As readers of The Cosmic Kaleidoscope know, we experience physical matter but the entire cosmos, and our planetary universe with it, is a psychic projection in the cosmic mind. This is a concept difficult to grasp at first. Is it even explainable?
The first rule of spirituality is that understanding comes with direct realization and not by intellectual speculation. Still, let us try to get closer to the above idea with the help of a few simple examples.
The child of an electrician may look towards the starry night sky and fantasise about some great wireman out there celebrating a grand festival of lights. This is more or less what our forefathers did when they imagined superhuman, divine figures behind wind, rain, the seasons, etc.
It is we, the created unit beings of little consciousness, that perceive of existence as physical, or rather make anything of consciousness into material things. In reality, the matter that we sense and enjoy consists of vibrations of consciousness that keep changing and transforming due to the influence of the three qualifying tendencies, just like air, vapour, water, and ice keep transforming into each other.
If we consider the proposition that we can think about a stone, but it cannot think about us, lacking as it is in brain, nervous system and other stuff needed for thinking, we should feel satisfied that we have come a long way from the proto-life that once emerged from crude matter here on Earth. If we can think about a stone, then who or what is thinking about the entire creation, and what is more, about the entire Cosmos? For, surely, there is no counter-argument to it, that as we think about the things around and within us, something of a very different magnitude may be thinking about us at this moment.
As explained in the book, the operative principle is the combination of three existential tendencies endlessly replacing one another in dominating everything created. They are the elevating, mutative and static tendencies. Everywhere these tendencies of the manifesting, operative principle express themselves in varying subtle and crude forms, resulting in countless mixed qualities and expressions brought about by, such as:
- Electricity is a dynamic expression full of mutative power, transformative, changing darkness to light, off into on, static into movement.
- The gravitational force is static and has the final say in keeping all things on the planet in place.
- Subtler physical expressions, where the elevating sentient tendency is prominent, may motivate refinement, nobleness and magnanimity in us. A supramundane, celestial, magnificent sunrise; a captivating singing voice, a particularly graceful gesture, etc. convey the elevating force, filling us with wonder at the mysteriousness of creation.
The static tendency may be responsible for such things as black holes and exploding stars out in space. In a more general sense, it defines the created world by way of giving final result to the activities of the imaginative sentient and actional mutative tendencies. This defining tendency keeps things in their place in our inner world, too. By shaping the results of actions, it makes those results distinctly noticeable. Hence, the static tendency is the dominating tendency of the mind-stuff where every result of the experiences of our personal world is stored.[1]
How can the static tendency dominate the mind-stuff where also mutative and elevating energies are found? The static cannot replicate the mutative and the elevating? If it could, it would become those tendencies, right? If the static dominates, then the mutative is no longer mutative but static, and ditto the elevating, is it not? That would be a misunderstanding. The sentient tendency is uplifting, the mutative is action-oriented, and the static tendency defines the result.
The book makes use of an example of doing house-cleaning where it is explained that even the much improved state of a home after proper cleaning is expressed by the static tendency however much the mutative force has been allowed to do its work for enhancing the sentient tendency. Let us suggest another example, that of an artist and his or her artwork.
Until given proper physical shape, an artwork remains an abstraction, existing in the artist’s mind. Even if he or she talks to an audience about it, makes sketches, shows examples, others may not get a proper understanding of it. They may sense the artist’s intention of creating something subtle, intellectual or crude, but there is no defining manifestation of it. As long as it is not properly expressed as a finished piece, the artwork remains unclear to the world. Only when people may enjoy the actual piece of art may they form a proper understanding of it, thanks to the static tendency of the qualifying principle. Now there is a properly defined result and everybody may enjoy it and express themselves about it. This is the physico-psychic reality of aesthetics, where the mind-stuff plays the central part and with it the static tendency.
The book further mentions:
Without the static, things would not have finality. The universe is physically experiential because the static tendency dominates the cosmic mind-stuff. Whatever comes through our sensory apparatus is dominated by the static regardless of how good it may taste, its wonderful smell, etc. If it were not predominantly static it would not be physically recognisable. When we experience mainly the mutative or the sentient, it is due to our evolved mind beyond the crude mental. Symbolism is a case in point where ideas and energies may flow from a symbol. Fine art is another example where artists create visual shapes and forms that convey realties—ideas, feelings, etc.—subtler than the static physical. The science of the supramundane centres on this reality, and its dynamics are explained in the chapter on the five layers of the mind.
The bottom line is: anything physical is crude and dominated by the static tendency, however appealing and nice it may be. If we go back to the creation of the cosmos, we remember that the state of cosmic pure I is dominated by the elevating force, the cosmic ego by the mutative, and the cosmic mind-stuff by the static tendency. The case is the same with our microcosmic existence: the physical is dominated by static, the intellectual by the mutative, and our intuitive, psycho-spiritual world is dominated by the elevating tendency.
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