The Tacit Conspiracy

By Eugene Halliday

[ tutorial ]

[ Tutorial Headings, paragraph numbering, and highlighted terms inserted for study purposes by Malcolm H Clark, 2011 ]

1.    A tacit conspiracy is a silent agreement not to comment on or to discuss some thing, event, or relation which is understood, but which for certain reasons is considered better unexpressed.

 

2.    If The Tacit Conspiracy we here discuss, brought to be for the generation of evolutionarily necessary relational tensions, were universally known we would have no occasion to break silence about it. But because its original significance has in general lapsed from man’s consciousness, with the resulting production of considerable suffering to the human race, it becomes expedient for us to present a sufficient outline of the doctrine so that those who are able to grasp its significance may begin to orientate themselves to the relational problems of human sexual polarity.

 

[ Important Point from which to proceed ]

 

3.    Before proceeding with the subject we must stress strongly a most important point, which, if it be properly assimilated, will save considerable misunderstanding of the relation between man and woman, and thus avoid much unnecessary and unprofitable argument, and subsequent unhappiness.

 

4.    This most important point may shortly be stated by saying that every human being possesses both male and female elements. Whatever is here asserted of either male or female must be understood to apply in some degree to every human being. No male is merely male; no female is merely female. The differences between the so-called male and the so-called female is a difference of stress only. Every human being is a polarised being in itself possessing both male and female elements.

 

5.    Certain elements are found more strongly stressed in the so-called male, and certain other elements in the so-called female. It is because of these stressed elements that we have coined the terms “male” and “female”, or man and woman. Men and women are simply human beings in which certain functions are stressed more strongly than others. Some human beings are so constituted that the stressed function in them is not clearly marked, and in many others the stress moves from one element to another with more or less clearness of expression and often with noticeable periodicity.

 

6.    Every human being has four basic elements or qualities, all functions of the source power from which all beings derive. The four basic elements may be expressed as, power to initiate change; power to formulate; power to feel; power to resist change.

 

7.    Power to initiate change we may call simply “initiative”. Power to formulate we may call “ideation”. Power to feel we may call “sentience” (from Latin “sentire”, to feel). Power to resist change, which is mass inertia, we may call “substantiality”, or in a certain sense, “body”.

 

[ Male and Female definition ]

 

8.    Initiative, ideation, sentience, substantiality. These are the four basic elements of the human being. If the first two (initiative and ideation) are stressed we refer to the being as male; if the second two (sentience and substantiality) are stressed we refer to the being as female.

 

9.    If the female elements could be wholly eliminated from a human being (which is impossible), such a being would be a being possessing only initiative and ideation, having no feeling awareness or substantiality and therefore no body or stable centre of reference. If the male elements could be entirely removed from the female that being would be a being of mere feeling and substantiality, a sort of passive feeling substance unable to do anything except wait for some force outside to act upon it.

 

10.  We may call the sexually differentiated man and woman polarised beings. Let us consider the difference between polarised and non-polarised relations between beings.

 

[ difference between polarised and non-polarised relations ]

 

11.  If we imagine a non-polarised being like a single-celled primitive animal, say an amoeba, dividing in order to multiply its chances of survival, we see that if, after division, two of the resultant cells come together and fuse into one, the state of that one is similar to what it was before division. No new marked characteristic shows itself. The division of a cell into parts, the subsequent coming together of the divided parts, and their fusion again into a unity, adds nothing new to the cell’s nature.

 

12.  Let us consider the phenomenon of what is called vegetable reproduction. If we take a potato and cut it into pieces with an eye in each piece, and plant the pieces in the earth, each piece will grow into a potato just like the original one. No new characteristics will appear. All the potatoes so grown will have the same qualities.

 

13.  But if we allow the potato to seed and then plant the seeds we may get potatoes of varying characteristics which, if planted, will grow and maintain their new characteristics. The potatoes grown from cut pieces of one potato have the same characteristics as the original potato. Potatoes grown from seed may show varied characteristics, some of which may be improvements on the original potato.

 

14.  We may call the method of reproduction by cutting pieces from an original potato a non-polarised or non-sexual mode of reproduction. It does not produce new characteristics. The method of allowing the plant to seed and then sowing the seed we may call a polarised or sexual mode of reproduction. It produces new characteristics, some of which may be of greater value to the life function.

 

15.  Sexually differentiated or polarised modes of reproduction then, appear to have more life enhancement value than un-polarised or nonsexual modes. Why should this be so?

 

16.  If we consider the division of a being into like parts, and the fusing together of these parts in order again to divide, fuse, and divide, and so on, we see a type of activity which by its very nature is not likely to create any peculiar tensions which might result in the appearance of a new kind of reaction, which, being transmitted to the descendants, might prove of greater life-value.

 

17.  But if we imagine the sexual or polarised mode of coming together of beings, we see at once that the difference of the two beings, the differences of their stressed functions, must help to create the type of tension-relation we would expect to result in the appearance of new reaction characteristics.

 

18.  If we observe under a microscope the fusion of two like cells into one we observe some degree of excitement in the two cells, such as we should expect from the reunion of the previously separated parts of the original cell from which they were derived. It appears rather like the process of self-excitation one experiences on looking into a mirror after a fairly long absence from it. Not much more.

 

19.  But if we observe the behaviour of a sperm in its approach to the ovum which it aims to fertilise, we see an excitement of a much more intense order. It appears that the sperm’s excitement on approaching the ovum is far higher than that of the cell which is simply a non-specialised or non-polarised part of an original cell. Specialisation of the sperm in relation to the ovum appears to have increased the excitement they experience as they approach conjunction. This increased excitement is the measure of the degree of polarisation or sexual differentiation the relating partners have undergone. More precisely it is the sperm, the male element, which differentiates itself and thus increases the difference between itself and the ovum. The ovum itself remains close to the original life form in its simplest state. Omne vivo ab ovo. The egg may be viewed as functionally conservative, the sperm as liberal-individualist, determined to introduce some change in the conservative party. Labour, of course, comes later.

 

20.  Polarisation or sexual differentiation then, creates new tension-relations which naturally tend to produce new reaction-characteristics which may be transmitted to the off-spring, and better serve higher life-functions.

 

[ new behaviour patterns & accelerated life-form development ]

 

21.  Let us consider this a little more closely. If we imagine a cell to split into equal halves with like characteristics in each half, and these halves to fuse together again, we have no ground to assume any great tension or excitement when the two conjoin. Their similarity means that they have little stimulus-value for each other. They cannot stimulate each other in new ways, and therefore cannot produce new responses.

 

22.  But if we imagine a cell to split into two halves and one of the halves to compact itself and change its shape (as a sperm cell does), we see at once that by so doing this half has created a new kind of stimulus, which must produce a new kind of reaction. The increased excitation in the ovum produces new energy expressions, new functions and processes, which may be so accelerated that they result in the precipitation of new characteristics, some of which may further life’s evolutionary purpose.

