I heard of a new book written by a scholar that was said to hate Paul almost as much as myself, so I went out and bought it. “How Jesus Became Christian” by Barrie Wilson. Here is a hint – don’t buy a book written by anybody who doesn’t have an adult name. “Barrie”!? I should not have been surprised to find the book intellectually immature.
Yes, any book that hates Paul isn’t all bad. But the attack is continued on against Jesus also. What is there to hate about Jesus, you might ask? Well, Jesus was not the Messiah. The argument here assumes that God is All Powerful and that if God had intended Jesus to be the Messiah, than God would have used every miraculous power to impose Jesus as Messiah. Apparently God should have been willing to kill anybody who stood in Jesus’ way. Because Jesus had failed to assert himself as a Messiah, that is, because he was not globally recognized as the Messiah, therefore, he in fact was not the Messiah. While the first part of the Book maintains that Christianity is a false Religion because of the misrepresentations of Paul, the book goes on to leave us the sad impression that even at the very most there had never been anything there anyway but the pretensions of an impostor messiah.
At least we are allowed a Historical Jesus … its not denied that there was some guy named Jesus who managed to start up a minor splinter of a Jewish Sect that lasted several centuries before it was forgotten by history. How inspiring.
In his last chapter concerning what we can salvage of Christianity, it is that we can acknowledge the Jesus was a Jew and out of respect for that, Christians should realize they should not be anti-Semitic. Hmmmmm. A Religion whose sole purpose would be to renounce itself in giving all respect to another Religion, or rather to an Ethnic Group with their own rather Exclusive God. Honestly, I don’t think it would work too well. Sooner or later the Gentiles would realize that they are giving respect to a Religion that returns to them no respect, even to the point of denying them a God! While the Jews have a God – the Only God – it is understood that there is nowhere recognized any God of the Gentiles, and that the One God that does exist, exists only for the Sons of Jacob. Really!? This is where Intellectual Maturity comes into play. If Jesus was nothing because he was NOT the Messiah, then does not the same argument have equal play in evaluating Jews and Judaism as a whole? If Judaism never produced a Messiah, then what need has it of any Gentile Respect? While it had been understood that Jesus WAS the Messiah, then Christians could be persuaded to begrudge the Jews some little bit of respect, which certainly has been the case as is shown by the Gentiles have accepted as Canonical Scripture the purely Jewish Books of the Old Testament. But in this new perspective, that Jesus was some itty-bitty footnote of forgotten Jewish History, than this is enough to consign all of Judaism to the Dustbin of Old Failed Ancient Religions, for as we see it today without any Sentimentality of Connection to an Authentic Christ, Judaism is only a Religion of an insular and selfish people who have survived apart only because of the intensity of their Hate which forbids them to let their sons or daughters marry anybody besides themselves. A Religion of Love they are not. They have succeeded only as a Religion of Ethnic Hate, and of those I am sure we have enough already.
Oh, but why can’t we all become Jews? Well, as they say, somebody has to pay retail.
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Reasonableness of Pessimism and Barbarism
To simplify the difference between Civilized and Barbarian Institutions, we have only look at their regards for population density – Civilizations adopt institutions which maximize population density whereas Barbaric Institutions, while not overtly admitting so much, depend upon sustaining low densities of population. Now, to be clear on this, often Barbarism does not positively and consciously design institutions that would limit population, but rather it is the failure to adopt Civilized Institutions to deal with high levels of population density that thereby default to de facto barbarism – as soon as the effective Population Density exceeds the ability of Society to deal with the needs of a Dense Population, then checks to that population will more or less automatically take over. One does not have to positively plan for Wars, Plagues, Rebellions, murder and mayhem. Such things occur given the absence of Positive Institutions to prevent them. Barbarism, for the most part is simply the void of Civilization.
However, some Barbarism is in fact intentional. Institutions set up to Prevent the establishment of Civilized Institutions are in fact Barbarian. Much of Western Liberal Democracy is Barbaric, when one evaluates it for ultimate effect. Designed to strip most of the people of their share of wealth in order to concentrate all measures of value to the top few percent of the population, then providing for police and armies to control or to eventually murder off the greater part of the populations when they should go into rebellion… such is a conscious and intentional Barbarism. In America it is perfected, by making it a matter of Public Policy to deprive most of the people of Health Care, disease is given a free hand to sweep away unwanted Population Densities.
Yes, it does seem paradoxical, that ‘Democracy’ is used as a weapon against the people. We have only to notice that it is the Wealthiest and Most Selfish segments of the Population that are so espoused to Democracy – and we can conclude that this is because they have found a way to utterly control it and exploit it. How? Well, although the People do in fact vote, it is the Wealthy Controlling Classes that decide who it is that runs for office. Yes, there are Left Wings and Right Wings, but as I heard it recently described, they are all the wings of the Same Old Bird. I would trust Democracy so much more if the classes most engaged in advancing the Cause of Barbarism Exploitation were not so unequivocally in support of Democracy and for its spread to all of the World.
Indeed, to be cynical about it, perhaps it is their wish to impose a World Wide Democracy in order to weaken all traditional Institutions of Civilization where they had ever managed to take hold.
Why would anybody prefer Barbarism? Well, sorry to say, Barbarism is the Deal with the Devil. When Barbarism is able to exert itself, to eliminate the burden of high population densities, then the results for the few survivors can be rather appealing… for a generation or two until population pressures re-exert themselves. But at the close of major plagues or major wars, land opens up and labor becomes dear – everyone makes out like a bandit – Cheap Land and High Wages. Yes, the nine out of ten people who die wouldn’t like the deal they got, but they aren’t alive to complain. History only records the delight of the Survivors who find so much stuff to pick up and take home for themselves. Cities of Gold have collapsed in ruin, but the survivors, previously of the lowest classes, couldn’t be happier but to rummage through the rubble and grab a few candlesticks. The Glory of Freedom!
So, Barbarism does have an appeal… for the optimistic who take it for granted that they will be the one’s who will survive… sometimes hedging their bets with cellars full of horded food, guns and ammo. Then, additionally, these glorious moments of Barbarism are historically troubling, as they are recorded as something of Golden Ages. It is supposed that these People were Happy not because they were lucky survivors, but because they were Freedom Loving Warriors or some such blithering nonsense. Look at America today – their collective prosperity an accident of discovering a virtually empty continent at a time when Europe was destroying itself with a series of suicidal wars, but if you ask any American, they insist that America is great because they are such dedicated Barbarians – Freedom Loving People who will do anything to stifle institutions that would allow for Civilized levels of Population Density. Happy entirely by accident, they think it is because their Selfishness was some kind of a Virtue.
But the Problem with Barbarism’s Deal with the Devil, is that in the absence of any intentional institution for either providing for Population or for keeping Population within certain prescribed limits, then the cycle of massive de-population is bound to re-occur, not really requiring more than 4 or 5 generations… barely more than a hundred years. For instance, the Black Death carried away almost half the Europe’s Population, and while the surviving generation was somewhat left in shock, the next generation was ecstatically happy with their prosperity. Things were so Free and Easy that what were left of Civilized Institutions were seen as obtrusive and senselessly unnecessary. Love of Freedom won over any sense of Security in Order. But it didn’t take more than 200 years before population was again at dangerous levels, and without the previous respect for Civilized Institutions that had once been able to support such levels. There occurred the Fall of Catholic Civilization and the wars and rebellions have not really stopped ever since – Europe has been using internal conflict to keep its populations at moderate levels, never reaching the levels of Asian Societies. When Western Propaganda thanks its Armed Forces for Freedom and Happiness, it is True, but in a sense much more sinister than I am sure is intended – the true sense is “Thank You for Killing Yourselves and Each Other to make more room for the rest of us”.
