Biographical
Necessity
the confessions of a social
philosopher
and occasional fool
by Joel A.
Wendt
dedication
(a bit obscure)
to Hannah, from Hank
in world of many masks and dreams
and dramas, you have always been a
A brief introduction (page 2 - page numbers are
approximate)
The
original essay meant to be the last one in the book
American Anthroposophy (page 4)
Additions
to the original essay: (page 51)
a visit
from Jahve (page 52)
the
Hermit, the Fool and the Magician (page 64)
Epiphany
2008 (page 66)
falling
into the arms of the Holy Mother (page 77)
my
Christ experiences (page 79)
Initiation
and Self-initiation (page 85)
The
School of Life, some comments (page 90).
a brief
introduction
In
September of 2007 (on the 19th to be exact), I died,
twice. I was then 66 years old. I had come awake
around 5
a.m., not feeling at all well, and got a friend to drive me to
the ER,
where during the intake interview with the nurse, my heart
stopped and
I fell on my face, dead. I was shocked back to
life, and
then after a while I died (heart stopped) again. To
revive me
this time took two shocks.
I
subsequently (that day) had two stents placed in two
different coronary arteries, whose blockages that morning had
twice
caused my heart to stop completely. I later
thought
that it was quite efficient of Divine Providence to block two
coronary
arteries at more or less the same time, so as to not require
that I go
through this particular initiation more than once. I saw
no white
lights, but was not really awake until two plus days later
when I
discovered myself in a hospital bed surrounded by three of my
five
children.
This
event had a number of effects on me, the principle
one being that in my will I no longer could, with good
conscience, put
off anything I knew needed doing. Having had this
grace of
a second birth then has led to a great deal of activity (the
finishing
and launching of several written and video initiatives -
almost a dozen
self-published on-demand books on lulu.com and several dozen
videos on
YouTube). Since I cannot act as if my life will go on
endlessly
(every anniversary of the 19th of September will be a memory
of my
condition of grace), I am publishing this essay, which was
written
originally as if it would be part of my book American
Anthroposophy.
That
was
written five years ago, and a lot has changed ... to
continue ... in
the original form, for now ...
New
material
and corrections will be highlighted in [brackets] and in red ....
To
restate this from a slightly different direction.
Knowing, from experience now, that I could die at any
moment, I
cannot leave things undone, if I am able. Of course, I
could live
another twenty years, but I'll not make such an assumption.
Rather, I'll consider myself quite blessed to be alive
tomorrow.
A friend
advised that to speak about my personal story of
joey/joel (a linear sequence of two egos, in one biography,
with the
change of egos happening in about the 31st year) would detract
from
that work (American
Anthroposophy), and I
found myself in agreement. At the same time, there
will be
some value to a true rendering of certain highly unusual
spiritual
aspects of my biography: 1) as a historical curiosity; 2) in
terms of
furthering what anthroposophists call spiritual research; and
perhaps,
3) existentially as an effect on the consciousness of some
members of
the Anthroposophical Society and Movement, for whom this might
be
useful - the general public will not gain much from reading
it, for its
main ideas are far too esoteric in
the worst sense of
that word.
[At the time of that
writing I was
concentrating my efforts within the Anthroposophical
Society, having
found little interest among Christians for my work. I
had written
and self published the Way of the
Fool: the conscious
development of our human
character, and the future* of Christianity - both to be
born out of the
natural union of Faith and Gnosis, around 2004. Efforts
to find an
interest in this book among regular Christian publications
universally
led to being completely ignored.]
For
example, if certain people where to wonder about the how and why of certain
developments described in my various writings
and videos, this essay below is an honest rendering of the
most salient
facts. It is also necessary to represent in this essay
below
certain conceptions about human and cosmic thought, and their
interrelationship, so that aspects of the practice of living thinking, from a particular point of view, can be better
understood. When the work one creates arises in
cooperation
with excarnate Beings, through organic and pure thinking, the
reader
needs to appreciate some of the more unusual nuances, in order
not to
make false assumptions.
As a
consequence of this necessity I am placing this work
on lulu.com. A
word to the wise is now called for. No doubt rumors
could arise
and the temptation to gossip as well. If the reader of
this takes
care, they will realize that no knowledge about this situation
can be
obtained from what is merely idly said, repeated and heard.
Only
that which is seriously studied and pondered can lead to the
truth. [This to my ear
appears today to be
kind of silly, but all the same does contain some
truth. Readers
of this unwilling to treat it seriously will fail to
understand it at
all.]
The
title below is how I framed this at the time I had
thought to include it in American
Anthroposophy. It has basically
not
been greatly changed from that original representation,
although
certain nuances and details have been given, over time, more
or less
emphasis. However, while the main body was not changed
in any
significant way, considerable additional material was added in
the
so-called appendix, all of which was written subsequently to
the
original essay.
To give
a bit of an advance hint as to the conclusion,
here is something that can be found near the end of main body
of this
essay: Consider
this
essay then a very long shaggy dog story, typical of the
American
Soul with its imaginations of such exaggerated fanciful
characters as
Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. That is, after all, the only
kind of
idea we anthroposophist's presently have of the Future
Maitreya Buddha
- a fantastic exaggeration. Anyone who thinks they can
speak with
final truth of such aspects of human spiritual history, had
better come
back down to the earth. Remember, Rudolf Steiner only
spoke of
this at a certain time and place because he was more or less
forced by
circumstances to do this.
Further,
just so it is clear: I also mean by this
essay to challenge certain assumptions
of those who think of themselves as students of Rudolf
Steiner.
Many are far too complacent, and to the degree
that
Providence grants me more years, I expect to walk among my
fellow
anthroposophists from time to time, urging them with as much
force of
personality as possible to redirect their energies into more
fundamental spiritual practices than is presently the norm.
There is far too much reading of Steiner's works,
and far
too little practice of the science of introspection.
Some
last introductory considerations:
It will
seem to some (perhaps all) who read this, that I
have climbed up on some kind of high horse in my view of
myself.
That I am technically in a kind of way lost in some
loose
astrality (the Baggage Disclaim area as described in Catherine
MacCoun's book: On
Becoming An Alchemist). The
problem is
that what surrounds and penetrates my biography includes some
unusual
people (or Beings if you wish to
use that term), whose interest in me (or
even need of [to bother
with]
me) becomes an obligation that must be honored.
For
example, below you will read of joey, the first ego
in this biography. You will get details about him, and
his life
and the gifts he gave to me. I have little purpose and
meaning
without those gifts, for he was a friend who literally gave me
his life
- he leaves our shared biography so that I may enter and do
what comes
to me to do. Here is a link
to a more intimate and detailed story of Joey's life.
Then
there is Rudolf Steiner, who while not perfect by
any means, did a work that is so important in so many ways,
that if it
is lost, humanity will have to face things it otherwise might
not have
to face. This treasure, an essential part of which I
call the New
Thinking, has been of great benefit to me in all my work, and
from
other practitioners of that Art, come works often far greater
than my
own. A main aspect of my work, concerning trying
to
understand human political and social life, is not possible
without
what I learned about the mind from the maps provided by
Steiner's books
on epistemology.
In the
appendix, where I describe the meeting with Jahve [or Yahweh],
we have another actor in this play, who, for whatever were His
own
reasons, dropped into my life one day and gave me another
great gift.
Then
there are all the writers of the many books that I
have read, which also became a part of my soul. How can
I not
honor their gifts?
In this
mood of gratefulness (which comes most often when
I have been down, and am now returning to a place of balance
between
above and below), and which includes a kind of feeling of
shame as well
for all my flaws, I sometimes think of a little boy whose life
was
portrayed in the movie by Scorsese about the Dali Lama.
How does
he manage to move through a life in which he becomes a center
of
something so much greater than he recognizes in himself, such
that to
be what seems expected can be a very heavy burden? Yet,
he does
and he does so with considerable grace and humor.
These
then are aspects of the biographical necessity that
rides me in life, and which has little to do with ego and a
lot more to
do with trying to mold the clay of my own being, at least in
some
degree, in such a way as to be able to represent in the world
some few
parts of the reality of these gifts of others.
The best
that I can do in response to these events, of
which I am not the author, is keep in mind joey's feeling of
embarrassment, when during his adolescence he was honored
three times
for what others saw in him that he did not see in himself:
First he was
elected as a high school freshman to be the president of his
church
youth group; Second was when he was in the Fall of his senior
year, and he was elected class president, an office for which
he did
not run, but for which he was nonetheless nominated by a girl
that sat
behind him in homeroom. He felt so undeserving of this
unwanted
honor, that he didn't tell his parents and they had to find
out about
it three weeks later through others.
The
third was in the Spring of his senior year, when he
was called down to the offices of the adult leader of the
local Demolay
Chapter, and told that while he was someone who hardly
attended and
seldom participated, he was going to receive their highest
honor - the
Degree of Chevalier. When he asked the adult
leader what
was going on, he was basically told that the adults in the
community
knew of his religious work in his
church youth group, and they were honoring
that.
Without
these events which came toward him without his
asking, he would never have been nominated to go to the United
States
Air Force Academy, at least not in the normal way (although he
did
apply and failed at that). Instead, one day after all
the slots
for his State were filled, his father received a telegram from
the
Secretary of the Air Force, whose officers no doubt, upon
viewing the
above honors in his application, thought he might be someone
special.
Well, in
a way he was. He stayed there three years
(didn't graduate, but left by inadvertently placing his
girl-friend in
a family way), during which time he managed to maintain a
position near
the bottom of his class of 600 hundred (he was in the bottom
five).
He also in his Second Class (junior) year, was one of
two
co-editors of the Dodo, the cadet humor magazine that came out
maybe
half-a-dozen times of year.
During
this same junior year, he and a friend (who also
didn't graduate) invented a fake cadet, which they named Nino
Baldachi.
Nino was meant to and became over time something of a
tradition,
appearing and disappearing from classes for which he was
registered and
receiving announcements over the intercom and other kinds of
useful
activity as needed. Twenty years after joey
left the
academy, when the first Bush was vice-president under Reagan,
Bush the
elder read the name of Nino Baldachi at graduation after some
cadet had
hacked the list of graduates and put his name on it. No
cadet
rose to receive that diploma and someone on the review stand
had to
explain to Bush the joke.
Of all
that joey did, I find this was the most enjoyable
although in a very subtle way, and the reader of this should
keep in
mind that particular action of joey's in considering the
reasons for my
putting my
name in as a possible candidate for a legendary spiritual
figure.
I do this in the best of the traditions established by
joey all
those many years ago. Not because it is true, or not
true with
any certainty, but because it is fun. [If we take life too seriously, how
will life take us?]
In a
world where there are a lot of constraints on our
freedoms, both inner and outer, and where there is present a
great deal
of woe in all our lives, fun and jokes is often the best way
to
find a healthy relationship to our own and other’s suffering.
At the same time, given the content of what
my
thinking has produced, it seemed to me that the readers of my
work,
however small in numbers, were entitled to some knowledge of
the soul
life of the author of those works.
A few of
the oddest aspects of that soul life is as
described below, including not only the events, but also the
thoughts
with which they were accompanied. Some may see these as
strange,
even unbelievable. I have one advantage, whatever
judgments
readers of this will make: I have only to tell the
truth, and lay
naked my soul and most inner thoughts and feelings, for your
consideration. What you make of this true-life
shaggy dog
story is your own responsibility.
-------------------------------------------------
this was originally meant to be the last essay in the
main body of the book American Anthroposophy,
which was to begin as
follows:
[for the
neophyte: the following is a bit of a
specialty item, and assumes a greater working knowledge of
Steiner's
terminology than many of the above essays. The naive
reader
should perhaps consider this a curiosity, and a kind of
in-joke.
Several things happened within the
Anthroposophical Society
and Movement over the change to the New Millennium of which
they took
almost no notice, being too obsessed with Rudolf Steiner
(apparently
assuming Christ would put all His eggs in one basket, to
borrow an apt
cliche`). The story below is just one of many where
continuing
spiritual revelation (beyond what Steiner offered) is pouring
over
humanity in this time of the true Second Coming, which
continuing
revelation large numbers of main-stream anthroposophists
studiously
manage to ignore. Many of the language conventions used
below are
made necessary by the work of Rudolf Steiner, whose research
into the
spiritual worlds led to many descriptions of beings and
processes that
are here followed in the word-form in which he gave them.
Other
seers no doubt would use different kinds of language.] [Along this same vein, I
wrote the
following in 2012 for the members of the Anthroposophical
Society: the
School of
Chartres, and the Culmination.]
Anthroposophy in the 21st Century,
and the legend of the current Bodhisattva
incarnation of the future Maitreya Buddha
(written for this book as the most curious,
and odd, piece of the puzzle)
confessions
Let us
begin with the problem of knowledge, for it is
that problem which has been a major theme of this book
[American
Anthroposophy]. Knowledge (the union of
percept
- experience - and concept - thought) has
to be
distinguished from understanding
(perceptless
concepts actively worked over, in order to met the offerings
of a
mostly reliable source). Reading a Steiner text, if we
meet it in
the right way, can provide true understanding, but
never real knowledge.
A
scientifically trained introspection can easily distinguish in
our own
minds knowledge and understanding from each other; and, these
two as
well from mere belief (perceptless
concepts
often falsely thought to be true, that are passively received
instead
of actively thought over, and to which too much unredeemed
emotional
energy is attached). In the absence of this trained
introspection, it is quite difficult for the I to perceive the
own soul
characteristics with sufficient discernment.
That
other approaches to the spiritual lead to a
different way of cognition, and to different kinds of
expressions of
the truth of matters, does need to be recognized.
Just keep
in mind that in Steiner's case, his biographical necessity
included
bringing into the stream of scientific materialism a healing
gesture in
which the rational mind, with its appreciation for concepts,
ideas and
reason, could find a Way to knowledge of the spirit. The
place
and the time of such activities are not without their own
meaning and
significance, and Rudolf Steiner accomplished something that
most of
his imagined students (and certainly his many critics) do not
yet
understand or appreciate.
The
material below represents a combination of knowledge
and understanding to the author, to which has been added (as
one can do
in science) a hypothesis (as long as the hypothesis is fully
stated).
In this case the hypothesis is a view which seems to be
one
possible logical conclusion that can be reached based upon
what is
known and what is understood. Let me now make this more
explicit.
All the
material below about the experience of a change
of egos, and the various life passages that followed, is based
upon my
personal direct experience and knowledge of my own inner
life.
At a certain point in time this biographical development
intersected the works of Rudolf Steiner, wherein was
discovered an
explanation (an understanding) of what certain of these
biographical
experiences could mean. Having experienced the change of
egos
described by Steiner, this encounter with Steiner's
explanation led to
certain difficult questions.
The main
difficulty was rather personal and represented a
temptation to think highly of myself (severe hubris), for
Steiner had
given several names of "lofty" (Steiner's typical phrasing)
personalities, who might undergo this experience (which I had
undergone). To think of ones self, for example, as a
reincarnation of Moses or Ezekiel or Abraham was clearly a
problem.
To think of ones self as a legendary Bodhisattva
incarnation of
the future Maitreya Buddha was an even worse problem.
Fortunately
such a difficulty can also become an
opportunity, so it became a discipline of mind that whenever
the
tempter (the luciferic aspect of the double) would cause such
a thought
as to my so-called spiritual identity to arise (which
identity-name-concept actually is a limiting concept), I was
offered
the opportunity to practice control of thoughts and
immediately dismiss
that concept as it arose in whatever context this occurred.
However, this problem was made all the worse, by the
fact that
during a period of time, when I was routinely intoxicated with
marijuana, some Thrones (those who contribute to sky phenomena
- a long
story, I'll leave aside the details) made a magical
(imaginative)
picture during a moment of atavistic clairvoyance, and by this
gesture
suggested to me the following as two previous personal
incarnations:
George Washington and St. Matthew.
Again, I
felt these things as a temptation to a kind of
egotistic excess and fought those aspects of my soul that
might succumb
to such confusion. Those, who have read my essay above:
In Joyous
Celebration of the
Soul Art and Music of Discipleship,
may have
noted that at a certain stage one learns to renounce any kind
of
self-identity as well as the centrality of the own ego in what
is going
on in the biography. Steiner once described a certain
aspect of
this soul phenomena when he wrote that whereas Descartes said:
I think,
therefor I am, it might be more true
to say: I
think, therefor I am not. A
similar activity is found in the teachings of
St. Paul: Not I,
but Christ in me.
Such
temptations then can serve as a goad to important
inner work.
I also
on a handful of occasions in the past had nights
in which I was unable to sleep at all (this started about 1997
- the
most recent was over the Holy Nights 2007-8). All I
could do was think
all night, and always the thoughts that were more insistently
sought,
by my own ego, concerned efforts on my part to resolve this
aspect of
my biography. Since the living thinking does not arrive
all of a
piece at once, and since it represents a kind of cooperative
working
with the Holy Spirit (from one point of view), then sometimes
sleeplessness means that important inner work is going on in
cooperation with excarnate beings. Some of what is below
was born
in such lengthy periods of thinking-contemplation.
Let me
tell one story in connection with this (this came
from the 1997 night work). Making a kind of inward
assumption (so
as to test the logic of the idea as well as whether all the
related
phenomena could meet the assumption-hypothesis) that I could
possible
be the future Maitreya Buddha (a thought that I suspect I
never would
have had, had Steiner not been forced by outer circumstances
to give
those lectures on this theme - see below), I inwardly asked
the
question of what incarnation might be in between my present
incarnation
and the one suggested by the Thrones as George Washington.
The
name Clara Barton was immediately thought in me in response to
my
forming this question, and when I later investigated her
biography I
discovered that she too had this pattern of a more innocent
youth (see
below), and a later gifted outer world personality, broken by
a period
described as having a kind of mental breakdown (again, see
below for
what happens when the egos change).
Now I
have called this section confessions, because I wanted the reader to have no
illusions, just
as I demand of myself here: no illusions. I lay naked
certain
aspects of my soul in this essay, and leave to the reader
whether the
hypothesis that is woven into what is knowledge and
understanding has
any value for our mutual work. This value, such as I
understand
it, will also be laid out below. So it is clear: the
phenomena of
the change of egos is direct personal experience to me
(knowledge).
Aspects of my understanding of it is formed by my
encounters with
Rudolf Steiner. I forgo belief, but do make what seems
to me to
be a justifiable hypothesis - a logical guess as it were. Why?
Because
during the Holy Nights of 2007-8 (particularly on
Epiphany), I had an initiation experience into the thought
world, far
deeper than the more ordinary living thinking I had been
practicing,
and included as a minor part of my processes of later
digesting this
experience was the idea that such a confession on my part
might aid
people's understanding of the future directions that are to be
taken
with Anthroposophy. At the same time that I took
seriously the
effort to consider this possibility, I also thought it would
be fun to
write this essay, and see how it fell out if I followed the
whole of
the conceptual themes to their essential conclusions. I
also
thought it would be fun to tease my fellow anthroposophists
with this
idea, to tickle and challenge * their imaginations and
assumptions.
[*Always
there is the danger of an excess of gravitas, so
to approach projects out of a spirit of cultivated joy
(combined with
reverence for the subject, as well as a degree of silliness),
helps to
overcome the tendency of the ahrimanic double to make rigid
what is
living, and far too serious what ought to be a cause for
celebration.
I also, by the way, mean with this essay to deliver a
friendly
shock to
the rigid aspects of the system of thought
(Steinerism) that currently possesses many in the Society and
Movement.
The ideas about the Maitreya Buddha, and his/her various
bodhisattva incarnations, currently at work within the Society
and
Movement need a good shaking up, to go with all the other
matters I
have in this book been trying to free from the death grip of
the
intellectualization of the Michaelic Cosmic Intelligence. Most people will have no
conceptual
context for these questions, and should then not bother to
read
further, for in order to "understand" what I am doing
requires of
thinking a considerable precision and delicacy.]
You will
see as you read the below that I have tried to
model this effort - to create such an understanding - somewhat
on
something done by Rudolf Steiner. What is being sought
here in
this essay is the illumination of certain processes of
history, in
which my I seems to play an active role (I do volunteer, by
the way),
but which role is only made possible by that inner work which
reduces
the tendency to egotism as much as possible. You also
might try
to appreciate that this activity is somewhat humorous - I can
imagine
certain people grinding their teeth, and/or using what is said
here in
an effort to discredit my work. Always, however, the
question is
what is the truth, what is the good, and how may we come to
those while
walking in beauty.
caveat
In the
material below, as well as what was written above,
certain names are used (such as future Maitreya Buddha etc.)
To
use such names in certain circumstances is to exercise a kind
of power.
The mind of others may take such a name and perhaps
inflate its
meaning - make it more significant than it really is (such as
to name
Steiner as a great
initiate, for example). Of all
the
useful
inner
acts
the
reader
can
do in
seeking to understand this essay, the best will be in
realizing that
such names are misleading almost in their entirety.
Names
can really limit something, by forcing the mind to
attach its own
weak conceptualizations to something that is perhaps of a
whole other
order than any carelessly formed conceptions. Names can
also
illuminate, and in that we are users and creators of language,
we are
required to take these Arts (the Gift of the Word) with some
seriousness and responsibility. Remember, we are
not nouns
(names), but verbs (actions). To be true to Steiner's
teachings
on thinking, we should never give him a name at all (such as great initiate, or alchemist), but try as
much as
possible to simply describe in a Goetheanistic fashion, the
story of
his deeds. By this inner picturing of his deeds - his
story (both
outward and inward - see my essay on his Path above), we begin
to think
with him, instead of just about
him.
In a
like fashion, I will below include considerable
facts of my story,
encouraging the reader to try to think
with
me and not just about me.
In the
case of this essay, the dangerous limiting matter
is to somehow focus on the single personality (as has been
done with
Rudolf Steiner), as if the personality lay outside the historical/spiritual
context in which it acted (the cosmic verbness or
deeds in which we as individuals are
embedded). It is really this context that is crucial, not the single personality.
Gifted individuals can be found everywhere, in small
places and
large (read Catherine
MacCoun's
book:
On
Becoming an Alchemist,
for
example).
Sometimes, the context uses such a personality to
achieve
its own ends, and the personality itself consciously
sacrifices aspects
of its freedom to this context. Steiner, as was pointed
out in
the dedication to this book, took on such a naming (great
initiate
etc.) in order to serve the purpose that was possible in the
context of
that time. By context, I mean of
course both
the Earthly Historical and the Heavenly Cosmic context.
A Great
Initiate, or a Bodhisattva incarnation of the
Future Maitreya Buddha, are really more a product than a
producing
cause. Their Art is humility and other moral qualities,
which
then enables cosmic thought to enter into intercourse with
earthly
thought. With this essay I hope to shed light on this
process by
which human history is influenced in a cooperative dance
between
excarnate and incarnate beings. The reader should keep
in mind,
in accord with the essay above (The Meaning of
Earth
Existence in the Age of the
Consciousness Soul), that this
same dance
fills out their own personal biography. Each of you, in
that you
discover [as explained
in the
last mentioned essasy] how to consciously participate
in the Second
Eucharist also plays an important
role in
this cooperative dance between excarnate and incarnate beings.
Whatever
someone like myself or Rudolf Steiner does (or
thousands of others), the crucial actor in the actual sphere
of your
own biography is you. It is not my thought, or Steiner's
thought
that needs to be brought forth, but instead your thought.
You are
there - you are the artist of your biography in that place and
time,
and it is the intercourse* between your earthly thinking (and
its moral
qualities of will) and cosmic thought that is the significant matter.
I
am not there in your biography, nor is Rudolf Steiner, so
don't quote
us. Use us to inspire and to confirm learning to trust
your own
activity, for Emerson had it entirely correct: In self trust all virtues are
comprehended. [emphasis added]
[*Anthroposophy
is
a
path
of
cognition
from
the
Spiritual
in
the
human
being
to the
Spiritual in the universe.
First
sentence, first Leading Thought - Rudolf Steiner. We
meet other
presence on the Path of Cognition,
which
pathway is fundamentally
a living two-way bridge.]
knowledge,
understanding
and
hypothesis
Almost a
century ago, Rudolf Steiner gave some lectures
under the title: World
History
in
the
Light
of
Anthroposophy.
Many consider these lectures, which concerned on the
surface a
sequence of incarnations of an apparently karmically bound
pair of
individual personalities, to have been a description by
Steiner of
several of his prior incarnations. A deeper reading of
these
lectures suggests an additional (and more important) theme:
namely that
World History goes through periods where certain individual
personalities serve as a means through which particular kinds
of
spiritual inspiration enter into world affairs. Further,
that
this stream
of
influence not only varies from epoch
to
epoch, but is in itself a kind of organism.
History
then is something living, and how individuals
participate in certain aspects of the unfolding of the history
of ideas
(the spiritual aspect of this living history) can aid our
appreciation
of the past, the present and the future. Understanding
how this
works in relationship to the evolution of consciousness (the
soul
aspect of this living history) can also shed some light on
this book [American
Anthroposophy] you are reading and its
place
in the history of Anthroposophy as well as its place in the
world of
thought.
These
personalities, through which ideas
enter history, are not the cause, but rather a kind of medium
of
transmission. Thought, as a cosmic activity, needs human
personalities in order to manifest in human affairs.
Recall once
more what was quoted several times at the beginning of this
book: "...the
very purpose of our
Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that man should become
increasingly
conscious of what takes
effect
through
him in
earthly
existence." R.S. Lucifer and
Ahriman,
lecture II, 2 November 1919 [emphasis added]. What the
personalities do in order for a certain quality of thought to
arise in
their consciousness shows the nature of their deeds of will,
but the
thought content itself is a cooperative art - the cosmos
co-participates (Christ as the Holy Spirit or Breath blows on
the
latent embers of our own being, encouraging our enlightenment
and
receptivity to this earthly-cosmic intercourse).
In this,
the last essay for the book American
Anthroposophy, I will endeavor to
approach
the same theme (cosmic thought and its influence on human
affairs) from
another, yet similar, direction as Steiner did above.
The danger
will be that people mistake the personality for the message,
as if the
personality has everything to do with the content (rather than
be a
small part), which content is sometimes called: the history of ideas (a concept worthy of deeper consideration by the
way).
Hopefully the story that I will tell here can bring
forward this transmission aspect
with greater depth and accuracy, for as many know
the set of lectures - World History in the Light of
Anthroposophy - is most often
referred to in terms of its possible
significance as describing Steiner's prior incarnations, and
seldom for
the light it meant to shed on World History.
