THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

Given in a series of seven lecturers by MBM,

October-December 1931

Transcribed from notes of Gertrude Borchard

Lecture I  – Rhythm – October 15, 1931

The study of these Principles opens door on door, and you move ever forward and inward, to the beginning of things — not intellectually, but with a kind of experiential knowledge, – akin to what we call Gnosis.  You move inward to those forges of Vulcan (Thor) where is wrought out the very fabric of those things which make manifestation.

Again, if you go on the other side of things, you should catalogue facts, and the illustrations I may present to you, – and some of the connecting laws of operation you may list up in your mind, – until you have a reasonable storehouse of facts; and you may conclude that that is all there is to it.  I warn you against this.  He who does not see the flavor of Immensities when they are before him, and does not respond to the first level of these when they are before him, blunts his faculties.  Therefore if in any small way you sense big things behind these Principles, don’t systematize the bit I am able to present to you.

“Music of the spheres” — as the name for these Principles, which are the methods of activity in manifestation, – is like a kind of major scale on which the harmonies of the Cosmic Music are played.  And the inter-play that these Principles experience on the different planes on which they operate causes the variations on the major scale.

There is, indeed, Cosmic Music, but that cosmic music is not heard with material ears.  It is heard with those sensitivities of mind, and eventually spirit — those organs, – sense organs of mind and spirit — they perceive this music.  And the Music is as literal to the mind — more so — than the music that strikes your physical ear.

What are Principles?  The word itself comes from a root meaning first – chief, the same root that gives us our word prince.  Principles, thus, are those ways of procedure, those supreme laws, that are derived directly from the Source.

 

Laws — not man-made laws (mores, local laws) but laws that belong to the modes of procedure in the manifestation of life, are those regulations that belong to lower stages.  Principles are fundamentals.  Laws play into Principles.  Principles dominate laws.  Principles are the major scale.  Laws, the little notes, – the little themes, that are wrought out of the major scale.

It is said among those who have studied these things deeply that there are a relatively small number of Principles.  Usually they are given as seven in number.  These seven, coming into activity with the beginning of manifestation, operate through all phases of manifestation.  They are the backbone of all things; and thus the study of them aids man in the understanding of himself and his immediate environment.  And to those who are able to sense, and then use, some of the deeper significance of Principles, there is the possibility of pushing up from plane to plane.  That is the mystical, initiation, character, – that character of Principles, – pushing up from plane to plane, until you knock at the door of the beginning of things.

The Principle I will discuss is one that has been rather close to some of the phases of work at Pojodag recently.  It is not the logical one with which to begin; but because I propose to begin rather gently with this subject, and with one related to things we have been touching, – the Principle called Rhythm.  We have had experience with Rhythm, and as we come to study, we will note we have had more experience with it than we at first anticipated.

It is said that Rhythm is a measured flow of things; that there is a tide which moves everywhere — a rise and fall, a coming and a going, – and that this, since it is a Principle, a first, a chief, an emanation of one of the modes of procedure from the very forge of Vulcan, penetrates into all things.  We experience it.

Not many want to come to know it further than experience.  For the experience is apt to be disconcerting.  But here, immediately, is one of the advantages of understanding Principles.  Principles can never be eliminated.  They are.  They belong to the noumenal world, – you can never wholly know, – and to attempt to do so is one of the foolhardy efforts of those who are unenlightened in their battle with this strange Principle.

Let us see how this Principle works.  If it begins at the forge of Vulcan, we should expect that it began with manifestation; and we find immediately the swing from non-Creation to Creation – from non-manifestation to manifestation.

It concerns every one of us, – intimately; and because it seems to be far away, – on the distant chart beyond space and time, we think we are apart from its impact.  That error will be lifted from us presently.

Thus, we might say that the first manifestation of the Rhythm is in manifestation, as against non-manifestation.  But those who have pressed further lift a veil on that which preceded, and speak of the great period before that non-manifestation.  How can they know that?  In two ways: by the development of faculties superior to those of ordinary man, – and there are grade upon grade of such faculties, – and by the clean-cut reasoning in the application of another Principle, which we will study on one of our later evenings.  So they know, not merely theorize, that before this period of manifestation there was another rhythm; and there will be another rhythm that belongs to the Nought, as the philosopher calls it.

But that may seem far away; so we will move down the picture a bit, and come to what is known as the Days and Nights in the Year of Brahma.

There is a Great Year, which symbolizes the complete period of manifestation.  But within that appear lesser periods — Days and Nights they are called, — the rhythm swinging from one to the other.  Should we hold to the Day, sooner or later, in the limitation of our speech, will come the Night.  Should we hold to the Night, sooner or later will come the Day.  Thus, these periods of Day and Night are, in this familiar terminology, called the Day, or Year, of Brahma.  Thus from Infinity we swing into Time.

In another text, the Hebraic, we have a phrase that, to the student of this Principle, immediately reveals a rhythm.  Genesis opens with the phrase: “In the Beginning.  The beginning of what?  If there was a beginning of somewhat, there was that which preceded it.  Hence, a rhythm.  It was in the beginning of this manifestation that the rhythm belonging to our period was initiated.

It is the astronomer, or physicist, who observes the forming of great stars and planets in the nebulae of space.  The average man is not concerned about these things.  He is busy about the trite and the bit of butter he can put on his bread.  But the wise do more than take care of bread and a bit of butter.  They know that they should have other things, – that if they had two loaves of bread they must sell one for leisure to watch the stars.

Thus, to the observer, and to one who reads from his observation, the forming of new stars and planets in the great nebulae is an indication of the work of a mighty rhythm.  For planets and stars come and go.  Millions of years, – billions of years, – but in the Day of Brahma these are little.  The condition will be upon us somewhere when we will be smitten by the realization of how we were hampered by our literal interpretation of Time.

Time is an accommodation to the three-dimensional animal, in the third dimension.  But it is by no means intended to be his limit, – and is not.  And once we escape even a little from the trammels of Time, Immensities are much simpler – much easier to deal with.

It is a useful thing, useful to the mind and spirit of man, to try, every now and again, and not too far apart, to sense what it might be if Time was not.  For there is such a condition; and our stretching of our capacities to experience some of this condition, is already the transcending of the dominance of this condition of Time and Space.

I bring this in only to remind you that when you are considering Immensities they need not appear to you as vast, as remote, as alien, as they do when you are limited by three-scone and ten, or by the history book of relatively nearby epochs.

There are other rhythms that impinge upon us, – moving nearer to our own conditions – and still far away from them on another angle, – the rhythm of changes on the surface of the earth.  Geology has long demonstrated that the earth’s surface has not been as it is now, that even the Pole, the North Pole of the earth, has shifted; and with it the temperate zones on the surface of the earth.  Not only that, but continents have come and gone, and will come and will go again.  The periods of time in which these things take place, or have taken place, may seem, again, remote; yet ten thousand years is little in the millions of years of the age of our planet.

The Rhythm that comes and goes is, in a sense, ruthless.  (It is not unrelated to what we will perceive in the next class under the law of Nature.)  There is a relentlessness in the operation of these rhythms, and we who live in this dimension, at an intermediate period, tend to think that these things that surround us are secure.  There is nothing secure in the phenomenal world; and the very world that seems to us solid is the most porous of all.  It is ironic that we should be so constituted in this dimension that we are able to walk on holes.  What we think solid, really is sponge-like.  Yet we assert that brick and wood, and steel and iron, are opaque.  The limitations, again, of this dimension!

These things are not so, – and this world in which we live — one of the farthest out from the center of the Forge of Vulcan, or Thoth — is most fragile.  But, since we function in bodies, and are limited to a few years, – and have sense organs that are contrived purposively to give us the illusion of solidity, in order that we may deal with this world — but not that we may perceive it as the end – we fall victim.  Because we have so little interest.  Continents have come and gone. . . .empires. . . .races!

Why did they rise?  Why did they fall?  And historians try to find rational answers.  Sometimes they do fairly well; but the totality of the answer is never in the date given by the historian.  Why?  Because the Principle of Rhythm is at work; and the Principle of Rhythm works from the beginning on, through the Day of Manifestation, – in the coming and going, the rise and fall, the flow of the tides.  So don’t take the word of the historian as final.  He does his best, but he does not know that there are Principles, Primaries, Chiefs — modes of procedure, derived from the original Center, at work.  So that, in spite of anything that man, or men, may do, this flowing in and out shall continue.

Not only races, but the individual: birth, maturity, decay, death — a rise and fall.  And you think that there is pathos.in it; and you strive, perhaps, to get all you can in that little cycle, – in the one swing of the pendulum.  But after you have studied the Principle of Rhythm you may not, if you press to the content of these things, make that error.  You will recognize that, within a rise and fall, certain things may take place – but not all.  And you will grow gradually in patience, perspective, spaciousness.  You will enter into that measured sequence of things that belongs to all Larger Patterns.

And then, if we should press our analogy with life, – or living organisms, a little further, we would note what curious rhythms there were: That it is apparently not applied evenly, this Rhythm — that the butterfly has one rhythm of life, — compared to that of the cat or the dog it is brief.  Yet, within that little span it lives its life.  Then we say: the butterfly is dead.  But the butterfly is really not dead; for the first mystery that impacts upon us from the study of this Principle is that, if things came to a cessation, there could not be another rhythm, – there could be no momentum to carry on.

We will not find the answer to the mystery of the butterfly in terms of this dimension — in terms of any investigation of the biologist or the physicist.

Then, as we move up the scale of life to the human, we find its rhythm — the human rhythm — still longer.  And we tend to think that man has the span of the cycle most extended, for the sake of his development.  But it is not so!  We have other forms of animal life—the elephant, – or plant life, like the trees, whose cycle is incomparably greater.  So we cannot conclude that the extended span is only for the sake of development, or opportunity.  Again, the reasons for these things are outside of this dimension.

Some philosophers have been intrigued with these questions, and have come to curious conclusions regarding the return, or recurrence, of that which has occurred before.  The best statement, or re-statement, of that is to be found in Ouspensky’s book, “A New Model of the Universe”, in the chapter called Eternal Recurrence.  The conclusion of these philosophers is that there is an identity, so exact in the return expression of a rhythm, that at some distant time the exact circumstances of each event will be repeated.  “The great tragedy of the Christian religion will be re-enacted.  Jesus will again do what he did;…. Pilate, Judas and the others …..to each detail of that drama.”

Many, and with considerable reason, have followed that theory.  But they have not drunk deeply at another great drive that is behind the Principles themselves, – and for which the Principles have been contrived.  If we should try to lift the curtain on these things for a moment, we could state it, more or less simply, thus: That the stages of the worlds have been contrived to provide the conditions in which various forms of life shall progress.

We know that all forms of life do not progress; that Nature is herself making gigantic experiments, and tossing aside discards.  These discards, like the discards in the metal shop, are those forms of life which have gone along blind alleys, or have come to a blind alley.

I am not speaking pure science.  I am speaking from other levels.  These forms of life have left their rhythm, and gone into a discard.

On the other hand, forms of life that have played the game progressively are arising — are evolving.  And, just as in the small experiences of our human being, there are those experiences which are discarded, – because for one reason or another they prove not acceptable, – so are there also those experiences, and those forms of life, which arise, and which improve in the struggle of environment.

For man’s life, for animal life, for vegetable life, all share this dimension.  We humans are not the only occupants of this dimension.  We share it: and other forms of life beside the human are ascending the scale of life, through experience, bringing the potentialities into potency.  And it is for this that the great Cosmic Day has been shot through with the living dynamics of these Principles, – sustaining all manifestation throughout the period, until the higher evolving forms shall withdraw themselves from these conditions.

Hence, we do not return in a rhythm of identity, but, rather, in a rhythm of likeness. We see it in the rhythm of the seasons – spring, summer, autumn, winter — and yet no two are identical.  The position of the sun at a given period of the year is identical, but the effect of it on the earth is not identical — late springs; early springs; unexpected frosts.  Thus, there is no identity in rhythm; but likeness.

Why is there not identity?  Because of the infinite variety of subsidiary effects of these principles on the laws; and, in turn, the laws on the detailed substance of the various planes.

So that there is not merely a Principle, – or seven Principles, – at work but a variable network of interacting forces, each in turn playing its part in law — in order, – definite and precise, but giving ample opportunity for a variety.

That variety is one of the important factors in man’s, and animals’, evolution.  If there were not these great cataclysms, – and the lesser cataclysms, the animal, and man, would tend to become set in forms.

When we become so flexible, – so enlightened, that we see the coming and going of the great Principle of Rhythm, breaking up the fabrics that we have spun about ourselves, it is a challenge to our resourcefulness, – to come out of the old house we have built, that has become so solid; and, with the experience of the past rhythm — that is, its momentum, its treasure — to carry over into the new, – and start again; until, as Emerson so finely says, – until — in happier minds, that is — this thing has become an incessant, a ceaseless, activity.

A few indications of this Principle of Rhythm; so that, at some later evening, when we are more firm on these Principles, and have pressed inward into somewhat of their nature, we can gather up again these bits I have scattered among you tonight, and make a more consistent whole — built a picture that sustains itself, as, in an infinite sense, these Principles do.

Let us take a few smaller illustrations: expansion and contraction of muscles, intake and outgo of the breath.  In all things that belong to the diastolic and systolic movement,- all expression of rhythm, these rhythms are inevitable.  It seems as though we were fated to be dominated by them.

What, then, when we come to so unpleasant a rhythm as the manic-depressive type of neurosis?  In smaller ways, we see it in moods; in courage-fear, in faith-doubt; activity and fatigue; waking, sleeping; desire, gratification.

What we might do in regard to rhythms.  The summer and winter rhythm, – a direct application of the value inherent in these rhythms.  I can only suggest what this value is.  Obviously, in anything engendered from a cosmic source there is a mighty dynamic, – even in this far remote third dimension.  To participate — synchronize and then participate — in a rhythm makes for a momentum, for capacity, – for a power that cannot be possessed otherwise.  Have a sense of energy as flowing, – in which the student shares who obeys the rhythm.  A tremendous experience!

Another example is one drawn from history.  You all know that the races preceding our epoch synchronized their great festivals with the seasons — that is, with the sun, – rarely with the moon.  They were right in so doing; and there was a momentum in the participation of the peoples of various races in these great festivals that we have not again caught.

In the early days of Christianity, its great festivals called Christmas and Easter, were on other dates than those at present set.  And, among the Church Fathers, some who had been schooled in the ancient traditions, came the suggestion to shift the Christian festivals to the dates of the pagan festivals.  It was so done, – and the crowds who had been attending the pagan festivals began to attend the Christian festivals.

That is the practical aspect of what was in the minds of the Church Fathers.  But behind it — the Principle of that — was apparent something much more powerful: that the pagan festivals were in harmony with a mighty rhythm, and that Christianity, to endure, would have to do likewise.  It is not to be found in outer Christianity how much of its hold on peoples is due to this synchronizing with a great Rhythm.

Possible additions to reading of lecture on

Principle of Rhythm

points and excerpts culled from MBM’s lecture on

this Principle, Apr. 3, 1937

Looking in with the great technicians of the Cosmos; observing a little of the means used to run the Cosmos, in a technical way.  These Principles are the princes that run the Fathers, house.

New Cosmic Day.  First manifestation the Principles setting out from the Father’s house.

All Principles have as their nature the technical way of producing life.  Pulse, heartbeat, by means of which nature set all things in motion.  It is not nature.  It is the technicians who dramatize the process in nature; for nature could do nothing of itself.

Geologist speaks of rhythm.  Biologist.  Music shows the pulse beat audibly, as though that were the only sense organ that can experience rhythm.

A peculiarity of the Principles: they permeate everywhere.  Man is to learn their true nature and enlist them in the transmuting of life itself.

Rhythm the means of growth.  Day and night.  That motion which is a seventh of life.

Being in the midst of the Principles consciously, – drawing on them, is to become yourself a lesser technician, and to experience that wellbeing that comes, as we know it from the mechanical point of view, when all the machinery runs well.

True rhythm not arbitrary.  Not just the beat of a drum; not really a rhythm at all.

The first great pulse beat of the Cosmic heart is the beginning of the Cosmic Day.

Pulse beat of the heart a good first aid to understanding rhythm.  Varies in man and animals, birds.  Within this possibility of variation of the pulse is the push, like the contractions of the heart, that pushes the life stream out a little further.  It is through rhythm that we see most obviously the thrust outward of the blood stream of the Cosmos, as in the small the blood stream coursing through your bodies.

How much we live in rhythm: Seasons, tides, returning of a comet.  But no spring is quite the same.  Rhythm as the blood stream passing through life – as a blood stream in the ethers — expanding and contracting — diastolic and systolic.

Different styles: war and peace; buying and consuming; old and new; labor struggles and agreements.  Will again be absorbed in something else, and recur.  One accommodates oneself to them.  Problems won’t stay solved.  Naive to think otherwise.  That is why nothing is sure in this world: a far outpost of the Principles that sent the life-blood pulsing.  A phenomenal world, of change, because this principle works.

Poor, may be rich.  Gautama and middle way.  See alike.  Don’t be involved in one end of the rhythm or the other.  Free yourself.

Can have the fruits of a rhythm only by going through it.  If at one end, rich, stagnation; no blood.  To be living one has literally to experience, to be in the midst of all of these principles.

Rain, sun.  Doesn’t matter whether you like it or not.  Don’t waste energy giving off reactions that have no relation to things.  Amateur annoyed by low tides, captain of ship never.

Work and fatigue.  Relax when resting.

A peculiar law is that things will work themselves out.  Time solves many mysteries, – because time will bring out things to complete the picture, when you have seen only one part and could not see the whole.  This law is an aspect of a principle penetrating all things.

Adapt to them as the captain of a freight boat, or relate ourselves to them so that we can speed them.  Example:  Fruit and vegetables here all year.  Compensating rhythms of one place for those of another.  Not just a wish.  There is never a rhythm canceled, but another may be superimposed.

As the blood courses and is refreshed by the lungs and breath, your body is not only kept going but is enabled to do additional things; grows; learns special techniques.

Not enough that that rhythm should recur, but should be used.  What rhythms are you participating in?  And can you shift the experience which must be yours of this rhythm from what we might call the automatic or inevitable levels to a conscious, understanding, directed pattern?  Mostly we are unaware, as with radio waves passing through this room.

Begin to list the rhythms you are participating in.  And then see what you can do to lift them up by your understanding, in such a way that it corresponds to what I have said is the objective of the blood stream.  Not only to keep the status quo, but enable the body to accommodate to new tasks, etc.

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

MBM – Lecture II

Duality – series of 1931

October 22, 1931

Principles emanate from the Source.  They are the “Firsts”…. in the very beginning of the Day of Manifestation.

The Principle with which we began our study is perhaps the easiest to follow in the entire series, – partly because we are all familiar with its characteristics, in one way or another.  Objectively out, – or beyond – ourselves, we are familiar with Rhythm: the tides, the seasons, cycles.  We also experience some of this Rhythm in ourselves as we shift in experience from fear to courage, and back again; from doubt to faith; from hate to love; from all manner of angles and degrees of Rhythm.  These things are known objectively and subjectively.

Tonight, the Principle we shall study is of quite a different character.  It is a dark seeing, – an enigma.  We might preface it from the prophets of old: “Behold!  I have opened to you a mystery.”

It is to the content of this second Principle that I would direct your attention.  Be careful, again, not to listen to the array of facts.  I am trying to get behind the appearance of things, into their content.  Press behind the mere facts, I am trying to say to you.

Our second Principle is one that immediately arouses our questions.  It starts out: Everything is dual.  Thing is singular; dual is plural.  In the face of things in this world, we are not so prone to accept it.  It has been a bone of contention, this question of duality.

These Principles always present themselves; we cannot evade them.  Sooner or later the challenge impacts upon us.

Not only does our Principle say: Everything is dual, but it adds that that duality is the same.  We are familiar with the two aspects of things. . . .Janus looking backward and forward.  But it is hardly that that our Principle means.  It goes back to the secret (sacred) hidden beginning of things.  It is said that at the Beginning the Nought — or, if you like, the point, if you can’t think of the Nought — was torn asunder; and there arose, immediately, two points — the Opposites.

Some know this Principle by the name of the Pairs of Opposites; some, by Unity in Duality; some by the term Polarity.  These are the three familiar names for this Principle.  In more mystic language, it is said that the Great Sacrifice that began with Manifestation is the tearing asunder of the Point into the Pairs of Opposites.  That is the burden which is sustained throughout the Cosmic Day, – the period of Manifestation.

Everything is dual, yet the duality is the same.  Everything has poles, but the opposites are identical in nature: extremes shall meet; truths, are half-truths; paradoxes must be reconciled.

This Principle is the most important one to follow in cosmic processes, for it is the very Substance of substance — the Maya — the Great Illusion.  There are many illusions, but the great Maya, the great Substance, which is, as it were, spanned throughout Eternity, – which is a measure of Time, – that Substance, – Maya, – sustains all else that is, as it were, woven over it.

This stretching of the Pairs of Opposites is, at the same time, the great Stage, on which everything that is acting, living, growing, evolving in the Cosmic Day, yields to — steps upon — and must solve.

It is, in a sense, the major riddle which all evolving life must follow.  But man, just because he is man, must give himself to the solution of this riddle.

At the point where Manifestation begins begin the Pairs of Opposites.  The farther there is an issuing from the Point, which is the beginning of the Cosmic Day, the farther apart do the poles move, each from the other.

This, then, is the Stage on which all living things act, and in which man, as a peculiar creature, must, with particular emphasis, attempt to find the solution.  How can those Principles be returned here (to the Point)?  For the end of the Cosmic Day does not come until that is the case.  Will these shorten, and be drawn in? (See diagram)  What is the solution?

You will also quickly see that the Principle we studied last week is related to this one — that Rhythm is the movement between the poles, – is the flow between the pairs of opposites.

What are some of the main pairs of opposites in the Larger Stage – not the stage of man, but of manifestation: Light and Darkness, – the first pairs of opposites; and between light and darkness all things move.  The farther the movement toward light, the sooner will be the return to darkness.  These poles are the span of the movement, and, as with the earlier Principle, they too cannot be annihilated.  We immediately conclude that the solution is not the annihilation of the pairs of opposites.  But let us follow some of the great Pairs of Opposites a little further.

Light and Darkness, divided into another half, are called the Four Pillars.  This Light and Darkness is not to be associated with our light and darkness.  They are many octaves beyond.  Our light and our darkness are farthest away from the Point (Beginning).  The Light and Darkness of this First are not our light and darkness, but the limitation of words gives us this as the nearest.  Light and darkness as words, therefore, give us nothing of the concept of the First Duality.  It is dependent on the mind to leap beyond words, and grapple with concepts abstracted from this plane, – and move as far up as it can.  The Principles are analogous on different planes.

Those four Opposites are called by different names in different traditions: by the Four Elements; fixture and elevation; traction and rest.

The Creation of things that we know under the name of matter also has its beginning and its end.  It is interesting that modern physics is investigating more and more into this beginning of things, – and new findings reverse some old traditions.  The old concept that the sun, and the stars were slowly running down is now very open to question.  Some great physicists state that out in inter-stellar space energy is again building up substance.  If some universes run down — and there are many universes – other universes come into being, and are accelerated.  The cosmic ray is associated with that theory.

Be it as it may, as far as the findings of the physicists are concerned, these Principles, which press behind the findings of science, – in fact, mark the way which science will go in setting up its ultimate authority — these Principles state that these things are so.  And the movement is therefore from the Beginning to the End, in Manifestation.  As one old tradition sonorously puts it: The Beginning is “by setting the Wheel moving, from a Beginning Boundless to an Endless End.”

So the Rhythm moves on, and the philosophies cognize it, or recognize it.

As we move from the Beginning a little nearer to the philosophies of men we find that, again and again, the patterns of the pairs of opposites have been set up: the Two Pillars of Jachin and Boaz, – the two poles between which all things move.  The early student of the movement of the stars set up the two pillars, between which the shadows and lights move — the Two Pillars, – the Two Poles.

So in an old Hebraic tradition, the Kabbalah, the Crown, or the Point, is divided into the two First Poles, – the two First Opposites: Wisdom and Intelligence.  So we can move down the line of great thinking, – of philosophies.  These things, in a sense, are outside of man.  He sees them as he sees the rhythm in the tides.

Let us now turn to these rhythms as they appear in man, – between the poles, – and see if we can begin to find an answer to the way these pairs of opposites must be reconciled.  For these poles, remember, are said to be one.  They are dual, and yet they are the same.

Can we find any illustration of that in the great Patterns before we turn to the personal.  The most familiar is the Hebraic or the Christian tradition, and there we have the phrase: The great I AM.  The I AM is the poles drawn together into an IS-ness state.  In some of the Christian terminology we have these spoken of as separate, and yet implied as being drawn together: “That which was, and which shall be”. . . . implied as being associated in a Point, – in a state which is then rather inadequately put: “World without end.”

In every great world philosophy you will find the correspondence to these ideas.

That which has solved the Pairs of Opposites is that which has passed through and over; because it has both more than three dimensions and, at the same time, is a kind of carpet over which all living creatures walk.  They are the ones who have found the way back to the Point.  Yet it is not back; it is forward.

Now to man: How do these pairs of opposites, – these poles, manifest in man?  Let us take one set we have already touched upon in the movement side of things — therefore in the Principle of Rhythm — love and hate.  You  hear people say: “I hate”, or again, “I love.”  And they are quite torn on the horns of a dilemma.  And the-rhythm which swings them from one to the other will relentlessly work its way upon them.  Do you love?, – you will hate; do you hate, you will love.

That sounds rather harsh, – dangerous.  Yet it is so.  These are poles that belong to the psychic plane, – the world of feeling, – and they are the same.  How can man solve them?

Now we go back on another little journey.  Inevitably, the human finds it much easier to solve those things which are objective to him than those which are subjective to him.  It is the normal procedure that man learns first outside of himself before he turns upon himself.  And many of the pairs of opposites that have pressed upon man from the outside, and caught him on the horns of a dilemma, have already been solved.

The most obvious one is the human correspondent to light; for with light comes heat, – with its absence darkness and cold.  And heat and light, and cold and darkness, have been problems for man down the ages, until relatively recent times.  We do not know where heat begins and cold stops; or where cold begins and heat stops.  Here we begin to understand a little of what our Principle means when it says: the poles are identical — heat and cold are the same.  They are divided only by the degree that the poles are opposite each other.

Primitive man suffered under these poles, and slowly, – very slowly, did he find a solution.  Now when the cold season comes there is a way of neutralizing the cold, and we keep the temperature approximately the same.  When the dark season, or the night, comes we neutralize darkness by turning on the light.  It has taken many, many years to accomplish this solving of the problem involved in these pairs of opposites.  We take it so for granted, forgetting the years of grueling effort, of research and experiment that go into the setting up of even the humblest heating plant.

Yet, in the study of the way man went about the solving of these pairs of opposites, we get a hint of two things: first, the long, long process which is necessary to really solving pairs of opposites.  What does it entail?  Acquaintance with facts, inquiry, study, and, finally, control.  That for one point.  And the other, – that it then requires an actual application of the thing we have learned to control.  For it is not enough to know how a heating plant is to be set up.  It requires to be actually done.

These things are done in the third dimension, – in the objective world.  When we deal with man, – except as we deal with fatigue and activity, – we are actually coming into an encounter with the beginnings of another dimension; and we may not, therefore, make the error that identical methods may be used in solving the pairs of opposites, subjectively, in man.

Go back to hate and love: There are those who, understanding something of the solving of the pairs of opposites in the third dimension, – and therefore the applying of heat to canceling cold, – who recommend love as a canceling of hate.  They would apply good thoughts, – kindly thoughts, as against bitter, hateful thoughts.  To them the solution of hate is the practice of love.

If this were still on the physical plane — the third dimension — that method might be used; but in each dimension there are laws peculiar to it.  When we are dealing with feeling we are dealing with the psychic world; and the laws which govern the psychic world are not identical with the laws which govern the physical world.  What occurs? That which is pressed out of a position of dominance, be it hate or love, swings over to another position of the self.

In the objective world you have full control of the area in which the change of temperature is to take place.  For instance, this room is without heat, and it is cold outdoors; we would change the temperature…. turn on.the steam, close the windows, etc.  And the totality of the area that we would affect is accessible to the incoming heat, and affected therefore by the rising temperature.  But, alas, that is not the case with the subjective man.  He has not his totality accessible to him.  And does he apply heat in one part – the part that is unknown to him, and therefore inaccessible, piles up the opposite.  Therefore the application of love to heal hate cannot be the way for man.

You will suspect that I am speaking of the unconscious….the transliminal.  Again and again I have seen that strange thing take place: the elimination of one thing in the conscious, and its accumulation in the unconscious.  Somehow, before man can solve the pairs of opposites in himself, and make a one out of the poles, he has to open up the entire room, or household, of himself.  Else the relentless rhythm of a swing from one to the other is inevitable.

Let us note this thing from another angle: The pairs of opposites are manifested in types; and modern psychology has already made rather deep-going investigations along these lines, particularly through Dr. Jung.  He has marked the pairs of opposites in man, with the opposition of both attitude types — extravert and introvert — and in function types.  If the conscious is of one type, it is absolute that the unconscious is of another.  And he has gone far in setting up the signs by which these opposites can be recognized, in their varying degrees.

