PLEXUSES, PLANES AND SO ON
The primal consciousness in man is pre-mental, and has nothing to do
with cognition. It is the same as in the animals. And this pre-mental
consciousness remains as long as we live the powerful root and body of
our consciousness. The mind is but the last flower, the _cul de sac_.
The first seat of our primal consciousnesses the solar plexus, the
great nerve-center situated behind the stomach. From this center we
are first dynamically conscious. For the primal consciousness is
always dynamic, and never, like mental consciousness, static. Thought,
let us say what we will about its magic powers, is instrumental only,
the soul's finest instrument for the business of living. Thought is
just a means to action and living. But life and action take rise
actually at the great centers of dynamic consciousness.
The solar plexus, the greatest and most important center of our
dynamic consciousness, is a sympathetic center. At this main center of
your first-mind we know as we can never mentally know. Primarily we
know, each man, each living creature knows, profoundly and
satisfactorily and without question, that _I am I._ This root of all
knowledge and being is established in the solar plexus; it is dynamic,
pre-mental knowledge, such as cannot be transferred into thought. Do
not ask me to transfer the pre-mental dynamic knowledge into thought.
It cannot be done. The knowledge that _I am I_ can never be thought:
only known.
This being the very first term of our life-knowledge, a knowledge
established physically and psychically the moment the two parent
nuclei fused, at the moment of the conception, it remains integral as
a piece of knowledge in every subsequent nucleus derived from this one
original. But yet the original nucleus, formed from the two parent
nuclei at our conception, remains always primal and central, and is
always the original fount and home of the first and supreme knowledge
that _I am I._ This original nucleus is embodied in the solar plexus.
But the original nucleus divides. The first division, as science
knows, is a division of recoil. From the perfect oneing of the two
parent nuclei in the egg-cell results a recoil or new assertion. That
which was perfect _one_ now divides again, and in the recoil becomes
again two.
This second nucleus, the nucleus born of recoil, is the nuclear origin
of all the great nuclei of the voluntary system, which are the nuclei
of assertive individualism. And it remains central in the adult human
body as it was in the egg-cell. In the adult human body the first
nucleus of independence, first-born from the great original nucleus of
our conception, lies always established in the lumbar ganglion. Here
we have our positive center of independence, in a multifarious
universe.
At the solar plexus, the dynamic knowledge is this, that _I am I._ The
solar plexus is the center of all the sympathetic system. The great
prime knowledge is sympathetic in nature. I am I, in vital centrality.
I am I, the vital center of all things. I am I, the clew to the whole.
All is one with me. It is the one identity.
But at the lumbar ganglion, which is the center of separate identity,
the knowledge is of a different mode, though the term is the same. At
the lumbar ganglion I know that I am I, in distinction from a whole
universe, which is not as I am. This is the first tremendous flash of
knowledge of singleness and separate identity. I am I, not because I
am at one with all the universe, but because I am other than all the
universe. It is my distinction from all the rest of things which makes
me myself. Because I am set utterly apart and distinguished from all
that is the rest of the universe, therefore _I am I._ And this root of
our knowledge in separateness lies rooted all the time in the lumbar
ganglion. It is the second term of our dynamic psychic existence.
It is from the great sympathetic center of the solar plexus that the
child rejoices in the mother and in its own blissful centrality, its
unison with the as yet unknown universe. Look at the pictures of
Madonna and Child, and you will even _see_ it. It is from this center
that it draws all things unto itself, winningly, drawing love for the
soul, and actively drawing in milk. The same center controls the great
intake of love and of milk, of psychic and of physical nourishment.
And it is from the great voluntary center of the lumbar ganglion that
the child asserts its distinction from the mother, the single identity
of its own existence, and its power over its surroundings. From this
center issues the violent little pride and lustiness which kicks with
glee, or crows with tiny exultance in its own being, or which claws
the breast with a savage little rapacity, and an incipient
masterfulness of which every mother is aware. This incipient mastery,
this sheer joy of a young thing in its own single existence, the
marvelous playfulness of early youth, and the roguish mockery of the
mother's love, as well as the bursts of temper and rage, all belong to
infancy. And all this flashes spontaneously, _must_ flash
spontaneously from the first great center of independence, the
powerful lumbar ganglion, great dynamic center of all the voluntary
system, of all the spirit of pride and joy in independent existence.