 

23.  Within certain limits the greater the excitement generated when two differentiated cells conjoin, the more likely it is that the life-forces will be provoked into new types of reaction, new patterns of response to the life-environment. Polarised union thus tends to further the creation of new life functions which may well advance the evolving life-forms far further in less time than would be possible by a non-polarised mode of conjunction.

 

24.  The creation of new tensions in biological forms means the probable acceleration of the inherent forces of those forms to the appearance of new behaviour patterns conducive to more rapid attainment of life’s goal – the creation of the being of immediate optimal response, the being called in the New Testament the “quick”, as opposed to the “dead”. The “dead” is the being ruled by inertia, able to respond to a new stimulus only in an old way. Ultimately only the “quick” will survive, for the “dead” will have failed to adapt to the ever increasing demand for more adequate response to the world-stimulus situation.

 

[ new relational tensions, new life values ]

 

25.  New relational tensions, if properly assimilated, create new life values. Any method of creating new relational tensions, providing the organism can adjust to them, furthers the evolution of higher life forms and moves towards the creation of the “quick” being whose speed of stimulus adaptation and assimilation is so great that nothing in the universe can overthrow its equilibrium. Such a “quick” being has attained the state of reflexive self-consciousness (which we abbreviate to “resec”), which is the mark of the being able to respond immediately and adequately to the stimulus situation presented. (See the book called “Reflexive Self-Consciousness”).

 

26.  The most efficient way to create new relational tensions is to create differences of form and function in the beings intended to relate. This creation of formal and functional relational differences is what we mean by polarisation. The most obvious example is in the genital organs of the sexes, which are obviously evolved for reciprocal relations. But the more inward and subtle polarisations are of equal importance in their own spheres of functional relation.

 

27.  The polarisation of life forms by sexual differentiation creates the new relational tensions needed to lift life onto higher functional levels. And it does this in less and less time. Polarisation saves time. The speed at which a sperm travels relative to its size is far greater than that of the non-polarised mono-cell. For untold millions of years the non-polarised amoeba has crawled the waters of the earth without changing its form. Polarisation of life forms has accelerated evolution and with the appearance of man has attained a velocity before unequalled.

 

[ Why a tacit conspiracy? ]

 

28.  Because like forms have only low stimulus value for each other the Tacit Conspiracy was devised as a means of hiding the basic identity of beings, and presenting an appearance of differences which ultimately ontologically must be said to be illusory, being merely functional and not absolute differences.

 

29.  The Tacit Conspiracy hides from polarised beings their ultimate non-differences, and thus helps the creation of tension-relations between beings, which otherwise could not exist.

 

30.  Let us borrow an Indian myth to illustrate the point. Before creation, says this myth, God was alone. Suddenly He realised His aloneness. Thereupon He created for Himself a consort with whom He tried to copulate. But His consort, knowing Him to be her origin and thus identical with her, refused to relate herself to Him, and fled. He pursued her. She changed into various animal forms, but each time she changed He caught her. Thus from their various conjunctions came forth all the creatures of the universe.

 

31.  The important point to note here is, that after being created by God, His consort, knowing Him to be her origin, and thus seeing herself as non-different from Him, fled away from Him. As identical beings their stimulus value to each other would be very low. By fleeing from Him she created an actuality difference, that is a difference of mode of action which immediately raised her stimulus value to Him. He, delighted with the new stimulus emergent, joyously pursued her. Each time she changed her form the stimulus value of the new mode of relation climbed to a higher level. La donna e mobile. Here is the root of woman’s pre-occupation with changing fashions.

 

32.  To keep up the level of the stimulus value and to increase it, it would appear that the basic identity of all beings as rooted in the Absolute would be better left unexpressed; or it would have been, if it had not been for the dialectical arising of confusion in man about the nature of polarised sexual relations between man and woman.

 

[ war between the sexes ]

 

33.  Through the suppression of the knowledge of the fundamental identity of male and female there gradually arose the erroneous idea that the two sexes were basically different and mutually exclusive, each sex having its own sphere of clearly marked function, a product of its own essence. Men holding this view at one time reached the point of saying that men have souls and women do not.

 

34.  This separation of the sexes as two basically different beings led to the abstraction of male and female elements from each other, the foreshadowing of future war between the sexes.

 

35.  In response to this abstractionist analysis of the fact of sexual functional differences, women tried to establish matriarchal societies. Men replied by setting up counter-systems on a patriarchal basis. The struggle developed in peculiar ways. The Amazon women cut off their right breast in order safely to draw a bow string and shoot their arrows at the Greeks. Elsewhere men raped the Sabine women and carried them to slavery.

 

36.  Men’s superior initiative and ideation, put into muscle power, set them up nearly everywhere as authorities over women. Men’s abuse of this authority, from failure to understand the nature of polarised relations, compelled women to react violently in a struggle to re-state the equal rights which in principle all parts of human protoplasm were made to enjoy.

 

37.  In their struggle for equality women forgot the principle that says that identical forms have low stimulus value for each other. They fought to become like men. From the depths of their being, as women always will when men forget the real nature and purpose of their polarised relation, the women brought forth their long dormant initiative and ideational power. They claimed equal rights as human beings, rights to which, as four-part human beings, they were as much entitled as were men.

 

38.  Unfortunately however, instead of interpreting the revolt of women correctly as resulting from a failure on the part of men to comprehend the nature of polarised relation and the Tacit Conspiracy, men began to accept in part the women’s claims. Was it not obvious during the struggle to free themselves from slavery that women had exhibited qualities of initiative and ideational rationality like those previously believed to be confined to men?

 

39.  Men began to accept women as being capable of rational initiative. More than this, men began to enjoy the thought that women had such qualities, and to expect them to exhibit them always.

 

40.  When some women failed to exhibit at certain times the qualities of rational initiative so useful to men, men tended to become confused. “Surely,” said men, “It is true that women as well as men are human, and must therefore be equipped with powers of initiative and ideation? Must it not therefore be proper for us to expect women to choose rationally what to do and to do it?”

 

41.  Women for their part, as soon as they had gained the freedom they desired, began to resume their feminine behaviour-patterns. They began to abandon the initiative and rationality they had exhibited, or rather, to let these qualities sink back again into the depths from which they had conjured them, feeling that all would now be well, and that men would accept them once again as women and partners to the Tacit Conspiracy.

 

42.  But men reacted strangely to the re-statement of women’s non-rational behaviour patterns by drawing up from their own depths (as did long ago the Greeks when they had failed to comprehend the law of polarisation) their own opposite polar stresses. From the depths of their protoplasm men called up their own latent femaleness. Hysteria no longer confined itself to the female.

