CHAPTER VII

Form as the Devolution of Cosmic Substance

The universe comes into manifestation when the three gunas are in the same phase.
-Patanjali

"Attention! Attention!" sang the mynah birds in prophet Aldous Huxley's last novel Island. This is not mere local color; the birds are telling us a secret; the secret of life is attention. Let us take three examples of heightened attention; a woman under hypnosis, under the spell of orgiastic love- making, and under mystic rapture. All three examples involve total attention to the situation, with the blotting out of all extraneous stimuli, a "feminine" passivity, an altered state of consciousness, and the production of unusual side effects. The individual is absorbed in the experience; indeed, in a certain sense the individuality is lost in the experience. We are told by Indian gurus that eventually the knower who pays full attention becomes the known, in other words, knowledge with the highest attention changes into state.

If full attention reaches ultimately the limitless and unbounded void, then inattention is the precursor and cause of imagery. It also seems to be the cause of the world of appearances. The three metaphorical examples in the previous paragraph all are combined in the imagery of cosmic connubial bliss of the Tantra (Rawson 1973:18-9), in which Shiva and Shakti "are so deeply joined that they are unconscious of their differences and beyond time." Or to put it more austerely as Asvaghosha does (Hakeda 1967:50):

Mind, though pure in its self nature from the very beginning, is accompanied by ignorance. Being defiled by ignorance, a defiled (state or level of) Mind comes into being. But, though defiled, the Mind itself is eternal and immutable. Only the Enlightened are able to understand this.

What is called the essential nature of Mind is always beyond thoughts. It is, therefore, defined as 'immutable.' When the one World of Reality is yet to be realized, the Mind seems

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mutable and not in perfect Unity. Suddenly a thought arises; this is called ignorance.


As Wilber (1977:110) continues:
 

Ignorance, in other words, is ignorance of the non-dual and non-conceptual mode of knowing, which would instantly reveal the universe to be Mind-only. It is thus ignorance of Mind-only which literally creates the conventional and symbolic universe of separate things extended in space and succeeding one another in time; and since the major instrument of ignorance is thought, it is thought itself which is ultimately responsible for the seeming existence of the conventional universe.

The word 'thought,' as Asvaghosha uses it, refers not so much to the process of full-blown logical intellection that we use, for instance, in solving a math problem, but rather to the very root process whereby we create distinctions and dualisms. Thus when Asvaghosha says, 'Suddenly, a thought arises,' he is referring to the Primary Dualism that Brown described as 'Let there be a distinction.' Thought, conceptualization, ratiocination, distinctions, dualisms, measurements, symbolic-map knowledge - all are different names for that maya whereby we seemingly divide the One into the Many and generate the spectrum of consciousness.

Perhaps this will become clearer if we proceed to the teachings of the Lankavatara Sutra. Throughout this profound text passages such as the following can be found: 'It is like an image reflected in a mirror, it is seen but it is not real; the one Mind is seen as a duality by the ignorant when it is reflected in the mirror constructed by their memory.... The existence of the entire universe is due to memory that has been accumulated since the beginningless past but wrongly interpreted.' Accordingly to the Lankavatara, the 'existence of the entire universe' occurs when the one Mind is reflected upon by memory wrongly interpreted. This 'reflection' creates 'two worlds from one' and thus propels us into the conceptual world of space, time, and objects.

To understand this process of 'reflection by memory wrongly interpreted,' we need only recall that the genesis of time involves the mistaking of present memory for real knowledge of a 'past.' For it is only through this 'memory wrongly interpreted' that we create the convincing illusion of knowing time past, and then -- projecting this 'knowledge' forward in expecta-

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tion - we create time future, whereas all memory and expectation, and thus all time, exists nowhere but in this present moment. In this fashion do we conjure up, out of this moment, the fantastic illusion called 'time;' and since 'time' is just another name for space and objects (space-time-objects being a single continuum), the Lankavatara claims the entire universe of separate objects extended in space and succeeding one another in time is actually generated by thought-memory wrongly interpreted, which 'reflects' the one Mind and thus apparently creates two worlds from one.


