THE LOVER AND THE BELOVED
Consciousness develops on successive planes. On each plane there is the
dual polarity, positive and negative, of the sympathetic and voluntary
nerve centers. The first plane is established between the poles of the
sympathetic solar plexus and the voluntary lumbar ganglion. This is the
active first plane of the subjective unconscious, from which the whole
of consciousness arises.
Immediately succeeding the first plane of subjective dynamic
consciousness arises the corresponding first plane of objective
consciousness, the objective unconscious, polarized in the cardiac
plexus and the thoracic ganglion, in the breast. There is a perfect
correspondence in difference between the first abdominal and the first
thoracic planes. These two planes polarize each other in a fourfold
polarity, which makes the first great field of individual,
self-dependent consciousness.
Each pole of the active unconscious manifests a specific activity and
gives rise to a specific kind of dynamic or creative consciousness. On
each plane, the negative voluntary pole _complements_ the positive
sympathetic pole, and yet the consciousness originating from the
complementary poles is not merely negative versus positive, it is
categorically different, opposite. Each is pure and perfect in itself.
But the moment we enter the two planes of corresponding
consciousness, lower and upper, we find a whole new range of
complements. The upper, dynamic-objective plane is complementary to
the lower, dynamic-subjective. The mystery of creative opposition
exists all the time between the two planes, and this unison in
opposition between the two planes forms the first whole field of
consciousness. Within the individual the polarity is fourfold. In a
relation between two individuals the polarity is already eightfold.
Now before we can have any sort of scientific, comprehensive psychology
we shall have to establish the _nature_ of the consciousness at each of
the dynamic poles—the nature of the consciousness, the direction of the
dynamic-vital flow, the resultant physical-organic development and
activity. This we must do before we can even begin to consider a genuine
system of education. Education now is widely at sea. Having ceased to
steer by the pole-star of the mind, having ceased to aim at the cramming
of the intellect, it veers hither and thither hopelessly and absurdly.
Education can never become a serious science until the human psyche is
properly understood. And the human psyche cannot begin to be understood
until we enter the dark continent of the unconscious. Having begun to
explore the unconscious, we find we must go from center to center,
chakra to chakra, to use an old esoteric word. We must patiently
determine the psychic manifestation at each center, and moreover, as we
go, we must discover the psychic results of the interaction, the
polarized interaction between the dynamic centers both within and
without the individual.
Here is a real job for the scientist, a job which eternity will never
see finished though even to-morrow may see it well begun. It is a job
which will at last free us from the most hateful of all shackles, the
shackles of ideas and ideals. It is a great task of the liberators,
those who work forever for the liberation of the free _spontaneous_
psyche, the effective soul.
In these few chapters we hope to hint at the establishment of the first
field of the unconscious—at the nature of the consciousness manifested
at each pole—and at the already complex range of dynamic polarity
between the various poles. So far we have given the merest suggestion of
the nature of the first plane of the unconscious and have attempted the
opening of the second or upper plane. We profess no scientific
_exactitude_, particularly in terminology. We merely wish intelligibly
to open a way.
To balance the solar plexus wakes the great plexus of the breast. In our
era this plexus is the great planet of our psychic universe. In the
previous sympathetic era the flower of the universal blossomed in the
navel. But since Egypt the sun of creative activity beams from the
breast, the heart of the supreme Man. This is to us the source of
light—the loving heart, the Sacred Heart. Against this we contrast the
devouring darkness of the lower man, the devouring whirlpool beneath the
navel. Even theosophists don’t realize that the universal lotus really
blossoms in the abdomen—that our lower man, our dark, devouring
whirlpool, was once the creative source, in human estimation.
