Discovering Hidden Astrological Influences – Stan Grof

The Examination of the Sharp and Loose Destiny and Progressed Planetary Stations

The Sharp or Loose Destiny aspects present in a natal chart, and planetary stations in secondary progressions, are among the powerful yet little-known techniques available in the practice of astrological analysis. An examination of the horoscope of Czech-born psychiatrist, Stanislav (Stan) Grof, will illustrate how his Sharp Destiny and progressed Uranus station provide penetrating insight into one of the most profound existential events of his lifetime.

During his residency, at Charles University in Prague, Grof assisted in experimentative LSD sessions with volunteer professionals as well as his own clinical patients. Ampules of LSD were sent from Sandoz laboratories in Switzerland to the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, and to research clinics worldwide, for the purpose of having psychologists, experience from the LSD, what chemist Albert Hofmann believed to replicate the states of mind suffered by psychiatric patients.

Upon graduation in 1956, Grof was able to experience his own LSD session where he discovered the unconscious to be a treasure-trove of personal and archetypal knowledge and a powerful ally for psychological and emotional healing. The event’s transformative effects diminished his regard for traditional precepts of psychiatry which he then replaced with a quest for a deeper understanding of what he calls “non-ordinary states of consciousness.” Grof’s immersion into the depths of mind through psychedelics and intense breathing techniques inspired him to formulate his theories on transpersonal psychology and to establish his therapeutic, drug-free Holotropic BreathworkTM practice.

Experimentation with LSD was legal until rebellious youths of 1960s America used the substance irresponsibly. Timothy Leary, the controversial Harvard University psychology professor, was among the revolutionaries who encouraged the wide use of the mind-expanding agent. During that time the misuse of LSD was the cause of many casualties on the way to its becoming the requisite sacrament for the more serious-minded nonconformist.

Chemist Albert Hofmann, who first synthesized LSD, wrote of his creation:

I was aware that LSD, a new active compound with such properties, would have to be of use in pharmacology, in neurology, and especially in psychiatry, and that it would attract the interest of concerned specialists. But at that time, I had no inkling that the new substance would also come to be used beyond medical science, as an inebriant in the drug scene. Since my self-experiment had revealed LSD in its terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected was that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching a pleasure drug.1

Aside from its use as a “pleasure drug” as Hofmann put it, LSD also had a nurturing effect on society in contrast with its labeling by the mainstream as a threat to the establishment. Through the provocative LSD experience, Americans were exposed to lifestyle alternatives that included communal living with greater accessibility to healthier foods and natural healing methods. More significantly, it ignited the pursuit of spiritual truths explained in Eastern philosophies and introduced the practice of yoga and meditation. LSD was the chemical agent that opened a channel for the energy/intelligence of the powerful planetary conjunction of Uranus with Pluto throughout a major portion of the 1960s.

Stan Grof “turned on and tuned in” but he did not completely “drop out” as did his American counterparts Timothy Leary, who popularized the slogan, and Richard Alpert, aka Baba Ram Dass, who wrote Be Here Now, which became the counterculture’s guidebook. Instead, in 1967, Grof was accepted at John Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, and later became chief of psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center where he continued investigating the virtues of LSD. In 1973, Grof met with one of the founders of Esalen Institute who then invited him to serve as scholar-in-residence at the institute in Big Sur, California. It was during his residency that he and his wife Christina developed their Holotropic Breathwork techniques.

Albert Hofmann visited Esalen Institute in 1984. Grof interviewed the notable chemist and expressed his gratitude in the following statement:

“Dr. Hofmann’s discovery of LSD and his work, in general, have had a profound impact on my own professional and personal life, for which I am immensely grateful. My first LSD session in 1956, when I was a beginning psychiatrist, was a critical landmark and turning point for me and since then, my life has never been the same. So, this interview gives me the opportunity to express my deep appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Hofmann for the influence he has had on my life.2

On a Tim Ferris podcast interview,3 Grof candidly described the results of his first LSD session:

“I was one kind of person in the morning, another walked out of there in the evening. This was my first LSD session . . .   I was physically open to the mystical world that I saw there. It was a much deeper understanding . . .”

GROF’S TRANSFORMATION IN ASTROLOGICAL TERMS

Grof’s description of his unexpected and radical life-path transition is associated with two significant astrological factors. They are the Sharp Destiny present in his natal chart and the station of Uranus in his secondary progressions. The “hard” and “easy” major aspects between Jupiter and Saturn categorize a native as either endowed with a Sharp or Loose Destiny.4

The Sharp Destiny

When Jupiter and Saturn are in challenging conjunction, square, or opposition aspect, the life direction is defined as fateful or “Sharp.” Experience is guided by a narrowed course with strict adherence to discriminating conscience and a lean toward intense self-scrutiny. (If the indicators form the easier sextile, trine, or are not in major aspect, the destiny is “Loose” and suggests a minimal concern over moral considerations of right and wrong.)

In The Essentials of Astrological Analysis, renowned astrologer Dr. Marc Edmund Jones formulates the contrasting ways consciousness manages its personal conduct. In metaphysical terms, he explains the difference between the two forms of psychological outlook:

The fundamental distinction is between the life with its course rather well determined at birth or before, and the one where there is little preset in its development.5

In Grof’s birth chart, the relationship between Jupiter and Saturn is the opposition of the two and classifies the native’s conscious functioning in accordance with a Sharp Destiny. This is self-awareness in its most alert capacity with Jupiter the indicator of unrestricted, enthusiastic outreach poised in direct balance or conflict with Saturn and its tendency for deliberate control of attitude and behavior. Jones speaks of the opposition as foretelling self-development and heightened awareness, often occurring as a result of polarized circumstantial factors:

Jupiter and Saturn in opposition aspect indicate an ordering of life’s fundamental motives through which the native is usually compelled to dramatize himself continually in the presence of his fellows, at least if he wishes to participate with them in any course of everyday experience. This necessity often tends to throw a given lifetime into two entirely separate periods, with the latter revealing greater depth and continuity of realization, as perhaps an unsuspected consequence of the mirroring it has given itself through some more superficial role-playing in the former. There may be either a prodigal expenditure of the self’s resources, with their ultimate recapture in a refinement of soul, or a moral vacillation that accentuates every weakness of character, and so encourages a surrender to a final and hopeless ineptitude.6

Grof was and is clearly subject to dramatic and periodic change through the Sharp Destiny’s influence in his chart. His formative years were spent with ambitions for a career in film animation which took an abrupt turn when introduced to Freud’s work in psychoanalysis. Grof, however, eventually rejected psychology’s conventional approach, thanks to his encounter with the transformative attributes of LSD.

The Jupiter-Saturn opposition encourages metamorphosis when transiting planets conjunct either end of the aspect’s poles or when progressions make any “hard” contacts with it. A thorough probe into the dates of activation throughout Grof’s lifespan is beyond the scope of this brief study, however, an astrologer’s independent search of the dynamic aspects7 to the opposition could further validate the influence of the Sharp Destiny in the native’s life.

Progressed Uranus Station

Thorough chart analysis usually includes spotting current transits of the outer, slow-moving planets that activate natal potentials dramatically and over long periods of time. However, sole attention on real-time planetary movements is not sufficient for the comprehensive identification of the forces at play at precise times of significant events. This was the case in Grof’s life and chart at the time of his exposure to the powers of LSD. In mid-November 1956, the transits of Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto failed to make either a conjunction or opposition aspect to any planet in Grof’s natal horoscope. Transits Saturn and Neptune were in square to natal placements during this crucial time, however, squares reveal a more remote or subjective struggle rather than direct aspect connections by conjunctions and oppositions when identifying the connections of celestial forces with empirical reality.

