Psychological Hydrogens

If we are to fully profit from the immense part of this teaching that tells us about "hydrogens", we have to make it practical. We have to realize it. Hydrogens must become as obvious and recognizable as fresh bread.

The idea of the hydrogens, which integrates fourth way cosmology with fourth way psychology, is the widely accepted notion that we are "the stuff of stars". But in modern thought, the stuff of stars is only primitive, ultimately combining into its most complicated expression—us. In fourth way thought, the stuff of stars is divine. And we are out here on some distant limb of creation, apparently more stuff than star, but ideally capable of recognizing and actualizing our stellar quintessence.

Hydrogen 48

As usual, more than enough indications are given to allow us to proceed. Mr. O., when asked, suggested our perception of a blank sheet of paper as an example of H48. Think about that, or better yet, feel about it. What does it mean? It is neutral, not exciting, nor exhausting. It does not affect our perception, we perceive it simply, without remark.

Hydrogen 48s are neutral hydrogens for us. Simple logic, for example, without an emotional element to it, works with H48.

Hydrogen 96

Hydrogen 96 is not naturally a part of our psychological makeup. It represents matters too coarse, energies too inert, to work properly with any of our centers. It is the energy of false personality, whereas H48 is the energy of true personality, and H24 the energy of essence. Physically, H96 is experienced as rigidity; emotionally chiefly as dullness if at all; intellectually as a mess. Indeed, the matter itself may still be among those we commonly refer to as matter, Ouspensky suggesting "vitamins" being at this level of hydrogen.

Hydrogen 24

We can look with greater attention at a sheet of paper and see it quite differently. Certain papers, literally "finer" paper, show a texture and color that is derived from the natural substances that comprise it.

H 24. Nature. Driving down the road, a look to the distant hills, and something in us feeds on this. Or look at a marble ashtray, the grain of wood on your chair, a chunk of rock—attentive looking, actually seeing the thing and not just recording it from sleep, can be energizing, can refine our psychological state permitting finer distinctions of feeling and thought, and serve as a general tonic for the physical functions which work with H24.

This level already requires us, such as we are, to sustain our attention. Our essence works with H24, and our machines are so inclined toward personality that if we forget to maintain the production and use of H24, we automatically slip back into personality. In some cases—through isolation in nature, school disciplines, drugs, and so on—we may be placed in a sustained state of H24, but without attention to it we are simply asleep in essence.

A bird seems to show us H24 of the instinctive center. Watch it look around for danger, preen itself. But a flock of birds shows another H24, this one of the moving center. The speed at which a bird moves its wings or picks a flea does not strike us—though it probably should—but to see a flock of birds apparently simultaneously veer sharply in flight, as if of an apparent single mind suddenly settling down to feed, is also H24.

By nature, our intellectual center receives neutral impressions of hydrogen 48. A key idea of the fourth way is that we can intentionally refine that energy, we can in effect split that incoming H48, by an act of attention, into H24, an energy twice as fine, twice as dynamic. And the intentional splitting need not stop there. But this splitting requires educated work of the emotional and intellectual centers.

Hydrogen 12

Hydrogen 12 is, with only the rarest of exceptions, the highest energy we experience by nature. One H12 is the energy of true sex, another the proper energy of our emotional center, still another H12 is a physical energy naturally, but not normally, available to us. With hydrogen 12 we begin to approach a more harmonious "vibration". These are the energies intended for our finest emotions and our higher emotional center. It can be overwhelmingly powerful, and that is its blessing and curse. It has become our curse through unintentional misuse, and it becomes our blessing through right action.

If we look at the the table of hydrogens (see The Technology of Consciousness) we can see three different hydrogen 12s in the lower story of the human machine. One, si 12, is the normal end result of the octave of digestion or refinement of the food we eat. Another, sol 12, is a refinement of the air we breathe, and the third, mi 12, a refinement of the octave of impressions.

The first and third of these octaves, the octaves of food and impressions, are arrested at an interval (si and mi, respectively). The octave of air is not at an interval, and to some extent is able to pass on even to hydrogen 6 (la 6), thus keeping our connection with higher intellectual center ("spirit") alive, although without sufficient hydrogens to vivify our sleep.

Clearly, we need to find ways to bridge the two intervals. But let us keep this in perspective: the one interval, si 12, is most commonly bridged by reproduction, where the si 12 of the man and woman unite in the ecstatic shock that is conception; the other interval, mi 12, is most mysterious, and it would seem that here especially, the very refined and powerful work on the transformation of negative emotions might occur.

And even this is just a piece of the picture of the possibilities latent in these three hydrogen 12s. It is not impossible that other uses of si 12, for example, may be involved in establishing what G. called the higher being bodies, and it is likely that the octave of air with its sol 12 and la 6 may also be strengthened. The possibilities must be very great indeed, even unimaginable, as anything we can imagine with lower hydrogens could not possibly approach the potentialities inherent in these new and unknown worlds. It is, in fact, the miraculous.