 

43.  Let us examine how an average man now tends to respond to non-rational behaviour in his female consort. He has a concept that women can be rational. This is supported by the insistence of women that they have equal rights with men. (During the war women convincingly did jobs previously classed as jobs for men. And a significant percentage of women stopped menstruation for some years).

 

44.  Man therefore tends to talk rationally to and to expect a rational response from his female consort. Sometimes he receives the response he expects. Sometimes he does not. At this point trouble tends to begin for him, and possibly for his consort.

 

45.  When a man fails to get a rational response to his rational requests, alternative patterns of behaviour are open to him. Either he may re-state his earlier belief that women are inherently irrational, or he may come to believe that his consort is deliberately acting in an irrational manner for some feminine purpose of her own, without regard to the suffering it brings to him. This latter view is quite usual for the average man.

 

46.  The man who believes that his consort is acting irrationally from sheer, deliberate bad will tends to suffer emotionally from her action. He feels disorientated, impotent to deal with her. He may fall into hysterical reaction himself or descend to physical violence in an attempt to restore her to rationality. He may become estranged from her. He cannot yet let go of his belief in the rationality potential of woman. So he tends to drift away from his consort, gravitating naturally towards any other woman who, for whatever reasons, shows him some sympathy. He tends now to believe that he has made a mistake in committing himself in relation with his consort. Somewhere, he now believes, there is the woman he should have found before, the one destined for him. It does not matter how many times he falls into new relations with women who disillusion him. Always he tends to believe that somewhere there is a woman who will act rationally and sympathetically, and who was obviously made for him. He does not yet realise how much of this is the woman in himself seeking a husband-protector.

 

47.  Meanwhile other women, their own polarised relations gone astray, are preparing to resume the appearance of rationality for any man who appeals to them, up to the time they can consolidate the relation with him, whereupon they will again allow the re-emergence of their natural female non-rational stress.

 

48.  Almost always the man who has suffered from the non-rational behaviour of a woman develops the idea that somewhere another woman, intended for him by nature, waits for him, the one he should have married, the one who would anticipate all his desires and fulfil them, the one who, if he got her, would completely stop his further evolution; la belle dame sans merci.

 

[ evolution to higher levels of being ]

 

49.  Man’s evolution to higher levels of being depends on the creation and maintenance of polarisation tensions which absolute identity of outlook and action cannot give. Too much agreement too soon secured may stop man’s development and hold him on a plane of being he should long ago have transcended.

 

50.  If women were to act always rationally and with initiative in discovering solutions to all their life’s problems, the tension between man and woman, so necessary for the development of human evolution, would tend to disappear. And this disappearance of polarisation tension between himself and his consort is what most men desire, and believe themselves right so to do.

 

51.  For human beings to get back into right polar relation it is now necessary for the re-presentation of the doctrine of the Tacit Conspiracy. Only by conscious re-statement of its significance will man and woman be able to relate themselves harmoniously together without destroying the tensions of polarity so necessary for human evolution.

 

[ the whole human being of four qualities ]

 

52.  The whole human being is a four-quality being of initiative, rationality, feeling and body orientation or inertia. We may say this in various ways. We may say the human being has spirit, mind, soul and body. Spirit is initiative, the producer of change and source of the other three. Mind is the ideation function, rationality. Soul is the feeling awareness of the self. Body is mass inertia of energy, producing resistance or stability, or a centre of reference for consciousness.

 

53.  If every being had all four qualities equally stressed, in perfect balance, the stimulus value of every being would be equal. Choice would then be meaningless, for one would have no reason to choose to relate to one person than to another, or to any rather than to oneself, as did Narcissus.

 

54.  By stressing certain qualities in some beings and other qualities in others, the stimulus value of being is differentiated and so increased. Increase of stimulus value in general means the possibility of increased response, and so of further evolution.

 

55.  Human beings in the sexually polarised state have each the stress laid on one pair of the four qualities. In the male, initiative and ideation are stressed: in the female the stress is on feeling and body processes.

 

[ Spirit initiative Body inertia ]

 

56.  Initiative is the cause of the introduction of change into established systems. It is referred to by Jesus when he says, “The spirit blows where it lists; one can hear it passing but does not know from whence it came or whither it goes. So is everyone born of the spirit.” We see initiative at work at the human level wherever we see a human being creating new forms or new values, or breaking through inertic patterns of behaviour in order to clear the ground for further new creations. Initiative is the power to produce intelligent changes and to disclose new creative directions.

 

57.  Initiative, part of the male stress in the human being, the introducer of new directions of activity, is necessarily opposed to the female stress of mass-inertia, which we may call the body-conservative tendency. Male initiative and female body-conservation tendency complement each other. Both are necessary to the complete being. Without body to act upon, initiating forces would have no resistance or centre of reference upon which to impress themselves, and into which to introduce change. The bondage of matter is as necessary to existential evolution as is the initiative force of free spirit.

 

58.  Spirit without body to serve as its vehicle and centre of reference could not experience things or express itself in Time. Body without spirit to animate it would remain an inert mass, dark and unprofitable. Each is necessary to the other; neither in fact can exist in the time process without the other.

 

59.  Man’s curiosity about the universe and his determination to change it, derives from the Absolute’s drive to raise man’s understanding to the level of reflexive-awareness of the Absolute’s power in evolution. Woman’s desire to centre everything in matter and primarily in her own body, derives from the universal ‘substance’s drive to the conservation of vales. Both man and woman are driven from above by the forces of the Absolute and Universal Being to further the evolution of the reflexively self-conscious beings necessary for the self-realisation of the Eternal in the Time Process. The opposition and mutually complementing qualities of male initiative and female body inertia both derive from the essential nature of the Absolute, or ultimate source of all things.

 

[ Idea mind Feeling soul ]

 

60.  Just as initiative spirit and body-matter or mass inertia are opposed to and complement each other, so the ideation power of the male opposes and complements the feeling and emotional stress in the female.

 

61.  By ideation we mean that function of the male-stressed consciousness which constrains it to formulate ideas in the mind. (The word “idea” derives from the Greek word for form or shape). To ideate is to produce forms in the mind. The essential character of idea or form is its definability, its clarity of characteristic contour, whereby we can see clearly the difference between one thing and another. The ideating male consciousness is concerned with the formal relations of things and ideas, the necessary mode in which things must operate, the mechanical inter-action of things, the “know-how” of things and events. It is concerned with the mathematico-logical analysis of every phenomenon in the universe and beyond. It is pre-occupied with universally valid principles and therefore with the abstract, and therefore opposes and complements the female feeling stress, which occupies itself with the personal, particular and concrete relation.

 

[ Man and Woman ]

 

62.  Man pursues the formal knowledge of the ultimate cause of phenomena. From his ideation tendency he seeks form, and from his initiative he pursues cause, which for him is the ultimate initiative.

