Polar Beings

DANCE, my heart ! dance to-day with joy.

The strains of love fill the days and
the nights with music, and the
world is listening to its melodies :

Mad with joy, life and death dance
to the rhythm of this music. The
hills and the sea and the earth
dance. The world of man dances
in laughter and tears.

Why put on the robe of the monk, and
live aloof from the world in lonely
pride ?

Behold ! my heart dances in the de-
light of a hundred arts ; and the
Creator is well pleased.

KABIR

COURTLY LOVE

The absolute-Love is accessible to the human soul even here. However, neither man nor woman can reach it separately. It is only accessible to a couple, and on the condition of a conscious and total integration of both into a single Being by a synthesis of the real “I” and “You” who have had the strength to break the crust of their respective Personalities. In practice, this can only happen when the two Personalities are already very advanced, and both rich with the experience that each has separately acquired in exterior life.
If it is certain that the state of Beatitude cannot be properly described in human language, yet the Tradition insists on the fact that in spite of its immense difficulties, it is possible to attain it. With this goal in mind, esoteric science has elaborated a complete science of exercises.
Human love is imperfect because it is instinctive and impulsive. As long as man automatically follows his impulses, his love will serve only the cosmic goals of the ensemble. The pleasure he always gains from this is as much an equilibrating element as a reward. As it is, it will not serve his esoteric evolution in any way.  Yet Love is the surest and most powerful means of achieving this evolution. This is because Love is the one objective element in our lives. That objectivity remains true in all Love's many aspects, and through all the variety of its manifestations.
Love can, in effect, serve man in his esoteric evolution. However, to achieve this aim, man must apply conscious efforts to this love, not allow himself be led on by impulses.
In this case, the contribution of energy which Love provides will not be spent immediately to serve general aims, but will remain in man's possession. It can then be used to accelerate the growth of his Personality and its progress towards the second Birth, the first tangible result of esoteric practices.
This is the theory of monastic work, and it essentially applies to the sexual center. We strive to master its impulses by exercises. Without detailed examination of the advantages and inconveniences of this method we must say that, in the new Era, esoteric work is to come out of the crypts and the monasteries. From now on, it must instead be pursued inside life, in the field of everyday activity of human society. This task is certainly more difficult, for we are neither protected within life, as in a monastery, nor sheltered from the greatest part of “A” influences. On the other hand, life offers more effective means, and leads to less fragile results; esoteric practice inside life also allows simple control of the sexual center, permitting cultivation of the manifestations of love by means of the emotional and intellectual centers, making the creative spirit spring up in all its different forms. This higher order of culture will have as its aim to focus all creative efforts towards one and the same point of application, the integral development of the Personality: the second Birth; the crystallization of the astral body, and its junction with the real “I” to form an Individuality
This work, done by man and woman working together, can develop with extraordinary power and give rapid results... on condition that from the esoteric point of view the two beings entirely suit each other, and also on condition that they are a perfect couple, that is, that their combination— with reservations concerning the peculiarities of their human type — reflects the relation between the absolute “I” and the 'You' before the Creation of the Universe. This is the case of those beings known in esoteric science as polar beings.

If the fall is a direct consequence of identifying with the “I” of Personality, and the solitude of polar beings separated by the fall is the source of weakness in humans who have in this way become mortal, the return to Unity appears to be an inexhaustible source of new energies.

These energies are necessary to man, and to restore the dangerously disturbed equilibrium of today's public and private life, he must seek them out.

However, this return to the perfect unity of polar beings is not given freely. It is the exclusive privilege of those who have crossed, or are ready to cross, the second Threshold of the Way. It is through realization of the totally indivisible unity of their real “I”, by two polar Individualities arrived at the second Birth, that the original sin can and must be redeemed. This is the solution for private and for public life. This is also the peace of the Lord.

