The Significance of the Process of Regeneration

significance of regeneration, Fellowship of Friends, Robert Earl Burton

Sacred Among the Six Processes

This article describes how the six processes act, in terms of their foundational combinations of forces. The significance of the process of regeneration is noted, as it alone is able to create new life, new being.

A marvelous fluidity and dimension unfold over the course of one’s experience of organic life. Our special intermediacy situates organic life’s unique balance between three cosmoses. By the relations of an intermediate cosmos to the next one higher and next one lower, the laws come together that will govern the intermediate cosmos.

              DEUTEROCOSMOS, MESOCOSMOS, TRITOCOSMOS

We refer to these three cosmoses as:

               SUN, PLANETS, EARTH

We refer to the effects of these three cosmoses experienced by organic life on earth as:

                LIFE, FORM, MATTER

Three Forces in a Triad

One special law governs how these three levels of hierarchy come together cosmologically.  Each of these three cosmoses can play the role of any one of these three forces in a triad.

                FIRST FORCE- The active force, giving initiative to the process.

                SECOND FORCE- What is acted upon.

                THIRD FORCE- Catalyzing force, enabling the action to occur.

The triad determines the process. Mathematically, the permutations of these three cosmoses yield a structure of six different triads whose combinations substantiate six different processes.

Six Cosmic Processes – Six Unique Triads

Each process reveals the genesis of its unique cosmic dynamic.

FIRST FORCE          SECOND FORCE         THIRD FORCE          PROCESS 

LIFE                          MATTER                      FORM                      Growth

MATTER                  LIFE                              FORM                      Refinement, Digestion

LIFE                          FORM                           MATTER                 Elimination, Destruction

FORM                      LIFE                               MATTER                 Corruption, Crime

MATTER                 FORM                             LIFE                          Healing

FORM                    MATTER                          LIFE                          Regeneration

Thus we see three pairs of processes share the same third force. The nature of the invisibility of these shared third forces provides an interesting angle of perspective. For another view of this, see https://fourthwaytoday.org/category/six-processes/.

The Third Force for Growth and Refinement

Form serves as mediating third force for the two processes growth and refinement. Growth, as in maturation and expansion, and refinement, as in digestion of food, occur within the world of human, animal, and vegetative creatures living along the surface of earth. While the role of planetary influence imparting form to organic life is not generally visible, seeing the role of form as third force can deepen one’s understanding of one’s own psychology. Man is a microcosmos, a planetary type corresponding to the cosmology of this knowledge.

The Third Force for Elimination and Crime

The two processes, growth and refinement, that have form serving as third force are quite distinct from the two processes possessing the third force of matter. The pair of processes with the third force of matter are elimination (destruction) and corruption (crime, or disease). The natures of elimination and corruption reveal a substantially lower plane of action, a lower order of cosmic intelligence and vitality. Elimination and corruption are fueled by a materiality much coarser than that of organic life’s growth and refinement.  

The Third Force for Healing

The importance of the process of healing can be seen in the way the triad changes to produce an utterly different process from corruption. The invisible role of matter moves from third force in the case of corruption (disease) to first force in the case of healing.  

But how can a lower cosmos, matter, act as first force upon a higher cosmos, form? The nature of healing begins from a negative quantity, such as the invader disease. Thus we begin to see the process of crime for what it is, a danger that threatens to reduce a single unit of organic life into the body of an inert and lifeless being.

Conversely, healing’s third force is life, not matter. We witness the power of healing’s mediating third force when we watch an injury on our own body heal over time, neutralizing a threat that, unchecked, might undermine our body’s overall health. Through the miraculous higher properties of life, healing restores the form of the body to its optimal functionality and unity. 

The Third Force for Regeneration

While with healing, matter provides initiative as the first force, with regeneration[1], matter is passive. Form is its first force. Life is the third force. Form and life respectively work together in regeneration to transform second force, matter. By the full harmony of this combination’s triadic potential, new life begins.

New life, John the Baptist, the new man, Fellowship of Friends, the significance of regeneration
John the Baptist, displaying the New Man

A complete new organism first begins to know itself, and to remember itself, by the virtue accorded to this second birth.  

The Significance of the Process of Regeneration

Through the process of regeneration, one can experience one’s being unconditioned by time and by space, turning them inside out, and rise towards one’s birthright to exist in simplicity. Completely different physics compose the Deuterocosmos, this second cosmos we refer to as the source of life, the sun. Regeneration is a dynamic of the supernatural, like fire’s role in evolving conifer cones. 

significance of regeneration, Fellowship of Friends

Understanding regeneration means practically engaging the triad of form, matter, and life within oneself as a microcosmos. Its personal value becomes self-evident by how much specificity one can bring in relation to the effort one is applying.

This effort, with its connection to the presence of one’s third force, may reveal to one the significance of the process of regeneration, sacred among the six processes.


[1] For more on regeneration, see also: https://fourthwaytoday.org/fourth-way-fire-sacrifice-suffering-change/.