The often-neglected secondary progressions are of paramount importance when seeking to identify astrological indicators of consequential shift. They are powerful corresponding activators in the life process, and it is during the years when progressed planets reverse their direction that great modifications in experience are to be expected. When planets pause in their course to turn from retrograde to direct or vice versa, existential circumstances will mirror the progressed planet’s reversal in direction, producing what Jones defines as a time set apart for “a critical regrasp of experience:” 8

The phenomenon in progressions always identifies a subtle or psychological shift in the fundamental course of life, such as requires a critical regrasp of experience and often proves to be an adjustment over an appreciable span of time whether marked by some single sharp event of easy identification or by a complex syndrome of changes of less obvious interrelation.

Grof’s personal LSD experience on November 13, 1956, was sandwiched between prior developing circumstances, where he monitored others taking LSD, and the years thereafter of continuing research on the effects and benefits of the psychotropic substance. Both the long-term, subtle development and the abrupt realization Jones points to in his Scope of Astrological Prediction were active in Grof’s case.

To determine the timing of a planetary station, one counts each day after birth as equal to each year of life. Counting from July 1st in the 1931 ephemeris shows Uranus stationing to turn retrograde twenty-five days after Grof’s birth. The station of Uranus synchronizing with his first LSD session accounts for the major transition of his lifetime at age twenty-five.

The seemingly random progressed stations associated with a particular several years in the lifespan mark the rare occasions when a major disruption of normal activity is likely to occur.  Grof’s Uranus stationed in progressions to turn retrograde on August 20, 1955, at 19 Aries 23, offering him a new paradigm to contemplate. This date closely corresponds with Grof’s initial steps on the experimentative path he was to take and to which he became thoroughly dedicated. The Uranian impulse incites exploration of unknown realms and dimensions, and when positive, becomes the Hero’s Journey. For Grof, it was the revelation of the bountiful assets available at the deeper levels of consciousness that beckoned him. Progressed Uranus turning to go retrograde led him inward to take up the task as an iconoclast in his chosen field, and shaped him into a spiritual leader in the mid-twentieth century’s New Age movement.

Without forewarning, a native can become alarmed by the mental and emotional pressure of stealth-like stationary progressions, with the stress likely to cause an unproductive resistance to the demands of mandatory turning tides. However, when a station is known to be imminent or when a future date is foreseen, the native can prepare in anticipation of yet undisclosed opportunities for reassessment and reestablishment of circumstances. Although taken by surprise, Grof was able to quickly identify the advantages LSD had to offer when challenging, yet auspicious events, synchronized with his progressed Uranus station.

An interesting feature in the planetary patterning of Grof’s natal chart is the relationship between the numerous opposition aspects and natal Uranus as they create a purposeful conduit in the form of a T-Cross. The name of the Cross is derived from the configuration’s resemblance to the letter T, with the horizontal line representing the planets in opposition aspect and the perpendicular pointing to Uranus at a 90-degrees to the planets in the signs of Cancer and Capricorn. Grof mentions his T-Cross in several interviews but it is far more complex than simply the ultra-tight Pluto-Saturn opposition he occasionally references. With a total of six oppositions in the chart, including the Sun with its wide orb of 17 degrees, it is considered a preponderance9 of the opposition aspect as it establishes the ultra-powerful foundation of the Cross.

The T-Cross is a Focal Determinator10 in Jones’ parlance with the squaring Uranus assigned the position of Point Focus. The squaring Uranus becomes the focal point of a continuous release of self-expression spurred on by the tension of the axis oppositions. With seven of the possible ten planets forming the foundation of the Cross, the arrangement can be considered the chart’s signature aspect. The Sharp Destiny coupled with the Point Focus Uranus coalesced to represent the genius of the chart and man who stepped out of the norm most profoundly in 1956 when progressed Uranus performed its station.

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A LEGACY

Challenges often arise when one crosses the boundaries of accepted protocols as Grof did in the field of psychology. His own Holotropic Breathwork program could suffer criticism as well, similar to what he outlines in a 2009 interview appearing in The Sun.11 Grof includes the following remarks in answer to the question, “What were the results of that initial LSD study?”:                                             

” . . . at the cradle of all the major religions have been personal mystical experiences of their founders and prophets. When the religions become organized, they tend to lose the connection with their spiritual source and become concerned with politics, money, power, and possessions. . . “

Replacing the word religion with the word movement puts Holotropic Breathwork in a category much like any controversial organization. This exposes Grof’s work to misinterpretation by his peers in the field of psychology and leaves him vulnerable to misunderstanding even among his own representatives and facilitators of the breathwork system. Conflicts over workshop objectives and methods also present difficulties when facilitators’ personal beliefs filter into what should otherwise be a standard and well-regulated program. For a clear understanding of Grof’s intent, one needs only to hear and to read his own words.

Despite all potential obstacles, it cannot be denied, that Grof has developed a valuable program for those who wish to immerse their conscious mind into the deeper states of consciousness. This practice facilitates awareness of the motivations and traumas that often lie dormant in the unconscious and may stand in the way of the sincere seeker’s quest for enlightenment. At the very least, long-standing psychological imbalances may be resolved though Grof’s innovated form of breathwork self-realization.

A Transit of Import

Transit Pluto stations within a degree of Grof’s natal Moon on April 30, 2022, at 28 Capricorn 36. Pluto’s penetrating influence suggests that Grof’s legacy may then firmly take hold, especially with a conscious effort on his part, or by those in his organization, to manifest the message of his Moon’s Sabian symbol, A secret business conference.12 Following the suggestions of the symbol’s definition may be the key to a successful and long-lasting legacy:

CAPRICORN 30 A secret business conference This is a symbol of the momentary background in human relations as essentially the product of current activities and attitudes, and of a determination to capitalize on any given situation through effective allegiances among the principal personalities involved. The emphasis here is on man’s desire for an inner circle of associates through whom he may exercise a real control over immediate eventualities, and on his realization that in this fashion he may monopolize the resources of his fellows. The keyword is OPPORTUNITY. When positive, the degree is a gift for clever planning and successful administration in every area of life, and when negative, rampant selfishness and rank exploitation of others.

The Moon facilitates an emotional and nurturing connection with others in give-and-take fashion. World history identifies numerous spiritual leaders tasked with the duty to remind humanity of the wisdom accessible to them from within. Each points the way with a vital message for the advancement of current and future generations. Whether Transpersonal Psychology and the more somatic practice of Holotropic Breathwork stand the test of time is yet to be known.

The Jupiter-Saturn Sharp Destiny and the progressed station of Point Focus Uranus are the two main indicators that empowered the shifts in life direction of consciousness-explorer Stan Grof. They are representative of astrology’s bountiful symbolic and archetypal counterparts to the planetary energies that served to establish an innovative path for the native, and that brought self-realization within reach of both himself and all those blessed by his social contribution.

Regarding horoscope analysis, each astrologer has their preferred approach to which they are dedicated, however, the revealing techniques described above can easily fit into any astrologer’s toolbox. The motivational characteristics defined by the Sharp and Loose Destiny technique and the timing of great change throughout the lifespan shown by progressed stations are invaluable when seeking a comprehensive understanding of a native’s life potentials.

