the actual door is open ... for safe passage to
Where the Holy Mother and Her Friends are remembered.
Basements, are curious constructions. Caves really.
Creepies and crawlies and things that go bump in the Night.
That is, ... if ignored, and left to ruin.
Mother Nature's Bounty includes the Metals and the Stones.
hanging from ceilings unfinished. Furnaces, oil tanks,
Atomic, Volcanic, and most especially: the Lunatic ... all
serve at Her Pleasure,
for She is Justice as only a Mother can carry out.
Imagining the Letter admission folk
want you to write - - poetic ganja laced fancies - later
revised completely
An essay about me, described to me the first time - this
Way: [keep in mind that I am 76, and not seeking admission
for the usual obvious purposes - this longer “essay/” is
to substitute for unneeded transcripts, for my life is
something much different in the nature of its “course”
work, and that life-course work is the crucial element.]
“Our admissions committee takes a holistic approach to
each applicant. Therefore, your personal statement and
essay allows the committee to see you as a holistic person
and not simply as transcripts or test scores. As an older
applicant, the personal statement would provide you with
the opportunity to explain why you feel HDS is good fit
for you and why you would benefit from an education at
HDS. ... “ [ friend Samantha, wrote this ... ]
So, being a writer by confession, and understanding my
personal standards for writing, I’ve taken to beginning
the crafting of this “essay/statement”, far in
advance of it being requested or needed. (initial
draft June, 9th, 2017 - a full moon, in the Season of
Saint John’s Tide.)
My first thought, upon asking myself to write something I
had not yet written, was this:
I hope to be the most dangerous person to walk through
Harvard’s Gates. I am a providence trained, asshole
question-asker. My e-mail tag is: “share the hope,
take no prisoners, and laugh your ass off at every
opportunity”. I could be Harvard’s Socrates,
except in my case no one has ever seen the likes of
my-me’s before, in the Halls of Academia.
In the Epoch of Trump, bragging is a necessary art.
Don’t assume that all brags are lies. The brag is
notice of that there might actually exist an outrageous
event that can only be described in metaphors without
limits. How do you describe for example, what makes
a person a genius, or a university amazing, or nation and
people great. Hyperbole means to draw attention to
what?
The evidence is below, and on my webpages (see CV - link
at end). The Farce in D.C. is gods and goddesses
reminding us that they too contribute to the arts from
which civilization is borne. When a whole world is
to be reborn - the dying into a new becoming of
civilization - all the players have to shed their masques.
Still, Socrates didn’t live through the death of hope in
1968, when JFK, MLK, RFK were murdered, the Democrat Party
ignored the anti-Vietnam War Left, in order to float
toward the Center-right, and ... my father died at age
58. In fact Socrates had a totally different
texture of consciousness, which those who research the
“evolution of consciousness” call: the sentient soul
becoming the intellectual soul. We moderns live in
the more evolved texture of consciousness labeled (by
some) the on-looker separation, and the epoch of the
consciousness, or mind soul. Don’t worry, new ideas
require alterations of language.
Socrates didn’t love America the Way I do
either. If a good death is the price, then
that is a cost I willingly bear in order to deliver these
goods, bound in art and good taste, weighted with the
wisdom of hundreds of minds, about which Harvard knows
almost nothing at all. Of course, I also risk not
being admitted, and thus found not worthy to dine at your
tables.
Keep in mind that a good guest brings fine wine for
sharing, as life teaches the essential nature of
risk-taking, and that the best libations are well aged.
Grandiosity and excesses of self confidence = foolish
folly? The court jester is wise, and if he/she can
keep the audience in states of enjoyment, life may
continue to surprise. In the right moment, who isn’t
willing to be the foolish in the service of a good cause?
Consider me prone to silly, which used to mean a few
hundred years ago: possessed by the sacred.
What is arriving on this page, and will continue to do so,
is the effort at expressing thought, grown in the
mind-wildflower-field of a spiritual nerd. Ask me
about hermetic science, Christian Tarot, Sufism,
Gurdjieff, Magic, Egyptian Science, astrosophy, goethean
science, natural science, physics, biology,
projective/synthetic geometry, physical and ethereal
spaces, which version of alchemy I prefer, how much was I
into the Tibetan Buddhism taught by Chogyam Trungpa,
Scientology, Moonies, the practice of the 23rd Psalm, the
practice of the Sermon on the Mount, what are my thoughts
on prayer and meditation - truly nerdish spiritual habits,
... you should see my study.
I am like a kind of more socialized Sheldon/Sherlock - I
sometimes think too much too fast. I also like to
enjoy being full of myself on occasion, wanting to show
off how smart I believe I am, all the while capable of
being something of a real asshole, on occasion on
purpose. It is not uncommon for me to get kicked off
discussion groups, or become the verbal enemy of victim
driven political correctness.
