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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
by Joel A.
Wendt
* Regarding the
future of Christianity,
here is John 16: 12-15 "I have much more to say to you, but you
can't bear it
just yet. But when the other comes, the breath of truth,
he will
guide you in the ways of all truth, because he will not speak
on his
own, but will speak what he hears and announce to you what's
coming.
He will glorify me, because he will take of what is mine
and
announce it to you. Everything the Father has is mine:
that's why
I said he will take of what is mine and announce it to you"
Dedication
This book is dedicated to Mary Kelly Sutton, MD (anthroposophical doctor and dear friend), without whose support, generosity and hours of conversation, it could not have been written.
Acknowledgments
The list is
long, and for this reason you
will find it at the end of this book - one caveat, however:
the text
has not been edited by a professional, and is therefore no
doubt filled
with matters that might make other writers, editors, teachers
of
English and anyone connected with good writing, cringe.
For this
torture of the editorially gifted, I apologize.
Table of Contents
Introduction.
Moral Grace
- the theme (song) of the central mystery of the modern age -
first stanza: Shepherds and Kings - a Temporary parting of Ways -
second stanza: the Evolution of Consciousness - the meaning of the historical differences between the time of the Pharaohs (the time of the Old Testament) and our present Age (the Dawn of the Third Millennium)
third stanza: the Church and the Body of Christ - being a discussion of the future of Christianity as that future development appears out of the Evolution of Consciousness.
fourth stanza:
Moral Grace - a first iteration - being an attempt to
describe and name something very many people already
instinctively know
Freedom
- the theme (song) of
the
real challenge of modern life -
fifth stanza: Three New Ways - being an examination of the profound and surprising interrelationship between the What Would Jesus Do Movement; the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous; and, Rudolf Steiner's book: The Philosophy of Freedom (also known as, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,) [which stanza also contains, the Shepherd's Tale, the King's Tale and the Healers' Tale]
sixth stanza: in the Absence of the Good - in the Age of Freedom, and in the confusion of the weaknesses of traditional moral authority, what happens when Moral Grace is not present - the Pharmaceutical Industry as an Example
seventh stanza: the Seventh Day of Creation - the problem of freedom seen in the light of the nature of evil, and its relationship to the course of individual human lives (the biography) [which stanza also contains the Fool's Tale (part I)]
eighth stanza:
the Gesture of the History of Civilizations as expressed in
both Matter
and Spirit - from whence comes
technology and where is it going, or, the entanglement
of the
i-AM in matter, its consequences and its meaning
Love
- the theme (song) of
the
deepest hidden potential of the human being -
ninth stanza: the Four Forms of Love - selfless love (Agape); nurturing love (Storge); brother and sisterly love (Phileo); and, erotic and sensual love (Eros).
tenth stanza: the Seventh Day of Creation as an Expression of Love - concerning the role of Divine Love, and human love, in the creation of new social forms, or what we usually call the Fall of one Civilization followed by the Birth of a new one [also contains the Fool's Tale (part II)]
eleventh stanza: entering the Narrow Gate - love as an act of inner husbandry, through the stewardship and discipline of the life of the mind
twelfth
stanza: love and the gift of the word - a demonstration - being a deeper consideration of the
relationship
between our inner activity, and our outer acts in speech [also
contains
the Fool's Tale (part III)]
Appendices
(some matters requiring a bit of detail,
but which
really didn't belong in the main text)
1) Prayer and Meditation: certain nuances connected to providing the i-AM some rest and time of reflection.
2) Sacrifice of Thoughts: cleaning out the garden of the mind before growing new insights, and other unusual properties of our soul-spirit nexus.
3) Some further thoughts about finding a healthy relationship to the fourth form of love, UnFallen Eros.
4) A few words for those whose faith is in natural science, and/or might consider themselves to be secular humanists.
5) In praise of the virtues of ordinary mind.
6) Confessions.
7) In Joyous Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship: some more recent thoughts on the relationship between Shepherds (exoteric Christianity, or Faith) and Kings (esoteric Christianity, or Gnosis).
Epilogue: Concerning the immediate future
End Story: Bicycles: a Children's Christmas Story for Adults
Introduction
This
introduction is a bit long, but it
is necessary to touch on a number of preliminary points so as
to form a
contextual basis for what is in the main text. At the
same time,
the reader should feel that there is nothing here that has to
be deeply
learned or memorized. In a way we are just going to
travel
through an introduction to the landscape
of
ideas to be later encountered in this little book, and
you
should just enjoy the view and the visit. The nice thing
is that
because this is a book, you can always revisit it in whole or
in part
as you need.
There is also a lot of unusual or different content in this book - perhaps for some readers too much. Given that reality (of much unusual content), the reader is urged to take only what seems to be of personal value and to discard the rest. Different concepts will resonate more strongly with different readers. Let that resonance, that spark of personal interest, be your guide.
*
If there is a
main point in the
introduction, it is this:
My own life experience begins as a ordinary Christian, with all its ups and downs, periods of doubt and periods of secure Faith (the Way of the Shepherds). Yet, in the middle of my life I began to learn about Gnosis (the Way of the Kings), something I hadn't expected or been taught to recognize. I discovered that these Ways were not in opposition to each other, but rather belonged together, the older Way (Gnosis/Kings) complementing and completing the younger Way (Faith/Shepherds). Their separation over 2000 years ago was for a purpose, and the contemporary need for the beginning of their rejoining also has a purpose. That, however, is the longer story this book hopes to illuminate.
*
In writing of the natural union of Faith and Gnosis, I am referring to something which is already
ongoing in
the present, in human consciousness, albeit mostly
instinctively.
This is a complex matter, and in one sense really takes
the whole
book to explain. Here we should just have the idea that
Faith -
indirect knowledge of God - is different from mere belief;
and, that
direct knowledge of God (Gnosis) can be scientific.
This
union of Faith and Gnosis then is also the coming natural
integration
of what otherwise seems today to be deeply divided, namely
Science
(knowledge - Gnosis) and Religion (Faith).
This union is
taking place in the
individual consciousness (soul), and requires of us that we
faithfully
observe (be scientific about) our own consciousness in order
to come to
knowledge of its real nature. What should not be
overlooked,
however, is that this union of Gnosis and Faith, or Science
and
Religion is really an Art - the Art of conscious
(intentional)soul life
or character development.
For a starting
point, here is some apt
wisdom from the middle-East: cultivate your thought for thought will
become speech;
cultivate your speech for speech will become deeds; cultivate
your
deeds for deeds will become character; and cultivate your
character,
for character will become destiny.
By the Way of the Fool, I mean to use the
term Fool in the
same manner as has the anonymous author of Meditations
on
the
Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism,
wherein the Arcanum (the Meditation on) The
Fool is also called Amor,
or
Love. This is what then gives this Way its
Christ-based
texture, being an act of Love. By
using the term human character, I also
mean to suggest that this Way, while it has
kinship with Buddhist Enlightenment, is yet different - the
Path of
Love being a further evolution of the Path of Compassion
[Christ being Essence rather than Being - the goal of the Buddha
at one time]. Since the former is a facet of God
becoming human
(for a time), and the latter a facet of the human moving in
the
direction of becoming only pure Being
- disappearing into the Source, then the activity - the
Teaching of the
Way of Love in human evolution - appears in human history progressively subsequent to the Teaching of the Way of
Compassion.] .
This being the case, we should also notice there is a
difference
(as well as a relationship) between Compassion and Love, which
is why
we have to also consider the term initiation as well as the
term
enlightenment.
Without going
too far into the matter,
from a certain point of view it is possible to speak of depth spirituality (spiritual practices requiring serious
meditation
practice and other acts of intentional self-development) as
needing to
be called enlightenment in the
East (Asia), initiation in the
Center (Europe) and character development
in the West (the Americas). With enlightenment we are raising the individual up into spiritual
heights.
With initiation we are using
the individual to bring down cosmic wisdom
from these same heights. With the development of
earthly
character, we are seeking the moral integration of the
individual as a member of all communities, both
visible and invisible. The author of this book is after
all an
American, and this causes a certain perspective to arise, and
a certain
given nature to be in effect.
And, speaking
of Buddhism...there is a
kind of technical problem. In a very real sense there is
more
than one kind of Buddhism, just as there is more than one kind
of
Christianity. In the Cultural West, especially America,
these
various versions of Buddhism have made a deep penetration, not
all of
which has been to the good. Let us call the more healthy
versions
depth Buddhism, and the less healthy
(superficial)versions pop-Buddhism
(we
can make a similar distinction as regards Christianity - there
are depth
aspects and merely pop aspects).
Part of the
effort in this book then, is to help the reader distinguish
between the
superficial versions of spiritual practice and the depth
versions, as well as to become awake to certain distinctions
between
depth Buddhism and depth Christianity.
Now I don't
mean to suggest, by the use
of the term superficial, any
particular human failing. Rather, as we all
know, some people only go to Church on Sunday, and others are
so
devoted to religious practice that they enter a convent or a
monastery.
This also we all know, for not only is this a teaching
in many
religious and philosophical texts, it is also a lesson of
life: as
you sow, so shall you reap.
Those who take their religious practice more
seriously than others will find inner riches that others
cannot yet
reach and discover.
The core of the
character development
aspect is, however, tied up with the problem of morality - in
a manner
that is not easily approached from a traditional frame of
reference.
A real focus of this book then is about how we can come
to trust
our individual and independent moral judgment (outside of
tradition),
and the meaning of that search for both our personal
biographies and
the general condition of the world - something that is not a
small
topic in any event.
*
The image on
the cover is a weaving of
seed beads (an artistic effort inspired by the use of such
beads by
Native America Peoples), which I created around 1977.
Much the same
way that cover design is
created out of many many small colored beads, so is the design
of this
book created out of individual words - lines of dark upon a
page - a
mosaic of ideas set free in trust for the reader to make of it
what he
or she will. I am grateful to whomever takes the time to
let into
their soul this small offering. Thank you.
*
The words that
follow in this small book
then, and the thoughts which seek to live through them, are
derived
from the whole of my life. This means that in certain
respects I
am a very lucky human being - I have been Graced with a rather
remarkable series of teachings, most of them out of life
experience.
But of my own story, my biography, I will write only
occasionally, in the light of the following observation.
Who I am, and
what of the truly human I
have become (we are not born fully human, but must seek it and
become
it), is mostly due to all the people I have met in life.
I have
had the great fortune to encounter at almost every turn wise
and loving
people. Yes, there have been all the usual personal
struggles,
even including addiction, but all the ordinary human suffering
that I
have experienced has been far out weighed by the Grace of a
very wise
Providence, who placed in my life's path a sequence of
teachers and
life teachings for which I am not only very grateful, but upon
whom I
am completely dependent. The best in what I write is
born in
them, while the worst will be due to my own failings.
All the same,
to receive such treasures
into ones soul and spirit is clearly not meant to be for me
alone.
It is, in fact, an aspect of age (I was halfway through
my 64th
year when the major portions of this book were being written,
and I am
66 at the writing of these current revisions) that creates a
need to
pass on what has been learned, knowing that it was by such a
sharing
from others that ones own life was greatly enriched.
At a certain
point in my life, while
reflecting on the nature of these riches entrusted to me, I
wrote of
what it was like to receive them using the following words: "Listening to the
World Song". Here then, in
this book, is a portion of what I
heard - the Story Sung to me by the World Itself, concerning
the human
adventure that is each individual's biography, as that
biography is
held within a most wise and loving embrace - an embrace which
was once
called Divine Providence, and which today we might call: Earthly Human
Existence. The meaning of this Earthly Human
Existence will be
the principle thought-picture, in this landscape of ideas, to
be
brought forward at the end of the main body of the book.
I should also
confess that a great deal
of what I write about this Way of the Fool (Love) is based
upon direct personal experience. Very little is just the
repeating of ideas gained from the reading of books, or the
shared
wisdom of people I have met. Always it has been my
practice to
test pragmatically any suggestion of others as regards
spiritual or
inner work. This being the case I have in the main only
spoken
from experience, although I frequently quote sources
especially the
teachings of Christ as contained in the Gospels. Of all
that has
been tested in practice by the way, it is Christ's teachings
that have
been the truest, the deepest, and the most practical.
At the same
time, the reader should be
able to find here a few indications (stories) describing how a certain understanding came to
me
during the course of my biography. Let me here give an
example of
the kind of story that I will tell:
In about the year 1979, I was working as a dishwasher in a small restaurant near Lake Merritt in Oakland California. The owner was an unusual and passionate gay man, given to all manner of human excesses coupled with a remarkable generosity. Human beings, somewhat in the nature of stray cats, would come to his attention and he would help them with jobs and money. I was one such stray cat.
One morning when I got to work there was an older gentleman standing in that part of the kitchen where I worked at washing dishes and certain other tasks. The owner, Patrick, had apparently brought this man to the restaurant in order to give him some work. My guess is that Patrick had wanted to give the man money, but the older gentleman being of another generation, his pride probably demanded that he work for this gift. Just to round out the reader's picture of this gentleman - he was tall (a little over six feet) and thin, with short gray hair, and a couple days gray stubble on his unshaven face. He was wearing a threadbare dark blue suit and a white shirt with no tie. He was not dressed for working in a kitchen.
I was introduced to this gentleman upon getting to work and told that he would be doing some tasks. But breakfast was a busy time and I soon was very active, as were all the rest of the employees. As I ran around doing what was expected, the gentleman stood quietly and silently out of the way. Concerned, I asked him if he would like some coffee while he waited, to which he replied: "Yes. Please." I then retrieved a cup from that place where it was produced and which he could not have seen or known he could use. When I handed him the cup he said: "Thank you, I am twice warmed."
I had never
heard this form of speech before, and my facial expression
became
clearly quizzical. This he immediately noticed, and then
said:
"The hot coffee warms my body, but the kindness of your act
warms my
soul."
Such are the
lessons with which we are
surrounded in our biographies.
*
A couple more
introductory points....
As most
everyone knows there are many
translations of the Gospels and other Old and New Testament
texts.
Where a particular author has used a text, I will quote
it as
used. Where there is a certain reference I need to make,
I will
quote from a beautifully bound Bible that I found on sale at a
Monastery, which calls itself the: Catholic
Family
Edition of the Holy Bible and was
published in 1953 by John J. Crowley & Co., Inc. of New
York.
Where the Gospels in particular are being quoted I will
do
something in addition, namely quote the same passage as
published in
the book The Unvarnished Gospels by Andy
Gaus. There is a reason for this.
When the
Gospels were first written down
(they were oral traditions before being written), they were
written in
Greek, the language of scholarship in that Age. As time
passed,
and the religion that is Christianity arose, translators began
to adapt
the original Greek and to change it to accord with various
established
doctrines. So in our time we don't get what was actually
written
of the Gospels in their original form in Greek, but rather
official
versions and later interpretations that change the original
text to
make it consistent with the by then established doctrine.
By
adding a translation faithful to the original Greek, it is my
hope to
aid the reader to see that perhaps something of the true
Mystery has
been sacrificed over the centuries in order to force the text
to
conform to someones later invented dogma.
Just to give an example, here is a quote from the preface to The Unvarnished Gospels, which preface was written by one George Witterschein:
"To my eye the most startling
difference between this version and all others I know occurs
in the
famous Prologue to John's Gospel. Everyone has heard it:
"In the beginning was the Word, and
the Word was with God
and the Word was God." Now one of the first things I noticed
upon
reading this passage in Greek was that it doesn't say "the Word was with God." It says"...and the Word was towards God," or "...was going towards God."
Which is another matter altogether. If
the Word
was in motion towards God, instead of being literally and
plainly
identical with God, then St. John is introducing the notion of
development (or process, or progression) within the divine
nature, as
the explanation for the origin of the created universe!
"Movement toward " implies a
separation that is in process of being
overcome. The movement of the Word towards God can then
be seen
as history: the history of the created universe, going back to
its very
beginning, is one of overcoming a separation from God, of a
process of
reunification."
{Where I have quoted from
The Unvarnished Gospels, this
quote will appear in the text below, in bold and italics -
that is in this
form.}
One small
caveat...The
Unvarnished Gospels is not perfect.
Choices were made and not all those choices were
wise.
A reader now awake to this problem will probably want to
look to
the Internet or other sources for the further considerations
of any
difficult or seemingly ambiguous passages.
*
With reference to modern Biblical scholarship, a field full of worthy effort, I must make some small comments. We have, of course, a long pursuit of the historical Jesus by the world of scholars, some believers and some not. Documents are studied, languages are mastered, papers written and conferences held. In spite of all the valiant efforts made, I do not believe this activity has any hope of finding the truth of who Jesus was, and what those events of 2000 years ago meant then, mean today and will mean on into the future.
True knowledge
of this kind comes in only
one way - the practice of the teachings in the Gospels. The
essence of
what is to be learned is not found in any text, whether it is
the Four
Gospels themselves, the supposed book of Q, or the newly
discovered
Gospels of Mary and of Thomas. This essence is only
found through
the trials in life that come from struggling to follow in the
footsteps
of the Teacher. This knowledge only comes from doing, not from mere
belief, reading, study or contemplation
of any text - even the many texts which I will cite below.
Let me come at
this again, from a
slightly different direction...
Consider the
Gospels of Mary Magdalene
and Thomas, which some today find remarkable, especially since
these
two seem to emphasize the teachings of Jesus in ways more
familiar to
that kind of spirituality we have been hearing from the
Eastern Ways,
such as various forms of Buddhism (such as Zen) or the equally
indirect
teachings found in the Sufi Tales. There is a similar
enigmatic
quality to these newly discovered Gospels, and a kinship to
various
kinds of Gnostic teachings. For those of us made
sensitive to
this kind of spirituality, and who have also become hardened
or
resistant to the confused religious beliefs of many traditional Christians, there has come
to live
in us a hunger for something other than the traditional
interpretations
of what the Four Gospels mean.
Consider then
the possibility that there
is nothing essentially inconsistent between the Four Gospels,
Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John, and the Gospels of Mary and Thomas, or
the
teachings of the Gnostics. Suppose, once we enter the
realm of doing and not just reading and having beliefs, the
light that
inspires all spirituality and all religion begins to shine.
This
is a light that shines in and through us, and once alight will
itself
illuminate in a new way the Four Gospels themselves, and give
rebirth
and resurrection to our understanding of the meaning of the
Incarnation.
Lets add here a
nuance much discussed in
traditional Christianity, and this is the distinction between
works
and grace,
for in emphasizing doing
I appear to suggest that works are superior to grace.
It is possible
to read many arguments
about this problem - are we saved by grace
and by faith
alone, or are works necessary too. In framing the
question this
way, something else is added, namely the idea of being saved.
However,
when I wrote above about doing,
what I said essentially was that true knowledge comes only from doing.
I was not
speaking about being saved. At this
point I
only want to suggest that there are subtle matters involved,
and that
this problem of the relationship of knowledge, doing,
being
saved, grace, faith, gnosis, and belief are worthy of a great deal of thoughtful
attention, and
ought not in any case be just left aside as matters of mere
doctrine
and dogma. They must be examined, and made whole with
experience.
*
One of the
aspects of human nature that
has become somewhat lost and confused to modern human beings,
particularly in the Cultural West, concerns the role of the
imagination
in our understanding of existence. I will speak more in
the main
text about the imagination in certain specific instances, but
here I
just wanted to point to the problem, and also just point at
the depths
that can be considered, for example in Samuel Taylor
Coleridge's
(not as well known as they should be) remarks on primary and
secondary
Imagination, from Chapter XIII of his Biographia
Literaria:
"The Imagination then,
I consider either as primary
or secondary. The primary Imagination I hold to be
a living
power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a
repetition in
the finite mind of the eternal act of creation of the infinite
I Am.
The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the
former,
co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical
with the
former in the kind of its agency and differing only in degree,
and in
the mode of its operation . It dissolves, diffuses,
dissipates,
in order to re-create; or where this process is rendered
impossible,
yet still at all events it struggles to idealize and to unify.
It
is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are
essentially
fixed and dead."
Then there is
Coleridge's distinction
between these and Fancy:
"Fancy, on the
contrary, has no other counters to play
with, but fixities and finites. The Fancy is indeed no
other than
a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space;
while it
is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of
the will,
which we express by the word Choice. But equally with
the
ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready
made
from the law of association."
The
imagination, as you might now be able
to see, is not well understood in general today, but I will be
trying
to bring it more to the fore in the book below where I am
going to tell
some stories - in some cases what I explicitly call Tales.
Ordinarily
we think of such (Tales)
as fanciful feats of the imagination, and no more real than
comic
books. Such is also the view of many concerning
Religion, or at
least the reality of the Divine Mystery - what some see as
just another
fanciful myth.
Each of us will
have to decide the truth
of such things for ourselves. All the same, the reader
should
know that the author of these words knows the imagination in a
most
intimate fashion, and as something of far greater depth and
reality
than the merely fanciful. Our inwardness is joined to
another
Inwardness, and the boundary world between our personal
mystery and
that far greater Mystery is the imagination. Yes,
the world
of the imagination is prone to illusion and fancy, but that
comes from
our approach to it, not from its own nature. If we
approach it
from a particular direction, as explorers and adventurers -
knowing we
enter a place of mystery and awe - then the imagination
becomes what it
truly is meant to be - a light-filled bridge between ourselves
and the
Divine.
In the
imagination we make our first baby
steps away from mere sense experience, and turn inward, into
realms of
mystery and enchantment (something all good authors of the
arts of
fiction and poetry well understand). Even science
travels here,
although it has masked its journeys in such sterile
(bloodless) terms
as hypothesis and theory.
For example,
Quantum Theory, the Big Bang
and the Theory of Evolution are products of the human
imagination,
albeit falsely treated by many scientists, and even more by
the general
public, as known facts.
All the same,
with the undisciplined imagination there is
darkness
there as well as light - a little illustration, that is, a story:
A man's wife travels into the city with some girlfriends. In the evening, on their way from dinner at their hotel to the theater, the man's wife becomes separated from her friends for a moment and is mugged.
Later, on the train coming into the city to see his wife at the hospital (she may not live), the man closes his eyes and drifts on the sea of his mind. He imagines life without her, and part of him would like that, would like to be free of her shadow side, the side that wants things he can't understand or give, and which often treats him in a way he does not feel he deserves. So he imagines life without her, and the freedom from the necessary pains of relationship and marriage.
After a time someone coughs, which wakes him
from his
day-dreaming while riding the sea of his mind, and he now
feels guilty.
How could he want her dead, she who bore his children,
and gave
herself to him in so many ways over so many years?
We know these
dark dreams. We
know that the fanciful and the imaginary are not easily
controlled.
There is no logic there of the cold, hard and certain
kind.
The imagination is of the blood and the heat, which is
full of
life yes, but like life is dark as well. We are right to
fear its
siren songs. If we swim in these waters without proper
care, we
can end up mad, or in prison, the victim of our own unbridled
passions,
or lost in illusions.
This is why
some like science and
technology. Not so messy these cool, smooth and
controllable
things (as long as we pretend that hypothesis and theory are not of the imagination). Not like
love, or
attachment or other matters of the blood and of the heart.
That
is the true danger of the imagination - not that it is
fanciful, but
rather because it is too real.
About
science...
The
intersection between religion and
science is part of this book, but as everyone knows that
subject is so
huge that I'd have to write a half dozen books to even begin.
In
this book - the
Way of the Fool - it should be
said that
the process of inner development (Gnosis) referred to here is
completely empirical and objective. The only difference
is that
instead of studying the outer sense world, the neophyte scientist of the
spirit begins by studying his or her
own mind.
In addition, as
we know, science and
religion seem to express two completely opposed paradigms or
views of
the nature of reality. This book then is also a paradigm
- a story
- that seeks to include the essential aspects of both views
and hopes
to suggest there can be expressed here a viable (though brief)
synthesis. This paradigm of synthesis will also have
qualities
that for
the
reader are hypothetical and
theoretical.
This book is then, in the same way that the theory of
evolution
is a picture in the imagination, something which seeks to explain what is behind known facts. The paradigm
expressed
here in this book will explain (again
briefly, and as
part of a greater whole) the future integration of science and
religion
(through the art of character development) that can be thought
by a
mind that has come to know itself empirically and objectively.
If
we can learn to understand our own consciousness out of the
scientific
spirit, then that understanding - that science of insides - penetrates and changes all the other facts we
believe
we understand on the basis of our science of outsides
(scientific
materialism), such that religion and art themselves take on
new meaning.
As food for
thought on this, consider the
implied relationship of these concepts (as lived) : truth,
beauty,
goodness / science, art, religion / reason, imagination,
devotion.
Or seen another way: truth - science - reason / beauty -
art -
imagination / goodness - religion - devotion.
And finally (at
long last)...
Mostly this
book is descriptive, that is
a synthesis of experienced observations, and not an analysis
of
abstract facts, or again it is the result of many years of: Listening to the
World Song.
Which is why we
come back to character...this book
is written mostly to help people understand
(explain) their interior life better, and the relationship of
that
interior life to the elements of their biography. How
the reader
chooses to act, in the light of this new understanding, will
become an
aspect of their character, and thus, their destiny. We
are, after
all, artists in the co-creation of our lives, thus the Navajo
blessing,
which I now address to my reader: May you walk in
Beauty.
**************************
and now, finally, to the main text of
the Way of the Fool...
Moral Grace
- the theme (song) of the central mystery of the modern age -
first stanza
Shepherds and Kings
- a Temporary
parting of Ways -
We have been
told that attending the
birth of the Christ Child, besides the immediate family, were
two
different groups of human beings, the Shepherds and the Kings.
This element of the story is worthy of deeper study.
These were
times of oral culture, and the
Gospels, in spite of all our other uses for them, were
originally
stories. This is how wisdom was shared among the common
people in
that time, and in fact for most of history. We moderns
with our
written literature, and television and videos, have lost sight
of the
more essential, more human element. It is really the
oral stories
that we share among us as human beings that brings forward
wisdom and
human knowledge. Yes, we have all kinds of modern ways,
including
the Internet, but the wise reality of life always comes down
to our
tales, shared from one to another (c.f. Le Guin's The
Telling). At the time of the
Gospels few could read, and
most learned all that was learned through being told via
speech
(remember the story of the miracle of Pentecost?). With
this in
mind then, let us recall the Gospels in the more true way - as
wise
tales.
We might also
keep in mind, that contrary
to some modern scholarship, it is also very likely that the
disciples
of Christ to whom the Four Gospels are attributed, were in
fact the
creators of those stories. In an oral culture,
these
stories would have been memorized once originally told, and
frequently
quite accurately at that. No one would dream of
retelling such
stories and adding embellishments. To do so would
dishonor
the original speaker, and the story itself; as well as violate
the
trust of the listeners. Whether they were told in Greek,
or not,
we do not know. All we really know is that when first written down, they were rendered into Greek (the
language of
scholarship in that Age), which has now been translated for us
in The
Unvarnished Gospels into idiomatic
English.
To really
appreciate this, we should
imagine ourselves around a hearth, in the evening. The
traveler,
who is now our guest, has had his feet washed (he has walked
far to
visit us), been fed and allowed to rest. This is the
best way to
receive the Gospels - orally, yet in the closeness of family.
All we have to
do is read the opening
lines, and the story nature of the Gospels is clear. For
example,
Mark 1:1 says: "The
beginning
of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God".
{The
Beginning
of the Good Word of Jesus The Anointed, Son of God} Or, Matthew, after laying out the line of
genealogy peculiar to his Gospel (a quite different genealogy
from
Mark), says in 1:18: "Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this
way.". {The
birth
of Jesus the Anointed was like this:}
These are
classical forms for the
beginning of a story. I am, by the way, not suggesting
anything
about the truth or not of these stories, but rather pointing
to
something else. These stories are not meant to be the
dry
recitation of facts, but have behind them the intention to
render into
words what for the speakers was rooted in the experience of a most sublime mystery.
What this means
for us is that there is
nothing superfluous in these stories. Every detail was
placed
there for a purpose, and nothing was intended to be simple
filler, or
any excess of exaggeration or fancy. And, given that
what is
being rendered in the Gospels concerned what the story tellers
conceived as the greatest of Holy Mysteries, we cannot pass by
any
element of the story without considering its possible wider
meaning.
Nor should we,
as is done far too
frequently today, render these Mysteries into rigid meanings
and
certainties. The Gospels are meant to evoke Life in our
souls, to
enliven us and inspire us, not to kill what lives there with
cold
intellectual concepts and arid doctrines inviolate for all
time.
We should try to hear them as we once heard them when we
were
little children (lest
ye
become again little children...),
out of a
natural feeling of awe and mystery.
With the
picture of the Shepherds and the
Kings attending the birth of the Christ Child, we come upon a
much
overlooked aspect of these Gospel stories - an aspect that can
tell us
a great deal about our time, and the future. Those, who
know the
nature of humanity's deep and wise stories, know that just
such little
details often reflect Archetypes, which when properly
appreciated lead
us to what are otherwise hidden, or at least less obvious,
meanings and
truths.
Christ Himself
taught frequently using
the image of the Shepherd and his flock, which fact ought to
suggest
that it is of no little moment that the birth of Jesus was
known to two
quite different classes of human beings. Yet, about
Kings, Christ
tells no parables. Moreover, the Shepherds who attended
the Birth
in this story knew of the Birth in one way, and the Kings who
attended
knew in another. This difference is itself important.
The Kings are
described as following a
star (Matthew 2: 7-12), which led them to Bethlehem and the
Birth, to
actually seeing the Christ Child. The Shepherds, on the
other
hand, experienced an announcement from an Angel, and from this
they
then traveled to the place of birth (Luke: 2:8-20).
We can, for
example, understand that for
the ancient peoples of this time, a star was part of the vault
of
heaven, and not, as we are taught today, a mere object in the
sky, no
different from the Sun, and certainly having no being or
consciousness.
So in the story, when it was taught that the Kings
followed a
star, it was understood that they followed a sign from heaven.
We have here
then two ways of coming to
knowledge of the Birth, and these two ways effected two quite
different
groups of human beings. The Kings were knowledgeable and
wise
(able to understand and follow a sign),
and
the Shepherds meek and ordinary. The Kings knew
something on
their own out of a wisdom tradition, and the Shepherds had to
be told
by an Angel in order to know.
Who were the
Kings?
Part of our
history of those days has
been forgotten, and it certainly was true that as the early
Church grew
into prominence, it went on the attack against the various
Mysteries
that had preceded Christianity. Today we call these
prior
Mysteries: paganism; and, some
treat them as if they were the superstitious
ravings of lunatics. But this is a false revision of the
true
history of those days.
In point of
fact the Kings were
Priest-Kings, for in those times the ruler-ship of nations and
principalities had often been in the hands of these so-called
Pagan
Mysteries. Moreover, these Mysteries practiced
disciplines by
which individuals were brought to what is called a state of initiation. A Priest-King, who was an initiate,
experienced
directly the sublimity of the Divine. These Mysteries
practiced
forms of gnosis - or the direct experiential knowledge of God.
Today, of
course, those who consider
themselves educated do not believe such a view of ancient
times.
Even so, it must be understand that those moderns who
harbor
such beliefs do not in fact know the truth of this past.
It is a
kind of negative superstition to assert that something isn't
true that
we don't really know can't be true. Many assume this,
and will
often as well hypocritically criticize others for believing in
matters
that seem outside the scope of being knowable. Richard
Dawkins,
the author of The God
Delusion is one such, for he asserts
as not
true something he can't prove is not true (not to leave out
Sam Harris,
and his flawed book: The End of
Faith). We will return to this
later in
the text in considering the deeper implications of
fundamentalism
(there can be a scientific fundamentalism at the same time
there can be
a religious fundamentalism).
Now to return
to the story
under consideration...
The story tells
us indirectly that the
Kings that attended the birth of the Christ Child knew through
initiation (direct gnosis) about the Event in Bethlehem.
This is
implied by story of the Star, and the recognition that they
were wise
and therefore could follow signs (remember, in order to truly understand the story, we have to place our
selves inside the consciousness of the listener of that time).
Thus their knowledge was based, in large part, upon
their own
efforts (coupled, of course, with Grace - Grace being an act
of the
Divine Mystery reaching down into the human realm). This
supersensible (beyond the senses) knowledge is reflected in
the story
by the picture of the Star. The Kings followed their
direct
transcendent knowledge - their Star - which then led them to
the Birth.
The Shepherds,
on the other hand, were
simple and ordinary. Their relationship to the Divine
was based
not upon direct personal knowledge, but upon the early soul
conditions
of Faith. This then required that they be told through
the office of an Angel about this Event.
In this way the
Birth was attended by
what is essentially a small class of individuals - namely
initiates
(Priest-Kings); and, it was attended by representatives of a
much
larger class, namely the ordinary and the lowly - the meek
(Shepherds).
Please remember: Blessed are the meek for they shall
inherit the Earth. Matthew 5:4 {The
gentle
are in luck, they will inherit the earth.}
In this way the
Gospels tell us the story
that there are two ways of knowing about God. One
direct,
personal and immediate, and the other indirect and mediated by
another
Being, in this case an Angel. These two Ways we will
call here:
Gnosis and Faith. I do not, by the way, refer in my use
of the
term gnosis in this book in any way to the Gnostic Religion,
but only
use the term to refer to the direct personal experience of the
Divine
Mystery.
As most
everyone knows the Way of Gnosis
disappeared, and during the Middle Ages, to speak of such
things was
considered by the Church to be heresy. The Church,
founded on the
rock of Peter, and elaborated by the heart of Paul, became a
Church
rooted in Faith. Knowledge of the true meaning in the
Gospel
stories of the Kings was deliberately forgotten and then lost.
Only the Way of Faith seems to have remained
historically visible.
But not
really...
For a certain
other fact was written into
the stories of the Gospels. Most everyone knows that
the
Matthew, Mark and Luke Gospels were significantly different
from the
John Gospel. Biblical scholarship has long recognized
these
differences, and actually creates a separate category for the
first
three Gospels, calling them the Synoptic Gospels.
The reason for
this is plain, once we
understand the meaning in the story of the two groups who
attended the
Birth. The Kings were allied with the old Mysteries, and
for
Christianity to develop as a new Mystery, the old had to pass
away for
a while into the mists of time.
The result is
that we have in
Christianity two Ways. The Way of Faith, or Pauline
Christianity
and the Way of Gnosis of Johnine Christianity. The
Gospel of John
has contained, since the beginning, knowledge of the Way of
Gnosis.
In spite of this, most of Christian history has involved
the
coming into being of the assumption that the John Gospel was
just a
variation of the other three, with the result that a true
appreciation
of what is described in John has been lost. [See, for example,
a modern
look at the John Gospel, which rediscovers its original
meaning: Becoming
Aware of the Logos:
The
Way of St. John the Evangelist, by
Georg
Kuhlewind.]
Today, what has
been forgotten for two
thousand years is returning (with the discovery of the Dead
Sea
Scrolls, and the Gospels of Mary and Thomas, for example).
The
true meaning of the Gospel story of John has begun to emerge
from its
hiding place. Once again there exists knowledge of how
to know
God in a personal and direct Way. In reality, this Way
was never
truly lost, but mostly had to sacrifice its former preeminence
in order
that the Way of Faith could bring forward its gifts, which
were new,
and very important for the future.
Consider that
Christ said: Blessed are they who have not
seen, and yet have believed. {How
lucky
are the ones who never saw but still believed!} John 20:29. The ancient mysteries were
mysteries
based upon the gnosis (initiation) of the priests, whose
authority then
was accepted by their followers. The Way of Gnosis, the
form of
the old Mysteries (with an active and dominant priesthood),
had to go
into the background for a time, as part of a long term process
which
was to make it possible for human beings to no longer need any
kind of
intermediary between themselves and God (many of the
patriarchs, kings
and prophets of the Old Testament had direct experiences of
the Divine
Mystery - Moses, for example sees the burning bush). All
the
same, in the beginning of the history of the Church, a
priesthood
remained necessary, but this intermediary priesthood was
itself to be
based upon faith, and not any longer upon the old gnosis
(initiation).
However, in order to understand in a deeper way why it
was
necessary for the Way of Faith to dominate early Christianity,
other
considerations must be added.
second stanza
the Evolution of Consciousness
- the meaning of the historical differences between
the time of the Pharaohs (the time of the Old Testament)
and our
present Age (the Dawn of the Third Millennium) -
To understand
this next part a little
better, let us first examine a question seldom asked: Where was Christ
before the
events described in the Gospels?
Our Faith is
that Christ (the Son) was
sent by the Father to save us - to walk the earth as (or in) a
human
being, to eventually be crucified, to die and be buried, and
then to be
resurrected. And, in this process to take on the sins
(errors) of
the world.
At the same
time, Christ certainly existed before
this human historical moment. Where then
was He? What did He do? Was He known to human
beings in
some other way?
How did the
Magi know of Him? Had
their understanding - their insight, the signs - told them
that Christ
was coming? Coming from where?
In the
pre-Christian Mysteries, knowledge
of the deeds and the meaning of the Son - of Christ before the
time of
the Gospels - was available to those who spent a lifetime in
religious
instruction such as led them to initiation - to a consciously created condition of gnosis - direct
experience
of the Divine Mystery. This
is the secret of the stream of the pre-Christian Mysteries
represented
by the Kings (priest-kings) - the Magi - of the Gospel
stories.
So, where was
Christ before the Birth?
This question we will leave aside, only drawing from it
that
there might well have been those at that time who knew, and
who saw.
This initiation wisdom did not disappear after the Incarnation, but instead stepped aside (sacrificed itself) so that Faith could begin to become the force it is meant to become in human souls (as an aspect of the Evolution of Consciousness). Then in the 20th Century the meaning-essence of the initiation wisdom at one time represented by the Kings in the Gospel stories began to return. What does this modern initiation wisdom have to say to us today? As an example, we will now look toward the work of one such human being.
Rudolf Steiner
(1861-1925) is a modern
representative of the stream of mystery wisdom once belonging
to the
Kings in the Gospel stories. He was an initiate, and had
direct
personal experience of the Divine. While it is not
necessary to
take my word here on this, it would be wrong for me to pretend
that I
know otherwise. However, what we are going to do here is
the same
that we did before with the Gospels. We are going to
look at some
of the stories that Rudolf Steiner told. No one is
required to
believe Steiner was an initiate - I only tell that part of his
story so
the reader will know what are my views as regards his status.
Let us now look
at some of what Steiner
taught, not as knowledge to be believed on his authority as an
initiate, but rather as a story, from which we are free to
draw our own
conclusions. In our Age, the Kings are no longer meant
to
dominate, but rather have joined the rest of us at the
shared
common ground of our humanity. In fact, deep initiation in our Age is frequently more of a unusual
challenge
than a blessing.
[As a small
aside, let me elaborate the nature of this challenge. It
is
unusual, as we would all agree, for individuals to have direct
experience of the Divine. In fact, in the modern
scientific age,
to assert that one has known God directly is often considered
madness,
for to many in science God is not real, but rather a
superstition.
Yet, for people of integrity, to deny their experience
is
impossible - in point of fact, it is a violation of
conscience.
One must be honest about ones experience in this regard
(although
some discretion is natural, and there is seldom reason to
stand on the
street corner and assert ones religious importance as some
kind of
messenger). In fact, in most cases conscience forbids
acting as
if one was more special than others because of these
experiences.
This direct experience of the Divine then becomes
a kind of
weight, where one must choose between honesty about what has
been
learned, and ordinary human humility. It is this weight,
and its
difficult moral dilemmas regarding when to speak and about
what, that
creates the unusual challenge, which itself tends to separate
someone
with this particular challenge from the rest of us.
Those, who
speak of their authentic spiritual experiences often face
subsequently
some sort of trial (another aspect of the challenge), such as
either
being seen as mad, or treated with an excess of deference (a
hard, but
necessary aspect of the development of character). At
the least,
we need to recognize that in our age, those who say they are
having
visions are not seen in the same light as ordinary human
beings are
seen. In point of fact and in large part because of this
challenge, Steiner attempted to place his life's work (what he
called
Spiritual Science, or Anthroposophy) on a scientific
foundation.
He hoped, that by showing how people could make
empirical such
research and find out for themselves, the previously solitary
nature of
authentic spiritual experience could be overcome.]
In addition to
Steiner, if one chooses,
there are others that can be looked to for conformation about
what I
will write below regarding the Evolution of Consciousness such
as is
described in his stories. Here are three such books and
authors:
Ernst Lehrs' book, Man or
Matter: Introduction to a Spiritual Understanding of Nature on
the
Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought; Gottfried Richter's book, Art
and
Human Consciousness; and, Owen
Barfield's
book, Saving the Appearances: a Study in
Idolatry.
The story that
Steiner tells is long and
complicated, being an attempt to tell a broad history of the
whole of
human and spiritual evolution, from the very beginning of
Creation to
modern times, and then beyond into the future. Here we
are only
going to look at a very narrow aspect of this much greater
story.
In the
vocabulary that Steiner creates
for telling this long story, he speaks of what he calls "cultural epochs." Our present time is one cultural epoch
among
seven others, which seven is again embedded in larger periods
that
might be called Ages. We are only going to examine the
middle
three cultural epochs of the current Age.
The time of the
ancient Hebrews and
Egyptians was in Steiner's words the time of the third
cultural epoch
of our modern historical era (Age). This epoch extended
from
around 2800 BC until about 700 BC (this latter date roughly
corresponds
to the founding of Western Civilization), at which point
begins the
fourth cultural epoch that goes until around 1400 AD, after
which
begins the fifth cultural epoch of the modern era - or our own
time.
Each cultural
epoch also corresponds to
the development of some particular inner characteristic
of human
consciousness. For the third
cultural
epoch, humanity developed what Steiner called the sentient soul; for the fourth, the intellectual soul; and in our time (a period that will last until
about
3500 AD), we are developing the consciousness soul.
Now these different consciousness (or soul) developments
are just
the names that Steiner gives to aspects of human nature in his
stories.
They could be called anything, for it is not the name so
much,
but the actual nature and experience of the developing inner
quality of
being human that is important. This varies, one stage
building
upon another, so that while our physical evolution is mostly
at rest
(perhaps even starting to enter a time of decay), our inner
spiritual
evolution is potentially always ongoing (it is, however, not
automatic,
but requires our participation).
Now what makes
Steiner's story even
deeper is that each form of soul development has a
corresponding social
form. That is, for the sentient soul development
there is a characteristic set of social relationships as well
as
historical conditions; for the intellectual soul
development another set of social arrangements and historical
conditions; and, for the consciousness soul
a third
characteristic social structure and historical frame of
reference.
The reason this
is important is that one
can see in history, as we know it, the proof of Steiner's
observations.
Our knowledge of the time of the ancient Hebrews and
Egyptians
shows us both the outer social forms, and by implication the
inner
nature of human consciousness that went with that period of
human
evolution. So also with the fourth and fifth cultural
epochs.
Steiner's stories in this regard are not inventions, but
rather
much deeper and wiser descriptions of the meaning of these
periods of
human history, than those ideas we are taught by our current
professors
and teachers.
For once we
recognize this Evolution of
Consciousness, we also realize that modern humanity tends to
mistakenly
fancy that consciousness was the same in the past as it is in
the
present, and so our modern teachers describe events in ancient
times in
such terms as if those peoples thought, saw, and felt in the
same way
we do today, when the real historical facts everywhere suggest
the
opposite. The ancients were inwardly different, and
those differences are precisely why they
believed and thought differently. They were not
any more
stupid or superstitious, but rather had different kinds
of knowledge, belief and understanding exactly because
they had a different form of consciousness, which also means a
quite
different life experience. [knowledge, belief and understanding are quite
different modes or conditions of mind, and will become more
important
later when we get into practical inner work.]
Again, let me
point to the three authors
mentioned above, Lehrs, Richter, and Barfield. Their
researches
will fully support what I have pointed out above regarding the
evolution of consciousness - Lehrs through a history of
Science,
Richter through a history of Art, and Barfield through a
history of
Language.
I am also not
going to go into the
details of the
sentient soul, and the intellectual soul, or any of the greater aspects of the stories
that
Steiner tells, because the reader of this book, who wants to,
can go to
that source and get it all in a much better way (see Steiner's
Theosophy, and Occult
Science:
an outline). Rather, I want us
here to have a very narrow focus, and to concentrate on what
we all see
right in front of us - outwardly in social life and
inwardly in
our own soul life. All the same, a little something
needs to be
said before going on.
If one wanted
to get some sense of the sentient soul
development, then a study of Homer's Iliad and The
Odyssey would be in order. With Homer we can get some
sense of
how strongly the people of that historical epoch lived in
their life of
sensation, and the extent to which outside Ideas/Ideals, such
as the
Gods and love and heroism, influenced this life of powerful
sensation,
both inner and outer. On the other hand, the intellectual soul development would have as its book marks:
Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas. In this epoch people began to more and
more live
more strongly in how their capacity for ideation took hold of
existence, rather than in how much life filled them with
sensation.
Oliver Stone's recent film about Alexander the Great
gives us a
glimpse of the transition from the time of the sentient soul
to the
time of the intellectual soul. There is a great deal
more that
could be said, but I will leave that to the other writers I
have
mentioned.
The purpose of
bringing forward the idea
of the Evolution of Consciousness is to get us to wake up to
these
types of changes, and to see that what we experience today is
part of a
much larger pattern that can be discovered, if we wish to
devote the
time to learning about it. We should also note, in
passing, that
the life of sensation is more outward in its soul nature, the
life of
the intellect a bit deeper in the soul, and then in the consciousness
soul epoch we reach even deeper into
our inwardness.
The point here is to recognize that the evolutionary
development of
consciousness is taking place with a
gesture
such that each progressive stage moves further inward into the
depths
of our true being and nature.
These three
cultural epochs, being also
part of a much larger set of changes that encompass seven
periods in
all - each period lasting about 2100 years, have a special
relationship
with each other (if folks are concerned about these number
relationships, just consider that the Creation is Art, and
that
music-like whole number relations should not surprise anyone).
The fourth epoch, in which the Christ Events appear at
the end of
the first third, is a middle or transitional epoch.
While the
third (the time of the ancient Hebrews and Egyptians) epoch
and the
fifth epoch (our time) are somewhat mirror images of each
other -
social forms, historical processes and cultural structures,
that turned
over and inside out in a kind of way during the fourth period.
So
we have the third epoch with its social and inner nature, then
a
transitional period (the fourth epoch), and then the fifth
epoch with
its social and inner nature, that is something of an inversion
of the
third epoch.
For example, in
terms of social structure
the third epoch was characterized by top down hierarchical
social
organizations (priest castes being in charge, whether it was
the
Pharaohs of the Egyptians, or the Patriarchs and Kings of the
Hebrews).
While the modern epoch is characterized by the end of
hierarchical structures, and the beginning development of
bottom up
individualized social forms. In the third epoch,
individualism
was not the point, and general soul development the essence,
with the
moral order being in the form of laws and rules handed down by
the
priests (e.g. Moses and the Ten Commandments), whereas in our
time, it
is our individual moral sense of what is right that wants to
dominate
and more and more rejects being told what to do by the last
remnants of
priest classes.
In Matthew
5:17, as part of the Sermon on
the Mount, Christ explains at one point that: "Do not think that I
have come
to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I have not come to
destroy,
but to fulfill". {Don't
think
I came to dissolve the law or the prophets: I didn't come to
dissolve them, I came to fulfill them} Then
later, when He is asked to speak as to which of the
Commandments is the
greatest, He explains further this fulfillment in this way,
Matthew 22:
37-40 "Jesus
said
to him, "This is the greatest and the first commandment.
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart,
and with
thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind." And the second is
like it,
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." On these two commandments
depend the whole Law and the Prophets." {He said
to them, "You are to love your lord God with all your heart
and all
your spirit and all your mind. That is the important and
first
commandment. The second one is similar: You are to love
those
close to you as you love yourself. All the law and
all the
prophets hang from these two commands."}
By rendering
them (the Law and the
Prophets) into their essence in the admonition to Love God
Completely
and Thy Neighbor as Thyself, which when carried out as acts of
individual moral intuition (see later the fourth stanza of
this section
of this book, which is more explicit about Moral
Grace) brings the Law no longer from
the outside inward (from
the outside social community into the inwardness of human
beings), but
instead from the inside outward (from the individual moral
intuitions
of the human being out into the social community). The Law no longer is
to act
upon us, but we are on the way to becoming
(the Evolution of Consciousness) the Law as we act
upon each
other. [Yes, this is a very radical
idea, but
a lot more in support of it will be written as we go along.]
This change,
the Kings of the Gospel
stories understood, for its coming could be seen in the Christ
Event
itself. So they followed their in-sight, their star, and offered up their gifts (their
Way of
Gnosis) in sacrifice, as symbolized in the story in the images
of the
offerings of gold, frankincense and myrrh.
But such gifts
could not be completely
sacrificed - gnosis did not disappear as a human capacity
(although Christ recognized its inherent problem
"Blessed are
they who have not seen and yet believe" John 20:29 {How
lucky
are the ones who never saw but still believed},
a
statement which appreciates that there are still those who do
"see",
which in modern times, as I said, can be a kind of unusual
challenge.).
Only its (gnosis's) social influence had to wane.
For in
the age of the
consciousness soul, in the time when
individuals were to think for themselves and make their own
individual
moral judgments, no priests as authorities would any longer be
needed.
Yet, gnosis itself did not entirely lose its meaning,
for what
the Kings had once been still had a role to play for a while,
and this
we have to understand next.
As the fourth
epoch moved into becoming
the fifth, a certain new Way of seeing the world came into
being -
natural philosophy (science). In the 1400's human beings
began to
see the natural world for the first time as an object (the on-looker separation, see Lehrs and Barfield above).
Lets look a
little more closely at the
idea of the on-looker separation. In Barfields' book Saving
the
Appearances: a Study in Idolatry, he
describes humanity's beginning state of consciousness as original
participation (the gods were a given
and we directly experience them -
that is we felt ourselves as inside nature,
the mysteries
and each other to a degree - no individuality).
Subsequently we
are brought to a state of separation, pushed out of this
original
state, such that around 1400 this separation became so acute
that we
felt ourselves completely outside nature, the cosmos and each
other.
It is this stage of the Evolution of Consciousness (the
on-looker
separation) that makes possible
natural science. At the same
time the on-looker
separation is but an intermediary
stage in
between original
participation (where the Divine was
a given)
and final
participation (where we have to
choose to
have a free relationship with the Divine). This is, of
course,
overly brief and one should read Barfield directly in any
event.
The paradigm
(world view), which emerged
initially from the on-looker separation
(the
scientific spirit will produce other views in the future)
would
be called scientific materialism (only matter, no spirit) in
the
beginning, and has played a role in helping us to further
individualize
and find within ourselves that necessary place out of which to
begin to
stand as free human beings - free even from the influence of
the
Divine. (For a detailed examination of this change from a
certain point
of view, also see Evolution
and the New Gnosis: Anti-establishment Essays on Knowledge,
Science,
Religion and Causal Logic, by Don
Cruse with
Robert Zimmer)
At the same
time, scientific materialism
is a heavy burden for modern consciousness. In social
Darwinism
(a kind of social justification for many clearly immoral
acts),
scientific materialism turns human being against human being,
and
fosters the idea that there are those who are more fit, and
therefore
more entitled to survive. In addition, with the image of
human
beings as mere animals (something that really can't be
maintained if
you look honestly at Art and
other cultural achievements), we find that
the idea of who
and what we are has descended into great depths -
we no longer see ourselves as the image and likeness of God
(the Fall
penetrates even into our world views). But as the Law
becomes
something inside us, resting not on moral rules, but rather
living in
our own impulses of the heart, opposition to a spiritless
world view
(and its terrible social consequences) has appeared
everywhere.
What Steiner named the consciousness
soul, has
begun (especially in the late 20th Century) to unfold its
forces into
our social existence, in Civil Society, in the environmental
movement,
in the opposition to elite globalization and many other social
and
personal phenomena (see on this theme Jesaiah
Ben-Aharon's
remarkable: America's Global
Responsibility: individuation,
initiation and threefolding).
Even so, this
change taking place all
around us has yet to become fully self aware - to really see
and know
itself for what it truly is - or to discover how to overcome
scientific
and social materialism as completely as ordinary people need
to be able
to overcome it. So, the spiritual essence of the gnosis
gesture
of the ancient Kings return for a time, to show that Gnosis
still
exists, and that Faith has a partner and a companion in the
dance that
is the story and mystery of the
Evolution of
Consciousness.
third stanza
the Church and the Body of Christ
being a discussion of the future of Christianity
as that
future develops out of the Evolution of Consciousness
So far we have
mostly considered aspects
of the past: a deeper look at the matter of the Kings and the
Shepherds, and a fairly new idea concerning the Evolution of
Consciousness. Let us now look a little more carefully
at the
present, and at the fact that today what we call Christianity
is
divided into a great many different sects, rites, Churches and
other
social forms, that often so strongly disagree with each other
over
meaning and doctrine that wars are fought and people killed
and
tortured.
It is my view
that no single Christian
Church or sect possess, even to a degree, the whole truth of
the Nature
of the current iteration of Christianity. Each has bits
and
pieces, but we only begin to see that Reality - the current
totality -
when we start to integrate into one whole, not only the
various
versions of the Ways of Faith (the Ways of the Shepherds), but
also the
Ways of Gnosis (the Ways of the Kings). For example, the
Catholic
Church in its conception of the Church and the Body of Christ
sees one
aspect of a mighty whole, while the Jehovah's Witnesses, in
their
peculiar and unique way of practicing the Eucharist, have
knowledge of
something of remarkable depth (the Witnesses only practice
Communion
one day a year, at Easter, and then one only eats the host if
one
believes that one has so far progressed in ones development as
to be a
member of the Elect, as prophesied in Revelations. This
challenge
to the soul to examine itself with such savage clarity is very
good for
us. I make no comment at this point on whether this is
what
Christ wanted, only meaning to point out the quite personal
test that
such an act makes us face.)
To give a
couple other examples: the
Mormons, with their social and community practices have an
excellent
grasp of Christ's social teachings as regards the practical
application
of Charity to the social community, while those rites in many
Black and
gospel singing Churches better understand the nature of Joy
and
Celebration in Christianity. I am not saying, by the
way, that
only these aspects of each Church is of value, only that one
cannot
grasp the totality of present Christianity by only looking at
particular Churches, doctrines or sects, as if any single
group
possessed the whole truth.
One way to
appreciate this is to
understand that what was originally created following Christ's
Resurrection, as a single Church, soon became, under the
influence of
humanity's developing individualism, a multiplicity,
eventually
splitting into more and more sects and divisions, until today
we almost
have as many versions of Christianity as we have individuals
who
practice it. This has even gone so far as to
divide into
such a fine set of distinctions, that many individuals, in
whom the
fulfillment of the Essence of the Law and the Prophets lives
as an
impulse of the heart, no longer consider themselves Christian
at all,
although their every act is Christian through and through
(What St.
Paul so beautifully describes in I Corinthians 13: "If I speak in the
tongues of
men and of angels, but have not love,..." -
is becoming the essential nature of the human heart, as it
finds its
way to its full expression in the Evolution of Consciousness).
It
is as if a once unitary ocean of Spirit has fallen to Earth as
individual raindrops. (Please recall what
was said above in Witterschein's introduction to The
Unvarnished
Gospels concerning the apparently
real meaning of part of the opening lines of the John Gospel -
"The
movement of the
Word towards God can then be seen as history: the history of
the
created universe, going back to its very beginning, is one of
overcoming a separation from God, of a process of
reunification.") These fallen
individual raindrops, finally
coming to apparent rest in single human hearts, do not stop
there or
rest content, but from this heart center then seek naturally
for
reintegration with their original Source.
Now at the
beginning of the Christian
Era, what is today's Catholic Church was Christ's Church on
the Earth.
But as time passed, more and more this Earthly Church
became
Fallen. Only during the Mass anymore does Christ enter
into the
Rites of the Catholic Church. The hierarchies and
bureaucracy of
the Church have become too Earthly, and with the exception of
some
individuals, this institutional Church
(but not the laity) has lost its spiritual
connection, and become just another earthly power among other
earthly
political and social powers.
[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 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.]
This original
hierarchical structure
(Popes, and priests) was a remnant of the hierarchical social
order
that once was dominant in the third cultural epoch. The
Body of
Christ, the faithful, at the inception of Christianity were
still too
child-like within, and needed guidance. But as the
fourth epoch
gave way to the fifth, humanity began to leave behind its
spiritual
childhood, and the need for an intercessor (a priest) became
more and
more superfluous. This is so elsewhere, not just in
Christianity,
but also in Buddhism and Islam, for example, - the age of
priests,
masters and mullahs is falling aside, and in the time of the consciousness
soul (remember this musical
interval in the appearance of time
is to last from around 1400 to 3500), moral truth and goodness
more and
more belong to the individual to determine.
We can see this
quite clearly in today's
sexual crisis in American Catholicism, where it was not the
institutional Church in the form of the priesthood (the
Bishops and the
Cardinals) that understood the true nature of the moral
dilemma, but
the Body of Christ, the People of the Church who knew what was
right
and what was wrong.
The Catholics
have a doctrine, which
recognizes that the Holy Spirit moves among the Body of Christ
(the
laity). But this doctrine is not so much practiced by
the
hierarchical structures, rather it is just given lip service.
They (the priests and bishops) thought to preserve their
prestige
and power at great cost to hundreds, if not thousands, of
children.
Surely the Mother of God weeps, and the not often seen
wrath of
Christ is subtly descending (the wealth of the America
Church is
being leached out of it through the legal system as atonement
for the
hiding of the violations of innocence) upon the hierarchy of
the
American Church for this intolerable crime, and no doubt also
upon Rome
for its lack of righteous backbone as regards the same events
(in the
ascension to the Throne of Peter of a rigid and backward
thinking
theologian, rather than a true pastor - Shepherd - to the
faithful,
which ascension is slowly leading to the end of a true
Papacy).
[We have also
seen in America, a similar
fall from grace of many Protestant evangelical Christian
leaders over
recent years, for the hypocrisy of sexual and financial
excess.]
Yet, this Idea,
of the Church and the
Body of Christ, has preserved for us something we would do
well to
understand.
The situation
that existed at the
founding roots of Christianity is now reversed, and
Christianity is
becoming (now and into the future) something new. It is
the Body
of Christ (the Essence of Law and the Prophets as living in
individual
hearts) that is to structure the future nature of any true
order in a
social form, such as a Church. The questions of
application of
moral absolutism in the ideas regarding abortion and the like,
and the
need for priests to remain celibate and for women not to take
up the
Celebration of the Mass - all these are fundamentally moral
questions,
and are no longer to be questions of doctrine or dogma, but
which
instead now belong to the laity (of all churches, sects and
rites) -
the Body of Christ - to determine as the Holy Spirit moves in
and
through their hearts.
The
hierarchically dominated Churches are
dying. And, with their much needed Death, something new
can be
resurrected. Out of the Body of Christ (the faithful
laity) can
arise a new and true ecumenism - no need for the divisions
into
Catholic, or Protestant, or Orthodox or whatever.
Moreover, this
is an ecumenism that will transcend even the divisions into
Christianity, Islam, or Buddhism (to name but few). All
those old
social forms in which Christianity first lived are now to be
cast
aside. A Christianity of the Heart (see Covenant
of
the Heart, by Valentin Tomberg)
seeks to
express itself, and the only matter of import is the
Charitable
recognition of each individual by each other individual and
their
mutual companionship as members of the faithful (Shepherds)
and direct
knowers of the moral (Kings). What was once divided into
two
pieces, as a kind of ancient division of social class, can now
be
remade whole as individuals more consciously experience and
participate
in the stage of the Evolution of Consciousness we are calling
the
consciousness soul.
Does this mean
that the Rome of popes and
cardinals and bishops should disappear? Or the end of
big
hierarchical organization in Protestantism? I don't
know. I
do know that it will be the authority of the Body of Christ
that is to
authentically anoint any Church functionaries in the future,
not the
present fallen functionaries themselves (the real meaning of
the Third
Fatima Prophecy - the end of a hierarchically determined
Papacy?). The line of true
moral authority of the
hierarchical Churches has broken, through the many many
failings over
the centuries (selling of indulgences, torture and burning at
the stake
of heretics, the inquisition, the turning away for the horrors
of the
Holocaust, etc. in Catholicism and the excessive interests in
wealth
and sexual hypocrisy in Protestantism), of which the child
abuse
scandal in American Catholicism, and the recent fall from
grace of a
leading evangelical, are only the most modern examples of a
complete
lack of any such true
moral
authority in the institutional
hierarchy of
Christian Churches.
For, as we
learn more and more to
understand and practice the Moral Grace being described in
this first
theme of four stanzas, we will slowly begin to see that we all
may come
to possess now, both Faith and Gnosis, which in the age of the consciousness
soul are ours alone to understand
and apply. The
potential fulfillment of the Essence of the Law and the
Prophets now
resides within, and the gifts once long ago sacrificed by the
Kings,
are now treasures that can be found in each human heart.
fourth stanza
Moral Grace - a first iteration
being an attempt to describe and name
something
many people already instinctively know
As spiritual
children, it was our need to
be provided moral guidance. Thus, in the early stages of
the
Evolution of Consciousness, moral rules and laws predominated.
In
Buddhism this took the form of the Eight-Fold Path (right
views, etc.),
in Judaism, the Ten Commandments, the Torah and so
forth, while
in Christianity, the Parables of Christ and the writings of
Paul, and
in Islam, all manner of rules in the Koran coupled with the Idea that all is the
Will of Allah (those Christians who find
this Idea
disagreeable, should review the mystery of the second petition of the Lord's Prayer: Thy kingdom come, thy
will be
done, on earth as it is in heaven).