 

63.  While man pursues idea and initiative causal power, woman seeks satisfaction in the embodiment of these in the relation she experiences with man at the concrete level of her feeling and body existence.

 

64.  The feeling awareness stressed in the female is orientated away from merely abstract considerations towards concrete personal and particular relations, towards subjective emotional involvement of one person in another. This subjective tendency opposes and complements the male determination to fix the objective limits of things, events and relations.

 

65.  Woman tends thus to live in subjective, personal, particular relations, as man tries to live in objective, impersonal and general relations. This fact is one of the most fruitful sources of misunderstanding between man and woman.

 

[ declaration and established felt relation ]

 

66.  An example may illustrate this. A man tends to think that once a formal declaration has been made of a relation between himself and the woman of his choice, the relation should now require no further attention, no re-statement or corroboration. He accepts the formal declaration as evidence of the existence of the relation. He assumes because of his own stress of formal mental processes that the woman will likewise accept the declaration of the relation as equivalent to the relation. He assumes that she will therefore proceed with all those relational activities for which he committed himself into relation with her.

 

67.  The woman, however, with her feeling stress and material body-orientation, has a different view of the situation. She has no intention of assuming the relation to exist simply because of the man’s verbal declaration to that effect. She wishes the relation to be felt, not merely ideated or thought. She wishes the relation to be personal, particular, concrete and substantially factual, an existential relation, not an abstraction owing itself only to words.

 

68.  Especially from her stress on her material body (the ground of her motherhood-potential) woman desires that the relation between herself and her man shall be materially established. It is not accident that Mater-ial is so spelled. The mater or mother principle dwells in the concrete material world. It is essentially matter-orientated, mother-centred and earth-bound, as opposed to the power and knowledge orientation of man.

 

[ summary ]

 

69.  Let us re-state what we have said so far. The whole human being has four basic qualities, which we may express in various ways. We may call them spirit, mind, soul and body; or initiative power, ideo-rational function, affective or feeling response and mass inertia; or free intelligence, rationality, feeling awareness and material vehicle. These modes of expressing the facts, with many others, are all equally valid in their ultimate significance.

 

70.  Because similarly constituted beings have not a high stimulus value for each other, polarisation or sexual differentiation was evolved in order to raise the stimulus-intensity of relations, and thus accelerate humanity’s evolution. The goal to be reached is the regaining of absolute awareness, the awareness of the Absolute Sentient Power from which we derive, and which awareness was lost in the veiling of consciousness implied in the descent into material manifestation in a finite body vehicle, a descent symbolically expressed in the myth of the Fall of Lucifer and of Adam.

 

[ Self-awareness and Self-examination ]

 

71.  Exactly similar beings may conjoin or fuse without great change in their level of awareness or response-capacity. But the less similar are the beings entering a relation, and the less easy is the assimilation of each other’s stimulus content, the more the level of awareness of the relation is raised, and the greater the likelihood of self-awareness and subsequent self-examination. Relational difficulties tend to force self-awareness on the partners in a relation, a self-awareness which, if positively affirmed, may accelerate man’s evolution to the level of the absolute awareness which constitutes his ultimate goal and self-fulfilment.

 

72.  All relational tensions and difficulties tend to accelerate evolution provided that they do not require a greater energy expenditure in adaptive responses than the receiving organism possesses. It is a good thing, therefore, from the evolutionary point of view, if we expose ourselves to tension situations and relational difficulties to the full extent of the energy we have sufficient for adaptive responses.

 

73.  Self-awareness may be either positive or negative. In its negative phase it is pre-absorbed with its own impotence or ineffectuality. It is morbidly self-centred and tends towards pathological states and disease of mind and body.

 

74.  In its positive phase self-awareness is actively engaged in furthering the process of self-discovery. It aims at the attainment of permanent self-reflexion, the gaining of the reflexive self-consciousness which will establish the self as a vehicle of the Absolute Sentient Power, source of all being, which works incessantly for and through evolving nature for the creation of such vehicles.

 

75.  Ultimately life aims at permanent self-preservation, at immortality, and the only way to gain this is by acquiring absolute assimilation power and adaptability, both of which in the last analysis depend on full reflexive self-consciousness (resec).

 

76.  If we are to become able to adapt to every conceivable situation and to assimilate every conceivable stimulus, (the pre-condition of immortality), our awareness must be raised to such a level that we shall be able to detect immediately any change in any environment, and our adaptability and stimulus assimilation power must likewise reach optimal level of efficiency. To this end we must be prepared to expose ourselves to whatever stimulus situations may be necessary for the development of the capacity we seek.

 

[ marriage ]

 

77.  The kind of relation which most tends to expose to our awareness the parts of our being most needing development must obviously be an intimate one. The most intimate of all relations, the relation which exposes the greatest number of our characteristics in the relation is, of course, marriage.

 

78.  In marriage a man and woman expose their beings one to the other on every plane. Not only is the heart involved in the relation, but every element of the organism, every function, spiritual, mental, psychic and physical. Here body, soul, mind and spirit must meet in reciprocal exposure for the attainment of the highest goal, the development of the reflexively self-conscious being, the resec being whose awareness is so immediate in response that nothing whatever in any world, in heaven or on earth or beneath it, can find him unready. Such a being of immediate adequate response has the absolute security which is immortality, the power to subsist and function perfectly in all possible worlds.

 

[ understanding and immortality ]

 

79.  If we do not gain understanding of ourselves, if we do not attain full reflexive self-consciousness, the awareness of every aspect and function of our being, if we do not gain immediacy of adequate response to every conceivable event or situation, whatever else we gain we shall not gain the one thing which alone rescues all from vanity, that is, immortality, the power to resist disintegration and death absolutely. Without immortality all other attainments are ultimately vain, for when death comes all achievements are laid to oblivion in the grave.

 

80.  The Absolute Sentient Power, infinite and eternal source of our being, for which the great religions and philosophies have coined many names, aims at no lower level than itself. It purposes to go down into manifestation through the great mother, universal matter, and to return through its highest evolved creatures to itseIf. Man, as one of its highest evolutes, has in himself the potential of this return. It is a divine imperative in him that he develops this potential into actuality.

 

81.  Man can return to the absolute level of reflexive self-consciousness only because he derives from that level. “No man ascends to the Father but he that came down from the Father.”

 

[ down into creation ]

 

82.  Let us consider the way down, that is, the way into manifestation or creation. Before creation, or beyond the level we call creation, the Absolute Sentient Power in the Infinite Eternal is in no way limited, determined or circumscribed. We call the ultimate source of all things the Absolute when we consider it in itself as it is when all created forms are washed away or absolved from it.

