3. The Animal Kingdom - Part 2
I deal not with history nor with the details of racial evolution. These are necessarily all connected with the problem of sex, but are too vast in their implications for my present purposes. As I said before, I deal not with the physiological aspects of sex, nor with the diseases incident upon the misuse of the function, nor shall I deal with the subject of sterility, except as it enters into our consideration of modern man. I cannot touch upon the quarrels of the various schools of thought, for I am not writing from any specific angle, such as that of religion or of morality or of partisanship. The whole question is wider and bigger than any religious view or the moral affirmations of the little minds. What is morality in one country or in one specific relation can be quite the reverse in another. What is deemed legal in one part of the world is found illegal in another. What constitutes a difficult problem under one climatic condition presents totally different possibilities under another. Polygamy, promiscuity and monogamy have been and are cyclically dominant in different parts of the world, down through the ages, and are to be found functioning simultaneously on the earth today. Each has been, or is, in turn right, legal and suitable, or wrong, illegal and unsuitable. Each of these forms of interpreting the sex relation has been the subject of attack or defence, of virtuous horror or of specious argument; each has been the common custom and the rightful method, according to the location, the tradition, training and attitude of the men who practiced it. In one part of the world, one woman may have many husbands; in another, one husband is legally [274] entitled to four wives, if so he choose, and in the harem and the kraal such conditions are always to be found. In the West, a man has legally one wife, but through his promiscuity and his so-called "romantic" adventures, he really has as many as an African chieftain; and today, women are little better.
I have enumerated the above conditions with no thought of criticism in my mind, but simply as a statement of fact, and in order to awaken in the average reader a realisation of a world-wide condition which is probably quite different to their ordinary surmise. I write not for the specialists, but for the average intelligent student who needs a world-wide picture of existing conditions.
It is divinely true that the trend of men's thoughts and desires is towards an established monogamy, but as yet this has never been universally achieved. If one faces this issue with courage and with truth, one will be forced to the conclusion that down the ages men have never been monogamists. Women have been more so in the past than men, but are perhaps less so now, as modern knowledge is inculcating modern methods of protection from the risk and pain of childbirth. Up till now, the act of bearing children has been regarded as deterrent and as a penalty for legal or illegal sex relations. Think of the horror unfolded in those words! Women, practicing the ancient trade of promiscuity, have of course always existed, but I am referring here to women in the home.
Will you believe me if I tell you that the world situation today where sex is concerned, is so critical and so serious that there is not a thinker to be found who can yet see the solution, or who can find—no matter how clear his brain or erudite his mind—the way out of the present impasse? The traditions of customs and of practices, with their inevitable consequences and long established tenure, serve to bewilder [275] the clearest minds. The physical results alone of sexual intercourse, carried on within or without the legalised marriage relation, have produced not only the world of every-day human life, but much of the disease, the insanity, the evil tendencies, and the perverted impulses which today fill our hospitals, our homes for neurotics, our sanatoriums, our prisons and our lunatic asylums.
Our young people, especially the idealistic types and the clear-thinking boys and girls, find themselves faced with a situation which defies their best efforts. They do not know what to think or what to believe. They look into, or form part of, homes which are sanctified by legal marriage, and find (on a large scale) nothing but unhappiness, legalised prostitution, ill-health, the seeking of illicit relations outside the home, neglected and unwanted children, the friction produced by wrong mating, divorce, and no answer to their many intelligent questions. They look then elsewhere, into the lives of those who have avoided the responsibility of marriage, and find naught but discontent, frequently a secret and hidden sex life, ill-health as a result of the frustration of the natural instincts, psychological conditions of the worst kind, sometimes illegitimate children, sexual perversions, and a growing tendency towards what is called homosexuality. They are overwhelmed by complete bewilderment and the failure to find an answer to their questions. They ask the worldly-minded for a solution and for help, and get no clear reply, no sound philosophy and no fundamental instruction. They may be offered sound common sense, and the injunction to avoid excesses and those conditions which would impair their health or lay on them the burden of straitened economic conditions. The moralities of the past may be pointed out to them, and they may be warned of the results which inevitably follow when the laws of nature are broken and the [276] physical body is prostituted to ill-regulated desire. They may have the virtues of "straight living" eulogised to them, and even the fact that they are sons of God may be emphasized to them. All this is good and right and useful. But no true solution is offered, and no light is thrown upon their problem, and their confusion remains unrelieved. They may perhaps turn to the religiously minded people and seek out the orthodox churchman. They may be told to be good; the example of the saints may be cited to them; they may find themselves deluged in a flood of puritanical injunctions, in righteous platitudes, and with unsatisfying explanations, based often on personal prejudice and predilection. But seldom is a clear note sounded, and seldom is it possible to do more than enunciate the great Mosaic law, "Thou shalt not..." To the bulk of the young and seeking enquirers of the present generation the fact that God says thus and so, or the Bible ordains this, that or the other, does not satisfy their longing to know the reason why. The hope of an ultimate heaven, where self-discipline, self-control and sexual abstinence will receive a just reward, seems too far away to offset the temptations of the outer environing world and the insistent urges arising within the man himself.