So, anyway, there are those who suppose that the World is coming to a major traumatic cataclysm of Apocalyptic proportions that will carry away the vaster part of the troubling population levels, and that after this huge purge, this vast cleansing, the elect few survivors will be Happy. Well, yes, they will be. But I tend to see this pessimistically. The process is entirely negative. With no new Civilized Institutions put in place to guide the subsequent growth, the same disasters can be expected again, and perhaps even worse, as the Happy Glories of a fleeting Barbarian Golden Age serve only to discredit and remove whatever had remained of Civilized Institutions.
.
It would be preferable to emplace Institutions for dealing with these uncomfortable levels of Population Density – planned economies, public health care, limiting child birth – putting the World on a strict budget. Nobody would really be happy, but everyone would live. Yes, hope could be planned for in the long term. By imposing a strict budget to limit new population increases, then more benefits could accrue as the overcrowded numbers decline over time in a controlled way. Or the political decision could be made to keep population always at a maximum… a dangerous balance on the razor’s edge. I think that China and India have met with the inevitable future of Civilization in that they have taken conscious and positive control of their population growths with various childbirth limiting programs.
But as reassuring it is to hope and believe for the best, unfortunately, the trajectory of decline toward War, Rebellion, Crime and Disease seems too steep to stop. There is not even the slightest hint of a move toward implementing Civilized Institutions. The Forces of Barbarism seem very much planted at the Helm, at least in West where the sworn Barbarians of Free Masonry have been calling all the shots for Centuries, even if somewhat below the Surface of Appearances. The East, while culturally and historically more inclined to adopt Civilized Institutions, will probably be unable to stand up to the West, which I suppose will not permit itself to die quietly, but will lash out at the rest of the World in a frenzy of Over-Powering Military Reaction. Then, if the East does survive better than the West, the appeal of Open Land and Scarcity of Labor will forestall any necessity for adopting Civilized Institutions, and the Cycle of Barbarism will re-emerge again, East or West.
In conclusion, Barbarism is so easy, and it’s Golden Ages occur again and again, everyone remembering the few Living, forgetting the many Dead, that there is never any great momentum established for putting in place Civilized Institutions. So, overall, I am rather pessimistic.
As a last word I should mention that the UFO Aliens captured at Roswell, New Mexico in the United States were purported to have written of their Civilization, some several million years old. Little has been hinted of their Civilization, and it is rumored that the primary reason why the United States denies the U.F.O. Aliens is because they suppose it necessary to deny and suppress any model or idea of that Civilization, which is not very similar to Liberal Democracy dominated by Corporate, Zionist and Gun Interests. (Besides, the Free Masons having done everything they could to discredit all of the World’s Civilizations, in order to install their own self serving Barbarism, that we could little expect them to allow the published detail of an Other Worldly Civilization, and particularly that of one that has succeeded so well and for so long.) But it’s been said that the U.F.O. Aliens deny that we Human Beings here on Earth have ever had even our first Civilization. As they said, if we would ever once tasted of Civilization, we certainly would never go back. But what I wish we could find out is what they, the Aliens, did some millions of years ago to spark their own Civilization. What was it that finally made them all work together, instead of doing what is so much more easy – to play “Last Man Standing Gets to Be Happy”. What makes living beings love one another instead of hording food and collecting guns?
However, some Barbarism is in fact intentional. Institutions set up to Prevent the establishment of Civilized Institutions are in fact Barbarian. Much of Western Liberal Democracy is Barbaric, when one evaluates it for ultimate effect. Designed to strip most of the people of their share of wealth in order to concentrate all measures of value to the top few percent of the population, then providing for police and armies to control or to eventually murder off the greater part of the populations when they should go into rebellion… such is a conscious and intentional Barbarism. In America it is perfected, by making it a matter of Public Policy to deprive most of the people of Health Care, disease is given a free hand to sweep away unwanted Population Densities.
Yes, it does seem paradoxical, that ‘Democracy’ is used as a weapon against the people. We have only to notice that it is the Wealthiest and Most Selfish segments of the Population that are so espoused to Democracy – and we can conclude that this is because they have found a way to utterly control it and exploit it. How? Well, although the People do in fact vote, it is the Wealthy Controlling Classes that decide who it is that runs for office. Yes, there are Left Wings and Right Wings, but as I heard it recently described, they are all the wings of the Same Old Bird. I would trust Democracy so much more if the classes most engaged in advancing the Cause of Barbarism Exploitation were not so unequivocally in support of Democracy and for its spread to all of the World.
Indeed, to be cynical about it, perhaps it is their wish to impose a World Wide Democracy in order to weaken all traditional Institutions of Civilization where they had ever managed to take hold.
Why would anybody prefer Barbarism? Well, sorry to say, Barbarism is the Deal with the Devil. When Barbarism is able to exert itself, to eliminate the burden of high population densities, then the results for the few survivors can be rather appealing… for a generation or two until population pressures re-exert themselves. But at the close of major plagues or major wars, land opens up and labor becomes dear – everyone makes out like a bandit – Cheap Land and High Wages. Yes, the nine out of ten people who die wouldn’t like the deal they got, but they aren’t alive to complain. History only records the delight of the Survivors who find so much stuff to pick up and take home for themselves. Cities of Gold have collapsed in ruin, but the survivors, previously of the lowest classes, couldn’t be happier but to rummage through the rubble and grab a few candlesticks. The Glory of Freedom!
So, Barbarism does have an appeal… for the optimistic who take it for granted that they will be the one’s who will survive… sometimes hedging their bets with cellars full of horded food, guns and ammo. Then, additionally, these glorious moments of Barbarism are historically troubling, as they are recorded as something of Golden Ages. It is supposed that these People were Happy not because they were lucky survivors, but because they were Freedom Loving Warriors or some such blithering nonsense. Look at America today – their collective prosperity an accident of discovering a virtually empty continent at a time when Europe was destroying itself with a series of suicidal wars, but if you ask any American, they insist that America is great because they are such dedicated Barbarians – Freedom Loving People who will do anything to stifle institutions that would allow for Civilized levels of Population Density. Happy entirely by accident, they think it is because their Selfishness was some kind of a Virtue.
But the Problem with Barbarism’s Deal with the Devil, is that in the absence of any intentional institution for either providing for Population or for keeping Population within certain prescribed limits, then the cycle of massive de-population is bound to re-occur, not really requiring more than 4 or 5 generations… barely more than a hundred years. For instance, the Black Death carried away almost half the Europe’s Population, and while the surviving generation was somewhat left in shock, the next generation was ecstatically happy with their prosperity. Things were so Free and Easy that what were left of Civilized Institutions were seen as obtrusive and senselessly unnecessary. Love of Freedom won over any sense of Security in Order. But it didn’t take more than 200 years before population was again at dangerous levels, and without the previous respect for Civilized Institutions that had once been able to support such levels. There occurred the Fall of Catholic Civilization and the wars and rebellions have not really stopped ever since – Europe has been using internal conflict to keep its populations at moderate levels, never reaching the levels of Asian Societies. When Western Propaganda thanks its Armed Forces for Freedom and Happiness, it is True, but in a sense much more sinister than I am sure is intended – the true sense is “Thank You for Killing Yourselves and Each Other to make more room for the rest of us”.
So, anyway, there are those who suppose that the World is coming to a major traumatic cataclysm of Apocalyptic proportions that will carry away the vaster part of the troubling population levels, and that after this huge purge, this vast cleansing, the elect few survivors will be Happy. Well, yes, they will be. But I tend to see this pessimistically. The process is entirely negative. With no new Civilized Institutions put in place to guide the subsequent growth, the same disasters can be expected again, and perhaps even worse, as the Happy Glories of a fleeting Barbarian Golden Age serve only to discredit and remove whatever had remained of Civilized Institutions.
.
It would be preferable to emplace Institutions for dealing with these uncomfortable levels of Population Density – planned economies, public health care, limiting child birth – putting the World on a strict budget. Nobody would really be happy, but everyone would live. Yes, hope could be planned for in the long term. By imposing a strict budget to limit new population increases, then more benefits could accrue as the overcrowded numbers decline over time in a controlled way. Or the political decision could be made to keep population always at a maximum… a dangerous balance on the razor’s edge. I think that China and India have met with the inevitable future of Civilization in that they have taken conscious and positive control of their population growths with various childbirth limiting programs.