Man is torn, then, between extravert and introvert.  Does he become sluggish, – negative, in the conscious, – is he introverted, unable to carry on, those energies which have, over a period, receded from conscious control have been moving — slowly but relentlessly, in the rhythmic movement, to the opposite pole.  He may go the long, slow way of nature, until the smallest point again calls him.  That is, the further away he moves from the activity which he desires in consciousness, the more does it compel him, and call him back.

That is an extraordinary law — not a Principle — but a law derived from the Principle, that the smallest point is the most compelling; and the more the pendulum swings from the right to the left, the more surely will the right compel it!

So the Principle works; and the stretch of the poles is the span of his life — not in years but in substance.  Relentlessly that rhythm holds him.  He is in the hands of fate; unless he begins — as is the case with man in regard to objective matters — to solve the problem: to investigate, to learn, and finally to control.

How, then, is love and hate solved?  Let us wait a bit, and observe a few more opposites, – poles, – in man.  Let us take attraction and repulsion, for it is related to what we have just discussed.  If you are repelled from something in the conscious, that is to you as a negative pole, – the pole from which you are moving, – you are as positively attracted to it in the unconscious.  And you sway between attraction and repulsion.  Many a neurosis is derived from such an attraction and repulsion.

Another pair of opposites, – two poles that man experiences — the very substance in which he has his being: the bound and the unbound — that which is held and that which seeks to be free; that which goes the way that it is told to go, – directed, led, governed, – and that which, sooner or later, according to the strength in the individual soul, breaks forth from that and seeks independence, – so-called freedom.

We have a dramatic illustration of that type of thing in the life, and recent statement, of Krishnamurti, the old theosophical symbol of the World Teacher, under the leadership of Mrs. Beasant.  Krishnamurti was brought up under the dominant leadership, direction, of Mrs. Beasant and Mr. Leadbeater.  He was bound — perhaps partly in gratitude and his own mystical temperament, – perhaps by the unconscious reaching for power, drawn to play the part, – believing in it, doubtless, in the early days, that Mrs. Beasant and Mr. Leadbeater set for him.  He was bound.  The autonomy of his own soul was not.  And there has been growing, in these later years, as he moved to the opposite pole, the increasing resistance to that dominance.

That movement was inevitable, as is the moving between poles for every living human being.  With a man like Krishnamurti, schooled in philosophies, with the very fabric of his life intensified, with, undoubtedly, his own soul heritage powerful, he moved with relative swiftness toward the opposite pole; and, with heroic courage, dared to break away from the dominance of Mrs. Beasant.

He is now at the opposite pole.  You will recall that a few days since, in the paper, he was quoted as saying that everyone must go their own way; that truth cannot be set up as a doctrine; and that the individual must find his own solution.  Krishnamurti is at the opposite pole.  He has not found the solution of the pairs of opposites.

Now, again, we come to big things.  If there are laws that govern those elements that make steel, and set up the proportion for highly temperable quality; if there are laws that govern — as we know they do — everything that we construct in the outer world, – and only in obedience to them is there progress; then why should we for a moment be so blind as to believe that there are not laws which govern the evolution of the individual man?

When Krishnamurti says truth cannot be set up as a doctrine, he speaks not from the center, – the middle point, but from a pole; and he is in the rhythm of movement from pole to pole.  Law, and those things which go toward the making of the ultimates — which he undoubtedly meant when he spoke of truth — ARE.  Their formulation is more exact than any formula in earth.

No man who moves toward the Larger can set up those formulae for himself.  They are.  And the time will come, undoubtedly, when, in the movement toward the opposite, Krishnamurti will find the middle place: That truth is to be obeyed;  that it is the same for all men;  that no man may go as an individual.  He guards the integrity of his life, but he enters into the obedience of the laws which govern his evolution.

Those are not casual.  They are exact.  Hence, man must come to know himself, and find out what laws govern; — just as, in the long, long process, he discovered the solution of outer things.

Now, for a moment, back to love and hate.  These poles in men are not to be solved by a fluctuation; and the tragedy is, for man, that he does fluctuate, and will continue to, until he seeks the understanding of both love and hate;  as, in the Gita, he is “seated between” these pairs of opposites, and neither possesses him.  A cold position?  Try it, and find out.

The substance that is stretched — this stuff, Maya, the great illusion — has many lesser illusions, requiring man’s pressing through the veils to see.  Man in moving forward must lift the veils of Isis, – one by one, until between them he discovers some of the ultimates — the things that belong to the middle road, – where indeed Life and Light are.

Let us take a few other pairs of opposites: Sometimes, in the world about us, we see pairs of opposites, poles — not always in the same people, though they are bound to work in the same people sooner or later.  For instance, we have on the one hand sex and body madness, and the religious spirit.  Have you never noted that out of the excess of one grows the other?  Read the history of old races and see how, in their periods of wanton bodily expression there slowly grew, out of the dung of these things, something else.  Sometimes the two were there simultaneously.

And in this period, with the excessive expression toward physical ends, there is also a movement, already well set up, toward what we might call the religious spirit.  What is the answer?  What is the middle road?  It is not to be found so quickly.  You can’t give up one and flee to the other.  Because if you do the devil will get you in the hindermost.  You have to understand.  It is only through mind that the pairs of opposites can be mastered.

Excess is always an alienation of the poles; that is, it stretches them further and further.  Man must come nearer, and release the tensions.  He can’t on the great poles, but he can as they are in himself.  And bit by bit, as he lifts his spine, he puts each in its place — into proper proportion.

Another pair: humility and pride, – inferiority and superiority.  What tragic bugbears they are!  If you have been working with the psychology of the unconscious you know that the opposite pole is always to be found in the unconscious opposite.  Instead of having them opposite we must have them one above the other.  Man is therefore between many opposites.  He must bring his mind into the center — the position of control.  When he does, he may be proud as a kingly one to his neighbor, and humble to the Larger.  Again, each in its proper place, according to position.

War and peace! . . . gnawing at our vitals (war), not only in its threat but in its aftermath.  What is the philosophical solution?  It is not only the outer war, with poisonous gasses, etc. that we should consider, but the same answer is to be found for the outer war as for the inner war.  Did you ever think how the tension between these poles is a thing of dynamic, of energy, of potential; and that the energy-potential is slowly drained off by the Principle called Rhythm, – lest, indeed, there should be a cosmic explosion.  Lest, indeed, in man there be an explosion!

Yet we do have explosions in man — psychoses.  There may be divided personality . . . . quick shifts.  But, outside of these things, kindly nature drains the tension, the dynamic in this stretch of the fabric between the poles.  When man learns how to tap that dynamic, and apply it, he will have solved the problem of peace and war.  All other things are makeshift; and we are bound to have makeshifts for a long time unless great leaders, with dominant personalities, come into positions of power.  They act as guardians, very frequently against the errors, the blind forces, at work in the mass.

But for the many, – for conscious functioning, – please, it is necessary that the dynamic which is stretched between these poles must be tapped — yes, – the same dynamic which nature so generously drains in her rhythm flow from pole to pole.

So man must find the way between the poles.  Not swiftly.  He cannot.  There is no swift solution.  There are swift illusions, – but the Larger will have none of them.  And it is not by such steps that you move forward, in truth.  You may move forward in illusion, until that pairs of opposites, too, causes you to swing.  And then comes the debacle, and you know you have been stretched between the poles of an illusion.

Far better, then, to go the slower way of MBM’s study — of coming to find these poles in oneself — not merely the pole in consciousness, – for that is to find heat, or cold; and while heat may be comfortable for a time, it is not acceptable as a steady thing.  But neither is cold.  Again the rhythm steps in.

But you must find both poles, and then come to understand what this fabric is.  That is, it is a fabric for you to walk upon, and a substance in which you move.  Until, as in the Gita, you solve the illusion.  As Krishna puts it:

It is out of two –

Pass over these illusions, O Arjuna.

But when you have passed over these illusions

You have found the way to Immortality —

To true freedom.

You have found the way back to the point.

Practically, we solve, now this pair of opposites, now that one.  If we are actually at work!  The world is one of the pairs of opposites in which we are taught our possibility.  And when enlightenment, to that degree which we call Self-consciousness, awakens us, we utilize these opportunities.

/ / / / /

MBM calls attention to the Gita, Fifth Discourse, lines 20-21 also Fourth Discourse, lines 16-18, and Fourteenth Discourse, lines 24-26.

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

MBM.  Lecture III

Principle of Correspondence

Oct. 29, 1931

Our Principles lead us into Immensities.  By this evening we should have gotten some of the quality.

The nature of Principles as compared with laws.  We use analogies to help us.  An ideal one is that of weaving, – the warp and the woof.  Warp means a long thread.  Principles are like tow-lines, the long threads on which the woof is woven.  The woof, on the other hand, is the laws, which, like a shuttle, weave the thread in and out, across, under and over the warp.  That gives us a simple but perhaps useful diagram.

The warp (is) Creative Manifestation; the woof interlaces it, making the tapestry.

In each realm the laws are unique to those realms; so that the Principles, while uniform, are nevertheless affected by the laws that are unique to each realm.

From the Center issue all things — the point of the Beginning of the Cosmic Day.  The Principles are the tow-lines, or tow-line, – for they are really one — which, like the warp, run the whole length of all that belongs to Manifestation.  The laws cross the warp lines, and make the different patterns, which, in the warp lines, are identical.

The Principle we are studying this evening is the Principle of Correspondence.  It is one of the most effective, in the hands of the knower, to unlock the Larger mysteries, – for the understanding of the nature of the different realms.  A guide to the mysteries of higher space.

All the Principles operate simultaneously; and you can’t get a clear understanding of any Principle without an understanding of the others.  Nevertheless, this Principle of Correspondence has an especial way of providing solution to many of the riddles that belong to metaphysics and metapsychics.

There are three leading characteristics of this Principle.  This Principle means that all things correspond — “As above, so below; as below, so above”.  It makes no difference from which realm you speak.  The reference is not only to two realms or planes but to all the realms.

Now, likeness does not mean identity.  The special characteristic is likeness, – similarity, – correspondence — but not identity.  The Principle is the same, but in manifestation — and we only know it through manifestation — it appears similar to the way it appears on another plane.

Our second characteristic is continuity of influence.  The influence, as it were, radiates continuously from one plane to another.  Planes are not sharply marked divisions.  The planes are matters of gradation; and yet, the more discriminative your faculty the more you will be empowered to see where one does divide into the other.  The gradations are infinitely fine — no arbitrary divisions; yet, to the knower, a sharp division.  Through these various planes runs the continuity of influence, of power.

Third: Because of this continuity of influence, there is an inherent harmony.  That harmony is concealed because of the woof affecting the warp; but that harmony is nevertheless effective as soon as you have come to penetrate down to the Principle through the woof.

People don’t do that.  That is why so many people see in the world round about them only a conglomeration of matter, circumstances, events, forces, without any harmony — without any relation, or inter-relation — without any sense whatsoever of the tow-lines.  As soon as they learn to see the tow-line they will see the flowing, connected harmony, from the beginning to the end.

These three characteristics are by no means all we might draw upon to illustrate the Principle of Correspondence, but it would be most useful to find how they work.  By the right application of it (the Principle) — inductive reasoning, if you like — you can move from plane to plane, – comprehending a little at first, then more as to the way the laws and principles operate.

We cannot take these illustrations in their superficial nature; you have to penetrate to radical indispensables.

The musical scale reveals audibly some aspects of this Principle.  Each note reappears in another octave — a likeness of the notes in the higher to the notes in the lower.  There is similarity — likeness — but not identity.

There is a continuity of influence.  To the musical ear, the tonic, or the subtonic of a note all ring with that note.  And again, to the musician, it is on these relations of notes that the harmony, as well as the flow of a melody, are built.  In music, perhaps more than in anything else, we have illustrated the flow of things.  Music is dependent on your memory, – and on your anticipation.  Continuity of influence and sub-stratum of harmony are dependent, inherent.

(A further illustration.)  Still remaining within the phenomena of this world, – things that are apparent to all of us: We know that light makes it possible to relate ourselves to people, objects, places.  Light is necessary for our existence.  But light on other planes, – in other aspects of man’s being, – is just as essential to orientation and relationship as it is in this physical world.

Leaping to the mental one in man’s being, you say, “I see” when you understand a thing.  A corresponding faculty of the mind makes you comprehend.  Hence, you can move about with ideas, and relate yourself to them.  You could not, unless you saw mentally with the mind’s eye, not physical.  Light on the physical plane corresponds to the light of understanding in the mind, – and is actually light on the mental plane.

The more we study light the more we shall have a key to the nature of light, in its indispensable radicals, on the mental plane.  But people generally do not take time to work out what are the indispensable radicals (essential nature, characteristics, function or service) or then to relate them to the next plane.  But you must do just that if you go into metaphysics or metapsychics.

Consider attraction of various kinds in this dimension: Attraction of chemical elements; attraction of what is known as gravity.  We also have attraction on every plane.  In the (new psychology, the) psychology of the unconscious, we have come to rather intimate connection with that which is the law of correspondence on the psychic plane.  What are the dynamics of the psychic plane? — wish, desire, fear, anger, hope.  These have attractive forces, – or repulsive forces; and they operate, drawing together the feelings, or the psychic influences, that are related — that are akin to each other; or that are on the opposite end – which is the same, mind you — repelled from each other, – as in the physical plane the two poles of the magnet or the fall of an object to earth.

When it comes to the mental plane, we again have attraction — the attraction of ideas and the repulsion of ideas.  If you have worked with dream images you know that all types of images are drawn together, apparently helter-skelter, into some appearance of a dream picture.  They are not helter-skelter.  They obey the laws of attraction on the psychic plane.

To know the laws of attraction on the psychic plane is to be able to solve the problem there, as is the chemist on the physical — to make relationships, compounds.  Therefore, when you have dream pictures that seem absurd, or fantasies that are strange and irrational, remember they are not really so, but they correspond, in this other plane, to the laws of attraction, just as unerringly as the laws of the physicist and chemist in this world.  In human relations also there is the attraction of heart, mind and soul.

Illustration of the atom: the organization of an atom.  The little particles revolve around the center. . . . correspondence, therefore, of the atom to the structure of the solar system, or our universe.  It is filled with profound meaning for those who push further into the nature of the atom and relate their findings, in indispensable radicals, to that which belongs to the larger world.  It is tragic to see scientists, who, if they knew these Principles, and would find the answer to their problems.  But as yet our scientists are not ready for the content of such Teachings as these in our Principles.  It would be unscientific — not perceptible to, or measurable by, the 5 senses.  Hence they must go the long way, stumbling on the relation of this to that, when, if they knew how to work with the Principles they could unlock the doors much more simply.  Could know, for instance, layers of psychic life like geology and earth.

Likeness (of the atom) to the cell, with its nucleus and nucleolus within thecells in the human organism.

In this physical world we know that we have two types of relationship — the relation to the subject, or the self, and the relationship to the objective, or the environment – subject and object — and we have no difficulty in differentiating between the self and the body in which it navigates (on the one hand) and the body of another; nor yet again, between the body in which we navigate and the world in which that navigation takes place.  The minute we should cease to differentiate between the subject and the object our intelligible life would also cease.

This dual relation — subject and object — can solve for us, via application of the Principle of Correspondence, that very strange dilemma as to the immanence of God, on the one hand; and God who is not, but is only in the self, on the other.  Subject and object reappear on each plane.  The Principle is true to itself — the tow-line continues from the beginning of the Day of Manifestation to the end, but on each plane, according to the laws, or the woof, it appears somewhat different.  If you have no discrimination — and that is a sin — you say either: God is immanent and everywhere, or you are God.  You make no mistake about the separation of yourself from things of this dimension!  And if this world is intelligible to you via that Principle, be sure it is more so as you move upward.

Einstein and the fifth dimension: The nearer we move from the periphery in, the nearer are we to singleness in the operation of Principles — the more immediate their relation to one another.  The more we move toward the center, the more we will find one law, which contains even all the Principles.

Even with Einstein’s fifth dimension, which is a mathematical way of approaching what we are approaching philosophically, – even there, there will be no loss in regard to this Principle in operation with subject and object.  Always the self, and always the environment, or object.

What people refer to really when they speak of the immanence of Deity, is that they are sensing — as indeed they are — the inherent steadiness of the manifestation of these Principles and their laws.  Most people do not know the difference between the manifestation of these Principles, sustaining via the long threads of the tow-lines the whole Pattern, and actual Deity — but there is an enormous difference.  On each plane there is a separation, – subject and object; and those ultimate realities which are referred to as Deity belong likewise in this classification.  No Nirvana as “merging like drop in ocean.”

Watching the correspondence of number, to take a simpler illustration:  the numbers 7, 12, 30 reappear over and over.  There is a certain quality in number, but the power is in its correspondence on different levels, – not actually in the thing we call 12 or 7.  For instance, the number 7 as it appears on this plane; but 7, when we take it up to a higher plane is not 7 at all.  But we may still call it that, because we cannot grasp it in the noumenal world.  It is then, rather, influences which have certain characteristics which correspond to what we here know of as 7.  By the same token, 12.

Now in another department.  This Principle is used in the writing of the great scriptures of all races, and no one can read those scriptures intelligently without knowing this Principle.  Let us go back to number.  When the number 30 appears in a scripture it means, to the one who has learned its significance, a certain state.  It does not mean thirty years, or thirty divisions.  That is what it means in this dimension.  Scriptures refer to other dimensions.  The thirty which we know in this dimension is the correspondent of a condition, or a state, of another plane; hence, to the reader, thirty conveys a concept of a condition in which a particular series of events is set.

That same use of 7, 12, 30 is familiar to us in the Christian tradition.  Jesus going at twelve to the Temple, is not physical.  If you know the Principle of Correspondence, supported by the other six Principles, you have some grasp of the state, or condition of the life-quality in this person called Jesus, as indicated by that Principle.  It therefore conveys to the reader incomparably more than would the idea that he was twelve years of age, in our numerical record.

Thirty does not mean thirty physical years but, again, a condition — the thirty when he began his active ministry.  So, to one who follows the Principle of Correspondence, there is conveyed much more than to one who takes these numbers literally.

Now, an illustration from metaphysics: The physical body has five senses.  If there are other planes in which we participate then there must be subject and object — bodies that correspond to the other realms.  That is working by our Principle of Correspondence.  For, in order to have subject and object on another plane, you must have your personal substance on that plane, divided off by the little membrane – whatever it is on that plane — from other substances on that plane.  If the physical body has its sense organs — and it must have them in order to relate itself to the objective — by the same token there are sense organs on other planes.  So that the body of you on another plane has its means of relationship, as in this plane.

Now we are in metaphysics.  Ask yourself: What are these indispensable radicals?  What are these characteristics in our five senses.  When you have worked through to what they are, you can, via the Principle of Correspondence, begin to understand something of the functioning on another plane, – in another realm.

The reasoning applied in these Principles, if you are not used to it, may seem a bit dangerous; but I assure you that a Principle, rightly understood, is more solid, is safer to go on, than anything you set up in this dimension.  You need not be afraid to launch yourself on these Principles.  You need only, as a preliminary, to be sure that you understand them, – and that you have come to a grasp of these indispensable radicals.

So, applying this Principle, we know that there must be a set of sense organs corresponding to those on the physical plane, in the next plane, – and in the next.  That is a preliminary.  You can’t let it go at that.  You need now to begin to apply what you know to the next plane.  As that becomes clear, begins to have definition, you can then move on to the next.  In these realms, each must become the explorer, the builder, the pioneer, and the achiever.  Experiential knowledge.

The Principle shows us a likeness, not an identity.  Here (meaning in this dimension) we can rest on what Columbus and the.colonists, and the others, did, – up to today; but not so in other worlds.  Bit by bit we come to those realms where we go forward only on what is done by the individual.  The nearer we move toward the Center, the more each must do.  The farther out, the more we rely one on the other, and profit each by the other.  Such is the Principle of Correspondence, seen from the outside toward the Center.

Masonry.  Even in its name Masonry refers to building.  But the building referred to by the Masons is not identical with the building on the physical plane — it corresponds. The apron they wear corresponds to something else which man wears — which, when he knows, he can lay by, as the Mason lays by, literally, the apron.  Spade, hammer, right angle, plumb line.

Masons, in their symbology, have much application of the Principle of Correspondence.  Apropos of their scheme of building — the building of man — the movement is from the rough stone, just out of the quarry, neither quite defined nor polished — from that to the polished ashlar — the stone ready to be placed in the Larger structure.  Physical structure?  No.  A correspondence!  An aid in the building up of those other regions between ourselves and the Ultimate.

Just as the physical stone that comes out of the quarry must go through many stages until it is acceptable to the builder, so must man.  The Temple of Solomon, and others, is a correspondent, in marvelous detail, to the “building not made with hands” that man is to make, via the polished ashlar.  Little stones also go into the structure.

All mystical organizations have used the Principle of Correspondence.  They could not do otherwise.  Obviously, all such groups are concerned with things of other dimensions, not with things of this dimension.  Hence, they use the things of this dimension as illustrations, corresponding to the things they really mean.  And the ideas that are conveyed are in proportion to the knowledge of — on the one hand — the Principle, and, on the other, the specific character of each cult.

Substance and energy.  They are everywhere.  In the subject there is matter and energy.  In the environment there is substance and energy.  We are rather familiar with the energies belonging to the realm of physical matter: that it has certain characteristics, and offers obstacles to the flow through it; and that the work of science is to minimize the resistance to the flow of the energy through it.  The more it is reduced – this resistance to the flow of energy, the greater the efficiency of that particular carrier of energy.

Energy in the physical world, due to the blocking it receives at various points when controlled by the mind of man, becomes capable of transformation.  If it were not so, the falling power of water would not be transformed into electrical power, heat and light.  These are characteristics of this plane; but, via the Principle of Correspondence, we are now able to grapple with the same sort of thing on the next plane.

Libido, via, Freud.  (Our term, psychenergy.)  We know that psych-energy does not flow freely in men, due to obstacles – such obstacles as habit, fears, prejudice, inertia, etc.  The same thing should be done in regard to the energy in man on the psychic plane that is done in regard to energy on the physical: reduce the resistance to a minimum.  That makes for efficiency.  If you get the actual philosophical content: the pattern of the work to be achieved.  When we understand the laws of the psychic as of the physical we will be able to transform one type of energy into another: the type that belongs to the higher psychic and to the mind, unfolding those potentials.

Wherever there is a realm there is energy.  Wherever man is, penetrated into several realms, he has the energy that corresponds to that realm.  As yet, the energy in these higher or deeper realms is 70 per cent blocked, frustrated — in the same state as the objective world before the scientist conquered it and began to subdue it to the purposes of practical life.  There are purposes of practical living that belong to other planes.

Via the Principle of Correspondence, we know that the same type of behavior belongs to each plane.  Each plane presents the same problem to your intelligence as on the physical: namely, to understand what those obstacles are, to remove them, to reduce to a minimum the resistance, to transform energy from one type to another, as it is desired.  For again, the life in us flows from one sphere to another.  The warp threads run through.  The need is to follow them all through.

We find a dramatic illustration of the warp threads – the human problem known as the Oedipus, or Electra, complex in psychology.  I suppose we have all bumped into that, to the right or the left, before or behind.  With it comes the word, – so little understood, incest.

The actual nature of incest cannot be solved – even touched — without the aid of this Principle.  The psychology of the unconscious(speaks all too much of these problems, – complexes, – but it is not the key to the solution.  That is only via the Principle of Correspondence.

The relation involved in the Oedipus and Electra complexes — the relation of the youth to the parent – is the inherent movement, via the tow-line, for re-birth.  Regeneration, second birth: first is of water (of the flesh), second of the spirit (See John III, 3)  And unless the analyst understands it he distorts, or relates only to the physical plane, the thing that is inherently – because of the tow-line — the problem of a much higher plane.

The problems that stir in men’s hearts and minds are not only physical problems.  The solution to these deeply stirring tasks is not to be found in regard to material things only.  Man, being three-fold in nature — and potentially the fourth — partakes, via his transliminal, of this other world.  And in the transliminal we find the stirring of these problems in other realms, which correspond to the physical.  If, as is the case with the analyst, he reduces it to a problem of this dimension, he violates the very nature of the patient, or the student.

Via the Principle of Correspondence, and according to the principal realm in which this problem has its nucleus — it may anywhere, according to where it has its head — so must be the application of the solvent.  It cannot be applied in regard to things of the physical.  These are manifestations of man, of the individual in this dimension, of something much more fundamental, – much more elemental in nature — more related to the Source.  Via the Principle of Correspondence, seeking for those “indispensable radicals”, we come to a solution of the incest problem, – the Oedipus or Electra, complex.

In working with these Principles, you must always posit your own complex nature, and first get a grasp from which plane in yourself you are moving out toward that problem.  According to the woof, so the manifestation, though the warp remains identical to itself.

 

 

 

From Principle of Correspondence

symbols of Bread, and Fire

from MBM series 1937

Bread: Staff of life; main food upon which the physical body and its sustenance depends.  So on the next octave, the psychic, it too must have its bread.  So must the mind, the soul and the spirit.

Bread is a curious interlacing of the work of nature and man.  Psyche and soul can’t eat the bread that feeds the body.  We must do to that other bread as the miller, the baker and the eater do on the physical plane.  That is man’s work — the part that man contributes.  So ask yourself, what have you done in reference to the bread for your soul.  Do you even know where the wheat grows — how to gather it?

An important difference in this other plane is that no man can cut our wheat for us, or take it to the miller, or bake it, or buy it, or eat it.  So all these things must be done by each of us.  Once we get into the routine of it, our steps are gladly accomplished by the life within us.  How can your soul thrive without food?

So the feasts of bread and water and wine have been served in sacramental meals by every great race, the Christian the last.  All these have, via the Principle of Correspondence, referred not to physical bread but to something else.

If you use this Principle, you will know what it means.  It begins to unlock the mysteries, secrets, precious things, valuable for the evolving being.  Corrects errors.  Helps us to emancipate ourselves.

Fire Heat, light, transformation, destruction.  Through fire we have life, and only through fire.  Sun, and life on earth.  In the human body there must be something like fire, ardor, warmth.  In the psychic world: the first reaching, as in ambition; later the desires that move upward.  On the mental plane thought, penetrating, and will, brings that which is like fire on the physical.

We should have fire on all the octaves — fire of the soul, and of the spirit.

Now we know why, following this pattern, in some of the Asiatic traditions, fire was worshipped, – because it seems the central motif of life itself.  Through fire there is transformation, with the lower destroyed, and the higher ascending, as fire does.  The worshippers saw in the flame the likeness to the all-sustaining God, through all the universe, visible and invisible.  To continue these changes that are going on, there must be a central Fire.

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

MBM – Lecture IV – Nov. 5, 1931

Vibration

Principles are Firsts, or Princes, in the great realm of Manifestation.  They are the very first rules and regulations, on which all other things are spun.  We should alsohave it clear that, as we move to a conception of these Principles, we also see that that which was an idea begins to have stuff; and it is not so remote, so impossible a thing, that what we call a Principle, or mode of operation in this dimension, is verily the stuff of another.

We should also have stretched our minds beyond the problems of this dimension.  In that stretching, the mental muscles may be a little lame, or unequal to the task; but we nevertheless have been in a mind gymnasium that should stand us in good stead for any philosophical work we may do.

We have had a look at three of the Principles: Rhythm, Polarity and Correspondence.  These are the most outward ones.  They are more outer in that they are more obvious.  We can see them better — better judge of their operation, than the three we will study beginning this evening.  It is not difficult to see that there are great rhythms.

But now we come into more hidden areas, – secret, – but open to the genuine student who penetrates behind appearances.  It is as though the secrets of this Principle were to remain behind a veil, or series of veils. .It is the most close up; comes into the deeps of being – and also into the common places.

But now — paradoxically — this very Principle is the one most abused among all the Principles, – whose name is spoken most lightly, carelessly, – whose very fabric is misused in daily speech, by those who attempt to speak of mystical things, – who are pseudo.  The word is Vibration.  Vibration is a phenomenon of the noumenal worlds, which only the true investigator comes to know as they are.

Our Principle states that everything vibrates — nothing is still — everywhere there is a circular movement.  And this, science has already begun to show in its investigation of the phenomena that lie within its field — in physics, astronomy, biology, etc. Vibration is the very stuff of matter.

Seen as a “prince” in the realm of the great First Day of Manifestation, Vibration precedes all the others.  It is, in a sense, first.  It precedes rhythm.  It begins with Breath.  For, when the Breath of .Life is breathed, it begins as vibration, and later becomes rhythm.  Later are the swings between the poles.  And later, as it penetrates into different areas, it obeys the law of correspondence.  But first comes Vibration.

Since it begins so early, with the very emanation from the Source, it must be, in its nature, fine, delicate, yet strong.  It must have some of the characteristics that hide it before ordinary eyes.  The scientist knows that vibration is not to be seen, except in its coarsest forms, without the aid of a high power microscope as his first instrument; and then, he pushes still further, with an addition of instruments so delicately attuned that you can hardly follow unless used to laboratory methods.

To help ourselves with some ideas as to the fineness of vibration, and some practical aid to its hidden nature, let us pause for a few moments in the laboratories of the physicist.  He works with matter; and matter, instead of being still, dead and inert, except to the initiate, now is known to all to be highly alive, vibrative.

We move from matter to the molecule and to the atom; and always it is highly vibrative.  The physicist is in awe with that which he finds.  He sees science running over at the edges into metaphysics.  For the atom is so rapid, so continuous, yet so strong, that the matter disappears into something else, though he calls it energy.

