must understand that he cannot go on The Way unless there is cessation of the sexual desire and act. The desire must be for permanent union of feeling-and-desire, not for spasmodic union of physical bodies. Sex indulgence is the continuation of births and deaths. Whereas, The Way leads to Self-knowledge in a perfect and everlasting physical body.
You, the conscious doer-in-the-body, who have decided to find and be on The Way, may appeal to your thinker part to guide you. You will have the Conscious Light within to show you The Way—to the degree that you trust it and use it. The Conscious Light within is Truth, it is your degree of Truth. The Light will show you things truly as they are. That is what Truth does.
You must learn to distinguish that from all other lights. The difference is that the lights of the senses are lights of nature. They make you aware of the objects of nature from the outside, but they are not conscious of the objects which they make visible outwardly. Nor are they conscious inwardly; lights of nature do not know anything; they are conscious as their functions only, nothing more. Whereas, the Conscious Light is Self-knowing; it is conscious that it is the Light that knows that it knows. The Light leads and shows the way to the knowledge of all things of nature, and to the knowledge of one’s greater Self. Without the Conscious light one could not be conscious of or as oneself.
Without the Conscious Light you cannot find The Way. In right thinking you use the Light; and when you seek The Way, the Light will show you and keep you on The Way. But you must qualify yourself in two arts in order to find and to travel The Way.
The first is the art of seeing things as they are. You may ask: What do I see, if I do not see things as they are? You see things as appearances, as they appear to be, but not as they really are.
In acquiring the art, preference and prejudice, two treasured heirlooms of the human, must be done away with in order that you may find and travel The Way. Preference and prejudice grow on the mind’s eye like as cataracts do on the physical eye. Thus the Conscious Light is dimmed and finally obscured. Therefore they must be removed and forgotten. They can be removed by virtue.
Virtue is one’s power of will in the practice of honesty and truthfulness.
Honesty begins with right thought and motive in oneself, and is expressed by one’s actions in dealing with others. Honesty is not merely a passive not-taking what belongs to others; it is also an active refusal to consider being devious or crooked.
Truthfulness is the purpose and practice of stating facts as the facts are, without intent to deceive. Truthfulness is not the mere negative assent to, or statement of what is so, fearful of misstatement or of being mistaken. It is the strict intent to not deceive oneself, and then be direct in statement of facts, in the simple words that allow no opposition.
One may have a strong will and a general acquaintance with honesty and truthfulness, and yet not have virtue. Virtue does not happen at once. Virtue is developed, but only by the practice of honesty and truthfulness.
Virtue, as the power of will in the practice of honesty and truthfulness, develops a strong and fearless character. Dishonesty and falsehood are then strangers, and are foreign, undesirable to virtue. By virtue the scales of preference and prejudice are dissipated and removed, and one sees things as they are. When the scales of preference and prejudice are removed from the mind’s eye, the unobscured Conscious Light shows and makes one conscious of things as they are. One is then truly qualified to learn what not to do, and what to do.
The second art is the art of knowing what to do, and doing that; and knowing what not to do, and not doing that. Now you can speak to your thinker and ask to be guided.
You can mentally say: My Judge and Knower!—guide me in all I think and do!
Rightness of your thinker will speak to you through conscience in your heart, and tell you what not to do; and reason of your thinker will tell you what to do. Practice in the art of seeing things as they are, and in the art of knowing what to do and what not to do, will be your preparation to travel the three sections of The Way.
For practicing the two great arts: of seeing things as they are, and of knowing what to do and what not to do, your ordinary everyday experiences will give you all the opportunities necessary for the practice. You need not be surprised at anything that happens, or that nothing that happens is out of the ordinary or beyond your duties. But whatever does happen will be for your training and for the development of your character, whether it be strange or commonplace.
Duties are important, always; but they are most important when one decides to be on The Way. No duties should prevent one from deciding for The Way, because no human can ever be free from them until he has performed all his duties. All that one has to do is: to do that which he knows to be his duty, and to do it as well as he can with goodwill, without undue expectation, and without fear.