But as reassuring it is to hope and believe for the best, unfortunately, the trajectory of decline toward War, Rebellion, Crime and Disease seems too steep to stop. There is not even the slightest hint of a move toward implementing Civilized Institutions. The Forces of Barbarism seem very much planted at the Helm, at least in West where the sworn Barbarians of Free Masonry have been calling all the shots for Centuries, even if somewhat below the Surface of Appearances. The East, while culturally and historically more inclined to adopt Civilized Institutions, will probably be unable to stand up to the West, which I suppose will not permit itself to die quietly, but will lash out at the rest of the World in a frenzy of Over-Powering Military Reaction. Then, if the East does survive better than the West, the appeal of Open Land and Scarcity of Labor will forestall any necessity for adopting Civilized Institutions, and the Cycle of Barbarism will re-emerge again, East or West.
In conclusion, Barbarism is so easy, and it’s Golden Ages occur again and again, everyone remembering the few Living, forgetting the many Dead, that there is never any great momentum established for putting in place Civilized Institutions. So, overall, I am rather pessimistic.
As a last word I should mention that the UFO Aliens captured at Roswell, New Mexico in the United States were purported to have written of their Civilization, some several million years old. Little has been hinted of their Civilization, and it is rumored that the primary reason why the United States denies the U.F.O. Aliens is because they suppose it necessary to deny and suppress any model or idea of that Civilization, which is not very similar to Liberal Democracy dominated by Corporate, Zionist and Gun Interests. (Besides, the Free Masons having done everything they could to discredit all of the World’s Civilizations, in order to install their own self serving Barbarism, that we could little expect them to allow the published detail of an Other Worldly Civilization, and particularly that of one that has succeeded so well and for so long.) But it’s been said that the U.F.O. Aliens deny that we Human Beings here on Earth have ever had even our first Civilization. As they said, if we would ever once tasted of Civilization, we certainly would never go back. But what I wish we could find out is what they, the Aliens, did some millions of years ago to spark their own Civilization. What was it that finally made them all work together, instead of doing what is so much more easy – to play “Last Man Standing Gets to Be Happy”. What makes living beings love one another instead of hording food and collecting guns?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Creating a Better God
Perhaps the reason there are so many Atheists is because Atheism seems so plausible, that so many people see no clear signs of there being a God. But the real problem may be that they do not know what to look for, that their very conception of what God is or would be misleads them. They may not be looking in the right place, or they may not know what they are looking for, not realizing that they passed it over because they did not recognize it when they saw it, as in the expression “they would not know God if He were to bite them on the ass”. So we need to ask ourselves if there is another way of anticipating or visualizing God besides the traditional way. How might God be hiding from our expectations?
Well, first let’s look at our traditional way of conceiving of God? In the West God is envisioned as a collection of all positive absolutes – All Powerful, All Loving, All Knowing, and All Decisive, the Grand Being behind the notion that everything has meaning, and that everything has a purpose, and all is as it should be. Because of God we live in the ‘best of all possible world’s’. Rich people use such a notion of God to justify and entrench their privileges, while also concluding that God must have His reasons for hating the poor. The Poor themselves more often than not suppose God is either testing them with challenges or building their character by providing them with a kind of resistance training.
Well, such a God must be up against a huge barrage of constraints, because it seems clear enough to most people, that we live in a very complexly troubled world. If some people do seem blessed, then we can hardly determine any good reason for it, and those who are apparently under some curse, well, they too may seem all too blameless. And it had never been much better but had probably been even worse most of the time – an odd condition for the Best of All Possible World’s under the dominion of a Wise and Good God. So what is God’s problem?
First, let’s become clearer on what we suppose is the nature of God. Many spiritualist traditions envision God as ethereal and spiritual, and this in contradistinction to the idea that the World is material and basic. The early Christians, and the Greek Philosophers with their Platonic notions of the Logos, actually agreed on this issue, of God being Ethereal – made of the substance of thought and dreams.
Here is where we should apply some common sense. Here we need to ask ourselves what influences what. Does Thought influence Matter or does Matter influence Thought? Well, isn’t it easier to suppose that massive structures of gravitational electromagnetic clusters could more easily influence the vague nebulous Mists of the Ethereal then to believe that such insubstantial wisps of quasi-nothingness could affect the massive solids of the World? It seems likely we have been looking at this Theology completely backwards, seeing cause and effect in mirror image, supposing that the Spiritual was the Creative Element, indeed, that God, the Core of Spirit, was the Ultimate Creator, when, quite actually, the Spiritual has been the created product of the Material. It’s the substance which influences the spiritual and not the other way around. We’ve had it backwards.
I once read an amusing, if blasphemous, anecdote that goes back to perhaps the earliest Civilization, the Sumerian. It seems that one citizen had discerned a contradiction between all of the sacrifices to the Gods being asked of the public and the subservience to the Gods that was also being demanded. So there written on one of the small clay tablets was the thought that if God had to beg his food like a dog, then God should be whipped like a dog, and taught to do tricks for his dinner just like any other dog. Perhaps there is some truth here, although our Mesopotamian Friend hardly had presented much of an expansive argument. But lets stay with the metaphor for awhile, that is, comparing God with Man’s Best Friend. What if God really needed to be trained, cultivated, nourished – not being seen at his best unless treated as a cherished pet and given a certain degree of discipline and character formation?
Yes, God may consist in the Ethereal and Spiritual, but all of the real power may be with the Material, and if God ever attains to any significant power it is because this power had been imparted by the Material World. Indeed, the Vedas, the World’s most ancient Religious Literature, states clearly that God’s Power comes from Sacrifice – that it is Man that energizes God and not the other way around.
This may help us to better understand Religious History and our own Religious Current Events. When a Civilization can get together in a common prayer and a common religious Vision, then, in a sense, God becomes Solidified. With so many people thinking similarly, the Collective Consciousness crystallizes a God of the People’s Moral Consensus. God is a Collective Phenomena.
What happens when Barbarism and Individualism reigns? What happens when education breaks down and all unifying culture collapses in skepticism or just plain ignorance? Well, if there ever had been a God, then that God simply evaporates. Yes, each individual may have his own Religion and his own God, but without the Multiplier Effect of Common Communal Belief, then each person’s separate God is too small to matter. It is like a hundred thousand batteries that if wired together would out-surge a bolt of lightening bolt, but just one little single cell battery isn’t enough to run a toy.
But in Ages and Cultures that had a great degree of Religious Unity and Intensity, then a certain amount of Power was communicated into the Spirit World and that power became manifested in Saints, that found a way to tap into it, and Spiritual Apparitions which are probably to be best compared to condensations of Ethereal Substance or Flash Points. Or, if we are hesitant to attribute any quality of Matter to the Spirit, then we can limit these manifestations of Spirit to being phenomena of Consciousness – that these Divine Apparitions may consist in the quasi-substance of what we would otherwise call Delusion – the Substance of Dreams, of Visions, of Thought Itself.
Yes, yes, yes… it is objected that if something is not Material then it is not real. Science equates delusional phenomena with random and arbitrary nothingness. But if a phenomena contains elements of coherent order, substantial or not, then that very coherent order is in itself something of meaning which needs to be respected and understood. We need to have more respect for such Objective Experience, and so if a thousand people all have the very same experience, even if only subjective, even if dismissible as just a Common Delusion, or Collective Hallucination, then the reality of that consensus needs to be valued and appreciated, and if Science has not yet found the tools to quantify such a phenomena, then that is an indictment of Science, and not Religion. After all, Galileo would be the first condemn as silly any person who maintained that Empirical Phenomena was to be discounted only because an investigating Philosopher was unable to assemble a means of verification. Galileo invented the Telescope to make his Research quantifiably possible. Today’s scientists need to stop their endless bitching and invent the Telescope of the Spirit. So much consensus regarding empirical subjective experience cannot be random and of nothing.