The history of ideas is also, to a large degree, the history of words, languages and meaning, something that changes over time. In the works of Owen Barfield, for example, we can come to not only a deep appreciation of these facts and their meaning for our lives today, but also note that he points to the poet (or we might say the artist of the word, which anyone who writes must exhibit to one degree or another) as the leading edge of cultural developments through their poetic expansion and contraction of the meaning of words. So while I of necessity have to refer to Steiner and Anthroposophy in its own language to accomplish certain tasks and intentions I have given myself, for Americans I suggest that best (in the poetic sense) expression of many spiritual ideas, questions and problems is contained in a book several times mentioned in this little book: MacCoun's On Becoming an Alchemist. It is how she represents the spirit in American idioms and language that is most wonderful and practical. Were anthroposophists to adopt many of her language conventions, all of our conversations would be enriched.
*
Some
general observations and questions...
There
would seem to be no reason to expect that the
development of Anthroposophy, as a possible influence on world
affairs,
will take a linear course. Yet, many people in the
Society seem
to act as if this were the case. The implied idea goes
something
like this: in
linear time the sequence is: Steiner gave us great gifts and
we develop
them (Waldorf, biodynamics etc.).
Lets
throw this idea away immediately, if the reader doesn't mind,
for just
a little attention to history shows that such is never the
shape taken
by any set of ideas or cultural influences. Aristotle's
works,
for example, disappear from Western Civilization in the
immediate
centuries after his death, only to be preserved by Islamic
cultural
developments, and then from there be returned to Western
culture more
than a thousand years after their original production.
Instead,
let us look at the 20th Century development of
Anthroposophy as being mostly rooted in Steiner's work, first
developed
in the late 19th Century (his books on the science of
introspection
etc.), and that this activity of writing and lecturing
inspired many
people. It is kind of like a series of seeds sown in the
garden
of many souls, as well as within the general ongoing cultural
context.
The seeds grow and develop, but is that the ending of
planting,
sowing and harvesting? What next?
How
about another set of seeds sown into additional
gardens of soul and cultural contexts?
First of
all we need to separate the personality of
Steiner from Anthroposophy itself. The reader will find
it useful
to conceive of Anthroposophy as something not from Steiner,
but rather
as a universal potential capacity of human consciousness that
Steiner
unfolds and which then stands behind his work, but which is
also
something in itself (a cosmic Being - Anthroposophia, who appears reflected in the microcosm of the
human
being as a kind of part - active imaginative (picture forming)
cognition, just as the cosmic Being
is itself just a part of
something much larger - the macrocosm).
This is
a very tricky matter in the anthroposophical
world, so let me dig a little deeper. In most
translations of the
First Leading Thought (Anthroposophy is a path of cognition....), the German word erkenntnis is most frequently translated as knowledge.
So for
many people Anthroposophy
is
a
path
of
knowledge..., and when they add
in the ideas in Knowledge
of
Higher
Worlds, and in Occult
Science:
an
outline, about study as a
preliminary condition of spiritual development, then
Anthroposophy
becomes, in the mind of far too many, a path of study of
things Steiner
wrote and said.
Steiner
himself aided the confusion by using
Anthroposophy as an adjective: anthroposophical, a term he
applied over and over again. What makes something: anthroposophical? One of his favorite constructions was: anthroposophical
spiritual
science. Many people treat
those two
terms as meaning the same thing, that is Anthroposophy equals
Spiritual
Science. Yet if this was true, for Steiner to use
the
terminology anthroposophical spiritual science is the same as
saying
grape flavored grape flavor, which is clearly nonsense.
Obviously
he meant something when he modified the term spiritual science
by the
term anthroposophical.
What did
he mean?
To my
thinking (which involves the conscious
contemplation of the relationship of these various concepts in
pure
thinking) he meant to imply that there could be more than one
kind of
spiritual science, but that kind of spiritual science which
was anthroposophical was one in which active imaginative - picture
forming -
cognition played a special role. First comes the
spiritual
experience - the work of the spiritual researcher. Then
comes the
act (art) of cognition as applied to
the subject of experience. This art
of cognition was the first thing he developed during his
biography,
both as an experience and personal soul development, and then
as a
subject of three books. Later in life he referred to
these books
over and over again, in particular A
Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception
and The
Philosophy
of
Freedom.
Now for
many people in the Society and Movement this can
all seem like a bit of silliness, except for the fact that
since they
don't know this art
of
cognition as an experience, they
have no
basis for making any judgments concerning its nature and
importance.
To go over this once more, here...
The New
Thinking Mystery can be lost to humanity for a
significant amount of time unless it is understood, sought and
then
practiced. The Society and Movement do not appreciate
this.
In a way this ignorance is itself a danger to the New
Thinking.
To cultivate spiritual science as a prize of the
intellect, but
not recognize the unique form of willed cognition that led to
the
becoming of our particular form of spiritual science, is to
make a
picture that the house (the huge edifice of spiritual
scientific
concepts) didn't have a carpenter, but rather sort of grew
there as a
kind of magic act coming from the personality of the great
initiate.
Lets
avoid this, if possible.
To
return to our theme: we could then say that Steiner
develops Anthroposophy in himself (evidenced by his books on
scientific
introspection), and then this capacity has consequences (the
sowing and the reaping). Steiner, being of a kind of
esoteric
linage (the organic stream or sequence of initiates in the Post-Atlantean Age) as revealed by World History in the
Light of
Anthroposophy, is already
atavistically
clairvoyant as a child, and this aspect of his biography then
leads to
a certain course being taken such that Anthroposophy appears
in the
world out of a kind of context highly related to his
biography.
Anthroposophy appears in the way that it does because
Steiner was
of a linage (and spiritual community - the communion of
saints) that knew about how to bring
down from spiritual
worlds, through initiation, cosmic truths.
Once we
understand this, we can now begin to form a basis
for appreciating how the in-the-present Bodhisattva
incarnation of the
legendary Future Maitreya Buddha will take a completely
different
course (hereinafter referred to as the HLFMB, i.e. the
Hypothetical
Legendary Future Maitreya Buddha - and yes I do mean make a
bit of a
joke of this, for it should be clear by now why this is not
only
justified but necessary [We
are
not to take the unfolding of this shaggy-dog story seriously
at all - lest ye become
again little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven ... there is something in
Tales that
is transcendent in their own right, and an excess of
literalism kills
the spirit of the Tale]).
Bodhisattvas
are of a quite different kind of linage than
that of initiates. The probable biography of this
individuality
is not at all similar to Steiner's and in these differences we
will
come to see how Anthroposophy is taken up by this personality,
put to
use, and then appears in the form of another set of seeds
which will be
sown in those receptive souls and cultural streams, which will
be of a
quite different order from those of Steiner's. Further,
humanity
has moved on since Steiner's time, and something different is
called
for as a consequence. What Steiner needed to do is not
what needs
to be done now. The only similarity is Anthroposophy, as
a
potential human capacity, and the role that capacity plays in
the
history of ideas and the evolution of consciousness.
To give
an oversimplification here: Steiner brings
something of the cosmos down into incarnation and the HLFMB
develops
something of the human and raises it up. The two are
very
different kinds of acts, albeit quite related to each other in
a
certain way, about which the reader ought to be able to
discover more
details when they think
about it. Individuals may be able to benefit from learning to develop both
what
Steiner taught and what the HLFMB teaches. May...obviously, for
people called to the Anthroposophical
Movement quite easily follow Steiner, and whether they will
find
something useful in the works of the HLFMB, that is a whole
other
question.
We could
say (albeit again as a bit of an
oversimplification) that Steiner humanizes cosmic (universal)
thought,
and the HLFMB universalizes earthly individual human thought.
In
both cases, however, the living thinking (Anthroposophy), that
plays a
role as a capacity, remains a
cooperative art - both incarnate and excarnate
beings participate. [Also
keep in mind that we must constantly wrestle with the
dangers of the
name, such as HLFMB, as if the name actually represented
what I am
trying here to illuminate mostly through description.]
Perhaps
it will help to think of the influence of the cosmic and human
thought that streams through
Anthroposophy (the capacity) as itself fluid and living, and not all of a
piece (or
otherwise fixed in any manner for all time). So there is
to be a
succession or sequence (historical organism) of personalities
who take
up the unfolding of the capacity, and then
act
out
of
their
own
being in an effort to
manifest what is there. Our excessive leaning on Steiner
then not
only misses the point of Anthroposophy as a means to bringing
in cosmic
and human thought, it tempts one to
not even look in the many places
outside the Society and Movement where Anthroposophia chooses to support the manifestation of this cosmic and human
thought.
In the
case of the HLFMB, Anthroposophy manifests
something quite different in quality and character from what
Steiner
manifested, and this is not only necessary but ought to be
welcomed. An
anthroposophical product of cosmic thought and human thought
is
multidimensional and needs to appear in the world from many
different
aspects of its nature.
Let us now look a little more carefully at the general nature of a HLFMB incarnation (and also [using for the fun of it] the current one in particular) in an effort to more deeply appreciate what is being offered to the furtherance of anthroposophical work in the world from this quite different quarter. Remember please the somewhat humorous meaning of this term: HLFMB: hypothetical legendary future Maitreya Buddha.
*
Some of
what we might decide to understand about this
individuality is given to us in a series of lectures by
Steiner, done
mostly around the year 1911. Steiner was confronted at
that time
by an effort within the Theosophical Society to promote a
young Indian
boy (Krishnamurti)
as
some kind of weird combination of the Second Coming of Christ
and the coming 7th Buddha (and other things as well), and had
to
explain to those who would then listen that the future
Maitreya Buddha
incarnates in a very unusual way (references to Steiner
comments
on the FMB will be followed by an AS: according to Steiner). Some of these lectures are collected
under the
title: From Buddha to Christ.
For
example, according to Steiner, this personality does
not incarnate at birth, but another individuality does.
Not until
around the 30th year, when a change of ego's takes place, does
the
FMBAS (giggle) take on a body. The unspoken implication
of these
lectures then is that the young Indian boy being promoted
around 1911
within the Theosophical Society could not be the future
Buddha, since
the young boy is already quite remarkable. On the
contrary,
implies Steiner, there is basically nothing outwardly
remarkable at all
that would draw our notice to the personality that prepares
the bodies
for the FMBAS [more
fun!].
After
pointing out the absence of outstanding (or
noticeable) features of the first personality, Steiner then
goes on to
say a number of things about the FMBAS - the ego that later
takes over
from the first personality. He/she can be called: the Bringer of the
Good, or the Flesh becomes
Word when the
final of a long sequence of incarnations is reached.
This FMBAS
incarnates in almost every century for about 5000 years.
Steiner
also suggests that this individuality is to be a main teacher
of the
Christ Impulse.
There
are other pictures that can be noted, for in the
Luke Gospel lectures Steiner speaks of the Lodge of the
Buddhas as
something that can be seen Imaginatively circling around
Christ as a
Sun-center, from whom Wisdom streams as substance into these
Twelve
Buddha beings. This concept is worthy of deeper thought
as well,
for it suggests that the ego of these individualities (the
Lodge of the
Buddhas) is made (created by Christ) out of the substance of
Christ's
Love as that can manifest as Wisdom.
Tomberg,
in his Meditations
on
the
Tarot
- a
journey into Christian Hermeticism
(in the
Arcanum on the
Fool or Amor - Love) describes this future Buddha as being both a
human and
an avatar (the Kalki Avatar), who over the course of the
sequence of
incarnations draw nearer and nearer to each other, until the
last
incarnation when they merge.
We can
see then that everyone has a point of view it
would seem, for not only have Steiner and Tomberg had
something to say,
a number of anthroposophists have entered into the fray with
their own
assumptions and thoughts (see Thomas Meyer's The Bodhisattva
Question, for example).
Perhaps this should give us pause
for a bit of caution. An acquaintance of mine (of deep
insight),
described Steiner's presentation as creating a picture of the
FMBAS as
a kind of Teutonic Superman, by which she clearly meant to
suggest that
Steiner's picture was neither entirely accurate or
particularly useful.
The
reader then should imagine that what is to follow
here represents the concepts concerning this FMBAS by someone
who has a
much more intimate understanding and knowledge of how a change
of egos
unfolds.
Perhaps
the matter most obviously overlooked (albeit
Steiner and Tomberg should have mentioned something, and
others as well
might have considered it more carefully) is just who is the
individuality that holds down the fort (so to speak) for the
first 30
years or so. Is it just any old soul that inhabits a
body for
almost half a life and then turns it over to the HLFMB?
Steiner
in referring to this incarnation process notes in
passing that it very much reflects characteristics of Christ's
Incarnation - a perhaps unusual birth, followed by a more
ordinary life
(to some extent), which then leads to the Baptism at the
Jordan (where
the Christ-Sun-Spirit enters into a body prepared by the
Zarathustra
ego). The HLFMB incarnations appear to be in a kind of
harmony
with Christ's Incarnation, as might be expected of a
personality
created by Christ out of the substance of Christ's Wisdom. It
is as if
a kind of song or sound comes into incarnation, which is in
resonant
harmony with the Incarnation.
So then,
what about the place holder of the biography -
the personality that is born into life in order to later
sacrifice that
biography as a gift to the HLFMB?
[Before
going deeper into this question, it should be
added that if Tomberg is correct, not only is there a
placeholder
personality who prepares the bodies for the HLFMB, but in the
last of
the sequence of incarnations, when the HLFMB becomes the
Seventh
Buddha, this earthly human development is met by the Kalki
Avatar, and
a kind of Rite of Incorporation takes place. So the
bodhisattva
incarnations of the Future Maitryea Buddha are preceded by a
personality that prepares the bodies, and are, at the same
time,
overshadowed and guided by the Kalki Avatar, until such time
as the
final incarnation when the work of the three spirits results
in the
Rite of Incorporation that produces what Steiner called: the Flesh becomes
Word. All of which must be
done without interfering
with the conscious freedom of either of the three essentially
different
spiritual beings - the preparer, the bodhisattva and the
avatar.]
It is
possible for the HLFMB to reflect upon its memories
in such a way that a kind of style* can be
observed in which
the memories of the first thirty plus years are quite
distinguishable
from those of the later years. At the change of egos,
memory does
not disappear, for the astral, etheric and physical bodies are
left
behind by the original ego and thus come into the possession
of the
HLFMB for his or her use. A careful inward memory
contemplation
later in life by the HLFMB will reveal a certain quality in
the earlier
memories that is different from those subsequent to the change
of egos.
The memories are mirror-like in their nature, and in
this mirror
can be found a reflection of the character and qualities (the
style)
of
the
two
different
ego
personalities.
*[for
this language usage, see MacCoun's On
Becoming an Alchemist]
[As
another aside, it should be noted that the HLFMB does
not know it is the HLFMB when it takes over the left-behind
bodies, for
just as in a regular birth the memory of a pre-birth spiritual
existence is forgotten, and the HLFMB finds itself integrated
within an
ongoing biography as well as integrated within the already
well-formed
astral, etheric and physical sheaths and bodies. More
will be
said about this transition later.]
So, for
example, in the current HLFMB incarnation it is
clear to such inward memory contemplation that the earlier
personality,
while being someone with no obviously perceivable outstanding
characteristics (as predicted by Steiner) he was nevertheless
an
individuality of unusual inner qualities. We might want
to think
of the preparer-being as someone of extraordinary natural
innocence -
without evil thoughts, without guile, filled instead with a
powerful
instinct for empathy (is able to hear in the tone of voice of
the other
- the Thou - the real feeling nature of their state of soul).
Further this is a being who is generally passive in its
nature -
the world acts on it, it does not act upon the world.
From
this we can acquire the idea that the sheaths (and
the astral, etheric and physical bodies) prepared by this
individual
for the HLFMB) are already largely purified, for an
essentially pure
and innocent soul has occupied them for thirty years.
Now I mean
to say here clearly: "largely purified", for
the
innocent cannot entirely remain innocent during incarnation,
especially
given their essentially passive-receptive nature. At the
same
time this is a being who does not significantly change during
incarnation - it is complete in itself to a large degree.
What
happens to it is that it takes on in its soul (due to its
passive-receptive nature) aspects of the world in the time of
its
incarnation that become a kind of sacrifice - the acceptance
of a
burden, thus leading to karma. The world reacts to the
innocent
and impresses itself there, such that this personality must
(in order
to be in harmony with its surroundings) more and more act like
that
which is around it. It copies, as it were (as a kind of
costume
and mask), the fallen characteristics of others, for to remain
true to
its real nature would be to be out of harmony with life.
What a
child does early in life in imitation, this being continues
for the
entirety of its earthly existence.
As a
consequence, when the change of egos occurs the
astral, etheric and physical sheaths and bodies have acquired
multiple
qualities of various kinds, not all of which are positive.
This
is a gift to the incarnating HLFMB, as it becomes a kind of
puzzle to
be solved by an ego that is essentially in its created nature
wisdom (not wisdom as content remember, but wisdom as
substance
of ego being). The biography left behind by the innocent
passive
imitator of life becomes a riddle, and in the resolution of
this riddle
a great deal is learned by the HLFMB that is essential to its
own later
activities in the continuation of this complicated biography.
Whereas Steiner's incarnations were apparently
accompanied by a
dance partner (as it were) - a second incarnate individuality,
the
HLFMB process contains two egos in one biography (plus an
overshadowing
and guiding avatar), something much more intimate by the way
(in fact
it would be difficult to imagine something more intimate - in
an
earthly sense, for the innocent one leaves behind all that it
did and
felt and thought both as memory and as embedded aspects -
consequences
- in the three sheaths and bodies, as well as the intricate
circumstances of the biography itself to that point in time).
Further,
it is crucial to see this wisdom ego being as
buried in a kind of way - as imprisoned. It must work
its way to
the surface of the sheaths and bodies, each representing
different
kinds of puzzles, obstacles, opportunities and burdens.
I will
discuss this in a little more detail shortly.
What
Christ bears during one Incarnation, as a process of
receiving an already prepared set of sheaths and bodies, the
HLFMB
experiences in tiny imitation spread out over multiple
incarnations
(about 49, or seven sevens, to be more precise) taking about
5000 years
to accomplish. The essential matter for the HLFMB is the
weight
and
direction
given
to
the
shared
biography
by the innocent preparer. The significance of this
gift for the later work of the HLFMB is not to be
underestimated.
For
example, in this specific case there were already in
the biography three children and a wife. There was a job
and a
tendency to seek something missing in the soul life through
recreational drugs (mostly pot). There was also an already
established
world view (set of conceptions), and various habits of body,
posture
and speech. In addition, there was a specific
geographical
location, and all manner of past situations (family, friends,
experiences as a youth, as a high school student, as a cadet
at the
United States Air Force Academy for three years, a year at
Denver
University in a pre-seminary program and then three years in
law
school, followed by a half a year as a clerk to a Montana
Supreme Court
Justice.). There had even been a brief love affair, and
already a
first divorce and then a remarriage.
Thirty
years of lived life and all its consequence now
came to be the possession of the HLFMB, who in the beginning
fully
identified with the past of the previous innocent ego, as if
the HLFMB
was this same personality. All the same there was one
odd
experience that arose right the next morning, for the change
of egos
occurred during sleep.
Everyone
has an idea of themselves. The astral
body, and the etheric and physical bodies, bear a memory
impression of
the ego as if it saw itself in a kind of mirror, albeit very
dimly.
Let us call this self-image: the personality
matrix. When the change of
egos occurred, there was no
longer the original ego present that was needed in order to
maintain
the natural living soul organism of this personality matrix,
so right
from the first morning it began to slowly fall apart - to
dissolve.
Further,
the new ego already comes with capacities the
older ego never possessed. One consequence of this is
that a kind
of light now shines into the soul life. The new ego is
more awake
in the inner world, and as a result of this the falling apart is fully experienced (something the Clara Barton
incarnation almost couldn't handle, thus the period of
apparent mental
disorder). As there is no conception for this process
already
present in the world view that was left behind by the previous
ego, the
new ego is forced to find concepts for this unusual experience
among
that which already exists - defining its experience for
itself.
Oddly enough in this life it was first experienced as
great
freedom.
If we
consider the previous personality matrix as a kind
of fixed structure into which the old ego had woven itself
over the
prior thirty years, we can see how this falling apart of the
matrix
might induce a feeling of freedom, such that the new ego
realizes that
it is in a situation where it is now able to redefine its
personality.
The HLFMB sees the prior personality matrix dissolve and
feels
this experience as an opportunity to construct a new
personality.
In fact,
one of the earliest examinations of the prior
ego's memories occurs at this time, for the new ego looks back
and
observes carefully (remember it is more awake in the depths of
soul
than is normal - something quite different from Steiner's
youthful
atavistic clairvoyance) just how the first personality was
constructed
as adaptations to life experience. Reviewing the
previous
personality matrix construction-process of
the
innocent preparer (which at that point is assumed to belong to
himself)
enables the second ego to more consciously and slowly create
an
entirely new personality.
In this
way then begins the work of the HLFMB of
modifying in small details and large, the whole biography from
its most
intimate aspects to those choices that lead to significant
destiny
decisions. Rather than go into more detail (a great deal
could be
offered on these themes), let me just relate a few stories
that arose
because of the change of egos.
Within a
few months the new ego, recognizing that
previously it had been quite passive in the marriage
relationship,
speaks to the wife that it has noticed this, and does not wish
to
continue in a partnership where one party (the wife) was so
dominant.
This request for greater participation in family
issues is
instinctively refused, for the whole marriage rested in a
situation
dependent upon the first ego's passivity. The new
ego finds
itself confronted now with a significant moral question, for
how does
one continue a marriage with such an imbalance in decision
making
processes. However, since there had already been one divorce
and
remarriage, with its attendant unwanted consequences for the
children,
a kind of moral gridlock arises for the new ego.
A
significant state of depression comes with this (more
later on the shadow aspect here), such that one Saturday
morning the
new ego leaves the home and begins to wander, almost unable to
think or
make decisions at all, even of the smallest nature.
After about a
five mile walk (in an urban area) it finds itself at the base
of a
small hill that is topped with woods. Upon climbing this
hill it
finds a large stone on which to sit, and then a prayer
(petition) is
made for help with this debilitating confusion.
Immediately in an
instant the depression is gone, and a great peace replaces it,
accompanied with the sure knowledge that any decision (to
stay, or not,
in the marriage) will be morally alright.
As a
consequence the marriage is left (a significant
first destiny decision). Because the culture in which
this occurs
is full of psychological and spiritual life (Berkeley,
California, in
the early 1970's), following the marriage dissolution an
encounter with
a remarkable eclectic soul-healing discipline comes about,
which
enables the new ego to do a great deal of inner work that
would
otherwise have been impossible on its own (like Clara Barton,
the new
ego had to go through some acceptable process of soul healing,
as was
available at the time). After three years of this work,
coupled
with inwardly conscious choices to become someone new, the
former wife
(who had intimately known the previous ego for more than ten
years -
and of course assumed a continuation) remarks to the new ego
somewhat
as follows: You
know,
you
have
become
a
completely
different
person.
You
walk
differently,
you
talk
differently, you stand and sit differently.
Both former husband and former wife mistakenly
assume that this is the result of the encounter with the
remarkable
eclectic soul-healing discipline, a truth which is partially
correct
for the second ego took hold of this discipline and made of it
a great
deal (a whole other story).
Several
years later, after the new ego has met the work
of Rudolf Steiner and come upon his lectures regarding this
change of
egos phenomena, the new ego has a conversation regarding this
with his
eldest daughter (someone who shares similar spiritual
inclinations, for
example they both, independent of and unknown to each other,
begin the
journey to join the Catholic Church at the same time through
what is
called: the
Rite
of Catholic Initiation of Adults).
She
relates that at the house where they were living, when the
change of
egos seems to have occurred, she was awakened one night (she
was 5 or 6
years old) by a great wind blowing through the house in the
direction
of her parents' bedroom, which great wind was followed by an
immense
dark shadow. For her this had many consequences, and one
consequence was that she was now instinctively awake in the
astral
world and began many years of lucid dreaming; and, formed a
conscious
relationship with her angel (she called it her inspiration, and could ask it questions up until the onset
of
puberty at which time it consciously, through telling her,
left her
from then on to her own devices) of which experiences she is
only now
able to speak of to her father.
Around
the same time as this conversation with the eldest
daughter, the new ego becomes a member of a group around a
Christian
Community Priest, who tells of the following understanding
acquired
from Steiner: that certain significant personalities have to
carry a retarded* moon Archi as a shadow or double, because
something
that strong is needed to balance out the potential excesses of
this
equally strong of character personality.
*[This
is a Being who has voluntarily held back its own
normal development in order to undertake, as a sacrifice, a
specific
spiritual task.]
By the
means of these stories it has been my intention to
show how in the soul depths of the HLFMB certain matters are
being
played out that are entirely inward, without much outer world
effect at
all. This ego is slowly working its way through the
riddles and
burdens of the innocent's left behind gifts, and at each stage
it is
not always obvious to those around this personality that these
events
are occurring. The family and friends know of the outer
personality changes, but as long as this individuality does
not yet
take up clear outer world work, the inner changes are largely
invisible.
In some
previous incarnations of the HLFMB, outer world
work is more obvious (as we saw in the examples of famous past
lives),
but in this particular incarnation the work for a very long
time has
been mostly inward. Considering that this incarnation
began in
Berkeley, California, in the early 1970's, a place where inner
soul
work was for a great many the cultural norm, this concentrated
focus on
achievements in inner work is quite understandable.
It is
after all a natural reaction to the higher aspirations of the
time -
the seeking for enlightenment or initiation, which of course
must
necessarily be more of a private act, than a public one.
As a
consequence many systems of spiritual and psychological life
were
encountered and to a degree mastered, before the meeting with
Rudolf
Steiner took place.
This is not to say that outer world work was never considered, by the way. Many fantastic visions of possibilities were offered to the second ego as temptations by the luciferic double, such that (for example) three times the second ego ran for President of the United States (in a closet and rather badly, but given the George Washington incarnation, to feel responsible for the State of the Republic was naturally deeply felt). Especially during the years of drug intoxication, inflated luciferic visions - such as becoming a great spiritual teacher - were common (the second ego became clean and sober in September of 1987). In fact, during the initial period of the encounter with Tibetan Buddhism the HLFMB thought he had become enlightened. This tendency to gross hubris (and its downfalls) was itself an essential lesson from life, for it proved how false such fantasies could be, and helped keep the spiritual activity of the HLFMB focused on the possible instead of the fantastic.
In the
first seven years (approximately1971-78) of the
present incarnation, Buddhism was nevertheless met with a
certain
carefulness (not every encounter meant a luciferic
intoxication), with
the result that the HLFMB's approach was to work only with the
Four
Noble Truths, and to see if these could be rediscovered out of
his own
activity. Nothing of modern Buddhism was adopted as a
doctrine,
but the Four Noble Truths were turned into questions that the
HLFMB put
to life in order to confirm, out of his own experience, their
reality
(see in this regard the essay: this
and
that at
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thath.html).
