In the phase of creation, breadth and immediacy are characteristic, meaning a person’s ability to perceive things as they occur, without significant control from consciousness, empathy, and lack of criticism. Empathy is the direct perception of another person’s state—not only in their words but in their entire mental content, their whole psyche. In the phase of creation, there is no special tuning of perception; the person perceives with wide-open eyes and ears everything that enters their sphere of perception, and it usually enters unexpectedly. They love surprises, are attuned to them, and often receive them. They value what has not existed before and do not compare what they see and hear with what they knew before. When it is said that the new is the well-forgotten old, this does not resonate with them; even the poorly forgotten old is completely forgotten by them, and when it appears before them, it seems new. It was in the phase of creation that the famous phrase was uttered: “You cannot step into the same river twice—for both the person and the river have changed.” When a person is in this modality of perception, it is easy to dazzle them, create an illusion, or make an impression so strong that both they and the one they impress feel as though they are fully absorbed; in reality, however, this is not the case. Soon after, they will turn their head aside, become captivated by the next spectacle, and their former enchantment will vanish like pollen from a flower, replaced by a new one. Some people experience new love this way: it comes as if for the first time, displacing all others, and the person feels as though they are in love for the first time in their life—yet after a short time, this state passes, and a new object is perceived as even more beautiful than the previous ones. But were there even previous ones?
In the phase of realization, perception is, first, critical, and second, filtered through certain patterns and templates. The person has a specific goal, certain activities, and a particular worldview, and within the framework of this goal, activity, and worldview, they perceive everything that happens. It is very difficult to disrupt this setting. They do not even strive to do so. Here, perception can be said to be sober; though, from another perspective, it is extremely narrow and overly pragmatically goal-oriented—yet the person sees details and nuances that are completely invisible in either the phase of creation or the phase of dissolution. Their attention is that of a professional. They look at the world knowing exactly what interests them and how the received information will be further processed. They can regulate their attention to a much greater extent than in the phase of creation, but this regulation occurs within the boundaries of their interests and self-imposed tasks. Their attention does not go beyond these limits. It is highly controlled, and the element of randomness, chaos, and even the mind wandering outside its designated circle is minimized.
In the phase of dissolution, perception, in some respects, expands compared to the phase of realization, while in others, it narrows. Here, the person tries to see the fate of an object or the world as a whole within the framework of the program they feel is nearing completion. They look at the beginning of the object’s history, its creation, then at all its work, and strive to understand the laws by which this object lived and how it should best complete its existence. Here, attention is not local or focused on details but integrated—the person tries to encompass the object and its life history as a whole and extract some conclusions or information from this holistic, global perspective. This is a higher, more abstract, more philosophical attention than in the phase of realization. At the same time, the person can understand and feel something that was imperceptible in the first two phases.
In many cases, attention in the phase of dissolution is dogmatic—the person has already drawn certain conclusions about the object and now perceives its entire history and being as a simple illustration of these conclusions. Anything that goes beyond the dogma is simply ignored. In the best case, in the phase of dissolution, the person perceives nuances and subtleties that were previously inaccessible to them, and here they may become an aesthete, a refined connoisseur, a gourmet who values the quality of mold in cheese, loves decadence in poetry, and appreciates the aesthetics of same-sex love in theater.
Questions for the reader:
- When listening to another person, do you always try to compare their story with your own problems?
- Are there topics that have nothing to do with your life that still interest you?
- Are you capable of consciously undivided love, even if only briefly?
- When you are deeply focused on work, does noise outside the window, conversations in the next room, or quiet music distract you?
- Do you feel a change in the nature of your attention when it comes to something professionally interesting to you?
- Are you inclined to look at things philosophically?
- Do you like the ideal of the Indian yogi, detached from the world, who impartially observes the rotation of the gunas, the qualities of time’s phases?
- Does your perception often deceive you?
- In what situations does this happen most often?
Idea
No matter what materialists say, the entire civilized world and our civilization itself first arose in the form of ideas in the mind of the creator and were only later realized in practice and materialized in physical forms. As for the Universe and the world as a whole, almost all religious traditions recognize the world as secondary to the Divine Idea that gave it birth. It is no wonder that a person’s attitude—both conscious and subconscious—toward the very theme of the idea is highly indicative, at least regarding the archetypes that govern their life and consciousness. What qualities does a person value and prioritize when considering an idea, depending on their archetype?
The archetype of creation values above all the moment of the idea’s birth, its originality, and its vividness. Under the influence of this archetype, a person perceives the idea uncritically. They become either a passionate adherent or reject it outright. The qualities of an idea in the phase of creation include its lack of refinement, even roughness, its generality, potential for further development, freshness, unusual charm, and appeal. It attracts both this person and others, compelling them to work for it, serve it, and sometimes even demand the sacrifice of their entire life—and this does not stop it. At this phase, the idea overcomes passivity; it sheds bright light on the future. Here, it is still undeveloped, appearing as the primary seed of a future manifestation, and therefore necessarily contains a mystery or secret to be unraveled.