Yet, in spite of all the rules, human beings have begun
to more
and more insist upon their own right to choose. Everywhere the
rules are
being cast aside, and this rejection of tradition
(while frequently - and wrongly - blamed upon the
cultural West)
is really a consequence of a change within the totality of
humanity due
to the current phase of the Evolution of Consciousness.
Humanity
is stepping out of its spiritual childhood and individuals are
claiming
more and more personal responsibility.
What will
surprise many, as this
transition unfolds, is that this individual spiritual reality
is
clearly recognized in all the various religious writings.
The difference is that when we were children, we
saw these
writings through the lens of our need for these writings to
provide
certainty of belief and moral guidance. But as the
future unfolds
we are to learn to see these same writings with greater
maturity, and
as we do so, we will find they also support our current
condition and
aspirations.
Yes, there is
deep divide between past
and future, which manifests in humanity's religious
communities and
cultures, most obviously in Islam. At the same time, we
need to
avoid accepting the pictures provided us by Media, and instead
speak to
ordinary Muslims. If we do this we will discover that a
moderate
and wise interpretation of the Koran is everywhere, but since
these
voices make no noise, the Media does not see them. Just
as
traditional Judaism has its corresponding esoteric form in
Cabala, so
Islam as its corresponding esoteric from in Sufism (the fools
of Allah
- God).
Recently I read
where one of the authors
of the Left Behind series of novels (undisciplined imagination
and
fancy?), was preaching about the Koran and its views on the
killing of infidels (non-believers).
This is a strangely hypocritical
view, given that this same writer has Christ on His Return (in
the
novels), killing those who are not Christian believers.
Can any
one tell me what is the difference between these asserted
views?
This all raises
a rather perplexing
philosophical, religious and social question. If we are no
longer
spiritual children, how are we to be moral beings without
descending
into some kind of chaos of moral relativism, where there are
no rules
anymore at all, just raw animal impulses. This is, by
the way, an
excellent question.
Yet, if we are
to trust the Divine
Mystery, and have true Faith, then we have been assured that such a
question
must have an answer. The very idea that God. the Divine
Mystery,
would leave humanity abandoned in some kind of an anarchy of a
moral-less evil and ungodly jungle is to mock the Divine
Itself.
Surely there is a Plan, or better yet - Divine order and
form to
our existence.
Well duh!, as
the young people say today.
The Evolution
of Consciousness is the
unfolding of human potential from within outward.
Something
inside us, as we unfold our humanity, contains within it just
what is
needed. This is why I give it the term: Grace. We possess something as a Gift. If
there is
a caveat, it is that we only can unfold it by our own will.
It is
latent and can only come to the fore by our practice and our
intention.
We have to will to be moral. We have to choose.
The first stage
of this is self trust.
We have to have Faith in the Divine within (something
appearing
more and more everywhere). Emerson puts it most
succinctly, in
his lecture The American Scholar: "In self trust all virtues are
comprehended."
This is, of
course, one of the hallmarks
of the epoch of the
consciousness
soul - more and more people are
trusting their own moral/spiritual intuitions over any outside
agency
or institution. No longer do we accept and tolerate what
the
dying hierarchical religious social forms tell us to believe.
We
only have confidence in our own judgment - we know something
trustworthy is living inside of us.
In addition,
something is going on in our
biographies in this Age. We are being more and more
placed in
situations where it is not possible to choose to drop back
into a
dependent child-like moral path. Instead the only choice
is to
rely on ourselves. Each biography lurches from moral
crisis to
moral crisis, where not to choose is not to be allowed.
Life
itself insists: Choose! Choose! Choose!
[ Once upon a time, there was a man who became somebody else. His daughter had a vision in which she saw it happen, saw the new spirit and its dark natural companion (the Shadow) enter into her life...and his and theirs.
The man soon saw that he could not stay in the relationship he was in, yet since he had left this family once before, his soul entered a state of moral gridlock and deep depression ensued. One day he began to walk, having lost any ability with his thinking to take hold of things, and found himself walking up a winding road to a quiet hilltop where he prayed sincerely and deeply, for the first time in many years.
Instantly the
depression was lifted in an act of Grace, and he knew that
either way
he chose was all right. To not choose was the only
flawed way,
for that led to his own descent into illness, perhaps even
madness.
But as to the consequences for others - he chose what
made him the most whole, and then
from that place of wholeness he was still able to love, even
more
deeply than before.]
To appreciate
this in its fullness all we
have to do is look at what the artists tell us, with their
dramas on
stage, in film and on television, or in the songs the singers
sing.
This development is seen everywhere.
For example,
one of my favorite
television writers, David E. Kelley (whom I call America's
Shakespeare), he who has penned much of L. A. Law, Chicago
Hope, Picket
Fences, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public and Boston
Legal, has
one of his characters (the Sheriff) in Picket Fences, say at
the end of
a particularly difficult day, something on the order of: "there are no moral
rules any
more, we are all on our own."
Our very
language speaks of this, for
what in the fifties was meant by "do the right thing," became in the sixties "do your own thing." And, of course, there is that very
difficult
decision that women face today, that appears to divide people
everywhere into seemingly war-making camps - the right to
life, versus
the right to choose.
What this
conflict asks is: Can an
individual know what is moral, without outside guidance in the
form of
some religious authority's given rules of conduct? And,
keep in
mind that those most asserting the right to provide moral
guidance, are
the priests of the dying hierarchical organizations. In
most
cases it is they who are not yet ready to let go the prestige
and power
the claim of such authority grants, while at the same time
their
congregations are beginning to know otherwise. And, lest
we
ignore this aspect, it will certainly be the case that many
will have
no desire to take on the challenge of ambiguity and
uncertainty in true
moral choice, and will then want to remain in a co-dependent
relationship with a supposed moral authority. Some will
not want
to grown into spiritual maturity.
If, as I have
been suggesting, that the
fulfillment of the Essence of the Law and the Prophets is now
emerging
from human hearts, how is that going on, in a practical and
observable
way, within the inner forum of individual consciousness?
I will put the
essential matter this
way...
The human being
has an inner organization
of which we have lost (in the age of a spiritless science) a
clear
knowledge. We simply do not posses a proper language by
which to
describe this inner landscape, so as to be able to answer the
above
question in a concrete, realistic and perhaps even scientific
fashion.
(In fact, it is one of the main social transformations
that is
going on today, from the bottom up - namely a reaching into
language
and reinvigorating its capacity to accurately represent our
inner
realities.)
What concrete
reference can there be, in
the age of science, to such terms as soul and spirit?
It is to help
us answer this question
that the spiritual essence of the meaning of the Kings
(initiates) has,
for a brief time, returned (Steiner was not the only one, but
more on
this later).
The spiritual
essence of the human being
is properly called the "I-am." Although this term, the
"I-am", is
often written in that form, hereinafter in this text I will
write it as
follows: i-AM, seeking thereby
to remind the reader that the i-AM
is not something which is a mere thing, but is rather
something much
much more dynamic. We are, we exist, that is our
spiritual
essence. At the same time, we, as i-AMs,
act - we
choose. That
capacity to act, to choose, to create, in this we are
will-on-fire, so
in giving name to our spirit it is my hope to emphasize this
quality by
downplaying our individuality (i), and
up-playing our fiery
will (AM). We are verbs, not nouns.
We can also
call this i-AM
the ego, but there is a dangerous confusion that can arise
when we
consider the differences between Christian gnostic practice in
this
regard, and the deeper teachings of Buddhism regarding ego.
It
would be going too far to fully resolve this confusion, yet
something
needs be said here, for many will naturally have a concern,
given their
own encounters with Buddhist thought (especially any form of pop
(superficial) -Buddhism).
At best I can
suggest something from
another book it has been my fortune to encounter - the
previously
mentioned and anonymously written Meditations
on
the
Tarot: a journey in to Christian Hermeticism. In this book one will find the following
idea,
which I will paraphrase.
Eastern wisdoms
consider that the core of
the human being is being, and that the
goal of
human development is reached when this core of being
re-integrates itself with the Original Source,
or Being.
This
is frequently described as a voluntary giving up of ego, or self identity.
According to
the author of Meditations, the Christian idea regarding the ego, or the i-AM,
is
different. This i-AM is an
individual essence
(the human being is created in the image and likeness of God),
and the
goal of Christian practice is the meeting of our individual
essence
with the Cosmic Individual Essence that is Love. A
separate
identity remains (for both), even while we become enveloped
within Love
(described in the Gospels in the Parable of the Return of the
Prodigal
Son - the Gospel story of re-integration) - essence within Essence. The
crucial question is put this way: How can
there be Love if there is not a Lover, a Beloved, and the Love
itself
that is to be shared between them? If being
simply merges with Being (out of which
arises
identification leading to compassion), there can be no such
Love. Yet, if essence is to meet
and know Essence, then the Lover, the Beloved and Love (the phase of development in the Evolution of
Consciousness after compassion) will certainly be.
By the way, I
do not believe this
apparent conflict (between Buddhism and Christianity)
regarding the
nature of the ego (or i-AM) is
unresolvable.
The full Idea of the nature of the resolution simply
lies far
outside the intended scope of this small book, although
certain aspects
of this book are meant to contribute to that resolution an a
practical
level.
Now within the
inner
forum of our
consciousness (the soul), the i-AM
(the spirit) sits as the essential center (what Steiner
describes as
that which we only can refer to when we say the word "I"),
while the
rest of consciousness (the unconscious and so forth - all that
is
invisible to others, but which each of us knows - at least in
part and
with great personal intimacy) could be called the soul.
So when
we see another person, we recognize another ego being (another
i-AM),
who
also has a rich inner (soul) life (see all the books being
written
today in an effort to describe soul life, from Gary Zukav's The
Seat
of the Soul, to Robert
Sardello's Facing the
World with Soul).
This inner life
is very complicated, and
materialistic science is only beginning to scratch the surface
of its
realities. However, with regard to the moral question we
have
been trying to understand and appreciate, the following can be
said (at
least at this point in this work):
When the human
being poses a moral
question to him or herself ("is this act I contemplate right or wrong
in a moral sense?"), we have by
Grace the capacity to receive an answer.
In this receiving of an answer we are in that moment
(again by
Grace) inwardly Kings. We are Shepherds in that we have
the faith
that we can know the answers to moral questions, and Kings
when we ask
and inwardly listen and receive. Faith and Gnosis in the
Age of the
consciousness soul are no longer
apart, but are rather united in human
beings that follow the deepest moral sensibilities of their
own hearts
(an action which, as it develops and grows, requires and
results in
more and more strength of character).
In the next section, we mostly focus on Freedom, but we will begin by examining three specific forms in which knowledge of this union of Faith and Gnosis, via Moral Grace, has appeared in modern Western Culture (it is appearing elsewhere, but below I am just going to refer to matters in the cultural West). In this way we will also come to a deeper and more practical appreciation of what has been, and still is, going on in our Civilization.
Freedom
- the theme
(song) of the real challenge of modern life -
fifth stanza
Three New Ways
being an examination of the profound and surprising interrelationship
between the What Would Jesus Do Movement;
the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous; and,
Rudolf Steiner's book: The Philosophy of Freedom
(also known
as, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,)
So far we have
come to understand that
the meaning-essence of the Kings of the original Gospel stories has returned - that is that authentic gnosis is once more being taught in Western Culture,
even
though this Culture is dominated by Materialistic Science.
Further, many members of the religion that is
Christianity want
to believe (perhaps erroneously) that their religion remains
firmly
(and only) rooted in Faith. The ancient wisdom of the
Kings has
been relegated to a mere paganism, and salvation is now
thought to
depend only upon accepting Jesus as our Lord, confessing to
being
saved, and/or in a blind obedience to morally bankrupt
institutional
hierarchies - the all too often hypocritical priests and
preachers, who
claim the right and the authority to tell other individuals
what to
believe and how to be moral.
But the world
is not ruled, or given
order, by these vain authorities. The world order (as we
shall
come to more and more understand) is in quite other Hands.
A
claim of moral authority by one person over another person is being
replaced by Moral Grace from Above - the Law and the Prophets are
becoming the
spiritual treasure of each individual heart.
Next, we shall examine in detail just how the phenomena of modern Culture reveals that with the co-participation of incarnate human beings, Christ is deeply active in our individual lives.
*
Not everyone is
the same. This
obvious fact is often overlooked, especially when people want
to think
that their personal Way is the very best Way, and all the rest
somehow
lesser means or beliefs. Fortunately, in the epoch of the consciousness
soul, this tendency may become extinct to a great degree. This is
because
one of the items we all first have to learn on our own Path is
humility
(what in the John Gospel is demonstrated for us by Christ's "washing of the feet"). The journey through humility then, as
lived in
our individual biographies, can soon cause us to clearly
realize that
each Thou is to be entirely free to choose their own Way, just
as we
recognize our own need to also be free to choose.
Even so, much
is accomplished in
communities, and there are three communities that I have come
to some
personal knowledge concerning, that can serve as excellent
examples of
not only Moral Grace in practice, but of the relationship of
Freedom to
that very activity. All the same, we do need to keep in
mind the
very legitimate question: Whether it is possible for an individual
to have real
moral knowledge, independent of seemingly authoritative and
traditionally acceptable sources, such as religious texts? And, as a necessary corollary question: What does it mean if
ones
moral intuitions of the heart conflict with these traditional
authorities?
In modern American Culture, for example, Christian Faith is the foremost religious practice. Surely if God - the Divine Mystery - were to offer something new, something beyond moral rules, He/She/It would certainly not leave out ordinary Christians. This is so. At about the same time that Rudolf Steiner (a King) was publishing his book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom) in Germany in 1894, in the United States in 1897 was published In His Steps, written by Charles M. Sheldon (a Shepherd), a young minister who was then living in Kansas. The fact of the co-participation of Highest Grace, in the more or less simultaneousness of these writings, is not to be overlooked by the way.
the Shepherd's Tale
This book (In
His
Steps) is a fictional (or
imaginative)
account (a story) of what happens
in a certain church community when a
particular question is faced. This question is: What
does it mean
to practice being a Christian, such as is described in the New
Testament (I Peter 2:21) as follows: "For hereunto were ye
called:
because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example,
that ye
should follow in
his
steps." (emphasis added) [This being
the
first lines of Chapter I of Sheldon's book, and of course the
basis for
its title.]
The rest of the
book is an effort to work
out this question of Christian practice in quite pragmatic
ways.
At the same time at the very beginning, certain
aspects of
the book's Idea and its method are laid out very carefully.
One of
the central characters, for example, asks this question from
the pulpit
in the second Chapter: "I want volunteers from the First Church
who will pledge
themselves, earnestly and honestly for an entire year, not to
do
anything without first asking the question, "What
would
Jesus do?"
And after asking that question, each one will follow
Jesus as
exactly as he knows how, no matter what the result may be."
This asking
(faith) and knowing (gnosis)
is then elaborated a few pages later, as follows: (a
question is
being asked of the minister who made the above challenge, by a
parishioner...)
"I am a little in
doubt as to the source of our knowledge
concerning what Jesus would do. Who is to decide for me
just what
He would do in my case? It is a different age.
There are
many perplexing questions in our civilization that are not
mentioned in
the teachings of Jesus. How am I going to tell what he
would do?"
"There is no way that
I know of," replied the pastor,
"except as we study Jesus through the medium of the Holy
Spirit.
You remember what Christ said speaking to His disciples
about the
Holy Spirit: "Howbeit when He the
spirit of
truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth; for He
shall not
speak for Himself but what things soever He shall hear, then
shall He
speak; and He shall declare unto you the things that are to
come.
He shall glorify me; for He shall take of mine and
declare it
unto you. All things whatsoever the Father hath are
mine;
therefore said I, that He taketh of mine and shall declare it
unto to
you."
There
is no other test that I know of. We shall all have to
decide what
Jesus would do after going to that source of knowledge."
My interjection
- the quote above appears
to be from John 16:13-15. Here is a different
translation than
the one that Sheldon used of the same passage, but which
includes the
sentence before verse 13, that is John 16: 12-15: "I have yet many things to say to you, but you
cannot bear
them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide
you into
the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but
whatever he
hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things
that are to
come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine
and
declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine;
therefore I
said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you." Since this quote that Sheldon uses here
concerns
the process of gnosis ("going to that source of knowledge"),
are
we to be surprised that he has chosen to quote from the Gospel
of
John (the Gospel of Gnosis)? {I have
much more to say to you, but you can't bear it just yet.
But when
the other comes, the breath of truth, he will guide you in the
ways of
all truth, because he will not speak on his own, but will
speak what he
hears and announce to you what's coming. He will glorify
me,
because he will take of what is mine and announce it to you.
Everything the Father has is mine: that's why I said he
will take
of what is mine and announce it to you}.]
To continue
with Sheldon's book...
"What if others say of
us, when we do certain things, that
Jesus would not do so?" asked the superintendent of railroads.
"We cannot prevent
that. But we must be absolutely
honest with ourselves. The standard of Christian action
cannot
vary in most of our acts."
"And yet what one
church member thinks Jesus would do,
another refuses to accept as His probable course of action.
What
is to render our conduct uniformly Christ-like? Will it
be
possible to reach the same conclusions always in all cases?"
asked
President Marsh.
Mr. Maxwell
was silent some time. Then he answered, "No; I don't
know that we
can expect that. But when it comes to a genuine, honest,
enlightened following of Jesus' steps, I cannot believe there
will be
any confusion either in our own minds or in the judgment of
others.
We must be free from fanaticism on one hand and too much
caution
on the other. If Jesus' example is the example for the
world to
follow, it certainly must be feasible to follow it. But
we need
to remember this great fact. After we have asked the
Spirit to
tell us what Jesus would do and have received an answer to it,
we are
to act regardless of the results to ourselves. Is that
understood?"
The process
Sheldon seems to understand
is very clear. We are to inwardly ask, and then listen
for the
Holy Spirit to tell us what Jesus would do. In this way
we are
living out Christ's admonition: "Ask and it shall be
given
you, seek and you shall find, knock and it shall be opened
unto you." Matthew 7:7 {Ask
and
you will receive, look and you will find, knock and you will
be
admitted.}
So we have, at
the beginning of Sheldon's
book, a clear outline of how to practice Moral Grace. In
the rest
of the book Sheldon attempts to imagine what actions his
characters
might take, and as Sheldon himself is an early Temperance
(anti-Saloon)
advocate, the rest of the story has certain odd
characteristics
connected to the time and place, and the related dominant
cultural
values in which Sheldon himself lived. All the same, his
central intuition as to the
method
of Moral Grace in action remains
valid, in spite of the limitations of his imagination to flesh
it out
in a way with which our modern sensibilities can easily
identify.
Now the curious thing is that at the same time a young Shepherd (a pastor in Kansas) was coming to this understanding, a young King (Steiner had been working on this problem from his mid-20's to his early 30's) was drawing the same conclusions, albeit in a quite different context and by a quite different means. Where Sheldon created an imaginative picture (a story), Steiner wrote a book squarely in the German philosophical tradition, in which its remarks on moral life fully paralleled what Sheldon outlined above.
There is also,
due to the differing
nature of their approaches (Sheldon the Shepherd, traveling
the Path of
Faith, and Steiner the King, traveling the Path of Gnosis), a
considerable difference in how they framed their understanding
of what
I have called here: Moral Grace
For Sheldon the
matter was handled in a
very pragmatic (and typically American) fashion. It was
what
worked that concerned him, and his question was: How do we best follow
Christ
Jesus in practice? For
Steiner, a
middle European, the need was to express the philosophic Ideal
in a
form consistent with the dominant paradigm of the 19th
Century, Natural
Science. Thus, his question was: On what basis can
questions,
regarding the freedom and moral nature of our inner life, be
understood
in the Age of Science?
At the same
time, in both cases, each was
faced with the reality of human nature, and our actual
relationship to
Spirit. They just came at that reality from different
directions,
with the result that the same reality ends
up being
described in considerably different ways.
the King's Tale
With Steiner,
however, we have to take a
somewhat different course than we took with Sheldon.
What was a
novel, and an act of the imagination for Sheldon, was for
Steiner an
attempt to take an introspective look at the problem of
knowledge in a
specific field of formal philosophy (what is called there epistemology), following logical and observational principles
modeled
on natural science.
Did you
understand that last sentence?
Possibly not, and that is a good example of what will be
faced by
most people trying to read Steiner's The
Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity (Freedom),
written in German and then translated into English.
Because
of this I am going to approach the content in this book of
Steiner's
also as a story.
Now keep in
mind that this story is
coming from a King, not a Shepherd, that is from someone with
direct
experience of the Divine (Gnosis), not a relationship based
upon Faith.
According to his autobiography, Steiner began having
such
experiences from the time he was eight years old, and these
continued
throughout his life. Here we are looking at a book
written in his
early 30's, after he had acquired his doctorate degree in
philosophy.
His problem was to take his spiritual experience and
then root it
in the soundness of the German philosophical tradition, and in
the
methods of thinking and observation which were at the basis of
natural
science. He looked not for the sometimes vague and
beautiful
mysticism of a St. John of the Cross, or a St. Teresa of
Avila, but for
the precision and exactitude of pure mathematics and
theoretical
physics.
He looked
inward, and began to describe,
albeit using the language of philosophy, what exact
observation
(introspection) might find within the inner (soul) life of the
human
being. In a sense, his description is a map of an
invisible
territory, that is only knowable if we ourselves look at the
same
invisible place within our own inwardness. The book then
consists
of a series of questions one can place before ones self (the
map), that
can only be answered when we authentically and objectively
observe
ourselves (the actual territory). The book also seeks to
draw
this map in as an exact a way as possible, because the goal
was to
bring to spiritual inquiry the precision of the adventure of
science.
Remember what I said above in discussing the unusual
challenge
for those with modern direct experience of the Divine Mystery
- the
need to make spiritual experience fit in with the spirit of
the Age
(Science), that is to show how it's seeking and achievements
can be
repeated by others.
Having followed
this map, I will next
relate not so much what Steiner describes, but rather my own
explorations, using the same language conventions which
Steiner used -
my own version of the story as seen
under the
guidance of his map, The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom)
(or what I sometimes want to call: The Philosophy of
Free
Becoming). [This is by the way,
based upon
over 35 years of introspective life, for details see Appendix
7: In Joyous
Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship]
Deep in our
soul, our spirit asks several
fundamental questions. Here are just a few: What am I?
What
is the purpose of existence? What is the truth?
How do I
know the truth? Am I a free human being? What does
it mean
to be a free human being? Am I a moral human being?
How do
I know what
is moral? As a
human being, I have desires, hungers, needs and wants.
Am I free
when I live out these hungers and wants? Can I choose
what I
want? Is my will free, or am I just a creature of
appetite and
habit?
On the journey
to answering these
questions, Steiner points in the direction of first and
foremost
examining the nature of thinking itself, for it is in thinking
that we
first pose these questions. Yet, thinking does not exist
in a
vacuum, but rather is influenced by our emotional life and by
our life
of apparent instincts and hungers. With regard then to
acts of
thinking, his map suggests that we notice the difference
between
thinking and experience, or what he sometimes calls: concept
and
percept. We have experiences, outward in the sense world
and
inward in the soul world, and these are percepts
(perceptions).
To these experiences (percepts) we attach ideas or
concepts -
that is we think at the same time
we experience, and the meaning of the experiences, both outer
and
inner, is provided by the act of thinking.
For example, in
the simplest way we know
the names of all manner of objects. This is a tree, that
is a
car. As we grow, the concepts and ideas we have about
something
that arises either in the sense world, or inwardly in the soul
(such as
an experience of an emotion like fear) becomes more
complicated.
We learn, and in this way
our conceptual life deepens, so that
someone who is a good cook, or a good car mechanic, will know
(think)
all manner of things, that someone less experienced will not
know
(think).
And, just as we
can know about outer
world objects, we also can think about inner world objects.
A
Tibetan Buddhist, or a contemplative Nun, will have then
considerable
knowledge from thinking about the life of meditation and
prayer.
Steiner's map
suggests that there is a
hierarchy of objects in the soul (mind) as regards our
concepts, for
which he uses the terms: mental representations, concepts and
ideas.
We just need to remember that the crucial matter is to
look at
our own thinking and see how, and if, such names (mental
representation, concepts and ideas) can be related to what we
actually
experience when we look within. We are being asked by
Steiner, in
taking an approach to introspection out of the scientific
spirit, to
make careful observations and fine distinctions.
In this way,
and using Steiner's map (the
King's Tale), we begin a journey of detailed examination of
our inner
life that can be as exact and precise as that which a
scientist comes
to when he examines an unknown compound to determine from
which
elements and molecules it has been created. All
manner of
objects can be found there, in the mind or inner life, such as
(no need
for the reader to know these, I just here give a few
of the names to lay out some of the more general features of
this inner
landscape): cultivated feelings, raw emotions, antipathies,
sympathies,
likes and dislikes, conscious and unconscious acts of will,
mental
representations, concepts, ideas, intuitions, and moral
imaginations.
As it is that
Steiner is a King, it is
necessarily part of his intention to make this map capable of
leading
the reader to the same state of being (gnosis, or what
is
sometimes called initiation in the cultural Center, and
enlightenment
in the cultural East). The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom) is
a map to the inner world created by a King in order that those
who
follow it can come, through their own effort at thinking, to
authentic
spiritual experience. In the cultural Far West, in the
Americas,
this path leads through the development
of earthly
character (rather than directly at enlightenment or initiation), a matter that will become more clear as our
discussion
deepens over the next chapters.
The freedom
Steiner wants for us, in
working through his book The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom),
is not political freedom, but what might be called inner
freedom or spiritual freedom.
He lays out his map so that we can, by
the growing development of intended and attentive thinking,
find our
way through the labyrinth of the conscious and unconscious
elements of
our mind to the gateway that lies in the depths of that mind,
and which
leads from our own essence (spirit) and inwardness (soul) to
the
Essence and Inwardness of the Universe.
Now what I have
been calling Moral Grace,
and what Sheldon describes from his view as a Shepherd (asking
ourselves What Would Jesus Do, and then trusting that the Holy
Spirit
will bring inwardly to us the answer), is in the King's Tale a
significant feature of the landscape of this inner world of
soul, but
not the totality. So we have here from Sheldon, the
Shepherd, how
Moral Grace is seen from the point of view of Faith, and now
from
Steiner, how Moral Grace is seen from the point of view of
Gnosis.
This feature of the inner landscape Steiner has called
moral
imagination, which he speaks of in the text in the following
ways:
"To be free means to be able of ones own accord to determine by moral imagination those mental pictures (motives) which underlie the action."
"...as a moral being, I am an individual and have laws of my very own."
"Moral action, then, presupposes, in addition to the faculty of having moral ideas (moral intuition) and moral imagination, the ability to transform the world of percepts without violating the natural laws by which these are connected. This ability is called moral technique."
"Moral laws, on the other hand, are first created by us. We cannot apply them until we have created them."
"He [meaning human beings in
general, ed.] has
purely ideal reasons which lead him to select from the sum of
his
concepts just one in particular, and then to translate it into
action.
But his action will belong to perceptible reality.
What he achieves will thus be identical with a
quite
definite content of perception."
Now in the
above quotations, Steiner has
used certain terms which are in other places in his book more
fully
elaborated, and which in the quotes above are meant to have a
specific
and exact meaning - that is to describe and point out
something in the
inner landscape that all can observe and know, such as mental
picture,
moral intuition, ideal reasons and so forth. However,
rather than
get into a long explanatory elaboration of what Steiner meant,
I will
simply now briefly cover this by sharing what I have learned
through my
own experience of following this map to the inner landscape of
the
soul. This is not meant, by the way, to replace the
inner work in
Steiner's text, for the very reading of that text is a
developmental
exercise for the soul and spirit of the human being.
Here, I am
just endeavoring to sketch out the general Idea of the moral
aspect of his book,
so that we can come to see how this way
of seeing the Idea relates also to how Sheldon saw this same Idea (the Idea of Moral
Grace).
When I am
confronted in life by a
specific moral dilemma, a dilemma that demands of me that I
make a
moral choice, there are basically two ways I can go in how in
my mind I
consider the problem. One way is to draw from memory
some learned
moral ideal, given perhaps by admonitions or rules acquired
from a
religious text, or perhaps from a learned relative or teacher.
Another way is to ask myself what I
think is the
right thing to do.
More and more
in our Age, individuals
have been choosing to do the latter, and to leave aside the
former.
Our current state of development in the Evolution of
Consciousness is such that we are learning more and more to
trust
(recall Emerson's: In self trust all virtues are comprehended) our own intuitions of what the good is in any
specific
situation, than we are any longer willing to trust a rule.
The
reason this is so has nothing to do with what critics of this
call
moral relativism, and everything to do with an emerging
intelligence in
our own being. This personal intelligence (our own moral
genius)
actually sees the particular dilemma with greater
clarity,
including our own relationship to the question. A rule,
on the
other hand, being of an abstract and idealistic nature, does
not take
account of the individual characteristics of the situation we
are
facing.
The reality is
that when a moral dilemma
approaches us, it calls forth to our individual moral
intelligence to
respond. This dilemma in our personal biography doesn't
say: go
to the library of the mind and look in a book for the right
thing to
do. On the contrary, the very personal nature of the
dilemma in
our individual biography demands an equally personal response.
We have to
act. Yet, the conflict naturally arises,
as both the Shepherd (Sheldon) and the King (Steiner) saw at
the end of
the 19th Century - how do we know the good in such times of moral
crisis?
Sheldon's
answer was that we have been
given, in the Gospels, the clear teaching to follow In
His
steps, and that in asking What
Would
Jesus Do, we frame in ourselves the
necessary first and right question. After which, we
trust (have
faith in) the Holy Spirit to bring to us (gnosis - knowledge
of) the
answer. Steiner's answer is that we create an inner
picture of
the dilemma (a moral imagination), and trust ourselves to
experience a
corresponding moral intuition of the good as that is needed in
the
moment as regards that particular moral question.
In practice,
although the words used to
describe the process are different, it is the same very
human
inner
gesture in each case. We frame
a
question, and we seek the highest answer in response.
And, at the
same time, it is an
inner
act of spirit on our part to do
this.
We have framed the question inwardly, and looked
inwardly
for the answer. Where Sheldon refers to the activity of
the Holy
Spirit in the response, Steiner speaks of moral intuition, and
by the
term intuition he means the exact same thing - namely that
such
intuitions are not merely an isolated inner act, but given
that the
human inwardness is a gateway to the Spirit, when we
experience a moral
intuition we have a like encounter with Spirit as that
referred to by
Sheldon.
[Another way to
see this from the point
of view of the Divine Mystery is as follows. The Divine
Mystery,
in the form of the Holy Spirit, gives Itself to us. We,
It's
children, receive from within (Above) via our authentic
seeking questioning, as a free gift in this time, knowledge of
the Good
- the Good being some of the very substance of the Divine Mystery. This inner
Eucharist is
then Moral Grace in action, or what Sheldon calls the Holy
Spirit.
Another way to see this is that it is a kind of dialog
between
our undeveloped self, and our highest nature, which we
sometimes call
conscience. We then consciously exchange or have
conscious
interaction with our conscience on the path to coming to
knowledge of
the Good. We seek the conscience, and this seeking
becomes a
co-participation in the highest that is within the own soul.
Conscience is the substance of
the Divine Mystery
given to us (as a part of us) through an act of Grace from
above, via
the within (the
kingdom of heaven is within you - Luke
17:21).]
This all to
brief and limited explanation
then is the main characteristic of our Age, which Steiner in
his stories calls the Epoch of the Consciousness Soul, and
which in
his book Theosophy he
describes as
follows:
"By causing the
self-existent true and good to come to
life in his inner being, the human being raises himself above
the mere
sentient-soul. A light is kindled in her [the soul, ed.] which is imperishable. In so far
as the soul lives
in this light, she is a participant in the eternal. With
the
eternal she unites her own existence. What the soul
carries
within herself of the true and the good is immortal in her.
Let
us call that which shines forth in the soul as eternal, the
consciousness soul."
What Sheldon
expresses in the question What Would Jesus Do is the seeking by the Faithful after the highest
good as
they might be able to come to know it. What Steiner
expresses in
the question framed by the moral imagination (the creation of
the
picture question of the moral dilemma) is the same inner
gesture of
seeking knowledge (Gnosis) of the highest good. Both
Sheldon and
Steiner expect the Divine Mystery to participate, and what the
one
calls the Holy Spirit, the other calls moral intuition, and
again each
means the same thing, for the mind (soul and spirit) of the
human being
in reaching inwardly for an answer to the particular moral
dilemma
faced by them as an individual, through this reaching one does
in fact
come into contact with the Eternal.
This then is
the situation of modern
humanity - this possibility to know individually what is moral
in any
given particular and personal moral dilemma, and which I have
called
here, precisely because the Divine Mystery participates in the
creation
of this potential and its activation: Moral Grace. [This
situation of
modern humanity is more present in the cultural Far West than
elsewhere, a complicated matter beyond the current scope of
inquiry.
Let us just say that a highly developed individuality is
a
necessary preliminary stage before the Evolution of
Consciousness can
call forth the Moral Grace of the consciousness soul, and that
in the
cultural Far West individualism is stronger in the present than in other parts of the world. Other
parts of
the world have some of this development, but in general lag
behind to a
degree, for the moment. Advancement of this kind - the
Evolution
of Consciousness - proceeds in waves as it were, and does not
arrive all at once everywhere.]
It is though an
act of Divine Grace that
we possess the capacity to know the Good (the Moral), and the
True as
an act of individual question and answering. Moreover it
is an
act, which is clearly meant to enable us to be inwardly free
of any
confining and limited religious dogma. The days of the
authority
of priests, or pastors and preachers (and mullas and masters),
to
define individual human moral activity are meant to be over,
and it is
the Divine Mystery Itself that has created in us this capacity
to seek,
to ask and to find.
Naturally there
are many questions, and I
will try to anticipate and answer a few of them next.
We can
distinguish the act of knowing what
the good (the moral) is in a given situation, from
our acting upon that knowledge (moral technique - or how we
carry
out in practice our knowledge of the good). That is, we
remain
inwardly free to follow, or not, what we know to be right to
do.
This has always been the case, and will always be the
case.
Knowledge of the good and the true (What Would Jesus Do) does
not
compel. We still must choose
to
follow this knowledge. Recall what Sheldon wrote: "After we have asked
the
Spirit to tell us what Jesus would do and have received an
answer to
it, we are to act regardless of the results to ourselves.
Is that
understood?"
While Sheldon,
the Shepherd, has
understood then Moral Grace, he has not quite yet understood
Freedom.
He still has to preach, and in so doing instructs those
who would
take up this activity, that they "are to act regardless
of the
results to themselves".
Sheldon
understood Moral Grace, but not yet Freedom - that which comes
from
distinguishing knowledge of the good from acting upon that
knowledge.
People will
disagree concerning what is
moral in a given situation, in particular if they approach the
situation as if there were a set of rules that covered all
possible
realities. So some will think that all killing or
all
abortions are morally wrong, and will judge others, who act
contrary to
their rules as regards such actions, as morally incorrect.
But
this is not the question really being faced by either Sheldon
or
Steiner.
First let us
take up abortion for a bit
as an example, since it is question that dominates the world
in many
forms and ways.
First, an
abortion always takes place
with regard to a particular individual person, and is part of
their
individual biography. There is then the moral
question that
belongs to them to answer: Do I have an abortion and why?
Second,
in a time when many such actions are being taken, those who
have as
part of their biography the concern as to what it means to end
the life
of a fetus, come up with a personal question of their own: How
do I
relate to a world and the culture in which I live, where large
numbers
of abortions are happening, which I believe are murder?
As we know, in
the case of both questions
there are many individual circumstances and many individual
responses.
Some women use abortion as a kind of contraception.
Some
women never really ask themselves the essential question.
Some
women agonize greatly, and never feel (whatever their
decision) that
they made the right choice. Some who oppose abortion
generally,
will work to convince the potential mothers to take the baby
to term
and at least give it up for adoption. Some others will
picket
clinics and try to make their clients and doctors and nurses
feel
guilty. Some even commit crimes in order to do what they
think
their conscience requires.
In looking at
these social facts, we can
see (in spite of what some say is a Truth which all must
apply) how in
each individual biography a crisis of choice is confronted
with greater
or lesser consciousness. What this shows us is exactly
how the
epoch of the consciousness soul is unfolding. None of
these
agonizing trials lies outside the concern and interest and
support of
the Divine Mystery.
To return to
the Shepherd's Tale and the
Kings Tale...
Nowhere in
either work is the question
put in such a way that we judge what the other person is
doing.
We don't ask What Would Jesus Do, or
seek a
moral intuition, about someone else's moral dilemma. We
can only
ask these questions about our own moral dilemmas, and the
operation of
Moral Grace is such that we can only receive an answer to a
question
which is ours alone to ask. The Divine Mystery has not
said to us
- look within and I will tell you what other people should
morally do.
There are quite clear reasons why this is so.
Each human
biography is unique.
Yes, there are many similarities, but each of us is a
completely
different individual and our biographies are just as
individual.
Simple observation shows us this. This means that
a moral
dilemma in my biography, regardless of any superficial
comparisons, is
in no way the same as a similar moral dilemma in yours.
We are
very much facing our own trials, and because abstract
idealstic rules
can't really comprehend the nuances of the distinctions and
differences, we have by Moral Grace the means to know what is
right to
do in our particular and unique situation. The Divine
Mystery has
created us individuals, and Loves us as individuals and knows
that our
needs are also individual.
The broader
social implications of this
we will face later, but for now we need to appreciate that
Moral Grace
only operates as individual knowledge of the good and the true
(What
Would Jesus Do), and in no way
provides us any abstract rule or code by
which to judge the morality of the other, the Thou (who bears within themselves the same personal
Moral
Grace).
We can also do
a poor job of asking.
We can be quite inauthentic and dishonest in how we
frame the
question, and we can also let ourselves believe we have an
answer which
is quite self serving and in error. We are after
all quite
human, and there is a good reason the Lord's Prayer contains
the plea: "And lead us not into
temptation, but deliver us from evil"
Matthew
6:13 {And do not put us to the test, but
snatch us from the
Evil One's clutches, ...}. The
act of
asking the question in an authentic and honest way, and the
act of
listening inwardly in a selfless and open fashion, is not an
easy act.
Much darkness in us will turn us away from the truth.
One
way we can know that the answer is the correct one will be
that it asks
of us something we might well not like doing (which truth
Sheldon
understood, which is why he tried to insist that the knowledge
be acted
upon). True moral activity is often difficult, and
frequently
comes with a cost (for a wonderful dramatic elaboration of
this
reality, see the film: Pay it
Forward from the book of the same
name by
Catherine Ryan Hyde).
Let us pause
here a moment and consider
this movie more intimately, for it touches an aspect of moral
conduct
which we might describe as being pro-active rather than as
re-active.
Normally in life the moral dilemma offered to us by the
individual biography comes toward us in a circumstance of
crisis.
The dilemma confronts us. In
the movie Pay it
Forward, the teaching intuited there
is
framed in such a that in what way or how we can act morally
pro-actively (creatively) in the world other than re-actively
(that is
only on the basis of being confronted in crisis).
In the film
this pro-active creative
morality (something also common in this Age - see Civil
Society,
doctors without borders, etc.) is outlined as follows: First,
it
involves a generosity between two strangers (a re-active
dilemma
usually involves people we already know). The young boy
in the
film (Jesus' age at the Temple?) has been asked by a school
teacher to think
of an idea that could change the world.
His life experience is hard, such that he believes "everything sucks". So his idea is to challenge us to do three pro-active moral acts as gifts to three strangers. The moral nature of these acts comes from their generosity, and the fact that it is difficult or hard for us to be this generous is an important aspect of this self-chosen moral conduct.
He is fighting
against us accepting the
way things are (or appears to him - everything sucks), and wants us to have faith in the goodness of
other
people, such that when we do this act of generosity, we also
ask them
to pass it on - to Pay it
Forward. He learns a hard
lesson in the
film, that you can't actually fix a person
(see the 12 Steps
next below), but the person who is inspired by our generosity,
to be
themselves generous in a difficult way to three others, could
very well
begin to fix (heal) themselves.
To return to
our main theme...
In many ways,
however, Moral Grace really
comes down to practice. We have
to awaken inwardly and become active
there. Without our willing it, nothing happens.
Moral Grace
needs our activity to manifest. We have to sincerely
ask, and be
willing to accept the consequences of knowing what the right
thing to
do is. We should expect to get it wrong, as often as
not, for we
are here speaking of a very subtle and real inner experience,
that
requires a certain discipline and silence in the soul in order
to have
the right space in which to appear. We will also do
actions we
know are wrong. We have asked and been answered and we
do not
follow the answer. The activity of the Holy Spirit
(moral
intuition) does not beat us over the head inwardly, but is
more like a
whisper, that well-known small, still and quiet voice. Knowledge of the Good
does
not compel action upon that knowledge.
Here, from my
biography, is a story told
to me by someone of quiet personal grace (I will in all
probability get
some of the details wrong). This person described to me
a
situation where she was sitting watching some children at
play, the
children themselves watched over by their mothers. The
mothers
chatted and then occasionally acted, not always just looking
out for
their own child, but often taking in and acting upon the whole
play
situation. Now my friend on occasion sees Angels, and in
this
instance an Angel was near where she sitting on a park bench.
At
one point the Angel comments as follows "See, do." - in this way highlighting the moral activity
(love)
at the center of the overseeing of the play situation by the
various
mothers. One first sees, and then does. Now this
seeing is
twofold, being both outward and inward. One must take in
the
situation - the ordinary call to moral action (see the need to
act) and
know the good (see the moral nature of the required act).
In
life, this seeing of the situation and the good (the required
act) are
often united in an almost seamless way, the one immediately
flowing
into the other, or "See, do".
So far then we
have considered the Shepherd's Tale and
the King's
Tale, and seen their
inner correspondence. But life is often lived in many
kinds of
harsh circumstances, and some moral problems run deep, such
that we
seem almost possessed by evil and demonic forces. As
alcoholics
and their families know, for example, demon
rum is terribly destructive, as are all kinds of what we call
addictions and other seemingly unchangeable habits of
behavior.
But just as we have heard so far of the wisdom-filled
experience
of a Shepherd and a King, so now we come to the wisdom-filled
experience of a couple of Healers, and the development of what
are
called: The Twelve Steps, applied in myriad places now, but
originally
created as the founding practices of Alcoholics Anonymous.
the Healers' Tale
As an addict in
recovery, I can speak
from experience about these kinds of moral dilemmas, which
involve deep
and seemingly permanent behavior patterns, whose origin is not
easy to
understand, and for which, in a way, there seems to be no
cure.
Something exists within the inwardness (the soul), that
has to be
learned about and lived with. That's why we say "in recovery," not "recovered." You
don't get
over it, like one might remove the symptoms of the common
cold.
You only find a means to master it (instead of it
mastering you).
In my own thinking I call this process (the Twelve Steps
seen as
a whole): the
elevation of the spirit for the mastery of the soul.
What I mean by
this, and what the Twelve
Steps can accomplish, is not a direct attack on the root of
the problem
of habitual out of control behavior, but rather a kind of
process of inner education, by which the
individual, in the company of others, learns to live life on a
different basis than before. Through this learning (the
Twelve
Steps), and the social influence of the companionship of
others with
similar problems, the individuality (the spirit) learns to
hold in
check the demon (my disease)
which seems to live permanently within the
depths of our inwardness (the soul). This process
involves, among
many other actions, a kind of constant moment to moment, day
to day,
brutally honest self-reflection.
The Twelve
Steps came into existence
through the meeting, in the early 1930's, of Bill W. and
Doctor Bob,
two men whose own struggles with alcoholism had resisted all
their
efforts to pass beyond. I'll leave aside the stories of
this
meeting, its growth and then its evolution so as to include
many
others, as well as its contextual background, which anyone can
read
about in what is called: the big book of Alcoholics
Anonymous (at the same time
suggesting that
this is a story that everyone would gain from understanding).
Instead, let us just go to the Steps as they are
understood today.
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol -- that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought
through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact
with God
as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will
for us and
the power to carry that out.
12. Having
had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we
tried to
carry this message to others, and to practice these principles
in all
our affairs.
Now, if the
reader will look carefully at
these Twelve Steps, it should be obvious how it is that they
too are
inwardly related to the understanding of Moral Grace offered
to us by a
Shepherd and a King. At the same time, the Twelve
Steps
approach to Moral Grace has to go much deeper than the
Shepherd's Tale,
for it undertakes to
transform
the basic nature of the individual,
not just seek after an answer to a particular moral question.
Again, like
with Sheldon and Steiner, the
language used is different, but still the Healers looked
inwardly at
the same reality, and just used the language with which they
were most
comfortable to describe what they learned. For example,
the
Healers pursued knowledge of His will, but
left to the
individual how that was to be understood (as we understand him). Again, they looked within for the
highest moral
understanding, all the while recognizing that each individual
needed to
interpret this experience in his or her own way.
In addition,
they went deeper. They
sought not only to know the moral and the good (God's Will as we
understand it), but to transform
their character (remove shortcomings).
They also sought to redeem the past (make amends), a present action which when done (as those
know who
actually practice it) changes you. Nor were these
matters to be
abandoned when done, but rather the whole was to represent an
acquired
daily spiritual practice, which had the result of leading to a
spiritual awakening.
Keep in mind
here what has been said
above about character. The Twelve Steps can be a path of character
transformation, and it is no
accident that in
the Far West of world culture, where the Original Peoples
valued (and
still value) character above all else, that a spiritual path
directed
right at character transformation would naturally arise.
In a very real
sense, the Twelve Steps (the Healers' Tale) are a middle realm in between the work of Faith
and the
work of Gnosis. Sheldon's version of Moral Grace is the
simplest
as goes with his vocation, a Shepherd to the faithful.
Steiner's
version is the most complicated, not only being philosophical
and
scientific, but the moral question is only part of a much
richer map of
the landscape he would have us visit on what is intended as a
path of
initiation. With the Twelve Steps, we get something in
between.
On the one hand it is clearly not as simple as Sheldon's
imaginative presentation, and on the other not nearly as
complicated as
Steiner's map. The Twelve Steps also partake of that
remarkable
American quality we know as pragmatism. They are not
theoretical
at all, but are worked out entirely from practice - the only
question
was/is: what works.
As everyone knows, however, the Twelve Steps are not a panacea. This as well has become understood pragmatically, for it is out of the Twelve Step work that we get the idea of the difference between merely talking the talk, and actually walking the walk. Anyone can learn the vocabulary of What Would Jesus Do, of the Philosophy of Freedom, or of the Twelve Steps. But being able to use the language (talk the talk) is quite different from the pragmatic and intimate personal knowledge of our own inner life that comes from the practical application in life (walking the walk) of these ideas.
*
Before we go on
to the next aspect of our
considerations of Freedom, let us weave together the various
elements
of our story thus far.
At the
beginning of Christianity, there
were two Ways of meeting the Divine Mystery, with the older
one
receding, while the newer one comes to the fore.
The newer
one, mediated by a priesthood, was the Way of the Shepherds, a
Way of
Faith, while the older, direct and personal, was the Way of
the Kings,
a Way of Gnosis. At the same time, Christ entered the
world in
between two quite different epochs in the Evolution of human
Consciousness - in between the third epoch, characterized by
ancient
mysteries and hierarchical social structures, and the fifth
epoch,
characterized by individuality, free moral choice and
community
transformation arising out of the social commons.
Christ, in mediating between these two epochs - during the fourth epoch, took the Way of the Ancient Hebrews, what the Gospel stories called the Law and the Prophets, and promised their fulfillment - a New Way, and taught us, as individuals, how to accomplish this. But a task such as this is not easy, and does not take place all at once. The Old Way, with its outside rules of moral behavior (top down from an organized priesthood), had to slowly move aside for the New. This direction is pointed out in Christ's saying that the highest commandment was to Love God with all our heart, and all our mind, and all our spirit, with the second like unto it, namely to Love our Neighbor as ourselves.
Christ, as
Creator, also added something
to human nature, which we have here been calling Moral Grace.
Rather than morality coming from the outside inward (the
third
epoch, the Law and the Prophets), in the future it was to come
from the
inside outward (the fifth epoch, the Law and the Prophets
fulfilled,
through human freedom). This fact has been captured for
us in
three profound Ways, namely through the work of Sheldon (a
Shepherd), brought to life in In
His
Steps, through the work of Steiner
(a
King), brought to life in The
Philosophy
of Freedom, and finally through
the community
work in which the
Twelve
Steps live, and in which healing
arises out
of practices supported by that brotherhood and sisterhood on
which are
shared the agonizing trials in life.
No one needs
more proof of the existence
of Moral Grace, than what lives in the following of these
three paths,
all of which have the same inner gesture, characterized by
Christ
Himself in the promise: "Seek and you shall find, ask and you
shall receive, knock
an it shall be opened up to you"
Matthew 7:7 {Ask and
you will receive, look and you will find, knock and you will
be
admitted.}.
All of these
Ways recognize that what is
urged is not easy, and this leads to certain yet to be raised
questions
that have lurked in the background from the very beginning:
What
is the meaning of Evil in human life? And, what is the
significance of the individual biography, as against the vast
scope of
history? This brings us first to the:
sixth stanza
in the Absence of the Good*
in the Age of Freedom, and in the confusion of the weaknesses of traditional moral authority, what happens when Moral Grace is
not present - the
Pharmaceutical
Industry as an Example
*"evil is the Absence
of the Good",
St.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1272)
The following remarks are an effort to show how that in the Absence of the Good certain profoundly undesirable consequences arise. Certainly in the Pharmaceutical Industry (just one example - these problems are everywhere in our culture), as well as in the practice of medicine, there are many honorable men and women. At the same time, as we all recognize, the drive for profit frequently places any other values into the background. In fact, in our Age, while we could say that many wish to do the Good, most are forced to compromise in order to make a living. As a result the macro decisions of large institutions more and more lack any moral center at all, with all manner of horrible social consequences, both for us as individuals and as members of larger groups. In the case of the Pharmaceutical Industry, those macro decisions made in the Absence of the Good are producing a catastrophic attack on human inner freedom, which it is the intention of the following remarks to illuminate.
One cannot
watch television today without
seeing any number of advertisements for drugs, created by and
sold to
us by the Pharmaceutical Industry. They are ever present
in the
modern world and represent, when understood in their real
context, to
be one of the dominant active opponents of human spiritual
freedom.
This Industry mostly serves the Dark God Profit, and
being
organized in a social form (a Corporation), this Industry is
not even
permitted by law to take seriously any service to the idea of
what
truly lives in the human being. The law, in its present
degenerate condition, has determined that Corporations owe
their
primary duty to their shareholders (profit), and their workers
and the
consumers of their products have significance only as an
afterthought.
To a degree the
deeper fault for this
lies elsewhere, but we are yet not able to open that chapter.
Let
us here say this: while it is true that scientific materialism, in that it
believes only in matter and never in spirit,
creates the intellectual context for the Pharmaceutical
Industry, it
nevertheless is greed (the Absence of the Good) that drives this
assault on
human spiritual freedom. This Industry does not have to
act the
way that it does, but in the Absence of the Good there can be
only one
result. Drugs are created and sold to us that we do not
need,
that do not promote either our physical health, or our
emotional health
or our spiritual health. They are created in order to
make money.
Lies are told and kept about their side-effects.
Government
watchdogs, that should protect us, are subverted.
And, the
greater portion of the medical profession is seduced into
cooperation,
while those healers, who might have a true sense of what we
need, are
opposed, attacked and sometimes even jailed.
The totality of behaviors of those
who lead and guide the Pharmaceutical Industry
are perfect examples of the Absence of the Good, and its
consequences.
Yes, there certainly are moral people in the Industry,
but even
these are themselves quite often subverted and seduced in
order to
serve the bottom line - the Dark God Profit. We could
take a
similar look at the military-industrial complex, or at
agribusiness.
The same is true everywhere - in the Absence of the
Good, evil is
the result. [In the use of the term "evil" here, keep in mind
that
there is a lot more that has to be said about this, such that
we will
come to understand that evil has a role in the Creation and is
related
to something that has to be called: the Mystery of Evil.]
Let us next
look more closely at the
consequences flowing into our shared social life from out of
this
particular Industry.
In a very real
sense, the human community
that is sold these drugs is seen by this industry merely as a
market.
While some thought is given to our real needs, almost no
thought
at all is given concerning the wider social consequences.
For
example, there was recently (Aug. 22, 2004) an article in the
New York
Times Sunday Magazine (Did
Antidepressants
Depress Japan, by Kathryn
Schulz) on the entrance of the Pharmaceutical Industry into
the
cultural life of Japan, wherein well understood traditional
Japanese
spiritual virtues connected with the human grace involved in
melancholy, sadness, and suffering, were labeled as a disease
(depression). [See also A Journey
into the Economy of Melancholy, by
Gary
Greenberg in the May 2007 Harper's magazine - a penetrating consideration of the
intersection of scientific thinking about our consciousness,
with the
medical and drug industries, all leavened with a wonderfully
subtle and
wry sense of humor.]
The basic
thinking is that if you are
unhappy, you are ill, and need medication. This has now
gone so
far that a President of the United States (in this case George
W.
Bush), is now standing behind an effort to test everyone in
America for
mental disease (starting with all children - parental consent
be
damned), and if found to be ill, to be provided the assumed
needed
medication. Following the twisted logic of such efforts
by out of
control governments, this assault on our inner freedom in the
guise of
drugging us for reasons of presumed mental disease is called:
The New
Freedom Initiative, after the
fashion of newspeak in George
Orwell's 1984.
The dark visions of Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, where books are outlawed and drugs to control emotions mandatory, is well on its way to coming true. Why? Let us repeat this, for it needs to become our cultural mantra - in the Absence of the Good, evil is often the main result. Generally, for the Good to be there, we must consciously insert it.
There will be
those that argue, with some
degree of truth, that humanity is greatly benefited by modern
medical
discoveries, including many drugs. This is not disputed
here.
Who would want to dispute it? But the idea
that
everything is perfect, all is well, nothing is wrong is as
equally
foolish as asserting no good has come. It
is
one thing to use a substance to heal physical illnesses, it is
another thing entirely to define behaviors outside some
arbitrary norm
as disease, and then bludgeon with drugs the consciousness of
a human
being in order to subdue their inner life of soul and spirit
as a means
to making their behavior conform.
It is a
question of spiritual (and
sometimes even physical) freedom in the very highest sense.
The fact is
there is no true scientific
standard for a great deal of what has over recent years come
to be
called mental illness. The diagnosis of mental illness
is
subjective in the extreme, and frequently involves a judgment
on the
part of a so-called medical professional, who may simply not
like the
patient, or find them morally repugnant (an act which our
studies of
Moral Grace has shown to be invalid). Lest you think I
don't know
about this problem, I have spent 18 years in the field of
mental
health, 10 in a for-profit psychiatric facility, and the last
35 years
leading a very introspective life. Both sides of this
problem
live in me in a very deep way.
If you want to
study a sociological
perspective on this issue, read Deviance
and
Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness,
by Peter Conrad and Joseph Schneider, which describes how all
manner of
social behaviors that were considered outside the so-called
norm,
became slowly defined as mental illnesses over the last 50
years, and
then became subject to the authority of assumed mental health
professionals. Basically what was done was that the
problem of
good and evil was eliminated from the discussion (too elusive
for materialistic science), and if the social order (or some small
part of
it) found you to be deviating from the norm, the mental health
industry
classified you as diseased and gave you drugs.
As someone who
has seen from the inside
how this is played out, I can assure you that basically it is
a
disaster on multiple levels.
For example,
the standard defining text
for mental illnesses, which is called the Diagnostic
and
Statistical Manual (it cleverly
gives a
number for each supposed mental disease or sub-category of
disease),
contains an alleged illness called: Intermittent Explosive
Disorder.
When I grew up we called this having a bad temper, and
expected
people to get their act together and learn to control it.
Now it
is being asserted that it is a disease, and as such one is
really no
longer held morally responsible, can get treatment in a mental
hospital
and be given drugs to subdue the excess.
Of course, the drugs seldom work unless there is a lot of overkill, so that the whole personality (remember those side-effects!) is pressed down. If you converse with people taking these medications, many of them don't like the effect, and often stop taking this chemical restraint on their inner life. They'd rather have the problem than the cure.
What frequently
happens in mental
hospitals is a violation of medical ethics (first do no harm),
in the
name of research and/or assumed to be standard medical
practice.
Let me tell a story.
The way the
Pharmaceutical business works
is that drugs have to be tested for their efficacy.
Granted part
of the demand for testing comes from the government, but
mostly this
demand for testing is a consequence of patterns of behavior in
the
Industry over the years, where they released badly tested
drugs (e.g thalidomide).
In any event,
at the hospital where I
worked the Chief of Psychiatry was also a paid consultant to
the
Pharmaceutical industry, and oversaw numerous test protocols
as these
were carried out at the hospital. The Chief made extra
money, the
hospital was able to charge the full costs of the treatment
(the
patient ended up with no bill), and various ancillary staff
were also
given additional compensation besides their normal salary.
The studies had
to be done under the
double blind system, which meant some patients in the test
received a
placebo (no medication at all), and no one was to know which
were being
tested with the real experimental drug and which patients were
receiving the placebo. Of course to the staff, if the
mental
illness was acute (such as schizophrenia), those receiving the
placebo
were obvious, since they got sicker and sicker, suffering a
great deal
for the period of the test (often at least for a month,
sometimes far
longer). Of course the other patients on the ward, and
the staff,
suffered as well because of those individuals who were not
receiving
any effective medication in order that the test protocols be
scientifically (?) correct. In essence, very ill people,
and
their caregivers and companions, are routinely tortured in
order that
the testing be done in this assumed correct way (in the
Absence of the
Good).
Just to show
how cruel this really can
be, consider that the patients have often been already
declared
incompetent. This means that they have a conservator,
usually a
family member. The family member gets told that the
hospital stay
will be free (the seduction), and the harm to the mind of the
patient,
if they receive the placebo, is downplayed (the subversion).
None of this,
by the way, deals with the
freedom of the acutely ill to choose not to be medicated.
Their
right to so choose is there in the law, but in practice it is
frequently by-passed by obtaining permission from the
conservator.
Obviously there
are mental illnesses that
are real. What I most frequently observed was that the
psychiatrist (the ones who had to diagnose and order drugs),
were
basically experimenters. Routinely the originally
prescribed
medication was changed, as the doctor hunted around for
something that
would give him the desired behavioral
effect. First
a certain behavior was consider
undesirable, and then various medications
tried until the behavior was altered.
In severe cases we admitted we
practiced chemical restraint. What we didn't admit was
that in
moderate cases we did the same thing - we restrained the
unwanted behavior with
chemicals. [Where, in such circumstances and
goals (the insistence upon the change in outer behavior) is
the
individual's own sense of their inner being given any weight
and
meaning?]
Of course, in
order to do this, you have
to first convince a human being that they are ill, that they
are
diseased of the mind. In that most intimate aspect of
our being -
our soul and spirit, we are assaulted with the socially
enforced belief
that something is wrong with us, and it has to be fixed.
All this
in the context of a well understood phenomena, called the
identified
patient.
Emotional
dissonance in the family
generally produces (in our current culture obsessed with
mental
illness) someone who will come to the mental health system
seeking
treatment (where else can they go?). This is often
understood to
be the most mentally healthy individual in the family matrix
precisely
because they are self observant enough to want to solve their
inner
dilemmas. They are called the identified patient, and the assumption of this paradigm is
that the
root of the problem (unless it is the physical nervous system
itself
which is broken) most probably lies in those family members
who do not
seek treatment. The true illness lies elsewhere and
can't be
treated unless the family consents (admits) to a problem.
Today one can
hear remarks from so-called
mental health professionals that anywhere from 20% to 40% (or
even
higher) of the population of the United States suffers from
mental
illness. In spite of the fact that the vocabulary of
this
approach no longer uses the term normal (as if there ever was
some
standard way of being an individual
human being), the
idea of normal is still present. If you deviate from the
assumed
standard, you are likely to be called ill, not just recognized
as
different and unique. Mostly this fancifully imagined
standard
arises out of a comparing of behaviors (ignoring our highly
individualized inner life), with the so-called standard
actually being
set by those who have most effectively compromised and
conformed
their individuality to social normative pressures.
Such a
conclusion, and the related
suggested responses are horribly wrong (in the Absence of the
Good).
What makes it all the worse, is that the Pharmaceutical
Industry
rides this cultural confusion solely for its own benefit.
Not
only do they ride it, they promote it in every way they can.
Huge
profits can be made in convincing us that such inner states,
for
example, as melancholy, shyness, sadness and suffering are
diseases of
the mind.
Certainly many
individuals within these
fields and professions seek to act with morality and honor.
Yet,
the fact remains that the institutional systems have evolved
in the
Absence of the Good, thus producing evil consequences.
For
example, over the course of my life, the practice of medicine
has
changed from that of holding to the idealistic goal of being a
healer,
to becoming a complicated for-profit business. Third
parties,
such as the government and insurers, have inserted themselves
in
between the patient and the doctor, and over and above this is
the idea
(promoted by scientific materialism)
that the human
being is a mere mechanism (all matter, no spirit).