The physicist tells us that the atom is composed of three types of entities.  And if the atom is composed of three types of entities, the atom, which we thought one, is still capable of further analysis — namely into these entities — the negative particles of charged electricity, which, when you don’t see it as electricity, is matter; but which, when you see it moving, vibrating, becomes electricity; and second, the positively charged particles, which become positive electricity; and the magnetic field, which gives off certain rays, as, for instance, the X-ray.

Now these all, tiniest particles, move, vibrate, disappear into non-substance.  Thus, the physicist tells us that, through vibration, matter disappears.  An extraordinary statement!

Perhaps we should try to gain some concept of how small is an atom.  Think of a grain of gold hammered to an area 75 inches square — therefore terribly thin, so that we can hardly comprehend that it still has thicknesses of molecules, one above the other – finer than this is the movement we call vibration: the vibration that makes matter disappear.  Here we are at the literal threshold of the form side of metaphysics, – where science disappears, but re-emerges as a metaphysical science.  But science here is just as genuine as with matter, molecules, and then these three entities of which matter is composed.

Do you realize that everything that impacts upon your physical body comes to it via vibration – for instance, light and color and form.  They come to you via vibration. Color and form are largely built up as changes in vibration.  Sound comes to you via vibration.  Heat, or a relative degree of heat, which we may call cold, comes to your sense of touch via vibration.  So with odor, so with taste.  We are, as it were, isolated within a membrane — apart from the material world, yet of it; and that which is objective to us touches us not at all, but via vibration.  We are so used to this experience via the five senses that we don’t fully comprehend what it consists of.  It does not consist of an actual contact but of an impact via vibration.

It  seems that we might be entitled to use the word vibration, does it???  No.  For no one who has mind sacrifices his intelligence for the use of a word to convey something that he does not understand.  Hence we will forbear to use the word until we know something of it.  (Here MBM referred to the chart of wave frequencies prepared by the engineering society to indicate the audible spectrum, the color spectrum, the ether spectrum, the radio spectrum.)  Machines that record impressions are crude compared to what the psyche and mind are doing constantly — a machine that man has, but has barely begun to use consciously.

Vibration penetrates everywhere.  Rhythm does not.  Vibration always remains true to its mode; rhythm does not.  Rhythm has a particular character, which has within it the possibility of extension or contraction.  The seasons recur, but never exactly the same.  Vibration always remains true to its mode — if you like, its rate.  It is accurate; it never varies; it has its own specific.  It includes an infinite variety, from the beginning of the Cosmic Day to the end – with infinite opportunity for change.

I won’t take up the technical side, but will go into other aspects — some of the areas our profounder study will make us investigate.  Why is vibration so fascinating a subject?

Vibration, in the earlier days, was more evident in the primitive dance than rhythm.  Have you ever seen pictures of those dances?  There is something quite different in that dancing than in that of the modern day.  One of the main differences is that vibration, or rapid movement quickly repeated, is much more typical of it than in our modern dance. Rhythm belongs to modern dance, vibration to primitive.  Primitives were nearer to many things than the modern man.

This had an advantage – also a disadvantage.  They (the primitives) sensed – being close to the heart of things – the curious pulse that beats there — the heartbeat of the world.  And their response to it is instinctively a correct one.  And so we can see why they have so often combined their dancing with ritualistic or magic procedure.

Vibration belongs, on various levels, to those who know, or who obey instinctively.  It is one of the important hidden Principles; and he who would be close to the heart of things — and for the primitive that means the heart of nature, not ultimates — Vibration is the mode, – vibration, or circular movement.  With dervishes, their whirling movement brings them close to a pulsing heart.  And they are therefore partaking, through a magic that belongs to the physical and vital, of a condition in which matter disappears into another kind of energy.

You  may call that a mystic state.  That is “passing the buck.”  Come to grips with the science of things and follow a few of the points that this Principle may make clear.  The primitive who dances — but must dance in a certain way, – not in any way, but in a way that synchronizes with certain vibrations in nature — loses the consciousness of this dimension.  And so, via the Principle of Correspondence, just as matter disappears into electrical energy, so the consciousness of the primitive, or the dancer, disappears into something else.  Many people try this, but if they do not know what they are doing they should not try.

To be quite commonplace: We know there is such a thing as sympathetic vibration registered on the strings of a harp from which the damper has been removed; also in the piano, – inducing a like vibration.  Note that the damper has been removed.  That is a necessary thing.

By the same token, singing strongly a class of music can shatter a fine tumbler.  So, from another angle, the military procession — soldiers, when they come to a bridge, break their march, fall out, don’t keep the same vibration.  These are curious illustrations, although they may be familiar.  Don»t think, because you are familiar, that you understand what has taken place.  I repeat: this is a fearfully secretive Principle, most difficult to deal with; but those who know are able to bring about certain changes.  There are plenty of illustrations of such changes in ancient scriptures, and those who know the signs can read them.

In the Book of Ezekiel: where Jehovah, giving instructions to Ezekiel, tells him to go to a special place and “speak to the bones”; and when he shall speak to those bones in a certain way they will be shaken, so that something take place upon them.  Shaking is, in the translation, the usual word for what we call vibration.  And, according to the way, in Ezekiel, he did as he was told, the bones moved.  They took form again, bone to bone, and were enfleshed.  They were not physical bones.  This is secret language.  I am referring not to the enfleshing but in terms of the Principle we are studying.

In Isaiah we have a reference to the “Word of Jehovah” shaking the wilderness, the trees, the mountains.  You think that that is colorful Semitic language, but it is more than that.  It has to do with the changing of condition via vibration.

The classic example perhaps, in the Hebraic scripture, is the famous one of the city of Jericho, when it was besieged, and instructions given as to the way it should be done.  The whole system of the conquering of Jericho was based on the Principle of Vibration.  The reference is to metaphysics.

Even when we deal with sound waves, the lowest vibrations, we are dealing with something that is not exactly solid.  It is already on the borderline of something beyond the physical.  That is why this Principle begins to hide itself before you.  Because, until you are familiar with metaphysics, – while preserving your scientific method, and overcoming your fear of stepping off solid stuff into the three types of energy, – until then the mysteries of this Principle remain verbal or audible only.  The genuine student can measure and handle them, even as with electricity.

Now from another angle: Many of the therapeutic methods of today are based on vibration, – hydrotherapy, for instance, – though they may not know it.  As yet, they are not very intelligent, are experimental, not understood, and hence frequently laid on the shelf.

By the same token, color is now used therapeutically, in hospitals.  White has been found to be not good.  Color needs to be used with discrimination, selectively, and cannot heal except by those who can select, out of white, those colors which are healing.

Again, via music.  Music impacts via sound, the lowest rates; and we have long known, from the day of David on, via the Hebraic tradition, that music is soothing — or rousing — but do we know why?  We know it practically.  That may do you.  These things remain hidden until the individual penetrates.

Far more than with our other three Principles, you have to ponder here — enter into metaphysics, – push beyond the boundaries of the literal, and hazard your security.  But if you don’t venture you are not worthy of your breakfast.

Back to higher things:  the Word, the Breath.  We know that, as we evolve, we have to be more careful of our speech.  We can’t be careless of what we say.  That is only a partial, conscious realization of the importance of Vibration.  In the noumenal worlds Vibration continues.  Fortunately vibration here does not continue throughout the eternities.  It presently dies out, – slowly erases.

Remember our chart, showing the Cosmic beginning with the spiritual world, or Atlantic coastline to the Western continent.  From that Atlantic coastline on, the vibration set in motion must be worthy of enduring.  This side of that line — the Firmament, we are in an experimental world where, as children of varying ages, we try out this or that, until we are capable, – sufficiently mature and obedient to Principles, – sufficiently reverential toward the Larger Plan, to do what is consonant with those Principles.  Not here!

So here Vibration, happily, is not so important.  Yet we have to learn in this, world — sometime — how to use these things; and hence the sense of that word – the right use of speech — is somehow a factor in right living.  It is, – because of the Principle of Vibration.  Is it desirable for accuracy, or for good usage?  Yes, though that is outer.  But that which is set in motion via the speech of the mind — which is thought — shall also be resonant and sweet in quality.

Man in the lower worlds senses the importance of the Logos, or Word — or the Logoi — which are spoken in the Cosmic world, and echoes of which penetrate the phenomenal world.  They have something — to the ears of the mind — which our ordinary speech has not.  There is an urge to approximate that vibrative condition.  Hence the concept, that|you run across every now and again, on the importance of the control of speech.  Next time you come across such an extract remember it has to do with the Principle of Vibration — not merely the literal sound, but of thought.

It is interesting to note that religious organizations, from way back and into the present — a few consciously — have known the place that vibration plays in ceremony.  Example: the ringing of the bells in the Tyrol in a hailstorm.  It is in the tradition of the Roman Church.  There are many secrets in that church, but they are not used in knowing; hence they have no magic.  The bells in the Mass.  That has to do with the Principle of Vibration.

In the early days of the Hebraic tradition another instrument was used, which the Hebrews learned in Egypt during the sojourn there — a strange little instrument, curved, with metal bars loosely through it, and frequently the head of a god or goddess on top.  It was the systrum, – the word coming from the root shake.  This was shaken in the most sacred rituals by the highest attendants.  A systrum was broken when someone died to this plane.  It has a magic in the hand of the knower, – therefore right user.

In the meantime, throughout the world there are many who seek the use of vibration.  The misuse of the word, as in certain cults, makes me wince in pain.

Let us use this word in regard to another plane, and see if we can find something else.  That which vibrates, or moves alike, has a certain consonance — that, for instance, which moves as the notes of a musical scale, where, at intervals, a wave length meets another wave length as a two-to-one, three-to-one, four-to-one rate, etc, – where, at points therefore, the nodes meet.  There is a consonance.  On the other hand, when two notes are struck on the piano and there is a dissonance, what has occurred is that their rates of vibration do not meet at stated intervals.  It is irregular.

Let us go back.  Our Principle says that all things move; nothing is still.  That means, then, not only the physical body, which is made of mineral stuff, and is therefore the farthest away from the original Breath; but also that that original Breath vibrates, and therefore everything, from the Beginning moves – namely the first Breath and the first plane of manifestation, down to this outer one of solid, or material, substance.  The further up, or away from, the mineral world — the outer sphere, the more rapid is the vibration.  Even on the chart of wave frequency rates you noted that, in the ether and radio frequencies, compared with the audible range.

That means that the next stage of substance beyond the physical matter – the vital body, also vibrates.

And it is in regard to this, and the vibration of the physical, that we have some of the phenomena that belong to sense attraction and sense repulsion.  You have all had the experience, from time to time, of seeing someone whom you have never seen before, from whom you either felt strongly repelled or to whom you felt strongly attracted — and you could give no logical reason.

We can take the first step to understand it through Vibration and the correspondence of the wave length — where there is a synchronization like the one, two, three, four ratios (and where there is a meeting there is a consciousness of attraction) – or where there is the opposite, repulsion.

Now, our physical bodies and our vital bodies, – at least with the majority of people, – shift, – do not keep the same rate — haven’t been set up well.  They haven’t established their own rate.  In some cases that is fortunate.  At any rate, it is.  Therefore the instability of many of our human relations.  This is true not only of the physical, or life-side of things, which imply sex, but also in regard to the affections, – also in regard to the mind.

Let us watch what occurs when someone grows: Do you say simply their mind is developing?  But then you are an outsider, and you do not know the science of things — the meta-science.  What has changed is the vibration rate of his mind.  People do vibrate (the word has been used shabbily) in quality, thoughts, interests.

What happens between marital partners, or friends.  They may start out relatively alike.  Then come along a variety of experiences, drawing out potentialities or causing further development of something already manifest, – perhaps something in the physical, in the vital, psychic or mental, – and their rate of vibration in that particular body has changed.

You say they have changed emotionally, or their affection has changed.  Yes, – but in infantile language.  I am talking now, for a few minutes in meta-science.  When we know the science of right living we will have to know something likewise about the science of the development, acceleration and maintaining of a standard of vibration.  For, if one partner develops in this way and the other one does not, – or develops in an opposite direction, – there is a dissonance just as literal, from the standpoint of metaphysics and metapsychics, as is the rate you can hear when you listen carefully to two notes on the piano that are in dissonance.

Those are coarse vibrations, but the vibrations that belong to the other bodies are analogous, via our Principle of Correspondence.  And those who would know something of right living, in the super-science, must accord their rate of vibration.

Many of the phenomena that are experienced, which we call by other names — neurology, psychiatry, – where it has to do with attraction, consonance of behavior, – has to do with vibration — if you want to see the way it works.

You see, we are back where we began.  The real operation of this Principle is available only to the true student — to the one who ponders deeply, who observes, – not in terms of the physical but in terms of that region where matter emerges into metaphysics, – where it is a new entity — and where we, unless we are cowards, or evaders, must follow.  The only ones who live are the adventurers, – who dare to push beyond where the crowd drags its heavy feet.

If anything I have said intrigues you into a search, it is good!

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

MBM – Lecture V

November 12, 1931

Gender

We should characterize these Principles so that each in its own way becomes unique.  If we said that one is more pervasive or irresistible than another it would not be true.  For all of these Principles make the very fabric of the noumenal world.  They are invisible in this world, but the stuff of the next.

Perhaps our Principle this evening is the most dynamic.  But immediately I would have to modify that, and say it was the most productive.  This Principle is the essence of production.  It goes back even behind the first Breath, whose nature we discussed last week as Vibration, at the very moment of its emanation.  This Principle precedes even that.  It is the secret of the mystery of the Great Parents — a very great mystery therefore — and to discover it in any of its actual nature is to shout, with Pythagoras, Eureka, – the aspect of this Principle which suddenly illuminated that which he was deciphering via the triangle.  The meaning had arisen into a new dimension.

What is our Principle?  Gender!

It is said Gender is everywhere, below and above, – masculine and feminine.  Masculine and feminine therefore precede the Breath.  It is the mystery in the Dark.  Or, if you could see it, the mystery in the Light — but hidden.  The very flavor of that still rings down into our outermost area, in strange, mutilated ways, in human relations.

Masculine-feminine have been known by many names, but what we know of the masculine and feminine does not at all describe the First Parents.  We know them, these First Parents, through what we may call their Cosmic behavior, – much as we know electricity through its behavior but know nothing whatsoever of its actual nature.  So the manifestations, which have been called by many names, do not describe the First Parents, but some of their behavior on Cosmic, or Celestial levels.

Regarding some of the names given to these First Parents: The Gnostics have been most dramatic in their description of the quality — not of the Parents but of the activities that come from them.  In one system they call them Profundity and Thought — Profundity being the feminine and Thought the active or masculine, the combination of which produced the next generation (Son.)  So Gender means to generate.

 

There is only one Creation, strange as that may sound, for Creation means to make something out of nothing — that which man cannot do.  But from the state, or condition, when THAT was from which all the rest was to be begotten, Generation replaced Creation.

Other names for the First Parents are Depth and Activity; or, if you like, Cosmic Wisdomand Flame.

In the symbol of archetypal man in the Kabbala, marking the ten Sephirot, the first two are illustrations of the masculine and feminine, and all the way down the sides of that symbolic figure you will see the crossing and re-crossing of the masculine and feminine Principles.

What is the difference between masculine and feminine, which seem opposite each other, and the Pairs of Opposites?  Many persons, including G.R.S.Mead, do not get clear the difference between these two.  In Polarity we have that which is in nature the same, as in heat and cold; but in the distance between which a movement or rhythm progresses.  In Gender we have two which are — and remain, different.  Their very nature is to remain different, and should they violate that nature the power that is inherently in them ceases.  The fluctuation is not from masculine to feminine, or vice versa, as in Polarity, but is in an intimate relation between two characteristics that must stay separate, even in their union.

Therefore, try to work this through further for yourselves — the difference between Polarity and Gender.

This Principle of Gender begins to set forth the signs of its uniqueness in that it has committed to it the power of production and reproduction; and that in it are therefore hidden the mysteries of life — death — life, – and that there would be no change from one nature to another except through the aid, or power, inherent in this Principle.  For instance, such a saying as that of Jesus: Except a man die, he cannot be born again.

Now to humble things: What relation has sex to Gender?  Sex is based on physiological differences, the male and female bodies — a contrivance on the physical side of things to reproduce bodies.  And there we have an illustration how, except the masculine and feminine remain each in their own power, there is no reproduction.  Sex, then, is an outermost expression of a cosmic power, and the quality in it, – the dynamic in it, – is a suggestion of the extraordinary dynamic of the same Principle on other levels.

What shows us its force in operation better than material sex is the magnet.  It is a contrivance used not only as a toy but in great industries, for lifting huge pieces of machinery and conveying them from place to place.  In the Chalmers shops, for instance, in Wisconsin the magnets not only convey huge pieces via the ceiling but are periodically used to pick up dropped bits of metal all along the ground.  People are always surprised at the amount of it.  But the point is that in the magnet the current is not closed; but it strains to be closed, and it is the straining to be closed that makes it pick up the pieces of metal on the floor.

A powerful lesson!  The straining in the magnetic field is where the power is demonstrated.  For the magnet is masculine and feminine, and seeking the closing of the circuit.  The intimate relation does certain extra labors.

Man is not yet as effective as the magnet.

Now go behind the magnet and see what masculine and feminine are at closer range.  Not so many years ago masculine and feminine in the realm of science were called positive and negative; and the two poles of the magnet, or the two ends in an electric circuit in a battery were labeled plus and minus.  One seemed to be the powerful side and the other seemed to be the not powerful side.

But science has taught us many things.  William Crookes was one through whom certain investigations first took form.  It was Crookes who discovered that in the vacuum tube the manifestation of rays was at the so-called negative end.  That led slowly to a change in terminology, so that science — even our literal science – no longer used positive and negative, but has replaced them by anode and cathode.(cathode, the movement down; anode the movement up.)  It was at the cathode end in his vacuum tube that the production of rays took place.

Here we come, at close range, to the unique nature of our Principle — the union of two for the production of a third.  It was part of that that Pythagoras saw — and saw in its Cosmic implication, – not only literal knowledge, as in that beautiful illustration of Crookes with his vacuum tube.

There is nothing new produced with any other Principle.  But with this Principle of Gender arises a third — the new element — and that new element is the desired factor, – the new generation.  It is for those rays that the masculine and feminine ends — anode and cathode – are contrived to be separated in the tube.

Back to sex: If, in the scientific field, Crookes and those who followed upon him were on the road of a genuine illustration of the inherent qualities of our Principles, then those qualities will be seen on other levels.

Sex, on the feminine side of things, is known to be in two positions, passive or receptive, and reproductive.  It is in the body of the female, whether human or mammal, that the new life is carried, is generated.  If we should follow this through we would note that this characteristic reappears on every plane.  Via our Principle of Correspondence we would see that the active, stimulating principle is supplemented swiftly by the power of the reproductive at the cathode end — at the feminine side in the female body — or, in the ultimates, on the side of Wisdom.

The old Gnostic said the same when he said that out of the Pleroma all things came. Will is the masculine, Wisdom is the feminine.  Whether you turn to the first Tarot card, or the ancient cosmogonies, or the pages of the profundities of the Gnostics, – wherever you will go, it is the Wisdom side, the Pleroma side, from which the life springs forth.

Is there greater value on the feminine side?  Or greater potency?  No.  For so balanced is this contrivance of interrelationship that neither can move on without the other.  The one is literally dependent on the other – a second unique characteristic of this Principle.  There is a certain amount of activity at one end of the pole in Polarity, but with this Principle the one must relate itself to the other for the sake of becoming.  Thus, not one is more valuable contributive, – more serving the need of generating, than the other, but, as the Hermetic statement puts it: “Just in their union is it that life consists.”

This union — this relationship of masculine and feminine, is one of the secrets of the old Mysteries; and the use and application of it was taught.  But, as in many departments of life, some of the profundities that were taught have made strange deteriorations in the course of things, and the concept of the relation of masculine and feminine has brought about degeneracies in many cults whose alleged purpose was to move toward higher relationships.  I know of a number of cults, both here and abroad, which believe that this relationship of masculine and feminine in regard to bodies is a means to regeneration on another plane.  That may well be; but they have used it for purposes not related to that; and many tragedies have trailed their way out of such cults, across the pages of this continent and Europe.

The way to the use of the relationship of this masculine and feminine is, in the world of science, a sound thing and a beautiful thing; but it does not permit adultery, for adulteration leads, just as in the electric current, to a short circuit.  If one can understand, via the Principle of Correspondence – if one can relate these masculine and feminine elements on the various planes to a begetting on the plane to which they belong, new life arises.

Likewise, new life arises when there is a relationship between one plane and the next.  So, turn again to an old Gnostic saying: “There is a commingling which leads to death, and a commingling which leads to life.”

In the world of science — chemistry — we can find illustrations of this: In the nature of the atom, – in the tiniest particle, which has the double nature, masculine and feminine, the proton, or the center is the positive, or anode pole, and the ions which revolve around it are the cathodes.  Radio activity is the slow throw-off of the ions, which makes for the transformation of the element.  Hence, in slow ways, through thousands of years, uranium becomes lead.  There is a commingling which leads to death.

Always that which moves downhill is easy; that which moves up requires effort.  So, as man endeavors to change elements — and he has been able to do that even to the making of gold out of other elements, he requires much effort.  He can now make gold, but the price of that which contributes to making the gold is so much greater than the price of gold that it is not a commercial project.

So, in interesting analogy, the labors of making lead in man to gold — for the changing of the lead to the gold is the alchemical mating of masculine-feminine of the philosophical alchemist – the one who used the metals as covers for the processes that belong to man himself.  That means labor.  It costs so much that many say it is not worth the effort.  The commercial value is not commensurate with the labor that is put into it.

So there are few alchemists yet; for the alchemist must know the secret of this Principle of Gender.  He must know the qualities that are on the masculine side.  It would be a healthy thing for your minds to make two parallel columns in your notebooks, and to write down the characteristics of the masculine side and the characteristics of the feminine side.  You will say: the stimulating, on the masculine side, – the aggressive, but what will you say on the feminine?  Receptive?  But what against stimulating?  Very interesting, when you come to work on these things, how little you sense the differences.  Again, discrimination!  Until you know, you can’t be a good alchemist.

The alchemist wants to produce something new — wants to generate, to beget.  You do also, – on many planes.  You want, presumably, to beget something.  How do you do it?  You listen, – on the cathode.  But do you generate rays?  Unless you do you are not using this Principle.

Go back to Genesis.  Adam, – Red Adam.  Do you know that Adam and Eve changed gender in those chapters right under your eyes; and you still call them Adam and Eve, because your translation gives them all as Adam and Eve.  Yet Adam – the first Adam – is, strange as it may sound, feminine; and Eve, Aisha, Desire, is active, – masculine.  That is why the serpent enters into the picture — the serpent, the symbol of masculine force — connected up, in its outer, cruder aspects, with phallic worship.

So the first Adam is feminine and the first Aisha is masculine.  That is, the body is passive, and is stirred into activity by desire.  It is so with everyone who moves through the human evolution.

Then comes another stage, where Eve becomes feminine — becomes again the woman, or the soul.  And the next Adam — the Adam who is working in earth,- therefore learning, being forced to learn, is forced to be active, and becomes again male, and works upon the soul.  And so, through the procession of movements down the pages of old scriptures, – not merely those of Genesis.  The change of gender is that which begets the next stage; for if Aisha, as masculine, did not work upon Red Adam — earth man, as feminine — there would have been no stage, no son, or stage, to follow.  Thus, the second Adam is son of the first Adam.  And therein are some of the secret codes of the Old Testament.

If now we move further through the evolution we will recall that at a high point in the New Testament there is a reference to the bride and the bridegroom — feminine and masculine.  What is the bride?  It has been called the Church.  But, unless you have the ears that penetrate, that won’t mean much – indeed, may even revolt.  The figure, in reality, is a little different.  The processes of the change of gender from the time of the first Adam have moved on through those stages of human evolution and the soul, represented by the Church, means that the being who has gone through the human evolution is no longer active in it, but is receptive to Cosmic influence, and the Cosmic Flame.  Or, the potent power of the Male enters into the soul.

In the New Testament this thing is told in Semitic language, not altogether susceptible to Western ears.  The content of it is wholly related to the infinity of relationships in the change of gender from the time of the first Adam through the three stages of man.  The leaven has done its work.  You remember, the leaven was placed in the three measures of meal — the three areas in man.  And the leaven? — that external power which works upon those three areas, bringing about their change of gender.

Thus, each one moves through shifts in himself.  For the fact that he wears a masculine or a feminine body is only one illustration of the application of this Principle.  To identify yourself with it is philosophically and mystically an error.

So you shift your gender.  Your gender now, if you are listening well, is feminine.  My gender now, as I am speaking, is masculine.  But, in order to bring about the child you must do more than be feminine.  So, my labors are the briefer ones, – similarly as in the act of the relation of physical bodies the part of impregnation by the male is brief, but the gestation by the female is long.  So your use of Gender is, to you, that you are in the position of the feminine side in its second position — reproductive.

In the body those processes go on automatically, – for that is the realm of nature.  But in the nature where man must stretch himself from earth to the realm of heaven, these things are in his hands.  He must do them.  They don’t get done except as he applies them.  Thus, this realm is, and is not — is waiting for man to stretch — is here illustrated by the stretching you must do to be productive.

There are prostitutes of heart and of mind as well as of body.  Those who receive the seed and do nothing with it are prostitutes.  Those whose hearts do nothing with the seed that is sown in affection, – whose minds do nothing with the seed that is sown in thought, and take more — they are the prostitutes of these two other planes.  Those who run about listening to this, that and the other — sermons, lectures, etc. — never give anything space to grow, – never nourish with the blood of their own life that which is given: that which has been received within the self.  Such a fate with regard to the psyche and mental is not one whit brighter than the fate of the prostitute.

By the same token, the male who scatters the seed.  That is one reason why these classes are so closed to outsiders.  I would not be a male that scatters the seed to prostitutes.

Watch that you profit by the qualities inherent in this strange Principle.  The more we study it, the more it stands out, in ways which we cannot describe, above the other Principles – and yet not above.  It is not dimensional.  But the quality, the power, is so different in this Principle than in the others that it seems to raise it into another world.  Many things have been taught about this Principle down the ages: the relationship of the masculine to the feminine — how man changed his gender in a single day.

The new psychology has contributed in showing that the conscious may be one, and the dominant characteristics of the transliminal another.  That other may be represented by the “soul image”; and between the two should develop a reciprocal relationship — not the swinging from one to another, but the development of a relationship.  Dr. Jung, in his studies in what is called the symbol of reconciliation, is sensing there, – in the symbol of reconciliation, that which is begotten between the masculine of the one and the feminine of the complementary side of the self.

But it is not only in this aspect of conscious and transliminal that we find duality of sex but in the events of each day.  That which betrays you into ineffectual living is that type of thing I have just described via the feminine and masculine prostitutes, when you don’t bring about the reception of the seed and the production; which means conscious, applied effort to bring about the birth of a new state.

An example can be seen even in the getting out of bed in the morning.  What is really occurring is that the thought is masculine, positive: get up!  The body is feminine — the feminine in its first position, or condition.  And if it remains so, it is the feminine as a prostitute — that is, bearing no fruit.

If once we get the flavor of this exchange between positive and receptive, in daily living, and put it into actual, dynamic relationship, we will discover we will make the day beget many children.  That is, a new condition will be born out of the relationship of the masculine and the feminine.  The masculine comes first, as it should always.  The feminine comes after, and encloses the masculine — embraces it, as it were — but the masculine, the will to do, should come first.  That is the ideal relation.

Alas, these things are rarely, in human relations, as they should be.  But as we come to understand how this Principle inherently is, we may contrive to bring our own application of it a little closer to the archetypal pattern as it works on higher planes — how masculine and feminine in you, in various aspects of your being, are in relationship, but rarely bear children.  Work it out.

It is as though, all through the human evolution — the three measures of meal, and the time it takes the leaven to work in the three measures — that this masculine-feminine should be put to virile use; and that the more you understand it, – the more you can apply it, the swifter is the fruit you will bear — until, at the end of that three measures of meal period, you become your own “son.”

That phrase is not so strange as it sounds.  We have beard it frequently in different ways.  When you have become the son of the Human Evolution – have begotten yourself into the ultimate of that stage – you are what is called, mystically, Son of Man.  To that end is necessary the deep understanding, and the fruitful application, of this Principle.  This brings about what is know as “life ever more abundant”, in the words of Jesus.  They are not unlike the phrase used by other great Teachers.

You have reproduced yourself by regeneration.  And regeneration is nothing but the enlightened use of this Principle.  The perfect symbolic illustration of that is in the Egyptian symbol of what is known as the “key of life” — the Ankh cross, in which the feminine and the masculine are in constant juxtaposition.

To keep the masculine and the feminine in constant juxtaposition, in occult ways, is to have won the key of life.  To that end everything that you can learn that is veridical of this Principle, is of paramount importance.

Ponder in special ways on this Principle.  Don’t leave the others out, or this would not contribute.  But ponder especially on this Principle.

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

MBM – Lecture VI

 

November 19, 1931

Causation

Our study of the Principles is metaphysical and metapsychical.  There are other types of study, but we are ready to push into more inward interpretations.  So I must stay with that general type these two evenings.

Our Principle of this week is on the right hand side of Gender – earlier than Gender.