 

Notes and References

  1. LSD My Problem Child: Reflection on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science by Albert Hofmann
  2. Interview at Esalen Institute of Albert Hofmann by Stan Grof 1984, https://maps.org/news-letters/v11n2/11222gro.html
  3. 18:51 on the Ferris podcast interview, Grof states that his first LSD experience was on Nov. 13, 1956. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mdYUmvTeig&t=1157s
  4. Essentials of Astrological Analysis by Marc Edmund Jones, Sabian Publishing Society, Stanwood WA, 1970, Definition: Sharp and Loose Destiny, pp. 342-343
  5. Essentials of Astrological Analysis by Marc Edmund Jones, Difference between the Sharp and Loose Destiny, p. 343
  6. Sharp Destiny, opposition aspect between Jupiter and Saturn, pp. 124-125
  7. Dynamic Aspects are the moving transit and progressed aspects
  8. Scope of Astrological Prediction, by Marc Edmund Jones, Sabian Publishing Society, Stanwood WA, 1969, Challenge by Progressed Station, p. 49
  9. Essentials of Astrological Analysis by Marc Edmund Jones, Sabian Publishing Society, Stanwood WA, 1970, preponderance by opposition p. 266
  10. Essentials of Astrological Analysis, Chapter on Focal Determinators, p. 192, for T Cross p. 193
  11. The Sun interview, 2009, https://wintercreativestudio.com/across-the-universe/
  12. Sabian Symbols in Astrology, by Marc Edmund Jones, Sabian Publishing Society, Stanwood WA

 

Ignorance of One – Part 1

THE IGNORE-ANCE of ONE

A Note on Real/Imaginary Mathematics

Copyright 1953-2020 © by A. Ray Johnson

 

I. The Fundamentals

APART from metaphysical speculations, there are no more delusive illusions than may be encountered in the field of mathematics, ancient/modern. In mathematics, the complex of Concrete/Abstract comes to its sharpest and also its most diffuse focus. In mathematics, we have the whole field of Illusion/Reality under both microscopic and telescopic observation. Here we are confronted with unlimited Fact and Fancy, with end-less fancies about facts, with equally end-less facts about fancies. It is no wonder that the most fantastic books in English (the Adventures of Alice in Mirror- and Wonder-land) were the works of a mathematician. Fancy is a prime fact in the structure-nature of man, and mathematics is the most systematically abstract product of man’s fancy or re-creative imagination. Poetry and statistics are twins. Tom-toms and adding machines measure the rhythms of peace and war. At the point where fancies and figures meet, history and mystery make their throbbing appearance. Mystics and masters of the high-er calculus, back to back, search the heavens in opposite directions for the unified field formula. The multiplication table, music, and the molecular structure of Form/Energy: Matter discourse along the same course. It is obvious that a definitive answer to the question, What is the relation of count to reality? would involve a solution of the riddle of the universe. To a fun-da-ment-alist, that ought to be fun.

The fun begins in the recognition of the obvious fact that figures are fancies that have no existence in nature save in the heads of mathematicians (who may here be redefined as figure-heads). There are no such things in earth or heaven as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7; search high and low and you will find that figures exist nowhere but in your mind. In concrete nature such abstract operations as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division are merely figures of speech. Two white horses times four red-headed girls, four monkeys plus six stars, one hundred cabbages divided by ten kings, forty oysters subtracted from one bed, — such propositions are nonsensical. They are impractical fancies; you can say them, but you can’t really think them: they are as close to Platonic or immaterial ideas as the race will ever come. Two bankers plus two robbers equals four bank-robbers, — this is a formula that can produce nothing more tangible than a ghost or spirit. One teacher of mathematics plus thirty scholars equals a dull half-hour and thirty-one headaches, is a piece of poetry, not a piece of mathematics. Paint the figure 15 in red on the rear end of an elephant, but it won’t change the actual number of elephants in the circus. There may be fifteen elephants in the circus, but they didn’t come into the world with the numbers 1 to 15 stamped on their foreheads.

Search nature: you will never find anything but analogues to mathematical operations and geometrical designs. The closest, visible analogues to geometrical designs are the heavenly spheres and the terrestrial crystals, but there is no tangible evidence that abstract geometry has anything to do with the formation of these concrete forms. The closest analogy to numerical values is music, but it would be difficult to prove that abstract, mathematical formulations enter into the construction of the nodes in the human throat and ear. Atomic structure and the periodic table of the elements would seem to argue that matter embodies mathematical harmonies, but it is obvious that there is nothing abstract about the embodiment. Other analogues to mathematical operations-formulations are readily seen to be nothing but figures of speech. One analogue to addition is growth, and another is the swelling of mountain streams in the course of a heavy rainstorm; you can compute mathematically the growth of a tree or the rise in the volume of a river over the spring months, but abstract addition has nothing to do with the real processes involved in the growth of the tree and the increase in the volume of water in the river.

In nature one analogue to multiplication is generation, but there is nothing at all abstract about the process by which one peach be-comes fifteen annual crops amounting to tens of thousands of peach-es. One male guinea pig times one female guinea pig equals hundreds of guinea pigs, but that, albeit natural sense, is mathematical nonsense. Analogues to division and subtraction are decay, disintegration, erosion, and evaporation; you may also say that the passage of clouds over the sun subtracted a number of degrees of heat from the thermometer: but these are all figures of speech, and are that even if you compose very precise mathematical formulas expounding the processes and the rates of decay, disintegration, erosion, and evaporation. Mathematical formulas dealing with these natural processes are practical fancies: although they leave the actual processes really unformulated, they enable men to deal with the phenomenal, the superficial changes wrought by the processes.

In the regenerative process, cells “add” and “divide”, but both natural operations are biological, not mathematical. As yet there are no formulas reflecting the bio-electro-magnetics involved in syngamy, — the penetration of the egg by the sperm, — and if there ever are any such mathematical formulas they will prove to be fictions about an essentially unformulated reality, — fictions perhaps a little more practical than love stories in “explaining” the sexual process, but not a whit more realistic. Mathematical fictions are useful when elements, compounds, and organic tissue are subjected to artificial analysis-synthesis, but the natural realities thus dealt with remain essentially, or really, unformulated. Mathematical formulations provide men with a wealth of practical information, but with no true understanding of the structure-nature of Matter/Life. And the general failure to realize this fact is of crucial significance. Men generally mistake their fictitious formulas for apprehensions, — even comprehension, — of the realities, and in this are victims of a delusion, — a delusion which, if undiscovered, could destroy the race. Persistent and stubborn ignorance of the fanciful nature of mathematics could be disastrous. The subject is worthy of full attention and thorough inquiry-research. The fundamentals should not be funereal. LET us get a more detailed picture of the interplay of mathematical fancies and natural facts. First, let us consider the mathematical fancies that may be in exact accord with simple, obvious, natural facts. Of this order are the number of eggs in the basket, the number of sheep in the fold, the number of persons in the family, the number of citizens in the town, the number of soldiers in the army. For every unit in these classifications, there may be a real, natural fact; eggs are eggs, sheep are sheep, etc., and each one of these is a natural integer. This kind of mathematics is simple arithmetic, — primitive accounting, — and is very useful in dealing with elementary commercial and communal relationships.

Even so, the numerical fancies have little to do with the real facts, and only the fact that each abstract Fancy can be paired, in a one-to-one relation, with a natural, easily identifiable Fact keeps this basic unreality of arithmetic from being immediately discerned. Consider the superficial realities involved in the simple counting of objects. For example, it is possible that a man could own three hundred sheep without being able to count them. In a primitive society, the reality of his ownership is not at all affected by his inability to count. As a matter of fact, learning to count may confuse him and impair his grasp of the realities. For him to know how many sheep he owns, he must master a relatively abstruse system of abstractions called numbers. To do this, he must bring into correlated play two kinds of fancies about the sheep that graze beneath his eyes on the hill-side. For each sheep he must have both a Concrete image and an Abstract or numerical image. To use these images he must reflect twice and ultimately thrice.

First, he must reflect subjectively each actual sheep; second, he must reflect upon that reflection, — identify it as separated from the general image-idea of many sheep; third, he must mentally affix a numerical-symbolic idea or thought-form to the first two reflections. The first reflection is immediate and factual; every time he sees one of his sheep there is one image in his mind of the sheep. The second reflection is a long step away from the concrete fact in the direction of ideal abstraction; subjectively he divides his Many into two artificial groups, — 1) the one, separated sheep, and 2) the remainder. The third reflection introduces relatively pure abstraction: he assigns a numerical symbol to the counted sheep.

