Wednesday, February 8th, 1984

CLASS at Wisdom's Goldenrod, Hector, NY

with Anthony Damiani (AD)

February 8, 1984

PB PARAS; PHILOSOPHY; BALANCE

TOPIC: PB Paras

SUBJECT: Philosophy

SUBSUBJECTS: Balance, Knowing Willing Feeling, Soul Powers, Insight, Intuition, Witness-I

CONTENTS:

BALANCE IN PHILOSOPHY; CAN'T BALANCE UNDEVELOPED FUNCTIONS

THE RATIO OF DEVELOPMENT NEEDED BY EACH PART DIFFERS WITH INDIVIDUALS; THE HIGHER FACULTIES WILL INTEGRATE THE PSYCHE

THE FUSION OF KNOWING WILLING AND FEELING GIVES BIRTH TO INSIGHT; IS THERE AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD TO WHICH THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FACULTY CAN BE REFERRED?

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES IS GUIDED BY INTUITION

DYNAMIC BALANCE

MAKING EFFORTS AT SELF-DEVELOPMENT

THE BALANCE OF KNOWING WILLING AND FEELING ENGENDERS WITNESS CONSCIOUSNESS

TURNING ON ENTHUSIASM

A SAGE IS NOT NECESSARILY BALANCED; THE SPIRITUAL POWER DEPOSITED BY A SAGE IS NOT TO BE EQUATED WITH THE QUICKENING OF KARMA

INTUITION AND INSIGHT

BOOKS READ FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Paul Brunton, Notebooks. 16 vols; vol. 1 entitled Perspectives.

• Plotinus, The Enneads (MacKenna translation, 4th ed.)

• Muhammad, Koran

PLOTINUS QUOTES READ OR REFERENCED: III.3.6

NOTE: Earlier transcript versions exist.

TRANSCRIBED from Audio Cassette Tapes (and also using the original Pat Campbell 1983 transcript as a basis) by HP, et al. in 1993 as part of the set for Living Wisdom. V11 version 2018. Reformatted from V11 version by JRM & JF 2019-2020, with Subheads and Table of Contents added by JRM. In 2024, IT updates prefatory matter and footer, replaces tape markers with audio file markers, expands Subsubjects, alters most Subheads to make more accurate, completes Book List, adds Plotinus quotes section, corrects typos/errors, adds new note within transcript, reformats to accord with new conventions. Readable edited transcript – V14.1r.

AUDIO FILES: 1984 0208a, 1984 0208b. [Note: "Tape" and "Side" refer to original audio cassette tapes that were later digitized into .MP3 Audio Files.]

1984 02/08 at Wisdom's Goldenrod

PB Paras; Philosophy; Balance

Readable Edited Transcript

BALANCE IN PHILOSOPHY; CAN'T BALANCE UNDEVELOPED FUNCTIONS

[Audio File 1984 0208a Begins]

PB: "Even our understanding of balance has to be corrected. It is not, for philosophic purposes, the mean point between two extremes but the compensatory union of two qualities or elements that need one another." (Perspectives p. 270 and 20.3.277 (reread))

PB: "Inner balance is not established by setting two polar opposites against each other, as miserliness against extravagance, but by combining two necessary qualities together such as bravery with caution." (Perspectives p. 271 and 20.3.412)

PB: "But it is of the highest importance to note that the principle of balance cannot be properly established in any man until each of the elements within him has been developed into its completeness. The failure to do so produces the type of man who knows truth intellectually, talks it fluently, and does the wrong in spite of it. A balance of immature and half-developed faculties is transitory by its very nature and never wholly satisfactory, whereas a balance of fully matured ones is necessarily durable and always perfectly gratifying." (Perspectives p. 269)

DB: Would it be possible to ask why that (set up) should be; what the implications of that type of durability are? On the one hand you have a transitory characteristic of an undeveloped faculty or of an undeveloped part of a person. On the other hand one says things are all developed completely, in some respects they have a durability which they lacked previously and then they're no longer transitory. Now there's a transition there between something which was at one point transitory to becoming something that's no longer transitory. I don't understand that.

RC: Some of the things we went over last week-- Anthony was commenting about how when this proper balance is established and the faculties have been developed . . . (it's) the insight that gets born out of it. It seems that that would be why the second would not be transitory.

DB: Bear in mind that I don't understand insight very well, it would be then the insight which would be the durable factor but the evolved functions there wouldn't be? I don't know.

JG: Randy, didn't he speak about when those faculties have fully ripened then balance is possible? But it doesn't say that the ripened faculties themselves are balanced, are equally balanced. Something else then is possible to happen.

DB: It's possible that I misunderstood the quote.

PB: "But it is . . ." (reread)

SDx: I think he is just saying that any faculty naturally develops to a point of fullness or ripeness, just like a fruit would develop, and if you try to do something with it when it's still in the process of growth it's going to be transitory because it's still developing, it's still changing.

DB: But my question was that here we're dealing with a fruit that instead of then going back to the earth and starting all over again as a tree, it is in some sense is a durable achievement, it remains--

SDx: It's not the faculties, David, I think it's the balance that becomes durable.

DB: Balance of those fully mature faculties. Take away the faculties and what are you talking about?

SDx: And what was not durable or only temporary before was against the balance.

AD: Go ahead.

SD: And the balance is temporary because the faculty's changing and that changed the relationship. Let's say you've established an equilibrium between your thinking and your feeling, but your feeling hasn't developed--something comes up and it starts growing and it's out of balance again. But when they've developed then they CAN work together in a durable way.

DB: You're right.

AH: I think also Anthony mentioned last week or the week before, when you speak of the three faculties' balance as mature faculties there's actually another thing. They're not three FACULTIES any more. Was it something to that effect, Anthony?

AD: Yes, but that's not the point Severin is trying to make here. The point Severin is making is that you can speak about balancing functions that are developed; functions that are UNdeveloped--you can't speak about balancing them. Balance isn't possible there. So it would be in the very nature of trying to balance undeveloped faculties for them to be transitory.

AH: What would it mean to try to balance undeveloped faculties?

EM: We're trying all the time. (inaudible)

AD: Well, if you think of your thinking as undeveloped and your feelings as undeveloped, and you try to balance these two undeveloped faculties, you're going to find that it's in the very nature of the balance you achieve to be quite unstable.

SDx: Maybe that would correspond to what you said before wasn't balance, a midpoint between extremes rather than a coalescing of mutually necessary opposites.

DB: I think I appreciate how balance of the undeveloped faculties is not possible. What I don't understand though is how the transitory character of those faculties disappears when they become fully developed.

JB: It's the balance that's transitory, not the faculties. The quote says that the balance is transitory and the latter balance is more permanent.

DB: Right. The secondary balance IS more permanent, let's say, but it's the balance of those faculties and the permanence then would depend on some stasis of those faculties, otherwise we're speaking of a balance of NOTHING.

JB: I don't know. Balance may be another term and not the sum of the faculties. Your suggestion that just because the word balance is used in both, that there is some kind of one thing there that changes its nature, is not necessary.

DB: Then the implication would be that the faculties, once fully matured, disappear, and that doesn't seem to make sense.

PC: What about the faculties once fully matured remain as fully matured faculties?

DB: Right. That's my problem.

PC: Well, then they're not transitory in the sense that--

DB: But they were.

PC: They were but only in the sense that they didn't remain at the same level of development and therefore any relationship between two faculties that were in progressively converging states of development was transitory. When all the faculties reached a more or less stabilized developed stage we could achieve a more permanent balance.

