The Zodiac as a Dynamic Process - 3

Two Approaches to Life
There are two essential ways in which the dualism of celestial order and earthly jungle can be interpreted in terms of meaning and purpose. The first — the simpler and still the most popular — is to consider the realm of the sky as that of positive, inherently ordered, energizing and eventually controlling Powers which exert a constant influence upon the passive, receptive, inert and inherently chaotic (separative) realm of earthly activities, impulses, desires and passions. The sky realm becomes thus the "world of Ideas" or as medieval philosophers called it Natura naturans: active Nature, in contradistinction to Natura naturata, passive and earthly nature. "Human nature" in such a conception almost unavoidably acquires a pejorative meaning. It is seen as perverted by the original sin and requiring to be controlled by the will of celestial Powers and the reason of divine Intelligences, or to be redeemed by the sacrifice and compassion of a starry being — a " son of God."
      Most religious and even classical philosophies have been based on such an interpretation featuring a quasi-absolute dualism of good and evil, spirit and matter, God and nature, reason and emotions, "higher" and "lower." The present catastrophic state of Western mankind is the result of such an interpretation which for centuries divided human experience in two parts fundamentally irreconcilable in spite of the efforts of human will and the sacrifice of divine love.
      A different type of interpretation is possible, and at times has been attempted. Modern thinkers, from psychologists to physicists, are more than ever striving to build it on solid grounds; but as a more mature mentality is required to grasp its full implications, it is not yet popular, even among trained thinkers steeped in the old tradition of dualistic philosophy and in its transcendent escapes into idealism and absolute monism.
      According to this "new" interpretation there is no opposition between the realm of celestial order and that of earthly chaos, because earthly chaos is merely an appearance or fiction. There is order everywhere, but man is blind to it while he is passing from one type of order to the next and more inclusive type. What he feels as chaos on the earth-surface is the result of his incomplete vision. When unable to apprehend the wholeness of a situation, man sees it as chaotic — as a jig-saw puzzle whose pieces are lumped into incoherent blocks. The picture cannot be seen while such a condition prevails. There can be only apparent chaos unless every piece is fitted to every other piece in the relationship which the "Image of the whole" determines and to which this Image alone gives meaning.