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How Thinking Affects Nature
Percival's diagrams are worth meditating on. Let's go through some simple patterns together that describe what they are symbolizing...
Pattern 1: The Cross
Reality is represented as a circle. There is a horizontal diameter that divides the circle into a part that symbolizes the "Unmanifest" (i.e.: potential) and another part that represents the "Manifest" (i.e.: actual).
There is a vertical diameter that divides the circle into a "Nature" side and an "Intelligent" side. Each is associated with "Nature Units" and "Intelligent Units", respectively. (We might liken them to matter and energy.)
Together these two lines make a cross shape.
The Unmanifest becomes Manifest (from top-to-bottom) and Nature Units become Intelligent Units (from left-to-right). This cycle is "The Eternal Order of Progression". There is an "Involution" or descending half to this cycle (shown as the blue arrow), and an "Evolution" or ascending half to this cycle (shown as the red arrow). The former becomes the latter at the "Aia Point" (shown as a magenta dot).
Pattern 2: The Angles
We are embedded within The Eternal Order of Progression. Therefore, human bodies act like a refinery, turning Nature Units into Intelligent Units. This process can be described with differing levels of detail, but here we will approach it generally...
We will represent the beginnings of this process by the radius of a circle turned at a 30-degree angle (shown in gold).
Repeating this several times gives us seven points along the circumference of the circle (shown in green). In other words, it is a seven stage process.
The first half of this cycle (shown by the purple arrow) describes the "Exteriorization" of a thought (i.e.: the creation and manifestation of an idea). The second half of this cycle (shown by the orange arrow) describes how we learn from and balance that thought.
Pattern 3: The Nested Circles
Throughout reality, Units can become more or less dense or rarefied. We will represent this relationship as a series of four nested circles:
This pattern of four repeats throughout every "Sphere", "World", "Plane", "State", and "Substate":
All of them are nested inside of one another as well (i.e.: all of the Substates are in the Solid State, all of the States are in the Physical Plane, all of the Planes are in The Realm of Permanence, and all of the Worlds are in the Earth Sphere). However, the thing that we want to emphasize here is the doubling and halving pattern to how the circles nest:
Uniting The Patterns In Meaning
• Pattern 2 is simply a more refined look at Pattern 1. In other words, The Eternal Order of Progression has many stages to it, but it is helpful to relate every transformation that Percival describes back to this core pattern. The transformation of Units within the human being is simply one part of a much larger continuum. For example, as Percival points out, plants and animals have the features that they do because humans have impressed certain ideas upon the Units that make them up, not only directly through things like agriculture and animal husbandry, but by literally having a place within their cycle of growth. Notice how the material that comes from the environment (such as the flesh of plants and animals that we eat) is transformed as it passes through us and put back into the environment. This is true of the impressions that we receive from Nature as well (i.e.: they seem to cause a transformation of the Units within the body that we then project outward into our environment in response), but this process of "thinking creating destiny" is much more subtle to most people.
As we've seen before, our "Feeling" is within the nerves that permeate our senses (i.e.: Sight, Hearing, Taste, and Smell), while our "Desire" is within our blood and motivates us to act. "Rightness" exists within the heart and contains the standards for how to act. "Reason" judges how to implement those standards.
If Feeling is overwhelmed by "Glamour" (i.e.: the Nature Units within one's senses are distorting one's perceptions), it provokes Desire to ignore Rightness and force Reason. We become at the whim of the "body-mind", rationalizing our behaviors into continuing rather than thinking carefully about how our destiny is being created in the process.
However, if Rightness guides Feeling, which in turn brings Desire into agreement with Reason, then we transcend the habitual. We no longer oscillate around in The Eternal Order of Progression without thought.
• Pattern 1 and 3 are occurring simultaneously. The Eternal Order of Progression passes through every Sphere, World, Plane, State, and Substate, then rises back up through them in reverse order:
The repetition of seven and the doubling and halving make me think of music. Moving from one circle to the next is literally like moving up or down an octave. We double or halve in frequency each time that we do so. This is more than just an analogy though! As Percival points out, Intelligent Units make a kind of pattern that the Nature Units fill in like atoms within the lattice of a crystal. While this process is "Pre-Chemistry" (i.e.: the pattern exists before the existence of the element itself), we should expect to find correspondence with the chemical elements as they are the same idea at a different octave.
If we look at a "periodic table", there are eight vertical columns (or "groups") for the different types of elements. They are ordered in this manner because certain properties of each element repeat. This is why it is called a "periodic" table. This phenomena was originally known as "The Law of The Octaves" because chemists at the time of its discovery also likened it to music. While it isn't normally taught in school, musical ideas have been applied to the understanding of matter all throughout the history of Chemistry.
We mention these ideas mainly for two reasons:
1. The nesting that happens with the "Pyrogen", "Aerogen", "Fluogen", and "Geogen Units" as we move through The Eternal Order of Progression can be organized much like the different atoms on the periodic table. And further, the patterns of "Point Matter", "Line Matter", "Angle Matter", and "Surface Matter" that they make are similar to the geometric ideas that are used to describe the bonding that occurs when the elements combine to form chemical compounds.
Atoms are like points whose bonds are like lines, which in combination make angles. All together, they make surfaces (i.e.: crystal structures). Also notice how prefixes "geo-", "fluo-", "aero-" and "pyro-" are like the different "states of matter" (i.e.: "solid", "liquid", "gas", and "plasma").
2. Exteriorization literally affects matter in the same way that our thinking controls our bodies, which are comprised of Nature Units. It takes only a thought to move the matter that makes up one's arm for example.
This idea of thought affecting matter is also acknowledged within modern science to some extent. To give another example, "quantum physics" deals with the "sub-atomic particles" that make up atoms. Some physicists within this branch of science state that the observer affects whatever they are observing on this level of reality. (This is called "The Copenhagen Interpretation" within the context of quantum physics.)
But it also applies to larger objects! One of the most striking examples that I have ever seen is the work of Marcel Vogel. He was a research scientist at IBM who helped develop the magnetic coatings that they used to store information on floppy disks.
One night, while researching materials, he looked at a "liquid crystal" under a microscope. (A "liquid crystal" is a material that is part way between a liquid and a solid. It is same material that is used within LCDs or "liquid-crystal displays".)
As he stared at it under the microscope, he meditated on an image of the Virgin Mary. The liquid crystal started to take on the shape of the image in his mind the longer that he looked at it. He took a photo of it, had it printed, and hung it up inside of his house:
Photo Credit: Dreamhill Research Facility
This is how the "Conscious Light" affects Nature!
