Theos-Talk Archives (January 1994 Message tl00095)

When the world comes into being, we are told that there are certain
intrinsic qualities that break apart into a pair of opposites, and
thereby become manifest.

There is a symbol of a point, breaking apart into two new points
separated by a line. This forms a triange, with those two new points,
at the ends of the line, connected with the original point. The quality
of consciousness that the original point represents has come into being,
and it is represented by the spectrum of conscious expression to be
found along the line between the two new points.

We might hear of the upper triad as being formed this way, with Atman
manifesting as the dual points of Buddhi and Manas. This may not be
quite right. It might be better to say that the Auric Egg, the
unmanifest in one, one's storehouse of experience, the eighth principle,
comes into manifestation by creating Atman-Buddhi.

Consider Atman, which is pure being, of the nature and quality and
flavor of the world or universe into which we are born. And consider
Buddhi, our first sense of individuality, our identity, as composed of
relationships, our karmic web, our first individual consciousness, one
step removed from a sense of personal selfhood or being a separate
self, apart from others.

There is nothing to us at all, when we only clothe ourselves in Atman.
There is only an awareness of the overall nature of a world. But when
we take on Buddhi, we then enter into relationship with the beings of
the world, and are composed, in deed, of those relationships. We
could consider our being, in a world, as crowned by a upper triad
composed of:

               Auric Egg                   (the unmanifest)
    ----------------------------------------------------------------
            Atman           Buddhi              (the manifest)

where the spectrum of being, the pair of opposites, is created between
Atman and Buddhi.

When we have a pair of opposites, there is a duality. It is not
necessarily one of good and bad, where one side is preferred to the
other. And it is not necessarily a binary situation, with either one
state or the other; there can be a spectrum of consciousness.

While this manifestation continues, and some quality exists in the
world, we can experience it in different ways. Depending upon our
experience of the quality, we might be said to be "caught up in the
pair of opposites" or to have "risen above the pair of opposites."
The triad exists, with the essential quality expressing itself as
a range of consciousness, a range of experience, alike to a subplane
of space, but our perception of it changes depending upon our own
individual state that we are in.

Looking at the lowest standpoint, that of the combative personal self,
we see a pair of opposites as a battle between good and bad, with one
end of the spectrum being evil, to be opposed, and the other side as
good, to be embraced. There is a good side and a bad side to the
spectrum.

The second stage of experience would have one side as good, but the
other not being bad. One since has more good, and the other side just
has less of the good. It is not evil, it just consists of the absence
of the good. We move in the direction of the good, and some of us are
closer to it than others, but nothing is bad, only farther from the
good that we are.

The third stage would stop calling one end of the spectrum as good,
and say that either end is as good as the other. No one is better
because of being closer to one end that the others. We do not take
sides, but consider all points on the spectrum to be good. It would
be comparable to a musical scale, where all the notes should come
forth in a beautiful melody, without regard for position on the musical
scale. There is no bias towards certain notes nor towards a certain
end of the scale; the emphasis is on the beauty of the music, not on
the placement of the notes on the musical scale.

When we have reached this third stage, we could be said to have risen
about a particular pair of opposites. It does not mean that we cease
the corresponding activity. What we do in the world does not change.
Rather, we have come to perceive and experience our activities in a
different way than before. The activities continue, and others may not
see any different themselves, but for us, we relate to them in a
different way.

Coming back to the symbolism of the triangle, we have shifted our
awareness into the point at the top, and relate to the activities
from that standpoint. But the triangle continues to exist, and we
still engage in the same activities as before. We just do so with
a different awareness, a different relationship to the activities.

                    Eldon Tucker (eldon@netcom.com)