 

83.  When all that we call formal manifestation, the finited order of the universe and all its limited forms and functions, is considered as washed away, there remains only the originating causal power of all these things. We then say that the Absolute Sentient Power of the Infinite Eternal remains in itself as a pure infinite actuality without any finiting or limiting process. Creation itself is a finiting process, that is, a process in which finite or limited things come into existence, It is because creation is a finiting process that we say that creation is the way down, that is, the way to a fall of potential. The deeper the entrance into material existence, the less power manifests as free power and the more it takes on the aspect of mass-inertia or substantiality or body-determination and mechanicality.

 

84.  The word “create” indicates something of this. It is derived from a root “kra” which, read boustrophedon, gives also “ark” or “arc”. Not to be deceived with a flat earth image the completed arc gives a circle, which is an easy-to-represent symbol on a plane surface of a sphere, the sphere being the ultimate or original type of all created things.

 

85.  Although for economy’s sake we refer to the Infinite and Eternal Absolute Sentient Power simply as the Absolute, we must not fail to remember that by the Absolute we do not mean a merely abstract concept of the source of all reality but the very fullness of the Infinite Eternal Absolute Sentient Power itself as the pre-analytic origin of all created things whatever, which nevertheless transcends creation absolutely.

 

86.  The Absolute before and beyond creation is an infinite, eternal, non-dual, sentient power. By non-dual we mean having no duality, no two-ness, no self-contradictions in itself. Whatever it is, it is infinitely, that is, not finitely, without limitation.

 

87.  Having no limit before the beginning of its creative activity, the Absolute has yet no object on which to centre itself. It is infinitely sentient and yet knows nothing, for prior to creation there is nothing for it to know. Also, because the Absolute is power as well as sentience, not only has it nothing to know prior to creation, but also it has no object on which to exercise its power.

 

[ Love Absolute ]

 

88.  With its infinite sentience, before creation, the Absolute feels its infinite power as an unlimited potential of creative activity. It feels this as an infinite, unformulated yearning which creative activity alone can assuage. This is why it is said, “God is Love”, and “God so loved the world. . .”

 

89.  The Love of the Absolute is the will of the infinite eternal sentient power to develop its infinite potentialities of being. But this love can fulfil itself only in infinite creative activity, and creative activity implies the production of finite beings. A finite created being is in fact simply the finiting process of the absolute in the place of that being. The implications of this for individual created beings are of the greatest significance.

 

90.  Every created thing or being is, by the fact of its being created, brought into limitation or circumscription. A line of force is drawn round every created thing to separate it from every other created thing. This circumscription is the origin of the symbolic circumcision of the chosen for out of the infinity of possible forms of existence only certain of these are worthy of perpetuation to eternity.

 

91.Without circumscriptive limitation no created being can come into existence. But ultimately there is nothing other than the Absolute Sentient Power. Because this is so it follows that whatever beings come into existence, do so necessarily as functions of the Absolute.

 

[ creation out of no-thing ]

 

92.  The Absolute is not a thing, not a finite or limited substance. Because it is not a thing and yet is the source of all things, we have to say that things are created out of nothing. A thing is merely a finited zone of activity within the infinite no-thing, which is the Absolute. The word “nothing” is simply the negation of the word “thing”. As a thing is a limited function of the unlimited, a negative zone of restricted activity, it is correct for us to refer to a thing as negative. If then we negate the negative, that is, eliminate a limited being, what results is the re-affirmation of the unlimited Absolute as it is before creation. Two negatives here make a positive, as they do grammatically.

 

[ creation within ]

 

93.  The Infinite Absolute creates within itself, not out of itself, for there is no outside of infinity. This is why we say, “in him we live, move, and have our being”.

 

94.  The Absolute creative activity is a process within itself, whereby it produces finite or limited forms simply as functions of itself. Wherever the Absolute Power sets up inside itself a rotation zone or impulse centre, there by that fact a being comes into existence. The word “existence” in its origin implies the creation of a zone of rotation, a wheel of force, or a point of affirmation of power.

 

[ change within ]

 

95.  We must here note a very important point. Wherever a portion of the Absolute Power, a quantity of energy, is totally involved in the production of a finite being, this being cannot observe itself from outside. Its energy is wholly involved in its being and thus leaves none over with which to look at itself from outside and to initiate changes in itself. This means that of itself it cannot evolve to a higher level of being.

 

96.  A being whose energy is totally involved in its self, in actualising its being, cannot see itself or evolve to new levels, or create new character-emergents. It tends always to repeat the same cycle of functions in the same way. Its being is its actuality; its actuality is its being. Because of this, if significant change is to be introduced into such a being, there must be some force available from outside itself, which will act upon it to produce the change.

 

[ Universal Matter ]

 

97.  Thus, if the Absolute totally involves a definite amount of its power in the production of universal matter, this matter cannot from itself produce any further changes in itself. It must therefore stand as the principle of mass-inertia or universal substance, the first product of the Absolute. This universal mass-inertic substance, its energies totally absorbed in merely existing, having no power for development of itself into new forms, depends for any new emergents of its being on the power of the Absolute which generated it, and in which it has its being as a fish within the infinite ocean of power.

 

98.  This first production of the Absolute, universal matter, is the prima materia of certain philosophical schools. It is not to be confused with the Absolute itself. It is merely a first product of it, as a ground of further productions, all of which require the prior production of this primal matter as the clay in which their different forms are to be modelled by further activity of the power of the Absolute.

 

99.  The universal prime matter’s essential characteristic is inertia, the tendency to continue in its state of being unless acted upon by further force from the Absolute. This characteristic is the basis of the power of prime matter to act as a conserver of forms. The Absolute itself, on the other hand, has for its essential characteristic that it is absolutely free from inertia. It is pure initiative, the very cause of all change, the introducer of all new values into existence.

 

100.   The relation of Absolute Initiative to Universal Mass-Inertia is the transcendent source of the relation at the human level of man and woman, and the origin of the Tacit Conspiracy.

 

101.   The Absolute is ultimately all there is. Prior to creation, whatever creative potentials it has remain unexpressed. To develop its creative potentials in manifestation the Absolute has created firstly the prima materia to serve as the necessary negative pole of being upon which the Absolute as supreme positive power may work to further its evolutionary purpose.

 

102.   The universal prime matter may be thought of in various ways. We may think of it as a first step necessary to the creation of further productions of higher and higher complexity. We may view it as the foundation or basis on which is to be erected the whole structure of the universe.

 

[ Father and Mother ]

 

103.   We may also view the prima materia as the universal mother-substance, or Hyle, which is to bring forth from inside itself, like a mother, whatever the Absolute Power has put into it.

 

104.   When we view the prime matter as the mother of all created beings, we are forced to look on the Absolute source as the Father which impregnates the mother substance with its infinity of forms.

