io Man and the Three Worlds
When we compare different traditional ternaries with each other, we may find it possible to establish a genuine correspondence between them term by term. However, it would be wrong to conclude automatically from this that the corresponding terms are actually identical; and we must be no less wary of jumping to such conclusions even in cases where some of the terms have very similar names or designations, for it is quite possible that these designations are in fact being applied by analogical transposition at completely different levels.
These comments are especially relevant when comparing the Far-Eastern Great Triad with the Hindu Tribhuvana. The Tribhuvana, as is well known, comprises 'three worlds'-Earth (Bhü), Air (Bhuvas) and Heaven (Svar). And yet this Heaven and this Earth are most certainly not the T'ien and Ti of the Far-Eastern tradition, for which the equivalents in the Hindu tradition are Purusha and Prakriti.[^1] In fact, whereas T'ien and Ti (or Purusha and Prakriti) are outside of manifestation, and indeed are the immediate principles behind manifestation, the 'three worlds' signify the totality of manifestation itself, divided into its three basic categories-the realm of supra-formal manifestation, the realm of subtle manifestation and the realm of gross or corporeal manifestation.
Once this necessary distinction has been observed, we are still left with the apparently awkward fact that we are obliged to use the same terms - 'Heaven' and 'Earth' - in both cases. But to justify this dual application or connotation of the same terms we need only point out that the supra-formal realm of manifestation is clearly the realm in which celestial influences are predominant, while terrestrial influences will obviously predominate in the
gross realm. (We are here using the expressions 'celestial influences' and 'terrestrial influences' in the specific sense we gave them earlier.) We can also say - and in fact this amounts to saying the same thing in a different way - that the supra-formal realm is closer to essence while the gross realm is closer to substance, although of course this in no way entitles us to identify them with universal Essence and universal Substance themselves.[^2]
As for subtle manifestation, this is the 'intermediary world' (antariksha) and therefore the middle term in the schema we have just outlined. It derives from a combination of the two different classes of mutually complementary influences, balanced and intermingled to such an extent that it is impossible-at least when speaking of this intermediary world as a whole-to say which set of influences is stronger than the other. Admittedly its enormous complexity means it must contain some elements which may tend more towards the essential side of manifestation and others which may tend more towards the substantial side. Yet the fact remains that all these elements, regardless of their specific nature, are always on the side of substance relative to supra-formal manifestation, and always on the side of essence relative to gross manifestation.
On no account must this middle term of the Tribhuvana be confused with the middle term of the Great Triad, Man. This is by no means to assert that they have nothing in common: in fact a definite connection between them does exist which (as we shall soon show) is no less real for the fact that it is not immediately apparent. But even so, there are certain respects in which the roles they perform are not the same. To be specific: the middle term of the Great Triad is strictly speaking the product or
resultant of the two extremes, hence its traditional designation 'Son of Heaven and Earth'. But as for subtle manifestation, this derives from the supra-formal realm alone, and gross manifestation derives in its turn from subtle manifestation. In other words, if we take each term of the Tribhuvana in a descending order, it will have as its immediate principle the term that precedes it.
So we see that a valid concordance between the two ternaries cannot be established from the standpoint of the order of their production. Such a concordance can only be established so to speak 'statically' - that is, at the stage when all three terms have already been produced. In this case the two extremes of both ternaries can be thought of as corresponding in a relative sense to essence and substance within the realm of universal manifestation, provided we consider universal manifestation in its entirety as constituted analogously to a particular being - that is, provided we viewit as the 'macrocosm' in the strict sense of the word.
There is no need to go to any great length here on the subject of the analogy between the constitution of 'macrocosm' and 'microcosm', for we have already covered this ground fully enough in other studies. But there is one particular aspect of this analogy which does deserve restating, and that is that a being such as man must, as a 'microcosm', necessarily participate in the 'three worlds' and therefore contain elements corresponding to each. In fact the same broad ternary division applies to him as well: through his spirit he belongs to the realm of supra-formal manifestation, through his soul to the realm of subtle manifestation, and through his body he belongs to the realm of gross manifestation. We will return to this tripartite division later on and develop it further, as this willhelp us to throwinto clearer relief the relationship between several ofthe most importantternaries.
This brings us to another point, which is that the expression 'microcosm' truly applies to man-and by 'man' we mean above all 'true man', or man fully self-realised - more than to any other living being. The reason for this lies, yet again, in that 'central' position of his which makes him a kind of image, or 'summation' in the sense of the Latin word summa, of the totality of mani-
festation. Man's nature, as explained earlier, is a synthesis of the nature of all other living beings, and this means there is nothing to be found in manifestation which does not have its correspondence and equivalent in man. This last statement is not just a mere 'metaphor', as people today would be only too ready to believe; on the contrary, it is the expression of an exact truth which happens to be the foundation for a considerable portion of the traditional sciences. And here, incidentally, we have the explanation of the correlations which exist, in the most 'positive' fashion, between modifications in the human order and in the order of the cosmos. Perhaps no other tradition attaches more importance to these correlations than the Far-Eastern tradition, which is unmatched in its thoroughness in deducing and then applying in practice all the consequences that they logically entail.
Looking at the subject from a slightly different angle, we have already mentioned that there is a particular correlation between man and the 'intermediary world', which is what could be called a correlation of 'function' as we will now explain. We have seen earlier that man occupies a position mid-way between Heaven and Earth—regardless of whether these terms are understood in their principial sense (as in the Great Triad) or in the more specialised sense of spiritual world and corporeal world (as in the Tribhuvana). The fact that man by his constitution participates in both of them means he plays an intermediary role in relation to the Cosmos as a whole which is comparable to the role played in a living being by the soul as the intermediary between spirit and body. The crucial point to be noted here is that this intermediary domain - which when viewed as a whole is called the 'soul' or 'subtle form' - is also the location of the element characteristic of human individuality as such: namely the 'mental faculty', or manas. We can therefore say that this specifically human element occupies the same place in man that man himself occupies in the Cosmos.
It should now be obvious that the functional factor which we mentioned above as being the basis for the correlation between man and the middle term of the Tribhuvana, as well as with soul which corresponds to this middle term in the case of a living
being, is strictly a 'mediatory' function. In fact the animic principle, or principle of soul, has of ten been described as the 'mediator' between spirit and body; [^3] and similarly as far as man is concerned he is the true 'mediator' between Heaven and Earth, as we will explain later in greater detail. In this respect only (and not because of man being 'Son of Heaven and Earth') a term-by-term correspondence can be established between the Great Triad and the Tribhuvana, but on the understanding that this correspondence in no way implies an identification of the terms of the one ternary with the terms of the other. Earlier we called this point of view a 'static' one, to diff erentiate it from what could be called the 'genetic'[^4] point of view which is concerned with the sequence in which the terms are produced. From this second point of view a correlation between the two ternaries is no longer possible; and our next chapter will show even more clearly why this must be so.