Whether one’s position in life be lofty or lowly does not matter. Whether married or single, with or without family, with or without encumbrance, does not matter so much. But what does matter is that one does in good faith all that he has agreed to do, or that circumstances show to be necessary. Should there be any ties, they will not be broken; they will naturally fall away. Duties that would ordinarily seem insuperable will in this way be done naturally and properly through circumstances which will come about in orderly process of time: they have a purpose in your training. For the learning and doing, time is not the important matter. The essence of the doing is in the accomplishment, not in length of time or number of lives that may be required. You are to learn to think and live in the Eternal, not in time.
There is a method of regenerative breathing which assists in seeing things as they are, and in knowing what to do and what not to do. It re-establishes the right relation between the breath and the form of the breath-form; it is a beginning of the reconstruction of the human body according to the form of its original perfect body. Further, this method is a way of exploring and examining the body by means of the breath, of knowing the mystery of the human body.
The breath as it is breathed in should be of four kinds: the physical breath, the form breath, the life breath, and the light breath. Each of these is subdivided into four subsidiary breaths. As the four subsidiary breaths of the first kind are practiced and known, they prepare and initiate one into the next kind and its subsidiaries.
The four subsidiaries of the physical breath are: the solid-physical, fluid-physical, airy-physical, and radiant-physical breaths; in other words, the structure of the physical, the form of the physical, the life of the physical, and the light of the physical.
These first four subsidiary breaths build and repair the structure of the physical body. They should maintain a balance between the building material and the waste matter that cannot otherwise be removed. This is done by the regular inflow and outflow of the four substates of solid-physical matter: that is, of solid, fluid, airy, and radiant units.
Breathing is intended to permeate and supply all parts and states and substates of the solid body with units of matter of its own state, so that all units in the body can perform their functions properly. This can be done only by regenerative breathing. At present, the human breathes only portions of the gross physical breath. These are insufficient for proper digestion and assimilation of the food and drink taken into the body. Therefore ill health and death may be consequences of improper breathing.
Tissue is built, and a balance is maintained between the building material and the elimination of waste matter from the body, by the process of breathing. Breathing is the process of (a) building new material as structure onto the form of the breath-form; (b) the elimination of waste matter from that structure; and (c) the metabolizing or maintenance of balance between the building and elimination. This explains the age-old biological mystery of tissue building.
By practicing the regenerative method of breathing until such breathing becomes the habitual breathing of the physical breath at all times, the solid-fluid-airy-radiant structure of the physical body will, by the four subsidiary states of the physical breath, be built into a properly adjusted and functioning physical body of health, the life of which may be prolonged indefinitely. One who decides to practice this system of breathing is advised not to practice yoga breathing, pranayama, or any other system: they would be interferences. The rules for the regenerative breath are as follows:
1) There should be no unnecessary pause or interruption of breathing, between inbreathing and outbreathing. That would be an interference with the rhythm of breath, or a stoppage of the Light for thinking.
2) One should think with and follow the breath as it comes into and passes through the body, to observe and actually feel where it naturally does go, what it does, and the results of what is being done by the breath in its tidal passage in and out of the body.
3) A time should be set for the daily practice of regenerative breathing; it should be at first not less than ten minutes, and should be gradually extended to longer periods as seems consistent with one’s reason. But the breathing may also be practiced at any time of day or night, so that eventually the practice will become one’s regular and normal breathing.
4) The practice of the breathing should be suspended or stopped if one believes there is any reason for so doing.
5) If there is a time of panic, anger, excitement, or when one seems likely to be overwhelmed, then persist in the uninterrupted and full inbreathing and outbreathing.
By the practice of this regenerative breathing, the breath rebuilds the tissues and opens new avenues for the unobstructed flow of the breaths through all the interstices of the body and its senses, its organs and its cells, molecules, atoms, and electrons or protons. The breath passing through the blood and nerves tends to relate and put into agreement desire, the active side of the doer-in-the-body, and feeling, its passive side, so that they will be in intimate relation.
The blood vessels and the nerves in the body run side by side, the blood being the field of desire, and the nerves the field of feeling. As the breath passes through blood and nerves it puts feeling and desire into phase, and so they act conjointly.