He must be able to project these three steps in abstraction and formulate a series of them, progressively separating the groups of the counted from each other and from the remainder. He must avoid assigning two or more number-fancies to one group of real sheep, and also avoid allotting two or more groups of real sheep to one number-fancy. Though practically useful (especially in exercising and developing the powers of imagination and abstraction), elementary mathematics is really very elusive; at the primitive level, the strong man who can’t count fingers and toes is almost certain to have a more realistic grasp of the sheep situation than the dreamer who can count to a thousand. The technical con-fusion of Concrete reality and Abstract fancy begins on the primitive range, and becomes more and more subtly confusing as men progress in sophistication, civilization, and learned ignorance of their origins. The more you know about fancies the less you know about facts, and the more elaborate your fancies for the superficial control of facts the more likely you are to lose realistic contact with the facts.

The basically fanciful nature of all mathematics becomes more patently evident when we consider artificial, not natural units. There are no grams, centimeters, ounces, pounds, pints, quarts, bushels, horse-power, megatons, or light-years in nature. In the invention of such units of measurement, man took a long stride forward in his characteristic work-play of mixing Abstract-Concrete cocktails. Out in the woods and the fields, there are no inches, feet, miles, acres, or sections. These, and all such fancies, including counties, states, and nations, are pure fancies imposed on natural reality. They possess a secondary reality so long as their inventors score the face of nature with these fictions and abide by the fictions in dealing among themselves with the realities. These fancies enable men to handle space-matter as if the fictions did exist in natural fact. The plastic nature of reality/matter makes it possible for men thus to realize their fancies. (Note this fundamental for future reference.)

Although they love these fancies and often mistake them for true realities, most literates of the modern world, even the most scientifically educated, are able to understand and, under gentle but firm pressure, admit that all the units of artificial mensuration I have just mentioned are pure fancies with no reference whatsoever to any natural realities. This nearly universal but sometimes uncertain and often reluctant sanity disappears, almost totally, at the next level of abstract-concrete, systematic, technical con-fusion. Hardly anyone can realize the essentially fanciful nature of the more complex practical inventions, the ones in which mathematical imagination plays a hidden, though never truly subdominant, role. That houses, automobiles, airplanes, typewriters, skyrockets, cathedrals, telephones, radio, TV, books, H-bombs etc. are, au fond, pure though practical fictions, relatively unreal, is an idea that strikes most minds as having all the earmarks of being a suspicious and probably dangerous foreign-er. They just “don’t get it”, and seldom can be induced to consider it seriously, even for a second.

This point is worthy of some illustration. Men much prefer fanciful fabrications to natural realities, manufactures to living creatures. Tell the proud owner of a Cadillac that his shiny car is a mechanical myth that would disappear from the earth if men did not continue to believe in it and serve it, — then watch with cool and scientific but compassionate eye all the mystical and metaphysical antics the devotee will perform, all the absurd fairy tales he will tell, in the defense and adoration of his sacred cow. (Automobiles in the United States surely are as sacred as cows in India.) The idea that his house is not at least as real as any of the trees that went into its construction would strike a professor of literature as a piece of poetry, unworthy of even such masters of line typical perversity and obscurity as T.S. Eliot, H. W. Auden and e. e. cummings. In truth, all the products of men’s arts and sciences are the practical Idols of the mystique of technology. Their secondary reality is unquestionable. Nevertheless, they are masks that disguise pure fancies, the offspring of the re-creative imagination functioning in relative ignorance of prime reality, the outer children of the inner marriage in confusion of Concrete and Abstract thought.

This note is designed to dissipate the confusion and reveal the real facts in their right relationship, — insofar as fiction about fact can do that. This is a serious/humorous undertaking, a comedy of intellect-ion which could easily become a farce or a tragedy if I fail to realize, at any point in the narration, that I am exorcising fancies with fancies, fictions with fiction. I may not be able to clarify your mind, but at least I should be able to avoid confusing myself.

THE preliminary picture is far from complete. We have yet to survey the somewhat special field of money and the 1-2-3 levels of the Higher Mathematics, but I pause to refocus the attention and more clearly define the scope of observation-inquiry.

I have defined the factor in natural reality that makes it possible for men to realize in local practice their fancies as the Plasticity of Form/Energy: Matter. Protyle is fictile. Hyle is impressionable, and may be molded; it receives and to a ponder-able degree sustains-retains artificial forms. Basically, the relationship between the two, between Art and Nature, is not difficult to observe and understand. Men’s artificial forms and formulas are no more naturally real than the sand-castles built by children at play on the seashore. They are a little more practicable, a little more durable; that is all. The children’s hands, their pails and their shovels are essentially identical with their elders’ mathematical formulas and technological designs. The work of men and the play of children are, at bottom, the same thing, but there is a difference between the men and the children. Children never more than fancy that their sandcastles are real castles, but men are completely deluded by their idols, and only in fits of despair or aberration ever surmise that all their arts and sciences and religions are nothing more real than daydreams.

Man’s infatuation with his fancies is an important fact. The realist who doesn’t realize this is not very realistic. Only facts can really dis-illusion, and so to You who are now reading these words, I say: Before you disagree with me, make sure that it is with Me and not with your own mistaken idea of Me that you are dis-agreeing.

I shall not always do so, but at this point, I am going to call my next shot. I am going to deal with the subject of Money in a somewhat fanciful and disorderly fashion.
Men’s deluded worship of their idols, their absurd adoration of the works of their hands directed by their re-creative imagination, is most easily analyzed and illustrated in a consideration of that masterpiece of mythical-mystic mathematics, Money. In Money, man has come as close as he ever will to manufacturing something that is nothing. Plato shot his immaterial Idea into the Attic air one balmy afternoon two thousand and four hundred years ago; in that hour High Finance was born in the mind of an anonymous Greek, who happened to overhear Plato’s immaterial prattle, and has been going strong ever since. Compared with the nonsensical metaphysics of the mint and the bank, the systems of hyper-spacial hocus-pocus invented by Buddha, Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas, Swedenborg, Calvin, Missus Eddy, and Einstein are infantile. When it comes to converting fancies into facts, Freud and Marx and the Pope are tyros compared to Santa Claus, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the girl at the cash register. If there is any matter in creation in which “there is no life, truth, intelligence or substance”, it is Money. It is far more holy than holy water, and when it comes to stimulating mass action and class consciousness, it reduces the Communist Manifesto to muttering and imbecilic impotence; yet it is a Thing that is next to No-thing, a some-thing like the square of the square root of minus 1. It is mathematics made tangible, “in”finity made finite, pure poetry made ponder-able, — the most popular fanciful fact in the whole Pantheon of technological mystification and practical metaphysics. No one in his right mind would exchange the real figure of a fine horse for the figure 300, whether that number was stamped on a piece of paper or metal or not.

What is the real value of any coin, of any unit in any monetary system? No one has ever been able, no one will ever be able to give any save a purely fanciful and basically nonsensical answer to that question. The only realities involved in the exchange of 1 penny for 1 lollipop are a childish lust for sugar and an adult lust for counterfeit. Money is magic, myth. Its very nature is that it is fiction and has no real value, unless you equate it to the complex of greed-fear-ignorance-superstition-credulity that is its source and substantiation. Its hypo-stasis is irrational faith, — credit. It is the every-day religion in every land. Currency is the bread-and-wine which ceremonious belief transforms into body-and-blood. It is frozen sweat, manufactured muscle, the corporeal ghost of an incorporeal idea. It is a vicious circle of ciphers kept in motion by a ring of enchanted integers. At the highest level it is the hocus-pocus performed by the high priests of financial theology, as insubstantial as a pen-scratch; at the lowest level it is the sacred wafers, the Host made visibly veritable to reassure the unenlightened and half-doubting layman, — the government-banker’s Word made tangible coin so that incredulous Thomases may handle it and be convinced.

It is a system of signs designed to perform the continuous miracle of transubstantiation labor into goods and goods back into labor. It is the imaginative animal’s inability to understand and control his imagination. You cannot eat it, drink it, wear it, or build anything of it, but unless you are a mere animal or an angel you can’t eat, drink, wear or build without it. It is materialized mirage. The mint is the factory that turns out the great fairy tale, Money, the most charming of all fables. It is one with the serpent in the garden of Eden and Balaam’s ass, and greater than any such: though inorganic, it talks. Money is Time, the fourth dimension. Money is counterfeit. It reduces every real fact to a fancy. It is the most obvious proof that men are creatures who believe far more in Fictions than in Reality.