The archetype of realization considers the idea in a completely different context and expects entirely different qualities from it. It is oriented toward the exploitation of the idea, its implementation within the framework of a particular program. If the idea constitutes the essence of their program, it must have already passed through a phase of certain development, must be somewhat systematized, its novelty already faded, its brightness diminished, the idea somewhat dimmed, materialized, and now must function like gasoline powering the process of unraveling the mystery that manifested in the phase of creation. Here, the idea is a real force that recruits adherents ready to implement it (in the phase of creation, the idea attracts many, but only briefly, and this circumstance, from the perspective of the archetype of realization, is its great flaw). On the other hand, here the person can work with the idea to a much greater extent, and this work will be more concrete. Here, the idea unfolds, is realized, and there is a fully tangible, real interaction with it. If in the phase of creation what the idea gives is more like human inspiration, in the phase of realization, through this idea, the person influences the world and transforms it.
The archetype of dissolution gives the idea a touch of banality. It is already widely known, has largely fulfilled its purpose, and now only attracts the most devoted followers who have grown accustomed to it and do not notice how it has weakened—or philosophers who begin to study it, analyze its development from beginning to end, and examine its influence on reality, thereby ultimately burying it. This phase of the idea’s life is often characterized by the expression “What we fought for is what we got,” meaning that the idea reveals certain negative side effects that were initially imperceptible and did not particularly bother people in the phase of realization—but now, the time comes to pay for what was overlooked at the start. This is how the idea is killed and buried so that its remnants do not poison the subtle world, the noosphere, or history.
History repeats itself twice: first as tragedy, second as farce, says folk wisdom, which, it seems, does not see the phase of creation—the beginning of the tragedy. The tragedy itself belongs to the phase of realization, while the farce that concludes the theme belongs to the phase of dissolution.
In general, art, as a symbolic representation of reality, tends toward the phase of dissolution—not because it destroys reality, but in the sense that it seeks the higher Divine meaning revealed precisely in this phase. Therefore, the plots of a people’s life or the lives of individuals, which serve as inspiration for directors, writers, and poets, usually reside in the phase of dissolution.
In the phase of dissolution, the idea is characterized by a global perspective, a desire to comprehend its subtleties and deeper meaning, which is seen as more meaningful than the direct and literal. It involves looking between the lines, the final revelation of the mystery, the disclosure of the hidden, inner, and profound meaning. After this—and this is very important to understand—the idea dies; it may be reborn in some completely unexpected new form, but almost nothing will remain of what it was before. However, it is precisely this “almost” that the work of the phase of dissolution is all about.
Questions for the reader:
- What do you prefer: perceiving ideas, developing them, or burying them?
- Are you inclined toward parody?
- Do you enjoy parodies?
- Are you inclined to create them yourself?
- Do you like elaborate introductions?
- Do you believe that the newest ideas of youth are based on the wisdom of tradition?
- Do you think that ninety-nine percent of new ideas are nonsense that does not withstand the test of time?
God and Religiosity
A person’s view of God and the nature of their religiosity are greatly influenced by the subconscious accentuation of the archetypes of creation, realization, and dissolution within them. Even if a person does not believe in God, they have some views on the evolution of the world, and by analyzing and studying these views, one can understand which modality dominates their subconscious. At a lower level, the role of religiosity is played by a person’s superstitions or their worship of various idols; by examining these idols from the perspective of the modality of their perception by the person and the modality of the idols themselves, much can be revealed about the inclinations of their subconscious.
The modality of creation corresponds to a God perceived as the Creator of the world, the Patron of all creative processes. From the perspective of responsibility, a person with a strong accentuation of the phase of creation tends to believe that God’s task was to create the world and humanity, while the main work of maintaining the world in order falls to humanity. This kind of position reveals, at the level of consciousness, the priority of the phase of creation—the person acknowledges what they themselves cannot do—but the subconscious priority, of course, is given to the phase of realization; any psychologist will understand this. In the religiosity of the phase of creation, the main emphasis is placed on the act of Divine revelation, that is, situations where God directly, without mediation, transmits His will, thoughts, emotions, and even His wrath to a person. This revelation cannot be comprehended through human effort, meaning it cannot be perceived in the modality of realization, and it serves as the primary source of creativity and creative inspiration in a person’s life. This Divine revelation is not perceived as a developed guide to life: the person takes on the development themselves, while from God, they receive only the primary impulse, the core of future transformations, the future programs that the person must carry out within themselves or beyond.