My present girl friend meet me in 2008, when after a
lecture by Andrew Cohen (an American enlightenment
teacher), at the School of Philosophy building next to the
Alcott Orchard House, in Concord Ma, ... I was the first
to ask a question, which was: Do you know
everything? His groupies all took in a big breath,
while he admitted he did not. I continued: If you
learned something new, is it possible the new that you
learned might cause you to change something you already
believe to be true? Long pause while speaker and
audience try to get around that seemingly trick
question. He shrugged, started to babble, and was
rescued when given another question from the
audience. My soon to be girl friend thought I was a
jerk, for such an impolitic question.
When this happened, I was one year just past dying twice
on the same day, in an ER in Sacramento California.
You get a kind of attitude from such experiences, ...
don’t waste time anymore - don’t put things off.
Life is too precious; and, life is full of adventures if
you are up to some social risk-taking.
The people who put up with me have tried hard to socialize
me, but I do have a tendency to burp and fart loudly, and
do horrendous sneezing without covering my mouth, although
I seldom am seen doing so in public - actually I don’t do
“in public” if at all possible, being quite shy, and now
in a kind of daily mild high from my pain meds, ... there
is a reason my email is: hermit@tiac.net . Words on
a page are much safer.
Skype and friends give enough intimacy for conversation,
and while I enjoy visitors to our home in Paxton, I do not
however like surprises. My intimacy with Living
Ideas, on the other hand, is a whole other kind of
intercourse. My plan/expectation is to telecommute -
not be physically present on campus. Other “plans”
below ...
Science and Religion and Art have to be One - all sourced
in thinking/ or what might have been different types of
consciousness among our deep-cultural Elders. If
Harvard wishes to help heal society, then the now common
separations of disciplines has to be consciously
reversed. Specialization has gone beyond
comedy, to tragedy, as noted by Sir Arthur Eddington a
century ago: “We are learning more and more about
less and less.” See Owen Barfield’s “World’s Apart”
for details.
Matter is as real as is Spirit - multi-sides of coins of
poetic verse spent searching for words that will never
exist, hoping against hope that the nameless will never be
named - really - why bother, just grok it. Although,
physicists continue to invent words a poet can put to good
use, such as: “the quantum entanglements living in the
black hole of a banker’s heart”
The Ancients always knew there were gods: That was their
direct experience. The Ancients always had science,
as well, they just didn’t see matter as empty of spirit,
because they perceived the spirit in matter
already. Plus, on the bright side, ... the
Incarnation of Christ included several promises, not the
least of which is: “I shall be with you until the ends of
time” (or something like that, depending on translation
choices).
People of Any Faith are in the process of receiving early
gifts from that “promise” - a style of science, with
knowledge of the spiritual qualities of reality, is
arriving. Yet, ... Love is so Profound, that It even
supports the coming into existence of a matter-only
science, because the individual human being is to get
their own Way, down to the smallest details. One
person’s truth is not meant to crush the truth of someone
else. At the same time, to go to a University, is to
volunteer for an actual educational experience, victim
mongering and trigger warnings aside. This no true
education without facing new and uncharted
territories.
The tragedy is that as consciousness continues to evolve,
it will free itself more and more from matter.
Meanwhile, each is to decide how to blend their own nature
into our shared reality, and nobody is to own the
best Way, for all of time and space is devoted to our
choices - given death is not an end. Whatever
we choose to believe during life in a body, there is/will
always be life after life. Even though some folk
dream of heaven, others worry over hell, and a few think
their spirit and soul (self-consciousness and
consciousness) can be uploaded into silicon.
So ... we too then are all destined to become wizards,
shamans, disciples, apostles, bodhisattvas, and drunk
poet-fool-warrior-space-pirates. No spiritual
secrets anymore. No hidden books. No Ways held
apart in temples of forgotten lore. Each individual
whole-sequence of biographies, through multiple
incarnations, is a personalized Holy Grail. Self
designed in the Afterlife, with the help of some very
special Friends.
These are not beliefs, by the way. Careful
observation, coupled with disciplined thinking, finds that
our experience itself is a book written by the Divine
Mystery. The Wind sacrifices its former pre-eminence
for the benefit of Its children discovering their own
wisdom. Goethe began the reading the Book of Nature,
and I’ve begun the reading the Book of the
Social/Historical world. Via the latter, humanity is
observed emancipating itself from its parents.
I am an archetypal heretic, wishing to do the job
providence, and several other’s of impeccable taste,
launched in the direction of Harvard, even back when I
worked with the folks at Stuart Week’s: The Center For
American Studies at Concord (MA), where I read in 1987, in
Emerson’s essay Nature: “Nature is a thought incarnate,
and turns to thought again as ice becomes water and then
gas. The world is mind precipitated, and the
volatile essence is forever escaping into the state of
free thought.”
That is an exact scientific statement, once we mend the
seeming rift between Plato and Aristotle that haunts the
thought-life of Western Civilization. “In It (the
Word) was Life, and the Life was the Light of the Word”,
... another fully exact scientific statement. See
George Adams’ wonderful dissertation on mathematical
physics (1933): “Space, and the Light of Creation” - whose
chapters are: a) Radiation of Space; b) The Music of
Number; and, c) The Burden of Earth and the Sacrifice of
Warmth.
