Part Four

H. P. Blavatsky expressed a key holistic thought in remarking that every aspect of the worldview she formulated is interrelated with every other aspect. The interconnectedness of the myriad metaphysical concepts and facts theosophy or similar systems provide, however, makes it difficult to deeply understand any one of its particular aspects without first understanding the system and its worldview as a whole. Here is where epitomes and outlines prove valuable. By depicting the grand sweep of the cyclic world process in a few graphic words, an epitome lets the reader see the whole picture in a single glance.
      This section draws on the core principles of the philosophy and metaphysics of Wholeness in epitomizing as clearly and succinctly as possible the main features of the cyclic world process. Throughout it certain key ideas, principles and propositions will be reiterated in different ways, each time contributing toward the formulation of a broader, yet still epitomized, picture of the world process, the Cycle of Being.
      Our spiraling epitome consists of three widening sweeps. The first is based on a symbolic depiction of the "eternal motion of the Great Breath" presented in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. The second focuses on the dynamic aspect of the world process. Then a broader sweep examines the involutionary and evolutionary activities operating within it.

In the Proem of The Secret Doctrine, which is a prelude to the main text and provides an introduction to the work's fundamental ideas, Blavatsky presents a short and highly symbolic outline of the perpetual motion of the Great Breath extracted from what she quaintly terms the "Occult Catechism." It begins with a dialogue between guru and chela.

"What is it that ever is?" "Space, the eternal Anupapadaka [parentless]." "What is it that ever was?" "The Germ in the Root." "What is it that is ever coming and going?" "The Great Breath." "Then, there are three Eternals?" "No, the three are one, that which is ever being and becoming is also one: and this is Space."

      In less symbolic terms, the three in one are: 1) Space, the field of being and relatedness, the container of all; 2) Seed-Potentiality as an aspect of Space; and 3) the perpetual Movement of Wholeness, which to finite beings experiencing its rhythms assumes the form of the great Cycle of Being, the world process. A Cycle of Being is one of a never-ending series of moments in the rhythmic Movement of Wholeness through which indefinable Potentiality is gradually actualized by wholes. The passage continues in these words—
     

The One is an unbroken Circle with no circumference, for it is nowhere and everywhere; the One is the boundless plane of the Circle, manifesting a diameter only during the manvantaric periods [the objective hemisphere of the Cycle of Being]; the One is the indivisible point found nowhere, perceived everywhere during those periods; it is the Vertical and the Horizontal, the Father and the Mother, reaching in reality nowhere, for the One is the Ring as also the rings that are within that Ring.

      The image of "the One" figures largely in spiritual and religious traditions. A philosophy of Wholeness, however, shifts our attention from "the One" to the Whole and to the all-inclusive principle of Wholeness. By so doing, the pitfall of monism and non-dualism is avoided—the very dubious proposition that "the One" or "the Absolute" was moved by a desire to create a universe or to express itself. It is a trap because it posits the impossible situation of the Absolute One lacking or desiring something. In view of this, instances of the phrase "the One" in the preceding extract could be replaced with "the Whole" or "Wholeness."
      The passage next presents the eternal motion of the Great Breath in these graphic terms—

It proceeds from without inwardly, when it is everywhere, and from within outwardly, when it is nowhere.

      This is a poetic way of depicting one of the fundamental principles of the metaphysics of Wholeness. The sweep of the Cycle of Being moves from a condition of almost total unity and subjectivity (inwardness) to its symmetrical opposite condition of maximum multiplicity and objectivity (outwardness), and then moves again toward a highly unified and subjective condition of being, activity and consciousness.
      The passage goes on to reiterate the work of the ever-oscillating relationship between the principles of Unity and Multiplicity which inheres in Wholeness.

[The Great Breath] expands and contracts. When it expands the mother [primordial substance] diffuses and scatters [differentiates]; when it contracts, the mother draws back and ingathers. This produces the [alternating] periods of Evolution and Dissolution, Manvantara and Pralaya.

      The Sanskrit words Manvantara and Pralaya refer to the hemicycles of predominantly objective and multiplicate and predominantly subjective and unified conditions of being, activity and consciousness. They are the periods of cosmic day and night.

