I remembered my guru. It seemed that he too had passed this way and blazed a trail of light that others could follow. Then, as always, inside my inside-out world there was my "alter-self" Howard. Our angle was the same as though we had been fused into one dichotomous being. We were moving together like intermeshed strands of purple and gold silk and there was something important about the direction we were taking. Evidently we were making a turn that would create a significant definition of the design we were weaving within a much larger tapestry of flowing colors. We were changing the angle and I could see that this was going to be hard to accomplish. The point was too acute; there was pain in the process of making so sharp a bend. It was like the screech of chalk on a blackboard or the burnt-rubber pressure on the tires of a car as it swerves round a corner. I was trying to engineer this vector so that I would be on the outer edge. In this way it seemed as though I might shield him from the abrasiveness of the contact with the harsh surface that was resisting our progress. "Please, please put him on the inside and me on the outside!" I begged. "I don't want him to have to feel that pain. Let me be at the point of the angle."
But already the gods of the 360 degrees were retreating back to their austere Olympus, the angels of the angles had flattened into black and white lines, and space was a place of static surfaces. As always, the awareness of de-amplifying my consciousness, like stepping down an electrical current, was accompanied by the frustration of realizing that there was still no way that I could link these contrasting realms. There simply weren't enough memory fibers to make the connections, or even to create a verbal reconstruction. However, a mathematical analogy did suggest itself.
It seemed to me that my situation was similar to that which a two-dimensional plane being who, for the sake of analogy I will call "Mr. Square," might encounter if he were trying to explain the dynamics of a cube to his surfacy friends. If Mr. Square could contrive to rise up and down at an angle to his accustomed plane he might to some extent experience the qualities of the cube. He might even become cognizant of the fact that he had always been a cross section of this fuller, deeper state of being. But once the vertical motion ceased he would again become hopelessly horizontal.
Now if Mr. Square could somehow get "high" and thereby ascend into the third dimension his two-dimensional compadres would probably assume that he had merely gone away, leaving only the projected shadow of himself behind. They might also suppose that he had in some mysterious way been diminished, whereas actually the scope of his awareness had increased. Indeed, his square associates would be apt to resent his elevation, since in their normal superficial condition there would be no way they could follow after. To make matters worse, any description Mr. Square could give of the modus operandi of the cube would be bound to sound like arrant nonsense unless other squares could be induced to take the same journey. Only by experiencing "cubeness" themselves could they understand.
Now as I sank back to my own personal Flatland it appeared that there were identifiable reference points along the downward arc. Not that there were any clear lines of demarcation between one stratum and the next; there weren't. It did seem, however, as though I was passing through a spectrum of states of consciousness in which one hue or tonality imperceptibly gave way to the next.
At the highest (or deepest) level there was the cosmatrix, that all-in-all state of purely transcendent, but nonetheless totally sentient, being. According to our illustration the cosmatrix would constitute a dimension even higher than that of the cube-a dimension where everything is everywhere. Probably the best word to describe the quality of that formless fullness is interpenetration.
Next there comes the tripartite realm which we have come to call the bright world. One could say that the cosmatrix is like a supersaturated solution which is ready to crystalize when subjected to the catalytic action of the bright world. That is, the bright world precipitates the potential energy of the cosmatrix into the kinetic circumstances of the mundane plane. While the bright world is inherently subtle it contains the chemical formulas which underlie the dense elements of planet Earth. In other words the bright world is the numinous nexus of formative principles that are the precursors of bodily existence. It comprises the sum of the individualizing process which simultaneously reduces Spirit into Matter and transubstantiates Matter into Spirit. As such it can be identified with the anima mundi or "soul of the world" of which philosophers have long spoken.
It seemed to me that the bright world itself could be divided into layers which, curiously enough, correspond to the Hindu philosophical trinity of Sat-Chit-Ananda, a tripartite word usually (and inadequately) translated as "existence-knowledge-bliss." Having raised myself in the theosophical tradition I would have expected to have encountered a somewhat different layering of effects. As it turned out, there were also some correspondences with the higher astral, egoic, and causal realms of the theosophical tradition. However, to my surprise, the system of the Hindus came the closest to matching my personal experience. The qualities of Sat, Chit, and Ananda can be briefly described as follows:
Sat, being the first emanation from the power source which the Hindus call Brahman, is concerned with the essences of all forms. It is the will-to-be which brings all things into existence and determines what they may eventually become.
Chit is the principle of mind which wisely conceives the archetypes of the various modes of being. As such, it involves the exercise of pure reason which makes the blueprints of the universe compatible with the properties of the material being molded, and which adjusts the psycho-genetic codes of all discrete entities.
Ananda is the expression of love which makes the fabric of creation right and good. We experience the bliss of Ananda through the beauty, orderliness and perfection of nature.
One might say, therefore, that Sat emits the original impulse, Chit is concerned with design making and Ananda en-joys (literally puts joy into) these designs.
The outcome of this externalizing process is the sensate realm which the Hindus term Maya or illusion. It should be borne in mind, however, that the phenomenal appearance of the world is illusory only in the sense that the pictures projected upon a movie screen are delusive. What one sees may not be a great show but nonetheless the story told represents real happenings. The main thing to grasp is that the material world is only the end result of a chain of causation which stretches back through the various strata of a serial universe. Pondering these concepts I found that my private cosmology was beginning to look something like this:
During the course of thirty-five years of metaphysical investigations I have studied many different maps of consciousness. I have delved into the profundities of the twelve zodiacal signs, the ten Cabalistic sephiroth, the nine Catholic orders of angels, the eightfold wheel of the Buddhists, the seven rays of the theosophists, the six-pointed Soloman's seal of the Hebrews, the five elements of the Chinese, the four essences of the Greeks, the sacred trinity of the Christians, and the polarized duality of the Gnostics. In all these enumerations it has remained apparent that, as the Vedantists insist, "Truth is one; men call it by many names."