Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG http://www.esonet.ORG 1

Constitution of Man -
The Physical and Psychic Bodies - 3
Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
The subjective polarity of being in the human body never is and never has been
inoperative. Indeed it is the impersonal and generic power of "life" itself — life as a power
which integrates the multiple elements constituting the entire body. This power is
primarily focused at the etheric levels of the physical body, because these constitute the
field in which structural factors mainly work. These factors — and through them the
formless energy of life (as an agent of the principle of Unity) — need periodic
strengthening. They regularly have to recuperate from the demands made on them by the
principle of Multiplicity during daily activity, when energy is scattered and the human
structure is subject to forces of at least relative "disformation." This recuperation occurs
during sleep.
In sleep, objective consciousness ceases except for the mostly, yet not entirely,
subjective activity we call dreams. In sleep and the dream state, the ratio between the
objective power of the principle of Multiplicity and the subjective power of the principle of
Unity shifts away from the ratio manifesting as the state of waking consciousness. The
new ratio varies during sleep; hence Hindu psychologist-philosophers distinguish the
state of dreaming from that of dreamless sleep. From a practical psychological standpoint,
however, what the awakening consciousness retains as dreams usually are representations
of activities incited by happenings in the sleeping body, of confused remembrances of
events of the preceding days, or symbolic dramatizations (often distorted) of real activities
having occurred at the more "spiritual" levels of a mind controlled by the principle of
Unity.
A dream is the reflection upon the mind of a periodic and only temporary condition of
increased subjectivity that belongs to the realm of objective existence. The death of the
physical body, on the other hand, refers to an alteration of the balance between Unity and
Multiplicity which, though similar to the dream state, is seemingly irreversible. We say
that a person in deep sleep is "dead to the world." But this person awakens, because the
principle of Multiplicity predominates in the world of existence to which the person
belongs as an embodied system of biological organization. When the strength of the
principle of Unity exceeds that of the principle of Multiplicity, the physical body of a
human being not only passes into the state of sleep — it dies. The principle of Unity
becomes too strong to make life in the biosphere possible. Objective existence is "killed" by
too much subjectivity.
The balance between subjectivity and objectivity in a living person is very delicate; it
can differ only slightly from the norm of mankind's evolution at the time the person lives.
Similarly, the temperature of the human body can deviate from the norm of 98.6 degrees
Farenheit (or nearly 37 degrees Centigrade) only plus or minus a very few degrees without
death ensuing. Thus a human being can neither sleep too deeply nor be awake too
objectively. He or she cannot operate too far away from the prevailing normal balance of
subjectivity and objectivity and remain alive in a physical body. The question is, however,
whether during physical life a human being may not have another "body" in which
101