What is the real “I”, Soul of our soul and core of our Individuality, if not a divine spark, a particle of Christ's body

“GNOSIS” TOMO I BORIS MOURAVIEFF

In the Orthodox Tradition, one is taught that a book exists which is The Golden Book- The maxims and texts which figure in it are revealed to disciples gradually, as they progress on the Way. These fragments are read to them only once, but the disciple must remember them word for word and learn them by heart.

This is not a Book of the Dead, but a Book of the Living,
And this is what is inscribed in the book regarding the question we have just raised;
To live means to love;
He who loves not, hardly lives,
He leads a mournful existence
Whose only meaning lies in the hope of loving.
The remainder of this text is aimed at polar beings. We have already commented on it without having divulged it, and we will return to this subject later.
This principle which is so strongly stated in Lermontov's couplet had already been pronounced by St Paul nearly two thousand years ago. He said: the aim of life is to attain Love.
To attain Love is indeed to attain Light, to attain the Spirit, to finally attain God. For:
God is Love God is Light, God is Spirit.
And St John adds:
For Love is of God ... and

In a manner of speaking the T of the Personality, which is situated between the two other “I”s, is the great question-mark of our lives. The Personality can perish if it identifies itself with the T of the body, or it can gain eternal life by identifying with the real “I”.
So everything depends on the attitude that a man adopts towards himself and his life: on whether he builds directly on the sand or digs first until he reaches the rock.
In fact, the human Personality is a talent, a. marvelous Divine loan given to man so that he can make it germinate through Work; it is not given to him so that he can bury it. If he does so, he is only establishing himself in the Temporal illusion which he obstinately takes for the real in spite of all the evidence to the contrary, evidence that is confirmed by death.
This idea, or rather this fact of an existence loaned to us with the opportunity to make it permanent through Work, should be ever-present in the seeker's mind if he aspires to the Way, the Truth and the Life. And he should not forget for one instant the maxim which is inscribed in the Golden Book, that anyone who does not develop his talent loses it.

We have said that Love, like the personality, is also a Divine talent which is loaned to man, and we will repeat this more than once. Everybody shouts: I love, you love, he loves, etc. But first of all we need to be aware of just what can be objectively true in this assertion. This is the problem.
The nature of Love cannot be defined precisely in scientific language. We can only judge from its known manifestations.

St Paul gives us an objective and complete description of it in the following lines:
Love is patient and full of kindness; love envied not; love vaunt not itself, is not puffed up with pride; does nothing dishonest; seek not her own, is not easily provoke, think not evil, rejoice not in iniquity, but rejoice in the truth; bears all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things.
 
However, to know Love in itself one must feel it—must live it. And one cannot feel it except in confluence with it. We must never lose sight of this reality: Love, being of the Divine essence, reveals an absolute power in its manifestations. The result is that one cannot command love any more than one can forbid love. We know this in our heart of hearts, whatever we may say and however we may plead for ourselves or moralize for others.
II

We have just said that the Aim of life is to attain Love. The degree of Love that enables the acquisition of spiritual gifts—what we have called the acquisition of new faculties —is an attribute of the man 5 who has passed through the second Birth. In other words, it belongs to the newborn Individuality which has acquired the consciousness of the real T in its sublime androgynous manifestations. It is the fruit of Love, of the Divine Grace which is accorded to one who works in the Lord's field, that is, who works esoterically.
However, Love always remains the Aim of life, even for someone who is ignorant, according to the Apostle's expression, one who does not participate in this Work. Better still, Love is the Aim of life on the whole cosmic scale, right down to the most primitive organisms. As far as human beings are concerned, three characteristic levels appear. As we have seen, everything that lives, lives by Love, and aspires to Love, And by changing its appearance, Love manifests itself as a whole scale of values. It is, however, important to understand that this whole scale of values corresponds to several different levels of Consciousness. And in the case of Love as in that of Consciousness, the acquisition of the higher level does not automatically exclude or annihilate the lower level that has been transcended, but transform! it.
One often speaks of the sublimation of sex which follows the passage to higher levels of Consciousness. In fact, this sublimation takes place continuously on the whole Great Ladder of the evolution of living beings. For mankind it involves three steps which correspond to the three categories, already described, into which humanity is sub-divided.