All the “qualia” physicists and biologists want to ignore,
... all of it has meaning. Properly understood,
thinking is a spiritual Eucharist - a Second-Coming
related Rite involving the transubstantiation of thought.
I come to Harvard mostly to “wash the feet”. I’m
here to serve “all my relations”. The only real
danger is to those points of view that have become too
fragile through age. A systematic reboot of the
question of duality (body and spirit) is ripe for a
review. Places where subtlety of thought is weak,
sadly will have difficulty. All the same, We are all
the right people, in the right place, at the right
time. Imagine the discourse we - me and thee -
engender, as faith and knowledge, - through art -, find
their very much needed balance.
The separation into specialists’ kinds of knowledge, with
no meta-(above)-physical thought for their obvious
correlation and inter-relationships, creates a void in the
collective thought organism of the world [noosphere - “a
postulated sphere or stage of evolutionary development
dominated by consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal
relationships (frequently with reference to the writings
of Teilhard de Chardin)”]. Nature Does Abhor a Vacuum
(horror vacui).
Consider the scale of this story: Harvard is a giant in
the world of thought. Who can doubt such a
reality. What better testing ground for
new/fresh/thought. A guy who can barely walk,
because of his arthritic knees, on medical marijuana for
his pains of body and of heart, wandering your electronic
hallways where people use tech to dialogue. No mass
movements and rush about opinions needed. Sound and
careful conversation serves all participants.
Harvard only risks ruining its reputation if it makes too
much a big thing, of something really very small - or, by
refusing admission for fear of awkward silences and
pregnant pauses. An explorer from the lands of
heretical Christianity washes ashore, seeking the life
giving powers of sympathetic conversations among
equals. Do we not live in dire times, and do not
America’s elders often actually know incredible
stuff? How will Citizenship change under the stress
of something as demanding as the present day chaos in our
public life?
I have no plans to hold press conferences.
Fame, or notoriety of any kind, is not just not desired,
but scary and abhorred. This hermit has other wants
than having a conversation with someone lost in the dark
ambitions of journalism. Not to be mean, but there
is truth in the caution about pearls before minds not
interested in the nuances.
The counter-Copernican revolution (of which I am a
member), runs mostly silently alongside the more famous:
Copernican Revolution, - this quiet wisdom included spirit
in its considerations of matter: Goethe, Coleridge,
the Romantics, Emerson, Thoreau, the Transcendentalists,
and the newest effort to correct the errors of the
matter-only point of view - the Rudolf Steiner folk:
anthroposophists; Waldorf teachers; goethean scientists;
biodynamic farmers; anthroposophical doctors; et al.
Even Leibniz posited that the smallest entities would have
consciousness and will.
Do I have a plan, as it were? Get admitted, and
helped to see how to not just wander HDS’s electronic
halls, but also the larger environs of Harvard. Meet
some minds of different interests, who welcome the
discourse of basics. No courses to take, no papers
to write or be scored, weighed, and categorized. If
you want, give me (privately) an honorary degree for Joel
A. Wendt’s: “Saving the Catholic Religion from the Roman
Church.”. Give me a masters for that, and then
a doctorate for: “The Art of God: an actual theory of
Everything”.
Oh, wait ... Some other folk already honored me for
those works ...
Put me on the faculty if you want, but don’t expect me to
teach or lecture. Been there done that (270 videos,
a dozen books, hundreds of essays and short stories - even
a novel and a movie treatment). Right now all I want
is small conversations with two or three folks at a
time. Keep an edge on my mind, the volume on the
output low, and the ideas as subtle as the situation
requires. When art moves more than one soul, the
Wind visits everyone.
Pause ... and picture my wallet: a student ID, numbers and
such. A magic token to conversations about the edges
of knowledge, ... My wish that my life’s works are worth
that much
The groundwork exists to restore science to religion
(honor the Ancients, our spiritual mothers and fathers),
and religion to science (healing what was the result of
“Single vision & Newton’s sleep” - W. Blake).
Seriously thoughtful people have been trying for years to
add to human knowledge, without throwing out the baby
(spirit) with the bath water (as Kepler warned).
Nobody, by the way, is needing to be argued into
anything. The are so many books, ... so many
wonderful new kinds of “good news”, such as the literally
Gospel-of-Water, Wolfgang Schwenk’s: “Sensitive
Chaos”.
Although - yes, ... questions we don’t like often sting,
yet that doesn’t mean a stinging question is to be avoided
- rather the contrary. Change never comes without
effort and courage, a lot of which requires an honest look
in a mirror.
In my email tag, the phrase “take no prisoners”, lives in
between “share the hope”, and “laugh your ass off at every
opportunity”. I’m seeking membership in the Harvard
community, by the religious door mainly, because ... well,
heretical Christianity needs some time spent on updating
the right kinds of translations of Its Weird Ways of
seeing the world, knocking around in the backpack of my
soul. Tons of scholarly work available for those who
might want to find Christ and Friends, represented living
in uncommon environs.