That many do withstand the "temptations of the flesh" is indeed wonderfully true. That there are men and women everywhere who pass through life clean and uncontaminated is equally and wonderfully a fact. That there are advanced souls whose life is divorced from the animal nature and whose minds control their daily acts is the glory of humanity. But many of them, living in another world of thought and interest, are not tempted as are the more animally inclined of the sons of men. There are, again, of course, those who refrain from wrong doing because they fear the results, either today in the physical body or hereafter in the other world of [277] penalty. But which of all these people, even the most good and saintly, can speak with real wisdom and understanding of this universal problem? Which of them can see the way out for humanity at present? Which of them understands the reason for all the distress, sin and wickedness which have grown up around the sex relation? Which of them really comprehends the true significance of the sex life, its place in the great scheme of things, and the reason for the relation between the sexes? Which of them can say with true vision what the next evolutionary step will be, whither we are going, and what will be the next development?
1. Definitions of Sex, of Virtue and of Vice
Cosmically speaking, sex is a short word used to express the relation existing (during manifestation) between spirit and matter, and between life and form. It is, in the last analysis, an expression of the Law of Attraction,—that basic law which underlies the entire manifestation of life in form, and which is the cause of all phenomenal appearance. Humanly or physically speaking, sex is the word used to denote the relation between men and women which results in the reproduction of the species. Speaking in terms of modern usage as it is found among the unthinking and the average, sex is a word which denotes the alluring satisfaction of the animal impulses at any cost and with no rhythmic regulation. Sex is essentially an expression of duality, and of the separation of a unity into two aspects or halves. These we can call spirit and matter, male and female, positive and negative; and they are in the nature of a stage upon the evolutionary ladder towards a final unity or homo-sexuality which has no relation to that perversion which is, today and inaccurately, called "homosexuality". This latter manifestation is rampant at this time in a mental and modern conception of the phenomenon, [278] but it is rare indeed to find a person who truly combines within himself the two sexes, and is,— physiologically and mentally—entirely "self-satisfying, self-sustaining and self-propagating". Down the ages, here and there, we find the true homo-sexual emerging as a guarantee of a distant racial and evolutionary achievement, when the world cycle will have been run and the two separated halves will again be merged in their essential unity. In the above phraseology I do not refer to any doctrine of twin souls, or to any perversion of reality, as ordinarily understood today. I refer to the divine Hermaphrodite, to the true androgynous man, and to the perfected human being. But the word has been distorted from its true significance and applies in nine cases out of ten (nay, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred) to a type of mental perversion, to a distorted attitude of mind which results often in physical practices and reactions which are—in their manifestation—so old that their very antiquity gives the lie to the idea that this attitude marks a step forward on the path of progress. It marks indeed a point of retrogression, the swinging back into an ancient rhythm, and the resumption of ancient practices.
These perversions are ever found when a civilisation is crumbling and the old order is changing into a new. Why should this be? It is due to the fact that the newer impulses pouring into the old, and the impact of the new forces upon humanity, awaken in man a desire for that which is, for him, a new and untried field of expression, and for that which is unusual and oft abnormal. Weak minds then succumb to the impulse, or strong experimenting souls fall victim to their own lower natures, and investigate in unlawful directions. You have, then, under these new energies, a definite progress forward into new and untried spiritual realms, but at the [279] same time, you find an experimenting in the realm of physical desire which is not for humanity the line of progress.
As the world of forms responds cyclically to the inflow of the higher energies, their effect is to stimulate all parts and aspects of the form life, and this stimulation will produce results that are bad as well as good. Evil will temporarily emerge as well as lasting righteousness. If the effect of the impact of these energies is to produce material reactions, and if man then lays the emphasis of his interest upon that which is material, then the form nature becomes dominant, and not the divine. If energy is prostituted to material ends, such as the expression of physical plane sexual relations for purely commercial objectives, then evil is the result. But it must be remembered that the same divine energy, when working in the realm of brotherly love, for instance, would produce naught but good. Let me illustrate my point in two ways, both of which account for the present orgy of sexual expression and for the widespread interest in the subject.
We live today in a period of the world's history wherein three events of major importance are taking place, mostly unrealised and unobserved by the majority of people.
