CHAPTER XXVII Place of the Individual Human State in the Being as a Whole
From what has just been said on the subject of anthropomorphism, it is clear that the human individuality, even when envisaged as an integral whole (and not restricted to the corporeal modality alone), cannot have a privileged and exceptional place in the indefinite hierarchy of states of the total being ; it occupies its place among them like any of the other states and by exactly the same right, neither more nor less, in conformity with the law of harmony that governs the relations of all the cycles of universal existence. This place is determined by the particular conditions that characterize the state in question and demarcate its domain. If we cannot at present know what it is, the reason is that we are not able, qua human individuals, to get outside these conditions so as to compare them with those of other states, the domains of which are necessarily beyond our reach. But it is obviously sufficient for us, always in our individual capacity, to be aware that this place is what it should be and cannot be other than it is, since each thing is strictly in the situation that it is bound to occupy as an element of the total order. Furthermore, by virtue of the same law of harmony that has just been alluded to, " the evolutive helix being regular everywhere and at all its points, the passage from one state to another takes place as logically and as simply as the passage from one position (or modification) to another within one and the same state "[1], without there being, at any rate from this point of view, the least break in continuity anywhere in the Universe.
If we have had to make a reservation as regards continuity (without which universal causality could not be satisfied, demanding as it does that everything should be linked together uninterruptedly) the reason, as was indicated earlier, is that there exists (from a viewpoint other than that of the course of the cycles) a moment of discontinuity in the development of the being ; this moment, which is absolutely unique in character, is that at which the action of the "Celestial Ray", operating on a plane of reflection, produces the vibration that corresponds to the cosmogonic Fiat Lux and illuminates by its irradiation the whole chaos of possibilities. From that moment, chaos is succeeded by order, darkness by light, potency by act, virtuality by reality; and when this vibration has attained its full effect in its amplification and reverberation to the utmost confines of the being, the latter, having thereupon realized its total plenitude, is obviously no longer bound down to passing through this or that particular cycle, since it now embraces them all in the perfect simultaneity of a synthetic and " non-distinctive " comprehension. This is what properly speaking constitutes " transformation", conceived as implying the " return of beings in modification into unmodified Being ", outside and beyond all the special conditions that define the degrees of manifested Existence. " Modification", says the sage Shi-ping-wen, "is the mechanism that produces all beings; transformation is the mechanism in which all beings are absorbed." [2]
This " transformation" (in the etymological sense of passage beyond form), by which the realization of "Universal Man" is achieved, is the same thing as "Deliverance" (in Sanskrit Moksha or Mukti) of which we have spoken elsewhere [3]; it requires, before all else, the previous determination of a plane of reflection of the "Celestial Ray ", so that the corresponding state thereby becomes the central state of the being. In principle, this can be any state whatever, since all are quite
equivalent when envisaged from the Infinite ; and the fact that the human state is in no wise distinguished from the others implies, for it as well as for any other state, the possibility of becoming that central state. " Transformation " can therefore be attained from the human state as a basis, and even from any modality of that state, which amounts to saying that it is possible for corporeal man on earth; in other words, " Deliverance " can be obtained " in life " (jivan-mukti) [4], and this
does not prevent its essentially implying, for the being who obtains it during human life as in all other cases, absolute and complete release from the limiting conditions of all modalities and all states.
As regards the actual process of development which allows the being, after passing through certain preliminary phases, to reach that precise moment when " transformation" takes place, we have no intention of speaking here, for it is plain that a description of it, even a summary one, cannot enter into the scheme of a work such as this, whose character must remain purely theoretical. All we have sought to do is to show what the possibilities of the human being are ; and these possibilities are necessarily possessed by the being in each of its states, for the states cannot differ in any way from one another in respect of the Infinite, in which Perfection resides.