Category Archives: spirit and matter

Towards an Age of Light



“Working out beneath the surface of the information and communications revolution, is an arcane process with tremendous implications for humanity’s future. In the digital circuits on which the Internet, computers and cellular phones all rely, electricity is made to run through the circuitry pattern on a silicon chip performing an ordered, repetitive dance – the rudiments of ceremony and ritual.”   Lucis Trust


The Scope of Evolution


“Planes of evolution are made of the degrees of .”

–Lover’s and Others, H. C. Morse

I think evolution is not simply adaptation and reproduction of forms but the development of relationship between spirit and form. Physical survival is a tool of evolution, but evolution in the larger sense uses and transcends death, advancing not just by acquisition of better forms but by adaptation of forms to spirit.

The scope of evolution is not simply biological survival. There is evolution of physical and spiritual fires that range from atom to man to galaxy, all expressing in a multi-dimensional universe, a spirit-matter continuum. There is evolution of consciousness, of love and wisdom. There is evolution of powers and undreamed possibilities. There is evolution of beauty and mind. There is evolution not simply of blood but of spiritual radiance. I picture how the laws of nature express the will of the God, or if we like, of ascending gods and angels.  And always, what we see and can reason about is but the smallest part.

“Gliding o’er all, through all,
Through Nature, Time, and Space,
As a ship on the waters advancing,
The voyage of the soul—not life alone,
Death, many deaths I’ll sing.”

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

Pseudo Spirituality



Metaphysical thinkers often become preoccupied, not with true spiritual life, but with a kind of pseudo-spirituality bound up with external things, with things intellectual, emotional, and physical. People become preoccupied with the pseudo-spirituality quite easily and that to the great detriment of both normal healthy material life and true spiritual life. These masquerades of spirit are defined by the lack of true motive.

Transition from a personal vision to a transpersonal vision is largely dependent on meditative apprehension of the heart and its fusion with wisdom. When the fire of the heart becomes the goal and the vision, the focus becomes transcendental. Spiritual motivation has few true exponents because people try to approach a higher path in the same way as worldly one.

Deeper Causes


Modern observation, by intense attention to externals, finds causes and relative facts. Useful though these may be, there are superficial and deeper causes for everything. So genes do not ultimately cause or determine anything, rather they are in the realm of secondary causes and effects. Behind and through them are undiscovered dimensions.

It is the same with brain and body. There are causes that run far deeper than genes and brain patterns. The light bulb in our ceiling may be considered the source of the light, or one may look to the generator, the waterfall, the Sun, or a “big bang.” But then science cannot truly define gravity or thought and the origin of the universe is not contained in the pages of books.

Geometry of Consciousness


Let’s think and play a bit with geometry, proceeding from the most simple.

Geometry begins with a point. It is a focus and in way the most illusive, being abstract and without dimension. We might think of the point as unmanifested potentially. And we might say that, being without visible aspects, it is unity, or the source of unity, and that it is the beginning point or cause from which everything flows. Since it is origin, it is an apt symbol of spirit.

A ray, extended from the point yields a line. This first radiation has a terminus. Let us call this terminus dense matter or effect, or that which is most remote from the origin. So, from potentiality (spirit) comes radiance, relationship, and relativity.

The simple line itself yields three entities: the origin (spirit), the terminus (dense matter), and all relativity in between. The line is also a unity in polarity, and is essentially one, a single line.

If we extend an infinite number of co-equal rays from our central point, the collective end points of these rays describe a circle, or if we add another dimension, a sphere. Perhaps we may take this as symbol of all possibilities, of all that radiates from the Alpha point or cause.

But, returning to the simple, we have three: point, endpoint, and the relation between. Relations are part of knowing. Consciousness means “to know,” and the simplest form of knowing is that of the relation between two entities. So let’s call this relational middle ground “consciousness.” So in our play with the line symbol, we have:

  • Point, line, endpoint
  • Cause, relativity, effect
  • Spirit, consciousness, matter

Apart from the line, the simplest regular geometric representation of trinity is the triangle, and the next simplest such form is the square. The triangle gives us three points and the square gives us four points, and we might picture these two figures as a basic duality, analogous to the start and endpoint of our line. These two simple figures, the triangle and square, give us an added dimension in that their combination (3 + 4) yields seven entities.

It’s an entertaining thought that “a square” is a person regarded as dull, rigidly conventional, and in another sense a square suggest something block-like, solid, or sturdy. We might take the square, externally considered, as a symbol of spiritless personality. We can then, easily see the square as correspondent with matter. The triangle or trinity principle stands behind the square as spirit, and one often finds the triangle as the symbol of deity or of the higher self.

There are many alternative symbol systems that have some value. In thinking with and about symbols, it is not so important to derive a fixed or rigid system (which would be a uninspired personality thing to do), but it’s important that we think and strive to get at the meaning of things in the most simple and clear terms.