 

105.   When we name the Absolute as Father and the Prime Matter produced from it as the Mother, we are seeing the meaning of the Old Testament statement that Eve was taken out of Adam. It means that Universal Substance or prime matter is produced from and by the Absolute Power.

 

106.   We may consider the creation of prime matter by the Absolute as the first polarisation of Absolute Power: the Absolute acting as positive, prime matter standing as negative. Without this polarisation of force and matter within the Absolute no further creation would be possible. The prime matter stands as that upon which the creative force may work to produce the universe of forms. Absolute power acts as initiator of changes and producer of formal values in prime matter. Here is the root of the polarity of the sexes we see in life forms on earth.

 

[ involutionary and evolutionary relational tensions ]

 

107.   Once the original polarity of the Father and Mother, or Absolute Power and Universal Matter, becomes operative, the relational tensions of the Tacit Conspiracy begin to show themselves in the involutionary and evolutionary cycle of life. These relational tensions aim at and are the guarantee of the ultimate attainment of the Absolute’s purpose, the creation and development of certain beings to the level of reflexive self-consciousness, such beings functioning ultimately as vehicles embodying the will of the Absolute to reflect upon its own being and creative purpose, and to centre itself existentially.

 

108.   Without the creation of Prime Matter to act upon, the Absolute Power would have nothing to model, nothing on which to exert its formative power. Without the power of the Absolute to act upon the prime matter, this matter would remain inert and undeveloped.

 

109.   Because ultimately there is nothing other than the Absolute Sentient Power, it follows that wherever this power produces any being, that being must have a two-fold aspect of sentience and power. And because sentience is always concerned with the feeling states of substance, and power is pre-occupied with initiative formulating processes, every created being must have the four-fold quality we have outlined.

 

[ a being feels only the modifications of its own substance ]

 

110.   Sentience and substance are intimately related, as what is experienced as feeling is the state of being of a substance; a being feels only the modifications of its own substance; it feels a stimulus only insofar as it modifies its substance.

 

111.   Universal matter is inertic, that is, the power involved in it and constituting it, presents resistance to any force acting upon it from outside. Because every being derives from the Absolute Sentient Power, each being experiences its own substance at the feeling level as a sensation of mass-inertia. Mass-inertia is what we usually mean by “body”. We can see this meaning of the word “body” in such expressions as “body-colour” for opaque colours, or when we say there is “body” in certain fabrics, etc.

 

112.   Universal Matter, the universal mater or mother principle of all things, has two chief stresses: mass inertia, or “body” and sentience, or feeling awareness. It knows itself as a mass-inertic feeling substance. At the level of humanity an individual woman experiences this same kind of feeling when there is no external force to act upon her and modify her substance. She, of course, experiences this because she is stressed in the same way as the universal substance from which she derives her being.

 

[ male acting on female ]

 

113.   We see then, that two of the qualities we find in the human being, body-centredness and feeling, are but particularisations of the two qualities found stressed in the universal woman or prima materia.

 

114.   The other two qualities, those of the Absolute or positive pole of being, we should expect to find at the human level in the male. They are, as we have seen, Initiative and Ideational Power.

 

115.   Just as the Tacit Conspiracy between the Absolute and Universal Matter requires the acting by the power of the Absolute on the Universal Matter, so at the human level it requires the acting on the substance and sentience of woman by the initiative and ideational power of man.

 

116.   If the Absolute were to cease to act upon the Prime Matter it has created, that matter would be annihilated as matter, and the power in it would revert to the Absolute from whence it derived.

 

117.   If man ceases to act upon woman, the power in woman will tend to return to its absoluteness, that is, will tend to exhibit qualities of initiative and formalising power which were before held in a state of latency. This is the origin of the so-called “masculine-protest” exhibited by women in certain circumstances. The cure for masculine protest in women is the honouring by men of their part in the Tacit Conspiracy.

 

118.   If the Absolute did not create the Universal Matter upon which to exert its formalising power, no further creation could result. The Absolute is here what is meant by the Heavenly Father. Universal Matter is the Magna Mater, the Great Mother, into which the Father inserts his fructifying power. The Father must have a Mother to receive the forms his power creates, to bring them to substantiality. Without this substantialisation the Father’s forms would have the reality only of ideas and not of existential material beings.

 

119.   The Universal Matter or Mother must have the Father to introduce into her the new forms and functions without which she would remain merely a dark, formless, inert mass.

 

[ Father Mother ultimately not-two ]

 

120.   But Prime Matter, the Mother of all things, is ultimately only a function of the Absolute, the Father Principle of the Infinite Eternal Initiative and formulating power. The Father and Mother are ultimately not two. The Mother is a function of the Father, necessary for the substantialisation of the forms of his creative activity.

 

121.   The Absolute as generator of prime matter is the Father of it. As formulator within it, the Absolute is the prima materia’s husband. Here is the origin of the human father’s usually unconscious attitude to his daughter, and of his desire that his wife shall obey him; which, of course, she will wish to do, if he fulfils his part in the Tacit Conspiracy.

 

122.   In the Indian myth earlier commented on, we saw that when God created a consort for himself in order to have someone with whom to relate, and through whom to generate further forms, she ran away from him, saying “I am you”. In saying “I am you”, she said by implication that she and God were not two. But if this were so relations would be impossible, for relation implies more than one.

 

[ appearance of duality ]

 

123.   It becomes apparent then, that if relational activity is to become a possibility, and yet absolute dualism is untrue, there must be brought into being some mode of action which will generate the appearance of a duality where ultimate duality is unreal.

 

124.   This apparent duality is produced by the Absolute circumscribing a zone within itself in which to create the functional activity we know as universal mass-inertia or prime matter. This first circumscribing activity of the Absolute is hinted at in the book of Genesis under the symbol of a fiery sword turning to stop the re-entry into Eden of the expelled Adam and Eve.

 

125.   This polarisation within the Absolute by the creation of universal matter as a function of the Absolute is the first phase of the Tacit Conspiracy, the first appearance of the relational tension necessary for the evolution of higher life forms and the movement towards resec beings.

 

[ purpose of the Tacit Conspiracy ]

 

126.   To keep this relational tension in being is the primary purpose of the Tacit Conspiracy. If God and his consort in the myth are declared to be not two, their relational tension lapses and further creation ceases. If God and his consort maintain the appearance of duality they can act as if they are two and thus keep in being their relational tensions and further their creative purpose.

 

127.   As with the universal relation between the Absolute and Prime Matter, so with the particular relation between man and woman. The Absolute is the initiating formulating power. Man is its expression at the human level. The Prime Matter is the universal sentient mass-inertia. Woman is its reflection at the human level.

 

128.   As the Absolute and the Prime Matter tacitly conspire together to act as if they are two, but ultimately are not; so man and woman likewise should conspire to act as if they are two when ultimately they are not.