But if we accept that the Spiritual is secondary to the Material then there are serious Theological consequences to such thinking. First, we can decide that the Polytheists were right, or more right then the Monotheists. The Truth is that there probably was a contest between competing Gods, between the Spiritual Visions of competing peoples. The Greatest God would be that God with the greatest total sum of collective intensity supporting it. Yes, at the very deepest level where ‘God’ becomes thoughtless and unmodified, consisting in pure unelaborated spirit, then ‘God’ would have a certain sameness. But also, at this level, God would be providentially useless, or worse than useless, as in the Buddhist sense of encouraging nihilism by rewarding the pursuit of absolutely nothing at all. Reject the World, and abandon Society and live in the Bliss of Pure Meditation on God. It is the Intellectual equivalent to drug abuse, or even continuous sex abuse. It leads to some people indulging in Nothingness while other people must take up the slack and work that much harder. Its simply not fair. Oh, which is the reason why the East argues about Karma… that the Lazy have earned the right to be lazy and that those who work hard for society must have a lot of bad Karma. Again, we see how the Rich and the Privileged are adept at finding arguments to justify themselves. We must remember that our Mesopotamian friend was right about the God he compared to a dog, that it is not worth feeding unless we can get some tricks out of Him. God must be useful. Religion must be useful. And People should be useful.
The same way in which particles of iron dust are lined up and made coherent by the invisible influence of a magnet, so we can envision so many individual people being made into a Coherent Civilization by means of God and Religion. In this sense we are comparing God to Electricity, and with this acknowledgement and qualification, that we are ourselves responsible for having to generate the Power and even the Form of God by our own efforts and moral intuitions. The more we can all agree in this Moral Vision, the more coherent our Collective God will be. The Ultimate Quality of our Civilization depends upon our Collective Vision of God.
Well, first let’s look at our traditional way of conceiving of God? In the West God is envisioned as a collection of all positive absolutes – All Powerful, All Loving, All Knowing, and All Decisive, the Grand Being behind the notion that everything has meaning, and that everything has a purpose, and all is as it should be. Because of God we live in the ‘best of all possible world’s’. Rich people use such a notion of God to justify and entrench their privileges, while also concluding that God must have His reasons for hating the poor. The Poor themselves more often than not suppose God is either testing them with challenges or building their character by providing them with a kind of resistance training.
Well, such a God must be up against a huge barrage of constraints, because it seems clear enough to most people, that we live in a very complexly troubled world. If some people do seem blessed, then we can hardly determine any good reason for it, and those who are apparently under some curse, well, they too may seem all too blameless. And it had never been much better but had probably been even worse most of the time – an odd condition for the Best of All Possible World’s under the dominion of a Wise and Good God. So what is God’s problem?
First, let’s become clearer on what we suppose is the nature of God. Many spiritualist traditions envision God as ethereal and spiritual, and this in contradistinction to the idea that the World is material and basic. The early Christians, and the Greek Philosophers with their Platonic notions of the Logos, actually agreed on this issue, of God being Ethereal – made of the substance of thought and dreams.
Here is where we should apply some common sense. Here we need to ask ourselves what influences what. Does Thought influence Matter or does Matter influence Thought? Well, isn’t it easier to suppose that massive structures of gravitational electromagnetic clusters could more easily influence the vague nebulous Mists of the Ethereal then to believe that such insubstantial wisps of quasi-nothingness could affect the massive solids of the World? It seems likely we have been looking at this Theology completely backwards, seeing cause and effect in mirror image, supposing that the Spiritual was the Creative Element, indeed, that God, the Core of Spirit, was the Ultimate Creator, when, quite actually, the Spiritual has been the created product of the Material. It’s the substance which influences the spiritual and not the other way around. We’ve had it backwards.
I once read an amusing, if blasphemous, anecdote that goes back to perhaps the earliest Civilization, the Sumerian. It seems that one citizen had discerned a contradiction between all of the sacrifices to the Gods being asked of the public and the subservience to the Gods that was also being demanded. So there written on one of the small clay tablets was the thought that if God had to beg his food like a dog, then God should be whipped like a dog, and taught to do tricks for his dinner just like any other dog. Perhaps there is some truth here, although our Mesopotamian Friend hardly had presented much of an expansive argument. But lets stay with the metaphor for awhile, that is, comparing God with Man’s Best Friend. What if God really needed to be trained, cultivated, nourished – not being seen at his best unless treated as a cherished pet and given a certain degree of discipline and character formation?
Yes, God may consist in the Ethereal and Spiritual, but all of the real power may be with the Material, and if God ever attains to any significant power it is because this power had been imparted by the Material World. Indeed, the Vedas, the World’s most ancient Religious Literature, states clearly that God’s Power comes from Sacrifice – that it is Man that energizes God and not the other way around.
This may help us to better understand Religious History and our own Religious Current Events. When a Civilization can get together in a common prayer and a common religious Vision, then, in a sense, God becomes Solidified. With so many people thinking similarly, the Collective Consciousness crystallizes a God of the People’s Moral Consensus. God is a Collective Phenomena.
What happens when Barbarism and Individualism reigns? What happens when education breaks down and all unifying culture collapses in skepticism or just plain ignorance? Well, if there ever had been a God, then that God simply evaporates. Yes, each individual may have his own Religion and his own God, but without the Multiplier Effect of Common Communal Belief, then each person’s separate God is too small to matter. It is like a hundred thousand batteries that if wired together would out-surge a bolt of lightening bolt, but just one little single cell battery isn’t enough to run a toy.
But in Ages and Cultures that had a great degree of Religious Unity and Intensity, then a certain amount of Power was communicated into the Spirit World and that power became manifested in Saints, that found a way to tap into it, and Spiritual Apparitions which are probably to be best compared to condensations of Ethereal Substance or Flash Points. Or, if we are hesitant to attribute any quality of Matter to the Spirit, then we can limit these manifestations of Spirit to being phenomena of Consciousness – that these Divine Apparitions may consist in the quasi-substance of what we would otherwise call Delusion – the Substance of Dreams, of Visions, of Thought Itself.
Yes, yes, yes… it is objected that if something is not Material then it is not real. Science equates delusional phenomena with random and arbitrary nothingness. But if a phenomena contains elements of coherent order, substantial or not, then that very coherent order is in itself something of meaning which needs to be respected and understood. We need to have more respect for such Objective Experience, and so if a thousand people all have the very same experience, even if only subjective, even if dismissible as just a Common Delusion, or Collective Hallucination, then the reality of that consensus needs to be valued and appreciated, and if Science has not yet found the tools to quantify such a phenomena, then that is an indictment of Science, and not Religion. After all, Galileo would be the first condemn as silly any person who maintained that Empirical Phenomena was to be discounted only because an investigating Philosopher was unable to assemble a means of verification. Galileo invented the Telescope to make his Research quantifiably possible. Today’s scientists need to stop their endless bitching and invent the Telescope of the Spirit. So much consensus regarding empirical subjective experience cannot be random and of nothing.
But if we accept that the Spiritual is secondary to the Material then there are serious Theological consequences to such thinking. First, we can decide that the Polytheists were right, or more right then the Monotheists. The Truth is that there probably was a contest between competing Gods, between the Spiritual Visions of competing peoples. The Greatest God would be that God with the greatest total sum of collective intensity supporting it. Yes, at the very deepest level where ‘God’ becomes thoughtless and unmodified, consisting in pure unelaborated spirit, then ‘God’ would have a certain sameness. But also, at this level, God would be providentially useless, or worse than useless, as in the Buddhist sense of encouraging nihilism by rewarding the pursuit of absolutely nothing at all. Reject the World, and abandon Society and live in the Bliss of Pure Meditation on God. It is the Intellectual equivalent to drug abuse, or even continuous sex abuse. It leads to some people indulging in Nothingness while other people must take up the slack and work that much harder. Its simply not fair. Oh, which is the reason why the East argues about Karma… that the Lazy have earned the right to be lazy and that those who work hard for society must have a lot of bad Karma. Again, we see how the Rich and the Privileged are adept at finding arguments to justify themselves. We must remember that our Mesopotamian friend was right about the God he compared to a dog, that it is not worth feeding unless we can get some tricks out of Him. God must be useful. Religion must be useful. And People should be useful.
