The thesis: A tension of potentiality (a vacuum or niche) is what activates the co-creative process from the unified field which leads to fruition and a new integrated life form.

“Surely nature longs for the opposites and effects her harmony from them.… That was also said by Heraclitus The Obscure: Combinations – wholes and not wholes, concurring differing, concordant discordant, from all things one and from all one things.
In this way the structure of the Universe – I mean, of the heavens and the Earth and the whole world – was arranged by one harmony through the blending of the most opposite principles.”

— Aristotle, On the World, quoted in Harvey 1997, 117

Volution is the life process that unfolds once an impulse has triggered a movement out of the unified field. As Max Planck said, “All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force” (quoted in Currivan 2017). An impulse is a movement of life that sees an opportunity for a useful experiment due an unmet need or unfilled niche, defined by a creative tension between the current reality (which includes all of the past) – the Manifest seed – and a sense of potential in the future (the Container). This initiating impulse is reflected in the ancient wisdom of the Vedas, where “desire, aspiration or yearning of the heart is said to have been the first thing, which stirred in the ‘deep’ at the primordial dawn of all creation” (Chopra 2007, 23).

The seed is related to instinctual raw life-creating impulse and embodies the order that enables the whole to emerge in a coherent way:

“[Instinct] is a mighty cause which organises the holographic pattern of life forms, the infinite fractal proliferation of itself through countless fields or levels … the source of our creative imagination and our creative power” (Baring 2013, pp 397-8)

“At the first moment of our Universe, literally as space and time began, it was minute and embodied impeccable order. Then rather than in a chaotic explosion, it expanded with amazingly exquisite precision.” (Currivan 2017)

A tension field is set up between present and future, seed and potential, Manifest and Container, and it is in that polarity that the toroidal dynamics play out.

CG Jung (1995) saw polarity being at the essence of all life:

Just as all energy proceeds from opposition, so the psyche too possesses its inner polarity, this being the indisputable prerequisite for its aliveness… Both theoretically and practically, polarity is inherent all living things. (379)

In the creative tension between the Seed and the Potential, and the gradual interpenetration of the unseen potential with the manifest reality, life starts to take shape and grow – through the heart at the centre (Merry 2011). Binder (1995) in describing Walter Russell’s science defines “potential” in a way that fits well with the Potential-Seed polarity described in volution theory: “ Potential is energy wound up ready to be released and to penetrate its opposite cone of energy which is unwound and ready to accept and incorporate its opposite” (39).

*Figure 5: A galactic torus manifesting from the polarity*

This life process can be seen in multiple forms of life, from the smallest to the largest. Figure 6 shows some initial examples of how that actual form shows up in life:

Figure 6: Examples of the torus formSource: Peter Reid, 2007 (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/77546424810030275/) — *Figure 6: Examples of the torus form*Source: Peter Reid, 2007 (https://www.pinterest.com/pin/77546424810030275/)

Dr Jude Currivan in The Wave (2005) explains the dynamics of the polarity a number of different ways. Exploring the meaning of numbers, she notes with the number two that “it is fromthe interplay of such polarities and theirmanifold expression, that the world is generated” (32). Referencing the symbol of the Caduceus (which has been a symbol of healing for millennia), she notes how the two serpents represent the “interplay and balance of energetic polarities” which are entwined around a third staff and through which “they heal into the wholeness of their resolution” (34).

As mentioned in the previous section, polarity and the number two is the first dynamic that moves from oneness and into relative forms. The vesica pisces (Figure 2) is an often-used representation of that, with the overlap between the circles representing the space from which 3-dimensional reality is born.

Lao Tsu describes this universal dynamic in the Tao Te Ching (Lao Tzu, Mitchell trans.1999, verse 42):

The Tao gives birth to One.

One gives birth to Two.

Two gives birth to Three.

Three gives birth to all things.

Currivan (2005, 54-55) likewise points to two fundamental binary systems that lie at the core of our manifest reality and an eastern understanding of the more hidden dynamics of life. The first is the double-helix structure of DNA with the bases (A, T, G, C) forming pairs whose “total number of possible permutations… engenders the 64 so-called DNA codons of the genetic code”. The second is the ancient Chinese I Ching with its matrix of 64 hexagrams which philosopher Martin Schoenberger discovered has “exactly the same permutations of binary pairs” as DNA. From both a scientific and more esoteric perspective, binary polarities lie at the foundation of all life.

Polarities come back in The Wave (Currivan 2005, 91) in relationship to a vortex field. A torus has a vortex at each end. A vortex field is created by “eddies of alternative polarities … seen when a stationary object interrupts a moving stream of water or air”. Plants, Currivan points out, also exhibit this “alternating rhythm of a three-dimensional vortex sheet as they unfurl around a central stem”.