In another place Wilber (1977:319) after quoting Benoit and Krishnamurti on the subject concludes: "Here Krishnamurti is agreeing completely with Benoit that the machinery of image production is inattention, (i.o.) or as Benoit calls it, passive attention."

After this rather rambling introduction to a very profound subject, let us explain where the author is coming from. We have been on the track of creativity, trying to induce its precursors during the process of incubation. We have found (Gowan 1978, in press) that the precursor is imagery. What then are the precursors of imagery? It now looks as though a better method might be to work from the opposite end and deduce a series of de-gradations of cosmic substance, which hopefully will end up in the position stated herein.

Let us try for a little while to perform a nearly impossible task, namely to look at the process of material manifestation from the Absolute point of view. From this stance it would appear that matter is the end product of a series of de-volutions or de-gradations of spirit. This process involves a series of breakings or severances of perfect primordial symmetry. As the Hindus have it, "The universe manifests when the three gunas are in the same phase." Brown declares (1972:v): "A universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart." And Ghykha (1977:86) states Curie's principle: "In order that a phenomenon should be produced in a system it is necessary that certain elements of symmetry should be missing."

Realizing that at best we are developing analogies for a process which is magnificently grander than any homologue, we can also look at another facet of the elephant by considering each devolution as a mathematical differentiation of a function which is transcendental. The differential shares only derivative characteristics

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of the function in a much diminished state of one less dimension. If human life in this world represents, say, a triple differentiation of ultimate reality, then our task (or better the task of consciousness), must be to free itself from the triple bonds of time, space, and personality, by successive integration back to the Absolute.

Heidegger (1961:51), after quoting Heraclitus, on the original conflict (division), which produced the whole creation says of this polemos:
 

This conflict, as Heraclitus thought it, first caused the realm of being to separate into opposites; it first gave rise to position and order and rank. In such separation cleavages, intervals, distances and joints opened. In the ausein-andersetzung (setting apart), a world comes into being. Conflict does not split, much less destroy unity. It constitutes unity. It is a binding together - a logos. Polemos and logos are the same.


In this remarkable, and somewhat equivocal passage, Heidegger seems to be saying that despite the polemos which produces the phenomenological world, the logos, or original collectedness, continues in the noumenal world, and that ultimately these two are the same. We shall see that both Brown (1972) and Wilber (1977) refer to exactly the same process of cosmic mitosis. Let us now turn to their investigation of this devolution process.

Following Wilber (1977) we have attempted to lay out levels in the spectrum of consciousness in Table V II- 1. What we have essentially in this table are a number of different names or designations, mostly from Eastern sources for a hierarchy of descending order (from top to bottom) and increasing entropy. This taxonomy consists of five states and four interspersed bands or filters. The filters act like polarizing lenses which successively minify the radiation by one dimension. Hence, each filter reduces the cosmic glory until it "fades into the light of common day." For this reason as one goes down the column one goes in the direction of decreasing mental health, and increasing dissociation. This is seen clearly, of course, in the case of the Lilly numbers. In the second column comes the name Wilber has given the level (with the last two added); in the third column the Indian sheath name; in the fourth column remarks for helping the reader orient himself. The fifth column as letter designations, and the sixth Mahayana names. The seventh contains a conjecture as to where the Brown words

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TABLE VII-1: LEVELS IN THE SPECTRUM OF CONSCIOUSNESS AFTER WILBUR (1977)

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would go, supposing them to be commensurate, and the last column contains conjectures about the relevant body or vehicle of consciousness in the domain. It should be emphasized that the table purports to be a rough map of unfamiliar territory, and there may be cell misplacement. (For a fuller explanation of the Sullivan-Van Rhijn theory which underlies the prototaxic, parataxic, and syntaxic remarks at the F, G, and H level, please refer to Gowan 1975:2.) Van Rhijn's contribution (1968) is more relevant here, since he posits that experience which can be assimilated and dealt with cognitively (syntaxic) is beneficial; experience which can only be dealt with emotionally (parataxic) is less beneficial, and finally experience which cannot be dealt with at all (prototaxic) is projected onto the body and the environment, producing poor physical and mental health.