SDx: Perhaps also, when the faculties were undeveloped they weren't things that you were in control of. In fact there was something compulsive about them that they controlled you. But when they become developed and ripened then the balance is that you come to the central point that can use those faculties. It's not that the faculties disappear but now they become things that are at your disposal rather than undeveloped things that require working through.

DB: I don't know. It seems very mysterious to me, and maybe it's not so. I guess what I'm asking is, is there an ontological change in the status of these faculties once they've reached maturity?

RC: You keep picking up on that. A couple of people have said that it's the BALANCE that's being spoken of as transitory and not the faculties, in the first half. There's no reference in here to the faculties being transitory and then becoming no longer transitory.

DB: Right. So it's a balance then of what in the second part?

RC: The balance of the faculties in a matured and developed state.

PD: I don't see why you retreat to ontology about one (little) quote. I mean it's a very direct intimate quote as to your own personal development. You're taking the question and analyzing it in a metaphysical sense, David.

DB: Well, I'll drop it very readily, but I think there's something very mysterious going on here . . . I think the implication is that from a transitory state of affairs something permanent and durable is balanced and I was just trying to understand if that was so. I mean if all we're left with at the end of this development of these three faculties is a balance over something that is still as transitory as it was when we began--

AD: No, the three faculties still remain with you. If you fully develop feeling, and fully develop thinking, and then you have to consider something, you could properly evaluate it in terms of feeling, and you could properly think it out. And it isn't that they're lost; you still have them. The balance that is required is that each function plays the role that is assigned to it, makes the proper consideration. They don't disappear. So a fully developed thinking faculty in the person of the sage doesn't disappear because he has insight, nor does his willing or his knowing. They're still at his disposal. But he can balance all three. He could make a consideration on some subject and all three fully developed faculties could be operative, each playing its role. They'll stay with you.

THE RATIO OF DEVELOPMENT NEEDED BY EACH PART DIFFERS WITH INDIVIDUALS; THE HIGHER FACULTIES WILL INTEGRATE THE PSYCHE

RC: I thought this one was especially interesting:

PB: "The proportion of development needed by each part of his being will differ with every individual. Only a correct ratio will lead to a correct balance of all the parts." (20.3.353) (First sentence of this quote in original (5v/100/102) reads: "The ratio of development needed by each part of his being will differ with every individual.")

LR: He's talking about the ration of WHAT, Randy?

RC: The development needed by each PART of the person.

I think he's saying that--to say that these faculties are supposed to reach mature development in the individual doesn't mean that there's like a certain high water mark that everybody is supposed to reach, and that until you reach that level of development of that function it's not mature. Rather, he seems to be saying that within each individual there's a proper development that's appropriate for thinking, a proper development that's appropriate for feeling and willing.

LR: Is he implying that the ratio is different, that the ratio is different for each man?

RC: Yes. At least that's what I get out of this quote.

AH: But also there seems to be a necessity, qualitatively speaking, of the function being fully developed.

RC: Yes, but fully developed is--this quote really puts that notion of "fully developed" for me into a certain context. If you were to think of some type of LINEAR development where the development of the will, this goes on forever, or the development of thinking goes on forever--or are we to think of them as elements in a being? That in the constitution of that being, are brought to a certain BALANCE which is the expression of that particular person's ESSENCE, and that that person lives in a state of balance when those faculties reach that point?

AC: It seems like that might be indicated by a person's chart. That ratio might be really--you might be able to tell if a person was really living--well, I guess they couldn't help but live according to their chart--but you could really tell by looking at the chart--that ratio--

TS: What kept you so long? What's the secret? (Tim is trying to get Amy to speak up here.)

AC: No, but the ratio that he's talking about, it seems that that ratio could probably be the actual chart structure?

LdS: The other question, Randy, is it seems that you're suggesting that the ratio has to do with the end product of the balance of the developed functions. I may have misheard it but I thought he was speaking of the developmental phases as having this unique ratio for each individual. Then you should point out in the quote where I'm being misled.

PB: "The ratio . . ." (The quote is reread here.)

LdS: It seems to me that he's speaking there again that it's in terms of the progressive development that the ratios will be unique to each individual, rather than the end product of this balance having a specific ratio for each individual.

RC: I don't think I'm picking up on the import of what you're saying.

LdS: In other words, for me, in my life, maybe the will function needs to be emphasized, the ratio of will to thinking and feeling may be much greater. In your case it may be the feeling tends to be emphasized compared to willing and thinking, and in terms of the developmental process of these functions that the ratio will be unique and specific to each individual. But it seems from other quotes that the end product, where all the faculties have been developed and matured, then you wouldn't speak in terms of a ratio there. You would speak of a true balance.

RC: You see the second seems imaginary. The first seems conceivable. You COULD be talking about a balanced person in which each of the faculties that were potential in that person had been brought to its full potential in that person. But to think of a faculty, it seems to me, any one of them could extend ad infinitum. At what point do you say it's developed or that it's reached its completeness?

LdS: Yes, I see that possibility that people become very lop-sided, but it would seem that inherent in the very constitution of the individual would be some kind of standard or gauge or you would speak of karma to correct that.

RC: I was thinking in terms of examples that came to mind, not specific examples but types.

Let's say that you get three sages and each one of them is living in this state that he's calling balance or equilibrium. One of them operates predominantly through the will, say for the phase of the World-Idea that he's involved in making available. Another one is operating primarily in terms of an intellectual formulation of the doctrine. But just in terms of the exercise of the faculties on a daily basis he's exercising primarily through the intellect. And vice-versa with someone probably like Ramakrishna that's energizing primarily through the feeling--I guess maybe he's not a good example. But I could see a person living in a state of balance in the sense that they are at one with their Overself and there's not a bouncing in, bouncing out, uneven relationship between the ego and the Overself, and nonetheless the ego has one function that--not dominates the others but is a primary mark of that particular sage. Because he can feel, say like maybe Apollonius, he CAN feel or think but he primarily is DOING things.

PD: No, I can't understand that quote in terms of the interiority of the sage, but on the psychological level one person's got Mars in Aries, and another one Mars in Scorpio and wherever. It's going to go through a certain quantum of development and differentiation due to the total complex in that chart. And for that person that's the correct ratio that's being unfolded, and that Mars doesn't become the universal Mars. It's the potentiality that that person is endowed with to unfold and differentiate, and so it's a very specific meaning in that context. That's the way I see that reference there and not to the interiority of a sage.

DR: Are you suggesting that the word ratio maybe refers to the functions of the psyche and maybe the word balance refers to something else, maybe the standpoint of the Overself? Are you making that distinction?

PD: Well, that after a certain amount of individual development some type of balance could be achieved as the epitome of the development, but those different parts and potentials that a person's endowed with still have to go through some process of growth. (cough) . . . level . . . (inaudible)

DR: Yes, I think that ratio does seem-- That seems a good term to use for what that sort of person might be like. I thought that was a good point. Balance seems to refer to something else.

RC: I would maybe ask Tim would you look at charts when you break them up into the different parts--you know, one degree, two degrees, things like that. Do you come up with things where you would get a sense that this person would never function as an integrated unit? (laughter)

TS: Um-- I think to follow what you're saying and what Paul's saying is that the way (I) was thinking about it was there would be some--in most cases you would see--look to see the dynamic energy within the psyche functioning in such a way that it does not create a false center of awareness or association with that psyche. That the sense of individuality or the Sun, or whatever you want to say, the Sun is in fact experienced as central, and there's no eccentricity in the energy or the evolution of that. It would seem then that would be necessary before the overshadowing of the higher consciousness could really fully reveal itself in that psyche. So it seems that the quote can be read on two levels, and that the integrity of the chart would be quite different for a person who has a grand cross or a grand sextile.