Walter Russell was clear in his science that “matter always forms around gravity poles” (Binder 1995, 23). His description of the formation and expansion of form fit well with the volution theory:

Gravity… is the centripetally inward-directed motion to compress into form in contrast to radiation as the centrifugally outward-directed motion to expand out of form. In this sense, gravity is the winding up of multicoloured light waves to form ever more dense and more unstable matter. Radiation… is the unwinding of this same light to form evermore unstable matter. (23)

In the great wisdom traditions, the idea of the Sacred Marriage of two polar parents making love and giving birth to life is very prevalent. The sacred marriage of sun and moon, god and goddess, king and queen, prince and princess is woven into the rich tapestry of hidden or lost mystical traditions: Alchemy, Gnosticism and Kabbalah (Baring 2013). CG Jung (1995, 193), in the middle of the 20th century, made this statement: “The assimilation of the fundamental insight that psychic life has two poles still remains a task for the future”.

Govinda (1966) describes how critical polarity is to life:

Flow [of consciousness] means continuity as well as the relationship between two levels or poles. Without this polarity there can be no movement, no life, no awareness–and without continuity no meaningful relationship. The greater the distance of the difference between these two levels or poles, the more powerful is the stream or force that results. The highest consciousness is the product of the widest range of experience: the amplitude between the polls of universality and individuality. (124)

He also illustrates it through a description of Tibetan ritual, with the sublime Buddhas juxtaposed with the ridiculous “grotesquely grinning masks” seeming to:

deepen the sense of reality, in which the highest and lowest have their place and condition each other, thus giving perspective and proportion to our conception of the world and of ourselves. By experiencing the opposite pole of realities simultaneously, we actually intensify them. They are like the counterpoints in a musical composition: they widen the amplitude of our emotional response by creating a kind of inner space through the distance of simultaneously experienced opposites. The wider the amplitude, the greater the depth or intensity of our experience. (176)

Laszlo and Currivan (2008) describe the important role of “duals” in life, where two aspects of nature mirror each other, “that are not separate but complementary aspects of each other… such fundamental polarities as the wave/particles of quantum entities and the generic attributes of passive yin active yang principles” (42-3).

A different framing can also be used to point to creative polarity with its seed in the moment, the potential in the future and the dynamics of manifestation that follow. In my paper for the Living in Mastery course (Merry 2012), I explored the themes of presence, resonance and coherence that had been the focus of the course. This is how I described how they relate to the creation process:

After making explicit the current state of affairs, identifying patterns and releasing the things that hold one there, you then drop into a state of stillness and emptiness (presence), before noticing what is emerging from that empty space and seeing how it starts to take shape (resonance), and then giving it greater form in collaboration with others until it settles into a new pattern (coherence). (p2)

Presence can be seen as the equivalent to the stillness of the seed, resonance as the impulse of the potential from the future, and coherence as what happens as the present and the potential become integrated into a new whole. Here is a poem I wrote in the Paper that attempts to express a feeling for those dynamics (p4).

Presence

There is not much

One can say about

Presence

As really it is

Empty

Of anything.

“Empty”

from Old English meaning “rest”.

Rest.

Not doing.

Still.

Not moving.

Noticing movement.

Feeling stillness.

Eye at the center.

I at the center.

The center at I.

I as the center.

The center as I.

I as that.

That as I.

I thou it we you its.

Mmmm.

Still.

At rest.

Present

With it all.

Presence.

Something stirs.

Pre-sensing resonance.

Resonance

In the stillness

Something stirs.

Or is stirred.

Still again.

Still. Stir. Still. Stir.

Stir Stir. Still.

Stir Stir Stir. Still.

What's that stirring?

Attention drawn.

Curiosity awakened.

Something is stirring.

The first awake seems to stir others.

New others.

And old others.

New constellation though.

What’s stirring?

It’s disturbing.

My stillness.

It’s growing.

Something is forming.

Strange.

Stranger.

Strangest.

Still is safe.

I know still.

Staying still

I watch the strange stirring.

The connections

Start to draw me in.

I feel excitement.

Something is growing in me.

As me.

It’s me growing!

An explosion of stirring

Like the crazed whisking of a spoon in a teacup

Sloshes tea all over the place

Yet is held together by the stirring

At the center.

Then I see.

The harder is stirred,

The emptier the spiral at the center

The fuller the tea all around.

Presence holds resonance

As a new form is born.

Bring on the tea!

Coherence

As I see

Myself in the strange

My whole being

Sings a new tune.

From teaspoon

To dervish dancer

Whipping the world into its orbit.

I look up.

Things look different.

They look strange

And I recognise

The strangeness.

It fits.

We fit.

New me, new world.

We move.

We dance.

We sing.

We play.

And stillness fills the movement.

And movement fills the stillness.

As one.

And my mind asks:

But what changed?

I see the same world

But feel it is different.

It responds differently.

I act differently.

But physically it’s all the same.

My life is different.

Or so it feels.

What is that out there

If it is so malleable

By this in here?

How can I impact that

When there is so much of it?

What’s the difference

Between my experience of reality

And reality itself?

Is there a difference?

