The three spatial dimensions of our physical world yield six directions, since each dimension has two directions. If our spatial dimensions are height, breadth and depth, then our six directions are up and down, right and left, front and back. When to those six we add the centre position, the "here" from which the directions range, we have another Septenary (Seven Stage Construction).
The existence of six spatial directions is obvious. We look above and below ourselves, to our right and left, forward and backward. Here we are in the centre with these six directions radiating out from us, like the six points of a star with living light at it's core.
Because analogy exists between all aspects of Reality, it should not be surprising that our Personality, the Physical part of us, also has six directions along three dimensions. We can think of the six directions of the Personality as it's location in evolutionary development, where we are on our obligatory pilgrimage through the Cycle of Necessity. The three dimensions of Personality are Heredity, Environment and Trans personality. Each has two directions, making six in all.
GENETIC INHERITANCE
Our Heredity is of two sorts. First is our Genetic Inheritance. That is what we normally mean by Heredity. We inherit certain physical Features and Characteristics from our biological ancestors. And because the Physical is not isolated but in fact is linked with the subtle realities of Feeling and Thought, we also inherit certain Emotional and Mental Characteristics from our progenitors. Western science has made much of Genetic Inheritance and it is important, but it is not all-important.
CULTURAL INHERITANCE
Another sort of Inheritance is our Cultural Inheritance. We are born into a society, a culture, with certain values and ways of regarding the world around us and responding to it. Sociologists have called these mores and folk ways. Mores are the customs that have value for the Culture, that are meaningful and powerful. When we violate them, trouble follows, for society regards them as having the force of law. Folk ways are just the ways we happen to do things. If we do not observe them, we will be thought odd, but not wicked. Our language is also part of our Cultural Inheritance, and so is our habitual world view (unless we have thought about it for ourselves, which few people do)
We inherit our Culture from our Cultural Ancestors, just as we inherit our genes from our Biological Ancestors. Americans, whose Biological Ancestors came from all over the world, are nevertheless the inheritors of a common culture, which is basically British (English, Scots, Irish and Welsh), with a strong admixture of many other cultures in the New World. If Americans visit the land of their Biological Ancestors origin, they quickly discover that culturally they are not Africans or English, Scots or Poles. They are, whether they like it or not, American in culture.
Genetic and Cultural Inheritance are often contrasted as nature and nurture. It is true that we learn our Culture, though in an unconscious way, but we (as personalities) don't pick it out, at least not our first and most formative Culture. We inherit it. We don't say, I think I'll be a Louisiana Cajun or a Scots Highlander. Our cultural inheritance is imprinted on us in our most formative years. Like Popeye, we must say "I am what I am, I'm Popeye the sailor man" or, as the old adage has it, you can take the boy out of the country but you can't take the country out of the boy.
TOPOGRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT
Another dimension of personality is Environment. It also has two directions. On the one hand there is our Topographical Environment, the world around us, not just the physical topography, but the Psychic and Spiritual Topography as well. It is obvious that our Personality is influenced by our physical topographical environment. If we live on the sea shore, or in the mountains, or on a great plain or in the canyons of a vast city, we respond to that environment. It moulds us.
However, we also live in the midst of a Psychic and Spiritual landscape that likewise moulds us. The Anglo-Saxons came to the British Isles, probably in the early fifth century. They had a vast stock of legends and myths about Germanic heroes and gods, some of which are reflected in the great Anglo Saxon epic Beowolf. But the Germanic ethos belonged to the Continent, not to Britain. So on the island, the Anglo Saxons adopted the legends and ethos of the native Britons, and the great English hero came to be King Arthur.
Arthur and the Arthurian material is basically Celtic. When the English moved into Celtic lands, they conquered the native Celts politically, but were themselves conquered by the psychic and spiritual landscape of Celtic myths. It is a great irony. But it often happens that way. When the Vedic Aryans migrated into India, they absorbed (and were absorbed into) the native pre Indo European Indic culture. When Europeans came to the New World, they moved into the landscape of the Amerindian peoples, and even today the various Amerindian traditions exert a powerful influence on Americans.
We live amidst a landscape of Psychic and Spiritual energies and forces that were generated by peoples long ago but that provide our environment. The Psychic and Spiritual Landscapes are just as real as the physical one. And they are even more powerful than physical geography in shaping us. The ancients knew about this inner, psychic landscape. The Romans personified it and called it the genius loci, the guardian spirit of a place.
ASTROLOGICAL ENVIRONMENT
In addition to our Topographical or Terrestrial Environment, there is also a Celestial one, our Astrological Environment. Everything in the Cosmos is interconnected. Every Event at any point in the entire Universe resounds, echoes and reverberates throughout the whole vast Cosmic stretch of Space. And our environment is not limited to this terrestrial globe. Our neighborhood includes the nearest planets and the farthest stars. The fall of a rose petal in Paisley has consequences for the lost star of the Pleiades.