In finance you can observe and study the trinity of human ignorance, — Mathematics the ghost, Machinery the father, Money the son, — in impractical, religious-scientific action. Money is price-less and in-valuable. It is the delusive potential of everything, and you really don’t know any-thing or something until you know the nothingness of money. Men will remain highly civilized savages, very learned idolaters, deluded devotees of technological animism, so long as they are unable to project a communion not dependent upon money, so long as they fail to transcend faith in Fiction and come to a realization of Reality. It is obvious: those who really love lies cannot really know the truth. But man is the imaginative animal. Imagination is a part of the whole of reality, and all illusions, whether objective or subjective, are aspects of reality-imagination. Myths and other lies are re-creative “truths”, which the plasticity of Imagination/-Matter: Reality will substantiate so long as men believe in and serve them. The understanding and control of illusion-imagination is the negative complement of the understanding and control of fact-reality. And one must admit that such a project is not the province of mere poets, priests, professors of physics and politicians.

THE picture of abstract-concrete con-fusion is still far from complete. We have yet to consider the intellectual money current in the constellations of the Higher Mathematics, — in the heavens of the whole shebang of Im-Practical Symbolisms. This upper world is the realm ruled by the metaphysics of science; here we encounter the more rarefied of the systematized fancies employed by men in their Knowledgeable/Ignore-ant endeavors to understand and control themselves and their environment. In this field I define three levels of reference, as follows: 1) the Mathematics of Form, 2) the Mathematics of Energy, 3) the Mathematics of Mathematics.

Geometry is the ancient-modern core of the mathematics of form. The simple elements of geometry are point, line, plane, and solid. All four are meta-physical, seemingly hyper spacial, ideals above or beyond the gross world of real, three-dimensional things. The first three are merely imaginary, — pure abstractions, or, as the more erudite gobblygook has it, conceptions. (Note that term, conception, for subsequent reference.) A point has position (+) but no (-) dimension; it is the first positive-negative in scientific mythology. In the line the negative becomes a trifle more positive; it has length (+) but no (-) breadth or thickness. In the plane the negative becomes still more positive; it has length and breadth (+) but no (-) thickness. In the solid, ideal abstraction-projection becomes perfectly positive; Imagination here apprehends three-dimensional reality. All four are imaginary, and unless Imagination is operative at every point in natural Reality, there is no place in reality, save the head of man, where these elements of geometry may be found. Even in man’s head, they do not exist as defined; you cannot really imagine a non-dimensional point, a two-dimensional plane, a one-dimensional line, a solid composed of these. If you draw them on a three-dimensional blackboard with a piece of three-dimensional chalk, they will be basically three-dimensional objects. You cannot really isolate any one of the dimensions from the other two, or separate all three from anything. Subjectively, these abstractions exist in your concrete, three-dimensional body. By no magic of imagination can you really transcend three-dimensional reality.

At this point, Imagination and Reality, — “Mind” and “Matter”, — squarely confront each other. At any other point in this note, from the first sentence on, I could have engineered such a confrontation, but for two reasons did not choose to do so. First, in the interest of precise and comprehensive communication, I desired to pose this crucial meeting of the prime poles of the field under observation-integration against an elementary, general survey of the Order of the Whole, — against a picture in perspective of the major factors and their relationships. Second, I desired the inevitable confrontation to happen in relation to terms of such a nature as to facilitate exclusion from the focus of your attention of the greatest possible number of distracting associations. For example, had I precipitated the confrontation in relation to money, I would have compelled myself to formulate my exposition in terms most heavily charged with distracting associations. I not only did not choose to make money the verbal lens of focus, but in the interest of a strong contrast, I chose to treat money in a way both frivolous and disorderly. I trust my non-sense about the non-sense of money, — in which I said nothing about the price of labor as correlated with the price of eggs, and also, which is even more to the point, refrained from introducing the factor of symbolism, — will serve to define more clearly the very rigorous order of discourse I am about to indulge and divulge. (If all that I have said thus far does not make sense, it isn’t likely that anything I shall say from this point on will make sense either. So — ) … Now — Mind is the most general term for the subjective half, and Matter is the most general term for the objective half of Reality conceived as an Organic Whole. When Mind squarely confronts Matter, what is the first thing that happens? Answer: Matter is reflected in Mind. The best way to study the results of the confrontation is to conceive of Mind as a living mirror. And the very best way to illustrate this conception is to study a non-living mirror.

II  Reflections and Symbols

IMAGINE a large, clear mirror on the wall of a beautiful drawing-room. Step before this mirror, and examine it systematically. As you do so, realize that your reflective body-mind is face to face with its prime analogue in the relatively impersonal, objective field of overall reality. The mirror is full of images of the things before it, and your body-mind is full of images of the things around it. The mirror and your mind are similar and also dissimilar. (Note this Positive/Negative relationship, for it is a prime factor in the analytic Dis/Integration of Real/Imaginary form-energy.) Let us consider the similarities first.

The mirror is a three-dimensional plate of glass, to the back of which a coat of silver paint has been applied. It is the coat of opaque silver at the back of the glass that transforms the otherwise transparent glass into a relatively perfect reflector of light and the objects before it illuminated by light. The uniform coat of silver together with the uniform transparency of the glass makes the reflective medium, a brilliant blank. The silver is not (-) transparent, but the glass is (+); the two opposites complement each other in structural union to compose a surface-depth capable of reflecting the many different forms of the objects in the drawing-room. The brilliant blankness, the product of a uniform Positive in one-to-one opposition to a uniform Negative, is the mirror’s three-dimensional zero (0), the potential of all reflections. The first, simple facts about the Mind are that it is exactly like the mirror and does exactly what the mirror does. The mind is the reflective function of a three-dimensional body. The uniform darkness of the body’s interior and the uniform sensitivity of its exterior combine to create a reflective medium, basically neutral or “blank”, capable, like the mirror, of receiving and reproducing in-differently all manner of different impressions. The mirror faithfully reflects form-color-motion, and so does the mind; both have a relatively opaque back, and neither one can “see” objects that are not in front of it.

For more similarities, let us now examine the reflections in the non-living mirror. In the mirror is an image of yourself and images of all the chairs, tables, rugs, and other objects in the room back of you. As you stand facing it, the mirror is like a pair of eyes in the back of your head. The images you see in the mirror are so real that, apart from your experience with mirrors, you might mistake them for real objects. Indeed, in their own system of reference they are real objects, — objects tangible to your sense of sight. They are actual models of yourself, the chairs, etc., models created by light reflected in-from the brilliant blankness of a three-dimensional, silver-backed plate of glass. They appear in true but reverse perspective. They possess length and breadth, and a very real illusion of the third dimension. But they are dead images, and have no life apart from the life of the things they represent. Only to the sense of sight are they tangible. You can touch your nose with the tip of your finger, and the image of yourself in the glass will reflect that touch, but you cannot touch the imaginary nose in the real mirror with the tip of a real, not a reflected finger. If you know its powers and its limitations, the mirror is a faithful but non-living witness.

The images in the Mind are very like those in the mirror. Within their system of reference, they are very real; primitives sometimes find it difficult to distinguish between dreams and objective realities, and civilized men find it all but impossible to realize that their artifacts are projected dreams. Mental images or thought-forms are brain-cell patterns created in the electromagnetic field of your three-dimensional body by stimuli originating in the world outside the body-mirror-mind. If you are not one of the unfortunate ones who do not have subjective visual projection, you can close your eyes and see images of all the things around you; just as you cannot touch the images in the wall mirror with your actual hand, so you cannot touch the images in your mind with your actual hand, but, just as a reflected hand will touch a reflected thing in the mirror, so you can touch the images in your mind with the hands of imagination. Provided you know their system of reference and their limitations, the real illusions of mental reflection are faithful models of three-dimensional realities.