Thinking is the steady holding and focusing of the Conscious Light within on the subject of the thinking. The steady holding, or actual focusing, of the Conscious Light, by thinking, is possible only at the neutral moment or point between the outbreathing and the inbreathing, and between the inbreathing and the outbreathing. So that the actual results of thinking are possible only at the two poles or points of the complete round. The practice of so breathing and thinking is a method for acquiring the power to think.
When the thinking is on the subject of this regenerative breathing, the processes of breathing in the rebuilding of the body will be made known, as the Conscious Light is focused at the neutral points between the breathings. As the practice continues, the thinking will make known the parts and functions of the body in relation to the functions of the universe; and the relation of the functions of the universe to the parts and functions of the body, and to the body as a whole, and their reciprocal action and reaction.
There are four stages or degrees in thinking. First, the selection of the subject, and giving attention to the subject. Second, holding the Conscious Light on that subject. Third, focusing the Light on that subject. Fourth, the focus of the Light.
The subject should be the only thing to which attention is given. There should be nothing else with which the attention is engaged.
In the second, the holding of the Light steadily means that all the available Light in his mental atmosphere that one has to think with is turned on that subject. As soon as the Light is turned on the subject, that Light attracts one’s past thoughts, and any other idle or wandering thoughts. To the Light so turned, thoughts and subjects of thought, pests of the night, all try to crowd into that Light. The first effect on the thinker is that there are a great many subjects that would obscure or prevent his seeing his subject. The thinker usually tries either to get these out of his Light, or else to give attention to any one of the number of thoughts that crowd in. This is too difficult and the thinker is usually distracted and prevented from holding the Light on the subject of his selection. He will mentally see one of the subjects or thoughts that have crowded in, and hold the Light on that. But no sooner has he done so than the others try to crowd that one out by getting in the line of his mental vision. Fight as he will, he cannot seem to get back to his subject. And he turns the Light from one to the other of the innumerable thoughts or things that crowd in; and he does not get any farther; so he finally gives up the effort, or else falls asleep.
He may take this same subject up again and again, for what he calls contemplation, or meditation, or by any other name. Then he will have itchings, or feelings of irritation and uneasiness, changing his position and beginning over and over again. He often tries to do away with these unwarranted intrusions. But the more he tries to put them out of his thinking, the less he is able to be rid of them. There is one way, and one way only, by which they are dispersed. That way is to keep on trying to think steadily on the subject, and to mentally refuse to see anything but the subject on which he is trying to hold the Light.
However many efforts and however long this may take, it is necessary for him to do it. Because that is steadiness in thinking. Each time he thinks of things that annoy him, he turns the Light on that thing and the other thing, and he is not holding the Light on his subject. But when he refuses to see anything but what he wills to see as his subject, then the unwarranted subjects flee, and he is holding the Light steadily on the subject; he has completed the second stage.
The third stage is the focusing of the Light. The Light is more or less diffused over an area, so to say. By looking steadily at the subject as a point, the Light becomes more compact and is directed from the area to its central point, which is the subject. The focusing must be continued until all the Light comes to a focus, to its focus on the subject. As soon as the Light is focused, the subject as a point opens into the fullness of the knowledge of the subject, which the Light shows at once in its entirety. It is a more complete revelation of the subject of the thinking than a lightning flash which illuminates a landscape in the darkest night. The difference is, the lightning shows what is seen by the senses. The Light is the knowledge of the subject accomplished by thinking.
Concerning the second stage, the holding of the Light: Each time the Light is turned on intervening subjects, there is a change of distance and perspective. One subject intervening comes closer, another closer still; another may come still closer. Each tries to get closer in the line of vision, to attract attention. And the poor thinker is so distracted that he does not know what he is thinking about. And he becomes confused, ill at ease, or gives it up in discouragement. He does not get the knowledge until all the Light is focused. With each focus of the Light he acquires knowledge.
When one looks at a thing it is not seen as an entirety. To see it, one must see the focal point of the thing that he looks at. And if he can see the focal point, he can see the whole through that point.