Because
the
innocent
had
been
a
natural
Christian
(and
raised
in various protestant
denominations in his youth), the astral body left behind was
also
already predisposed to what the innocent preparer had
understood as
living in the Gospels.
The
greatest comfort as regards the riddles and trials of
life were thus provided to the HLFMB's developing soul (as the
second
ego slowly transforms the astral body to accord with its own
nature),
from this strong relationship of faith by the innocent one to
the
Gospels. Many a life riddle found its answer solely
within the
Gospels, in spite of studies of Buddhism, Ceremonial Magic,
Native
American Spirituality, and the countless other disciplines
that one
could encounter in the remarkable world-cultural center that
was
Berkeley, California, in those years.
Now
Berkeley at this time was also a center for political
awareness. The innocent one had been well introduced to
the
ideals of the American form of government as a youth in
school: and,
then during adolescence (at the time of the 1956 presidential
elections) discovered great distress of soul in realizing that
this
idealism had been lost, for nothing could he hear (with his
remarkable
gift of hearing the soul's reality in its tone of voice) that
suggested
that the competing politicians felt deeply connected at all to
the true
spiritual nature of America. Here was a great riddle for
the
innocent one, that left such an impression on the soul that
the second
ego was unable to ignore this pain, but had to spend many
years in
seeking to understand how such remarkable (yet pragmatic)
idealism out
of which the American Experiment was born, has come to be lost
to
contemporary America politicians.
[Since
these two, the innocent preparer and the
bodhisattva, are most intimate partners, it is no wonder that
there is
a resonance with prior incarnations.]
This was
the second of three great riddles left behind by
the innocent one. The first concerned the problem of
evil, for in
the school yard the innocent one first encountered real
cruelty, an
experience it did not understand at all. It was one
thing to read
of such things in books or newspapers, but quite another thing
to
experience it directly, yet have no ability to appreciate such
human
tendencies, for no such impulses existed in the innocent one
at all.
The
third riddle arose in the soul of the innocent one
during the year of pre-seminary training, before deciding
instead to go
to law school. A course was taken at Denver University
on the New
Testament, which course was so arid and academic (theology
under the
influence of modern materialistic scientific thinking), that
all the
mystery and magic of the innocent ones youthful faith was
nearly
destroyed, and he became out of this experience (which he
trusted and
felt he had to believe - remember he is essentially a passive
receiver
of cultural influences) an agnostic.
This
preparation via modern education included a full
acceptance by the innocent one of the belief systems of
natural
science. The innocent was in all respects (except faith
and
morals) a complete materialist. So also then, in the
beginning,
was the HLFMB in his essential world conceptions.
As a
consequence of its own new gifts, during the first
seven year period the second ego had a number of natural (no
doubt
atavistic) clairvoyant experiences, but had yet encountered no
world
view that enabled it to make peace between this direct
experience of
spiritual reality and the materialism present everywhere.
Thus
arose at the end of the first seven year period of the HLFMB's
incarnation, in the remarkable cultural environment that was
Berkeley,
California, this question: If the world is at
its roots
and origin spiritual in nature, what are the implications of
this fact
for humanity's social and political existence? This
question
was actually written down at that time in a journal.
Here
again are the three riddles of the innocent, the
great questions of life bequeathed to the HLFMB: What is the
meaning of
evil? Why is the spirit of America lost to
America's
leading politicians? And, why is the current teaching of
Christianity so empty of mystery and magic? Perhaps the
reader
can now see how it was that the three riddles, of
the
innocent, are synthesized in the
above
question posed to himself by the HFMB. It was then,
while in full
conscious awareness of this question, that Rudolf Steiner was
met
through his books.
[With
this picture clearly in mind, one who is interested
in history, might then reread various biographies of George
Washington
and Clara Barton, for their illumination of the influence of
the
innocent preparer on the later ego's biographical
circumstances, all of
course overshadowed and guided by the genius of the patiently
waiting
avatar. See especially the book: The
Invention
of George Washington, by Dr. Paul
K. Longmore. Dr. Longmore's book develops the thesis
that
Washington's public persona was consciously created and
crafted by him
in order to use it as a tool of responsibility, first as a
large
landowner and member of the Virginia legislature, then as a
General in
the Continental Army, and finally as a principle aspect of
Statecraft
in the founding of America. This matter is made all the
more
poignant when we realize that Dr. Longmore is disabled and
that for a
year and a half in the late 1990's the HLFMB was his live-in
aide.
Nor should we overlook that the innocent preparer spent
three
years in the United States Air Force Academy, during a period
of life
in which in the Washington incarnation he was there on his way
to
becoming a quite young high officer in the English Army.
There is
a great deal of music and harmony in the interrelationships of
these
various incarnations.]
Already
introspective by nature (recall the second ego
was deeply aware of its inwardness from the moment of its
morning
awakening in the three sheaths and bodies), it was natural
then to be
drawn to Steiner's books on the science of introspection (A
Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception, and The
Philosophy of Freedom). Also
profoundly
attractive were the books on Goethean Science, on Projective
Geometry
and much else besides. Well worth special mention are
the
writings of Owen Barfield.
Part of
the importance of this is to recognize that the
HLFMB, containing as he did the characteristics of the
innocent one in
his astral body, was also receptive (less passively, however).
He
soaked up knowledge and experience like a dry sponge. If
one were
to trace the world view of the innocent one and watch its
progression
to what is the world view today of the HLFMB, we would find
that this
transformation was constantly informed by those outside him.
Everything was a stimulus, although the HLFMB became
more and
more aware that he was solely responsible for his idea-world [see the recently written: The
IDEA of the
Thought-World].
Knowing through introspection exactly how he created it,
it was
clear that his world-view was his own personal moral
responsibility,
regardless of how much others provided guidance and good
questions.
At a
certain point in the encounter with Steiner (which
began without any idea of there being an Anthroposophical
Society), a
kind of crisis ensued. The HLFMB discovered that he was
reading
lecture cycle after lecture cycle trying to scratch an itch
that would
not be relieved. Previously on two other occasions, the
HLFMB had
found himself in bondage to a powerful world view (see
Steiner's
remarks on this problem at the end of the original
preface in The
Philosophy
of
Freedom). The first
time
the capture was by the conceptual frame of reference in the
remarkable
eclectic psychological system that had provided so much
healing, and
the second time was with respect to concepts living in Tibetan
Buddhism. Having mastered (out of a necessity to remain
instinctively free inwardly) these idea-complexes by learning
to not
think out of them (an inner effort that he later began to call
sacrifice of thoughts, and breaking the chains of the
teaching), the
HLFMB then for a time stopped reading any Steiner at all,
until no
thought of Steiner's would arise in the soul unless
consciously called
forth.
Once
this soul art had been realized in practice (again
invisible to all outward observation of others), a review of
Steiner
and Anthroposophy was undertaken as a contemplative and
imaginative
inner picturing process. Through the formation of these
inner
pictures it was discovered that Anthroposophy was a method (a how of doing something)
not a content (a what produced by the how).
Upon
sharing
this
discovery
with
a
new
anthroposophical
friend,
he
was
shown
a
lecture of Owen Barfield's, given in Dornach in 1933 and
published in the Barfield collection: Romanticism
Comes
of
Age. In this lecture Barfield
made the exact same commentary: Anthroposophy
is
a
method,
not
a
content.
[This has lead to
the
complete revision of my website in the Season of Easter, 2013:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit]
Confirmed
then in this insight, the HLFMB now began a
long process to adapt the newly discovered (and being
explored)
Goetheanistic thinking to the social question above (a work
that was to
take at least 21 years to reach a kind of climax of maturation
in
certain insights): If the world is at its roots and origin spiritual
in
nature, what are the implications of this fact for humanity's
social
and political existence?
It will
help the reader here to recognize that this time
of inner work, beginning right from the first morning of the
incarnation of the second ego, is seldom (if ever) something
done by
even the most serious anthroposophist, much less people
leading
ordinary lives. It is also inner work that is made
necessary
by the incarnation process itself (the change of egos),
for the new ego has to overcome all the effects of the prior
innocent
ego (thus the title to this essay Biographical
Necessity). The new ego has to
transform the various bodies and sheaths in order to make what
he is
newly receiving his own. At the same time, he is (out of
his own
impulses of will) forming a second marriage, having two more
children,
succumbing to a serious bout of marijuana addiction, and
moving from
job to job following faithfully all that Providence puts
before him (consciously* living life according to the 23rd Psalm).
In this
way this personality is active in the inner world of soul,
slowly
transforming it according to the tasks set there by the
innocent one,
as well the tasks set before him in Rudolf Steiner's works on
scientific introspection; and in addition, struggling
constantly to
live life according to the Gospel teachings of Christ Jesus,
in full
gratitude for the trials being offered by this life.
*[Almost
from the beginning, the HLFMB accepted [surrendered to] his lot
in life - the biography, and recognized in it, in all its
details, the
guidance of the Divine Mystery. He actually, at one
point,
engaged in a scientific experiment to test this proposition -
called in
Sufism: the
increasing
of necessity.]
The work
is inward, with little appearing in the outer
world where everyone sees this individual according to their
own ideas
of what is right, never appreciating that where they might be
unconscious and living out of habits, he is transforming the
soul
seeking to develop all that he believes is potential.
All the
while, he is managed and limited by a shadow intelligence [- the retarded moon archi],
who
is equal
to all the powers the HLFMB might manifest, for even though
more awake
than others inwardly, he is nonetheless bound, by the nature
of the
three sheaths and bodies that were inherited, to all the rules
of
ordinary consciousness.
To be as
precise as possible, the reader should
understand that this inner work was essentially moral in
nature.
While Steiner in The
Philosophy
of
Freedom teaches the
application
of moral imagination, moral intuition and moral technique in
relationship to choices to be made in the outer biography, it
was
obvious to the instinctive wisdom nature of the HLFMB to apply
these
same rules to his inner life as well. One needed to be
just as
moral inwardly as outwardly, such that inner acts too became
the
subject of moral imagination, moral intuition and moral
technique, [as well as
serious moral trials - one
does not always succeed in self mastery at all, and the long
term
consequences, which now at age 72 can be seen in a number
illnesses
connected to insufficient effort made to master the physical
body.].
For all
this inward activity we are right to ask whether
anything has been produced outwardly. An aspect of the
whole
situation is that the HLFMB thought for many years that those
working
in anthroposophical circles understood the nature of the
required work
- namely the development of the new thinking out of inner
moral
impulses. Working on the social question mostly in
private and in
his spare time (while living a life of children and jobs -
working in
restaurants, mental hospitals and in a factory for the last
three years
before retiring on social security, following and in agreement
with the
biographical imperatives of the innocent one), the HLFMB
struggled to
give birth to a new social science based upon the Goetheanism
recommended by Steiner.
We must
see the HLFMB as fully embedded in ordinary life,
with all its trials. There was available to this
individuality no
academic robes or tenure, no place to simply teach, read and
do
research (although this was often hungered for). All
that was
done on the social question was done as a kind of avocation,
or hobby.
Mostly the HLFMB's daily allotment of life energies were
given to
work and to family, such that the spare amount of life forces
that
remained, were then given over to these questions regarding
human
social and political existence, [up
until age 62 when he retired and had then few family
responsibilities
as well].[Some
may also
find the references to myself in the third person rather
odd, but they
should look to Steiner's book Knowledge of Higher
Worlds, and the admonition there to learn to look
at one's self
as a stranger.]
We also
need to see that this personality has totally
given itself over to the earthly human world, with all its
temptations
to our appetites and other unredeemed soul wounds. There
were no
doubt, due to karma and other factors, just as many defects as
virtues.
In fact, the defects are crucial, for if there is no
pain, no
suffering, nothing to be overcome, there is no real need to
develop.
While
there were many days that the HLFMB regretted this
condition, and even sought to change it, he learned over time
that this
path through ordinary life was entirely necessary, for it too
was
teaching of the most precise and special kind. Thus we
find in
his writings such conceptions as: there are only two
important
books to be read: the Book of Life and the Book of the own
Soul.
The
product of this modest work (written essays and a few
lectures) was often offered to the Anthroposophical Society
and its
various publications, but was just as often refused. In
a certain
sense, since the inner work was itself invisible, so the outer
work
could not really be recognized for it often presented itself
in a form
at odds with the assumptions regarding the social world
prevalent in
the Society (a weakly understood social idealism rooted in
Steiner's
Threefold Social Organism). It became necessary
eventually to try
to understand why this work of over 21 years could not be
received by
that social form (the Anthroposophical Society) which seemed
most
suitable for its presentation and support. Thus began a
series of
articles (published on the Internet, and sometimes handed out
for free
at anthroposophical conferences) which took a critical point
of view of
the Society (see the collection of other essays in the book to
be
called: Dangerous
Anthroposophy).
Eventually it was understood
that the
Anthroposophical
Society had fallen behind the development of Anthroposophy
(predicted
by Steiner in his lectures on Awakening
to
Community). Since Anthroposophy is a naturally
evolving capacity of human
beings, to the extent that the Society became
fixed in its methods and form, this Society was not living
(too much
tradition, too much reliance on Steiner-said, too much
sub-conscious
looking to the Center for leadership). Naturally what
has become
not living will fall behind the evolution of that which does
live
(Anthroposophy as a capacity).
During
the period that this failure became more and more
apparent to the HLFMB, he found himself now capable of the
living
thinking, the goal Steiner had set for those working out of
the
scientific introspection. This led to certain
experiences that
essentially became (up to that time) the impelling cause of
that which
could be produced out of the many years of preliminary inner
work.
The intercourse between human and cosmic thought had so
slowly
emerged that for a number of years the HLFMB did not fully
appreciate
it, nor understand how to give himself fully to it until his
retirement
from work and family that began in 2002. The
overshadowing and
guidance of the avatar aspect of this threefold spirit art was
not
intrusive - the HLFMB was always free before what was offered
by the
subtle and delicate
fullness of Presence and presence of Fullness
(no bondage to the Idea).
For
example, he began then in his retirement to write of
the social world as the logos speaking.
Whereas
Goethe had learned to read the Book of Nature, the HLFMB
learned to
read the Book of the Social World, and eventually could only
conceive
of this world as something created by the Word,
or:
the
logos
speaking. The living thinking
beheld
the intricate manner in which individual biographies and
streams of
history were woven together, found them to be extraordinary,
and that
only a truly divine and cosmic power could accomplish the
remarkable
reality which was the Social World - thus, the logos speaking. [Leading
eventually, in 2010 and 2011 to the book: The Art of
God: an actual
theory of Everything.]
Following
this [in
2004], a book was created that wove together the
presently separate streams of the Shepherds and the Kings
(exoteric and
esoteric Christianity). This writing (the Way of
the Fool) arose out of the living
thinking,
which is itself in its nature based on inner practices of
renunciation
and love. It is these moral soul conditions that makes
possible
the living thinking (Christ's Breath), which new thinking was
carefully
described in the appendix to that book (and here in the third
essay).
This book also became later understood by the soul of
the HLFMB
to be a consequence of the fact that this present time is the
third
sounding of a 1000 year rhythm regarding the Shepherds and
Kings (that
is, the book was written as it appeared in the processes of
the living
thinking, and then only later did the HLFMB connect this
experience to
this 1000 year rhythm).
The first was (of course) on
the occasion
of a Birth,
while the second was 1000 years ago at Chartres. It is
significant that this bridge should be offered to both the
world of
esoteric Christianity (especially anthroposophists), and the world of
exoteric Christianity, in a time so fraught
with materialism, that materialism's negative effects on
spiritual life
are quite deep (no one really notices most of these effects,
not even
many anthroposophists). Again it needs to be noted that
the HLFMB
did not initiate this activity, but out of his practices of
renunciation and love the thoughts arose in the living
thinking then
being practiced. Recall now the introduction to this
essay, which
considered the role of human beings and the appearance of
cosmic
thought in world history through their freedom. [Regarding this see the essay
from
2012, on the School
of Chartres
and the Culmination.]
Another
matter to recognize in this book (the Way of the
Fool) is that it is a kind of treatise on Cosmogony. Now
Cosmogony is today thought of as a theory of the origin of the
Universe, and we are all pretty familiar with the idea of the
Big Bang,
and its purely material nature. This idea of the
Big Bang
as a cosmogony originates out of present day inquiries into
the nature
of the physical world, the conclusions and understandings of
which are
extrapolated into the past. The HLFMB's work in the
above book
does something similar, except that it recognizes in the
speaking of
the social world (the logos speaking), as can be thought
phenomenologically out of the present (reading the Book of the
Social
World) is something that can also provide us with a Cosmogony,
but this
time one in which the spiritual takes center stage.
Now this
book wasn't written with that question exactly
in mind, since its major thrust was an effort to understand
exactly and
with precision the present day nature and meaning of human
social life,
but at the same time once we create this spiritual picture of
modern
existence, it naturally extrapolates logically backwards to a
spiritual
creation. I point out this fact here, in part, to add in
an
indication of Rudolf Steiner's that the development of
Cosmogony is to
be a natural product of the activity of the American Soul (see
Cosmogony,
Freedom
and Altruism, R. Steiner) [Once more: There was a
further
development in 2010 and 2011 that produced an even more
exact
consideration of the question of Cosmogony: The Art of
God: an actual
theory of Everything.]
As a
result of the underlying moral practices which
support the living thinking, this book (the Way of
the Fool) was thought in the HLFMB, as a cooperative art between his own
ego
being and the world of cosmic beings, no doubt
inter-penetrated by the
avatar. As a special nuance here, one needs to conceive
of this
art as never, ever, overcoming the freedom or the
responsibility of the
incarnate human ego. As Steiner wrote in the last
sentence of the
original preface to The
Philosophy
of
Freedom: "One must be able to
confront
an idea and experience it; otherwise one will fall into its
bondage."
In
addition, to the culmination of the many years of
social research, was the discovery (again appearing to the
living
thinking) that human social existence was actually (in the Age
of the
Consciousness Soul) a Rite of Baptism, whereby in human souls
when they
sought the Good, there came to be an experience of the Second Eucharist, an ongoing rite now possible in the souls of
humanity
since the True
Second Coming was inaugurated in the
20th
Century. It became possible to perceive with this living
thinking
how it is that within social existence, and the relationship
between
the individual biography and the stage setting we call modern
history,
the Christ wove together (as Artist - Lord - of Karma) our
biographies
with such art and precision that within each biography would
arise the
possibility of this Baptism by Christ with Holy Breath and
Fire as told
to us by John the Baptist so many years ago (the arising of
such ideas
in the soul life of the HLFMB, is also no doubt related to the
harmony
between the present incarnation and that of St. Matthew, as
reveal by
the Thrones).
With the
presentation of this idea, and its significance
concerning human social existence (recall the question asked
just
before the encounter with Rudolf Steiner's writings: If the world is at
its roots
and origin spiritual in nature, what are the implications of
this fact
for humanity's social and political existence?),
the
maturation
of
the
examination
of
this
riddle
is
now
complete
(in
the
sense of present day conceptual thinking). Here we may be seeing just why Steiner called the
HLFMB: the
Bringer of the Good, for a
foundational part of such a work is certainly the
unfolding of the conceptual nature of the human experience of
the Good
itself (the Good being another name for a principle aspect of
the
Christ Impulse).
The most
recent set of observations to appear before this
living thinking (while it continued to work mostly out of the
context
of Spiritual Science) was the discovery of the identity of
Ahriman's
in-the-present incarnation, a matter certain to be
controversial.
Again this was a result of questions posed not by the
ego itself,
but by life and the surrounding influences in the biography.
In
point of fact, as the question came more to the fore, it was
initially
refused. The HLFMB turned away from it, not believing he
was
capable of such a perception. Only after it was insisted
upon
from many outside quarters that the question be faced, did the
HLFMB
take on this task.
At the
same time this work on the identity of Ahriman was
being developed, the HLFMB suffered a heart attack (he was
then 66
years old). This event, which took place in the ER (his
heart
stopped completely twice) was followed by two days spent
mostly
unconscious (the doctors were uncertain as to whether he would
come out
of this with any of his faculties intact). During this
two days
sleep, impulses of will matured, such that the HLFMB
subsequently finally abandoned completely the Anthroposophical
Society
as a possible field of activity, [for a time, as usual things change]
and looking to new areas in which to
work was invited to go to live in New England and to work
there with a
Native American seeress, in conjunction with her work with a
most
unusual protestant Church, the Mormons, or the Church of Jesus
Christ
of the Latter Day Saints (the question then arose in the
HLFMB's soul
as to whether this might be a Church more open to the needed
intercourse between Shepherds and Kings - a matter to be
determined in
the future) [this
project failed
for the most part, but was, even so,
worth investigating for its potential.]
In
addition, the living thinking brought it about that
the HLFMB decided to take his activity deeper into the world
of the
Internet (he'd already had a website for over 10 years, as
well as
being an active presence on many Steiner related Internet
discussion
groups). Conversations with another friend (who was also
- but
from a different direction - completely involved with
Steiner's The
Philosophy
of
Freedom) brought about a
consideration of where was Anthroposophy (as a capacity) to be demonstrated and put to work (a pragmatic
American Soul gesture) if it was not possible to do this
within the
Anthroposophical Society in its present day conditions.
The
understanding was reached (through conversation and
inspiration) that
one should take Anthroposophy where the future was being born
- and to
offer it as a service there. Thus arose the impulse to
make
digital videos (a truly modern art) for such places as YouTube (where the
future - the
young - hang out in the presently interwoven global
community), which
now becomes a main aspect of the coming stages of the HLFMB's
work
(should health continue to permit, - so far over 200 videos
have been
created). [At the
present - March
2013 - there are over 240 videos, resulting in almost 400
subscribers
and over 100,000 visits - an audience quite international in
scope,
involving multple themes. The name of the Youtube
channel is: the
foolish
philosopher.]
Having
come this far, we now need to more fully complete
the spiral of thought and return to what was written in the
beginning,
perhaps hoping to achieve a higher level of understanding.
While
Anthroposophy was for a time the treasure of the Society, this
Society
has fallen behind the evolution of Anthroposophy and can no
longer
serve as a vital and appropriate support. As a
consequence the
HLFMB finds that his activity must step away from the Society
and seek
other fields of endeavor - other places to cultivate and seed,
which
were described above.
These new seeds must be sown in fertile ground, yet with all the moral and scientific clarity that can be mustered, in accord with Steiner's example. From this we can perhaps see that while Steiner's sowing was effective for a time in bringing Anthroposophy to the attention of some, the HLFMB's activity will have to place Anthroposophy in other contexts entirely (outside the Anthroposophical Society and Movement), for Anthroposophy belongs to humanity, not [just] to the students of Rudolf Steiner. The scientifically based living thinking (Anthroposophy), which is a kind of intercourse between the human ego and cosmic thought, serves the world of humanity such that its influence on World History is itself living and evolving. In Steinerism this life becomes arid, rigid and essentially indigestible to the modern soul.
[Call to mind the
fact of the three original riddles the preparer personality
left within
the astral body of the HLFMB: First, what is the
meaning of evil,
which as of 2012 resulted in the book: The
Mystery of
Evil in the Light of the Sermon on the Mount; Second, what about the
spirit of
America - where has that gone, which as of 2012 resulted in
the booklet
Economic
and Social
Rebellion, that
itself was an
outgrowth of Uncommon
Sense written in
2005; and, Third: what
about the loss of the magic and mystery nature of
Christianity, which
then resulted in 2010 and 2011 in the book: The Art of
God: an actual
theory of Everything.]
Now that
we have looked more closely at the biography of
the HLFMB, let us next reconsider an earlier question as to
how the
HLFMB and Steiner differ, and what meaning can be found in
that
difference.
At the
start of this essay I characterized this
difference as follows: In the case of Steiner it is the
bringing
something down from cosmic heights, while the HLFMB brings
something
out of the human depths. If we compare the quite distinct biographies, we can see
how
this difference in the application of Anthroposophy is also
embedded in
their nature. Steiner's biography is dominated by the necessity of his spiritual clairvoyant experiences, while
the
HLFMB's biography is dominated by the necessity of rising out of and transforming the depths of
the
sheaths and bodies (and other biological imperatives) left
behind by
the innocent one. Let us consider a few details of the
patterns
in their different biographies.
Steiner
is atavistically clairvoyant as a youth, while
the HLFMB is not even incarnate in his youth for his bodies
are being
prepared by the innocent. Steiner, a man of considerable
intellectual capacities, rises to the heights of his cultural
life,
such that he is given the task in his twenties of editing
Goethe's
scientific works - Goethe being the paragon of Central
European
cultural life. The innocent in those same biographical
years (the
early twenties) is first at the USAF Academy, then married and
raising
children - and the HLFMB is still not incarnate.
By
Steiner's early thirties he has produced A
Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception,
finishing his revised doctoral book Truth
and
Knowledge and about to launch his
masterpiece: The
Philosophy
of
Freedom. In his early
30's the HLFMB is just incarnating, and struggling to manifest
his own
ego through the weight and density of the innocent's left
behind
sheaths and bodies. Steiner had to overcome his
atavistic
clairvoyance in his late teens bringing in then the new
thinking
initiation, while the HLFMB in that same phase of his physical
biography, as when Steiner created The Philosophy of
Freedom, is soon to manifest bits
and pieces of atavistic
clairvoyance, all connected in the beginning to marijuana
intoxication
and other drug experiences.
I think
by now the reader can get the picture.
Steiner's genius of spirit is of an entirely other order
than is
the HLFMB's genius of spirit. Steiner is a towering
intellect,
bearing the fruit of many incarnations where he has manifested
over and
over again, the ability to represent on the earth the all
encompassing
view of the cosmic heights. In this Steiner is of the
stream of
the Kings.
The
HLFMB's incarnations are entirely earthly and human,
and if we do not make too much of it (or too little) he is not
so much intellectual (in the highest cultural sense as was Steiner),
but ordinarily
and humanly moral to the bone.
Recall that the innocent is a pure
and naturally humble soul through and through, and leaves
behind an
already much purified astral body - it has only been made
earthly by
the necessities of life. In this the HLFMB is of the
stream of
the Shepherds (thus the Matthew incarnation).
To get a
deeper sense of the human aspect of this work,
just contrast the subject matter produced by Steiner with the
subject
matter produced by the HLFMB. The HLFMB has no
clairvoyant
vision, no akashic record, no regular intercourse with Cosmic
Beings.
His teachers are life, his own soul and other human
beings.
What he does with that - that is the clue.