These are the first, simple Facts about Fancy, — the first Realities of Imagination, — the first Matters of Mind. The more complex facts about the re-creative imagination come to light in the study of the dis-similarities that distinguish the living from the non-living mirror. The dissimilarities are radical and far-reaching. The reflection in the mental mirror is not only a subjective impression, but an objective projection; you see things by means of a two-in-one reflection, — a reflection that is at once subjective and objective. In this respect, the mind is less like a mirror and more like a motion-picture camera, — a camera that instantaneously takes, develops and projects moving pictures. The universal sensitivity of the mirror is limited to light, but the universal sensitivity of the body-mind is a complex of light-warmth-touch. Moreover, the body-mind-mirror has special organs of sense; it can reflect not only form-color-motion, but sound, savor, and odor. It does not merely mechanically reflect; it (un)consciously re-presents. Unlike the wall mirror, it can retain and recall images. The Vital Factor in the human body-mind transforms reflections into recreations, by a process of conscious awareness. This process is a vital complex of Three orders of progressively integrated reflections: 1) you first reflect the object, producing a subjective image; 2) you reflect on the image, transforming it into a subjective object, from which you abstract properties, qualities, parts; 3) you re-reflect on the image and the original object, a process that establishes Identification and evolves Nomination. These three-in-one orders of conscious reflection amount to re-creation, — the ability to project into the objective field not only images-models of the things in that field, but images and models of things that have their origin, not in the objective field of Nature, but in the subjective field of Art. The first cycle of the re-creative reflective process ends when the Re-creator projects into the objective field an image of the image in his mind of the objective thing. The archetype of this end-product is the Picture. The vital mirror in man 1) sees, 2) reflects, 3) recreates, and 4) projects, — an image, a picture. And the picture, once projected, becomes a symbol of both the objective thing and the subjective image thereof.

In all this, we discover four orders of vital reflection or re-creative reality: 1) the reality of the objective Thing; 2) the reality of the subjective Image; 3) the reality of the subjective-objective Re-Construction; 4) the reality of the projected image conceived of as a Symbol. All four are interdependent, but each is prime in its own field. In none is there anything less or more than three-dimensional. These four-in-one realities are present in any account of anything. You can’t count anything without using these four realities at every point in the process of counting. This is the Re-creative Order of the Whole of Reality, and it is impossible to abstract any of the four-in-one realities and treat it as an isolated reality. As you stand before the mirror on the drawing-room wall, all four of these realities are present in one: 1) there is the objective whole which includes yourself and the mirror; 2) there is the reflection in the mirror; 3) there is your reflection of the reflection in the mirror; 4) there is your re-creation of the Order of the Whole, which includes yourself and the mirror. You are the ONE that integrates the four-in-one recreation of the three-dimensional, objective-subjective universe.

APART from the vital factor which empowers the mind to perform these are creative operations, the whole “mystery” of the relation of the Mind, or subjective field, to the objective field, or Body, is now cleared up. Nowhere in either field can be found anything that is not embodied in some portion of three-dimensional Form/Energy:-Matter. Organic body and organic mind are complementary “halves”of organic matter. Immateriality is unimaginable, and all metaphysics, religious or scientific, is absolutely anoetic.

In arithmetic, mathematics, and geometry, as in mysticism and theology, misunderstanding of reflections, abstractions, and symbols induces belief in ghosts, spirits, pure ideas, and incorporeal principles. There are no body-less entities, — no non-dimensional points, no immaterial powers. All such are products of mirror-land, — reflections, imaginings. All the abstract-symbolic thinking in the universe takes place in concrete heads, and heads that imagine that such no-things have any save a symbolic reference to overall reality are very concrete indeed. You can’t shake hands with your image in the mirror; for this reason, you will never really see a spirit or a ghost, — an event apart from a material eventer.

The prime gimmick in religious-scientific metaphysics is the symbol. The fact that you can write-speak such terms as immaterial, non-dimensional, and infinite might mislead you into opining that there really is something immaterial, non-dimensional and infinite, — If you use these terms, — these verbally manufactured negations, in a positive way, you talk non-sense, not sense. You can forgive the monkey for mistaking his reflection in the mirror for another monkey, but you shouldn’t make the same mistake yourself. (In this, I am patently talking to myself, and the you addressed is my alter-ego; as for you, you are free to do as you please, of course.)

However, the fact that re-creative imagination is a prime function of the human body-mind, which is itself an integral part of the Order of the Whole Universe, is a certain indication that imagination-conception and abstract-symbolic design are involved in the order of Prime Reality. Before the end of this discourse, I shall come to grips with this crucial fact.

There is no Form apart from Energy, no Energy apart from Form. Light, electricity, magnetism, and imagination never manifest themselves save in the three-dimensional manifold. Inseparable form and energy spell matter, — ponderable, three-dimensional some-thing. Reality is some-thing, not no-thing, and matter is the most familiar, general, impersonal term for that some-thing. Matter reflects itself, both in the organic and the inorganic systems of reference. When you look at the moon and its reflection in the still lake, four moons are present, one of which is the real, objective moon, one of which is the real, objective reflection of the moon, the other two of which are subjective reflections, one of the moon itself, the other of its image in the still waters.

That is all that I need to say at this point about the mathematics of form.

COME we now to consideration of the Mathematics of Energy, — to an analysis of the abstract-symbolic models men have invented and use for the exploitation and control of the Power in all real Form. The best introduction to this subdivision of real-imaginary mathematics is a brief history of the evolution and use of abstractions and symbols. The first symbol was a picture. It may have been simple or elaborate. It may have been drawn with a finger in moist sand or with a charred stick on the surface of a flat rock. It represented some object in nature, — a man or another animal. It was an ideal model, an outline reconstruction, and it did not exist in the objective field until the mind-and-hand of man put it there. Its making was accompanied by human sounds. All of man’s arts and sciences were involved in the making of that first picture, and from it, by a process of progressive simplification and stylization, have come all symbols. Obviously, it was not the real object which it merely re-presented, and therefore, even there in the beginning, was nothing more or less than a symbol. And it is significant to note how intimately related the ultimate symbols are to the first pictures and to all form, abstract or concrete.

T was involved in the first picture of a tree, and so was Y; M was somewhere in the first picture of mountains; W was there in the first picture of waves; H was part of the first plan for a house; O was the first picture of the sun; S is still a pretty good picture of a serpent; and I, the straight line, the universal symbol for one or first, was in them all. All that man, — first or last, — thinks, says or does is immersed in reflection-abstraction-symbol.

Over the centuries, men have developed many different systems of symbolism. Without Something that stood for Something-else, they would have no way to relate their reflections to reality or to communicate with each other at any level above the basic semantics of the brute. To rise above the jungle vocabulary of grunts, groans, shouts, slaps, blows, nudges, grimaces, and gestures, men had to invent articulate symbols, a higher order of elementary signs. This they did. The picture was the first symbol, and the Word, for all practical purposes, was its coeval. The non-verbal picture was accompanied by the verbal equivalent. All systems of symbolism are either Verbal or Non-verbal. For every word there is a non-verbal reference, and for every non-verbal sign there is a verbal reference. There are many, different systems of non-verbal symbolism, but for every sign therein there is a word. It is therefore accurate to say that all of man’s symbolism are Non/Verbal (another example of the Positive/Negative complex at the base of all reflect-ion.)