Our sixth Principle is Causation.  Vibration, – masculine and feminine; and this week’s, – all on a new line.  Principles consist of a synthetic quality, in which they are equal though different.  No sooner do I try to describe one than I am doing violence to other aspects.  Just in proportion as we are able to bring to these matters the seventh and eighth rung of the mental function are we to some extent escaping these difficulties.  But I can only do that in part, since we are not a homogeneous group.  So I shall be full of contradiction, apparently.

Our Principle of this evening is earlier than the Principle of Gender, studied last week, and is to be seen as coming a little on the right side of Gender.  I mean that it has to do with the masculine side — though only partially — in that Will, in our inadequate terminology, is used usually to describe the dynamics of the First Cause.  The word willis limited not only by our everyday use of it, but on higher levels.  Will is not sufficient to contain within itself the depths and heights of what is inherent in the Principle of Causation.

Everywhere is cause; and everywhere cause leads to effect.  For an effect is preceded by a cause.  Causes and effects operate on all planes.  Push behind Gender then, – behind the veil as far as we can into First Cause — this masculine Will that drives forth from the Unknown, – Zero, – and starts a procession of dynamics, using the other Principles in its wake.

If Vibration appears with the Breath, and if the Breath of Manifestation is born out of Gender (the union of the Masculine and the Feminine) then Causation, or the determination of Cosmic, or Celestial, Will is behind Gender.  There are attempts at description in the ancient scriptures, – trying to describe how this First Cause began its operation, and continues throughout the Cosmic Day.  It has really come closer to the first outward thrust from the Zero — from this invisible, unknown reservoir of potential power, driving itself forth; because it is self-operative, and passing, through the use of these other Principles, throughout all forms of energy and their manifestation.

You will recall that energy and the substance through which it manifests are a kind of syzygy; but that pair, as in a true mating, melt one into the other.  So with matter it melts into energy, and that energy becomes substance on another plane — which melts again into energy and becomes substance on a still subtler plane.  So that we have, even through this duality — energy and the particular form through which it manifests — the driving force of First Cause.

We are not going to study our Principle as it is studied in philosophies.  You probably know that the Problem of Cause is rather a fundamental one, whether with Hume, or Descartes, or others.  But we are stepping quite aside from all that type of discussion and resting quite securely on the Principle.  It is one of the characteristics of Principles that you can rest on them securely.  They are greater than philosophies, – more penetrative.  They are the enduring, yet tenuous, thread that binds all Creation.  Philosophies are attempts to analyze, and build up acceptable theories, – of life, of living, of Creation, of first and last things.  But these Principles are apart from all that; and thus we can rest quite securely on the apparent simplicity of the statement of Cause and Effect.

We will study quite briefly a few of the first steps in Cause, and then watch it in operation on lower levels.  Originally Cause, or Outward Drive, – just as First Parents, are so inclusive that they contain all other masculine-feminine Principles or derivatives — all other emanating Principles on all other planes.  Hence you should be by no means surprised to find in this Principle of Causality, which is on the right — the feminine side of things.

The moment operation begins the Principle becomes the Will — the first movement.  But surrounding it is Wisdom, or all the vast experience stored up on the plus side of things of previous Cosmic Days.  How vast that may be, our human minds cannot conceive.  But when the curtain lifts we find that Cause sending forth, through the feminine Principle, or Wisdom, the Breath (Vibration).  And swiftly there arises, since time is not, those other cooperative powers known as the Seven Rulers.

Are the Seven Rulers identical with the Seven Principles?  No!  No more than an energy, or a type of energy, emanating from you as a three-fold creature is a description of you, or self-indicative of the totality of your being.  But the Principles are one of the characteristics of the Seven Rulers.

These Seven Rulers have, via the Principle of Correspondence, their replica on many levels.  On celestial levels — that is, higher than the spiritual plane, – within the Cosmic Sphere, but not its gamut — these Seven are known by various names: the Seven Lamps about the Throne, – the seven-branched candlestick a reminder.  These Seven carry on the inherent tradition of Cause.  (other names)  In the stellar mythos, the Great Mother, seen as the constellation around the Pole.  Thus the feminine side, in which and out of which, as out of the womb, the Seven arise.  Those Seven are repeated in many octaves, – from that one down to the musical scale.

Those profundities we cannot watch in a class of this kind, even in a sketchy fashion.  But I propose to follow two lines of thought from higher levels, showing how Cause becomes enwrapped, hidden, and abides its time.  The processes that are derived from First Cause are not hasty, or impatient; they operate throughout the Cosmic Day, – and many of the Causes — or what we might call the powers in the First Cause — are folded in.

 

The Hymn of the Robe of Glory describes the enwrapping of powers, – therefore Causes, – in the light spark as it descends from the Cosmic stages down into the physical.

Every cause has its effect; but the effect is not immediate.  It belongs perhaps to a much later stage, for Cosmic processes are patient.  Down in our earthly levels, – in time, – we await effects quickly, because we are impatient.  In regions where time is not, effects are awaited in patience.

Our poem describes certain powers — therefore hidden causes — which are enwrapped.  They are in code.  He says, the writer, that that which is enwrapped is small, yet great — precious stones, etc.  All are causes which are enwrapped; and every cause has its effect somewhere.  You may have bulbs in your cellar, or in some cool closet, which you have had stored over years.  The cause, which is the power of producing a plant, is there; the effect awaits condition.  You will see, thus, that causes are not to be associated with presence, – maybe in cases of human activity, but in other regions, – not so.  Even in earth there may be a variety of agencies, – which we may call causes; and every cause has its effect.  In this brief bit I have read you the causes are potential, enwrapped, – described in mystical language.

The correspondent of this is in the mythos of Osiris in the Egyptian tradition.  Osiris is the description of the descent of the light spark, which later becomes the soul.  And Osiris, in passing through different regions, – as our Syriac poet has put it, takes on, and enwraps, as he descends.  So Osiris, passing through various regions, wraps in causes that achieve later effects.

In a few of them you can see the long distance at which Cause may operate, – where Isis and Osiris mate.  But before they mate Isis has gone through two other types of relation to Osiris: mother and sister.  Those two describe the enwrapped causes, which are unwrapped into effects later, when the light spark is in earth.  The mother-sister aspects yield to that of wife, or mate.  And out of that union, in the mystical language, is born Horus.  He is an effect of Osiris passing through the stage — or world, or region — over which Isis is mistress.

The powers of that, in turn, give way to effect in the Four Sons of Horus.  And thus effects are, in turn, cause.  For you will have long since noted that, every cause leading to an effect, that effect, in turn, is cause to a long procession of dynamic forces, thrust out into manifestation in the period when time was not.  The Four Sons of Horus, who are effects, are, in turn cause of something else — this all being in mystical, or occult, language.  They are the cause of Osiris ascending to Amenti — occult symbolism, and is based on the effect of the causes set in motion, but turned in, or enwrapped, long ago.  This enwrapping makes for what we may call Destiny.

An interesting triad: destiny, fate, and free will!  Let us loiter here for five minutes, – since we are working philosophically: The First Cause, as far as man is concerned, being enwrapped destiny, is the sure effect, whether the individual knows it at a given time or not.  The full dynamic of that Cause, thrust into man, is not revealed, or revealable, in this dimension.  It requires capacities, functions, faculties, which are not possessed in this dimension.  Only in proportion as a human transcends this dimension does he come to know any of these things, though he may hear them intellectually.

Fate, as we have already seen in our Three Realms of Law series, is the operation of law — a kind of series of cause and effect of its own, in any realm that is not moderated by the work of man’s mind upon it.  Fate is therefore the procession of cause and effect, without interference.  Free will, or the power of choice, – with which is linked that other interesting concept in philosophies, determinism, deals with the capacity of man to make choice; but, as at a given time, only a small radius within which he can make choice.  But the exercise of choice is the development — not the result of — the development of the power of free will.

Just as a muscle, or a function, is developed by exercise, so the power of free will, of choice, is also developed.  People who are careless in their thinking believe that free will either is, or is not.  That is due to lack of clean thinking.  Free will is a power to be won by exercise.  Thus the gordian knot that seems to tie one to fate is released through the exercise of choice.

Thus man becomes released from fate, but not from destiny.  For destiny is enwrapped in stages before man began, – man being mind.  So, over a long process, Cause operates, and brings to fruitage its effects.

The further Cause operates from the initial impulse, and comes thus into regions, spreading out fan-like, as it were, where stuffs meet its impact, – so Cause becomes effects.  Thus that fan-like radiation of Cause leading to effects, presses outward through the various planes into this outermost one, in which we are at present — the earth, – humanity.

Here Cause is shot up into such a large number of causes that I do not know how to label it; and, in turn, to as many more effects — for effects multiply.  We have only to select some familiar illustration, such as the condensation of vapor in a room.  The moisture appears on different objects.  The cause is relatively simple but the effects vary according to the stuff, or object, on which the condensation takes place.  This, to put before you one illustration of the fan-like radiation of Cause on many types of substance.

Another illustration, in a quite adjacent region: A concert, with an audience of a thousand; the performer one.  Thus the instrument one; and we will conceive of one number.  The cause is therefore simple; but the effects are as many as there are members in the audience.  And on each one the effect will register differently.

An episode in a shop, – perhaps unpleasant.  Different effects on the different people concerned, – according to the stuff of which they are made.  Thus, in every hour of our days we are surrounded by the driving force of this initial impulse – cause and effect, – cause and effects.

To anyone who studies, there is apparent a fine relationship between cause and effect, effect and cause.  One may observe the procession either way: inductive-deductive; descent-ascent.  And to the one whose mind is appreciative, that fine relation becomes an indication of something — an indication of an orderly procession.  And that orderly procession, that sequence, which, in its ultimate nature, is unalterable, becomes a kind of ordered Pattern, in which the whole world and its process are seen.  Through it he can harness the forces which are operating.  Through it the mind works upon the natural law, or realm of nature.

How much of our modern activity is a search either for cause or for effect!  For in modern science, research, theory, the thinker is able to work both ways, as he should — up and down.  Sometimes the problem that fazes him is the effect, the cause being known.  Sometimes it is the reverse.  But always, perceiving the orderliness of the procession of things, – from cause to effect, and effect to cause, he is stout of courage, and inquires.

You will see that, even with our physical science; even with medical science, – with music, art, commerce, international relations, the problem of war and peace, with the more intangible problems, as they are handled by theology — everywhere the question of cause and effect, from effect to cause – is the orderly line by which man’s mind may move.

A few further illustrations, and then we move to where there seem to be exceptions.  We take it that our Principle is inviolable, but there are regions where it seems not to be so.

In the physical world, a world of material substance, you are now familiar with the law of cause and effect.  So we will leave that, and move to the psychic world — the world of images, likenesses, reflections.  Here too we discover, as we plumb our way through it, that cause and effect are working in the same orderly procession as in the world of physical matter.  And, interestingly enough, our first inquiries in this region were made through that which exaggerates relationship and thrusts into the picture an apparent fluke — aberrations of mind, which we now call the psyche, people who were “possessed of spirits”, etc.  Those whom we now call — or did until recently, the insane were considered either possessed of devils, and so shunned until little more than a hundred years ago; or they were considered divine beings, and sought as oracles.  They seemed to be a fluke.  Again, conversions: until recently functional paralysis, deafness, tics, melancholia, manic-depressive states, and so on, were not understood.

Now we know, through the discoveries of the malady in the so-called unconscious, that the law of cause and effect is unerring; and that trauma, which also like the powers enwrapped in the descent of the soul, are hidden, are lost, or buried in the unconscious.  That is, they are not acceptable to the conscious mind; but the effect of that buried trauma works.  Effects burst – that is, ray out into expression; and we have the phenomenon now known to all of us — conversion.  That is the conversion of a psychic cause into a physical effect.

Here we come to some of the complications.  Thus, the psychic plane — the plane just above the physical, or rather, adjacent to it, of another dimension, that is hooked into this — causes, – because set into action by some circumstance, which was therefore its antecedent cause — may operate from one dimension into the next.  Hence the trauma, the cause lodged in the psychic body (called the unconscious by those who do not know — is operative, bringing about a diseased condition in the psyche, much as a toxic condition in the body presently breeds a skin disorder.  Always cause bores its way out to expression on the periphery.

So First Cause pours itself out through all the concentric rings surrounding it to the outermost, the periphery known in occult language as the Ring Pass Not, because we cannot pass it, because of the limitation set by something we will touch upon next week.  So that, with First Cause, like the cause in the traumatic condition in the psyche, or the physical toxic condition pressing out to the skin (Principle of Correspondence) the movement is from the hidden into the expression — out to the periphery.  And, through that, the illustration of the phenomenon that the psychoanalyst calls the conversion.

Cause and effect operates in the world of likenesses, – or pictures, or images.  We know a little about this world because of many things we have read, because we are familiar, somewhat, with dreams, and know a little about hallucinations; but the thing itself we do not know, for we are altogether too oriented to this third dimension, and we get only a reflection of it in this dimension.

How then, when we go up an octave further, to the world of thoughts, or mind?  Thought produces images, for images are the form side of which thought is the energy side — again the syzygy of energy and its method of manifestation.  And cause, or activity, may be located in the realm of mind.  Thought can bring about an image, and the image an effect.  A trite illustration: the lemon (sense of sourness, puckering of mouth.)  The cause on one plane working through a second, to a third.

Cause may be incited by outside stimuli, or it may be self-incited via the method of auto-suggestion.  Very few people know anything, really, about the use of thought, – for the reason that we are oriented to this dimension and do not literally see in the thought world.  We only get it via its effect, when the cause has been operating subtly; and we deal with it on an oblique, not directly.  We know it through its effect.

Of course you have noticed how an outside circumstance — whether the weather, an unpleasant occurrence (it goes easier downhill) your thoughts wrap themselves around this.  They are stimulated by these circumstances.  Those thoughts produce fantasies, the images, or effects; but they are, in turn, cause; and presently the effect of those causes, or images, is either in the direction of joyfulness or melancholy — usually melancholy, for it is so easy downhill.  And the melancholy, in turn, being a cause for the next dimension, brings about an effect in the body, a lowered vitality.

The physician and psychologist are intelligently facing the fact that it is necessary to work with the attitudes of people.  Christian Science says it generally.  But it must be done specifically.  People have to be taught how to be causes in themselves for those conditions that they wish to achieve.

For here comes now the step to those conclusive arguments that I might call the more practical aspects of this Principle.  Man, being suspended between earth and heaven, as we saw in our previous class, – that is, being capable of operating in the region between, through the use of his mind, – learning to observe the Principle of cause and effect in operation, – may bring about in himself the effects which he chooses, by using right causes.  He knows that humanity has long been doing just that very thing in the objective world, getting the effects that it wants by controlling the series of causes that bring about the desired effects, whether in building, business, or other things. Because they know the effects they desire.

Now I say to one who thinks constructively: it is a bit annoying that man does not bring about something of that same procedure in regard to the subjective realm — objective on other dimensions.  Man must learn to apply this series of cause and effect, fan-like, in all departments of his own being — physical, psychic, mental.  As he studies the causes, first, of those effects that are undesirable — that is the usual way — he comes to know, bit by bit, how to avoid those effects.  That is the first step.  And then he undertakes to learn how to set up those causes which are assured to bring about the effects he desires.

Being three-fold, that is not so easy as it is in the objective realm about him, where it is only of one sphere.  It is not convertible, as it is in man.  Man being three areas, the causes of symptoms spring through, and cause disaster in one place, where they appear to cause beneficence in another.  Thus, the intelligence has to watch over three realms, not merely one.  A trite illustration is that pleasure on the physical side may interfere with the condition of the physical body, and therefore of other pursuits.  Thus the effect which he desires, pleasure, has to be abrogated in favor of a redistribution of pleasure between the physical and the mental.

Man’s problem is not a simple one.  It is man-size.   And when he comes to understand it he will be thankful that it is.  It is more zestful, and challenging.

So this Principle, which has been set in operation from the beginning, – on the right side of our Principle of Gender — therefore the masculine, and one requiring will, through the aid of intelligence, just as in First Cause — is presently able to set up a series of operative effects, – causes and effects, in a long series, transforming his or her life.  He learns, – and in that also something of that largeness of gesture that is always inherently to be anticipated where more than one realm is affected by law.  In the physical we may get effects swiftly, understanding causes; but as, in proportion, another realm is added — and in man, three — complications enter in, and results are not to be anticipated swiftly.

One word more, on flukes: I have already given illustrations how the trauma, though unknown to the patient, can bring about a conversion, or effect in the physical.  By the same token, since there are other realms, – activity on other realms, quite apart from the realm in an individual person, also affecting this dimension.  For we have to be logical enough in our metaphysics and metapsychics, – that if there is a psychic area in us, and a mental area in us, there must be a realm to which that corresponds.  Thus operations from those planes, or regions, quite apart from man, may affect this dimension — and that may suggest a number of things.

This operation from other planes, which does take place and will continue, causes what I before called flukes, or effects that no one who is seeing the laws in their series of cause and effect in one dimension alone, can explain.  You probably know that scientists have frequently run into events and conditions which they can’t explain, – for which there seems to be implied a gap.  The Principle, whether you know it or not, is that the concentric rings of these realms are, in a sense, in gear, or hooked up, somewhat as the physical, psychic and mental are in you.  And by the same token as there is possible a conversion in you, observable only in its affect, so in other departments outside of yourself — or perhaps in yourself — this effect, whose cause is unknown.

But on this rest secure: you are standing here on immutable Principles; and although you do not know the cause, or causes, and though they may be unattainable to your mind at a given time — or unattainable to this dimension at all the causes are immutably operative.  Therefore, no effect without its cause.

We, being on the periphery, work from the outside in.  We often experience effects here of conditions, or events, which, in a sense, transcend known cause.  But they do not transcend Cause.

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

MBM – Lecture VII

Dec. 3, 1931

Our last Principle sounds as though it were the simplest of all.  “All-Father, who is Mind, created All in Mind.  Therefore all is mind.”  But the trouble is that our reasoning mind is the tool with which we approach this Principle, and reason thinking is not at all capable of comprehending the nature nor the domain of this great Principle.  It is the Principle that is the ultimate.  It precedes, if we can think of it in time – for it is all before time — yet if we posit place in the process, this Principle precedes all others.

Since we cannot approach it with our reason thinking, how can we move toward it with any comprehension?  We must step out from reason thinking, after it has trained us, as the butterfly flies forth from its cocoon, – out of its element.  The butterfly enters an entirely new element.  So must our minds, released from the limitation of reason thinking, try to comprehend this Principle.  For Mind, as is implied in this Principle, is not in the slightest comprehended by the lower mind.  It is a remote cousin.

Some of the ancient traditions regard the All-Father as Mind.  The Proem to the Gospel of John is one of the most familiar, though not in its correct translation.  In the translation of G.R.S. Mead it reads: In Primality was MIND.  In IT is Life and Light.

In the great Gnoses, therefore, All-Father is seen as MIND — the inclusive and exclusive ALL.  Our universes are mental, a projection of Cosmic Mind, and therefore, to comprehend them in truth we have to comprehend them in mind, – through light of the mind, which is beyond reason thinking.

“And God-Mind, being male.and female, both as Life and Light subsisting, brought forth another Mind, to give things form.”  Brought forth, then, the Seven Rulers — a genealogical tree of Mind-stock.  After MIND, then, Mind that became active as Will, and brought forth a third Mind – the Formative Mind.  These form the Seven Rulers that the Cosmos, or sense, perceives.  Therefore this Principle precedes the Seven.  The tradition of the All-Father MIND is carried on by the Seven in the exoteric tradition known as Hermes.

In another tradition:  “The Great Mind sent forth another Mind known as the Logos, and the Logos (similar to our Formative Mind) created according to the Plan, or Will, of the Great Mind those things which belong to the Cosmos.”  And then, says this tradition, this Mind returned to the Demi-Urgos, which is the Second Mind.  The Logos, then, returned to the Demi-Urgos.  Again three Minds.

The work of these Minds, – or of the most outward Mind, the Logos, as direct representative of the All Father-Mother MIND, keeps the influence of that operative process held in Mind throughout the Cosmic Day.

This is the Mind that in another tradition is call the Mind of all Masterhood.  It stands above all Masterhood.  Our reason thinking becomes numb under the impact of such implications, far removed from our world.  Yet if we would understand anything of this Principle, it is essential that we go back to these Immensities, – grapple a little with the beginnings of things.

To go down a little to what are the processes by which Mind creates.  Creates does itindeed?  We have reserved, all these weeks — indeed always — the word creation for the great operations of Deity, or Deities, and the word reproducing, or begetting, for those lower activities that are related, and yet different, belonging to man.  As we look into the vastness of early processes we are struck with a paradox.  Did Deity, or All-Mind indeed create?  And, if we are wholly accurate, in minds removed from reason thinking, we should have to say No.  Not in the last analysis; for all things are in Deity, or within the enclosure of the All Father-Mother.

Hence, out of the All Father-Mother is projected that which belongs to the processes essential to the carrying on of the Cosmic Day.  Can man, by any analogy aid himself to appreciate how that might be!  Yes.  Fundamentally the microcosm, or nature of the soul, potentially, is as the nature of the Macrocosm in the Immensities.  We can help ourselves to understand by the manner in which that which is analogous in man takes place.  All things begotten are a re-formation.  Those things that belong to the phenomenal world are manifestly so; even in the re-formation of the elements in the body of an infant — there is nothing new in the elements which construct that body in the womb of the mother.

But when we come to those things which are carried out in the processes of Mind there is a slightly different order.  Order belongs to the projection of images.  How are images projected?  Via those processes of the Mind on the screen of the psychic.  Psychic stuff is formed according to mental images.  There is the nucleus of our analogy.  All-Father Mind, out of what, to us, is highly tenuous stuff — more than the stuff of the psychic images — formed the pattern for all creation, and holds in Mind that pattern throughout the Cosmic Day.

Immediately the challenge of that power to sustain impacts upon us.  And here arises our first little practical lesson in the application of this Principle.  Our images, our thoughts, move swiftly from one motif to another.  In psychology there is much study of what is called associative thinking, or non-directed thinking.  No sustained nature — one impact after another; that is associative thinking.  It is the weakness, the inherent dilemma of man.

Man, being under the natural law until he resurrects himself from it, is the victim of impacts which shift his images.  He has no power of continuity — does not sustain.  And the challenge that bears down on us too heavily for comfort, in the study of this Principle, is the majesty of that Mind that is able to sustain, in consciousness and continuity, long processes throughout what we call time and eternity; for eternity is a kind of time, – a sort of extension of time.

Some may say: Images are not real, and this world is real, and therefore that analogy is not playing fair.  The answer to that is the simple one that you are under the delusion that this phenomenal world — the most solid and outer one from the center — is the true world; whereas it is the most fleeting, – and as you move inward, or upward, this becomes as you think now the shadows of images are.

As usual, we have aids to that in pathology.  In patients suffering with psychoses, the images they have created are so solid that they live in terms of them, and this world has literally faded out.  They are only in it because the silver cord is not yet broken; their body is in this but their consciousness is in another.

You will say: that is abnormal — a sickness.  Oh yes; but we can afford, can’t we, as we have always, until we come to higher consciousness, to learn from disorder, dilemmas, whether in physical disease, conquering of waste territory, mental disease, the challenge of homes without fire or light, the challenge from the supernormal, – always we learn.

It would be a fortunate thing for you if it began to dawn on your consciousness how highly important is the ability to produce and sustain thoughts, kept intact by images — images being the form side of thought.  When you have thoughts, – unless you have scaled very high — you have images.  You must have, until you are free from this consciousness.

But think how difficult it is to set up an image and sustain it!  How difficult it is to keep your minds, with continuity, on any one subject, particularly if that subject requires uphill work.  Progress is uphill.  There is little difficulty in sustaining an image when we are held to it by pleasure or affection.  That is natural attraction.  But given the task of sustaining an image or thought in regard to that which is difficult for us, how far we are from having learned even the first lessons in control of mind.

Try it!  Be so rash as to go over the content of this lecture tomorrow night and see whether you can sustain it over five minutes.  You will note that things in you begin to rebel.  Feelings thrust their way into the picture, – impacts from the outside, interruptions gladly received.  Yet it is only as we learn to coordinate our living with these Principles that we come to know them in truth, or make the microcosm like the macrocosm.

There are interesting ways in which man has made first procedures to ordering his universe.  For the connection of all produced in Mind is that the World is a world of Order.  We have the content of that in the familiar saying; Order is heaven’s first law.  And the first law that man must obey in moving toward obedience to this Principle is that of Order.

How does he do it?  Being a kindergartner, he starts on the outside.  Man, being evasive, preferring ease to labor, tends to refrain from applying the same thing to himself.  Now how has he ordered the world?   You are familiar with the analogies I have used.  The outer world, where man touches it, – where it impinges upon him, is ordered by man’s mind.  Bit by bit it is man’s mind that conquers — sometimes aided by the plow, later the tractor, – by many contrivances that, in turn, have been built up by mind.  As though mind were used to equip man to order the outer world.  And everything with which we are surrounded is one or another type, or degree, of ordering by mind — sometimes lesser, sometimes greater.  Even the child playing with blocks is ordering, according to the very wee beginnings of its little mind, just breaking forth into this dimension, – making those simple contacts.

Mind at work, ordering.  That is the objective world; and much has been done to conquer it, to bring it within the law — the law that is order, the first derivative of the work of operative of the Great Mind.

But you know that the challenge is to turn that back on the self, and that the other is merely a preliminary exercise of muscle, to order later the household of the self.  That is the heroic task from which man flinches — which he so gladly evades, and is so glad to be interrupted.  It is so much harder to order the self than the objective world — even one behavior pattern, than to order your desk.  How much more difficult to control your thoughts than to arrange an orderly file on your desk!  To bring some wish within the ordering of your mind, or to send forth an activity of the mind to achieve something, than to purchase an article!  But the article is less necessary than the journey of the mind to some goal of thought.

These lessons await your doing.  And man becomes like, in terms of the microcosm and macrocosm, only as he understands the implication, and obeys the law.

There are certain steps one might work out, in regard to such procedures, and I think they have a practical value, – if we would thrust our mind into a new element:  that since mind is what it is, and brings with it the concomitant of order, there must be purpose.  I therefore posit these five points in what we might call the steps of mental activity, according to the pattern of Cosmic Mind:

The Great Operative Life Principles

(1) Purpose.  There is no gesture of mind activity, – no movement of mind going out to conquer even the frontier land, – or order the dresser drawer, that has not in it, in order to be coherent, – that has not in it purpose.  So, in that, man and the All-Father must be alike.

(2) There must be a pattern of procedure.  You must have some concept of the steps by which you would move — the pattern of that which is to be accomplished.  That is different from purpose.  In all the great traditions we have touched on together, – again in the Friday classes on the Books of Moses, the Pattern world, – always Deity, in beginning the work, sets up the Pattern.  To do otherwise (to speak of man) is to be a fool, – to be without mind.  One must therefore have pattern in all that one does, where the mind is at work.  Is there any place where the mind should not have its pattern?  No!  Even in play, – in the simplest outpouring of activity, body or heart, there is mind.

(3) Order.  Order means sequence.  It means also that relation and inter-relation of parts as the flow is, from the point outward.  The point expands, in terms of lines, even to the periphery of the circle.  Again, what is to the right and left, until we have the horizontally bisected circle.  So there is the process, and in that process there must be order.  You must therefore not only have purpose and pattern but the sequence of your procedure must be held in mind.

(4) Labor.  The first three are antecedent to actual work.  Think of it yourselves.  It is possible to have purpose and pattern, and outline procedure, and still not have knuckled down to work.  Labor belongs to work.  Occasionally I meet people who think mind moves easily — no work.  But mind, too, must work.  Those of you who have learned some of the steps in the science of meditation know some of the applications of that labor.  It is hard labor — labor in which the mind must, as it were, be as a workman.

(5) Endurance.  perhaps the most difficult for man.  It is not so difficult to begin a thing — to have a certain amount of enthusiasm and interest; but to sustain it to the logical conclusion of the effort, obedient to the pattern and the purpose which precedes the pattern, – that is difficult.  Yet without endurance to the logical conclusion of the purpose, the whole purpose might be said to have failed.

Let us throw that against the Cosmic Pattern.  Suppose Deity grew tired of sustaining, in Mind, Cosmic Thought, – universe or universes, – what would occur?  They would disintegrate, quite literally — just as literally, as your images disintegrate when your thoughts are withdrawn from them.  Where do they go?  The same place where flame goes when it is blown out.

So if Deity should withdraw the power of endurance from these apparently substantial elements of the phenomenal world, and the other elements that sustain what are to us more tenuous planes, all would fly apart; and the result is that the efforts of all these ages — of two-thirds of the Cosmic Day — would be nil.

As kindergartners, you and I may not need to endure – we are only building up muscle to learn to endure — but when playtime is over and we are adults, not children and adolescents, then it is essential to endure, – not as Deity, for it is absurd even to dream of such a thing in our human capacity; but we must understand, first of all, what it implies if we do not endure through to the end we have undertaken.

It does not make much difference in a course in college, or a similar undertaking, but once you are concerned with larger things, for which these are preliminary training, the lesson of endurance must have been learned.  And according to that which you have undertaken, so must you endure.

These, then, are profundities with which we are working in the seven o’clock class — bitter-sweet realities.  You may forget them, – so remote from life, – just the opposite of the things we are discussing!  (Or, just the opposite is true.)  Why bitter-sweet?  Bitter, because so difficult — because they reveal to us where we are in our status as beings.  Sweet, because they have within them so sweet a beneficence, once they are put into action, even in little ways in your lives, that the bitter is sought for the sake of the sweetness.  Or, you are willing to labor for those things which you may win — for the strange super-flavor that comes in contacting a synchronizing with these Principles.

