Rudhyar Archival Project
   Home | Bio | Art | Music | Literature | Civilization & Culture | Philosophy of Wholeness | Theosophy & Spirituality | Astrology






THE SONG OF LIFE

As the compassionate ray of light surging from the Heart of the Sun plays upon and penetrates a portion of space "set apart" to become the magnetic field within which a future living being will be born and will grow, a "current of induction" is generated within that space, the first manifestation of life in a particular mode.

Space is substance, and substance is the reason for space's being. Substance must always have space to be extended in; and were it not for the fact that there must always be matter left over from some solar or cosmic cycle of manifestation — that there will ever be substance to oppose spirit, there would be no space. Spirit, being pure unity, is symbolized by the mathematical point, without dimension or extension. Matter, on the other hand, is the manifested reality of space and has in itself the potentiality of an infinite number of dimensions. We do not see space; we see only matter in extension, matter of various densities — and what seems to us "empty space" is merely the expanse of a type of material relatively less dense.

This matter of extremely small density is, at the origin of any cycle of manifestation, what has been called the "great Waters of Space" or "primordial Chaos". It is abysmal darkness — utter indifference to spirit. But when under the compulsion of God's command: "Let there be light!" the spiritual Essences of the past are aroused from their condition of bliss and unity, and the song of light begins to thrill through the infinitudes, then upon the face of the dark Waters of Space rays of light begin to play.

Deep vibrations are aroused in response within the bosom of these Waters. Motion throbs throughout the abyss. Waves begin to swell, agitating the quiescent substance. To light answers life. The waves of the "Sea" answer to the waves of the light. Vibrations echo vibrations. Cosmic relationship is being established. The cosmic antiphony of light and life sounds out; two songs in a cyclic counterpoint; major and minor tonalities weaving tone-patterns; the warp and woof of the universe. Upon those will be woven the fabric of organic existence, the brocade of consciousness and of soul. What people call imprecisely "life", what more exactly should be named "cyclic becoming", is this eonic, ever-changing relationship of the songs of light and life; a vast duo between the Sun and the Moon, going on and on throughout the ages. The harmony needed to sustain the two melodic strands in their interaction is provided by the planetary gongs. Saturn sounds the fundamental tone, the Root-sound.


. . . Out of the dark Waters of Space wells up the song of life; and this song is born of the past. It is born of unfulfillment. All life springs from unfulfillment. This is the true meaning of the "original sin". That which is fulfilled has no need for life. It is pure being; bliss. But life is suffering; because it is striving; because it is the attempt to overcome the memory and the pull of the past. Light is the compassionate gesture of God providing another opportunity to neutralize or redeem the relative failures of the past. This opportunity is what is meant by "living in an organic body of earth-substance". The Earth is the new field of opportunity. The Moon is the song of the resurrected past.

Because the Moon vibrates to the echoes of the past because it is a ghostly presence summoning from forgotten depths memories of failures or unfulfillments, men have called the influence of the Moon evil. But is it really evil? Is the cleansing passion that arouses all repressed unregenerate desires, the hand of the housewife that forces the hidden dust to rise to perception, evil? Is disease evil? Is it not rather the way of redemption and purification, Nature's effort to reestablish harmony and health, to free the organism — be it psychological or physiological — from the subterranean pressure of collective, subconscious Karma; yes, from the ancestral sins of mankind ... or the ancient perversions of the reincarnating Soul?

The Moon is not the past as mere dead weight. Rather, it is the striving and the struggling of embodied humanity away from that past; the yearning for freedom from that past; the willingness to face it and overcome. The solar light provides the energy and incentive for the overcoming. The lunar life-tides measure the phases of the effort toward fulfillment. They beat the rhythm of overcoming. They energize the periodical currents of the life-flux, which mould themselves upon the root-pattern of destiny, or karma, — over which rules Saturn, the Lord of Boundaries.

Nothing that is a part of organic living can be evil. The body is the one field of opportunity provided by God in His great compassion for the unfulfilled and the imperfect — so that it might become fulfilled and perfect at the end of the cycle of living. And by "body" here is meant every living organism — from the atom to the solar system and the vastest galaxies. The whole manifested universe is the "pattern of redemption". The body is the one and only divine Church, in which light officiates. The song of life — the Moon song — is the answer of the congregation. It is the faith and the prayer of men; and also their indifference and their hypocrisy. It is the inchoate expression of the crowd which is the raw material to be organized into a society, a harmonious group, by the supreme leader that is light. It is the barbaric impulses to be civilized.

