12 THE TWO CHAOSES
Among the distinctions founded on the consideration of a condition of existence, as set forth in the last chapter, one of the most important-indeed, we could even say the most important-is the distinction between the formal and non-formal states, for metaphysically this is nothing other than an aspect of the distinction between the individual and the universal, the latter being seen to comprise both non-manifestation and non-formal manifestation, as we have explained elsewhere.[1] Indeed, form is a particular condition of certain modes of manifestation, and it is as such that it is notably one of the conditions of existence in the human state; but at the same time it is generally the mode of limitation that properly characterizes individual existence, and can serve it as some sort of definition. However, it must be understood that here form is not necessarily determined as spatial and temporal, as it is in the particular case of corporeal human modality; in no way can it be so for non-human states which are not subject to space or time, but rather to other conditions altogether.[2] Thus, form is a condition common,
not to all modes of manifestation, but at least to all its individual modes which are differentiated among themselves by the addition of various other more particular conditions; what constitutes the proper nature of an individual as such is being clothed in a form, and everything that belongs to its domain, such as individual thought in man, is equally formal.[3] The distinction we have just called to mind is thus fundamentally that between individual states and both non-individual and supra-individual states, the former comprising in their totality all formal possibilities, and the latter all non-formal possibilities.
The totalities of formal possibilities and of non-formal possibilities are what the various traditional doctrines symbolize by the 'Lower Waters' and the 'Upper Waters' respectively;[4] in a general way and in the most extended sense, the 'Waters' represent Possibility understood as 'passive perfection',[5] or the universal plastic principle, which, in Being, is determined as 'substance' (the potential aspect of Being), this last case referring only to the totality of the possibilities of manifestation, since the possibilities of non-manifestation are beyond Being.[6] The 'surface of the Waters', or their plane of separation, which we have described elsewhere as the plane of reflection of the 'Celestial Ray',[7] therefore marks the state in which the passage from the individual to the universal is operative, and the well-known symbol of 'walking on the Waters' represents emancipation from form, or liberation from the individual condition.[8] The
being that has attained the state that for it corresponds to the 'surface of the Waters', but without yet having risen above this surface, finds itself as if suspended between two chaoses, in which at first there is only confusion and obscurity (tamas), until the moment of illumination that determines its harmonic organization in the passage from potency to act, and which results in the hierarchization that will bring order out of the chaos, as does the cosmogonic Fiat Lux.[9]
This consideration of the two chaoses corresponding to the formal and the non-formal, is indispensable for the comprehension of a great number of symbolic and traditional figures,[10] and this is why we have mentioned it especially here. Moreover, although we have already treated this question in our preceding study, it is too closely connected with our present subject for us to fail to mention it again, at least briefly.