The seventh Ray of Law and Order is coming into manifestation; we are transitting into a new sign of the zodiac, and the "coming of Christ" is imminent. These three great happenings are the cause of much of the present upheaval and chaos; at the same time they are responsible for the universal turning to spiritual realities which all true workers at this time recognise, and for the growth of understanding, of welfare movements and of the tendency to cooperation, of religious unity and of internationalism. Types of energy which have hitherto been latent are now becoming potent. The consequent world reaction is, in the initial stages, material in its manifestation; in its final stages, divine qualities [280] will manifest and change history and civilisation. The interest being shown today in the so-called cosmic rays indicates a scientific recognition of the new incoming seventh ray energies. These rays, pouring through the sacral centre of the planetary etheric body, have necessarily an effect upon the sacral centres of humanity, and hence the sex life of mankind is temporarily over-stimulated, and hence also the present over-emphasis upon sex. But hence also (and this must be remembered) the keen impetus now being mentally expressed which will eventually result in man's thinking through to a solution of this problem of sex.
The coming in of the Aquarian age also stimulates in man a spirit of universality and a tendency towards fusion. This can be seen working out in the present trend towards synthesis in business, in religion and in politics. It produces an urge towards union, and among other unions, towards religious understanding and tolerance. But these influences, playing upon the sensitive bodies of the undeveloped and the over-psychic, lead to a morbid tendency towards unions, legitimate and illegitimate; they produce an extreme aptitude to sexual intercourse in many directions, and to relations and fusions which are not along the intended or the evolutionary line, and which outrage oft the very laws of nature itself. Energy is an impersonal thing, and is dual in its effect,— the effect varying according to the type of substance upon which it plays.
The incoming seventh ray expresses the power to organise, the ability to integrate and to bring into synthetic relation the great pairs of opposites, and thus produce the new forms of spiritual manifestation. But it will also produce the new forms of what, from the standpoint of spirit, may be regarded as material evil. It is the great impulse which will bring into the light of day all that is to be found clothed [281] with matter, and will thus eventually lead to the revelation of spirit and of the hidden glory, when that which has been revealed of the material form has been purified and sanctified. This it was to which Christ referred when He prophesied that, at the end of the age, the hidden things would be made plain, and secrets be shouted from the housetops.
By means of this process of revelation, within the human family as well as elsewhere in nature, we shall have the development of the power of thought. This will come about through the development of the faculty of discrimination, which will offer choices to man, and thus develop a truer sense of values. False and true standards will emerge in man's consciousness and those choices will be made which will lay the foundation of the new order, which will inaugurate the new race, with its new laws and novel approaches, and so usher in the new religion of love and brotherhood, and that period wherein the group and group-good will be the dominant note. Then separateness and hatreds will fade out and men will be merged in a true unity.
The third factor under consideration, the coming of the Christ as it is called, must also be noted. Everywhere we find the spirit of expectancy, and the demand for a manifestation and a symbolic happening which we call by various names but which is usually referred to as the advent of Christ. This, as you know, may be an actual physical coming, as before in Palestine, or it may connote a definite overshadowing of His disciples and lovers by the Great Lord of Life. This overshadowing will call forth a response from all those who are in any way spiritually awakened. Or again, the coming may take the form of a tremendous inflow of the Christ principle, the Christ life and love, working out through the human family. Perhaps all three possibilities may be found simultaneously on our planet very shortly. It is [282] not for us to say. It is for us to be ready, and for us to work at preparing the world for that significant series of events. The immediate future will show. The point I seek to make, however, is that this inflow of the Christ spirit of love (whether it comes through a Person in bodily form or through His felt and realised Presence) will again be twofold in its effect.
This is a hard saying for the unthinking and the illogical. Both the good and the evil man will be stimulated; both material desire and spiritual aspiration will be awakened and fostered. Facts prove the truth of the saying that a heavily fertilised garden and a carefully tended and watered plot of ground will produce its crop of weeds as well as flowers. Yet in this fact you have two reactions to the same sun, the same water, the same fertilising agency and the same care. The difference exists in the seeds found in the ground upon which these factors play. The inflow of love therefore will stimulate earthly love and earthly desire and animal lust; it will foster the urge to possess in the material sense, with all the evil consequent upon this attitude, and the resulting growth of sexual reactions, and the many expressions of an ill-regulated mechanism, responding to an impersonal force. But it will also produce the growth of brotherly love and foster the development and the expression of group consciousness, of universal understanding; it will produce a new and powerful tendency to fusion, to at-one-ment and to synthesis. All this will be brought about through the medium of humanity and the Christ spirit. Steadily the love of Christ will be shed abroad in the earth, and its influence will grow stronger during the coming centuries, until at the end of the Aquarian age, and through the work of the seventh ray (bringing the pairs of opposites into closer cooperation), we can look for the "raising of Lazarus from the dead," and the [283] emergence of humanity out of the tomb of matter. The hidden divinity will be revealed. Steadily all forms will be brought under the influence of the Christ spirit, and the consummation of love will be brought about.
