In respect to Heart Centers, what little can be grasped is understandable only when certain facts are acknowledged. To begin with; no purely spiritual philosophy can endure the test of logic, for such a monism fails to account for the seeming presence of the impure and the imperfect in man, the world, and the universe.

From our view point the universe is a duad, a positive half, and a negative half. The positive half is the unknown Spiritual Supreme, while the negative half is the total of manifest creation, to wit: solar systems and their progeny from highest to lowest. This negative half is naturally lethargic and unprogressive, whereas the positive half is inconceivably active. For the full and final perfection of the whole, each requires the other, because of itself the positive would be increasingly one-sided, or top-heavy, so to speak, while of itself the negative would tend back to that primal chaos from which it was lifted by the positive.

That mutual benefit may result, the Supreme Spiritual establishes itself at the very heart center of worlds and creatures; in fact, at the infinitesimal center of every atom in manifest creation. It is taught that the Supreme Spiritual is devoid of attributes, but a clearer teaching is that the utmost enlargement of human conception of will, wisdom, and love, conveys only a dim idea of their correspondence with the Supreme Spiritual. Even then we are confronted with the possibility of many unknown attributes proper to the Supreme Spiritual.

Whether few or many, these attributes are summarized by the word Life, a word whose superficial meaning is understood by all human beings. Concerning this Life, or Energy, pulsating in every material and immaterial atom, its manifestation would seem to be governed by the law of periodicy, of ebb and flow.

From this we are not to suppose the negative half of the universe to have no life of its own. The synthesis of what is named will, wisdom, and love, constitutes an inherent negative life; one also conforming to the law of ebb and flow. The "dead" human body, and the "corpse" of the moon, each has lost only that which utilized its ebbing negative life. As for positive Life, it will inform the atoms of both - whether assembled or dispersed - until the universal night.

Positive Life is known as the Great Breath. This life blood of Cosmos flows from the hidden Heart Center of Being to every organ and part of what Swedenborg called "The Grand Man." This flow is continuous during the great Day of Mani festation; then, at the very outskirts of creation, the life blood turns toward its source and, one by one, the outlying Suns and Systems lose their basic Life. Among the last to succumb are the Zodiacal Hierarchies, and for them there is an order of passing. The last to sink into prelaya will be the first to waken at the dawn of the New Era, whereas the first to sink will be the last to waken.

What then shall we conclude? Is the darkened universe to be deprived of all life? By no means! When the physical body of man succumbs, the negative life therein falls into recuperative sleep, and so in turn the negative lives of those inner vestures which posthumous man discards. But in the Maha Prelaya, though not till then, the permanent in man, and its negative life, lapse into unconsciousness, and his lower vestures are dissipated. So with the worlds! The impermanent disintegrates; but the permanent merely sleeps. Hence the midnight hour of every Maha Prelaya witnesses a higher correspondent of the primal chaos into which Positive Life, the Word, at midnight once breathed Its quickening Breath.

Lethargy is an inherent characteristic of negative life, therefore, the negative aspect of the universe has in itself no incentive toward organization. From this fact the office of the Supreme Spiritual is obvious. Now why is Positive Life outbreathed and then withdrawn? Evidently for one of two reasons, and possibly for both. Posi tive Life may obey some imperative limitation, or else negative life cannot endure the strain of unremitting activity.

To one holding that the Supreme Spiritual accommodates itself to the limitations of its other half, and so to the law of influx and efflux, the query is suggested: Will this condition obtain eternally? Our answer is, that when the other can endure the strain of incessant activity, then the union of positive and negative will be complete, the great cycle of Necessity accomplished, the Heart Center and the Circumference of the universe equalized, and God will be All in All.

M.