KD: What are you guys talking about? I don't follow what this has to do with--? What did you mean by integrity? What did you mean--? The chart itself is a symbol of integrated functioning. The psyche is integrated whether a person has a Pluto-Sun opposition or you know--

LR: It is? The psyche's always integrated?

KD: Well, I just wondered what he meant by that.

AD: I think she means that the psyche is never integrated. (laughter) And that it's going to take the higher powers of willing, thinking, and knowing to integrate a chart, the psychic functions. You won't find it in the chart, Tim. (pause, then inaudible student) I want to see what Tim's going to say. (laughter)

TS: You won't even find it in the relation of the trans-Saturnians to the natal Chaldean structure?

AD: You may think that way. But basically what corrects the unbalanced functioning of the psyche are the higher faculties, and that very often is independent of the natal chart. I mean, you could look at your natal chart and say, "Well, here's a deficiency or an excess of a certain quality." And the soul brings its thinking to bear on that, and its willing to bear on that. But the chart itself would prefer not to have that done. I mean, that's the way I see it, Tim.

TS: So you're saying the ratio is not a certain kind of integrity within the ego structure.

AD: No.

TS: But it is a ratio which is established in spite of the ego structure.

AD: Yes.

TS: Now would you say that if anywhere one was to look, the continuum of the moving planets, the trans-Saturnians, would have a certain kind of continued influence within the natal chart?

AD: That may; I'll leave that open. I don't know. But I would say I would basically have to depend on the intuitive faculty to point out to me a shortcoming, let's say, in the way my psyche functioned, or where it's excessive in regard to something else.

TS: It certainly would seem that it would be mechanical, that one could logically establish it.

AD: Yes, I would agree. It would seem to be a mechanical thing, and I don't think it's possible. What would be the criteria? (pause) Alright, Andrew.

THE FUSION OF KNOWING WILLING AND FEELING GIVES BIRTH TO INSIGHT; IS THERE AN OBJECTIVE STANDARD TO WHICH THE DEVELOPMENT OF A FACULTY CAN BE REFERRED?

AH: Anthony, I'd like to ask: From the point of view of that amalgam of the three functions we mentioned before, when fully developed functions actually become another kind of amalgam, they're not lost but there's something more that's added when the three are put together in full development. And that obviously is a kind of perfection or the accomplished sage when we speak of that happening. Is it from that point of view that the psyche would be an imbalance?

(AD/AH question clarification.)

AH: From the point of view of the fully developed perfected functions?

AD: I don't know if I follow your question. Is it from the point of view of insight?

AH: Yes.

AD: No. That's not a point of view.

AH: But the three functions in full perfection or development result in insight. Is that so?

AD: No. It results in insight or it seems to engender insight, but they remain. They remain. They're not canceled out. If you take PB's lead, where he speaks about willing, feeling, and knowing have to be brought to their highest level of development and then the fusion of these three engenders the faculty of insight; it doesn't deprive the sage of thinking, willing, and feeling. There's still those functions that he could work with. But this new faculty which is engendered, and becomes operative in him, is not a point of view.

AH: May I pursue this just a minute? Is there a standard that these functions must be brought to that would be uniform or is it peculiar to each person?

AD: No. It's individual.

LR: Isn't that what the quote says, that it's individual?

AD: And that's why the guidance will have to come from your own intuition.

AH: So, one sage may have developed a more perfected feeling function than another?

AD: No. That doesn't follow.

RC: It may be more differentiated, but--

AH: I'm trying to understand the quote, the notion of ratio. The ratio is what you come in with, and it's the space between that and perfection is the place where you speak of ratio.

AD: Well, now you're taking me to another quote. Will you read the quote he's referring to?

RC: Is this the same one, "The ratio . . ."?

PB: "The ratio of development . . ." (reread)

AH: It says the ratio will differ with each individual but the accomplishment doesn't is the thesis that I'm trying to ask about.

AD: Yes. True, yes.

AH: The accomplishment is the amalgam of the three functions which--

AD: Well, it's not only the three functions; you have to remember you have some others, too. The Chaldean planets also represent functions; at a different--a little different, perhaps, but still they're functions.

But what you say is true. It differs with each person, but the accomplishment is the same for all.

BY: It seems to me that in thinking of the perfectibility of the faculties conjures up a notion of a standard but there is no standard level that faculties' have to be reached. But in a way you could think of the standard of the faculties development in terms of the adequacy of them being capable of them being fused together in balance to achieve insight and that that would be the same for everyone. Whereas each sage has a different place in the World-Idea so there will be a unique ratio for each one.

AH: Bill asked my question better than I could have formulated it for myself. I was wondering what it means for those functions to be PERFECTED so they could be in balance. That was really the question. It does seem to be speaking about some standard.

BS: I think that's the individual, isn't it?

AH: No, I don't think it's for the individual. There's some universal requirement for that function in order to be transformed into insight. In the case of thinking it would be fairly easy to articulate what that would be like. Thinking would see its own source. But I don't know how to speak about that in regards to the other functions.

JG: Didn't Anthony just say that the functions remain, that they are not transformed and fused together and a new product arises, but that the peak development engenders something?

AH: I'm trying to understand the relationship between peak development and engendering something.

AD: Now you keep changing positions, because before you just wanted to know if there was an objective standard to which the development of a faculty can be referred to. Right?

AH: I'm sorry, I didn't hear the question.

AD: I said you're changing your position now because before you were wondering if there was an objective standard to which each faculty must be referred to in order to reach peak development.

AH: Then are we saying there is or is there not an objective standard?

AD: Well, there may be an objective standard, but I'm not going to try to answer it unless that's the question. (laughter)

AH: That's the question. Because I can see what that standard is in regards to the thinking function, but I have no way of understanding what the standard would be with regards to the other functions.

AD: What would be the standard in terms of the thinking?

AH: It would be the ability for thought to discover its source, the last of the requirements for metaphysical thinking. Thought would have to be FIT to take on that task. That would be its perfection.

AD: Well, could you say the same for feeling? That feeling reaches its highest level of development and can properly evaluate whatever situation occurs within the World-Idea?

AH: As feeling?

AD: Yes, as feeling, as evaluation. And will you say that that would apply to willing, too, in the sense that the person will know what to do and what not to do--in accordance, again, with the World-Idea? So that you're saying that the perfection of these functions is basically interrelated with the individual's understanding, coordination and working with the World-Idea. Is that the standard that you're conceiving?

AH: Yes.

AD: Well, I can't answer, because I don't know. And when I reach, I'll let you know.

RC: For some of the examples he gives here in terms of where a person could maybe know what needs to be done but not be able to do it, it seems to be a situation of imbalance between--I'd guess you'd say--either the thinking and the evaluating, one of those two being used to know what needed to be done, but the will being not able to put it into action.

AH: I'm sorry, Randy, I didn't understand what you said.

RC: Just what Anthony was saying there, that with the development of the feeling, that you'd be able to properly evaluate the content of the World-Idea at any particular moment, and with the perfection of the will the person would be able to do what was the right thing to do. That that would be a situation of balance. Then specifically one of the things that he criticizes is when a person can know what needs to be done but lacks the will to be able to do it.

JG: Who criticized that? PB?