Plus, as a bonus, I have friends-living, with truly
unusual skill sets: a woman Christian/Tibetan
alchemist hanging out near Chicago; a dude in the Santa Fe
area who spends tea-time with the Holy Mother on a regular
basis, while hanging around native American elders and
such; a woman in Scotland, who smokes a pipe and drinks,
who sees out of the spirit of the Athens of the North -
Edinburgh - and, writes of how to spiritualize economics;
an Italian master of the epistemological arts as applied
to spirit; And then there is:
joel a. wendt, who is also a lawyer ... hmmm???, but
mainly a human being. And, at 76, not a bad tale
teller. No reason new truths cannot come before us
in the more imaginative form of “stories”, without any
need to demand belief, and a lot of word-art can then be
spent on helping the individual reader/listener decide for
themselves: What is the Good, and the True, and the
Beautiful.
Next a tale <here>, which is truly a tale, and
though in the nature of legend, where all the factoids are
but bits of punctuation in a sea of letters, words,
phrases, sentences, - names are dangerous, unless we
see the whimsy involved, especially given what isn’t us is
our dream ... “‘In the last days, God says, I will pour
out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will
prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men
will dream dreams.”
As well, being an America-tale it is necessary for Pecos
Bill and Paul Bunyanesque metaphorical exaggerations, that
are not meant to be more than a kind of verbal
ancient-pyramid in words. A rather large signpost
buried in history, for later discovery. The kind of
Art Gods and Goddesses Weave, and poets suffer to declaim.
In the academic world, the following could not be said,
being based upon visions, and operational encounters with
the Divine, in a variety of forms over many years.
Shamans, however, appreciate the art of a good story, and
words/letters/sounds - are the flute (breath) and drum
(blood) of Ideas, perceived as independent of my own
thought-creation disciplines.
[“Sacramental Thinking” - me; “It thinks in me” - Rudolf
Steiner; and, “Learn to think on your knees” - Valentin
Tomberg].
An old man’s “dream” (one among many):
In the academic world, quite justly, Aristotle guides and
scholarship becomes art. However, a young man (my
body-brother), had his innocent Christian heart broken
when he, while considering the ministry, took a course in
the Gospels, based upon modern scholarship. If the
sense of modern thinking is that the Matthew of the Gospel
stories did not tell that wonder as he walked with friends
down desert trails, ... then what other failures live in
what the Church taught him in his youth, ... and, my
body-brother has already seen/made too many compromises
when it comes to the practicing of what was taught.
Meeting his religion - as an act of intellect instead of a
mystery - scars his soul, and he became an agnostic.
On a meta-level, many earth lives being the skeletal fact
of the organism of spiritual evolution, some folks who
walked with Christ in the Desert, start bounding back into
Life about every millennium. So, ... for the
beginning of the Second Millennium we had the School of
Chartres. The intellect of Aristotle, applied to
theological considerations and about to give birth to the
Scholastics, is touched by a return of some of those who
walked with Christ. Little is clear, true history
difficult/impossible, especially when the modern historian
pretends that real spiritual events weren’t happening via
the School of Chartres. In fact, if you follow the
situation to a properly artistic conclusion: What is not a
real spiritual event? If one situation is, all must
also be.
That’s the problem for the physicist: If any religious
belief turns out to be scientifically true, the whole
“Great Design” implodes and turns to dust. The Third
Millennium is here. Are we up to accepting its
treasures, from contemporary walkers in the arid deserts
of modern thought - intellect without heart?
The tricky aspect is to personally admit that to know a
spiritual event, such as the walks in the desert, requires
a spiritual act. Like must seek like, and those
walks were/are/will always be:
Incapable of being reduced to words on a page - a curse
for the poet, which the fundamentalists of all persuasions
write in stones, and thus leave in the ruins of biblical
studies a vain song of absolute adoration of the
absolute. Fortunately, for all not addicted to the
absolute facts and/or truths: And, this too shall
pass. Flexible ='s “Antifragile: Things That Gain
from Disorder” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Nuances of
meaning and subtlety of beauty live in the goodness of
truth.
Something is Here-Now: a sword, not peace, basted with
baptism by fire and holy breath - the Hopi call It: The
Day of Purification.
Christ&Friends is not to be imprisoned in a book, nor
is any other god or goddess. They Live.
Now ... seek them as your cultural choices requires, but
the master of doubt - materialistic science, does not
actually know all that it believes it knows, or insists
others believe - too much religion of scientism, in denial
of its own addictions.
Scientific theories are just stories made up by folk who
threw away from consideration, all that could not be
counted ... only felt. “Reach out with your
feelings, Luke.” In our Age the Intellect duels with
the heart, while the scientist declares that mind (spirit)
does not exist, nor are we free of the ruler-ship of
matter.