The Moon therefore represents all raw materials, all elemental or psychic energies not yet organic or individuated. But it is not only the inorganic as such. It is the inorganic striving to become organized. It is the "woman" yearning to be fecundated and to become a mother, longing for her "home". It is not chaos; but rather, the response of chaos to light; an unsteady, changeful, moody response, now waxing, then waning — yet it is light nevertheless; as much of light as the resurgent past may mirror and reflect. And the Earth and all living things thereon are the temples where the song of light and the song of life resound. Light gives to men the will to be whole and integrated. Life gathers their chaotic soul-energies, churns them up, dissolves and boils them in the alchemical vessel in which may be generated the gold of consciousness and of individual selfhood.

At the physiological level this alchemical vessel is the mother's womb, the place where life gathers its momentum in answer to the call of light, the place of the Moon, the "sublunar realm" of ancient philosophy. At the psycho-mental level the alchemical vessel is the "psyche", the womb of the Self, the "place" where the inherited ancestral soul-energies are churned by the rhythm of the psychic life, and whence, perhaps, a god-like Individual will be born.

The formation of the child's body within the mother's womb is a mysterious operation; yet still more mysterious is that other process of psychic formation which produces, if successful, a truly individual soul. The former is the process of gestation; the latter, that of individuation. Both depend upon the rhythm of the Moon's song. This rhythm operates following a four times seven phrasing, twenty-eight being the synthetic number of individuation as well as of gestation. It may be divided in many ways, as for instance the 40 weeks of pregnancy, which become the 40 years of wandering in the desert, or Abdul Baha's 40 years of imprisonment in Akka — meaning the womb — in Bahai symbology. Considered from the point of view of solar light — and no longer of lunar life — the number becomes 9, the sacred number of the Bahai movement, which can be considered as an expression of planetary gestation, the gestation of a new Era seen from the planetary standpoint of power, rather than from the human standpoint of consciousness.

The processes of gestation and individuation are based on analogical operations; only, the former is an entirely set process at this time of man's evolution, with a relatively small percentage of failures, whereas the latter is not at all well established at present, and carries a vast majority of at least relative or temporary failures. We may easily believe that there was a time when physiological pregnancy was also beset with failures, and many monsters were born; when mating between incongruous types or species was most frequent and led to hybrid and short-lived stocks. This is no longer true, now that our planet's life and the life of its main biological types are quite definitely set and relatively crystallized; that is, now that the planet has reached physiological maturity. But Man as a species has not yet reached psycho-mental maturity, or let us say, stability. It may be said that humanity, while physically past the mid-life point, is in the throes of an early "change of life" — with all the resulting problems of psychological readjustment.

Such a readjustment, when truly understood, can be seen as a process of psycho-mental pregnancy. Humanity, as a whole, is attempting to set a process of individuation which would be valid and successful for the race at large, and which would result in the formation of true individuals. In order to do that, mind must have reached a high point of development; for the formative Powers of individual selfhood are mental. The mind is the formative instrumentality of the soul. Without mind, the soul is a field of conflicting psychic energies which can be controlled only by an autocratic Will, itself the product of a dominant desire. Thus the process of individuation in the past was a process of forceful initiation, which meant the assumption of power over the psychic nature by an entity superior to this psychic nature. This meant, in short, the need for personal subservience to a guru, or spiritual ruler (not really a Teacher), in whose hands was placed the key to the psychic nature. Initiation therefore implied absolute self-surrender and obedience to the guru; and eventually a complete transference of will from the guru to the disciple (chela) ready for initiation.

Such a process, however, cannot possibly apply to the whole of humankind, for the relation guru to chela being a personal one (however spiritual in essence and purpose), the number of those admitted to initiation was obviously limited. It is only when mind can be made the basis of the whole process of individuation that this process can become valid for the majority. Mind as a basis; not of course as the whole structure. But just as certain agencies of physical nature have control over the formative process of biological development in the womb (or in any seed), so the somewhat analogical process of psycho-mental formation (individuation) is to be put under the control of mental agencies of a definite type. These agencies are now being developed in a planetary way, through the spread of logical (that is, formed) thinking, objective mentality and conscious metaphysical understanding of man's relationship to the powers of the "collective unconscious".