RC: Yes.

PB: ". . . The failure to achieve this kind of balance produces the type of man who knows truth intellectually . . . and does the wrong in spite of it. . . ." (Perspectives p. 269 (repeat)) (Note: The phrase on the tape "achieve this kind of balance" is published as "do so".)

AH: But that wouldn't be the fulfillment of the thinking function, to know the truth intellectually.

RC: It wouldn't?

AH: No. We were describing the fulfillment of the thinking function as being thought discovering its source.

JG: You were?

AH: Yes, I was. That's right.

RC: "Knowing the truth intellectually," what does that mean? Not that you speculate, necessarily.

AH: Well, is having a concept of truth which would be knowing intellectually the same thing as thought discovering its source?

AD: Thought knowing its source, and what Randy said, when the person knows what to do, is the same as saying that he knows what is being required of him, let's say by the World-Idea; circumstances, situations, events, etc. He knows WHAT he has to do, and he may not be able to implement that knowledge through the will. But thought cannot discover its source.

AH: Are you speaking of the quote that Randy just read where a man knows the truth intellectually?

AD: Thought cannot know the truth; it cannot discover the truth. By definition, it is barred. It can only know it intellectually.

Feeling, so to speak, could evaluate properly, let's say, a situation that is, give it its due recognition in terms of being a felt content, and will would have to implement it, or let's say can carry out the activity required of it. Now these three things are all still in the domain of relativity. Even if they're perfectly balanced, they're still in the domain of relativity. When they're fused together, and they engender an entirely different faculty, insight, THAT is what discovers the source.

AH: I see. I understand now.

AD: Ok.

JG: Anthony, is there an actual fusing?

AD: Let's say you're a musician, and you're going to play on the piano. That means the will is going to be employed, right? And you have to know the piece you're playing. There's cognition. And there's an evaluation or a feeling to what you're playing. Now these three things seem to fuse together, and there's a magic that comes out of this, "Wow!" A fusing in that sense. They don't get swallowed up and disappear and now you've got no feeling, willing, . . .

(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1984 0208a Ends; Side 2 Begins)

(Beginning of tape 1, side 2 is incomplete. Pat Campbell version continues with:)

AD: . . . and knowing. The three stay; they don't go away in insight. So the fusion . . . (this is from the PC transcript only)

AD: . . . or it engenders, it gives rise to the insight, and then that becomes permanent. Or you try to make it permanent; you keep on trying to repeat it over and over so that the insight becomes a permanent thing.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES IS GUIDED BY INTUITION

LR: So then balance in this way that you're speaking of it seems to be more like a posture of the soul to act in the appropriate way at any given moment.

AD: That's alright. Yes. That would be a good way of putting it.

LR: It's not weighted in any one thing but rather all the parts--

AD: Yes, that would be a good way of putting it. So he's saying like the entirety of all the different parts of the psyche act in this controlled way. Each knows its place and acts accordingly.

AH: Is that possible without insight?

AD: Well, like I pointed out before that it's a development that takes place through the intuitive faculty. It's your intuition that guides you to do or to develop this, do that and the other thing, whatever's required. This is very individual.

AH: It's curious how one could be aligned with the World-Idea without the faculty of insight and it seems you just answered that by positing intuition as an intermediary.

AD: You remember in some of the previous discussions where he speaks about the Interior Word, the way it guides you, tells you what to do, and all that? Well, don't forget those things, because that's all part of the development of the intuition. You actually look inwardly for the guidance what to do, because you no longer trust the ego. You know it's always up to its own shenanigans.

RC: Anthony, could you say more in terms of how you understand this faculty being perfected, that what it means to say that the individual faculty has--

AD: I don't know if I care for that word, 'perfected,' because that kind of scares me. But if I say that thinking or willing has to be brought to a level of function where it will adequately serve the soul's development, if it hasn't achieved that level of development, it will always distort whatever intuitions come through and make mayhem of the whole situation. So I think of it in the sense that the faculty of thinking or willing or any one of these faculties--and I also include the Chaldean functions--has to be brought to a level where it could adequately respond to the needs of the individual, and it is DEVELOPED rather than perfected.

And I speak of "developed faculties" and not "perfected faculties" because I don't believe in perfection. There's only one thing that's perfect, The One, and everything else is pretty, you know--

LR: In what sense were you speaking of these faculties as serving the purpose of the life in some way? Could you speak of it that way?

AD: That's the way I'm speaking of it.

LR: So the way we were speaking about all the Chaldean faculties as drawing out, as radiations, servants of the sun, to reveal the true purpose of that sun--that's what you're talking about?

AD: And then further than that, the willing, thinking, and knowing guiding that individual.

LR: Which would be guiding the servants, so to speak.

AD: So you have a kind of hierarchy there. The soul through these three faculties, supposedly concerned with the development, or let's say the full development, of the individual and is required for that, in the sense that the psychical functioning of the Chaldeans may be in balance, and the thinking, willing, and feeling that's brought into operation--or, if I could, for those three words, use the term 'intuition'--as to which of these faculties is underdeveloped, which has to be developed. So it's a question of the whole psyche coming into balance, each knowing the role it has to play in regard to the whole, in regard to THIS individual whole, not anyone else.

MB: Anthony, when you speak of the full development of the individual doesn't that also include a certain amount of impersonality or detachment from the ego? Does it also include a certain impersonal approach of detachment from the individual ego where perhaps the development of the individual requires interest in others or--?

AD: Well, that's absolutely necessary, because if there isn't a certain amount of impersonality in regard to the way the ego functions, one would never know that he needs this rather than that. I mean, how can you tell, for instance, that one of your functions is shortchanging you, unless there's a certain impersonality in regard to the way the ego functions?

MB: But not only impersonality with regard to the ego functioning, but also an impersonality with respect to putting one's own individual self in front of others, for example. I mean in a social context there's a certain impersonality.

AD: Well, that would be included, wouldn't it?

MB: In the development of the feelings.

AD: Yes.

MB: --especially. Ok.

AD: Yes.

JfL: Anthony, the development is being brought on by the individual's higher self then, and not by the circumstances?

AD: It's a combination. Sometimes circumstances will be in favor of that development; sometimes they'll be against that development and the soul will insist, regardless, that they be carried through. That's why I say you won't find that in the chart.

A few times Tim and I disagree about an interpretation of a chart, and it isn't that he's misinterpreting it; he's following the understanding that he has acquired from reading charts. And I would say, "No, this person NEEDS that; he has to GO through that development." Sure it's an unpropitious beginning, but that's exactly the way it's going to get started. So he'll have to go through difficulties. It's alright.

RC: I guess more specifically the kind of question I was trying to ask Tim before was--this condition of balance that he's speaking of as prerequisite for the birth of insight, do you see that as potential in every chart or do you see it as a fairly rare potential?

AD: No. That's kind of rare.

LR: What, that there be balance?

RC: Yes, that balance is a likelihood for this.

LR: Well, you've got these seven faculties that are supposedly revealing the purpose of the life, and say the purpose of the life is to be revealed by the Sun and you've got Mars square it. So it's not likely that it's going to be able to (inaudible) reveal, you know, just looking at the aspects, you can see it, that it's pretty unlikely that that would occur--that one function would always fight against that central purpose.

JB: So what's the ratio of development (like)?

LR: So what seems like--it seems like what--Tim what you're describing would be some kind of archetypal chart.