The same way in which particles of iron dust are lined up and made coherent by the invisible influence of a magnet, so we can envision so many individual people being made into a Coherent Civilization by means of God and Religion. In this sense we are comparing God to Electricity, and with this acknowledgement and qualification, that we are ourselves responsible for having to generate the Power and even the Form of God by our own efforts and moral intuitions. The more we can all agree in this Moral Vision, the more coherent our Collective God will be. The Ultimate Quality of our Civilization depends upon our Collective Vision of God.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
China: Moving Toward Civilization
Recently I have been reading books and articles highly critical of China. It makes me think two things: the first is that maybe writers should be required to take some standardized intelligence test, and their score posted upon the cover of their book or on the heading of their article, so that the reader can see straight away whether or not to give the material any serious credence. After all, if the author is stupid, then what can we really expect from his book? Secondly, who is promoting the book and its publication? We may have situations where a really intelligent author simply designs a book to meet certain ideological specifications, agreeing with his own arguments only in the sense that he knows they deliver the propaganda he was paid to provide.
“In the Jaws of the Dragon” by Eamonn Fingleton is a book where we can both note a deficiency of intelligence and an ideological bias. In one case he apologizes for ancient Confucianism by calling it ‘benign’ but says that Modern China has subverted Confucianism because now they are ‘authoritarian’. Duh. The author here is either ideological or stupid, and probably both. Why should authoritarianism be excluded from the possibility of being benign? The author is assuming that those who propose Authoritarian Systems simply intend to be mean for the purpose of simply being mean. We should allow almost anybody the charity of supposing that they have good intentions. Even Adam Smith, in proposing the most extreme selfish motivations of Capitalism, justified them in arguing that the ends would work out better for everybody. So the argument against Capitalism and Adam Smith should go not against his intentions, that Goodness may come, paradoxically enough, from Selfishness, but that there is a Better Way to achieve a Better End.
Western Capitalists, when Russia had been the Big Enemy, used to brag that Capitalism proved itself by its success, and that Socialism was a failure simply in its failure to compete. Well, we won’t go into the facts that the West had cut off Russia from access to raw materials that made success possible. After all, part of the argument for Capitalism was that, in business, any means of competition is ‘fair’, as in ‘alls fair in love and war’. Western Capitalists had never been shy about comparing business strategies to War… indeed, it makes them feel manly to toss out such comparisons. But now that Socialism is showing all of the Competitive Strengths, growing at an average of 10% a year while Western Capitalism is struggling not to contract, now we are finding the Capitalists complain of unfairness, and suddenly discovering that there is more to life than Profit Margins. I almost laughed when I found this arch conservative, this Republican, speak of fair wages and working conditions. This is from a Capitalist Ideology that from its very beginnings had proposed Subsistence Wages, and in its practices has always been hostile to the Collective Bargaining of Unions or the Political Determination of Wages through Legislation. Well, to be fair, I guess one could construe his argument to mean, that if the West has to deal with such awful annoyances as Organized Labor and Labor Politics, then so should the Chinese.
However, to be fair to the Chinese, this whole idea of Competition was not their idea. Remember, the Chinese may have been paying attention while the West was gloating over their Victory over Communism and Capitalism’s obvious ascendancy over Socialism. It is just barely conceivable that the Chinese may have supposed that they would be the West’s next target.
No, I am not supposing that the Chinese had at any point decided to do anything unscrupulous. Indeed, all they really needed to do was to stay true to some certain points of Civilized common sense. And this brings us to the basic differences between East and West, between what is Civilized and what is essentially Barbarian. Civilization creates institutions which promote organization, unity, sharing, community. Civilized Institutions aim at minimizing internal conflicts, and even external conflicts. Therefore, as it should be intuitively clear, Civilization can support much higher population densities. Yes, there is the problem that not everybody in a crowded Civilization can be ecstatically happy all the time. Living with people and getting along with people requires certain compromises, and Civilized People learn to deal with a certain level of frustration with civilized poise and their good graces – a product of being raised in a Civilized Culture and having a proper Education.
Barbarism, though, when examined only in part, can be much more fun. You see, Barbarism depends upon a very light density of population – wide open spaces, cheap land, and a plentitude of resources. So, of course, given these conditions the Barbarians can speak of their idyllic life style – their Freedoms. But the Barbarians never go into much detail about how they manage to assure these thin levels of Population. The Americans enjoy their success NOT through any advantage in ideology, democracy or capitalism, but only because they landed on a practically empty continent. And Western Europe – we know how they keep population down. War, War, War. Adam Smith didn’t mention it, but perhaps he thought he did not need to. You see, in the absence of Civilized Institutions and Civilized Cultural Expectations, War will happen almost automatically, as soon as that certain line is crossed in Population Density that separates a Society’s level of Barbarism from the Level of Civilization that might have saved it. So, yes, Barbarism IS happier, but the catch is, that Barbarians keep their happiness by lashing out and killing all who would infringe upon their Happiness. So it is that the survivors of Barbarism are happy, and nobody factors the victims into the equation. While Civilization may sometimes include a certain degree of frustration, while people must compromise to live side by side with other people, at least it does not depend upon the fundamental Horror of having to base its proffered happiness on a tacit policy of Kill Kill Kill.
Oh, and about Tibet. Honestly, it is as though nobody is thinking. The United States has seen the benefits of Unification. Even Europe is demonstrating that it finally is beginning to understand the benefits of Unification. But all these same people are willing to riot in the streets for the rights of Tibetan People to exercise their hate campaign against Ethnic Chinese. What is their point? Do we seriously want a World in which every little Ethnic Minority is at constant war with all of its neighbors? Or do we eventually want to arrive at a One World Community, where we each see that we have more in common than what is different between us. And we will not get there by rioting against broader political jurisdictions. After all, the Chinese have brought a fairer rule to Tibet, and have even reduced the tax burden for the typical Tibetan, when it is considered how much the lazy monks and Lamas extracted from the Tibetan People they held as effective chattel. Looking at the current rioting in Tibet we can suppose it is propelled only by those who are funded by Western Agitators who suppose their advantage would be in once again imposing their own taxes for their own personal benefit. The West speaks of Freedom, but here it is simply the freedom of predators to stalk and kill their prey. And this brings to mind the Dalai Lama, probably a stupid man who has his books written for him by Western Ideologues – a warm and fuzzy Buddhism, not in keeping at all with the rough and tumble Tantric Buddhism which scholarship tells us abides in Tibet – a mix of sex and sorcery spells all to be expected from a bunch of boys housed together at the public’s expense. Yes, we all might have hoped more from any variety of Buddhism, but as we see the Actions and Behavior of Buddhism, in Tibet, in Nepal, and now from city to city throughout the World, Buddhism is just another name for Chaos, Hate and Violence. Buddhism really needs a Modern Awakening, and has to decide whether it is a force for Barbarism or for Civilization.
“In the Jaws of the Dragon” by Eamonn Fingleton is a book where we can both note a deficiency of intelligence and an ideological bias. In one case he apologizes for ancient Confucianism by calling it ‘benign’ but says that Modern China has subverted Confucianism because now they are ‘authoritarian’. Duh. The author here is either ideological or stupid, and probably both. Why should authoritarianism be excluded from the possibility of being benign? The author is assuming that those who propose Authoritarian Systems simply intend to be mean for the purpose of simply being mean. We should allow almost anybody the charity of supposing that they have good intentions. Even Adam Smith, in proposing the most extreme selfish motivations of Capitalism, justified them in arguing that the ends would work out better for everybody. So the argument against Capitalism and Adam Smith should go not against his intentions, that Goodness may come, paradoxically enough, from Selfishness, but that there is a Better Way to achieve a Better End.