What exactly does mathematician Brown mean by his "void to form, form to indication, indication to truth, and truth to existence?" Actually, Brown did not quite say this. What he did say (1972:101) is:
 

It is, I am afraid, the intellectual block which most of us come up against at the points where, to experience the world clearly, we must abandon existence to truth, truth to indication, indication to form, and form to void, that has so held up the development of logic and mathematics.
It should be remembered that Brown is using these terms in an exact and mathematical meaning. For example: "Existence" means an existence theorem (i.e., There exists at least one "a"); "truth" means the truth value of a statement (i.e., A = B).

Brown says (1972:101):
 

There is a tendency, especially today, to regard existence as the source of reality, and thus a central concept. But as soon as it is formally examined, existence is seen to be highly peripheral, and as such, especially corrupt (in the formal sense) and vulnerable.
Brown explains in an appendix (1972:127) the "formal examination" as follows:
 
Now the distinction between existing and not existing is not applied like the distinction between true and not-true. If a
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statement "s" is true, then the complementary is false. But if a thing "t" exists, then its complementary thing "not-t" is not necessarily non-existent.


So much for existence. This brings Brown to truth, of which he says (1972:101):
 

The concept of truth is more central, although still recognizably peripheral. If the weakness of present day science is that it centers around existence, the weakness of present-day logic is that it centers round truth... Throughout the essay, we find no need of the concept of truth ... (truth=open to proof). . . At no point is it a necessary inhabitant of the calculating forms. These forms thus are not only precursors of existence, they are also precursors of truth.


Regarding his calculus of indications (marks), Brown has this to say regarding truth-value (1972:113):
 

We have a choice of whether to associate the unmarked state with truth and the marked state with untruth (or the opposite). Although it is quite immaterial, from the point of view of calculation which we do, the latter arrangement is in fact easier from the point of view of interpretation.


Since the calculus of indications (which is the substance of his book The Laws of Form), Brown notes (1972:112) that it applies "to a language structure in which sentences can be true or false." Thus truth yields to indication.

But indication depends upon a mark. As Brown puts it (1972:4) under knowledge:
 

Let a state distinguished by the distinction be marked with a mark (an inverted L), of distinction. Let the state be known by the mark. Call the state the marked state. Call the space cloven by any distinction together with the entire content of the space, the form of the distinction.
We are now back to the Primary Duality: "Let there be a distinction," and hence back to the evolution of form out of the void. Brown describes this in the first sentence of the book (1972: v): "The theme of this book is that a universe comes into being when a space is severed or taken apart."

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And quoting this opening paragraph, Wilber (1977:108) remarks:
 

It is with precisely this original act of severance which creates the phenomenal universe that we are now concerned: the very first movement whereby we sever a space, create two worlds from one, and land ourselves squarely in a world of appearances.
It does no good to argue that Brown's world is conceptual while Wilber's is phenomenological. Both are ultimately conceptual and the laws of form apply equally to either.

The alert and captious reader may at this juncture interpose that despite an effort to be clear the author has jumbled together several universes: the total physical universe, the subset of the inanimate universe, the subset of the animate universe, the subset of the conceptual universe, and perhaps others (which would include the logical universe of Brown). But the strength of Brown's approach in The Laws of Form is that the laws underlying all these universes and their subsets are the same, for the laws are simply the way our minds cognize plenums, and whatever exterior forms the plenums take, the basic laws are the same, with only exterior modifications of constants, zero-points and other mensuration to distinguish them.