For
example, above [in
the book American Anthroposophy, of which this essay
Biographical
Necessity was originally meant to be a part] is a
very frank
discussion of human
sexuality, from the human side of it. The essay The Meaning of Earth
Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul
is not based upon a vision from cosmic heights, but a view
from the
depths of the human inwardness, which in like fashion is the
basis for
the essay on the Shadow. The material throughout
this book
on the Social World of Humanity, is not from outside it, but
from
inside it - how the social world looks to a fully awake
participating
thinking still bound to the earthly plane of existence.
We ought
not to imagine, for example, the HLFMB becoming able to do
this without
having the intense life experiences of being an addict,
without knowing
divorce and marriage and children, without a multitude of jobs
in all
sectors of human existence; and, certainly not without the
foundation
of the 30 years of receptive imprinting of the Age on the soul
of the
innocent. None of this kind of life experience was in
Steiner's
biography (nor did it need to be, either).
Yet, as
a consequence of these differences, the work of
Steiner and the work of the HLFMB are fully complementary -
two sides
of one coin, and perhaps the future will unfold in such a way
that this
presentation of Anthroposophy grows in a number of different
dimensions
- even to accord with the seven-sided platonic solid
discovered
recently by the American Frank Chester.
The
HLFMB is an ego made out of wisdom - wisdom as being.
Receiving the bodies, sheaths and memories of the
innocent, the
HLFMB is not so much an act of intellect, but one of wise
morality.
This we know through the two previous incarnations, Washington
and
Barton. Neither was a towering intellect, but each was
to a
considerable degree goodness incarnate and a demonstration of
the
wisdom such goodness can produce (showing us, by the way, an
interesting contrast between male and female wisdom - the male
masters
the cruel necessities of war and aggression, while the female
masters
the grace necessities of receptive care-giving that follow as
natural
consequences of the first). As Goodness is a core
aspect of
the Christ, it is then no wonder that one can see that the
HLFMB is to
become a teacher of the Christ Impulse (recall now how in In Joyous Celebration
of the
Art and Music of Discipleship, the core gestures of the way to living thinking
were
acts of renunciation and love.)
Now many
others, knowing this individuality in life, will
have, out of their own antipathies and sympathies, found the
morality
of this individual wanting, and are entirely justified in
doing so.
Partly this is due to the age in which we live, where
there is a
confusion everywhere between morality as code, rules and
guidance from
books and religions, and the free morality Steiner taught in The
Philosophy
of
Freedom. Most people
won't even be able to recognize how frequently the HLFMB acted
out of
fully conscious and participated conscience, for much that he
did (and
does) was/is contrary to social norms. Let me just
illustrate
this with one story from a meeting of an anthroposophical
Branch, where
such problems manifested in great detail.
The
subject of the Branch meeting was a very poorly
thought-out book called: From
Gondhishapur to Silicon Valley - Spiritual Forces in the
development of computers and
the future of technology - written
by Paul
Emberson. At the meeting where this book was being
uncritically put forward as supposedly revealing much about
the nature
of America and the Future, the prevailing spirit in the room
became
quite dark. The mood of soul of the group was full of
fear and
hopelessness, for the Beings being evoked by the discussion
were not of
the higher hierarchies, although everyone acted as if we were
all being
Michaelic.
Into
this context, the HLFMB (who was experiencing, as he
often did at Society meetings, a great deal of soul pain),
begin to ask
some simple questions, going straight to the point by
wondering out
loud what of the discussion brought the Christ forces into the
shared
contemplation. People basically were too asleep to even
understand how their fascination with the dark, and with a
representation of the dark that was full of untruths
(Emberson's book),
could lead them into a group thought-content (kind of an
anti-reverse
cultus - that is: an undisciplined contemplation of
sub-nature) that
was essentially destructive and so far away from the
redemptive powers
of the Christ as to serve neither Michael or Christ, but
rather only
Ahriman.
After a
few questions failed to evoke a reconsideration
of the group's luciferic fascination with the dark, the HLFMB
made an
impassioned short speech trying to lay out the flaws of the
book and to
redirect the attention of the members toward other approaches
to
thinking about technology and to other resources than Emberson
(look up
the American Martha
Keltz on Google and her
studies
of Tesla, Keely and
Russel), where a more healthy approach was being made to
these
questions. This was, of course, provocative, for people
naturally
will seek to defend their positions rather than reconsider
them, not
knowing the value of continuously practicing sacrifice of
thoughts.
As a consequence, the HLFMB was attacked for holding
false views
(a Christian Community priest emotionally proclaimed that he -
the
HLFMB - had no idea what Anthroposophy was).
Those
familiar with the Christian-Rosicrucian Path of the
Seven Stages of the Passion of Christ, will understand how for
the
HLFMB this was experienced as a crowning with thorns. Moral activity in such a situation
requires being
open to receiving what is being said, and taking it in - that
is being
vulnerable to its impact. The room full of untruths and
then
accusations of false views is experienced in the soul as a
piercing of
the idea aspect of soul life - a crowning with thorns.
Now
please do not think the HLFMB is the only person to
experience such soul trials. They are in fact quite
common in all
kinds of social circumstances where individuals strive to be
moral - we
just don't know yet the relevant vocabulary required in order
to
appreciate them. We live in a materialistic culture,
where almost
all words are tied to meanings in which the real
soul-spiritual
experiences of human beings can find no expression. I
only really
told this story so the reader can see how easily it is for
moral action
to be mis-perceived by others and seen instead as moral
failure
(through their beam - their
antipathetic judgment - see Christ's Sermon on
the Mount).
Part of
our problem comes from having what the HLFMB
would call: the
comparative mind (see the essay
described
above: this
and
that). It is an
instinctive gesture of mind to compare one thing to another.
This
is rooted in our natural antipathies and sympathies. So based
upon our
unconscious likes and dislikes we think: this
person is moral, that person is not.
This
person knows Anthroposophy, that person
does not. This
book is valuable and should be read, that
book should be thrown in the trash.
The
difficulty comes from the fact that this gesture of
thinking is instinctive, not conscious. The mostly
sleeping will element behind the thinking tends to be easily
available
to the threefold double-complex, and not so easily available
to the
true I. Antipathy and sympathy are reactive
feelings, not
awake and freely chosen cultivated feelings.
As a
consequence, we tend to react
to each other rather than choose through conscious will how to act toward each other. The
driver for this tendency is the unmastered feeling life
(absence of a
conscious in-the-moment equanimity). The stronger the
feelings,
the harder it is for the I to choose the thought content
(control of
thoughts). The result is that in life we all experience
moments
in which we are trying to act out of conscious conscience
(participated
conscience), but the reaction of those around us appears
negative.
The more we are following a moral path, the more these
life
situations result in those soul experiences described as (for
example)
the scourging or the crowning with thorns.
To
know and follow the Good, that is to unfold from within the
beginnings
of the Christ Impulse, is to have a biography in which the
experiences
of the soul have a tendency to take the form and shape of the
Seven
Stages of the Passion of Christ (the washing the feet, the
scourging,
the crowning with thorns, the carrying the cross, the
crucifixion, the
entombment and then the resurrection).
Don't think I came to cause
peace across the land. I didn't come to cause peace, I
came to
wield a sword, because I came to divide a man against his
father and a
daughter against her mother and a bride against her
mother-in-law, and
to make a man's servants his enemies. Whoever prefers
father or
mother over me is not worthy of me; and whoever prefers son or
daughter
over me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take his
cross and
follow after me is not worthy of me. Whoever found his
life will
lose it, and the one who lost his life because of me will find
it.
Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives
me,
receives my Sender." Matthew
10:34-40
*
So,
where are we?
We
started actually with an hypothesis - an hypothesis
about a legend. I offered the hypothesis as much for the
fun of
the teasing of my fellow anthroposophists, as for the reality
of it.
The change of egos is a fact for me, as is the
description of all
the various developmental challenges and changes that are
connected to
following into life a biographical path blazed by a rather
remarkably
innocent and humble, yet passive-receptive, spirit.
The
consequences of this union of two egos in one
biography ought to be clear, in terms of the product (inwardly
and
outwardly) of that work. The challenge to master the new
thinking
was met and won. With this capacity in hand a dialog between my I and the world of
spirit
(the wind, wherein in some sense or another the avatar also
may have
dwelt) arose, yet in each instance my freedom and
responsibility for
what I think and then write is never diminished. The
earthly
human element, and all its life experiences, penetrates every
bit of
the work produced.
I have
not brought something down from spiritual heights
as did Rudolf Steiner. Nor do I consider either one of
us
superior to the other. Even to form such a question is
to engage
in the weaknesses of comparative mind (all analysis and beam,
no
synthesis and mote). Each human individual is, according
to the
understanding given to us by Steiner, as different from each
other as
any three species of animals. It is more than just
apples and
oranges, but instead the same kind of difference as between
platypuses,
porcupines and penguins. Imagine, six billion plus human
beings
that different from each other!
The
value of this work, especially since it comes out of
an American Soul, will depend on whether it is pragmatically
useful to
others. Let me finish this last essay with a comment on
the
American Soul that may explain certain things to those
anthroposophists
that have known me in life, and also it may shine some light
on a
matter that is worth considering all on its own.
The
American Soul contains as one of its major
characteristics what might be called: the egalitarian
gesture (a belief in human equality
especially with respect to
social, political, and economic rights and privileges - recall
once
more, Steiner: English
speaking
peoples
are
instinctively
in
the
consciousness
soul
in
their
life
of
rights). As a consequence
Americans are more at home in the horizontal gesture of the
Cross, than
in the vertical. We don't like to raise someone up above
us in
social matters (although we often do - we just don't like
doing it).
This is
a phenomena of soul very crucial to the
underlying brotherhood destiny of
the American Soul. It also connects to
our basic soul orientation that seeks to be pragmatic helpers
in the
social instead of idealists. We want to solve problems,
not make
the social conform to some higher principle, as do most
Central
Europeans (neither soul gesture is better than the other, but
they are
quite different).
As a
consequence of this egalitarian gesture, Americans
have a hard time recognizing in another American any
achievements in
the vertical dimension. Dennis Klocek, for example, has
accomplished a great deal in that realm, but remains
under-appreciated
and under-utilized by the Society and Movement in America,
because we
don't yet really know how to make use, in the social, of our
wise men
and women (some others, such as Catherine MacCoun, Stephen
Clarke and
Harvey Bornfield, pass by on the edges, but can never draw
near the
center of our work because that center is too exclusionary in
its
fundamental social gesture).
We even
have a hard time recognizing them. The
egalitarian gesture causes us to assume the other is
like us inwardly, and to insist on having a
relationship to them more horizontal-social, instead of
appreciating
that what lives in them (a perhaps much deeper connection with
cosmic
thought) exists there to be of service to us. Partially
this may
be due to what was modeled for us by
the excessive deification of Rudolf Steiner. Our
instinct as
Americans is to not imitate this excess, but at the same time
we don't
yet always have modeled for us how to form a right
relationship to
spiritual talent.
Those
familiar with Steiner's thinking, on the
threefolding of the social organism, will have encountered the
concept
that while the cultural life is the realm of freedom, they may
not have
noticed that he also suggested that there would arise there a
natural
hierarchy based on the fact of different capacities.
Others will
be better than some at certain tasks, being possessed of the
relevant
gifts. What ultimately needs to happen, when we finally
get
around to being willing to move out of the horizontal and
recognize the
existence of talent in another in the vertical, is to not get
confused
by believing this means we have to sacrifice our own instincts
and
thoughts to such a personality. Not only is this
useless, it is
not desired by the particular personality who has achieved
something in
the vertical. Their very own trials have already taught
them not
to think highly of themselves, and the last thing they want is
for
others to think highly of them.
What
they do want is to be of service, and the way to
make use of their talent is to ask them questions.
Steiner
modeled this for us in his own activity, where (especially in
his last
years) the deepest and most significant lecture courses arose
because
people came to him and asked him questions.
To ask
such questions doesn't mean by the way to bind
ones self to an answer - to any kind of authority, but rather
it places
before the talent the opportunity to apply its ability to
engage more
consciously in the vertical - in the intercourse between human
and
cosmic thought, which in our system means to practice: true Anthroposophy.
Nor does a question mean there is going to be an
answer.
On the contrary, there might be a response which is just
more
questions. Living thinking is not about answers.
Not only
that, we
can
engage
each
other all the time in this
way if we bother to wake up to the possibility.
All of
us have talent. Remember the wind blows
where it wills, not where we wish it to blow. Don't
sacrifice your own thought before the pseudo-altar of a
supposed
expert. Ask, listen and learn (seek, ask and knock), but
always
keep in mind that your own I is responsible for the thought
content of
your own mind. The trick, to the extent there is a
trick, is to
become
conscious of the difference between the vertical and the
horizontal,
between the spiritual and the social. When it is a
matter of the
social we are all equal. When it is a matter of the
spiritual,
people are differently talented. You don't ask your next
door
neighbor about the
cloudiness coming over your eyes, you ask a doctor. At
the same
time, if you need help fixing something, or any other
neighborly aspect
of existence, your neighbor is just the person to ask (your
doctor is
not going to come over and help you start your car in the
winter).
Again,..
everyone has talent of this kind. If we
recognize then the nature of a particular talent, we can ask
the talent
for something we might need that fits within its already
demonstrated
capacities. No reason to go around putting folks with
spiritual
talents up on a pedestal. You can treat them socially in
the
horizontal just fine, but if they have a sphere of knowledge
or
abilities which you recognize, then ask for the service they
can give.
To perform that service is a major reason why they
incarnated in
the first place.
*
A couple
final words...
At the
very least I hope the reader will have some sense
of the nature of my biography (a confession offered so that
there will
be no confusion in the reader about the biographical and
spiritual
background of the one who has written this book). I have
tried to
be as honest as possible (without going into all the details
of the
many other flaws and missteps you should assume to have gone
along with
all that was said above. The innocent one gave me a leg
upward
(as it were) on the vertical aspect of the Cross, and then I
came along
and found my own way to many aspects downward, balancing out
his more
pure characteristics with dangerous appetites of a more
personal
nature, for which I have been solely responsible.
These
certainly include whatever egotism that remains in
the hypothesis concerning the legend offered
in this essay, a
temptation both to me and to the reader to make too much of
something
that is more truly understood in down to earth terms.
Consider
this essay then a very long shaggy dog story, typical of the
American
Soul with its imaginations of such exaggerated fanciful
characters as
Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. That is, after all, the only
kind of
idea we anthroposophists presently have of the Future Maitreya
Buddha -
a fantastic exaggeration. Anyone who thinks they can
speak with
final truth of such aspects of human spiritual history, had
better come
back down to the earth. Remember, Rudolf Steiner only
spoke of
this at a certain time and place because he was more or less
forced by
circumstances to do this.
What is
the truth? If we ask the question of
whether Joel Wendt is a Bodhisattva incarnation of the Future
Maitreya
Buddha, we have missed the point entirely. Joel
Wendt
doesn't exist, nor does Rudolf Steiner the great initiate.
These
are mere nouns (names) for the immortal spirit (the i-AM),
which on
occasion manifests rather funny caricatures of itself. I
have no
interest in finding a name for
myself (although I do
call myself sometimes, a: social philosopher...and occasional fool), but certainly i-AM, and I
have had this
biography above described. In cooperation with the
Breath - the
Wind of the Holy Spirit in my soul, I have produced the
thought content
in this book [American
Anthroposophy]. For the reader, this thought
content is
the matter
with which to wrestle, not any name applied to me. It is
the accomplished deeds of a knowing doer,
engaged in the
intercourse of cosmic and human thought, that exists on these
pages
- nothing else.
There is
a connecting nexus, which we call Anthroposophy,
at the intersection where the impulse to natural science and
introspection meet in the ethereal world of thought in the
company of
Christ. Rudolf Steiner, who traveled a path of
initiation in the
style of an Alchemist (as do many others - Dennis Klocek and
Catherine
MacCoun for example), and Joel Wendt, who has traveled a path
of
Discipleship, all meet at this nexus.
And yes,
I have played with the naming habits
of anthroposophists, and their tendencies to think too
highly of certain particular individuals. I have done
this quite
on purpose, the way one friend will tease
another in order to make light of that which so easily can be
too
heavy.
The most
important point to remember here is, however,
that while human beings gather around this nexus, it is the
activity of
the cosmic beings that makes it all possible. The human
beings
have the choice to serve something, and play a role (the human
cognitive act which incarnates into words the spiritual
understanding
and experience), but none of that happens without the
offerings and
sacrifices to all of us by the world of spirit.
At the
same time, they have given us a great gift of
trust - the gift of responsibility. It is our will that
crafts
thought into its incarnate form in writing and in speech.
So it
is you dear reader who will have to be responsible yourself
for your
own thoughts and what you make of the gifts of others, who
also produce
speech and writing.
What
becomes meaning in the world of human beings - the logos spoken
social world
of humanity - flows out of us.
What
your life means, what existence means, what others' words mean
- each
of us stands also in
between - in between the object of
our
thought and how that object is thought about,
with, within or as. If you just look around you at both the
ordinary
world of your biography, and the strange, terrible and
beautiful
textures of the stage setting in which it is embedded, there
you will
also see the ebb and flow of meaning.
This meaning may
be crass, ugly and evil, or truthful, beautiful and good.
Which
it is, is our choice.
Having
brought choice into the foreground once
more, I will next paraphrase the writer of the John Gospel*
and focus
on the powers unfolding in this particular time of the
evolution of
consciousness - the Age of the Consciousness Soul, keeping in
mind that
this paraphrase only speaks to a part of a much greater Whole:
In the beginning was the
choice. And the choice was toward God. And
God was
what the choice was. The choice was with God in the
beginning.
All things happened through the choice, and not one
thing that
has happened happened without the choice. In the choice
was Life,
and the Life was the meaning of the World.
*This
paraphrased text is based on the
Unvarnished Gospels by Andy Gaus, a
translation straight from the Greek to idiomatic English, with
the
later reinterpretations, imposed by sectarian dogmas and
traditions,
removed. As should be obvious, where the actual text
says Word
or it, I have substituted the word choice, and where it says Light
I have substituted the word meaning.
This is where
humanity is today, and will be on into the near future - given
the gift
of choice. This gift of choice is a single aspect of the Word, that moral
foundational
aspect of the Christ Impulse now available to those human
beings with
the courage to take up this possibility, and to bear also
those
consequences that come from making free moral choices
(reaching for moral grace, by asking,
seeking and knocking).
Nor is choice a simple matter.
We can, for example, put ourselves in a box of a kind by
conceiving of choice in an either/or
sense, as if we are forced by
circumstance to choose between two things that already are.
Or,
we can go past either/or to both/and, which then causes a
synthesis of
the apparent polarity of choices, transforming it into
becoming
something new. That is we can choose creatively - to invent
that which is not yet, becoming thereby
moral co-creators of the future.
Nowhere are our choices more
profound then in how we use the gift of the word - the ability
to write
and to speak. This then is American Anthroposophy - not as
a doctrine or set of fixed ideas rooted in
Steiner-said, but instead the creative cognitive acts of
individuals
who take personal responsibility for the meaning they give to
the world
of experience - the anthroposophist as a teller of
stories...as a
brother and sister to all, and a wise companion on the
journeys of life.
*
* *
From
Rudolf Steiner's Education
As A Force For Societal Change:
In the future, social life
will depend upon cooperative support between people, something
that
happens when we exchange our ideas, perceptions, and feelings.
This means that we must base our general education not
just upon
ideas taken from science or industry but upon concepts that
can serve
as a foundation for imaginative thoughts. As improbable
as this
may seem now, in the future we shall be unable to interact in
a
properly social way if we do not teach people imaginative
concepts.
In the future, we shall have to learn to
understand the
world in images.
From
Valentin Tomberg's Anthroposophical
Studies
of
the
Old
Testament:
At the present time, the
mission is different (the mission being the method correct for
the
average student of mystery wisdom in a particular epoch).
It
consists in a thought knowledge endowed with vision achieved
through
the development of the forces of the conscience in order then
to live
powerfully in the creative word.
------------------------------------------------------
"the gift of the word" very
much wants to be read aloud, with some passion
and the
occasional rush of words. It also likes to have someone
read it
to us, so that we may concentrate only on "hearing" it.
the gift
of the word
Speech, / Words, letters, sounds, / heard by both the inner ear and the outer.
Letters, sounds, words, / linked invisibly to ideas and thoughts.
Ideas, thoughts, letters, sounds, words, / a woven tapestry of meaning,
carried by Speech, / sometimes with grace, / but most often just carelessly.
Meaning, / a weaving of thoughts, sounds, words, letters and ideas,
spoken into the air and left there, / abandoned.
Words, spoken and heard. / Meaning intended. / But what is heard?
That which is heard is also intended. / Two intentions, two purposes, two meanings.
How difficult then communication, / suffering as it does the contrary pulls of multiple intentions, purposes and meanings.
I speak, you listen. / I mean, you grasp. / Somewhere in this delicate dance of words, sounds, letters, thoughts, ideas and purposes; / understanding is sought after.
Perhaps. / Sometimes.
Voice. / Speech reveals the unspoken. / Anger, fear, pride, arrogance, true humility.
The ear of the heart hears what is hidden in voice.
Posture, gesture. / Speech is more than sound. / The eye hears things the ear cannot, just as the ear sees things the eye cannot.
One mind. / Two minds. / Speech a bridge of woven light between two minds, and sometimes, although rarely, / between two hearts.
Speech, rich and full of flavor, / a light bridge, / joining two separate beings.
Speech denatured, / No sound, no gesture, no posture, no voice.
Speech reduced to lines of dark on light. / Written. / A treasure map in code spilled across a page
Words, letters, ideas, thoughts, sounds, / reduced to marks upon a parchment. / Speech dying.
Yet, / even in death, murdered by pen or pencil mark, / some essence of Speech still.
Meaning embalmed. Understanding buried. / Until read.
Reading. / Words, sounds, letters, thoughts, ideas, meaning, purposes, intentions,
Speech resurrected in the silence of another mind.
Speech. / Light bridge dying into print, / reborn when read in the inner quiet of another soul.
Speech, / The Spoken Word. / Writing, / The Word entombed. / Writing read, / The Word resurrected.
That this is so, / that human beings live in such an exalted state having Speech, this is Grace.
The spoken word, the written word. / Things so ordinary, so taken for granted, so pregnant with possibility.
The
emptiness between two souls is always / chaste,
virgin, pure, / waiting for Grace, for the bridge of light, /
for
Speech.
The Gift of the Word, originally called Speech, was written on
Epiphany, Jan. 6, 1997, in
the evening, in about a third of an hour.
additions
to the original essay
This
material is written after the original essay, which
was constructed with certain ideas in mind, particularly
matters
belonging to the work of Rudolf Steiner. As with
much of my
current work, which is arising while I am on retreat in New
Hampshire
in 2008 (and has been linked in my soul to the years spent
devoted to
Anthroposophy), in describing my biography above I mostly
wrote
concerning that which seem directly related within that
biography to
those questions relevant to my social research, which as I had
mentioned was begun in connection with Steiner's introduction
to
Goetheanism via the book A
Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception.
There is
another thread running through my biography that
in the heights of summer 2008 has called out for a review,
such that I
find that it wishes to be remembered (spirit recollection),
and
honored. What is next then concerns a few of those other
experiences, which also have influenced me deeply. Also,
please
remember that these are just a few of a larger number of
stories I
could tell of those crucial formative years in my biography
(1971-78).
the
meeting
with
Jahve
[or if you prefer:
Yahweh]
It will
seem odd to some to speak of having an encounter
in the physical sense world with one of the seven Elohim, but
as this
was the case, and as this was an important background
experience for
me, I will next take up that story. It is, in its own
way, far
more curious and intriguing than a lot of what has been
written above.
However, there is a back story to all this that first
must be
elaborated before this meeting can be described, so we will
begin there.
During
that period of my life, the first seven years
following the change of egos, where the joey personality
passed on to
me, joel, the three sheaths and bodies, I was then living in
Berkeley,
California, where I underwent a kind of schooling. I
have
previously briefly mentioned Buddhism, which included an
encounter with
the Tibetan Lama Choygam Trungpa and his students (where I
eventually
had to "break
the
chains of the teaching"), and now I
want to
relate my encounter with the works of Franz Bardon, and the
school of
Magic Initiation which he fostered through his three books on
that
discipline.
This
story begins with some fun joey's younger brother
provided by introducing him to the Tarot. Following the
change of
egos, I was one day stoned on weed, and playing with a tarot
deck.
I was lying in bed and had laid the cards out, face
down, fanned
across the bed. I held my right hand a couple of
inches
over the deck and passed it back and forth, and felt a
tingling
sensation in my middle finger as it passed over various cards.
These, of which there were three, I turned over, being
led to
them by the tingling sensation.
When our
brother had first introduced us* to the Tarot,
he had done a reading for joey where we produced from the
deck, in a
random fashion, three cards. The first he called
my outer
self, which was the Nine Card, the Hermit. The second he
called
my inner self, which was the Zero Card, the Fool.
The third
was what he called my life destiny, which was the One Card,
the
Magician (these are from the Paul Case deck). He later
told me
that he had made the whole thing up in his own mind (this
style of
tarot reading).
*[I
sometimes may use this odd construction - referring
to joey/joel as us. In thinking
over this situation, I have assumed
that as I drew near the time of my incarnation, even though I
was to
forget my experiences as a pure spirit, I must have
overshadowed joey
for years, drawing more and more near, otherwise the
transition would
have been too abrupt.]
These
then were the three cards my finger felt, while I
was intoxicated on pot, and which I turned over in the same
order: the
Hermit, the Fool, and then the Magician. As all this
spiritual
stuff was quite new to me, you can imagine that I was puzzled,
albeit a
bit delighted at the same time.
Other
events intervened, but eventually I took once more
an interest in such things about three years later when I read
the
book: The Magic of Findhorn. On
reading this book I came to believe (in connection with other
experiences including those described just above) that magic
might be
real (a considerable advance from my previous materialistic
upbringing
into which joey, the innocent preparer, had led us).
In fact,
a trip to Yosemite Park had produced a wonderful
piece of wood which in my lucifericly influenced fantasy life
I thought
of as a magic staff. I had decorated it a couple of
years before,
and reproduced on it drawings of the three tarot cards
mentioned above.
A friend had borrowed it to go to an event in Ho Chi Min
Park in
Berkeley, and it was there stolen (going on its own journey no
doubt).
As a consequence, after reading the above book on
Findhorn,
I decided to go on a magic walk (recall that my understanding
of things
spiritual was still unfolding in fields far from
Anthroposophy) looking
for the lost staff.