RC: It seems like there's two things involved though. When you speak in terms of Sun square Mars or something, you're talking about the inner tensions of the ego. That seems to be one thing. But the relationship of the ego to the Overself or the soul seems to be what's really crucial in this discussion of a balance. So like the ego could have a really rough destiny but the person could still be quite balanced about it, I think.

AH: That roughness may or may not preclude the possibility of insight.

RC: Yes, that's what I'm thinking and questioning about.

DYNAMIC BALANCE

RC: Does anyone have that quote from last week? I'm missing that one page . . . there's one level that you talk about as within the ego, a balance of the ego's powers, and another of knowing when to submit to the higher . . . I guess in the meantime:

PB: "Those who talk or write truth, but do not live it because they cannot, have glimpsed its meaning but not realized its power. They have not the dynamic balance which follows when the will is raised to the level of the intellect and the feelings. It is this balance which spontaneously ignites mystic forces within us, and produces the state called"born again." This is the second birth, which takes place in our consciousness as our first took place in our flesh." (Perspectives p. 270 and 20.3.385 (reread))

JG: So why is that balance dynamic? We have so far always spoken about balance like you take a pound of courage, and a pound of this, and it will even out, and the whole thing seems boring. It's a little frivolous to speak about it that way but this comes out as something alive.

AH: Because it ignites those mystic forces.

JG: Is that why it's called dynamic?

RC: Yes, I think they're talking about something here which is to be understood as essentially dynamic. We started out talking about how the basis of the universe is its equilibrium. You can take that as some kind of model.

DB: Yes, I think it's like that one quote you read earlier about you take two opposite qualities and you find the mid-point in between them. That's the idea of canceling each of them out. These forces are complimentary and they need each other so that you'll be cautious when it's necessary and brave when it's necessary and you won't be either one or the other inappropriately, so that it's always a dynamic, vital interaction with the World-Idea--not like this inert, immovable lack of response.

RC: Yes, and even more I think like in that example, that out of the simultaneous presence for example of bravery and caution, this balance is being expressed, even more than out of pure alternation.

KD: That state of dynamism exists when you're free from compulsion. You're only free to act according to your knowledge, when you're not dominated by some unconscious determination or compulsion, like you're standing outside, you're free from that compulsion that we normally live in.

AD: If we go back to the example we used before, Johanna, about the musician? We said that a moment of magic is created. That's dynamism. And you say to yourself, "Couldn't it be like this ALL THE TIME?" That's a dynamic state.

PD: Something else seems to be implied in that quote too, and that is that what's happened is not a product of your own activity but (due to these) mystical forces, so your willing doesn't create anything, but your NOT willing interferes with something happening.

AH: Paul, was it that (willing was brought to) the level of feeling and thinking? (hard to hear)

PD: On account that those other two ways were developed to some extent in that context.

AD: But, Paul, take the example we just used, that you're in a state where your feeling, willing and knowing are being exploited to the utmost, and you will feel yourself to always be a very dynamic person.

PD: But that quote--he seems to be referring about a release of mystical forces--

AD: Yes, that's what I'm talking about. Isn't that what happens? Isn't there a release of mystical forces when the willing of the musician, the thinking of the musician, and the feeling of the musician is fused momentarily and you have this magic moment appear and you feel as though you have been reborn in consciousness? But you can't keep it up. But nonetheless it's a good example that if you live like that, there will be many moments that you experience this dynamic state of being. Or I should say that you experience the dynamism that's inherent in being.

KD: But that implies that you're not tied to one of those functions. We're not compelled to--

AD: Yes, but we're not discussing that. What we're trying to understand is that the complementarism of these three factors produces the dynamic state. And it is a mystical sate. Maybe Bert could give us an example: He plays the piano; he's got to will it; he's got to get down there--you know how hard that is--and then he's got to feel the piece properly and he's got to know everything he's doing. Then he plays and he gets transposed into a dynamic state of being. He feels greater than he's ever been. Then, when that magic moment is over, there's a relapse. (laughter)

JG: You mean to say that a sage lives like that?

AD: All the time. All the time. He's always a dynamic being. That doesn't mean he goes around lifting up two hundred pound weights. (laughter)

KD: So the dynamism occurs as a result of exercising those functions, isn't it?

AD: The dynamism is inherent in that state of being.

KD: When those faculties are being exercised?

AD: When the three of them are conjointly functioning to produce that magic moment or that state of being. Why do you people go around in circles? Why don't you listen to me the first time?

JG: We're thick.

AD: I go out of my way trying to find examples.

JG: The more you talk the better for us.

AD: No. The worse for me.

JG: We're not thinking of you. (laughter)

MB: Anthony, it sounds like you're saying that this state of balance can be brought about intermittently even when it isn't a fully developed capability.

AD: Yes. And also I'm making a point that a state of balance is not a state of immobility. You know, like when you balance something and it doesn't move any more? You know, you put it on a scale and it's (perfect). That's not balance. That's stasis. That's inertia.

JG: But these words came up before, these words like equilibrium and stasis and--they came up before.

AD: Yes, but you see I'm trying to explain it, I'm trying to explain it, so I have to use different words. Because if I use the same words, then you could read it for yourself.

MB: It sounds like alchemy. Like this quote sounds like an alchemical process.

AD: It definitely is.

MB: Combining of different elements bring about a--

AD: It definitely is.

MB: --Energic state.

RC: Well, even in terms of those words, once before you had talked about equilibrium in terms of a chemical reaction as a state of maximum energy, that the slightest shift from one side of the equation to the other, the release of the tension, the release of the energy that is present in the equilibrized situation. (pause) There seems to be a real tendency to take words like equilibrium and balance to mean stasis and not being excited, and so on, but he seems to be going in a very different direction, that balance here seems to be fullness, livingness, clarity, freedom--they all seem to be involved in this.

AD: Yes. I definitely think so.

LR: . . .

DB: Randy, you know, I don't know if it's appropriate but that quote, it's one of those quotes that asks more questions than it answers. Is there anywhere else in this section where he talks about what actually he means by the will in this quote? You know we had example(s) like I'm going to drive to work and stay there until five o'clock. That's the will. But what does he mean here? What is the meaning for the will which ascends from wherever it is to the level that releases this. I'm not asking about the mystic forces that get released but I'm just wondering what is to be understood by his meaning of willing in the quote.

(PD/BS): As being dynamic or not?

DB: Whatever.

LR: But didn't Anthony give the example, David, that when your knowledge (inaudible) the proper execution of what's known as (inaudible) would be what's meant by the will? In other words, the ability to carry through all the way-- (This comment is hard to hear.)

DB: Yes you see, that's another example of that. I mean that's why--the same as the guy turning on the car and going to work and staying there, he's operating in accordance with all the other faculties and the World-Idea is unfolded. I'm just curious, what is this will besides that (it/(inaudible)) goes from one level to another? . . . I still don't have an image of what that means.

JB: You take that quote to be more than an example? Is that what you mean? Because, in this quote, it just begins with the suggestion that someone has developed the feelings and the intellect but not the will. But that's just an example; where the will is sufficient--

DB: Oh, sure.

JB: You'll acknowledge that the same example could have been where either the thinking's sufficient or the feeling's sufficient.

DB: Sure, whatever.

RC: He seems to be saying something about realizing the power of the truth. The way he puts it here, he's saying, "Those who talk or write truth, but do not live it because they cannot, have glimpsed its meaning but not realized its power."

And then he goes on to say, "They have not the dynamic balance which follows when the will is raised to the level of the intellect and the feelings."--which, as Jonathan says, in this quote is assumed to be developed. It seems that in these terms that the will almost seems to be the organ within the soul that recognizes the power aspect of the truth. It seems to be very different to recognize meaning than to recognize power.