How does one get the Light in thinking? The surest way of getting the Light is by regular breathing. Whatever Light one gets will come through a point, at the neutral point, between inbreathing and outbreathing, and between outbreathing and inbreathing. So there is twice in one round of complete breathing where the Conscious Light can be focused.
When the Light comes in at the two neutral points between the inbreathing and the outbreathing, one must be thinking steadily on the subject, else the Light is diffused. If he has more than one subject while trying to think, the Light cannot be focused. So many subjects are hindering him in his steady thinking that he does not get any focus when the Light would come in; it is therefore diffused over the many subjects. But the continued practice of trying to hold his thinking steadily on the subject selected, allows him to so exercise his mental vision that if he persists long enough he will eventually be able to discover something about his subject, because the Light will give a little illumination on his subject, although it may not open it into knowledge.
In this way those who think get information in business, in art, in any occupation or endeavor in life. The Light gives information about the subjects of which they believe they think. But one seldom thinks steadily enough to get knowledge on the subject. All inventions, all discoveries in science and art, or in any earnest endeavor in life, come either as illuminations on the subject or as flashes of knowledge, through the neutral point between inbreathing or outbreathing.
This is thinking, human thinking; not real thinking. Real thinking is beyond the ordinary human. If it were necessary, when the Light was focused at the time of thinking on the subject, breathing would stop. The Light would suspend the breathing, and one would think into the Light, and see into any subject of his choice. That would be real thinking, an extension of what may be called regular thinking.
Light is intelligence per se, and only that which can use Light is intelligent. But human beings are not Intelligences. They become intelligent in varying degrees, according to their ability to hold the Conscious Light on the subject of the thinking.
As one goes on and persists in the thought and action of right and justice, the advice and guidance of one’s thinker, as Judge, can be mentally asked and received during breathing. So, one may gain strength, and act fearlessly and with confidence in any undertaking. So, one may from time to time have revelations in answer to one’s questions on the relation between the universe and one’s body, concerning duties, and one’s relation to the thinker and knower of his Triune Self.
Each subsidiary of the physical breath is the medium which the next finer breath uses in the building of its matter into the structure of the physical body. The form breath and its subsidiaries begin to build out the form body when the physical body is developing to physical health. The breath-form will gradually and automatically rebuild and reconstitute and re-establish the physical body in its original state of perfection. But it can only do so as the doer empowers and directs it by thinking.
The one whose regenerative breathing has prepared the body for the form breathing will breathe the form breath, which will gradually improve and reconstruct the structure towards perfection and extend the life of the physical body indefinitely. The form breath is the beginning of the rejuvenescence of bodily life; it is the initiator and mystery and miracle of life in all its higher forms. It will gradually prepare the body for the breathing of the life breath. Then one will receive further information from the thinker and the knower of his Triune Self, as indicated by the system of thinking in the fourteenth chapter.
DIVINE, “IMMACULATE” CONCEPTION and REGENERATION OF THE PHYSICAL BODY
Regeneration begins with thinking when, by self-control, the lunar germ is not lost after it has reached the region of the left kidney, (Fig. VI-C); instead, it continues its upward course and ascends to the brain, — thus completing the first round.
The next month the lunar germ descends again, together with the succeeding lunar germ; if and when the lunar germs are saved for thirteen rounds, equal to one solar year, and the thirteen having merged into one, a divine conception takes place in the head, by the union of the lunar germ with the solar germ, through issuance of light from the pituitary and pineal bodies. So far only slight structural changes have taken place in the human body.
After this divine conception the germ descends on the right side as far as the pelvis; now, however, instead of ascending in the involuntary nervous system on the left side, it connects with the voluntary system by building a “bridge” from the coccygeal ganglion to the terminal filament, (which by this time has developed a central canal from above down to the coccyx).
The lunar germ then opens and enters the terminal filament and is thereby on the form path of The Great Way, and then passes upward to near the junction of the 1st lumbar and 12th dorsal vertebrae, within the central canal. Building the “bridge” and thus making the connection between the two nervous systems, marks a definite change in the structure of the body.
A divine conception is the beginning of the building of a perfect physical body, which is to be the medium for three finer bodies; that is, one, each, for the form-being of the doer, the life-being of the thinker, and the light-being of the knower of the Triune Self.