Obviously I
can't solve this grave
problem here. Nor am I the only observer of modern life
who is
awake to these issues. At the same time I can strongly
suggest
certain directions to take, and as well some concrete examples
that can
be practiced. Since depression is thought to be one of
the main
diseases of modern inner life, let me go forward with a brief
discussion of this inner state. In the next stanza, I
will come
at this from a more intimate discussion of the nature of evil,
particularly as regards what is called the double or the
shadow in the
soul. For now, however, I only want to make more general
observations of our inner life of soul and spirit.
None of what is
below is meant to suggest
that no help is available from either talking therapies or
various
substances, especially if the therapy is done in the Presence
of the
Good, and the substances are natural. Here,
however, is
another of those side-trips it would not do to take.
What is
below concerns an example of how we as individuals can bring
health and
balance to our own minds out of our own will and inner
activity (in
freedom). As this book proceeds, other suggestions
regarding the
nature and discipline of mind will be put forward.
One of the
greatest individuals of human
recorded history is known to us as Gautama Buddha. His
teachings
rest on what he called the Four
Noble Truths, of which the first is:
Life is
Suffering.
What could be
more obvious to any
self-honest reflection? We live, and we suffer. We
have
moments of joy and moments of sorrow. Those who obtain
to even
the smallest degrees of wisdom know that just in these
feelings of the
heart we are the most human. Why in the name of the Good
would we
ever want to chemically eliminate from our lives our feelings?
Yet, we do.
We are being taught
that sadness, melancholy and suffering are a disease. We
are
being taught (and sold) that our inner life is not healthy if
it
contains such fundamental human moods. Why such
insanity?
Why are we taught to want to get rid of that which makes
us
human? And even more scary, why are we being forced,
against our
wills, to take such a view of our inner and most intimate
nature and
being?
Science, in
order to maintain the fiction
that all is matter and there is no spirit, has to create a
paradigm
that makes of human inner life nothing but biology and
chemistry.
If my mood has no connection to my will, to my freedom
(see B. F.
Skinner's Beyond Freedom and Dignity),
then I am basically a mechanism, and should be treated as
such.
The problem with this view is that everywhere it is
rebelled
against. The materialist thinks this principle is a
certainty as
an intellectual conclusion, yet never behaves in life as if
this were
true. We have it as an idea, but we don't live at all
consistent
with this idea.
So our society says: don't suffer, don't be sad, don't be melancholy. Take a pill instead. But you know what's worse? If we get rid of sadness, what happens to joy?
Without doubt there is probably clinical depression caused by a true dysfunction at the level of brain chemistry. Now if you want to not be sad (something you are free to choose or not) or if you are overly sad, and feel depressed, and if some inner voice is telling you that you are unworthy, and unloved, and a failure, it isn't necessary to take a pill and beat up your inner life with some chemical restraint. There are mind sciences of deep wisdom and divine inspiration not unfamiliar with this inner state. Here are some practical suggestions.
The anonymous
author of Meditations
on
the Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism, advises that you cross yourself three times,
and spit
over your left shoulder. This ritual (an old folk
remedy, well
practiced) compels the double (see below, next stanza) to
retreat from
its work of inner prosecution.
Much normal
depression is also due to the
holding back of mild forms of irritation and anger. We
try too
hard to always be nice, and we burden ourselves with the inner
consequence. What I have learned to do is to announce to
those
who live intimately with me, that over the next couple of days
I am
going to be very cranky, and further that I am going to enjoy
it, so
they just better get used to it. I then wander around
complaining
in a loud voice about anything at all that passes my fancy to
complain
about. I will curse and swear and occasionally insult.
Oddly enough I am having so much fun doing this, that
those
around me can't help but like it. It clearly isn't
really
personal, but on the contrary quite inspirational and often
catching.
If the
depression seems more deep, then
prayer is called for. The shadow (again see below) in the soul can be sometimes a
bit
more powerful than the i-AM (also see
below). In
such a case the intercession of the Divine Mother is a
powerful help.
As I go to sleep at night I make a most sincere prayer
to Mary
for her aid in helping me overcome this state of excessive
inner
turmoil. Always on waking, there is a new sense of
inner
freedom before the torments. There is a kind of gap
between my
spirit, and the force of these troubles in the soul. I
can stand
up to them, and send them packing.
Another
recourse, from Dennis Klocek
(author of Weather and Cosmos, Seeking
Spirit Vision and The
Seer's
Handbook among a number of other
works), is
to inwardly look at the dark mood within, as something that is
not-I,
and say several times to this mood in our inner voice: "What is your name?". The dark presence (the shadow-double)
cannot
then respond to this question, and is forced to retreat.
I have also
found it helpful to
consciously create alternative inner pictures. Suppose I am
depressed
(or some other unwanted mood), and I come awake to this
condition.
Instead of inwardly passively accepting my given mood, I
oppose
it with my own inner will by making a counter-mood picture.
For
example, if I think some aspect of the shadow-double is
pestering me, I
will imagine a kind of small being, humanoid in form, but all
angles
instead of curves, over which I am pouring hot chocolate and
tiny
marshmallows.
Or, if I am in
a hurry, and I am being
tempted (wouldn't you like an extra scoop of ice cream,
wouldn't that
taste good), I will take control of my inner voice and yell
there: Get
out of here you fraud and
useless piece of maple syrup! It
is
very important in doing such work to use humor, for as we get
deeper
into understanding the shadow-double within, and its
relationship to
our inner freedom, we will find that humor is the best
antidote.
To close this
stanza on a slightly
different note, lets take the problem of sleep. In our
hurried
and harried civilization, many people are going to the
Pharmaceutical
Industry to obtain drugs for sleep. This is a bit odd,
if you
think about it, in that we ought to be able to sleep when we
are tired,
but many people have the experience that while their body is
exhausted,
the mind is still rushing about and will not "turn off".
Even in this idea we miss the mark, for to think that the soul-spirit nexus (mind) is something to turn off is to live in a kind of denial of our inner reality. Yet, what do we do?
Rudolf Steiner
offered a very interesting
exercise for the end of the day (the Ruckshau). As we
lie in bed,
with our mind running at top speed, we take hold of the
thinking
activity and turn it in the direction of reviewing our day.
We
picture the day backward. We are lying in bed, our body
is
beginning to relax, and we take hold of our mind and we expend
our will
inwardly in this realm of pure soul and spirit existence, and
form
pictures of the day.
This daily
review produces two effects.
First it lets us examine our own activity during the
day,
something that the rushing mind is already trying to do, if we
were to
observe it honestly. Only instead of letting it rush
about from
association to association without any discipline, we expend
some inner
will forces and remember the day backwards. This review
of the
day helps us learn about ourselves. How did we behave?
Did
we do the best that we could do? If we failed, what
amends might
we make tomorrow? In this review, of course, we are free
to
approach it however we want.
The second
effect is that we start to
relax the mind. By putting this little amount of will
into the
situation of the mind, we give order where it would otherwise
remain in
chaos. This is our last amount of will of the day - a
sort of desert of the day. If we spend this last amount
of will
in an inner
exercise, surprise, we often will
fall asleep!
The reason we
can't sleep is because at
the same time as our body relaxes, our soul-spirit nexus - our
mind -
needs to finish its business, for it is the soul-spirit (our
inwardness
and essence) that has been moving the physical body around all
day
long. In order to have the right relationship between
mind and
body at the end of the day, so that sleep can arise, we need
to make
conscious the fruits of the day. When we take a drug to
push us
into sleep, we miss out on what is the best part of our day -
a kind of
moral digestive process. Here, in the daily review, we
nourish
the heart forces which make possible our free acts of moral
grace
(below, in the discussion of nurturing love, we will look at
this
matter from a slightly different direction, since for many
people, they
do not enter and exit sleep alone, but with a partner).
Emphasis needs
to be placed here on the
idea of nourish. Just as we feed the body, so we need to
feed the
soul, and one of the foods for the soul is to look back on the
day and
digest it. We have had a day full of experience, and the
more
consciously we can reflect on that daily experience, the more
healthy
will become our soul-life. [The best nourishment for the soul
is
(obviously) always art and beauty, although that needs to be
set to our
own specific tastes, which is why so many crave an encounter
with the
Natural World, or want to lose themselves in their favorite
music.]
Of course, all the above is to be taken with a grain of salt, while at the same time sincerity of effort and experience will prove to be the best teacher.
What does this
mean?
It means that we have to prize our inner freedom more than we accept the dictates of the Pharmaceutical Industry, which in the Absence of the Good would have us believe we are diseased, when we are only and wonderfully human; and, that we need not any longer accept that we have to have all kinds of drugs for the aid of what are really very normal functions (such as sleep). All the same, to appreciate this even more, we have to enter more deeply into the understanding of human existence and the real nature of the Mystery of Evil.
seventh stanza
the Seventh Day of Creation
the problem of freedom seen in the light
of the nature of evil, and its relationship to the course
of
individual human lives (the biography)
Psalm 23
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
In verdant pastures he gives me repose;
Besides restful waters he leads me;
He refreshes my soul.
He guides me in right paths
for his name's sake.
Even though I walk in the dark valley
I fear no evil;
For you are at my side
With your rod and your staff'
that give me courage.
You spread the table before me
in the sight of my foes;
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
all the days of my life;
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
for years to
come.*
[*I can say
with assurance that it is
possible to experience life in this fashion, minute by minute,
hour by
hour, day by day, year by year - to trust Life knowing (have Faith) that
the Divine Mystery is everywhere Present in all aspects - not
only in
the outer circumstances of our biography (the events which
help and
challenge), but also in the inner biography (the unfolding of
the life
of mind and soul, with its moments of both darkness and
light.]
*
We come now to
one of the great mysteries
of the modern age - one which considers the nature of history,
the
meaning of existence, and the importance of the individual
biography.
While there are ideas in natural science that some might
construe
to be in conflict with the material presented here, it must be
understood that the scientist does not even really ask the
relevant
questions. He has asked other more limited questions, so
that
when he gets to questions of the heart and the deep meaning of
human
existence, he has no basis in his formalism for what that
which in life
can only be described within the language of mystery
and songs
of
poetry (as in the 23rd Psalm).
This is what is
told to us in the story
of Genesis 2:1-3:
"Thus the heavens and
the earth were finished and all
their array. On the sixth day God finished the work he
had been
doing. and he rested on the seventh day from all the
work he had
done. God blessed the seventh day and made it holy
because on it
he rested from all his work of creation."
The tendency
has been in modern times
among some religious to consider that the term "day",
in
the text of the story in Genesis, refers to what we experience as a
single day, the twenty-four hours it
takes for the Earth's rotation to return the Sun to more or
less its
same position in the sky as in the previous day. This
happens
because when it suits our personal agendas, we vainly take our
human
perspective and insist the Bible speaks to us only in that
same
perspective - absent poetry and mystery (which obviously is
the Bible's
real language and song). Others, more awake to the
mystery and
poetry of such writings as the Bible, understand that the word
day,
in
the sense of Genesis, means much larger periods of time, and
that
God's creation of the Earth took these great periods of time.
My own thinking
leads me to put the
matter this way. The Divine Mystery ceased the greater
part of
Its creative activity (rested) at a certain point, after which
from
that time forward what had been set in motion determined what
was next
to happen; and that among what had been set in motion was the
eventual
emergence of human freedom. We don't have to have
beliefs to see
this, for surely, if anything is obviously true, we are
clearly free to
be moral, or not, create, or not, and destroy, or not, all
that has
been previously created by the Divine Mystery.
As the Plains
Indians observed in their
Mysteries, the human being is clearly the determiner, the
dominant
decision maker among all of the Creation which can be
observed.
Rudolf Steiner puts the matter this way, in his book A
Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception:
"Man is not behaving
in accordance with the purposes of
the Guiding Power of the world when he investigates one or
another of
His commandments, but when he behaves in accordance with his
own
insight. For
in
him the Guiding Power of the world manifests Himself.[emphasis
added,
ed.]
He does not live as Will somewhere outside of man, He
has
renounced His own will in order that all might depend upon the
will of
man. If man is to be enabled to become his own
lawgiver,
all thought about world-determinations outside of man must be
abandoned."
Yet, much
religious thinking and doctrine
considers God to be an active presence in our lives.
Among
evangelical and fundamentalist Christians there is all manner
of
discussion of the doings of God in our time. Not only
this, but
from the side of natural science more and more there is coming
into
being a kind of biological determinism, in which almost all
behavior is
seen as hardwired into the brain, while the brain itself is
merely the
creation of a genetic inheritance produced over the eons by
natural
selection. Between
many
religious then, as well as many scientists, human freedom is
considered secondary to either a determinism of spirit (the
will of
God) or a determinism of matter (the will of mindless
evolution).
Where is human freedom in the face of these twin and
related
prisons?
What
is the truth?
Basically,
people are going to have to
decide that for themselves. I'll tell you how I see the
world -
my story of the world. However, I not only don't
expect it
to be believed, I don't want it to be believed. All that
is
intended in the Tale below is that the
reader be given cause to think for
themselves. Let us go toward this Tale
then, first pausing to consider some additional Emerson (an
American
King/Shepherd/Healer) on these very deep questions. From
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 in the form of free thought".
the Fool's Tale
(part I)
The human
spirit or i-AM
is eternal. In fact, it seems to be a piece (a child) of
the
Father. The Father divided Himself into a multiplicity
(all the
Angels, all the i-AMs and so forth), in
the process of the Creation, for what
else could He do (God being All) but create out of Himself.
When
Christian tradition speaks of the promise of everlasting life,
it is
semi-consciously aware of this eternal nature of the essence
of the
human being.
As an aside,
the reader might note that
when we considered Christ's remarks concerning the question of
what was
the greatest commandment, the doctrinally correct Catholic
Bible said: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.", while the Unvarnished
Gospels says: "You
are to
love your lord God with all your heart and all your spirit
and all
your mind".(emphasis added, ed.)
In the
doctrinally correct text then, the Greek
word spirit has been changed into soul. Why do you
suppose that
was done? Rudolf Steiner suggests that it was a
conscious
decision of the Catholic Hierarchy to hide from the faithful
the truth
of their Triune Eternal Spirit nature (body, soul and spirit). On
the other hand, perhaps this
confusions was authored by the Divine Mystery Itself, Who knew
we were
not yet ready to have such knowledge.
There are then
two basic forms of
existence: the Earthly existence in which the i-AM
inhabits a physical body, and the Heavenly existence in which
the i-AM
is an eternal spirit in a solely spiritual reality. The
Shepherds
believe aspects of this through Faith, and the Kings know this
directly
through experience (Gnosis).
Earthly
physical existence has a purpose,
which is the education of the child - the education of the
individual
eternal spirit that is the essence of the human being - the
own i-AM.
This
divine education is only vaguely similar to our
processes of
education, although we could more and more learn to imitate
what has
been created. This divine education is of the Highest
Art, and
being akin to both music and drama, the Bard was quite right
in
suggesting that: "all
the
world's a stage...". Human
earthly
life is Art, and we cooperate - are co-creative - in this Art
through
the gift of freedom.
What this means
is that the human
biography is a work of Art, created in cooperation with the
Divine
Mystery. Moreover, the real nature of our shared
existence is not
seen in history, not in the great events and doings of
dominant
individuals, but rather finds its central meaning in the events
of the ordinary and everyday individual
biographies. This is because all else passes away (and this too shall
pass away), except that which the
eternal spirit, or the i-AM,
acquires
in the sense that the experiences of our biography change our
nature. We live our lives, acquire experiences that
transform us,
and what in us that is transformed lives eternally.
Everything else
in earthly existence
passes away.
Now this, while
obvious to many, hardly
answers all the questions, of which one of the most important
for our
time concerns the nature of evil - what one author put forward
as: Why do bad
things happen to good people? (by
Melvin
Tinker).
If we
appreciate that we have been
spiritual children, and only now are beginning to be mature
enough to
understand such a deep question ourselves, then we can also
appreciate
why the earlier religious texts, even the Gospels, are not
straightforward in providing an answer. In each
successive Age,
we are provided the answers we need, until in this Age we are
more or
less now placed on our own, having been given Moral Grace,
which
becomes a means not only of knowing (gnosis) the good, but
also the
true. Recall that verse I added above when first discussing
the
Shepherd's Tale: John 16:12: "I have yet many
things to say
to you, but you cannot bear them now."
{I have
much more to say to you, but you can't bear it just yet.}
Christianity is
not the only Religion in
the world. We get something of a hint in this regard
when the
Kings are described in Matthew 2:1 as "Magi came from the
East" {wise
men
from the East showed up}. As I
pointed
out, the Kings were Priest-Kings, or initiates in the ancient (pre-Christian) mysteries.
Nowhere should
this suggest they did not possess truth, and it is time to
consider, as
Christians, what wisdom might have had to be left aside for a
time,
while we were being slowly nurtured into greater spiritual
maturity
through the gifts of Faith and of Freedom.
Here are some
of the left aside wisdoms: repeated earth lives, karma,
fate, destiny and the real meaning of
evil
with special emphasis on the double or shadow
that accompanies in life each individual human i-AM.
St.
Paul understood these problems, and hinted about this too in
I Corinthians 13: 8-12: "Charity never fails, whereas prophecies
will disappear,
and tongues will cease, and knowledge will be destroyed.
For we
know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is
perfect
has come, that which is imperfect will be done away with.
When I
was a child, I spoke as a child, I felt as a child, I thought
as a
child. Now that I have become a man, I have to put away
the
things of child. We see now through a mirror in an
obscure
manner, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but
then I
shall know even as I have been known."
We need to keep
in mind that St. Paul on
the road to Damascus was told by Christ that: "...for I have
appeared to
thee for this purpose, to appoint thee to be a minister and a
witness
to what thou hast seen, and to the visions that thou shalt
have of
me;..." Acts 26:16. Christ
speaks here
of what Saul becoming Paul has seen and what visions will be
given in
the future, and by this shows to us moderns, that in St. Paul
we have
already one who has been appointed both Shepherd, King and
Healer,
which clearly would have been necessary for the role he was to
play in
the founding of the Christian Religion.
So we have both Christ and St. Paul telling us that not all can be said at that time, and that we begin as spiritual children who can later become mature. In this light now let us consider the older views of the East regarding repeated earth lives (reincarnation), karma, fate, destiny and the problem of evil as we might understand these today (keeping in mind that the appearance of these ideas among members of the so-called New Age Movement is considered by many Christian believers to be itself a terrible evil).
"Vengeance is mine, I
will repay, sayeth the Lord", is
something we have heard, and of which St. Paul
writes in Romans Chapter 12. Does this refer to
something hidden,
that we have not, until now, been mature enough to understand?
{I have
much more to say to you, but you can't bear it just yet.} Here is what I have learned from the study
of
modern Kings (initiates).
When the human
being dies, the essence -
the i-AM, as well as the inwardness - the soul, survives,
and
only the physical body decays, its material substance
returning to the
Earth (dust to dust). In the afterlife, following on the
experience of the often reported memory tableau (my life
flashed before
my eyes), we enter a realm which the ancients called kamaloka. In this spiritual realm the i-AM
is made to experience that which was done to others during the
biography. If we murdered, we will experience being
murdered.
If we abused dozens of children, we will experience what
they
experienced. Here, hidden but still real, is God's
Divine
Vengeance (Justice), which is to make us experience what we
have done
unto others. Christ is telling us this in the Sermon on
the Mount
when He says in Matthew 7:12: "Therefore all that you wish men to do to
you, even so do
you also to them; for this is the Law and the Prophets." {So
everything you want people to do for you, you do the same for
them,
because that's the law and the prophets.}
And, perhaps
even more to the point,
Matthew 7:2: "For with what judgment you judge, you shall be
judged; ..." {...you
will
be sentenced to the same sentence that you sentence
others,...}. What better
description of the kamaloka
experience could there be?
When we are
told "vengeance
is mine" we are being told that the
Father's Justice (in His Idea of the nature of the afterlife) is the best
justice, and
we need not take vengeance upon ourselves, for in kamaloka we
will
experience what we have done to others. What better
justice could
there be?
[We need to
distinguish Divine Justice
from human justice. In this book, the
Way of
the Fool, I am writing out of the
gesture of "render unto God"; and,
in a later book (if life grants me the time), the
Way of
the Citizen, I will be writing of "render unto Caesar", and there take a look at the meaning of human
justice.]
Now following
on kamaloka, we enter what
the ancients called lower and higher devachan, a realm of the
afterlife
in which we reflect on what we experienced in kamaloka and can
then
choose to accept and contribute to that karma and fate in the
next
life, which choice will make recompense for the actions and
failures of
the current life. Thus we are forgiven 70 times 7
(returned to
life, reborn to continue to learn our lessons) as Christ
admonished
Peter, for certainly Christ did not use any arbitrary figure.
Karma is the law of recompense for prior life actions,
and
involves our own acceptance of that compensation. Matthew
18:21-22 "Then Peter came up to him and
said, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I
forgive
him? Up to seven times?" Jesus said to him, "I do
not say
to thee seven times, but seventy times seven."
{Then
Peter
came up to him and said, "Lord, how many times shall my
brother
wrong me and I forgive him? Up to seven times?" Jesus says to
him, "I'm
not telling you up to seven times, I'm telling you up to
seventy-seven
times."}
It is out of
higher devachan that the
next biography is formed, from our own remorse at the actions
in our
former life. This becomes then our karma (the law of
recompense)
and our fate (that which must come to us in this life).
Yet, it
would be an error to assume that all that is evil, or seems
unjust, is
karma or fate. For we remain free in each successive
life to
commit new actions of good or evil, and thus create new karma.
Our biographies then contain, not only sufferings and
joys
reflecting prior and future lives (for higher devachan lies
outside of
time), but also numerous opportunities for new choices with
new
consequences. So, for example, for someone to say that a
woman
who has been raped is receiving her karma, is to not
understand
anything at all.
Not one of us knows how in any
life, our own or others, these matters are being played out,
which have
been chosen by us in higher devachan with the aid of the
highest
hierarchies. In fact, it is terribly presumptive on our
part to
assume that we can know what was decided by another individual
during
their afterlife as regards what is to be experienced later.
Moreover, fresh evil is always possible.
Here is the
picture so far (that will
alter later, by the way, when we know more about evil):
The main
thing to keep in mind is to not look at any biography but your
own,
using these ideas of repeated earth lives, karma and fate.
Any
thought which suggests that we can perceive for others these
matters is
a idea not worthy to have been thought. The point is to
appreciate that what in life we experience as suffering may
have as its
background the need of our eternal spirit to receive teaching
in the
Divine School which is the biography. It is up to us,
and only
us, to recognize and reflect upon the lessons (matters of
karma and
fate) of our own life.
Now above I also used the term destiny in addition to that of karma and fate. The term destiny is here meant to point toward that aspect of the biography which is neither karma or fate, but rather represents the results and consequences of our own free actions in this particular life. We weave our destiny in spite of karma and fate. We have to endure karma and fate, but to the extent we overcome those and learn their lessons, we also become capable of creating our own destiny.
Let us now turn
forthrightly to the
problem of evil, and not incidentally, the problem of sin.
By the way, the
Unvarnished
Gospels do not appear to contain the
word
sin. That conception seems to be a later confusion added
by
authorities who had other agendas. Here is what
Witterschein
wrote in his introduction: ""Sin", for example, connotes a
deep separation between human will and God's will, a kind of
flaw in
our makeup that results in our acting wrongly. But the
Greek word
hamartia is startlingly
different: it
is a term from archery, and means "missing
the
mark"!
The very word itself implies a much more optimistic view
of human
volition than "sin" does. With hamartia we are talking about something essentially
correct in
human nature, a part of us that wants to do what is good and
right, but
missed the bull's eye. Our goal is the right one;
but
somehow we miss it (Gaus rightly prefers to render hamartia as "mistake" or "doing wrong")."
In the
Creation, has the Father brought
forward evil and the possibility of mistake into the world for
a
purpose? This has been a paradoxical problem for
humanity for a
long time, especially when we consider those forms of evil
which seem
so terrible, such as the Holocaust, torture and the theft of
innocence
that is created by child abuse. How can a good God
author or
allow such suffering?
Well, the first thing to recognize is that God does not make such a choice. What has been created is the possibility of human freedom, as an act of Divine Love. It is that we are loved that we have been offered the possibility of becoming free. It is we, who once freed, that choose to bring evil and error into the world, out of that very freedom.
What God has
done is created a loving
Divine Justice - a response to our actions, in that in
kamaloka we
experience the suffering we have caused, and in lower and
higher
devachan we are offered the opportunity to form our next
biography in a
way that makes for recompense. Further, in giving our
spirit -
our i-AM - immortality, He has given the victims of our
errors
and evil a gift far beyond what they suffer in any individual
life.
He has also created us in such a way that those we have
harmed
can forgive us (and those who have harmed us can be forgiven).
In
the Sermon on the Mount we are given, among so much else, the
Lord's
Prayer, in which the fifth petition is: "Forgive us our debts
as we
also forgive our debtors." Matthew
6:12 {And
forgive our debts, the same as we forgave the debts that
others owed
us.}.
Notice how,
like the Golden Rule, this
phrase accounts for the kamaloka experience of the afterlife.
Where we forgive in this life, so we will experience the
effect
of that forgiveness in the afterlife. Kamaloka is not
just the
experience of the consequences for others of our wrongs and
errors, but
it is also the experience of the consequences for others of
our
forgiveness and love.
We now need to
consider Satan and the
Devil, for if we believe God to be real, than certainly we
must believe
that Satan and the Devil are real.
One of the things we know is that Satan and the Devil (these are not the same by the way) are known as tempters. Neither is the author of evil or error anymore than God is. Eve is tempted in the Garden, and Christ is tempted in the Desert. And we...we are constantly tempted also. This then leads us to the double or shadow.
We really face
two worlds. One
world is the outer material world we experience through the
senses, and
the other world is an inner invisible world that in the
beginning we
only know within our own minds - our own soul life. In
stepping
out of our spiritual childhood it is the truths and reality of
this
inner world that we most need to face, after which we may come
to
understand what the true relationship of that inner world is
to the
outer world, which we experience through the senses.
For those who
seek to follow the Way
of the Fool, in essence it is
really an
exploration of this inner world, coupled with learning to
understand
the relationship between our actions in this inner world and
our
actions in the outer world. Here too Christ pointed a
clear
finger in the Sermon on the Mount when he said (among many
other
teachings): Matthew 5:28: "But I say to you that
anyone
who so much as looks with lust at a woman has already
committed
adultery with her in his heart." {But
I say
any man who looks at a woman and really wants her has already
slept
with her in his heart.}
Then here, in
this next verse later in
the Gospel, is this consideration of the inner world made
fully
explicit: Matthew 23: 25-28 "Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! because
you clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but within they
are full
of robbery and uncleanness. Thou blind Pharisee! clean
first the
inside of the cup and of the dish, that the outside too may be
clean.
Woe to you, Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! you who
are like
whited sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful,
but within
are full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. So
you also
outwardly appear just to men, but within you are full of
hypocrisy and
iniquity." {Woe
to
you canon-lawyers and Pharisees, you fakes, for cleaning off
the rim of
your cup and saucer while on the inside you're bursting with
greed and
wild appetites. Blind Pharisee, wash out the inside of
the cup
and saucer first, if you want the outside to end up clean!
Woe to
you canon-lawyers and Pharisees, you fakes, for being like
dusty
monuments that look pretty on the outside but on the inside
are full of
the bones of corpses and all kinds of rot. You likewise
from the
outside appear to the world to be decent, but inside you're
full of
hypocrisy and ways around the law.}
In this way and
others, Christ points out
to us that what goes on within is superior to what goes on
without.
I only learn to love the outer world toward which my
acts of will
unfold, to the extent to which I master the inner world, from
which my
outer acts arise. I stand then, in between the outer and
inner
worlds, toward both of which I must equally attend.
Let me make of
these facts a little
symbolic diagram:
[sense world
< soul (d) < i-AM > (d) soul > spiritual world].
In both
directions (<>) the i-AM
is mediated in its relationship to either the sense world or
the
spiritual world, through the soul. The soul itself is
very
complicated, and the "(d)", which I
have placed on
either side of the i-AM, is a symbolic
representation of the double, or what is called the shadow and
sometimes the doppelganger. I
will have a lot more to say about the
double/shadow shortly. For the moment we need just to
place it as
the nearest companion to the i-AM, in the
soul, and as a
participant in the mediation between the i-AM
and the two worlds - the world of the senses and the world of
spirit.
Everyone
clearly knows something of the
sense world. It is the apparent rules of the sense world
that
natural science believes it comprehends, and it is somewhat
the rules
of the spiritual world that religions believe they comprehend.
For most of us, this spiritual world is not experienced
(no
gnosis), and what we do believe we
know of it we know
mostly through our beliefs, which is not
the same
as true Faith. About the sense world we seem to know a
great deal
(a kind of experimentally based gnosis), but if we were to
examine this
presumed knowledge carefully, we would realize that here too
there is a
lot of belief. Only this time we have Faith (trust) in
the
priests of natural science and their teachings. We have
been
taught (educated in) the paradigms (beliefs) of natural science, about which most of those,
who do
accept these ideas, do so on the basis of their Faith (trust)
in the
methods of science. This Faith, in several of the
fundamental so
far elaborated views of science, will turn out to have been of
temporary value. Our Faith in the scientific spirit itself, however, is well founded. [The scientific spirit seeks objectivity, empiricism and repeatable
results
with regard to experiments. All such qualities can be
obtained in
a properly conducted introspective examination of the own mind
(soul/spirit nexus).]
Culturally,
this inward state (Faith in
the methods of natural science and belief it its ideas) exists
in many,
while in many others there is Faith in God, and belief in
various
counter-images to the beliefs of science. A kind of
battle has
arisen, and this book hopes to help the open minded among us
to find a
path of wisdom between the labyrinthine extremes of the true
believers
in either Religion or Science.
In modern times
the inner world is and
has been more and more explored, mostly in the fields of
psychology and
psychiatry, wherein that exploration follows or tries to
imitate the
methods of natural science. Many books can be found
today, which
make a worthy effort to explain consciousness in the terms of the world views of natural
science,
suggesting (for example) that consciousness is a product of
the
chemistry and electrical aspects of the brain; and, that our
behaviors
arise from how the brain has become hardwired over the many
eons of
evolution (in the sense of natural selection). We saw
above, in
the sixth stanza, how in the Absence of the Good these
fields of inquiry, in practice and application within the
Pharmaceutical Industry, led to evil (the unwarranted chemical
restraint of human inner freedom).
I am not here
going to digress into an
elaboration of the problems with these views of natural
science
regarding consciousness except to point out the following.
Natural science has only been investigating
consciousness (in the
sense of brain physiology) seriously for the last three or
four
decades, and it (natural science) really only fully stood on
its own
feet, as a method of acquiring knowledge, during the 19th
Century.
Thus, it is clear that the considerations of natural
science
concerning consciousness are quite young in the history of
humanity,
and perhaps can be forgiven for being quite naive.
The fact is
that human beings have been
interested in consciousness for all of our existence. In
the
process of unfolding this interest, over many millennia,
consciousness
has been explored over and over again, with pretty much always
the same
result. Human consciousness is spiritual in origin, not
material.
It makes no difference whether one studies the teachings
of
Tibetan or Zen Buddhism, or Indian Yoga (Hindu Mysticism), or
Sufism
(Islamic Mysticism), or the Cabala (Hebrew Mysticism), or
Anthroposophy, Alchemy, Rosicrucianism, and Christian
Hermeticism (all
variants of Christian Mysticism). These traditions, some
quite
new, but most very old, mature and wise, have known from their
beginnings that consciousness is not based in matter.
We are then, as the future unfolds, beginning that journey by which our understanding of the sense world, and its relationship with the world of spirit, is to be re-founded. Moreover, we are in that particular Age (the 2100 year - 1400 to 3500 - Consciousness Soul Age) where it is through human freedom that each individual i-AM is going to have the opportunity to decide these issues for themselves. No priests, whether of a religious, or a scientific conviction, are any more to be allowed to tell us what to think.
And, it is with
this symbolic diagram [sense world < soul (d)
< i-AM >(d) soul > spiritual world] that I want to show the reader where we all
stand - in
between the two worlds, and free to decide all meaning on the
basis of
our own investigations.
Several years
ago, after experiencing a
kind of spontaneous awakening, I faced a very deep riddle.
What
was the relationship between my sense experiences (of the
outer world)
and my thinking (the nearest aspect of the inner world)?
And, in
the solving of this riddle, as a second and equally important
question:
what was the relationship of my conscience (my moral
sensibilities) to
the process by which I answered these questions?
It is my hope
with this book to encourage
everyone to seek the answers to these very fundamental
questions for
themselves. In the aid of this then, what is written
here has
been carefully from the beginning cast before the reader in
the form of
stories and tales, trying as best
as I am
able to leave the reader free to find out for themselves
(which of
course is why I placed the first part of the Fool's Tale in the section on Freedom).
Nothing is as
important as our own
thinking. In this regard then, let us look again at a
little
Emerson, from his lecture at Harvard in 1837: The
American
Scholar:
Books are the
best of things, well used; abused, among the worst. What
is the
right use? What is the one end which all means go
to
effect? They are for nothing but to inspire. I had
better
never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out
of my
own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The
one
thing in the world, of value, is the active soul. This
every man
is entitled to; this every man contains within him, although
in almost
all men obstructed and as yet unborn. The soul active
sees
absolute truth and utters truth, or creates. In this
action it is
genius; not the privilege of here and there a favorite, but
the sound
estate of every man. In its essence it is progressive.
The
book, the college, the school of art, the institution of any
kind, stop
with some past utterance of genius. This is good, say
they - let
us hold by this. They pin me down. They look
backward and
not forward. But genius looks forward: the eyes of man
are set in
his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.
Whatever talents may be, if the man create not, the pure
efflux
of the Deity is not his; cinders and smoke there may be, but
not yet
flame. There are creative manners, there are creative
actions,
and creative words; manners, actions, words, that is,
indicative of no
custom or authority, but springing spontaneous from the mind's
own
sense of good and fair.
It now remains
to add some deeper
considerations of the double or shadow, and in this way to
come closer
to the problem of the Mystery of Evil.
Without doubt
modern humanity sees evil
everywhere. Recent Presidents of the United States have
spoken of
the evil empire, or the axis of evil. War is evil
(except,
hypocritically, for that war we author), A serial killer
is evil.
Hitler was evil. The Holocaust was evil.
Islamic
terrorists are evil. America is the great Satan.
The
anti-Christ is soon to take over the world.
Not everyone
agrees as to whether a
particular person, thing, event or whatever is evil.
Like beauty,
evil seems highly subjective. One man's meat is
another
man's poison is the folk wisdom.
Referring to our symbolism, we might say that our perception of evil arises in the soul itself, and is not a
function
of that which we see through the senses. or through the eye of
the
spirit (true thinking). We most frequently project the
judgment
of evil onto something from out of our own inwardness (soul),
but the
thing, in itself, is different in essence from how we see it
(via our
projection).
In the Sermon
on the Mount, Christ gives
us a very important teaching about this process of projection:
Matthew
7: 3-5: Judge
not,
that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge,
ye
shall be judged; and with what measure ye mete, it shall be
measured to
you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in
thy
brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is thine own
eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the
mote out
of thine eye; and behold a beam is in thine own eye?
Thou
hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and
then shalt
thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's
eye. {Don't
judge,
so that you won't be judged; you will be sentenced to the same
sentence that you sentence others, and by whatever standard
you measure
you will be measured. Why do you look at the splinter in
your
brother's eye but don't notice the log in your own eye?
And how
can you say to your brother, 'Let me get that splinter out of
your
eye,' with that log there in your own eye? You fake,
first get
the log out of your own eye, and then you can see about
getting the
splinter out of your brother's eye!}
I am again
going to tell something from
my biography, so that it can be seen how what is being said
next is
rooted in experience.
In the 1970's,
after being out of work
for some time, an opportunity came to me to find work running
a
pornographic movie theater in the Tenderloin area of downtown
San
Francisco. The wages were small, about $5 an hour, but
as the
saying goes, beggars can't be choosers, and I needed work.
For those who
don't know, the Tenderloin
is one of San Francisco's darkest areas in terms of sleaze,
low level
crime and general poverty. There are sex shops, greasy
spoons,
pawn shops, homeless people, street whores, addicts,
alcoholics, and
other places and folk that most people from the suburbs would
avoid at
any cost. The movie theater was owned by the notorious
Mitchell
brothers, and was on that edge of the Tenderloin that touched
Market
Street, between about 6th and 8th Street.
For $1.99 one
got three movies, which
changed to three different movies every Friday. I worked
the
tickets and tiny candy counter, while the only other hired
person in
the place was the union projectionist. My shift was
three Twelve
hour days, from opening to closing (10 a.m. to 10 p.m.),
except half a
fourth day when the other manager and I only worked a half
shift each.
This was a regular money maker for the Mitchell
brothers. I
never took in less than $800 on a weekday, or $1200 on a
Friday or
Saturday.
You can guess who most of our customers were, except during the noon hour on weekdays, when dozens of gay men in suits would come to have mid-day liaisons in the back row seats. Most people would have a hard time in such an environment, for many of us are taught when young that such folk are immoral and degenerate, to say the least.
For me the
matter was a bit more
complicated.
At that time in
my life, I was very
active in an introspective way, and very much struggling quite
consciously with the problem of the log and the splinter.
I could
see arise in my soul all manner of judgments of others and it
was a
constant battle inwardly to tame this tendency to judge,
sentence and
measure, on the basis of my assumptions of the moral nature of
those
coming into the theater. Yet, as an aspect of the
miracle of our
biographies, I couldn't have asked for a better social
environment in
order to be forced to face this shadow in my own soul - that
part of us
that judges, sentences and measures and sees not the human
being before
us, but only the log, the judgment we have projected onto the
other, the
Thou.
It was a wise
Providence then that graced
me with this opportunity to see myself with clarity, to see
the log, to
struggle with it, to tame it, and then to discover that once
set aside,
a small, but wonderful, miracle happened. With the log
gone I
began to see the true (and yes, imperfect) human beings as
they came
past my ticket counter, and over time the regulars and I would
converse, as people do who have ongoing casual contacts.
I
learned things, and began to understand that these folks came
to their
lives, not because they were less than human in any way, but
rather
because that was where they had to struggle, just as I had to
struggle
in my own biography.
I also learned
a deeper meaning of
Matthew 25:40: "...as
long
as you did it for one of these, the least of my brethren, you
did
it for me". {Let
me
assure you, however much you did it for any of the least
important of
these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me.} Once I saw past the judgments, sentences and
measures, I
began to treat my customers with greater respect, recognizing
what
trials and errors had lead them to this place and time, and
also
recognizing that much that they had struggled with in their
own souls
and biographies, I could never have met and mastered had it
been my
karma to face. These folks were not less than me, but
braver and
frequently more self honest and human. It was I, with my
log, who
was the hypocrite and the fake.
Later, as my
biography unfolded further
chapters (as noted in the previous stanza), I ended up
spending about
18 years in the trenches of the mental health system, 10 of
those
working the graveyard shift in a for-profit mental hospital.
Here
too I learned about the shadow in the human being, both my own
and that
of others, and how many people, whose lives seem so abnormal,
are
nonetheless strong of spirit for having faced trials and tests
I know I
would have failed.
Of course, we
should not overlook my
addiction to marijuana and related stronger hallucinogens, and
the
later struggles in that aspect of my biography to enter the
disciplines
of recovery.
Being the
philosopher that I am by
nature, I have taken then time to think a great deal over the
years
about the Mystery
of
Evil, the nature of the human
biography,
and the darker aspects of the human being. I have
learned not
only from observation of others, but also observation of
myself.
From these experiences comes what I write next in this Fool's
Tale
(part I).
Let's once
again look at the symbolism: [sense world < soul (d)
< i-AM > (d) soul > spiritual world].
We
are now going to consider the role of that aspect of our inner
world I have designated with the term "(d)",
meaning
the double, or shadow.
As the
symbolism suggests, the double is
intimately related to the i-AM. As
far as I can
tell, there is no part of the soul life more close to our
essence than
this aspect (except for that aspect of the i-AM
which we don't yet ourselves even know, but will learn about
as our
future unfolds, and which some try to refer to in making a
distinction
between the so-called lower and higher ego). Knowledge
of the
double has been around for a long while, but was lost for a
time in
Western culture during the middle-ages. It is discussed
in many
ways in Native American teachings, and Carl Jung's psychology
of
Archetypes tried valiantly to take hold of this reality.
Rudolf Steiner writes of it in great detail,
relating the
double to two major figures in his pantheon of Evil, namely
Lucifer and
Ahriman. Valentin Tomberg, another anthroposophist (at
one time),
discusses the double in his work on Inner
Development, describing three forms
of the
double: a luciferic form, an ahrimanic form and a human form.
The
anonymous author of Meditations
on
the Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism
considers these problems, identifying inner temptation
(the luciferic double) and inner prosecution (the ahrimanic
double)
to which he adds a long discussion of what he calls
human created
demons, or egregores in Arcanum XV
(the meditation on) The Devil. In
this same Arcanum one can also find quoted extensively, a
great deal of
Christian teachings concerning this, derived from the work of
such
explorers of the authentic spiritual life as St. Teresa of
Avila, St.
John of the Cross, Origen, St. Anthony the Great and so forth.
Here is how the
shadow is described in a
Native American work: "Waynaboozoo's Spirit Father advised him:
'You have a twin
brother whom you have wondered about and whom you would seek.
This I tell you: he is your other side in all things and
in all
ways. He is with you...do not seek him. Do not
wish to know
him, but understand him. You will walk in the path of
peace...he
would not. You are kind...he is not. You are
humble...he is
not. You are generous...he is not. You seek the
good in
things...he does not. You shall respect others...he will
not.
You will seek the goodness in others...he will not.
You are
the light...he is the darkness. Know that he is with
you,
understand him.'" From the
Mishomis
Book The voice of the Ojibway by
Edw. BentonBanai, 1979.]
What does it
mean that the essence of who
we are as individual i-AMs is coupled so
intimately
within the soul with something so apparently dark and evil?
And,
how much do we ordinary folk, who aspire to walk In
His
Steps, and for whom this book is
mostly
written, need to know?
If we take up
self-development in any
conscious way, we will have to face our own inner darkness;
and, much
that Christ taught centers quite clearly on these problems.
If we
are to be practicing, in the sense of In
His
Steps, we have to relate to these
problems,
remembering that Christ Himself was tempted, following the
Baptism at
the Jordan, during the 40 days in the Desert.
But more
crucially than this, if we wish
to understand human life, our own and that of others, as
expressed in
the biography, we must take account of the double. It is
said in
many places in fact, that if we are to believe in God, we
shall also
have to believe in Satan, for quite clearly Satan has been
most
successful to the extent that we forget his existence, and
fail to come
to terms with the Fallen hierarchies and their role in the
Creation.
Yet, there is a temptation right here in considering the problem of the Pantheon of Evil (Satan, the Devil, Lucifer, Ahriman etc.). Such a mental playing with concepts of Evil can be distracting from the real work, which is facing evil within our own lives and biographies, our own inwardness. Contemplating the pantheon of Evil is the problem of the log and the splinter on a larger scale. What we need to do instead is look at what is right in front of us, and which we can deal with, leaving aside too much of a focus on grand cosmological questions that attribute modern social problems to such as the Anti-Christ. We can have far too much theory, and not enough practice. If you really want to understand the Mystery of Evil, study what you can know about yourself before anything else. Otherwise, you will be nothing but a hypocrite and a fake. Take it from one who knows.
St. Paul has given us a great hint, in his remarks about how
we will
what we do not wish to do, and how we wish to do what we
cannot will.
There can be observed in all our lives the clear fact
that our
intentions and desires to do good are frequently frustrated by
something in us that we cannot tame, yet leads us in
directions that
bring pain, trials and troubles by the score. As the
Unvarnished
Gospels point out: we frequently
miss the mark. Our intentions (our wishes) get subverted
on their
way to being willed.
Here then we
encounter one of the
functions of the shadow or double. In order to meet in
our
biography that which is karma and fate, that which we need to
meet in
order to learn what this life is meant to teach us, we have to
come to
certain experiences from which we might otherwise shy away.
It is one function of the double to make sure we
face our
trials, and so we have weaknesses and flaws, in spite of the
best
intentions of our eternal spirit, or i-AM.
The
aim (wish) of the will of our i-AM
is true, but we are guided into error in order to experience.
In
this sense then the double is our friend, or at the very least
a
divinely authored necessity.
The double or
shadow is a gift from the
Divine Mystery, that enables the Art of the order and shape of
the
individual human biography, such that our biography's context
and
texture contains the teachings we individually need to
receive. For this reason are we tempted
inwardly - wouldn't this be fun (the luciferic double) and
prosecuted
inwardly - that nasty voice that tells us what jerks we are
(the
ahrimanic double) and flawed - those character defects we need
to
overcome (the human double, or egregores). These
indications, just given about the double by the way, are not
meant to
be complete, but only to hint or point in a certain direction,
so that
the reader may over time begin to distinguish between that
which
appears within as acts of their true i-AM,
and
what appears there that is brought by the double and meant to
challenge us.
[From this
point onward I am no longer
going to use the term egregores as the equivalent of the human
double.
While it may be technically accurate (an egregore is a
self-created psychic parasite - what the heroin addict called:
the monkey
on my back), as a form of expression
the term egregore is lacking
in beauty. I have found over the years that the truth is
not only
also good, it is also beautiful. So from this stage
forward I
will be using the terms wounds or karma of wounds or self-generated
wound in order to refer to the human
created
double.]
What we need to
remember, always, is that
what we are confronted with by this inner dynamic is choice.
We
are not compelled by the doubles, but encouraged. We, as
i-AMs,
still
choose. Sure, many will deny this. We like to be
able
to say: it was an irresistible impulse, or I couldn't help
myself.
But, when we learn to be properly, and brutally, self
honest, our
inner moment of choice is and was always there.
The pedophile
likes that dark pleasure.
The drunk likes that first drink of the day. Those
with a
bad temper like the feeling of power and the rush that
accompanies the
release of their passions into violence. We have the
capacity to
lie to ourselves above all other lies we tell in life, and
certainly we
like to lie to ourselves about these choices and about our
true
responsibility.
Let me here
make a small aside about
another aspect of mental illness, for many might become
confused,
particularly given Christ's method in the case of several
healings
wherein demons were cast out. The natural science
practices of
medicine are not in error in many cases to find material
problems in
the brain as a cause of much that we call mental illness.
Rudolf
Steiner remarked that physical symptoms frequently have their
true
cause in the soul, while soul problems (dysfunctions of the
inner or
mental life) frequently have their true cause in the
physical-material.
Let us take schizophrenia as an example.
Modern
psychiatry is quite correct to
find material dysfunctions in the brain as a major causal
element of
this mental disease. But psychiatry is flawed in
thinking that
the voices heard are, however, in all cases hallucinations.
The
brain is an organ by which the spiritual takes hold of the
material in
a certain way, and when the brain is not healthy, the
spiritual cannot
seat itself properly in the physical. Not properly
seated in the
physical then, the spirit or i-AM is
partially and
improperly across the threshold in the spiritual world, such
that
abnormal psychic experiences are the result. What in a
healthy
individual would be a balanced relationship, with the doubles
and
self-generated wounds in the soul, is now imbalanced, and the
voices
are symptomatic of the fact that these aberrant psychic powers
have an
untamed access to the i-AM.
Such individuals
then, bear in their biography, the difficult and courageous
task of
meeting inner experiences without a sound understanding of
their nature
(which then explains the descriptions in the Gospels of
certain of
Christ's healings).
In the film A
Beautiful Mind, we can find a
wonderful
depiction of these realities, provided for us by the honest
and careful
observations of the main character, John Nash, a real
schizophrenic.
His visual hallucinations were of three main kinds:
First, there was the college roommate, whose playfulness and rowdiness gives us a profound picture of the luciferic double - the tempter; Second, there is the dark spy figure, whose paranoia and domination of Nash shows us the nature of the ahrimanic double - the prosecutor; and Third, there is the little girl, who is the human double - the self created wounds connected to Nash's frequent indulgences in infantile behavior in his social relationships (his lack of humility early in life with reference to his genius).
This film also
suggests that were we to
better understand the nature of these inner torments, we might
help the
individual find the inner strength and mastery, which led Nash
in the
maturity of his life to find a place of balance between his
own i-AM
and the double-complex as that lived in his soul. Which
balance,
by the way, led him eventually to speak, in his acceptance
speech for
the Nobel Prize, so authentically of the importance of love in his own healing
and understanding of life.
I can do no
more than hint here, but I
did want to point in this additional direction so that people
will be
careful in their judgments regarding the details of much that
we have
called: mental illness.
Yet, what do we
do when the temptation is
so deep, so ongoing, so dark and nasty and consuming of our
being and
brings such horrible consequences with it to our families and
loved
ones?
Here we come to
the created inner demon
or egregore,
which I am now calling a
self-generated wound.
As suggested above, in an earlier version of this
book I
used the term egregore more or less continuously, and having
now
decided (getting this ready to be published) that I no longer
want to
express this situation this way.
On the road to
being an alcoholic, for
example, if that is our karma and fate - or choice, we are
tempted by
the double. But over time, within us there comes to be,
by our
repeated (almost like a religious Rite) activity, the self-created
wound that is evoked by turning
again and again to the
dangerous pleasure. It is by repetition that
something unwanted (the monkey on my back, my
disease - the wound, a self-created
dark entity) grows in the soul. I
grow it by indulging my unrestrained passion. The double
may
tempt me, but the wound comes into being
through my repeatedly choosing to
consent to the temptation. Yet, as we all know, many
find the
strength to overcome the effects of this self-generated wound
in the
soul.
It was for
healing this that the same
Grace that led Sheldon to write In
His
Steps, and Steiner to write The
Philosophy
of Freedom, also led two
alcoholics to discover the Twelve
Steps. The
Twelve
Steps are a Grace given means by
which human
beings, in the company of others with like trials, can learn
to face
the weakness of the i-AM in the face of the
temptations, prosecutions, and defects fostered by the
doubles, as well
as the wounds created by our repeated giving into the these
same
temptations, prosecutions and defects.
Please remember that consciousness is evolving over eons of time, and that only now is humanity stepping out of its spiritual childhood, such that finally we are becoming ready to confront the inner trials and tasks of facing the shadow, which itself has been placed there by the Divine Mystery in order to bring us to those experiences demanded by the law of recompense, or karma. We have chosen badly in the past, and will chose badly in the future, yet the Divine Mystery, in a most Loving Way, has taken account of this.
Obviously more
needs to be said, because
some actions are so horrible as to be incomprehensible to most
of us.
Ethnic cleansing, for example, an unjustifiable
euphemism for the
murder and rape of innocents of another race or culture, seems
far
outside anything we can call human at all. Like the
Holocaust, we
suspect that there lurks somewhere such darkness of soul and
spirit as
to be unnatural in the extreme. We are right to ask: Is
it
possible for an apparently human being to sacrifice so
completely that
humanness and descend into depths unconscionable? Here
we come to
a boundary condition in the Mystery of Evil,
wherein the
potential within the i-AM for highest good
is
confronted by its same potential for gravest evil. Just how free has the
Divine
Mystery created us?
It would seem
there are no depths we
cannot plumb, for the very reason that there are also no
heights we
cannot achieve. The one cannot exist without the other.
Human evil can go beyond even what the Gods ordain,
precisely
because human good can also go beyond what in that realm has
yet been
imagined. Freedom is that deep and that
terrible in all its potentials, and this is one of the lessons
of WWII
- the one we most wish not to face (there was not only the
Holocaust,
there was also the Atomic Bomb).
I can here, as
a kind of help in
understanding this, only share a very intimate conversation
with the
Divine Mother that occurred during prayer and meditation one
day (see
appendix for a discussion of how to combine prayer and
meditation in a
practical and pragmatic way). I was in a moment of deep
personal
anguish, aware of my own failings, and aware of how much
suffering we
humans cause each other. I could not but cry out to the
Mother
and the Son, how did They handle it, for
surely They
experienced everything we did, not only from our side as evil
doers,
but also from the side of our victims. How did They
deal with such horror? Horror that had to come to Them
everyday, and had come and would come to Them
for eons both past and future. My little trials could be
nothing
compared to what They must feel.
So, filled with this little pain, which
arises just in recognizing the incomprehensible weight and
pain They
must feel, so much greater than ever I would experience, I
asked: What
do You do with this
intolerable pain?
Then, from the
very deepest realms Her
voice came, gentle, soothing, almost caressing in its
kindness: We turn it into Love.
This then we can understand - that within the Roots of the World, the Divine Mother, and within the Heart of the World, the Son - They first receive into themselves (and take upon Themselves) the sins - the errors - of the world, in the past, in the present and in the future) and then transform even the worst of human evil into Love.
There is more
that needs to be said on
this theme, but before we can go deeper into this, we need to
take up,
in the same way we first met with Moral Grace and then Freedom, a
deeper discussion of
the nature of Love. Once we have some
working knowledge of love, we can
then make a whole of what has necessarily, up to this point,
had to be
presented in bits and pieces. At the same time, we need
to make
one last look at the problem of Freedom, so as to enrich our understanding of human
history, on
our way to beginning our considerations of Love.
eighth stanza
the Gesture of the History of Civilizations
as expressed in both Matter and Spirit
from whence comes technology and where is it going,
or, the entanglement of the i-AM in matter,
its
consequences and its meaning
"It matters to me
for matter to be
and that I to matter
do matter"
In our previous
discussions of the
Evolution of Consciousness, we have mostly been looking at the
insides
of human civilization - at the life of soul and spirit.
We need
as well to take account of the outsides - that is how the
spirit has
taken hold of matter and molded it for our needs and purposes.
These two streams, one inner and one outer, interact
with each
other, and how this interaction is to play out in the future
is a very
important consequence of our Freedom. We are now more
and more in
charge, as we enter into our spiritual adulthood. Our
choices are
to be determinative. Do we bring forward Moral Grace, or
do we
found a new civilization (out of the contemporary conditions
of social
chaos) that more and more is based upon the Absence of the
Good?
We are all
aware of the pictures that
natural science has given us. First there is the big
bang, some
mysterious event out of which matter and energy appear from
nowhere in
the smallest instance of time. First nothing, then
everything.
The causal problem is shoved to the other side of this
Event.
Why nothing, and then everything, is not known; but it
seems that
somehow this is supposed to have happened all by itself.
There is
assumed then, in this Event, to
be no consciousness, no being, no meaning. Only matter
and energy
with the two seemingly interchangeable. The question of
whether
there is space there before the big bang is also not known.
Is
there already an infinite emptiness into which the big bang
appears as
if by magic? Or is space itself created in this moment
of
mystery? Also, what about time? Where does time
come from?
Following on
this inexplicable event
(inexplicable in the sense of conventional theoretical
physics),
everything else that happens in time and space is supposed to
flow.
Matter and energy interact and various kinds of
substances form.
Over vast amounts of time these dead and empty of
consciousness
substances interact and coalesce, until we have stars and
planets.
The great heat of this imagined (theoretical) initial
event
recedes and all begins to cool (remember, it is not
empirically
observed, but imagined). At some point water appears on
at least
the Earth, and then by accident the first stirrings of life -
some kind
of quasi-organic soup.
Again great
time passes. The soup
differentiates into a variety of forms until micro-organisms
appear.
Now the mysterious hand of
natural selection
begins to work its will. Accidental variations arise,
and these
compete, with that which has the best chance of adapting and
surviving
passing through this rite of accident and competition.
More and
more complexity arises as the eons of evolution run their
course.
Then again a
great mystery - consciousness appears!
The accidental development of the nervous
system and its chemical analogs in the metabolism somehow
combine to
produce not only a self-reflective consciousness, but one that
eventually comes to develop languages, tools, cultures and
myths.
The accidental
substance wakes up, looks
around and thinks! Thought comes
into being from
out of nowhere (or so it seems to many). [Recall again
Emerson,
from the 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 in the form of free thought.]
Of course, the
views of modern science
are not how human beings always thought about their existence.
Prior to the arrival of materialistic science (as a
consequence
of the on-looker
separation
stage of the Evolution of
Consciousness - more later...), ancient and wise peoples spoke
of Gods
and other Invisible Beings. Where modern physics
speaks of the big bang, Genesis
says: Let
there be Light!
The belief of
the modern secular
humanist, for whom religion has no meaning, is that the
ancients were
ignorant, and made God in their own image, exporting from
their own
experience the myths that have come down to us through the
Ages.
God is an invention for many, and a poorly made one at
that.
Of course, it
hardly is noticed just how
much of the theories of moderns are
themselves myth. The mud woke up
and thought, and after thinking of the Gods, decided after a
while to
think of a universe without the Gods, perhaps just to have a
little
variety?
What have the
returned meaning-essence of
the Kings had to say about this problem?
In the tenth stanza in the section on Love below - the Seventh Day of Creation as an Expression of Love - we will investigate in more detail the enchantment of humanity that took place in the years during which science emerged from what some call onlooker-consciousness (a very specific stage in the Evolution of Consciousness). For now, let us just consider the wider context of the differences between ancient and modern myths concerning the origin of the universe and the appearance of human beings in that universe.
Owen Barfield,
mention above in reference
to Steiner's work on the Evolution of Consciousness, has
himself
studied and reflected with great discipline upon the nature of
language, and what the study of language might reveal.
Barfield
has written a small book, which is nonetheless very important:
Speaker's
Meaning, in which he examines the
history of
meaning and the meaning of history. I will next
summarize his
argument, which is subtly and carefully wrought. Please
take this
summary with a grain of salt, for almost certainly I will do
it poorly,
and one should read this book in any event.
The study of
language reveals that
languages have common ways in which they arise and evolve.
In
their beginning, the words always refer directly to what lies
in the
experience of the culture that is creating the language.
Objects
of experience are simply named. This is a fox, that is a
tree.
Here we run, now we eat. As languages evolve and
grow, the
meanings of words begin to change - these words take on
changes in
their meanings as the culture's life and growth itself
changes.
For example in English, over a recent period of two
hundred
years, the words subject and object exchanged meanings with
each other.
Eventually in maturity language becomes metaphorical, so that, for example, where once one might have
used
the word sunset to refer only to
that event which we experience while
watching the sun set, now this term can be applied metaphorically, such as to speak of the sunset of someones life.
Modern
thinkers, under the influence and
the assumptions of natural materialistic science (Barfield
calls this
influence in this book: modern taboos),
look at history
in the following way. Closest to us in time is recorded
history,
history written down as it happened. Then as we go back
we have
prehistory, where the memory of events was oral only, which
oral
history was itself to some degree remembered and written down
in
recorded history. And, before even recorded history, and
prehistory, we have the age of myth. In the time of myth
the
various cultures invented the Gods (so it is thought today),
and these
myths then become first part of oral history, or prehistory,
and then
later are also remembered during the period of recorded
history.
According to
these same modern thinkers,
these myths were a metaphorical use of
language,
done in an effort to explain the inexplicable aspects of human
existence - those nasty questions about the origin of the
universe and
the meaning and existence of humanity.
Oops!, says Barfield.
The problem with this view, while
convenient and consistent with the theories of materialistic
science,
is that it assumes that language can do something it cannot.
Namely, it cannot be metaphorical
during its youth,
which youth clearly occurs during the language's, and its
culture's,
Age of Myth. Let us go over this again, so as to make it
as plain
as possible.
Languages and
meaning evolve as follows:
plain meaning (words refer only to experiences), developing
meaning
(words changing as to what they refer), and then metaphorical
meaning
(words given new, even higher meanings). History,
according
to moderns, goes: myth, prehistory, and then recorded history.
The problem, suggests Barfield, is that if myth and
plain meaning
are linked up, then what is remembered in myths can only have
referred
to something that was in fact experienced!
This view of
the history of ancient
cultures seems clearly correct: myth, prehistory and then
recorded
history. At the same time, the language which is born in
this
same culture will have its youth in the period of myth, at
which time
it always and only makes words that refer to experience.
This
being the case, this means that the myths of humanity always
refer to
real experiences. These languages developed a name for
Gods and
other Invisibles precisely because these were part of their experience.
What Steiner as
a modern King helps us to
see is that the error in thought that is made by moderns
is to assume that the nature of our form of consciousness is
the same
as the consciousness of the ancients (we looked at this
previously in
stanza two in the part on Moral Grace, when first we took up
the
subject of the Evolution of Consciousness). From the
experience
of modern Kings we can come to understand that in the time of
myth,
consciousness was different. Human beings did not live,
as we do
today, in a state of inner darkness. Rather they lived
in a state
of dream-like integration - their consciousness united with
the
invisible realms. For example, think about the
aboriginal peoples
of Australia and their idea of the Dreamtime.
Myths arose
because human experience, in
this dreamlike state of integration, named
what was known directly to the type of human consciousness
typical of
the time of the creation of that myth.
Now we can begin to find the counter-picture to the one of materialistic science, with its modern myth (fanciful imagination known as the big bang) of matters they have not seen or experienced directly, but only assume based upon that hypothesis (cold hypothetical and theoretical - fanciful - picture) which only sees matter and never spirit.
If we are to
truly appreciate history,
without falsifying the age of myth, we can see that more and
more
humanity became entangled in matter. And that in fact,
consciousness was there in the beginning (this is what myth
teaches),
integrated with the being and activity of
the Gods.
So that as matter comes to be, it is accompanied by
consciousness
- the two interweaving over the long eons of evolution.
There was no
big bang, but there was the
Creation: Let
there be light!
Thus, along
with the birth of matter is
the simultaneous birth of the i-AM.