This I
did, doing what I thought of at that time as a
spirit-walk, which meant walking the streets of Berkeley
without a plan
or direction, and at each junction just going by the in the
moment
intuition of which way to turn, what street to go down and so
forth.
On this walk, about three blocks from where I was
then
living, I passed by a small book store that I had frequently
passed but
never before entered, for the window showed mostly books of
poetry
concerning which I had at that time no interest. I
stepped inside
on impulse, and right near the front door was a small
bookcase, which
at the top said: "Occult Books".
I looked
at these books for something on magic, and
finding nothing called out to the store keeper (who was about
30 feet
inside in the back), asking whether he had any books on magic.
He
first said no, and then upon reflecting, as I turned to leave,
said
that I should wait a minute. He gestured me back
to him and
showed me a book that had just been sold to him that morning.
It was yellow, cloth bound and a bit careworn.
He
wanted $7.50, which was all the money I had at that time.
Since I
was at that moment in my biography seeking to
objectively test the nature of Divine Providence, through a
Sufi
discipline called: the increasing of necessity, I
was easily able to give away all my cash to the purchase of
this book.
Readers ought to keep in mind that while in Berkeley in
those
years I was in a School, a University of Human Spiritual
Disciplines,
that only came into existence for a time in that cultural
milieu, and
then disappeared. This made it possible for me to study
and
practice many spiritual ways simultaneously, drawing from each
what
seemed appropriate and workable, all the while grounded in the
moral
impulses left behind by joey (the innocent preparer) in the
astral body
which I was then instinctively beginning to transform.
This
book (The
Practice of Magical Evocation) was
the first
of three Franz Bardon books I was eventually to study quite
seriously
(the other two being: Initiation
into Hermetics, and The
Key to
the True Quabbalah). On my
website can
be found articles that I later wrote about the meaning of
Bardon's
work: [ http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/lzbwe23x.html
].[This has been updated
in 2012
to that minor aspect of my work now called, on Youtube and
on my
website: On Becoming
a Real
Wizard. I actually
developed
this aspect of my Youtube work in large part because of the
Harry
Potter books, recognizing that a lot of young people would
wonder about
magic and wizardry given their reading of those
stories. Of all
my Youtube work this has turned out to be the most
popular. In
the first video I point out that being a wizard is not about
seeking
powers, but about seeking wisdom. In this way I opened
a doorway
to wisdom for many young people - the reaction has been
international
in scope, by the way.]
To save
the reader here the trouble of reading those
essays, let me say this. While some anthroposophists whom I
have told
of this work have recoiled in terror (magic frightened them in
some
fashion or another), the main import of this work is to make
it
possible to heal themselves, those whose karma from past lives
requires
that they work through various relationships to powers (and
other
superficial aspects of the so-called magical arts).
Christ's Love
extends to all, even those who dabble in such arcane matters.
These books are a path through those troublesome
jungles,
and as the reader will see below, this work does lead quite
directly to
the Christ Mysteries that lie behind Anthroposophy.
In any
event, upon receiving this book, which apparently
was left just that morning for me to find (by a certain
personality,
more later), I began to take a deep (albeit spiritually
immature)
interest in magical arts.
These I
studied seriously for three to four years, buying
other books as well. The other two Bardon books all come
to me
through quite definite fortuitous (providential)
circumstances.
For example, when I found in a bookstore the Quabbalah
book
(after much searching), the owner of that store (The
Metaphysical Town
Hall in San Francisco) told me that these books always seemed
directed
at certain individuals, because first this old man would come
to the
store and sell him two or three copies, after which a few days
later
individuals would come in and purchase them.
In fact,
my relationship to Providence at that time was
quite intimate, and continues to this day. For example,
once I
had met the works of Rudolf Steiner I soon found my way to
used copies
of Lehr's Man or Matter,
and Hauschka's The Nature
of Substance through events that had
little
to do with my own initiative and a lot to do with my faith in
the
co-working of Divine Providence in all the details of ones
life, both
inner and outer.
To
return to the story at hand...
The
Bardon books are an initiation system rooted in the
Four Elements, or the mysteries of the Yod, He, Vau, He, the sacred name of the God of the Egyptian
initiates,
and subsequently in some of the Hebrew Schools. I
was
progressing in my studies, able to sit still in the asana
(meditation
posture), for up to an hour and a half, doing exercises.
These
exercises were at the stage where I began to work at inhaling
and
exhaling the elements (enabling the astral body to experience
such an
element as Pure Fire for a time).
As this
practice was beginning, I also became curious
about the world of plants, for much lore was implied by the
study of
the magic arts, but living on the cheap which I did in those
days, one
could not buy all the books one might otherwise want to buy,
so I had,
by necessity, to sift through many before purchasing just one.
In
search of deeper insights to the world of plants, I was in
Shamballah
Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, when I looked once more
at the
shelf of Steiner books, which I usually dismissed. I
noticed
among them the Agriculture Course for the first time, glanced
through
it and bought it.
I took
it across the street to the Mediterranean Cafe, a
famous Berkeley coffee house, where I had some coffee and read
the
first lecture. I was so impressed that I crossed back
across the
street to Shamballah books, and bought the Luke Gospel
lectures, and
the John Gospel lectures.
At that
time I was one of the managers of a small art
film movie house in San Francisco, working for my younger
brother, who
worked for the notorious Mitchell Brothers (pornographers),
who owned
the movie house and had invested in my brother's art film
enterprise.
I took these three books with me to work, which work
left me with
a lot of spare time for reading, and it was during this time
of reading
(which was leading me away from the Moon Wisdoms of Magic and
Buddhism
- see Steiner's Paths of
Experience, which was later renamed:
the
Metamorphosis of the Soul) that
Jahve [Yahweh] put
in
an appearance at my place of work.
My work
duties required that I open and close the
operation (a 12 hour shift, from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.), and this
particular movie house had in addition to the manager, a
ticket
seller/candy clerk (very beautiful young women) and a union
projectionist. I was to show a presence in the
theater
itself (walk up and down the aisles) every hour, as well as
count the
tickets sold and the candy and the cash in the register,
recording all
this information on a sheet created for that purpose. At
the end
of the day, I took the receipts to the main offices of the
Mitchell
Brothers, which was several blocks away on Polk Street (the
theater was
on Larkin).
During
one hourly count, when I was standing at the cash
register and taking my various notes, a man walked up to me to
buy a
ticket. I had seen in him in the theater before, during
a
walk-through on a previous day. He was short, perhaps no more
than five
and half feet tall. He wore tan work pants and a
tan work
shirt, covered over (it was summer in San Francisco after all)
with a
light blue windbreaker. In his shirt pocket were two or
three
cigars. Under his right arm was what appeared to be a
kind of
small case for a musical instrument (I could see it end on),
and around
this case was wrapped some newspaper tied with string.
I began
chatting him up, as he had to wait since I was
counting money in the open cash register. I observed to
him that
I had seen him before, I asked about his age, given that we
had a
special price for seniors, and other more or less inane
matters.
In the beginning, as I glanced at him, his face was
tipped down
as if he was starring at the ground, such that I could not see
his eyes.
The
trouble started right away when he spoke in response
to my chatting questions. I have never before or since
heard such
a voice, for it seemed to resound from his whole body, as if
his body
was some kind of resonant cathedral. The tones
were deep,
and musical, and I felt them penetrate into the depths of my
own body.
Their effect was to make my mind disconnect, to a degree
- I was
unable to fully concentrate or be really awake.
When,
for example, I asked him if he wanted the senior
discount, he said no, that he always took care of his own
responsibilities. When I looked at him fully for the
first time,
my limbs already sort of paralyzed by his voice, he raised his
face and
I saw his eyes. The irises were a deep penetrating blue,
but it
was the whites that were the problem. They were not
white!
Instead
they were clear, like crystal. Deep
penetrating blue irises, set in orbs as clear as a fresh
mountain pool.
Before their gaze I knew my soul and spirit to be naked
to the
core. Unable to really think in this commanding
presence, he
asked me a question.
"Don't
you want to do something about that?" he said.
"What?"
I said.
"Don't
you want to do something about that?" he said once
more, the voice a bit more insistent.
Again, I
replied, my voice now squeeky: "What?!?!?"
Finally
he asked again: "Don't you want to do something
about that!?!?!", his left arm and hand rising and pointing
outside
through the windows to the street, to the world.
I took
his money. He went into the theater.
What the candy clerk thought I don't know, I never spoke
to her,
or really looked at her. For all I know she never saw or
heard
anything. I walked upstairs to my office and sat down,
my mind an
unstable vortex.
Over the
next days and months and years, it slowly dawned
on me what had happened.
On a
fundamental level he had reminded me of something in
my soul with which I had lost contact. We were,
politically, just
emerging from the Nixon crash and burn (the mid to late
1970's).
My youthful (and joey's) belief that society could be
healed of
its ills was dead. I felt socially and politically
impotent, and
wandered in the disciplines of magic because I saw no way to
be in the
world that had any meaning to which my spirit could identify,
or in
which my own will could find purchase.
His
questions were an enormous gift, for they re-awoke
the idea that something could be possible. It was just a
small
seed, but it was nonetheless the effect of his words and his
deed.
He reminded me of something that I was (which of course
included
joey's own astral nature, as left behind, although at that
time I had
no idea of this transformation). I had lost hope, but
now it was
rekindled.
Seen
from today, this is the meaning I give to this event
(a meaning I was able to begin to give to it a couple of
decades ago,
once I began reading Steiner - which of course at this point
was just
itself beginning with the Agriculture Course and the Luke and
John
Gospel lectures). Recall above in the main text, how I
had in my
soul a certain question regarding the social clearly before me
out of
the riddles joey had left behind, which then determined
(biographical
necessity) the orientation I had as I began to study Steiner
and
Anthroposophy.
I was in
prior incarnations, strongly linked to the Jahve
[Yahweh] stream.
This
no doubt began in those incarnations prior to the
Incarnation. Steiner had written in fact that one of the
consequences of the sacrifices of the Jahve [Yahweh] Elohim was
to become
bound
to the elements, which is no doubt why I was necessarily drawn
to Franz
Bardon in the first place (a system of initiation via the
elements).
The New
Sun Mysteries could not fully arrive in the world
immediately after the Incarnation. The Christ
Impulse (the
effect of the other Six Elohim) could only manifest slowly, in
progressive waves, over time. For example, America's
Founders,
including George Washington, were high level Masons,
themselves (so the
legend is), taught directly by an apparently human being that
was
called: the Professor.
We need
to see the Moon Wisdom of Jahve [Yahweh] only slowly over
time receding and giving way to the New Sun Mysteries of the
other Six
Elohim, which in Anthroposophy and the work of Rudolf Steiner,
appears
in the social for the first time quite strongly (Roman
Catholicism no
longer has the political power it had originally won in the
4th
Century, to punish esoteric Christian impulses as heresies).
At
the moment of my own transition from the Moon stream (Bardon
and
Buddhism) to the Sun stream (Steiner and Anthroposophy), my
old Teacher
came into my biography, and blessed this event, as well as
giving me a
gift - the return of hope.
He
didn't do this by compromising my freedom, either.
It was done by meeting me face to face (known as
known, see
I Corinthians 13) and asking me a question. I was not
directed
anywhere but into the depths of my own soul, where resided not
only my
own I, but the astral body prepared by the innocent (joey).
One more
nuance remains, which itself was kind of fun.
Just
before my meeting with Rudolf Steiner, through his
books, I was introduced by a friend to the music of the Moody
Blues, an
English rock group that began in the 1960's and still tours
today (some
of them at any rate). She gave me a half dozen of their
albums,
saying at the time that she thought I would really like them.
I did.
In fact, they meant and still mean a great
deal to me, so I will tell a little of their story next, as a
kind of
introduction to those who may not know them.
Their
first hit album, Days of
Future Passed, was the original
concept
album. Prior to that time, popular music albums were
sets of
single records, perhaps organized around a theme (all blues
for
example), but never before was the whole conceived as an
integrated
whole before. Not only that, the Moody Blues here also
did
another first, which was to produce an album in which a major
orchestra
(the London Philharmonic) not only did backup on a number of
individual
songs, but had had composed for them various bridges from one
individual song to the next. Many readers may know only
of one
song from this album, which is still played on elevators
today: Nights
in White Satin.
Just to
give a hint of what their fans thought about them
- this from a concert of theirs I attended in Oakland,
California,
around the time I was transitioning slowly into the New Sun
Mysteries.
We were
in a venue filled to the rafters, that held about
14,000 people. The Blues had finished their main
set, and
now returned for one final encore song (always planned
that way
of course), which was from the newest album Octave
(their eighth album under their own
label: Threshold
Records). The song was called:
Once Step
into the Light, and it was basically
about the fact that the Second
Coming of Christ had happened, but seen from their perspective
(more
later).
When the
song was done, and the fans were on their feet
screaming for more (which was not, of course to come, and
which
everyone expected anyway), but the Band had loved us and we
were
returning that love. At this moment of powerfully voiced
fan
passion, the then flutist (Ray Thomas) stepped to the front of
the
stage and raise his two flutes in the form of a cross.
Though it
had not seemed possible, the outpouring of love in the form of
voice
and applause from the audience doubled.
The
Moody Blues touched something deep in the hearts of
their fans, which is why in my own writing (an essay on my
website) I
describe them as composing Hymns
to
the
Consciousness
Soul.
Those
familiar with my essay The Meaning of Earth Existence in the
Age of the
Consciousness Soul, will know (also
from
their own experience) that we now live in a time of dramatic
trials in
all our biographies, trials which often lead to deep pain of
soul, and
difficulties in understanding the world in which we live.
The Moody Blues music speaks to these soul depths
for all
their many fans.
In the
album Octave, noted
above, are these verses:
From the first song, Stepping in a Slide Zone:
I took a ride in a limousine
I took a road I'd never been
I met a stranger by the way
His coat was torn but his eyes were clear
Standing in a slide zone
I could be steppin' in a slide zone
He told me where a river flows
He showed me how the apple grows
He told me of a magic stream
His face was worn but his eyes were clear
[emphasis
added, ed.]
Clearly I was not the only one to meet this remarkable personality which I have come to understand was an experience of Jahve [Yahweh].
Also in
the same album, from the second song Under Moonshine, these lines:
The dawn crept into by room
And stole my dream
Now I'll never know
Just what it means
Or what could have been
Yet still I try to lie
But I'm seen
Under moonshine that's where I've been
Under moonshine I'm clearly seen
Under moonshine that's where I've been
Under moonshine I'm clearly seen
Creator of dreams that melt with the sun
I'll send you the things this man has done
He was a saint and a sinner rolled in one
But I miss him now that he's gone
I sure miss him now that he's
gone
This
shows their recognition that the spiritual stream to
which they have belonged is a Moon Wisdom. Please recall
that not
all the good being poured over humanity comes from Steiner, or
even
clearly from the New Sun Mysteries, which are only now
maturing in
their ability to appear in the social.
Finally
these lines from the last song in the album, Octave, One
Step
into
the
Light
(their experience of the
Second Coming - from the the point of view of a Moon Wisdom
stream):
One step into the light
One step away from night
It's the hardest step you're gonna take
The ship to take you there
Is waiting at the head
Of the stairs that lead up through your opening mind
Above the dark despair
Shines a light that we can share
Close your eyes and look up in between your brows
Then slowly breathing in
Feel the LIFE FORCE streaming in
Hold it there, then send it back to him
All the old things are returning
Cosmic circles ever turning
All the truth we've been yearning for
Life is our saviour, saviour, saviour, save your soul
The river of LIVING BREATH
Is flowing through the SUN
He was there before the earth began
The world will drag on you
Use his love to pull you through
Find the mission of YOUR LIFE and start to BE
All the old things are returning
Cosmic circles ever turning
All the truth we've been yearning for
Life is our saviour, saviour, saviour, save your soul
There's one thing I can do
Play my Mellotron for you
Try to blow away your city blues
Your dreams are not unfound
Get your feet back on the ground
The TRUTH will set us FREE, we cannot lose
We cannot lose, we just have
to CHOOSE
The
world is a far more miraculous place than one might
think if they just went to Branch meetings and study groups of
the
Anthroposophical Society. The music and lyrics of the
Moody
Blues, produced now over many many years, is itself a Gospel
of deep
wisdom, written poetically and in images (true consciousness
soul
speech), not just to the intellect, but also quite directly to
the
heart. They model something all anthroposophists
might do
well to imitate for a time, in their use of imagery to unveil
powerful
moral truths. I consider them important personal
teachers and
deep spiritual companions.
For my
part, following this transition to the New Sun
Mysteries, and away from a seeking of initiation through the
study of
the elements (a Moon Wisdom), I choose in the 1980's to offer
to
sacrifice both the study of powers and initiation (during
prayer life)
in order to ask the Mystery for whatever support that could
help me
obtain to that state of soul which might enable me to see
deeply into
the social life of humanity (as per the riddles of the
innocent
preparer) in such a way that I could tell the true spiritual
story of
the world to modern humanity, thus my research called: Listening
to the World Song.
Lest
someone think I am bragging about my moral purity of
intention, do not worry. I remain, as this essay in fact
demonstrates, not infrequently shamelessly human and full of
myself.
There is here, however, a purpose.
We need
to recognize that Steiner was speaking to the
Intellectual Soul in Central Europe for the most part, which
by its
nature needs to have before it a strong sense of the Ideal.
America is a place of soul work that requires
other
characteristics be emphasized. Here the practical and
the
pragmatic is important, which means (among much else) that we
appreciate how much of ourselves and our culture is
fallen.
We don't
need to think of this fallen nature as evil or
wrong, however, which too close an involvement with the Ideal
can
suggest. Rather, we think of our real human nature as
transformable, not only out of our freedom, but most crucially
only in
those directions we freely choose. This fallen culture
is part of
the process - a process in which we are the central
participants.
Should we choose, consciously, an ideal goal, that is
one thing.
Should we choose a practical and realizable goal,
that is
another. We need not abandon our oh so very human
nature, but
rather we create out of it. We see the divine in the
creative
potential of the human, and this as the whole creative
foundation for
the future.
It
remains to be seen whether I have enough years of life
in which to create such tales, in the language of the
consciousness
soul out of the insights of the New Sun Mysteries, following
the beauty
and example of my old companions in the Moon Stream, the Moody
Blues.
the
Hermit, the Fool and the Magician
On my
retreat in New Hampshire I sometimes walk around
the property, and sometimes into the surrounding woods.
In
cities we cannot have this, but it refreshes the soul and to
the extent
the next years might make cities less inhabitable, that will
(in part)
be a blessing.
Here I
want to address the imagery of the Hermit, the
Fool and the Magician.
The
Hermit was my outer self, or in another way my social
self. I have had few true friends, for with such
friends we
must share the deepest part of ourselves, so you might see
that given
my biography and its real nature in an inner sense, the
principle
driving aspects could not often be shared. Others would
not
understand them, and so it becomes necessary to create an
outer
personality that is protective in a kind of way, and which
others might
think of as standoffish. Those who get close to me, I
cannot hide
from, and since there have been many good reasons to maintain
a kind of
hidden core, I have adopted this persona of the Hermit, the
wise old
man.
The Fool
is my inner self. This essay is an example
of that. In many uses of this image in different tarot
decks, the
Fool is seen as appearing to step off a cliff. In
Tomberg's Meditations
on
the
Tarot, the Fool Arcanum is the Arcanum
of Love. I have, in my life, done what may appear
to others
as many foolish or stupid things (they judge me that way), not
understanding that Love often requires that one look stupid or
socially
foolish. At the same time the Fool and social
foolishness are not
always the same thing, for how we appear to others (our outer
self) is
not how we appear to ourselves. In the language of Carl
Jung,
these are archetypes, and universal as well. We
all have
these characteristics in varying degrees and forms of
expression.
For me, in my sense of myself as an actor in the world
who had on
many occasions to do what would appear socially inept or
foolish, the
idea of The Fool was quite important.
The
Magician is my life destiny. I had an
acquaintance who was a clairvoyant. Like many such she
was for a
time seen as mad (put in a mental hospital). She
was (she
has crossed over) a major figure in the books called: Messages
from Michael. She invented
(transmitted?) a symbol system in which she saw people as one
of seven
different types according to their role in life. Within
these
types there were seven different levels of maturity.
Within these
seven different levels and types there were seven different
qualities.
I asked her once how she saw me (this was even
before
meeting Steiner), and she said my type was Priest, my level of
maturity
was seven (the highest) and my quality was the study of
acceptance.
This (acceptance) was the last task, she said, and
in this
life I would become an initiate or enlightened, depending on
which path
I walked - East or West. In Tarot, the One Card - the
Magician -
is both beginning and end.
my 2008
Epiphany experience
The
background to this is important. The
preparation for this initiation experience was brought about
by life -
by the biography. The more I devote myself to the
teachings
in my biography (23rd psalm) and accepted it (surrendered to
it), the
more the biography was able to give to me.
I am
designed for my biography, and my biography is
designed for me. This arises because we live
within Christ.
We live within the Creation, in which Christ has
embodied
His own Being - his own Ego Being. As Lord (artist) of
Karma,
from the very highest worlds in between death and a new birth,
all
i-AMs prepare the just-for-them individual biography, and all
biographies are brought into musical harmony with each other.
Whatever we experience as dissonance in life
(antipathy)
and harmony in life (sympathy), is Love in its most earthly
form.
The more we refine the soul, following the personal
teachings in
our biographies, the more we will find additional dimensions
to the
Love that surrounds us.
The
story that follows is meant then more as an example
of Love in the biography, than as [any
kind of] a brag.
2007 was
a hard year for me. A very special
relationship was in trouble, and I discovered in the Winter
that I had
atrial fibrillation - my heart was constantly unable to
establish a
regular rhythm. This is a common disorder in our time.
As a consequence (the details are not so
important) I
entered into an drug trial for a new medication, which while
it was not
meant to "cure" the a-fib, it was intended to avert (most of
the time)
strokes and heart attacks, because the a-fib would cause blood
to
linger too long in one of the open spaces in the heart,
instead of move
through, and without the constant movement, the clotting
process would
begin. The drug helped this by "thinning the blood".
If the
blood was less thin it was thought that clots were less likely
to form
and therefore could not move to the brain to cause strokes, or
to the
heart muscle itself and cause heart attacks. The
statistics were
favorable, and all my care givers (including an
anthroposophical
doctor) recommended it.
To
hindsight this created a secondary problem that was
not noticed when it first manifested. This problem
was
psychological. We know the heart is an organ of feeling
(among
other things), and these feelings are a kind of
soul-perception
faculty. It we mechanically thin the blood, we disturb
some of
the normal psychological functioning of the heart and blood.
But
the study protocols were not interested in soul health, only
in
mechanical physical health, so while I reported a sense of
increase
emotional lability (constant change), the study people were
not
interested.
Since my
basic temperament was phlegmatic, I was
now in a realm of soul experience with which I was unfamiliar.
You could say I "felt" too much. This
stronger
feeling life gave the shadow forces more "fuel" as it were,
and as a
social person I became "different". This
eventually led to
stronger than usual disturbances in a personal relationship,
and
eventually it flew apart.
I was
asked to move out in two days. Very
stressful for a 66 year old fat bald man with a-fib, but very
necessary
for the psychological health of the partner. I didn't
like it,
but as you shall see a higher purpose was buried within these
events.
Providence is able to mutli-task at levels we cannot
imagine.
Being
chronically poor, I had to move into a spare room
in someone else's house. A gift to be sure, but
stressful as well
for we were dis-similar in multiple ways. Next happened
two
events.
One was
that it became harder for me to endure meetings
of the Anthroposophical Society, no doubt in part contributed
to by the
a-fib and the emotional consequences of the medicine. I
became
more passionate in how I expressed myself there, and such
passion
naturally led to passionate responses. In a sense I was
rejected
by those I most admired in the Society - they couldn't
understand me
(too much antipathy).
Another
was that my cardiologist gave me a "stress test".
Already under stress, the idea of the medical profession
was to
gather more data, so I was put on a treadmill, attached to
various
measuring apparatus (I should have recognized the danger,
because the
doctor had to be there in case I had a heart attack). So
we
stressed the heart physically even more, in order to get data.
The data by the way was good (from a mechanical
point of
view), for it revealed the absence of other more troubling
problems
with my heart.
In my
soul life at this time, I was basically being asked
to spend a lot of time thinking about Ahriman.
Life had
asked me to solve the riddle of whether Ahriman was already
incarnated
and what that might mean. A lot of my thinking and
meditation was
devoted to this question, which process was itself dangerous
for it is
not exactly psychologically healthy to draw near to such
onesidedness.
Living
Thinking involves a thinking movement from
thinking about to thinking with to thinking within to
thinking as. To a
very real
extent, in order to understand Ahriman as an incarnate human
being, I
had to see from his point of view. I had to
identify with a
kind of thinking (for brief moments) that is cold and callous
and
indifferent to human suffering. I also had to appreciate
this
event. I had to find my way toward that point of
view that
enabled me to have the title of one of the parts of the essay
about
him, state: Brother
what
ails
thee. That is: I not only had
to understand this onesidedness from the inside, but to so
sympathize
with it so that I could love him.
It was
during this work that I woke up quite early one
morning in great distress, hardly awake at all actually,
called my
former partner and asked her to drive me to the ER were I then
died
twice (again that remarkable multi-tasking nature of
Providence, that
let me block two different coronary arteries within an hour of
each
other, and thus receive two stents, which hopefully would
mechanically
maintain these arteries in an open condition).
So to
the stress of the a-fib, the rejection from the
Society, the leaving of the partner was now added the need to
recover
from two very bad heart attacks. Providence saw to it
that I had
them in the ER, for which I was very grateful from the moment
I awoke
two days latter.
Then our
(joey's and mine) mother entered her final
illness and died. The escalation of the final illness
began about
five or six weeks after the heart attack, and extended for a
few weeks
before intensifying in a several day event, which involved all
kinds of
contact with other family members, including disagreements
over her
care and how hard we should try to keep her alive (she was 95,
and in a
long term care facility, although her spirit had gone
walk-about many
years ago - no memory of her family, etc.) The medical
profession
kept her body alive, but did not know what to do to help her
spirit.).
My younger brother (age 59) knew instinctively, however,
and
helped her across the threshold, by going to her room with his
guitar
and singing to her, during which periods of her last couple of
days
this singing was the only time her face showed an absence of
deep pain,
and her body would not thrash about.
Not to
long after this, the man in whose house I was
living, gave me a thirty day notice to quit the room. He
had
personal justifiable reasons for his own need to have the room
for
other uses. In any event, more stress. Where would
I go?
To my children and add to their stress? A long
time friend
made me an offer to rent an efficiency apartment that once had
been
part of her garage in New Hampshire. This would
involve
moving 3000 miles, in early to mid-Winter, across the country.