The access to what is properly called the Way demands assiduous work which may be divided into four stages. This forms a Staircase of four 'steps' of which the last is Love—the level that the man of the psyche must attain to appear before the second Threshold and to cross it. We indicated the traditional virtues which correspond to these four stages: Faith — Hope — Knowledge (Gnosis) and, lastly hove. The execution of this successive program of work depends on the continuity of the faithful's efforts. The latter are often super-human, and must be made in the framework of one of the four Ways, which must correspond to the neophyte's type of psyche.
The fifth Way, which offers the possibility of rapidly attaining and triumphantly crossing the second Threshold. This way is only possible to two polar beings in a united and conscious effort. This is the way of the Knight and the Lady of his Dreams.
The essential thing is to understand that someone who climbs the Staircase by following one of the four ways faces a twofold task: the acquisition of Gnosis in order to attain Love and, at the same time, the liquidation of the karmic burden accumulated in the previous and current films. This work must be accomplished with all the Faith and Hope one can muster if one wishes to reach a result during the course of this life or during the film or films to come. The task is great and always difficult, but the risk is relatively small as the demands are less than those made on the fifth way. The reason for this is that the latter is much more rapid than the fourth way, just as the fourth way is more rapid than the other three. The rapidity of the fifth way is the logical consequence of the fact that one covers it, so to speak, in the opposite direction. In following the first four ways the mutual recognition between polar beings only happens after the second Threshold, but in the case of the fifth way it takes place intuitively before the second Threshold and even before the first for one partner, or sometimes for both.
This may be explained by the fact that the karmic burden never appears as an amorphous whole, but as the result of a certain number of positive and negative components, each on an appropriate plane, which when they are taken together form what is called the individual's Karma.
As we have just said, polar beings may recognize each other even before the first Threshold since, seen from the angle of their profound attitude towards Love, their karmic burden may be of no account or insignificant. In other words, they live with a deep aspiration towards true Love within themselves, whether or not this is recognized and formulated. They will not be capable of lying to themselves in this domain.

This inward attitude immediately places the polar beings on the fourth step of the Staircase, but they are then forced to quickly liquidate their karmic burden on the other planes of human consciousness. This burden may be light, medium or heavy, but it is different in each of the polar beings who form a couple.
The mutual recognition of polar beings before the second or even before the first Threshold presupposes that they have already acquired the minimum Faith and Hope that is demanded of them. Thus, already having Faith and Hope in large measure, and since they are on the step of Love, they only have to cultivate these in order to acquire Gnosis, and then liquidate the remainder of their Karma to give them access to the second Threshold.
The method that applies to them is a little special. Their case is an exception to the normal. In the picturesque language of the Tradition we say that the method consists in emptying the bags of Karma by repelling it with Gnosis. This is the imperative rule given to them. The reader who is committed to follow the fifth way must remember this maxim and meditate on its profound significance.
But this undertaking is not easy. Efforts and super-efforts are both necessary if it is to be completed quickly enough, as it is not possible to remain indefinitely on the fourth step. As we have already indicated, the steps of the Staircase are made in such a way that they bear the aspirant only for a certain time, after which they collapse.
These are the data of the problem that faces two polar beings the day they meet, when, through an indescribable inward movement, they spontaneously feel the objective and absolute feeling that together they form only one being.
In the domain of the free romance the partners think seriously of nothing apart from their desire to be united, and everything is subordinated to this imperative desire that is intensified by the will of the Absolute III. So much is this so that when one or even both of them are already bound elsewhere at the time of their meeting, they overlook it.
Apart from lying to others, they then begin to lie to themselves.
Love is the Divine expression of the Truth; the introduction of the lie ruins the happiness of the lovers. Their Love gives them a certain amount of credit, but this credit is short-lived.
if the lovers do not adhere to the supreme conditions demanded by Love, once their credit is exhausted, Love disappears.
The following does not apply to the just; but those polar beings who recognize each other are generally, at the moment of their encounter, tied hand and foot by old and new karma that is created before their meeting and, all too often, created after it as well.