What if someone else

Changes their experience of reality

Does that change mine?

And if it’s all moving together,

Then who’s doing the moving?

That’s a conversation killer.

Mind stops.

Still.

In presence

I feel the resonance

And am the coherence

And that’s all I know

For now.

A different yet complementary perspective on the role of polarities comes from my experiential study of information and energy and the development of my psychic abilities (meaning competencies that allow me to see more of the subtle spectrum of reality). For a period of six classes I was being taught by David McCready to connect more to my psychic intelligence and see different aspects of the subtle energy dimensions more clearly. One of the exercises that we engaged in was to practice moving my attention between dimensions of myself that were lighter in energy and those that were heavier or denser. In my imagination the lighter more subtle energies were higher up and the denser heavier energies were lower down. One of the things I noticed was that when I was locating my attention in the lighter more subtle energies, I just experienced lots of light and couldn’t make any distinctions of different forms at that level. However, when I brought my attention down to the lower energies and then looked back up at the higher energies, I could clearly experience more distinct entities in the lighter realms. This is how I recorded it in my journal that day (July 3, 2014):

Interesting is that it is by sinking in more to the heavier denser energy that you get to see the lighter energies more distinctly. If trying to see the higher frequencies from the higher frequencies it is just lots of light. As I drop my frequency, I step it down into distincter forms, more refined images.

The implications of this can be quite significant. Not only is it polarity that enables the life process to unfold, as argued above, but it is the very existence of polarity that allows different aspects on the spectrum of reality to be able to see themselves. From a psychic perspective, I need the denser pole to be able to see and distinguish life forms at the more subtle pole. Only then can I enter into communication with them.

In this perspective, the light pole can be seen as the potential and the dense pole as the seed. It is through the interaction of the poles and the process through which they enable each other to grow together and integrate, that a person becomes more whole.

This relates to another field of study which reinforces the importance of the function of polarity in creating new wholeness - Carl Gustav Jung’s work. Anne Baring (2013) points out the importance of polarity in Jung’s work:

Jung’s great contribution to an expanded understanding of our nature is that our psychic life has, as it were, two poles. Beyond the conscious mind lies a vast unexplored hinterland – the unconscious (249)

Jung defined sickness or neurosis as a state of incompleteness, and health as a state of wholeness brought about through the reconnection of the conscious mind or ego with the unconscious (256)

The conscious personality or ego grows and expands through aligning itself with the unseen ground of life. The creation of this relationship over the span of a life is the quintessence of the process of individuation. (260)

Once again, we have a description of a tension field created by two poles, the integration of which lead to a new level of wholeness. The conscious self, which can be seen as the potential, needs to communicate with and integrate the unconscious mind, which can be seen as the seed. Once this is achieved, the fruit has matured and “dies”, becoming a seed for the next iteration. Currivan (2017, 193-5) describes the thesis of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology developed by Roger Penrose and Vahe Gurzadyan which “envisages a continuing and holomorphic series of universes, each expanding from big-bang beginnings to an end point that can be reinterpreted as the big bang of the next cycle.” Here the Seed-Fruit dynamic plays out at the cosmological level. Currivan notes the relationship to ancient Vedic notions of creation as described in the Rig Veda as “innumerable individuated manifestations of consciousness coming into form and then continuing to evolve through countless iterations”. Scientific and spiritual concepts seem to be starting to relate around the idea of the volutionary polar Seed-Fruit process.

Abram (1996, 214) in his exploration of time through the works of philosophers Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty comes to a similar conclusion. He sees the past having disappeared, “refusing presence” and being foundational support for the present, and the future “withholding its presence” and yet both in their own way supporting the “perceived landscape” of the present. As he says, “sensible phenomena are continually appearing out of, and continually vanishing into, these two very different realms of concealment or invisibility”. It is that creative tension between those two poles which makes “possible the open presence of the present”. He concludes: “Dare we suspect that these two descriptions describe one and the same phenomena? I believe that we can, and the isomorphism is complete”. They are two aspects of one volutionary process.

One final point on polarity that is worth exploring is what happens when the creative potential of a polarity is lost. For a polarity to hold creative tension, one always needs to have both poles in one’s awareness as both being key partners in one system. This enables the information to flow into the system to integrate and transcend the poles. If instead poles are seen as opposites that repel and cannot be reconciled, the system is more likely to attract destruction rather than creation. This is best seen in the realms of conflict. Baring (2013) writes: “Whenever there is a strong polarisation of opposites, there is a situation which attracts shadow projections and the demonising of others” (314). She quotes Mark Gerzon: “What marks the Demagogue is that his leadership actually depends on, and is energized by, the existence of a hated Other.” (315). Destructive entities feed off a repelling polarisation that puts the system into a negative spin, breaking down wholes into parts and regressing to a more divisive consciousness of separation as opposed to a more constructive life-affirming consciousness moving towards greater wholeness and individuation in which each part is increasingly honoured for its specific contribution to the whole.