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Biblioteca Esoterica Esonet.ORG
http://www.esonet.ORG
The Cyclic Process of Spiritual Embodiment - 4
The Cycle of Man and its pancultural fulfillment
The process I have outlined above deals only with a single spiritual Quality — only one of
a myriad of aspects of the creative Word (Logos) — and a single series of personalities
magnetically drawn to this single aspect. Billions of these processes are now at work, their
earliest phases having taken place in societies forgotten long ago. In most of them, a
person now living is a rather narrowly circumscribed system of organization dominated
by biological drives, by the assumptions and imperatives of his or her culture, and by the
desires, emotions, and expectations of an insecure, constantly shifting center of gravity,
the ego; and previous personalities in the series probably felt, acted, and thought in much
the same way, at a similar level of consciousness in various cultures.
Instead of focusing attention upon these series of persons, each attracted (mostly
unconsciously) by a particular spiritual Quality, one can as well think primarily of the
gradual evolution of cultures through the millions of years mankind has been active on
earth. Each culture is also a whole, a system of organization giving a particular structure
and character to a collectivity of human beings, a society. This structure concretizes an
archetype of interpersonal and social relatedness, according to the possibilities of a region
of the biosphere and the need of the human species at a particular stage of the planet's
evolution. Cultures are systems of collective living, which gradually form, mature, and
disintegrate either rapidly or through a slow process of senescence and institutional
sclerosis. They usually leave some kind of mental or perhaps spiritual harvest to future
societies, and all these harvests contribute to the development of the earth's noosphere —
that is, the planetary Mind. But even this Mind is not the ultimate reality of the planet. A
planetary spiritual realm corresponds to the spiritual entity in the total organization of a
human being.
To think of the whole earth as a system of organization encompassing all levels of
activity and consciousness, from the most material to the most spiritual, may be difficult
for people whose conception of "being" has been limited by Western traditions. However,
there is no longer any reason to remain blind to the amazingly well-organized interactions
integrating every component of the planet into a single organism, able to maintain the
balance of its functions, heal, and transform itself. This planetary organism has a physicalmaterial
basis of rocks, minerals, water, and soil; and a biosphere gradually develops on it.
As vegetable and animal species evolve and become increasingly interrelated and
interdependent, ecosystems take form and at least rudimentary forms of collective
psychism evolve in them, especially as animal, and later primitive human societies,
appear.
As the contents of this psychic realm become ever more conscious and mental through
the operations of human cultures and socioreligious institutions, the planetary Mind or
noosphere becomes a relatively independent field for which the archetypes of many
cultures provide structures relevant to the needs of human collectivities. The highest levels
of this noosphere can be considered the base of operation from which planetary or cosmic
forces radiate into the whole earth. They may correspond to what Sri Aurobindo called the
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