The ceaseless oscillation of the principles of Unity and Multiplicity inheres in Wholeness and structures the world process, giving it the cyclic and spiralic form of the Cycle of Being.

      To beings whose minds do not yet encompass and reach beyond a particular world process, the Movement of Wholeness assumes the form of the Cycle of Being, which is microcosmed in the human cycles of sleep and wake, and life and after-death. The great Cycle of Being is also reflected in the planetary cycles of day and night (the diurnal cycle) and the seasons (the annual cycle). On the macrocosmic level, the Cycle of Being structures planetary, heliocosmic and galactic evolution.(8)
      A metaphysics of Wholeness therefore views the universe as a hierarchy of wholes within wholes within wholes. A particular cycle of being is a whole of time (a cycle, a quantum of Duration) operating through a finite space-whole (a field of activities) founded in a particular level of Wholeness. Less inclusive cycles are parts or subcycles of more inclusive cycles. But all cycles of being, great and small, are moments in the indefinable Movement of Wholeness. And just as any particular cycle of being is a cycle within a cycle within a cycle, Being manifest as a holarchy of wholes within wholes within wholes.
In the graphic depiction of the world process printed above, the Cycle of Being is characterized by two hemicycles (Day and Night) and four turning points (termed Midnight, Sunrise, Noon and Sunset) inaugurating its four primary phases, which are produced by the cyclic and symmetrical motion of the two opposing forces as they alternately wax and wane within a finite field of activity. In theosophical terminology, the subjective Night hemicycle corresponds to Pralaya, the Day hemicycle of manifestation to Manvantara.
      The principle of Unity predominates the Night hemicycle of mostly subjective being, activity and consciousness. But it gives all activity and motion a rhythmic and cyclic character, and it is responsible for the principle of holism—that is, for the manifestation of existence as a series of evermore inclusive wholes and for the release of energy in quanta or discrete packages.
      Multiplicity predominates the largely objective Day hemicycle. It is responsible for existence taking the form of a multitude of expanding and differentiating wholes, but the principle of Unity guides and stabilizes the process of differentiation, "from within outward," for the realization of archetypal spiritual Qualities.
      The points of symbolic Midnight and Noon are moments of greatest disequilibrium, where Unity and Multiplicity reach maximum strength, almost but never totally or absolutely abolishing the other.
      At the symbolic Midnight of the cyclic world process, the drive toward Unity is most intense, and Space and the principle of Multiplicity are reduced, so to speak, almost to a single point. At this supreme moment, the divine Compassion implicate in the Movement of Wholeness reverses the direction of the Cycle of Being, allowing failures of the closing cycle another opportunity to realize spiritual integration.
      A metaphysics of Wholeness does not recognize a condition of absolute Unity because, among other reasons, in such a universal condition there can be no need for (or purpose to be realized in) a new world process. If such a condition ever existed in the past, there would be today nothing instead of a multiplicity of things. In other words, no world process ever did or ever will succeed a condition of absolute unity because such a condition lacks the seed of multiplicity.
      To state, as do most religious and metaphysical cosmogonies, that "the Absolute" was somehow moved by a desire to create a universe or to objectively experience itself is to posit an absurd and impossible situation based on the self-canceling premise that a one and only Absolute lacks or desires something. Adherents to the many traditions find their way to accepting (and passing on to successive generations) this credo quai absurdum of cosmic magnitude because they are told "the Absolute," or "the One," or "God," or "Parabraham" is beyond thought and imagination. Yet it is human destiny to attempt to achieve an evermore inclusive understanding of even the most transcendent implications of existence. In a philosophy of Wholeness, the real purpose responsible for a new world process is the need to neutralize the failures and unfinished business of the past world process.