And it is from this center too that the milk is urged away down the
infant bowels, urged away towards excretion. The motion is the same,
but here it applies to the material, not to the vital relation. It is
from the lumbar ganglion that the dynamic vibrations are emitted which
thrill from the stomach and bowels, and promote the excremental
function of digestion. It is the solar plexus which controls the
assimilatory function in digestion.
So, in the first division of the egg-cell is set up the first plane of
psychic and physical life, remaining radically the same throughout the
whole existence of the individual. The two original nuclei of the
egg-cell remain the same two original nuclei within the corpus of the
adult individual. Their psychic and their physical dynamic is the same
in the solar plexus and lumbar ganglion as in the two nuclei of the
egg-cell. The first great division in the egg remains always the same,
the unchanging great division in the psychic and the physical
structure; the unchanging great division in knowledge and function. It
is a division into polarized duality, psychical and physical, of the
human being. It is the great vertical division of the egg-cell, and of
the nature of man.
Then, this division having taken place, there is a new thrill of
conjunction or collision between the divided nuclei, and at once the
second birth takes place. The two nuclei now split horizontally. There
is a horizontal division across the whole egg-cell, and the nuclei are
now four, two above, and two below. But those below retain their
original nature, those above are new in nature. And those above
correspond again to those below.
In the developed child, the great horizontal division of the egg-cell,
resulting in four nuclei, this remains the same. The horizontal
division-wall is the diaphragm. The two upper nuclei are the two
great nerve-centers, the cardiac plexus and the thoracic ganglion. We
have again a sympathetic center primal in activity and knowledge, and
a corresponding voluntary center. In the center of the breast, the
cardiac plexus acts as the great sympathetic mode of new dynamic
activity, new dynamic consciousness. And near the spine, by the wall
of the shoulders, the thoracic ganglion acts as the powerful voluntary
center of separateness and power, in the same vertical line as the
lumbar ganglion, but horizontally so different.
Now we must change our whole feeling. We must put off the deep way of
understanding which belongs to the lower body of our nature, and
transfer ourselves into the upper plane, where being and functioning
are different.
At the cardiac plexus, there in the center of the breast, we have now
a new great sun of knowledge and being. Here there is no more of self.
Here there is no longer the dark, exultant knowledge that _I am I._ A
change has come. Here I know no more of myself. Here I am not. Here I
only know the delightful revelation that you are you. The wonder is no
longer within me, my own dark, centrifugal, exultant self. The wonder
is without me. The wonder is outside me. And I can no longer exult
and know myself the dark, central sun of the universe. Now I look with
wonder, with tenderness, with joyful yearning towards that which is
outside me, beyond me, not me. Behold, that which was once negative
has now become the only positive. The other being is now the great
positive reality, I myself am as nothing. Positivity has changed
places.
If we want to see the portrayed look, then we must turn to the North,
to the fair, wondering, blue-eyed infants of the Northern masters.
They seem so frail, so innocent and wondering, touching outwards to
the mystery. They are not the same as the Southern child, nor the
opposite. Their whole life mystery is different. Instead of
consummating all things within themselves, as the dark little Southern
infants do, the Northern Jesus-children reach out delicate little
hands of wondering innocence towards delicate, flower-reverential
mothers. Compare a Botticelli Madonna, with all her wounded and
abnegating sensuality, with a Hans Memling Madonna, whose soul is pure
and only reverential. Beyond me is the mystery and the glory, says the
Northern mother: let me have no self, let me only seek that which is
all-pure, all-wonderful. But the Southern mother says: This is mine,
this is mine, this is my child, my wonder, my master, my lord, my
scourge, my own.
From the cardiac plexus the child goes forth in bliss. It seeks the
revelation of the unknown. It wonderingly seeks the mother. It opens
its small hands and spreads its small fingers to touch her. And bliss,
bliss, bliss, it meets the wonder in mid-air and in mid-space it finds
the loveliness of the mother's face. It opens and shuts its little
fingers with bliss, it laughs the wonderful, selfless laugh of pure
baby-bliss, in the first ecstasy of finding all its treasure, groping
upon it and finding it in the dark. It opens wide, child-wide eyes to
see, to see. But it cannot see. It is puzzled, it wrinkles its face.
