In the last presentation, we re-looked at what secondary is, comparing how conscious it is and what it is trying to achieve. What we concluded was that whatever its objectives were, it really had no say in the matter. Why? Because it is only passively conscious. The objective of the secondary atom is to involve, further and further, into matter. This is looking at the overall objective of secondary atoms. How do they fit into our lives? They are the very substance of our thoughts and emotions. As we know, there is no possible action within this universe that does not involve matter. So if we are reflecting on a thought or expressing an emotion, these events have to be located somewhere in physicality. This sounds counter-intuitive. We think of our thoughts as being subjective and located in our brains. We know from a study of Hylozoics that our thoughts are real objects floating around in the Mental World that surrounds our planet. I call this world the Mental Plane. As I have pointed out in the past, this is technically inaccurate. Mental World better reflects where these events are occurring, but the convention of describing this world as a plane is just easier when thinking of the juxtaposition of planes of matter.
Our monad, expressing itself as Secondary matter, has finally arrived at the boundary of the Emotional subplane of the Cosmic Physical Plane. To enter Plane 49, the Physical Plane, the monad has to be transferred again. This is still the job of the 2nd Logos. There may not be such a big fanfare as when the monad went from being Potentially conscious to being Passively conscious, but the change is significant. On entering Plane-49, the monad becomes actively conscious. What precisely does this mean and what does it imply? When a monad is passively conscious, it can resonate with external conscious inputs from another, more advanced monad. When a monad becomes actively conscious, it now not only responds to an input, it remembers it and can, to a very limited degree, initiate the acts it has learnt, by itself. We can conceptualise this by thinking about muscle memory. We know how to ride a bike. We do not have to think about it except for the first few moments when we were training our muscles how to behave in order to maintain our balance on an inherently unstable mode to transport. Moving on from this training phase, if we wish to cycle in the future, we have to set our intent and maintain our determination to keep peddling, even up those steep hills. The process of locomotion is semi-automatic. We just take this for granted, but stop and think for a moment just how much of your life is automated. You are not causing your heart to beat, or your food to digest, not to mention the relentless circulation of your blood around your body. How is this all occurring?
To answer this question, we have to delve into the realm of devas and what role they play in our lives. Not wishing to get bogged down in this vast topic, it just needs to be stated that our bodies function because there is a parallel stream of evolution that coordinates the whole process. However, they just coordinate it. The monads that are being coordinated, themselves, remember what they are supposed to be doing. Why? Because they are actively conscious. These monads are called Tertiary Matter. They do not just make up the matrix that is our physical organism, they make up the whole matrix of our planet! To give you an example, if you consider any element in the Periodic Table, say sodium. Within the sodium, there atom a very large number of monads. Only one of these monads is the quaternary monad that has reached the level of the 1st Kingdom of Nature. All the other monads are Tertiary matter (this is a simplified view but will suffice for the present). Clearly, the Tertiary matter in a sodium atom is less actively conscious than the Tertiary matter found in our muscles. So, there is an evolutionary scale within the structure of Tertiary matter. When we get to the Plant Kingdom, we begin to see the functioning of memory in the way plants interact with their environment. When you get to the Animal Kingdom, you see memory clearly in action. A plant may open and close its petals. As a plant biologist, I can explain to you the physiological processes that are occurring. As a Hylozoician, I realise that a plant is being guided by devas and the steps involved are remembered by the Tertiary matter itself.
In its active existence, the tertiary matter that forms the substrate of our physical existence is slowly waking up further. Let’s now put this in the context of our physical organism. We have talked about the envelopes of incarnation and a distinction has always been made between the principle envelopes of the human monad. These are the etheric, emotional and mental envelopes. Separate to this is the physical organism. The reason for this distinction is that what constitutes a 1st-Self is defined by a monad’s mastery over a number of triadic envelopes. If you look at this diagram, you can see that the physical organism is outside the nine envelopes that go to make the triadic envelopes of the monad, as it evolves through the Cosmic Physical Kingdom. We will return to this in greater detail when we deal with Quaternary matter itself. What is worth noting at present, is that the evolution of matter in the three lowest subplanes of Plane-49, are on their own evolutionary path and the reason for this is that all the matter here is under the guidance of the devic kingdom. We just happen to piggyback on this organisational structure to give us a vehicle that allows us to experience a physical incarnation. There is a benefit for the tertiary matter to allow itself to be used and abused by us. It gets to resonate with the higher frequencies of the quaternary monad. It gets programmed to perform tasks and it can remember these tasks and carry them out unprompted.
Another significant change is to be found between Secondary and Tertiary matter. The former is involving and the latter is evolving. It is making its way back to plane 43. If Tertiary matter is the primary matrix of Plane-49, what is its role on the higher planes? We have already discussed how the matrix of planes 48 and 47 are composed of Secondary matter, so what is the Tertiary matter doing here? It forms the envelopes that comprise the bodies of the Quaternary matter on these higher planes. On the Cosmic Physical Plane, all envelopes are made from Tertiary matter. The boundary created by these envelopes is what separates the Secondary matter that has been collected by the Quaternary matter and the mass of Secondary matter that comprises that plane. Tertiary matter is also what forms the substrate of the permanent atoms and molecules. When we talk about our subconscious, we are talking about a memory. If there is a memory, it can not be stored in Secondary matter, as this has no memory. So, Tertiary matter is vital to the process of remembering what has been learnt by Quaternary matter. This has particular significance for us Human monads, as we wish to store our traits and habits and also our knowledge and wisdom. It should be remembered that Tertiary matter is also closely involved with minerals, plants and animals, as they all have triadic envelopes.
To summarise, Tertiary matter is the third stage of the evolution of a monad, as it passes through the entire Universe on its journey from Primordial matter to fully conscious Quaternary matter. The evolution of Tertiary matter occurs exclusively in the Cosmic Physical Kingdom, which is also the case for Secondary matter. Without the functions it plays in creating our physical environment on Plane-49 and our triadic envelopes of incarnation on the higher planes, quaternary monads would not have structures to focus their consciousness through. The Quaternary monad may be the most awesome being in the Universe, unfortunately, it is so small that it has to piggyback on all the lower levels of monadic consciousness to get anywhere or do anything. This brings us to the final dramatic transformation a monad undergoes in our Universe and we shall recap this in the next presentation.