HE: I was wondering if realize there meant to realize it like "oh, I see its power," to actually have that power--

RC: Yes, actually having that power functioning in you.

MAKING EFFORTS AT SELF-DEVELOPMENT

HE: But in connection with that, it's a little bit confusing, because he says these are people who recognize it and talk it but they can't do it because the will isn't sufficient, right? And if you just talk about the will makes you do the good or do the right thing--but if you can't do it how are you going to get it raised up to the point where you're going to have the power to do it . . .

AD: Say it again, Harriet, say it again. --Your question.

HE: If the will is not developed to the level say of the intellect and feelings, so that you have a person who knows the good and has a sense of what's to be done but can't do it because of the deficient will, how is one going to overcome that deficiency except by willing the will to do it? Then you're willing yourself to will it. Willing yourself to do what's right, which is what you couldn't do in the first place.

AD: You're saying, if the will is insufficient, what can I do about it? If you wanted to develop the power of memory, how would you go about doing that?

CdA/LR?: Memorize. Start memorizing.

AD: And if you want to develop the power of will, how would you do it?

JG: You get up each morning and fight.

AD: You remember what Goethe said--you remember what he said-- "The battle for freedom is fought anew every day"? I hope you don't think it's done once and over.

HE: Are you willing yourself to develop the will?

AD: No, I'm not using it that way. I'm saying you're exercising the power of the soul to develop the will. Otherwise you'll be running on with wills from here to eternity!

HE: . . .

AD: If you take the definition of soul the way it was evolved in our studies of Plotinus: Soul has powers. It is present in every one of those powers. It must exercise those powers, or they might just as well not have been.

So if you want to develop the power of memory, you go about memorizing. Every morning you get up and you recite one chapter from the Koran, or you sit down and you memorize it, and the next day, you'd be surprised. The power of memory, the faculty of memory actually gets developed. And every day you get up and you do something you dislike or something that you feel that you should do and you can't do; and you develop the will to be able to do it.

AS: Is this still the born-again quote?

AD: But I'm not going to go into the definition of will. Because you know that--

HE: When he says at the beginning of the quote, someone who knows the truth but does not live it because they cannot, he doesn't mean CANNOT in any kind of--

AD: Absolute sense, but that he hasn't developed that faculty of the will to bring it up to par to the development of the intellect and the feeling.

HE: And this person may not know that he can develop his will.

AD: Sure.

HE: He just accepts his will as it is, "I just don't have any will. I can't do it." (inaudible)

AD: Sure. And when he gets defeated enough times, he'll suddenly get mad.

BS: So we could make certain efforts to develop. I thought you were saying that these efforts WE make--

AD: Count.

BS: Yes, in the sense that they will awaken IN us the inherent soul power itself. And possibly later you could work directly from that?

AD: Ok. (Yes.) You awaken a certain soul power when you exercise the faculty of memory, and then you recognize that you DO have this power to memorize. Yes.

BS: I don't mean that the soul power actually awakens.

AD: Well, they ARE powers of the soul. They are powers. Not every kind of being has those powers. Not every kind of being has those powers. We DO. The soul has those powers.

BS: (Gain it and) (you'll) regain (your) soul. (very hard to hear)

THE BALANCE OF KNOWING WILLING AND FEELING ENGENDERS WITNESS CONSCIOUSNESS

AS: I wanted to ask this question relating to that line about "born again." The next to last line was "born again."

PB: ". . . It is this balance which spontaneously ignites mystic forces within us, and produces the state called"born again." . . ." (Perspectives p. 270 and 20.3.385 (repeat))

AS: Well, it was in relation to an idea from a different class. He says something about born there too rather than 'born again'--the birth into the flesh and then into the consciousness. It sounded like when we were speaking of the soul has its power of projection and that it gets projected into the man's birth, and at a certain point--it's almost like this balance is really going on within that projected power of understanding, and then when THAT gets to a certain point of development, the birth of the higher soul into that, would you say that's what he means by this "born again"? It sounds like an analogy, like the normal birth is this power of projection . . . is conjoined with the body, but then the higher birth is the higher soul itself or the insight or the--

JB: You mean not the projection anymore but now the higher . . .

AS: No, the projection becomes now that in which the higher birth is going to take place. That projected understanding or that triple function was operating and developing through the body or through the organism and now that triple function becomes the place of birth of this higher insight.

JfL: Why don't you read that section again? Or the whole thing?

PB: "Those who talk or write . . ." (whole para repeated here, Perspectives p. 270 and 20.3.385)

JB: So what's given birth OF in our consciousness? When Avery said that there is a birth of insight . . .

AS: I wasn't using insight carefully there. I didn't necessarily mean what he calls insight.

TS: Let me ask it this way. It seems as though what's being said about balance is that balance is the achievement of the development of all of the faculties of the soul as part of the World-Idea, and when that World-Idea within the soul is balanced for that soul it constellates a response from the Overself whose quiescent being contacts that balanced function within the World-Idea. And it would be that quiescent being of the Overself from which insight would arise. But it seems that insight is part of the Overself and balance seems to be on the side of the World-Idea. So it seems to be like the long path and the short part--those would be the psychological images of it.

JB: I'd look for what was born in consciousness, analogous to what was born in the flesh, and it may be that just now you have contact with insight but it does seem that there is something more literal. You keep insight as still belonging outside in some way but extend it so this notion of something being BORN in consciousness may have a more literal analogy.

AH: I think the notion of birth entails a entity that is born, and what is born in the flesh we call our true self, then by and by we're born in consciousness and the identity is no longer with the flesh but with that…

JB: Same self you mean, but now known to be a self of consciousness.

AH: Known to mean mind rather than body.

AS: I don't know, maybe we've got the wrong meaning of born. It's not something (externally) created but now it's a present some(thing) . . . Birth in the flesh isn't that the (inaudible) comes in, creation is a present thing. That seemed to be the way we were describing this presence of the balance in the musical example. What that balance now calls forth--or now there can be a fit vehicle for presence of the higher, not that that insight or whatever is going to suddenly be born.

TS: It couldn't be created.

AS: No, it isn't. It's present now.

AH: What's born again?

AD: Well, let's try this way, Avery. I think maybe you're trying to say this: willing, feeling, and knowing bring us into the body; willing, feeling, and knowing is going to engender that Witness consciousness in us which IS the rebirth in consciousness.

AS: Yes, (inaudible) the willing, feeling, and knowing, when they're fully balanced and developed will be the place of birth of that higher consciousness.

AD: That consciousness, yes.

KD: What did you say it engenders?

AD: You become the Witness-I.

KD: Through the development of--

AD: --willing, feeling, and knowing.

KD: And knowing?

AD: Yes, when they're fully balanced, then you, like-- those magic moments that I spoke about, they're magic because at that moment you are the Witness-I.

JB: So the faculties become the locus rather than the body, of the birth.

AS: Or the you. What (Anthony) said--who is this you? You are now the higher. (inaudible)

JA: What does he mean "the faculties become the locus"?

JB: I put it in that sloppy way.

LR: I didn't hear you.

RG: She said, "What does he mean that the FACULTIES become the locus"?

AD: I didn't say that.

JB: No, no.

JA: Avery said that.

AD: I'm just defending myself.

JB: I've admitted now that I put it that sloppy way.

AD: Good, that's why you have to strive for precision, because it's very subtle now.