Owing to these three causes we have at this time a worldwide interest in sex, leading as a natural consequence to two things:
First, to an outburst throughout the entire world, and primarily in our large centres of population, of an increase in sexual relations, but distinguished at this time by no corresponding increase in population. This is due to the modern understanding of birth control methods and secondly to the increased mental focussing or polarisation of the race, which leads to sterility or to a reduction in the size of the families raised.
Second, to a reorganisation of the racial ideas on marriage and on sexual relations. This is due to the breakdown of our present economic situation, to the widespread interest in medical hygiene (an interest hitherto confined to the specialists), to the general recognition of the varied marriage customs of the nations in the East and in the West, which has led to a general questioning, and also to the failure of the legal machine to safeguard the family unit and to interpret human relations in a satisfactory manner.
Out of this universal interest and discussion we shall work towards a solution and an objective which exist as yet on purely abstract mental levels and in the world of ideas. Even the foremost thinkers of the race sense only vaguely and nebulously what these hidden ideals may be.
The question at issue is not primarily a religious one, except in so far as social relations are basically divine relations. It is fundamental in its connotation, and when it is solved we shall see the establishment of equality between the sexes, the [284] removal of those barriers which at present exist between men and women, and the safe-guarding of the family unit. This will involve therefore the protection of the child, so that he may be given those essentials to right physical growth and that true education which will lead to emotional unfoldment along sound lines, and a mental development which will enable him to serve his race, his time and his group to the best possible advantage. This has always been an ideal, but it has never yet been satisfactorily accomplished. The solving of the sexual problem will release the minds of men from an inhibition and an undue concern, and so produce a mental freedom which will admit of the inflow of new ideas and concepts. We shall discover that vice and virtue have no real reference to ability and inability to conform to man-made laws, but to man's attitude to himself and to his social relation with God and his fellowmen. Virtue is the manifestation in man of the spirit of cooperation with his brothers, necessitating unselfishness, understanding and complete self-forgetfulness. Vice is the negation of this attitude. These two words signify in reality simply perfection and imperfection, conformity to a divine standard of brotherhood or a failure to achieve that standard. Standards are shifting things and change with man's growth towards divinity. They vary also according to man's destiny as it is affected by his time and age, his nature and surroundings. They alter also according to the point of evolutionary development. The standard for attainment is not today what it was one thousand years ago, nor a thousand years hence will it be what it is today.
Yet all periods of the world's history have not been as critical as today, for—apart from the great cyclic opportunity to which I have earlier referred—we have in humanity itself a unique attainment. For the first time in racial history, we have the expression of a true human being, of man as he [285] essentially is. We have the personality, integrated and functioning as a unit, and we have the mind and the emotional nature fused and blended, on the one hand with the physical body, and on the other with the soul. Also, the shift of emphasis is today away from the physical life to the mental life, and in an increasing number of cases to the spiritual life. There is therefore little real cause for depression, if what I have here noted is true. There is today, on a wide scale, a true "lifting up of the heart unto the Lord," and a steady turning of the eyes towards the world of spiritual values. Hence the present upheaval.
Apart from the coming in of the new age, apart therefore from the inflow of the Christ spirit, with its transforming power and regenerating force, and apart from the cyclic return of the seventh ray energies, we have mankind in a condition where the response to the deeper spiritual energies and to the new opportunities is, for the first time, adequate and synthetic. Hence the increasing problem. Hence the great day of opportunity. Hence the wonder of the dawn which can be seen brightening in the east.
I should like here to approach the problem of sex from another angle and point out that it is a basic symbol. A symbol, as we well know, is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual reality. What is this inward reality? First of all, the reality of relationship. It is a relationship existing between the basic pairs of opposites,—Father-Mother, spirit-matter; between positive and negative; between life and form, and between the great dualities which—when brought together in the cosmic sense—produce the manifested son of God, the cosmic Christ, the conscious sentient universe. Of this relation the Gospel story is a dramatic symbol, and the historical Christ is the guarantee of its truth and reality. Christ guarantees for us the reality of the inner significance [286] and the true spiritual basis of all that is and ever shall be. Out of the relation of light and dark that which is invisible emerges into visibility, and we can see and know. Christ, as the light of the world, revealed that reality. Out of the darkness of time God spoke, and the Fatherhood of Deity was revealed.