When the lunar germ has traveled upward within the filament as far as the 12th dorsal vertebra, it has developed into an embryonic form body; at that point it is met by and merges with the solar germ, which has descended in the right hemisphere of the spinal cord. Together they enter into and ascend through the central canal of the spinal cord, to the 7th cervical vertebra. The distance between the 12th dorsal and the 7th cervical marks the life path, and while on this path, the solar germ develops into an embryonic life body. Traveling up the central canal of the spinal cord, the embryonic form and the embryonic life bodies are met at the 7th cervical vertebra by a light germ from the pituitary body; this marks the beginning of the light path and of the embryonic light body. Then the embryonic light body, accompanied by the embryonic life and form bodies, advances through the medulla oblongata and the pons varolii to the pineal body, opens the pineal and fills all ventricles and the spaces between the convolutions and immediately around the brain, with light. Later, the three embryonic bodies reach their full development and ascend through the top of the head, and the doer, the thinker and the knower of the Triune Self are established therein. The doer has then reached perfection, and the Triune Self complete is in a perfected, sexless, regenerated, immortal physical body, and at the end of The Great Way. The other two of the threefold Way, The Way of thinking and The Way in the interior of the earth, have then been successfully traveled.
Diagrammatic sketch of
THE REGENERATED, PERFECTED, TWO-COLUMNED, SEXLESS, IMMORTAL, PHYSICAL BODY, For The TRIUNE SELF COMPLETE, showing:
1) The Way in the body, and its Three sections: The Form Path, The Life Path, and The Light Path
2) The Front- or nature-Cord
3) The spinal Cord or Cord For The Triune self
4) The “bridge” that has been built between the two nervous systems 5) The Central Canal, running down through the nature-cord, across the
“bridge” and up through the spinal cord to: 6) The pituitary and The pineal bodies
Fig. VI-D
The Pineal body “bridge”
On the form path, extending from the end of the terminal filament to the 12th dorsal vertebra, a form body is developed for the doer, the psychic part of the Triune Self, the being of the form world.
On the life path, extending from the 12th dorsal to the 7th cervical vertebra, a life body is developed for the thinker, the mental part of the Triune Self, the being of the life world.
The front- or nature-cord
Pituitary body
The spinal cord or cord for the Triune Self
Form Life Light path path path
of The Way in the body
On the light path, extending from the 7th to the 1st cervical vertebra, a light body is developed for the knower, the noetic part of the Triune Self, the being of the light world.
When the human physical body has been rebuilt and its reconstruction into a perfect, immortal body is completed, that body need not be sustained by the gross foods of this earth. Certain nerve currents come into the body chiefly by way of the sense organs and their nerves; they pass along the central canal of the front-cord, of the “bridge,” and of the spinal cord and upwards into what are now the ventricles of the brain. In their uninterrupted passage through the canal of the two cords, the units making up these currents are charged with power by the Triune Self, and so the body is enabled to serve as a powerhouse through which nature is energized and empowered.
There is then no longer any need for the generative, respiratory, circulatory and digestive systems as they are now, and the organs at present serving these systems have become transformed. In their places, structures resembling those of the nervous systems fill the four body cavities: these structures are here spoken of as the four brains: the pelvic brain for the perfect physical body; the abdominal brain for the doer and its form body; the thoracic brain for the thinker and its life body; and the cephalic brain for the knower and its light body. By virtue of these brains, the three parts of the Triune Self can each thus act separately in its respective body, or together, and with or through the physical body.
When the body has been regenerated many significant changes have taken place: The present sternum with the esophagus and what has remained of the stomach and intestines, have been converted into a resilient, tubular column, the front- or nature-column, which is analogous to and resembles somewhat the spinal column; within this tube is the front- or nature-cord, made up of what are now the two main trunks of the involuntary nervous system and of the nerve structures belonging to that system. Joined with the nature-cord are the two vagus nerves, which are, however, under the direct control of the voluntary system. From the front-column, (Fig. VI-D), extend half arches to both sides, similarly to the present ribs, with which the half-arches are joined. A “bridge,” a direct connection, has been established in the pelvis between the two nervous systems, of which even now indications may be seen in slender fibrils that run between the two systems. Running down within the nature-cord, then across the bridge and upward in the spinal cord is a continuous canal, which, as stated above, is for the passage of breath and nerve currents, and for the use of the doer, the thinker, and the knower.