I wrote recently, in my: “The Saga of the Bonsai
Liberation Front”:
“This record is meant to show the effective actions of
certain extensions of the Plant, into the sphere of
influence of a natural born shaman. There is only one
Plant, the Green World - a single spiritual
organism/goddess-level Being of incredible complexity and
beauty, that daily engages in the transubstantiation of
matter on a cosmic scale.
At the growing point of the bud/leaf/flower, and the
growing point of the root, matter is conjured into
existence from the Void that preceded the Creation. Only
arts magic, and alchemy on a planetary scale, enables the
Life Sphere we need to live within - to flourish.”
Are our minds truly confined inside our physical heads -
inside brains of flesh? Only one Way to find out,
requiring your personal exploration of the
territory. Brain scientists make maps from the
outsides. Awake people take a personal look -
inside. There are a lot of awake people, and more
than one kind of Way to take the trip.
My CV:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thetree.html
- its beginning is at its ending. The Mind has
Roots.
current iteration of "letter", which I plan to be the
only act seeking admission (address details to be added
later)
An old man knocks on the door of a great university,
seeking admission to its community of students, scholars,
and other wanderers. He easily confesses that he is
not seeking course work, and/or another degree to go
with his previous two (B.A. pre-seminary Univ. of Denver
1963/or 4; and J.D. Univ. of Montana 1967/?).
Rather, ... he seeks conversation, and hopes that his
application will result in his acquiring a student I.D.
(numbered, stamped, pictured, and approved). He will
endeavor to use this admission/ticket to wander/wonder the
halls of this university, via magical/electronic means,
which will allow him, helped by the shape-shifting servant
Skype&Friends, to meet folks without leaving the rooms
of his mountain-top wizardly study in the Worcester Hills
of Massachusetts.
Age 76, bad knees requiring medicinal-ganja for body,
heart, and soul. Why should the university
admit such an elderly fool, probably full of fanciful
tales?
The usual Way is to show prior grade scores, measurements
with tests, testimonials to one’s character, plus some
writing in response to questions such a “Statement of
purpose—1,000 words” and an “Essay—500 words”.
Include a CV please. Not enough, Google me.
< Here’s a version-CV:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thetree.html
> The premise is that this request for the “state of
admission”, without any other goals than conversation, ...
this request will be accepted on the basis of the
experience of said CV - for want of which experience the
reader here may pause. Called: The Tree: the fruit
of 76 years, organized and with pictures, behind which
stretch journeys through forgotten caves of wisdom, now no
longer lost.
A few more words are called for <here>. My
original effort was just under 4,000 words - in practice
for writing this revision. I’ve cut over 3300 of
those words (but added a few more), for the Tale that
follows }latest word count: 1533.23}
In my later-in-life scholarly work, I’ve created over 270
videos on Youtube, self-published a couple dozen books on
Lulu.com, and maintain a rather huge website where all my
works are organized from different perspectives (including
over a hundred essays, short stories, poetry, and even a
novel and a film treatment - all of which are available
for free).
Never heard of me? Here are some categories: I am a
heretical Christian, and a member of the still
mostly invisible counter-Copernican
Revolution. We know how to scientifically reveal the
spirit in matter. My forerunners includes: Goethe,
Coleridge, Ruskin - romantics all, , leading to Steiner
Folk, such as Owen Barfield and Saul Bellow; along with
Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson - transcenders Western,
including these hardly known-yet moderns: Wendt, Clarke,
MacCoun, MacKensie, Abrami, and the recently passed over:
Bornfield.
Our works prowl the odd corners where specialization in
categories (Aristotlianism) gives way to becoming a
generalist in ideas (Platonism).
Having retired from that work, I seek other environs to
explore. Other minds to discover. Other
stories to learn. Why? When I stop learning I
may just die for lack of the essence of life.
Still, what is required to dine at your table?
Perhaps some finely aged wine - guests should bring all
the best there is to share. Again, ... see the CV
for the menu.
When I retired from my last job-for-the-man (a
light-industrial factory, for three years), at age 62, to
live within what providence and my own life skills had
provided, I had some business cards made: “social
philosopher ... and occasional fool”. My email tag
reads: “share the hope, take no prisoners, and laugh your
ass off at every opportunity”. My favorite bit of
Emily’s verse/not list: “Submit, you’re sane; Demure;
you’re straightway dangerous and handled with a chain”.
In the “60‘s” becoming the “70‘s, I went to a divine
providence created self-education mystery school in the
San Fransisco Bay Area - for 14 years. Sex, drugs,
rock and roll, with a dose of visions, while soaring with
minds enlightened, magical, yoga masterly, shamanistic -
Ken Kesey out there. [hereinafter the term visions
is meant to refer to a wide variety of spiritual
perceptions - too many kinds to easily catalog]
Came to earth, grounded by two wives, three marriages,
five children. Meet Steiner&Friends: Adams,
Schwenk, Schad, Lehrs, Hauschka, a long long list:
epistemological rigor meets art (beauty/imagination),
reuniting science (truth/reason) with religion
(goodness/devotion).
In certain respects, another of my categories is: aging
weekend hippie, now returning to the fold permanently -
pony tale, beard and all.