But when the mother puts her face quite near, and laughs and coos,
then the baby trembles with an ecstasy of love. The glamour, the
wonder, the treasure beyond. The great uplift of rapture. All this
surges from that first center of the breast, the sun of the breast,
the cardiac plexus.
And from the same center acts the great function of the heart and
breath. Ah, the aspiration, the aspiration, like a hope, like a
yearning constant and unfailing with which we take in breath. When we
breathe, when we take in breath, it is not as when we take in food.
When we breathe in we aspire, we yearn towards the heaven of air and
light. And when the heart dilates to draw in the stream of dark blood,
it opens its arms as to a beloved. It dilates with reverent joy, as a
host opening his doors to an honored guest, whom he delights to serve:
opening his doors to the wonder which comes to him from beyond, and
without which he were nothing.
So it is that our heart dilates, our lungs expand. They are bidden by
that great and mysterious impulse from the cardiac plexus, which bids
them seek the mystery and the fulfillment of the beyond. They seek the
beyond, the air of the sky, the hot blood from the dark under-world.
And so we live.
And then, they relax, they contract. They are driven by the opposite
motion from the powerful voluntary center of the thoracic ganglion..
That which was drawn in, was invited, is now relinquished, allowed to
go forth, negatively. Not positively dismissed, but relinquished.
There is a wonderful complementary duality between the voluntary and
the sympathetic activity on the same plane. But between the two
planes, upper and lower, there is a further dualism, still more
startling, perhaps. Between the dark, glowing first term of knowledge
at the solar plexus: _I am I, all is one in me_; and the first term of
volitional knowledge: _I am myself, and these others are not as I
am_;--there is a world of difference. But when the world changes
again, and on the upper plane we realize the wonder of other things,
the difference is almost shattering. The thoracic ganglion is a
ganglion of power. When the child in its delicate bliss seeks the
mother and finds her and is added on to her, then it fulfills itself
in the great upper sympathetic mode. But then it relinquishes her. It
ceases to be aware of her. And if she tries to force its love to play
upon her again, like light revealing her to herself, then the child
turns away. Or it will lie, and look at her with the strange, odd,
curious look of knowledge, like a little imp who is spying her out.
This is the curious look that many mothers cannot bear. Involuntarily
it arouses a sort of hate in them--the look of scrutinizing curiosity,
apart, and as it were studying, balancing them up. Yet it is a look
which comes into every child's eyes. It is the reaction of the great
voluntary plexus between the shoulders. The mother is suddenly set
apart, as an object of curiosity, coldly, sometimes dreamily,
sometimes puzzled, sometimes mockingly observed.
Again, if a mother neglect her child, it cries, it weeps for her love
and attention. Its pitiful lament is one of the forms of compulsion
from the upper center. This insistence on pity, on love, is quite
different from the rageous weeping, which is compulsion from the lower
center, below the diaphragm. Again, some children just drop everything
they can lay hands on over the edge of their crib, or their table.
They drop everything out of sight. And then they look up with a
curious look of negative triumph. This is again a form of recoil from
the upper center, the obliteration of the thing which is outside. And
here a child is acting quite differently from the child who joyously
_smashes_. The desire to smash comes from the lower centers.
We can quite well recognize the will exerted from the lower center. We
call it headstrong temper and masterfulness. But the peculiar will of
the upper center--the sort of nervous, critical objectivity, the
deliberate forcing of sympathy, the play upon pity and tenderness, the
plaintive bullying of love, or the benevolent bullying of love--these
we don't care to recognize. They are the extravagance of spiritual
_will_. But in its true harmony the thoracic ganglion is a center of
happier activity: of real, eager curiosity, of the delightful desire
to pick things to pieces, and the desire to put them together again,
the desire to "find out," and the desire to invent: all this arises on
the upper plane, at the volitional center of the thoracic ganglion.