      After Midnight, the principle of Multiplicity gradually expands and the "descending" process of involution begins. From Midnight to Sunrise archetypes are formulated in the divine Mind by "creative Hierarchies." At Sunrise a new objective world begins as the power of the principle of Multiplicity matches the influence of the principle of Unity and realizes dynamic ascendency.
      During the Day hemicycle the divine Mind—the collective Mind of the unified spiritual harvest of the previous world process—exteriorizes itself. As it ideates or projects archetypal forms upon protomatter (the dust or residue of the previous world process), a multiplicity of individual atoms, molecules, galaxies, solar systems, planets and biological species and specimen based on gradually more differentiated and complex archetypal forms are realized. The principle of Unity, retreating inward between Sunrise and Noon, shows its influence by maintaining the integrity of informing archetypes and the individual forms they guide.
      At the symbolic Noon the direction of the Cycle of Being is once again reversed, opening the evolutionary arc and the human period, during which the principle of Unity gradually increases while the principle of Multiplicity slowly retreats. The influence of the principle of Unity is seen during the early afternoon of the world process in the development of a long series of cultures integrating a multiplicity of members through the power of collective psychism. The web of interpersonal and intergroup relationships operating according to the often rigid and exclusive paradigms of a particular culture generates and is sustained by the binding and integrative force of collective psychism, which is analogous to instinct in animal species. This binding force, which in a limited sense is similar to Jung's "collective unconscious," is the accumulated psychic energy of the collective whole.
      As the power of the principle of Unity rises, Multiplicity becomes internalized as individuality and ego-will. But individualization is a transitional state leading to a highly unified condition in which individual selfhood and group unanimity interpenetrate. Individualism, then, it not an end in itself, and personality is not the ultimate product of evolution. During the afternoon of the world process, however, the individual and collective ego-will of human beings can obstruct the direction of the Cycle of Being. When this occurs, the Movement of Wholeness assumes a destructive aspect.
      The principle of Unity shows its power during the mid-afternoon phase of the world process as it acts for the eventual union of the mind and personality of an individualized, transformed human being and a unique and fully differentiated spiritual Quality. The meeting of human and divine, which occurs at the symbolic Sunset, has been called the "divine Marriage." The condition has been exemplified by Christ, Buddha and others. The symbolic Sunset, where the principles of Unity and Multiplicity are again for a moment equal, represents the gate leading Illumined Humanity into the unified spiritual Community. But because Multiplicity can never be abolished utterly, fully realized humans can pass through this gate only after treading the long and arduous Path to its culmination and facing its Transformations as individuals. All do not, therefore, pass through the Gate of Illumination at the same time, and some fail to pass through it in the time allotted to a particular Cycle of Being.
      During the closing phase of the Cycle of Being, when the principle of Unity is in dynamic ascendency, the cycle's spiritual harvest ingathers in a highly subjective, condensed and luminous condition of being, activity and consciousness. Such a spiritual harvest is termed the Pleroma, an ancient Greek word meaning fullness. It is equivalent to what Blavatsky termed the White Lodge. Because the principle of Multiplicity can never be completely eliminated from the Movement of Wholeness, a certain degree of individual selfhood and functionality is retained even in the Pleroma of unanimous and consolidated spiritual Beings.