LSD-Blasted into inner-space - the real Final Frontier,
after which I went on to reinvent social science by making
it conform to spirit as the actual fundamental scientific
reality (took three decades). Also went clean and
sober in September of 1987, - lasted the same 30
years. Wanted to face the visions with the clarity
of empirical thought, and no confusion by drugs (except my
blood pressure meds etc.). Joined the Catholic
Church in 1991, following a vision. Then the
Internet exploded. Found a thousand new minds
seeking what I was becoming: a spiritual nerd.
Ask me about: “hermetic science, Christian Tarot, Sufism,
Gurdjieff, Magic, Egyptian Science, astrosophy, goethean
science, natural science, physics, biology,
projective/synthetic geometry, physical and ethereal
spaces, which version of alchemy I prefer, how much was I
into the Tibetan Buddhism taught by Chogyam Trungpa,
Scientology, Moonies, the practice of the 23rd Psalm, the
practice of the Sermon on the Mount, what are my thoughts
on prayer and meditation - truly nerdish spiritual habits,
...” amidst a temple decor - my magical aerie/home blessed
by being, in part: a privileged white guy - at least
that's the color of my personal avatar/flesh in this life.
Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe ...
suggests to me that those of us who do see, may well be
cursed. Hard to get published when you’re too
radical, and have only a few other spiritual nerds for
which to write. Then there’s the gift - the visions
requiring a slowly evolving discipline - I write about it
in my book: Sacramental Thinking, the first essay of which
is “Cowboy Bebop: and the physics of thought as moral
art.”
Not selling anything. Not buying anything.
Interested in working up some trade in ideas, for sure -
need to draw away from the platonic friends, and come even
further down to earth among the aristotelians, and all
their categories of subdivisions of parts of this piece of
knowledge and that piece - a house of mirrors still
dancing to special music - the true spirit of Harvard -
the over-soul community drawn to such temples of wisdom,
forgotten except to poets (a category to which we all
belong).
hermits have few friends, but can always use a few more
... hermit@tiac.net
“There once was a man named Wendt,
whose mind became boggled and bent.
One fine sunny day, Wendt went away,
and no one knew where Wendt went.”
One last point, formed from the lines and planes of
thought ...
for thirty years, during which most of my works were
created, I was straight - no drugs, ... had to earn the
visions, if they were to become “thinkable” ...
sacramental practices, discipline, surrender, devotion,
trust, - many stars by which to steer the ship of
me’s on seas of pure thought ...
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. She likes to be read
out-loud, or to have someone read Her to us. Feel
free to play with the emphasis and/or rush of words.
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.
}}}}}}}
So ... here’s this me: decrepit david to Harvard’s
Goliath, not wanting war at all, ... can we dance to a
makeup tune instead? Or is there a sign at the Gates
of Harvard Divinity School: No Heretical Christians Need
Apply? Trade in Ideas is the one true coin of
learning ...
This Postman only rings once. At the front Door.
This was sent as an e-mail on July 17th, 2017, to a
staff person under the Dean of Harvard Divinity
School. I shot an arrow into the air, and where it
fell I know not where.
Dear Harvard Higher Ups&Friends,
Greetings:
To whomever is tasked with filtering such messages, ... it
is to you I write, with thanks for your attention and
consideration. I could use some re-direction, - why?
follows. Sort of need a kind of
patron/mentor/navigator, as it were.
Age 76, well self-educated and properly cooked by life ...
want to join the Harvard Community, through the Gate of
the Harvard Divinity School (see CV for obvious reasons).
Being odd/old, and impatient to get on with what’s next, I
could use some help for my semi- peculiar
circumstances. Don’t want to make any noise ... just
want to quietly visit Harvard’s electronic hallways, for
casual conversations and meetings via computer screens.
I am not officially disabled (not even claiming such
rights), but effectively can’t travel from the Worcester
Hills in Central MA, where I live, to Boston/Cambridge
etc. It is an eminently practical problem, easily
solved in this electronic era.
Plus ... not seeking course-work or another degree - I’ve
quoted myself below in one version of my
application/essay, should formal requirements dominate -
what is basically a request from one scholar to a
community of scholars: For an official visitor's pass
(official in the sense of a kind of ID for me that unlocks
doors as necessary): Such as: “Log in using your Harvard
Key”; and, “Log in with your Open Scholar account”.
.:.:.the latest iteration of the admission/pass-seeking
document of a writer/philosopher, who by habit mostly
colors outside all the lines, ... follows .:.:.:stories
can more interesting, can they not?
* * *
An old man knocks on the door of a great university,
seeking admission/membership to/in its community of
students, scholars, and other wanderers. He easily
confesses that he is not seeking course work, and/or
another degree to go with his previous two (B.A.
pre-seminary Univ. of Denver 1963/or 4; and J.D. Law Univ.
of Montana 1967/?).
Rather, ... he seeks conversation, and hopes that his
application will result in his acquiring a student I.D.
