The drive toward communal life is part of human nature. We could even say it is an instinct that makes human beings draw closer to one another and find ways to integrate through their shared interests and activities.
An initial level of mutual aggregation, centred around goals based on personal benefits and desires, becomes refined over time – particularly with the maturation of a consciousness that stimulates the search for a more conscious community experience that is oriented toward ideals that transcend mere personal needs. Thus, many groups emerge in which people unite to achieve something that, for them, represents a higher and broader set of values. Examples of this are volunteer, service, study and research groups plus those focused on human development.
Through these experiences, a further step occurs as we begin to perceive that community is not simply a gathering of people where one has the opportunity to more easily develop and grow both internally and outwardly. In fact, something else happens that instils a much broader and more meaningful sense of the call to community. As a result, we begin to understand that community already exists on the subtle plane where it is beautiful, balanced, and harmonious. It “stands and waits” to fall to earth and bestow its countless qualities and gifts on a humanity that, at present, is fundamentally tormented by relational and social problems.
Those human consciousnesses who aspire to create and give life to something truly new and substantially different from the many attempts made thus far, in which our highest aspirations blend with more mundane demand, face a considerable challenge. Questions arise in them such as, “Where can we draw inspiration that heralds a profound understanding and renewal that isn’t based solely on the need for diversions? How can we create a community based on higher criteria that consequently represent a model of a Reality that is elevated and yet alive and inspiring for us humans?
Certainly, we can start by trying, even if just for a moment of reflection, to abstract from what is already empirically known and then turn our gaze toward the subtle worlds which are also known to us as the “distant worlds”.
Starting from the top down, the first “distant, yet near world” we encounter is that of numbers: seen not only for its quantitative significance but above all for its intrinsic qualitative aspect. Each number carries its own unique quality, which begins to manifest itself from the presence of the digit that represents it.
Thus, even in creating community, we begin with the number 1. Typically, this is the founder, who lays the foundation for what was not previously there and is the person who first grasps the seed idea and takes responsibility for its emergence.
Number 1 embodies the function of being the focal point – a unifying point from which everything else springs. In the “One”, the essence is concentrated and it contains the founding purpose together with a synthesis of all the elements necessary to give rise to life.
The “One”, in turn, generates a “Two”. That is, it attracts to itself, meets, or recognizes another person with whom it can share its idea inside a field of affinity and psychic intimacy. The ‘two’ also constitutes the masculine-feminine polarity, where the ‘one’ is the initiator who introduces the idea into the space of the ‘two’, which welcomes and nourishes it. It is the union between ‘one’ and ‘two’ that attracts a third element, and thus a triad is completed and the premise for the birth of a group is realized.
“As above, so below” is a simple but fundamental cosmological statement. Every creative process, including that which gives life to a group, is nothing but an earthly reflection of the mystery of the Trinity in which Father, Mother, and Son merge into a unified whole from which all living manifestations flow.
It should be emphasized that every community is always born from the dynamic relationship between a ‘one’, a ‘two’ and a ‘three’, even when in reality things seem to be working out in a different manner and order. For example, the simultaneous inner cooperation of the ‘three’ unfolds in time and space as a sequential process of steps that are articulated in micro-phases.
Once the structure of the number 3 has been created, both in numerical value and geometric form, the other steps that compose the creative work that leads to the birth of a group, flow accordingly. They proceed from ‘three’ along a line that includes four, five, six, and seven – expressing the numbers that are part of the septenary system.
Each number corresponds to a specific phase which encompasses its own objective and its own operating methods. The seven steps that give life to a community are analogous to the seven notes that compose a piece of music as well as the seven colours of the rainbow. They reflect the notes of the seven Rays which are the Great Builders of all manifestation.
We can therefore clearly understand how a community cannot help but be made up of different notes – each with its own specificity and purpose. It follows that it is not simply individuals who place themselves in the community in one function or another in search of their own purpose; rather, it is the very numerical and geometric structure underlying the community that subtly attracts to the various positions those people best suited to fill them at that moment in time.
Seen from this perspective, the community “comes down from above” rather than “rises from below”. It is thus a system that tends to self-organize based on a need to have all the energies (in the form of numbers) that sustain its manifestation, represented within it. It is very healthy when these a priori Necessities, already inherent in its subtle structure, seamlessly meet the availabilities and aspirations of its members. This occurs when each person is able to identify their right and proper place in the whole that corresponds both to their own characteristics and to those criteria required by the entire organism that we call the community.
For most, if not all communities, this broad and lofty model is still only an ideal. However, an ideal that is recognized, loved, and pursued will sooner or later bear fruit for the good of all communities and for the entire Planet. Then we will have entered the age of the Community!
Marina Bernardi