In general, the non-verbal systems of symbolic reference consist of two, closely inter-related systems, viz., the Spoken and the Written (or printed). Since all symbols are either words or signs for which there are words, it follows that the one, general sign for all human symbolism is Word. The Word is man’s prime tool. The word is a name. All words are names, — the names of objects, groups of objects, actions, motions, qualities, quantities, places, relationships. The distinction between Words and Numbers is nominal: 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. are the non-verbal or mathematical signs for words that name the imaginary-abstract operations indicated. This is equally true of all other mathematical signs. Mathematical formulations are merely short-hand versions of verbal exposition-narration. It is well to remember this, whenever you are tempted to mistake a blackboard or a book full of mathematical formulas for anything other than signs for material-mental operations, — for abstractions divorced from concrete demonstrations.

From the first, numbers were more particularly associated with and referred to power-energy. The number of sheep in the fold, the number of horses in the barn, the number of lamps or candles in the house, the number of children in the family, the number of shekels in the bag, the number of men in the army, — these are simple computations of obvious power. Similar or identical examples of the elementary mathematics of Energy may be found on virtually any page of modern newspapers, magazines, and books. Such formulations compute superficial, natural and relatively unorganized energy. For thousands of years the race’s interests and needs were satisfied with nothing but Obvious Energy and the Simple Arithmetic required for its symbolic calculation and direction. Windmills, water-wheels, and sailing ships, though crude power machines, called for no great understanding or computation of the energies exploited. Neither, in the long days of their retarded development, did levers, screws, pulleys, etc. The eolipile, an ancient toy prototype of the steam engine, failed to interest primitive mathematicians in speculations that might have led to the invention of internal-power machines hundreds of years before their time.

Later, the invention of gunpowder and the telescope kindled no minds on record at the time to imagine ways to tap the energies hidden in all forms-modes of matter. It was not until a little more than a hundred years ago that man began to investigate the inner energies of matter, and invent ways to harness and use them. All the mathematical formulations for the generation and application of steam-power, oil-power, electrical and atomic power have been imagined during the past century and a half.

The exploration and exploitation of non-organic energies, of course, was accompanied by extensive and intense inquiry into the structure and nature of organic energies, but the work in the second field, though productive of much important information, has led to no formulation-s for the generation and release of vital energy. During the past hundred and fifty years, men have learnt more about physiological-biological fact than the race learnt during the whole of recorded time down to the XIX Century. Much as that is, it is not concerned with the Vital Factor, the central and prime reality. The Vital Factor is utterly ignored; it is as if the one thing that makes the difference between a pile of sand and a professor of semantics did not exist. (Maybe the difference isn’t as great as I think it is.) The difference is generally unobserved, and so today, in the hour when the manufactured release of atomic energy threatens to destroy the race (perhaps the planet), nothing, — absolutely nothing, — is known about the power of re-generation that was not known, in practical essence, to the ancient Chinese.

The human race ignores the one thing it ought to be most interested in. For that, it has one, shame-faced symbol, — sex.

ALTHOUGH seemingly better informed about the relatively non-vital energies, men are, in reality, just as ignorant of the realities involved here as they are of the realities involved in the field of vital energy. The authorities in the fields of physics and chemistry freely confess that they do not know what really are electricity, magnetism, gravity, — electrons, protons, photons, neutrons, atoms, and molecules. They intimate, and often explicitly state, that they are not interested in the What, only in the How. And there is no denying that they have considerable know-how now,– at least enough to blow themselves to Nirvana, if not enough to keep from sacrificing thousands of lives annually to the Moloch of Machinery. Their imagined formulas for the release of real energy are practically very efficient, to say the least. Elements and compounds respond as if atoms and molecules were present there-in according to the formulated patterns; the plasticity of matter sustains these imaginings as surely and neatly as water takes the exact form of any receptacle from a thimble to a tank. There are no ohms, volts, amperes, etc. in natural reality, but the Reality does not reject these Fictions. It is now evident that Matter, like Mind, has depth reflection and something very analogous to vital response. If you poise the model of a molecule before the mirror of Matter at the right angle, Matter will reflect that model-symbol. Just as you can project a picture on paper or a motion-picture screen, so you can project into the matrix of matter a dynamo-graph or mathematical formula of energy, and get the predesigned results. Within certain limits, you can impose on Nature-Matter, rape it, and get such bastard children from the enforced mathematical-mechanical nuptials as TV, the airplane, and the H-bomb. But it is not-able that all the imaginary knowledge thus far formulated swiftly goes beyond the limits of Nature-Matter’s tolerance, and ultimately proves itself to be destructive.

Each new discovery, each new masterpiece of fancy formulation, each new invention implementing the fancy is always heralded as a boon or a potential blessing, but without exception, each has proved to be destructive of truly human qualities, of true natural harmony, an unmitigated menace to all life on earth. You can imagine that the speed of light is 186,300 miles per second, and matter will reflect your formula in a way that will deceive you into believing that the image you have held up to the mirror of universal form-energy formulates the reality, but if you persist in foisting this Fiction upon the field of Reality, the real facts will explode the fiction and expose your ignorance. This is the truth, though you may not live to discover it. The obvious reality is that the universe is not a mathematical machine; it may be treated as such for a brief time, with seeming impunity, but in the end the result, invariably and inevitably, is a highly destructive explosion of unformulated Energy.

IT is unnecessary, here, to analyze the never-never-land of mystical geometry and mathematical metaphysics, countless bibles of which you will find on the shelves of the most holy temples of what is called (most solemnly) the sciences of physics, chemistry, astrophysics, and social psychology. The vain imaginings in these volumes are as unconsciously absurd as the speculations of Medieval mystics, alchemists and Schoolmen, but they are far more practical and this-worldly. The miracles of modern machinery, manufactured from the mundane, symbolic visions in their pages, prove that matter, though not informed by conscious awareness, is in its way as volatile and plastic as mind; these machines prove that if you can imagine it, you can find a way to materialize it, whether it be heaven or hell or an in/sane mixture of both. One glance at the mystical mathematics, the maze of symbols to be encountered on the pages of this order of scientific anagogic, — one glance at these precisely diagrammed prayers of devoted technologists, thrown off in the throes of intense mental effort to realize an ideal-statistical-mechanical construction, — just one such glance overwhelms one with the surmise that one is examining the graffiti of lucid lunatics, the rational ravings of dangerously intelligent madmen. This surmise is absolutely confirmed when one turns from the books to examine the objective results of these cortex-curdling, hair-splitting and hair-raising, almost hyper-spatial imaginings, — turns from these typographical terrors, surveys the field in which these fancies have found objectification, and beholds the hosts of modern, mythical-mechanical monsters, — beholds the droves of countless chimerical constructions, the armies of fire-breathing, automatic dragons, — the myriads of engines that now affright the air, the earth and the sea, and devour the minds and the bodies of men, the world around. I repeat, you can materialize a fancy if you fancy the matter analytically and systematically enough, but you can’t realize reality so long as you permit reason to be the slave of either religious or scientific symbols and illusions. And not the least of the monstrous illusions modern men have materialized are the machines of social order, the totalitarian-democratic church-states of communism, fascism and republicanism, all of them the products of psycho-mechanics, the application of statistics to human values, the reduction of men to the status of numbered things in a politico-ethnic-economic equation. The social psychologist is the ultimate engineer of human power, the technological thaumaturge who now seeks to impose his vain Imaginings upon the Reality of man.

It is not necessary, here, to do more than mention these matters, for the essence of the whole matter is to be found in a consideration of the Mathematics of Mathematics, — the mathematics that utilizes and formulates the highest mental energies generally known to man, — terrestrial-celestial mathematics, so to speak.

At this top-level, in the very heavens of the abstract, mathematics encounters itself, mirror face to mirror face, and reflects upon itself in-finitely. At this level, the basic fact, that mathematics is a product of the imagination, ends and loses itself in an end-less maze of count-less mirrors. I define in this field three levels of reference, as follows: 1) the mathematics of space time; 2) the mathematics of number-s; 3) the mathematics of infinity. I consider them in that order.