The drama of creation and the story of revelation are depicted for us, if we could but see truly and interpret our facts with spiritual exactitude, in the relation of the two sexes and in the fact of their intercourse with each other. When this relation is no longer purely physical but is a union of the two separated halves on all three planes,— physical, emotional and mental—then we shall see the solution of the sex problem and the restitution of the marriage relation to its intended position in the Mind of God. Today it is the marriage of two physical bodies. Sometimes it is the marriage also of the emotional natures of the two people concerned. Rarely indeed is it a marriage of minds as well. Sometimes it is the union of the physical body of one party, with the physical body of the other party left cold and uninterested and uninvolved, but with the emotional body attracted and participating. Sometimes the mental body is involved with the physical body, and the emotional nature left out. Seldom, very seldom, do we find the coordinated, cooperating fusion of all the three parts of the personality concerned in both parties to the union. When this is indeed found, then you have a true union, a real marriage, and a blending of the two in one.
It is here that some of the schools of esoteric teaching have gone sadly astray. The false idea has crept into their presentation of truth that marriage of this kind is essential for spiritual liberation and that without it the soul remains in prison. They teach that through the marriage act, at-one-ment with [287] the soul is brought about, and that there is no spiritual deliverance without this marriage. At-one-ment with the soul is an individual interior experience, resulting in an expansion of consciousness, so that the individual and specific becomes at-one with the general and universal. Behind the erroneous interpretation, however, lies truth.
Where this true marriage and these ideal sexual relations on all three planes are found, the right conditions exist in which souls can be provided with the needed forms in which to incarnate. Sons of God can find forms in which to manifest on earth. According to the scope of the marriage contact (if so unusual a form of words can be used in this connection), so will be the type of human being attracted into incarnation. Where the parents are purely physical and emotional, so will be the nature of the child. Thus is the general average determined. Today we have a world of men which is rapidly reaching a high stage of development. We have therefore a dissatisfaction with the present views on marriage, preparatory to the enunciation of certain hidden principles which will eventually govern the relations between the sexes, and provide, as a consequence, the opportunity to men and women to furnish, through the creative act, the needed bodies for disciples and initiates.
Under the symbol of sex, you have also the reality of love itself expressing itself. Love in reality connotes a relation, but the word "love" (like the word "sex") is used with little thought and with no attention to its true meaning. Basically, love and sex are one and the same thing, for both express the meaning of the Law of Attraction. Love is sex, and sex is love, for in those two words the relation, the interplay and the union between God and His universe, between man and God, between a man and his own soul, and between men and women are equally depicted. The motive and the [288] relation are emphasized. But the impelling result of that relation is creation and the manifestation of form through which divinity can express itself and come to be. Spirit and matter met together, and the manifested universe came into being. Love is ever productive, and the Law of Attraction is fruitful in results. Man and God came together under the same great Law, and the Christ was born,—the guarantee of the divinity of humanity and the demonstration of the fact. Individual man and his soul are also attempting to come together, and when that event is consummated the Christ is born in the cave of the heart, and Christ is seen in the daily life with increasing power. Man therefore dies daily in order that Christ may be seen in all His glory. Of all these wonders, sex is the symbol.
Again, in man himself the great drama of sex is enacted, and twice over in his body, within his personality, the process of union and fusion takes place. Let me briefly refer here to these two symbolic happenings, for the use of esoteric students, so that the great story of sex may be comprehended in its spiritual sense.
Man, as you know, is the expression of energies. These energies galvanise the physical man into activity through the medium of certain force centres in the etheric body. These, for our immediate purposes, can be divided into three centres below the diaphragm and four above.
These are:
I. Below the diaphragm:
1. The base of the spine.
2. The sacral centre.
3. The solar plexus.
II. Above the diaphragm:
1. The heart centre.
2. The throat centre.
3. The centre between the eyebrows.
4. The head centre.
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We know that two fusions have to take place and, in these two we have two enactments of the symbolic sex process, and two symbolic events that externalise a spiritual happening and picture forth to man his spiritual goal and God's great objective in the evolutionary process.
First, the energies below the diaphragm have to be lifted up and blended with those above the diaphragm. With the process and rules for so doing we cannot here deal, except in one case,—the raising of the sacral energy to the throat centre, or the transmutation of the process of physical reproduction and of physical creation into that of the creativeness of the artist in some field of creative expression. Through the union of the energies of these two centres we shall come to that stage in our development wherein we shall produce the children of our skill and minds. Where, in other words, there is a true union of the higher and the lower energies, you will have the emergence of beauty in form, the enshrining of some aspect of truth in appropriate expression, and thus the enriching of the world. Where there is this synthesis, the true creative artist begins to function. The throat, the organ of the Word, expresses the life and manifests the glory and the reality behind. Such is the symbolism lying behind the teaching of the fusion of the lower energies with the higher, and of this, physical plane sex is a symbol. Mankind today is rapidly becoming more creative, for the transfusion of the energies is going on under the new impulses. As we develop the sense of purity in man, as the growth of the sense of responsibility is fostered, and as his love of beauty, of colour and of ideas proceeds, we shall have a rapid increase in the raising of the lower into union with the higher, and thereby the beautifying of the Temple of the Lord will be tremendously accelerated.
