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CHAPTER EIGHT
Constitution of Man -
The Physical and Psychic Bodies - 1
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While Part Two dealt with the pattern of the cycle of being, the Movement of Wholeness,
in terms of essentially abstract principles which can be applied universally. Part Three
focuses attention upon the cycle of being of a particular entity experienced as a man or
woman. The biologist and the psychologist consider such an entity primarily a physical
organism whose life span extends between birth (or conception) and death. But from the
perspective of the mental attitude outlined in Parts One and Two, the life span of a man or
woman constitutes only one half of a whole cycle of being — its symbolic Day period of
predominantly objective activity and consciousness. The person called Peter or Jane refers
to this Day hemicycle. A full understanding of such a person requires the consideration of
the other half of the cycle — a Night period of predominantly subjective activity and
consciousness.
The difficulty encountered when attempting to deal with this Night half-cycle is that it
does not refer to the human being known as Peter or Jane, a being whose physicality —
one comes to realize — is only the external appearance assumed by a combination of
factors which in their, togetherness constitute a whole of being. After death, this
combination ceases to exist as the Peter or Jane we knew as a living person, yet the
component factors in this physically experienced person do not disappear. As I have
repeatedly stated, there is no place for non-being in the concept of wholeness of being I am
presenting. There is only being — being in a perpetual and rhythmic (or cyclic) state of
transformation in which a continual combining and recombining of elements occur. Being
implies a multiplicity of elements, because "to be" is to be a whole — one among the
seemingly infinite (because indefinable) number of concretizations of Wholeness.
When I speak of Peter or Jane, I have in mind a temporary combination of factors
constituting a human being in the state of physical existence. This combination breaks
down at death, but the Wholeness of which this being was but one phase retains its
identity of being in new conditions. The physically experienceable Peter or Jane is not a
whole of being. He or she represents — I repeat — only a half-cycle of being. Each of the
diverse elements combined to constitute a particular person during this hemicycle follows
its own course during the other half of the cycle, the symbolic Night period. A new
combination occurs when the entire cycle ends, because the end of one cycle is also the
beginning of a new one. The continuum of being has no end; the Movement of Wholeness
never stops.
The new is the progeny of the old. In a sense it is the old reborn; but not all the
elements of the old combination, Peter or Jane, will be parts of the new combination, John
or Barbara. This must be so because the cycle of being of a particular human whole is an
open cycle. It has to be open because it is actually only a very small sub-subcycle within
the cycle of humanity, the planet earth, the solar system, and the galaxy. During the period
between the birth of the old combination and the birth of the new combination, the entire
universe — particularly the whole planet and human societies and their cultures —
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