1. But how can I be sure that she is really the Lady of my Dreams? The one for whom I yearn and for whom I seek on all the paths of my Way? Will I have the strength to conquer doubt and to believe in the perfect, everlasting happiness that all my lost illusions cannot efface?

Here we return to the Golden Book and to the text that was previously quoted in part. This is what follows:
Every man is born bearing within him the image of his polar being.
As he grows, this image grows within him;
It takes form and is filled with life and color.
Man is not conscious of it. Yet it is his Alter Ego,
The Lady of his dreams, his Princess of the vision.
I ft quest of her he must eternally go.
In Her alone, he will find a perfect echo of himself;
Of the most intimate, inexpressible movements of his soul,
For in their union, the limit between the I and the Thou is obliterated.
Since she is his Singular, his legitimate Spouse.
And Silence will then be the depositary of the fullness of their Love.

BAPTISM OF FIRE

The Baptism of Fire, which is the ultimate proof of purification, is given before the second Threshold, preceding the second Birth,
The Baptism of Fire has a double meaning: a moral test and an objective effect.
The two lovers, conscious of their presumably integral polarity, are called upon to straightway renounce carnal love. They must do this consciously and of a common accord, at the same time cultivating the Sacred fire of their Love, which then takes the form of courtly love. In this way they will tune themselves until they are in harmony with the laws which rule sexual life in the second cosmic octave. On the other hand, the Sacred fire of this Love will progressively burn away their karmic burden. In this way, says the Tradition, the foreign faces in the film will be eliminated from the game of their own accord.
Circumstances will change and the obstacles will be removed. Having gone through this test of Fire, the two lovers will appear before the second Threshold purified and ready to receive the Baptism of Fire. They will then be united forever in the permanent consciousness of their integral and indissoluble unity by the act of the second Birth, the birth of their Individuality,
For this it is necessary to withstand the test.
Perhaps, after having rejected the divine hand stretched out towards them to unite them forever in the Light, and after the passage of time, they may bitterly regret the weakness which they then took for strength of character.
This is why it is written:
... Thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thin eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be jealous therefore, and repent.
Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.
To him that over cometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in His throne.
He that hath an ea, let him hear what the Spirit said unto the Churches?
The question is, simply, to know what to listen to. Christ offers us his pure Gold against payment in our false currency which He burns in the fire. In other words:
the ETERNAL against the TEMPORAL

GNOSIS III

POLARITY CASES

If only human beings were not so heterogeneous in their substance, or In other words, in their Personality, they would recognize their polar being, whom they meet at least once during their lives without difficulty. But because their hearts have become insensitive," they generally pass them by without suspecting their identity.

