The pyramid is an exceptionally stable structure, which for millennia has watched people, nations, civilisations and cultures, and even whole ages, pass by at its foot, remaining unchanged all the while. This changelessness is not lifeless rigidity, an inability to respond, but a stability that nothing can shake. The pyramid, then, is a stable system.
Beside the stone pyramid standing in the desert, let us now turn to another: the pyramid of consciousness. And we do not mean Maslow's psychological pyramid of needs, whose validity is open to question. If it were true that satisfying the needs of existence and securing safety and comfort come first, and that cultural and spiritual needs follow only much later, then a poor man would have no wish at all to pray or meditate. And yet it is when man is brought low that he can truly pray. We are considering another pyramid now, as we build existents into a hierarchical pyramid system: from the stone to man.
The base of the pyramid of existence is existence itself, the principle that binds together all that exists, and perhaps even the non-existent, and it was not for nothing that Aristotle said that what does not exist also exists, as non-existent…
Existence, then, is the base, the broadest expanse of the pyramid, a quality – existence – that holds universally for all things. The system sorts existents into four categories: the mineral, vegetable, animal and rational orders. A mineral existent is, for instance, the stone, whose one dimension is existence itself. (Let us set aside for now the thought that stones too are alive, only they move very slowly, living, we might say, in another dimension…) The next order is the vegetable order, the plant world, and one of its members is, let us say, the tree. The tree exists – and so shares in the universal principle – but, unlike the stone on the previous level of the hierarchy, it also shows signs of organic life, growing, multiplying, stretching towards the light.
The next plane of being is animal existence, exemplified by the horse. On the animal world's plane of being, interactive perception unfolds more fully, in contrast to the bare existence of the stone or the living existence of the tree. In the animal world perception is added to these qualities, and so the horse, and with it the animal world, is existent, living and sentient.
One step further comes the category of rational existence, typically embodied in man. The rational plane of being embraces every preceding quality – existence, vitality, perception – and to them is added reason, that form of intelligence we know in man, without disputing that individuals of the animal world, and even of the plant world, also show certain marks of intelligence. So man, who stands on the plane of rational existence, is, lives, feels and thinks. Clearly, this pyramid rises according to the degree to which reason, consciousness, is made manifest, its measuring rod reason, its apex thought.
From human beings, however, we can build yet another pyramid. The listless, dispirited man, in the grip of dullness, languishes at the mineral level and reflects nothing but bare existence. On the next level stands the gluttonous man, nature's lively child, who lives out the joys and sorrows of bodily life with abandon, which is to say he is and lives: he may be regarded as a vegetative man. Gluttony stands not only for an excess of the instinct to feed but, more generally, for gorging on the pleasures of life. And this greed is deeply characteristic of man: a kind of dissatisfaction goes hand in hand with life. From here it is only a step to the pleasure-loving man, who lives for sensual delights, which is to say he is, lives and feels. He is the animal man. At the apex of this human pyramid stands the virtuous man, who leads a life not merely sentient but rational, which is to say he is, lives, feels and thinks.
Just as the golden pyramidion once crowned the summits of the pyramids, so the apex of the pyramid of existence is man, and the apex of the pyramid of man is the rational and virtuous man. Where do you stand? How do you go further? What might lie beyond human existence?