It is a challenge to turn to yourselves, which is the purpose of the outer, until the powers within you are obedient, ordered, and you follow these steps that belong to the processes of the Great Mind; — that you can carry on, if you will it, what this very Principle requires: thinking in continuity, thinking with purpose, with pattern, – and so, through these our five steps — enduring until you have gotten some clear concept as to what these things imply.

These things seem remote — ultimates — but they are the very fabric of which your lives are wrought, for the 24 hours, waking and sleeping; and in them may be found many important treasures.

I would go back to an old tradition, supplementing what I have already given you about the All-Father Mind, with the relation, as seen in this old tradition, between the lower mind and the higher mind.  From an old Hermetic tractate — a conversation between Hermes and Tat.  Hermes, the mind — not the Great Mind but the intermediary mind, and Tat, the sensitive, the mind that is becoming touched by the call of larger things — is open to them.  To this mind — the mind of man moving upward, Hermes, the intermediate mind, is speaking.  They are discussing the work of the Great Mind in creation.  And Hermes says that the lower creation — or, as we would call it, earth-water — has not been endowed with mind; but that man has been endowed with a kind of mind that is often alliterated as reason; we would call it lower mind.

I will read a passage: “The All-Father Mind sent down to earth, or to the Cosmos, an archetypal Pattern, which is called the Flame Divine — the Flame Divine of man — a life that cannot die, and yet a life that dies many times.  And for many lives man excels by virtue of the Word and the mind.”

That is, these are potentials which the All-Father put in man, which makes him excel over all other types of life.  “For contemplator of God’s works he became”, “and wondered and marveled, and sought out their Builder” — the archetypal pattern of how man’s mind wonders, – how it was schemed, the purpose, pattern, order.  ”That which derived from the Word (a kind of Logos) was to all men distributed, but Mind it did not distribute, nor hath not yet given.”

Not, says Hermes, that it grudges man any of the treasures of Mind, for grudge is not in Deity, but in men in earth, who possess lower mind.  Tat asks: Did not Deity, All-Father, on all bestow a share of mind?  And Hermes answers: “He willed, my son, to have it set up in the midst just as a prize, a treasure.”

“And where hath He set it?” (asks Tat.)  And Hermes answer: “He hath filled a mighty Cup with it, and sent it down, joining a herald to it, to whom He gave command to make this proclamation to the souls of men; and this is the proclamation:

Baptize thyself with this Cup, that thou knowest for what thou dost come into being.”

“For those who understood the herald’s tidings, and doused themselves in mind, became partakers in the Gnosis; and those who could not receive mind, nor did not baptize themselves, are made another order.  They do not know the drama, nor partake of the Cup.”

I shall not uncode that.  Use your minds with purpose, pattern, order, labor and endurance.

Now, five minutes to draw together something of the inclusive nature of the Seven:

Where shall we begin? Perhaps by referring to the familiar names by which these are sometimes known:  The Seven Lamps about the Throne.  How could the seven Principles be the Seven before the Throne?  They are not the Lamps in their totality, but you will never know the Lamps about the Throne without these seven, for they are an element in the constitution of the Lamps.  When you hear the phrase “Seven Lamps about the Throne” think of these seven Principles as associated with these ultimates.

From the Seven Lamps come the Seven Rays, another familiar phrase.  How can that relate to man?  Yes.  For, in proportion as you begin to comprehend — not with your reason thinking — the actual nature of these Seven, you begin to set up within yourself something of the Lamp, and upon you begin to shine rays.  Those are not physical rays but rays that affect your being on other planes, as literally as the rays of any light on this plane.  You know that without rays of light on this plane nothing could move or have being.  It is necessary, therefore, that light shines on you in other planes, and these Seven Rays belong to that type of thing.

Another common phrase: “The Seven who are Mother.” You can conceive, I trust, that, since these Seven sustain all planes, the Principles are the princes of the Cosmic land.  But these Seven are also seen as the mother-side, the sustaining arms that reach out through all the planes, and sustain Creation.

The Seven Seals, of the Book of Revelations.  What are seals?  In the Book of Revelations those seals are loosened.  Certain things occur.  As you come to the place of unloosening the content and power of these Principles certain THINGS emerge.  And that is really what is implied in the opening of the seals in that Book.  To understand the Principles is to begin the undoing of those seals.

“Words are power.”  On higher planes, what is power may become words here.  Of course, our words do not become power, because we are still in the kindergarten.  So power in these books — which are not books — may lead to words; and they may lead to somewhat else.  When you open the seals you will know.

The last analogy is “the Seven Angels.”  Angels is a name given to a type of entity just beyond our plane.  Beyond them are archangels, and so on up, according to various traditions, through the many rungs that lead to the Center.  On all planes the Seven Lamps have their corresponding angels.  You will find them in the Christian, Hebraic, Chinese, – every tradition.  These Seven Angels are a name, – or an attempt at description, of what we might call the Custodians of the Seven.

These Seven — as the Seven Angels, Seals, Lamps, – are all simultaneously.  If one of them appears to be stronger in i effect than another, that is only because you are closer to one of its effects than another.  The Seven operate constantly.  They sustain the universe.

I must close with that first quotation: All-Father Mind bringing forth the Formative Mind, and the Formative Mind bringing forth the Seven Rulers who enclose the Cosmosthat Sense perceives.  Thus these Seven fill out the whole gamut of the Cosmos; and if you can comprehend that, perhaps you can see that there is some practical use — not to Broadway, but to a student of Larger things — to begin a serious pondering on these Seven.

Causation

frag. notes by Gertrude Borchard

Usually seen from short-range.    Science, medicine

search for causes      sometimes re effects

Stop at heights, bec.     we will study briefly a few of the first steps in Cause, and then qatch it in operation on lower levels.

At the heights, then .  Causation, like Gender, is in the Nought, Chaos, the Fullness, that unknown reservoir of potential power, Unorder, out of which

First Cause known by many names:  God, Will . . . .

It is even behind Gender, that first stirring . . . .

Will is used to describe the dynamics of First Cause; or the moment operation begins the Principle becomes the Will.  Mundane correspondent.

First Cause as the determining principle behind Gender.

Hard to distinguish . . . . easier on outer levels.

But originally both Causation and Gender   both so inclusive…

Read par.

First Parents, First Cause ….words of earth. . . . .

Electricity

Contain all other Principles, on all other planes.

Cause self-operative, drives itself forth, passes, thru the use of the other Principles throughout all forms of energy and their manifestation.  Starts a procession of dynamics using the other Principles in its wake: vibration, rhythm, etc.

The impacts of Causation run like nerve fibers. . . .

Won’t go further . . . . Attempts in all scriptures to describe how First Cause began its operation and continues….

Everywhere First Cause is seen as One, but .  Conflict

The emanations are usually seen in three stages.  Yet all this . . . Creation begins with the third stage  , the Third Mind, the Mind that brought forth Creation.  Breath.

Earth correspondent.

That Mind, the third mind, or third octave down is the Cause

of Creation, and in turn produced what are known….

They carry on the inherent tradition of Cause..radiate outward.

Are the Seven Rulers.. ..

Read: Another reason

Cause usually seen . . . . From another, a vision of the luminous web of relationship — nerve fibers of the universe, establishing organization, relationship, kinship, deepens.

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

Gender

from GB notes of lecture as given by MBM

April 15, 1937

Gender, meaning to generate, is associated in earth.with the male and female side of things.

All the Principles have a peculiarity of their own.  Sometimes hard to separate one out from the others, or the other six Principles.  This Principle has the peculiar character of begetting, producing, generating.

Beginning on the heights, immediately the two characteristics of Gender appear — masculine side and feminine side.  These are words of earth, and only partially describe what Gender implies.  Gender implies two complementary, not opposite characteristics, which, brought into a peculiar juxtaposition, produce something new.  And since, in this Day of Manifestation we are the order of the day (?) it is normal that, in that Beginning, we should see the two aspects of Gender in their action, – and therefore in their generating of all that is.

Tonight we will see how bound up with Rhythm is another Principle, that of producing.  The Word that went forth, the Breath that was expended in that Word, is the first masculine manifestation.  The Will behind it, not in manifestation, was the first Male coming into the new Day.  But Will itself does not manifest.  It manifests through what has been called the Breath, the Word, the Logos.

Maleness:  engendering, activation, stimulation, beginnings – that is the male.  And so the will, manifesting in nature (?) it is the Son, the Logos.

And now we see why the Logos is Son: because it is on the male side of things, beginning the great process of continuous begetting.  That begetting is still going on, – what Bergson called Creative Evolution.   “I sent them into differentiation”.  That is also a principle, not one of our principles.  Multiplication, shaping and re-shaping, producing and reproducing, building forms and new forms, and new combinations of parents.  It is said that one aids the processes of evolution most by continuing to differentiate.  Or, to cease to differentiate is to cease developing: to remain the same, is to die.  Or, to beget is to become different.  In becoming different we are combining various parents.

The First Mother is all essence of experience, which is Wisdom.  But not our experience: the experience of divine and celestial processes of previous Cosmic Days.  All that is Mother.  All that is ready to receive the Seed, the Will, to again produce.  This is the female Womb, which receives the Breath, and is therefore with the Breath — the First Mother with the First Father.

These are the First Parents, – parents of all the Aeons to be.  And from these First Parents was produced the First Son.  And the Son, the Will in Action of the Father, again draws on Wisdom, and there appears the first Pattern of the relationship of the Son with the Mother – that mystery that brings even the physical relation of son to mother closer than for children of the other sex.

The active Principle also on the next octave draws on Wisdom, and continues to differentiate.  That is the side of Creation, or Manifestation that is rarely observed, or considered, and still more, little understood: the sacred science of Cosmic Engineers.  They bring together the processes which, set into action, produce in series of generations; and, as the generations continue, permit of ever greater permutations.  So that differentiation continues.

Fill in another octave: From the First Son cohabiting with Wisdom, the First Mother, through all the stages of the Breath and regions, these Principles work.  But we shall pick them up again at a region closer to ourselves:  At the point of the Spirit Plane, which as Mother, known as the Holy Spirit in the Christian tradition, is the female principle brooding over the human souls, – over the earth, – over all those stages that belong to mankind.

With it is associated the male Principle, the Logos; and in and through the Christian tradition, known as Jesus the Christ; but known as the Logos, Holy Spirit, Brooding of Wings, Word, in the other traditions.

So here the world of Spirit appears as Mother, and the Will of the Larger Worlds, coming down through Teachers – the Logos made manifest through them — is again the male, the sperm that affects the life of humans in earth.

Another gap: Gender is called sex physiologically, and we know that this thing, gender, in reference to bodies is extraordinarily powerful, bending men and women to its dynamic until they have learned something of its power, and how to manage it.  By this, we may conceive how powerful is this great Principle on other levels.  Our life is filled with it.  It seems almost as if it were the leitmotif in human life, the romance motif in the picture.  All the arts except architecture succumb to a large degree to Gender.  Manybelieve it the fundamental principle of life,- around which life revolves, – that builds the home, – children . . . .

Sex is the humblest form of Gender, not its exponent.

Story of Leda and the Swan.  Offspring Castor and Pollux; also Helen of Troy.  This is not the manifestation of the sex principle by a Greek god, but is the process of differentiation through the continuous work of the Principle of Gender. For Leda is night, darkness, earth; and Jupiter is the will of heaven, – not the great God but one – not the One — that, working upon the earth, produces some of the lowest spawn, and also Helen, the Beauty of Spirit.  Also produces the Twins, Castor and Pollux, – one turned one way and the other the other way, who are the pattern for all mankind.

This story is an illustration of the Principle of Gender, as it appears in the myth, or Wisdom-lore of the various races: the Principle of Gender, allegorized in myths, and often distorted.

All the Principles are dynamic, but none is as productive of differentiation as this of Gender.  But man knows almost nothing of the Principle of Gender, except as its manifestation through sex.  It is apparently one of the last he is going to learn to use, and eventually to master.

I am speaking of the process of continuous differentiation, which is essential in the evolution of the soul; and which therefore man must employ in order to beget his higher selfhood.  All higher selfhood is a series of begetting; (and the “life more abundant” or, in analogous phrases from any other phase of Wisdom-lore, is due to the either accidental, or, later) purposive mating of the two aspects, the parents.

All things are so contrived that in them resides the nucleus of both aspects of Gender. (Wisdom is seen as masculine in the Kabala and Intelligence is seen as the female Principle.  In most traditions Wisdom is feminine.)  It is the combining of the two within man himself that leads to his higher begetting.  He becomes his own parents until, at a later stage, he becomes one of his parents, – against the completion of the lower stage.  First the development.  When he becomes one, he has become soul, – the feminine side; and that is wholly passive to the Larger, Spirit, which is then masculine.

The old concept of man is that he is masculine-feminine; and the concept corresponding to that is that man shall be masculine-feminine.  In the first, he is so potentially.  In the second, he is so in fullness of stature.

In the Adam-Kadmon figure, before the separation of the two sides in the Garden of Eden story, the two aspects of man were together.  This does not mean sex and the production of bodies, but mind and psyche.  That which works is masculine; that which changes, produces, is feminine.

One of the great old symbols of the masculine power is the serpent.  Its starkness, simpleness in form, has been associated with the Logos.  It is the symbol of the Logoi, and the serpent is invariably the glyph, or symbol, of all great Teachers.

This same great pattern, the serpent, in the old allegory of Genesis stimulates Eve to take the apple.  The serpent is the masculine force, the masculine intelligence, drawing upon the psyche, to stimulate it into action — to draw it down into the planes where it can grow — to bring it down into earth.

When that psyche has become activated it, in turn, acts upon itself, its body; and that is red Adam, – the first Adam, in the flesh.  So there Eve is masculine, though she was first feminine.  In you too is that potentiality, and has taken place over and over again: the interrelation of the aspects of Gender, male and female.

When you are stimulated to something, – perhaps by a lecture of MBM’s, that is the male Principle activating you, if it brings you into action.  You produce action.  Your mind has become active, – is carrying on the generation; and is bringing about changes in your life.  To some extent we do it many times a day, but we do not know what we are doing, nor how to protect ourselves from undesirable semen.  Nor how to carry on with the germ that we have received and produce that which is of the parentage that we choose to have.

Eugenics of the body is the smallest part we need to learn.  We need to learn the eugenics of the psyche and the mind, the soul and the body.  There are always impressions upon you.  They are doing something to you.  You produce thoughts, states of mind, acts — all of which are spawn, – something of the lower type that is bound to come about in you, as Jupiter cohabits with Leda, and produced, not only Helen and the Twins — the higher and lower self — but also all manner of lesser type.

The Principle of Gender is of great importance in our ascent.  We need to know how to receive seed, – to ourselves be seed, – and how to produce….. Science and art….Selective…. and protective.  And it is the way of differentiation to the larger stature, toward which all mankind is slowly growing, but in consciousness is willfully choosing to move.

On the negative side: the prostitute, the harlot.  The other is the sin of Onan, the spilling of the seed.  These are allegories of the negative side.  For the prostitute is the one who does nothing with the seed that is received; and Onan is he who is careless of the seed.  These are mystical, not literal, references.  Ignorance about onanism.  But nature is full of it.  Man may not, for man is above nature, and selects.

Man, who is mind, is to learn to manage, – to give, as it were, name and power to all things through himself.  He therefore learns to work with his powers.  He adds an octave above nature.  He limits the dandelion seed when he can, and others, and scatters those he prefers.  But the allegory is to that power in man himself which is not to be carelessly wasted; which is not to receive and not produce; but which, having received, and having approved of the receiving, shall produce.

In the regions beyond there is no sex.  You may take with you your sexness, and be involved in sex desire; and to that extent you will find sex when you are out of the flesh, because you are carrying with you the roused appetites.  But in that region itself there is no sex.  Because bodies do not need to be reproduced in that way.  That is not the way shaping takes place, but shaping, or building, or producing, takes place through your desire, and later through your thought.  And you learn, little by little, to make your thoughts male; and to let the others receive that thought and shape themselves to what has been your will.

You will generate on other planes.  You will not reproduce by sex.  So the problems of sex, annoying as in earth, fall away, and are not of paramount importance.

And as one understands the larger patterns of sex, sex too begins to take its place.

The process of being yourself parents: plural.  In the first place, cease identifying yourself with the body you are wearing.  In the psyche and the mind are resident the powers of both male and female, – not once, but in a hundred different cases.

Through desire, unguided, the masculine power slips out on you.  You spill your seed and you produce many things you don’t like, -situations, – because you have let your feeling out.  Or, subjective fears, because you have let your feelings in.  But, as the mind takes hold, comes into the position of strength and leadership in your household, that spilling of the seed is eliminated.  The being the prostitute is eliminated.

For you have been the recipient of the stimulus of a thousand male influences every day.  But you will remedy that by being selective, until, little by little, you are receptive only to one type, or one genealogy.  That is what is meant by being of one genealogy, – one tree, one line.  Until those things that you receive are all in line with what, in your intelligence, you have chosen to reproduce, or to be the parents of.

Have you chosen anything to be the parents of?  You yourself, in your selfhood, – in your possession of the Principle of Gender.  And as you perceive what sort of children you would bring forth you can practice eugenics — that is, selective parenthood.

You can begin to combine the will in you, or the determination, and the circumstances, and shape those circumstances to produce something new that you desire.  That is a practice of parenthood.

Another practice of parenthood is the relation between the conscious and the subconscious mind.  In the last step of the science of meditation you are practicing parenthood.  You have shifted gender, so that the subconscious mind shall become masculine and your conscious mind shall become feminine.  That is the practice of parenthood.

You cannot practice parenthood in this way without knowledge and training.  It is not as with a body, feminine or masculine.  In these things you control the parents.  Your intelligence is that part of you which stands above a process, – which begins to know and appreciate what you verily are, and combines all these things.

This kind of practice of parenthood is what evolves the man to the Son of Man.  Because he becomes parents over and over again.  It is this that makes you find “life more abundant”.  Now you can go about it in the messy, sloppy way of the prostitute, and you never get very far.  Potluck, laissez-faire, and taking such as comes along, and shaping that a little; or saying “I can’t help it; there it is.”  That is the prostitute.

Or, you can begin to understand that mind is a realm between nature and the gods; and that in no other way can that gap be bridged than by the due and full exercise of mind, to man’s own salvation.

Man shall practice this because he is like the gods.  He possesses the male and female.  He is potentially Hermaphrodite: the cupbearer to the gods, – mind that appreciates and overlays spirit, Nous, the Divine Worlds.  That is Hermes.

Aphrodite, the foam-born, – love born out of the experience. . . .

That is the Hermaphrodite, – that is the fullness in you that makes you eventually the Son of Man.  That is in the Greek.  Every tradition uses its own words to describe this balancing of the two sides of the Principle of Gender, which makes man, when he makes his cosmos an ordered world, so that it is like the great world that has been ordered – that is the lesson and the job that has been given to him, – and the doing of this job via the practice of the cosmic engineers.  And from them we may learn.

It is therefore their same technique, in sacred ways, that you and I have to use to accomplish these changes.

This force of Gender, being so strong, so dynamic, – being seen as the ideal of achievement (is) why symbolically speaking, the serpent has been so great a symbol.  For always it is the economic path of the male will — the divine will originally — and now the male will in us.  If seen only as sex, a distortion of the secret Teaching.

Juxtaposition of the two aspects in himself, the closer was he to producing the higher states in himself.  The ankh cross: mystically, it is the secret of the Larger Life.

It is a long way to conquer sex of physical bodies and to apply the Principle of Gender in different regions of being, until we find (in?) ourselves the actual processes of regeneration.

Regeneration is nothing more or less than the scientific practice of this Principle, within each individual being.  Once this is understood, so many of the occult stories, the strange tales of the old days, become illuminated.

That is the Hermaphrodite; that is the fullness in you that makes you eventually the Son of Man.  That is in the Greek.  Every tradition uses its own words to describe this balancing of the two sides of the Principle of Gender.  This brings what is known as “life more abundant”, in the words of Jesus.

You have reproduced yourself by regeneration.  And regeneration is nothing but the enlightened use of this Principle.  The perfect symbolic illustration of that is in the Egyptian symbol of what is known as the “key of life”, the Ankh cross, in which the feminine and the masculine are in constant juxtaposition.

To keep the masculine and the feminine in constant juxtaposition, in occult ways, is to have won the key of life.  To that end everything you can learn that is veridical of this Principle, is of paramount importance.

Ponder in special ways on this Principle.  Don’t leave the others out, or this would not contribute.  But ponder especially on this Principle.

Essence of this Principle: The sacred power of life-death and re-creation.  A vision of the Hermaphrodite of God.

 

For discussion, if time.

There is nothing new produced with any other Principle.  But with the Principle of Gender arises a third, the new element, and that new element is the desired factor, the new generation.  Illustration: the X-rays produced at the cathode end of the Crookes tube.

If one can relate these masculine and feminine elements on the various planes to begetting on the plane to which they belong, new life arises — Principle of Correspondence.

There is new life when there is a relationship between one plane and the next.  So again, the old Gnostic saying: “There is a commingling which leads to death and a commingling which leads to life.”

As you operate the Principles you become like a god.  The way of birth, death and rebirth is in this Principle.  No man can ascend except by the use of this Principle — a special kind of ladder.  The holy, or whole-making family is father, mother and child.  Only with that Principle do you ascend, octave by octave.

GB notes

The Seven Principles

(Operative Life Principles)

Gender

(from tape recordings of MBM Tues. morning series, Feb. 1952)

A phrase for the Principle of Rhythm: the heartbeat of the Universe.

Causation: the nerve fibers of the Universe.

Polarity: the hidden measurement of all things.  All things are measured, not only physical things.  There are some poles between which there is a rhythm but others between which there is no rhythm.

Each Principle is independent.  All act simultaneously.

Principles do not work from below up.  This world is not the first product, nor the end product, but a by-product somewhere along the line of the operation of the Principles.

If you wish to get content go far back into beginnings.

Re polarity: If you identify yourself at any time with one opposite, one conclusion, you have lost balance and vision, and lost contact with reality as it is.  On the one hand you must see your body as a by-product that is not of any real importance at all in the processes of life but, on the other hand, the opposite also is true; that, for you as a monad in evolution, this body is of primary importance.

Gender means two factors which, in the physical world, you call masculine and feminine.  Masculine and feminine are not opposites.  That is, not polarity.  Masculine and feminine as two supplementary factors that carry with them the power to engender, or generate, or regenerate, that it the real essence of this great Principle.  The feminine has the capacity to do something, and change that which it has received.  There is no significance in the relationship unless something occurs to the semen that has been received.  Not just receptivity.  Change to a new unit of life.

Chaos, or the Void, or the Darkness, in Genesis.  Symbols of the feminine Principle.

In every religion except the Hebraic-Christian you will find the two acting together.  Not as two poles, but one on the other.  A dynamic mingling has (or as) the capacity for generating new forms.  But not physical forms, except most incidentally.

The Chinese Yang and Yin  (Yin-Yang).  The two figures operating on each other are the necessity for the processes of Creation.

From far back these two have been known as the Great Parents; translated downward for the ears of materialist man.  Another phrase: The Divine Syzygy.  A complementary, supplementary relationship.  Acting and reacting, so that new forms are developed.  On stages of life that are intangible.

Logos  The Word is the masculine power.  And what, in the minds of the Church is the female side?  The Church.  The idea being that the Word fructifies the Church and transforms the Church — regenerates it into a new state of being.

Hermes, Thoth, Nebo (Babylonian).  A force that is continually operating.

? misunderstood its meaning and gave license to more or less continual sex relationship.  Which has nothing to do with it.  Man has made such funny blunders with his physical until he has gotten his sex impulse so swollen that they are monstrosities; and they think it the real thing.  It should be just a normal small thing.  What we call sex is an incidental, or the humblest expression of this Principle in our lives.

As science has penetrated the veils of matter they have discovered the positive and negative poles, even in the atoms.  William Crookes, who discovered that the manifestation of the ray, X-ray, was at the negative pole.  Name changed to cathode and anode.  It is at the feminine pole that the manifestation takes place – the manifestation of the change takes place.

Correction of some of the ideas: Spilling of the seed.  Considered a sin among the Jews.  What does it really mean?  Parable of the sower who went forth to sow: to sow the Teachings.  That is the semen.  And the seed falls on different kinds of ground.  Only one kind of ground where it is productive.

It is far more difficult to be productive in other planes than it is on the physical.  On the physical you haven’t a thing to do with it.  Nature runs you; you don’t run nature.  And if you bypass the planting of seed, or doing something with the seed, then, on the planes that count — there is little concern about the lower planes in the physical – there is no result.

People think that anything that begins to grow is important.  And many religions, old as well as modern, have strong taboos on this ground.  The humor, and bitter irony, of it is that their allegedly spiritual leaders are degrading the Teachings down to the material level.  The syzygy about which life in its stages of regeneration really occurs is that of the upward movement, not of the reproduction of bodies.

Actually, this Principle is the means of man’s ascent, or transformation.  If there is no such thing as regeneration, or rebirth, there is no such thing as growth, or development, or the ascent.

This power was set in operation in the very beginning of things, in the House of the Most High, the Absolute — part of the Warp.  Incidentally applied to all forms of life, including the atom.  And which humanity thinks of only on the physical level, and gets besmeared in so doing.  And so has missed the significance of this Principle altogether.

Apply this Principle to your daily life.  This Principle works from earliest childhood. Use the Principles.  Otherwise they reverse on themselves.  You have received the suggestion; the command, of anyone over you, that was your semen. And you were receptive.  You changed.  You received the word and you changed.  And that was the object of it.

Always that which is outside of you is the masculine.  There are many masculines, like many males around the queen bee.  It has nothing to do with the body.  It is for you to choose as your intelligence increases.  You are not to accept everybody’s word.  You have volition, or choice.  But unless there comes upon you something from the outside different from what you have — the skills (?) knowledge, understanding — you do not change.

Every one of us has children, – not physical.  You may have had stimuli which brought you into a state of despondency.  We have the responsibility of choosing what it is going on.  Advertising is masculine; and your eyes and your desires are feminine.  If something takes place you have a child – that is the child, the result.

This Principle can be used downwardly.  Then it uses you.  Cause and effect.  Because you are not yet conscious how to function.  And so you may have gone downhill.  It is just as possible to degenerate as to regenerate.  But the idea of regeneration, or the capacity to use this Principle for the ways of ascent, is inherent in its intention as the Warp.  It is peculiarly a kind of labor by which we can move upward.  Not when it uses you but when you begin to use it regeneratively.

The principle of ethics, from Gautama on.  When you use it it becomes a ladder; and the family that brings about the ascent is the birth of the son — one of the great mysteries of the Return.

Adam and Eve, a distorted version of the age-old version of the dual being, the potential.  And the potential, in order to operate, must become separated.  So Adam is split.  Like the two halves of a seed.  They are alike but as long as they are closed up (or close up) they cannot operate.  They must develop in order to contribute to the growth.  So the masculine and feminine develop.  The conclusion is the hermaphrodite — the perfected being, Hermes-Aphrodite.

To become “wise as a god” is to have used the Principle of Gander in its capacity to regenerate, up and up, until the perfected mind and heart.  They are the conclusion of this process that is starting with the two potentials.

There is too much emphasis in the Christian tradition on the Fatherhood of God.  Where is the Motherhood of God.  Mary (was) brought in later.  Because the Principle cannot be escaped.

Virgin Birth: no reference to bodies except in the Roman Catholic church.  The cycle runs from Eve to Mary.  Progress up to the state of Mary.  Milestones marking certain stages of regeneration, or the Ascent.

Mary, the fulfillment of what was potential in Eve.  And when Mary has the muscle, or learned how to use the capacity of regeneration, choosing (or chosen) the father, that which is Wisdom, then it accomplishes the transformation within itself, and that is the mystical, or occult, reference to the Virgin Birth.

It does talk from outside of you when it is the Word — Wisdom.  The god fructified so and so on earth (exoteric idea.)  The idea of something of a higher plane — the Jupiter motif, the Jehovah motif — fructifying man on earth (or man and earth) — the Light, the Word.  Then there is no objective body necessary in the process of regeneration.

Gender, the way of regeneration.

Great Operative Life Principles

 

Mind

MBM – May 20, 1937

Mainspring of them all.  The ALL is Mind.  From Mind proceeded all.  It seems as if the Principle could embrace everything.

Paradox: this Principle is actually the most difficult, though it seems the most simple.  We are of that All, and therefore mind.

Mind was before the Thrill.  Sustains all.  Continues.  This chair is not mind. Projected, or emanated, all things through Mind, and therefore all is mind.  But the flower is not therefore mind.  All things are not mind, but all things are from mind.  The Mind, embracing all things, conveys to them their primal being as derived from mind.

The Great Source has often been referred to as the Architect of All.  That Architect is Mind, MIND.  To separate it from other degrees of mind — the Mind derived from the first and second — Logos, Word.  In the old secret doctrines means Mind, before anything else.  The All-embracing power, the Mind.  That MIND projects everything else, as you could consciously project an image, – at will.  You are to follow the pattern of this Principle.

A projection of mind seems to be ephemeral.  Another paradox.  It is what should be (?) with a Principle stretched by contradictions.  If you could lift your mind above reason, to what in three-space would be contradiction, and in four-space has a consistent dimension.