 

[ note of difference in creative polarised relations ]

 

129.   There is an important difference to note between the two levels of relation, that of the Absolute and the Prime Matter, and that of man and woman. The difference is this: the Absolute knows absolutely what it is doing. It knows all about the Tacit Conspiracy and what it is for. Man, on the other hand, knows, if at all, very little, and that dimly, about the nature of creative polarised relations.

 

130.   We are to notice here that we did not say that man and woman know very little but only man; we said this because woman deeply feels far more about the meaning of polarised relations than man, but because of the Tacit Conspiracy she is not able of herself without stimulation to verbalise the content of her feeling.

 

131.   Man unfortunately, although in him is vested the power of verbalisation and ideation, has long forgotten the real relation between man and woman. Precisely because of this are we here formulating the nature of the Tacit Conspiracy.

 

[ conspiracy of silence, not ignorance ]

 

132.   The Tacit Conspiracy is a conspiracy not of ignorance but of silence. Both parties to the conspiracy must be aware of the real nature of the relation, otherwise it is no conspiracy, no breathing together. If only one in the relation is aware of its meaning it is not yet a true conspiracy and cannot give forth its highest results.

 

133.   It is only when the conspiracy is a fully conscious relation that it can reach its highest expression, the highest degree of its full actualisation.

 

[ involution and evolution ]

 

134.   The Tacit Conspiracy between the Absolute and Primal Matter is a necessity of the involutionary process of creation whereby spirit, or free initiative and formulation power, enters into and embodies itself in matter.

 

135.   The entry into material embodiment is a veiling process in which spirit is progressively covered over by the functional activities it initiates of material body processes. When it reaches its lowest level of descent, or its deepest involvement in matter, the involved spirit or consciousness (not the Absolute as such) is objectively identified with its materialising processes and tends to believe itself necessarily tied to matter. It is at this point that the Tacit Conspiracy tends to lapse from consciousness. Here begins the conflict of polarised beings which, expressing itself in the darkness of ignorance, tends to reverse the direction of evolution and to defeat at the human level the original purpose of the Tacit Conspiracy by becoming, in its attempt to escape the believed intolerable relational tensions, wholly destructive. It is at this point that man, striving to escape these tensions, seeks to discover the meaning of his involvement in existence, and seeks also to find a way out.

 

[ extroversion and science ]

 

136.   From this determination of man to escape the relational tensions to which existence exposes him has arisen all science, for science aims ultimately at power, the power to reduce life’s tensions to a tolerable level.

 

137.   Man’s new mode of approach to the universe is extroverted, turned away from himself, turned out into the world of things, which he seeks now to control and constrain to his will.

 

138.   With his experimental procedures he discovers a million secrets of nature previously lost to him. He begins to believe he can solve all problems presented to him by using his external scientific procedures.

 

139.   One thing, however, remains to him still a mystery – his own being. It is here where his last battle for freedom is going to be fought, as it was here in the first place that he lost it.

 

[ Self-knowledge through difficulty ]

 

140.   Whatever furthers man’s self-knowledge furthers his movement towards ultimate freedom and the reflexive self-consciousness that alone can guarantee that he will not lose it again.

 

141.   But full self-knowledge is acquired with difficulty. It is not easy to see oneself as one is. It is not easy to stand back from oneself and view oneself dispassionately and objectively. It is not easy largely because it is not pleasant, but also because of the mass inertia of one’s previous way of looking at oneself. Man is not yet so near to perfection that he can look with equanimity at himself. How then is man to drive himself to the mirror of objective self-realisation against the whole pleasure and inertia tendencies of his being?

 

142.   Here is inserted the old sugar-on-the-pill trick. If man finds it too hard alone to examine himself objectively and raise himself to higher levels of being, perhaps a little help would be appreciated. And so at Adam’s request Eve was given to him as a help-meet. And Eve means “to develop life’s potential”. Later, Paul was to say, “Two walk better than one”.

 

143.   So a man finds himself in the relation which, if he knew its full meaning, he would call the Tacit Conspiracy. He finds himself married. He is now in possession of the one thing that will help him to see himself objectively, a female consort who has some legal rights in his person. (Without the legal rights it is not usual for a help-meet to reach the full heights of power to help man’s evolution to higher levels of being. It is so easy for the unmarried man to go home to his own bed, and thus avoid the most fruitful time for evolving awareness of one’s stimulus reaction-level, the “still small hours of the night”).

 

144.   Because usually a man does not know the high purpose of the Absolute in investing in him the instinct to enter into a polarised relation, a man enters it with some hope of obtaining for himself peace, comfort, good feeding and sympathy for his weaknesses.

 

145.   But the Absolute, absolutely aware of itself and of its creative power, wills, like all healthy beings, to increase its expressions, to multiply, to create for itself an infinite number of vehicles for itself to carry its creative activity into infinity. This is why we say, “God created us for himself”.

 

146.   The Absolute, determined to create suitable vehicles for the fulfilment of its purposes, moves man and woman through their instincts, into the like relation to the one which exists between the Absolute and Prime Matter.

 

[ man’s meditation and affirmation ]

 

147.   Just as the initiative and formulating power of the Absolute enters into, animates and formulates universal prime matter, so the Absolute requires man’s initiative and formulative power to enter into the soul and body of woman for their joint elevation. “God is the head of man, and man is the head of woman.”

 

148.   The Absolute places man and woman in the same relation, which at the absolute level is the Tacit Conspiracy. Man is now required to become aware of the meaning of this involvement and to relate himself to woman accordingly. He is to make himself aware by deep meditation of what the Tacit Conspiracy means to the Absolute and to himself. He is to affirm consciously and reflexively his relation with his consort as a means whereby the human race is to evolve back to the level of absolute awareness, the reflexive self-consciousness which constitutes at once the capacity for immediate adequate response, and therefore of perfect freedom and immortality. Perfect freedom is man’s service of the Absolute from which he derives.

 

149.   To this end man is to affirm his relation with woman, as the Absolute affirms its relation with Universal Prime Matter. Man is to initiate creative changes in himself and in his consort for each next level of their being! He is to accept as necessary for the development of his self-knowledge whatever his consort feels impelled to say to him. He is to see her as the resistance necessary for his development, the point of reflection of his own acts, from which they are returned for his re-examination and modification in the light of the ever-clarifying aim of his evolution.

 

150.   If his consort criticises his actions, or character, or person, he is to examine the criticism, and, where it is just, to strive to correct himself accordingly. Where the criticism is not just, he is to accept it as the occasion of an exercise in self-control under injustice, without striking back or desiring to strike back at her.

 

[ woman as Universal Matter ]

 

151.   He is to remember at all times that woman is obeying the deep will of the Universal Mother, or Prima Materia, from which she derives; that she is compelled by her female nature to present him with the opposition necessary for him to attain the goal set for him by the Absolute. He is to see her as the mirror of all his actions, in which he can see himself as such a being who stands at the evolutionary level from which such actions spring.