She
lived in the country on six and a half acres of New
England woods, that were next to a nature preserve. Of
course,
everyone thought I was foolish, and I even choose to be
expressly
foolish. I had died, twice. I didn't know how much
life I
had left, and chose to live as fully as possible and take
whatever
risks seemed most interesting.
My
partner had rejected me. The Society had
rejected me. My body was rejecting me.
My birth
family didn't know what to do with me (I briefly thought about
moving
back to where joey was born). I had a month to move out,
and
needed to decide right away, because any move was going to
involve a
lot of work. So I leapt off the cliff [the Fool].
My move
out of the partner's house had involved a giving
away of many objects to which I was attached. This move
was even
more of the same, for I did not have the money to do a formal
move.
I packed up books and videos (a film buff, I had
500
movies, most recorded by myself) and shipped them to New
England via
media mail. I arranged to rent the largest car I
could rent
(I choose to exhaust my credit cards and take the
consequences) in
order to move the other objects of importance (including my
own body).
On the
day I had planned to leave, a Pacific storm of
considerable violence was going to engulf Sacramento (70 plus
mile an
hour winds did come) and hit Donner pass (two feet of snow,
highway
closed for almost a day). So I had at the last minute to
move my
timetable up a day. More stress.
When I
went with my eldest son to pick up the rental car,
I discovered that they were charging me $1200 instead of what
the
website had said ($765) for the cross country trip, because of
taxes
(which they didn't tell me about). There is more, but
you get the
general idea. More stress.
When I
got the car to my house, we couldn't get all that
I wanted to pack in it, into it. It was noon.
The storm was coming the next day and I had to get
out
ahead of it. Fortunately a friend, who was there to help
load,
took in trade some of my objects, in return agreeing to send
by UPS the
remainder (two or three boxes of stuff I didn't want to let go
of).
My son
said I could still choose to fly and find some
other way to ship. I opened a folding chair that I was
going to
take, and sat down on the sidewalk. I wanted to cry, I
was so
emotionally and physically exhausted. It was January
2nd, 2008,
the storm would hit on the third.
I told
my son and my friend that I just needed to go.
I needed to leave, to end it, to be on the road, and to
have
Sacramento in the past. In four hours I was over
Donner
pass, and into Nevada. I was, so it seemed, free of
something (as
an addict in recovery I also knew there were no geographic
cures, so I
was also taking with me all my wounds and other emotional
baggage).
On the other side of Reno I drove until it was dark and
then
found a motel. I had an elaborate trip plan, which I had
created
using the Internet. I had looked up in advance all the
cheap
motels every fifty miles for the whole 3000 mile trip. I
had
their addresses and their phone numbers. I'd get were I
got each
day, and using the plan, pick the motel. I had three
credit cards
and my ATM bank card.
It was
also the Holy Nights. I had been planning
for these particular Holy Nights for many months. My
nighttime
meditation practice had become quite interesting. I
would lay
down, or sit in a chair and take my consciousness into the
whole field
of sensation encompassed by my consciousness. This was
to me:
experience. As I rested in this field of experience I
could move
my attention about it, much the way we can survey our room
with our
eyes. I knew this field of experience as the astral
body, and the
will of my attention as my spirit. I would enter
meditation in
the astral body, but my I would direct what I looked at.
This was
also - this totality of the I, the astral body, the ethereal
body and
the physical body (for in meditation I did not leave my body)
the
microcosm.
The
totality of my own activity and my experience was the
microcosm, and as such it was a mirror image of the macrocosm.
Of
course, my knowledge and understanding of the microcosm, much
less the
macrocosm was weak and incomplete. I would not be able
to go far,
but there I came in meditation and studied what was there from
which to
learn.
With my
attention I could move among the various fields of experience, including lower and higher
chakras.
I was most awake in the heart, throat, eyebrow and crown
chakras.
For example, there is a kind of seeing/beholding that
thinking
can do if one's attention rests in the eyebrow or crown
chakras (best
is to do both eyebrow and crown simultaneously, see
Tomberg's
picture of the eye above the eye). One can also rest the
attention in the throat chakra itself. We know this
chakra as the
place from which we move our inner voice. If we rest
here in the
right way, the throat chakra begins to resound with the
surrounding
tones of spirit. It may seem odd to some, but if we
entirely
quiet our mental chatter (no discursive or inner thinking),
the throat
chakra makes the sound of silence. Paradoxical, no
doubt,
that silence is itself a sound, but this is so to experience.
Paul Simon seems to have had a glimpse of this:
Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
My
practice then for many nights, and especially more
intensely for the Holy Nights, was as follows.
I would
cultivate a mood of soul (consciously infuse the
astral body with certain qualities of feeling) by reciting out
loud,
first the Lord's Prayer, then a prayer of gratitude* that I
had created
(see my book the
Way of
the Fool), and then finally the
prologue
to
the John Gospel (verses 1-14). I would speak these out
loud and
in private, as taught by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount
(Matthew
5-7).
Then I
would experience and think, until I could no
longer remain awake (start to nod my head and fall asleep) and
I would
then cross my self twice (Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and
Mother,
Daughter and Holy Soul) and go to sleep.
*[something on the
order of - it had variations: Holy Mother, Mistress
of the True
Dark;
Christ-Jesus, my Lord and Savior; all the Hierarchies
Above and
all the Hierarchies below; the Communion of Saints, and the
Communities
of Ancestors; our Doubles and our Angels - thank you for this
day, and
thank you for the fruits of yesterday.]
I was
faithful to this practice all through the Holy
Nights of 2007 and 2008, regardless of how tired I was.
My
trials were not over, although I had left California.
I was driving across the country in the Winter, in a gap
in
between storms (the storms move from West to East across the
country
all winter long). Violent weather was behind me, chasing
me, and
in front of me was the remains of many snow storms.
The
first problem manifested the morning of the 3rd
travel day (Jan. 4th). I was to cross the continental
divide in
Wyoming. Highway 80 there is at 7000 feet, and in forty
miles it
crosses the divide three times. I got up early (before
light),
and hit this section of highway intentionally at dawn.
It was
open, although it had been earlier in December frequently
closed due to
storms.
For
forty miles it alternated ice pack with ruts, and
black ice (so clear you think you're seeing the dark highway)
as well
as stretches of bare road. I was in a convoy of 50
or more
very large trucks, facing the same road conditions. We
drove at
speeds of less then 20 miles an hour, and even then the ruts
would make
the cars and trucks go sideways. One always felt
that at
any given moment during this two hour trip for 40 miles, that
we could
suddenly spin out of control, and since other vehicles were
along side
us, it was very dangerous. I passed a half dozen trucks
and
passenger cars off the road and in the ditch. They all
had snow
on them, which indicated they were accidents from previous
weather, but
no one had had the time yet to remove them.
Eventually
I got to Laramie in eastern Wyoming and then
crossed into western Nebraska. It was mid-afternoon and
sunny, at
which point a warning light came on in my nice new rental car
and so
began an adventure of tires. It turned out that both
rear tires
were worn down to the steel, and the two in front were nearly
so (the
outer rubber edge was worn flat as a board). Many
hours
spent on the cell phone, and waiting for a tow truck and
having to
spend my own money to buy two new tires (the truck stop
wouldn't take
the rental companies credit card over the phone). I lost
time.
The next
day (the 5th) I had to drive across Nebraska to
Omaha, to the rental agency's main center at the airport
there, for
there at the airport was the only place they could take my two
front
tires off and replace those as well (I had 1500 more miles to
go and I
wasn't going to go with bald tires in the Winter on a front
wheel drive
car). But I couldn't go to the airport in the evening
(I'd be too
tired in any event), so on the evening of the 5th I got a
motel and
then got up at 5 a.m. to be at the airport at 6 when the
mechanics came
on duty (in a strange city, driving in the rain storm from the
weather
that had finally caught up with me). Finally, by
about 8
a.m. I was on the road (on the 6th), with 4 new tires, and was
able
that day to drive through parts or all of four states
(Nebraska, Iowa,
Illinois and Indiana), for a make-up day of over 800 miles.
As I
neared the end of this day, I arrived in eastern
Indiana in a wonderfully violent thunder storm. I
actually pulled
off the highway, drove into a shopping center parking lot
(near an
edge) and rolled down the window (after parking so the wind
blew the
rain away from the driver's side of the car) and watched and
listened
as the Thrones crashed and thundered away (about every 15
seconds for
awhile). One lightening strike hit a condenser on a
power pole
about 100 yards from me, causing lights to go out for a least
a block
around. Sparks everywhere, and I thought for a moment
the pole
was going to burst into flame and fall.
I bought
some food at a nearby major gas station (and
filled up the tank), called a motel on my list (it was 30
miles away to
the East) and went there to eat, watch some TV to come down
from the
long drive and then enter meditation on Epiphany, the 6th of
January,
2008.
I didn't
watch much TV, for I discovered I was very
tired. I had been running on forced adrenaline for four
days.
Pushing away from Sacramento and over Donner Pass on the
2nd, I
had crossed the great Western deserts of Nevada and Utah on
the first
full day (the 3rd). Then I traversed the winter
ice passage
of the continental divide and eastern Wyoming, only to fall
prey to
commercial laziness and dangerous tire problems on the 4th.
On
the 5th I was only able to do Nebraska in order to complete
the trial
of tires. Surviving this, I forced more miles in a rush
on the
6th, eventually entering the evening of Epiphany through the
gate of a
great thunder storm.
I had
spent myself. Going all the way back to the
beginning of 2007, where I found out I had a-fib, my biography
presented me with multiple qualities of experience.
Rejection
after rejection, coupled with deep inner work and writing (see
the many
essays in American
Anthroposophy that
were written in their first* drafts in those months,
especially the
season of Michaelmas 2007).
*[a
first draft is often written in one sitting, which
can run anywhere from two hours to 6 or more (with an
occasional
break). The living thinking finds itself involved with a
theme,
which grows and develops the more I attend to it. It is
kind of
like a piece of music, only formed of a melody of concepts
that sing
together in the mind (pure thinking). Often it is full
of
pictures, but always my own I plays the dominant creative
role.
For months after I will polish it, but little, in the
sense of
major changes, ever arises. During this "polishing"
phase, my I
returns to the theme in the world of thought, discovering many
a nuance
that was too subtle to be noticed at a previous encounter.]
As I
prepared to enter meditation on this evening, my
soul was exhausted and I knew I was spent. I had nothing
left.
I was in fact ready to die that night. There
was the
dream of New England, but that was still far away in time and
space,
and in the now I was empty.
2007 had taken all, whether it was in
trials or creative work. I begin to speak (to pray)
without my
usual mood cultivating rituals (the Lord's prayer etc.) out
loud my
state of being. I said to the invisibles how I felt, how
I was
empty, how I had nothing more, and that since I had already
been living
on grace since my heart attacks in September, I was ready to
die, right
then, right there. I surrendered to the Divine Mystery,
and made
no more claim on life.
This was
the true mood. The prayers, the cultivated
mood, that was one thing, but my true state of being was
another.
I can't really say what happened next, except that I
knew I was
someplace I'd never been before. I was nothing, I had
nothing, I
wanted nothing, I needed nothing.
Yet, I
still was. I was I without content.
I found
then I was also questions. There was so
much I didn't understand. I lived in a pain of
ignorance.
I'd had this last year of life and great pain and
wonderful
creative insights, and yet could see no future. I
couldn't even
see why I should get up the next day and complete my journey.
So, for
a moment I turned to my ritual speaking,
beginning with the Lord's Prayer, and started to recite it -
what else
was there to do? But my state of soul was unusual.
So from
the first word "Our" I was ignorant. What did that
really mean I
felt? I spoke my question outwardly, softly almost in a
whisper,
and then it began - a dialog. Outwardly I would speak as
if
unknowing, as if any concept was simultaneously a question.
There
was the pure concept of "Our" as I had understood it in the
past, but
did I really understand it, or was there a great deal more.
Inwardly, in the quiet of my exhausted and spent mind I
heard the
tones of answers. Sounding in me were the real
ideas behind
even such a single spoken word as "Our".
No
idea/word was less important or more important.
Every word/concept spoken and thought in this
surrendering
questioning mood brought forth the gentle ringing of an
answer. I
became questions, and other-presence became answers.
This
included such abstract ideas/words as: "Father" "who" "art"
"in"
"Heaven". Each single thought was full of consciousness
and
being, yearning itself to be known by me in the same way I was
known to
"It".
Several
thought streams wandered off into deeper dialogs,
until I was empty of whatever questions I could sustain in the
moment.
In this way I went slowly slowly slowly (one single
concept or
word at a time) through the whole of the Lord's Prayer, the
prayer of
gratitude, and the prologue to the John Gospel, - the whole
meditative
contemplative experience lasting about three hours normal time
(it
seemed full of forever).
Today,
when I do my usual mood cultivating work, prior to
mediation, I experience all of these (the two prayers and the
prologue)
in far richer concepts than I used to. For
example, I used
to think of "Our" as only human beings, but now I include all
of
Creation - the organic, the inorganic and much else besides -
as
aspects of this idea.
As
stated previously in various places, it was here that
I learned (in my dialogs about the prologue, that the Word had
various qualities, and that one of these different qualities
manifested in
the Christ Impulse in this Age as Choice. So one can legitimately say,
without
abusing the central understanding: In the Beginning was
the
Choice.
Of
course we confuse ourselves if we think of choice as a
word, or even as a concept. Better if we recall
that moment
of action when we made a choice. Choice then
is an act
of the will of the I. In this act of will of the I is an
echo of
the quality of Choice as that exists as a single aspect of the
Word.
This echo in the I is the embryonic birth within the I
of the
Christ Impulse: as
a
free
human
being
I
choose.
Now I
knew from my research into the social, how crucial choice (Moral Grace) was to our present needs as
regards the
Age of the Consciousness Soul, but I didn't know until
Epiphany this
year that Choice was such a primary quality of the Word
Itself.
Moreover, in continuing to work this way it becomes
necessary to
reconstruct for our current state of soul many aspects of the
prologue,
none of which diminish it in anyway, but all of which deepen
it and
fill it out as it were - make it richer.
For
example, where it says: there was a man sent from God
and he had the name John, we
shouldn't say
that anymore, because we don't receive missions anymore,
unless you
want to include all human beings in your idea
of God. The idea of freedom and choice has to be
conceived today
as much richer, and that God (if conceived as a separate
Being) doesn't
send us anywhere we don't choose to go. If God is an
integrated
Being, which includes us, then the nuances are a bit
different.
moral
grace, holy breath, choice....the I slowly
unfolding the Christ Impulse in all its glory...
falling
into the Arms of the Holy Mother
Sometimes
pain is the only place to be...
One
morning [when I
was living in Prescott Arizona around 2004], I was
approaching a
time of meditation, but
found myself in an odd mood. I don't remember what
brought it on,
which itself is interesting. In any event I was feeling
terrible
about my own flaws. It was a kind of remorse and guilt,
only 10
to 20 times worse. I entered into it instead of avoiding
it.
I let
myself live in all the terrible things I had done
in life. As an addict in recovery you have to know these
places
in the soul - they're as much a part of you as all the rest.
My
thinking then spread out in a kind of way, trying to taste all
this
evil we human beings did and were doing. It is very hard
to
describe this, but my mood of soul became filled with shame.
I
had no excuses and we had no excuses. So much pain
was
caused everyday by our selfishness and egotism.
I then
thought of Christ and the Mother. I don't
know precisely why, but the thought I had next was that they
knew us
this way. They felt our shame and guilt and
evil
deeds. They not only felt that, but they felt as
well what
those we harmed experienced. All that evil and
those
terrible deeds. Christ and the Mother surely felt it
all, both
sides of it. Those who do evil and those who are
its
victims. Their love left them open to this.
A world
of pain and terror and horror - endless inhumanity. And
not just
the suffering of those who were hurt, but also the suffering
of those
that caused hurt.
With
this thought my soul pain deepened. Except
somehow it wasn't just my pain. There was an agony now,
and a
strange void. I didn't understand. I knew it had
to be true
that all that was dark was known by Her and Him and that They
felt it
all - all of it in as intimate a fashion as possible.
Inwardly
then a cry tore loose from my soul - how do you endure it I said to Them, how do you feel all this pain,
this
suffering, all our terrible crimes against each other, and all
that is
caused by our errant wills, unjustified ever on, day in day
out, for
all time.
How do you endure it!
Then She
came and caught me falling. A sound, a
tone, a voice of such comfort and such love:
We turn it into love, She said.
We turn
it into love - this I was told and felt and knew.
They receive our deeds, all the pain, all the suffering,
all the
guilt, all the cold heartlessness...
They
accept it, and love us still...in a spirit alchemy
we can hardly sense or guess or understand...They turn evil
into love.
Sometimes
it is very important to be ashamed. The
vertical dimension of the Cross has an upward gesture and a
downward
gesture. We have to know both. Everyone needs to
"hit
bottom", for there is Someone there who is remarkably caring.
Not
just the High Ideal we are to know, but the oh so seemingly
fallen Real.
[All of us are Christ in
the Pieta ... fallen and falling
through the
Gate of Death until caught and held by Her]
Blessings
to all who have read this far....
my Christ
experiences
After
the change of egos as was mentioned in the main
body, I became severely depressed and went on a long walk, led
unconsciously to a hill top where I prayed. I was then
"comforted" (relieved of my burden). This was the first
by-grace
direct experience of Christ. [Some
Christian teachings describe this as the Paraclete, or the whole of the Holy
Spirit. This is fine, as long as we remember the
Trinity, which
refers to something that is at once separate and individual
and whole
and just one thing. A Mystery best know only through
experience.]
You will
read in Steiner (and my own experience confirms)
that this "contact" does more than the mere obvious, for it
penetrates
the whole being, from the ego, to the astral, and then the
ethereal and
physical. We are touched, completely. This
happened I think
in the early spring 1972, and may have happened then in the
Season of
Easter.
A second
time was in 1986, when I was living at the foot
of Mt. Shasta (a very spiritual place) in an old farm house.
One
morning I had a complicated dream/vision. This is how I
described
this event in my book the Way of
the Fool:
"[a personal aside: In
reference to the idea above, that Christ only enters the
Catholic
Church during the Mass (while always remaining available to
individuals, I am here only reflecting on what He does with
regards to
the organized Church), I want to tell the following story.
Again,
it is conscience that requires this, so that the reader may
know from
where I obtain such thoughts. In about 1986, while I was
first
studying Meditations on the Tarot: a Journey into
Christian
Hermeticism, I
had an early morning dream (vision), which came to me by Grace
{"And it shall come to pass after
this that I will pour out
my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters
shall
prophesy; your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men
shall see
visions."
Joel
2:28.}
The following was like a
dream: I was walking in a garden, to one side of which was the
house in
which I was then living, and on the other side of which was a
Catholic
Church. I was walking with a priest of the Church, and
explaining
to him why I wanted to become a Catholic (I had not yet done
this, or
thought of doing this, although 5 years later I did do this).
I
said to the priest that there were basically two Churches, a
pure
Heavenly Church, and a fallen Earthly Church, and that during
the Mass
Christ Descends and brings the two churches into direct
contact with
each other, and this fact was why I was becoming a Catholic (I
did
later tell the story of this dream to the priest that oversaw
my
experience of the Rite of Catholic Initiation of Adults, a 9
month
process ending with first communion on Easter - so in every
way the
dream was prophetic).
While I was saying/speaking
[to the Priest] in
the
latter part of the dream, I simultaneously had the by Grace
vision aspect. Christ had taken me into Himself and then
taken me
with Him, while He performed this act of Descent and by Grace
reintegration, in which temporarily He united the two
otherwise
separated Churches, the pure Heavenly Church and the fallen
Earthly
Church, during the Mass.
At this point, I opened my
eyes and discovered myself fully awake and lying in bed on my
back.
I stayed there, without moving, without even thinking,
for about
a half hour, at rest and completely at peace. I have
never before
or after experienced such peace.]"
During
the developments in my biography, that contained
as a small part my process through the Rite of Initiation of
Catholic
Adults, above referred to, we were not allowed to take the
Host, but
had to leave the Mass to go to lessons, just before that part.
During a moment of prayer there during the Mass, Christ
touched
me in His Aspect as Pure Love. Again this was fully an
act of
Grace, but keep in mind that with each contact I am changed in
some
subtle but fundamental way.
This
experience, by the way, shakes you to your roots,
because you both open the door to it, and then close it again
(it is
too overwhelming). The soul mood of prayer opened the
door, and
then when He touched me, I ran from the intensity of the
direct
experience of Spirit Presence. Now part of my experience
of these
events was always that
afterward I was more free. Nothing was taken, and what
was added
to me in no way interfered with my right to choose my own
path. I
know of no way to appreciate the details of the
intended changes, but I can describe two effects of which I
was aware
later, that can be attributed to this activity.
With
regard to my the Mt. Shasta experience, I had
entered the reading of Tomberg's work carrying a deeply
ingrained
prejudice, due to certain experiences of joey as he played his
role of
innocent preparer. He grew up in a town where there was
a sharp
social division between Protestants and Catholics.
We had
quite separate schools and seldom socially mixed. Our
biological
father, Wally Wendt, was a 33rd degree Mason (a Shriner).
In a
vulgar way, some called Catholics: mackerel snappers. This was no doubt in reference to the
fish on
Friday rules they followed. One effect of Christ's Touch
in 1986
then, was to heal me of this prejudice by showing me that
Christ did in
fact Love all.
In 1991,
when I was directly by Grace touched a third
time and Loved, I was beginning to write more (I was at that
time
working in a mental hospital, very much washing the feet).
I had
been working on developing consciously the organic thinking
taught in
Steiner's A
Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World
Conception, and applying this to the
social.
In fact my Threshold
Problems
in
Thinking
the
Threefold
Social
Organism was
written around that time.
It was
in relationship to this thinking activity (about
the social/political), that was being developed in a more or
less fully
conscious way with respect to the use of the imagination, that
I first
began to notice the regular very light touch of what many
years later I
began to call: the subtle and
delicate presence of Fullness and
fullness of Presence. I would be thinking about
the social
political (even when driving a car) and generally be forming a
question. At the expression of the question,
thoughts would
flow, but these had a subtly noticeable different quality than
my usual
thoughts. I began then to trust this subtle presence,
and
recognize that I was being helped, although at that time my
introspective capacities lacked the necessary delicate
discrimination
to note what might be called: details of the experience.
Almost
always, when this presence responded to a question
(meant to serve others) I would stop what else I was doing and
take
notes, because otherwise I would later forget those thoughts.
This
then was the first intimations of Holy Breath.
Many years went by before I was confident enough to
either write
or speak openly of this aspect of my inner life.
From these
first experiences and my trust in that presence, my work more
and more
matured, although it wasn't until when I was in Prescott,
Arizona [beginning in
2003], and
fully free of family and work obligations, that I was able to
devote
myself more intensely through daily practice to this activity
(and its
fruits), such that I eventually was able to write of this in
all the
ways that then followed in my various writings.
Let me
quote something from The Meaning of Earth
Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul
that was thought in me as part of this living thinking, as this is both descriptive of these
experiences in
detail, and a good way to [start]
end this biographical material:
"Invited
by the Love and Art of Divine Circumstance to
look within and to reach into the depths of our own being in
order to
source and author that Good which we know to be right, we
touch
something spiritual and are Touched by something Spiritual.
In
this time of the True Second Coming, in the inwardness of our
souls and
invisible to all outer seeing, a Second Eucharist is being
enacted -
the Good offers Itself - Its own Being
- to us (Moral
Grace). For the Good we know
is not just known in the
soul as what we tend to think of as a mere thought, but if we
attend
most carefully, it is true Spirit, just as the John Gospel
writer told
us that Christ spoke: [John 3:6-8] "What's born of the
flesh is
flesh, and what's born of the breath is breath. Don't be
amazed
because I told you you have to be born again. The wind
blows
where it will and you hear the sound of it, but you don't know
where it
comes from or where it goes; its the same with everyone born
of the
breath."
"[The
existence of a Second Eucharist, to accompany the
True Second Coming, in no way means to diminish or change the
Original
Eucharist. On the contrary, we will find that via the
Second
Eucharist our understanding
of
the
meaning of the Original Eucharist
(the
transubstantiation of matter) will deepen. See in this
regard,
the small pamphlet: Radiant
matter: Decay and Consecration, by
Georg
Blattmann. From the transubstantiation of matter we are
being led
onward to learning how to participate also in a
transubstantiation of
thought.]
"Thus we
are being truly and continuously born again
today (each act of moral grace is another Second Ethereal
Eucharist and
birth), from out of our spiritual childhood and into our
spiritual
adulthood, baptized outwardly by the fires of the times in our
biographies, and by holy breath within - a Second Eucharist
where
Christ gives of His own Substance that biblical knowing of the
Good -
His own Being. For us to truly know the Good, requires
we join
our own soul to the Good. Our yearning to author the
Good out of
ourselves is how we participate in the Baptism of being truly born again, and
how we participate in the sacrament of
the Second Eucharist. Christ also participates by giving
to us,
out of Himself, this very Good - this Moral Grace. When
having
received within ourselves this sacrament of the Second
Eucharist, an
act that only arises because we seek it and form its actual
application, we remain free - we create moral law - we author
the
fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Given to us
within by
Christ as a capacity, we then author its incarnate nature and
pass it
on to the world of our biographies, - from out of us thence
into the
outer world (or into the inner world), do we then ourselves
author this
Good: love
engendered
free moral grace.
"But how
does Christ do this? Is this Good offered
to us in this Second Sacrament as if it was a thing, passed by
hand
from one to another?
"No.
Christ as holy breath breathes upon the
slumbering burning embers of our own good nature, just as we
breath
upon a tiny fire in order to increase its power. He
sacrifices
His Being into this breath, which gives Life to the tiny
ember-like
fire of our moral heart. The holy breath becomes within
the soul
of each human being who asks, seeks and knocks a gift of
Living Warmth
that enlivens our own free fire of moral will.
"The
Narrow Gate opens both ways, making possible thereby
the intimate dialog and conversation of moral deeds and
thoughts that
is woven between the i-AM, the Thou and the
Christ (wherever
two or more are
gathered...), which intimate
conversation
leads ultimately to the consecration -
the character
development - of the soul.
"In this
way our thinking can now behold the Meaning
of
Earth
Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul:
A
macro-cosmic
Rite,
a Second Ethereal Eucharist, in which we give
birth out of ourselves in the most intimate way possible,
knowledge of
the Good, not as mere thought, but as Life filled moral will,
breathed
into greater power by the sacrifice of the true ethereal
substance of
Christ's Being in the form of holy breath.