Matter is itself enchanted being,
a created womb for the unfolding and development of the
i-AM over the ages, for consciousness and will
accompany
matter from the beginning. Moreover, what emerges
finally in our
time as thought, is the slow condensation and contraction of
this
spirit (the i-AM) from its origin
in the cosmic periphery into a center -
the individual human being.
That which the
natural scientist thinks
today, could only be
thought today, because before today
it was
outside us, surrounding us, carrying us forward in the
Evolution of our
Consciousness. (See Barfield's Saving
the
Appearances: a Study in Idolatry).
Consider for a moment the question of what is thought? We are being taught, under the assumptions of modern biology, that the brain produces thought. But this is not observed. What is observed (known empirically) is that areas of the brain show increased activity in accord with certain invisible things that human beings do, such as feeling and thinking. Further, that in damaged brains, some activity becomes impossible. Mental processes usual in normal consciousness are disturbed. The conclusion is then drawn that the human activity that exists invisibly (we know it in our self-reflective consciousness) has its only origin in the brain or some other biological (matter based) cause.
These conclusions, however, are not observed, but are rather themselves merely thought. A great deal of the content of modern natural science consists of thoughts about what was not and/or cannot be observed. When these thoughts become disconnected from observation, the empirical basis of science is lost, and the temptation to myth making arises.
In a
fundamental sense, these thoughts
are the names of matters not seen, and because this is the
case, these
thoughts become a modern myth in the sense the we use this
term today -
meaning something imaged in a fanciful way to be true, but
which was
not empirically observed.
The general
justification for the
creation of these neo-myths is that their existence is a
reasonable
extension of what has already been empirically observed.
So these
neo-myths then arise on a claimed scaffold of logical thought,
out of
certain limited acts of empiricism.
To get a sense
of this, we have to notice
a phrase frequently found when science is described in media:
"leading
scientists believe that...". When modern natural science moves beyond
its
true empirical limits it becomes more like what some call religion. Observers of modern culture have even
give a name
to this trend: scientism; which would
be the shared beliefs of scientists and the general public that can't
be
empirically supported.
Let us come at
this from another
direction.
In the
remarkable film, Mind Walk, we have a dramatic dialog between a poet, a
politician,
and a theoretical physicist. At one point the physicist
describes
matter as follows (more or less, again one should see the
original):
Mostly matter is empty space, that is: nothing. An
atom is
mostly empty space, and the huge empty space between atoms is
far
larger than the space between the parts of atoms. The
parts of
atoms are themselves not there in the
conventional
sense that people believe. These parts are more like the
geometric intersection of forces. The forces intersect,
and a
geometric point of intersecting force arises, having a kind of
stability or pattern and form according to the laws regarding
these
various forces. [In quantum theory this stability or pattern
is thought not
to be fixed until a particular moment in time, c.f.
the fanciful imagination of Shrodinger's Cat.]
The concept is that there is really no substance at all in the way we think of substance due to our sensual experience of matter. The solidity we experience is empty space punctuated with geometric points of the intersection of forces, which again behave according to laws (not all of which are understood by any means).
What are we to
make of such a set of
thoughts (concepts)?
One of the problems this points toward, which is not as well understood as it should be, is that this understanding of the nature of matter that can be found living in modern physics is not the idea of matter that is used in modern biology. The concept of matter in evolutionary biology is about forty years behind the concept of matter in physics.
If we turn to
the brain, and we realize
that the substance being described by the neurophysiologist is
really
not there at all, but rather only exists as an extremely
complex field
of intersecting forces that only coalesces into a fixed state
at a
particular moment (Shrodinger's Cat, again), such that then we
have to
ask a whole other set of questions, such as: How does a complex
field of
intersection forces produce thought? Or,
to
look at the question from a very interesting direction: Is perhaps this
complex
field of intersecting forces itself the result of Thought?
These are
serious problems, in that
science is far more ignorant than its practitioners often
admit.
Before I offer more of the counter-myth to that of the
big bang
and Darwinian evolution, let me speak for a moment about what
is called
the geological record. This record provides
natural science
with a lot of justifiable evidence for certain of its
conclusions.
Let me
summarize the record. Layers
of rock cover the earth. These layers have a kind of
order, which
is seen correctly as telling us something of the past.
As earth
evolution proceeded, these layers built up, and by examining
them in
reverse order we know something of the geological and
biological
history of the planet. These layers are not continuous,
however,
but are broken up by periods in which there is so much chaos -
so much
lack of organized forms, that we have no reliable concept of
what
happened during that period of time represented by that
chaotic layer.
This means that
the geological record is
discontinuous - broken up by periods in which what happened
left little
or no evidence in the sense of organized form, except and
unless we
read the chaos as evidence itself. The ordered layers
themselves
also have certain general characteristics, of which the main
one is
that the biological forms that begin that organized layer are
also the
biological forms that end that layer (this is called in
paleontology: stasis). This
means that each layer (or period) has the
same basic organisms in the end that it had in the beginning.
The massive changes that can be seen in biological forms between one organized layer and the next organized layer are separated by an intervening layer of chaos (mystery).
Lets make a
picture of these processes of
change. We have a layer that has biological forms in it,
which
forms it begins and ends with, and then a layer of chaos, and
following
that another layer of forms which don't change from the
beginning of
the layer to its end, but which are often radically different
from that
layer prior to the chaotic layer. If we step outside the
geological record, does anything in modern life follow a
similar
pattern? Yes!
In the change
from caterpillar to
butterfly we have first a well formed structure (the
caterpillar), then
a period of chaos (the formless mass in the chrysalis), and
then
another well formed new structure (the butterfly).
So we could
look at the geological record
as showing us periods of form, followed by periods of
formlessness,
followed again by periods of new form - namely a well known
biological
process we know as metamorphosis.
What this
suggests is that the whole record is itself a sequence of
ordered organic changes - one metamorphosis followed by another.
[One of the implications of this is that what we call rock
(look at those kinds of rocks called colloidal) was itself
first
biological - first organic. This means that the organic
is not
built up out of dead matter, but the dead matter was produced
by the
living processes of the Earth. We already see such a
process in
the embryo, where the skeleton only comes into existence from
the
living - the hardest parts of the human being are the result of a process in the living, rather than their
causal
precedent. Could this same not be true of the Earth,
namely that:
The solid,
bone-like Earth is a consequence of something that was
previously alive?]
Now
metamorphosis is a biological process
in which the organism moves from one form, through chaos, to
another
form as part of its own natural order. If the geological
record
is a ordered sequence of metamorphosis, then it is continuous
from the
beginning to the present - that is: the totality of the
geological
record is itself one single organism (existing on a planetary scale)
undergoing one
metamorphosis following on another, which as it progresses
extrudes
from its living nature some bone-like material which it leaves
behind.
The Earth is living, and as it has grown and developed
it has
created its own skeleton. The lifeless does not produce
the
living, the living leaves behind the lifeless.
Now we have had an assumption (no evidence) that consciousness doesn't arise until the biological forms achieve a certain complexity. This is not an observed phenomena by the way, but rather an concept imposed upon the phenomena. Part of the justification for this is another assumption, which believes that all biological form has left a record of itself. These assumptions twist the meaning that can be derived from the geological record in a certain preconceived direction.
In point of
fact, consciousness by its
very nature would never leave a record, since it is not
material.
The reality is that we have no idea, from the geological
record,
of in what way (or not) that consciousness participated.
We have
only assumed it away.
I have not tried above to completely argue away certain ideas. Rather I only wanted to break open our assumptions, so that we can see that maybe, just maybe, materialistic science doesn't really know what it thinks it knows, but rather only believes what it thinks it believes (which are two entirely different states of mind).
Let us now
return to what the history of
language teaches us.
If we admit to
the wisdom of the age of
myth, we can see that this arrangement we call substance was
itself
created out of the consciousness and being of what had to
preexist any
creation. Just as the i-AM was
created, so was matter
created, each to serve a purpose in the whole of the Creation.
The forces the physicist has discovered are nothing but
the will
of beings. And the laws the
physicist observes are nothing
but the higher rules by which those beings (whose nature is
found in
matter) have been organized according to the Divine Mystery.
We have seen,
in the Evolution of
Consciousness, that the i-AM is being
schooled.
We can now look at outer history, at the History of
Civilizations
- the times of the hunter-gatherer, the times of agriculture,
the times
of invention and industry - as a gradual emancipation from, coupled with an
exploration of the nature of matter. In the beginning, we
simply
live off the nature and order of the Creation (the
story-memory of the
Garden of Eden), until we assert ourselves against the
apparent rules,
and begin to take more and more interest in the Created world,
first
transforming it with agriculture and animal husbandry, and
then
investigating the nature of substance (matter) itself, and
learning to
manipulate that world as well.
Here we also
see something deeper about thought
itself. Without all the thought that
stands behind it, that which follows the pastoral
dream - the remembered Garden - does not work. To take
hold of
nature and transform it, proceeds entirely from thought. To analyze nature and seek its rules
requires thought. Our
whole civilization is filled everywhere with
the consequences of thought. It is,
in fact, thought which
penetrates, overcomes and transforms substance.
And, keep in
mind here the concept
previously mentioned, that thought (genius of spirit) was
outside us in
earlier stages of the Evolution of Consciousness, and only now
in our
time (the fourth and fifth cultural epochs) has thought
(genius of
spirit) individualized and entered into the single human
being.
How could what
is seen as a mere product
of substance (thought in the way materialistic science
conceives it)
find its way to understanding and transforming substance?
By
accident? This is nonsense of the most fundamental
order, for
there is no logical scaffolding that lets us believe as
rational beings
that the inferior can give rise to the superior. We
have, for
hundreds of years now, completely misconceived the true nature
of both
thought and substance. [into which misconception, as a
state of
consciousness, we were enchanted in order to become free of
the gods -
see below, the eleventh stanza.]
Our
intelligence first lived in the form
of a dreaming of the invisibles, walking the earth, picking
the
available fruits, until we more and more wake up in the sense
world,
and live less in the dreaming connection to the invisibles.
The
world of substance serves this awaking from the dreaming.
Our
intelligence - thought - clarifies, and becomes the possession
of the
individual. For the ancient Greeks, genius referred to a
spirit
outside us that taught and inspired us, while for we moderns
genius
refers now to what we ourselves are.
As we press
deeper into matter, we become
more individualized. What is at first outside as
spiritual
inspiration (the Gods), now becomes the natural capacities of
each
individual human being. The law and the prophets were
once
outside, and now, they are becoming us. As the i-AM
dances with substance (matter), we grow and become - we
experience
directly and personally the Evolution of Consciousness.
Eventually, we
find a way to look
objectively (myth free) at matter (the on-looker
separation). Genius is now
inside us, so we begin to take
matter apart. Free* anymore any experience of the Gods
(no
gnosis), we think for ourselves, and invent our own myths (the
big bang
and Darwinian evolution). The inner world is now dark,
while the
outer world is full of light (where ages ago the outer world
was once
in shadow and the inner world filled with light). Faith
has
arisen, but even that (since the time of Christ) has become
more and
more arid and rigid, leading to inflexible beliefs and
fundamentalist
social demands.
*[This Freedom
is discussed below in the
section on Love with respect to the reason for the enchantment into materialism.]
Let us review
this last point, with a
slightly different emphasis. Our original state of being
(and of
consciousness) was such that what we think of as the inner
world of
today was light-filled, and the outer world of the senses more
in
shadow. We knew the Gods then directly (the Dreamtime). But as part of the Fall, we lost this
connection, and the inner world became more and more dark,
while the
outer sense world become more filled with light. This
change was
important in the Evolution of Consciousness, for it is
necessary for
the development of individuality.
At the time of
Christ's Incarnation into
the stream of matter, and as a human being, the Son was set on
the path
that was to lead to death (something no aspect of the Divine
Mystery
ever before, or ever after, would experience). Also
at this time, humanity was still within the
Fall. The inner world was dark and getting darker
(gnosis was to
disappear fully, not even initiation would be possible for a
time as
the Dark Ages of Western Civilization began), yet Christ
reminds us of
this loss of our original state of integration and the
possibility of
return, with: "the
kingdom
of heaven is within you".
Moreover, He full well knows that we are to
descend (Fall)
further, into the state of the on-looker separation ("I
have much more to say to you, but you can't bear it yet").
Yet to save us, we are given the gift of Faith. Even in the darkness then, we are taught to hold true, and are given the powers of the soul that not only have the capacity to hold true (during the darkness of the Fall), but to act true (recall St Paul's remarks about Faith, Hope and Charity).
Let us now
return to our main theme, the
relationship of thought to matter...
At a certain
point in time, humanity
begins to create, albeit in a very clumsy and childish way.
We
take substance and change it. First we simply combine it
with
other substances and reform it. We extract it from
its
natural places and make it serve our needs. As we do
this we
begin to find that substance contains hidden forces, such as
the will
of beings constrained by higher law. Yet, we do not
recognize
that will, for with the on-looker separation, and the
darkening of our inwardness, we have lost the Gods. Our
lamed
thinking has produced a view of the world empty of being
and consciousness. We have a highly technological
civilization which
does not understand reality at all.
Even our
contemporary history understands
that chemistry (for example) arose from the activity of the
Alchemists,
who were (in their essence) the first iteration of the return
of
initiation (the stream of Kings) after a necessary absence.
There
is no chemistry without the Alchemists, who are falsely
accused of
seeking to turn lead into gold, in a material way, when their
every
effort and meaning was about turning the lead of the soul into
gold -
to overcome the Fall and seek reintegration. Because
such views
were heretical (leading to torture and death at the hands of
the
Church), they were hidden by the true Alchemists in a
metaphorical
language.
Moreover, the
leading scientists, which
our edited history of science now pretends was not true, were
all
students of alchemy and astrology (Newton, Kepler etc. to name
but a
few).
Eventually we
abandon the idea of good
and evil (the Absence of the Good), and begin to consume the
world.
We set free electricity and magnetism, not knowing we
play with
divine fires, until, we touch the very fundament of substance,
bursting
its lawful arrangement and making, of the destruction of its
divinely
authored order, a weapon - an atom bomb. [Recall that in
order to
make a bomb we first have to concentrate in one place tons of
what is
otherwise finely distributed throughout the mineral earth, and
then
refine that substance in centrifuges more and more
intensifying and
isolating it from its natural condition. Then this now
intensely
concentrated uranium must further be imploded (forced together
in an
even higher density by an explosion), in order to have a bomb.
And, not
content with the fires hidden in
basic substance, our play now reaches into the mystery of
organic life
itself. Having stolen the truth from our ideas of life,
and made
of the Creation a meaningless accident, we now look at the
laws and
mysteries of organic life, seeking to turn them to our
purposes.
Just as the fundament of substance was cracked wide open
in a
childish and impetuous fashion, so now we play with the life
order of
substance and put again at risk our own earthly existence, for
the
bodies we inhabit are built entirely out of the substances of
the
Earth, whose nature and order we now denature and destroy in
our
arrogant ignorance.
Yes, our aim is
true. We often seek
the Good, in impulses to heal, to feed the multitudes, and
solve the
dilemmas of existence. However, and we all know this, at
the same
time we do much for selfish purposes, far too much. In
fact, our
Civilization - Western Civilization - is in its last days
precisely
because we have much too much woven it out of moral
corruption.
Seeing only
matter and never spirit
(substance is real, but not thought), in our immature
arrogance and
ignorance, we violate (rape and plunder) over and over again
that true
Womb (the Earth) in which we were to be physically born in
order to
experience the life of the senses as a preparation for the
development
of our individuality and our birth into spiritual maturity.
How far does
this go?
Now we can see
the deeper meaning of the
Eucharist. "Take and eat; this is my body...All of
you drink of this;
for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is being shed
from many
unto the forgiveness of sins."
Matthew
26-28 ["Take and eat this: this is my
body...Drink from this, all
of you: this is my blood, the blood of the testament, poured
out for
many for the forgiveness of wrongs"]
Substance is an
aspect of the Divine
Mystery Itself, giving Itself to us the way a Mother and
Father
sacrifice their own being, out of Love, to their children.
When
shall we learn to truly honor that gift? Yes, it was
freely given
by the Divine Mystery for our illumination and edification,
but just
when will we consciously receive this gift and once again be
grateful
in the same way it was in the long ago Ages of Myth?
Some Christians
have taken up a peculiar
relationship to that part of Genesis (1:26) which says: "God said, 'let us
make
mankind in our image and likeness; and let them have dominion
over the
fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, over all
the wild
animals and every creature that crawls on the earth.'" This might misdirect us, if we take
dominion to
mean: do whatever you wish. This is, of course,
existentially
true - we can do anything (that is our Freedom). But the
real
issue is not what can we do, but what should we do, and then by what
measure do we determine the nature of that should (free moral
grace, or
by the rules of unrestrained greed and power?)
The true understanding of dominion has been lost over the years, especially since we have come under the influence of natural science. This patriarchal influence has also cut us off, for a time, from a more direct connection to the Divine Feminine. In the section below on Love, regarding the Divine Feminine, and in the appendix where other considerations of Eros are developed (especially the meaning of dominion and surrender) we will gain additional insights into this confusion, which for some Christians leads them to fail to grasp the significance of the environmental movement, with its instinctive understanding of the Eucharist aspect of our true relationship to Nature.
Further, there
is some indirect evidence
that dominion may be a mistranslation of the original Hebrew,
and that
the more correct translation might well be ...and let them have
communion with the..., - or as
is said
in ancient Taoism - be at one with Nature. These -
dominion
over or communion with
- are, of course, two very different qualities of
relationship.
This then is the deep riddle of Freedom - which do we choose: dominion over or communion with; and now we are finally ready to consider the riddle and Mystery of Love.
Love
the theme
(song) of the deepest hidden potential of the human being
ninth stanza
the Four Forms of Love:
selfless love (Agape); nurturing love (Storge);
brother and
sisterly love (Phileo); and, erotic and sensual love (Eros).
In the title to
this section I have made
reference to certain classical Greek terms (Agape etc.).
It is
not my intention to ground what is about to be written in
these ancient
concepts. Rather, I only want to honor the depth of
wisdom on
which Western Civilization was founded, by acknowledging that
wisdom.
The nature of the human being has changed considerably
since the
time of the ancient Greeks (see also the above discussions on
the
Evolution of Consciousness). The Civilization founded on
their
Genius has reached its last days (we presently live in the
time of the
End of Western Civilization). At the same time there are
all
manner of good reasons for coming around again to much that
they
thought and understood, as long as we recognize that this
return is not
a circle that comes upon its own beginning, but is rather a
rising
spiral that when it passes that beginning by, does so at a
much more
evolved state.
What this means
at a practical level is
that the following discussion (as with much before it) is not
based
upon some consideration of the Ideals of the Four Forms of
Love, but
rather on the most intimate personal experiences within my own
biography, through which I was taught, by a remarkable Grace,
in the
practice and the pragmatic understanding of these Forms.
For example,
some might consider Agape or
selfless love to bear a special kinship with Divine Love.
That
may even have been what the Ancient Greeks had in mind.
It is not
what I have in mind, however. Divine Love is, to
experience,
quite overwhelming. It is so present and penetrating
that one is
tempted to either drown in it (abandon our own ego) or flee
from it in
fear. Not, by the way, because the Divine Mystery is
calling to
us to drown or to flee in fear, but because until we are truly
ready to
experience Divine Love directly, we are easily overcome due to
our own
flaws. My personal experiences of Divine Love have shown
that
this Grace given Gift is only offered for as long as we can
tolerate It. Once It tends to become too much for us, It withdraws Itself out of the same
impulse of Love already present.
This being the
case, the selfless love of
which I intend to speak here is human in all its dimensions.
Selfless love is the human act of personal sacrifice, in
which
the i-AM forgoes any benefit for itself, and only acts
for the
benefit of the other, or the Thou.
It is this
human love that Christ teaches us in the Gospel lessons.
It
is this human love that Christ demonstrated by going to the
Cross,
whereas it is Divine Love that brings about the Resurrection -
the
re-integration (a goal toward which we hunger and which
requires our
co-participation before we can be welcomed home).
Now human love,
in its most general sense
in that it expresses itself in Four Forms, is nonetheless one
whole.
It is a whole with four faces, or aspects of expression.
From another point of view, it is also Fallen or
UnFallen
according to whether the center of its nature is selfless
love, for
selfless love itself can never be Fallen (too Earthly).
Selfless
human love is always an expression of the divine nature of our
i-AM.
It
is "Thy
kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven" Matthew 6:10 {Let Your
kingdom come, May Your will be seen On the Earth, just as in
the sky.}
Another small aside, as regards the term sky. We might think that Christ is misleading us in referring to sky, and that later efforts which substituted the term heaven were more correct. The real problem is understood from an entirely different direction. Later in this book I will discuss how the paradigm of scientific materialism was the result of a kind of divinely authored enchantment of the mind. We moderns don't see the sky to which Christ refers and which his listeners understood, but rather we see the sky which natural science teaches - a sky empty of being and consciousness, concern and delight. We need to relearn to truly see the sky, free of any paradigm, religious, scientific or otherwise.
The fact is
that when we see the sky
through the lens of our education, we do not see what is
there, but
what we have been taught to see - a place empty of
consciousness and
being, and full of abstract forces and processes, without any
living
intelligence. If we re-educate ourselves, then we can
discover
how to see the sky according to our own intuitive
understanding - that
is give it the meaning we decide, and not the meaning imposed upon us by
others.
To return now
to our main theme...
What this means
is that the other three
forms, in order to be UnFallen, must be rooted in their
expression in
selfless human love {Your will
be seen}. This is accomplished
through
free acts of moral grace (the fulfillment of the law and the
prophets
in actions based upon the moral sensibilities of the human
heart).
We will come to this point again later, but for now let
us return
to our discussion of the Four Forms of Love.
Here is another
story from my biography,
which really contains all that I can say from experience about
selfless love:
I had a very
intimate friend - intimate
in a way hard to understand. Our relationship was such
that when
he crossed over, in his early thirties, he was able to leave
behind for
me as a gift (with the aid of Grace), the fruit, via memory,
of his
whole life (explaining how and why this happened would be
going way too
far away from our work here). Now granted this is not
the usual
kind of experience we have, but I would be less than honest
not to make
reference here, for it was from him that I learned what I know
about
how to practice selfless human love.
To make this as
clear as possible: I
possess all his memories, and should I want to look at how he
lived and
what he thought, I have but to practice the right kind of
discipline
and the whole is there for me to experience, in much the same
way as we
can all experience our own memories should we care to make the
effort.
What he taught me in this way is that he seldom thought
of
himself at all, and certainly when with another person he was
fully
concentrated on their feelings and needs. He was a
natural empath
by the way, and this enabled him to see more clearly the other
- the
Thou. His biography did
occasionally force him to do
for himself, but in the main his nature was such that he
always placed
his own needs, wants, feelings and thoughts second to those he
was
with. He was also a true innocent, which meant that he
lacked
those common impulses to ordinary evil which he found in most
others.
Evil was to him a mystery, for there was no way in which
he, who
was naturally innocent and selfless, could have empathy with
evil (know
it from the inside out). He was then instinctively
selfless, and
I am forever in his debt for showing me a living realization
of this
human ideal to which to aspire (yes, I do frequently fail).
Now nurturing love
we mostly experience as arising between parent and child, or
teacher
and much younger student. At the same time, lovers who
hold each
other close during the night, also express this face of love.
Our
present day culture has lost much of its connection with this
form of
love, mostly through fear and lack of trust, for nurturing
love is most
frequently expressed through touch (holding a child in ones
lap,
comforting a friend with an embrace, care of the ill and
infirm etc.).
This loss of understanding of the touching aspect of
nurturing
love in practice has come about mainly because of the
influence, on our
decadent and decaying Civilization, of Fallen Eros.
Young people
will know little of this, but for those of us awake at the
time, the
1980's, with its fear driven panics (largely unwarranted) over
the
abuse of children by caregivers, made it impossible any more
for
teachers in schools to nurture children, or close relatives
either.
Excesses of publicity, and deep confusion (and
error) among
so-called professionals in mental health, has driven us away
from
appreciating the importance and nature of touch between human
beings.
For a teacher in a school to physically nurture a child
(regardless of how deep is the child's need) is seen now
(fearfully and
unjustly) as potentially sexual, and therefore dangerous
(accusations
of abuse, and threats of law suits). This is a great
loss for
both the children and the adults. Of course, the school
environment is not the only social environment that suffers
because of
this confusion.
In my
biography, I was graced for a time
to be a student of this form of love, as that was carried out
and
investigated for a few years in Berkeley California during the
early
1970's. An organization of lay therapists, which called
itself
Group House, experimented with the use of nurturing touch at a
very
high and intelligent level. It was not all that was done
there,
but it was a main aspect of that work.
Adults were
held like babies by group
leaders and members. People learned to express anger in
a playful
way by pushing each other around the room. The
accumulated rage
of a lifetime could be released, when the person expressing it
was held
tightly, physically, by the dozen or so other members of the
group, so
that the anger could be experienced freely, while at the same
time
remaining connected to the nurturing physical contact of those
others
present about who one cared, and who care about us. The
floor of
the group rooms were layered in mattresses, covered with gaily
colored
sheets, and with many many colored pillows everywhere.
We wore
lose clothes and no shoes, and in this environment for people
to sit so
close to each other as to be touching, hip to hip, arm over
arm, or
however they wanted to drape themselves in relationship to
each other,
was common.
There is a book
that I value (others do
not) called Seven Arrows, by Hyemeyohsts
Storm. Here is a quote from the opening section called
The Pipe: "The Medicine Wheel Way begins
with the Touching of our Brothers and Sisters. Next it
speaks to
us of the Touching of the world around us...".
While
the deep wisdom of Native Americans remembers the gift of
touch, though the influence of Fallen Eros (more later) our
decaying
White culture has more and more lost a true connection to
nurturing
love by an unwarranted sexualization of all touching
behaviors.
From this we
can understand a little the
nature of the choice offered. If nurturing love
is filled from the inside out with human selfless love,
its
Fallen nature (sexualization) can be overcome.
If we turn next
to brotherly
and sisterly love, we find something
that has not yet become so Fallen
(although it is often faked), but remains strong and growing
stronger.
Another name for this face (or form) of love is comradeship.
The struggles
of life are best endured
when shared. The real secret of Alcoholics Anonymous is
not in
the Twelve Steps themselves, but in the community (reread the
Twelve
Steps and notice the frequent use of the term we, an approach which
is also an essential aspect of the
Lord's Prayer). It is not the i-AM
itself that does this work, but each in the company of others.
It
was the Solidarity Movement in Poland that crucially weakened
Communism
in eastern Europe. It is associations of social
activists and
environmentalists that are combating the worst aspects of our
degenerating culture. Everywhere that human beings join
together
to share the burdens of life, brotherly and sisterly love (comradeship) is being
expressed.
We should also
pay attention to where it
is faked (Fallen), and what problems result. Mostly this
occurs
in the work place, and mostly it is faked when it comes from
the top
down as an urged tool of management (we have to be a team). At the same time, in the same work
place, its
UnFallen form will appear in the solidarity of the workers
uniting
against the abuses of management - a management that does not
really
want to share the burdens of the work, but rather seeks to
dominate and
to profit at the expense of the workers (dominion over, instead of communion with). In
our time the faked version of this form
of love dominates our work life, and there is no true
comradeship
between the owners and the workers. Yet, please recall
what was
said above about the Evolution of Consciousness, and how in
our time
top down hierarchical social forms are dying (dominion over), while bottom up social forms are beginning to
emerge (communion
with).
The faked (or
Fallen) form of comradeship
has lost its meaning and utility for the whole (it remains
useful for
the selfish and self centered who, possessing power over our
lives,
seek to dominate, rather than enrich). Here again in the
work
place it will only be when human selfless love penetrates the
impulses
to solidarity or teamwork that true comradeship will arise.
In
fact, much that the future will unfold depends upon bringing
more and
more into the work life, this face of love.
Most of us know
a great deal about this
form of love, for we experience it anywhere we find community
(such as
a church etc.). The danger is, of course, when single
communities
can't find a way to solidarity with other single communities.
Why
this is so is frequently a consequence of our having
difficulty finding
shared world views, which shared world views make possible the
comradeship of a typical community. Yet, if selfless
love really
comes to penetrate individuals in any single community, that
community
will then be on the road to learning how to live with other
communities, even though they do not share fully congruent
world views.
The fact is that we all share a great deal more than we
think,
and the coming changes in social existence, which are to take
the form
of various political and environmental crises, will lead us to
those
choices (free moral grace) by which we can learn to see our
shared
humanity across a broader spectrum of differences than is
presently
possible. When there isn't any longer an abundance of
food and
water for all, the ideologies and beliefs that tend to
separate us will
hopefully become secondary to the need to cooperate for
survival.
In a sense, a
major characteristic of the
coming crisis in civilization is the conflict between the
influence of
the false Darwinian social theory (competition, survival of
the
fittest) and free moral impulses (chosen cooperation as
our true
natural state). In the Gospels this message is contained
in the
Beatitudes, such as: Blessed are the meek [the
truly
humble]
for
they shall inherit the Earth. [The
television
series currently trying to work with this is Jericho, but its general conception of human nature is
weak, and
it mostly is written for dramatic tension (thus missing a
great
opportunity to show human beings acting more creatively).]
Here is another
brief aside, regarding
the meaning of work: There are many kinds of work that
are
devalued in our failing civilization and culture. People
are
taught, for example, to consider it demeaning to work in fast
food
restaurants, or as custodians. All types of labor are
thought to
be beneath many, who then judge and look down upon those who
serve
below them. If we are to give rebirth to our
civilization, one of
the central acts of rebirth will be in the redemption of the
meaning of
labor. I don't believe anything more needs to be said
here.
In my
biography, I learned the most about
comradeship in the work life.
Now I want to
undertake a discussion of
Eros, in both its Fallen and UnFallen forms. But
preliminary to
that, we need to deepen some of what we previously have
discussed
regarding the Four Forms of Love. And, because of the
huge
influence of Fallen Eros on our culture, this discussion will
have to
be done carefully and take some time and effort on the part of
the
reader.
It is possible
to make a symbolic cross of these
four forms in the following way:
selfless love
nurturing love + comradeship
erotic and
sensual love
Selfless love
is more Heavenly in nature,
while erotic and sensual love is more Earthly. It would
be wrong,
however, to conceive of erotic and sensual love as something
sinful or
base. The Divine Mystery has clearly placed in the hands
of the forces of erotic and sensual attraction that power by
which
procreation occurs, and by this has entrusted the coming into
incarnation of children to this attractive power (or force) of
human
nature.
I don't, by the
way, meant to use the
term force metaphorically. We have to appreciate that
emotion
and passion bring about movement toward, as well as movement
away.
This is a profound power in human relationships.
Physics
ignores this force since it can not be quantified, but anyone who is paying attention to their
lives, will
have no trouble appreciating the qualities here under consideration.
While selfless
love and erotic and
sensual love seem to have a relationship that can be
characterized by
heavenly and earthly qualities, nurturing love and comradeship
do not.
This symbolic
cross then seems to have both a
vertical and
a horizontal dimension. In order to deepen this I will
have to
add some matters which for some will seem speculative, but
which I can
assure you are also rooted in experience.
Christianity
has so far only known much
about what is essentially a patriarchal Trinity: Father, Son
and Holy
Spirit. We are entering on that time when knowledge of
the
matriarchal Trinity: Mother, Daughter and Holy Soul will be
added to
our understanding. The anonymous author of Meditations
on
the
Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism
puts the situation this way in the Arcanum XIX: (the
meditation on) The Sun:
Father
/ \
Daughter--/------\---Holy Soul
\ / \ /
\/ \/
/ \ / \
Son--\---------/-- Holy Spirit
\ /
\ /
Mother
Whereby Father,
Son and Holy Spirit
formed one triangle, and Mother, Daughter and Holy Soul a
second
triangle, such that the two triangles combined make a
hexagram, or the
Hebrew six pointed star symbol (the Seal of Solomon).
Now it is not
my intention to resolve any
of the questions that might arise in the reader here, but
rather only
to bring forth more attention to the Feminine Mysteries and
their role
in the future, as well as to suggest that there is no
understanding the
Divine aspects of Eros, without realizing that this part of
the mystery
of the Four Forms of Love is under the instruction of the
Mother.
All that I have learned during my biography about Eros
has been
at the inspiration of women.
So then we have
above
- selfless love (which rests upon the instructions of the
Father), and below
erotic and sensual love (which rests upon the instructions of
the
Mother), and in between these Heights and Depths we have the
Breadths
or nurturing love and comradeship (which rests upon the
instructions of
the Son), evolving our symbolic cross as follows:
selfless love
(the Father)
nurturing love (the Son) comradeship
erotic and sensual love
(the Mother)
Christ, in the Center and in between, then mediates the instructions of the Father and the Mother to the World (in the present), so that selfless human love and erotic and sensual love, representing a Vertical polarity of Above and Below (Heaven and Earth) in ordinary social life, reappear as nurturing love and comradeship, representing a Horizontal or social polarity. Our understanding of these relationships will change when below we explore more closely erotic and sensual love (the instructions of the Mother).
To the above we
must add the following
symbolism regarding our human organization:
spirit
soul
body
We have a
purely spiritual nature in that
we are, each of us, an i-AM - a spirit. We
have a purely physical nature, in that we have a physical
material
body. In between the spirit and the body lies the soul
as a
mediating principle. Recall now our previous symbolism:
[sense world
< soul (d) < i-AM > (d) soul > spiritual world]
From this we can come to the idea that the soul mediates in two directions - one outwardly toward the sense world, and the other inwardly toward the world of spirit. With these ideas in mind we can now begin to understand why in discussing Eros I have divided it into two distinct principles; the erotic and the sensual.
For purposes of
discussing Eros only we
can change the above symbolism as follows:
[sense world
- sensual love < soul (d) < i-AM > (d) soul >
erotic love -
spiritual world]
Sex, or what we
interestingly enough call
making (creating?) love, to most of us involves the
stimulation
of pleasure centers on the physical body. Not having
knowledge of
the soul, we assume that this pleasure is entirely physical in
nature.
Yet, if we leave aside the theories of modern natural
science,
and remain true to our own experience,
we will see
that whatever the nature of the physical body is, our
experience of sensation, whether just seeing, hearing, smelling and
touching, or
of the sexual pleasures, takes place in our inwardness.
The experience (as opposed
to the physical mechanism of the senses) of the sensation is
not
visible to the eye, although in
love-making
these sensations and the related emotions will produce visible
movement.
It is the i-AM
that experiences the sensations, which sensations are mediated
by the
soul through the sense organs of the physical body (which is
why I
pointed out above the symbolism: spirit, soul, body).
This means that when we touch or see or smell during love-making, it is the sensual capacities of the soul that are evoked, thus the most Earthly aspect of Eros is sensual love.
However, we
also speak
when making love. Today's hunger for romance is an
expression of
this side of Eros, which is then properly named: erotic love.
In
the sharing of ideas and the expression of feelings, we evoke
this more Heavenly aspect of UnFallen Eros. Please note
the
subtle distinction suggested between the expression of feelings, and the experience of feelings. There is a difference between
saying
"I love you", and feeling such love for another.
Here we also
need to make a distinction
between sensual pleasure and erotic pleasure, or between
pleasure that
is experienced in the sense oriented aspect of the soul,
and
pleasure that is experienced in the spiritually oriented part
of the
soul. We should also note in passing, that children are
sensual,
but not sexual. Sensuality is only sexualized when the
mind
enters into the pleasure and makes it erotic, and the mind
only begins
to fully appear in us during adolescence. For example,
the
pedophile will, having given in to being possessed by his
self-inflicted wound, claim to love
children, all the while being in denial
of the fact that if he truly loved children selflessly, he
would never
destroy their innocence. He really only loves himself,
and his
Fallen erotic pleasure in tasting this forbidden fruit.
Let us now take
a small, but quite
important, side trip here into contemporary social phenomena.
Women wisely
and instinctively (and
frequently) express that they want romance. They want to
be
courted, and they want to be talked to, both before and after
that
climax most people falsely assume to be the goal of
sensual and
erotic expression. Rightly their instinct is that
the
erotic aspect of love is more powerful than the sensual
aspect. It is
what is said and felt that is the deepest and strongest, not
what is
touched or seen. The purely sensual, while
important,
often comes down to just technique, while the truly erotic depends wholly on authenticity.
UnFallen Eros
then moves from above downward.
The
sensual and erotic aspects must be a consequence of the
selfless human
love which then seeks realization in certain situations of
natural
attraction, through the authenticity of the expression of
ideas and
feelings toward the other, or the Thou,
ultimately being
realized in sensual expression. I am selflessly sensual
to the
extent that my focus is on my partner's sensual/soul
experiences, while
I am selflessly erotic to the extent that my expressions of
love and
feeling are authentic (genuine). When we are erotic
first
(authentically romantic), this then frees and heightens
sensual
pleasure.
On the other
hand, Fallen Eros moves from below upward,
seeking selfish pleasure through the application of technique,
whether
in dress, movement or touch (in our culture this appears in
the
constant, and ultimately sterile, drive to look and act sexy),
or
through the application of lies (erotic speech) in which the
expression
of feelings and of love are faked.
In the case of
Fallen Eros we try to turn on the other, the Thou,
through technique, while in the case of UnFallen Eros
we become turned on by the authenticity
of our
expressions of love and feeling. In the former our goal
is our
own pleasure, while the latter is the natural consequence of
the
selfless deepening of expressions of affection, mutual trust
and
concern.
If women wisely
and instinctively want
romance, what could Men wisely and instinctively want?
You will
have to excuse me from saying anything at all about same sex
erotic
expression (at this point in time), this being a territory too
charged
with excessively passionate judgments and assumptions.
At the
same time, that wisdom we have seen in the instinct of Women
for
romance has a corresponding wisdom in the desires expressed by
Men.
It is just that in the case of Men, this wisdom has been
displaced and covered over with aspects of Fallen Eros.
In social life,
this displaced wisdom
appears in prostitution, the practices of the stripper, the
explosion
of pornography and the coming into being of paid phone sex,
and
sexually explicit Internet chat rooms. I am not going to
try to
give an historical explanation for this displacement, that too
being a
subject needing far to much detail and care. Let us just
consider
that, in the main, this displacement is a natural
consequence of
those same social forces that have led to the End of Western
Civilization.
As a small
aside, since we do call
prostitution the oldest profession, we might remind ourselves
that in
the most ancient times, in the older Mysteries, the Temple
included
Rites which were sensual and erotic. This was in times
in which
the Divine Feminine was more prominent and recognized, so that
for the
Temple to evoke Rites connected to the true mysteries of Eros,
was
entirely appropriate. Only when those Mysteries began to
decay
and fail, did prostitution appear in the social order, as a
consequence
of the loss of a truly religious appreciation of the sacred
nature of
UnFallen Eros. We need to restore this understanding to
the next
phase of our civilization.
Using our
previously developed
understanding we can see that prostitution, stripping, and
pornography
tend to fall on the sensual side of sexual experience, while
paid phone
sex and written (chat room) sex-play tend to fall on the
erotic side.
The former tend to mostly appeal to the senses (the
body), and
the latter tends to mostly appeal to the mind (spirit). These
represent
the natural hungers of Men, which if selflessly expressed properly in
private, and satisfied in private,
would no
longer need to be displaced to our shared social detriment.
If, in
situations of UnFallen Eros the
woman learns that in her movements, and in undressing and
dressing, as
well as in touch, she can be selflessly sensual with her
partner, she
can also learn that with speech, especially of an earthly
nature, she
can be selflessly erotic. What is displaced, and becomes
mere
commerce in prostitution, stripping, pornography, phone sex
and sex
chat rooms, can be returned to the bedroom as an offering to
the wise
instincts living in a man's natural hunger for a woman.
I realize that
today many woman believe
that in publicly dressing sexy they are finding a certain kind of
power,
yet at the same time they are conforming to what is really a
decadent
gesture in our shared social existence (civilization).
The
unveiling of the human female form, which can be seen as a
kind of
group insanity of immodesty, is not really appreciated for its
negative
social consequences. I am, by the way, not being prudish
here at
all, but on the contrary pointing out that we have to
understand that Eros is a force. A primal
power of the Creation is being
immaturely played with here, and we cannot continue to ignore
its
devastating consequences in those situations where we do not
use human
wisdom to master it.
Let me add to
our discussion some matters
pointed out to me by my encounters with the wisdom of Native
Americans.
There is a
remarkable document called the
Hopi Prophecy, which is worth all manner of careful study, and
which
contains the following language referring to that future which
has now
become our present: "The sacred body of the female will no longer be
hidden,
for the shield of protection will be uplifted, an act of
temptation
toward sexual license.". When women
wear
tight pants or shorts, instead of modest skirts, and now among
the
young with the uncovering of the belly, something socially
undesirable
is set free. Why? This comes next...
During my
biography, I happened to
discover that my ability to fully experience my senses
consciously was
limited by the way in which I was raised. It was not
just the
form of education, but the nature of the whole of my
experience as a
youth. The senses really are only opened up properly
when in
direct contact with raw nature (having been created primarily
in that
context and for the purpose), and I found it possible to
recover some
of these natural endowments through various exercises.
Here again
is a whole other discussion that will have to be set aside.
As a consequence of sharpening my senses, to put the matter directly, I learned that certain experiences caused unconscious (near involuntary) physiological responses in my physical organism. This is not, by the way, the same thing as the embarrassing involuntary movements of a young man's sexual parts, where hormones are just beginning to transform his organism. In my case, I was quite adult, and the experiences were quite subtle. Mostly they had to do with the experience of the curves of the female form.
Now it would be
possible to treat this
crudely, but please bear with me - this is not my intention or
purpose.
Just as we experience aesthetic
pleasure in the soul
in the presence of certain music or natural vistas, so for a
man, the
curves of the female body are perceived semi-consciously as an
expression of the Divine Art of Creation. They are meant
to
attract with great power, for the human female form is one of
the
wonders of the Creation, and the law of nature that
causes men to
be attracted to this form is not any different from the also
Divinely
Ordered law of gravity (with its yet to be perceived or fully
understood polaric opposite - the law of levity, which if
physicists
get their act together will eventually displace the lame
concept of
"dark matter".).
Yes, natural
science has uncovered
certain aspects connected to the sense of smell, i.e.
pheromones, but
to place sexual attraction solely in the realm of the human
unconscious
will be a mistake. Likewise, to rest these matters
solely on some
altar of genetic selection is again to misread the phenomena.
The
inner invisible aspects of human existence are always much
more
profound and powerful than the merely material.
The problem is
how to manage the social
consequences of this force of attraction in
a wise
way. For many ancient peoples, and still as a tradition
of much
of the Muslim world (for example), covering the female form
was one way
to deal with the force evoked during the Male's perception of
the
female form. Yet, as Western Civilization decayed,
social
dynamics, both within female and male sub-cultures, encouraged
the
gradual uncovering of this form, until today we are urged to
believe
that looking sexy is a high value (when instead it is nothing
but
Fallen Eros, and as such fills our souls with self-created
wounds of
soul, for which the middle-ages once used the terms incubi and
succubi.).
I don't believe
much more needs to be
said about Fallen Eros. Everyone can look around the
world and
see what is going on. For those who advocate inner
discipline in
the male, this would no doubt help. At the same time
there are
two parts to this, or two partners. As much as the male
needs to
master the flood of inner sensations in which he lives as part
of our
over-sexualized culture, so the female needs to rediscover the
wisdom
and value of modesty. Would you find any moral value in
torturing
a starving man with sights of food they cannot consume?
We should not
be surprised then that,
while these so-called hormonal stimulations (semi-conscious
physiological responses, connected to inner struggles with the
shadow
forces of temptation - the double, and self created repetitive
desires
- wounds) in all males continue to simmer, there is often
little other
way for them to move except that of expressing this force in
socially
undesirable aggression. A great deal of the
excesses of
competition among males, and aggression toward women, is
driven by the
semi-conscious over-stimulation of the natural erotic and
sensual
hungers of the male. What should also not be ignored, is
that the
advertising business well understands the psychological
implications of
connecting commerce to a man's desire for the female, and uses
this
psychological advantage for profit, regardless of the social
cost
(another example of what happens in the Absence of the Good).
Let us now turn
to what can be done to
develop a wiser cultural intelligence in the face of this
influence of
Fallen Eros. However, in order to do that, we need to
add some
other themes, for Fallen Eros is not the only semi-consciously
understood social force (greed, fear of death etc. come easily
to mind)
loose in our societies that is connected to the real nature of
the Mystery of Evil, and which can only truly be transformed by love engendered free
moral
grace.
tenth stanza
the Seventh Day of Creation as an Expression of Love
- concerning the role of Divine Love, and human love,
in the creation of new social forms, or what we usually call
the Fall of one Civilization followed by the Birth of a new one -
[also
contains the Fool's Tale (part II)]
If you will
recall, in those aspects of
this work concerning the Evolution of Consciousness, we
realized that
the former top down hierarchical social forms have lost their
validity
and vitality, and that in the next phase of the future all healthy social order will depend upon the bottom up
expression
of love engendered free moral grace. However, in the
creation of
new social forms, these will only arise out of individual acts,
which
means that the first new social forms will be the simplest -
one into
two. A couple, or a partnership, is the simplest basis
for a new
social form.
What I mean by
new social form,
by
the way, is that the rules and structural elements will be
based
upon the consciously love
engendered free moral activity of the participants,
and not upon sterile and rigid tradition. One of the
major
characteristics, of this epoch in which we live, is the
emancipation of
the i-AM from social tradition, so that in the future the
moral
lawfulness of social forms (communities) will depend no longer
on the
outside traditional values, but on individual, love
engendered, free
moral grace. Recall that Christ came to fulfill the law
and the
prophets, and that in His statement (see immediately below) as
regards
the most important commandments, He described them this way: "On these two
commandments
depend the whole Law and the Prophets".
{All the
law and all the prophets hang from these two commands."}
This being the
case, for all the
hysterics connected to it, the question of gay marriage offers
us the
opportunity to look at this problem in its most fundamental
dynamics
(we will address this in more detail shortly). Love
isn't
expressed in a vacuum, in some abstract fashion. It
appears in
reality in what goes on in between people (one of the primary
places
where Christ can be found - in between - there is always, as
regards
Love, both the Lover and the Beloved and the Love in between).
Love is not something found in a
book, or known vicariously. At the same time,
there is both
an inner and outer aspect to love as it is expressed in the
social.
Recall our symbolism: [sense world < soul (d) < i-AM
> (d) soul >
spiritual world].
To the extent
that we express love, we
express it in two directions. Christ puts it this way,
as we
noted above, in His response to the question of what is the
greatest
commandment: Matthew 22: 37-40 " Jesus said to him, "
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
"Thou shalt
love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole
soul,
and with thy whole mind." And the second is like it, "Thou
shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself." On these two commandments
depend the
whole Law and the Prophets." {He
said
to them, "You are to love your lord God with all your heart
and all
your spirit and all your mind. That is the important and
first
commandment. The second one is similar: You are to love
those
close to you as you love yourself. All the law and
all the
prophets hang from these two commands."}
Love directed
at God is directed
inwardly, into and through the doorway within that leads from
our
spirit (i-AM) to the Divine Mystery Itself. ("And on being asked by
the
Pharisees, "When is the kingdom of God coming?" he answered
and said to
them, "The kingdom of God comes unawares. Neither will
they say,
'Behold, here it is', or 'Behold, there it is.' For behold,
the kingdom
of God is within you." Luke 17:20-21
{Asked by
the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming he answered:
"The
kingdom of God doesn't come with watching like a hawk, and
they don't
say, Here it is, or There it is, because, you know what? the
kingdom of
God is inside you.} Love
directed
at our neighbors, or those close to us, is directed outwardly
toward
the Mystery of the other, the Thou, as
that unfolds in
the shared social world, or the Seventh Day of Creation.
Another aside:
Christ also turns us in
this direction with his remarks at Matthew 22:21: "Render unto Caesar
the things
which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's." {"So give
Caesar's things to Caesar, and God's things to God"}. Caesar, being
the parable-metaphor for the social world - the incarnated world of
human
laws and social traditions, deserves our gifts as well as does
God.
This being the
general rule, let us first
look a little at some macro social processes regarding
community and
individuality, so as to be able to place our growing new
understanding
in a more illuminating light. We will first look at
those
processes leading to the dissolving of tradition, before
considering
the up building processes. You will recall that earlier
I wrote
of the End of Western Civilization. It now becomes
necessary to
write more carefully about this theme, not only from the point
of view
of the i-AM, and the biography, but also in terms of the
influence
of the Divine Mystery on all human social order and history -
that
which appears in part as the macro application of the Mystery of Evil. Unfortunately, it would involve a whole
other
book to deal fully with this theme, therefore the reader will
have to
get by with a few hints as an aide to their own thinking.
the Fool's Tale
(part II)
Let us first
take a bit of thought from
Rudolf Steiner's stories about the pantheon of Evil, wherein
he writes
in detail of two powers: the near-god Ahriman, and the fallen
Seraphim
Lucifer, otherwise known as the Devil and Satan. The
convinced
materialist will wince here, but their naivety regarding the
role of
Evil in human civilization is not really our problem.
Rudolf Steiner
suggests that the
relationship, between Ahriman and Lucifer and the doubles in
the human
soul, is something like a glove within a glove, within a
glove.
The nature of these two powers is such then that their
influence
within us is mediated and stepped down through a series of
intermediary
invisible beings, until such moment as their presence in our
soul life
is appropriate according to the Design of the Divine Mystery.
We
have to imagine a pyramidal hierarchy that spreads out and
multiplies
in such a way that the power at the top is only experienced in
a very
small degree at the bottom, where it plays an ordained role in
the
soul. Let us symbolize this in the following way:
Ahriman,
followed by a series of
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
arrows,
representing
the gloves within gloves etc.
With this in
mind let us revisit our
original symbolism with certain additions. By the way,
lest folks
get confused here, a couple of crucial points. First,
this
situation is ordained, and plays a very much needed role in
the
Evolution of Consciousness in accord with the Seventh Day of
Creation
out of the Divine Mystery; and second, the appearance of this
structure
in the human soul does not begin at birth, for in the very
young the
needs of the i-AM are very much
under the direct instruction of a Guardian
Angel. In addition, you will see that the whole
structure is
overseen by even greater Divine powers than a near-god and a
fallen
Seraphim.
Also, the map below (the
symbolism) is not
the territory.
Christ Jesus
Guardian Angel
[sense world < soul (A/d) < i-AM > (L/d) soul > spiritual world]
human double
the Divine
Mother
Now please
remember that this is a symbolic representation of something that in reality is far more
complicated,
considerably less abstract and excruciatingly real. We
might also
pay a little attention to Rudolf Steiner's comments that the
double is
the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold, while Christ is the
Greater
Guardian. By Threshold is meant that
Boundary that we must cross over in order to participate in
full and
authentic spiritual experience, or what is called in the
cultural
Center initiation, and in the cultural East, enlightenment. In the final phases of our development,
such that
leads to full initiation, the double is consciously met and
worked
with, until it is no longer needed. Few of us will face
this
problem in this life, so I will say only a little about it,
and that
hopefully will be very practical.
In addition, in
the Cultural West, where
it is neither enlightenment or initiation that is central, but
rather character
development, it is rather our moral integration with the living world and the world of
invisibles that
is important. This moral integration comes about because
of how,
during the unfolding of the trials of our biographies, our
character is
created. We will have more to say on this later as well,
and in
greater detail.
Here again is part of the symbolic diagram:
[sense world < soul (A/d) < i-AM > (L/d) soul > spiritual world]
[human (d)]
This is more of
a functional
representation, rather than a pictorial. The ahrimanic
double
(A/d) and the luciferic double (L/d) are intimate companions
of the i-AM,
and
we experience (in the beginning) their urgings and commentary
as an
inseparable part of our
self (lower ego). At the same
time, in
that we inwardly hear this commentary and these urgings, there
is a
functional separation wherein choice is possible. We
know these
inner struggles, which appear to us when we seem (emphasis on
seem)
to
be fighting ourselves. This has always been a general
cultural
intuition in the West - one that frequently was seen in
cartoon films,
where a character in conflict is portrayed in such a way that
a tiny
angel (the luciferic double) and a tiny devil (the ahrimanic
double)
are visualized as sitting on the two shoulders of the
character, with
each one offering their advice of what to do, while the
essential self
finds itself caught in between.
This fighting
ourselves is really a
battle between the urgings and commentary of the luciferic and
ahrimanic doubles and the i-AM. In
many instances
we actually need these urgings and commentary, for the i-AM
is not yet capable of sufficient discernment, so that the
luciferic and
ahrimanic doubles often perform a needed function. There
are
times when a luciferic impulse or an ahrimanic impulse is a
valid
response to a life situation. Remember, we are spiritual
children
undergoing a metamorphosis, over the sequence of our
biographies, into
spiritual adulthood, out of our own initiative via love
engendered free
moral grace.
The soul, in
fact, seems to move from one
double, through the center (the i-AM),
to
the other, in a kind of rhythmic lemniscate movement. So
imagine an infinity symbol overlaying this: [(A/d) < i-AM >
(L/d)], circling first around one
double, then through the
center and then circling around the other. This is again
a functional
representation of the inner dialogs wherein we talk to
ourselves concerning various choices in life. We often "see"
moral
issues from three distinct ways. The first one tends to
a
kind of cold and calculating view (the A/d), while the second
one tends
to a kind of grandiose and prideful view (the L/d) - in the
first two
our lower ego is seen as the most important factor in the
choice - that
is we are self centered in the first two; and, the third is
self
sacrificing and humble (the true i-AM),
wherein
we choose to recognize that the Thou is
more important than
the I (Love God and thy neighbor
- the two most important commandments).
Added to this
we might consider a second
lemniscate, this one vertical rather than horizontal. In
the
vertical lemniscate the lower circle gesture is around the
human
double, while the upper circle gesture is around that aspect
of the i-AM
that is to win free of all the doubles. We thus might
make our
symbolism take the following form:
i-AM
[(A/d) < i-AM > (L/d)]
human (d)*
*self-generated wounds
We will later
go more into the problem of
the upper and lower ego, but for now the thing to note is that
our
natural desire is to learn more and more to make the choices
from the
center, from the heart of our being.
While at the same time, we will (and
we should expect this) frequently make choices from one pole
or the
other, and not out of the heart-center. When we do
notice that we
have made such a one-sided choice (outside of our
heart-center), this
becomes food for thought in the daily review (mentioned above
in the
sixth stanza in reference to consciously preparing for sleep).
As our inner development moves forward, especially in a moral way (we more consciously seek the Good), then the separation between the i-AM and the doubles becomes more inwardly perceivable and we begin to play a more conscious role in the struggle. We start to recognize that the commentary and urgings are not the true essence or i-AM.
We then come to a problem, which is what do we do if we wish to change the soul such that the doubles no longer have this role. This desire to change the soul then leads to certain kinds of crises in the inner biography. Do we fight, or negotiate? What role does love play (that is do we love this shadow - this seemingly alien and antagonistic aspect of the soul)? If we take upon ourselves - upon our i-AM - the tasks of the doubles, will this free us from their influence? Everyone has to answer these questions for themselves.
The luciferic
and ahrimanic doubles are
not Lucifer and Ahriman, but rather stepped down echoes of the
nature
of the Fallen Seraphim Lucifer and the near-God Ahriman.
So we
have the gloves within gloves within gloves, or: Ahriman
>>>>>>>>>>> a series of
intermediary
hierarchical beings
>>>>>>>>>>>>>> the
ahrimanic
double.
Rudolf Steiner
created a statue of the
Representative (model) of Humanity, where Christ (the model
for the i-AM)
stands
in between Lucifer above (the model for the luciferic double
in
the soul that stands in between us - the i-AM
- and the spiritual world), and Ahriman below (the model for
the
ahrimanic double that stands in between the i-AM
and the sense world).
Now when we
have given into an urging or
commentary repeatedly, a kind of independent organism grows in
the soul
due to this repeated giving in. This is the human double
or
self-generated wound. Various obsessions, even of a
religious
nature, will create such a wound, and for the practical
overcoming of
this near independent (tumor-like) aspect of the soul, we have
been
given the Twelve Steps.
This human
double is the true source of
evil in the world (a consequence of our Freedom), and when in
the run
up to WWII human beings began to consciously (freely) choose
to give
into (and consciously cultivate) these impulses (Stalin and
his cronies
and Hitler and his cronies - and others), that is when the
Beast rose
from the Abyss and gained entry into the world of human
affairs.
Here, in a sense, was the deepest point of the Fall of
Humanity,
and as we will see, it is precisely here at this deepest point
of the
Fall, where we were standing above the Abyss staring downward
at the
Shadow that is our darkest self, that this danger was met by
the Second
Coming of Christ, or what is sometimes called: the Return of
Christ in
the Ethereal (See Ben-Aharon's: The
Spiritual
Event of the Twentieth Century).
As everyone is
aware, this is a long
awaited event. Most Christians assume that Christ will
come again
in the flesh, not understanding the references to clouds, in
Matthew
24:30 and 26:64. The first concerns Christ's prophecy
about the
end times or the Day of the Last Judgment as foretold in
Daniel.
The second is not a repeat of the first, but is rather
another
reference, for it is in answer to a demand of the High Priest
to be
told whether Jesus is the Son of God, to which He answers:
Matthew
26:64: "Jesus
said
to him, "Thou hast said it. Nevertheless, I say to you,
hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right
hand of the
Power and coming upon the clouds of heaven.".
["That's
what
you say. But I do tell you this: next time you will see
the
son of humanity sitting at the right hand of power and coming
on the
clouds of the sky."]
We need to keep
in mind that Christ is
referring to heaven or the sky, and clouds because that meant
something
different than the mere physical world we see today.
This is a
reference to spiritual reality, not material. So when
Christ
tells the High Priest that the next time he will see Christ
will be
when Christ is coming on clouds of the sky, Christ is speaking
of His
Return (Second Coming) in the spiritual, not the material
world.
The Kings (Steiner et.al.) speak of this in detail, and
Valentin
Tomberg (another 20th Century King) wrote a whole book on it:
The Four
Sacrifices of Christ and the Return of Christ in the Etheric - meaning by the term etheric (or as some
prefer: ethereal) that aspect of spiritual existence most closely
related
to the material world. For example, true heart thinking takes place
in the ethereal world (more on this in the
eleventh stanza).
It is this
Return in the Ethereal Realms
which marks the 20th Century so deeply, and which prompts this
book.
It is because of this Return that we can now understand
John the
Baptist in Matthew 3: 11: "I indeed baptize you with water, for
repentance.
But he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose
sandals I
am not worthy to bear. He will baptize you with the Holy
Spirit
and with fire." {Now
I
bathe you in water to change hearts, but the one coming after
me is
stronger than me: I'm not big enough to carry his shoes.
He will
bathe you in holy breath and fire.}
With the Return, described in great detail and with the
most
profound depth in Ben Aharon's work above, Christ is now back
with us,
so that He can carry out what John the Baptist foretold:
Christ's
baptism of us with the Holy Spirit (the return of gnosis), and
with
fire (the trials in our biographies of spiritual maturation,
brought
about by our choosing to become awake to evil in the ways now
being
described as regards the complex of the doubles). Christ
is with
us and oversees our confrontation with Evil and all its
aspects,
especially if we pray the 7th Petition of the Lord's Prayer.
To return now
to our main theme...
We need to
recognize that these doubles
(the luciferic, ahrimanic and human) play a needed role in the
biography, and we can discover this role when we look back at
our
inwardness on individual days in evening prayer, or look back
over
several years time (those periods in the biography wherein
self doubt
and reflection lead us to wisdom). Through this looking
back we
will come to see where so-called bad habits and choices have
led us to
an education for our i-AM that can be found
in no
other way.
This process of
reflection is the surest
way to understand these things in our own biographies, and it
is only
in our own biographies that we have any business considering
these
problems. Just as we know that we can't fix an addiction
or
alcoholism in the other, in the Thou (we
know that only
they can fix themselves), so we have to accept our own
responsibility.
Again, it is in the Sermon on the Mount, where Christ
advises us
not to judge, but rather to look to the log in our own eye.
The social
organism can make laws
(consequences) for the giving into various impulses, but only
the i-AM
can heal itself. What the
Twelves Steps have taught us,
however, is
that those with similar self-generated wounds can form a
helping
community, so that we are not alone in facing these
self-created near
independent creatures in our souls. Moreover, this
self-healing
begins with what for some is that oddest of gestures: surrender. We give up forcing ourselves to change,
and in so
doing make a space within the soul for help from higher
worlds, and for help
from our shared earthly community. In
surrender, the lower ego confesses its incompleteness, and
recognizes
that the prideful belief that it (the lower ego) can do
everything on
its own is false. Thus humbled, we are now ready to be aided from that which is
not-I,
but is rather both our spiritual and our social companions.
The poet
Novalis has this to say that is
quite apt here:
The heart is the key to the world and of life.
We live in our helpless condition
in order to love, and be obliged to others.
Through imperfection we become ripe for the influence of others,
and this outside influence is the aim.
In illness we must be helped by others and only others can help us.
From this
point of view, Christ surely is the key of the world.
Basically what
I am trying to describe is
a functionally useful (pragmatic) map. Novalis has given
it
poetic representation. In any event, each person has to
make
their own experiences here.
Enough said.
For right now we are
just trying to see deeper into the inner aspects of the
Creation, so
that we can better understand the nature of our biographies
and their
relationship to social existence and history, so let us now
turn our
attention to some recent history.
