13 | The Being and the Environment

IN the individual nature of every being there are two elements which need to be differentiated clearly, although at the same time it is also important to show as precisely as possible how they are interrelated.

In the first instance this individual nature proceeds or originates from what the being is in itself. In the second instance it proceeds from the sum total of the influences exerted on it by the environment in which it manifests. The first element represents the inward or active side of the being; the second its outward or passive side. It must of course be understood that when we speak of an individual being we are referring to its integral individuality; otherwise we risk forgetting that its corporeal modality is only the outermost aspect of its being.

The individuality’s constitution is determined by the action of the first of the above two elements on the second; or in alchemical terms, Salt is the result of the action of Sulphur on Mercury. To understand this we can refer back once again to our geometrical representation of the ray of light and its plane of reflection.^[1] To appreciate the relevance of this scheme we need to equate its vertical axis with the first of our two elements and the horizontal axis with the second. We then see that the vertical axis represents the link connecting all the different states of manifestation of one and the same being, and that this link necessarily symbolises that being’s mode of expression—or, if you prefer, the mode of expression of its ‘personality’, in that it represents the direct line of projection used by this ‘personality’ to reflect itself at every level of its existence. As to the horizontal axis, this will represent the domain of one specific state of manifestation, understood here in a ‘macrocosmic’ sense. It follows that the manifestation of the being in this state will be determined by the point of intersection of the vertical axis with the horizontal plane.

This being so, it is obvious that there can be nothing arbitrary about this point of intersection. In fact it is determined automatically by the vertical in question, inasmuch as this vertical is distinct from every other vertical. What this amounts to is that every being is what it is as opposed to being anything else that also happens to be manifesting in the same state of existence. Another way of putting this is to say that it is the individual being itself which by its own nature determines the specific conditions of its manifestation. Obviously we need to qualify this statement by adding that these conditions can in any particular case only be a specification of the general conditions of the state in question, because its manifestation must necessarily be a development of possibilities contained in that state as opposed to any other. Geometrically, this qualification is represented by the prior determination of the horizontal plane.

To recapitulate and also carry our analysis further: a being will manifest itself by clothing itself, so to speak, in elements taken from the environment, and the ‘crystallisation’ of these elements will be determined by the influence exerted on the environment by that being’s own inner nature. As far as this inner nature itself is concerned, the fact that it acts in a vertical direction shows it to be something essentially supra-individual, and this is a point worth bearing in mind.

In the case of the individual human state, it is obvious that the environmental elements we just referred to will belong to the different modalities of that specific state: that is, some will be corporeal, others subtle or psychic. This point needs to be grasped clearly if we are to avoid running into certain difficulties arising from wrong or incomplete notions. For example, if we take the case of heredity, we can say that there is not only a physiological heredity, but also a psychic heredity. The two kinds of heredity have exactly the same explanation, both being due to the presence in a person’s make-up of elements derived from the particular environment into which the individual was born.

There are, however, some people in the West who refuse to admit a psychic heredity. Knowing nothing beyond the psychic domain, they believe that the psychic element contains the essential nature of the being itself and represents what it is completely independently of all environmental influence. Conversely, there are others in the West who grant the existence of psychic heredity but believe themselves justified in taking this to mean that the being is totally and exclusively determined by the environment: in other words, that it is nothing more than nor less than what the environment makes it. The reason for this second belief is the same as the reason for the first: the failure to conceive of anything outside and beyond the corporeal and psychic domains. In other words, we have here two apparently opposite misconceptions which both stem from the same fundamental error. Adherents of the first position as well as the second reduce the being in its totality to nothing more than its individual manifestation, and both are equally unaware of any principle transcending this manifestation. Behind all these modern theories regarding the human being there still lurks the Cartesian dualism of ‘body’ and ‘soul’.^[2] In practice this boils down to a physiological and psychic duality that is—quite incorrectly—viewed as being irreducible, ultimate, and capable of embracing the whole being within its two terms. In fact the two terms represent only the superficial and external aspects of the manifested being and are no more than simple modalities of one and the same state of existence—that is, the state of existence represented by the horizontal plane we have been considering. In short, the physiological and the psychic are just as contingent as each other, and the true being is beyond them both.