The Great Mind projects, or images, – dreams the Universes.  Like when you begin to dream true.  This world and all the Universes seen as the Great Mind.  The Great Mind projects outward that which is within that Mind.  And all the planes of life to stretch out through them.  That is the dream of God.

But this dream precedes any orderly fashioning.  The great Architect, like those processes in earth, projects outward from the First Mind, to the Second, to the Third, who forms the world of sense, – begins to enclose the world of things with the Seven Rulers.  They are derived from One.

Great Mind has within it the pattern of all things: the great Geometrizer, because all things are built on number proportion, relationship — and that is the evidence to lesser minds of the Great Mind.

The Hierarchies play within that dream pattern of God.  Your dream lasts but a few moments, or half an hour, – the dream of God through millions, billions of years.

Subjective Exercises to get a new idea of the majesty of Cosmic things.  The Cosmic sustains the order on all planes.  In imaging a duality, if you imaged the cells…a special reason, etc. . . . Deity follows all these little processes everywhere.  In the etheric also, life and spheres to be sustained by Mind.

You, – what do you do with your mind?  Man is mind.  With that concept we have touched an electric thread of relationship with the Great Source, which is Mind.c For here are tiny particles, the only thing that makes you godlike – tiny particles of this power.

If God had stopped his dream for even a moment, how terrible would be our disorder.

How hard for man to become godlike!  So Deity holds within his dream all things, until you become Mind.

Mind, the most significant thing on which to work!  But by mind is meant not logic, reason, not our ordinary thinking.  For that, as tradition puts it, is simply the lower sheath, out of which, like a chrysalis, is released the butterfly — the mind in you.  The mind, which has capacities which the caterpillar has not, – the great prize for which men reach, – that goal towards which we move, to become godlike.

As we discover our speed, waywardness gradually makes order, not just on the surface.

Principle of Causation

GB notes on MBM lecture VI from series given in 1937

Wisdom-lore says everything has a cause.  Every cause is followed by an effect.  Fewer causes….culminate in a point to the First Cause.  Unity as the origin of diversity.

First Cause: ONE.  Sometimes called Will; Love; God; Allah.

Other secondary causes following it through to our lower world.  The Thrill, the first Cause of Life in the New Day: beginning in manifestation with that Thrill through the slumbering heart of the Nought.

Stages: First God as First Cause, who brought forth the First Son.  The Will.  The Will with the Mother, that mystic Nought; that second Son and Mother bringing forth the next parents; that being, in most occult Teachings the Mind that brought forth Creation.

The third octave down in Causation, which, in most of the occult Teachings is the Cause of Creation.  That Mind, the third Mind, or the third octave down, in turn produced the Seven Rulers.  There is another Cause, or series of causes.

So, through this third Will, as now the Creative Cause, with the Seven Rulers, all that man can conceive was set into action — by Cause and Effect.  Impacts of Causation running like nerve fibers through all that was created.

Organization, balance — that kinship deepens.  Causation establishes kinship, consanguinity.  Except for your nerves, your body, with all its parts, could not be related.  Causes run along on them and make of this body of yours a living organism.   Nerve filaments in higher space, – causing effects.  And every effect, in turn, a cause, rolling on outward, in a series of causation, to the very periphery of the things that are.  Everything produced has a cause and is therefore lawful.

All that science is doing is building up on this sequence of cause and effect.  Man now considers how to avoid effects he does not like, and multiply those he does like.  Plan causes for good effects.  Many causes to be accomplished in making a journey.  Causes of economic effects of today now completely known, only partially known, out of all impinging causes which produced those effects.  Can’t control effects because he can’t manipulate causes.

Wherever and whenever you can manipulate causes you may accomplish effects.  Where the desired effects can’t be reached by you, or your colleagues you can’t bring about the desired results.  And how much pain and despondency could be prevented if that were realized.

Absolute causation reigned in the world of science till 1927.  With Eddington and Jeans, Hofdring and others has come about a questioning of causation.  They have made a valuable contribution in attempting to overthrow causation.  They find that there are flukes, – when the whole set of well planned and carefully considered causations do not bring the desired result.  Once in a million times water will not boil at the proper boiling point., etc.

This is really a forward step.  Because it marks the more careful observation which knows that things do not always occur as per se they should, and therefore are opening the door to what will come a little later — the observation and admission that there are other spheres, or planes, of causation than those of the third dimensional world.  Man in science is working almost exclusively with causation in the third dimensional world —and at the opposite rung of the ladder to the First Cause.

Your personality is the effects of previous causes: the way you walk, the way you speak, your moods, your mannerisms, your inflections of voice, your gestures.  Those are end products.

Fate is uninterrupted cause and effect.  But man has intelligence, mind.  He has already, in the world about him, interrupted causes and prevented effects, because he has learned by observation that certain effects are desirable and others not — but never to even the smallest percentage of your capacity.

Therein lies the value of a real understanding of this Principle — to interrupt fate, to cause – to do it on the upward path of progression: the movement of mind in control of causation on man, not on some business, or clothing, or gesture, but on the living stuff of eternal values.

Here we begin to deal with relative intangibles.  But the path of introduction to this intangible world of cause and effect has already been laid out by psychiatry, psychoanalysis, on the within side of it — discovering that conditions of heart and mind are also end products, –  are also still on this cross-section — and that we can, by interrupting those sequences, even untangle the filaments of causation which lie below the threshold of awareness, and set out a new pattern of causation.

Happy is he who begins really to sense that — and puts it to work on the only spheres that deserve it.  The things of this world are good enough to work on, but they seem to me like the practice ground – that the only real place where it is worthy to put man’s strength, thought, effort, is on those that are of permanent reality — that have duration.

So it is not enough to correct our difficulties, our personality traits, but to begin to see how we can manipulate causes to give the desired effects on permanent things.  That is the real work of man.

Teleology: the great end toward which things move, which “load the dice”, – constrain mankind to learn, little by little, that certain things have only transient value, but that there are things of permanent value, and should have the best of you, not the dribbles.  After you are through with temporary things.

Chance.  Is there such a thing as chance?  No.  Principle of causation.  If you throw a coin a million times, cause 500,000 heads. and 500,000 tails, the average levels it: our-first step to a study of chance.  But chance is only our way of saying that we do not know all causes and can’t manipulate them.  An apparent accident follows the causes that belong to it.

Fate?  Yes: Fate the admission that there are innumerable threads of causation over which man has no control, because he does know them.  And even if he knew all of them he could not.  For instance, we have a well developed system of weather prophecy.  In humble and in solemn (?) ways we are able to prophesy.  But the sun may have a burst of sunspots, larger and more violent than eleven years ago.  That has happened.  And so the sequence, without that larger factor, is disturbed.

So man’s sequence is often shaken up.  So it may presently, as a few of the physicists have said: We no longer believe in an absolute sequence of cause and effect.  They are speaking of the physical world.  And they are right.  Because we are not living in a closed physical world.  There are influences of other planes. other worlds, impinging upon us.

By what set of circumstances could you bring about the phenomena that take place in a seance room?  The cause and effect of a three-dimensional world is disturbed by the hooking in of another plane.

Possession is another illustration.  And all the phenomena that belong to the realm of metaphysics are causes of the flukes which the scientist, working on cause and effect in a three-dimensional world, is discovering sometimes do not work in a sequence which the three-dimensional world allows, – leads him to anticipate.  Because a hooking in from another plane has.interrupted.

If you know something of the sun as it is, not as it looks to your eyes, you would not be surprised.  If you know what the sun is as a force, you would not be amazed at the interruptions of mere weather.

The world, through science, is just beginning to recognize.a higher realm of causation.  But haven’t we heard other things that would make us believe that is not wholly new? From the time that men placated a divinity, prayed, offered sacrifice, masses in the church, the very best of such behavior has been to take into account that something beyond thin physical world — causation of another kind – would take place, and interfere with this.

Prayer:  You pray for help, and you are really praying for an interruption of physical world causation.  Miracles of healing.  Carrel, and others.  Fate interrupted.

That is just a beginning.  Your thought has in it the embryonic force of causation, – not only because you convey meanings to others but because thought itself is a nerve filament, or rather, a system of nerve filaments.  Because your feelings are nerve filaments.  Because all that you have done via causation on this side of things is the promissory note of what you reap here.  As you sow, so will you reap; but not in the physical world, but in this overlapping of several worlds and planes.  Beyond the physical; beyond the personality.

All that you have felt and not externalized is visible in these nerve filaments.  Try to see it.  Maybe the things you didn’t say, – or did say, have acted in that horrible magic of the voice over the radio — one voice and 50,000 listeners.  Every hour of the day what you are is speaking, without voice or with voice, with look, with act.  What set of effects is it establishing?  Where do you want to interrupt causation in yourself and your environment?  What don’t you like?  Are you a little shocked to realize, and then terribly shocked to appreciate what you have set in motion — the little word here, – the friendly gesture too.  It rings down the corridors of that person’s life, and over here.  The careless word….

Let us have eyes tonight to see this luminous web that binds everything into kinship.  Here in this house, what threads of causation are you ripping, and what are you saying.  Because we are a cross-section.  The real interrupted causation is what you do to interrupt it.  How do you propose to interrupt causation in this cross-section we have made tonight?

The familiar idea of karma is just cause and effect in reference to the soul.  The soul means, in this regard, that it is the receptacle in which is poured everything you do, – all that you are.  The power of soul is not whether you are rich or poor, but the quality of your being.  That is your karma — whether you have power or whether you are weak, – whether you are wise or blind.  That is your karma.

It is heartening that this Principle, perhaps of all Principles, is the place where we can best take hold and begin, by causing here and there, the effects that we want.  And that is our destiny — to accomplish upon ourselves this endless progressive miracle of unfoldment.

So this Principle, Causation, is something precious to you.  You can take hold of it better than any other Principle.  Use causation upon those things that are well worth it — ourselves.

12/11/71

There are actually more than seven Principles.  The Principle of Proportion should be included and was included in the 1951 series by MBM which was not attended by Gertrude Borchard (GB).  These notes were taken by Henrietta Peterson and may not be correct in all respects.  Yet they seem to be the only ones available on Proportion, beauty, etc.

     GB

PROPORTION

Lecture by MBM

notes by Henrietta Peterson

Nov. 20, 1951

Instrument of diversity, function, of beauty.  Could be no evolution without this principle.  Beware of any teaching that does not make sense.  But be sure your mind is not loaded with prejudice or habit.

 — a vision of evolution at work –

Non-differentiation: chaos, etc.  Prima materia of creation.  Differentiation has not yet set in.  Differentiation means proportion.

Astro-physicist – operative – nature of stars.  How do they begin? Birth of star.  Indicated 93% hydrogen, little helium, nitrogen, oxygen.

Prima materia of physical worlds change measured by proportion.  We can measure proportion of modern researchers of skies and ancient wise men.

Not measure all matter but all matter than has dropped into our wave frequencies. Scientists measure.

We see prima materia and all things begin as a likeness and move toward diversity.

Nature of atom is changed by proportion.  In everything we see PROPORTION

When proportion is changed, diversity.  Without it no diversity.  All the selectivity of thousands of years has gone into the making of your body.

Then we see the role that FUNCTION PLAYS.  You will have to see that some intelligence has changed these proportions to meet the functional needs.

All development is the story of this principle.  Not that other principles were not functioning but see the dominence of PROPORTION.

FUNCTION.  “Survival of fittest” in animals, etc.  We see a gigantic workshop, a tremendous drama.

Man discovered way back that he could do something about proportion.  Now he has worked down from mass change to the atomic change.  He has worked from large to the small.  He can change atomic structure at will.

You buy garments 50% wool, 50% nylon, etc.  So you choose.  You do something in regard to food, etc.  Every recipe, formula, prescription is proportion.  Everything you buy that is man made is proportion – your house, etc.  Same with a budget.  You do it with your day.  If you plan your day.  If you don’t plan and don’t know why you are doing what you do, woe unto you.  Your day is your playground.

Let’s go back to beginnings.  You will see two things:

     1) All we have discussed is taking place in the physical world.

     2) It is as though humanity had gradually learned to do something, get into lab and make changes.  But also in physical world.

In stories of cosmogonies, if brief or lengthy, sooner or later it speaks of four elements, the cross of matter, the four sides of even lengthened lines.  Here astro-physics will not go with us because they are only concerned with physical.

We include substance on any plane.  Cosmogonies say other forms of life than physical. There are other forms of life such as animal kingdom, begins to share – mineral world – are physical matter.  They have absorbed 99% of the attention of humanity.

But the desire world – often called psychic world

     fire

     air

These too have a great story in proportion.

Habits of material world are very strong.  How do you climb a mountain or staircase?  It was physical.  But you made effort against the downward pull.  If you are in habit of climbing stairs it is easier.  Same in other planes.

In constitution of your own make-up proportion plays a part.  Too emotional?  Too much water?  If too much resentment has been built up the psychologist will have to help you to get rid of resentment and reduce the amount of it, change the proportion.

The proportion in you has been brought about by natural law or you have tried to follow an ethical system.  Ethical system never changes the proportion.  Represses – only changes the outward expression of it.  Ethical systems temporary stop-gaps but not change proportion.

Marshall plan: Note how it is attempting to change proportion.  A re-allotting of where there has been less to more.

Reforestation, etc.

Morals and ethics are intended as a restraint upon those who are not able to restrain themselves consciously.

We can perceive holding in check is not changing proportion, only repressing.

Above morals and ethics – beginning of mind to see what is good.  Move toward a new vision of beauty.  Woven of satisfying proportion.  As we change our scale.  What we consider as beauty will change, too.

These lectures in awe and wonder, can change proportion.

We are potential operator not only in our own personal laboratory, but also that in regard to that of our environment.

What you say, your gestures, your acts, kindliness, forbearance, enthusiasm, sharing, all are proportion.

Most folk function just naturally.  That is undesirable.  We go through 3 stages:

1) Natural – raw material, our prima materia

2) Check-up.  What is effect of what you do, letter you write.

   Here is your laboratory. (Most thinking isn’t thinking but is repeating.)

3) Result after correction.  Skill.

Environment is also a conglomerate, is out of proportion.  Maybe you should leave home.

Your work with principles comes closest to have with this one, evolution or devolution.  Your own being is your laboratory.

Instrument of diversity – function and beauty.

You’ve been studying, makes you set to correct, (as vocal training) after the freedom of result.

Good service changes to a degree but doesn’t go very deep.  Changing of personality only changing 1/8 of self.  Doesn’t change 7/8 below.

Useful and good we have morals and ethics.  They are preliminary.  Graded like school grades.  In higher grades you view life differently.

All service is fine but not the end of it.

Everyone sees beauty in his own way and his way shows his proportion.  Plato, Plotinus showed that.

Why emphasize beauty?  Begin with physical world and follow-through.

Bookcover tangible to eye.  Beauty different than happiness.  Happiness is man’s reaction to a proportion in himself.

Causation

The following six lines from the Hymn of the Robe of Glory:

From the East our home, my Parents

Forth-sent me with journey-provision.

Indeed, from the wealth of our Treasure

They bound up for me a load.

Large was it, yet was it so light

That all alone I could bear it.

The Hymn of the Robe of Glory describes the enwrapping of powers, -therefore causes, – in the light seed, or light spark, as it descends from the Cosmic stages down into the physical.

Every cause has its effect; but the effect is not immediate.  It belongs perhaps to a much later stage, for Cosmic processes are patient.  Down in our earthly levels, in time, we await effects quickly, because we are impatient.  In regions where Time is not, effects are awaited in patience.

Our poem describes certain powers — therefore hidden causes – which are enwrapped.  They are in code.  The writer says that that which is enwrapped is small, yet great — gold, silver, precious stones, etc.  All are causes which are enwrapped; and every cause has its effect somewhere.  You may have bulbs in your cellar which you have stored for years.  The cause, which is the power of producing a plant, is there; the effect awaits condition.  You will see then that causes are not to be associated with presence;  maybe in cases of human activity, but in other regions, not so.  Even in earth there may be a variety of agencies, which we may call causes; and every cause has its effect.  In this brief bit from the Hymn, the causes are potential, enwrapped — described in mystical language.

The full dynamic of that Cause, thrust into man, is not revealed, or revealable, in.this dimension.  It requires functions, faculties which are not possessed in this dimension.  Only in proportion as man transcends this dimension does he come to know any of these things, though he may hear them intellectually.

The further Cause operates from the initial impulse, and comes thus into regions, spreading out fan-like, as it were, where stuffs meet its impact, – so Cause becomes effects.  Thus that fan-like radiation of Cause leading to effects presses outward through the various planes into this outermost one, in which we are at present – the earth, humanity.  Where Cause is shot up into a large number of causes.

To anyone who studies, there is apparent a fine relationship between cause and effect, effect and cause.  One may observe the procession either way; inductive-deductive, ascent-descent.  And to the one whose mind is appreciative, that fine relation becomes an indication of something — an indication of an orderly procession.  And that orderly procession, that sequence which in its ultimate nature is unalterable, becomes a kind of ordered Pattern, in which the whole world and its process are seen. . . . Through it man can harness the forces which are operating.  Through it the mind works upon the natural law, the realm of nature.

Man, being suspended between earth and heaven, that is capable of operating in the region between, through the use of his mind – learning to use the principle of cause and effect in operation, may bring about in himself the effects which he chooses, by using right causes.  He knows that humanity has long been doing just that very thing in the objective world, getting the effects that it wants by controlling the series of causes that bring about the desired effects, whether in building, business or other things – because they know the effects they desire.

Karma is causation set into effect over lives, via heritage.  You have made yourself what you are, or let yourself be made what you are, – by not having control of causes.  When you succumb to this or that situation of family, or circumstances.  You saw it as pleasant, or unpleasant – react on the basis of pleasant or unpleasant.  Early reactions are in terms of feelings.

As you go further, you see into the shining web, and see what it means, and begin to produce the causes that you know will give ideal effects.  You see it in the objective world — elimination of slums, education.

And destiny: the humanly long-range of producing causes for which we want effects.

The substance over which you are given opportunity: body, psyche, mind — the workshop.  What are you after?  There is nothing that you want that you can’t have if you will set the motion for it.  You have no idea of the power you have if you lay hold of Causation.  Maybe counter-causation.

Re Great Mind , fragments

from different series.

Mind not exactly a Principle.  Rather, it is the mainspring of them all.  All is Mind.  From Mind proceeds all.  It seems as if the Principle could embrace everything.  We are of that All, and therefore mind – in evolution.

Mind, in activity, the essence of all Manifestation — the categorizing, organizing, of Manifestation itself.  All through the Will.  Mind far above Gender.

All things are not Mind, but all things are from Mind.  This table is not mind, but mind projected it.  All things are projected, or emanated, through mind.

Great Mind sustains All.  Continues.  Placed earth and galaxies.

The Great Source has often been referred to as the Architect of All.  That Architect is MIND.  Degrees of Mind, derived from the Great Mind.   The Logos derived.  The Mind projects everything else, as you could consciously project an image, – at will.  (Weare to follow the pattern of this Principle.)  In another tradition.

This world, and all the universes, are seen as the Great Mind.  The Great Mind projects outward that which is within that Mind, through all the planes.  That is the dream of Deity.  Image held.

 

This dream precedes any orderly fashioning.  The Great Architect, like those processes in earth, projects outward from the First Mind to the formative Mind, or Creative Mind, the world of sense, – begins to enclose the world of things with the Seven Rulers.  They are derived from the One – carry on the tradition of First Cause, the Creative Hierarchies.  Genealogical tree of Mind stock.

The Creative Hierarchies play within that dream pattern of Deity.  Our dreams last but a few moments, or half an hour — the dream of Deity through millions, billions, of years.

You, what do you do with your mind?  Man is mind.  Distinguishes.  With that concept we have touched an electric thread of relationship with the Great Source, which is Mind.  For here are tiny particles — the only thing that makes you godlike — tiny particles of this power.  We are to follow the pattern of this Principle.

How hard for man to become godlike!  So Deity holds within His dream all things, until you become Mind.

Mind is the most significant thing on which to work.  But by  Mind is meant, not logic, reason, nor our ordinary thinking.  For that, as tradition puts it, is simply the lower sheath, out of which, like a chrysalis, is released the butterfly — the mind in you.  The mind, which has capacities which the caterpillar has not – the great prize for which men reach, the goal toward which we move, to become godlike.  What about heart?  Mind the only thing we develop that is worthy of perminence.  It assimilate everything else.

 

Great Mind, Characteristics

When Mind creates, the Creation is Order — relationship between parts, in energy, in substance, in schemology.  Sequence is also in the word Order.  Moving from childhood to age, that is Order; the successive positions of the earth in its orbit around the sun. That Order shall never be confused.

The first law that man must obey in moving toward obedience to this Principle is that of Order.  Being a kindergartner, he starts outside.  Being evasive, he prefers ease to labor.  He tends to refrain from applying the same thing to himself.

Now, how has he ordered his world?  The outer world, where man touches it, where it impinges upon him, is ordered by man’s mind.  Bit by bit, it is man’s mind that conquers, – sometimes aided by the plow, later the tractor, earth-moving machinery in road building, – by many contrivances that, in turn, have been built up by mind: as though mind were used to equip man to order the outer world.  Everything by which we are surrounded is one or another type, or degree, of ordering by mind – sometimes lesser, sometimes greater.  Even the child, building with blocks, is ordering, according to the wee beginnings of his little mind, just breaking forth into this dimension.

Mind at work, ordering.  That is in the objective world, and much has been done to conquer it, to bring it within law – the law that is order – the first derivative of the work of operation of the Great Mind.

But you know that the challenge is to turn this back on the self, and that the other is merely a preliminary exercise of muscle, to order, later, the household of the self.  That is the heroic task from which man flinches — which he so gladly evades, and is so glad to be interrupted in.  It is so much harder to order the self than the objective world — even one behavior pattern – than to order your desk.  How much more difficult to control your thoughts than to arrange an orderly file of your papers!  To bring some wish within the ordering of your mind, – to send forth an activity of the mind to achieve something than to purchase an article!  But the article is less necessary than the journey of the mind to some goal of thought.

These lessons await your doing.  And man becomes like, in terms of microcosm and macrocosm, only as he understands the implication, and obeys the law.  Fundamentally the Microcosm, or nature of the soul, potentially, is as the nature of the Macrocosm in the Immensities.

Purpose:  Also implicit.  Mind does not act without purpose.  Purpose is a characteristic of the Great Mind, and the microcosm can be said to work likewise.  Purpose is a part of the great scheme of Manifestation, and vibration, polarity, correspondence, causation, are working within that Purpose.

There is no gesture of mind activity, no movement of mind going out to conquer even the frontier land, or order the dresser drawer, that has not in it, in order to be coherent — that has not in it purpose.  So, in that, man and the All-Father Mind must be alike.

Pattern.

There must be a pattern of procedure.  You must have some concept of the steps by which you would move,- the pattern of that which is to be accomplished.  That is different from purpose.

In all the great traditions, Deity, in beginning the Work sets up the Pattern, the Plan.  One must therefore have pattern in all that one does where mind is at work.  Pattern includes the particular pattern that is assigned to all forms in manifestation, – whether crystals, plants, animals, genera: that clumps of trees act in certain ways; that electricity always acts in certain ways.  That territory has been set up, localized in space.  Earth and water, fire and air, so that that which is water is never earth. Therefore everything acts according to its own nature, on all planes.

Ponder on what such a mind might be like – everything to have its place and to hold it.  The grasp of such a mind!  Working out for millions of years — and that it was all good!  No personal God.

Your mind is to follow, in the little sphere that has been given you, that same pattern of ordering, of procedure.  You have your raw material, your prima materia, which you have already brought up a stretch of the road.  Now you are growing more and more conscious of it.  You may set into operation, through your mind, that which is orderly, – which proceeds in sequence, which has pattern.  And which has duration.  Not points.  Sensitivities.

 

Endurance

That belongs to the mind.  Body and heart give out, – or give up.  They have not duration.  And duration is necessary to hold all these activities of the Seven in operation throughout the Cosmic Day.  Nothing but Mind could endure like that.

Endurance is perhaps the most difficult of the characteristics of Mind for man.  It is not so difficult to begin a thing, to have a certain amount of enthusiasm and interest; but to sustain it to the logical conclusion of the effort, obedient to the pattern and to the purpose which precedes the pattern, that is difficult.  Yet, without endurance to the logical conclusion of the purpose, the whole purpose might be said to have failed.

Let us throw that against the Cosmic Pattern.  Suppose Deity grew tired of sustaining, in Mind, in Cosmic Thought, the universe, or universes.  What would occur?  They would disintegrate, quite literally, as your images disintegrate when your thoughts are withdrawn from them.

So, if Deity should withdraw the power of Endurance from these apparently substantial element® of the phenomenal world, and the elements that sustain what, to us, are more tenuous planes, all would fly apart.  And the result would be that the efforts of all these ages, of two-thirds of the Cosmic Day, would be nil.

The Seven  from MBM series 1944, and 1931

In the Egyptian scriptures, the Book of the Coming Forth by Day: “Hail to the Seven Beings who make decrees.”

Proverbs VII:  “Wisdom hath builded herself a house, and it resteth on seven Pillars.”  The “house” is Manifestation, or it can be the Wisdom in you, if you achieve this and rest your structure on “seven Pillars” — microcosm and macrocosm.

The Seven are not exclusively the seven Principles.  The Principles are the mechanics, the mystical mechanics, the metaphysical mechanics; the technical way that comes out in the weaving of the Pattern.

The Seven are a composite, work together, operate simultaneously.  Many strands go into the making of the composite of the Pillars.  The seven Principles are not the whole of it.  But they are the ways of functioning on all levels — that is why I call them operative Principles.

In a Gnostic tradition: “The Seven Virgins of the Light.”

The Seven-ness is very basic to what belongs to our planet, and is our field of the universe.

Try to realize that these Seven are immense, and that it is not possible to see them in their fullness.  They have other faces.  (Faces of the cube that you cannot see.)

This Seven includes the Cosmos that sense perceives — that is, our senses, but that is not the full measure of things.  Humans cannot be the criteria of the universe.

The Seven are:  forces, beings, entities, groups, correspondingly illustrated in symbolism as Lamps, Powers, Rays, gates.

 

The Principles in general

The Principles lead us into Immensities.

From the Center or Source issue all things — the point of the beginning of the Cosmic Day.  The Principles are the tow-lines, or tow line, for they are really, one — which like the warp, run the whole length of all that belongs to Manifestation.  The laws cross the warp lines and make the different patterns which in the warp lines are identical.

This is your real magic carpet — the carpet of Wisdom.  You can see it in your mind’s eye as a tremendous runner, from here up to the Heights: the long threads the Principles, and the short threads the patterns that are unique to each plane.

The mind is the only thing we develop that is worthy of permanence.  It assimilates everything else.

All the Principles operate simultaneously; and you can’t get a clear understanding of any Principle without an understanding of the others.  If one appears to be stronger in effect than another, that is only because you are closer to one of its effects.  The Seven operate constantly.  They sustain the universe.  Fill out the whole gamut of the Cosmic.  Practical use to ponder on them.

Essences

Rhythm:  The heartbeat of the universe.  A vision of the moving bloodstream of Creation.

Polarity:  Hidden measurements for the stage of life.  A vision of the gauge of all things, great and small.

Correspondence:  Octaves of Higher Space; a vision of the 7-stringed lyre.

Vibration:  Index of Intensity and Quality: a vision of the attributes of livingness.

Gender:  The sacred power of life, Death and Re-Creation.  A vision of the Hermaphrodite of God.

Causation:  Nerve fibers of the Universe: a vision of the luminous web of relationship.

Mind:  Supreme Master of Creation and Evolution.  A vision of the Music-Master and the silent sound of His Will.

Notes of GB

not wholly verbatim

THE GREAT OPERATIVE LIFE PRINCIPLES

as given by MBM in April,1937

Polarity

(lecture II)

The engineer must have specifications.  Those are the measurement of the size and proportion of that which is to be achieved by him.  By giving specifications we are implying two opposites — top and bottom, left and right.  These are the humble analogy of the Principle we are to discuss tonight, – Polarity, the measure of all things, both great and small.

When the new Cosmic Day began the question was: How far should this Cosmic Day extend.  That is the invisible measurement, conceivable only in terms of ideas, but nevertheless as actual as the measure of right and left on the plan of the builder.  The gods deal with Polarity in the great worlds.  Yet, for the great worlds, and for all that man does, the Principle of Polarity is the measurement of all things.

This measurement always has two poles.  That is why it is called Polarity: East and West; North and South.  So obvious that it blinds us to the enormous content of this Principle.  As with the width of the house, so heaven and earth were decided upon as the depth, or breadth, of the stage for the Cosmic Day.  So tell all the cosmogonies — the stage for all that is stretched between those poles.  Somewhere between those two poles all the drama within the entire Cosmic Day takes place.

And there are other poles stretched out, in higher space.  In all these higher spaces extensions are measured out.

The cube is a symbol of the third dimension.  It gives us all the poles we have here. They are the measurement of the stage of earth, of things, of the phenomenal world.  But in the world of the gods there are many other extensions.  And these were set out to prepare the stage for this Cosmic Day.  All of those man cannot possibly know.  But he does know a few of them: heaven and earth; earth and air; fire and water, those are all opposites, – another extension.

Man and God, – looked at from man’s point of view: the stretch, the measurement of the Journey of man, from man to God.  The two poles.  And all that man does will occur from his man-ness to his godly stature.  Inside of this space is a11 that man shall do in that long Journey.