The energy of the Movement of Wholeness is gradually repotentialized during the predominantly subjective evening phase of the world process by the spiritual Pleroma of perfected Beings inisting (in contradistinction to existing) in a transcendent condition of spiritual consolidation and integration. The process of repotentialization is analogous to winding a clock.
      During or immediately before Midnight, a tremendous inner surge of divine Compassion moves the Pleroma of Compassionate Beings to envision a new world process. Divine Imagination calls forth a Seed constituting an abstract solution to the existential problems and shortcoming, the karma and unfinished business, of the closing cycle. It offers the failures and partial failures of the past another chance to realize spiritual integration in the Pleroma. Through this tremendous feat of Mind and all-inclusive Compassion, the direction of the Cycle of Being is reversed and the principle of Multiplicity waxes, eventually leading to the start of a new objective universe at Sunrise.
      The Image Formula envisioned by the divine Mind of the Seed Pleroma outlines a finite solution to the failures of the past because the existential content of each world process is unique and only a definite and limited solution can even begin to neutralize the particular range of failure possible within a particular world process. But the Image is not a fully worked, complete and complex pattern for a new universe. It is rather an outline in broad strokes.
      Simultaneous with the reversal of the direction of the Cycle of Being at Midnight, the Seed Pleroma (the "Hidden Father" of ancient traditions) ensouls, so to speak, the Image Formula (the First Logos of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine) around which it organizes its Light of Compassion. The Light (pure, active, creative potency, the energy of the Movement of Wholeness repotentialized by the Pleroma before the close of the previous world process) then radiates into and fecundates Space, the Matrix of Potentiality. The Light of Compassion plays a key role in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine, where it is termed the Light of the Logos or Daiviprakriti (a Sanskrit word meaning radiant or divine primordial energy).
      After the Light ensouls the Image Formula and radiates into the Matrix, Light and Matrix involve into a plenum termed the Universal Soul, the Cosmic Womb, Alaya, Mahabuddhi, the Womb of Souls, the Cosmic Web, Father-Mother and the Second or Unmanifest-Manifest Logos. Within the Cosmic Womb a new Day gestates.
      As the influence of the principle of Multiplicity gradually waxes, the process of involution proceeds and highly subjective activity of the divine Mind is reflected in the Cosmic Womb. Hierarchies of divine "Architects" and "Builders"—the Seed Pleroma and other communities of spiritual beings carried over from the previous world process—slowly differentiate. Even though the creative Hierarchies differentiate and work with different types of energy and at various levels of activity, they are still highly unified in mind and soul. They conduct a multiplicity of subjective activities contributing to the formation of the divine Child of esoteric and religious traditions, known as Ishvara in Hinduism and Avalokiteswara in Mahayana Buddhism.
      In its form aspect, the divine Child—form plus energy, guided by mind—is the Universal Archetype, the seed or archetypal potentiality of everything that ever will be during the Day hemicycle of the particular world process. The Universal Archetype carries an immense multiplicity of variations because it must provide archetypal solutions to an immense yet finite number of failures and partial failures. It does not, however, carry the makings of every objective, existential form and experience in precise detail, no more than the Image Formula envisioned by the Seed Pleroma comprises in exact detail every feature of the Universal Archetype. Nor is the Universal Archetype a material object or being. It is rather an abstract pattern or formula formulated and sustained in the divine Mind, the collective mind of the communities of spiritual intelligences mentioned earlier, and sustained in the energy matrix of the Cosmic Womb.
      At the moment of Sunrise, when the power of the principles of Unity and Multiplicity are equal, but with the latter in ascendency, the Universal Archetype breaks out of the Cosmic Womb as space expands with explosive intensity. The symbolic Sunrise represents the Third, Creative or Manifest Logos of Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. Hinduism gives it a highly suggestive name: Brahmâ, meaning expansion.
      Simultaneous with the expansion of space, a tremendous quantum of cosmic energy bound up in the Cosmic Womb passes from potential to kinetic states. In another sense, divine creative energy (the Light of the Logos, Daiviprakriti) passes into what is termed Fohat in Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine. Fohat unifies the four forces of modern physics (the electromagnetic, gravity, and the strong and the weak nuclear) and other forces not yet discovered by modern science.