Early on, and
somewhat in between, I have
made reference to the nature of the relationship of a
particular stage
in the Evolution of Consciousness, with its corresponding social structure, such as the third epoch being
characterized by top down hierarchical social forms, while the
fifth
epoch is characterized by bottom up individually created
social forms
(since we are in the beginning of the creation of such forms
they do
not immediately stand out, but I can assure you that they are
present
everywhere if one just carefully observes and thinks).
Let's look
at this with a bit more attention to detail.
The Twentieth
Century is a remarkable
case in point, but we only have the time and the space to
examine a few
small parts of it. Following on the end of World War II,
America
experienced a kind of pause, which we call the '50's. My
friend,
whose memories I inherited, came in his biography to his
adolescence in
these years. This period of pause was followed by a
period of
rapid social change, which we call the '60's. Most
everyone knows
of these matters and many have lived through them. What
is less
known is how these events shape macro aspects of the shared
social
world of humanity, which social world is the living context for all our individual biographies. Conventional
history
hardly understands these realities at all.
In the '50's,
for example, three
remarkable American personalities (individualities) began
their
emergence as a kind of social nexus (or focal point) for a great deal of the change that was to
come.
I am not suggesting these gentlemen were the causes of
the
subsequent events, but rather that the transformations
appearing (from
the within outward) in the social order used these
personalities as a
kind of social lever. These three are: Hugh Hefner,
Elvis
Presley, and the Reverend Martin Luther King.
With Hefner's
publication of his Playboy
magazine, the sexual revolution (something very much related
to
freedom) and to further
degeneration (it also produced temptations to
all kinds of excess) all connected to the forces of Eros (both
Fallen
and UnFallen) began to emerge with great strength. With
the music
of Elvis Presley, which combined Black rhythm and blues and
White
popular lyrics and melodies, a new social dance came into
being, which
Presley not only encouraged, but exemplified - so that what we
came to
know as Rock and Roll emerged (granted Rock and Roll has a
deeper
history within the Blues, I am here going only to try to open
our
thinking up to macro social consequences, not the historical
details).
With the Reverend Martin Luther King, a kind of grace
filled
higher principle emerged, in that needed social change could
be
consciously induced through non-violent means (it won't hurt
to keep in
mind that King learned from Gandhi, who himself learned from
Henry
David Thoreau's On Civil
Disobedience - again an insight from
one of
those souls who was able to remain in touch with the
imagination,
during the enchantment into
materialism - for details see below).
It will perhaps
not be easy for the
reader to grasp this, but worth the effort to consider.
There is
a certain aspect of this which is connected to the human will,
and to
the activity of the limbs. Clearly the fostering of a
more
aggressive sexual impulse is a will/limb activity.
Clearly the
impulse to dance, and the form of that dance (its lower
limb
movements in the case of Presley) is a will/limb activity
(also
connected to Eros). And just as clearly is the
expression of a
refusal to consent any more to abhorrent social conditions,
coupled
with the means of protest marches, also a will/limb activity
(a
sacrifice, in many instances, connected to selfless human
love).
People today
look at America and most
often see a kind of social insanity in the decisions of the
sitting
government, and the abuses of multinational corporations, many
of these
dependent upon American military power for their protection
and
domination. That is an outer characteristic of the last
days of
Western Civilization, while the above will/limb activities are
an
expression of the inner characteristics of the emerging new
civilization. As suggested earlier, it is the invisible
inner
gestures that are the more lasting and powerful.
In the epoch of
the
consciousness soul, the development
of individuality is an essential aspect
of the Evolution of Consciousness, particularly in the sense
of freeing
the individual from the previously binding influences of
community and
tradition, so that these same individuals can now stand on
their own,
thinking their own thoughts, and making, under the influence
of moral
grace, their own moral judgments. With the emergence of
the
will/limb activity which was embryonic in the '50's and then
exploded
in the '60's, higher principles entered into the social world
from
within - from that invisible environment which we have been
reflecting
upon with our various symbolic diagrams.
These higher
principles, coming from
below upward (in a social sense, not in a spiritual sense -
which could
also be expressed as from within outward), have had greater
social
force than all those older, and now decadent social processes,
connected to the dying top down hierarchical social forms
vainly
struggling to hold on to their traditional existences (the
struggle in
modern civilization to move beyond the past of dominion over and to move toward a future understanding of the
need
for communion
with). This is true whether
these dying
traditional forms are religious, educational, governmental or
economic.
All of them are succumbing to the more powerful inner
forces
which first emerged in the 1400's in Europe with the on-looker separation
(leading to natural science - I
am
an independent self over here, and nature, the cosmos and
others are
separate and over there), and then later in full social
expression in
America, and out of the American Soul. America, being a
place of
unique freedom from the past of Western Civilization, and also
being a
place where the various Peoples of the whole Earth were
gathering, thus
became the obvious crucible for just such a birth - just such
an
emergence of the Phoenix out of the ashes of the dying into
fire of
Western Civilization. Just so that we can see that this
is more
than a mere metaphor, just consider that the social burning - the destruction of old social form - is taking
place
very slowly. Evangelicals and Fundamentalist Christians
have
called this burning of civilization, variously: the family values crisis and the culture wars.
Now in the
beginning these will/limb
impulses, being less conscious, served something on the order
of a
catabolic (destructive or taking apart) metabolic function in
the whole
social organism of the world. This active process in the
social
is why it has been so instinctively and intensely resisted by
the
keepers of traditional social order, first in the Rural South
in
America, and then later in the Muslim world, in the Far East
and in
many other places. At the same time, these raw forces
out of the
will of human beings are not to be denied, for the breaking
down of
tradition is their purpose.
Here we come to
one of the deep Mysteries
that has rested misunderstood in the Gospels as a major
enigma: Matthew
10:34-40: "Do not
think that I have come to bring peace on earth; I have not
come to
bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man
against
his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a
daughter-in-law
against her mother-in-law; and a man's foes will be those in
his own
household. He who loves father or mother more than me is
not
worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more that me is
not
worthy of me; and he who does not take his cross and follow me
is not
worthy of me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he
who
loses his life for my sake will find it. He who receives
you
receives me, and he who receives me receives him who sent me" {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.}
Here Christ is
telling us that individuality, the
freedom and development of the human i-AM,
is
so important to the Creation, that the overcoming of the ties
of
blood (family values) is of greater significance, than the
preservation
of any tradition.
This takes many
forms in practice.
For example, in some places Rock and Roll first
separates the
young from the elders - the emerging individualism of the
young uses
this leverage to find its first tastes of inner freedom and
separation
from the group impulses of the older and traditional (top down
hierarchical - dominion
over) social order. In other
places,
such as communist Russian and its satellites, Rock and Roll
was the
first taste of free thought, with its anti-establishment
impulses.
For example, we are just now learning, from modern
leaders of the
former Soviet Union, just what the Beatles represented to them
as a cultural
- spiritual - influence - one far greater in potency than any effort
claimed to
be effective by the Reagan Administration in the United
States. In the
future we will see that in large part it was Rock and Roll
that took
down the Berlin Wall.
Obviously I
could write a whole book just
describing what everyone can learn to see if they just think
carefully
enough. What arises in the inner world, out of the
Evolution of
Consciousness, are forces far greater than we otherwise
imagine.
Old social structures cannot impede them. And, if
we keep
in mind what we have been learning about the real dynamics of
that
inner world, with its impulses to freedom, love and moral
grace,
coupled with the restraining and limiting forces of the
doubles (which
give shape to the biography), we can begin to see, in the
above single
example of these three American personalities and their role
as focus
points for remarkable social transformation, how the social
world is
itself given beautiful logos order by the Love of the Divine Mystery throughout the
Seventh
Day of Creation.
This means that
out of America, after
appearing most strongly there, anti-traditional (catabolic)
social
forces have (and are) flowing all over the world, helping to
individualize the young, and then setting them against their
no longer
vital social structures. These forces include music,
film, art,
dress, speech, and myriad other influences, which burst upon
the world
out of the youthful will forces of the American Soul
(character).
What people
call today Civil Society,
Cultural Creatives, and the environmental and social activist
movements, are given Conception first
through this
process of a catabolic social destruction of tradition, which
then
enables the individual to more easily express love engendered free
moral
grace (the fulfillment of the law
and the
prophets) in all those social, political and
environmental
activities in the world (while the Birth
is itself representative of anabolic or creative social forces
- the
Phoenix arises from the Ashes). So we have the catabolic
functions in the social organism enabling (midwifing) the Conception of more and more individualism, and then the Birth
itself releasing, through the individual expression of love engendered free
moral
grace, the creative or anabolic
social
forces. For those who might be concerned about some
elevation of
Christianity here, let me remind you that I am clearly
pointing out the
dying of traditional Christian social forms themselves, and
the up
building of a whole new stage of influences, out of
individuals,
wherein the essence of the Christ Impulse (that aspect of
human nature
not so much different from what some might call our Buddha
Nature)
emerges freely on its own, without any influence from top down
hierarchical rules, traditions and structures. Just as
the i-AM/soul
nexus
has a Buddha Nature, so does it have a Christ Impulse which is
original and latent within. In fact, we could go so far
as to say
that the individual expression of love engendered free
moral
grace is the first iteration of the
Christ
Impulse as that exists as an emergent potential within each
human heart
in the epoch of the
consciousness
soul.
Since it is of
considerable import, let
us now look more closely at natural science and its
materialistic
paradigm, which paradigm would currently seem to exclude from
our
comprehension and understanding, any sense of the real nature
of the
Divine Mystery, within or without.
I do not want
to suggest, however, in any
way in the following discussion, that science has not brought
us many
great benefits, nor does it fail to provide much that we need.
Moreover, the practice of science is not uniform, and
many
scientists are currently moving beyond the materialist
paradigm on
several levels. Even so, for the ordinary human being
there does
exist a kind of religious-like conviction, that could be
called scientism. This belief system lives in such ideas as
natural
selection (in the sense of accident as the overriding causal
element in
the creation of life), in the big-bang (in the sense of a
universe
created without consciousness and life from the beginning),
and in many
other conceptions which dominate the minds of many of us
living in the
modern world. It is these spirit-less concepts which are false, and, as I will suggest below,
have been
intentionally created (the concepts) just so we could have a
certain
kind of experience in the first phases of the epoch of the consciousness
soul.
Above I
mentioned a book called: Evolution
and the New Gnosis: Anti-establishment Essays on Knowledge,
Science,
Religion and Causal Logic, by Don
Cruse with
Robert Zimmer. In this book is described how a certain error
in thought
was enchanted into Western humanity, at the dawn of the epoch
of the
consciousness soul. We were
led away from knowledge of the Divine
Mystery, and deeper into materialism, so that the separation
of the i-AM
from the Divine could be fully and existentially felt.
We needed
to feel and believe: God is Dead. We
needed to
feel alone. Even our faith had to become abstract and
empty.
Only through this descent could we become free to choose
to know
(gnosis) the Divine Mystery out of our own independent and
individual
impulses.
This is why,
when we look away from the
sense world, and into the inner world of spirit, we first
encounter a
darkness. We have been cut off from the Divine Mystery,
by the
Divine Mystery, in order that any future relationship must be
entirely
based upon our own free choice.
Now this enchantment into materialism was brought about by the
doubles. In
that the tempters and prosecutors in the soul, in cooperation
with the i-AM,
contribute
to the whole world view of a Civilization, the fact that at
the top of the gloves within gloves within gloves sits
dominant powers,
means that a whole culture can be turned in a certain
direction from
within, because all the doubles can act in concert to a degree
(Their
main mission is individual, but in specific Ages they also
carry
cultural influences that are needed. This truth is not
meant by
the way, to ignore that the hierarchies of the good also
strongly
influence matters. They do as well, but each role is
somewhat
different in its emphasis and effect.). In this way, the
dawning
of the Age of Science came with a Divinely authored blindness
meant to
set us free of all the old religious traditions.
Not everyone
suffered from this
enchantment, or what William Blake called: "single vision and
Newton's
sleep". The Romantics and the
Transcendentalists kept their insides in mind, and thus did
not suffer
the sleep from the poisoned apple as did Snow White (the witch
who puts
Snow White to sleep is Lucifer in the service of Ahriman, and
the seven
dwarfs are the soul. She, of course, is the Imagination
of the i-AM,
who
must fall into materialism and sleep as to the Divine in
Creation,
until awakened by the kiss of Prince Charming - the Christ
Impulse - as
that first appears during the unfolding of the epoch of the consciousness
soul). This Fairy Tale
describes in imaginative and
exact metaphor the inner happenings of the soul as many have
been
rediscovering in our time (see for example, Robert Bly's Iron
John, and the
Sibling
Society).
For those who might wonder what of the Fairy Tale is being reborn in the present, I refer them to the films of M. Night Shyamalan, and the consideration that one needs to not be passive in the face of these films, but participate and think with them, in particular paying attention to the visual metaphors used by this, quite ahead of his time, artist. Take for example the film Signs. Driven by fear, and a loss of faith, the main character retreats into the cave of his basement, having there his dark night of the soul. Watch closely then, the view from below upward, as the characters leave this night of darkness to again emerge into the light. The film frames a very interesting window at the top of the stairs.
Those, who did
not succumb, did so by
keeping alive the Imagination, and this power is what one
discovers as
such an active principle in the Romantics, the
Transcendentalists, and
many others. Owen Barfield gave us a very good book
about one of
these: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (What
Coleridge
Thought), and the discussion of the
Imagination in this work can be very enlightening. See
especially
the discussion in the four Chapters called: Imagination and Fancy (1); Imagination and Fancy
(2); Understanding; and Reason; wherein
Coleridge's
systematic investigation of the soul finds expression in the
symbolism [Reason / Imagination /
Understanding / Understanding / Fancy / Sense],
which
if we reverse it lines up with our own symbolism [sense world < soul
(d)
< i-AM > (d) soul > spiritual world]
thus: [Sense
/
Fancy / Understanding / Understanding / Imagination / Reason]. By the way, Coleridge does not mean to
use Sense
merely as pointing to the material physical senses, but rather
as a
soul capacity which leans more to the physical sensory side of
the soul.
If you will
recall, far above I wrote of
how the changes from Sentient Soul
development, to Intellectual Soul
development and now to Consciousness Soul development represent an ever inner deepening of
the
Evolution of Consciousness. Following Coleridge's
observations,
we can see that this course of changes travels in the
direction
beginning with what he calls Sense (the Sentient Soul),
through Fancy
and the first form of Understanding (Fancy being a mediating
function
in between the Sentient Soul and the Intellectual Soul), which
first
form of Understanding is the Intellectual Soul's instinctive
use of
thinking such that now we are entering into the second form of
Understanding (a
Consciousness Soul use of thinking), and bridging over into
the
recovery of the Imagination as a means to finally coming to
fully
conscious knowledge of what actually lives in Reason - namely
the
Divine Mystery within and without, or Christ in the Mystery of
His Logos
Nature.
Once we
appreciate the spiritual aspect
of the Imagination, we can then also see why Sheldon's well
reasoned
imaginative expression of his understanding of the moral
questions
regarding following In His
Steps has the depth that it has.
Sheldon's primary act is a true act of Faith, which then
enables
his developing Consciousness Soul (Faith and Gnosis) to
enliven the
Imagination within.
Sense and Fancy
then are tied to the
sense world side of the soul, while Imagination and Reason are
linked
to the spiritual world side of the soul, with the two forms of
Understanding mediating in the middle. Imagination is,
as regards
the spiritual side of things in the soul, the partner with
Reason, but
natural science tried to investigate the world using Reason
alone, and
out of this enchantment induced
failure then produced the paradigm of
materialism, or what Steiner in one place calls the Ahrimanic Deception. Here again is another one of those
side-trip
stories that would take us too far from our central theme.
In a sense we
are now at the lowest point
of the Fall (as briefly noted above), which is a Fall into
spiritual
darkness such that many truly believe we are accidental
animals living
in an uncaring Cosmos. Yet, in spite of all that natural
science
teaches, faith refuses to give in. The i-AM
says, no, I will not stop having Faith. If you want to
see an
excellent representation of this problem, watch the movie Contact, starring Jodie Foster, and based on a book
written by a
remarkable natural scientist, Carl Sagan. Even so, faith
in the methods of natural science is valid, for it is the method of natural science that Rudolf Steiner used in
creating
the map to our inwardness we know of as The
Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity (Freedom).
Through this enchantment, natural science was blinded in the beginning,
and
looked only outwardly at the sense world, forgetting through
this
enchantment to keep in mind the invisible inner world at the
same time
that it looked outwardly onto (the onlooker-separation) the
sense world. The result of this temporary blindness is
only that
the dominant
present
paradigm of natural science, materialism, is false. The method itself is fine. For science, in its
enchantment (Newton's sleep), it is
as if our symbolism was only: [sense world <> matter
based consciousness], instead of the
more
complicated and real [sense world < soul (d) < i-AM > (d) soul
>
spiritual world].
Here then we
see a macro aspect of the
Mystery of Evil, in that the social context in which the
present phase
of the Evolution of Consciousness unfolds, has been given a
most
powerful and immediate materialistic (all matter, no spirit) texture. It is Ahriman, and his aide
Lucifer,
working through the doubles upon our patterns of thought and
modes of
imagination, that creates our materialistic and spiritually
empty
culture. At the same time, it is the Christ Impulse
within, and
the still somewhat latent but slowly re-emerging force
of Virginity (the Divine Mother - all things are forever new),
which
maintains Faith, adds Gnosis, and rises socially from below
upward in
the creation of a new civilization (for an excellent
discussion of
Virginity, see Arcanum XI, (the meditation on) Force, in the
book Meditations
on
the Tarot: a Journey into Christian Hermeticism).
Out of the i-AM,
in
the current stage of the Evolution of Consciousness, comes
that
capacity to know of the activity of the doubles, and the karma
of
wounds, and to bring healing and balance to the soul (the elevation of the
spirit
for the mastery of the soul).
The
Christ Impulse, or love engendered free moral grace,
as
that lives in human hearts, is fully able to lift the darkness
within and find its way to authentic spiritual experience.
So we have then
a macro
Mystery of Evil, which influences
through the doubles a kind of
collective enchantment or order and structure to human
history, and a micro mystery of evil
(the doubles and the karma of wounds), that we each must
face as an aspect of our own biography and development.
In this
way, the individual biography rests in a very wise social
context, such
that the maturing i-AM is being born
again (awakened from its sleep) into the
adventure of the discovery of its own true nature.
In
contemplating the macro Mystery of Evil,
after the fashion suggested here, it is best to gaze
upon it from a distance, and as something which is just a part
of a
much greater Whole. For such purposes our ideas
regarding Music
are the most useful, for above all (regarding what the
Ancients called
the Music of the Spheres), there is Harmony in the world of
Spirit.
Tolkien, in his preamble to the Silmarillion gives a good approximation to what can be
experienced.
Creation is a Sounding and Resounding, and the Dark Gods
(of
which Ahriman is clearly one) have been placed into the
Creation for a
purpose. They do not lie outside the Creation.
Now granted the
macro
Mystery of Evil does not lie outside
the Creation, does this mean we are
to be passive in terms of its effects? Do we submit to
another
enchantment? No, this would clearly be insane. The
last
petition of the Lord's Prayer is: "deliver us from evil." {"But
snatch us from the Evil Ones clutches."}.
This is why in
this the time of our
emergence from our spiritual childhood (accompanied by the
Second
Coming of Christ in the Ethereal World) we are challenged to
consider
both the existence of God, and of the Devil, as real.
The
Ahrimanic Deception (the enchantment into scientific
materialism) is
real. Ahriman's and Lucifer's (the Devil's and Satan's)
influences through the doubles are real. Our
civilization is
textured by this influence, just so we can meet this texture
and become
awake to it and learn to overcome it. At the same time,
our
battle with macro Evil is individual. We will get
nowhere forming
political parties (one of the errors - sins - of the so-called
Christian Right) that seek to reform civilization in a moral
direction,
because taking that course means to live in denial of the
reality of
moral grace and freedom. The overcoming of the
influence of
the macro Mystery of Evil rests with individuals, and is
actually, in
the present, being carried out and won by individuals.
Organized
moral authority-based (dominion over)
political
movements are actually reactionary (going backward), and we
already see
this everywhere in what we recognize as the fundamentalist
impulse.
The
fundamentalist impulse is actually an
enchantment induced opposition to the Christ Impulse.
The central
identifying characteristic of the fundamentalist impulse is
that it
consists of a lie against time. It argues for the
reformation of
the present into a fanciful past that never existed. It
assumes
that the Divine Mystery is unable to influence the present and
has no
power over the future. It (the fundamentalist impulse)
arrogantly
presumes that only it can bring moral health to civilization,
and then
only by bringing into the present something from a fancifully
imagined
past. It is
a dead and dogmatic belief, without the grace of living Faith.
This fancifully
imagined lie is an act of
Lucifer in the service of the goals of Ahriman. It is
Ahriman who
wants us to make our civilization morally rigid, and by this
rigidification stamp out the Christ Impulse (individually love
engendered free moral grace). It is Ahriman who seduces
us with
the desire for material comfort from the one side (the
carrot), while
at the same time driving us forward through irrational fear
(the
stick). It was irrational fear that drove nurturing love
from the
classroom, and it is irrational fear that lives in the War
against
Terrorism, and the acts of those same terrorists.
When we refuse any longer to accept the Ahrimanic Deception (all matter, no spirit) we snatch ourselves from the Evil Ones clutches (the Lord helps those who help themselves).
When we restore
(de-sexualize) nurturing
touch to our children's lives, we defeat the Evil One. [See M.
Night
Shyamala's film: The Village.]
When we resist
the seduction of material
comfort, and accept our personal and just ration of suffering,
we
defeat the Evil One.
And, when we
refuse any longer to be
ruled by irrational fear in the conduct of our lives, we
defeat the
Evil One.
When we see
through that inner darkness
of the lies, and temptations, and prosecutions, that live in
our
personal inner world, we uncover more and more the true nature
of our
own i-AM. We free ourselves, and by freeing
ourselves,
begin to free our civilization. By placing in the center
of this
an act of love, we have in this activity followed exactly that
which
the Divine Mystery Itself does - we have transformed
evil into
love.
Now what about
long term consequences?
As regards the
micro mystery of evil -
the creation of the karma of wounds by the i-AM,
or
what needs be called human evil - this we must face on our own
with
clarity and equanimity. Here we have become the
authors of
true evil in the social world - the Seventh Day of Creation -
via the
biography. The macro Mystery of Evil gives us the
contextual
texture (the Stage), but we, in facing the micro mystery of
evil,
create the Play, and as Actors in the Opera begin also to
influence
that Stage itself as well. Giving into temptation, we
face a
trial of whether to continue to Fall (the Opera) and as well to continue the Fall (the Stage),
or to begin the presumed hard and
difficult work of ascent, of reintegration and of re-creation.
Rudolf Steiner
suggests that as we enter
the new millennium, humanity will begin to divide itself into
two
separate species - those who seek to master the life of soul
through
the elevation of the spirit, and those who choose to succumb
to
temptation and prosecution, such that they sink further into
animality
and evil by indulging without remorse in the dark and sterile
pleasures
of their self-generated wounds.
Again, it is
all about choice. And,
as with all choices, there will be consequences. We
should
remember that what the doubles and the self-created karma of
wounds do
in our inwardness (soul) is very subtle and is there for a
purpose -
evil exists for us to know the good. Part of its purpose
is that
we awake to these, and begin to learn the role that choice
plays in our
evolving soul life. Heretofore we have been asleep, and
now we
are to awake (become truly born again).
We already know when we are tempted (oh, just one more dish of ice cream, we deserve it). We already know when we are prosecuted (I am such a loser, no one should love me). We already know we have bad habits (I can keep smoking, there's always tomorrow in which to change, or that person is evil and I must fix them.). Now it becomes possible to face these dark aspects in our inwardness, and learn to distinguish them from the true i-AM. First we see through a mirror darkly, but then face to face.
It will be easy
for some to throw up
their hands and give up. Facing the own darkness is
work, about
which many will falsely believe it is too much work.
This is not
so. As you read on you will find exact ways with which
to
perceive and deal with the Shadow in the soul.
It is even
thought by some that should we
give into these temptations far enough, in the end we will
burn in hell
forever. Here is what the author of Meditations
on
the
Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism
had to say in Arcanum XX (the meditation on) The
Judgment, that is relevant here:
"The last judgment will be the
sacrament of penance on a cosmic scale, comprising universal
confession
and universal absolution, although it is difficult to imagine
impenitence in this situation. The Church Father Origen
could not
do so, and believed that everyone, including the hierarchies
of evil
with Satan at their head, will be saved. Was he right or
wrong?
By way of answer, I will pose these two questions: 1. Is
there in
the world any person or group of people who know with certain
knowledge
who will be impenitent in the distant future? 2.
Is
there in the world any person or group of people who have the
authority
to specify the limits of God's love and mercy?.. to state and
decree
that the love of God goes so far and no further?"
I was graced
recently in a vision/dream
with a picture of Ahriman, in the true final days, laying on
his side
and weeping at the feet of the Mother, broken by his labors
and begging
forgiveness for all the Dark Deeds for whose production he had
been
created, and which he had faithfully authored as was his given
nature
and purpose.
The fallen Seraphim Lucifer, by the way, is said to have already redeemed himself, becoming through his own deeds integrated with the Paraclete (the Holy Spirit). This is supposed to have occurred as a consequence of Christ's becoming human and accepting death on the Cross, an event which so impressed Lucifer that he could no longer remain in a state of rebellion, and sought forgiveness and was forgiven. Even so, it is also said that the hierarchies that he led in rebellion mostly remain in the service of the near-God Ahriman (as gloves, within gloves, within gloves), who himself (Ahriman) is said to be planning an incarnation during the Third Millennium (a lot of debate about when).
One can come
upon many such stories, as
we all know. In the end, it is up to us to chose what to
believe,
and how hard we will work in the endeavor to seek the truth.
As I
said above, the contemplation of the grand schemes of the
macro Mystery
(Pantheon) of Evil can lead us astray, and it is best to
remain with
what we can observe ourselves, in our own inwardness, of the
influence
of the doubles and the self-created wounds.
end of part
II of the Fool's tale
No doubt there
are many questions, few of
which we have the time or really need to answer, so we perhaps
should
go onward now by returning to a previous question, where I
wrote above:
This being
the
case, for all the hysterics connected to it, the question of
gay
marriage offers us the opportunity to look at this problem in
its most
fundamental dynamics. Now we have to deal with the
emerging new
civilization, whose first social forms are naturally the
simplest
joining of individuals in a partnership, or what we previously
called a
marriage.
Here we are
concerned not with catabolic
(destructive forces of the will-on-fire), but with anabolic
(creative)
forces of that same will-on-fire. In the Gay Rights
movement,
with its current desire to have its impulse of love honored
within the
traditional social arrangement we call marriage, we illuminate
in
bright contrast the battle between the old and the new.
We saw
above the same battle in the pro-choice/pro-life conflict.
Out of
the i-AM, in its struggle to express some form of love
engendered
free moral grace, then arises demands for its view of what is
morally
right, and this conflicts with tradition everywhere we look.
I am not (contrary to some hopes and expectations) going to attempt to resolve the conflict. Any resolution is up to the individuals involved. My only purpose is to highlight it, as an example of emerging forces out of the inwardness, seeking to create new social form at the simplest level: the partnership. Even so let me ask a couple of questions:
To those Gays
who seek traditional
marriage: Which is more important to you, to push the social
envelope
and be recognized, by those who dislike you, as married, or to
have the
meaning of your relationship celebrated in a sacred way?
To those
Christians who seek a
constitutional amendment preventing same sex marriages: do you
want
more to hold others to your own moral sensibilities, or is it
more
important to learn to recognize the divine spirit in everyone
(whatsoever
ye do to the lest
of these...)?
At the same
time, there is a higher
principle hidden in all this. I will express it this
way.
As the new civilization emerges (civilization being not
the outer
elements by the way, but the inner and more powerful forces of
soul and
spirit), partnerships create something we might call a Home.
In
the age of the consciousness soul then, with its individually
love
engendered free moral
grace, we have the potential of
creating the new civilization on a
foundation of the Home as the Temple of Love, and the bedroom
as the
Temple of Eros, within this Temple of Love.
Whereas in the
third epoch, the Temple
was a place of concentrated social power and mystery, with
priests
standing over and above all, in this the fifth epoch the
Temple now
becomes what is built upward from the social depths,
engendered through
our individual appreciation of the mysteries as we discover
those for
ourselves. Where once there were but a few
Temples, now
there are to be Temples everywhere.
In point of fact, we can already observe this, albeit in a fashion that shows we have any number of different gods which we worship. All structures are in a way temples to the idea that inhabits them, although often unconsciously. A bank is a temple, as are the buildings on Wall Street. High rise office buildings often are temples where the dark god profit is worshiped. A crack house is a temple to a deep karma of wounds. A church basement where a Twelve Step group meets regularly is a temple to recovery.
In each place,
the nature of the rites
will vary, but everywhere there are temples today where all
manner of
human ambitions, wants, needs, ideals, wounds and other
characteristics
are evoked and worshiped. In the wonderful movie The
Contender, in the speech near the
end were
the truth comes out, the main character is speaking in a
Senate meeting
room and calls it: the temple of democracy.
Here, in all
these temples, the i-AM,
as
a self teaching initiator of its own conscious character
development
(perhaps ultimately leading to initiation or enlightenment),
takes hold
of social existence and makes that place or the Home a Temple
for this
inner/spiritual work. Far better when we come to
understand this
principle, and seek to make conscious just what in any
instance is a
temple. Starting then from the simplest self-generated
relationships and rites, we re-found civilization from the
bottom up.
Any community then, in which such conscious Temples
arise, will
find itself filled from within outward, with all those forces
of
renewal that we are exploring and creating from out of the
individual will-on-fire.
What is one, is to become two, and then many.
Having set forth this train of thought, let me weave in a question that may lurk in the minds of many readers: What about single people, people without partner or family?
We can in this
instance think of the
single person in same way we think of the individual parts of
a
partnership or family. In a sense each of us builds
around us a
Temple to the own i-AM.
In a very real way we must
first come
awake to our individuality, before we can move on to the work
of
expressing love engendered free moral grace. We have to
free our
individuality from the social and familial past - to step out
of those
influences that demand compromise and conformance, in order to
give
full birth to the capacities that can appear from within only
out of
our own immortal spirit and through our personal initiative.
As we can see
in modern culture, such
actions, that hope to lead into full independence as an
individual, are
often filled with dangers. We can go too far, thus the
comments
for a time about the "me" generation.
Self
absorption is not unusual, however, many have had it, and many
will
have it in the future. Here we are only noting more
clearly the
idea that certain gifts of spirit sometimes can only be born
out of
this life passage into and through a self absorbed stage
of
individuality, much the same way any child develops through
its own
self centered course of inner growth.
At the least,
we should note that what
goes on in the
Temple of Individuality is for the
most part
the private business only of that individual. The fact
that many
people today seem to get stuck in some phase of development
(for
example, remain somewhat adolescent even as adults), is more a
function
of the cultural defects that accompany the end of a
Civilization, than
of the flaws of any single individual.
We no longer
celebrate rites of passage
to adulthood, for example, as was common to most aboriginal
cultures.
In Western Civilization, individuality has so triumphed
that the
cultural-spiritual processes that ought to accompany a healthy
social
organism are missing. As a culture we celebrate
self-absorbed
individuality, popularity, wealth, power, good looks, sexiness
and so
forth - everything but maturation, self control, and all manner of once
well
understood virtues such as modesty of dress and
ambition.
Yes, some
religious movements more and
more demand conformance to their ideas of a less sinful live,
but in
the age in which Freedom is so crucial, this demand no longer
has any
real meaning. We need to take a whole new approach, as a
culture,
if we wish to enable and support the full development of
individuality
into such a state of soul that it wants, out of its own
freedom, to
discover its capacity for selfless love.
This is part of
why our Civilization is
dying. It no longer contains an appropriate social
wisdom that
understands consciously the emerging nature of the individual
human
being in the epoch of the consciousness soul.
Thus, the current Civilization has to die in order for a
new
individualized wisdom to create the ripe and fertile ground
out of
which to grow new social forms and cultural values that take
account of
the reality of individually expressed: moral grace, freedom
and love.
Unfortunately,
the full discussion of the
possible wise content of a new civilization is so far outside
the scope
of this book, even though such a discussion is as equally
important as
what is contained here, we cannot presently take up such
themes with
any of the necessary depth.
Here I should
remind the reader of
something pointed out earlier. This book: the
Way of
the Fool, is an effort to express
something
deeply connected to "render unto God", while
the
next book (already being developed): the
Way of
the Citizen ("render unto Caesar"), will attempt to deal quite directly with the
above
questions about the nature and structure of a new
civilization, one in
which individual
freedom is understood as its core
principle.
Even so, this
picture of the various
Temples: the Temple of Love, the Temple of Eros and the Temple
of
Individuality is perhaps conceptually too Ideal, and we have a
need to
deal more concretely with the pragmatic and practical aspects,
wherein
it is useful now to go back to fundamentals, and in this case
to look
again at something Rudolf Steiner pointed out, namely: That in
our
inwardness is a hierarchy of content of which the lowest and
least
developed is the mental image or representation, while the
middle
development is found in the experience of the concept and the
highest
potential development is in the experience of the idea.
Recall again part of our symbolism:
[sense world
< soul (A/d) < i-AM > (L/d) soul > spiritual
world]
We are thinkers, and we have/create thought. This is the nearest inward aspect of the spiritual world (a world shaped mostly in our time in darkness), where our freedom and will can be active. We must wake up here - in the world were thinking arises, in order to develop that side of the potentials of our i-AM to their fullest extent.
This then takes
us in another direction.
third stanza
entering the Narrow Gate
love as an act of inner husbandry,
through the discipline and stewardship of the life of
the mind
Matthew
7:12-14: Therefore all that you wish
men to do to you, even so do you also to them; for this is the
Law and
the Prophets. Enter by the narrow gate. For wide
is the
gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and many
there are
who enter that way. How narrow the gate and close the
way that
leads to life! And few there are who find it." {So
everything you want people to do for you, you do the same for
them,
because that's the law and the prophets. Go in the
narrow door;
because the door is wide and the road is broad leading off to
destruction, and many people are going that way. Whereas
how
narrow the door and how constricted the road leading off to
life, and
how few people find it! }
We approached
this once before in
considering the problem of judgment in the light of Christ's
Sermon on
the Mount. We found there that we strongly tend to
project onto
the Thou something which is more of a log in our own eye, than
it is of
the splinter in theirs. We now will look at the judgment
in more
detail, using the terms mental representation, concept and
idea as an
aide to our understanding. Let us first look at this
somewhat
abstractly, and then more concretely.
We see a book,
for example.
Inwardly we can make an image (mental picture or
representation) of this particular
book.
Inwardly then we have the capacity to create an image
(of the
particular book) representing the sense experience. We
can also
have the concept: book. In
the concept book we have a generalized picture of all books,
such
that we might even recognize that something can still be a
book, which
is not physically like the ordinary sense perceptible book.
We
can think of our biography, for example, as a book.
The
Romantic poet/scientist Goethe spoke of learning to read the
book of nature (this book: the Way of
the Fool, comes in large part from
learning
to read the book of life, the book of the own soul, and the book
of humanities shared social, political and historical
existence).
With the concept book we can do
much more inwardly than we can with the
mere mental
representation of a particular book.
Lets look at this once more. We have the sense object: chair. We will make mental representations (pictures) of individual chairs, and also have a generalized concept of chairness or what is the function that the chair provides. For example, a tree stump or a rock can be sat upon, and therefore performs the same function as a chair.
Now we
normally, in ordinary speech,
often use the term idea to refer to what
Steiner
wants us to see only in the term concept. Keep this transposition of terms in mind
here, so
as not to get confused. For Steiner's exact and precise
introspection we need to use the term idea
in another way, rather than as a mere synonym for concept.
Like
Coleridge's suggesting of the two
sides of Understanding, concept, as a
term describing
something in the soul, can have two faces. There is the
more
ordinary generalized
kind
of concept, such that particular
books
are also seen as a general category, which is the one face
leaning more
toward the sensory side. There is also the pure concept, which leans more toward the spiritual side of
the soul.
We often deal with pure concepts,
for example,
when we form thoughts about mathematics and music. For
example,
infinity, and the interval (the place in between individual
notes where
the melody lives) are pure concepts
when thought
exactly.
This lets us
make of these concepts above
a symbolism: [mental
picture
or representation / generalized concept / pure concept / idea], which again follows our original symbolism
(map) for
our inwardness.
What Steiner
wants us to do, when
thinking about our inner experiences, is to begin to awake to
the fact
that in the pure
concept, and the idea
we are at the boundary where our inner darkness ends and the
threshold
to the spiritual world begins. Experience begins to show
that the
pure
concept is independent of our own
normal thinking activity.
The mathematician Roger Penrose, in his book The
Emperors
New Mind, described his own
experience this way: "...I cannot help feeling that, with mathematics
the case
for believing in some kind of ethereal, eternal existence, at
least for
the more profound mathematical concepts, is a good deal
stronger...".
Once we begin
to inwardly awaken to the
independent nature of the pure concept,
we can then start
to awaken to the further fact that beyond the pure concept is
what
Steiner meant as an Idea, or what Plato
also meant
- an
independent
self-willed spiritual Being (Penrose,
Einstein,
and Godel are all Platonists - for an introduction to this
see: Rebecca Goldstein's book: Incompleteness:
The
Proof
and Paradox of Kurt Gödel)
Some might
think that all this is fancy
(to again borrow from Coleridge), but I can assure you it is
not.
What is being laid out here is how, as we work forward
in our
biography with our inwardness, the content of our thought life
enriches. First it enriches in the sense of our waking
up to our
own creative and free capacities, and this after time leads to
waking
up to the fact that this thought content also involves the
cooperation
of other Beings.
We really then
participate in two
communities. The outer sense world social community of
other i-AMs,
and
the inner spiritual community of discarnate beings.
Through
communication we seek to commune with both communities.
Let us now take
these themes and apply
them to more concrete experiences.
In our thought
life, frequently without
our willing it, will arise mental representations
(self-created pictures) of other people. A lawyer in a
hurry
walking down a street in New York City will see a homeless man
or woman
and think (create a habitual inner picture) of them as perhaps
useless,
unimportant, degenerate, insane, whatever. Likewise, a
social
activist may, on seeing a corporate leader, believe (again
create an
inner picture) that sees this CEO as without any sympathy for
the
natural world, who is driven only by greed and a hunger for
power and
cares little for those who cannot serve his or her most base
impulses.
Both the lawyer and the activist live in mental
representations which do not mirror
the truth, but only reflect the
antipathies (unredeemed unconscious feelings) living inside
their own
souls - the log which blinds.
We also have concepts. Maybe we think (create a generalized
picture
that) all conservative politicians are idiots, and that the
only right
way to run a country is what liberals believe. Or the
opposite -
maybe we think (create a generalized picture that) all liberal
politicians are idiots and the only way to run a country is
what
conservatives believe. Mostly in this we use abstract and
generalized
concepts. These concepts are again created by the i-AM
and live in the soul as representations
(mirrored
images) of the world. Frequently we recognize the limits
of such concepts, for routinely we acknowledge that they are
opinions,
and in America for example, we strongly believe we are
entitled to our
opinions. However,
if
we want to truly have peace and a vital social future, we are
going
to have to get over having mere opinions, and start to seek
instead for
the truth.
The thing to
recognize is that this
mental world with its antipathy driven views of other human
beings, and
its opinionated beliefs about how things should be - this
mental world
is a necessary - yet self created - construct, developed
during the
biography in conjunction with our cultural influences and the
activity
of the doubles. It is also not the truth, most of the
time, but
rather is a quite complex log which while of value to us in
our
individual ways (playing a role in karma and fate), does not
serve us
in the end, but rather blinds us (makes us spiritually -
inwardly -
less free). We are infatuated with it, for it is after
all our
creation, while at the same time it is frequently neither the
truth,
nor the good (nor the beautiful).
Knowledge of
the Good and the True, while
potential within us, is not possessed by us on a regular
basis.
What lives in the mind (spirit/soul nexus) is mostly a
poorly
cultivated garden of prejudices and biases. Moreover, we
basically are asleep here in this inner world, while more
awake in the
outer sense world. We don't carefully choose our mental
representations and concepts - they just sort of
grow there. We are, in fact, too close to them.
We
are attached to them and we desire this attachment. The
wonderful
Tibetan Lhama and Buddhist spiritual teacher, Chogyam Trungpa,
called
this garden of concepts and mental
representations, with its associated
favorite and
self-loved feelings: ego's
collection (see his book Meditation
in
Action).
Now in order to
cultivate and develop
this garden of the mind, we have to first separate ourselves -
our i-AM
- from our
collection. The i-AM
is not the content of the soul, but must
become its true husband - its true steward.
During incarnation spirit and soul are married, with all the
intimacy
that this suggests, and it is a marriage too long based on
instinct,
semi-consciousness and illusory cultural traditions.
No one can do
this work for us, and it is
the only step that allows us to begin to truly understand how
to
express love into the social world. We first cultivate
the garden
of the own mind, taking care to eliminate the weeds, and to
plant only
that which we know through moral grace to be able to bear
fruit.
Our first moral acts then concern the content of the
mind, if we
are to be awake to the consciousness soul,
whose
meaning should now be most apparent. We turn our attention from concentrating mostly on the sense world,
and with intention begin to
enter into the landscape of the mind, to become
active (will-on-fire) there as well. Recall our symbolism: [sense world < soul
(d)
< i-AM > (d) soul > spiritual world].
No
longer just looking out, we also look within. And, as we
know, many are already on this journey.
Emerson has
written in The
American Scholar, for example: The only thing of
value, in
life, is the active soul.
By the way,
this need and process is seen
in may places. I mentioned previously the film Pay
It
Forward. Now I'd like to point
out
another such example - Barbara Hall's remarkable creation, the
television series Joan of
Arcadia. As those who have
watched it
in its first season know, Joan is a teenage girl who has been
seeing
God, who visits her in the sense world via a variety of human
forms
(children, adolescents, mature people, all colors, races,
kinds and
shapes), and then challenges her to confront various moral
experiences.
In the final episode of Season One,
Joan is brought
into a condition of doubt, while her parents, who had no
knowledge of
Joan's sense experiences of the Divine Mystery, are themselves
brought
to their own powerful experiences (the father sees a dead
person, and
the mother has a clairvoyant-like intuition, while at Church,
of Joan's
being hospitalized and needing her).
What we have
been struggling with here,
regarding making a distinction between sense experience and
inner
experience, is pointed out to Joan in two statements from God
to her,
in this episode: 1) sometimes it's hard to believe what you see, so
you have
to trust the world behind your eyes;
and 2) learn
to see in the dark.
Next I am going
to shed some light on
something not well known yet. This is the application,
in
practice, of moral grace to the inner world, not just the
outer.
Before, we
previously learned to
understand that we had the capacity, as a matter of Grace, to
be able
to know in any given individual social situation, what the
Good was -
what was moral, or what, as Sheldon points out, would Jesus
do.
Now we are to learn that in the cultivation of the
garden of the
mind we need to come to understand that the content of our
thought life
is a moral act as well. Again, Matthew 5:28: "But I say to you that
anyone
who so much as looks with lust at a woman has already
committed
adultery with her in his heart." {But
I say
any man who looks at a woman and really wants her has already
slept
with her in his heart.} Or, Matthew
23: 26 {...wash
out the inside of the cup and saucer first, if you want the
outside to
end up clean!}
The same moral grace that helps us navigate the world of our social
actions,
also helps
us to navigate
the
world of our inner mental image and concept creation, as
well as
the life of feelings. We can begin to learn to
distinguish here
between our prejudices and opinions, and the true and the
good.
We can also learn to know the difference between a
reactive
feeling (someone makes us angry), and a
cultivated mood of soul (for details see in the Appendix
the
discussion regarding prayer and meditation).
When we think
a thought, we commit a mental act.
We
can learn to look at this act, and ask ourselves a question
quite
similar to the one which we asked about our outward actions.
Is
this the good, is this what Jesus would think? From
experience I
can tell you that the same is true with regard to inner
actions as is
true with regard to our outer actions. When we ask if an
inner act
is moral, we have the Grace given capacity to know if this is
so. And, the same general
rules apply.
We can't ask
this about someone else's
inner actions, only our own. Each such action inwardly
is just as
individual as our outer social actions. Just as we can
approach
the outer social world out of a love engendered impulse of
free moral
grace, so we approach the cultivation of the own content of
soul.
Nor are we bound by our knowledge of whether an inner
act is the
good. We still remain free to act upon this knowledge,
or not.
Is it hard?
You bet. It's
just as hard as life. The miracle part is that there is
a one to
one correspondence between the life of the social world lived
in our
individual biography and our inner life within the soul/spirit
world.
We don't need sitting meditation to work on these
aspects of our
nature (there is however, much that can be said about the life
of
prayer and meditation, concerning which I will write later).
We
just live the biography and learn to wake up inwardly to how
that
inwardness and the outer sense world are joined. What we
learn is
unique to us. In the main there is no pattern, and we
are
basically our own teachers. We have stepped out of being
spiritual children, and entered the world of spiritual
adulthood.
As we noted above from St. Paul in I Corinthians: "When I was a child, I
spoke
as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child. Now
that I
have become a man, I have to put away the things of child.
We see
now through a mirror in an obscure manner, but then face to
face.
Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I have
been
known."
What is this
mirror of which St Paul
speaks? It is the soul, in which the spirit finds its
obscure
first reflection. As we unfold ourselves inwardly, we
pass beyond
mere mental
representations and abstract generalized
concepts, to the reality of pure living concepts and ideas, which are not
what's but
who's - not things, but Beings.
We pass beyond
mere reactive feelings to cultivated moods of soul, and then
through
those to communion with the Invisible. The content of
mind
changes from the merely conceptually reflective, to the
clarity of
intimate experience with the Divine Mystery Itself - face to face, and
known.
What is this
work of uniting the outer
and inner events of the biography in a self-examination
illumined by
moral grace? It
is
the conscious development of earthly character. Not only that, many readers of this text will
have the
truthful feeling that they are already doing this in their own
way.
That feeling is probably accurate, for these experiences
are
precisely what it means to be in the consciousness
soul - that
is to be alive in this particular period and stage of the
Evolution of
Consciousness.
It is, in fact,
in this work of inner
husbandry that we begin to overcome that which separates us so
strongly
- our addiction to and our egoistic love of our own
collection, our
individual point of view. Everywhere we look in the
social world
we see this collision* of individualized views of the world,
often
elaborate systems of belief, that we hold to so tightly that
we would
commit violence to maintain and protect them. As Kevin
Smith, the
creator of the remarkable film Dogma, had one of his characters suggest: We fight wars over
beliefs,
while we honor ideas and idealism.
The
temptation is to insist that the other, the Thou, give up
their
beliefs, while the real work always remains how we ourselves
cultivate
the inner garden of our own mind (for other details of this in
practice, see appendix 2) Sacrifice of Thoughts: cleaning out the
garden of the
mind before growing new insights, and other unusual properties
of our
soul-spirit nexus.).
*[See also the
end story, Bicycles:
A
Children's Christmas Story for Adults.]
Love, in a
social sense, then begins with
the sacrifice of that point of view which separates us one
from the
other. We seek to become as inwardly selfless as we seek
to
become outwardly selfless. The task is quite simple to
state,
although hard in practice unless we are diligent and
persistent.
We give up (sacrifice) the mere mental
representations, and abstract generalized
concepts,
which inhabit our individualized point of view, and slowly,
over time,
replace these with true (pure) concepts
and living
Ideas. We still think, but we enrich
that thinking with acts of moral grace.
[For details on
this from the side of
Gnosis, read: In Joyous
Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship, #7 in the appendix.]
By the way,
this individualized point of
view, which we seek to bring more in line with the truth - to
make more
universal, is not the same as our understanding of moral
grace, which
must be individualized. Moral acts, being particular and
unique
to us, must always be based on an individualized intuition of
the Good,
while the True is something shared by all, and becomes that
sharing
largely through conversation.
This is an
important but subtle
distinction, and well worth going over once again.
We know the Good as an individualized moral intuition
(What would Jesus do?). Mostly we practice moral grace
in our
immediate lives and relationships. We know the True as an universalized pure concept.
The True is not
individual but
universal, while the Good is not universal, it is individual. At the
same
time, to seek the True is inwardly a moral act. We know this
precisely
because we have to give up (sacrifice) our favorite prejudices
and
opinions in order to seek the True.
What we can do,
as an individualized
inward moral act, is ask ourselves the question: Is
this
the truth, or merely my opinion?
We then test our self-honesty, and develop a subtle, but
reliable, inner sense to the truth, as against our own
tendency to form
opinions (which opinions we often later act as if they were
true).
Here we are knowing the Good insofar as we make a sound assessment of our
inner
actions as regard the degree to which we seek the true. Seeking is an inner
act, and it is that act which we make moral
through the Grace which is in us to know the Good.
The Good in life then we know in an individualized way, and as well we know in an individualized way the Good as regards our inner actions. There are many kinds of inner
actions,
including the forming of biased mental pictures, opinionated
generalized concepts and reactive feelings which control us,
instead of
us controlling them. We can know when we live inwardly
in the one
(what are basically lies we tell ourselves) and the other (the
truth),
via our capacity for moral grace as applied to our inner acts.
However, when we seek to know the True, which is an universalized intuition, we may in
the
beginning, through our moral intuition, only know what we don't know. Our
moral
intuition is sensitive to our self-honesty regarding the truth.
In practice, this ability to know when we are full of it (do we just talk the talk, or do we actually walk the walk) or not, is very valuable in all our social relations, and the reader should recall this aspect of the Twelve Steps (Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong admitted it). Social relations based upon speaking the truth, as against mere opinions, gain from the practice. Moreover, in seeking after the True, we are frequently helped when this is done in community with others - when the seeking for the True is done in a context in which the search for universal concepts is a shared activity.
This then leads
us to the main way in
which we are social beings: conversation.
The
poet/scientist Goethe is sometimes
quoted as follows, from his Fairy Tale: The
Green
Snake and the Beautiful Lily: "What is greater than
gold?
It is light. What is more enlivening that light?
Conversation!".
Human beings can actually experience the enlivening effects of conversation. In fact, we all have had this experience, whether through the long discussions over food and wine in the family, or those school time all night sessions where deep (and often wonderfully silly) philosophical reflection is the theme.
In conversation
then we seek a means to
reach a shared and community understanding of the True, while
within
our own soul we seek the knowledge of the Good through moral
imagination or asking What Would Jesus Do. Recall once
more our
symbolism: [sense
world < soul (A/d) < i-AM > (L/d) soul > spiritual
world]. In the world of the
senses, our shared social
world, we need to have a community of
concepts and
ideas, rather than a collision* of
individualized
mental representations. This community of concepts and
ideas can
only be arrived at in a healthy social way through
conversation.
*[again, see the little story Bicycles, at the end of this book.]
In
conversation, the tendency to live
only in private mental pictures and generalized opinions can
be
overcome, should the whole group understand that this is the
goal of
the social activity. Marjorie Spock, a student of Rudolf
Steiner's, wrote a small book on this theme: Group
Moral
Artistry. Valentin Tomberg also
wrote a
small pamphlet on this: The
Philosophy of Taking Council with Others.
Further, our
whole social life will
change, if and when we can introduce into our public
(political) life
the understanding of these realities.
fourth stanza
love and the gift of the word - a demonstration
being a deeper consideration of the relationship between
our inner
activity, and our outer acts in speech
As the
cultivation of our
spirit/soul nexus (mind) grows, we encounter a deeper
appreciation of
the gift of the word. Here is some verse I wrote several
years
ago. By the way, the gift
of the word (once called: Speech) 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.
Perhaps,
even, this whole stanza could be read aloud...
the gift of the word (speech)
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 (Speech) was written on Epiphany, Jan. 6, 1997,
in the
evening, in about a third of an
hour.
Next to the
cultivation of our inner
life, the cultivation of speech (conversation) is of parallel importance. Speaking and
conversation are the main actions by which we are social.
As I
think of you, so shall I speak to you and treat you.
There is a
middle-Eastern aphorism as follows: There are three gates
to
speech. Is it true; is it necessary and is it kind. Here is another middle-Eastern
aphorism,
mentioned once before: cultivate your thought for thought will
become speech;
cultivate your speech for speech will become deeds; cultivate
your
deeds for deeds will become character; and cultivate your
character,
for character will become destiny.
The creation of
a socially healthy new
civilization rests entirely on love engendered free
deeds of moral grace, of which the
most important are what we think (how we
are moral in the inner world) and how we converse (how we are
moral in
the social world). Everything of a healthy social nature
is
rooted in these actions.
Out of the gift
of the word flow powerful
creative forces, as well as destructive forces, and we have
only to
look at history, and at contemporary events to see what is
involved.
The lie is everywhere. M. Scott Peck even wrote a
book
about it, or at least tried: People of
the Lie. Modern politics and
world
events are everywhere confounded with the lie. Our personal
lives too
are damaged and confused with the lie. The gift of the
word is
frequently not used with the grace that lives in its
potential.
Even Soap
Operas, or what the industry
likes to call daytime dramas, have as a central artistic
element
regarding their regular moral themes the demonstration over
and over
again of how the darkest consequences begin and flow from the
lie.
At this point
in this text, I would like
to use the gift of the word, after the fashion of the Letters
of St.
Paul, to address modern evangelical and fundamentalist
Christians,
Catholics, Baptists and all others who give to themselves the
name Christian. St. Paul had to write to many communities
to
admonish them for having fallen into error in their
understanding of
the message of the Gospels, and these same problems exist in
Christian
practice today, often in ways far exceeding the problems that
he
previously observed.
As to whether I
have any right to speak
in the following fashion, I leave to the contents of this book
that
sharing of my own biography the leads me to the necessity to
say what I
do. Certainly, as against all manner of preaching and
writing by
many a presumed authority in the variety of Christian Way's,
this
little book will be barely visible. Nonetheless, knowing
what I
do, I cannot in good conscience leave aside addressing these
issues.
the Fool's Tale
(part III)
Dear Friends,
Greetings from
one who would also follow In His
Steps, to the degree that I am able.
It
is my thought that to name oneself a Christian - a follower of
Christ
as many do, seems to me to take upon ones self a grave
responsibility.
If I name myself a Christian, do I not proclaim to the
world more
than just a belief in a particular God? What is
that more?
I have been, throughout this book, trying to suggest
that being
Christian is found more in doing than in the mere believing. But doing what?
This is
not, however, an easy questions to answer, and right in the
beginning
of this Letter I need to confess, being an addict in recovery,
that I
know myself to mostly fail to live up to His Example. Be
assured,
I will not be judging you, for I have no basis for such
thoughts, or
actions.
Yet there are,
as regards true In His
Steps practices, many issues. I mentioned in the first
stanza the
problem of works and of grace, a subject much discussed by
others.
Let me begin there, now that the major portions of this
book have
been expressed. I should also remind the reader that I
began my
biography as a person of Faith, and then only half way through
it, in
my 30's, did I come upon the ideas and practices of Gnosis.
I
bridge both worlds, and do not consider that either one
diminishes the
other, but on the contrary, each enriches the other to a
considerable
degree.
Remember also,
that at the beginning of
the Christian Era, Gnosis voluntarily
took itself into
the background - the ancient Mysteries of Initiation
consciously gave
way to the new Mysteries of Faith. In a sense, what St.
Paul
experienced on the road to Damascus, in all of a moment
(direct
experience of Christ - i.e initiation),
is the path the
Evolution of Consciousness can lead all biographies, if we so
choose.
It is Christ
Himself who makes the new
gnosis of moral grace, freedom and love available to us, yet
only now,
that at least a few of us have won some of the true gifts of
Faith, can
this be possible. True Faith is our foundation,
and Gnosis
is the house - the inner Temple - that can be built on that
foundation
if we will it. Mere belief is not a sufficient
foundation.
The conclusion
of Christ's Sermon on the
Mount is this: Everyone
therefore
who hears these my words and acts upon them, shall be
likened
to a wise man who built his house on rock. And the
rain
fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against
that
house, but it did not fall , because it was founded on rock.
And
everyone who hears these my words and does
not
act upon
them, shall be likened to a foolish man who built his house on
sand.
And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds
blew and
beat against that house, and it fell and was utterly ruined."
Matthew
7:24-27 {So anyone who hears these words from me
and does
them,
will become like a sensible man who built his house on
bedrock, and the
rain came down and the floods came and the winds hurled
themselves at
the house, and it didn't fall because it was grounded on the
rock.
Any anyone who hears these words from me and doesn't do
them,
will become like a stupid man who built his house on sand, and
the rain
came down and the floods came and the winds beat at the house,
and it
fell, and its downfall was tremendous.} (emphasis
added)
True Faith is that bedrock
foundation, and mere
belief leads to a house built on
sand.
In a sense this
means that having been saved
by grace, by Faith, we now can do more. Yet,
there are those who preach and want to
suggest that being saved is enough, nothing more is required,
which is
a view that the Gospels themselves show to be a mistake.
We have
to ask ourselves, if grace and Faith were all, then why did
Christ
teach the Sermon on the Mount, the Parables and all else that
He taught
about doing and works. Just consider the Beatitudes:
Blessed are the: poor in spirit; the gentle; those
hungering and
thirsting for justice; the merciful; the clean-hearted; the
peacemakers; the persecuted; and so forth. What did He
mean when
He said for us to clean out the inside of our cup first?
What is
the point of advising that the true Shepherd is he who leaves
the 99
already saved, to go and find the one that is lost?
Everywhere we
look in the Gospels, Christ
describes to us deeds, doing, works!
If we really
think our way into the
Gospels and make of them a whole, then we can see that it is
not that
we need to achieve perfection, but that we must try. We
must aim
for the highest we can be, and our Faith is that even if we
miss the
mark, Grace will not abandon us. We do not need to
succeed at
that tasks of works, but we are not to rest content and think
that all
the consequences of our misdeeds, our errors, and our failures
have
been overcome once all we do is make the commitment to Christ
that so
many preachers and Churches now suggest will save us - more is
required
or these words of Christ have no meaning: "whatsoever ye do to the least of these my
brothers and sisters, you also do to me."
(emphasis added)
Being saved is,
after all, something for
ourselves. Works are for others. Some think that
the main
work is to save others, that is to convert others, but which
actions of
ours do you believe will be most effective in helping others
see the
Wisdom of Christ: our rigid insistence on correct doctrine, or
the
obvious sacrament of our own selfless actions toward others.
Charles Sheldon
understood this clearly.
Otherwise what would be the point of asking ourselves:
What Would
Jesus Do? If there is
no point to this act of
asking, seeking and knocking, and if all we have to
do is accept Jesus as our Lord (an easy thing to do in the
feeling-passion of a well preached Church service), then
Sheldon's
book: In His Steps
has no meaning
whatsoever.
For those to
whom this book has meaning,
and calls out to them, then more is needed than merely
accepting Christ
into our lives. If we truly ask ourselves What Would
Jesus Do, then following In
His
Steps means at the least to live
life as He
lived, to
bear our portion of
the washing of the feet, the scourging, the crowing
with thorns, the carrying of the cross, the crucifixion, the
entombment
and the resurrection, as those trials come to us because we
share the
courage to also act in the world out of love engendered free moral
grace.
Going to church on Sunday to be saved and accept the Lord, and then acting in the world the rest of the week as hypocrites, will only lead to one result - a house built on sand.
Sheldon also knew, as he wrote, that when we authentically ask (for he certainly practiced this in his own life) the Holy Spirit comes to our aid.
Recall once
more what is written in John
and which is described in this book from many directions and
in many
contexts:
John 16: 12-15
"I have
much more to say to
you, but you can't bear it just yet. But when the other
comes,
the breath of truth, he will guide you in the ways of all
truth,
because he will not speak on his own, but will speak what he
hears and
announce to you what's coming. He will glorify me,
because he
will take of what is mine and announce it to you.
Everything the
Father has is mine: that's why I said he will take of what is
mine and
announce it to you."
When we go more
and more consciously to
this Source, through our growing development during the Age of
the
Consciousness Soul (as an aspect of the Evolution of
Consciousness) the
Holy Spirit will give to the sacraments of our inner life
(more below)
all that we ask, seek and knock concerning. We bring our
questions to the kingdom of God that is within us, and we will
receive.
Recall also
this important point: Sheldon
does not say: come to me and I will preach to you what to do,
but
rather he says go to the inner forum of your own conscience,
and there
you will be answered. The pastor is not any longer to be
a moral
authority, whether Pope or preacher. Only what is in us is to carry that
burden, and that gift (love engendered free moral
grace) is to be the only authority
any human
being has to acknowledge now and into the future.
At the same
time, we know the power of
moral action in this world, and its trials, which are many.
Mel
Gibson's movie The Passion showed us one version of such trials.
While I
would not have made such a movie, with its emphasis on the
Death of
Christ, diminishing thereby the significance of the
Resurrection (what
for me is the true Teaching), that my view is different is no
basis to
judge. Difference
in
point of view is how we live our biographies, as ordained by
our
Lord. But difference does not mean better.
My
biography led me to writing this, while Gibson's lead him to
his movie, each a freely chosen act of the heart.
To follow
Christ, to truly follow In His
Steps, as Gibson's movie does teach,
is to be
dangerous and to risk. Everyone who really tries to
practice what
we might call Christian Life understands this. Christ
wasn't
crucified because He conformed to the religious or political fashion of the moment, but because true moral action
violates
all such fashion (political
correctness).