But in calling the heart the sun, the source of light, we are
biologically correct even. For the roots of vision are in the cardiac
plexus. But if we were to consider the heart itself, not its great nerve
plexus, we should have to go further than the nervous system. If we had
to consider the whole lambent blood-stream, we should have to descend
too deep for our unpractised minds. Suffice it here to hint that the
solar plexus is the first and main clue to the great alimentary-sexual
activity in man, an activity at once functional and creatively
emotional, whilst the cardiac plexus is first and main clue to the
respiratory system and the active-productive manifestations. The mouth
and nostrils are gates to each great center, upper and lower—even the
breasts have this duality. Yet the clue to respiration and hand activity
and vision is in the breast, while the clue to alimentation and passion
and sex is in the lower centers. The duality goes so far and is so
profound. And the polarity! The great organs, as well as the lymphatic
glands, depend each on its own specific center of the unconscious; each
is derived from a specific _dynamic_ conscious-clue, what we might
almost call a soul-cell. The inherent unconscious, or soul, is the first
nucleus subdivided, and from its own subdivisions produced, from its own
still-creative constellated nuclei, the organs, glands, nerve-centers of
the human organism. This is our answer to materialism and idealism
alike. The _nuclear unconscious_ brought forth organs and consciousness
alike. And the great nuclei of the unconscious _still_ lie active in the
great living nerve-centers, which nerve centers, from the original
solar-plexus to the conclusive brain, form one great chain of dual
polarity and amplified consciousness.
All this is a mere incoherent stammering, broken first-words. To return
to the direct path of our progress. It is not merely a metaphor, to call
the cardiac plexus the sun, the Light. It is metaphor in the first
place, because the conscious effluence which proceeds from this first
upper center in the breast goes forth and plays upon its external
object, as phosphorescent waves might break upon a ship and reveal its
form. The transferring of the objective knowledge to the psyche is
almost the same as vision. It is root-vision. It happens before the eyes
open. It is the first tremendous mode of _apprehension_, still dark, but
moving towards light. It is the eye in the breast. Psychically, it is
basic objective apprehension. Dynamically, it is love, devotional,
administering love.
Now we make already a discrimination between the two natures, even of
this first upper consciousness. First from the breast flows the
devotional, self-outpouring of love, love which gives its all to the
beloved. And back again returns to the ingathered objective
consciousness, the first objective content of the psyche.
This argues the dual polarity. From the positive pole of the cardiac
plexus flows out that effluence which we call selfless love. It is
really self-devoting love, not self-less. This is the one form of love
we recognize. But from the strong ganglion of the shoulders proceeds the
negative circuit, which searches and explores the beloved, bringing back
pure objective apprehension, not critical, in the mental sense, and yet
passionally discriminative.
Let us discriminate between the two upper poles. From the sympathetic
heart goes forth pure administering, like sunbeams. But from the strong
thoracic center of the shoulders is exerted a strong rejective force, a
force which, pressing upon the object of attention, in the mode of
separation, succeeds in transferring to itself the impression of the
object to which it has attended. This is the other half of devotional
love—perfect _knowledge_ of the beloved.
Now this knowledge in itself argues a contradistinction between the
lover and the beloved. It is the very mould of the contradistinction. It
is the impress upon the lover of that which was separate from him,
resistant to him, in the beloved. Objective knowledge is always of this
kind—a knowledge based on unchangeable difference, a knowledge truly of
the gulf that lies between the two beings nearest to each other.
In two kinds, then, consists the activity of the unconscious on the
first upper plane. Primal is the blissful sense of ineffable transfusion
with the beloved, which we call love, and of which our era has perhaps
enjoyed the full. It is a mode of creative consciousness essentially
objective, but yet it preserves no object in the memory, even the
dynamic memory. It is a great objective flux, a streaming forth of the
self in blissful departure, like sunbeams streaming.
If this activity alone worked, then the self would utterly depart from
its own integrity; it would pass out and merge with the beloved—which
passing out and merging is the goal of enthusiasts. But living beings
are kept integral by the activity of the great negative pole. From the
thoracic ganglion also the unconscious goes forth in its quest of the
beloved. But what does it go to seek? Real objective knowledge. It goes
to find out the wonders which itself does not contain and to transfer
these wonders, as by impress, into itself. It goes out to determine the
limits of its own existence also.
This is the second half of the activity of upper or self-less or
spiritual love. There is a tremendous great joy in exploring and
discovering the beloved. For what is the beloved? She is that which I
myself am not. Knowing the breach between us, the uncloseable gulf, I in
the same breath realize her _features_. In the first mode of the upper
consciousness there is perfect surpassing of all sense of division
between the self and the beloved. In the second mode the very discovery
of the features of the beloved contains the full realization of the
irreparable, or unsurpassable, gulf. This is objective knowledge, as
distinct from objective emotion. It contains always the element of
self-amplification, as if the self were amplified by knowledge in the
beloved. It should also contain the knowledge of the _limits_ of the
self.