In the coming Aquarian age this will go rapidly forward. [290] The majority of people today live below the diaphragm, and their energies are turned outward into the material world and prostituted to material ends. In the coming centuries this will be corrected; their energies will be transmuted and purified, and men will begin to live above the diaphragm. They will then express the potencies of the loving heart, of the creative throat, and of the divinely ordered will of the head. Of this relation between the lower and the higher, physical plane sex is the symbol.
But in the head of man himself is also to be found a marvellous symbolic happening. In that living organism is enacted that drama whereby the purely human being merges himself in divinity. The great final drama of the mystical union between God and man, and between the soul and the personality is there enacted. According to the Eastern philosophy, there are in the head of man two great energy centres. One of them, the centre between the eyebrows, blends and fuses the five types of energy which are transmitted to it and blended with it,—the energy of the three centres below the diaphragm and of the throat and heart centres. The other, the head centre, is awakened through meditation, service and aspiration, and it is through this centre that the soul makes its contact with the personality. This head centre is the symbol of the spirit or positive masculine aspect, just as the centre between the eyebrows is the symbol of matter, of the negative feminine aspect. Connected with these force vortices are two physical plane organs, the pituitary body and the pineal gland. The first is negative and the second is positive. These two organs are the higher correspondences of the male and female organs of physical reproduction. As the soul becomes increasingly potent in the mental and emotional life of the aspirant, it pours in with greater power into the head centre. As the man works with his personality, purifying it [291] and bending it to the service of the spiritual will, he automatically raises the energies of the centres in the body up to the centre between the eyebrows. Eventually the influence of each of the two centres increases and becomes wider and wider, until they make a contact with each other's vibratory or magnetic field, and instantly the light flashes out. Father-spirit and mother-matter unite and are at-one and the Christ is born. "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," said the Christ. This is the second birth, and from that moment vision comes with increasing power.
This is again the great drama of sex, re-enacted in man. Thus in his personal life he three times knows the meaning of union, of sex:
1. In the physical plane sex, or his relation to his opposite, the woman, resulting in the reproduction of the species.
2. In the union of the lower energies with the higher, resulting in the creative work.
3. In the union within the head of the energies of the personality with those of the soul, resulting in the birth of the Christ.
Great is the glory of man and wonderful are the divine functions which he embodies. Through the passage of time, the race has been brought to the point where man is beginning to raise the lower energies into the higher centres, and it is this transition which is causing much of the trouble in the world today. Many men everywhere are becoming politically, religiously, scientifically, or artistically creative, and the impact of their mental energy and of their plans and ideas is making itself felt competitively. Until the idea of brotherhood dominates the race, we shall see these powers prostituted to personal ends and ambitions, and to consequent disaster, just as we have seen the power of sex prostituted [292] to personal satisfaction and selfishness and consequent disaster. Some few, however, are raising their energies higher still and translating them into terms of the heavenly world. The Christ is being born today in many a human being, and increasingly will the sons of God appear in their true nature to take over the guidance of humanity in the New Age.
2. Sex in the New Age
Prophecy is ever a dangerous thing, but a forecast, a drawing out of present general tendencies, is often possible.
During the next two hundred years the old influences under which we have been living will gradually die out, and the new potencies will make their presence felt. Three things we are told will characterise the coming Aquarian age, and they will be made possible through the influence of the three planets governing the three decanates of this sign. First, we shall have the activity of Saturn, producing a dividing of the ways and a proffering of opportunity to those who can avail themselves of it. We shall have, therefore, a period of discipline and a cycle wherein choices will be made, and through these discriminating decisions humanity will enter into its birthright. This influence is now being strongly felt.
Then, later, we shall have, through the influence of Mercury in the second decanate, the pouring in of light, of mental and spiritual illumination, and a truer interpretation of the teaching of the Lodge of Messengers. The work of the first decanate will enable many to make those choices and efforts which will enable them to raise the lower energies into the higher centres, and to transfer the focus of their attention from below to above the diaphragm. The work of the second decanate will enable those who are thus ready to fuse the personality and the soul, and thus, as I earlier [293] pointed out, the light will shine forth and Christ will be born within them.
During the third decanate we shall see the rule of Brotherhood inaugurated, and Venus controlling by intelligent love; the group and not the individual will be the important unit, and unselfishness and cooperation will steadily take the place of separativeness and competition.