Yet, many see
great evil in the world,
and it is Christ in the Sermon on the Mount that teaches us
that if we
would understand evil we must start with the log in our own
eye, before
we are ever able to help another with their splinter.
And later
He says, that we must wash out the inside of our own cup, in
order to
really make truly clean the outside. Knowing this it
pains me
deeply in soul to see so many who take the name Christian to
themselves, yet act with such judgment on those others who are
different.
There is given
a lame justification for
this: love the sinner, hate the sin. As we have come to
learn in
this book, the concept sin was added to the vocabulary of Christ's
teachings by
others - it was not in the original Gospels, when they were
rendered
into Greek. Instead, the understanding was that we
error, we miss
the mark, although our intention (our aim) is true.
For hundreds of
years now, judgmental
Christian leaders have weighed us down with the guilt
of sin - as if
we bore a taint, a
stain, from birth that never could be washed away, when Christ
Himself
has never sought for us to feel this way. Why would Love
make His
children feel so terribly wrong? Clearly He would not,
and
nothing in the Gospels suggests this, even His remarks on the
Fires of
Gehenna, which in the Sermon on the Mount only express the
consequences
of continuous error, not our given state of being. Is it
also not
possible that these Fires are another way of describing the
experience
of kamaloka - the after life where we are to endure what we
have done
to others?
We are to love
those close to us as we
would love ourselves, and when we classify another as an
enemy, how can
that be anything but that judgment by which we will later be
judged -
that sentence to which we will later be sentenced (in the
kamaloka
experience of the after life). Only our Lord can judge,
and has
He not shown, even on the Cross, the power of Forgiveness?
Can anyone who
reads this explain to me
how being Christian, truly a follower of Christ, can lead to
such
divisions over dogmas and doctrines (mere beliefs) that have
taken over
the One True Church. We have made such a mess of things,
such
that more and more that greater portion of the world, which is
not
Christian, hates all things that claim to be Christian.
Do we not
need to beg His Forgiveness for this mess we have made of His
Gifts?
Would even Christ be a
Christian in the sense that this
is lived today?
Yet, who can doubt that He does Forgive us, whether we practice or not the Fifth Petition of His Prayer: And forgive our debts as we forgave the debts that others owe us.
His Promise to
us was: "Come
to me, all you who labor
and are burdened, and I will give your rest. Take my
yoke upon
you, and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and
you will
find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my
burden
light." Matthew 11: 28-30. {Come
here
to me, all you drudges and overburdened ones, and I will give
you a
rest. Put my yoke on and learn from me: I am
gentle and
humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls,
because my yoke
is kindly and my load is light.}
Which do you
think is more easy: To hate
and despise and judge, or to take up the Yoke of Christ and
love?
What makes it so hard to love? Is it not our own
desires
and hungers and wants, that we would have to sacrifice?
Is it not
our own favorite beliefs and habits of feeling that we would
have to
give away? We cling to ourselves, and love ourselves
more, while
the highest love is always to love ourselves less, and God and
our
Brothers and Sisters more. What is it we fear about
love?
We fear love will not be returned, so we do not offer it. We only want to spend love to receive love - to make a commerce of this act, and much of life is this bargain over love me please so that I can love you. Yet, the truth is that the more we love, the more love we have to give. The more we give love, the more we are filled with love to give. The Yoke of Love is kindly indeed, and light as well. To love is to put down the burden of bargaining, to put down the burden of enmity, to put down the burden of judgment. So He tells us overburdened ones to come to Him and He will give us rest. Come to Love, come to gentleness and humility of heart, and find rest for all our souls.
And what is the
greatest sacrifice we can
make, the greatest burden we can put down? To give up
being Christian!
Christ went to the Cross as
a human being, not
as a Christian. And there then
is the
great choice: To be a human being, one with all our brothers
and sisters, or to be this other thing
- a Christian, someone who sees themselves as separate and
different,
someone who is seen now by most to claim moral superiority
over all
that is unlike itself (recall again the central dilemma of
Freedom: dominion over or communion
with) . Each human being, to
the extent
that they think of themselves as one thing, which others are
not, falls
into the trap of assumed otherness, such that we falsely
believe: I am different, better, while
they are not like me, and morally less than me.
What
madness is it that believes so vainly that only those who are Saved (like me), or are the Elect (like me), or Catholic (like me) are
worthy in His
Heart? What do I owe to those who are not like
me?
Which do you
think Christ taught?
To be a Christian, to take His Name to ourselves, or to
be human, and
to see Him in every other human being, including
ourselves, as He taught us? {Let
me
assure you, however much you wouldn't do it for any of the
least
important of these people, you wouldn't do it for me either.}
If we ourselves
are an i-AM,
a
spirit, a child of the Father, then so are all other human
beings.
On what basis then do we dare to conceive ourselves as
better or
more worthy in His eyes. If He has taught us to forgo
the 99
saved sheep to seek the one that is lost, do you not yet
understand
this question: What
Would
Jesus Do?
Did not St.
Paul write: "Not I, but Christ in me"?
(Galatians 2:20) What about Christ in the other, the
Thou?
And what about Faith? Is it the same as a strongly held belief? I think not. Faith involves trust, while belief is what we cling to that makes us feel different. We possess our beliefs do we not? Do we not say: "I am entitled to what I believe"? Faith makes room for miracles, for the promise is that Faith can move mountains. Maybe true Faith can move the mountain that is the log in our own eye.
At the same
time, all who conceive
themselves to be Christians a
re an odd and individual mixture of true Faith and mere
belief.
Faith is really an act of will, and not a thought
content at all,
while belief is mostly a set of dogmatic beliefs, which are
not
knowledge - no Gnosis. For Gnosis to have Life (Christ's
Presence) it must be founded on Faith. But for the
content (the
beliefs) of Faith to have Truth (again, Christ's Presence)
they must be
founded on Gnosis.
Overtime,
Gnosis has regularly infused
Faith (starting with Paul's conversion on the road to
Damascus), but
this stream of infusion has been broken up by periods of time
where
people then clung to the past (making rigid dogmas of the
previous
infusion). This is most obvious in the Catholic Church,
who
regularly has received infusions of new inspiration via such
as St.
Francis or St. Ignatius.
In addition,
there is so much hypocrisy
in today's Churches and sects, that He must certainly feel
great pain.
Some preach hate, some preach wealth (in spite of all
that Christ
warned about wealth), some preach that all manner of sex is a
sin, and
then the very next day they have to confess to practicing such
acts.
Do you really think that once you have taken Christ as
your Lord
and Savior that ends all other striving to do What Jesus Would Do?
Christ made promises, and Faith would know that these promises would be fulfilled. One matter that He promised - one most crucial matter - was that He would Return.
Some men, who
many will know of, have
written a series of books in which they believe to have set
out the
meaning for our time of the Last Book of the Bible, the Book
of
Revelations. Is there anything gentle and humble in
making up a
story that tells people that Christ only loves the Saved and
the Elect,
and that He, who taught us to love our enemies, would return
in the
flesh and spread death and destruction everywhere, acts which
have to
be the very opposite of Forgiveness and Love? What base
human
vanity to turn our Lord into a such vengeful monster!
Even so, I
would not want to take such a
burden as these writers will into the true judgment in the
afterlife
that is kamaloka. Perhaps they have done their best, and
who, but
Christ, is to judge them for it. Yet, how can I not
wonder
otherwise about their pretense to speak truthfully of the
Divine
Mystery in matters so acute and important to all humanity.
These
are, after all, books of fiction. Are they the equal of
Sheldon's
In
His
Steps?
There is a
story that has come from the
Holy Land, carried by a gentle and humble man. He wrote
a book in
1993, which he called The
Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century.
His name is Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, and he has been graced
with that
knowledge of the spirit world only seen when we travel the
path within
and enter through the Narrow Gate - via the development of our
own
will-on-fire in thinking.
This is not a
book that is popular or
widely known. It has not made its author wealthy and
beloved in a
worldly sense. It was given humbly, without publicity
and
advertising. The book simple waits, while its author
lives in the
Holy Land, working, as many work, in the socially creative
vineyards of
that troubled and tragic place.
Ben-Aharon not
only tells the true story
of the Return as Promised, but shows it has a depth far beyond
the vain
fancies of the authors of the Left Behind series. Read
them both
and compare and then decide for yourselves which speaks more
truly of
such profound and Holy questions. I can say this.
I have
read Ben-Aharon's book, and found not only that which makes
Faith more
secure, but it also has exact instructions as to how to open
up our own
souls to the experience of the Return, and, even more
strangely and profoundly, how to truly participate in this Return.
Some
Christians, such as the
institutional aspects of the Catholic Church, have come to
love their
own worldly power far too much. In this Fallen state,
they have
received into themselves news of a sort that ought to have led
to great
joy and celebration. Something happened in Europe during
the
Twentieth Century of profound importance for all who look to
Christ's
Example. The meaning-essence of the Kings returned and
the
Church's leaders know it and have said nothing concerning the
message
that the returned meaning-essence of the Kings has brought.
Pride
of belief took precedence over love of the truth.
Preservation of
dogmas and mere beliefs was more important than new
instruction.
Better for these to hold to their power over others,
their claim
of moral authority, than to admit the existence of Christ's continuing Revelation to humanity through His chosen voices.
Think on this
again. Just as at the
Birth, the Kings (gnosis-initiates) were present, so in this
time of
the Second Coming, when Christ experiences in the inner world
of spirit
a second Calvary, so too the Kings were present, called by
this sublime
event so as to witness and proclaim its meaning.
Yet, the
historic pride of the
institutional hierarchy of the Catholic Church has overlooked
many of
the most basic teachings of Christ, for example, where He
says, in Mark
2: 27: "The
Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath." The Church was made for humanity,
not
humanity for the Church. To the extent that a
conservative
dogmatism rules the minds of the Church's institutional
hierarchy - to
that extent the Life, which is Christ's
Presence, is excluded.
Authentic
spiritual experience, in part,
depends as much upon Grace from Above as it
does on
our will-on-fire in thinking. An initiate does not storm
the
gates of Heaven and steal its secrets. Rather he
purifies
himself, humbles his soul and then is meet by Grace from Above. When Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) began to
openly
teach, while many came to hear, others were jealous and turned
away.
While Steiner battled the birthing of the Beast in
National
Socialism during the early 1920's (which eventually was to
kill him),
Rome looked the other way. When the Way, the Truth and
the Life,
manifested again in the world, priests and bishops and
cardinals and
popes denied this manifested Presence, much as Peter denied
Christ in
the hours after the Crucifixion.
So the stewards
of the One True Church
looked away, and unrestrained, and essentially unopposed, the
Beast
entered into the world, and thus were slain millions upon
millions of
Jews, and Germans and Russians, to say nothing of the hundreds
of
thousands of others who died on the Cross of Rome's denial.
What did the
returned meaning-essence of
the Kings bring? Well, I have been mentioning portions
of it all
along. Steiner not only wrote concerning how to exactly
and
precisely study the life of soul and spirit within ourselves
in a fully
scientific fashion (through objective philosophical
introspection), he
also wrote dozens of other books, and gave over 6000 lectures,
most of
which were transcribed and many of which have been published
in several
languages. This work of new revelation
gave birth to
all manner of disciplines, in which knowledge of the world of
spirit
could infuse and heal the confusions caused by scientific
materialism.
The role of authentic spiritual understanding in
education, in
the arts, in medicine, in agriculture and even in natural
science has
been laid out for any to see and take up.
What Rome
denied wasn't just a prophet
standing on a street corner, but a whole unfolding of how,
behind the
scenes of nature and of the human organism, the world of
spirit exists
and participates at all levels. Through Steiner,
scientific
materialism was deconstructed without any abuse to the true
scientific
spirit, and its quite valid methods of careful observation and
thinking. But people, being people - that is human -
even
Steiner's students could barely carry the stewardship of his
work,
especially since this work's Christ Essence was denied by the
most
powerful Church of our time.
Let us consider
the practical aspects of
this for a moment. The Wisdom that Rudolf Steiner was
able to
bring (not solely out of himself, but as a co-participant with the Above) advanced medicine, education,
farming,
care of the disabled, natural science, public (social) life,
religion,
art and much more. However, it also bore within it (in
addition
to its disagreements with natural science) that which
conflicts with
Catholic dogma and theology, and which would suggest (as this
book
suggests) that the moral authority of the Church is no longer
valid,
nor is it any longer the time for the Church to look upon
their charges
as spiritual children.
As a
consequence, in order to keep its
earthly power the Church kept its support away from these
remarkable
new revelations of the spirit. This new spiritual
knowledge was
very much needed by a world desperate for advances in all
fields that
are required in order to overcome the one-sided vision of
materialistic
science: that existence is only of matter, and never of
spirit, or that
the human being is an animal, with no spark of the Divine.
The
Catholic Church, at some conscious level, made a decision to
think, in
regard to this new revelation, of itself first and humanity
second.
This then was
the revelation of the first
new King.
The second new King I have also mentioned, for Valentin Tomberg (1900-1973), who was for a time a student of Steiner's, was himself rejected by the community of Steiner followers. Not to be foiled by this vain resistance, Tomberg went so far as to become a Catholic during WWII, and following on this (in the decade of the 1960's) he wrote Meditations on the Tarot: a journey into Christian Hermeticism, which expressly was an attempt to remind the truly religious of the once One True Church of the path of the Kings, the path of gnosis and initiation. This was an extraordinary work, created after he retired in England, which sought to unfold the true roots of the Catholic Mysteries, all the way back through Hebrew Wisdom to the Wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians. With deep humility he had this published anonymously and only after his death.
And, those who
are paying attention to
these things will also know that while this book has become
important
among many of the religious, who are also Catholic (as well as
many
others besides), he also wrote - subsequent to Meditations -
something
more for the laity: Covenant
of the Heart.
Has any of the Catholic laity, the Body of Christ, heard either of these books quoted in a homily, or been encouraged to read any of Tomberg's works?
Steiner had
been ignored, and next came
Tomberg who reached right into the heart of the Church to
bring once
more the revelation that initiation wisdom is again available
for
humanity, but once again the Church held more dear its own
authority
and power.
So passed by
the revelation of the second
new King.
So far, I have mention two books of Jesaiah Ben-Aharon (1955 -): America's Global Responsibility: individuation, initiation and threefolding; and, The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth Century. There is a third: The New Experience of the Supersensible, in which he unfolds his own understanding of the processes of gnosis in our time.
Here, in his
little book (published in
1993) on the Second Coming (The Spiritual Event...), was
great news for all Christians - Christ had returned!
What more
would be needed in a world gone mad, with false prophets
everywhere
claiming that only the saved could be raptured, that the End
Times were
here, the Christ was yet to come and when He did He would come
in a
physical body, and in such a rage that he would kill people.
Instead of this
pollution of the truth,
Ben-Aharon writes of a second Calvary and second great
sacrifice.
Here then is the revelation of the third new King, who
still yet
lives, but who is also denied by Rome.
Like Peter, Rome in the
Twentieth Century has three times
denied the New Revelations of Christ, including the
announcement of the
real Second Coming!
[For those who
would like some facts,
Pope John Paul II is known to have been a part of Steiner
groups as a
young man in Poland before he became a priest, and there has
been seen
a picture taken of him, in his office just after becoming
Pope, that
was published in the German magazine Stern.de, which shows him standing behind a desk on which
can be
clearly seen a copy of Meditations
on
the Tarot. All of this, by the
way,
is not to ignore the obvious: That the Society of Jesus (the
Jesuits)
has certainly, through its critical intellectual passions,
been well
aware of these three individuals for some time.]
From out of the
depths of soul of those
peoples who were and did give millions of lives on the Cross
that was
WWII, the Hebrews, the Russians and the Germans, the new Kings
rose:
Jesaiah Ben-Aharon, born a Jew in Israel; Valentin
Tomberg, born
a Russian; and, Rudolf Steiner, born on the border of Austria
and
Germany, who was educated in Germany and centered all his work
there
until the National Socialists drove him into exile in
Switzerland in
the early 1920's. Such then were/are the acts of love of
the new
Kings, and it was the Grace of Christ that filled them from
within, in
all their efforts and work.
Nor is that the end of it. For the new Kings were not alone, but were accompanied by many. Can we not realize that the meaning essence of the Disciples will also return, and that there will also be a second Pentecost. Once we open this door of new revelation, whole worlds open up, including the means to truly reveal how to unite both Science and Religion on such important questions as the true meaning of human physical evolution (a matter requiring too much detail to touch upon here).
May those who
seek to follow In His
Steps, find their way to this fount
of New
Revelation that has been set to
flowing once more, beginning in the
20th Century - the Century of Christ's True Return in the
Ethereal.
let it be so.
end of the third part of the Fool's Tale,
and of a
direct discussion of love
There yet
remains an effort to make a
little summary of this book...
A principle
aspect of the great Mystery
of our Time is the Mystery of Evil, both outwardly in the
structural
backdrop to the shared social world of humanity, and inwardly
in the
depths of our own souls. I have tried above to point out
how it
is that the essential matter is not the outer social world,
but the
inner soul world, and the trials and education of the i-AM,
in
the biography. The context, which we need to call the maya of
history and current events, and which is penetrated everywhere from below by the Dark Mystery of the
Divine
Mother, all passes away, and only what is Eternal, that is
what becomes
an aspect of the developing i-AM,
continues; and, this
inner realm (the whole Inwardness of the Creation, which
includes human
souls and spirits) only exists because
of the Heavenly
Mystery of the thoughts (Ideas) of the Father,
while the whole (the outer social maya
and the eternal inner mind) is created, loved, overseen and mediated (wherever
two
are more are gathered...), in all
its
Grace filled and Artistic interrelationships, by the Earthly
Mystery of
the sacrifices of the Son.
[When He died
on the Cross He began right
there and then to fulfill His promise to be with us to the
ends of
time.]
We (humanity)
now begin to move out of
our spiritual childhood, and in making our way through the
Rite of
Passage that is Life as it leads us toward our spiritual
maturity, we
need to take hold of the complex of the doubles and the karma
of
wounds, as these thrive within our souls, and which encourage
human
evil through temptation and inner prosecution. Even so,
this task
of meeting the Mystery of Evil within the soul is not as heavy
as we
think, for through the Shepherd's Tale
[Charles
Sheldon], the
King's Tale [Rudolf Steiner], the Healers' Tale [the community-created Twelve-Steps] and the Sermon on the
Mount, we have all the practical
instructions that we need.
In seeking to
understand in
ourselves these three: moral grace, freedom
and love, we set before ourselves
what is required to be learned
in this particular epoch of the Evolution of Consciousness,
and it is
with these three naturally unfolding capacities that we are
Graced and
strengthened so as to be able to meet with courage the Mystery
of Evil.
If we do dare this path, and seek for the deepest
instruction in
Christ's Sermon on the Mount, then will come to us a change in
the
nature of our biography, such that it more and more takes on
the
pattern, described in the John Gospel, as the Seven Stages of
the
Passion of Christ (the
washing
of the feet; the scourging; the crowning with thorns; the
carrying of the cross; the crucifixion; the entombment and the
resurrection) (for a careful
exposition of
these Seven Stages, see Valentin Tomberg's (anthroposophical)
book: Inner
Development).
Whereas Christ
lived this in an
apparently mostly physical way, those, who truly follow In
His
Steps [the name of Sheldon's
book,
as well as a critical phrase in Ben-Aharon's The
Spiritual
Event of the Twentieth Century],
will in the main feel these trials in their souls, as aspects
of the
joy and suffering in the human biography.
These trials
may seem difficult, but the
truth is they are merely human. It was Christ becoming
human that
went to the Cross, for how could He place an example before us
we could
not do out of our own humanity (just as Sheldon wrote in In
His
Steps). It is the human in
Christ that
asks in the Garden of Gethsemane that the cup be taken from
him, but if
not, He accepts the Father's will. While later it is the even
deeper
human in Christ that says on the Cross: "My God, my God, why
did you
abandon me?". Who among us, in
the
trials and sufferings of life, has not uttered these same
thoughts?
[Steiner
teaches that from the point of
view of esoteric Christianity (Gnosis), these statements of
Christ on
His way to His death have a hidden meaning. I here
remind
Steiner's students, who may read this book, that this does not
change
the meaning known by Faith (by Shepherds). Both the
outer and the
hidden inner meanings are true within the nature of their
individual
significance and context.]
It is here that
Christ's teachings
strongly diverge from the Wisdom of the Buddha (who came
before Him),
for the Buddha would have had us overcome suffering by
learning not to
know it or to leave it aside (one version of the third Noble
Truth of
the Buddha reads as follows: " ...concerning the
Cessation of Suffering; verily,it is
passionless, cessation without remainder of this very craving;
the
laying aside of, the giving up, the being free from, the
harboring no
longer of, this craving."), whereas
Christ
asks us to embrace our human pain so that we can pass through the Narrow Gate of suffering to then know our deepest self, the i-AM,
and
then through this burning trial of knowledge of the true-self,
ultimately come to Him. If we would follow In
His
Steps then we too must take on
ourselves the
errors (sins) of the world, and the tasks of forgiveness and
love, for
every love
engendered
free act of moral grace takes up a
small part of Christ's suffering, so that we too participate
in the
deepest creative acts of the Seventh Day of Creation - the
transformation
of evil into love.
[This is for
Steiner students the
teaching attributed to Mani, but the reason such a personality
even
knows this is because the transformation of evil into love is modeled for us in the deepest felt actions of
the
Divine Mother and the Son. When we know intimately these
actions
of the Divine Mystery, we know the true spiritual meaning of
the
Mystery of Evil, and that this Divinely Lived Mystery is the
true
source of the earthly doctrine connected to it that is
sometimes called
Manichaeism.]
Is this
foolish? Of course, but we
need not fear this Way of the Fool, for
our Faith
in Christ's Promises will always be fulfilled, as we ourselves
can
learn to become the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.
Yes,
this Way is full of trials, but whoever has lived life, and
reflected
upon their experience, knows that in the meeting of our
biography's
trials with
true
courage (willed Faith and
Hope) we discover what it truly means to be human: to struggle, to fall,
to get
up and to learn - and, through this process, gently and
humbly, begin
to take up along side and with Him, Christ's kind and light,
Yoke of
Love.
Having said all
this, it becomes
necessary to make one last picture for the reader, for
clearly, in that
we read the news and hear of the horrors of man's continuing
inhumanity
to man, we ourselves face a terrible trial. How are we
to
understand a world seemingly so filled with Evil?
Picture, for a
moment, the surface of the
Earth. Below dense matter and fiery substance, while
above,
airless space. Humanity only lives out its Earth
Existence in
this narrow spherical band of Life (its about 3 miles from the
solid
surface up to that level of the ocean of air were breathing
becomes
difficult), which narrow band has a diameter of just under
8,000 miles.
The total surface area of the Earth is 196 million
square miles,
and the habitable land area 43 million square miles
Over
six billion plus human beings must find all that they
physically need,
which when we consider actual available arable land (land that
could be
cultivated for food), means that each individual only has a
square 161
feet on a side from which to annually grow the food they need.
This then is the
spacial aspect of the social organism of the whole world.
Yet, we know
that this space is itself
often unwisely distributed, for human social arrangements,
whether
rooted in dominance and selfishness (dominion over) or generosity and sharing (communion with), seem to determine this social order.
Because of
our Freedom, a moral and/or amoral order moves and operates
the
physical one.
As to this
moral
aspect of the social organism of the whole world, it has reached in this time a kind of climax of
development,
and it will be important to appreciate the true nature of the
logos order (the order
from Above) in which Christ has set
modern human existence, through His creative powers as the
Artist
(Lord) of Karma (the precise and love based placement of
individual
biographies in relationship to each other as regard the
healing of
wounds and the necessity of justice). Here is
something
Natural Science cannot do, for the meaning of existence is beyond the weaknesses of their fanciful and
spirit-empty images. This will also help us to
understand why so
many (falsely, but with some degree of reason) believe we live
in the
End Times.
In the
Twentieth Century the world was
woven together into a single social organism, not just via the
globalization of economic matters, or the personal
interconnections
offered by the Internet, but most centrally by the Media.
At the
beginning of the 20th Century, few knew what went on elsewhere
the
world, in any detail or with any immediacy. By the end
of the
20th Century, at the same time that the returned
meaning-essence of the
new Kings were unfolding the New Revelations of Christ in
connection
with His real Second Coming, the world itself was woven into a
whole in
the sense that no macro social event was not to be almost
immediately
known everywhere the same day (if not the same hour) that it
happened.
We live in a time when has arisen a World-wide Culture of Media - a kind of knowledge commons, in which vast resources are used to create for us pictures of the meaning of the world and of events. The more developed the country, the greater our daily experience can be saturated with the messages coming from this Culture of Media.
Moreover, great
effort and expense is
gone into by those who would force us to believe what they
want us to
believe. Between advertising, political propaganda,
outright
lies, weak or lame reporting, and other similar failures to seek or
reach the
truth, this saturation of the soul
by the
Culture of Media would seem to fail to offer us any service at
all.
What is not appreciated is that Christ is far wiser than even
the
deepest believers imagine. Every evil is eventually
turned to
good, and next we will explore a prime example for our time.
Recall what has
been pointed out many
times now, that the
individual
biography is the central reality of life on the Earth. What happens inside us as we experience
life is
much more important and enduring than the outer events which
surround
us. That Stage Setting (all the world's a stage....) is
but a distracting vanity to the reality of the life of
the soul. To help us appreciate
this then, let us explore these matters from the point of view
of the
biography.
In this time,
there are over six billion
plus of these biographies woven into the tapestry of the
social
organism of the whole world. Six billion lives held
delicately
and exactly within the Love and Divine Justice of the Mystery.
Within these biographies, all the individual i-AMs
experience that precise and personal instruction that hopes to
lead
them to the realization of their own divinity and immortality
of
spirit. [recall that the epoch (rite of passage) of the
Consciousness
Soul is 2100 years long, going from the time of the beginning
of the on-looker
separation (and the creation of
Natural Philosophy - Science) in
the 1400's, until the years around 3500 AD, when the first
(moral)
stages of final
participation will have by then
fully
arrived.]
To understand
this we need to think it
from the inside out, and not from the outside in. The
Culture of
Media only provides context, never essence. True, life
is hard,
even harsh, even terrible. The naive consciousness wants
to turn
away from this suffering, and cannot understand how God (the
Divine
Mystery) could allow such things as torture, child abuse and
the
genocidal acts which are dumbed down by the terms: ethnic
cleansing.
The reality is
that what the Divine
Mystery does is to allow for Freedom. This most precious
gift is
essential to the immortal spirit during its Rites of Passage
we are
calling: Earth
Existence. Moreover, the
Mystery also
makes certain there is a true Justice through the post-death passages of
kamaloka and
lower and higher devachan, in a manner no human social
structure can
provide. Christ has told us this in the Sermon on the
Mount: "to what
sentence you sentence others, you will be sentenced".
All this should be kept in
mind as we
proceed.
As a single
ego, I wake in the morning.
From the night I bring the remainder of yesterday,
perhaps worked
over. Surrounding me, as I live the day, are the lives
of those
with whom I have a karma of wounds - with whom I have a debt
of meaning
to creatively work over. This we carry together, each
bearing a
part, each bearing their own wounds. These are
wounds from
the past, from the present and from the future.
To observe the
world of today, as we walk
the walk of our lives, is to observe trials of fire and
suffering -
rites of wounding and being wounded. But not just this, for
also there
is healing. Where we let love thrive, wounds become
healed.
Thus flow all
our days, often too fast to
even notice the beauty and wonder of the surging sea of
personal
relationships and shared trials. Yes, there is
misfortune, and
evil deeds. But do we really imagine Christ and the
Divine Mother
lets this evil happen without recourse or justice? We
may not
know this directly through Gnosis, but we
also can have Faith.
Gnosis without Faith is empty of Life; and, Faith without Gnosis is empty of the Truth. Only when we join
them together, do we get: the Way (the Mystery of
living the Good), the Truth (the
Mystery
of knowing the Good) and the Life (the
Mystery
of union
with the Good).
This then is
the wonder of the outer and
inner biography, for often the wounds are not visible.
Yes,
sometimes the wounds are visible to our eye or ear for we see
people
too fat, too thin, too lamed in body, too poor, too physically
or
mentally deficient. Often, however, so many of us suffer in silence that we really do not know the nature and
personal
meaning of their wounds - only our own are visible to the eye
of our
heart, unless we first learn to exercise and unfold certain
powers of
soul and spirit.
Amidst all this
visible and/or silent
suffering, we find ourselves woven into the presently fallen
Culture of
Media. Images and sounds flow around us, pictures of a
world on
the verge of chaos and madness. Yes, we have the
intimacy of our
personal biography, but through the Culture of Media we are
drawn into
the painted backdrop of the whole world - a backdrop we all
share.
War in Iraq. Global warming. Governments out
of
control. Pandemics waiting in the wings.
What lives in this painted backdrop - in this Stage Setting - in the wise relationship of the Culture of Media to the unfolding of our personal biographies?
The answer is
this: the
mirror of our own inner
darkness...
Inside us the
double-complex - our
feelings of judgment, our temptations, our addictions and our
sense of
failure. Inside us the darkness that belongs personally to us,
while
outside us, carried to us by the Culture of Media, the mirror
of that
darkness.
Think on it.
Do we not experience
the images and sounds brought to us by the Culture of Media as
something that is filled with what we like and we dislike?
We
live our biographies and the Culture of Media confounds our
souls with
pictures of dark and light to which we all respond
individually.
The great masses of humanity do not make the News. The
great
masses of humanity experience the News.
What is News?
News is exactly what
the reporters and television personalities call it: stories. The Culture of Media provides us stories
(tales)
of the world, which are often presented as if these stories
are true,
something most of us have come to know they are not.
News stories
reflect all kinds of bias, and in some cases the bias is
deliberate.
Moreover, news stories often reflect questionable
conditions of
commerce (the dark god Profit) living in the agency reporting
them.
For example, it
is well understood that
in the last third of the 20th Century in American television,
the news
divisions of the major networks disappeared, and the
entertainment
divisions took over the responsibility for the news. The
opportunity to inform and educate the receivers of news
stories became
secondary to the need to keep them interested so as to be able
to sell
commercials and make a profit (see the film: Good
Night,
and Good Luck). In addition,
the
stories are mostly about dire and tragic events, and little is
investigated or reported that is about the positive and the
creative.
We are right
then to wonder sometimes
about the News, about its harsh nature and artless attention
to the
dark deeds of many. Humanity in general bears within it
the beam
that is not seen, while the mote is
exaggerated. But
the world itself is not this beam, is not this darkness.
The
greater part of darkness is inside us, projected onto the
world, and
the Culture of Media exaggerates this darkness further, at the
same
time it gives us much that also arouses our own unredeemed
antipathies
and sympathies.
Once more, if
you don't mind...
The world in its reality is not this darkness, which we all project from within the soul - the beam. Yet, in the Culture of Media this whole process of dark projection is exaggerated so that the mirroring nature of the social world itself begins to bother us. The logos order of the social world is complex and rich, and worth a deep study.
Pictures of a distorted and untrue meaning of the world abound, and while we all share these pictures, we make personal our reactions. Just as the intimate events of our biographies have a personal meaning, so does the shared stage setting have a personal meaning. In a more general sense, for example, many Christians today are confronted, via the Culture of Media, with pictures of individuals whose actions as self-proclaimed Christians either inspire us to imitation or cause us to turn away in shame. The same is true in Islam. The terrorist who frightens us in the West, also causes the ordinary Muslim to turn away in horror. Everywhere fundamentalism rises, to continue the example, the great mass of humanity, that are not so tied to such arid rigidity, shrinks away in antipathy. Do we not assert inwardly to ourselves: this is not me, I am not that - I will not be that!
In our
biographies then, we are
confronted in the intimacy of our personal relationships with
what are
sympathetic and antipathetic reactions to that which we would
choose to
admire and imitate, and that which we would shun and refuse to
be like
(the karma of wounds). Via the Culture of Media, we are
met with
that which approaches us in the same way, yet on a larger
scale.
Just as we as individuals have a Shadow (a
double-complex),
so nations, religions and peoples have a Shadow, and the
Culture of
Media puts in our faces these pictures and meanings with which
we can
identify or from which we can turn away, often in shame.
Christ has
arranged, in this particular
moment in time (the cusp of the 20th to 21st Centuries, which
is also
the Dawn of the Third Millennium) to place in the dying away
hierarchical social forms of humanity, those biographies which
do two
main forming gestures within that history. This is all
connected
to a process in which social chaos arises in order to cause
these old
hierarchical [third cultural epoch] social structures to let
go their
no longer valid hold, and in many instances be eventually
replaced with
new social form arising out of the social commons [fifth
cultural
epoch].
In the first
instance, these biographies
living in the decadent social hierarchies (such as government,
corporate and church organizations) portray strong images, via
the
Culture of Media, to which we react equally strongly out of
our likes
and dislikes. For example, one of America's wise women,
Doris (Grannie
D) Haddoch, has said that we should
be grateful for such
as George Bush, because he causes us to awake from our sleep
as
citizens. As a consequence, in our individual
biographies we
react to the extremes of these dominant religious, business
and
political personalities, and this brings about in us as
individuals
certain inner judgments and calls to action.
The second
effect of these biographies is
to drive the social order further into a needed condition of
chaos,
something all 6 billion plus biographies require in order to
birth the
moral dilemmas necessary for the Age of the Consciousness
Soul.
This social chaos sweeps traditional moral
authority aside,
and forces us as individuals into situations where we must
rely on the
own I in order to properly face the challenge. In that
human
beings are incarnating in massive karmic communities in order
to have
these sometimes shattering moral experiences, this causes the
present
world social organism to have the strong tendency to
completely
dissolve into a condition of near total social conflagration
[thus my
website: Shapes in the Fire http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/].
The moral
aspect
of the logos ordered social organism of the world requires crisis in order for the individual
biographies
to live, not just intellectually, but fully and dynamically
and
existentially into dilemmas of moral choice. Only
true
moral choice can awaken in us what is offered in this Age to
the
development of the Consciousness Soul.
Nothing in the
world is not touched by
the Art of Christ, who as Lord of Karma - Lord of the
Satisfaction of
Moral Debt and healer of karmic wounds, arranges in majestic
harmony
all the biographies so that even from the smallest detail to
the
grandest historical event, meaning is put to the service of our development - the
leaving
behind of our spiritual childhood followed by our birth into
spiritual
adulthood.
The world historical crises of this time are a complex and rich Stage Setting, against which 6 billion plus spirits live out the dramas of their individual biographies.
Thus, in this
birth from childhood to
adulthood, the Time - the Age of the Consciousness Soul - is a
Rite of
Mystery, a Baptismal Mass for all of humanity, just as was
told to us
by John the Baptist. [in Matthew 3:11] "Now I bathe you in
the water
to change hearts, but the one coming after me is stronger than
me: I'm
not big enough to carry his shoes. He
will
bathe you in holy breath and fire."
Consider now
more closely what happens
inside us as we experience the intimacy of our biographies,
and the
shared pictures that come via the Culture of Media.
Choice
confronts us. Do I be
like that, or like this? From what place inside do I
choose?
In a time so filled with chaos that rules no longer
apply, I
discover that I can rely only on myself. Out of myself I
must
author the Good in response to the world of meaning that
surrounds and
confronts me. So powerful, in its personal immediacy,
are these
experiences, images and meanings, that we cannot turn away
from them.
It is as if the World itself is on Fire, wanting to burn
and burn
and burn until we run from it in terror, or stand up to it and
give the
fullest of our participation to its
moderation and its healing.
Yet by Grace, I
contain the means to know
the Good that my biography and membership in the shared fate
of
humanity draws out of me. What I source becomes a part
of the
world, and I know that this is so. I know my
freedom to
enact the moral grace that my heart comprehends in its deepest
places.
Deep inside my soul my very own heart hungers to sing: Love will I give.
Love
will I create. Love will I author.
So now we think
away the physical - the
maya of the sense world, and let our picture
thinking gaze only upon this inner,
invisible
to the physical eye, moral act (Art). An act more and
more
emerging everywhere, for while in America, and the Cultural
West, the
Consciousness Soul is first appearing, it will and must appear
everywhere that human beings let the world touch their wounds,
while
they seek to share with others the trials by fire of their
biographies.
Forced by an
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 a 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 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.
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, which intimate conversation leads
ultimately
to the consecration - the character development - of the soul.
In this way we
now see the Meaning of
Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul: A
macro-cosmic
Rite, a Second Ethereal Eucharist, in which we take into
ourselves in
the most intimate way possible, knowledge of the Good, not as
mere
thought, but as the true ethereal substance of Christ's Being.
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
we receive and then enact 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 received within
in the
deepest intimacy of our life of soul, is an ethereal communion
with
Christ, even though we may only experience it as a mere
thought of what
is the Good at some moment of need in the biography.
Christ give 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
(What
Would Jesus Do?), 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
substance of
Christ's Being. We are touched by Love, and at this
touch we
shape that Breath into the thought that we then know.
The nature
of its application and the form in which we incarnate this
thought is
entirely our own. We shape the thought completely out of
our own
freedom, for only we can apply it accurately in the
individual circumstances of our lives.
As the Age of
the Consciousness Soul
unfolds accompanied by this Second Eucharist, the Social World
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
collective action (of the whole of humanity) 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 thought-world (ethereal
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 collectively a co-creation of all of humanity that so chooses to participate.
In the
Invisible World of Spirit, we
co-participate in the Dawn of the New Sun that is to become
the New
Jerusalem.
Let us now wind
down here for a moment,
and take a deep breath, for these last thoughts above may seem almost too big - too idealistic -
to be
easily contemplated. To ease our understanding and
gently ground
it, let us consider this situation once again in it most
ordinary
aspects.
The world of
our biographies places each
individual into the fires of experience.
These are remarkable gifts that can lead us toward moral
questions - often deep and troubling. We yearn to know
what to
do, and in this circumstance we may ask, seek and knock (What Would Jesus Do?). What has been called earlier in this
book,
Moral Grace, is available to us, yet the temple of mystery of
the own
soul of this practice of inner
activity is
where we ourselves create moral law - where we become the fulfillment of
the law
and the prophets.
In the King's
Tale, we saw that Rudolf
Steiner's book The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity
showed how
to come to this knowledge through the practices of Gnosis - to
knowledge -
in the form of moral imagination, moral intuition and
moral technique. In the Healers' Tale, we saw how the 12
Steps
helped us to master the soul through the elevation of the
spirit, and
in this way come to know God's Will as we understand it.
Finally,
in the Shepherd's Tale we came to understand that by
asking What
Would
Jesus Do out of Faith, we could also come to the needed individual moral beliefs.
Three different
paths (among perhaps many
more) all leading to those individual depths that each of us
must
uniquely experience, which we have now seen to be properly
called: Holy
Breath. So we come now to
perceive the Time - this Age of
the Consciousness Soul - where, if we seek it, we have made
ourselves
available to be baptized with Fire and Holy Breath, just as
John the Baptist us told Christ would do, 2000 years ago.
Even so, we
still have to truly want to know the Good -
to authentically ask, seek and knock.
*
this then is the end of our main conversation in this little book,
which was mostly written in the Season of Easter - the Spring, 2004,
and then revised in a number of details in the Season of Easter
- the Spring, 2006, only to wait again to be finished in the Season of Easter, Spring of 2007, by a humble apprentice to Kings,
and a faithful, tho' flawed, servant of Christ
Appendices
(some matters requiring a bit of detail,
but which
really didn't belong in the main text)
1) Prayer and Meditation: certain
nuances
connected to providing the i-AM some rest and time of
reflection.
We live modern
life too fast. There
is almost no time for reflection, and without reflection we
acquire no
wisdom. Yet, we cannot leave this situation as it is.
We
must make time for reflection, for contemplation, for
meditation and
for prayer - on a daily basis. It is an inner
nourishment that
the soul cannot live without. Without this time of
reflection,
the soul will wither and die; and, bereft of its spiritual
partner (the
soul), the i-AM itself will become
lost and perhaps even consumed by the
forces of Evil and Darkness (what Rudolf Steiner called: the
Asuras).
Steiner thought this would be the only time we would be free - when we meditate. The rest of the time life's situations push and pull us with its demands that control our thoughts and feelings. Only when we meditate, he said, were we able to find the inner freedom of thought that we need. I agree only partially with this view.
Some time ago I
heard some faculty from
the Harvard Divinity School speaking in a panel on television.
One speaker stated that the reason the Tibetan Llama
Chogyam
Trungpa required of his students that they spend several hours
every
Saturday in sitting meditation, was that Trungpa believed
Westerners
talked too much, and needed to slow down their mental
processes.
I agree only partially with this view, as well.
But neither
Steiner or Trungpa are
Westerners (Americans), and this then limits their
understanding.
In the main body of this text, you may recall the story I told about Hefner, Presley and King, and about the will/limb impulse that characterized their activities. What appears as physical form, by the way, is a reflection of the structure of the soul. This means that the fact that we have limbs is due to the will in the soul, which then manifests itself into the plastic unformed nature of the living organism and gives it form. We walk and reach as expressions of will. We have legs and arms as expressions of our will.
We also have inwardly the same functional capacity. We move in
memory on
legs of will, and we grasp thoughts with arms and hands of will.
To take the
time to sit still, to pray
and to meditate, is to begin the exercise of these inner limbs of will that we must have if we are to face the
coming
trials. The
first act of will is to
take the
time to sit still.
When sitting
still mind will at first
continue to rush about, as is its habit. This is
then the
opportunity for prayer. What we do is to pray out loud,
not
loudly but spoken, even in a whisper. The Catholic will
cross
themselves first and after, but everyone who aspires to follow
In His
Steps will want to speak
the Lord's Prayer. In the Sermon on the Mount, before
giving the
Lord's Prayer, Christ speaks quite clearly about where and why
to pray,
and if you read this carefully it is also clear that He means
for it to
be spoken
aloud,
and privately. Rudolf
Steiner is said to have spoken aloud the
Lord's Prayer every day at the same time.
The necessity
for the private element of true prayer life is something
entirely
overlooked today, with most Church Rites and many public
situations
being places where there is the practice of leading people in
shared
prayer. It seems a simple thing, and to some extent
cannot be
(and maybe shouldn't be) changed. At the same time, such
a form
of prayer is not (and cannot be) that which Christ had in
mind.
Prayer is the most intimate act possible between us and
the
Divine Mystery. We are best to enter prayer in private
knowing
there are no secrets. This mood of vulnerability and
honesty is
essential, and this is not a mood that we can sustain in our
souls in
public, regardless of how often or how passionate the leader
will
speak. In fact, if we carefully read this passage of the
Gospels
where we are given the Lord's Prayer, it is clear that Christ
is
telling us how hypocritical public prayer is. Public
prayer is
really a debasement of the true mood in which prayer needs to
be
carried out. Perhaps public prayer should not be any
more called
prayer at all. Perhaps we should understand public
prayer as a
kind of celebration, and the spoken words more like song and
verse -
anything but true prayer.
That said,
there is nothing that will
help better, than an honest and private practice of the Lord's
Prayer,
to still the mind.
I find it
useful to say the prayer
slowly, letting each petition (there are seven by the way)
stand alone
for a moment, and to let myself, after saying aloud each
petition,
briefly contemplate each petition's meaning. This helps
us not
fall into the bad habit of just saying the prayer
automatically,
without reflection on its meaning. From experience I can
state
that over time our understanding of each petition will grow
and deepen.
If we have
little time, then all we need
do after the final petition and the "let it be so" (amen), is
to let
mind rest for a while, however long we have. If we have more
time, we
might expand our prayer, again quietly aloud, asking those
questions
that we need to ask. It is best to ask those questions
which are
honest and authentic, and which represent us as inwardly and
as nakedly
as possible, for the Father spirit in us knows before we even
ask, what
is true for us.
This activity
creates a mood.
Normally our life of feeling is dependent upon outside
stimulus.
This experience makes us angry, that one makes us sad.
Prayer creates feeling (mood). So with prayer we
not only
still the mind, but we also evoke feelings of which those such
as
wonder, awe and reverence are certainly worthy. Yet,
authenticity
will also mean we are often afraid, angry, sad, filled with
remorse or
all manner of other moods which we have before we enter
prayer.
There is no reason to hide these.
The Lord's
Prayer also helps us to be
selfless, for all the petitions involve us, not as
individuals, but as we, as the whole Body of Christ - the whole human
race.
It begins, does it not: "Our Father...".
So we pray,
until we are emptied of what
lives in us that needs to be spoken. And, then we
are
silent. Regular practice will teach us how to still the
mind and
evoke ever deeper and deeper moods. Now, we meditate.
What is
meditation?
Meditation is concentrated intended and attended
listening/observation. Prayer has led mind to stillness,
and the
mood represents our intentions. Now we attend to (listen
and
observe - think about) what arises there.
Assumptions
about what is to happen in
the soul here are not useful. Nor should we too rabidly
assume
what happens there means a certain thing. We will bring
with us
desires: for enlightenment, for initiation, for visions, for
satori,
for personal (perhaps selfish) changes in our life. We
also bring
distractions - needs and wants of the day. These brought
desires
and distractions can kill the experience. We need to
pray into
stillness, by which we cultivate a mood of love (reverence,
awe, wonder
and mystery), and then we wait, maintaining inner silence.
The
more selfless our prayer life, the more the quality of the
mood
acquires the needed inner purity.
At the same
time, no one but we ourselves
is to find meaning here, because there is no experience in our
lives as
personal and intimate as opening ourselves up to the Divine
Mystery in
this way.
One advantage
of praying quietly aloud is
that sometimes when we ask quietly out loud a question, we
will
instantly hear inwardly, in the silence,
an answer.
What else have we been speaking of above in all those
discussions
of moral grace. We seek and ask and knock, and we will
be
answered.
Most often, in
the beginning, it is the
voice of our own spirit that answers (that aspect of the i-AM
- the so-called higher ego or participated conscience - still
unknown
to us, still of the Mystery). We are the one who knows,
and it is
with our own inner voice that we answer. Practice will
later show
the light by which we receive this answer, but in the
beginning we are
entirely right to accept hearing what seems to be ourselves
answer.
Prayer
is
our act of Faith, and Meditation our act of Gnosis.
This daily
practice will teach us how to
do the same acts in any given moment, in life. A
situation
confronts us, and we make a small prayer and then listen (See, do). We whisper the prayer and then let
ourselves
silently answer within so as to know what to do in the face of the moral dilemma living in the
situation. It is like learning to ride a bicycle.
You can't
do it reading a book. You can only do it by doing it,
falling,
and then getting up and doing it some more until the skills
grow into
craft and then art, and confidence comes in its proper time.
In daily life
important intuitions are
always present. Mostly they are so subtle that we don't
notice
them against the background noise of our ordinary daily mind.
Prayer and meditation practice will, over time, bring
clarity to
our daily mind as well. So we practice inner silence,
and we
practice quieting the rush of thought when we take the time to
sit
still. We can practice this on the park bench during our
lunch
hour, or on the bus ride home. Don't we already let the
mind
drift or worry or day-dream in these situations? I keep
with me
always a pen and paper, for sometimes intuitions will pass by
that need
to be recorded and saved. They have only been able to
come to me
when I let my mind rest and be silent, even just for a moment.
In the
beginning, various kinds of
thoughts will arise when we are trying to be silent during
prayer and
meditation. Notice them, but do not worry about them.
They
are pictures of your own soul and spirit being reflected there
for your
appreciation and consideration. After time you will
discover that
you can control what appears here in ways that will surprise
you.
Wings (limbs) of inner will-on-fire (spirit) are being
born in
the soul.
Remember, we
are spiritual children
trying out our adult wings. Christ has promised: we can
learn to
fly (the
Kingdom
of Heaven is within you).
One final
matter here, a bit personal.
As my explorations of the Divine Feminine went
forward, and
I became more aware of all the help with which we are
surrounded, it
came to me to add something following on the Lord's Prayer.
Christ could not ask us to pray to him, yet many do.
And
while Rites of Mary are strong in the Catholic Church, they
are not so
strong elsewhere. Here is an additional prayer that I
have found
helpful, again in setting a mood.
To give a sense
of the structure, this is
prayed following the Lord's Prayer (after a suitable
reflective pause),
and is (from my own heart) a prayer of gratitude to all
those invisibles who also surround us in life. I simply
name
them, and then end this prayer with thanks.
"Holy Mother,
mistress of the true Dark; my Lord Christ Jesus; all the
hierarchies
above and all the hierarchies below; the communion of saints;
the
communities of ancestors; our doubles and our angels - thank
you for
this day, and thank you for the fruits of yesterday."
Having shared
this prayer, it was not so
much me intention to suggest that others adopt it, but rather
to show
that we can with our own additional prayers, become creative
artists in
the temple of the own soul.
2) Sacrifice of Thoughts: cleaning out the garden of
the mind before growing new insights, and other unusual
properties of
our soul-spirit nexus.
Sometimes we
have mental habits that are
quite disastrous, some, if not all of which, we eventually
come to
believe must be eliminated. I will next tell some
stories from my
biography, and let them serve as the main instruction that
might be
given here:
I told above
the story of when I was
involved with Group House, at which time I learned a great
deal about
nurturing love. One of reasons that I left, was that I
had began
there to have spiritual experiences and needed to reflect upon
what
this meant, for the paradigm which we used at Group House did
not
include the concepts soul and spirit. Upon leaving, I
discovered
that almost everyone I met and especially anyone I knew well,
was
immediately seen through the lens of the paradigm of Group
House.
My Group House experience had left me with a great log
in my eye,
one which put everyone I met into the categories of mental
health which
we used.
This caused me
great inner distress.
I didn't like it that I carried this set of boxes with
me.
So what I did was that whenever such a perception arose
in my
inwardness, that placed people in one of these Group House
categories
or boxes, I would push that thought away. The mental
habits
acquired during my Group House days had acquired a life of
their own
(become something like a wound, which pain thereby led to an
almost
independent existence in my mental life). Almost daily
then I
wrestled with the impulse to place people in these categories
and
boxes, until after several months I was able to subdue this
habit of
thought - to tame it.
I did not lose
my Group House
understanding, by the way. All that I did was accomplish
the
ability to only think in that way intentionally. I had
learned to
ride that bicycle, and could mount it again any time I wanted,
but also
rode it now only when I wanted, and not because of some
unconscious
habit.
When, a little
time later, I had taken up
a study of the work of Chogyam Trungpa, reading many of his
books,
attending lectures, and hanging out with his meditating
students (I
never did the Saturday sitting meditation practices), I again
let live
in my soul (not yet fully appreciating this) another powerful
paradigm
(point of view), and filled my soul with its concepts and
nuances, such
that once again after a time I seemed to see the world only
through
this Buddhist lens. Not long into this, however, I again
experienced myself as unfree inwardly, and so once more I
sought to
tame a self-induced habit
of mind, a process of several months
duration. I was awake enough now to the process to give it a
name: breaking
the chains of the
teaching.
The same
happened when I later took up
the study of Rudolf Steiner's works. Fascinated with
this
material I opened my whole soul to it, and drank as deeply as
I could
of all the conceptual content that was offered. I must
have read
fifty books in three years, and soon again found myself in
this unfree
state, where unbidden the categories and boxes of the teaching
would
come to mind, a great log in my own eye. Now, however, I
knew
even more, for Steiner had spoken of sacrifice of thoughts,
and, more
directly in his The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (Freedom),
had spoken of how the soul can become captured by the concept
(its
prisoner).
So once again,
I took hold of my soul and
emptied it of the unwanted habits of thought, until no
Steiner-thought
would appear there unless I consciously and expressly called
it forth.
When I had finished this process with Steiner-thought, I
stood
back and for a time contemplated the whole. Upon this
reflection,
I discovered that Steiner's Anthroposophy (or Spiritual
Science) was
not a content, but a method. It was how
we did something, not the what that resulted.
We thought (an activity) in a new way,
and
this disciplined and careful method of thinking then produced
a precise
content that one could experience as knowledge.
Subsequent to
this insight, I told a friend, who immediately pulled a book
from his
shelf, Romanticism Comes of Age, by
Owen Barfield, wherein the same insight (Anthroposophy is a
method, not
a content) was given as part of a lecture in 1933, by
Barfield, at the
European center for anthroposophical work - the Goetheanum, in
Dornach,
Switzerland.
This then is
the value of sacrifice of thoughts.
It enables us to wrestle with the power we grant
to undisciplined belief in our
souls, in that we can come to be possessed by the belief, and
not be
its master.
Now I can say
from experience that any
belief we hold (or better yet, any belief which holds us) can
be tamed
and mastered, and at the same time never lost. We (as i-AMs)
never
lose what lives in the belief, we only gain the capacity to
rule
it, while it does not any longer rule us. In addition,
this is an
important means by which we begin the work of separating
opinion
(belief) from the True.
The inner
practice of sacrifice of
thoughts is not unlike any other sacrifice we make in outer
life.
It is a skill, craft and art that gains multiple uses as
we grow
in its practice. We can give it huge jobs that take
months to
accomplish (I once emptied myself of a whole book - in fact
the book
you hold in your hand is the third complete metamorphosis in
my soul of
an impulse that has now existed for over 20 years).
After such an
act I was able to freely reconstruct the whole thing in an
entirely new
way. We can also relate to quite simple soul changes in
an
immediate situation (give up a biased preconception we notice
we have
about someone, so that we can think them anew).
We can also
work with our concepts,
mental pictures and ideas about our self. In
pop-psychology, we
speak of self image and self esteem. Buddhist thought
considers
the ideal of achieving some degree of ego-lessness. The
reality
here is that we can be so free inwardly, that the very ideas
by which
we identify ourselves are up for grabs (so to speak).
Consider
the possibilities of being free of any conception or belief
about our i-AM,
our
own or that of others. Some very unusual problems in our
soul
can be addressed just in this realm.
While it is
best to work with sacrifice
of thoughts on your own, for practice is the surest teacher
here, a
little light should be shed on some of those other disciplines
that can
be applied to our inner life.
One of the by-products of learning sacrifice of thoughts is the increased ability to control thoughts. This is a crucial work at the beginning of our self-education regarding the darkness within. We labor in the soul and this labor bears fruit - increased understanding of our own soul processes. For example, we might try to apply sacrifice of thoughts to the inner problem of guilt. Let us consider this briefly, as such an example problem.
Most of us have
experiences of guilt.
Certain religions even have a reputation here, e.g.
Catholic
guilt and Jewish guilt. These are so well known that
comedians
make jokes about their own families and this experience of
guilt.
Most of us
sleep through the basis for
these inner experiences, and really only live in the general
feeling.
We feel as if we did something wrong, and this feeling
can be
just for a moment, or can become something over which we
obsess.
Frequently there may be some justification for this
feeling.
We did do something wrong, something not moral in the
sense of
what our community or family thought they had a right to
expect.
In reality,
such guilt can come from a
number of inner sources, and depending upon the source we will
have a
variety of guilt experiences. Inwardly there is not just
one kind
of guilt experience.
One common form
is called pricks of
conscience. Our inwardness has an instinct for right and
wrong
(our first sense of the potential of Moral Grace), and that
part of the
i-AM (what some call the higher ego, which is free of
the
doubles), knows this and this knowing is experienced in the
part that
is more earthly in its nature (what some call the lower ego)
as a kind
of inner sense of pain. This knowledge of wrong-doing on
our part
bothers us.
Another form of guilt appears as a consequence of the ahrimanic double, in that it prosecutes us. We find ourselves telling ourselves what a jerk we were, over and over again.
A third form
appears in what is
understood in ordinary psychology as a kind of incorporated
value
system from either the community or the family. The
assumption is
that certain experiences leave behind a kind of organism in
the inner
life, that makes us feel bad when we have violated the
community or
family rules.
A fourth form
can appear as a consequence
of a self-created wound. We have repeatedly succumbed to
some
kind of temptation, and now we have this bad habit, and when
we indulge
in this bad habit we know this, and this knowing results in a
guilt-like response. We will even do the action in spite
of the
feeling of guilt. In the face of such a habit, we feel
powerless,
and this is exactly where the 12 Steps start: with surrender
to the
truth of our powerlessness before out self-generated wound.
This does not
exhaust the possibilities.
Even so, the point is that we can to a certain extent
stand outside these feelings. We can look at them and say: this is a
feeling in
the soul, but it is not my true i-AM.
The
soul and this feeling serve a purpose in my inner life, but
they are not my
personal essence. Since
I can
observe it, it is not me, but rather a phenomena of my
inwardness that
I can examine and relate to - I can think
about it. Further, if I am practicing sacrifice of
thoughts, I am developing the ability to dismiss the thought
content
connected to the guilt - to refuse to any longer consent to
this
appearing in my soul - in my inwardness.
I can be free
of it. So it is with
all manner of matters of inwardness - we are moving into that
time in
the Evolution of Consciousness when we are leaving behind our
spiritual
childhood, and this is one of the tasks of spiritual maturity.
To
observe, to understand and to master (something the 12 Steps
can
produce - the elevation of the spirit for the mastery of the
soul), or love engendered free moral
grace.
Another inner
phenomena that can be
noticed in the mind (soul-spirit nexus) is the tendency to
form
distinctions. This arises almost automatically in our
inwardness
(mind), and it often appears in those cases of judgment-values
that we
make day to day. So we will experience something and
evaluate it.
It is better or worse than something else. We
compare.
This car is beautiful, that car is not. This
person is
moral, that one is not. We also turn this distinction
process on
ourselves. I am unenlightened, that Master is.
Steiner is
an initiate, I am not.
The mind makes
such distinctions
constantly. So we think: now I suffer, and if
only it was tomorrow I would not be
suffering. In a sense we are
constantly
rejecting the present. The Now (we assume) has something
wrong
with it, either in our outer experiences, or in our inner.
Steiner spoke of this process, in a general way, by
describing
the soul having this inner gesture of movement between
antipathies and
sympathies. This we do not like, that we do like.
The
aspect of the soul that tends to excesses of not liking might find its root in the
ahrimanic
double, while the aspect of the soul that tends to excesses of liking might find its root in the soul in the
luciferic double. In the former case we are too much
head, too
calculatingly cold, so we evaluate something and find it
wanting (this
person is less than us). In the latter case we are too
much will
(too self centered), overly warm toward something, and too
drawn to it
(the blindness of puppy love).
It is a great
wonder to learn to wake up
to this process of distinction making, and learn to see in
what
circumstances it has value (which value we choose) and in what
circumstances we need to see through it - to see that we are
blinded by
the distinction. Some speak of learning to set aside
thinking in
terms of either/or and learn instead to think in terms of
both/and.
This comes at the problem of distinctions from a
different
direction.
Here is another
practical discipline for
mind, that may also help with insomnia. It helps, by the
way, to
not use stimulants (such as caffeine) or depressants (such as
alcohol)
at all, and certainly not in the evening hours, if one wants
to do this
exercise. The soul needs to digest experiences,
something we
discussed above in the sixth stanza on the Absence of the
Good.
Here let us review this process of doing the following
exercise
indicated by Rudolf Steiner - that is to spend that last part
of the
day remembering it backward. First we recall our most recent
experience, and then the one before that and the one before
that and so
on, until we reach what happened to us just upon awakening.
This
involves a kind of inner work, and can be done after getting
in bed.
By thinking backwards about our day we do a process that
supports
the soul's need to comes to terms with (digest) our
experiences.
Such reflection
will aid us in
appreciating moral dilemmas that may have arisen, which we did
not
fully notice at the time. This review will have many
side
effects, including the arising of wisdom. It is not an
infrequent
experience to fall asleep while doing this exercise (thus its
value
with regard to insomnia). The mind tends to rattle
on, left
to its own devices, and by doing this exercise we bring
discipline
where before there was none. Here, at the threshold of
sleep,
will be all manner of inner experiences that we will want to
notice and
learn from. This threshold of sleep is also the
threshold to
spiritual experience. In the practice of remembering we
learn to
stay awake instead of fall asleep. Thus we learn slowly
how to be
awake when we cross the threshold, instead of losing
consciousness.
As with much else there is no hurry here, and certainly
no goal.
We live in the now and explore what lives within.
Sometimes, we
will have had a somewhat
shocking experience during our day. Perhaps a fight with
a family
member, or some unusual stress on the job. These
stronger
experiences take more time to digest, and we can learn to
notice this
digestive process in the soul, which often takes about three
days.
The first day we have a lot of chaos and agitation in
our thought
life. The second day our thoughts are calmer, but there
is still
a kind of after effect reverberation in the soul in the
feeling life.
Then, on the third day the digestion is taking place in
the life
of will, and is there almost unconscious. The soul
appears
quiescent, but this is not true. The work has gone
deeply within,
and it is hard to raise it consciously out of the more hidden
inner
realms. Finally, on the fourth day, we will find
ourselves better
able to act concerning the strong experience, because we will
have
waited for the soul to process its experience, rather than
acting
immediately while inwardly all is chaotic. In the end,
as with
much else, everyone has to make their own experiences here.
These matters
are raised here only to
point toward them, so that we can begin to notice such matters
in the
soul. We start to be objective about ourselves and about
our
inwardness - neither too cold nor too warm. We start to
practice
love engendered free moral grace both inwardly and outwardly,
and the
extremes of antipathy and sympathy begin to moderate, and we
start to
become empathic! We learn to see through the biases in
the soul
and find our way to the heart of things.
One final
matter...