(More student comments)

JB: (tries again) In the same way that the material body is the locus of birth when knowing, willing and feeling come to birth in manifestation, in that same way knowing, willing and feeling become the locus of the insight, of the coming to birth in consciousness. The self, in that respect, changes its attachment, its locus from the body to the Overself.

AS: Except for one thing. (inaudible) (I'm sorry that I used that word insight. I think Anthony's pointing out--precisely--) He's not talking about insight coming to birth there necessarily, but the state of that Witness. Technically, this is not what he calls insight into reality. This is the state of the Witness-I.

AD: It's equivalent to an awareness of awareness.

AS: But not insight?

AD: No.

LR: . . .

AD: That any of the what?

LR: Anthony, in that context couldn't you say that any one of those three, willing, feeling or knowing could bring about that Witness consciousness. The Witness consciousness doesn't depend upon the fusion of those three the way you speak about insight, that any ONE of those three could actually--

AD: No. The three of them have to be operative.

LR: All three have to be operative?

AD: Yes. It may not seem so from what you understand of astrology, but three of them have to be operative in order for the experience of being the Witness to take place. If there's unbalance in them, you will remain the empirical subject.

PC: You mean even a momentary glimpse of that Witness?

AD: Or even a momentary glimpse of being the Witness-I requires that these three are, for that moment, in balance. That's why I gave the example of a musician. Those three have to be in operation at the same time. You could see that if one of them was excessive or deficient, that means that there would be some compulsive functioning going on which would prevent the feeling of being the Witness or the knowledge of being the Witness.

PC: Could it take place in a state where they were quiescent?

AD: Where, what?

PC: Where they were quiescent?

AD: Quiet? Sure.

PC: Ok. (pause)

AH: Is that to say that the only way they're going to be quiet is (if they're/to be) balanced?

AD: That's true.

AH: If not they're pulling on each other.

PD: That seems to imply that if they're not balanced, the ego's present.

AD: You got the drift, Paul. You know, will doesn't always have to be some sort of activity. Sometimes will could also be an inhibition. It doesn't always have to operate that you got to go run a quarter of a mile. You've noticed that inhibition is an exercise of the will?

BY: Anthony, I'm a little confused about this point. It seems that in general and ideally--for instance in meditation there has to be a fusion of the three functions in the intensity of concentration. But what about a special meditation that . . .?

AD: No, not in the intensity of concentration. It's not achieved in concentration.

BY: Well, let me ask this question with a specific example. For instance with the Hua T'ou exercise is primarily a willing meditation and if it's successful . . .

AD: The willing is exercised on what?

BY: On attention, on trying to keep--

AD: On cognition. On cognition, yes.

BY: In my way of interpreting it, there's not any feeling involved in it.

AD: There isn't? Well, that's why you haven't succeeded! (laughter) I told you you've got to feel as though you are a stump of wood.

BY: When I think of feeling, I think of these devotional, loving feelings, but it also could be--

AD: Yes, that's because you people always think in the objective vein. But a feeling state could be one where you bring yourself to a state of absolute neutrality. You can see if there was feeling tugging on either side, you'd be into trouble again. Let's go to another one on balance. I'm sure to become UNbalanced before the night's over, but let's keep trying.

CdA: You're saying that you should be in a state of neutrality?

AD: Yes. You put yourself (in-)to a state of neutrality.

CdA: . . . (inaudible) specifically in that exercise.

AD: . . .which, by the way, is a very delightful feeling. (This phrase is from the PC transcript, not the tape.)

[Audio File 1984 0208a Ends]

[Audio File 1984 0208b Begins]

AD: . . . not to be for the desire or against it.

PB: "The balance needed by faith is understanding; by peacefulness, energy; by intuition, reason; by feeling, intellect; by aspiration, humility; and by zeal, discretion." (Perspectives p. 271 and 20.3.410)

St's: Could we hear it again?

AD: Write them down, because that's the only comment I'm going to make. (Sounds like the quote is written on the blackboard here.)

You notice how difficult it is to aspire when you're in a state of arrogance? You can go through that whole list. That's why they're so necessary to know. And to develop your faculty of memory, memorize that.

EM: You are going to read it again, aren't you?

(Quote reread by RC, followed by about 8 minutes of much student discussion dealing with trying to conceive this balance of apparent contraries.)

LR: Anthony, you said something about arrogance before?

AD: I said, I made my comment: write them down.

JG: Would you read another one? Anthony's not going to say anything.

TURNING ON ENTHUSIASM

PB: "All that is needful to a man's happiness must come from both these sources--the spiritual and the physical--from the ability to rest in the still centre, in the developed intellectual and aesthetic natures, in the good health and vigour of the body." (20.3.272)

(About five minutes of student discussion. Para is reread several times.)

AH: Is he talking about an accomplishment or . . .?

AD: He's saying, if you want to turn on enthusiasm, so you go to the faucet and you open it; enthusiasm comes out. He says but, in order for that enthusiasm to come out, there have to be two pipes that lead to that faucet. On the one side you could be quiet and still in your interior being, and on the other side there is the aesthetic and intellectual capabilities and good health. Then you could turn the faucet on and off whenever you want! Haven't you asked yourself, "Why can't I be enthusiastic all the time? Why does it just come in spurts?" You know, like you may have a good meditation and you get up and your knees crumble. There goes that enthusiasm! Or you may be intellectually very perceptive and aesthetically capable of appreciating and your health is in good vigor, but you have no inner quiet; your mind is always agitated. There goes the enthusiasm again. But if you could balance the two of them, then you could turn the faucet on whenever you want. You get a little bored with life: Turn the faucet on!

St: Leave it on.

AD: And, the strange thing, the novelty never wears off.

AH: Well, this is obviously a description of a fairly advanced accomplishment.

AD: Everything is advanced unless you practice it and try it! (laughter)

AH: I didn't want to understand this quote in the way that I would understand some of the literature about health food. (laughter) I wanted to understand it in a philosophic way, and you helped me to do that.

AD: You don't have to eat health food. I mean, you could just have a little garden and grow your own food and keep healthy that way. You don't have to go buy health food.

But basically, those ingredients are necessary: the ability to be able to be still, be quiet, identify with that quietness, and also be able to come out and actively engage in whatever intellectual aesthetic adventures or just in the sheer act of living. They're both necessary. It's very difficult to imagine how a person could be enthusiastic and happy if he is spiritually attained but at the same time is suffering, let's say, some very painful disease. So, that's pretty straightforward.

A SAGE IS NOT NECESSARILY BALANCED; THE SPIRITUAL POWER DEPOSITED BY A SAGE IS NOT TO BE EQUATED WITH THE QUICKENING OF KARMA

PB: ". . . The world is necessarily affected by his presence and activities, and affected beneficially. First, the mere knowledge that such a man exists helps others to continue with their efforts at self-improvement, for they know then that the spiritual quest is not a vain dream but a practicable affair. Second, he influences those he meets to live better lives--whether they be few or many, influential or obscure. Third, he leaves behind a concentration of spiritual forces which works on for a long time, through other persons, after he leaves this world. Fourth, if he is a sage and balanced, he will always do something of a practical nature for the uplift of humanity instead of merely squatting in an ashram." (Perspectives p. 275 and 20.5.180 (second paragraph of para))

BS: "If he is a sage and balanced"--does that mean there could be a sage that's not balanced or if you are a sage you are balanced?

AD: I don't think so. It's not necessarily so that if you're a sage, you are balanced.

(The para is reread here.)