In a planetary sense, such formative agencies may be considered as those exalted Beings who constitute the "White Lodge" and its differentiated branches, one of which dominates especially during each human cycle — as for instance the "Blue Lodge" of the original Aryavarta (Greater India) during the Aryan great cycle. They have taken the place of those celestial Hierarchies who at the dawn of human evolution projected into Man their "emanations," and thus sowed the seeds of the complete human being. What these Hierarchies accomplished in and through the unconscious, the human Adepts of the last few millennia — especially since the time of the Buddha — are now achieving in and through the conscious.

Thus the celestial Hierarchies and the "Planetary Spirits" were the ancient Sources of all instinct and of those "Primordial Images" or "Archetypes" (in Jung's terminology) which have ruled human behavior for long cycles. But today, the new method of development is through the "conscious Way". It operates primarily from the level of the conscious individuality; not through a process of compulsive direction by overshadowing, but through one involving the steady and relatively slow building of the formative powers of the individual soul; the building of a psycho-mental structure which parallels at a higher level the bone structure of the physiological organism. Logical thinking is the builder of this psycho-mental structure. It is spiritual calcium.

Such a structure is necessary so that the individual Soul may assimilate the psycho-mental food it needs, without losing its form or individual character, just as the embryo assimilates nutritive substances from the mother's blood. At the psycho-mental level the "Mother" is the Nirmanakaya: that synthetic "being" that is the summation of all civilization. It is the "Collective Conscious", the fruition of all that the race has felt and thought. Of this mysterious being Goethe spoke to some extent when he made Faust reach the realm of the "Mothers".

Yet he who knows how to differentiate between the "Mothers" who are the souls of cultures born of the soil and bent toward physical fulfillment, and the universal "Mother" whose soul is the Light of integrated humanity beyond collective and physical boundaries or religions — such a one is on the path to the higher mastery. It is a mastery based on intelligence and love, rather than on mere will. It is conscious mastery consciously won through synthesis — not through exclusion. It is an incorporation of the Spirit. Wholeness made operative through a man; Deity transfiguring Personality; Man corporifying God.

This development means that the song of life is being sounded at a higher level. It means that the Moon is becoming trans-substantiated. A "hidden" Moon is being revealed, and its vibrations are stirring a new layer of the dark Waters of Space. A deeper layer. A past more ancient, more cosmic, is being resurrected, to be redeemed by a will to integration more profound and more absolute. A new Sun-call is arousing a higher song of life. This Sun-call was heard last century by those who had ears to hear. Now the song of life is answering. Pluto opens the gates to the formative powers of a new Order of life. A new Root is conquering the depths of Man — depths as yet never truly conquered and civilized, depths the denizens of which could only be forced back into dark dungeons of the planetary Unconscious by the Will of planetary Rulers. And this conquest is by Love and Understanding. Such is the reality of the "Second Coming".

A New Moon — an eclipse, releasing a new song of life. The old song was conditioned by the chord of Mars and Venus. The new song is born of the harmony of Jupiter and Mercury. And beyond it, souls that are illumined may behold a new Ray shooting forth in glorious splendor from the cosmic depths: the Ray of the "Glory of God", whose source may be found in the mighty star, Betelgeuze — Beth-el-Ghazi, the "House" of the Lord.






This edition copyright © 2008 Michael R. Meyer
All Rights Reserved.





Visit CyberWorld Khaldea
Home | About | Calendar | Ephemeris
Charts | Art Gallery | Library | Resources
Shop | Rudhyar Archival Project | Help


Make a Frewill Donation via Amazon.com's Honor System.

Web design and all data, text and graphics appearing on this site are protected by US and International Copyright and are not to be reproduced, distributed, circulated, offered for sale, or given away, in any form, by any means, electronic or conventional.

See Notices for full copyright statement and conditions of use.

Web design copyright © 2000-2004 by Michael R. Meyer.
All Rights Reserved.