Rudolf Steiner
spoke of what he called: it thinks in me,
which is a kind of scientific, or reasoned introspective observation of something occurring
in the
soul; while Valentin Tomberg wrote of what he called: thinking on your
knees, which is the same thing seen
from the side of devotion. Christ,
in the Sermon on the Mount, comes at it
from this direction: blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the
kingdom
of heaven, which means that when we
are empty
inwardly (poor in
spirit), contact with the higher
worlds is
made more possible. What this has become in my
experience, I will
call the mind
feeling-sensation of fullness. and
which I
will next describe in a little detail.
Many years ago
I started to notice that
various intuitions of an excellent qualitative nature (new
thoughts)
were accompanied by a unusual kind of soul-sensation. I
would be
thinking, and there would be this feeling, and with the
feeling would
come the new thought content. Often this arose when a
certain
question was living in me. I would be seeking, and the
answer
would be preceded by the beauty of this
mind
feeling-sensation of presence or fullness.
The essence of
the feeling was that I was
not alone inwardly. At the same time the presence did
not
advertise itself in the sense of saying something really weird
like: hi.
I'm a spirit, and
I'm here to give you a message from above.
The fullness was really only a sign that my thinking
activity
would be meet by a cooperative presence, who was not
interested in
credit, but rather only responding to my heartfelt question.
Over
time, whenever I began to hear this wind blow when I was
thinking, more
and more I would then stop whatever I was doing and write down
what I
thought. [John 3:8 The wind blows where it wills, and you
hear the sound of
it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so
it is
with every one who is born of the Spirit]
For example, if
I was driving a car, I
would pull over to the side of the road. If I was in
bed,
thinking as we do, and this sense of fullness came, I would
get up.
Always, it was my own activity that inaugurated the
result, and
what was happening was only a kind of cooperation that I could
not only
sense, but I could count on the fact that when sensing it my
thinking
would deepen, and produce new content, new thoughts never
before
thought.
Sometimes the sense of fullness was quite strong. There were nights I could not sleep, or even write, but only be awake and think (these mostly were personal, in the sense of facing certain issues of my own nature and karma). Yet, the fact remains, that the more I honored this presence of Fullness and the fullness of Presence, the richer was my understanding of the world, and of myself and others.
Owen Barfield, mentioned above, describes this from another
direction.
In his book (previously mentioned), Saving
the
Appearances: a Study in Idolatry,
Barfield
describes the Evolution of Consciousness using these broad
terms:
original participation; the on-looker separation; and final
participation. We, many incarnations ago, were naturally
integrated with the world of spirit - that was original
participation.
With the on-looker separation (what we called above the
enchantment into materialism, or the Ahrimanic Deception), we
were
finally set completely free of this prior given relationship
to the
Divine Mystery. Final participation is a choice we make.
We
are free not to seek reintegration. In the case of the
presence
of Fullness and the fullness of Presence (it thinks in me) we
begin
that reintegration by an act of will, in our own minds, in
full
consciousness and by our own choice.
For my part,
the less I am there in a
certain way (sacrificing my prior thinking - i.e. poor in
spirit), the
more room there is for the other-presence of Spirit (the
kingdom of
heaven). Then we think together (final participation).
All the same,
we have to keep in mind
that we are so individual in our nature and temperament, needs
and
capacities - that there is no common path - each Way is
individual and
unique. All that we really share is the struggle, the
failures,
the getting up again and trying once more.
Now, in order
to circle around to the
beginning of this discussion of sacrifice of thoughts, let me
add this.
Sacrifice of
thoughts is a form of renunciation.
There are other forms of renunciation, such as
giving up an attachment to something harmful, or changing an
idea of
our self that is too inflated, too grandiose.
Renunciation is the
general principle, so to speak. In various practices of
renunciation, over the life of the development of our
character, we can
learn to move our thinking into a new Way. In a sense,
when we
renounce something, our will acquires a quality it did not
have before,
and this new quality then can be applied in the how of our thinking.
We start to
climb a kind of ethereal
stairway in the soul, wherein the i-AM
rises not by force of will, but by
surrender and renunciation. We
forgo, and this changes the quality of the
will - it
becomes more spiritualized, more pure. Thinking
then begins
to move from thinking about, to
thinking with.
Instead
of forming concepts about someone we have been judging,
our renunciation of this judgment makes a space in the soul
for us to
think with their nature - to learn to walk in their shoes
as the
saying goes. We bypass the judgment and start to see
them as they
are - like us. The judgment is superficial, while the
gesture to
start to think with - to understand
them from the inside out - this gesture
eventually carries us over into thinking within. We start to see them as they see the
world, not
out of the log in our own eye, but from inside them, and
through their
splinter. Sympathy and antipathy dissolve into empathy.
Renunciation
then leads the cold thinking
of the head about someone, through
the gesture of thinking with
(walking in their shoes), to the empathic thinking within, wherein we perceive/think as they themselves do
- to
thinking with the warmth of the heart.
[In appendix 7
below, I will write of
this last again, in greater detail, and in the form of an
essay I wrote
primarily within the realm of Gnosis - of Anthroposophy: In
Joyous
Celebration of the Soul Art and Music of Discipleship.]
3) Some further thoughts
about
finding a healthy relationship to the fourth form of love,
UnFallen
Eros,
By the way,
lest one think there is too
much talk here of Eros, all you have to do is be truly honest
about how
much under the influence of Fallen Eros our Civilization is,
in order
to appreciate our desperate need to find the path to Eros's
redemption.
Over eight years ago I began to have a relationship with a Native American woman. This relationship went through several phases, as such relationships want to do, and is now somewhat estranged. Nevertheless, it was her sharing with me, and teaching me, some of the traditional wisdom of Native Americans as regards the relationships of men and women, that lead me to those questions of spirit and soul out of which I have come to some of my conclusions regarding Eros.
Here are some
of the things which she
told me.
From her point
of view, which she
attributed to Native Americans in general, Anglo (White man's)
ideas on sex and male/female relationships are basically
insane.
We look a little nuts to them. For example, Anglo
women
seem to not be able to admit to having sexual desire, or seem
to have
to use their sexuality as some form of bargaining chip in
relationships. In our discussions, a very interesting
question
emerged, which eventually took the form for me of whether the Divine Mystery would be so cruel
to us,
as by making of our most intimate needs some kind of war zone
(the oft
mentioned war between men and women that our culture seems to
assume as
a given and a necessity). The Western cultural ideas, as
they
live in our practices about the differences between men and
women at
the level of desire, seem entirely false in the face of such a
question. The Divine is not cruel, although it certainly
is true
that we can and have screwed up the Divine's gifts in this
realm.
She also
suggested to me that once I
began to rethink my own sexuality, I would undergo changes.
My
head, it seemed, was full of biases and misunderstandings, and
that I
really just needed to understand, from the inside out (not on
the basis
of what someone told me, and especially not on the basis of
what my
Anglo culture told me) what it was that a man was in the sense
of his
erotic and sensual relationship to a woman. The
implication
was that I already knew what I needed to know, if I just
reflected on
my own inner truths, carefully enough, outside the boxes of
bad
information previously provided by this same Anglo culture.
As an aide in
this understanding, she
described for me the ideas of dominion and surrender. Since
our conversations took place over a
considerable period of time, and occasionally involved our own
confused
passions, I will not try to repeat here what was said, but
rather tell
the story of these principles as I have now come to understand
them.
Should any confusion remain, it will clearly be on
my own
head, and not on hers.
We do recognize
that the male principle
is somewhat active in its
basic nature, while the female principle is
receptive. These are both profound powers by the
way, and
need to be appreciated for their sacred essence. What I
was told
happens in Native cultures then is that in marriage the woman
offers to
the man dominion over her body (not her soul/spirit nexus,
only her
physical body). It is a gift to him. He then is
free to
express his maleness, his natural hungers and desires toward
her
(evoked in the man's soul, as I described in the main body of
the text,
through the divine beauty of the female form). His
arousal then
leads to the expression of his dominion over her body (what I
described
above as the sensual element of Eros) through touch and
similar acts,
which then arouses the woman, and to which arousal she then
surrenders.
He can also express his hunger in words and ideas,
coming
at the situation from the side of the erotic, rather than the
merely
sensual. This as well can bring about arousal in the
woman, the
surrender to which she again has committed herself as a free
gift.
We can admire
more than just the physical
form, by the way. We can admire the character, what
lives in the
deeds of will of our intimate friend. This admiration and love
for the
will-on-fire of the other, the Thou, is what leads to the
truly erotic,
for it is an apprehension of the beauty of the soul and spirit
of the other
. We begin to see not just the form of the physical
body, but the
soul and spirit of this person who is so attractive to us.
Some,
of course, will come to their attraction to the other, the
Thou,
entirely beyond the physical from the very beginning. It
is, in
fact, in the nature of women to do this more easily - to see
past the
beauty (or not) of physical form to the beauty of soul and
spirit,
while men have been so beat up by our Fallen Eros culture,
that they
are led to believe that physical beauty is only of a certain
type.
Everyone knows these problems already, but they
are worth
repeating.
Instead of the
usual bargaining that goes
on in an Anglo relationship, which often leads to: "not tonight luv, I
have a
headache", the woman in a dominion
and
surrender relationship surrenders to the approach. She
appreciates that her deepest sexuality (Eros) is felt when she
lives
out her receptive power, in response to his active power. The woman who surrenders, finds
(oddly
enough to our Anglo assumptions) that this surrender heightens
all her
sensual and erotic experiences.
The sensual and
erotic nature of the
female is a manifestation of divine harmony in relationship to
which
the male can be an artist, to the extent
that he
lives fully in (and here we get to some of the wonderful
paradoxes of
the whole situation) a surrender to
his own hungers.
Her surrender then becomes itself an active principle which evokes in him even greater
letting go.
While he is given dominion over her sensory erotic
nature, she in
surrendering, achieves dominion over his erotic sensual
nature, to
which he surrenders in return. As a result
then, for
the woman in surrendering, her receptive power increases and
becomes an
active principle by which she becomes an artist with the
manifestation
of divine harmony that is the male's hunger.
We could also
look at this in the
following way. Recognizing that both partners have
active and
passive qualities which they then express, we could see that
both the
active and the passive elements in their reciprocal interplay can out of our
freedom be done on the basis of communion with. This, such that we can understand that
the older
Native American traditional idea of dominion and surrender
might today
be better seen as a mutual communion with the partner.
Both male and
female are each then active
and receptive, and in the deepening of our understanding here,
through
experience, we also learn concerning these powers in the whole
of
Creation, for UnFallen Eros is a mirror of the force nature of the Divine Mystery, at least as much as such
is
possible to be known and understood while one is incarnated in
a
physical body.
You may recall
above my description of
the memory gift that was made to me by that individual who
taught me,
by his example, the potential for selfless human love.
Included
in this gift, was a brief memory of his pre-birth
consciousness, just
before he entered into incarnation. This memory, which I
experienced very very vividly the first time I received it,
was of an
intense joy and attraction to Earth existence. His whole
soul/spiritual nexus was inflamed with the greatest passion to
leave
behind the world of pure spirit, and enter into incarnation.
It
was a memory of the freely and intensely leaving behind of one
form of
union (purely spiritual), nonetheless filled with the greatest
joy of
the soon to come participation in another form of union
(spiritual -
social - physical).
This desire for
union, present both in
our hunger for incarnation, and in our hunger for
re-integration (a
return to purely spiritual experience), is found mirrored in
the
deepest experiences of dominion and surrender, between the
male and
female, when they engage in that face of love we call Unfallen
Eros.
All that is
asked is that selfless love
live within Eros, so that the expression of sensual and erotic
pleasure
find its true moral center. Now tradition has tried to
help this
need for a moral center with its various rules concerning
marriage and
procreation. However, as we are now stepping out of the
spiritual
childhood in which tradition once enveloped us as if in a
divinely
authored social womb, it now and in the future becomes up to
us to
provide the moral center from within.
Some pragmatic
and practical
considerations are now called for...
The expression
of Eros can be based upon
love engendered free moral grace. At the same time, no
one but
the two partners has any business in what goes on between
them.
The Divine Mystery has made it only their business, for,
truth to
tell, they are the ones who will share the consequences of the
choices
that they make in this realm. Like prayer and
meditation, which
is a seeking after spiritual union with the Divine Mystery
done in
private, so the exploration of erotic and sensual union, at
its human
level, is only to be done in private.
Experience
teaches that Eros can be 24/7,
as the saying goes. We mistakenly assume that the whole
point is
the climax, although there is something special to what we
might call
the afterglow. In the afterglow all the barriers between
two i-AMs,
to
the extent that is possible in the physical, have been set
aside,
which is why women tend to want to talk (grow closer) and men
tend to
want to sleep (rest content and at peace in the arms of their
lover).
Again, it is up to the partners how they want these
things to be.
The point I am trying to make here is that Eros is/can
be always
active and present. We can make love to our partner all
the time,
and that in a true partnership (where we explore the deepest
potentials
of love) nurturing love, comradeship and erotic and sensual
love (when
filled from within by selfless love) themselves become united,
so that,
for example, comradeship or nurturing among intimate partners
can
themselves be, at the same time, erotic.
Eros really
runs between two poles, one
of attentive tenderness and one of abandon. Washing and
drying
dishes together, while talking, can be enlivened with a touch
of the
spice of Eros, if the partners understand how to light that
flame and
keep it gently alive. For one to stroke the cheek of
another, in
tenderness, can be subtly erotic, yet need not imply that this
moment
should begin that path of deepening that leads to abandonment.
At
the same time, an earthy phrase, spoken teasingly, will arouse
that
small flame as well, yet too can be understood to be meant
only for the
moment. We can be always lightly erotic just for the joy
there,
without expectation or want that this subtle adult and mature
play lead
to the deepening we falsely assume is the only point.
In the daily
exchange of soul nourishment
of a loving relationship, touches of Eros are a spice that
enlivens.
The presence of
erotic play, filled from
within by selfless love, brings an increased sense of life to each partner. In fact, this is true for
all
forms (faces) of love when filled from within by love
engendered free
moral grace - vital life (a tiny flame of increased
consciousness and
intensity) is added to our every experience.
Let us consider this more closely, but starting from the other side. Think for a moment of our crowded cities, teeming with their millions of souls. Rushing past each other, oft times actually bumping into each other, such cities are made thereby a kind of boiling cauldron of aggressive stimulation. Crime abounds, and people lose the ability to be generous. There is no time to meet, no time to greet. Everything is fast and furious, as we rush through our days overstimulated by caffeine and similar unneeded substances.
The drive to
consume, to work, to
compete, to argue - all are variations of a need to achieve dominion over. This leads, as it must, to the
conflagration -
the burning up - of civilization. As the world burns to
the
ground around us we live into a question: What do we - what
can we - do?
Here we find
all kinds of people
expressing the need to slow down, to disengage, to drop out, tune in and
turn on (as the Hippie Movement
prophetically expressed this
need so succinctly). What did the Beatles write? All you need is love.
Think now for a
moment about children at
play. We can see this in any safe park-like place in the
world,
where children who are strangers to each other (and being
children not
yet polluted by adults in their thoughts about
stranger-others) do a
remarkable dance. It generally only takes a couple of
minutes for
those of like nature to discover who will be their friend.
The
communication of trust is mostly non-verbal - it is all done
with
movement, with circling around, and glances of the eyes - no
direct
looking, all out of the corners of the eyes. Then the
electricity
connects, the natural fear discharges, and the next thing you
know they
are finding a way to mutually make up a game. Here we
see our
natural capacity for cooperation - for communion with.
Adults do this
too, at places of work, or
other natural places of congregation. Its harder for us,
though.
We believe we bear too many wounds. Yet, if we go
within
ourselves, we will find that the innocence of youth has not
been lost,
it has just been layered over. This then is the dance of
love,
whatever form it takes: selfless love, nurturing love,
comradeship or
Eros. Can I trust you, will you trust me. A friend
suggests
that the balance to a gesture of trust is responsibility - if
someone
trusts us, it is not our reciprocal trust that they need, but
rather
our responsibility. The reverse is also true - if we
trust them,
it is not their trust we need, but their responsibility.
No doubt
many of our wounds in life come from the gift of our trust not
having
been met with responsibility. Love in its highest sense
is always
trusting, responsible and innocent play, which is why Christ said: lest ye become again
as
little children.
To return to
UnFallen Eros...
In American
literature there is a
wonderful example of this mature adult erotic play in the
novels of
Robert Parker about the private detective Spenser, and his
girl friend
Susan, a psychologist.
Above, in the
main text, I directed
attention to the gift of the word, and as well to the fact
that the
truly erotic (as against the solely sensual) partakes of
romance and
conversation, mostly for the female, and earthy speech, mostly
for the
male. Eros is really adult play, and dance (don't the
better
dance partners understand it as making love in the vertical?).
Words are play too, but play of the most serious kind.
Truth to tell we are most vulnerable here, most open and
most
exposed. This is why I spoke of authenticity as the key to the erotic. If erotic speech
is
merely faked, then great harm ensues, and we all know this.
Once
again it is human selfless love that needs to fill out erotic
speech,
and it is through erotic speech and the sharing of feelings of
love and
tenderness that Eros learns to be awake in the partnership all
hours of
the day and the night. So also with nurturing love and
comradeship - conversation brings enlivening forces to all who
are
present.
There is much
here to be learned, for
between two partners, who are active and awake in their
explorations
and play, a mere glance across a crowded room can bring a
small flame
of arousal. This is as explicit, by the way, as I intend
to be,
but I did want to leave no doubt as to what is being described
here.
A small touch can bring a quickening of breath, and
there is no
reason for true lovers not to become greatly skilled in these
arts.
At the same time, in order for such craft and art to
enter into
an intimate relationship, there must be conversation. It
is only
through talking to each other that we find out how to be with
each
other in the best ways. It is conversation through which
we
expose the wounds and discover how to trust. As we have
often
lived many years before we meet, in any relationship in any of
the
forms of love, where we are learning how to by-pass the wounds
and
discover trust (and thus authentic spontaneity - as little
children
once more), this requires time.
We can also see
here that we really are
having two kinds of conversation when making love. One
is spoken
with words, and the other is spoken with gesture (movement and
touch).
The interweaving of the two kinds of conversation, moved
by our
authentic desire for communion with then
leads to
that union of souls only possible in such an intimate
relationship.
One of the other matters with which we need to come to terms is that we are erotic one way in youth, another in middle age, and a third in maturity. For example, we are mistaken when we call a lack of male potency (impotence) a dysfunction. I'll not go into details here, but just suggest that this phenomena of maturity needs to be rethought.
None of
this means to suggest that
couples are to have some rules to follow. Each
partnership will,
through conversation, find its own way to that which is mutual
and most
loving. The standard as it were, is that there is
no
standard.
Recall that
dominion and surrender is
really a two way street, and if we learn to sacrifice
(renounce) the
thought paradigms in which our old and tired understanding of
Eros are
imprisoned, we can then, opened up individually through
individual
prayer and meditation in conjunction with shared conversation,
rediscover and reinvent the future of Eros in Civilization on
the basis
of love engendered free moral grace.
UnFallen Eros
is the marriage of the
active and receptive powers of the creation as enacted between
two
people. They belong together. Exploring them in an
awake
partnership, offers the opportunity to understand their
presence in
many aspects of existence, far beyond their role in UnFallen
Eros.
Ultimately, the
reader will want to make
all their own judgments here. I have only written those
ideas,
and their related experiences, that have come to me.
What comes
to the reader will belong to them and their biography.
It will
help, I believe, if the reader will keep this in mind: the
best
guide in human relationships will always be the warm reasoning
of
the heart, and not the cold and calculated logic of the head.
4) A few words for those whose faith is in natural science, and
might
consider themselves to be secular humanists
Here is the
logic of the situation, as
far as I can see it. God is either real (in the sense
that
natural science defines the real), or not. While I have
some
friends who love to say that we should avoid either/or
statements in
favor of both/and statements, in this case I would not find
such a view
applicable. Sure, I could spin it such that one could
make it a
both/and statement, suggesting that God is real if you want to
find
that, and not real if you want to find that. Such a view
would
place it in the realm of human freedom as to whether God is
real or
not. Problem is, having been graced with the Presence of
the
Divine Mystery, I can't really spin things that way without
denying my
own experience. We are free to know the Divine Mystery -
to seek
reintegration, or not, but we are not free to unmake the
Divine Mystery.
Sort of like
sex. If you are a
virgin, you pretty much don't have a clue as to what making
love is.
Same with having intercourse with the Divine Mystery.
Words
can't any more describe making love, especially when the
relationship
is emotionally and spiritually rich, than words can describe
meeting
the Divine Mystery, where it has to be a given that the
relationship is
emotionally and spiritually rich beyond imagination.
Now my view, at
least as regards those
whose faith is in science, is this: Stick to your faith.
If you
really pursue the truth, you'll end up finding the Divine
Mystery, try
as hard as you might not to do that (I am the Way, the
Truth
and the Life).
The thing
perhaps to keep in mind is
something Steiner pointed out, with the concepts that in our
time and
on into the future, we are all, consciously or unconsciously,
crossing
the Threshold into the spiritual world. Lots of folks
are meeting
the Divine (and Her/His co-workers) these days, and lots also
meeting
the Other Guys as well. There's a reason there is all
this
spiritual stuff going on all over the world, and also why wars
are
breaking out again over belief systems. And, the reason
doesn't
have anything to do with illusions of the mind.
We only can
believe in illusions of the
mind, as a reason for faith in God, if we don't know anything
about
mind from our own inner investigations. When scientists
and
secular humanists start to really explore their own soul
(inner) life,
then they will find there that it is exactly as described by
previous
visitors to the same territory. So, if you aren't going
to make
such a journey, and still want to run around mouthing off
about your
opinions in this field of knowledge, don't be surprised if
more and
more people start to tell you, you are full of it.
Got to walk the
walk.
Why?
Life. The
problem with science is
that it can't explain the existential necessities of the human
biography. Science can't explain the existence of evil,
of
suffering, or even of the more profound human emotions such as
love.
Oh science tries to explain these things, but reducing
existential necessity to a biological and/or chemical
determinism makes
of being alive an almost meaningless exercise. People
know
better. We know life has meaning, and further that life
is
trans-logical. The sterile logic of the laboratory
doesn't touch
what we experience in the biography, and people go to religion
precisely because it offers just that trans-logical
explanation we need.
People believe
(have Faith) in the Divine
Mystery in spite of what science theorizes (fancies).
Funny thing
is scientists don't live life in the same sterile logical
fashion of
their hypotheses. In the movie Contact, the priest asks the scientist if she loved her
father,
and then when she says yes, challenges her to prove it.
She knows
she loves her father, but this act is trans-logical, and
toward such an
end, an explanation - the idea of proof - has no meaning.
Please note I
used the term
trans-logical, not ill-logical. Love, being a moral
impulse,
defies logic, because love leads to personal sacrifice, which
is an act
in complete denial of our supposed dominant instinct to
survive.
Human behavior is itself a Mystery, and science
(in its
present state, divorced from the Imagination) can yet form no
honest
connection with these realities.
Now if the
scientist wants to go further,
to take hold of the trans-logical, then Steiner's books on
objective
philosophical introspection [A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception; Truth and
Knowledge; and, The
Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity (Freedom)]
will show the way, being based on a scientific examination of
our
inwardness. Science's theories come from that
inwardness, which
contains that which we understand as thinking, and sometimes
as
intuition. The true and surest tool of science is the
mind, and
without a disciplined introspective life, the scientist uses a
tool
he/she does not understand
.
All of which
takes us back again - you
can't just talk the talk about the mind, you have to walk the
walk.
5) In praise of the
virtues of
ordinary mind
Years ago I
read a book called Zen mind,
Beginner's Mind, by Shunyrn Suzuki. I don't remember
much about
it, but the title stuck with me, and during my own years (over
35 now)
of introspection, prayer and meditation I kept finding myself
facing a
rather odd question. Is there anything wrong or insufficient
about ordinary
mind or consciousness?
This question
would really come strongly
to me, when I would be reading about, or being in discussions
concerning, the ideas of enlightenment or initiation.
The
existential dilemma was basically that here I was in ordinary
mind,
more or less always, yet I had this idea of satori, or
initiation,
being some kind of permanent condition into which I would
eventually
arrive. In fact, the more I desired and struggled to
reach a
different state than the one I was in, the more I felt a kind
of
wrongness. Eventually I began to rebel against this idea
in my
mind that took any form of achievement over whatever was my
true
current inner condition. My state of being was what it
was, and I
saw no point anymore in viewing it as if it was defective,
less than,
or in any other comparative way of
thinking, not quite right.
After a time, I
began to realize that
what was changing was not my ordinary state of mind, but my
skill in
exercising its natural capacities. My will became more
and more
capable of doing certain things, when I needed (not
necessarily wanted)
it to do so, while at the same time the ordinary rest state of
mind,
with all its wanderings and confusions, was just fine.
In fact,
what I was
slowly growing into was this will. Recall above that I wrote of the i-AM
as a verb not a noun. It is in doing
that we are most ourselves, for in doing we are expressing
(being) our
essential and true self.
Clearly we are
each meant to go our own
way, so there is little to be gained by looking at some other
person
and thinking to ourselves that we should have some kind of
inner state
we imagine them to have. Far better it became, in my
experience,
to accept and love our ordinary mind, and just conceive that
we are
learning what we choose to learn and that those choices lie
entirely in
our arena of choice - such that the goals of others, or the
state of
being of others, is of little moment. We become and
change in the
manner in which we
choose to become and change, and
that is all
that counts.
In the West,
especially America, this
becoming more takes the form of character development, than it
does the
reaching for enlightenment or initiation. Further
on in the
Evolution of Consciousness, I expect we will become more and
more
universally human, and as that process unfolds, character
development,
enlightenment and initiation will become themselves a unity.
But
that is for the future.
Just as
clearly, for example and to
experience, the Divine Mystery loves us as we are -
unconditionally,
and completely. In fact, the more we see through the
vanity in
the desire to be something else, the more we are able to stop
judging
others as needing themselves to be something different, or to
meet our
expectations of what they should be, or become.
One of the
paradoxes of this view, is
that it is also part of ordinary mind to make these exact
kinds of
comparisons. When we simply rest in the state of
ordinary mind,
it is full of its endless chatter, what Choygam Trungpa called
discursive thinking (or sometimes the oscillations of the
citta).
We might call it the dialog between the spirit (the i-AM)
which
speaks, and the soul which hears - as in how the mother yells
from the kitchen to the rowdy children in the living room:
"Stop making
that noise, I can't hear myself think!".
The advantage
of ordinary mind is that
this state is where we all naturally are. To be in
ordinary mind
is to be right where we are meant to be, while at the same
time being
in exactly that place where we are most companionable with
others, most
able to live in that face of love we call comradeship.
At the
same time, our efforts over the years have led to certain
skills, which
are always latent in the soul. Moreover, these are just
those
skills we have chosen to develop. This means that
when we
choose to act within ordinary mind in order to do something in
the
realm of our inner life that we have taught ourselves to do,
this skill
(capacity, gift, art) lies there always in potential awaiting
our
willing it forth.
It is in fact the qualities of
character that has given birth to
these skills that become an
aspect of our eternal nature and thus survive the passage at
the end of
life we know as the death or end of the physical body,
although Rudolf
Steiner has advised that we have to birth the actual skills
anew once
more in each life.
So, if we
notice we are excessively
judging someone from our ordinary mind, we also might have
learned, in
traveling the path through the Narrow Gate, to master this in
the soul,
should we so choose. Yet, we may well not want to master
it.
This feeling of judgment arising in the soul might
actually
belong to the situation and need to be expressed.
Steiner spoke
of what he called righteous anger, and gave as an example
Christ's
yelling and overturning the tables in the Temple.
Much
arises in ordinary mind, precisely because ordinary mind has a
very
appropriate and necessary part to play. In point of
fact,
entering the Narrow Gate only means to begin to wake up within
-
nothing more.
What we do
through introspection, prayer
and meditation is develop capacities that would otherwise lie
latent in
the soul. Moral grace, freedom and love are three of
these
presently essential capacities. It is the will that learns to do - it is the will which is the truest expression
of our
verb-ness, our i-AM. At the same
time, ordinary mind is the truest and
most important inner context for this will.
As a
consequence, as we wake up and
learn, our will will naturally more and more express and impress
itself
on this context we call ordinary mind. We are already active
there
anyway, and some of you who read this will be already waking
up as to
this wondrous landscape that lies waiting for us in ordinary
mind.
There is no
need to overthrow or get rid
of ordinary mind. Rather we simply learn to appreciate
and master
its already existing virtues. However, the word master
can give
us some trouble here, so let me next elaborate on that.
The application
of the forces of our will
in ordinary mind is not meant to be like a sledge hammer.
Rather
it is more like what we played with as children - a kind of
butterfly-kiss. In ordinary mind, soul and spirit
intermingle,
and to the extent we want to differentiate them, one from the
other, we
need to tease them apart. This is our own soul that our
spirit is
learning to master, and this mastery has to be as much an act
of love,
as are the acts of love from a parent toward a child.
We
are gentle with ourselves, we nurture ourselves, we forgive
ourselves,
and most important - most
important - we laugh at ourselves.
Have you even
wondered why some of the
enlightened ones, and some of the true initiates, are always
laughing
and smiling? It is because being a human being is funny!
There they are, with all these folks coming around and
wanting
advice and teaching, and the enlightened ones - the initiates
- know
that everything they know, you know. We just don't let
ourselves
know we know. So there we are, asking them questions we
need to
ask ourselves, and it is funny. Not because we are being
funny,
but because the real teacher is laughing at himself, for there
he is
indulging our need and giving us that which lies in his/her
ordinary
mind, that also lies, at the same time, within our ordinary
mind.
Why? Because
through the Narrow Gate lies
the same realm, available to anyone who learns the practical
meaning
of: lest
ye
become again as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom
of heaven.
The truths we
need to know at any given
moment are right there available to ordinary mind. The
only skill
we may lack is how to frame questions, and how to keep these
questions
rooted in the real need of the moment. After that, its
all about:
ask and you shall be answered, seek and you will find, knock
and it
will be open up to you.
At the same
time that I say the above, it
will perhaps help to consider some differences between
Buddhism,
Christianity and some of the wisdoms of aboriginal peoples in
America,
or between the path of the the bodhisattvas, the path of
initiates and
the path of seeking to be fully human on the Earth.
The path of the
bodhisattvas is now a
path that sacrifices the final goal (achieving Nirvana) in
order to
remain on the wheel of incarnations until all sentient beings
can be
enlightened. The path of the initiates is a path that
sacrifices
personal desire in order to serve the Beings of the higher
world, so
that Their contributions can manifest in the lives of
humanity.
The bodhisattvas develop and evolve the human (what the
Buddha
did), and the initiates bring in the voice of the Gods (what
Moses did).
Distinct from
these, the aboriginal
peoples seek character, for whatever gifts one has, whether
one is to
become a teacher of mysteries or merely a good carpenter, it
is out of
our developed character that those around us, visible and
invisible,
will receive what they need.
Now the i-AM
has both a Buddha Nature and a Christ Impulse latent within
it, as well
as a basic need to be merely human. Where the Buddha
developed
fully the human capacity for Compassion, the Christ brought to
us the
Father's teaching concerning Love. So the i-AM,
as
well, has capacities to develop the highest in the human, and
to be
open to and receive from above (and below - let us not forget
the realm
of the Mother) the highest which yet lies outside ourselves.
At
the same time we are always involved in becoming just
ourselves - our
individuality. This individual personality (in its
highest and
most human sense) is the real earthly core of our being.
Within ordinary
mind these three
capacities are latent (and always, at the same time,
manifesting), and
will express themselves even more as we enter the Narrow Gate,
and
begin to wash out the inside of our own cup, our own
inwardness.
Yet, it is also this third aspect, which we have begun
to notice
when we look at the biography (for in the biography - as
Native
Americans understand - character develops) that has its own
special
nature. This is the changes that arise in the will,
especially in
regards to how the individual i-AM treats
and respects other i-AMs.
As
we know, this development of character unfolds in the
biography through what Steiner called: "trials of fire". Out of trials of fire grows the will-on-fire (character) of the developing i-AM,
and
since the biography is overseen most closely by Christ, now we
can
see once more what John the Baptist meant, when he said, in
Matthew 3:
11: "I
indeed
baptize you with water, for repentance. But he who is
coming
after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to
bear.
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire." {Now I
bathe you in water to change hearts, but the one coming after
me is
stronger than me: I'm not big enough to carry his shoes.
He will
bathe you in holy breath and fire.}.
For Holy Spirit and holy breath we have learned to also
use the
term gnosis, and for fire we learned to also use the terms the trials of life in
the
biography. Christ approaches
us from
two directions - inwardly with the breath of spirit in gnosis,
and
outwardly with the challenges of life in the biography.
And we?
We think about what we are receiving, from both
within and
without. We, in this thinking,
unite the inner and
the outer into their natural unity (for a time forgotten under
the
aegis of science - the necessary descent into materialism, or
the
Ahrimanic Deception). Inner and outer are not separate,
but
rather are one, whole and complete.
What a grace
given gift is ordinary mind!
6) confessions
It would be a mistake for those reading this work to consider that in anyway I have achieved something in the inner worlds of any note. I have many more bad habits than virtues. In my own view (let us make this the Fool's Tale part IV), I have many more failures than successes, and of those virtues I may accidentally demonstrate, it would be more accurate to attribute them to my Creator. I have been the recipient of many gifts in the sense of my own nature, gifts for which I cannot claim credit. Most of the qualities I may exhibit belong in whole to He who created me, and we are essentially lucky that I haven't managed to throw most of those gifts out through my own excesses.
I am an addict
in recovery, and for too
many years abused marijuana and hallucinogens. I
suffered an
egregious case of hubris in the mid-1970's , believing, at
that time,
that I had become enlightened. I love junk food, and
currently
weigh just over 300 pounds. I won't go into the details,
but my
interest in Eros comes mostly from being as much under the
influence of
a self-created wounds leaning in the direction of lust, and
leaning in
the direction of gluttony. I am lazy in the extreme, and
spend a
lot of time reading novels (many of the escapist sort, whether
science
fiction or mysteries), and watching television.
My meditative
life is frequently
sporadic. Sometimes I will be fairly disciplined for
several
months, and other times I go for an equal amount of time just
indulging
in my vices. In the Fall of 2003 I fasted for 45 days,
mostly for
selfish reasons trying to loose weight and gain some self
respect as
regards how I have most of my life abused the temple of my
body.
Incidental to that, probably due to my organism being
relieved of
working overtime with excesses of metabolic demand, I had
several early
morning Grace provided vision/understandings, which I wrote
notes
concerning, and which notes became the basic structure of this
book.
It was during such a time that I managed to lean a
little more
toward the light than the dark, such that my thick skull could
be
penetrated with fresh insights.
Most of my
visions are acts of Grace, and
few are the result of my own efforts. There are those
whose gifts
and efforts in this regard make them giants in comparison to
my own
quite modest and minor spiritual efforts. The Kings are
such
giants, and the most public, Steiner, was vilified and
attacked while
he lived. Even today he has many enemies. Tomberg,
as time
went on, became more and more quiet, leaving his masterwork to
be
published only after his death. Ben-Aharon is equally
quiet and
certainly not ambitious. I must confess to a bit of
worry that my
pointing him out while he lives might have unwanted
consequences.
Besides these, I have friends of many years
acquaintance, who
have gifts in this regard besides which my own pale, and upon
whom much
of my understanding is dependent.
In addition, I
am not the main artist of
my biography, although I don't doubt I made some kind of
contribution.
Somehow my biography was meant to contain certain
experiences,
and so I have had at least the decency to report what came my
way, both
within the outer biography and the inner one. Truth to
tell I
have mostly just stumbled along, and caused as much harm as
good in
many places (none of my relationships were/are perfect, nor
was I ever
any ones perfect employee, son, father, brother, husband or
lover).
We all, if we are honest, have much to feel remorse for,
and I
have my share in spades.
One should really not see me at all in what has been written here. I am simply a human being who happened to notice that the World had a certain organization, and who really only happened to notice this because the World hit him over the head with its Truth, not because he was any great seeker of truth. I try not be here at all in this book, if you read it carefully, and most of my effort in writing this has been to get me out of the way so that you too could Listen to the World Song, and begin to see a bit deeper into the Divine Mystery.
*
7) In Joyous Celebration
of the
Soul Art and Music of Discipleship
- This essay is a
contribution of mine to the work of the
Anthroposophical Society, a social community of students of
Rudolf
Steiner. Steiner sought to do two main things (in my
view), which
was to help us discover the Mystery of the New Thinking
(something only
potential in humanity in the present), and also how to bring
alive the
New Mysteries, which are no longer to be experience in
hierarchical
form, but rather are to appear from out of the social commons,
through
individual acts of love engendered free moral grace.
Above, I had
hinted at some of these
inner dynamics (in accord with the intention of this book to
be of
special use to those who are more familiar with communities of
Faith),
while the below is the clearest statement I have been able to
make in
that community in which the New Gnosis is most dominant.
The
reader of this book, the Way of
the Fool, will find in the essay
below
certain language conventions that may be unfamiliar, because
this essay
was written for a specific audience. If you are
interested in
more of my thinking on Anthroposophy and the Anthroposophical
Movement
and Society, then you should read my book: Dangerous
Anthroposophy (also available at
www.lulu.com), just keep in mind that within that community I
remain
somewhat of an outlaw (rebel).
*
In Joyous Celebration of the
Soul Art and Music of Discipleship
- a moderately serious introductory sketch unveiling
a mostly
American way of understanding the New Thinking -
first some necessary context
Recently in the
News for Members of the
Anthroposophical Society in America, was published a wonderful
lecture
given by Dennis Klocek, elaborating the alchemical foundations
living
in Rudolf Steiner's spiritual scientific work. The essay
below
means to be something from just one voice out of another of
the streams
that seeks to find its home within the Anthroposophical
Society and
Movement - the stream of discipleship,
of those who are
karmically related to the original Twelve and the direct
participation
in certain aspects of the Mystery of Golgotha.
In the essay
that follows, it might help
the reader to understand that it is mostly written for, and
out of, the
American Soul. About this Soul, Rudolf Steiner spoke in
different
places and in the following ways, which I will paraphrase:
The
American comes to Anthroposophy naturally. English
speakers are
instinctively in the Consciousness Soul in their Life of
Rights.
There is a hidden and unique form of Anthroposophy in
America,
and one should look to Emerson and his circle of friends to
appreciate
it.
The reader, of whatever Soul background and gesture, who would seek inner stimulation from actively engaging this essay, should understand that for the American Soul much of what is described below is already instinctively present. This instinctive relationship to the art and music of discipleship appears first in the American Soul in the dominant tendency to be directed outwardly toward the world, fully engaged in social reality, and sometimes (often more frequently than appears on the Evening News) seeking to heal the social world's wounds. Part of the hidden mystery of this Soul is that it is possible to take what is so present instinctively, and awaken it by gradual degrees into full consciousness. This task may turn out to be far easier for the American Soul, than has so far been imagined within Anthroposophical circles
.
To fully
inaugurate this gradual
awakening, however, does require turning from the outer world
and its
worries and wonders for a bit, and to look within - to
practice
introspection. When looking within becomes a normal part
of soul
life, American Anthroposophists should not be surprised to
find that
they already live instinctively in their wills in ways with
considerable kinship with the path of discipleship - the path of
moral action in
the world through renunciation and love.
With the addition of this introspective looking within,
we add to
the thinking we already do about the field of outer-world
social moral
action, a complementary and much needed thinking about the
soul-field
of inner moral action. Outer world thinking and action
are
enhanced by everything we learn from the practice of looking,
thinking
and acting within.
By the way, it
is not the point of this
essay to encourage any divisive distinction, such as might be
assumed
because of the emphasis on matters American. Nor is it
being
suggested here, for example, that Americans are any better at
Anthroposophy in any way. On the contrary, we are just
different.
Each Soul gesture in the Threefold World has unique
gifts to
offer, and this essay means to serve the potential freeing of
those yet
untapped American gifts from a kind of child-like imitation of
things
European. The tendency, to model our soul practices on a
kind of
European Anthroposophical idealism of the soul, was a natural
impulse
connected to our admiration of the work of our European
brothers and
sisters. It is time to grow past this however, to
discover our
far more earthly and pragmatic way to the Spirit.
And, to
do this not only for the benefit of the American Soul Itself,
but also
for the benefit of the Anthroposophical Movement world-wide.
There are then
two themes, which while
related are also quite separate. The relationship
of the
Alchemical stream and the Discipleship stream is one theme,
and the
relationship of the American Soul to the wider world is
another.
The point of intersection, between the Discipleship
stream and
the instinctive capacities of the American Soul, shows only
that the
Rosicrucian and Manichean streams of the Old World, and their
connection to Initiation, does not quite have the same meaning
for the
American Soul as does the natural Christ Impulse inspired in
Americans,
and revealed by their relationship to the outer world of
social need
(in part a consequence of the fact, that due to its rampant
individualism, the Consciousness Soul is developing faster
here - See
Ben-Aharon's America's
Global Responsibility: individualism, initiation and
threefolding).
The Alchemical
stream is a stream of
studied spiritual knowledge and of initiation. It is
more of the
Kings and of Gnosis than of the Shepherds and of Faith.
The
Discipleship stream is more related to that moral work in life
that
comes from following the Teachings of Christ, and thus is more
of the
Shepherds than of the Kings. The disciples, who were
meant to be
fishers and shepherds of human beings, were not of the old
mystery
streams as were the Kings. The Shepherds belong to what
was being
newly created - to the future Mysteries that are to arise, not
from the
old, now impotent and dysfunctional hierarchically organized
Mystery
Centers, but from finely and homeopathically distributed
Branches and
Discussion Groups - that is the New Mysteries are to be born
out of and
in the social commons.
At the same
time, while the America Soul
is more naturally of the Shepherd stream, - of the
discipleship stream,
because of its orientation to outer world moral action, it can
by
turning inward and seeking a pragmatic introspective life,
begin to
draw from the wisdom-well of renewed European spiritual life.
Rudolf Steiner, in his works on objective philosophical
introspection (A Theory
of Knowledge Implicit In Goethe's World Conception; Truth and
Knowledge; and The
Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity) gives us a
quite useful generalized map to this introspectively
investigated inner
territory - a territory that for the American Soul has many
different
and unique characteristics. With Emerson, we get a
similar map,
not as exact and scientifically rigorous, but one which
nonetheless is
more in harmony with the actual landscape of the American
Soul.
We can read
Steiner to initiate us into
our introspective soul voyages, in the most objective and
scientific
fashion; and, read Emerson for that travelogue, which is more
attuned
to the unique scenic beauty to be actually found there, given
that the
American Soul, like the other soul-gestures of the Threefold
world, is
differently oriented in its fundamental nature.
I have tried
here to distinguish two
problems that ought not to be confused. This
article is not
saying that the American Soul and the Discipleship stream are
identical, only that there is a definite kinship. What
is also
being said is that for those in this discipleship stream (of
which
there are no doubt many - Americans and otherwise - within the
Society
and Movement, and for whom this article also aims to provide
greater
self-understanding), they will tend to be less attracted to
exercises
aimed at spiritual development, and more called to moral
action in
life, which incidental to its true deeds, produces the after
effect
called: character
development.
"For every one step in spiritual development, there must be three steps in character development". Rudolf Steiner: Knowledge of Higher Worlds and How to Attain It.
[Keep in mind,
when thinking about
character development, this question: To what aspect of
character
development do we relate a good sense of humor, laughter,
foolishness
and dance? Please also note that at one time the word silly
meant to be possessed by the sacred.]
This is not to
suggest that specific
spiritual developmental exercises are unimportant, but rather
just to
point out that if the moral (character) development lags
behind, it
more and more becomes a danger that spiritual experience will
come
toward us in a one-sided way. Further, we need to understand
that
true heart thinking is almost entirely a consequence of the
extent to
which the will to do the Good (that is to be
moral) is the
foundation for all feeling and thinking activities.
To make some of
this a little more
concrete, we might notice that it would not be uncommon for
those drawn
to the Discipleship stream to find that their biography
involves a need
to encounter the 12 Steps of AA, or to have to undertake some
similar
deep moral-Trial work. Challenges to character
development
are common in biographies with a strong kinship with the
discipleship
stream. Which thought then leads us to the essential
point.
Moral or character development does not result from
spiritual
exercises, but only from inner and outer actions in the
biography, and
their related moral dilemmas. The practice of exercises
builds
capacities in the Soul, while moral
actions, both inward and
outward, apply these capacities in life (which then purifies the Soul). Christ puts it this way: Blind Pharisee, wash
out the
inside of the cup and saucer first, if you want the outside to
end up
clean [for the whole theme, see
Matthew 23:
25-28]
Let us review a
bit: From a certain
point of view, the Alchemical stream is very European, and
thus has a
tendency to put forward the incarnation of an Ideal as a goal,
leading
to the emphasis on spiritual exercises, knowledge and
initiation.
Americans, on the other hand, tend to face the social as
a
problem to be solved through moral action. This is very
pragmatic, for it is not the purity of an ideal that matters
as much as
being able to do something to help others. In this
sense, the
stream of Discipleship is more natural to Americans because,
in harmony
with our engagement with and in the world, as social helpers,
discipleship is rooted in moral action - in doing the Good ("...and
crown
thy Good, with Brotherhood...").
[Isn't this
Brotherhood also partly
related to our ability to help each other experience the
katharsis of
laughter, especially under dire circumstances.
Conversation does
have a higher function than light, but then what about a well
encouraged giggle? The Shadow cannot abide humor, and
runs away
when we make fun of it.]
In a sense, the
idealism of the European
anthroposophist has blinded the American anthroposophist,
first by
suggesting there is only one way to be anthroposophical (a
European
soul idealism), and second by failing to appreciate that the
American
Soul is considerably different. The result is that
instead of
coming to true self knowledge, we (in America) have been
pursuing what
is at best a temporary illusion - a goal we really can't
achieve,
instead of our developing, more consciously, the earthly
(including
humorous and joyous), socially oriented and pragmatic instinct
that is
our given nature.
I hope the above has not been too confusing. Mostly I just wanted to point out certain contextual themes, and leave to the reader's own thinking precisely what to make of these ideas. In what comes next, where we get more deeply into the pragmatic and the concrete, I hope then that these contextual matters will, as we proceed, begin to make a more practical, and a less abstract, sense.
*
[a brief
biographical note: My
interest in introspection began around 35 years ago, in 1971,
as a
result of a kind of spontaneous awakening in my 31st year.
I
didn't call it introspection at that time, but I had become
quite awake
inwardly, and was only able to orient myself to these
experiences using
the Gospels. Seven years later, in 1978, I met the work
of Rudolf
Steiner, and gravitated to his writings on philosophy,
particularly A Theory of Knowledge...,
and The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity.
I
also became very interested in Goethean Science, projective
geometry and all the Steiner material on the social problem,
which was
my own main outer-world interest. It was over 25 years
later, in
1997, that I wrote my first effort at describing what I had
learned
about the moral nature of the Soul under these two influences:
the
Gospels and Steiner's writings on objective philosophical
introspection. That essay was called pragmatic
moral
psychology. At that time,
however, I did not yet know enough about the Shadow, and only
now,
almost 10 years later, can I write the immediately below with
some
confidence in my appreciation of the intricacies of these
problems in
the light of the double-complex.]
substance, or better yet,
selling water by the river*
*[The river of
the soul lies inward in
everyone. To teach, as it were, about the soul, is to
sell water
by the river, to give to someone something that is already
right in
front of their own true face. In spite of all that
exists, for
example in our home libraries, of Steiner texts etc., there
are really
only two essential books for the study of the soul: the Book
of Life,
and the Book of our Own Soul. Learn to read those, and
you'll
know the core of what you need to know. A text, even
this text,
can at best be a word-map describing a territory you'll only
really
know by direct experience, however many other books you ever
read.
The
reality
of matters spiritual is, however, not found in reading, but
only in
action. We can acquire a lot
of
concepts by reading, but we need experience more.]
We should keep
in mind as we begin, that
what is described below is essentially very human and very
ordinary.
It is one possible descriptive word-map, as it were, of
the soul
engaged in the dynamics of inner awakening via the path of
discipleship. As a map, it will be somewhat abstract and
defined.
The actual territory is something else altogether -
human, messy,
inconstant, prone to emotional ups and downs - that is all the
wonders
of ordinary consciousness. All a word-map tries to do is to
point out
various significant features. Look out for these
mountains,
notice those valleys. Here is a pure spring, there is a
hard and
dangerous rock wall. It is my hope that the reader will
find
below some guidelines which will help them to chart their own
path
through the pristine forests and dark swamplands of the soul.
Keep in mind it takes courage to explore there, but at
the same
time there is no other adventure quite like it.
Recall then
what Dennis Klocek gave in
his lecture to the 2005 AGM, and then published shortly
thereafter in
the News for Members (or if you didn't hear or read it,
try
to find a copy as soon as you can): On the blackboard a
mandala:
a circle, expressing a series of alchemical relationships:
earth
(freedom); water (phenomenology); air (silent practice) and
fire
(dialog). The circle form suggests a return to earth
(freedom) at
some new or higher kind of level. But before considering
that,
first some deep background.
If, from a
certain point of view, we
think of the above four elements in Dennis Klocek's lecture as
notes in
a rising scale, we could also find that in between each note
is an interval. While the note is in itself more of
a step
in spiritual development supported by spiritual exercises, the
use in
life (the interval) of the
acquired spiritual skill/capacity is more of a
moral act - an aspect of the process of character development.
The soul is fallen - it is an out of tune instrument,
yet we
hunger to return, to rise up and to experience reintegration,
and to
give voice to the joy, which the Story of the Return
of the
Prodigal Son tells us leads to
celebration
and feasting.
Because the
spiritual development
exercises are so well known, and so completely covered
elsewhere in
Steiner's basic books, as well as Dennis Klocek's books, I
will not be
discussing them here. This essay assumes a general
knowledge of
that work, and some practice in their use. Here we are looking
at the
development of the Soul, solely with regard to its struggles
with the
so very messy, personal and human moral questions of the biography.
In case there
is some confusion here, in
Steiner's Knowledge of Higher Worlds, the
moral is approached mostly through a series of admonitions,
encouraging
the student to orient him or her self in life in certain ideal
ways.
Only in The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
with the
discussions of moral
imagination,
moral intuition and moral technique,
did
Steiner confront the moral problem directly and
exactly.
The details
that follow I have derived
from my own (naturally messy and human, stupid and silly, and
when I
really get serious - pretentious) introspective investigations
of the
moral dimensions of the soul, but it should be kept in mind
that while
it is prudent to describe these phases and Trials as if
separated in
time in the soul, they are much more likely to be layered over
each
other - and often simultaneous in a variety of ways. It
also
needs to be clear that what is to follow wishes only to add
another
dimension - another view from a different direction - to what
Dennis
Klocek gave, and not to contradict it in any way whatsoever.
It is
particularly crucial to note here
that we are mostly discussing those moral acts that take place
in the
Soul, not those in the outer
biography. There is a
relationship to be sure, but it will help to understand that
we are
moral in both worlds: the outer world of our biographies, and
the inner
world of Soul practice and art.
I emphasize the
word Trial
to add another quality to our understanding. Moral
development
takes place in the biography through Trials. These
challenges to
the life of soul and spirit are meant to be difficult.
We become
deeply engaged in our karma of wounds
with others in
these Trials. Moreover, these are called Trials
precisely because
there is great pain, suffering and effort (as well as not
enough fun)
connected to them, and because the Shadow plays such an important and often decisive role.
Furthermore, various aspects of the Seven Stages of the
Passion
of Christ (as described in the John
Gospel)
are enacted in the Soul via these biographical Trials: the Washing of the
Feet, the
Scourging, the Crowning with Thorns, the Carrying of the
Cross, the
Crucifixion, the Entombment, and the Resurrection. There is nothing abstract about these
difficult
processes of soul transformation, and this should be
kept in mind
as we go forward, namely that: every time I use the word Trial
I am
speaking of quite human, difficult and sometimes years
long
life-crises.
There is, in
this regard, something of a
kind of spiritual law involved. Just as the world of the
senses
has its laws of gravity and color, so the soul world has its
laws.
The ones to keep in mind here are the karma of wounds in
the
outer biography, as well as the outer and inner moral Trials
to be
faced there, which bear an exact and direct interrelationship.
To
face a challenge in life, to face a Trial, means to engage in
just that
personal teaching which belongs specifically to our
individually most
needed developmental task.
Consider a
marriage for example, or the
children to be raised there. These relationships are not
trivial
distractions to any spiritual development, but rather are
precisely
those riddles and mysteries of life belonging particularly to
our own
ego's character developmental needs. One can read all
kinds of
spiritual books, practice all manner of spiritual exercises,
and still
not advance because the biographical tasks are ignored.
To begin
to awaken within, and to appreciate that we are surrounded in
our
biography with just those moral tasks and Trials we
individually need,
is to recognize just how precisely and miraculously has
Christ, as the
Artist of our karma of wounds, woven us into the world of
personal
relationships. So when Christ advises that unless we
become again
as little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven, He
is, among
other matters, telling us precisely who our deepest spiritual
teachers
in life often are.
This world of
personal relationships, and
their corresponding moral Trials, whether of family or work,
or even
wider world challenges, is also very elastic in a sense.
We are
quite free in it, and it has a quality that can respond rather
exactly
to only those tasks which we choose to take up.
Part of
true Faith is to accept what comes to us as challenges, yet at
the same
time to recognize that our freedom also allows us to choose at
every
juncture, which way to turn, what burden to carry and when to
laugh at
ourselves.
For example,
the interval from earth
(freedom) to water (phenomenology) involves the skill:
thinking about.
This
skill we receive as a natural aspect of living in this age,
in that we are inwardly free to decide what to think; and, in
accord
with the Epoch of the Consciousness Soul, we are also becoming
more and
more able to form individual free moral ideas as well.
The
Consciousness Soul really just means
that if we inwardly wish to know the Good, in any particular
moment of
moral demand, crisis or need, we can in fact know what the
Good is.
Yet, in order to have this knowledge, we first have to ask, seek and knock. We have to inwardly form the question,
and
struggle there to let ourselves answer from the higher nature
of our
ego. The Good is what we make it to be, and as this
essay
proceeds, we will get deeper and deeper into this Mystery.
This
is why my book (found for free on line at
http://ipwebdev.com/hermit/twotf.html or which can be
purchased at
www.lulu.com) the Way of
the Fool calls this capacity to know
the
Good: Moral
Grace.
Now in this
thinking about
there is the object of our interest, in relationship to which
we are
the subject. As subject, we think about
this object. This thinking is also essentially (and
initially)
discursive to our inner experience. We appear to
inwardly
talk to ourselves. Our spirit seems to inwardly
speak that
which our soul then hears.
It is with the
skill thinking about
that we first enter on the problem of the Water Trial of
phenomenology.
Thinking about naturally
contains something of the shadow forces of the
soul, in that our feeling life is, in the beginning, dominated
by
antipathies and sympathies. These natural likes and
dislikes of
our individualized soul color all that we think about.
Through
them what we think about
acquires an individualized (non-objective) meaning for the
spirit - the
i-AM, in the soul.
[The use of
this form of the term "i-AM",
is
meant to lessen the emphasis on the being nature of the ego -
its
noun-like aspect, and to place more emphasis on the action
nature - on
the verb-like aspect of the ego. The being nature of the
ego
tends to be more related to the teachings of the Buddha, while
the action nature of the ego tends to be more related to
the
teachings of Christ.]
In the light of
Steiner's The
Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,
the
experience (the percept) is, in the beginning, distorted in
its meaning
(the thought, the concept) by the shadow elements lingering in
the yet
unredeemed antipathies and sympathies. By the way, the
reader
should be clear that only their own personal introspective
observations
can adequately discern what is going on within ones own soul.
We
have little business believing we can make such determinations
about,
or for, another.
Noticing these
excessive and unredeemed
aspects of antipathy and sympathy will give us our first vague
perceptions of the work of the double-complex, the Shadow in
the Soul.
Thought
is
a flower rooted in the soul-soil of feeling, and filled with
the
blossoming life of the will-in-thinking.
Where an excess of unconsciousness infects this soil and this
life, the
Shadow is given free play.
In order to
progress properly through the life passages that comprise the
Water
Trial, we have to learn to renounce the unredeemed antipathy
and
sympathy. This is the central
moral act
that makes possible the transformation via the Water Trial
from
thinking about to thinking with. We enter the Water
Trial knowing how to think about, and we
can leave the
Water Trial knowing how to think with.
The
essential moral nature of this Trial is outlined in the
Gospels in the Sermon on the Mount, in the teaching concerning
the mote
and the beam. In the biography, when we learn to
struggle with
the covering over (or painting in thought via the unconscious
Shadow
driven creation of mental pictures) of the persons that we
meet, with
our individual unredeemed antipathies and sympathies, we are
learning
about the beam in our own eye. We see not the person,
but our own
soul as that lives in our projected sympathies and
antipathies.
To learn to see past the beam, to meet the true
phenomena of the
other, to learn to think with them
rather than about
them, this is the moral craft to be
discovered during
the Water Trial.
The biography
gives us just those
experiences that challenge this learning. The spouse,
the child,
the co-worker, the boss, the neighbor, the relative, or the
stranger-other, all will evoke the beam, the unredeemed mental
pictures. We must learn how not to paint our
experience
with this already unconsciously given thought content, and
instead
learn to let the experience itself speak
into the soul, and to become consciously
active as a creator of the free thought
in relationship to
the experience.
Again, one way
to banish the Shadow
influence here (when we discover our thinking to be possessed
by the
beam) is to laugh at ourselves - to see the essential
silliness of our
dark inner depictions of others, as well as those depictions
which are
too sympathetic (that is where we raise another up to the
level of a
kind of minor deity, such as how too many view Rudolf Steiner
- and
others - out of a soul mood of ungrounded and unrealistic
admiration).
Sobriety, for
all its virtues, must be
balanced with play, otherwise the soul becomes an arid desert.
So, for
example, when we look at another
person and recognize that they are, in themselves, not just
that which
we observe in the moment, but rather that they are their whole
history
- their whole biography (in fact a sequence of biographies),
and when
we learn to consciously set aside the reactive feelings of
antipathy
and sympathy, only then can we start to think with
who they truly are, and not just about
them. Our folk wisdom calls this learning to walk in
another's
shoes.
This thinking with
can of course be applied to anything living, anything that has
a life
element to its nature, not just human beings, plants or
animals.
This includes the history (the story) of a social form,
such as a
family, or even an Anthroposophical Branch. When we recreate in
the
imagination, free of antipathy and sympathy, the story-picture
of
something, we are then learning to think with the object of our
thought.
Goethe taught
himself to think with
the plant, and to this organic way of thinking Rudolf Steiner
later
gave the name: Goetheanism, which is a thinking that leaves
behind the
discursive aspect of thinking about, and
replaces that with a
thinking with - a qualitative
characterizing picture thinking
(Tomberg's formulation). We do this by learning to make
inner
images (mental pictures) consciously. We still retain
the ability
to think discursively about these
inner images -
thinking about does not
disappear, but remains a skill which can be
applied when we choose and where we feel it is appropriate
(which is
why I wrote earlier of the layered nature of these soul
phenomena).
Two additional
aspects of soul phenomena
need to be understood here - the attention and the intention and
their
relationship. The moral act of renunciation is more
related to
those actions of the will-in-thinking that
determines on which particular object we focus our attention.
When we are lost to the beam in our own eye, part of our
attention is unconsciously focused on our own soul's reactive
feelings
of antipathy and sympathy. To the act of renunciation of
these
interfering aspects of our attention, we need to join the
intention to
love the object of this phenomenological (story-picture)
thinking.
After subduing the impulse to live imprisoned and in the
thrall
of the beam in our own eye (reactive feelings of antipathy and
sympathy), we use our first stage (necessarily awkward and
tentative)
understanding of how to love the other in such a way so as to
redeem
them in thought. We consciously create a new picture to
replace
the old unconscious and reactive one.
As part of the
Water Trial, we don't just
set aside the reactive feelings, but we learn how to create in
the soul
cultivated feelings. We create freely chosen cultivated
moods of
soul - that is intended feelings of reverence, wonder and so
forth,
which then have a salutary effect on the thought content that
is to be
produced according to where we let our attention come to rest.
This is an example of where the exercises bear fruit.
If we
have practiced these exercises, this will be a great help when
we then
need to apply the newly learned ability to form cultivated
moods of
soul, as a prelude and foundation for thinking with
someone in a new way.
With a cultivated feeling we transform the soul-soil from which the thought is born and then flowers (which is also why the ideal is expressed as: thinking with the heart).
In a certain
sense, what is renounced,
love replaces. What is given up, becomes transformed.
What
is dark, is turned to gold. What is evil - our dark
habits rooted
in the unconscious fear and mistrust of the other - the Thou,
are
beginning to be transformed into love. And, best of all,
what is
too sober, particularly in our Self, can as is necessary be
made silly.
The
renunciation of unredeemed antipathy
and sympathy does not, however, mean their elimination.
The will
acquires the capacity to master this somewhat base song of the
soul.
We cease attending to it unconsciously, and turn that
attention
(and the related intention) elsewhere. We master the
unconscious
soul gesture that leads antipathies and sympathies into the
forefront
of the soul, and like a good choir director, silence it so
that we can
concentrate on other instruments of soul potential, other
voices.