      The modern mind conditioned by the images, concepts and myths of modern science will probably want to think of the dynamic and explosive Sunrise moment as the Big Bang. Although the symbolic Sunrise marks the passage of at least some of the energy implicated in the Cosmic Womb from potential to kinetic conditions, a metaphysics of Wholeness and esoteric tradition do not wholly subscribe to the Big Bang cosmology held by most scientists. A more satisfactory and accurate symbol may be found in the Hindu Hiranyagarbha, the Golden Egg or Womb of Brahmâ, within which the universe gestates and eventually breaks out.
      The symbolic Sunrise may also be imagined as the Sounding of the Creative Word, an image often used by Rudhyar in his formulation of the world process, as well as figuring in the cosmogony of The Secret Doctrine and most religious traditions. And more recently, the superstring theory of modern physics comes close to envisioning the universe as a vibrating creative tone.
      The Creative Word is the Universal Archetype and each of its Letters is a divine archetype "inspirited" by a spiritual Quality and infused with a quantum of the energy of divine Compassion. At Sunrise the Creative Word, which is form and energy sustained by the divine Mind, is sounded. Gonglike, it emits a myriad of tones, and yet it is one Tone. The creative energy of the Tone—Fohat, the energy of divine Ideation—is said to be the bridge linking archetypes in the divine Mind with material forms. Yet behind both archetype and form stands a spiritual Quality and its energy.
      By any means, the passage of energy from potential to kinetic sets the objective world in motion. But because the principle of Unity is still powerful, though no longer in ascendency, every possible aspect and variation of the Universal Archetypal is not released and kineticized at once or at random. Aspects of the Universal Archetype are instead differentiated and released one-by-one, the simplest and most fundamental aspects and their many variation worked out first, providing the foundation for more complex forms.
      At first the archetypal forms are primitive (curves and circles, whirls and spirals, rotations and vortices) and inert protomatter (the residue of the previous world process) takes a long time to awaken and respond to the archetypal patterns impressed upon it. In other words, the frozen energy patterns and spiritual failures of the ancient past resist the attempts of photons (light quanta) and other force—carriers ("fohat's sons" of The Secret Doctrine) to infuse them with new life and form.
      As the power of Multiplicity waxes, matter (focused and condensed energy) assumes a multiplicity of forms. In terms of the atomic elements known and tabulated by modern science, Fohat organizes matter according to the archetypal forms of hydrogen, helium and so on. But the involutionary wave must first work its way down through several levels and sublevels of organization before reaching the dense physical conditions of which empirical science regards as the only reality.
      The rhythmic energy of divine Ideation eventually infuses more complex archetypal forms, and depending upon the scope of the particular Cycle of Being, a galaxy, a solar system, a planet, or a human being gradually forms. As all this occurs, the creative Hierarchies in the divine Mind which guide and control creative energy, gradually externalize their activity, so to speak, and further differentiate, while always remaining more or less unified on the level of Mind and Soul.
      When the sweep of the Cycle of Being has stabilized atomic and chemical forms, the divine Mind gradually impresses upon these forms the more complex patterns of organization belonging to the vital level, and a multiplicity of biological organisms (or their equivalent) begin to appear on the surface of a planet reaching the mid-morning of its Cycle of Being.
      As a planet's Cycle of Being advances toward the symbolic Noon of maximum Multiplicity, its biosphere teems with an immense multitude of life species. The principle of Unity still operates in the Day hemicycle, but its influence has been internalized as it maintains the integrative power binding atomic particles and stabilizing life-species. Unity also manifest during the Day hemisphere as the universal life-force (the prana or chi of Occultism and Asiatic traditions) vivifying all objective wholes and, at a lower levels, as the instincts of animal and human species. But around the symbolic Noon of our planet's evolution, the power of Unity became so weakened that the barrier between life-species became instable, permitting the conception and birth of the monsters of antiquity.
      Near the nadir of the world process, protohumanity appears in the biosphere.