Astrology maps out the Celestial Environment at the moment of our birth in a natal horoscope and at all subsequent times through progressed horoscopes. It is a mistake to regard a horoscope as a prediction of Events. It is rather a description of an Environment. We are not Astrological Patients suffering the effects of a horoscope. We are actors on the field of the earth and the heavens, which is mapped out by a horoscope. Astrology does not tell us what is going to happen to us. It tells us what the territory is like where the action takes place. We, not the starts, make things happen.
TRANS PERSONAL SKANDHAS
Western thinking recognizes only two Dimensions as molding our Personalities; these being Heredity and Environment. And even with these, it usually considers Environment as what is here called Cultural Inheritance. The influences of Topographical and Celestial Environments have been generally ignored in our time, except by a comparative few. But in addition to Heredity and Environment there is yet another Dimension with two Directions; our Trans personal Dimension, the Directions of which are our Skandhas and our Dharma.
Our Skandhas are the effects of our past lives. They were made by Prior Personalities and come to us as Past Life Karma. Each of our Personalities contributes collectively to the succeeding Personality, which is formed by them. The Skandhas are "bundles" or "aggregates" from our former Personalities that come together to form the seed from which our present Personality develops, out of it's Heredity and within it's Environment.
In Buddhist teachings there are five Skandhas: these being our Form, Sensations, Ideas, Mental Tendencies and Mental Powers. We might think of them as the predispositions we have acquired from the experiences of our Past Lives that effect our Perceiving, Feeling, Thinking, Responding and Conceiving. They come to us in our present Personality across earlier Personalities and so are Trans personal.
TRANS PERSONAL DHARMA
There is however, still another Trans personal Direction in us. For we are not just a succession of Personalities. Our Personalities are like beads that come after another in a necklace, but there is also a string or thread that joins all the beads. A Thread Self or Individuality that unites all of our successive Personalities. It is the "real" us. It generates all our separate Personalities and joins them into a whole.
The influence of our Individuality on a particular personal Life is what we call Dharma. That word is often translated as "duty" but that is a weak rendering of the inner sense of the word. Our Dharma is our innermost nature, the reality at the core of our being, that makes us what we truly are. All of our Personalities are efforts of our Individuality to express itself, to realize our Dharma in our Personal lives.
If we tune in to the individuality within ourselves, if we let our Dharma be expressed in our lives, the result is marvelous. It is transforming and overpowering. That does not happen very often. But most of us have moments in life when the influence of Dharma breaks through. If we open ourselves to those moments, the effect can last a lifetime.
IMMUTABLE AND MUTABLE DIRECTIONS
So what are we now in this life ? We are a Personality sitting in the centre of six great influences, the six psychological directions of our being. Along the Dimension of Heredity, we are formed by our Genetic Inheritance and by our Cultural Inheritance. Along the Dimension of Environment we are formed by our Topographical surroundings (Physical, Psychic and Spiritual) and by our Celestial surroundings, our place in the Cosmos. Along the Trans personal Dimension, we are formed by the seeds of tendencies from our Past Lives and by the call of our Higher nature, our Individuality, our Dharma to become what we truly are.
Even in our Personalities we are Seven Fold Beings. For the Personality is at the centre of these six Directions of Influence, and is produced by them. Three of the Directions are Immutable: our Genetic Inheritance, our Astrological Environment and the Skandhas from our Past Lives. They are all "givens" that we work with but cannot change. Three of the Directions, however, are mutable and indeed are ever changing: our Cultural Inheritance, our Topographical Environment and our Individual Dharma.
Although we do not choose our Culture, it is not fixed, but constantly changes. The Culture around us today is not the Culture of our birth; it has changed with the years. Indeed, in our time, certain aspects of Culture are changing more rapidly than they have for eons in the past. That is easy to see in Communication, Transportation, Technology, Living Patterns and Social Values all around us.
Similarly, though less dramatically today, our Topographical Environment changes. Even if we stay put, the Topography changes. Village life becomes urban or deserted. The coasts wear away. The forests disappear. But the inner Environment is also changing. The Psychic and Spiritual Landscapes are shifting around us. And, of course, we ourselves can move into a new Environment - Physical, Psychic and Spiritual.
Finally, and most important, our Trans personal Dharma changes. Or rather, the aspect of it that shines into our Personal Life changes. Our Individuality or Higher Self, is constantly trying to break through into Personal Consciousness. It's full power can seldom do so. (In rare cases when it does so fully, the result is a Saint, an Enlightened One, a Sage, an Initiate). So the influences that come from it change in order to take best advantage of the opportunities it has to express itself.
We human beings tend to dislike change, to fear it and to try to stop it. But change is opportunity. Only where there is change can there be Transformation. Most change is lateral, and lateral change produces nothing but just one thing after another. However, in the midst of lateral change, there is the opportunity for change of another sort; Transformative Change, by means of which we become not just different, but new.
Being aware of the Directions of our Personality along the Psychological Dimensions gives us an opportunity to be open to such Transformation when it's possibility comes. The possibility comes unexpectedly, unannounced and must be seized, or it is lost. It is up to us to recognize it when it comes and to act.
I can tell you how to find those who will show you the secret gateway that opens inward only, and closes fast behind the neophyte for evermore.
Come open your gates, and let me gae free, I daurna stay langer in bonny Dundee