Indeed, further, the laws relating to the genesis of any microcosm of the universe, such as a newly discovered scientific principle, or a newly created musical opus, are precisely the same; each act of individual creativity in time is a miniscopic homologue of the whole act of creation, and each contains within it a holographic isomorphism with that major act.

Finally, and most miraculously, the universe contains within it the means to know and inspect itself. It is not mere creation; it is creation that knows itself to be creation. Says Brown (1972: 105):
 

Now the physicist himself who describes all this, is, in his own account, himself, constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particulars he describes, no more, no less, bound together by and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and record. Thus we cannot
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escape the fact that the world as we know it is constructed in order (and thus in such a way as to be able) to see itself. This is indeed amazing.

But in order to do so, evidently it must first cut itself up into at least one state which sees, and at least one state which is seen. In this severed and mutilated condition whatever it sees, is only partially itself... In this condition it will always partially elude itself.


So that in the last analysis, the process of self-observation is self-defeating, for it entails the Primary Duality.

One way of understanding the devolution of manifestation better is to look at the opposite process - namely integration. If we inspect the testimony of saints and sages (Gowan 1975:351ff and especially Table VIII, p. 247), we shall see the reverse process, including its discrete levels, laid out in matching fashion. Since this table has been explained in great detail elsewhere (Gowan 1975, 1978),* we shall forbear much further here. Suffice it to say that the table represents an escalation of consciousness out of time, space and personality. It also represents a healing of the dichotomy between knower and known, which, as we have seen earlier, is the primary dualism. As Eliade (1969:96) explains:
 

The object is no longer known through association... it is grasped directly in its existential nakedness... Let us note that ... Samprajnata Samadhi, [Ed. Jhanas 5-8], is shown to be a 'state achieved through a certain knowledge.' This passage from knowledge to state must constantly be kept in mind... (it) leads to a fusion of all modalities of being.


This absolute knowledge reveals that "knowledge and being are no longer discrete from each other." So the yogi who penetrates to this samadhi without support of objects becomes (as Meister Eckhart truly testified), one with the Deity. If creation may be compared to the mathematical process of differentiation, then this escalation may be compared to the process of integration, for it returns to an undifferentiated state. This fusion of knower and known, of noumenon and phenomenon, of subject and object reveals that the integration process is achieved through a juncture of the individual and general minds, in which duality is abolished, and through knowledge more and more complete, the one becomes the other.

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It may seem incongruous to return to tantric sexual rites for a prefiguration of this restoration, but notice how closely the following description imitates the essential unification:
 

I cannot tell you how it is for others, but when the man I love enters me, all at once I am suffused with an exquisite wholeness; it is more than physical; it is some escape into a primordial completeness. I do not need an orgasm to validate that experience for me. As I lie enfolded in him, and he in me, we are one, whole, beyond time and space, almost beyond personality. There is content, security, and rest that I cannot begin to describe in words. I should die if I could continue in that state very long, and for me the orgasm is the release from this overwhelming bliss back into mortality.


Or as Rawson (1973:19) puts it: "Shiva and Shakti within man and the world are so deeply joined that they are unaware of their differences and beyond time." It should be clear that Teilhard de Chardin's "Omega point" is far more than even exalted sexual union, but what is amazing is that the tantric model is so isomorphic.

From a Christian vantage point, Plotinus (Russell 1945: 288ff) identified the nous as the second division of the Trinity (the first was the ineffable Godhead, and the third the individual soul; these are not equal as in the orthodox Christian Trinity, but in a descending hierarchy). "Nous is the image of the One; it is engendered because the One in its self-quest has vision; this seeing is nous" (ibid:289). But Plotinus insists the seer and the seen are one, hence nous may be considered the light by which the One sees itself. We have avoided translating the word nous because while the nearest English word is "spirit," it is obvious that something more is here meant - something more intellectual in the manner of St. John's "logos," (the word).2 Whatever words are used, it is perfectly obvious that the process concerns the primary dualistic split, and hence is germane to our discussion.

