CHAPTER SEVEN
Spirit and Mind - 2

But while spirit is playing an increasingly important, transformative, and illuminating role in the evolution of humanity, the forces that oppose spirit are leading a vast number of people to what can only be qualified as partial failure. Numerous total failures also occur; in them, being is gradually reduced to the state of a quasi-dimensionless point without any contents or meaning whatsoever. But from the point of view of the philosophy of Wholeness, these failures polarize the gradual emergence of spirit-illumined beings; yet the ratio of failures to successes may be undetermined.
       Partial failures have been called the "laggards" of human evolution, in which they probably constitute a majority of human centers of being. Because they cannot overcome the inertia of desire for life in a physical body swayed by the exciting dramas and frustrations of love, of the desire for possessions and their tragic albeit stimulating loss, and above all of the desire for personal existence as a uniquely valuable (even though separate and alienated) "I," these human beings do not reach Illumination at the fateful "Last Day" of planetary evolution. They may lag behind even at the end of a lesser period when a decision for or against spirit has to be made — the symbolic separation of the sheep and the goats. One might say that these "laggards" drop out of the planetary evolutionary movement into a partially subjective state of "sleep." In this state, they are absorbed in "dreams" which mainly repeat or develop memories of past life-periods. Karma will compel them to reawaken in a new universe, where they will have a second chance to reach illumination and the Pleroma state of unanimous being.
       The total failures also will be given a second chance, but for them this means more than merely reawakening from "sleep." It necessitates a powerful reenergization and mobilization out of a nearly absolute, negative condition of indifference to existence and to relationships of all kinds. It demands a new universe in which they can once more experience the pull of love, relationship, and the light of meaning. This demand is met at the symbolic Midnight by a surge of total, all-remembering compassion — the fountainhead of spirit in its supreme state. It is met by an incomprehensibly all-inclusive "vision" (such an inadequate word) emanating from the Godhead state — the vision of a new cycle of being.
       This vision must acquire definite form, indeed an immense multiplicity of forms, each of which potentially will be a particular instrumentality for the regeneration of a particular type of failure, total or partial, of the past universal or planetary cycle. The vision must be defined, differentiated, and formulated in a vast number of spiritual Qualities of being which in their togetherness constitute the creative Word or Logos. While there is only one Word, it has many "Letters"; similarly, in religious symbolism, God the Creator, the One, has many "Names" (for example, Power, Compassion, Love, Beauty, Justice, Intelligence, Omniscience, Beneficence, Charity, Perfection, Plenitude of Being, Permanence, Destroyer, Redeemer, and so on).(3)
       Each of these spiritual Qualities will seek concrete manifestation during the period of the new universe — or in a more restricted sense (as the universal Whole is a hierarchy of subwholes, sub-subwholes, and soon) during a planetary cycle in which some kind of "humanity" develops and seeks Illumination. After the symbolic Noon of this cycle, the evolution of humanity will be essentially an attempt to establish a permanent link between each of these Qualities and corresponding lines of development of human beings in concrete physical organisms.
       At first this link is only generic and collective. Each racial line of human development and each culture — each originally related to a particular continent and region of the biosphere — is linked with a particular spiritual Quality (Ray and sub-Ray). The Quality is "projected upon," or reflected especially clearly by, one or more prototypal beings later worshipped or revered as the "great ancestor" of the race, tribe, or nation, for even modern nations are not without revered "Fathers" and heroes having embodied a highly valued way of life under difficult conditions. Such prototypal personages become at least symbols of a human collectivity's rootedness in a past which is glorified and idealized long after it actually has taken place. At least in terms of the salient features of their characters and deeds, they can be considered Avatars for the collectivity for which they represent a particular quality of being (or a small group of such qualities).
       Collective avatarhood can become individualized avatarhood once the process of individualization has been successfully undergone, once a person has freed himself or herself from bondage to the set patterns of family and culture and has achieved a radical independence from the collective power of society and at least a degree of authentic spiritual autonomy. When this happens, a definite linking of a particular spiritual Quality and an individual person occurs. I have referred to this in previous writings as a "one-to-one relationship" between a spiritual entity (or Quality) and a living human being.(4) The process of establishing such a one-to-one relationship may have been attempted and partially or temporarily achieved during a succession of human lives — a process which we shall examine in Chapter II when we study the complex and usually misunderstood concept of "reincarnation." For now let us say only that the ultimate goal of such a process is to effectuate a meeting of spirit and matter in the "divine Marriage" of a single spiritual Quality (or Letter of the creative Word) and a single individualized person.
       This meeting and the process bringing it about involve and require the activity of the mind, which is a complex and extremely important factor in the cycle of being. It operates in several ways, depending upon what is needed during particular periods of the cycle. All aspects of "mental" activity can, however, be understood if we realize that mind is the type of activity through which the principle of relatedness operates — and this principle is the most essential factor in Wholeness.

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3. In Occult terminology, the creative God often is considered one "Ray" of Light which differentiates into three basic Rays, which in turn differentiate into a multiplicity of colors and shades. Or the creative power might be considered as a mysterious, physically inaudible because mainly subjective Sound (nada or Aum) which has a quasi-infinite number of overtones, or rather of undertones, as the creative Tone operates in a "descending" mode. The energy of this creative Tone (also called Fohat) compels the total failures to break away from the condition of total indifference to relationship and existence. It whirls these utterly separate, static, almost dimensionless points of being into immense whorls of cosmic protomatter — the first stage of existence assumed by the failures that in their nearly total separateness had become the dark roots of matter, pure chaos.  Return

4. See The Planetarization of Consciousness, Part Two, Chapter 7, "Soul-Field, Mind, and Reincarnation."  Return