"The
outer world is but a seeming, and what is brought by
the Culture of Media mere pictures of the Stage Setting for
the World
Temple that is home to our biographies. When we think
away this
outer seeming - this logos formed and maya based sense
world, and concentrate only on the Idea
of the moral grace (Life filled holy breath) we receive and
then enact
out of the wind warmed fire of individual moral will - as
individual
law givers, as the fulfillment of the law and the prophets - we create this Meaning of Earth Existence.
Every act of moral grace, given greater Life
within in the deepest intimacy of our life of soul, is an
ethereal
communion with Christ, even though we may only experience it
as what to
us is a mere thought of what is the Good at some moment of
need in the
biography.
"Christ
gives us this Gift, by Grace, freely out of Love,
and with no need that we see Him as its Author. We
hunger
inwardly to know what the right thing to do is, and when this
hungering
is authentic, we receive Christ's Holy Breath. This does
not come
so much as a thought-picture of the Good in response to our
questing
spirit, but rather as the contentless
breathing substance
of Christ's Being. We are touched (inspired) by Love,
and at this
touch we shape
that Breath into the thought that we then know. The nature of
its
application and form in which we incarnate this thought is
entirely our
own. We shape the thought completely out of our own
freedom - our
own moral fire of will, for only we can apply it accurately in
the
individual circumstances of our lives.
"As the
Age of the Consciousness Soul unfolds [over the whole of the Third Millennium]
accompanied
by this Second Eucharist, the Social World of human
relationships
begins to light and warm from within. For each free act
of moral
grace rests upon this Gift of Christ's Being to us - an
ethereal
substance received in the communion within the Temple of the
own Soul,
freely given in Love whenever we genuinely: ask, seek and knock
during
our search for the Good. Our
participation in this Rite, this trial by Fire leavened by
Holy Breath,
leads us to the co-creation of new light and new warmth - the
delicate
budding and growing point of co-participated moral deeds out
of which
the New Jerusalem is slowly being born.
"This
co-creation is entirely inward, a slowly dawning
Sun within the macro Invisible World of Spirit.
Moreover, we do
it collectively (as humanity). While each of us
contributes our
part, it is our collective conscious celebration of the Second
Ethereal
Eucharist (creating the Good) that begins the
transubstantiation of the
collective (presently materialized and fallen) thought-world
of
humanity into the New Jerusalem.
"Thought
is real, and it is as equally real as is matter.
The Original Eucharist transforms the already divinely
given
now-dying substance of earthly matter into Life-filled Spirit
through
our ritual
invitation of the active Grace of
the Divine
Mystery; and, our
participation in the Second
Ethereal Eucharist transforms dead thought into living
ethereal
Substance, through the mystery of our individual spirit's
active and
embryonic grace, that becomes united into the collective
co-creation of
humanity.
"In the
Invisible World of Spirit, we co-participate, out
of the own moral fire of will, in the Dawn of the New Sun that
is to
become the New Jerusalem."
Initiation
and Self-initiation
Sometimes
things surprise us. We are not always
actors, but on [many]
occasion[s] are
acted upon.
One
evening, while on the phone with a friend, I started
to get the chills. We finished talking, but the chills
persisted,
and lasted about an hour, even though I added clothes and
blankets.
Eventually I slept and woke to a small fever (100.3),
and the
many aches and pains that one usually associations with the
flu.
This
condition persisted for the whole day.
That evening I went to bed early, tired and still
slightly
feverish. My scalp felt funny - it hurt for example,
every time I
moved my face in any strong expression of feeling.
The
fever broke about 24 hours after it began (around
midnight), and I slept on and off, except that during periods
of waking
up I became more and more aware of painful conditions of my
scalp (it
was tender to the touch). In the morning, when I
awoke free
of the previous days aches and pains I normally associated
with a flu,
the skin of most of my head hurt when I moved it, and when I
looked in
the mirror my head, from the neck up, it was everywhere red
like a sun
burn and tender to the touch.
I
assumed the "fever" had burned me and later that day
shared this odd fact with a friend who was also an
anthroposophical
doctor. She had no explanation, but did say that during
an acute
illness (such as flu's etc.) when symptoms appear on the skin,
this is
a good sign because it is easier for the body to heal them,
than if the
acute illness leaves its traces more inwardly in the organs.
That
night, about 24 hours after the original fever had
"broken", I again became feverish, with a temperature of
101.1.
As this continued into the next day (a Saturday,
when my
regular doctor's office was closed), I became concerned and
went to the
ER. The doctor there had no explanation for the "burn",
but noted
it and took all kinds of blood for later testing. I was
given
ointment for the skin and a course of antibiotics and told to
see my
primary care physician on Monday.
This
individual had by that time all the results of the
various and many blood tests, which showed no causal element
for the
acute illness symptoms (the fever, and aches and pains).
No
"bugs" as it were, or any other oddities in my blood. He
also had
no explanation for the skin "burn", having never seen such a
condition
before.
As the
days went forward, the skin healed itself,
although pretty much every where it flaked off a very thin
outer layer
in quite small pieces, almost like dandruff, with the largest
pieces
being no more that an eighth of an inch square.
My own
thinking was a bit strange, and was as follows.
I had not had an acute illness (no bug). Rather I
had had
an experience related to what Steiner describes as the
impression of
certain embryonic organs of clairvoyance, as developed in the
astral
body, onto the etheric body (see lecture 12, the John Gospel
cycle).
There is
more than one kind of possible explanation.
For example, since this is not something I can
apparently do
myself, someone else (another Being) has to
carry out the
forced (in a way) act of impression.
This presence
was fever-like because it was another ego acting in
conjunction with my
own, of such power that during its entrance and exit from the
upper
pole (the nerve-sense pole) of my organism its extra warmth
(the warmth
body being a vehicle through which the Spirit interacts with
our
spirit) became so intense in its working that it "burned" the
outermost
layer of skin (a boundary area where the astral and etheric
are
co-joined).
The
reality might well have been that my upper
nerve-sense pole had been sun-burned, by the causal presence
of the
original Sun-Being, in the night, in the darkness of a room,
where no
physical sun would ever shine.
I did
not make a big deal of this interpretation, but in
that I thought it, I have kept it in mind as other
developments took
place. I later (during Easter Week) came to an
alternative
interpretation.
Through
various conscious activities of my own, which
engendered a kind of moral spiritual development, this made
possible
the activity of aspects of my own will, which normally lies
below the
level of my conscious action. That is (as an alternative
explanation), a force residing in my own will was released in
such a
way that it mimicked the acute illness process in order to
produce the
impression of the astral body (where the moral development had
taken
place) upon the ethereal body.
The
fundamental question is: Is initiation
dependent upon the approval of another ego besides my
own? A related question is: Is initiation any longer
necessary?
I have for years understood that there was to no longer
be any
necessity of an intermediary between the individual and the
divine (no
need for priests, gurus and mullahs any more). If this
is so on a
practical level, is initiation even necessary? Rather is
the
human being now complete (fully in possession of all his
spiritual
faculties because he can think and feel and will), such that
his real
freedom allows him to stand outside any tradition anymore
which would
make him dependent upon something other than his own self for
his
present or future development.
After
the "sun" burn event, but in between the two
alternative explanations set forth above, there was another
phase, or
experience, which was even more strange. [To read this sentence was very weird,
for in a later writing I told this story in substantially
different
ways - see http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/threshold.html
- although the internal revision of my memories on these
events does
not change their individual essential description, it is
factually
correct that in this last URL I wrote of the order of the
events with
the double or shadow aspect coming before the "sun" event,
while here I
reverse the order. I have no explanation.]
For
about a week my thinking became (on occasion) more
and more morbid in a kind of way. It was hard not to
think ill of
myself, and be a bit depressed inwardly. This mood came
in waves,
and my inner reflections more and more focused on various
failings.
Things I did, that I wished I did not do. Or,
things I did
not do, that I wished I would do.
For
example, there were appetites I did not control (or
at least thought I should, even though when ever I gave into
them, I
did so very consciously because the represented so much
enjoyment.
There were also spiritual practices or exercises I
thought I
should undertake, but which I had not. Problems with
regard to my
health (extra weight, lack of physical exercise, various
healing things
I could do to help etc.) also came under periods of more and
more
intense scrutiny.
One late
evening, after going to bed, this
self-examination of flaws got extremely intense. I could
not
sleep, my mind raced, and I got up and had to pace my room.
I
loathed myself, and could not abide myself and wanted more
than
anything to get away from myself.
Now
there was here no thought at all of suicide. I
did not want to kill myself, rather I wanted to not be myself.
I
hated this weak person who had no discipline, no will to take
proper
care of his body, and no will to do potential spiritual
exercises of
various kinds that were thought possible.
This
went on for about two hours, and finally I laid back
down and in a kind of desperation began to say the Lord's
Prayer out
loud, at which point this very intense feeling of
self-loathing slowly
melted away. I was then able to sleep.
On
waking up, I had these thoughts. What I had
experienced was a meeting with what Steiner called the Lesser
Guardian
of the Threshold - the double. This meeting took the
form of what
Steiner describes as Intuition, where the two beings (my ego
and this
double-being) mutually inter-penetrate. We become
united, and the
loathing and self hate which I experienced was how he felt
about me.
He hated
being joined to me - such a weak and incomplete
human being. Not only that, it was his nature to feel
this way.
This made his role in my life possible, precisely
because he was
of a spiritual hierarchy that could not tolerate, or even
really
comprehend, human weakness.
As the
days following this experienced passed, I began to
feel differently about my lacks and errors and weaknesses.
I
started forgiving myself for them. I could no longer, as
before,
look at myself as the double did (and which I had incorporated
into my
own thinking all my life, as a valid point of view). I
had been
mistaking his judgments for my own (one of the roles he is
apparently
meant to play in my psychology).
Now I
was free of this inner judgmental force, to a large
extent. I could look objectively at my lacks, and not
prosecute
myself for having them - for being human and flawed.
This
also effected how I thought about others, and was, in a way, a
kind of
counter-point to work I had been doing as a writer.
All of
this was taking place during the Season of
Michaelmas, 2009, while I was writing three sort of concluding
pieces
of work in connection with my "problems" with the
anthroposophical
movement and society. These appear on my websites, under
these
titles:
A Commentary on Scott E.
Hicks remarkable essay: Spiritual
Beings
Dwell in the Ground of Propositions
[ http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Hicks'essay.html
]
Sergei O. Prokofieff's Anthroposophy
and
The
Philosophy
of
Freedom: a (sort of) book
review. [
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Prokofieffbookreview.html ]
and,
Saving
Anthroposophy: from the
anthroposophical
Society and Movement. [ http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/Saving.html
]
The
writing of these essays, during Michaelmas Season
2009, involved very careful and intense thinking activity, in
order to
treat the subjects of the essays (which were to an extent the
thoughts
and ideas of fellow human beings) with the right objectivity
and moral
sympathy due the personalities, yet at the same time be
rigorously
scientific (logical and empirical) about the ideal and
conceptual
content of their thinking.
This
striving in my daily work then had a corresponding
interweaving with the citizens of the spiritual world,
connected to the
fever-sun- burning impression experience and the encounter
with the
true being of the double. But life has its demands as
well, and
certain relationship questions of a personal nature also
demanded their
due, such that Michaelmas led onward to the Season of
Christmas
and the Holy Nights of 2009/2010.
It was
during the onset of the Christmas Season 2009,
when the above essays seemed the last word I had to say to
anthroposophists about Anthroposophy , that my video work
finally began
to blossom. By mid-January 2010, I had produced 63
videos: 35 on
the theme songs
of a true white brother, and 28 on
the theme:
the Second American Revolution. During the Holy Nights I
learned
something new as well (over 200 have now been produced, as of
the time
of this revision of this essay).
In the
light of previous inner work during the Holy
Nights I approached the situation as if once more deep
meditation was
required. At the same time, I continued to remain awake
to the
presence of Holy Breath as it offered itself in support of
certain
choices I might make during the regular course of my
thinking.
Since a
lot of my thinking was devoted during that time
to video production, it soon became apparent that Holy Breath
was more
available for that outer world work than for inner world work.
As
a result, during this period of the Holy Nights, during the
day, I was
highly productive in the creation of videos - on several days
producing
as many as five a day.
As this
unfolded, my thinking recalled a remark of
Steiner's that went something like this: the stars once spoke
to man,
and now is the time for man to speak back to the stars. This was now my task. To use the
developed
thinking to speak back to the stars, but the stars in this
case were
now the human beings of the earth and the beings of the
heavens.
Out of the human in me I was to tell my stories, in
these videos,
however clumsy and inarticulate that might be. For the
point was
not perfection of art, but the expression of human nature as
it
contemplates those spiritual questions we all share.
The
Divine Mystery was more interested in what I might
choose to say, than it was in my saying what It might choose
to convey.
Here is Steiner, from the preface to his
dissertation: Truth
and
Knowledge: The object of
knowledge is
not to repeat in conceptual form something which already
exists, but
rather to create a completely new sphere, which when combined
with the
world given to our senses constitutes complete reality. Thus
man's
highest activity, his spiritual creativeness, is an organic
part of the
universal world-process. The world-process should not be
considered a
complete, enclosed totality without this activity. Man is not
a passive
onlooker in relation to evolution, merely repeating in mental
pictures
cosmic events taking place without his participation; he is
the active
co-creator of the world-process, and cognition is the most
perfect link
in the organism of the universe.
In a
way, it would seem, the more responsibility that I
took toward properly representing my own thinking (my own
spiritual
activity), in relationship to but independent of discarnate
invisible
beings, the more I performed my role in the totality of the
creation.
As the
season of Christmas passed, and then arrived Lent
in preparation for Easter, I undertook a more careful reading
of
Catherine MacCoun's book: On
Becoming an Alchemist.
Previously I had
just skimmed it, not feeling deeply drawn to it, but now I
decided to
engage it more fully.
My girl
friend had pointed out to me certain matters that
I have written of in my upcoming review of Catherine's work,
but she
also said that when she finished it, it put forward a kind of
surprise
that left her disappointed - as if a kind of trick had been
played.
Nonetheless, she also gave several copies of this book
to friends
during Christmas, an action which meant in spite of this
disappointment, she still felt others should engage the book.
I have
(at the time of writing this) read it carefully
about half way through, and also started writing the review.
I
wondered what could this surprise at the end be?
During
this Easter week, on Facebook, my first wife
posted on our family page a video of the creation by certain
Tibetan
monks of one of their elaborate sand mandalas. It was
filmed in a
kind of stop-motion technique from overhead, so we can see the
creation
process, the eventual result of which is something
extraordinarily
beautiful and detailed, and then its (as is usual with this
art)
destruction.
The
lesson there seems to be one of impermanence, a
Buddhist (Eastern) concept of no small import. Reminds
me of the
story of the wise men whose king demanded that they create a
phrase
that would be true for all time and that was to be written
over the
doorway to the king's throne room. What they later had
written
there, after much thought, was: And this too shall
pass.
Having
on occasion myself, completely abandoned
(destroyed) something I had written and worked upon for
several years,
and which including whole thought structures (elaborate points
of view
and understandings as came to exist in my mind), I understood
how
temporary is anything we create, which I suppose will have to
include
the Creation itself.
As
Easter Week culminates in a Death, and then a
Resurrection, I am in the moment of writing this feeling as if
all that
I have done, in response to what I have been calling biographical
necessity, has to be treated as
impermanent, whether or not this
is an aspect of the ending of Catherine's book which
disappointed my
girlfriend. When I finish her book I may know, but on
this day I
awoke wanting to craft these words on this page, for that was
what was
living in me to do. Tomorrow or in the next five
minutes,
something else will need to be done or want to be done or just
be done.
Are there any fixities in existence? Even my self?
The
Tibetan Lama, Choygam Trungpa, with whom Catherine
MacCoun had a many year relationship, writes in his book Meditation
in
Action that there is no "I" and
there is
no "am", which is a kind of denial of the point of view in
which I have
been swimming for sometime - the point of view of the
Christian
cultural West, which sees the human spirit, the I-am, as the
point of
the Creation. In fact, to deny my "self" is to me to
engage in a
kind of cultivated madness.
Recently
a novel (The Name of the Wind) brought to my
attention four ways of avoiding pain: forgetting, madness,
sleep and
death. As I thought on that observation, I recognized
that each
was a part of a polarity: remembering and forgetting belong
together,
just as do madness and sanity, sleep and being awake, and life
and
death.
Is then
impermanence a unavoidable condition or a choice?
If it is unavoidable, then we are never to be free, and
the
resultant nihilism a spiritual horror not to be wished for at
all.
Why would Eastern thought contain such a view: there is no I, there
is no am? [Elsewhere
I have written, as a result of my 2008 Epiphany experience:]
In
the Beginning was the Choice. And the Choice was
towards God, and God was what the Choice was. The Choice
was with
God in the beginning. There is no Tibetan monk to tell
us of
impermanence
without the Choice that brought about the Creation itself.
Without the Choice (the first aspect of the Christ as
will be
manifested via each of the seven Elohim as that process
unfolds in each
individual "I"), there is not even any Now.
It seems
to me that there needs to be a balance between
remembering and forgetting, between madness and sanity,
between
sleeping and being awake, and between life and death.
This is the
living mandala of the I itself - this balance, or striving for
balance.
At the core of this, in the present, is the Choice.
There is
no Choice without an I to choose. There is
no Creation without a Creator. There is no impermanence
without
something that can endlessly change. Choice is the first
power of
the Creation, and is also the power that makes for
impermanence.
All that the pursuit of ego-lessness (or liberation as
sought for
in the cultural East) produces is something that imagines it
can be all
periphery and without a center. The striving for the
state of
pure beingness is a spiritual madness, which seeks through the
forgetting of the center (the ego) to live into the pure
memory of the before - the before the categories of
impermanence and permanence.
That one
can Choose a permanent state of madness and call
it liberation shows how unviable (how outside of life) is
wanting to
resurrect that past - the time before. While the Now is
the meeting place of two arrows of time, the very fact that
part of the
Creation can be inside of time, and another part outside,
speaks
volumes if one has ears to hear.
For
those to whom this does not quite seem as obvious as
it should, let me offer the following:
My
child-like (least ye become again as little children)
ambition, since the beginnings of my weird incarnation, has
been to be
a wizard. Not unlike in the movies and books - become a
real
wizard - do magic and stuff, make lightening crash down to
blow up
buildings, and change people I didn't like into frogs.
Very
childish, I know, but the wish to do magic is not childish -
it is
child-like.
I have
clear memories of joey's youth and in fact his
pre-incarnation existence. I remember what it felt like
to him to
descend into life on the earth, and the way in which he was
totally
intent on this act. No reluctance at all, but a very all
encompassing passion to enter physical existence - felt as a
kind of
all over joy. Nothing could be more wanted or desired.
Part
of his joy was the knowledge that he had that he would be able
to do
something that was a gift to all mankind, for which he felt a
great
deal of love.
Another
memory I have of his is when he was a toddler.
He walked into and through life within a great sphere of
warmth
and light, accompanied by another Presence holding his hand.
Later, when he had more of a sense of self, each day was
magical
to him because it contained endless surprises, and a very
strange
capacity to grant his wishes. He would have wishes
and they
would come true.
All the
same, what little wisdom has crawled through my
head over the years is that a real wizard is of special use to
the
Cosmos, because not only is the Cosmos actually an act of
magic, it is
truly truly funny. God has an amazing sense of humor.
A
wizard gets to be part of the joke, but doesn't have to know
the joke.
That's the part that comes after "social
philosopher" - the
"... and occasional fool" part. The right amount
of
foolishness goes a long way.
Part of
that foolishness has involved "naming". At
the beginning of this I made a hypothetical, which is
partially
justified, and certainly egotistic. I actually
don't care
if it is existentially true or not. It makes no
difference.
The real effect on my life was in forcing me to
learn about
myself, because of the temptation inherent in seeing my true
self
through such a distorted lens as is contained in the illusion
that is
this name: the future Maitreya Buddha.
So I say
to God, okay, let me in on the joke. I'll
play Falstaff to your Kingship. I'll drink the wine of
initiation
and enlightenment and self-development and all that insanity.
I'll drink it deep and long and get drunk on it, and
even
encourage some other people to think I might be someone
famous.
I'll even on occasion believe it myself.
Just as long
as in the end its a joke. As long as for all my
foolishness in
taking the Paths and the Ways seriously, in the end I get to
laugh at
myself and at you God and at all of us believers.
So there
you are. I found myself waking up inside
of one of God's own shaggy dog stories, and said okay, tried
my best to
play the part but now its time to sit back and enjoy the joke
too.
That said, it will not do however, to fail to
treat the
seriousness of others, with the seriousness they themselves
bring to a
situation. While I may enjoy feeling foolish,
there is no
reason to suggest that other's are foolish as well.
the School
of Life
the lord is my Shepherd, I
shall not want
An
acquaintance of mine (the infamous Catherine MacCoun)
seems to have acquired the idea that I had fallen for a
spiritual con
job, such that she used me (with a fake name) as an example of
this
inner problem in the
book she
wrote, saying: One day, Hank [me]
astonished
us all by
announcing his candidacy for
President of the United States. He went on to further
reveal that
he was the incarnation of the next Buddha and that his destiny
was to
lead the nation into a new spiritual age. When another
member of
the group asked bluntly what in Hank's lackluster career had
ever
qualified him for such a task, Hank replied that the menial
jobs where
themselves proof of his exalted identity. In the
spiritual world,
according to Hank, working on assembly lines is what
bodhisattvas do
with themselves until their Moment of Destiny arrives.
Given
that this is not what I said (it misses about 90
percent - that is most of the context, and gets several facts
wrong), I thought I'd here speak of
the School of Life and its importance, in more concrete terms.
Most of
us can go through life looking at our troubles as
the fault of everyone but ourselves, or as cruel acts of fate,
sometimes tempered with remarkable gifts of grace. It is
possible, however, to reflect on our daily
existence as a remarkable form of education, much more radical
and
complete than anything we might get from a book or through
intercourse
with a spiritual being. The most relevant fact concerns
our
personal attitude toward our daily life. My own
experience is
that the 23rd Psalm is an excellent poetic expression of how
rich life
is, should we be willing to accept its treasures. I made
a number
of hints at this in the text above, and here I want to speak
more
intimately of some of these life-teachings. [Some stories, of which there
could be
many, but no real need to do more than give a few examples:]
the thread of attention
Just
before the change from joey to joel described above,
joey found himself in an unusual situation. He was out
of a job,
his then wife had work for which she was quite highly paid,
and there
was a new baby in the home (our third child). With the
agreement
of his wife, joey then became what was being called at that
time a househusband. It was while being a househusband that
joey set
this next matter in motion, although as I followed up on his
efforts in
this regard I was able to add other factors.
He began
to specifically wonder what childhood was really
about, since the care of a growing infant was now his main
charge.
After a little thought, and given his nature and
disposition, it
was not surprising that he came to the idea that the child
itself knew
more about childhood then he did, and that he might profit by
letting
the new daughter teach him, rather than books or his parents
or whoever
felt they were experts in the matter.
So the
child taught and the parent followed. Now
this is not to say that anything the child wanted to do was
allowed,
for the whole thing was more carefully thought about than
that.
Joey, as mentioned, was able out of his own gifts to
understand
other human beings through his empathic capacities. So
you could
say that as our daughter matured, a kind of subtle
clairvoyant-like
dialog arose between the incarnating spirit of the child and
he and I.
Matters that needed to be understood arose in intuitive
thought,
and were followed, unless some other question required their
modification.
To make
this concrete I'll tell a couple of stories - one
through joey's memories and the other through my own.
This
child started to crawl and then toddle, and it was
joey's concern of course that such experience, whether inside
or
outside, be done safely. Prior, in the child raising
departments,
infants in this family had been mostly confined to a "play
pen", so now
we have the question of what we are going to if the child is
to
teach.
In the
apartment building where this took place, we lived
on the second floor, from which a set of concrete steps
extended
downward from the shared outside balcony to the street level
below.
Joey took to taking the child outside, letting her
explore, well
all the while remaining quite close (within easy arms reach).
At
a certain point in time, she began to take an interest in
these stairs,
which were basically free standing (an infant could fall
through the
back). When she decided she wanted to climb these
stairs, joey's
original instinct would have been to say: No!.
Instead,
he sat beside her, moving up with her, ready at
any instant to reach out and protect her, should she appear to
be in
any real danger. This practice, I followed for the next
couple of
years (thinking of course at the time that I was he).
By the
time she was about 4 years of age, we had
developed what I had to call: the thread of attention.
I was aware that she was aware that I held her in my
consciousness, even if I did not directly see her physically
with my
eye. For example, we might go walking together in
Berkeley
California, where we lived. If it was a slow
contemplative walk,
she would wander, and I would stroll. For a long time
she never
did more than get near the edge of that thread. That was
her safe
zone, so to speak - she would explore within the zone of the
thread of
attention, but not outside it.
This led
to my exploring my memories which went unbroken
into joey's childhood. I discovered there that it was
normal for
him at those early ages to also perceive that he was
perceived.
This is of course a natural gift of the human being,
which most
lose early on, but which can be redeveloped later (we mostly
know it as
adults when we can feel someone looking at us from behind).
There
came a time when she broke this bond, quite on
purpose, disappearing for about an hour one day in the company
of
another 4 and 1/2 year old, such that I and his mother were
quite
besides ourselves with worry. It ended when we saw them
walking
up the sidewalk in a light rain, hand in hand, having managed
to not
only escape (become free from) our "attention", but at the
same time
find a way to lose their clothes.
the I in everything
I was
standing on a street corner, waiting for a bus,
about three years after the joey- joel change. I had a
sudden
deeply penetrating intuition that not only was I an I-am, but
that all
existence consisted of Beings with consciousness and
self-consciousness, including the Sun. This
revelation
might be described as a kind of quick replacement of the
conceptions,
previously held by joey of the materiality of the world, with
the
sudden realization that all was spirit. This was a quite
powerful
experience, and came in such a way that I had no reason to
ever later
question it.
the increasing of necessity
I spent
a lot of time rethinking everything joey had ever
thought (although still in the beginning conceiving of it all
as a
continuation, which in a technical way it was), such that
while I was
simply re-examining all past thought, this was based on a
rapidly
growing new set of experiences and a quite different attitude
toward
life.
I was
reading all kinds of books, including collections
of Sufi Tales, which included a tale called: the increasing of
necessity. I'll here tell a
very short version: A man
sits by a stream and about mid-afternoon a paper wrapped brick
sized
package floats by. He lifts it from the stream, opens it
and
finds within a substance edible and nourishing.