Western Capitalists, when Russia had been the Big Enemy, used to brag that Capitalism proved itself by its success, and that Socialism was a failure simply in its failure to compete. Well, we won’t go into the facts that the West had cut off Russia from access to raw materials that made success possible. After all, part of the argument for Capitalism was that, in business, any means of competition is ‘fair’, as in ‘alls fair in love and war’. Western Capitalists had never been shy about comparing business strategies to War… indeed, it makes them feel manly to toss out such comparisons. But now that Socialism is showing all of the Competitive Strengths, growing at an average of 10% a year while Western Capitalism is struggling not to contract, now we are finding the Capitalists complain of unfairness, and suddenly discovering that there is more to life than Profit Margins. I almost laughed when I found this arch conservative, this Republican, speak of fair wages and working conditions. This is from a Capitalist Ideology that from its very beginnings had proposed Subsistence Wages, and in its practices has always been hostile to the Collective Bargaining of Unions or the Political Determination of Wages through Legislation. Well, to be fair, I guess one could construe his argument to mean, that if the West has to deal with such awful annoyances as Organized Labor and Labor Politics, then so should the Chinese.
However, to be fair to the Chinese, this whole idea of Competition was not their idea. Remember, the Chinese may have been paying attention while the West was gloating over their Victory over Communism and Capitalism’s obvious ascendancy over Socialism. It is just barely conceivable that the Chinese may have supposed that they would be the West’s next target.
No, I am not supposing that the Chinese had at any point decided to do anything unscrupulous. Indeed, all they really needed to do was to stay true to some certain points of Civilized common sense. And this brings us to the basic differences between East and West, between what is Civilized and what is essentially Barbarian. Civilization creates institutions which promote organization, unity, sharing, community. Civilized Institutions aim at minimizing internal conflicts, and even external conflicts. Therefore, as it should be intuitively clear, Civilization can support much higher population densities. Yes, there is the problem that not everybody in a crowded Civilization can be ecstatically happy all the time. Living with people and getting along with people requires certain compromises, and Civilized People learn to deal with a certain level of frustration with civilized poise and their good graces – a product of being raised in a Civilized Culture and having a proper Education.
Barbarism, though, when examined only in part, can be much more fun. You see, Barbarism depends upon a very light density of population – wide open spaces, cheap land, and a plentitude of resources. So, of course, given these conditions the Barbarians can speak of their idyllic life style – their Freedoms. But the Barbarians never go into much detail about how they manage to assure these thin levels of Population. The Americans enjoy their success NOT through any advantage in ideology, democracy or capitalism, but only because they landed on a practically empty continent. And Western Europe – we know how they keep population down. War, War, War. Adam Smith didn’t mention it, but perhaps he thought he did not need to. You see, in the absence of Civilized Institutions and Civilized Cultural Expectations, War will happen almost automatically, as soon as that certain line is crossed in Population Density that separates a Society’s level of Barbarism from the Level of Civilization that might have saved it. So, yes, Barbarism IS happier, but the catch is, that Barbarians keep their happiness by lashing out and killing all who would infringe upon their Happiness. So it is that the survivors of Barbarism are happy, and nobody factors the victims into the equation. While Civilization may sometimes include a certain degree of frustration, while people must compromise to live side by side with other people, at least it does not depend upon the fundamental Horror of having to base its proffered happiness on a tacit policy of Kill Kill Kill.
Oh, and about Tibet. Honestly, it is as though nobody is thinking. The United States has seen the benefits of Unification. Even Europe is demonstrating that it finally is beginning to understand the benefits of Unification. But all these same people are willing to riot in the streets for the rights of Tibetan People to exercise their hate campaign against Ethnic Chinese. What is their point? Do we seriously want a World in which every little Ethnic Minority is at constant war with all of its neighbors? Or do we eventually want to arrive at a One World Community, where we each see that we have more in common than what is different between us. And we will not get there by rioting against broader political jurisdictions. After all, the Chinese have brought a fairer rule to Tibet, and have even reduced the tax burden for the typical Tibetan, when it is considered how much the lazy monks and Lamas extracted from the Tibetan People they held as effective chattel. Looking at the current rioting in Tibet we can suppose it is propelled only by those who are funded by Western Agitators who suppose their advantage would be in once again imposing their own taxes for their own personal benefit. The West speaks of Freedom, but here it is simply the freedom of predators to stalk and kill their prey. And this brings to mind the Dalai Lama, probably a stupid man who has his books written for him by Western Ideologues – a warm and fuzzy Buddhism, not in keeping at all with the rough and tumble Tantric Buddhism which scholarship tells us abides in Tibet – a mix of sex and sorcery spells all to be expected from a bunch of boys housed together at the public’s expense. Yes, we all might have hoped more from any variety of Buddhism, but as we see the Actions and Behavior of Buddhism, in Tibet, in Nepal, and now from city to city throughout the World, Buddhism is just another name for Chaos, Hate and Violence. Buddhism really needs a Modern Awakening, and has to decide whether it is a force for Barbarism or for Civilization.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Myth of Peaceful Protest
I wonder that everyone has so low an estimation of the Public Peace, that they can consider anything ‘peaceful’ whose sole intent is to cause disruption and I have been in enough Peaceful Protests to know that their intent it to cause the most disruption possible. Apparently what is meant by ‘Peace’ here is simply the absence of any intent, starting off, of actually murdering anybody. Yet how often do these Peaceful Protests naturally and even intentionally escalate into riots, where, if murder isn’t deliberate, then only the densest of idiots should not have expected it as a simple matter of course.
We only need to look at some of the very numerous instances in History. Well, yes, the whole idea of ‘Peaceful Protest’ is of only relatively recent invention – we had Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience, and then Gandhi and Martin Luther King – all three intellectually presiding over some of the most violent riots in History, all while preening their non-violent credentials.
I had visited India in the Eighties and met a certain Professor at one of the more fashionable Guru Ashrams. He had known Gandhi from one of the British Prison Camps where the British kept everybody they would suspect of Treason while they fought the Japanese and the Germans during World War Two. The Professor told the story of a young man hounding Gandhi for advice on Non-Violence, not saying that the young man was himself, but it probably was, as such stories go. Anyway, Gandhi is finally fed up with being bothered by this annoying young man and lets out that he never believed in Non-Violence for a second, that he was first a foremost a Lawyer, and that the British could only hang him for sedition if he OVERTLY ESPOUSED VIOLENCE. So, while engineering the largest and deadliest riots in human history, he was careful to instruct the Rioters to be peaceful, knowing full well that People’s Nature would take over and do what it would always do. For Gandhi Non-Violence was not a Philosophy of Peace. It was a Legal Stratagem.
Anyway, these 3 Big Philosophers for Peaceful Protest have conditioned the World to assume that every GATHERING RIOT has to be by some given logic a “Peaceful Protest”. Does anybody ever bother to go into such mobs to ask what the general disposition of that particular collective mind happens to be? I’m sure that it would be learned that most every body is intent upon assembling such a preponderance of Numbers and weight of Force that the Government or Ruling Classes could be overthrown, and, yes, by means of murderous bloodbath if it comes to that. No, it does not have to be the deliberate plan of each individual – they might not awake in the morning with murder on their minds, but the typical dynamic of Mob Violence never involves the deliberate intent of every individual. However, it is extremely naïve to suppose that the Mob Leaders don’t know what is what, and while they strenuously claim that they did EVERYTHING to keep their Mobs under control, they never renounce the Gains that the Mob Violence brings them. Gandhi readily accepted Indian Independence that came at the cost of millions of lives snuffed out by his ‘peaceful demonstrations’, and Martin Luther King must have celebrated that he was able to coerce the American Government in to granting his people special benefits and privileges based solely on their race and ethnic affiliation only after his ‘peaceful protests’ had lead to a series of American Cities being burned to the ground. If any other Race had jobs and college slots left open to them solely on the bases of their Race, well, that would be Racist. But if you can burn down a few Cities and threaten to burn more, that changes things in no way that a Peaceful Protest ever could have.