Our whole world seems to resolve itself into first one and then the other of the opposites.  Can you find a single thing that has substance which does not come within the category of this Principle: darkness and light; wet and dry; long and short; want and plenty — two poles measuring the extent of something else.  Our whole physical world is based on extension, – poles, – because one opposite is seen as the limitation of one side, as the other opposite is the limitation on the other.  (Even space may not have an end.  Because, with finite minds, we cannot conceive what comes after the end.)

There are other kinds of measurement beside these of physical things.  Unseeable, but .real, – such as the subconscious as a pole for the conscious: a measure, as it were, of tv/o extensions of man. That extension of consciousness is not linear, nor can you say that of the subconscious. ‘Stet they both have poles. They are opposites.  in terms of those two opposites they have duality.

And that duality is something we find in all forms of manifestation.  It is a discomfort, as we first recognize it. How did
this duality come about?  Man is a duality—not only conscious and subconscious, but a beast and a god.  He inherits all the proclivities of the body, which came up from lowly ancestors, and he has all the proclivities of the divine spark that came from the gods. These are the measurement of things of duality, and to man, who experiences them, they are frightfully perplexing.  You may not experience it, yet man extends in that fashion.

Castor and Pollux — earthly son and heavenly son.  Or, if you like, the steps from the personality to the individuality, Castor being the personality, Pollux the individuality.  The extension is not in terms of our space but in terms of higher space.  The push is outward (that is, from the old self, the little self) and measures your extension.  Those opposites are not filled in.  They quarrel.  You are a field for this duality, and suffer the pains.

Take such opposites as love and hate.  They are, as we know them, feelings.  They are extensions of one thing.  Love and hate are two opposites on one line, as, on the physical, are heat and cold.  Where does heat begin and cold stop?  It is a gradation from one into the other.  And love and hate are opposites – a duality of one thing.

Courage and fear — one thing, but poles apart.  Doubt and faith; elation, dejection; harmony, discord.  You will find a host of others in any good anonym book.  You may conclude that the world is just composed of illustrations of this Principle of Polarity.  Work and rest.  Exhilaration and fatigue; eagerness and apathy; birth and death.  All these are only the pairs of opposites for a certain section of the drama from the human to the god, – everything in the physical, emotional and mental world.

Quote from the Pistis Sophia: “The measure of her descent (the soul’s) is the measure of her ascent.”

Any thing, being a thing, will have poles, – all before the almost endless ways — to us indeed endless — in which the Creative Hierarchies stretched things.  And always the measure of the distance they stretched gave us the opposites,

To us something big, like heaven and earth.  Then we, being in earth, may see too much of earth for our pleasure, but still there is heaven, the other end, awaiting us.

Nirvana, the transcending of the pairs of opposites — that is what Nirvana is, occultly: the time, or the stage when the pairs of opposites which man experiences, have been transcended, and man is free of them.  Now man is stretched by them, as in a maze of rubber bands.  There is tension because of them, – suffering, pains.  Ambition and inertia; encouragement and discouragement; vitality and fatigue; hunger and surfeit; loving and loss of those loved.  Aren’t you all on the road from birth to death.  Innumerable rubber bands, with the poles stretched.

Sometimes it seems cruel that man should be thus torn asunder.  He has desire for this and that.  And as soon as he goes out with desire for a thing, one end is hooked in, and its opposite is yonder, and he is torn between those two points.  And love, from that angle, seems chiefly pain.

Hence, it is said in some of the old philosophies, that to free yourselves of these opposites is to find happiness.  But, as Krishna says: These things are inevitable in manifestation.  There is no need to bewail them.  They are inevitable by the very fact that stuffs are stretched out.  The minute you pull out anything from that dot, or point, it has opposites; it has poles.

The movement between the pairs of opposites belongs to Rhythm.  And we are now beginning to see the interrelationship of the Principles.  These movements between the opposites as in the seasons are nature’s — they cannot be changed.  They are in the hands of larger entities and influences than yours and mine.  But when it comes to a movement between poles of those things that relate to man, man can do something about it, – as with reference to darkness.

The rhythm of night was conquered by mind, and we have light.  It took a long, long time and many workers.  That is again of a visible world — a tangible pair of opposites.

By the same token, man can deal with worlds that are invisible, but not inexperiential.  For instance, you are angry, or you hate – two poles we don’t like.  We can move toward the other opposite.  So we begin to see another extraordinary point in reference to this Principle: that we can move around on this stage, – this stage of life which the pairs of opposites have stretched, not only in the phenomenal world but in the psychic and the lower mental.  We move on it, that stage, and our place is not arbitrarily set.  We may move on that stage.

We may move in many spaces simultaneously, altering our position.  We have altered our position in regard to the cold of the winter months, – in regard to drought and flood.  So we can alter our condition in these other spaces; and that is one of the reasons why even the beginning of a knowledge of these Principles is so amazing.

You cannot come by it quickly.  Just as we did not come to the comfort of this well heated room this day, but innumerable years and acts were necessary to bring about this comfort.  So, as that was relatively complicated, so this movement from hate, or anger, is not a single swift act, but a movement in the spaces of this stage, before you have gotten your proper place upon it.

Balanced in pleasure and pain.  (Gita)  Balanced in love and hate.  Why not balanced in love?  Because the early arrival at love is not love at all.

Ignorance to wisdom.  Time and eternity.  In time you rush; in eternity you are poised.

The world now is struggling between a number of opposites.  They always come out boldly in a period of transition.  War and peace.  But people don’t know what peace is.

A few more opposites: worry and tranquility; wealth and poverty; past and future; health and sickness; youth and age.  And you are all going through all of these.  Freedom and bondage; pride and humility; introvert, extravert.

We move not only in this space but in higher space.  Now this stage that is stretched out this way, of opposites, is the growing school, the training opportunity, for men, and other forms of life beside men, in which he shall have option.  He may move as he likes, relatively speaking.  Of course, his present act is determined by his previous acts, or by the acts of his environment.  Only exercising is learning.

The higher we move in that realm of learning the more we understand how to act upon that stage.  The “beatitudes” in the Gospels are full of opposites: “Blessed are ye when men shall hate ye for the son of man’s sake.”

Jesus an illustration of the “Son of Man” — not the only one, – the fruit of man, mind, or of the human evolution.  If, for that sake, the attaining of the other opposite, you are being reviled by those trying to block the way, don’t be concerned, – you will attain it.

“Love your enemies.”  The natural law is to hate.  The mind law, the next realm, which builds the bridge to heaven, moves to cancel this by thought.  Here is the word of a great leader to those who seemed to be fixed in one opposite.

When, in the course of your lives, you are experiencing one opposite, and you seem to be fixed, or held there, try to get every bit of the lesson you can from that point, but tear yourself loose from any fixation, to the fullest.  For it is yours to move onthat stage.  Not that it is wholly in your hands, – because no drama is one actor.  Let us learn the lesson of the one opposite we are in, that we do not become repeaters.

As for instance poverty.  Might be loneliness: If you are suffering these things for the Son of Man’s sake, because you are striving to the goal of godliness, – if you are hindered, – never mind: you are there, even though in the flesh you are not there.  The movement is in higher space.

Jesus (in the allegory) changed the water to fire, – soul to spirit.  Jesus’ whole life was a pattern of the opposites.

The opposites again as seen in the Lodge floor: An illustration, symbolically conceived, to imply the measurement of all things.  Let us get the vision into, and upon, the stage of life, and see it as this rectangle.  Opposites visible and invisible.

And in that rectangle, you recall, the cross is formed.  Because that three-by-four rectangle makes twelve little squares: the Twelve Labors, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, – always in which, in higher space, the stage is stretched out for man to act upon.

In the pattern of the Cross he begins to learn where and how his action is ultimately to be placed.  In the beginning he swings from great hate to love, – not in one life but in many, – until slowly there dawns upon him, perhaps vocally at first, the way of the middle, the balance, – the thing that Krishna spoke of.

And the way of the Cross — that middle road — is the balance.  Seated between the pairs of opposites.

The Cross is seen as the Tree of Life.  The hands are stretched on the crossbar.  The meaning is that through our hands — our energies, our contacts, we are rapport with all opposites.  We have mastered them.  We possess their power.  We can control them.  We are no longer swayed by them.  He who has understood all these dimensions, and mastered them, is the man on the Cross.

Or, in the East, a Buddha, with the many hands and arms, – strong, placed, seeing ahead the vision of the Whole.  The arms have been given to many tasks, yet never once losing the poise of the invisible life, that, like the trunk of the tree, runs up the center of the rectangle.  Path of Life and Light.

Back to the stage:  Every actor must learn to know where to play his part.  Act your part rightly.  Do not become placed on one side.  Mystically, or occultly, speaking: Get away from the opposites and make your way more and more toward the center.  But never deny, or cease to use, the opposites.  Keep your hands out, but yourself be seated in balance.  Whatever rhythm you are in, eventually it will cease, and you will, in the ultimate, attain Nirvana: the stage of infinite space and directions.

Your role is back of center until your position is like that of the Cross, or the Buddha, “Undisturbed in pleasure and pain”, – because you know these Principles.

Possible additions on Polarity from MBM series, 1931

In this period, with the excessive expression toward physical ends, there is also a movement, already well set up, toward what we might call the religious spirit.  What is the answer?  What is the middle road.  It is not to be found so quickly.  You can’t give up one and flee to the other.  Because if you do the devil will get you in the hindermost.  You have to understand.  It is only through mind that the pairs of opposites can be mastered.

Man is therefore between many opposites.  He must bring his mind into the center — the position of control.  When he does, he may be proud as a kingly one to his neighbor, and humble to the Larger.  Again, each in its proper place, according to position.

Practically, we solve now this pair of opposites, now that one, – if we are actually at work.  The world is one of the pairs of opposites in which we are taught our possibility.  And when enlightenment to that degree which we call Self-consciousness, awakens us, we utilize these opportunities.

Outline used by GB – January 1961

Our sixth Principle, Causation: the line from cause to effect; from effect back to cause.  Cause and effect operate on all planes.

Wisdom lore says everything has a cause; and every cause is followed by an effect.

Causation culminates in a point to the First Cause — unity as the origin of diversity.  Secondary causes; fan-like radiation.

Our Principle is usually seen from the short-range point of view: the search for causes, as in science, medicine, economics, sociology, international relations.

But we will stop at the heights for a few moments; because the Principle at its Source is spoken of in all Wisdom-Teachings.  Also, because we are working philosophically, and therefore should see at least a little something of the long range as well as the short range.  We will study briefly a few of the first steps in cause, then watch it on lower levels.

At the heights then, with First Cause.  Again, like Gender, is in the Nought, the Fullness, the Unknown Reservoir of potential power — Unorder, out of which is to come Creation, Order.

First Cause known by many names: Will, Love, God, Allah, Great Mind, All-Father Mind.  Is even behind Gender, that first stirring, thrill, of the first masculine with the first mother Wisdom, in the Nought.  Will is used to describe the dynamics of First Cause.  From the moment opesation begins in regard to the new Day, Cause becomes Will (example from every day).

First Cause as the determining principle behind the first parents, on the right-hand, or masculine side.  Hard to distinguish Gender from Causation, especially on the Heights.  In the outer planes it is easier, and I think we will see that as we go along.

But, originally Causation and Gender are both so inclusive that they are bound to take in characteristics of other Principles, and we would have to be working on the higher rungs of the mind ladder to know always which predominated.

For instance, Causation, is on the masculine side, determining side, but surrounding it is Wisdom, or all the vast experience stored up on the plus side of things of previous Cosmic Days.  How vast that may be our human minds cannot conceive.

First Parents, First Cause, Great Mind, first masculine-feminine.  These are words of earth.  We cannot know their nature or fullness any more than, on humbler planes, the nature of electricity, though we can know of their derivatives and behaviors.  Can only get an idea on lower planes.

Causation, and Gender too, are so inclusive that they contain all other Principles, on all other planes.  Causation drives itself forth, because it is self-operative .and passes, through the use of the other Principles, throughout all forms of energy and their manifestation.

The impacts of Causation run like nerve fibers through all that was created.

We won’t attempt to go any further into the profundities here.  Suffice it to say that there are attempts in all the scriptures to describe how this First Cause began its operation and continues throughout the Cosmic Day.

Everywhere First Cause is seen as One, but with emanations from that One, so that there are both the One and the Many.  There is no conflict in this philosophically (whole-seeing) though there has been conflict in exoteric religions.

The emanations are usually seen in three stages.  Yet all this is beyond Time.  Creation begins with the third stage, sometimes referred to as the Third Mind, the Mind that brought forth Creation.  (Breath.)

Earth correspondent: Idea, Blueprint, building.

That Mind, the Third Mind, or the third octave down, is the Cause of Creation, and in turn produced what are known as the Seven Rulers — those cooperative powers known as the Seven Rulers.  Swiftly there arose the Seven Rulers.  Again the One and the Many.  All this is beyond Time.  They carry on the inherent tradition of Cause – radiate outward.

Are the Seven Rulers identical with the Seven Principles?  No.  No more than an energy, or type of energy emanating from us as a three-fold creature, is a description of us or indicative of the totality of our being.  But the Principles are one of the characteristics of the Seven Rulers.  We may bear a little more about them on outer planes next time.

Another reason why we have stopped briefly with the Immensities is because we are going to try to see how Cause becomes enwrapped, hidden, and abides its time before it is unwrapped.  The processes that are derived from First Cause are not hasty or impatient.  They operate throughout the Cosmic Day.  Many of the causes are folded in, or what we might call the powers in the First Cause are folded in – may take ages to become effects.

Causation is seen usually from the short range point of view.  From another, it is a vision of the luminous web of relationship — nerve fibers of the universe, establishing organization, kinship; that kinship deepens.

Fragmentary notes on series by MBM on

The Seven Operative Principles

Nov. 1944 – Mar. 1945_, as taken by GB

Gender

     Li and Chi.  (from Chinese tradition)  Birth – Rebirth.  In the Cosmic mechanics.  Gender: the sacred power of life, death and re-creation.  A vision into the Hermaphrodite of God.  As you can bring yourself under it, it becomes a path of vision. Li, masculine, like the Will; Chi, primal substance, upon which Will operates.  The object of this Principle is to reproduce.  Produced Yang and Yin — nothing of the male and female there; but the object of the juxtaposition of Li and Chi has been accomplished.  They continue, and heaven and earth are produced; again in a syzygy… meaning the heights and the depths.  And it is from these heights and depths that all other things are derived.  Orgies, a stupid reading of the Principle.

     As a Principle, the malleability of the First Substance to the Perfect Will.

     The Principle reflected in the region of man.  His ignorance, and so reflects, not intrinsically but extrinsically….his understanding of it.

     Some traditions emphasize one or the other of the syzygy…. Logos…..The substance of that flame the feminine side.  The Substance is Mother.  Inflamed and then ordered by the Higher.  Responsive and productive.  On the lower planes it is not so; but on the planes above and below man, Mother is productive: Mother-Nature.  Humanity has not learned to be Mother, – only in limited ways.

     In the Christian tradition: First father and mother evidenced in Eve and the Serpent.  Red Adam.  Eve masculine when she stimulates Adam, the material man.  The smallest point has the greatest pull.  The Roman Catholic church, making Jesus the Son of God, emphasizes the male role.  And having to bring in Mary, the mother of God — the working of the pull in an inadequate way.  Gesture toward Gender by Jesus in the Holy Spirit.

     Some religions emphasized, out of compulsion, the mother principle, because others emphasized the male principle.

     As you operate the Principles you become like a god.  The object of this Principle is to produce.  And when we do not produce good things that belong to the material plane we are distressed.

     MBM, as masculine, impregnating.  If you don’t do anything about it, you are like a paralytic. The sin of Oman, is distorted.  The only seeds that shall not be spilled are the seeds from.above.  The laws of the plane shape the particular functioning of the Principle.  In nature there is much spilling of seeds, in order to meet right condition.

     This Principle begins as the power of Creation, pressing through for reproduction; – is the vision into this duality, the Hermes-Aphrodite of the Creative Hierarchy.

     Intelligence is feminine; mind (higher) is masculine.  Jesus said: By their fruits ye shall know them.  The “fruits” are the off-spring of the syzygy, and evidence that the soul is using the syzygy, and is making its ascent via this Principle.

     By the same token, if this Principle is used downward, by the practice of desire, and business, and you become material, by that fruit ye shall also be known.  No Principle is so important in Training, in mystical work, as this.

     How we control the masculine and feminine elements in our environment and in ourselves…As the male woos the female; as the Creative God shaped, and made receptive, the primal substance, so you shape, and mold, and woo and win your environment.  When you shape upon it your will, then your syzygy is productive.  But with one and not the other, you are sterile. … To use both, constructively, in all avenues of life.  Shape it, and impregnate it, so that there are off spring.

     The way of birth, death, and rebirth, in this Principle.  No man can ascend except by the use of this Principle – a special kind of Ladder.

     The holy, or whole-making family is father, mother and child.  Only with that Principle do you ascend, octave by octave.

 

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Vibration

     First manifestation of the Larger, the Cosmic; Breath into the Germ of life…. Stays within it’s own pattern; Rhythm moves forward.    Many vibrations at the same time.

     Thoughts are vibrations, translated by the mind into ideas; like a transformer in the telephone.

     People do vibrate, though that term is shabbily used, – quality, thoughts, interests.

     If you don’t respond you are dead; you don’t vibrate.  “In the relationship is life.”

     You all vibrate, – differently; therefore, don’t crowd each other when you do the etheric exercises.

     The spinning top, one of the so-called “toys of Dionysius”.

The sistrum (stringed musical instrument).

     “All things vibrate; condition is changing the vibration.

     You should have control over your vibrations — raising the lower to the higher, – getting in tune.  “Rehearsing” lowers the vibration.  So do negative thoughts of all kinds.

     Many of our exercises concern vibration – like expressing gaiety.

     It shows you can control your vibration; but you change too quickly.

     You don’t maintain.

     Change of condition in a room…a complicated thing.

     Discordant vibrations in music are resolved, but not in noise.

     We are affected by vibration.  Example: color on hospital walls.

     The Morris anti-noise campaign.

     Faith a powerful aid to the higher vibration – insulates from the lower.  Doubt draws down.

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Polarity

     Polarity is the dimension of the stage of life.  The first poles: heaven and earth.  The distance that they are apart from each other is the measurement of the extent of that stage.

     The stage that belongs to our evolution.  It is not the only dimension.  What we see is not the full measure.  The dark side of the moon.

     In the Plan, the stage is widely sundered.  The two ends of the poles are the measurement.  Has also been called the Pairs of Opposites.  Basically they are the same, – come out of the Point; but they are measured by their distance apart.

     Temperature: where does heat begin?  A matter of degree.  The concept of sameness, though the poles are opposites.

     How does Polarity apply in the mechanics of Creation?  Heaven and earth; God and man; the beast and God.  Yet just a matter of gradation.

     Every thing has polarity.  Rhythm is, in a sense, the movement from one pole to the other and back, – as the rhythm of the seasons, – winter to summer; drought and rainy season.

     The stage is to be drawn together again as the ascent begins.  At-one-ment, the opposite of dis-memberment: “gathering your limbs from all regions.”  (Mead: Fragments of a Faith Forgotten.)  Drawing up the roots.  “Seated between the Opposites” (Bhagavad Gita.)  “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Jesus used the opposites to show the movement.  In the Chinese, the philosophy of the mean.  Appears in many teachings.

     The values gotten by dis-memberment.  Science.  Therefore the distaste of entering upon the mean too quickly.  The Western world is a bold protest against the mean too quickly assumed — spreads its roots out further.  That is one of the contributions of the Western world, – a corrective.  Too many seek to be balanced before they have a dismembered root system which could be balanced, – wide enough to be balanced.  The dangers of that are spoken about in Revelations.  Lukewarmness.  If you try to be immune to the opposites before you have learned, you are balancing with too narrow a base.  All lessons could not be stated at one time.  As each cycle gives its lessons, – successive widening, so we can have a wider perception today.

     Our material civilization, while it holds men in fixation to earth, and we see its handicaps, has nevertheless a big value to offer.  In the Western world the more is brought back.  If then a balance can be made, so one is no longer absorbed by that, then you arrive at the teaching of the mean, and you are balanced.  The further your hands and legs are extended symbolically, the more you are the man on the cross.  Stretching out to the poles.  He who does not stretch out in opposites has a very small stage in which to act.

     Re attitude types….The size of your stage limited by the extent that you go out…. Don’t be the same thing all the time.  You are arrived at the mean without the balance of the roots — then pseudo, lukewarm, no power.  To arrive at the mean with the value of the roots, has power.  The other is afraid to enter into life.  The power comes from the experience.  The point of coming down is to learn.  The preliminary to finding the balance.  Widening the base.  The Confucian doctrine — working for balance in the state — equilibrium.  Which is harmony.  The sage can stand in the middle; but you get to be wise through much experience.  The superior man finds himself in no situation in which he is not himself.  He has found the mean — in his real nature, not the persona.

     In certain ways it is good to resist the being drawn out — anger, jealousy, envy….The seven sins.  Because they are destructive.  On the other hand, he who has not, and cannot, experience anger is lukewarm.  Anger, in its place, is a healthy thing — but must not come up cheaply, – about small things.  Or ever be personal.  You must have the power of any opposite, when it is in the picture, ideally.  The idea that the one who is unmoved, or is sweet always, is the powerful one, is cheap.

     Each one has his own stage, which bodily experience and environmental experience stretch out for him.  Opportunity and frustration.  Partly he stretches them out for himself.  Inheritance usually closes them up… Don’ts.  And heritage, according to the power that is in it, stretches it out.  The size of your polarity is very considerably in your hands.

     Opposites in your own hand: going up the Ladders; breaking type; getting experiences which you have not had before, and getting them consciously and purposively.  Widening of the horizons.  Working with the transliminal — the pairs of opposites between the two worlds.  Etheric projection and the physical world.  Long range and short range.

     For you, the pairs of opposites mean the rhythm from one to the other; only in rare cases the mean.  Move from extraversion to introversion — don’t be one or the other.  Don’t try to do two things at one time until you are extremely proficient in each.  You will be striking the balance.  Can you mix in that society, and that, and be at ease?  You are not at the stage of this quote from the Chinese.

     No situation in life picks out one of these Principles.  They are interlaced, like a tapestry.

     Break the routine.  Then you move out to an opposite.  All.pursuits indulged in to the exclusion of everything else become disastrous.  Counterbalance!

     Let us break up extraversion and introversion.  A million ways of “out” and “in”.  Don’t do it in the same old ways.  If you do, you are dead.  Mingle differently with different kinds of people.  Don’t repeat.  How many different colors can you play in yourself, – with face, gesture, body?  Don’t be inhibited.  Don’t get preconceived ideas of what is good and bad.  Don’t be a New England type.  Don’t always sit in the same places.  Let the variety of potentials in you get out.  Don’t look glum.  Don’t be niggardly.  Be wiser than taboos. Re-examine it.  It is your root system.

     What you bring back from this life depends on how far you have sent your poles out.  Give it as rich a life as you can.  The richness will depend to a large degree on the dimension of your poles.

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Correspondence

     The most practically useful of all the Principles for Trainees.  Gives a chance to look into the various planes by the peculiar likeness you can find in the plane you are in.  Like octaves.

     The seven-stringed lyre.  By its strings you can climb up into the character, the life and being-ness of the octaves above, “As above, so below.”  Octaves of ether vibrations.  Fill in the octaves (scientists?) but don’t know the phenomena within them.

Must be                     .. accurately, like A in one octave and in another.  Sympathetic relationship.  Helped by your image-making ability.  Accurate correspondence…through the mind’s eye…from what you know.

     Starting at the top: the first division: heaven and earth.  Not physical.  Power of sundering (?) which is above, and uses the Wisdom.  The heaven and earth in you — higher desires and earthly desires.  Similarity, but never an identity.  Just as in your musical scale.

     Now at the bottom end of the picture.  Love.  In the mineral world, attraction.  Different types of attraction: chemical, molecular, electric, etc.  These are all forms of love — mineral love.  These are        in terms of gender, like proton and ion; some mix, some don’t; some become a new compound, permanently established.  That may be called permanent love.  Some are transient.  As the attraction among humans, mistakenly called love.

     As you mount in the scale of octaves, via the Principle of Correspondence, you expect to come to higher notes, higher vibrations.  Virtually human beings know very little of what is love on higher planes.  Judge it by emotional attraction, bodily attraction, sympathy in interests, pursuits.  Those are temporary expressions of this attractive force.  Made to be broken again.

     Consider the different types of attraction as you mount the three Ladders.  Love is a thing of tremendous extent in octaves.  Brotherly love, etc. up to universal love is a pretty big gap.  Many octaves in between, as in        , whose phenomena you don’t know.

     Cosmic love.  If you know any of the characteristics of love on any plane you may see what love might be like on other planes.

     Loyalty of the ion to the proton, – unless they are knocked off, and break up the marriage.

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Elements.  Starting at the top: the four classic elements in the division of Cosmic material.  Differentiated.  The four Rivers.  They start out.  Parents: Will and Wisdom.  Not like the parents of your body.  To find out what those “rivers” are like you start in the octave you know.  Characteristics of earth — what it is good for; its handicaps; what it provides, etc.  And so on with the others.  Then you would begin to project those characteristics over the next, and the next, octave.  Always increasing the vibrational rate.  Make them doors, by study.  Then they are doors.

     Light and darkness.  Starting with physical light and darkness.  Psychic: sustainment (?), despair.  Mental: placement on the divisions of the Ladder.

     Another form of Correspondence is found in all symbolism.  Bread: when the races speak of bread they are speaking via the Principle of Correspondence; don’t mean physical bread.  Eye of the mind; to the psychic body; to the human mind; to the Great Mind (?)  Behind what the Trainee says there must be substance — the substance of their own efforts.

     The Principle of Correspondence more helpful to you than any other single Principle.  Seen in atom to solar system.

     What is music on higher planes.

     Masonry — building.  What kind of a house are you building for your few residents?  A good foundation, for soul, mind, spirit.  What correspondents to it — stone by stone.  The importance of little things.  That is a little stone.  Things of your heart and thoughts, with great care and with purpose.

     What is red on different octaves?

     Principles are modes of functioning, set up in the Beginning.  Basically they don’t change, but outwardly they do, as they correspond to the planes.

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Causation

     Seen usually from the short-range point of view. (From another) a vision of the luminous web of relationship.  Nerve fibers of the universe.

     Can move backwards or forwards.  Present point as effect of what has gone before.  Cause of what will follow.

     The further you are on your development, and your awareness of life, and your responsibility, the more you will be in great care about causes.  Because there is nothing you can do that is not productive of effects.  Every thought has its effects.

     Some thoughts, or “rehearsing” of an image, or memory, or unhappy circumstance, produce a state in the etheric that belong to the heaviness side of things.  Thoughts are things.

     (In?) “Live Consciously”: Produce the effects you desire by right causes.

     Every venture you undertake is producing its result.  Some are long-range, like marriage, establishment of a business, bearing of children.  Endless series of results.  Some briefer, like taking a job.  Bring in their wake secondary and tertiary causes.

     You are, through Causation, the victim of fate.  Through Causation you can understand what fate is, better than through any other Principle.  Undoing of fate comes in proportion as you are consciously adding the causes that spell the results you want.  The bigger the results you want the longer and more complicated is the chain of causes.

     Most people live unconsciously.  Karma is causation set into effect over lives, via heritage.  You have made yourself what you are, or let yourself be made what you are.  By not having control of causes.  When you succumb to this or that situation, of family, circumstances.  Saw it as pleasant, or unpleasant … react on the basis of pleasant, or unpleasant.  Early reactions are in terms of feelings.

     As you go further you see into the shining web, and see what it means, and begin to produce the causes that you know will give ideal effects.  You see it in the objective world — elimination of slums, education….

     And destiny: the humanly long range of producing causes for which we want effects.

     False causes ascribed to effects.  And vice versa.

     As you move to an understanding of subtler planes of life, and your life, the more you should be careful of your acts, thoughts, feelings.

     Canceling out…balance.  You cancel out what you begin by a (counter ?) motion in a different direction.

     What results do you desire?  Wax  . . . as at.the Tree Lighting.  Your use of cause.  What are you moving toward?

     Produce the things you desire.  Consistent.  Continue.

     The substance over which you are given opportunity.  Body, psyche, mind — the workshop.  What are you after?  There is nothing that you want that you can’t have if you will set the motion for it.  You have no idea of the power you have if you lay hold of Causation.  Maybe counter-causation.

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Mind

     Manifestation of Mind, in activity, the essence of all manifestation.

     Mind not exactly a Principle.  A categorizing of manifestation itself.  A vision of the Music-Master — the Music of the Spheres.  MIND in action, creating Beauty.  And that it is all through His Will.

     Far above Gender.  Mind in action, and therefore can be called male.

     Characteristics:

     Order:  When Mind creates the Creation is Order; relationship between parts, – in energy, in substance, in schemology.

     Purpose: Also implicit.  Mind does not act without purpose.  Pattern or purpose is a characteristic of the work of the Great Mind.  And the microcosm can be said to work likewise.  Mind, purpose, is part of the great scheme of manifestation; and Vibration, Polarity, Correspondence, Causation, etc. are working, operating within the pattern of Purpose.

     In cosmogonies Mind is seen as the Creator power, in three outpourings.

     The Second Mind shaped into activity the Seven.  The First Mind brought forth the Second Mind, and the Second Mind, brought forth the Seven Rulers.  If that is an accurate esoteric teaching, this Mind is not one of the Seven, which includes the regions that sense perceives.