Transformed and conscious feelings of antipathy and
sympathy
become a valid means of discernment. But we need to be
awake to
the arising and becoming of these feelings, if we wish not to
give the
shadow element free play.
The
will-in-thinking (an awake and more and more morally pure
intention and
attention) fills the thought with life (which is why I add
to the
ideal of thinking with the heart, the ideal also to will the good).
In this way we
also refine the gold that
is latent in antipathy and sympathy - their capacities for
discernment
and truth are enhanced, because we apply them with more
consciousness -
a more awake attention and intention. In the teaching on
the beam
and the mote, Christ, in Matthew 7:5, ends it this way: You fake, first get
the log
out of your own eye and then you can see about getting the
splinter out
of your brother's eye.
Again, one of
the best ways to eliminate
the log is to learn to laugh at it. The log arises from
the
Shadow side of soul life, and in the light and warmth of our
learning
to laugh at ourselves, the Shadow's hold dissolves.
In Steiner's The
Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity, we are
taught the importance of the moral basis for our actions,
whether
outwardly in the sense world, or inwardly in the soul.
Only that
action, which is preceded by a self-determined moral reason
(intention), is truly free. Even so, no one should be
surprised
to discover that they are already trying to do these
activities in some
fashion or another. Emerson said this: In self trust all
virtues are
comprehended. The purpose of
this essay
- this word-map - is to help us raise out of the realm of
instinct,
step by step into full consciousness, our already existing
natural
goodness.
[Another brief
biographical note: As I
shared previously, I underwent a kind of spontaneous awakening
at age
31, and one of the by-products of this inner infusion of
light, was
that I became hyper-aware of judging people. I could see
myself
putting them into various boxes and categories, and being now
awake to
this beam in my own eye, I could also see that this was not
right - it
violated conscience, so that I struggled to learn how to not
do it.
That said, learning how not to do it, does not mean that
we
always apply this newly learned moral craft. On the
contrary, I
often fell back into old ways many times over the years,
although there
did slowly dawn a kind of sensitivity, that let me see that I
had been
again in thrall of the beam. Stepping outside the prison
of the
beam does not become automatic - a habit, but must always be
applied,
in the moment, consciously, with intention and attention (the
will-in-thinking).]
After we have
learned to renounce
(consciously and for specific and individually freely chosen
moral
reasons) our soul gestures of yet unredeemed antipathy and
sympathy, in
order to learn how to think with that
object of thinking
which we are learning to love, do we then move out of the
Water Trial,
via more necessity, to the life passages of the Air Trial.
This
movement from water (phenomenology) to air (silent practice),
which
before (at the entrance to the Water Trial) began with
thinking about,
now
begins with the newly learned craft of thinking with.
We
start with that which we have now discovered as a spiritual
development in the course of the Water Trial, and then apply
that new
level of moral craft (capacity of the will) of renunciation
and love to
the Air Trial. The will-in thinking, which has learned
to master
the unredeemed aspects of feelings of antipathy and sympathy,
and to
replace these with thoughts born out of cultivated moods of
soul, is
now strengthened. It is this strength that then lends
itself to
the life lessons of the Air Trial.
Dennis Klocek
described the Air Trial as
a learning to think backwards - of unraveling, or unrolling,
the
thought content produced by thinking with.
The
Discipleship stream sees it from a slightly different
direction,
one which, however, is not in opposition, but which instead is
once
more intended to be complementary.
Via the Water
Trial we have learned how
to think with, and that has
produced a thought content in the soul.
It
is this
content that must now be renounced in the Air Trial. When Steiner wrote of this he called it:
sacrifice
of thoughts. We learn how,
again in meeting people, to not
have a thought content at all. We become inwardly
silent.
Strong forces of will are needed in order to subdue the
already
achieved thought content, which we have wrapped around another
person
(or any other object of thinking), even if this content now
lives free
of unredeemed antipathies and sympathies. We can also
renounce,
during the life passages of major aspects of the Air Trial,
those
thoughts produced only by thinking about.
Further, in the
feeling life there live attachments to
the thought content. We have, after all,
produced it. It is our creation, and we like it (most of
the time
- where the Shadow has unconsciously produced the thought
content, we
can learn to relate to this soul phenomena out of a healthy
antipathetic
discernment - we can come to not
liking it
that we have such a thought). Sometimes, however, we
can't even
separate our own sense of self from this thought content.
Nonetheless, to traverse the Air Trial we need to
renounce our
collection of mental pictures (thoughts). Remember, the
self
development that accompanies the sequence of alchemical Trials
is not
just related to spiritual exercises, but also to moral or
character
development; the chief features of which are acts of sacrifice
- acts
of renunciation, and acts of love (the beginnings of: Not I, but Christ in
me).
Steiner also
calls this attachment to our
thought content, in certain circumstances: being captured by the
concept. It can be a savage
inner struggle - this Air
Trial - to learn to forcefully set aside our favorite ideas of
the
world, a seemingly negative artistic act, sometimes taking
months to
accomplish. At the same time, their essential nature
does not
disappear, for the very same qualitative aspects of our true
nature -
our true i-AM - can once again
call them forth. Thought does not
disappear, it only becomes latent and goes into a kind of pralaya. The will-in-thinking is strengthened by
this act
of renunciation, and when we choose to think again concerning
this same
object of our thought, the penetrating new powers of the
will-in-thinking (attention and intention) can call forth from
this
pralaya an ever deeper understanding of the underlying meaning
and
truth of that about which we have chosen to think.
[another
biographical note: I first
explored this process during my many long years of the Water
Trial,
which really began when I discovered that I had become
captured by a
psychological paradigm, or world picture. I had come to
view
everyone, after a time, through the lens of this
psychologically based
world picture. I discovered that the best way to become
inwardly
free of this capture, was to undo any relationship to this
paradigm, an
activity that took several months. A year or so later, I
let
myself be captured by a similar world picture, this one
connected to
Tibetan Buddhism. Again, many months were needed to
become
inwardly free - to break the chains of the teaching - to be
able to
only experience these thoughts when and if I consciously
called them
forth. Subsequently, upon encountering Anthroposophy, I
gave
myself wholly to it - became intoxicated with it in a way, and
spent
three years drinking in all that I could manage, eventually
once more
finding myself inwardly lacking the spiritual freedom before
the
concept that I knew by then was essential. Only
after many
months of work, was I able to stand in relationship to the
massive and
marvelous thought content of spiritual science, inwardly free.
I
could then see that Anthroposophy was not a thought content at
all, but
rather just the method of awake, and fully conscious (intended
and
attended) free thinking I had been instinctively seeking for
many
years.]
As the shadow
elements (unredeemed
antipathies and sympathies - Water Trial, and emotional
attachments to
our self-created thought content - Air Trial) are being let
go, we now
begin to have another experience connected to the Gospels.
This
is again related to the Sermon on the Mount, specifically the
beatitude: "blessed
are
the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven".
The rolling
back, the sacrifice of, the
renouncing of the previously created thought content, makes
the soul
inwardly
poor in
spirit. As we empty out the
soul, we
begin to learn a new spiritual activity, which might be called
thinking
within. The Air Trial passages of life are
taking
us from thinking with toward thinking within. This opens us to
the delicate first stages of the conscious experience of the kingdom of heaven as It begins to appear with greater clarity out of the
general
background noise of the soul, and on the wings of our natural
instinct
for the embryonic New Thinking. The Air Trial is
developing
that which is meant to take us upward and onward to the Fire
Trial, or
dialog. When we are poor in spirit, empty of the
previously given
thought content (and master of silent practice), then we can,
to a
degree, experience directly the inside of the object of our
thought.
In personal relationships, this is the capacity for the
beginnings of true empathy.
In a sense, the
base elements of
unredeemed antipathy and sympathy are a foundation in the
soul. They
are of the earth. In the Water Trial, we rise to a more
subtle
and plastic condition in the soul. To think with,
to
know the phenomenology of the object of thought, is to bring
the
thinking into movement with its
object. The
earth aspect is more solid and crystallized, while the water
aspect
more fluid and more mobile. The discursively produced
thought is
dead (the instinctive living element necessary for any thought
remains
in the unconscious), while the consciously created
picture-thought is
more living. With the air element, the soul becomes more
expansive. Thought that is renounced in the Air Trial
dissipates,
disperses and dissolves into the general spiritual background
of the
soul - the previously noted pralaya condition. The
will-in-thinking does not any longer call it forth, nor does
it let the
thought call itself forth. When we are captured by a
concept, it
calls itself forth, and the Air Trial teaches us to break the
chains by
which we have let our unconscious feeling attachment tie us to
the
concept. We break these chains of feeling by dissolving
them, and
Dennis Klocek's metaphor of rolling back the thought is quite
apt.
We untie it from its attachment to the soul, and without
doubt
the practice of the spiritual exercise of the Ruskshau is a
great help
here.
Only then, when we are truly empty, can thought, in the sense that it is the true inside of our object of thinking, come toward us. The true idea of the object moves toward us, as we learn to open ourselves to it, such that it then thinks in us. As Christ says in Luke 17: 20-21 "Asked by the Pharisees when the the kingdom of God was coming he answered: "The kingdom of God doesn't come with the watching like a hawk, and they don't say, Here it is, or There it is, because, you know what? the kingdom of God is inside you.""
Steiner writes
at age 25, in "The Theory
of Knowledge Implicit in Goethe's World Conception", published in 1886, that: What takes place in
human
consciousness is the interpretation of Nature to itself.
Thought
is the last member in the series of processes whereby Nature
is formed.
While Emerson
writes at age 33 in the
essay "Nature"",
published in 1836, 50
years before Steiner wrote the above: Nature is the
incarnation of
a thought, and turns to a thought again, as ice becomes water
and gas.
The world is mind precipitated, and the volatile essence is
forever
escaping again into the state of free thought.
Thus, having mastered (to a degree) silent practice (learned how to be poor in spirit), we are at the beginning of the Fire Trial, and similar in kind to our previous renunciations, the soul now begins to discover how thinking can be in deepest kinship with its object, by abandoning the Self - by no longer seeing ourselves as the center of the universe. Instead we begin to love the object of thinking more than we love ourselves. This deepening intention to love, in that our own i-AM learns to stand out of the way, allows the i-AM of the other more room in the soul - we begin to see them not just from their inside - true empathy or thinking within, but as them, united with them. Again, anything living that can be thought empathically, can also be even more deeply known when we learn to unite with it in thought. But this requires more than our own action. The art of true empathy, or thinking within, now, as we let go our own centrality of being, becomes the chalice in which It can think in us - and the life passage of Fire Trial begins to unfold.
This is the
fruit of the Air Trial now
carried further - the spiritual developmental capacity to have
dialog
with the realm of the invisibles, for true empathy free of
self
importance and rooted in inner silence, now lets the inner
being of the
other - the Thou - speak. Having understood how we
become
captured by the concept, and emotionally attached to it, we no
longer
repeat those actions, with the result that thought tends not
to come to
rest in the soul, to coagulate there. Instead, thought
now passes
through the soul - flows like a living stream.
[In 1999, seven
years ago, I wrote this:
My
method
basically now consists (when life circumstances allow it) of
sitting at
my desk and writing descriptive passages of social and
political
realities. Inwardly the experience is analogous to
looking at a
clear stream. The surface of the stream results from my
inner
activity in sacrifice of thoughts, fact gathering, picture
forming and
artistic expression (more or less done simultaneously).
At the
same time as my thinking sees this clear surface, I can
perceive that
there arises, on the other side of that surface, activity
which does
not belong to my own will, but which appears there
spontaneously of its
own accord. The clear surface is then a product of two
activities
acting in concert. With my writing I record what appears
there.]
With this art (thinking within), which
was earlier
merely a skill
(thinking about)
and
then a craft (thinking
with), we now are in the midst
of the Fire Trial. But before discussing this Trial more
deeply
from the point of view of Discipleship, we need to look ahead
a bit and
understand what lies on the other side of the Fire Trial.
We need
to have a picture of what happens in between - in the moral
interval
between fire (dialog) and the new earth (new freedom), as the
circle
gesture spirals around in a kind of completion, before moving
on to a
new level of experience.
[a bit more
biography: the material next
to be presented, regarding what can happen after the life
passage of
the Fire Trial, is a little bit speculative on my part.
While I
have had quite definite experiences of the kind: Imagination,
Inspiration and Intuition (mostly by Grace from Above), I am neither clairvoyant nor an initiate. I am
not
even sure most of us need anymore to strongly seek such a
goal, at
least certainly not in a single lifetime. When I get
deeper into
the Fire Trial material itself (below), especially given the
layered
nature of the soul capacities and experiences of all the
Trials, and as
well the true mystery nature of ordinary consciousness, why I
encourage
a consideration of the more modest goal of a kind of sacramental thinking (as against initiation), will be made more
plain.]
This
culmination of the Fire Trial is
described in Steiner's John Gospel lectures, in lecture
twelve, as: The Nature of the Virgin
Sophia and of the Holy Spirit.
The
previous spiritual developmental tasks, interwoven with the
moral and
character developmental intervals, or Trials, produces a katharsis, or
purification
of the astral body, such that the
Rite of
Initiation may now be enacted, and the seed organs of
clairvoyance may
now be impressed on the etheric body. I emphasize the
term may,
because
while a great deal of the development leading to this stage is
rooted in our own actions - our own will-in-thinking, as the
Fire Trial
progresses we become more and more interdependent with the
will
activity of the invisibles.
We do not, as I
understand it, initiate
ourselves, but instead are initiated by Another.
On the other
side of the Fire Trial, if
initiation is to be the result, we have acquired new faculties
of
perception. The spiritual world is now there to be
experienced
directly, and the soul has fully developed that spiritual
freedom,
which The Philosophy of Freedom (or Spiritual
Activity) contemplates, for we have
renounced unredeemed antipathy
and sympathy, we have renounced our emotional attachments to a
given
thought content and we have renounced even the significance of
our own i-AM
in relationship to others; all the while learning to love ever
more
deeply the objects of our perception and thinking.
Now before us
stand new perceptions.
The world of Imaginations is faced with this new
freedom, but it
stands inwardly over there, as it were, such that once more we
have
something which we think about, only
this time it is not
a sense object but a spiritual object. Moreover, the
perceptual
element of an Imagination has required our co-participation.
Contrary to a sense object, which has as an aspect of
its nature
what Steiner called the necessary given, a
spiritual Imagination as an object of clairvoyant perception
does not
exist independently of our own will-on-fire in thinking.
We have authored and sourced
(for this language, grateful thanks to Harvey Bornfield)
it in cooperation with spiritual beings.
Our new
thinking about
has participated in the creation of the Imagination. We
experience the Imagination in infinite internal space
(ethereal and
peripheral space) as an object, whose existence comes about
because our
own activity is coupled with the by Grace activity of higher
beings.
The intention and attention are involved in a Parsifal
question
to which the Imagination is an answer. Subsequent in
time to this
experience, cognition then produces the word forms, either
written or
spoken, in which the living Imagination dies into a
crystallized
word-picture, such as what is given to us in many of Steiner's
lectures
and writings. When we actively (not passively) read
these
word-pictures, recreating them in our own picture-thinking,
the soul
harmonizes with the Imaginative aspect of the world of spirit,
creating
out of this harmony a rudimentary chalice in which later
spiritual
experiences can arise.
So we begin
then to repeat at a higher
level the previous Trials, but this time facing experiences we
have
never before had. We travel once more around the mandala
of the
circling spiral of soul metamorphosis, learning in new ways to
think about
(Imaginations), then on to new thinking with
(Inspirations) and finally to new thinking within (Intuitions). [There would seem to be here
a great
mystery, about which I have not (yet) any experience, but at
the same
time a great curiosity: do angels etc. tell jokes or laugh and
dance?]
This full new thinking, however, is itself at a higher stage. It is thinking transformed into willed creative and participatory beholding (perceiving). The normal thought content, which we know as an aspect of our original state of consciousness (earth and freedom, in discursive thinking about), only arises in the soul after the clairvoyant thinking perceiving (beholding). This thought content falls out, as it were, during the period of time the spiritual experience is fading away. The spiritual experience does not continue in earthly memory, but at the same time, the thought content produced (that is, how the experience was initially cognized as it fades away) does remain in earthly memory.
Let us now
return to a deeper
appreciation of the life passages we are calling: the Fire
Trial.
All the work we
do, through the various
Trials and passages of our biography, more and more purifies
the soul,
making it ready for clairvoyant spiritual perception. At
the same
time, there is constant spiritual music in the soul - the song
of the
wind and of the breath - even as far back as when we are only
being
newly born out of the first Trial of earth and freedom.
Ordinary
consciousness is already full of
spirit. Our problem is how do we pick the gold out of
the dark
shadowy and leaden dross of the soul, normal to its given
fallen state
of earth and freedom. Two factors are clues. These
are
discovered during the early stages of introspection in the
idea of
needs and the idea of choices. The wind - the breath -
the living
river of thought - blows through the soul constantly, but always in accord with
need
and most often in accord with other-need,
that is the needs not of the Self, but of the Thou. To
live into
this Grace given always present intuition-like breath, we need
to
choose. When
we
do choose service to other-need, then true, good and beautiful
intuitions flow on the wind of Grace into the soul, even in
its
ordinary and fallen state of consciousness.
Other-need also helps
keep our ambitions in check. One of the
temptations that the Shadow offers to us is to let us believe
we can,
for example, out of reading a Steiner text speak with
authority about
matters concerning which we have had no other experience than
the text.
Absent the real experience - the percept - true thought
(the
concept) cannot arise. Only in conjunction with actual
clairvoyant experience can we, in full conscience, speak of
such
matters with the same confidence as did our Teacher, Rudolf
Steiner.
Yet, in the face of other-need, and our choice to devote
ourselves to this need, spiritual contact (experience) does
appear in
the soul. The
spiritual
percept (experience) arises within the soul as a response to
the Parsifal question which our intention and attention have
created
out of our relationship to other-need, and the modest nature
of our
choice to serve this need makes our soul a suitable chalice to
receive
that thought content which then serves this need.
For example, we
have no need (besides a
vain curiosity) to know who was the 20th Century Bodhisattva
incarnation of the future Maitreya Buddha. Yet, on the
other
hand, there is a deep need to know how to love those intimate
others in
our biography, so that we can learn to heal our shared karma
of wounds.
With this in
mind (and also keep in mind
the layered nature of soul development, as against the
one-sided idea
that it is a mere linear progression) let us look at the Fire
Trial,
which Dennis Klocek has described also as: dialog; and which he related to meeting with the dead,
who come
to us through our encounters with others. From the
standpoint of
the Discipleship stream, this is once more perceived a bit
differently,
yet again in a complementary fashion.
Having passed
through the previous
Trials, our will-in-thinking now possesses certain capacities,
certain
inner arts, the essence of which are moral in nature. The self
development spiritual exercises are secondary to, but
supportive of,
the character (moral) developments. We have learned in
the Water
Trial to renounce unredeemed antipathies and sympathies and to
replace
those with a redeemed thought content produced in a chalice of
freely
chosen cultivated feelings. In the Air Trial we have renounced
as well
even this self-produced thought content, in order to live in
the
silence, that is poor in spirit.
In Fire Trial,
which begins with its
capacity of thinking within, won in the Air
Trial,
we now enter into dialog on the wings of a renunciation of
self
importance. That which is not-Self is to become more
important
than that which is Self. Love of the other
fills the
attention and intention, and the work toward Not I, but Christ
in me
matures. In this case, the
dialog
element for the Discipleship stream is more accurately
characterized as
Steiner's "it
thinks in me", albeit this form of
expression
is lacking a certain artistry. A more beautiful phrase
would be: the delicate and subtle
presence of Fullness and fullness of Presence.
[another
biographical note: I learned,
over many years of hard experience, that the essential matter
was the
Parsifal question - the deeply felt question, coupled with the
absence
of personal ambition in this question. The knowledge I
seek must
be consciously intended to serve others, not to serve my vain
curiosity. In fact, my success in my researches into the
social,
seems to have been entirely related to my renunciation of the
possibility of initiation in order to more deeply be led to an
understanding of the social, an act which occupied my prayer
life for a
number of years in the mid-'80's. As a consequence, I
began to
experience this wind, this delicate and subtle presence of
Fullness and
fullness of Presence in response to my Parsifal questions
concerning an
understanding of the social, which I had sought in order to
serve
other-need. My biography led me to working, from my
mid-thirties
onward, as a member of the working poor. I cleaned
toilets,
washed dishes in restaurants, worked in mental hospitals, and
the last
three years of my work life (59-62), I worked in a factory.
This
lead me to not only a personal, but a shared experience of the
suffering in the world due to the Age of Materialism, which
has led the
i-AM not to appreciate itself or the causes of its
suffering,
and which gave me such pain that the only way I could think to
alleviate this was to seek, via the new thinking, the ability
to tell a
new story of the world and of human meaning. This was my
Parsifal
question in its broadest form, and the wind would come at
anytime It choose as I lived out these experiences, so that
I had
to learn to be sensitive to this wind,
and
to serve It, even by pulling off the road when driving and
taking
notes, or getting up from bed at night and writing when
called.
The success of this inner work also made me on more than
one
occasion, an obnoxious moral nut case, filled with excessive
moments of
grand hubris - my own Shadow intoxicated and inflamed.
Fortunately, the Trials would knock me down whenever I
got too
drunk with the seriousness of any luciferic fantasies of
having a
mission.]
The moral art
of thought not only comes to the truth of the object of
thinking, but
also knows its goodness and its beauty. In intimate
relationships, where we learn to love the will of the other -
the Thou,
and to see the beauty, not of their physical appearance, but
of their
deeds - in this selfless perception we then start to live in
their true
Fullness and Presence.
Thinking within, as it traverses the Fire Trial, begins to
experience
the spiritual world as a thought world, via a pure thinking,
which is a
cooperative art - Grace will be present. This purity is
three-fold. It is pure in the sense that it is only
thought -
that is it is sense free. The attention is so focused
only on
thought, that the outer sense world recedes far into the
background of
consciousness. That is one aspect. The second kind
of
purity is moral in nature. The soul is pure in its
intention and
attention. The intention and attention are chaste, as it
were.
Modest, or moderate. Without ambition of any kind.
Not even seeking initiation or enlightenment.
Insight
increases in the soul, but each time as a surprise - as a
wonder.
The third kind
of purity is as regards
the thought - the concept itself. It is only
pure concept or idea and in this it is thought as Being, as
Presence
and Fullness. Our earthy
grasping of
the thought, which in the beginning tends to render it into
mere mental
pictures or generalized concepts, has been gone beyond.
We have
sensed thought unconsciously in this beginning, and caused it
to fall
into our earthly and darkened consciousness from out of its
original
living environment. When we learn how to return thought
to its
true realm and nature, then our sense-free thinking, and the
purity of
our intention and attention now lets the pure nature of the
Being of
the Thought think
in
us (dialog).
At the same
time, this conversation has
what seems at first blush an odd quality to it, in the sense
of our
freedom. As discussed in the essay on The
Meaning
of Earth Existence in the Age of the Consciousness Soul, just as Christ gives his Being to our need for
knowledge of the Good as an act of Grace in such a way that
the thought
of the Good is entirely ours to shape, so also that which thinks in us does not answer our knock with any authority
whatsoever.
This Holy Spirit (the wind in the soul) spends (exhausts) Its will into us in a
way. Its participation with our i-AM
in the nature of the thought's form is such that, while the
Holy Spirit
elevates our perception of truth, we remain the final author
and
source. The Holy Spirit's participation is also a gift
and
becomes the wind to the wings of our soul. Borne on this wind we see
from
whatever height, depth or breadth that must be there for other-need. We serve the Thou and the Holy Spirit
serves us
both.
The soul is now
grateful for whatever
wills to dialog with it, and has
no need for anything other than the
occasional, but profoundly nourishing, experiences of Grace,
all of
which it had already begun to know, even coming in the
beginning in the
wonderful mystery of ordinary consciousness, and in accord
with other-need and choice.
Yet, in this
same beginning, the karma of
wounds, and the unredeemed aspects of the astral or desire
body move us
forward in life, and we are guided by the Shadow into and
toward our
necessary biographical experiences. In the processes of
the Fire
Trial, we learn to let go these drives, to move with and
within the
stream of Providence in Life. The soul now tends to want
only to
be content and at rest, no long driven. We love the
necessity
that Providence brings us, and devote ourselves to that task,
recognizing that the Great Whole of Life is in Other and far
more
competent Hands (Christ's Love).
There can be,
by the way, either (or
both) an outer necessity and an inner necessity. Self observation, with an
evocation of
conscience applied to whether we are being truthful to
ourselves,
will reveal whether an
inner necessity is to have the same weight as an outer one. This essay, in fact, was very much
produced out of
an inner necessity in connection with the delicate and subtle
presence
of Fullness and fullness of Presence, brought into the stream
of Time,
because of a Parsifal question that occurred to me regarding
the
pending conference on Ben Franklin (August 18-19, 2006), where
I live
in Fair Oaks, California. Yet, even in this work, I
encountered
Fire Trial elements, for latent and unredeemed ambitions
limited and
distorted my first versions of this essay. Only after I
had
recognized these ambitions and laughed at myself for them, did
matters
acquire a satisfactory to conscience moral clarity.
We need to keep
in mind that we remain of
the earth, even when the wind - the kingdom of heaven - is
blowing
through the soul. In our earthly dialogs, one with the
other, we
need to learn to just listen and not to always impose our own
opinions
upon the others freedom of thought (for parents of children
and others
in a teaching necessity, this will be different, sometimes).
We
can let the soul rest in wonder at what the Thou will say and
do.
So also with the invisible other-presence in the soul. In this way the outer
biography and
the inner biography more and more consciously harmonize their
naturally
interwoven music.
Life itself -
the biography - will demand of ordinary layered consciousness,
and in
harmony with the necessities of our karma of wounds, those
experiences
to be faced in which other-need and choice appear. If we
think
with the heart and will the good, Grace will come in the form
of those
other-needed intuitions - the deepening consciousness of what
other-presence wants to say into our inwardness, in
concordance with
our slowly growing and developing capacities, as is necessary
for
service to the Thou.
This is the
essence of the Fire Trial - a
burning away purification of self for other. Just as in
the Air
Trial we set aside attachment to a given thought content, so
in the
Fire Trial we give away our attachments to our own meaning -
we
dissolve the self descriptive concepts with which we
previously adorned
our i-AM, as if wearing a costume. Instead, we just
are.
We no longer are this or that, but just are. Each
favorite
self-name: father, mother, Anthroposophist, alchemist, lawyer,
ditch
digger - all these names of self are let go, using the craft
and art
acquired in the Air Trial. We do this in order to get
ready for
the first part of Not
I,
but Christ in me - the Not I
part. We burn away the I concepts, which by their very
nature are
limiting and mark us as not-free and are a beam in our own
eye-inside,
directed at ourselves.
We don't have
to think of ourselves as a
father or mother, for example, since the necessity of the
biography
places those tasks before us already. The inner
biography too,
with its ambitions, hopes, dreams and wishes, pulls us forward
as well.
There is as yet
no traditional
clairvoyant spiritual perception - the astral body is still
being
purified during the Fire Trial. What was the lower ego,
or that
which begins its path accompanied by the Shadow or
double-complex, has
more and more merged and identified itself with the higher ego
- the
self-participated aspect of conscience.
When we live
purely in Parsifal questions
(that is, poor in spirit), in the artistic mastery of our
antipathies
and sympathies, having set aside self importance and attending
to the
object of thinking with the intention to love, then thinking
is meet
with other-presence, as needed. This is the quite definite
inner
experience of the delicate and subtle presence of Fullness and
fullness
of Presence, which is described in the John Gospel as follows:
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; it's the same with everyone born
of the
breath John 3: 6-8
This Fire Trial is all the more painful, because we have become exposed via the previous layers (stages) of spiritual and character development, to a much deeper introspective understanding of our own desire body - our own astral body. We can now not only think within the other - the Thou, but also we can now think much deeper within our own soul - we are naked before our own introspective clarity of perception. That which remains unredeemed, and still yet outside the full and completed Fire Trial of purification, lies inwardly exposed to us. The descending conscience (like the descent of the dove in the Gospels) meets the rising lower ego, both seeking union and marriage; and this light from above, a kind of deep moral Grace, illuminates and warms all that is yet shadow in the soul. Emerson has put the bare bones of it like this in his lecture, The American Scholar: "For the instinct is sure, that prompts him to tell his brother what he thinks. He then learns that in going down into the secrets of his own mind he has descended into the secrets of all minds..."
*
Just as we learned to think about, with and within the other - the Thou, so we learn to think about, with and within ones own soul. Each skill, craft and art of thinking emerges from its corresponding Trial. The Earth Trial is a given, it is where most of us start. The Water Trial requires our first struggles with renunciation and the beginning, and delicate, expressions of love. The Air Trial takes us even further, to the abandonment of our favorite thoughts. Then we also renounce our excessive sense of Self, in the process of facing the Fire Trial. There we are also most exposed to our own other-Self, - the Shadow - which is now fully illuminated - no secrets whatsoever.
Let us
consider, briefly, some hints on
the encounter with the Shadow, from the point of view of the
Discipleship stream.
When Valentin
Tomberg was writing as an
anthroposophist, he described in his book Inner
Development, three aspects to the
Shadow: a
luciferic double, an ahrimanic double and a human double.
Later,
in his profoundly Christian Meditations
on
the Tarot he wrote of the tempter,
the
prosecutor and of egregores - that is of self-created psychic
parasites
in the soul (Steiner called these latter creatures, in Man
as
Symphony of the Creative Word:
cancers or
tumors of the soul).
When we think
discursively - talk
inwardly to ourselves, the unconscious works into the soul.
That
is, both the higher and the lower unconscious are present.
No
true thought, for example, can arise in the soul except for
its having
come to us via the living stream of thought (see Kuhlewind
here).
But, because in ordinary and fallen soul consciousness,
we are
bound (intentionally by the Gods so as to give us true freedom
on the
earth) into an inner darkness of spirit, we only can know
thought as it
falls out and down into the soul from its original living
element.
In discursive thought the living element has died.
Conscience,
another higher element of the
unconscious, also speaks into the soul via discursive thought,
as that
whispering still small voice.
At the same
time, the Shadow is active
here as well. When we struggle with our own
temptation or
tempt others (the luciferic double), or when we hurt
ourselves, or
others (prosecute ourselves) with mean thoughts (the ahrimanic
double),
these too come from the unconscious into discursive thinking.
When we fall, over and over again into temptation such
as
addiction or alcoholism, part of the soul becomes excessively
free of
the ego, for the ego is weak in many ways. This part can
be
called an egregore or a tumor of soul.
However, since
all manner of bad habits
(an ill temper, an abusive tongue) are also connected to tiny
tumors of
soul, I have began to feel that this language lacks what art
and a
sense of beauty needs to give to our conceptions, so above I
wrote only
of wounds, of our karma of wounds.
What the life
passages of the Trials give
to us is ever greater consciousness. We draw out of the
unconscious, through a more and more awake intention and
attention,
not only its lower elements, the Shadow and darkly cold
side of
temptations, prosecutions and wounds, but also the Light and
heart
warmed side, the stream of living thought and participated
conscience.
So, in facing
the Water Trial of the mote
and the beam we begin the work of discipleship, the work of
seeking
reintegration and reunion with the Divine Mystery Itself.
So also
with the Air Trial and the Fire Trial. Bit by bit we
perceive and
then let go what is dark in the unconscious, thereby
separating and
drawing into the light the gold of our growing
will-in-thinking.
The fruit of
each Trial remains with us,
and at each passage becomes deeper. The soul becomes a
rich
texture of layers of inner song and music in the form of ever
unfolding
capacities of will, in the corresponding creative cultivation
of
sublime elements in the feeling life, all interwoven with the
arising
and passing away of the breath stream of living thought.
The purified
will (an appropriately moral intention and attention) creates
heart
warmth in the soul-soil of feeling, out of which the light and
life
filled flower of thought is born.
And,
because we are first born into this process out of the Earth
Trial of
freedom, our whole passage in these Life Trials goes forward
in
freedom. It all evolves out of our choices. Recall
Emerson:
In self
trust all virtues are
comprehended.
Nothing
renounced has disappeared, but
rather the soul becomes an instrument, which the i-AM
in freedom learns to play. The notes and intervals
become primal
dynamic expressions of soul forces and capacities, many
generated out
of spiritual exercises. Just as we must practice
the use of
a material musical instrument, so we must practice the
capacities of
the soul. At the same time, many forces and capacities
(if not
more) have a quality that comes only from the moral tone of
the soul.
We purify the instrument of the soul as much as we learn
to how
use it. Both are needed, both are necessary. The
spiritual
exercises, that is the how as in
technique, has more
kinship with the teachings of the true Alchemists - the stream
of the
Kings, while the moral purity of the soul has more kinship
with the
teachings of Christ - the stream of the Shepherds.
Steiner's The
Philosophy
of Spiritual Activity is the
modern transformation of the Christ in me moral essence of the
John
Gospel, while Knowledge
of Higher Worlds is the modern
transformation
of the Rosicrucian Ideals of spiritual developmental
exercises.
While the latter has more kinship with the soul
nature of
Central Europe - the seeking to incarnate the Ideal, the
former
has more kinship with the soul nature of the American - the
need to act
morally in the world. Both are present everywhere in the
world,
it is just the mix and their proportions that vary from
one soul
gesture to another, in the wonder and mystery of the Threefold
World.
Let us make a
whole.
We become more
and more free as we
renounce and transform sympathies and antipathies, then as
well the
very thought content itself, until finally we sacrifice our
own
importance. Each act of renunciation is accompanied by a
corresponding and deeper capacity to love. Each act of
love,
beginning with the most simple appreciation of the other - the
Thou,
creates inner purity - inner light and warmth. We are in
the
process of learning to make of the soul a temple, and to fill
it with
created and cultivated feelings of reverence and wonder at not
only the
world of nature, but also the world of social community, the
stream of
karmic wounds and free destiny meetings with our companions in
life.
Ultimately, this inner and outer moral work leads us to
becoming
fully inwardly naked to ourselves in the Fire Trial (where
there is no
longer the possibility of escaping the Shadow), and as well
fully and
consciously naked to the other-presence (the
kingdom
of heaven is within you). But even in the face of the other-presence we are nevertheless completely free. The nature
of the
breath (the
other-presence) is to bring not only
a new
depth of comprehension, but ever more freedom, for we never
stop being
the principle willful agent of the thought content that arises
in the
soul. Overtime we become even freer and more creative -
a true
artist in thought.
The creation of
a human thought content
is the sole province of the 10th Hierarchy. Only in us,
and
through our love, does the Cosmos know Itself in the beauty of
human
thought. We were told this as long ago as Genesis
2:19-20, with
the symbolic picture that unto Adam is given the power of
naming every
living creature. We name the world, give it its human
meaning,
with every thought we source and author.
Here we can now
come to understand more
deeply the truth, beauty and goodness hidden in Christ's
comments in
response to the question of what is the most important
commandment: He
said to them, "You
are
to love your lord God with all your heart and all your spirit
and
all your mind. That is the important and first
commandment. [love other-presence] The second one is
similar:
You are to love those close to you as you love yourself. [love the Thou, the companions in life] All the law
and the
prophets hang from these two commands"
.
Matthew 22: 37-40.
What we really
learn is to participate
sacramentally in the arrival of the thought content in the
soul, which
becomes then ever new each time we truly think. We are,
in this,
inwardly born again and again and again. This living
thinking is
a perpetual rebirth of thought, which comes into being and
dies away -
a constant dying and becoming. We learn to unite with
this living
stream of thought, the living stream of breath within.
We give
ourselves over to it, in a participatory Rite - an artistic
soul dance
of sacred-heart thinking, and then discover the true secret of
the Fire
Trial, which has been hidden out in the open in the Gospels,
just in
this:
Now I bathe
you in the water to change hearts, but the one coming after me
is
stronger than me: I'm not big enough to carry his shoes.
He will
bathe you in holy breath and fire.
John
the Baptist: Matthew 3:11
leading us, through His Grace (holy breath within)
and His Love (as Artistic arranger of the Karma
of the Fire of Trials in our biographies), to:
Not I, but Christ in me.
*
"are we having fun yet?"*
(*many thanks to Bill Griffith's, Zippy the Pinhead,
for one of the
best statements of the
current Zeitgeist ever)
Epilogue:
Concerning the Immediate Future
I don't believe
anyone, who is seriously
thinking about what is going on in this climactic phase of the
end of
the first third of the epoch of the Consciousness Soul (the
Dawn of the
Third Millennium), will not be noticing that everything seems
to appear
to be getting worse and worse. History shows that
Civilizations
do undergo periods of intense crisis, and clearly we are in
such a
phase. In this part of the Seventh Day of Creation,
where we
stand on the cusp of leaving behind our spiritual childhood,
are we to
imagine in some fanciful way that such an Event is going to
happen
without a great deal of upheaval and change?
We live in a
epoch where each individual i-AM,
in
its own biography - both inner and outer, is able to pass
through
that baptism we know as trials of fire that can arise only in
this
particular way and only at this particular time (this is the
true cause
of the so-called population explosion, as an acquaintance once
said: "the
reason so many have
incarnated is that everyone wants to be at the party"). It is as if a Great Dance is now to go
through
a very special Moment of Transformation, with all the partners
in the
Dance having their individual roles (their biography), while
the Whole
Artistic Rendering, which really is only a backdrop (or
context) in
which the individual biographies appear - this Whole, when
viewed as a
Whole, seems to many to be some kind of potential end, to the
Earth and
to all humanity (as I wrote the first version of this
Epilogue, the
crisis connected to the discovery of acts of great evil,
torture and
humiliation, by Americans in Iraq, is just in its first stages
of
unfolding). But this hint of an End is just a seeming -
an easy
way for many to misinterpret this rise of chaos that
challenges us to
discover, out of our own thinking, the true meaning of Earth
existence.
There is a danger, however, to believing this time is an
End
Time, and we know this danger in the phenomena modern
psychology calls
the "self-fulfilling prophecy". The danger of such
beliefs
then (besides just being plain in error) is that we will form
a belief
and then act so as to see the fulfillment of that belief, thus
bringing
it about ourselves, while it would never otherwise have
happened on its
own.
In order for us
to have the greatest
opportunity to discover moral grace, freedom and love in a
clear
existential fashion in the biography (that is wake up to the
consciousness soul, the Christ Impulse and our own true
character - or
love engendered free moral grace), it is only in such Massive
Historical Chaos that this possibility can arise in a concrete
fashion
before the billions of i-AMs that
have chosen to
incarnate just in this time. To help make this clear,
let us
imagine a couple of specific examples.
In America
there is a common experience
in this time of economic globalization, namely the loss of
jobs.
Many people in America are undergoing big changes in
their work
life, such that their previous life style, in its economic
aspects, is
changing. This has actually been going on for some time,
and in
the present and immediate future appears to be accelerating.
People are being torn out of their comfortable ways of
life, and
confronted with large changes in circumstance. Pressure
is put on
marriages, and families are under increasing stress (this has
been true
in minority communities far longer than in Anglo - white -
communities,
a fact not to be ignored).
Let us review
once more this deep Mystery
of the Gospels: Matthew 10:34-40: "Do not think that I
have come
to bring peace on earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a
sword.
For I have come to set a man against his father, and a
daughter
against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her
mother-in-law;
and a man's foes will be those in his own household. He
who loves
father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who
loves son
or daughter more that me is not worthy of me; and he who does
not take
his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He who
finds his
life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will
find it.
He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me
receives
him who sent me" {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.}
Families are
not meant to impede the
unfolding of the i-AM, and as
individuality increases, so the cohesion of the
family must decrease. It is Christ in us, that needs to
unfold,
and it is Christ in between us that is the sword. Many
Christians
have believed that what they called the family values crisis
was caused
by outside evil in Society, but this view is false. The
true
cause is Christ, within and without, Who, in order to bring us
out of
our spiritual childhood, must first separate us - help us know
ourselves as independent individual human beings. Rudolf
Steiner
put it this way: ties of blood are passing away.
And now,
whatever relationship there is to be between individuals, must
arise
through the love engendered free acts of moral grace, that
learns to
see not the mother or the father, or the wife or the husband,
or the
son or the daughter, but instead the Christ Impulse within
each
individual i-AM, in spite of the
natural blood relation. We must learn to love the
Christ within the Thou, to be worthy of, and evoke, the Christ
within
our own inwardness. Did He not
teach
us: whatsoever
ye
do unto the least of these my brethren ye do so also unto me; and love your neighbor as
yourself.
When we combine these two teachings (as we must weave
together
all that He taught) how can we not know what He meant?
Yes, troubles
are everywhere. The
school which is Earth Existence is not only difficult, its
also a Mystery. All we need do is think of the ordinary
people
trying to survive in the war zone that has become Iraq.
Each day
brings to each biography moments of moral crisis. The i-AM
must make choices, and more and more frequently the choices
will set
family member against family member. The father will
urge the son
to help the family survive, fetching water, finding work and
food, but
the son may find his moral response in opposing the
occupation.
The mother will want the daughter to help with the
cooking and
cleaning, but the daughter may instead want to care for the
stranger
other, the wounded outsider. That many live under the
religion of
Islam (or any other Cultural influence), only means that the
Stage
setting experienced outwardly, and the given paradigm
(collection of
mental pictures and generalized concepts) experienced
inwardly, have a
special significance in the biography of those incarnated in
such
Cultural regions and backgrounds.
Some may have
noticed that little has
been said here regarding any deeper relationship between Islam
and
Christianity, in a way similar to the obvious similarities and
contrasts as regards Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism.
This is
made all the more needed (some kind of understanding of the
nature of
this relationship between Islam and Christianity) due to the
apparently
huge conflict in the present between these two cultures.
As near
as I can tell, this needed understanding of the deeper
relationship of
Islam and Christianity is in preparation. I have a
friend (the
one who sees Angels in playgrounds - remember "see, do"?), who must face the trials connected to living
into
this great question. From my own experience, I am well
aware that
a great deal must first be lived and learned before one is
ready to
stand before the world and illuminate such a thorny question.
Let
us all hope that she will be free to do so soon.
Should there be
any doubt that such an
inner relationship is possible between Islam and Christianity,
let me
quote from the Quoran (keeping what I have been writing above
about the
double in mind): "Qul a'udhu birabbin
nas. Malikin nas. Ilahin
nas. Min sharril waswasil khannas. Alladhi
yuwaswisu fi
sudurinnas. Minal jinnati wannas", or
in English: "Say,
I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind, the King of mankind, the
God of
mankind, from the mischief of the sneaking whisperer, who
whispers in
the hearts of mankind from among the jinn and mankind."
We share a
great deal just being human
beings, in spite of our outer religious and cultural
differences.
The biography
is lived day by day, moment
by moment. The Great Historic Moment in which modern
biographies
unfold is just a Painted Backdrop on a Stage. Wars,
conflicts,
corporate corruption - all that we see as evil is merely
context.
Yet, let us be grateful for it, for this context of
apparent evil
is what enters our souls and leads us to choices. If we
all lived
idyllic lives on tropical isles, the i-AM
would forever remain the same - a child.
Macro induced
Evil exists in the world to
force us to face the differences between that and the Good.
The
World is a great Pictograph, on a scale we can hardly imagine,
and the
tempters and prosecutors within induce us to give into our
karma of
wounds as part of the Play, so that the Not-Good can be
clearly seen
and distinguished. The sooner we get it, the sooner
Marco Evil
will cease to be necessary. We hold the near God Ahriman
in a
kind of bondage, as well as his aide Lucifer, to the extent we
do not
cultivate the garden of the soul. And, by the way, if
people
think this is hard to swallow, just wait a few incarnations.
Over the next
years conflict and chaos
will increase until some kind of peak is reached and
everything (and
everybody) wants to rest (there are suggestions in various
other-visions that the peak will occur about 2012). We
are in a
Divinely Orchestrated Rite of Passage, whose meaning is the
emergence
of the i-AM from out of its spiritual childhood. Yet,
the
tapestry which serves as the backdrop to our individual
biographies is
not the essence, in spite of what news readers believe.
What is
in the news is only a vain confusion of the foreground and the
background. So don't pay that much attention to what
Media thinks
it all means. The modern folk wisdom Think Globally, Act
Locally, has it exactly right.
Do understand the World, the Tapestry of Conflict and Disorder
(Think
Globally), but behave in your
biographies out of your own love engendered free
moral grace (Act
Locally), or as the Angel said to my
friend: "See,
Do."
The Moody
Blues, an English rock group
whose works I have described on my website, Shapes
in
the Fire, in an essay there called:
Hymns to
the Consciousness Soul, have this
line of
verse in their collected works: "...turn the Earth to
ash and
still commit no crime...". In
the
Seventh Day of Creation, we grow and become, wild flowers in a
Garden
we have yet to honestly appreciate for its real Truth, Beauty
and
Goodness.
Let's come at
this once more, from a
slightly different direction. The above mostly concerned
the
teaching function of the Seventh Day of Creation as regards
the
individual biography. Now let us look at the more
dramatic
elements of the stage backdrop, or historical context.
A lot of people are concerned about what they call Earth Changes. So, for example, we have some people paying attention to the changes in the features at the bottom of Yellowstone Lake in the Western United States (the bottom, according to some, has risen over 100 feet in a couple of decades, suggesting a new period of volcanism is pending), and similar kinds of phenomena. The geological history of the region suggests that if volcanism were to return to that region in a dramatic fashion, the area of immediate devastation might be as large as 600 miles in radius. Many of the same people are also concerned about global warming, and/or the possibility of an new ice age.
Most of this
thinking assumes either a
living Earth Being that is responding to our activity, or
mechanical
features of the Earth organization, suggesting a kind of cause
and
effect relationship between pollution and climate changes.
My way
of seeing this is a bit different.
First, when we
look at complex phenomena
that aren't behaving in accord with old patterns, this makes
me think
in the following way. Complex systems occasionally
change their
basic parameters. When they do this they usually first
begin to
oscillate rather wildly, with various factors getting
increasingly out
of tune, until a kind of climax is reached, after which a new
equilibrium arises. The Earth's climate and geological
features
are clearly complex systems.
In my view we
have to expand the factors
we include in the complex system of the physical Earth and
climate to
include our moral life and our life of thought and feeling.
My
view is that collectively, this aspect of humanity actually is
the
dominate feature of the whole complex system. Our
morality sits
at the upper (spiritual) level, and this quality descends
through
thought and feeling until there is a collective impression
made on the
level of material climate and geology.
We have to include our own moral activity - our way of life - as an aspect of the physical complexes and potential changes. And, given that everywhere we look it is clear we live too fast - too far outside wisdom and moral restraint - the possibilities do no look good. The Hopi have a word for our current situation: Koyaanisqatsi, or life out of balance.
In his
remarkable book on the Second
Coming, The Spiritual Event of the Twentieth
Century, Jesaiah Ben-Aharon writes:
"Now
when they identified
themselves with the situation of earthly humanity, the souls
who
remained true to [Archangel] Michael prefigured, in their
planetary
Earthly-Sun life, the great Sacrifice of Christ. They
walked
again in His steps as they did in former earthly lives, only
now the
order of following was reversed. They went before Him,
showing
Him the way, acting out of free and self-conscious human
decision, and
He followed in their steps only after they fully united
themselves with
the divided karma of Earth and humanity. Only then could
He offer
His sacrifice as the answer to the new, future question of
human
existence: the question concerning the mission and fate of
evil."
What this means in practice is that climate change and other Earth changes are going to come about because of our collective activity at the level of morality. We now decide, and the higher worlds will follow. This is what leaving our spiritual childhood means - what freedom truly means, - we are now responsible for what happens on the Earth.
The seer-singer
Bob Marly has an
interesting line of verse: "total destruction the only solution".
This then is
how I see these aspects of
the future. The Hopi Prophecy and oral history speaks of
evil
two-hearted people, whose activity then led to the destruction
of the
lands the Hopi lived in before their great migrations that led
them to
where they live now. When human evil comes too much to
the fore,
ordinary people can no longer tolerate this excess, and become
then
willing for the climate and Earth changes to occur. We
don't
exactly will the Earth changes, but we do permit them.
This is
the qualitative and moral aspect of the near future.
Recall
Emerson's remarks in his essay
Nature: "Nature
is
a thought incarnate and turns to thought again as ice become
water
and then gas. The world is mind precipitated and the
volatile
essence is forever escaping into the state of free thought."
Human evil is
rising. More and more
people are choosing to be evil, and to deny the Good and the
True.
Their excesses grow as well. Greed, fear of death,
Fallen
Eros, these and other dark impulses of the i-AM,
living
in the soul as nearly independent self-created wounds, more
and
more prey upon ordinary humanity. Since it is the
goodness
instinctively living in the meek (ordinary humanity), which
holds in
balance the world (from above through our collective moral
nature), the
more excessive the activities of those parts of humanity
consciously
choosing evil, the more we collectively are willing to allow
great
destruction to arise in order to stop these excesses. (Blessed are the meek,
for
they shall inherit the Earth.)
At a certain
point, we may collectively consent to deep Earth changes,
and we also may consent to many many crossing the
threshold of
death (into the afterlife) at the same time, in order to hold
back the
excesses of the evil two-hearted ones. These would
destroy the
Earth and humanity, with their arrogant ignorance, their
weapons of
mass destruction, their toying with the DNA of the food
supply, and the
thousand other completely unwise and grave errors common to
our time.
[At the time of my last revision of this part, the loss of 60%
of the
bees in the United States has just entered public awareness.]
At the same time we don't seem to be in full crisis mode yet. The moment of decision has not yet been reached. The peak of chaos will apparently arise about 2012, and if we follow the various cosmic clock features of Creation, that seems to be the time in which the oscillations will reach their wildest swings. All the same, nothing is set. We can still reach into the situation on an ordinary level, and make course corrections in the nature of civilization so that this crisis doesn't have to mean: total destruction the only solution.
We all, those
who dream dark dreams as
well as those who dream of the light, need to keep in mind the
folk
wisdom: be careful what you pray for, you just might get it.
Again, I speak from experience here.
Is there a
point?
Christ comes
not to bring peace, but a
sword - a sword that separates us one from the other, so that
our
individuality - our i-AM - can find its
center.
In aloneness we learn to stand. But then what?
Again it is all
about choice. Do we
remain in our individuality, or do we find ways to work
together, until
we discover how to build communities, not on the basis of mere
tradition, but out of love engendered free moral grace.
This too
is then the nature of the times, the context in which the
biography
unfolds. Do we stand alone against a sea of troubles, or
do we
stand together? Which do you think will serve all of us
best?
Now perhaps, one can see even deeper into why the Lord's Prayer begins Our Father, and why the Twelve Steps are all about community.
Recall again, the well known final words of St. Paul from I Corinthians 13: 13: "So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
Faith is a
profound and quite real force, as is Hope. But Love
penetrates
and rules them all from within, and there is no love without a
Lover, a
Beloved, and the Love in between them. Not I alone, but
we, with
Christ within and about us.
finis
Acknowledgments
The temptation
is to list everyone I ever
met, since I have been influenced and taught by all. One
could
begin, as they do at the Oscars, with my mother, Dorothy
Lillian Wendt
(Olson), and my father, Wallace Edwin Wendt, then my brothers
Doug
(eight years younger) and Lou (five years older).
Certainly my
wives, Tina (first and second wife) and Dawn (third wife).
Our
children: Marc, Doren and Jennifer by Tina, and Adam and
Gabriella by
Dawn. These children were and are all very special
teachers, and
I could write a book about what they have given me.
There are all
the class-mates at high school, such as Mike O., or the
friends at Law
School, especially Mike C., the friends at the Air Force
Academy, Bob
H. and Barry W.; and, then there are all the people I worked
with over
the years at my 30 plus jobs, which would have to include Rita
B. and
Karen N., who worked the graveyard shift with me at Brookside
Hospital
for many years. {you will notice I am just using last
initials, to keep
for them some privacy}
There are girl
friends, Sue B., Carla H.
and Candace C., who gave me much and did not always get back
what they
needed. Or the spiritual influences mostly through
books, such as
Steiner, Tomberg, Trungpa, Barfield, Lehrs, Bardon, Adams and
on and on
and on. A special mention for the writers Orson Scott
Card and
Ursula K. LeGuin is also in order. Then there is the
Moody Blues
(Graeme Edge, Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas, John Lodge and Justin
Hayward)
...what can be said? They held me together in all manner
of
periods of darkness, and still provide a great deal of peace
and joy.
Friends from
the anthroposophical
movement, such as Michael B. and Michael F. while in Fair
Oaks, CA.
Carl Stegmann of course for those who know his work in
The Other
America.
In the last years, my friends through the Center for American Studies, especially Stuart W. and Steve B. Of particular note have to be those who I have encountered in Internet discussion groups over the last seven years, which would be a very long list, but must especially include Catherine M. and Stephen C. Even Dan D. and his cohorts at PLANS need a mention - their opposition clarified much.
Latest, but not
the least by any means:
Earlyfire (Harvey B.), who taught me that insight sings and
gave me the
words source and author as verbs. Finally, a reminder to
the
reader of the dedication of this book to Kelly, dear friend.
This is not to
overlook the many
spiritual companions one has a such a journey as mine (Christ,
the
Mother etc. etc. etc.). They don't seek either
recognition or
credit, but at the least I should write here how grateful I am
to all
that they have given, most often quite anonymously. And
of
course, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John certainly had
something to
contribute.
Then there's
the man with clear eyes...
:-) [See the Moody Blues album Octave, song: Steppen' in a Slide Zone]
*
*
*
One last
thing...hidden here at the very
end for whoever has stuck it through this far. This book
is, if
you read it carefully, not about what the world should be in
the
future, but about how the world is now, if you just lift up
your head
and look around and actually look at it...don't quite believe
me?
All you need to do is will the good, and
think with your
heart (and laugh at yourself at least once each day).
John 16: 12-15
"I have
much more to say to
you, but you can't bear it just yet. But when the other
comes,
the breath of truth, he will guide you in the ways of all
truth,
because he will not speak on his own, but will speak what he
hears and
announce to you what's coming. He will glorify me,
because he
will take of what is mine and announce it to you.
Everything the
Father has is mine: that's why I said he will take of what is
mine and
announce it to you."
Oh, and by the
way, if you are concerned
about the future and surviving what seems to be coming, try
this
website as a opening investigation of the survival web ring:
http://www.standeyo.com/News_Files/Hollys.html
end story
BICYCLES
- a
Children's Christmas Story for Adults -
This story is
dedicated to Gabriella, Catherine Rose, Ross Gregory, and
Adam, who
were on my mind Christmas Eve, 1996, as their fathers (of
which I must
confess I was one) were absent from home for the Season. It
was written
the following Christmas Morning. It
is
best received read aloud to others, or have others read it
aloud to
us.
There once was
a girl, who found herself
weeping in the dark, alone in her room.
This is nothing
unusual. Many people, not
just children, can be found weeping, alone with their pain in
the dark
of the night.
But there was a
difference. Although it
was not a difference as infrequent as we might imagine.
And the
difference was this. While she
was weeping an Angel appeared, sitting quietly at the end of
her bed.
It was quite a while before the girl noticed the Angel. Yet, this did not bother the Angel, who had been if we do not mind, created out of patience and joy.
After a time
the girl stopped weeping,
and the two simply looked at each other for a while.
Finally the
Angel reached out and touched
the girl on the shoulder, and asked: "What is troubling you
child?".
Now it is true that the Angel already knew the answer to this question, but the Angel also knew that the girl needed to talk about her grief.
This was the
girl's answer.
"It is Christmas Eve." she said, "My father and mother have quarreled and my father is not here. I don't even know when, or if, he is coming home."
At this the girl, who was at that very awkward age between being a child and being a young woman, began to weep again, even more deeply then before.
After a while
she stopped, looked at the
Angel and asked: "Why?" and, then began weeping again.
Now you may
wonder why the girl wasn't
troubled or confused by someone being in her room at night.
The fact is
that when you meet an Angel there is no question about what is
happening. No doubt, no confusion. Angels aren't like anything
else
except Angels.
This is how the
Angel answered the girl.
"Are you ever
bad?" asked the Angel.
"Yes", she
said, a bit hesitantly.
"Are you ever
bad on purpose, knowing you
are being bad?"
"Yes", she
said, almost whispering now.
"Are you ever
bad by accident, not having
thought about what might happen?"
"Yes", she
said, a little more confident.
"Do bad things
ever sometimes happen even
though you were trying as hard as possible to do something
good?"
"Yes", she
said, back to herself finally.
Then they sat
together for a while. She
was thinking and the Angel just was.
"O.K.", she
eventually said. "Mother and
father aren't trying to hurt me, and I didn't do something
wrong."
"Right", said
the Angel.
"But", she
said, having just reinvented
philosophy, "Why is the world such a terrible place?"
After a very
long pause the Angel said,
"It's because of the bicycles."
Now this was said with a straight face, as much as an Angel can be said to have a straight face, their normal countenance being filled with patient joy.
Even so, the
girl's dark mood broke and
she laughed, and then caught in this odd feeling she tried to
stop and
ended up almost falling out of bed because she was giggling so
much.
Again there was a passage of time, so that the girl could ask her next question without breaking up. It actually took several attempts before she could get the question out.
"What do you
mean by "it's the
bicycles"?" she said, pulling up the hem of her nightgown, as
much to
distract herself as to dry the tears of both suffering and
mirth.
"Well", said
the Angel, "As you have
guessed the bicycles are invisible, being made out of ideas
and dreams,
hope and despair, all stuck together with bits of conscience
and just
plain stubbornness.
"Everyday
people wake up and ride around
on their invisible bicycles, forgetting the bicycles are there
and then
because they have forgotten them, people just keep banging
into each
other.
"Soon all the bicycles are in great disrepair. Some with flat tires, some with crooked wheels, and some without even handlebars to steer by.
"It takes a great deal of courage for people, for mothers and fathers, to get up in the morning and ride their bicycles out into life each day. A great deal of courage."
Then the Angel
was quiet again and so was
the girl.
After a while
the girl, having graduated
from philosophy to theology, asked: "Why does God let this go
on? Why
doesn't he fix the bicycles or make people learn how to ride
them
without banging into each other?"
"Hmmm." said
the Angel
Now before you
imagine the Angel is
pausing to think, I should tell you that is not what was
happening.
Angels do think, but when they do something happens. For
Angels
thinking creates. The reason the Angel said "Hmmm" was so the
girl
would first reflect a little about what she had said, before
the Angel
answered her.
"Do you ever
talk to God?" asked the
Angel.
"I think so,"
said the girl, tentative
again, and rightly so.
"You should you
know.", said the Angel.
"You can't interrupt him, or bother him when he's doing
something else.
He always listens. Always. And when you talk to him he never
interrupts
you, never tells you he's heard it before or done it himself
or knows
more than you. You couldn't ask for a better listener. And
when you're
done he doesn't give advice, or tell you what to do, or
criticize what
you've done or tell you, you aren't adequate. He just listens,
and
accepts you and loves you, whatever you have to say."
Then the Angel
asked another question.
"Do you ever
get angry at God?"
"What!"
exclaimed the girl. "Get angry at
God !?!"
"Of course."
said the Angel. "God loves
you and wants your love. People who love each other get to be
angry
with each other. It's a way to care. God doesn't mind your
anger. Now
your indifference? That's another matter."
"O.K." said the
girl, now a little more
in touch with her own frustration. "But you still haven't said
anything
about repairing the bicycles or giving lessons on riding
them."
"Didn't need
to" said the Angel. "All
kinds of excellent repair and riding manuals already out
there. There's
the Bible, and the Vedas, and the Torah, and the Koran, and
the Sutras,
and the..."
"O.K.. I get
it." she said, interrupting
the Angel, who didn't mind at all. Then she paused and thought
a little.
"All right."
she said. "This is what
you've said. The reason the world is so difficult is because
we all
have our own ideas and dreams and conscience and stubbornness,
and when
we go out and ride these "bicycles" in life we bang into each
other, or
ride over each others feet, because we have forgotten about
these
invisible things. But if we want riding lessons and repair
instruction,
that information is already there. We just have to use it.
Right?"
"Right." said
the Angel.
"O.K." said the
girl, after a very deep
sigh, "Just one more question."
"Granted God is
the best listener in the
world, always available and never critical. But how come he
never
answers me?"
This last was
spoken with a great deal of
anguish, as only the very young can feel at the impossible
burdens they
sense when they contemplate growing up and being really free
and
responsible for themselves.
Again the Angel
waited for a while, as
silent and beautiful as a starry winter night.
"How well do
you listen?" the Angel
answered. "He always answers you, always. You just don't
always hear
him. He answers in many ways. With the continued breath of
life, or
with a fading sunset. With the touch of a breeze on the cheek
or a
crash of thunder. In the most quite place inside yourself he
whispers
to you. More softly than the endless beat of your heart he
sings to you
in the voice of the dancing colors that delight the eye. You
eat his
answers for breakfast and when you walk barefoot through the
dew wet
grass his answers touch your feet.
"Do you have
eyes, ears? Or if not even
these, you have the thoughts you choose. You believe or not.
Is that
not a great gift itself? To have faith or not, hope or not,
charity or
not, according to your own will. God does answer. With life,
with
freedom. And yes, with sorrow and with pain. Are these not
gifts as
well?"
Again there was
a harmony of silence
between the two of them. Then the girl smiled and looked
mischievously
at the Angel.
"Do you have a
bicycle?" she asked.
Then the Angel
laughed. And outside the
girl's window the birds sang to greet with joy the first hints
of dawn
on Christmas morning.