      As the symbolic Noon draws near, it becomes imperative to bring down and anchor archetype Anthropos to the higher material (or "etheric") level of the Earth being.(9) Archetype Anthropos is the total pattern or seed potential of Humanity. It is in every human being and it holds in archetypal form and potential of all that is, was and ever will be human. Archetype Anthropos needed to be anchored to Earth's etheric or akashic level before the symbolic Noon of the Cycle of Being because, among other reasons, it must be stabilized there before the Avataric Event can occur.
      To answer this need, divine Compassion impelled a group of highly spiritual beings representing the seed harvest of previous world processes to embody, sustain and anchor archetype Anthropos to the heart of Earth's super-physical "etheric" field, the legendary Shambhala of Asiatic traditions. Along with archetype Anthropos, the presence of these Promethean Beings in the Earth-field allowed protohumanity to develop the latent fire of intelligence and self-consciousness.
      The Promethean sacrifice initiated the truly human, self-conscious and mental phase of evolution. But it takes a long time for human beings to fully reflect and embody the total potential of archetype Anthropos.
      The second of a long series of steps leading to the realization of archetype Anthropos came at the nadir of the Cycle of Being, the symbolic Noon. Through the release of a tremendous quantum of divine Compassion, the Presence of Wholeness assumed human form, serving as the prototype of the first of several aspects of archetype Anthropos. Such a Presence of Wholeness is known as an Avatar, a divine manifestation.
      The presence of the First Avatar in the planet's biosphere coincided with the reversal of the direction of the Cycle of Being and, after that, the principle of Unity gradually rises. The primordial Avatar is "inspirited" or "overshadowed" by the spiritual principle of a member of the Seed Pleroma of the previous world process. Through a type of formative resonance, the presence of the first Avatar catalyzed the formation of truly human forms and minds according to and adequate for the first fundamental aspect of archetype Anthropos.
      Eventually, some of the Promethean Being mentioned earlier "incarnated" among early humanity, for whom they served as "celestial Rulers" and "divine Instructors." Humanity evolved step-by-step as increasingly inclusive aspects of Archetype Anthropos and divine Wisdom are released and anchored to the biosphere. Each new aspect of Anthropos and Wisdom provides the foundation of a new culture and a new type of personhood, the product of culture.
      Throughout the human phase of the Cycle of Being, from Noon to Sunset, three fundamental though often overlapping periods may be distinguished. The three periods are characterized as tribal animism, regional vitalism and atomistic individualism. But in spite of what Jan Smuts, Teilhard de Chardin, C. G. Jung and others claim, personality and individualism is not the final stage of evolution. Individualization is instead a transitional state, and beyond and through it and the condition of culture lies the luminous Pleroma condition. The Pleroma is even now being formed cell by cell, as one by one fully individualized human beings emerge from the matrix of culture and modulated their minds, wills and identity from the level of biopsychic appetites and responses and psychomental complexes and ego-drives to the spiritual-mental level. There a mind of Wholeness, guided by spiritual will, acts as a lens focusing the Light and Power of a unique spiritual Quality intoned at the symbolic Sunrise of the Cycle of Being.
      Sunset is the symmetric complement of Sunrise, and at it the potentiality released at Sunrise is actualized. It is the symbolic gate leading Illumined Humanity into the Pleroma. But because fully realized humans can pass through this gate only after treading the long and arduous Path to its culmination and facing its Transformations as individuals, all humans do not pass through the gate at the same time.
      During the evening phase of the world process, from Sunset to Midnight, Unity acts as an irresistible power of spiritual condensation, simplification and unification. It operates as highly subjective activity in a series of evermore inclusive Pleromas.
      As the Cycle of Being draws to a close, three groups of beings may be distinguished.
      Success and failure in any world process is inevitable because there can be no success without the possibility of failure; and success, if inevitable, would be meaningless. The time allotted to a particular Cycle of Being is finite and fixed because cyclicity is a metacosmic principle and the structure of any cycle is invariable. The length of earth's day, for instance, remains virtually unchanged over trillions of cycles.
      To claim, as do some cosmologies, that the conclusion of a cycle of being is prolonged or delayed until all beings realize spiritual success is to posit a situation in variance with the very nature of cyclicity. One may as well say that winter is delayed until all farmers worldwide completely harvest their crops, regardless of how long the slowest farmer takes to achieve the task, or that the sun stood still in the sky until so that the Hebrews would win an important victory.
      Because success and failure is inevitable in any world process, one group consists of the dark harvest of spiritual failures and partial failures—beings who did not realize spiritual Fullness in the time allotted by the Cycle of Being.
      The spiritual harvest of the closing cycle consist of two groups distinguished by fundamentally different levels of spiritual Being—Compassion and Inertia. All three groups condition the future world process.
      As the Midnight or "Godhead" condition approaches, the Pleroma of Spiritual Inertia, which has forgotten utterly the failures of the closing cycle, is impelled by Inertia to drive unrelentingly toward the impossible goal of absolute Unity—which in its single-pointedness it has forgotten never was and never can be.
      The Pleroma of Compassion, however, never forgets. It has become the Cycle, the Eon. It will be the Seed Pleroma of the coming cycle, while the Pleroma of Inertia will, among other things, perform the function of the "creative Hierarchies." In a tremendous act of Compassion and feat of Mind, the Pleroma of Compassion reverses the direction of the Cycle of Being and envisions an Image or Seed Formula for a new, more perfect world process. The new world process ideated by the Seed Pleroma is a solution to past shortcomings, and through it the spiritual failures of the previous cycle are given another opportunity to realize Spiritual Fullness.

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8. The words heliocosm and heliocosmic refer to a solar system as a whole, as a living organism.  Return

9. In theosophical nomenclature, archetype Anthropos is tied to the seventh or highest subplane of Earth's physical plane. The seven physical subplanes are dense, liquid and gaseous, followed by four unseen, attenuated subplanes of which modern science has not as yet discovered.
      At the akashic level energy exists in a highly attenuated condition or organization which underlies all physical forms, and within which archetypes are "reflected."  Return

Read Part One