The least “pure” of the three is the first, for it is chiefly concerned with the nature-structure of the universe as conceived-observed by men on Earth. Except in the common sense of the word, space is imaginary, an abstraction as unreal as the non-dimensional point. As a matter of fact, generalized space is merely an extension of the non-dimensional point, — the brilliant blankness of the mirror conceived as not reflecting anything. Vacuum and 0 do not exist except as convenient symbols of general potentiality, distribution, relative quality, quantity, and composition. Three-dimensional objects are not in space; they are real space: the reality is an end-less but not in-finite manifold of three-dimensional objects. Some of these three-dimensional portions of the universal, three-dimensional manifold are very elastic, even diaphanous, so to speak, but all of them, including the finest gases, are essentially three-dimensional. The universal, three-dimensional manifold itself is a very elastic continuum, capable of in-definite but not in-finite expansion and contraction, about which I shall have some-thing to say in the closing pages of this discourse. Common space, like common time, is such a familiar reflection-conception, — one that is so firmly fixed in the mixture of every-day, symbolic reference, — such a real illusion, — that all but all men would find it impossible to dis-illusion themselves about it and come to a realization of the reality. As commonly conceived, space, time, and money have a lot in common.

Continue to Part 2   http://planetarydynamics.com/2020/11/20/ignorance-of-one-part-2/

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr. – The Assassination

Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968. His progressed Mars was exactly opposite his High Focus natal Saturn at 25 Sag 21.

26 Sag: A flag-bearer. Original symbol, The scene is an old-fashioned battle; in the hot hand-to-hand fighting a flag bearer distinguishes himself.

Below are a few stunning highlights from Marc Edmund Jones’ description in The Sabian Symbols in Astrology:

” . . . Implicit in the symbolism is the call for a high self-sacrifice, and for the development of such new dimensions of experience as will permit the self to realize its transcendental aspirations. Every resource of normal life is commandeered for the greater potentiality. The keyword is NOBILITY. When positive, the degree is spiritual exaltation through some dramatic or vital service to all. . . ”

ACCURACY OF THE CHART

Although Lois Rodden gives the time of birth for King to be an A rating, the Moon is always in question with a birth time of 12 noon. Transit Pluto may or may not have been Opposite natal Moon, but if the birth time is correct, that Transit is a definite sign of profound pressure leading to the ultimate transformation – not always, but certainly when it shows itself to be present in such cases, it is no surprise. And by the end of May 1968, Pluto would be Stationary Direct at 20 Virgo 10. Transit Pluto was in the process of a turnaround even two months earlier than the exact Station because the planet moves so slowly.

The emotional depth and intensity of King’s last and most prophetic speech, “I’ve been to the Mountaintop” is unmistakably the mark of a Pluto influencing the Moon. Improvised and straight from the heart, that speech is as powerful an event to coincide with the dynamic planetary pressures that also brought the gunman to memorialize and martyr the man forever.

Saturn & Pluto, Partners in Crime and Salvation

While Pluto shines light on our obsessive thinking, Saturn shows us the way to freedom from preoccupying thought through mindfulness. Meditation, governed by Saturn, refers to the training of the mind to concentrate on positive, present awareness, rather than the imagery that takes hold of the attention through an emotional need. Emotions take part in the threefold process of experience; stimulus, response, reaction. These correspond to the mental and emotional mirroring of outside stimulation that leads to a resulting reaction. There are two modes of response; positive/constructive and negative/destructive. If the personal ego feels a threat from the environment the emotional response is then recorded in the mental substance of memory. As these reactions accumulate, so does the build up of negative energy that remains unnoticed by the conscious Will. The experience is then etched into the unconscious and emanates out into the ectoplasm of the human aura. The process can be described in another way: A physical reaction to unwanted stress is a rejection of the experience, and is propelled by the emotion of anger. Anger is the ego’s way of separating from threat, discomfort and pain.

Pluto rules the “underworld” or in modern terms the unconscious. Saturn rules self-consciousness, the conscious mind and conscience. Saturn’s process is one of selectivity. With the help of the meditative process, the conscious mind can examine the content of the unconscious. Thoughts rise up from the subconscious to be observed by conscious awareness for their value to the individual. Thoughts can be dispelled when deemed distractions, or preserved when positive and useful. Saturn is synonymous with concentration; the ability to focus the mind at a desired point of attention. It does this through practicing to concentrate on one point, such as the breath, the flame of a candle or a part of the body like the hand and fingers. Its process is disjunctive; it has the power to evaluate and compare right and wrong, and drop from existence thoughts too low in standard for acceptance. Self-evaluation is its purpose.

THE ADVANTAGES OF THE MEDITATIVE MIND

Pluto is like the hard-drive of the mind that stores information to be recalled when needed, and Saturn views and evaluates this data. Meditation has long been closely identified with the planet Saturn, because personal growth depends upon awareness and accountability for one’s actions and attitude. Saturn’s identification with meditation is the process of concentrating on an object or the breath, and through this passive activity the content of the unconscious rises to the level of enlightening recognition. If we are not aware of the root content of our thoughts and the need to correct negative motivation when it arises, we cannot be transformed. Self-awareness is the core of positive living, and is the ever-present guidance from within.

Meditation is simply a method of quieting the body so that the content of the mind can more easily be accessed. In this way we can view what the problems are as they rise to the conscious mind from the depths of the unconscious. When we react to stressful situations, it is an emotional response. Emotions are recorded in the mind and the body’s biofield.

The planets during Transits and Progressions draw situations and individuals into our lives to represent parts of ourselves needing fulfillment and/or transformation. This process works through the stress that others cause in our lives. For example, if a person demands something from us, we tend to blame them for the stress we feel when we cannot deliver. It is really our own inadequacy that we need to address, and then we can see that the stimulus of the other person is not the cause, but in reality is life’s method of showing us what is lacking in ourselves to maturely address the problem. People and situations are doing us a favor of playing the part that brings out our weaknesses. To avoid these situations is not the answer, and to be combative is equally inadequate. What is needed, is to realize that we are all here for the purpose of expanding awareness, and adversity is the key and prodding to advance us along the way.

THE DUALISM OF MENTALITY

It is important to restrain desire from too much indulgence. Nothing can be achieved without the desire to advance, but nothing can be enjoyed without a sense of boundaries and the peace of mind restraint can bring. To entertain both ambition and limitation, one must work toward balance throughout a lifetime, and meditation and concentration is essential for its manifestation. The dualistic mind: we think subjectively in terms of the self, and objectively in terms of environmental factors. But to keep these dual aspects of life functioning in a healthy manner, one must keep mindful of the present moment where the two features of mind take place. The method to assure a balance is through the practice of concentrating on the breath, the hand, a mandala or candle flame or any other object.  This is how the attention can be directed by the Will aspect of mentality. To be preoccupied by thought is a sign of not being in control of it. Learning to shift the attention from obsessive thoughts to a neutral object helps to interrupt the hold the obsessive thoughts have over the mind. Consolidating the direction of thought is governed by the planet Saturn. In contrast, the broadest range of thought is governed by Pluto. Integrating the two vibratory energies into a working coalescence is necessary for a productive life and peacefulness.

The distinct differences of Saturn and Pluto can coexist, just as all the planets have working relationships with one another in the Solar System. Look to the relationship of Saturn to Pluto in a horoscope and how it fits into the Gestalt; whether the two are in major or minor Aspect, or are not in a definitive aspect at all. These relationships reveal deep meaning, and are guides to help us understand our unique and individual destiny and purpose in life.

The positive and negative meanings of Pluto:

P: Transcendence, broadened awareness, equality, cosmic consciousness, spiritual power, truth and probity.  N: Intrigue, political manipulation, confusion and contrast between truth and lies, investigations for truth finding, criminality, mob and gang rule, hidden motives, hypnotic and compulsive activity.

The positive and negative meanings of Saturn:

P: Conscience, concentration, sensitiveness, maturity, wisdom, conservative, integrity, disjunctive analysis, endurance, patience, discernment. N: Frustration, guilt, fear, anxiety, sadness, self-destructive, isolationism, discrimination.  

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