Let us return to our calculation of the partial polarities that can exist between man and woman, or vice versa. We have seen that, starting from the twelve sectors of the two motor centers of a couple, we may reach sixty- six types. Each of these sectors can become an organ of manifestation of  the energy SI 12 of the sexual center as it acts.
These sixty-six types represent the possibilities of more or less 'legitimate' relationships. Those that are formed outside this group belong to the vast domain of 'considerations' and of prostitution.
These sixty-six types, taken as a whole, express the different possibilities. Of pure carnal love. Four types out of the sixty-six associated with the “I” of the body, which is essentially polygamous or polyandrous, are different from the others by nature and, because they are distinct, are not included amongst them, but are added to the list, thus carrying the number to seventy.
In the first place, it is a question of three cases in which one of the three centers of the Personality is wholly engaged-and so of three cases where hylic love is accompanied by psychic love so that, from then on, it no longer simply represents three of the many possibilities of 'legitimate' mistresses or lovers, but the three possible husbands or wives allowed by the Orthodox Church in cases of widowhood or divorce in their recognized
forms. It stops at this figure precisely because the natural possibilities of polarity of the psyche do not go any further.
The distinctive signs of these three cases of polarity of the psyche, which can lead to three unions which are canonically and esoterically legitimate- but which only engage the couple for the terrestrial life of the psyche - are the following:
I. When the polarization of the motor centers is complete, the attraction that the man and woman feel towards each other has its center of gravity in the sense of touch, which prevails over the other sensory impressions: then there is, in the act of carnal love, such a deep confluence that the couple may momentarily lose consciousness of their intellectual and emotional functions.
II. When the polarization of the intellectual centers is complete, the attraction is of another order: it is visual in the woman, and auditory in the man. These cases were relatively rare in past centuries, but they are multiplying in our days, now that intellectual formation is the same for the two sexes.
III. When the polarity of the emotional centers is complete, on the contrary, the attraction is visual in the man and auditory in the woman.
Of course, these distinctive signs exist in full only where, theoretically, the functions of the centers are not mixed; or in other words, when no center interferes in the domain of the others. In addition, the sexual energy must not be previously usurped by one or two of the three centers, but must be discharged equally through them all, so that they may all be
oriented together towards the act of carnal love, each taking its particular role.
The fourth example of the distinct cases mentioned above -- and the seventieth of the total number - is that of truly polar beings.15 Here the real “I” is involved, and the couple's Love, while containing all the possibilities already described in the preceding cases, has a

15. Regarding this, it is interesting to note a passage from Nestor's Russian chronicle A Tole of Times Gone By, in which he relates how, in the year 989 (AD) an Imam was called to the Court of the Great Prince Vladimir, who wanted to hear what were the principal dogmas of the Islamic religion. This is what he was told: '... Mohammed teaches that it is necessary to practice circumcision, not to eat pork, and not to drink wine. But after death, he will compensate each one with seven9 beautiful girls, and when one has been chosen from amongst the others, he (Mohammed) would concentrate in her, the beauty of all the others, and she would become the wife of the one who chose her.' (RDTR, Academy of Sciences Publications, Moscow-Leningrad, 1950, in two volumes, Vol. I, p. 59). The italics are the author's.
correlational character of a higher order.

singularly. It naturally follows that as this Love is hylic, psychic and spiritual at the same time, thus leading to an attraction that is visual, auditory and tactile, it is incomparably richer.
The chief characteristic of this so-called Royal case is the bi-polarity of the real “I” o n e for each couple. This orients their Personalities and their bodies in such a way that what each hopes for and awaits from the other is precisely, and very naturally, what the other desires to and is prepared to offer.
It is only in a case of this kind that there can be absolute harmony between a couple, and even this is conditional on each of them trying progressively to liquidate his or her karmic burden and to establish a balance between the lower centers, whose development must be pushed to the limit. These are the combined objectives which the allegedly polar couple who enter on the fifth way must seek through their work. This means that, right from the beginning, the Knight and his Lady-elect must practice courtly Love, which unites in itself Faith, Hope and Knowledge (Gnosis). After the Second Threshold, this involves the acquisition of new faculties, and once this task has been accomplished, it comes to an
end in the note MI of the Way.