     Mind not a Principle, but it is the all-inclusive concept.

     Endurance:  That belongs to the Mind.  Body and heart give out, – or give up; they haven’t duration.  And Duration is necessary to hold all these activities of the Seven in operation throughout the Cosmic Day.  Nothing but Mind could endure like that.

     The idea that it is Mind that plans.  You will find that in the Pattern of Creation.  Not map, or blueprint, in the sense of progressive unfoldment — that is procedure, but rather of the particular pattern that is assigned to all forms in manifestation: whether crystals….(making) a cabbage a cabbage, a sweet pea a sweet pea; – that clumps of trees act in certain ways; that electricity always acts in certain ways.  That territory has been set up, – localized in space, – inside of which procedure proceeds.

     So don’t mistake Pattern for what I might call the blueprint.  Pattern here is that which is unique.  Genera.  Earth, water, fire, air.  So that which is water is never earth.  Therefore everything acts according to its own nature.

     Opposite (?) implies sequence; which also is implicit in the word order.  Moving from childhood to age; that is order.  That order shall never be confused.

     Holds these things within their own territory.  Or a shoe would be mixed with hair.  Keeps everything moving in its sequential way.

     Ponder on what such a mind might be like.  Everything to have its place, and hold to it.  The grasp of such a Mind!  Working out for millions of years, – and that it was all good.

     Your mind is to follow, in the little sphere that has been given you, that same pattern of ordering, of procedure.  You have your raw material, your prima materia, – which you have already brought up a stretch of the road.  Now you are growing more and more conscious of it.  You may set into operation, through your mind, that which is orderly, – which proceeds in sequence, – which has pattern.  And that you have also duration.

     The “Seven” are referred to in various ways:

     In the Book of the Coming Forth (into Day): “Hail to Ye Seven Beings who make decrees.”  Now these Seven Beings who, under the leadership of the Mind make the decrees; but that Mind is the all-enclosing power.

     In Proverbs VII: “Wisdom hath built herself a house, and it resteth on seven pillars.”  The “house” is manifestation.  Or it can be the Wisdom in you, if you achieve this and rest your structure on “seven pillars.”  Microcosm, – macrocosm.

     The “Seven” are not exclusively the Seven I have been giving you.  Those are the mechanics – the mystical mechanics.  The Seven are, in turn, a composite; the Seven I am giving you are the metaphysical mechanics of the Seven.

     You have known the Seven under various names.  Another aspect through the planets.  Many strands which go into making the composite of the Pillars.  The seven Principles are not the whole of it; they are the mystical mechanics.  That is why I call them the operative Principles.

     Another quote: “The seven virgins of the Light.”

     The philosophy of number may help you fill out the substance of the Pillars.

     This seven-ness is very basic in what belongs to our planet, and is our field of the universe.

     Try to realize that these Seven are immense, – and that it is not possible to see them in their fullness.  There may be other faces.  Faces of a cube which you do not see.

     This Seven includes the “cosmos that the sense perceives” — that is, our senses.  But it is not the full measure of things.  Humans cannot be the criteria of the universe.

     These Principles move down through the planes; and, with the laws, move horizontally in the planes.  Laws belong to a plane, and Principles belong to all planes.  Warp and woof.

     This is your real magic carpet — the carpet of Wisdom, or of the functioning of Wisdom.  You can see it in your mind’s eye as a tremendous runner from here up to the Heights: the long threads the Principles, and the short threads the patterns that are unique to each plane.

     The mind is the only thing we develop that is worthy of permanence.  It assimilates everything else.

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Essences of the Seven Operative Principles

MBM’s vision into the mystical mechanics, which aspects

sustain Creation, and which may be used to ascend the scale

of life.

RHYTHM:  The heartbeat of the Universe.  A vision of the moving blood stream of creation.

GENDER:  The sacred power of life, Death and Re-creation.  A vision of the hermaphrodite of God.

POLARITY:  Hidden measurements for the Stage of Life.  A vision of the Gauge of all things, great and small.

VIBRATION: Index of Intensity and Quality.  A vision of the attributes of livingness.

CAUSATION:  Nerve fibers of the Universe; a vision of the luminous web of relationship.

CORRESPONDENCE:  Octaves of Higher Space; a vision of the seven-stringed Lyre.

MIND:  Supreme Master of Creation and Evolution.  A vision of the Music-Master and the silent Sound of His Will.

A supplementary evening of answers to questions by MBM

on the Operative Life Principles; also on certain

Subjective Exercises.  Jan, 22, 1945 and Mar. 26, 1945

MBM: What could you conceive bigger than the Great Mind?

Work on such subjects — life on the higher planes; how to recognize someone who was the Knower (a Knower.)

     Image-making, plus intelligence, the best way to build the Way.  If you are really working, the magnetic current in you will keep the field clear.

Application of the principle of Gender in daily life…. I haven’t stressed their (Principles’) fruit.  The object of Gender, as the object of sex: reproduction.  The most practical of the Principles for you at this stage.

     So what is the object of the principle of Gender?  The child.  The Holy Family, or the whole family.  Only for the sake of the child.  No value for the masculine in you except as it is disposed to the feminine somewhere outside, or in you, and the results.

     Sins in Christianity are against the mystical side.  The sin of Onan, the first strong statement in the Hebraic scriptures against the crimes of Gender.  The masculine power in you must not spill the seed but must deliver it over into the receptive, reproductive feminine.  Can be applied in innumerable ways.  Small value if something does not result.  Not too vague or intangible.  Without that, no whole-making family.

     When you learn something, – take it on, that is feminine.  If you have received an idea, and you work upon that further, so that it is your semen; so that you also have built up, or generated, or chemically produced semen in your body, then it is operative, and devises ways in which that Teaching can be applied in your life.  That is the feminine role.  The actual doing of it is the child.

     In the Triad the “Son” is active.  The School of Applied Philosophy founded on Gender.  Will, wisdom, activity.  Male, female.  The generation of one family after another.  The genealogical tree…depends upon it.  You have to start that cycle.  The “son” manifests.

     The feminine side is that which receives, nourishes, devotes itself to the service of that thing; to that the love, the care, the anticipation.  But that is not yet the “son”.  That is objective – outward from you….manifestation outward.

     No Principle operates until changes take place in the self.

     The Theme ,^”Wisdom is radiant and fadeth not away”: contains many changes of Gender.

     The “son” is no son unless it is activated, manifest; not of the father or the mother.  Will and wisdom are, in a sense, not manifestation, but activity is.  It is the son.  In all traditions emphasis is on the son.   Messengers of the Most High — they are the active workers.  That is Manifestation.

     The first steps of the Son in Jesus at the age of twelve: “I must be about my Father’s work.”

     Paul, after the experience on the road to Damascus — his ministry after that.

     Can’t manifest except in this dimension, – must not be subjective — unless you no longer have a physical body.

     All the principles are active.  Different kinds of activity.  Meditate on it and you will see the difference between the different kinds of activity.  The kind that produces the son (is) different from the others.  But the “son” may call upon the others to assist him.  Because of the inter-relationship of these Principles.

     A clarion note in Creation, the Triads.

     Desire, replaced by determination, the forerunner of will on the mental Ladder.  You will have stocked up as personal treasure-house of resource and power.  Your experience is your feminine pole.  When you have gone as far as will you have the pattern of the macrocosm.

     Aisha, “the mother of all living.”  The Scriptures don’t shift the role of Gender often enough.  The first Adam is the archetype.  Then the split.  Then Red Adam, or urge – physical desire.  Then the next Adam, described as Aisha, who is really the third Adam.

(In answer to a question re the difference between polarity and rhythm).  Polarity means the use and balance of the pairs of opposites — sustaining the opposites in yourself, and the use of them.  Teeter-totter.  But not identified with either.  That balance is toward learning control, – mastery.  Uranus: perfect balance of the pairs of opposites.  Two sides of the soul, which balance everything.

     The usual idea is that Mind is the seventh Principle.  MBM does not agree.  That is what the Kabbalah says.  “I certainly won’t tell you that.” (MBM)

     Let us agree that you make Gender the outstanding Principle.  Study it deeply.  Find out which one of your partners has not done the job.  Maybe you haven’t grown the semen in you.  If you are the parent the child comes.  And the other Principles work along.  Let Gender be the leading motif in discussion.

     Concentrate on imagination, if you have no other crutch.  Image-making is a tool; it is meant to do just that.  If you use it as a scaffold then sometime imagination will stand back, and suddenly something else will be revealed.  The wisp of an experience.

Q: What is the difference between the two types of imagination?

Ans: Never see yourself doing it.  That is double-crossing yourself.  The “I” principle very important.  If your “I” principle is separated from your image, it is very bad.

     Recapitulation of the idea is a mental exercise; equips you for something else later.  In it comes imagination, concentration.

     The “stick movement” is primarily a concentration exercise.  It is mental, with the aid of an image.  The etheric exercise, also with the aid of imagination, requires also concentration.  These are aids.  The etheric projection is the main thing.

     Ascent in the Penetralia, a mystical experience.  Not meta-physical.  There your imagination is in service to mystical transformation.

Q: How can you tell if you are accomplishing the etheric exercise in part?

Ans: Sometimes something unpleasant — conversions, pain, nausea, dizziness, etc; you will know it, – as you know when you put your hands in a pool of water.  And you will know the difference between your efforts and something that finally begins to click.  It is dependent upon you.  ….They are specific physical discomforts, not any kind of discomfort.  Weed out any other discomfort.  You don’t see consistently the things you pass.  You may see a bit here and a bit there.  Proof that you were doing it if you saw some object you had not seen with the physical eye, and corroborated it.

     Muldoon learned to project, but didn’t get far.  Just the physical.

     Semi-darkness best for subjective exercise.  Bright light keeps physical mechanism responding to stimuli.  Have you eliminated the stimuli to which your sense organs respond?  The time will come when that won’t make much difference.

     The secret of Training is desire.  No adequate stages which do not hurt the athlete.  Can’t have the treasure of the Kingdom of Heaven without paying for it.  The opposite takes place when you have designated yourself as ready for things seriously.  Keep your eye on the star on the horizon.  If your desire for that star is great enough you will take all that is between you and it.  The rest will take its course, and you will meet it.  Your star on the horizon, and integrity.  The rest shapes itself up inevitably.

? topics used by GB in giving talk on Vibration

Nov. 1960

We have had a look at three principles, the most outward.

Look now at more hidden areas; secret; veils.  Most intimate of the principles; most close up; comes into the depths of being, and the commonplaces.

Belongs to the noumenal worlds.  The most abused.  Only the true investigator comes to know them as they are.

Our principle states that everything vibrates; nothing is still.  Everywhere a circular movement.  Acknowledged by material science — physics, astronomy, biology.  The very stuff of matter.  Subtler matter too?

Vibration precedes all the others.  In a sense first.  Begins with the Breath for when the Breath of Life is breathed, it begins as vibration.  Later rhythm.  Later polarity.  And Correspondence.

Emanates from Source.  Must be fine, delicate, strong: characteristics that hide it from ordinary eyes.  Scientist knows that vibration is not to be seen, except in its coarsest forms.  Microscope first instrument.  Matter porous.

We move from matter, to molecule, to atom; and always it is highly vibrative.  Seen as matter, seen as energy.  Runs over at the edges into metaphysics.  Magnetic field.  Physicist tells us that through vibration, matter disappears.  Extraordinary statement.

Do we realize that everything that impacts upon our physical body comes to it via vibration; for instance light and color and form.  Color and form largely built up as changes in vibration.  Heat to your sense of touch.  Sound.  So with odor and taste.  Separated as by a membrane, and world touches us not at all except via vibration.  So used to it.  Not actual contact.

Chart.  Small section of color spectrum we can see.  Ether spectrum.

What about our own substance?  Machines that record impressions are crude to what the psyche and the mind are constantly doing.  A machine man has but has hardly begun to use consciously.

Infinite variety of wave frequencies: from heaven to earth; from the beginning of the Cosmic Day to the end; with infinite opportunity for that wave frequency to change.

Vibration vs. rhythm.

Why is vibration so fascinating a subject?  Primitive dance…

Dervishes.  Whirling movement in the physical and vital; partaking in a condition in which matter disappears into another kind of energy.  Not mystical.  As matter can change into energy, so the consciousness of the dancer disappears into something else.  Dangerous to try.

Strings of a harp.  Damper removed.  Also piano.  Singing strongly a class of music. Don’t think because you are familiar that you understand what has taken place.  Secretive principle.

Even when we deal with sound waves, the lowest vibration.  That is why this principle hides before you.  Until you are familiar with metaphysics, stepping off solid stuff…verbal or audible only.  The genuine student can measure and handle the mysteries of the principle even as with electricity.

Some therapeutic method . . . experimental. …

Music.  Soothes or rouses.  But we do not know why.  Practical; but these things remain hidden until the individual penetrates.

Far more than with our other three principles you have to ponder here, enter into metaphysics, push beyond the boundaries of the literal and hazard your security.  But if you don’t venture…..

Back to higher things: the Word, the Breath.  We know that as we evolve we have to be more careful of our speech.  Can’t be careless of what we say.  That is only a partial, conscious realization of the importance of vibration.  In the noumenal world vibration continues.

Religious organizations: place that vibration has in ceremonies.

Sistrum.

Many who seek to use vibration; misuse of the word.

Consonance

Our Principle states that from the Breath to the outermost planes all things move.  Mineral matter of  our physical bodies.  The farther up, or away from the mineral world the more rapid is the vibration.  Even on the chart. . . The more intense.

Next stage of substance beyond the physical body, the vital body, also vibrates.

Sense attraction; and repulsion.  Experience of meeting stranger.  Corresponding wave lengths, – synchronization, as in consonant rates in music.  Meeting and consciousness of attraction, or repulsion.

Our physical and our vital bodies…..instability of relationships.  Not only of the physical, or life-side of things, which imply sex, but in regard to the affections; also in regard to the mind.

Read pars. on p. 8.

These are coarse vibrations.  Vibrations that belong to other bodies… principle of correspondence.

There is not an attribute you can name that we cannot reduce to vibration.  And here we don’t surrender into a mechanical interpretation of life.  Fear, courage, sensuality, affection, reason power, higher mind power.  The vibration of your being is intensified by the kind of thoughts you think; and you can change your vibrational rate by thinking different thoughts.

All we do in subjective exercise, and subjective development generally, is vibrational: getting the physical still, quieting your images, concentrating upon a motif, you are really attempting to force into action higher wave frequencies within yourself.  They belong to the etheric, and by exercising them, intelligently developing them you can receive and transmit impressions that are not just of three-space.  Many of our subjective exercises concern vibration: e.g. generating in the self gaiety, goodwill, cheerfulness.  Shows you can change the vibration.  But you don’t maintain; change too quickly.

Agitation, unrest, excitement, discontent are uncoordinated and unsmooth vibration rates.  To speed them, and make them more rapid and smooth, is to attain.  What is true quietness, true peace.

There is no evolution you can experience that is not intimately linked with vibration.

Ideally, you should have control, raising the lower rates to higher, getting in tune.  Control of a bad temper, or despondency, or cultivation of thought on profound subjects — always you are dealing with vibrational rates.  Whether it is stopping gossip, sending a cheering word, or concentrating, you are dealing with wave frequencies.  Rehearsing lowers the vibration.  So do negative thoughts of all kinds.

Extravert, introvert: Intensity of vibration expressed on the periphery makes active extravert.  Intensity of vibration not expressed, but used subjectively, is the introvert.

Fear and courage: Not only one set of wave frequencies, but many, if change from the first to the second is to be enduring: psychic, etheric, mind, affected; correspondence on different levels, octaves.  Predispositions mold you.  Deal with wave frequencies.

Essence: Index of intensity and Quality; a vision of the attributes of livingness.

Addenda, fragments, on Principle of Vibration, from MBM series 19?7

Principles and laws, the magic carpet, noumenal world the real world, phenomenal world illusory.

Vibration the most intimate of the principles; most close-up; comes into the deeps of your being and the commonplaces.

The very first movement when anything takes on life is that thrill, that stirring.  Rhythm proceeds to stretch it out via polarity.

The principle of vibration requires porosity.  If there was not space to move, those 400,000,000 particles in one square inch, could not move.  We have to think of things being porous, and providing for opportunity of movement, – otherwise no opportunity for change.

Infinite variety in Vibration: from heaven to earth; from the beginning of the Cosmic Day to its end, there must be opportunity for that wave frequency to change.

That rate of vibration, that wave frequency is the very stuff of matter.

Primordial substance, which is dispersed into the making of all things, and which remains alive by that rapid, pulsing movement.  Hence everything is thrilling, and the illusion of stillness is just that — an illusion.

Color and form to the eye largely built up as a change in vibration.  Sound to the ear, the vibrations in air instead of ether.

Everything impinges on you from the objective world through variations of wavefrequency.  Your sensing of the outer world due primarily to vibration.

Magnetic disturbances in the earth’s atmosphere, one kind of wave frequency interfering with another kind.

Machines that record impressions are crude to what the psyche and the mind are constantly doing: a machine that man has, but is hardly beginning to use consciously.

Fear, a state of vibration.  It’s opposite to courage, another kind.  Ways of overcoming fear (prayer, meditation, reason.), each method deals with wave frequency, to the extent it is effective.  Can work directly or indirectly.  One of the beautiful solutions which the Principles offer.

Not only one set of wave frequencies, but many: body, psyche, etheric, mind affected.

How pre-dispositions mold you — deal with wave frequencies.

Hence our curve of courage may start with the physical, psyche, mental or vital, but it must go through all the others to be enduring.  Not a simple set of wave frequencies, but a corresponding one on other octaves.

There is not an attribute that you can name that we cannot reduce to vibration.  And here we don’t surrender into a mechanical interpretation of life.

All we do in subjective exercises, and subjective development generally, is vibrational.

Ether interpenetrates all substance.

The physical senses have gone through ages of development.  The etheric senses have for ages been disregarded.  They can be built up.  There are nuclei, corresponding to nerves in the physical, which receive the impressions more readily than other parts.  You can develop ganglia in the etheric.  In any case, these impressions have come via vibration.

Subjective exercise: getting your physical still, quieting your images, concentrating upon a motif: you are really attempting to force into action higher wave frequencies within yourself.  They belong to the etheric, and by exercising them, developing them intelligently, receiving and transmitting impressions.

Re quietness, peace: that which is agitation, excitement, unrest, discontent, irritation, are uncoordinated and unsmooth vibrational rates.  To speed them, and make them more rapid and smooth, is to attain.

The vibration of your being is intensified by the kind of thoughts you think; and you can change your vibrational rate by thinking different thoughts.

 

With the outer world, you may change it; but when it comes to the world of that stuff which is localized and belongs peculiarly to you, as no room ever belongs to you — when it comes to your being — that is where the work, and the thought, and the careful consideration of this principle of vibration is peculiarly important.  There is no evolution that you can experience that is not intimately linked with vibration.

Intensity of vibration expressed on the periphery makes an active extrovert.  Intensity of vibration not expressed, but used subjectively, is the introvert.

You can’t free yourself from vibration.  Control of a bad temper, or despondency, or cultivation of thought on profound subjects, always you are dealing with vibrational rates.  Whether it is stopping gossip, whether it is sending a, cheering word, or concentrating, you are dealing with vibrational rates.

 

Re War and Peace

When man learns how to tap that dynamic, and apply it, he will have solved the problem of peace and war.  All other things are makeshift.  And we are bound to have makeshifts for a long time, unless great leaders, with dominant personalities, come into positions of power.  They act as guardians, very frequently, against the errors, the blind forces, at work in the mass.

Essences:

Rhythm: The heartbeat of the Universe, – a vision of the moving bloodstream of Creation.

Polarity: The hidden measurement for the Stage of Life.  A vision of the gauge of all things, great and small.

Possible additions to lecture on Principle of Polarity

from MBM’s series on the Principles, 1944-45

He who does not stretch out in opposites has a very small stage in which to act.

(In reference to attitude types:) The size of your stage is limited by the extent that you go out.  Don’t be the same thing all the time, or you will be arriving at the mean without the balance of the roots.  That would be only a pseudo mean, lukewarmness, no power.  To arrive at the mean with the value of the roots has power.  The other is afraid to enter into life.  The power comes from the experience.  The point of coming down is to learn — the preliminary to finding the balance.  We need to widen the base.  The sage can stand in the middle, but you get to be wise through much experience.  The superior man finds himself in no situation in which he is not himself.  He has found the mean — in his real nature, not in the persona.

In certain ways it is good to resist being drawn out — anger, jealousy, envy, pride, gluttony, and the rest of the “seven sins”, because they are destructive.  On the other hand, he who has not, and cannot, experience anger is lukewarm.  Anger in its place is a healthy thing, but must not come out cheaply, about small things — or ever be personal.  You must have, ideally, the power of any opposite which is in the picture.  The idea that one who is unmoved, or is sweet always, is the powerful one, is cheap.

The size of your polarity is very considerably in your hands.  Some of the opposites in our own hands: Going up the Ladders; breaking psychological type, or personality type; getting experiences which you haven’t had before, and getting them consciously and purposefully; widening horizons; working with the transliminal, which is working with the pairs of opposites between the two worlds; long range and short range.

Break routine, then you move out to an opposite.  All pursuits indulged in to the exclusion of everything else become disastrous.

Let us break up extraversion and introversion: there are a million ways of “out” and “in.”  Don’t do it in the same old ways.  Mingle differently with different kinds of people.  Don’t repeat.  How many different colors can you play in yourself, with face, gesture, voice.  Don’t be inhibited.  Don’t get pre-conceived ideas of what is good and bad.  Don’t always sit in the same place.  Let the variety of potentials in you get out.  Don’t look glum.  Don’t be niggardly.  Be wiser than taboos; re-examine them.  It is your root system.

What you bring back from this life depends on how far you have sent your poles out.  Make it as rich a life as you can.  The richness will depend to a large degree on the dimension of your poles.

The Operative Life Principles

(The Seven Principles)

GB notes taken from MBM tape recordings, as played back

Feb. 26, 1952

 

Vibration

You should have, even if vaguely, a sense of how all things are being manipulated.  The alchemists, and others, learned that things could be done with the Principles.  Bringing about effects such as (those of) the shaman, the Yogi, etc.

Vibration  The word has been used popularly.  This is an intimate Principle, – close up.  It says everything moves continually; there is nothing at rest.

The chair vibrating (nucleity?) though at rest.  That is, if you begin to look under the screen (?).  This activity is so intense that it is stronger than anything known in man’s world.  From it, the atom bomb and all that belongs to fission, – the fission of the atom.

The sense of hearing and the sense of sight have two series of vibrational rates impinging upon them.  Air vibrations reaching the ear.  Every cell of our body is intensely vibratory.  So is our spinning world.  We are set in the midst of vibration more intimately than any other Principle.

With sight, there is ether vibration.  Impinging on you both subjectively and objectively.  All things, with the other senses too, report via vibration.  The close-up means of communication.  Take yourself as surrounded by vibration.  The nervous system coordinates them all.  When the coordinating principle is lost it is a chaos.

Vibration (has long been) used purposively.  In the early ages of mankind, by the use of drums.  Don’t confuse this with rhythm.  The two (principles) can be combined.  Principles can be combined or independent.  The drums set up a vibration.  They have an effect by the continuity of that vibration, by the pitch.  Reference to MBM’s Chinese gong.  Drums, gongs, bells, used to produce effects.

The modern world is re-discovering some of these facts.  Amusingly, it is not conscious of what is taking place.  But it is recapitulating ancient history.  Interesting, when we get on top of it and get on with the new.  A classic instance was the one in the Old Testament when the trumpet of Joshua went around the walls of Jericho.  The effect was not on people but on the walls.

There is no miracle ever performed anywhere without the application of principles and laws.  But the knowledge of how to apply them is for the few.  It requires also the preparation of the self, to place them into action.  The strenuous training of a medicine man.  For whatever his objective.

In small ways you have played with this Principle.  Feet on the pedals of a piano.  Finding response, not in every note, but in the note sung by the singer.  Caruso and the tumbler that cried (?).  If you strike the rate of vibration that corresponds something occurs.

A kind of functioning, which is moving outside of ourselves, and implies, in a way, a new order in the operation of this Principle.  In the direction of the medicine man, the magician.  You may have used the word in regard to a house.  Yet not have lifted the hood? from the machine?

Everyone has, in varying degrees of development, etheric sensitivities.  But they are in as varied states of development as there are folk.  No two are alike.  It is via these not known faculties that it is quite possible to report.  Recognition of a condition means receptor organs in themselves.

You have all had experiences of impressions that have come upon you.  They have come through the ether.  As color does.  Same media but a different set of wave frequencies.  And, being out, or beyond the scope of physical senses, they can only be reported to your intelligence — we will call it your consciousness at the moment — if your receptor organs are working.  (Here MBM made reference to a chart of the ether frequencies issued by an engineering society.  The chart included the human range of sound and sight, and the many ranges beyond the ordinary ones.)

Animals have a range of receptors in sight, and smell, and hearing, beyond that of the human.  By the same token there are those who have developed sensitivities which go beyond the ordinary range.  They too, like the animals, can report what is going on in those wave frequencies.  As you could report about my standing here.  There would be different reports, but they would agree in essence.  That would be accepted as evidence.  But (regarding) the details, you would not be competent to know them all (or to note them all).  In regard to extended faculties just learning to function in the etheric, we have the same phenomena: report on the general and the variations in the small.  It is the report on the general that gives us the basis on which we build further.  This faculty has aided the Yogi, the magician, etc.  They have learned now to read and use vibrational rates.

Aura  Everyone has heard, and probably used, the word.  It is important in the discussion of this Principle.  The aura is a fact.  We have extended our field into octaves in the ether that are different from the octaves of sight.  All octaves of vibration do not report the same thing.  Or do not report the full measure of it.  What you see of me on the chair would not explain my mind at work.  From there we have been moving into the more intimate field of that which surrounds the human being, the aura.

Everything is interpenetrated by something which the physicists know, and do not have a name for it — ether.  Reports of the physical world through the wave frequencies is not the end of it.

The aura is what you might call your own private front- and backyard.  It is the extension of your physical.  It impinges upon the etheric outside of it as the front- and backyard impinges on the property adjacent.  All this is moving in an intensely rapid fashion.  But this aura that you have is, curiously, a kind of discharge ground. In this aura are discharged all your emotions and your thoughts.

The analysts have never told anyone what the subconscious is.  And they won’t, unless they are ready.to go further than just the study of physical, tangible things.  The subconscious and your aura are virtually identical.  Not wholly, but practically, identical.  Everything that has occurred to you from childhood, that you have forgotten, is put down into your unconscious; from which it can be drawn up by various methods.  By the same token it is in your aura.  It is via this that you have the explanation of why you like to be close to this person and not that.

The vibrational rates (are) for every part of the ether; they are continually moving.  (Or the ether is continually moving.)  They are the Book of Life. (many strands) like the coaxial cable.  The impact of your thoughts in the aura.  That is what people too glibly assert when they say they see in terms of color.

(here MBM referred to her experience with a woman musician she met in London)  She was interested in the aura, and who claimed that, by intoning certain pitches, she could bring about a removal of dissonances of vibration.  (A reference) to someone who, by a drop of blood was able to diagnose disease.  He put forth the idea that the vibrational condition of the blood may have something in it.

The vibrational rates close to man (are) the next field of investigation.

The aura floats, as it were, in the ether.  From your aura are continually breaking off things that are in the aura.  They land in the general atmosphere.  Causes danger in the ethers.  (this general thing.)  Like microbes or viruses.  If you pick them up.  You may bump into something (of this kind) in your sleep.

Thought transmission, another form of vibratory transmission.  Is now accepted.  It impinges upon you via vibration.  In fact, your entire etheric structure is impinged upon continually by vibration.  Its very nature is vibration.

Changing the rate of a string by tightening it.  While the physical body is a mass of atomic vibration; and from there on up, other forms of vibration; still more so is your etheric.  And from the physical plane onward you will be like that string on the piano or lute.

You will be wearing the etheric body (when out of the physical) and that which will change will be its vibrational rate.  Many other things too.  But this is our intimate Principle.  And therefore the progress, or development, your ascent, or return, or by any other name, is actually, technically, measured in terms of vibrational rate.

You can’t go any higher than the vibrational rate to which you have attained by progressive development of your being.  That shows the intimate importance of this Principle.  It is close to the nature of the self — what we are, described in terms of vibration.  Not one vibration but for your hope, fear, effort or lack of effort, is measured in rate of vibration.  It is in that region that the philosophic examination of the subconscious is very different from the psychoanalytic.

The therapeutic use of sound and color in hospitals.  The use of music with the mentally disturbed and those recovering from disorders.  (not as a cure)  If used as an aid, that is quite another thing.  But if there is no effort on the part of the one who is suffering there is no profit by the experience.

Get all the values you can out of any experience.

We are only beginning to understand the experience of the arts upon us ……clarity of the impact upon people.  Bring in word about it if you see examples.

In the techniques of concentration you are gradually helped to keep the slippery mind and imagination from going all over, and staying as far as possible on one theme.  You are trying to bring the vibrational rate of your mental functioning under the control of one idea and seeing if you can hold that steady.  All real training attempts to do that sort of thing.

– – – – – – –

(The Principles epitomized)

Rhythm: the heartbeat of the Universe.

Causation: the nerve center.

Polarity: measurement of all things.

Gender: the power of life, death and regeneration.

Vibration