Returning now to the question of heredity, we should add that it is not a full expression of the influences exerted on an individual by the environment, but only refers to those influences that are most readily apparent. In reality these influences extend much further; indeed we can say quite literally and without the slightest exaggeration that they extend indefinitely in every possible direction. In fact the cosmic environment, which is the domain of the state of manifestation we are considering, can only be conceived of as a whole of which each part is linked to every other part without any break in continuity. To try to conceive of it otherwise would be to assume the existence of a ‘void’, but this is not a possibility of manifestation and can have no place in the Cosmos.^[3] It follows that there must necessarily be relationships—which is basically to say that there must be reciprocal actions and rections—between all the individual beings which are manifested in this domain, either simultaneously or successively.^[4] From the nearest to the most distant (and by that we mean distance in time as well as space), it is essentially just a question of differing proportions or degrees. As for heredity, whatever its relative significance compared with everything else, it now appears as just one particular case among many others.

Quite irrespective of whether we are dealing with hereditary or other influences, our initial statement at the beginning of this chapter holds true: a being’s situation in the environment is in the last analysis determined by the nature of that particular being, and the elements which it takes from its immediate surroundings, as well as the elements—both subtle and corporeal—which it draws to itself from the indefinite totality of its particular domain of manifestation, will necessarily correspond in some way to that nature. If this was not the case it would be impossible for the being to assimilate those elements in such a way as to make them secondary modifications of itself. Here we have the explanation for that ‘affinity’ which dictates that a being coming into manifestation will only take from the environment whatever conforms with the possibilities which it bears within itself, and which belong to it alone and to no other being. In other words, as a result of this conformity it will take whatever is necessary to provide the contingent conditions which will allow these possibilities to develop or ‘actualise’ themselves in the course of its individual manifestation.^[5] It should in fact be self-evident that for any relationship between two beings to be real it must necessarily be the expression of something inherent in the natures of both. So, the influence that a being might appear to undergo from the outside and to receive from another being is never anything else, when looked at from a more profound point of view, than a sort of translation in relation to the environment of a possibility inherent in the nature of the being itself.^[6]

However, there is a sense in which it can be said that a being in its manifestation is in a very real way subject to the influence of the environment. But this is only the case when that influence is viewed in a negative light as representing a limitation for that particular being. This is an immediate consequence of the conditioned nature of every state of manifestation, in which the being inevitably finds itself subject to certain conditions which have a limitative role. These will consist in the first instance of the general conditions that serve to define the state in question, and in the second instance of the special conditions that define the particular mode of manifestation of that being in that state. It should be obvious that limitation as such has no positive existence, whatever the appearances, and amounts to no more than a restriction excluding certain possibilities, or a ‘privation’ in relation to what is thereby excluded. In short, however we may choose to express it, it is something purely negative.

There is of course another side to the coin, for fundamentally these limiting conditions are intrinsic to one specific state of manifestation and can only apply to whatever is included in that state. That is, there can be no question of these conditions attaching to the being itself and following it into another state. Needless to say, to allow it to manifest in that other state it will encounter another set of conditions which will be analogous to the first; but these new conditions will be different to the conditions it was subject to in its previous state. Also, it will never be possible to describe those new conditions in terms suited to describing the old. Human language, for example, is incapable of describing conditions of existence different from those of the state to which it corresponds, for the simple reason that it is determined and, as it were, moulded by those conditions themselves.

This point may seem simple enough, but it is not so easy to grasp it fully. People usually have no trouble accepting that the elements drawn from the environment to contribute to the make-up of an individual human being (technically the stage of ‘fixation’ or ‘coagulation’ of these elements), must be restored to the environment (the stage of ‘solution’) when that individuality has terminated its cycle of existence and the being passes to another stage. Everyone can witness this process directly for themselves where the corporeal elements are concerned.^[7] But what seems less easy to accept, although the two things are closely linked in reality, is that on transferring to another state the being leaves behind completely all the conditions to which it was subject as a human individual.^[8] The inability to grasp this fact is doubtless due primarily to the impossibility of visualising (if not conceiving of) conditions which belong to a totally different order of existence and cannot be compared to anything belonging to the state of existence in which we live.