In Rawson's view (1973:19), once division from the primary cosmic copula has been made "the female objective (Shakti) performs her dance of illusion, persuading the male subject that he is not one but many, and generating in her womb the world of multiplied objects in what seems to be a sequence in time." This is a very significant point with great practical consequence. It means that since the archetypal feminine is a generating entity

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outside time and space, every manifestation in time and space (every entrance from posse to esse from our point of view) will be multiple, that is, we will experience it as a series or sequence in time with space held constant, or in space with time held constant.

When a numinous thought-form is to be actualized in our world of experience, despite its specific nature, its non-categorical and numinous quality dictates that it be experienced in multiples which may be distributed over either space or time (if distributed over both, the experience will hardly be noticed as coincidences). Thus with regard to accidents, the result may be a series of very similar mishaps at the same or near times in widely separated spots, or at the same spot over various times. What appears determined is the thought form (often with amazingly coincidental specifics), but the results are at least partly under the control of wise/brave utilization of humans connected with the situation at the time of crisis.

We notice such coincidences with regard to dramatic events, but similar ones exist in creative thought-forms. When the zeitgeist is opportune, the same non-categorical impulse will be manifested in several dedicated scientists, artists or researchers at the same time in several places, and they will each add an idiosyncratic flavor to a common discovery, or a new idea. Jung (Campbell 1971: 505ff) commented extensively on this in his essay on synchronicity.3 Although nowhere does he explicitly state that the translation from the numinous archetype to the phenomenal reality will result in multiple manifestations.

A glimpse of the same animating fecundity in nature is afforded by Gaster (1950:17) in his concept of the "durative topocosm"

 
Seasonal rituals are functional in character. Their purpose is to revive the topocosm, that is the entire complex of any given locality conceived of as a living organism. But this topocosm... possesses a ... durative aspect, representing not only actual and present community, but also the ideal of community, an entity of which the latter is but the present manifestation. Accordingly, seasonal rituals are accompanied by myths which are designed to present the purely functional acts in terms of ideal and durative situations.... What the king does on the punctual plane, the God does on the durative... The pattern is based on the conception that life is vouchsafed in a series of leases which have annually to be renewed.
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Ultimate reality, in the guise of the durative topocosm, cannot adequately present itself through a language of tensed verbs. Hence, it must do so through a metaphor of continual recurrence, and we should learn to recognize such usage as signifying the advent of the numinous archetype in which time and space are transcended.

But there is more wisdom here in the fecundity of Shakti than practical knowledge; the essential point is that in every individual act of creation (differentiation), and in every individual act of salvation (integration), there is a microcosmic reenactment of the primal creation and the ultimate "Omega point"; each separate act of evolution and involution is a holographic miniportion, containing within it the model of all creation and resolution. As Gandhi said: "We are all tarred with the same brush," and all creation is stamped with the same die.

Thus each individual life, and each individual creative experience which makes up that life, is in the process of defining and exemplifying that creation; therefore, every human being has the potentiality of creation, not just of ideas, but of actual reality. Consciousness is in the process of becoming, in the process of manifesting, in the process of building, what, to us, is a future event of perfection (but in actuality is outside time). All that precedes that dawn is prologue, including the dream world in which consciousness seems housed in our personality. But that rehearsal is a necessary part of its evolution, as seen in time, for when housed in us, it is able, if but in the blink of a human lifetime, to become complete in little things, and to prefigure that "Divine faroff event" of the poet, when, all having been brought to perfection, the All shall fully cognize (and become) the All.



1 Locked in time, we must call this a process. But to consciousness outside of time, it would appear as a symmetrical transform in the time dimension of space.

2 For its more exact meaning, see Heidegger 1961:109 where it means "original collectedness."

*Given herein as Chapter 6.

3 Further to this subject see Vaughn, A. "The Riddle of Coincidence" FATE 33:1:65-73, 1980.

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