(numbered, stamped, pictured, and approved). He will
endeavor to use this admission/ticket to wander/wonder the
halls of this university, via magical/electronic means,
which will allow him, helped by the shape-shifting servant
Skype&Friends, to meet folks without leaving the rooms
of his mountain-top wizardly study in the Worcester Hills
of Massachusetts.
Age 76, bad knees requiring medicinal-ganja for body,
heart, and soul. Why should the university
admit such an elderly fool, probably full of fanciful
tales?
The usual Way is to show prior grade scores, measurements
with tests, testimonials to one’s character, plus some
writing in response to questions such a “Statement of
purpose—1,000 words” and an “Essay—500 words”.
Include a CV please. If that is not enough, then
Google me: Joel A. Wendt.
< Here’s a version 3.23=CV:
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/thetree.html
>
The premise is that this request for the “state of
admission/visitation”, without any other goals than
conversation, ... this request will, or will not, be
accepted on the basis of the experience of said CV - for
want of which experience the first time reader here may
pause. Called: The Tree: the CV is the fruit of 76
years, organized and with pictures, behind which stretch
journeys through once-forgotten caves of wisdom, now no
longer lost - although for most in the Academy, these
regions are mere rumors of rumors. That there
actually is - lurking behind the sense world - a largely
unremembered community of other-intelligences than ours -
may be shocking to some.
When certain folk tag-you, you’re seriously it.
A few more words are called for <here>, obviously -
each odd fact leads to many questions. My original
effort was just under 4,000 words - in practice for
writing this revision. I’ve cut over 3300 of those
words (but added a few more), for the Tale that follows
}latest word count: 1533.23}
In my later-in-life scholarly work, I’ve created over 270
videos on Youtube, self-published a couple dozen books on
Lulu.com, and maintain a rather huge website where all my
works are organized from different perspectives (including
over a hundred essays, short stories, poetry, and even a
novel and a film treatment - all of which are available
for free).
Never heard of me? Here are some categories: I am a
heretical Christian, and a member of the still
mostly invisible counter-Copernican
Revolution. We know how to scientifically reveal the
spirit in matter. My forerunners includes: Goethe,
Coleridge, Ruskin - romantics all, , leading to Steiner
Folk, such as Owen Barfield and Saul Bellow; along with
Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson - transcenders Western,
including these hardly known-yet moderns: Wendt, Clarke,
MacCoun, MacKensie, Abrami, and the recently crossed-over:
Bornfield.
Our works prowl the odd corners of knowledge, where
specialization in categories (Aristotlianism) gives way to
becoming a generalist in ideas (Platonism).
Having retired from that work, I seek other environs to
explore. Other minds to discover. Other
stories to learn. Why? When I stop learning I
may just die for lack of the essence of life.
Still, ... what is required to dine at your table?
Perhaps some finely aged wine - guests should bring all
the best there is to share. Again, ... see the CV
for the menu.
When I retired from my last job-for-the-man (a
light-industrial factory, for three years), at age 62, to
live within what providence and my own life skills had
provided, I had some business cards made: “social
philosopher ... and occasional fool”. My email tag
reads: “share the hope, take no prisoners, and laugh your
ass off at every opportunity”. My favorite bit of
Emily’s verse/not-list: “Submit, you’re sane; Demure;
you’re straightway dangerous and handled with a chain”.
In the “60‘s” becoming the “70‘s, I went to a divine
providence created self-education mystery school in the
San Fransisco Bay Area - for 14 years. Sex, drugs,
rock and roll, with a dose of visions, while soaring with
minds enlightened, magical, yoga masterly, shamanistic -
Ken Kesey out there. [hereinafter the term visions
is meant to refer to a wide variety of spiritual
perceptions - too many kinds to easily catalog, as well as
their being very little evidence of anything. {A
vision points a finger - careful thinking follows after
...]
Came to earth, grounded by two wives, three marriages,
five children. Meet Steiner&Friends: Adams,
Schwenk, Schad, Lehrs, Hauschka, a long long list of fresh
thoughts: epistemological rigor meets art
(beauty/imagination), reuniting science (truth/reason)
with religion (goodness/devotion). Seriously new
wine in new skins.
In certain respects, another of my categories is: aging
weekend hippie, now returning to the fold permanently 24/7
- overweight, pony tale, beard and all. Although:
Once upon a time: LSD-Blasted into inner-space - the real
Final Frontier, after which I went on to reinvent social
science by phenomenological means/disciplines, to reveal
spirit as the actual foundation of scientific reality
(took three decades).
Fundamental questions: What is Thinking? What is
thought? - to the thinker, not to the brain
scientist. Don’t know the mysteries of
thinking? Then you don’t know the primary tool of
mind.
Ask me about: “hermetic science; Christian/Hermetic Tarot;
Sufism; Gurdjieff; Magic; Egyptian Science; astrosophy;
Goethean science; natural science - physics, biology;
projective/synthetic geometry; physical and ethereal
spaces; which version of alchemy I prefer; how much was I
into the Tibetan Buddhism taught by Chogyam Trungpa;
Scientology; Moonies; the practice of the 23rd Psalm; the
practice of the Sermon on the Mount; what are my thoughts
on prayer and meditation - truly nerdish spiritual habits
...”, practiced amidst a temple decor - my present
magical aerie/home graced by my being, in part: a
lower-middle-class privileged white guy - at least that's
the color of my personal avatar/flesh in this life.
“Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believe” ...
suggests to me that those of us who do see, may well be
cursed. Hard to get published when you’re too
radical, and have only a few other spiritual nerds for
which to write. Then there’s the gift - the visions
requiring a slowly evolving discipline - I write about it
in my book: Sacramental Thinking, the first essay of which
is “Cowboy Bebop: and the physics of thought as moral
art.”
Not selling anything. Not buying anything.
Interested in working up some trade in ideas, for sure -
have no money to pay to Harvard, hoping my barter goods
will suffice. Also - need to draw away from the
platonic friends, and come even further down to earthly
reality - among the aristotelians, and all their
categories of subdivisions of parts of this piece of
knowledge and that piece - a house of mirrors still
dancing to special music - the true Spirit of Harvard -
the over-soul community drawn to temples of wisdom,
forgotten except to poets (a category to which we all
belong).Harvard is not finished, however ... is it?
Something is out of balance. Science, in making
rigorous abstractions&categories, conceives of
religious experience the same way, trying very hard to
confine transcendence to the graveyard of mere qualia, not
realizing The Qualia are Everything, and language is just
a prison for experience.
hermits have few friends, but can always use a few more
...
hermit@tiac.net
“There once was a man named Wendt,
whose mind became boggled and bent.
One fine sunny day, Wendt went away,
and no one knew where Wendt went.”
One last point, shaped from the lines and planes of
thought ...
... for thirty years, the period during which most of my
mature works were created, I was straight - no drugs, ...
had to earn the visions, if they were to become
“thinkable” ... sacramental practices, discipline,
surrender, devotion, trust, - many stars by which to
steer the ship of me’s on seas of pure thought ...
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. She likes to be read
out-loud, or to have someone read Her to us. Feel
free to play with the emphasis and/or rush of words.
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.
}}}}}}}
What do I imagine or hope - will happen should my request
be honored? A healing of something not well observed
as being a problem? Why am I outside the Academy,
and not inside? I don’t have answers to such
questions, nor am I sure they are relevant.
Or, ... is there a sign at the Gates of Harvard Divinity
School: No Heretical Christians Need Apply? Trade in
Ideas is the one true coin of learning ... I come fully
armed, with books most don’t know exist, much less have
yet begun to appreciate.
Primarily I am a kind of librarian/practitioner of modern
Christian Esoterica, with some natural gifts thrown in for
good measure.
Although, ... this Postman only rings once. At the
front Door that is ...
a poem wrote me today / we were watching The Grateful
Dead / me,s followed as best we could / the Long
Strange Trip / LSD memories woke up / nonsense on
reflection ... except ... / for the breaking of dead /
and,too fragile too rigid thoughts, / into fragments of
pure mystery
Trigger Warning God are Real. Oldest Myths all
true. Science, read rightly, proves this. Most
folk will find my works very unsettling. Shouldn’t
be a concern. The whole world is escalating its
unsettling-ness. This is medicine of the best kind -
for what ails us. I give it away in whispers to
HDS&Company for pre-taste testing. No Nobel
prizes to seek. No Ph.D with honors. God
very clear on this. We hardly give Them credit for
what They have done already.
I wouldn’t mind dying before getting any credit for the
work involved birthing this stuff, for which I was just a
pass-through gate of little moment. No true poet,
however intoxicated, can claim more than mere words,
against the Reality of a Sunrise or a Sunset. That’s
the Art - Their Art. I just do commentary.
Which is why the Greek Tragedy in Washington D.C. is
God-orchestrated-Highest-Farce-Art. We always get
enough rope to hang ourselves, from which ever-side of the
Beam we gaze. Religion is much more profoundly
ancient than modern immature and unnatural science.
We/Then knew the God-Folk directly. Its just that
our assumption - that modern minds are like ancient minds
- is completely wrong. Consciousness evolves -
continuously.
We are the right people, in the right place, at the right
time. With all the right invisible friends, helping
us learn to dance like everyone is watching, and we just
don’t care. Everyone is being Baptized by Fire and
Holy Breath, whether they like it or not. That’s not
a believe, that’s a social fact of existence. Our
consciousness (The Qualia) alive in the alchemical forge
of Gods and Goddesses. What do folks think is on the
other side of black holes, quantum-entangled stuff, and
what we’ve been calling Dark Mass and Dark Energy,
embedded in a field of Warmth the size of Everything?
Sadly, ... what science takes apart was never parts in the
first place. Now that science has pretty much broken
all the stuff it can find, the battlefield is now the
realm of qualia/experience, where most of religion still
is in retreat, leaving that war for sanity - to art. “I am
not my brain: the map is not the territory”
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/brain.html

...