In no department of life will these coming great changes show more potently than in the attitude of man towards sex, and in the readjustment of the marriage relationship. This new attitude will gradually come about as the slowly developing science of psychology comes into its own. As man comes to understand his own threefold nature, and as the nature of consciousness and the depth of his own subconscious life are more truly grasped, there will take place, gradually and automatically, a change in the attitude of men towards women and of women towards their destiny. This needed change will not be the result of legal measures, or of decisions by the people's representatives to meet the disasters of the hour; these changes will come slowly, as the result of the intelligent interest of the next three generations. The young people now coming into incarnation, and those who will come during the next century, will prove themselves well equipped to handle this problem of sex, because they can see more clearly than the older generation, and will think in wider and larger terms than is common today. They will be more group-conscious and less individualistic and selfish; they will be more interested in new ideas than in the ancient theologies, and will be freer from prejudice and less intolerant than are the bulk of the well-meaning people of today. Psychology is only just come into its own, and only now is its function beginning to be understood; in one hundred years' time, however, it will be the dominating science; [294] and the newer educational systems, based on scientific psychology, will have completely superseded our modern methods. The emphasis in the future will be laid upon the determining of a man's life purpose. This will be brought about through an understanding of his ray, through an analysis of his equipment (and of this, vocational psychology is the faint first beginning), through a study of his horoscope, and through giving him a sound grounding in mind control, as well as training his memory to the impartation of information. The processes by which he can integrate his personality and raise and purify his living qualities will receive careful attention, and all to the end of making him group-conscious and useful to his group. This is the factor of importance. Synthesis, physical purity, decentralisation and group good will be the keynotes of the teaching imparted. Emotional control and right-thinking will be inculcated, and where these are present a knowledge of spiritual realities will be automatically acquired and the life subordinated to the group purpose. Man's relations to others will then be intelligently directed, and his relation to the other sex will be guided not only by love and desire, but by an ordered intellectual appreciation of the true significance of marriage. The above applies to the intelligent, well-intentioned majority whose standards will have developed as the decades pass, so that they will embody the dreams and ideals of the most advanced visionaries of today. The unthinking, the idle and the stupid will still be found, but evolution proceeds apace and order is on its way.
What laws will be enacted for the control of the people on this difficult subject of sex I cannot say; what the marriage laws will be it is no part of my purpose to foretell; how the legislatures of the nations will deal with the problem remains to be seen. I am not interested in speculation.
[295]
But I can and I shall put down for you here the basic premises which will underlie the best thought of the future on the subject of sex and marriage. These premises are three in number; when they are understood and grasped, and when they are integrated into the thought of the period, forming the basis of all recognised standards and consistent living, then the details as to how and where and when will take care of themselves.
1. The relation of the sexes and their approach to the marriage relation will be regarded as a part of the group life and as serving the group good; this will not be the result of laws regulating marriage, but a result of education in group relations, service and the law of love, as understood practically and not just sentimentally. Men and women will know themselves as cells in a vital organism, and their activities and outlook will be coloured by this realisation. It will be regarded as a fact in nature and as a product of past evolutionary cycles, and not be looked upon as a theory and a hope, as is the case today. What is best for the group, and what is needed to promote the efficiency of a unit in the group, will be the points considered. Men will increasingly live in the world of thought and understanding, and not so much in the world of ill-regulated desire and of animal instinct; the love of men for women and of women for men will be more truly present than is now the case, for it will not be so purely emotional, and it will be based also on intelligence.
As the creative urge is turned upwards from the sacral centre to the throat, man will live less potently in his physical sexual urges, and more consistently in his creative expression. His physical plane life will proceed along normal lines, but it is necessary for men to realise that the manner in which man today satisfies his sexual nature is abnormal and unregulated, [296] and that we are on our way to a wise normality. The craving for selfish pleasure and for the satisfaction of an animal urge, which is instinctually right when regulated and devastatingly wrong when prostituted purely to enjoyment, will give place to a mutual decision by both of the parties concerned. The decision will meet a natural need in a right and suitable and regulated manner. Today one party or other is usually sacrificed, either to an undue abstinence or to an unseemly profligacy.
2. The second rule is based upon the point of evolution, and for its right fulfillment necessitates the true integration of the personality. This rule might be expressed as follows: True marriage and right sexual relation should involve the marriage of all three aspects of man's nature; there should be a meeting on all three levels of consciousness at once—the physical, the emotional and the mental. A man and a woman, to be truly and happily married, must be complements to each other in all the three departments of their nature, and there should be a simultaneous union of all three. How seldom is this the case, and how rare it is to find! There is no need for me to elaborate in this direction, for this truth is obvious and has oft been voiced. Later, but not for a long while yet, we shall see marriages which will be based upon the point of development of the integrated personality and only those will meet each other in the sacred marriage ritual who have reached the same point in the work of transmuting the lower into the higher centres; a marriage will be regarded as undesirable and the parties ill-mated where one is living the life of the purified personality above the diaphragm, and the other the life of the intelligent animal below the diaphragm. Finally some few will choose their mates from amongst those in whom the Christ has been born again, and [297] who are giving expression to the Christ life. But the time is not yet, except for the rare and the few.