When has there ever been a Peaceful Demonstration? Yes, they remain peaceful as long as they are small and unsuccessful. But whenever sufficient numbers show up and the crowd senses their advantage, they all turn to riot. I can only suppose that America and America’s European Lap Dogs know this Truth, and by pushing by every means the acceptance of Peaceful Protest upon Nations outside of American Jurisdiction, they are only aiming at their destabilization and overthrow. America does not advance Peaceful Protest around the World in order to advance the cause of Peace, but because they consider the bloody overthrow of Non-American Regimes to be in their own self-interest – that by destroying another People’s Golden City, they can make off with one silver candlestick they didn’t have before – simple Barbarian Rapacity which is all America, or indeed England, has ever cared about. What should really concern us is the News Medias – the CNNs and the BBCs – that are nothing more than propaganda outlets for all of this sinister evil. Or perhaps these news people are REALLY so stupid as to believe what they are saying. Perhaps being stupid is one of their career requirements. After all, I can’t think of any News Person who has ever studied anything at University besides Journalism. No History, no Sociology, no Poly-Sci. They are kept like Perfect Airheads, and only taught about the 5 W’s (who what where when why). It’s like innocent children covering the News… except that most of them are a bunch of back stabbing drunks.
Now let’s look a few recent ‘peaceful demonstrations’, and see if these are the type of things we really want.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution started on the model of what would be called by the American and European Media as ‘Peaceful Protest’. And it was ‘peaceful’, that is, until the very moment when they saw their advantage and used it to capture every office of Government and then to unleash their Reign of Terror. 20 Million people were murdered in the wake of that Peaceful Protest. Then we had Tiananmen Square. The Chinese Officials knew for a fact what was at stake. These were the same Leaders, who, back when they were young, were the killers of the Cultural Revolution. THEY more than anybody knew what the Tiananmen Square Mob was capable of, indeed, what the Leaders of that Mob were deliberately planning. Nobody fills a Nation’s Capital with millions of potentially violent rioters for the simple fun of it.
America itself once had such a dilemma on their hands. After World War One, the veteran soldiers were upset that their pensions were so worthless at the same time as the Prohibition Laws forbade them the solace of getting Drunk about it, and so they marched upon Washington, the American Capitol, and set up a Tent City where they watched and waited as their numbers and strength gathered. It was ‘peaceful’ until it appeared that there were sufficient demonstrators available to overrun every Government Building and effectively pull-off a successful Coup, destroying the Federal Government if that had suddenly become their whim. So the Government, not wishing to be murdered in some great bloodbath, mobilized the Army and the demonstrators were dispersed, much as the Chinese dispersed the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square and just as the Burmese Government dispersed its rioters. America shakes a finger of blame at the Burmese Generals and at the Chinese, but America was not the least bit squeamish about charging the Cavalry into the Veterans Tent City. And I do not blame them for what they did then, but only for this later hypocrisy and convenient forgetfulness. One cannot allow the Fate of a Government and the stability and order of a Nation to hang upon the whims of a Mob of rioters – and anytime you have a few hundred thousand people in the same room, I’m sorry, but that’s a ‘Mob of Rioters’ – oh, unless we are talking of America’s new phenomena of Tourist Protestors and Fashion Protests – hundreds of thousands of ‘protestors’ coordinated by their Churches and Clubs to show up on a buses, to hear a few speeches and some celebrity singing, and then to leave on the same buses hardly before it gets dark. Its got to be more fun than simply going on a country picnic outing or a visit to Disney Land. But its not really a Protest while its fairly certain everyone will get back on the bus and leave. Its only Entertainment. And by conducting such staged events American Politicians can claim to the rest of the World that they permit free speech and public assembly.
But when protests aren’t carefully staged, when buses aren’t lined up to take everybody home when the last song is sung, then Violence is simply in the nature of such things. Again we can remember the Peaceful French Revolution, the Peaceful Russian Revolution, the Peaceful Chinese Revolution. Even the Peaceful American Revolution that murdered 3,000 British Peace Keepers at Bunker Hill.
We only need to look at some of the very numerous instances in History. Well, yes, the whole idea of ‘Peaceful Protest’ is of only relatively recent invention – we had Thoreau’s idea of civil disobedience, and then Gandhi and Martin Luther King – all three intellectually presiding over some of the most violent riots in History, all while preening their non-violent credentials.
I had visited India in the Eighties and met a certain Professor at one of the more fashionable Guru Ashrams. He had known Gandhi from one of the British Prison Camps where the British kept everybody they would suspect of Treason while they fought the Japanese and the Germans during World War Two. The Professor told the story of a young man hounding Gandhi for advice on Non-Violence, not saying that the young man was himself, but it probably was, as such stories go. Anyway, Gandhi is finally fed up with being bothered by this annoying young man and lets out that he never believed in Non-Violence for a second, that he was first a foremost a Lawyer, and that the British could only hang him for sedition if he OVERTLY ESPOUSED VIOLENCE. So, while engineering the largest and deadliest riots in human history, he was careful to instruct the Rioters to be peaceful, knowing full well that People’s Nature would take over and do what it would always do. For Gandhi Non-Violence was not a Philosophy of Peace. It was a Legal Stratagem.
Anyway, these 3 Big Philosophers for Peaceful Protest have conditioned the World to assume that every GATHERING RIOT has to be by some given logic a “Peaceful Protest”. Does anybody ever bother to go into such mobs to ask what the general disposition of that particular collective mind happens to be? I’m sure that it would be learned that most every body is intent upon assembling such a preponderance of Numbers and weight of Force that the Government or Ruling Classes could be overthrown, and, yes, by means of murderous bloodbath if it comes to that. No, it does not have to be the deliberate plan of each individual – they might not awake in the morning with murder on their minds, but the typical dynamic of Mob Violence never involves the deliberate intent of every individual. However, it is extremely naïve to suppose that the Mob Leaders don’t know what is what, and while they strenuously claim that they did EVERYTHING to keep their Mobs under control, they never renounce the Gains that the Mob Violence brings them. Gandhi readily accepted Indian Independence that came at the cost of millions of lives snuffed out by his ‘peaceful demonstrations’, and Martin Luther King must have celebrated that he was able to coerce the American Government in to granting his people special benefits and privileges based solely on their race and ethnic affiliation only after his ‘peaceful protests’ had lead to a series of American Cities being burned to the ground. If any other Race had jobs and college slots left open to them solely on the bases of their Race, well, that would be Racist. But if you can burn down a few Cities and threaten to burn more, that changes things in no way that a Peaceful Protest ever could have.
When has there ever been a Peaceful Demonstration? Yes, they remain peaceful as long as they are small and unsuccessful. But whenever sufficient numbers show up and the crowd senses their advantage, they all turn to riot. I can only suppose that America and America’s European Lap Dogs know this Truth, and by pushing by every means the acceptance of Peaceful Protest upon Nations outside of American Jurisdiction, they are only aiming at their destabilization and overthrow. America does not advance Peaceful Protest around the World in order to advance the cause of Peace, but because they consider the bloody overthrow of Non-American Regimes to be in their own self-interest – that by destroying another People’s Golden City, they can make off with one silver candlestick they didn’t have before – simple Barbarian Rapacity which is all America, or indeed England, has ever cared about. What should really concern us is the News Medias – the CNNs and the BBCs – that are nothing more than propaganda outlets for all of this sinister evil. Or perhaps these news people are REALLY so stupid as to believe what they are saying. Perhaps being stupid is one of their career requirements. After all, I can’t think of any News Person who has ever studied anything at University besides Journalism. No History, no Sociology, no Poly-Sci. They are kept like Perfect Airheads, and only taught about the 5 W’s (who what where when why). It’s like innocent children covering the News… except that most of them are a bunch of back stabbing drunks.
