THE FOURTH DAY : FIRMAMENT LIGHTS

 

Genesis I, v. 14 to 19.

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days and years; and let them be for lights in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth’: and it was so. And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: He made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.”

All commentators appear to have interpreted this passage as simply descriptive of the creation of the sun, moon and stars. It is certainly extraordinary that they should all fail to see any significance in the fact that the Hebrew text carefully avoids using the word “Sun” — “Shemesh,” or “Moon” — “Iarech.” There would have been no object whatever in avoiding the use of those words if the writer had not been concerned with some-thing more than the material sun and moon. Instead, however, of using the ordinary names, he uses a much more abstract expression: “maoroth” — “light givers”; “foci of light”; or “sources of enlightenment.” He describes the “maoroth” — not exactly as “two” lights, but as a “duality” of light. The number is in the “dual” form. The “lights” are twin centres of one light. Clearly, the meaning of “maoroth” depends entirely on the meaning we attach to “light.” So much has already been said about this word, and of its interchangeability with “intelligence” throughout the creation narrative, that there is no need to repeat it. If then we accept it that the “light” in question is “intelligence” here, as it has been previously, we can see why the writer did not use the words “Shemesh” and “Iarech.” The physical sun and moon provide physical light; but we do not look to them for mental or spiritual enlightenment. It is none the less true, however, that on the physical plane the sun and moon, and the light we get from them, are outwardly “representative” of the spiritual sources of enlightenment with which the narrative is chiefly concerned. It does apply to the physical sun and moon also, but is interested in them, as we shall see as we proceed, because they were destined by the Creator to be means of imparting to men very important knowledge respecting His purposes.

The “maoroth,” therefore, are a dual source of “light” formed by Divine Intelligence within the Universal consciousness for three purposes: (a) to bring “day” out of the “night” of chaos; (b) to be for “symbolic signs”; and (c) to bring down from the higher realms the “light” of intelligence to earthly man. Man upon earth, is “formed” from above ; whatever is produced in him is first produced in the Universal consciousness. The ideal “man” created by God is, in the earliest stages of his formation, just as much a “chaos” as the Universe began by being. He had to be “made into man” by the same processes that transform chaos into an ordered Universe. Cosmically, the Divine Intelligence works in and through the ‘‘firmament,’’ i.e., the Consciousness plane of that “Spirit-Matter” which is the potential, unformed, Universe. The ‘‘Light’’ which Divine Intelligence forms in the spiritual firmament descends to the consciousness of earthly man. In the human constitution, the conscious “Ego”* has, as the organ of its intelligence, the Mind. There are really two minds, working separately and in quite different ways; yet the two are one in the act that they are both “mind,” and both the mind of one conscious “Ego.” It is a “duality” of mind, like the dual light in the firmament.

The first mind, i.e., the “sub-conscious,” receives its impressions and impulses directly from spiritual sources. We do not control its activity. The second mind, i.e., the “conscious,” is closely linked up with the physical world. It receives its impressions through the brain, which in its turn receives them through the physical senses from the outside world. Over this mind we have a great power of control, though this control is not absolute, as we often discover. Control over it can be developed, however — as far as we can see — indefinitely. In undeveloped Egos it is very incoherent and imperfect in action; but in a really great “thinker” it can become wonderfully well-ordered and powerful. This mind is usually called the “conscious” mind. The term is not very happy. It denotes, however, the mind which we now use in full waking consciousness in everyday life; it is the mind with which we think, analyse, reason, deduce, build up ideas, opinions, theories, and form judgements. We can consciously and deliberately give it a particular realm of activity. We can direct it into spiritual realms, thus obtaining “understanding” of what would other-wise only be “felt.” In that sphere it transmutes a religion of blind “faith” into one of intelligent spiritual understanding. If not consciously directed upward it can also become a merely intellectual and materialistic organ of “thought.” It is essentially the “day” mind; a conscious disperser of darkness in the thought-world. It is also the mind that consciously creates.

*By the “Ego” the writer wishes to denote the spiritual “centre” of every individual. It is the “I” which thinks, feels, cognizes, wills; and in which all life and experience centres.

The other mind is usually called the “subconscious” mind. Its chief characteristic is that it is tremendously receptive of impressions, but receives them quite indiscriminately, It never analyses them; it never reasons about them or selects them. Every impression that comes to it, if it reaches the brain, becomes transferred into a mental “picture.” It is the mind that gives us our dreams in “dream-sleep.” In deep sleep we do not “dream.” But that does not mean that the subconscious mind is inactive in deep sleep. On the contrary, there is evidence that it is then in its fullest activity. “Dream-sleep” is really a half-way stage of sleep; in it some brain consciousness is awake, and this permits the sub-conscious activity to merge into the day-consciousness sufficiently for the latter to retain some of the dream “pictures” and impressions-and these we are able to remember.

When we recall these memories of our dreams, we are at once aware of their startlingly dramatic and emotional vividness, and also of their complete lack of “logical” sequence, or of any possibility of “reality.” Yet we know how powerful they are to affect us, and sometimes we are quite aware that they reveal, in a symbolic way, very definite spiritual experiences. If in our dreaming — (everyone must often have noticed this) — the idea should suddenly come into our minds: “Surely I am dreaming-these things are obviously impossible” — instantly the dreaming ceases and we are awake. No effort then to sleep again and continue the dream to “see the end of it’ can ever succeed. The moment that the day-consciousness awakens, the conscious mind takes possession of the brain and the subconscious activities are unable to “get through” to it.

To our wide-awake day consciousness the remembered activities of the subconscious mind often appear to be merely fantastic, incoherent imaginings. But there is vastly more in this matter than that. Wonderful as are the faculties of the “conscious” mind, those of the subconscious mind are just as wonderful. They can do very much more than give us pleasant dreams or unpleasant “nightmares.”