Curious, he
moves up stream the next day wondering, and sure enough
earlier than
the day before another package floats by. This
goes on for
several days, until one early morning as he waits by the
stream, across
from a Castle Tower, he sees a female arm throw one of these
packages
into the stream.
He
crosses the stream and after talking to a servant is
ushered in to see the Lady of the Tower. He tells his
story.
She replies that every morning she baths in milk
and honey,
to which becomes added the sweat and skin from her body
acquired on the
previous day. When the liquid is let out through
the
bathtub drain, a solid mass clings to the sides of the tub, is
scraped
off by a servant and then wrapped in paper and thrown out the
window
and
into the stream.
He
ponders this for a moment and then says to the Lady: "For you the remains
of your
toilet, for me manna from heaven."
I came
to be in a situation where I was not receiving any
income, and did not want to get once more on welfare, if that
could be
avoided. I was about 4 years into the change. I
decided to
see what reality was made of, in a kind of way, and gave
notice to my
landlord that I would be moving out at the end of the most
recently
paid up month. I had some cash, but it was slowly
dwindling.
I gave
away all of my books (a couple of hundred) except
for seven, and did further acts reducing my possessions.
I traded
a number of objects for seven woven baskets belonging to the
lady that
lived above me, and reduced all that I owned (and needed for
the care
of my daughter) to what could be contained in these seven
baskets and a
wooden chest I had rescued (it had been, when discovered, in
ruin in an
outdoor shed) from where I was living at the time of the
change (I
still have this chest).
I
continued to live and wonder what would happen next.
During this period I found in my back yard a large
grocery store
cart into which I placed all the no longer needed clothes of
my
daughter. As I was moving this out to the side yard,
where I had
already put our mattresses and other no longer needed things
with a
sign that said "free stuff", two women walked by, one of whom
was 8
months pregnant. They soon walked happily off with the
grocery
cart full of children's clothes.
About
five days before I had to leave (or overstay) where
I was living, I had an idea about how to find a place to live
for free.
I made a couple of calls and shortly thereafter my
daughter and I
moved to a place where we could live for free, that even had a
phone
(the details are unnecessary). We lived there for some
time, and
I did not work, but for a while found money on the street, one
time a
five dollar bill on my way to the nearby grocery store to buy
some food
with our steadily diminishing funds.
One
morning, [during
period of investigation], I woke, and was preparing
to take my
last 45
cents and go buy a loaf of bread to go with the peanut butter
and jelly
we still had in the larder, when I looked out the window and
saw parked
against the curb, right in front of our door, a shopping cart
full of
food. I opened the front door, and as I started
out of the
house, a loud noise nearby attracted my attention, which came
from a
telephone booth where the man on the phone had just slammed
open the
door. Oh, I thought, that's his basket of food and
turned
around and closed the door.
Three
minutes later he knocked on the door, and we shared
tea, as he explained to me that he had just rescued that food
from the
dumpster at the nearby grocery store, and was able to give us
5 loaves
of bread, five pounds of moldy (but cleanable) cheese, and
five heads
of lettuce while having a lot left over for others for whom he
routinely collected food on his route investigating various
grocery
store dumpsters. He also explained to me that in the
23rd psalm
(we had a long discussion over tea), anointing one's head with
oil was
done as follows:
He
pulled from his pocket a small tin container labeled
"tiger balm". He took some and rubbed it with his index
finger
over the area of my "third eye" on my forehead and gave me a
blessing.
The naturally bodily heated oil soon sent a small jolt
of warmth
right into my pineal gland. Not only did he live this
way, he
also spoke in verse, much of it in rhyme.
I
continued to live this way for some time, although
circumstances often changed, but basically I took no job, and
found
that whatever was my situation, not only did Divine Providence
act from
the outside stream of life, but also from the inside - as a
part of the
ordinary stream of thought. Whatever thought I
needed in
order to solve a more or less immediate problem would also
become
present as necessary.
It was
while living in these circumstances that the
finding of the first Franz Bardon book took place, as I
related above,
and which included me spending at that time all the money I
had in that
moment ($7.50). In the Bardon books he made the comment,
as a
kind of aside, that one might not want to always live
dependent upon
Divine Providence.
animal magnetism
Above I
noted that my first wife at one point said that I
had changed completely (about three years after the joey-joel
change),
no longer walking, standing, siting or talking in the same way
as when
she first knew me. My changes of posture were
consciously done,
as were my changes of speech.
For
example, I discover that I had habits of posture,
connected to inhibited feelings, more or less all relating to
childhood
experiences. When I discovered my self holding my body
in this
kind of stiff old way, I would breath in my muscles in such a
way that
the tension disappeared, and also strive to become awake to
the
emotional dynamic that brought about the tendency to live in
my body in
rigid ways.
I
thought of myself as living on the earth, and although
even living in the City, I could see no reason to not live in
a kind of
conscious awareness that I might have had if I was a Native
American.
I wore loose clothes, no underwear, and moccasin-like
shoes,
whose only difference was the rubber sole that was needed to
not wear
out so quick on concrete streets and sidewalks. I
changed my
posture as a walker, from joey's kind of hunched over fear of
being
dominated by others kind of walk, to feeling the earth beneath
my feet,
and the energy of life as it rose from the earth and entered
my body,
enabling me to stand upright.
I
watched the sky, and learned to read the signs by which
I could easily predict the weather 3 days out. If I had
an
opportunity, I slept outside on the ground.
I
learned at one point to actually look at the world
differently. I would go to parks, especially where my
daughter
could play with other children, and sit quietly observing.
I
started letting my eyes and my attention just go to what
attracted it,
in terms of sound or motion. I began to study this
aspect of my
eyes, and came through self-observation to knowledge that one
eye liked
to focus on single objects, while the other eye liked to see
wholes.
I did a number of similar experiments with my senses,
discovering
they contained capacities my "civilized" upbringing had failed
to
develop.
One of
the things I became acutely aware of was that both
men and women were reacting to me in unusual ways. Men
either
admired me, or found reason to be jealous and then
problematic.
Women were easy to seduce as I became more and more
aware of what
might be called the animal mind, or which some speak of as the
body
language. Much of this tempted me, and I am not proud of
a number
of things I did in those years.
To give
an example: I had taken a bus to a restaurant-bar
near the water of San Francisco Bay. I was looking to
see if I
wanted to score something of a sexual experience in that
scene.
It was too noisy and after about a half hour of
wandering around
(and not wanting to get drunk like everyone else) I left to go
outside
in the fresh air, and sat down on a low wall enclosing some
plants.
A man came out of the bar and walked up to me, and asked
me if
everything was all right. When I wondered what he meant,
he said
he thought maybe that someone had picked a fight with me
(which was why
I went outside) and maybe I might need some help. I
thanked him
for his interest, and said nothing had happened, after which
he
returned to the bar. [[People noticed me, which massaged
my ego,
but sometimes that led in undesriable directions.]
play
My
sister-in-law lived in New Orleans, and when traveling
there to do a psychological group marathon (how I earned my
living
before doing the increasing of
necessity) I spent some time with her
and she gave me strings of plastic beads from Mardi Gras.
I had
been learning to make seed beads into art (see my book covers
and
websites), and during this time I started wearing these Mardi
Gras
beads on my clothes (around the edges of the bottom of my
pants, at the
ends of sleeves and so forth. I decorated myself and
wore my hair
in a long pony tail. It was very Berkeley, yet not
really so much
Hippie.
One day
I was walking down College Ave. southeast of the
Berkeley campus, wearing a open beaded shirt, and beaded
shorts and was
barefoot. I was carrying a tape player in my shoulder,
playing a
tape of the music of movie The Harder They Come, with this
song
running: You Can Get It If You Really Want It. I was
full of
myself, and a man came up to me to panhandle me, and I gave
him all I
had at the time, which was only a quarter.
I had no
keys, no car, no insurance and few cares.
No one really knew what to do with me. I had
become a kind
of spiritual asshole. I thought I was enlightened, when
all I
really was was a manifestation of what anthroposophists call
the
luciferic [we would call
it
excessively grandiose]. The
social-emotional
distance between me and others
increased and became slowly more and more uncomfortable.
I was at
an acquaintances house, where they were reading
aloud to everyone the book Johnathan Livingston Seagull.
They
read a passage about someone who became free of all the
entanglements
of living life, and this seemed at the time to me to be a good
thing.
I began
to think that what I should do is travel around
the world, forgetting family and friends, and just go where
the wind of
Providence took me, becoming a preacher of this new freedom
which I
assumed was due to my clever enlightened insights and that I
could
teach this to others. We could all become so wonderfully
free.
A kind
of cusp of decision presented itself. At
this moment in time, I also took LSD, three times in five
days.
It was very good acid - very pure window pane (a tiny square about an eighth of an inch on the
side).
A friend had given it to me for free. The third
"trip" had
me out of my body throughout a whole night, surrounded by
voices, who
for hours had their own views on what I should do next.
I have
written the above to show how I had radically
changed the life joey had once lived after he had given me the
gift of
his bodies. There are easily a hundred more such stories
I could
tell. I was ready to leave family and give myself over
to a kind
of dance with life.
Not all
of a sudden, but over several months time, I
decided that whatever I did with life, it would be wrong to
become so
"spiritual" that I abandoned family. Not only that, but
I needed
to re-enter ordinary life, to once more hold jobs and conform
and take
on my share of all the burdens of an ordinary human existence.
Whatever spiritual talents there were that I might
have,
they belonged rooted in life, and in life I would seek their
meaning. [I
stopped
depending on Divine Providence and started taking jobs.]
a lesson in judge not less ye
be judged
It was
through my younger brother that I ended up working
for the Mitchell Brothers, San Francisco's most popular
pornographers.
I ran a tiny little theater of theirs for a time in the
Tenderloin district, on the Market Street edge between 6th and
8th
Avenue. We offered three movies for $1.99.
We had a
lot of regular clientèle. Many gay
men in suits would come at the lunch hour. Three Indians
would
come every week, one a female who always looked beat up.
A
man always dressed in a long coat, open metal buckle galoshes,
and a watch cap came every Friday when the movies where
changed
to new ones. He also came every day to drop off the
morning
newspaper. This was his thing - surviving by getting the
end cuts
off the press run for free from the newspaper printing plant
about four
blocks away, and then distributing these in the neighborhood
in
exchange for things he wanted or needed. For a free
afternoon of
porn, he gave us a paper every day.
I took
the money every night by cab to the Mitchel
Brothers offices on Polk Street, to be put in the safe there,
and
generally the night manager had to come to the door of his
office
zipping up his pants from the favors the girls who danced
there no
doubt had to give to him. We made around $800 every
weekday, and
$1200 every Friday and Saturday. My shifts were three 12
hour
days and one 6 hour day, at the end of which I gave the keys
over to
the other manager.
Joey had
been raised in Montana, and while he had not
been particularly judgmental, he did normally put folks in all
kinds of
boxes which often characterized them as immoral and such (such
was the
thought paradigm into which he was born). This work
situation
gave me an opportunity to rid my mind of these habitual boxes,
and to
learn to see those who came through the doors of this theater
without
judgment. As I did this, I naturally became more
friendly with
the customers, and bit by bit heard some of their stories (in
passing,
we would idly chat).
I
interacted on occasion with the Mitchel Brothers, and
their collection of "sex workers". I was at this time
give by
life an opportunity to study in my soul something Jesus had
done, which
was be friends with the prostitutes and the tax collectors.
Moreover, as an inner act, the actual practice of not
judging
brought deeper inner awareness, concerning which I was later
to write
the essay on my website: pragmatic moral psychology.
periods of unemployment
Once I
had fallen out of the middle class ([joey was] no longer a
lawyer etc.) I could only get certain kinds of jobs, because
any honest
rendering of my work history led to questions I really could
not
answer. I was, more often than I liked, out of a job,
and given
that I ultimately had two marriages and a total of five
children, these
were painful experiences. I could no longer relate to
such times
with the freedom I had had when I was dependent upon Divine
Providence.
I began
after a time to feel blessed by such experiences.
In part this was because my inner life was growing in
ways that
my contemporaries could not understand. Less and less
could I
speak to others of what was going on there. How do you
say: Oh,
by the way, God dropped in at work yesterday and asked me
didn't I want
to do something about the world.
To
suffer the pains of ordinary existence was a nice
balance to the temptations to think highly of myself.
addiction
During
my Berkeley years I became addicted to pot [joey started it], and
loved certain stronger drugs such as acid, although after a
time one
really couldn't get good drugs of this type on the street
anymore.
For example, some friends and I bought what was
supposed to
be acid, but which turned out to be speed laced with
strychnine.
We were all sick, instead of having a nice trip.
You
could find out these things because the Haight Ashbury free
medical
clinic (born in the Summer of Love in SF) routinely had
broadcast on
local radio a drug report about what was on the street - we
just found
out after the fact.
I stole
drugs from my brother. I didn't properly
take care of my children. I coped - it wasn't as bad as
heroin or
cocaine, but it was bad enough. At the peak (about
a 2 year
period), I would get paid at my job $50 cash every day, and
then stop
at my dealers house for a 1/8th of an ounce for $25 on my way
home.
Its a puzzle I made the rent. I did dumpster dive
for some
of the food we ate. I had three children at home during
most of
this two year period. I'd come home, start something on
the
stove, get stoned and burn the pan after checking out in front
of the
TV.
I had my
last joint in September of 1987. I'd quit
several times before, but it hadn't taken. I don't see
any
reasons for regrets - that is pointless. It happened, I
was
responsible. Through the 12 Steps I got eventually to
making
amends, which is a very interesting art. I also learned
a lot
more, which can be found in my writings.
two kinds of typical jobs and
their virtues
I worked
often for restaurants and in the mental health
field. Working in a kitchen requires an odd kind of
mental skill.
It all works better if you can be friendly, and in
really busy
place you have to learn to think about two dozen things at the
same
time, but in any given moment be very focused just on the one
that you
are doing. The mind learns a lot of interesting skills
in this
kind of environment.
One
place I worked in Northern California had two cooks
in the winter but three in the summer (when the vehicle
traffic on
Interstate Five was high). I worked the breakfast shift
as a
support for the main "egg flipper". One morning, before
the third
summer cook was hired, the two of us served 600 meals (mostly
breakfasts) in seven hours. It would take a book to
describe how
such a thing could be accomplished. Its kind of like
dancing in a
very small place, all the while engaged in juggling things
that will
burn you if not handled correctly.
Mental
health work is like working as a cop or in a
prison. Its just not as nasty dangerous, but it is
easily not for
everyone. Mentally ill people often tend to get very
much in your
face, and being not rational most of the time, they require
special
skills to keep at peace.
One has
to be very observant of quite subtle shifts of
mood. Each person really needs an individual response,
unique to
their situation. It is hard to work in such a place and
think you
have bad troubles in your own life - you meet too many folk
with
problems you know you couldn't endure. If you don't know
how to
be very patient and have your own emotions in check, these
places will
kill you.
Cooking
in a fast kitchen requires physical adroitness
and mental alertness. Working in a mental hospital
requires
emotional adroitness and acute verbal skills. In both
places you
have to think fast and make crucial instant judgments.
Both
places can be spoiled by having bad and incompetent bosses or
co-workers.
For
someone such as me, who in their interior life is
engaged in all kinds of disciplines most people don't even
know you can
try, it becomes a very challenging field of activity.
The
mental hospital was the most emotionally trying, not so much
because of
the patients, but because of the frequent impossibility of
helping
people with such acute care needs. The system actually
worked against itself (see my essay: Healing the
Insanity of
Psychiatric Medicines and Practices). There I
worked the
graveyard shift (what a name!?!), and made my best effect
often mostly
by prayer and by careful listening.
The
prayer was silent, and often created (emanated) an
atmosphere that was helpful in at least reducing the intensity
of the
problems. The listening was often quite healing in the
right
circumstances. However, the system and the supervision
would
object as if somehow one was giving too much personal
attention,
forgetting how inhuman such isolated societies (the inside of
a mental
hospital) can be.
Since a
lot of my inner life was involved in trying to
understand human social existence and its meaning, these jobs
were rich
with experiences I could not otherwise obtain. One
really cannot,
through the intellect, appreciate what is going on in these
places on a
spiritual level. Only through experience, elevated with
moral
will-engaged thinking, can the meaning of such structures in
human life
become [fully]
understood.
my last job
Some
years previously, my older brother had worked in
this place for a time and found it somewhat immoral as an
operation.
I came to the situation needing not only a job, but an
environment that challenged me physically. I still do
not get
enough exercise, and at least during this job I was forced to
move
around more.
The
place was what we might call light industrial.
Most employees serviced various machines, whose
purpose was
to create as an end result (via different stages) mass
mailings
soliciting charitable contributions. If you periodically
get in
the mail something that gives you free personal address
stickers and
related stuff, hoping you'll make a gift in return - that's
the kind of
thing we created.
A big
job might produce in 6 weeks 15 million
pieces of mail. There were many different kinds of
machines.
One kind stuffed envelopes, and took about 6 people to
service.
In an eight hour shift we might produce 20,000 pieces of
mail.
Another kind stuffed boxes with things, and took
about 20
people to service. The machines ran 24/7, the people 40
hrs a
week.
Certain
machines took less people and we often were asked
to stand while servicing them. In these situations my
back would
start to knot up in about an hour and by the end of eight
hours would
all be knots. I'd go home, sit down in front of the TV,
and the
first time I'd try to move my legs I'd get horrible
charlie-horses in
my calves and thighs.
The
supervisors were not very educated in being
supervisors. Most of the people I worked with were like
the kids
I grew up with and went to high school with, but never had a
year of
college, if they could even mange to graduate from high
school.
Now they were adults with wives and ex-husbands and
children and
illnesses and addictions and money troubles.
The
first year was pretty bad, but the second and third
years were a bit better, because a supervisor in a certain
section took
an interest in me, and asked for me to run some of her
machines.
These one person could run, and most of the time sit
down while
running them.
It was
the social environment that was particularly
educational. Besides being filled with less educated
people (they
would make jokes to me about my education, and when I would
ask how
they knew, they'd say you just talk that way), it was also a
place
where aspects of the immigrant experience was in full flower.
50% of the workers were recent immigrants from
Brazil, and
several got caught at some point for having a fake green card.
It
helped that I had my person to person skills honed in
the mental hospital, because I was able to get along with just
about
everyone. In the mental hospital I'd also been skilled
at body
language (you'd be surprised how important it is how you stand
and hold
your arms when working with someone mentally troubled), and
these
skills were useful here as well. One didn't have to
think a lot
about them, as talking with body language comes to be a kind
of skill
that flows naturally after awhile.
Machines
often broke down, and if it was a temporary
breakdown, we'd just get to sit and chat. Picture 50
year old
uneducated white women, talking over her love life with a
lovely
Brazilian woman who can't speak much English but is being
romanced by a
white truck driver. Or switch the pairing, say
between a
tall black Brazilian, and a local white woman - lots of
gossip
and often some good advice. The place with rich with
biases and
love and truths that can't be found in any book anywhere.
For
example, the Brazilians were a mix of races: white,
black, mayan etc. All kinds of colors and combinations
and
variations. What was interesting was that none of
this
"color" stuff meant anything to them. I liked asking
them whether
they were from the country or the city, and then finding out
more about
their life there before they came here. Mostly they were
fleeing
economic and social deprivations of various sorts, and had
fallen hard
for the "dream" that is America.
Some
people liked to talk politics, and as it was the
early parts of the Bush II years, we had a lot of interesting
material.
9/ll happened while I was at work, and while we were not
allowed
to get much more than rumor that first day, it was again very
educational to watch how this social environment dealt with
the various
issues.
Because
of my more esoteric interests, this was a
wonderful counterpoint to the temptation to too much
intellectualism
and a very interesting place to practice the thinking skills I
had been
learning through Rudolf Steiner's books.
For
example, the job where I was able to run the machine
alone, had this very odd quality because the movement elements
were so
repetitive that I could split my attention (quite consciously)
away
from the "work" and into thinking questions about the social
and
political that I was contemplating in my writing at home.
I could
also indulge in fantasy as well. I had some time ago
began a
routine of carrying always with me a pen and a small set of 3
X 5
cards, on which I could write notes when inspiration came
calling.
So I was able to do, in this environment, much thinking
work
related to my social-spiritual questions, and then make a
quick two or
three word note that could, later at a more mediative moment
at home,
allow me to return to the same landscape in the
idea-world
for further
development of the thought-themes.
family - the great teachers
Inspired
by joey's idea that the child could teach a
great deal about what it meant to be a child, this type of
question was
liberally applied in all aspects of my family life.
While I had
my indulgences, drugs, television, sex etc. I was still
surrounded with
remarkable companions in life, and over time I got better at
learning
what they had to teach.
For
example, by the time I was working with adolescents
as part of my mental health work in the mid-1980's, I had
raised two of
my own children through this period of life. Most of the
other
group home counselors were young people, not so far out of
their own
adolescence. My children helped me have a lot of insight
into
very practical questions that I was facing at work.
I spent
a lot of time thinking about how to not be a
stupid over bearing parent, who ended up so insistent on the
child
behaving according to their biases, that the child (during
adolescence)
never was able to find themselves. People who don't get
the
privilege of raising children miss out on a lot of life
lessons.
Basically
they taught me that what they needed was to
slowly over time become more and more self-determining.
In order
to mature in their judgments, both moral and social, they
needed
practice. If as a parent I insisted they think like me
or do only
what I thought was right, I was laming their own natural
potential.
In practice this also had to be adapted to the
individual - each
child was unique.
As a
result, our family life was quite different from the
families of my children's peers. What I did was give out
a
certain degree of autonomy as a kind of rope (recall the
thread of
attention), and walk beside them so to speak, as they
made their
own
judgments for which they were then responsible. If they
made an
error, it was their error. I gave a kind of gift of
trust, and
they (in varying degrees) ran with it, fell down sometimes and
other
times achieved great success.
The rope
would be shorter at the beginning of
adolescence, and longer around the time they were ready to
leave home.
One of
my goals was to maintain communication. I
couldn't really provide any council at all if we weren't
talking to
each other, and we wouldn't talk to each other if I was
determined to
be the boss of all the details of their lives. When
issues of
judgment came up in conversation, I generally did not so much
give
advice, but asked questions. I tried to awaken their own
minds
and their own consciences for meeting the questions that life
put to
them. Knowing from my own experience that life was the
Great
Teacher, I introduced them to their own lives and tried to
help them
"think" their way into its meanings that were personal to
them.
As I
wasn't their only parent, and given that their peers
were also a big influence, I can't really say I did more than
play a
small role in their psychological and spiritual development.
The
end result is interesting, however. To some degree they
are today
my best friends. We know each other well, although each
has their
own way of maintaining their own autonomy.
When we
are together we have a lot of fun.
Several of them are quite musical, and we sing and
make
jokes at each other's expense, and while we are not free of
"issues"
and "complaints", overall there is a lot of love between them.
I
can't tell more intimately their stories, for that is their
own
business, but they do provide an aspect to life that can't be
otherwise
replaced.
For
another example of how I was taught by them to
"raise" them, I made certain they learned how to hold a job.
Not
by force of my personality, but by sensing opportunities for
life to
teach this to them, and then providing the right action and
the right
support at any critical moment that came within my own grasp.
They still made all the crucial choices.
My own
descent into being a member of the working poor,
meant I could not provide possibilities of college from my own
wealth.
Nor did I insist any go to college, although two
have
earned degrees while working - often full time. Others
have found
their way into life, that fits their nature and temperament -
they
found their niche so to speak - the one that belongs to them
and not
any idea I've had to which they ever needed to conform.
Besides
my children, I have been blessed with many other
companions in life, and I'll start to end here by saying a
little about
joey's two brothers, who I was lucky enough to inherit - they
too
taught me lot.
The
older has a PhD in micro-biology, and over the many
years of our shared lives has provided countless hours of
wonderful
discussion of the significance and limits of natural science.
The
younger is an artist, with special interests in music, and who
often
has a radio show of one kind or another. Most of my
capacity to
understand that aspect of human social existence comes from
his own
love for music, mostly of special kinds, such as Reggae,
World-beat,
and Native American.
I can't
not mention my wifes, and my girl friends, but
must limit that discussion for it is too fraught with personal
emotions. Suffice it to say that in 2003 I
undertook a long
fast (it lasted 45 days) during which one morning on waking
up, I
experienced all the women in my life as a sequence of symbols
of the
teachings of the Feminine Mysteries. Within each lived
unique
combinations of the various aspects of the Divine Feminine,
and
subsequent to this experience I spend a lot of thinking time
living
into what had been given and taught by all these women.
From this
thinking was produced the small book: Seven
Dates: or erotica* transcending: love sexuality,
sensuality
and the New Feminine
Mysteries of Eros. *(adults
only).
This
then is some hints of the School of Life as I was
able to experience it, which no doubt was not the usual way
most people
experience this School. I gave myself to this School
almost from
the beginning of the change from joey to joel, and I am as
much a
creation of that School as I am a creation of my Creator and
of my own
ego.
Keep in
mind that it became my habit in my early years in
Berkeley (and then beyond) to turn every experience into
lessons and
teachings. To give one last example:
I have
(and joey did as well) always loved television and
movies. Once I began to realize the wisdom latent in
these modern
forms of art, I could see that while a great deal was silly
and just a
waste of time, much was capable of being just as culturally
rich as
great literature, symphonies and classical art.
America was
a quite different place than Europe, and this was not without
meaning
in the design of the Creation. In my writings will be
found many
details, in particular the section in my book American
Anthroposophy called: Present Day American
Culture
- four archetypal personalities. [In the book The Art of God,
dozens of movies are used as reference points for showing what
artists
have to teach to the religious and the scientific.]
One of
the things this approach taught me was to love my
experiences, even if they were difficult. I was not
perfect in
this, but over time this developing relationship between
experience and
thinking and the love of the experience brought about certain
inner
skills and attributes. Recall if you will the material
above
about the riddle joey left me, which I had written down more
or less as
follows seven years after the change and just before meeting
Steiner
through his books: If the world is at its roots and origin spiritual
in
nature, what are the implications of this fact for humanity's
social
and political existence?
It was
in my prayers for many years, that whatever my
life experience was to give to me, it would be an aid in
thinking about
this riddle. 21 years was devoted to this thinking
(spiritual)
activity, where life experience was again and again turned
into
teaching for understanding this Meaning of
Earth Existence in
the Age of the Consciousness Soul
(see the
essay of that name for the details of what ultimately was
taught to me
by Life itself).
It seems
I got my wish. See: The Art of
God: an
actual theory of Everything. as well as The
Mystery of
Evil in the Light of the Sermon on the Mount and Economic
and Social
Rebellion.