GNOSIS III BORIS MOURAVIEFF

PNEUMATIC MARRIAGE

The transmutation of the Hydrogens in this first octave can continue beyond SI 12 in two ways: ordinary and extraordinary. The ordinary, direct transmutation of SI 12 into DO 6 takes place in a natural way in the normal sexual act, which fills the interval between these two notes. When the act ends, the transmutation is completed by conception, where, united in the genetic orgasm, the male SI 12 and the female SI 12 conceive a new, independent embryonic life, which will follow its own way and develop through a descending scale.
In the second case, the extraordinary transmutation, all the surplus SI 12 energy, which is ejected from the organism for the price of the pleasure obtained by carnal love, can be accumulated in the organism and undergo an internal transmutation.
This extraordinary transmutation is indirect. It does not take place in an instinctive, natural way, as with conception. It can only result from the conscious efforts of those who are progressing on the Staircase and have attained the third step. We wit1 come back to this important question in more detail toward the end of the present volume. For the moment we will leave aside the question of 'how', and will only describe the alchemical technique of the process.
Like the first, this second mode of transmutation has three stages, which we can regard as analogous to betrothal, marriage, and conception. It is true that we are still dealing with Love, but here it acts on the higher plane of the Courtly love at unites the Knight with the Lady of his dreams.
During the first stage of this Love, instead of being ejected from the physical and psychic organisms of the man and woman, the energy SI 12 is preserved in them both by being associated laterally with SOL 12, the fifth note of the octave of respiration.
The happy climax of this process is felt like an irresistible sexual attraction, but of a higher, purely psychic order, and the fresh energy of the SI 12, uniting synchronizing  with SOL 12 in the two organisms, communicates a new impetus to the latter; the couple feel a wave of high inspiration flowing through them and opening up surprising perspectives.
Apart from very rare cases, the couple - the Knight and his Lady - realize this state of higher inspiration only after they have practiced courtly Love for a more or less prolonged period; fox only courtly Love can provoke this new impulse that comes from SI 12 turned towards their interior. This is because the SOL 12 is already the fifth note of the respiratory gamut, so that the loss of charge at this distance, in the 'fallen' condition of the couple, is such that it barely responds any more. But, under the effect of this powerful impetus coming from the SI 12, the couple experience a union of the psyche which can be compared with nothing else, a foretaste of the androgynous consciousness. In this way the Knight and his Lady reach the stage of the mystical betrothal and receive a benediction from Above through the mediation of the higher emotional Centre.
If the couple attains the desired degree of emotional tension through courtly Love practiced in this way, the SOL 12, aroused by the strength of the SI 12, will communicate an inflow of energy to MI 12, the third note of the octave of impressions. Keeping in mind the epicyclical currents, the reader will understand the power of this triple Hydrogen 12 that comes from the two sexes and combines in itself the SI 12, the SOL 12, and the MI 12, all three vibrating fully in both partners.
The successful unfolding of this process can provoke a state where the masculine and feminine energies coming from the SI 12, aided in both the man and the woman by two other Hydrogens 12, unite in an ecstasy –in the consciousness of their bipolar real 'I:, which is ONE and indivisible for the two elements of the couple.
In this way the marriage of the psyche, which is the crowning of courtly Love, is consummated: after this, the Knight and his Lady will be forever fused together in their androgynous consciousness, whatever the outer circumstances and even in spite of death. On the Fifth Way  is the first tangible result obtained through a sustained and conscious effort for the sublimation of sex.
I t is necessary to state here that the sublimation of sex is not an aim in Itself, but a means. It has four degrees, of which the three that follow the ecstasy of the mystical marriage appear in an order opposite to that in which courtly Love had led the couple to the androgynous consciousness.
The second is the synergic and synchronous passage from MI 12 to FA 6 in both the man and the woman, a passage which is instantaneous and has an effect analogous to conception. The third degree is the passage from SOL 12 to LA 6 which happens gradually and demands time: we can compare this with the stage of pregnancy; lastly, if nothing happens to stop the process, the couple reach the fourth degree, the simultaneous passage from SI 12 to DO 6: this is the Birth, the Third Birth which, with the crossing of the Third Threshold, opens up t h way that will lead the Knight and the Lady of his thoughts towards the empyrean of the Pleroma.
It is easier to understand now why it is such an error for the evolved adamic man and woman who have reached the third Step of the Staircase and are about to climb the fourth, that of Love, to continue to eject the SI 12 energy from their organisms for the sake of ephemeral pleasure, when its accumulation, its mastery, and its judicious orientation toward the act of courtly Love, can open the door to the lost Paradise for them.

(for better to understand it would be useful to revise the Hydrogens´s transmutation in chapter XIV of the book III)

extracto de GNOSIS III