BS: Well, if I may follow it through, I guess I don't understand exactly that way what a sage is, but taking that part for granted, how could a sage merely squat in an ashram and not (do anything) in a practical way?

TS: I think he speaks of the mystic sage and the philosophic sage, and the philosophic sage is one who advances the World-Idea--that not only on an inner level but on an outer level that he's in the actual circumstances of the sense of world--is active.

JA: Maybe he was referring to people he met that considered themselves sages or portrayed themselves as sages and pointing out that that would be one way that you could tell . . . I think PB met a lot of people who thought of themselves as sages . . .

BS: Well, I grant you that but I didn't hear it in the quote.

JA: I did.

KD: What does it mean to leave behind a concentration of spiritual forces that works through other people? . . . A quickening of karma in the people that are in close contact with the sage, that activates them. Does it mean more than that?

(Six minute discussion follows for the most part between Kathleen D. and Andrew, relating to the distinction or non-distinction of the spiritual forces and the quickening of karma--Andrew taking the side of the distinction; Kathleen mentions how people got married after PB was here; the discussion ends with:)

KD: Each person has their own karma that's going to unfold at a laborious rate and a sage comes in contact with these people and all of a sudden everything is changed.

AH: It's a spiritual force. Frequently the contact with a sage, or a man of power, results in eight or ten years of misery. How do you translate that back to the spiritual force?

KD: That would be the same thing.

(S: Is there a distinction between spiritual forces and the quickening of karma? = paraphrase of above discussion)

AD: They're two different things. They're two different things. When a sage deposits a spiritual force in a person, it's quite different from the karma that is being quickened.

AH: That's the distinction I wanted to get. Thank you.

BS: Well, we know it's different now but we haven't heard the distinction.

AH: Well, they're distinct.

AD: No comment.

KD: Something is deposited.

LD: But one doesn't have to come into physical contact with the sage, I don't think. He says that sometimes it's better just to read my writings and not meet me in person because you might be disappointed.

KD: I would agree. I was wondering, it seemed that you didn't need to come into contact with him to be affected and to have these actions transplanted into your--

JG: There's one point that Andrew was after. That quickening the karma and planting the spiritual seed in a person are radically different.

AH: Experientially, but fundamentally it's the same thing.

St's: Anthony said it's NOT the same thing.

AH: Because if the goal is the spiritual that goal is attained by karma's unfolding . . . You go to the sage because the karma's hastened. The goal is closer.

AB: But Andrew, the whole discussion of balance that we've been having is that if a person is not balanced, couldn't perhaps the wrong thing get quickened or aroused and that wouldn't be spiritual or good?

AH: I think that would depend on the way the sage worked--if he worked with that kind of discretion or worked with pure power.

AD: The spiritual power that a sage deposits in a person will be operative regardless of whatever karma that person has to go through. Let's go on to the next one.

INTUITION AND INSIGHT

PB: "When a certain balance of forces is achieved, something happens that can only be properly called"the birth of insight."" (Perspectives p. 274 and 20.4.181 (reread))

PB: ""Intuition" had come to lose its pristine value for me. I cast about for a better one and found it in "insight." This term I assigned to the highest knowing-faculty of sages and was thus able to treat the term "intuition" as something inferior which was sometimes amazingly correct but not infrequently hopelessly wrong in its guidance, reports, or premonition. I further endeavoured to state what the old Asiatic sages had long ago stated, that it was possible to unfold a faculty of direct insight into the nature of the Overself, into the supreme reality of the universe, that this was the highest kind of intuition possible to man, and that it did not concern itself with lesser revelations, such as giving the name of a horse likely to win tomorrow's race, a revelation which the kind of intuition we hear so much about is sometimes able to do." (Perspectives p. 276 and 20.4.152)

MB: Anthony, would intuition sometimes be false because it is concerned with the realm of manifestation which is indefinite, in flux, and so forth?

AD: Yes, it's concerned with the realm of relativity. Sure. In the realm of relativity there's a confluence of the forces, you might say, that are operative in the universe; on the one hand Providence and on the other hand Necessity. And intuition is concerned about those two being intermingled.

MB: So even a perfectly developed intuition, if there is such a thing--

AD: --could be wrong. If you remember, Plotinus pointed out that not even the sage can distinguish sometimes between what is Providential and what is Necessity. [Note: See Plotinus, III.3.6, fifth paragraph.]

(AD/JA question clarification)

AD: So that if you look at things from the point of view of Providence, they're predictable to some extent, because it's a flowing out of reason-principles in a certain ordered manner. But Necessity very often impinges on that, and the consequence is that there could be some disorder, and so intuition would falter, would be misleading.

Andrew, I'd like to ask you what equivalent Asiatic word do you think 'insight' stands for.

AH: Prajna.

AD: Yes, Ok. And prajna is the same as turiya in some mysterious way?

(AH or AD): How so? (Not clear who speaker is.)

AD: I said, it's a mystery. If I knew it, and told you, it wouldn't be a mystery. If I knew it wouldn't be a mystery.

PB: "Insight is a function . . ."

AD: Go back and read the one before (inaudible)

PB: "Intuition had come--"

AD: No, the one before that.

PB: "When a certain . . ."

AD: Now, skip the next one and read the one you just were going to--

TS: Now, let me read the two together-- (two quotes below read together)

PB: "When a certain balance of forces is achieved, something happens that can only be properly called"the birth of insight."" (Perspectives p. 274 and 20.4.181) (repeat))

PB: "Insight is a function of the entire psyche and not of any single part of it." (Perspectives p. 276 and 20.4.184)

(Long student discussion, 10+ minutes, which continues through the beginning of Tape 2, Side 2. Some of the issues: Is insight only from the side of the psyche, not the Overself? Is the entire psyche equatable with the Overself? Is there a higher psyche, I suppose as well as a lower? Is the psyche the ground for insight to arise in? Is the individual psyche as a whole the position of the Witness-I? Which is the prerequisite for insight, the Witness-I or the Overself? Is insight individual or non-individual?)

(Side 1 of original cassette tape digitized as 1984 0208b Ends; Side 2 Begins)

(approximately 4 minutes student discussion)

CdA: I would say that union with the Overself would be primarily prerequisite to having insight.

BS: But now I have to follow what that sentence means. It doesn't make sense.

CdA: I don't either. Would you help?

AD: What don't make sense?

CdA: The way I have understood insight is that it was insight into the void.

AD: No. That's not necessarily so. If you think of it this way: just try this for size: if we think of all the functions that life has evolved--and we're speaking about vegetative functions; we're speaking about reproductive, sensitive, reason, intellection--these are all functions that the power of the soul has evolved. And if we could think of a moment when all these powers of the soul are harmoniously integrated, at that instant insight is available. Life understands itself without any intermediary.

CdA: Is it necessary to understand that in terms of the levels of cosmology or the chart . . .?

AD: I tried to avoid all that. I tried to make it very simple and straightforward. Think of all the faculties that life has developed--digestion, breathing, functioning of the senses, the vegetative soul, complete; reasoning phase, intellective phase--and if you could conceive of a moment of harmonious integration, at that moment insight occurs. Life understands itself. But if there's the least disruption of one of those faculties, then you can't have insight.

Leave the question alone as to what is the content of the insight.

I put it a little differently once. I said, "When life articulates itself so clearly that that articulation is understanding. And that's the same as insight." But I'm using words now, you know, not in the colloquial sense the way they (wrote them). (Rings bell.)

Thank you gentlemen.

[Audio File 1984 0208b Ends]