Faith under the archetype of creation is often joyful and life-affirming. It is the belief that in a difficult moment of life, when nothing seems to help, the Lord will intervene directly and save the person from destruction or provide a radically new source of strength, courage, and open new paths of development that the person could not even imagine existed. In the phase of creation, God is seen as an inexhaustible source of creativity, blessings, love, and care that does not require reciprocity, and sometimes even punishment—inexplicable and not requiring understanding. God is incomprehensible and spontaneous. A person can hear, see, and feel Him, but God does not require feedback, meaning any actions from the person. Repentance here is most often perceived as a formality, and the person does not invest much emotional content into it. They believe that God teaches them like a child, not expecting special obedience, and in cases where they are distracted, God Himself finds ways to bring their attention back to the necessary object.
Religiosity in the phase of creation is, as a rule, spontaneous—it arises at some point and just as suddenly disappears, and the person considers this normal. It flows without boundaries or conditions, and the person does not burden themselves with the burden of serving one and the same God—today they pray, tomorrow they sin, tomorrow they serve another god, destroying the old one as unnecessary and obsolete. For them, novelty, freshness, and new emotional tones are extremely important in religious feeling. This does not mean that a person whose religiosity is in the phase of creation is a bad believer. They may even have a very strong faith, but their inner experience of God must always be new and fresh; otherwise, their religiosity fades and disappears.
In the modality of realization, God sustains the life of the Universe. He is not “up there”; He is much more practical. He takes into account the concrete life of a person, and with Him, one can enter into dialogue, ask for His help and support in what the person is currently doing. The God of the phase of realization is more like a human—unlike the God of creation and the God of dissolution. With Him, one can bargain, disobey, and expect limited wrath; if He punishes a person, He may soon have mercy. He possesses quite human qualities, emotions, and an ethics accessible to humans, primarily aimed at regulating relations between a person and the world. This God maintains the balance of the world and supports the person in their relationship with it, assigning them a certain place in life—a kind of ecological niche, as they say now—and gives them the opportunity to exist within it, limiting the world in its aggression against the person but not overwhelming them with gifts they cannot assimilate, return to the world, or process.
This God is the God of balance, sometimes stern but mostly a just judge. All professionals, regardless of their nominal or conscious religiosity, rely on Him and pray to Him. In the phase of realization, God is often conceived by a person as a higher law governing the world and sustaining its existence. He must not so much be loved as served and obeyed, comprehended through His laws, and adhered to. At the same time, He leaves the person great room for creativity within the framework of serving their programs. The God of realization is partially comprehensible—not in Himself, but through His attributes. First and foremost, through His laws, the most important of which is the law of balance between the world and humanity. This God cares for the person, and the person must care for the fulfillment of Divine laws, in particular, regularly reporting to Him about their mental state, plans, and activities, while also carefully listening to Divine instructions and following them. Religiosity here is perceived as a connection between a person and God, where bribery, flattery, and other quite human actions are not excluded.
The phase of dissolution corresponds to a God who destroys the world, a God who cleanses the world, a God who sees evil and destroys it, a God who did not intervene in the phase of realization but arrives at the moment of the completion of a certain narrative and passes judgment according to the achievements, accomplishments, and sins of each participant in the events. This God sees everything. He possesses a wisdom that is incomprehensible to humans and comes only from the complete knowledge of the world and its reverse side. This wisdom sees karma—that is, the causal connections governing the flow of life events—and based on this vision, the God of the phase of dissolution passes judgment. The meaning of this judgment is not only the restoration of justice as understood in the phase of realization but also a higher justice that includes mercy, the ability to forgive sins, and release them without the karmic return that would normally be due, provided the person has understood and fulfilled something essential, deep, and true that resonates with their soul.
If, however, in the phase of dissolution—for example, when preparing for death—a person gains deep insight and awareness, then the God of dissolution may come to their aid, and their pre-death sensations, experiences, and post-death fate may be subject to an entirely different logic than that seen in the phase of creation or the phase of realization. The God of dissolution perceives everything that exists in the world; He is multifaceted, possesses fullness, and is not captivated by the manifested world and the processes occurring within it. He does not subordinate humanity to the ecology of prosperity, development, or self-realization; instead, He draws overall conclusions and provides a person with a vision that is significantly fuller and deeper.
At a low level, this is a God of crude destruction, who manifests through destructive natural phenomena—hurricanes, typhoons, earthquakes, accidents that destroy human life or radically shatter their core narratives and values. At a high level, this is a God who meticulously and subtly cleanses both the life of humanity as a whole and the worldview and world-sensation of a specific person, using subtle methods and destroying established rituals, traditions, and beliefs that seem unshakable but are long outdated. The God of the phase of dissolution should be feared in the future, foreseeing His future wrath or retribution. This is the subtlest nuance, an invisible and vaguely felt meaning, the final outcome of development, the place where the soul arrives after long journeys through the manifested worlds.