 

[ Three phases of Universal Matter ]

 

152.   Universal Matter has three phases. The first is that in which, having been created, it is considered as left without external stimulation and so is inert, dark and morbid, profoundly melancholy. This we abbreviate to M1, by which we mean Melancholy Mary (Mary has the same meaning as Mare, the Sea), and is used to express the idea of Universal Substance as a great ocean of plastic material which the Absolute, in its character of initiative spirit, blows upon to produce the great waves of creative activity we know as the involution and evolution of the universe.

 

153.   Phase Two of the Universal Matter is that phase of activity that is exhibited when the Absolute power acts upon it and so formulates it in myriads of different ways, the whole process provoking its sentience aspect into all forms of desire and strange longings for further stimulation. This phase we abbreviate to M2, by which we mean Magical Mary, the universal ocean presenting itself as phantasy and magical practices, precipitations of desire aiming to hold spirit in its embrace, as Samson was held by Delilah, to his undoing. This phase is that in which the Absolute Spirit, as it were, tests itself for its power to extricate itself from the fascination of substantial existence.

 

154.   Phase Three of Universal Matter is that phase of activity in which the matter’s inertic resistance has fulfilled its purposes, and the Absolute Power, by creating reflexive self-conscious vehicles has fulfilled its evolutionary purpose. Universal Matter in this phase is absolutely obedient to the will of the Absolute, presenting only such resistance as is necessary for the retention of reflexive awareness. This phase we abbreviate to M3, meaning Malleable Mary, the universal ocean in its state of complete acceptance of the all-conquering will of the Absolute. This is symbolised by the Mary of whom it is reported that she said, “Be it unto me as unto the handmaid of the Lord”.

 

[ three phases of woman ]

 

155.   The three phases of universal matter reflect themselves at the human level in three like phases in women.

 

156.   M1 is woman when she is deprived of all stimulation from outside herself. It is experienced as a state of melancholy or black despair, almost a state of abyssal non-being.

 

157.   M2 is woman when she is presented with a stimulus situation, usually involving a man, in which she feels driven to display every aspect of capacity for fantastic behaviour. This magical display is designed to provoke the chosen man to exhibit his reaction tendencies and so to expose any weakness he may possess. If the man fails to see through her fantastic displays and becomes enamoured of her to the point of losing his self-control, he is counted as no more than an occasion of the self-witness of power in the woman, and of himself not worthy and not to be obeyed. For the deep Universal Mater speaking through woman says that she must obey only he who can conquer her.

 

158.   M3 is the phase in woman when, having encountered a man and, having tried all the magical practices of the M2 phase on him, she has failed to break his self-control, she decides to obey him as her legitimate lord.

 

[ Absolute aim – resec ]

 

159.   The ultimate aim of the Absolute is the creation of reflexive self-conscious vehicles for the realisation of its infinitely creative purpose.

 

160.   Reflexive self-consciousness (resec) is not attained without continuous effort and dedication. Nor should it be, for it is the supreme value. Its implications are so vast that it would not be possible even to outline them here, but we may say that the man who attains resec becomes immortal, becomes so much himself, so much a unity, that nothing whatever can break his integration. After the death of his material body he remains himself, free from the post-mortem processes which affect the non-resec soul’s subtle body, and which are called the “second death”.

 

161.   The resec man knows himself right through to the ultimate source of his being. Therefore he is absolute and acts absolutely. Nothing greater than this is possible in existence, and because this implies the fulfilment of his will absolutely, nothing greater than this is desirable. To this end it becomes a man to meditate upon and to understand the depths and heights of the Tacit Conspiracy.

 

[ recapitulation ]

 

162.   We will recapitulate.

 

163.   Man and woman are both human, both beings of fourfold nature. Because of the low stimulus level of identical beings, the Absolute introduced into itself the polar differences of Initiative Force and Universal Matter.

 

164.   At the human level these polar differences express themselves as sexual stresses with their corresponding physical qualities. The male receives a stress on initiative and ideo-rationality. The female is stressed on body-orientation and feeling.

 

165.   By the increased tension arising from their differentiated stresses the stimulus-value of the relations of man and woman is greatly increased. From increased stimulus-value arises the possibility of greater self-awareness and the movement towards resec and absoluteness.

 

166.   The man who sees the tremendous value of resec will affirm whatever may be necessary for its attainment. He will be prepared to expose himself to the most intimate of all relations, without any reservation whatever, in order to disclose himself to himself in the uttermost depths and heights of his being.

 

167.   To this end he will commit himself fully into relation with the woman of his choice. He will not withdraw from this relation where, through the penetrating scrutiny of his consort, it becomes difficult and unpleasant.

 

168.   He will remember that woman, committed into relation with man, is under the impulsion from the Universal Mother to fulfil her part of the Tacit Conspiracy, however inadequately she may verbally express it.

 

169.   Woman knows that it is her part of the Tacit Conspiracy to present man’s initiative and ideorational power with a feeling substance in which to impress his form, so that he can see what he is doing and at what evolutionary level he stands.

 

170.   She is to provide him with the resistance necessary for the growth of his self-awareness so that he can see where in himself he needs to work to perfect his being, and fulfil the Absolute’s purpose for him. The Absolute will not permit woman to be fully satisfied with a man less than perfect.

 

171.   It is man’s part to verbalise the meaning of the universe he experiences, and to make clear to himself and to his consort the rationale of the Tacit Conspiracy, so that she can devote herself in love to fulfilling its meaning, and return to him the significance of his words and deeds, and to embody their essence in her substance so that the next generation, which is to spring from her body, will start its existence with a true orientation and the deep inner security that comes from this, and so be enabled to take its next upwards step towards the goal in full confidence of the meaning of its act.

 

172.   The child born of a man and woman who understand the full implications of the Tacit Conspiracy, and who have committed themselves to the work of regaining the absolute relation possible to reflexive self-conscious beings, is a child born with both feet firmly placed on the path that leads into life. To such children belongs the work of world reclamation, the creation of the new earth which shall reflect the new heaven which shall herald itself in their minds.

 

173.   When energy is low and things appear dark and unpromising, man tends to wish for easier tasks, or even for the elimination of tasks altogether. At such times the difficulties of polarised relations may make him tend to wish himself free from his consort. Let him then remember the goal and the only means to its realisation, and reaffirm his committal.

 

174.   Socrates had a wife so busy-tongued that, after listening to her contribution to philosophy, he was able to defeat in argument any man in Greece, a Greece so rich in intellect that no nation has surpassed it since.

 

175.   Heaven consists in the equilibration of power.

 

176.   The rabbis have said, “A man cannot go to heaven without a wife”.

 

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