In the earliest stages of man’s development it was the only mind that was at work in him. It is also the only form of mind possessed by animals; in animals we call it “instinct’ — and in spite of certain appearances to the contrary, animal mentality never rises above it. We often read of things done by animals which suggest reasoning powers — especially when they live in close contact with human beings — but close and accurate observation will give quite a different explanation of those actions. We cannot go farther into that question here, but a study of animal instinct will reveal to us many of the wonderful possibilities of the sub-conscious mind — and not only possibilities but also accomplishments. There are many things that animal instinct can do which no exercise of the human “conscious” mind will enable a man to do — or even to explain.

Consider, for instance, the case of a carrier-pigeon who may have been taken hundreds of miles by land and sea in a closed box and then released. It circles round once or twice and then shoots off, unerringly, straight to its home.

Many things that human beings have to learn by experience or long teaching, an animal knows from the moment it is born. No one needs to tell them what to eat or not to eat; they know, and left to themselves, make no mistake. Consider again, the well-known “clairvoyance” of many animals. All these things can tell us a great deal about the subconscious mind, and help us to understand many of the faculties possessed by our ancient ancestors, which by the present dominance of the conscious mind we have, at least temporarily, lost.

Still, we find certain people who exhibit the same “clairvoyant” capacity that was spoken of above. Their “clairvoyance” is almost always spontaneous and involuntary. The explanation in the case of human beings, is that these people are so constituted that they live at times in a state in which normal day consciousness is not fully active. They easily drop into a “brown study” or a semi-sleep in which the sub-conscious mind, which is always at work, although we are unconscious of it, is able to convey impressions and ideas to the brain, and through the brain to our normal consciousness. It is exactly the same process that enables us to remember a dream.

[bold and italics added — see the image in the center of the whiteRabbit pages at www.organelle.org for a representation of what the pigeon is doing (in analog).]

The great importance of all this lies in the fact that what the sub-conscious mind experiences are spiritual impressions received from an outside spiritual world; they are not received from our senses through the brain. Now, it is obvious that no impressions could be received from any non-existing source. All clairvoyance, therefore, is proof of the existence of a realm in which thought, feelings, ideas and memories exist spiritually and being spiritual, exist eternally*.

[* The common argument of rationalists that clairvoyance is a sham or misdirection artifact, while true in some cases, is really an unwillingness to grant the vast preponderance of physical recordings, witnessed experience, and personal or group experience which clearly point out, with indeterrable completeness and momentum, that there is a source of connectivity which we may access and experience, or express, but may not believe in.]

This universal spirit world is no figure of speech; it is the most solemn and wonderful reality of life, and when once we grasp the reality of it we have the key to the greatest mysteries. We are told: “For every idle word a man shall speak he shall give account.” That necessarily implies that everything leaves its record in some spiritual form; and so everything — good or evil — lives on spiritually. This is the Eternal “Book of Life.” We need not regard it specially as a record for the use of an Eternal “Judge” in some great “Judgement”; it exists for every man’s present use, benefit and progress. Little as we may be conscious of it, we are not only adding to this spirit world every moment of our lives, but we are also taking from it continually the very power by which the soul grows and is enriched. It is the foundation fact of memory; we could not “recall” anything if it did not exist spiritually. The thoughts of countless millions of thinkers of past ages all live in that spirit world; they did not die with their creators. More than that, the spiritual “individualities” of all who have “passed on” live still in that world, and each one is an individual “focus” of thought and life. Each one also by a law of spiritual attraction gathers round itself, so to speak, its own definite thought-world.

One of the most wonderful of these processes by which thought works is that which we call the association of “ideas”. Thoughts have a kind of life and activity of their own, they attract their like. Not only does one “memory” link itself on to others, in a way we are all perfectly familiar with; not only does one thought chain itself on to other thoughts already in our own minds, but the same law of association of ideas is also at work linking our thoughts with the vast, inexhaustible reservoir of thought in the spirit world through the medium of the subconscious mind. Therein lies the explanation of what we call “genius”. “Genius” is the faculty of drawing up from the cosmic thought-world ideas and powers which extend the capabilities of the normal conscious mind. One cannot by “thinking” produce those “inspired” flashes of thought which are the supreme beauty of great poetry and music, for instance. They are received by the subconscious mind from the spiritual world. We have perhaps the supreme example of the subconscious activity in the writings of the great prophets. The special peculiarities of the subconscious inspiration are revealed in the sudden appearance of some phrase or passage which is like the flashing out of a great spiritual light. Such a passage, in its context or out of it, is of eternal significance. No “thinking” can produce any-thing like it; we know it to be inspiration and nothing less.

What has been said is but a very small fragment of what might be said on the subject, but it is probably enough for our purpose of explaining the “duality of lights” which combine to produce human intelligence and to illuminate man’s earthly course.

The greater “light” is the fully conscious activity of the “thinking” mind. This is the last faculty to be developed in man, and when fully developed, it completes his human constitution.

The “lesser” light — the sub-conscious mind, is a link between the animal and man. Man, in his ascent to the human state of being, was at first in a state of darkness. The sub-conscious mind alone was developed in him. He could not “think for himself”; he followed the promptings of instinct. The sub-conscious mind was his light and guide in the “night.” Its greatness and its latent possibilities have, however, scarcely been realised in modern times.

As the activity of the greater “light” of reason and deductive thought commenced and developed in man the lesser “light” of instinct fell more and more into obscurity, it became — subconscious. Its powers, however, will in time re-awaken, not to dominate, but to work co-operately with Thought and Reason.

 

 

Chapter 8 ::: Chapter 10