To understand the extent of man's possible evolution, we must first discover the place that man occupies in The Ray of Creation. In previous posts, we have learned that there are two places where the octave encounters difficulty in any ascending or descending octave. In the terminology of The Tradition, these difficult places are called 'Shocks,' and they occur between the notes Mi-Fa and Si-Do.

To allow the passage of force through the Mi-Fa or Si-Do intervals, some influence or force from the outside is required. We saw examples of this in the three-foods diagram, where the introduction of air allowed the digestion of food to continue. Consider now the following diagram:

Organic Life

What outside influence allows the passage of force from the higher orders of The Ray of Creation to flow to the earth and her moon? Organic life! Without organic life, she would be a cold and barren wasteland. Every form of life on this planet is a receiver of extra-planetary forces. Life processes refines and distributes them to the planet and moon. In this regard, organic life acts similarly as enzymes do in the digestion of food in our bodies.

However, if an outside influence is required to fill the shock, from where does it originate? The planet cannot fill the missing semitone on its own. For reasons that will become clear later, it is through the will of our sun that the missing semitone is bridged. Our sun, sounding the note 'Do,' creates a lateral octave, known as organic life, to allow the passage of force from higher to lower (and vice versa).

As can be seen in the above diagram, organic life on earth fills this interval in The Ray of Creation by sounding the notes 'Fa', 'Sol', and 'La' in the place of the shock. These notes give us a significant clue as to the types of forces that organic life processes. Recall that the note 'Fa' corresponds to the level of "All Planets" in our solar system. The note 'Sol' corresponds to our sun, and the note 'La' corresponds to our Milky Way galaxy. By way of the tuning fork principle, life on earth is designed to process planetary, solar, and galactic forces.

The Tuning Fork Principle

The tuning fork principle simply states that "things of kind resonate on the same frequency." For example, if I hand you a tuning fork tuned to the musical note 'A' and sound the note of 'A' on a piano or some other musical instrument, your tuning fork will begin to vibrate in sympathy, even at quite some distance.

Similarly, organic life on earth is constructed of the 'stuff' of the planets, our sun, and our galaxy. As such, organic life resonates with and attracts to itself those frequencies. We vibrate in sympathy with the signals of the universe!

One can find, in this notion, a strong connection to astrology. In ancient times, when man was more in tune with the cosmos, he could sense which animals, plants, and minerals responded to planetary and starry influences. This is why for example, the sign of Aries became associated with the ram, the wolf, honeysuckle, etc... These were not arbitrary assignments but actual observations of the forces being processed.

Levels of Consciousness

Each note in the lateral octave corresponds not only to a type of life on the planet but also to its level of consciousness. Below the note 'Fa' on the lateral octave, we find 'Mi' which corresponds to the mineral life of our planet. Lower still, at the note of 'Re,' we find metallic life, which is also associated with the moon. At the note 'Do,' we find the heavy, radioactive elements which offer only death to organic life.

From a psychological standpoint, the notes 'Mi' and 'Re' correspond to the waking-sleep and the nocturnal-sleep states (respectively) that nearly all of mankind lives in. The note 'Fa' of the lateral octave represents consciousness at the level of "All Planets," "The First Awakening," and the formation of the Astral Body. The level of 'Fa' is the lowest level of consciousness that man was meant to occupy.

Based on this understanding, we can now see that just as the "will of the sun" creates a lateral octave in The Ray of Creation, the "will of man," through the practice of self-remembering, bridges the Mi-Fa interval in the "Ray of Consciousness":

Thus, we now understand our place in the cosmic Ray of Creation. We can also begin to see the kind of effort required to awaken. From a technical standpoint, our effort of will in self-remembering allows us to collect the finer Hydrogens that resonate with planetary, solar, and galactic influences in the universe. This is the tuning fork principle at work.

This, however, is only a part of what is required to awaken. In the following few sections, we will take a deeper look at the energetic structure of man's design to shed more light on the requirements of awakening.

The First Awakening

In the last heading, we explored the mechanics of evolution within the context of the three foods. We discovered that certain higher hydrogens correspond to higher functions within the human complex. We also discovered that the third food, impressions, only sounds like a weak 'Do' in the organism:

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