One major implication of all this is related to the fact that every individual being belongs to a certain species, such as the human species. Obviously there must be something intrinsic in the nature of that being which has caused it to be born into one particular species as opposed to any other;^[9] and yet once it has been born into that species, from that moment onwards it will be subject to the conditions which are implied in the very definition of a species and which will be included among the special conditions of his mode of existence as an individual. Here we find side by side both the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative’ aspects of the specific nature: positive in the sense of being the domain of manifestation for certain possibilities, negative in the sense of being a restrictive condition of existence. But it is extremely important to understand that it is only as an individual manifested in the state under consideration that the being actually belongs to the species in question; in every other state the being escapes entirely from that species and no longer maintains any connection with it whatever. In other words, species is a purely ‘horizontal’ factor: that is, it only applies within the domain of one particular state of existence. For it to intervene in a vertical sense—that is to say when the being passes from one state to another—is altogether out of the question. Naturally what we have said here about species applies with even greater force to factors such as race and family—that is, to all the more or less restricted parts of the individual domain in which the being finds itself included by the conditions of its birth, at least for the duration of its manifestation in that particular state.^[10]

By way of rounding off our comments on this subject, we would like to say a few words on the subject of what are called ‘astral influences’. In the first place it needs emphasising that this expression is not to be understood primarily—let alone exclusively—in terms of the influences exerted on us by such-and-such a star or stars. Admittedly and without any doubt these influences—like any other influence exerted by anything else—are real enough in their own domain. And yet what the expression really means is that—chiefly symbolically—the stars represent the synthesis of all the various kinds of cosmic influences (primarily subtle rather than corporeal) to which individual beings are subject. When we say that the stars represent these influences ‘symbolically’, this is to be understood as meaning that they do so not in an ‘idealised’ or merely figurative way but because of real and precise correspondences based on the structure of the ‘macrocosm’ itself.

The usual way of regarding ‘astral influences’ is to think of them as factors that rule the individuality. However, this is only the most outward way of viewing the matter. If we consider the question from a more profound point of view, the truth is that if the individuality is connected with a clearly defined group of influences it is because this group of influences is the one that is consonant with the nature of the being that happens to be manifesting in that individuality. In other words, although ‘astral influences’ might appear to determine what the individual is, this is only the appearance, not the reality. The truth of the matter is that these influences do not determine the nature of the individual, but are merely an expression of it owing to the accord or harmony that necessarily exists between the individual and his environment. As we saw earlier, it is this harmony alone which makes it possible for the individual to realise the possibilities of which the entire course of its existence is simply a development.

In other words the real determination does not come from outside, but from the being itself. This brings us back to our earlier statement that in the production of Salt the active principle is Sulphur, whereas Mercury is only the passive principle. The outward signs simply make it possible—for those who know how to interpret them correctly—to discern the determination by, as it were, giving it a sensory expression.^[11] In practice what has just been said does nothing to modify the results that can be obtained from studying the ‘astral influences’; but from a doctrinal point of view it seems essential to clarify the true nature and function of these influences—in other words, the true nature of the relationship between the being and the environment in which its individual manifestation is actualised. The keypoint to bear in mind here is that the indefinite multitude of the various elements which together make up the environment in its totality is expressed through these influences in an intelligibly co-ordinated form.

We feel there is no need to elaborate any further on this subject, since we have already said enough to convey the essential fact that in a sense every individual being has a dual nature. In alchemical terms we could say that inwardly it is ‘sulphurous’ and outwardly ‘mercurial’. It is the fact that ‘true man’ alone is capable of fully realising and perfectly balancing this dual nature that makes him actually as well as potentially the ‘Son of Heaven and Earth’. At the same time, this dual nature is what qualifies him for fulfilling the function of ‘mediator’ between these two poles of manifestation.