Religiosity in the phase of dissolution often focuses on life after death, purification from worldly filth, atonement for sins—possibly very old ones—erasing sins, fasting, and other severe purification measures on the physical plane, what in the Middle Ages was called mortification of the flesh.
Questions for the reader:
- Do you think a sense of humor has a Divine origin?
- Do you feel the creative principle inherent in God?
- Do you perceive God as the guardian of ritual?
- Is the idea of the human incarnation of God close to you, especially when humanity loses eternal ideals and values?
- Do you consider understandable human justice the main trait of God?
- Or, on the contrary, do you believe Divine justice to be incomprehensible to the human mind due to its limitations?
- Do you prefer to pray within the framework of a standard ritual, adhering to known texts, or do you speak to God in your own words?
- Why do you place more emphasis in your religiosity—on your confession to God or on attentively listening to His words, His will, or the fulfillment of that will?
Reincarnation, Karma, and the Immortality of the Soul
The influence of the archetype of creation is evident in the fact that a person is not particularly concerned with the theme of the immortality of their soul. For them, what matters more is that their soul is incarnated here and now, in these circumstances, which arouse the greatest interest. If they accept the concept of reincarnation, past incarnations with their karmic ties exist as something separate from their life, somewhere in a separate space, and are dumped on them as an unexpected surprise. Moreover, their life is already full of unexpected twists and surprises, and it is not entirely clear to them how to distinguish the consequences of old karma and its materialization (as they say, ripening) from the simple turns of their life. They tend to perceive the immortality of their soul not retrospectively but by looking into the future. They are happy to stir up trouble without thinking about how they will clean it up, hoping that this will happen not soon, not in this incarnation, perhaps not in the next, and not even in one after that. If they have a high opinion of themselves, they may readily identify with the Lords of Karma or consider themselves an executor of their will—but at the same time, what they do will not be based on the existing order of things or conducted with regard to the past, whether karmic or ordinary, but will be spontaneous and uncontrolled.
At a high level, the same occurs, but the person creates their future karma with a more precise adjustment, meaning they take into account that they will one day have to resolve the karmic knots they are tying now and will create special devices to facilitate their unraveling. Most often, they believe that their new incarnations will be interesting, and even if there are unpleasant things, they will be such that they will not grieve. If in the phase of creation a person sees themselves primarily as one who ties karma—good or bad—in the phase of realization, they are immersed in the karma that has already matured and is relevant to them. They feel their past incarnations, vaguely foresee future ones, and take both into account, but what is most important for them is their current incarnation, their real life, work within it, and the opportunity to resolve those karmic ties that they consider most relevant and appropriate to address in their current position. Most often, this person sees karma in the immediate conditions of their life, their relationships with the world, and lives in such a way as to best process and work through it. They see the meaning of the laws of karma as regulating the life of a person in the Universe, giving each living being a place and regulating their relationships with one another so that the world as a whole exists. This development may have its own evolutionary phases, unexpected twists, and surges of karmic currents, and they must deal with and work through this, work and work again, because they know there will be no other opportunity as effective as now to work through their karma. They act accordingly.
In the modality of dissolution, a person looks at their life retrospectively, as the result—perhaps a previous one—of a chain of their transformations, and perceives what is happening primarily as the unraveling of the karmic knots they once tied—and as an opportunity to realize the developments they previously created. For this view of karma, humility is characteristic, as well as the dutiful fulfillment of others’ obligations (with the thought that perhaps they once burdened others with their own obligations), a desire to understand phenomena and events that exceed the ordinary everyday logic of life. This person believes they are capable of deep conclusions and subtle understanding of fate and narrative development. However, they mainly see these as nearing resolution, while narratives that are just beginning attract little of their attention or do not cross their path.
At a high level, an example of this is the Buddhist monk who has such clairvoyance that they can find a lama who has reincarnated into a new body; however, upon finding and identifying this child as the incarnation of a high soul, they do not seek to engage in their upbringing but consider their mission fulfilled. It is precisely people who understand karma in the modality of dissolution who hold the idea that, ultimately, after completing the cycle of their wanderings, the soul becomes refined, freed from the burden of earthly cares and obligations, and returns to what was once God. However, a person under the archetype of dissolution does not think about the specific details of this path. They are more concerned with the karma that currently weighs upon them and must be resolved, while what future karma they may tie and what karmic knots they will have to unravel later is not their main interest.
Questions for the reader:
- Do you perceive the immortality of the soul as a certain forecast, or rather as an extraordinary branching of your roots in the past?
- Do you often feel that you have abilities unrelated to your experience and developments in this life?
- What form of atonement do you believe in more: through labor or repentance?
- When happiness and success suddenly befall you, do you think you will have to work them off someday, or do you not think about it at all?
- Do you consider a religion devoid of the dogma of reincarnation incomplete? The only correct one?
- Do you suppose that some human souls may reincarnate while others have only one incarnation?