So it is with the Infant. Curious indeed is the look on the face of the
Holy Child, in Leonardo’s pictures, in Botticelli’s, even in the
beautiful Filippo Lippi. It is the Mother who crosses her hands on her
breast, in supreme acquiescence, recipient; it is the Child who gazes,
with a kind of _objective_, strangely discerning, deep apprehension of
her, startling to northern eyes. It is a gaze by no means of innocence,
but of profound, pre-visual discerning. So plainly is the child looking
across the gulf and _fixing_ the gulf by very intentness of pre-visual
apprehension, that instinctively the ordinary northerner finds Him
anti-pathetic. It seems almost a cruel objectivity.
Perhaps between lovers, in the objective way of love, either the
voluntary separative mode predominates, or the sympathetic mode of
communion—one or the other. In the north we have worshipped the latter
mode. But in the south it is different; the objective sapient manner of
love seems more natural. Moreover in the face of the Infant lingers
nearly always the dark look of the pristine mode of consciousness, the
powerful self-centering subjective mode, established in the lower
body—the so-called sensual mode.
But take our own children. A small infant, as soon as it really begins
to direct its attention. How often it seems to be gazing across a
strange distance at the mother; what a curious look is on its face, as
if the mother were an object set across a far gulf, distinct however,
discernible, even obtrusive in her need to be apprehended. A mother will
chase away this look with kisses. But she cannot chase away the
inevitable effluence of separatist, objective apprehension. She herself
sometimes will fall into a half-trance, and the child on her lap will
resolve itself into a strange and separate object. She does not
criticize or analyze him. She does not even _perceive_ him. But as if
rapt, she apprehends him lying there, an unfathomable and inscrutable
objective, outside herself, never to be grasped or included in herself.
She seizes as it were a sudden and final, objective impression of him.
And the conclusive sensation is one of _finality_. Something final has
happened to her. She has the strange sensation of unalterable certainty,
a sensation at once profoundly gratifying and rather appalling. She
_possesses_ something, a certain entity of primal, pre-conscious
knowledge. Let the child be what he may, her knowledge of him is her
own, forever and final. It gives her a sense of wealth in possession,
and of power. It gives her a sense also of fatality. From the very
satisfaction of the objective finality derives the sense of fatality. It
is a knowledge of the other being, but a knowledge which contains at the
same time a final assurance of the eternal and insuperable gulf which
lies between beings—the isolation of the self first.
Thus the first plane of the _upper_ consciousness—the outgoing, the
sheer and unspeakable bliss of the sense of union, communion, at-oneness
with the beloved—and then the complementary objective _realization_ of
the beloved, the realization of that which is apart, different. This
realization is like riches to the objective consciousness. It is, as it
were, the adding of another self to the own self, through the mode of
apprehension. Through the mode of dynamic objective apprehension, which
in our day we have gradually come to call _imagination_, a man may in
his time add on to himself the whole of the universe, by increasing
pristine realization of the universal. This in mysticism is called the
progress to infinity—that is, in the modern, truly male mysticism. The
older female mysticism means something different by the infinite.
But anyhow there it is. The attaining to the Infinite, about which the
mystics have rhapsodized, is a definite process in the developing
unconscious, but a process in the development only of the
objective-apprehensive centers—an exclusive process, naturally.
A soul cannot come into its own through that love alone which is unison.
If it stress the one mode, the sympathetic mode, beyond a certain point,
it breaks its own integrity, and corruption sets in in the living
organism. On both planes of love, upper and lower, the two modes must
act complementary to one another, the sympathetic and the separatist. It
is the absolute failure to see this, that has torn the modern world into
two halves, the one half warring for the voluntary, objective,
separatist control, the other for the pure sympathetic. The individual
psyche divided against itself divides the world against itself, and an
unthinkable progress of calamity ensues unless there be a
reconciliation.
The goal of life is the coming to perfection of each single individual.
This cannot take place without the tremendous interchange of love from
all the four great poles of the first, basic field of consciousness.
There must be the twofold passionate flux of sympathetic love,
subjective-abdominal and objective-devotional, both. And there must be
the twofold passional circuit of separatist realization, the lower,
vital _self-realization_, and the upper, intense realization of the
other, a realization which includes a recognition of abysmal
_otherness_. To stress any one mode, any one interchange, is to hinder
all, and to cause corruption in the end. The human psyche must have
strength and pride to accept the whole fourfold nature of its own
creative activity.