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THE HEALING OF ELEMENTALS - I

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"How did you come here, O King, on foot or in a chariot?"
"I did not come, sir, onfoot. I came in a chariot. "
"If you came in a chariot, explain to me what that is. Is it the pole that is the chariot?"
"Certainly not."
"Is it the wheels, or the frame, or the ropes, or the yoke, or the spokes or the goad that is the chariot?"
To all of these King Milinda still answered no.
"Then is it all these parts that is the chariot?"
"No, Nagasena."
"But is there anything outside them that is the chariot?"
And still he answered no.
"Then, ask as I may, I can discover no chariot. 'Chariot' is a mere empty sound. What, then, is this 'chariot' you say you came in? Your Majesty has spoken a falsehood, an untruth! There is no such thing as a 'chariot'! You are king over all India, a mighty monarch. Of whom, then, are you afraid that you speak untruth?"

Questions of King Milinda

__Human beings commonly conceive of themselves as privileged subjects active in an outer world of objects, and acted upon by a host of forces and pressures. Though they assign a stable reality to themselves as subjects and to these objects, they are generally confused about the dynamic connection between the two. Typically, they picture objects as having a sort of mechanistic persistence and variability, markedly different from the kind of vital energy they ascribe to themselves. No such sharp distinction can succeed, however, in accounting for the essential facts of human life. Much that is deemed to be subjective displays the same inveterate and stark routinization held to characterize the so-called external world of mechanical objects. And supposedly inert objects often reveal dynamic qualities ranging from the perverse to the poetic. The nexus or network of this perplexing condition is centered in the human body itself, which is continually affected alike by seemingly subjective and objective forces.

__The arcane mystery surrounding embodied consciousness has been the fertile source of much philosophical speculation, largely bound up with Cartesian dualism and the so-called "mind-body problem". Having severed form and consciousness from each other at a fundamental level, most thinkers, like "all the king's horses and all the king's men", have been unable to put them back together again. Nor does radical objective materialism or extreme subjective idealism yield a consistent resolution of the problem. This philosophical quandary reflects a broader malaise in human understanding and self-consciousness with vital implications in arenas such as medicine and health, education and therapy, and the crucial connection of individual moral choices with the collective social and political order. Notions like "psychosomatic illness", "ego-transference" and "political charisma" point to lacunae in our basic categories, and provide more heat than light, with few, if any, clues to responsible action. As a result, the well-intentioned find themselves unable to instantiate their ideals, and it is small compensation that the perverse and malicious are also rather impotent in imposing on the world their malign schemes for universal degradation.

__From the standpoint of Gupta Vidya, this entire dualistic approach is rooted in a fundamental philosophical error. Instead of viewing differentiated form and consciousness as two radically separate modes of being, it sees them only as manifesting aspects of a single undifferentiated substance-principle. That rootless root is pre-cosmic ideation as well as pre-cosmic matter, both absolute consciousness and absolute unconsciousness, it being impossible to attribute any finite or formal character to this primordial, pre-genetic Ground. Thus the common-sense distinctions between mind and matter, between body and soul, are merely relative and conceptual, helpful in characterizing different functions and faculties within living beings, but systematically misleading if taken as suggesting any strict dichotomy in the ontological bases of these diverse powers and principles. Further, this singular and sole origin of all consciousness and form implies that there is no unbridgeable gap between modes of manifestation of form and consciousness in various kingdoms of Nature, ranging from the least and lowest to the most metaphysically exalted. All alike are ensouled by one universal and ramifying divine Intelligence, and all are equally embodiments of one supreme and homogeneous light-essence.

__These two aspects – mahat and daiviprakriti – unfold and enfold all the possibilities of differentiated existence throughout the complex realms of visible and invisible Nature, from the highest radiations of Logoic or cosmic intelligence to the subphysical species of elementals – the salamanders, sylphs, undines and gnomes of alchemical and popular folklore. At every successive level, grosser emanations mirror the specific modes of activity and intelligence of their more subtle "parents" but with diminishing ranges of action on every descending plane of existence, until finally the extreme limit of differentiation in a particular cycle of manifestation is reached. The entire web of Nature vibrates and resonates with the pulsations of the Logoic heart, expressing the One Life in myriad modes of manifest sensitivity and action. Throughout, the law of universal harmony reigns unbroken, continually adjusting the relations of all the parts within the impartite sovereign presence and provenance of the One. Its intelligence is behind their intelligence, and as they are drawn together or driven apart in successive communities and aggregations, as they suffer various transformations and transmutations of capability, all this is directly and immediately an expression of the infinite potential inherent in the Logoic root.