Striking Implications of Tension
Articles By M. E. Haselhurst
It seems beyond doubt that any interpretation of tension depends on the quality, mental calibre, and intuitional capacity of the interpreter. Even sustained consideration as to what this particular word symbol implies leads to considerable mutations of awareness. Ideas expand and flow into one another; new ideas arise; new relationships are established and new recognitions made clear. In short, as mental effort is sustained and carried to more abstract levels, so what is used in occult philosophy, touches ever expanding arcs of consciousness. The result is that today's truth becomes tomorrow's limitation.
Allowing for this inevitable trend towards modification and enlargement, it would seem that tension is the result of the impact of energy on force (or vice versa). It arises when all the forces of immediate, conscious being meet and take the impact of energy flowing in from the next level of awareness to which consciousness aspires.
Understanding of the implications of this word demands a conception of man as something other and greater than his daily, demonstrable self, since the suggestion is of a state which arises when the known self gathers all its forces for an upward reach into some wider or higher or more inclusive state of being.
Tension is an essentially Active state. It represent the tremendous potential livingness which results when force and energy act upon one another to produce that which is new, whether it be a leaf, a human body, a universe or an idea. It is the womb of creativeness, a state in which invoked energies fill the "evokee" beyond the limits of normal capacity to the end that some fragment of eternal truth may be given new form.
Tension has a true significance on the soul levels rather than human, yet it is linked most closely with all phases of man's life, irrespective of the particular sheath which the Self happens to be using. Long before individual man emerges in his latest physical body, there has been points or crises of tension by means of which the Ego has carried forward his pressure towards externalisation and Appearance. As is stated in "Treatise on Cosmic Fire" (p787) "This work of passing on to a plane for purposes of incarnation marks a definite crises and is characterised by the exertion of the will in sacrifice, the appropriation of the substance in love, and its energising into activity."
Tension, the point of equilibrium at which force and energy fuse into pure being, is linked in our human lives with the power of the creative imagination. Men use the energy which they know or believe to be available. Lacking knowledge concerning the spiritual energies which impel them forward, the power of imagination makes possible that upward thrust of consciousness which releases spiritual potentialities, thus creating ever wider fields in which force and energy meet and form which activity can be carried forward. As is laid down in the book "Heart" (page 36) "one can continuously create new rhythms", but this creation depends upon an understanding of the basic principle that the process of intensification of energy is similar to the action of a pump, in as much as the upward flow is absolutely conditioned by the downward pressure.
From this angle, tension emerges as the point of balance between the downward and upward drives; it is that moment of eternity wherein the essence of the past is gathered to a focal point to meet the inflowing energy of the future, with a resultant radiation of inspired activity in the present. Most wisely does the Doctrine of the Heart enjoin aspirants to "Become accustomed to a state of constant labour", pointing out that "labour, not to secure rest, but for limitless perfection". ("Heart", page 106).
Tension involves recognition and true evaluation of the forces of destruction. The two great destruction which liberate man's consciousness (of the etheric web and of the casual body) take place through the right direction of force and the right release of energy, in other words, through tension so perfectly established that the unreal drops below the level of consciousness and the Real is recognised, realised and demonstrated. Thus, as "Heart" again bears witness, "people will find their place in Cosmos" realising that "the so-called state of Nirvana is not rest but the highest tension of energy."
World tension may yield a great pooling of cultures with consequent emergence of people who are world citizens in their everyday consciousness, despite differences of race or nationality.