3. The third governing principle will be the desire to provide good and fair and healthy bodies for incoming egos. This is not possible today, under our ill-regulated system of co-habitation. The majority of the children who are born now have come accidentally into being or are not wanted. Some few, of course, are desired, but even in these cases, that desire is usually based on reasons of heredity, property to be passed on, an old name to be perpetuated, an unfulfilled ambition to be satisfied; yet the day of ordained and desired births is drawing nearer, and when it comes it will make possible the more rapid incarnation of disciples and initiates. Right preparation will take place prior to any fulfillment of the sex urge, and souls will be attracted to their parents by the urgency of those parents' desire, the purity of their motives and the power of their preparatory work.
When these three motives are carefully studied, and when men and women mould their physical plane relationship to each other upon their group responsibilities, upon their union with each other on all three planes simultaneously, and upon the offering of opportunity for incoming souls, then we shall indeed see a restoration of the spiritual aspect of marriage. We shall see the coming in of that era when goodwill will be the outstanding characteristic, and wherein selfish purpose and animal instinct will fade into the background.
3. Some Suggestions for the Present Cycle
I have been occupied with indicating a situation which at present exists, and in pointing out an ideal one which lies ahead, but which is not as yet possible. This is valuable, but it leaves a gap in our thought which requires filling. The question now arises which is capable of formulation in the [298] following terms: Given the accuracy of my presentation of the present appalling conditions, given the possibility of an ultimate approximation to the presented ideal in a distant future, is it possible at this time to take steps which will eventually lead to the necessary adjustments in the department of sex? It most certainly is, and my answer takes the following form.
When certain basic postulates, four in number, have been presented and kept before the mind of the public, they will finally lead to such an education of public opinion that the needed activities will follow. But the first step is the education of the public, and their grasp of the four essential laws. Any correction of present conditions will come as a growth from within humanity itself, and not as the imposition of a ruling from without. The training of the public consciousness must therefore go steadily forward, and thus we shall lay the foundation for the later changes.
I should like here to remind you that the coming three generations (in which I include the present one of boys and girls) will bring into incarnation a group of people who will be well equipped to lead humanity out of the present impasse. This fact warrants remembrance, and is often forgotten. There are always those at every epoch in human history who are able to solve the problems which arise, and who are sent in for that very purpose. This sex problem, in the last analysis, is a temporary one, little as you may think it today, and it grows out of a basic mistake,—out of the prostitution of man's God-given faculties to selfish physical ends, instead of their consecration to divine purposes. Man has been swept and carried off his feet by his instinctual animal nature, and only a clear and clean mental understanding of the real nature of his problem will be strong enough to carry him forward into the New Age and into the world of [299] right motive and right action. Man has to learn and deeply grasp the fact that the main purpose of sex is not the satisfaction of the appetites, but the providing of physical bodies through which life may express itself. He has to understand the nature of the symbolism underlying the sexual relation, and by its means grasp the scope of the spiritual realities. The Law of Sex is the law of those relations whereby life and form are brought together in order that divine purpose may be seen. This is a fundamental law of creation, and it is true, whether one is dealing with the informing Life of a solar system, with the birth of an animal, or with the appearance of a plant from a seed. "Sex" is the word we use to cover the relation which exists between that energy we call "life" and the aggregate of force units through which that energy expresses itself and builds a form. It covers the activity which takes place when the pairs of opposites are brought together, and by means of which they become at-one and produce a third reality. That third reality or result bears witness to their relation, and another life in form is seen. You have always, therefore, relation, at-one-ment and birth. These three words deal with the true significance of sex.
But man has prostituted the truth, and the real significance has been lost. Sex now means the satisfaction of the male desire for sensuous pleasure, and the assuaging of a physical appetite through the prostitution of the feminine aspect to that desire and appetite. This relation leads to no result as intended, but to a momentary second of satisfaction, and all of it is confined to the animal nature and the physical plane. I am largely generalising and would remind you that there are exceptions to all generalisations. I should also like to add that no one must here think that I hold the masculine aspect as responsible for our present problem when I say that man uses woman for his pleasure. How can I mean this, when I [300] know that every human being is cyclically either a man or a woman; that the men of today have been women and the women have been men in previous lives? There is no sex, as we understand it, where souls are concerned; it is only in the form life that sex exists. Only in the process of differentiation for the purposes of experimentation does the incarnating spiritual man occupy first a male body and then a feminine, thus rounding out the negative and positive aspects of the form life. All the race is equally guilty, and all must be equally active in the process of creating the correct conditions, and in bringing order out of the present chaos.