The present ganglia and nerve plexuses of both systems are greatly augmented and fill the body cavities; they form the four brains before mentioned. The body is by that time largely a body of nerves.
Aia : is the name here given to a unit that has successively progressed through each and every degree in being conscious as its function in a University of Laws, in a perfect, sexless and immortal body; which has graduated from nature, and is on the intelligent-side as a point or line distinguishing it from the nature-side.
Doer : That conscious and inseparable part of the Triune Self which periodically re-exists in the man body or woman body, and which usually identifies itself as the body and by the name of the body. It is of twelve portions, six of which are its active side as desire and six are its passive side as feeling. The six active portions of desire re-exist successively in man bodies and the six passive portions of feeling re-exist successively in woman bodies. But desire and feeling are never separate; desire in the man body caused the body to be male and dominates its feeling side; and feeling in the woman body caused its body to be female and dominates its desire side.
Knower, The : is that of the Triune Self which has and is actual and real knowledge, of and in time and the Eternal.
Light, Attachable and Unattachable : is the Conscious Light of the Intelligence loaned to the Triune Self, which the doer-in-the-body uses in its thinking. The attachable light is that which the doer sends into nature by its thoughts and acts, and reclaims and uses again and again. The unattachable Light is that which the doer has reclaimed and made unattachable, because it has balanced the thoughts in which the Light was. Light that is made unattachable is restored to one’s noetic atmosphere and is available to that one as knowledge.
Light, Conscious : is the Light which the Triune Self receives from its Intelligence. It is not nature nor reflected by nature, though, when it is sent into nature and associates with nature units, nature seems to manifest intelligence, and it may be called the God in nature. When, by thinking, the Conscious Light is turned and held on any thing, it shows that thing to be as it is. The Conscious Light is therefore Truth, because Truth shows things to be as they are, without preference or prejudice, without disguise or pretense. All things are made known by it when it is turned and held on them. But the Conscious Light is fogged and obscured by thoughts when feeling-and-desire try to think, so the human being sees things as it wants to see them, or in a modified degree of Truth.
Light in the Doer, Potential : When one performs duties uncomplainingly, ungrudgingly and with pleasure because they are his duties, and not because he will profit or gain or get rid of them, he is balancing his thoughts which made those duties his duties, and the Light that he frees when the thoughts are balanced gives him a new sense of the joy of freedom. It gives him an insight into things and subjects he had not understood before. As he continues to free the Light he had kept bound in the things he craved and wanted, he begins to feel and understand the potential Light that is in him and which will be actual Conscious Light when he becomes an Intelligence.
Light of Nature : is the reaction as shine, sparkle, brightness or glitter of combinations of nature units, to the Conscious Light sent into nature by the doers in human bodies.
Thinker : The real thinker of the Triune Self is between its knower, and its doer in the human body. It thinks with the mind of rightness and the mind of reason. There is no hesitancy or doubt in its thinking, no disagreement between its rightness and reason. It makes no mistakes in its thinking; and what it thinks is at once effective.
The doer-in-the-body is spasmodic and unsteady in thinking; its feeling-and-desire-minds are not always in agreement, and their thinking is controlled by the body-mind that thinks through the senses and of the objects of the senses. And, instead of with the clear Light, the thinking is done usually in a fog and with the Light diffused in the fog. Yet, the civilization in the world is the result of the thinking and the thoughts that have made it. Were some of the doers in human bodies to become conscious that they are the immortals that they are, and to control instead of being controlled by, their body-minds, they could then turn the earth into a garden in every way superior to the legendary paradise.
Triune Self : The indivisible self-knowing and immortal One; its identity and knowledge part as knower; its rightness and reason part as thinker, in the Eternal; and, its desire and feeling part as doer, existing periodically on the earth.