Now let’s look a few recent ‘peaceful demonstrations’, and see if these are the type of things we really want.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution started on the model of what would be called by the American and European Media as ‘Peaceful Protest’. And it was ‘peaceful’, that is, until the very moment when they saw their advantage and used it to capture every office of Government and then to unleash their Reign of Terror. 20 Million people were murdered in the wake of that Peaceful Protest. Then we had Tiananmen Square. The Chinese Officials knew for a fact what was at stake. These were the same Leaders, who, back when they were young, were the killers of the Cultural Revolution. THEY more than anybody knew what the Tiananmen Square Mob was capable of, indeed, what the Leaders of that Mob were deliberately planning. Nobody fills a Nation’s Capital with millions of potentially violent rioters for the simple fun of it.
America itself once had such a dilemma on their hands. After World War One, the veteran soldiers were upset that their pensions were so worthless at the same time as the Prohibition Laws forbade them the solace of getting Drunk about it, and so they marched upon Washington, the American Capitol, and set up a Tent City where they watched and waited as their numbers and strength gathered. It was ‘peaceful’ until it appeared that there were sufficient demonstrators available to overrun every Government Building and effectively pull-off a successful Coup, destroying the Federal Government if that had suddenly become their whim. So the Government, not wishing to be murdered in some great bloodbath, mobilized the Army and the demonstrators were dispersed, much as the Chinese dispersed the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square and just as the Burmese Government dispersed its rioters. America shakes a finger of blame at the Burmese Generals and at the Chinese, but America was not the least bit squeamish about charging the Cavalry into the Veterans Tent City. And I do not blame them for what they did then, but only for this later hypocrisy and convenient forgetfulness. One cannot allow the Fate of a Government and the stability and order of a Nation to hang upon the whims of a Mob of rioters – and anytime you have a few hundred thousand people in the same room, I’m sorry, but that’s a ‘Mob of Rioters’ – oh, unless we are talking of America’s new phenomena of Tourist Protestors and Fashion Protests – hundreds of thousands of ‘protestors’ coordinated by their Churches and Clubs to show up on a buses, to hear a few speeches and some celebrity singing, and then to leave on the same buses hardly before it gets dark. Its got to be more fun than simply going on a country picnic outing or a visit to Disney Land. But its not really a Protest while its fairly certain everyone will get back on the bus and leave. Its only Entertainment. And by conducting such staged events American Politicians can claim to the rest of the World that they permit free speech and public assembly.
But when protests aren’t carefully staged, when buses aren’t lined up to take everybody home when the last song is sung, then Violence is simply in the nature of such things. Again we can remember the Peaceful French Revolution, the Peaceful Russian Revolution, the Peaceful Chinese Revolution. Even the Peaceful American Revolution that murdered 3,000 British Peace Keepers at Bunker Hill.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Angel’s Lesson in Morality: Black Sin, Red Sin
Once an Angel, well actually two Angels in this particular instance, came to me in a Dream and lectured me upon the two sorts of Sin (the Angels had even come with a chalkboard and pointers) -- there is that kind of Sin that damns one to Hell, and there is the other kind of Sin that attaches only to the body and dies away when the body dies. These two types of Sin are called, by the Angels "Black Sin" and "Red Sin".
The Black Sins are premeditated evil – Evil done in cold blood, Evil done for profit. The intentional and deliberate crimes that victimize and exploit others are Black Sin. And so it is that Black Sins can be identified as primarily driven by selfish and greedy impulses of individuality. Black Sins are set against Community and Collectivity and are deliberate acts of defiance against Social Cooperation. Black Sins are the blows that bring down Civilizations.
The Red Sins, on the other hand, are the crimes of passion and appetite. Red Sins are the sins of the flesh. Every Red Sin is somewhat akin to that of a poor hungry man stealing a loaf of bread. If the appetite could be removed, then so would be any impulse to commit such a Sin. And this is exactly what happens when the body passes away; the soul is liberated from the Red Sins.
The worst that can be attributed to the Red Sins is that Souls can become habituated and identified within such behaviors – as in the case of a man who makes a hobby of sex or gluttony, and takes pride in such things, to the point in which such behaviors become integral to his definition of ‘self’. The soul who leaves the body and transitions toward a spiritual existence will feel lost if all of its priorities and sense of identity had been aligned around these bodily appetites that had of necessity dropped away when the body dropped away.
If the Soul should identify itself with these old carnal appetites, then these appetites will survive as something of ghost-like remnants – thought forms, or karmic contaminations. These will weigh upon the Soul, or cloud the soul’s clarity. The Soul much stained by Red Sin, clinging to the old appetites, will find itself too dense, and too dark to tolerate the Light of Heaven. You see, to the Pure and Clear Soul the Light of Heaven is a Pure Joy. But to the Dark Soul, the Light is absorbed and turns to Heat. The Pure Soul shines with the Light of Heaven because all such light passes through unobstructed – no light is contained, no light is absorbed. Purity is as clear as glass. But Impurity will block the light and hold the Heat – and this heat is both a Blessing and a Curse for the impure Soul. It purifies but it does so painfully. The Higher an impure Soul can ascend into the Spiritual Realms, by sheer Spiritual Ambition, the more Light it can then absorb, creating the heat that can burn away any trace of the Red Sins. This is Purgatory. But the Heat does indeed ‘burn’ – it is uncomfortable. The Soul requires a degree of positive motivation to tolerate such discomfort. The Soul needs to be reassured that the same Light that comes at first as Heat will eventually become Pure Bliss once its Purgative Functions have been completed.
We can see how certain Catholic Practices incline toward speeding up the process of diminishing the Red Sins. Catholics are encouraged to entirely discontinue sins of passion and appetite. Fasts are common, and in the Religious Orders, celibacy is insisted upon.
When the strength of appetites and passions are beyond the power of the Will to contain them, than remorse, repentance, and atonement are expected. It is hoped that by this, that after death, the Soul will gladly let these appetites simply fall away and not clutch at them – not allowing them their downward pull into the realms of the ghosts and the demons. A Soul only has to sincerely regret his Red Sins and feel relieved that the motivating physical appetites are gone, that is, transcended, for the “Red Karma” to simply drop away at death.
Therefore the Red Sins are not necessarily impediments to Heaven, or what we would call the Higher Spiritual or Angelic Realms.
Oh, by the way, there is a type of Dream that prepares us for dealing with our Red Sins. Reoccurring Dreams in which we are aware of being lost or having lost some desired possession – such dreams presage the dropping away of the Red Appetites at the time of Death – the Loss of the Red Sins. The ‘trick’ which we must learn from such Dreams is to let go of what was Lost. We must move forward and not look back. We must forget what was “lost” and look forward to new things. This practiced ability for Transcendence will become useful at the moment of our Death when we will by our engrained practice not look back, not feel ‘lost’ for having lost our lives, lost our bodies, lost our life-long acquaintances, friends and family, and that we will not search for our lost appetites and lost habits of the body. Not looking for what was Lost, our Souls will be untethered and free to Rise to the Higher Spiritual Levels. Indeed, even before our Death, we can use our Dreams transcendently, and we can infer the quality of our Afterlife by the quality of Our Dreams.
What makes the Black Sins so much more terrible? Well, there is the inherent Individuality – the Self against the Flock. Intentional Predators are simply unfit for Company. Has it not been said that Hell is simply being alone, or being with others who won’t leave one alone. One loses the right to enjoy the companionship of Social Creatures and must either abide alone, or tormented by predators as sly and ruthless as one ’s self. Anti-Social Beings are spun out from and rejected from Spiritual Society. The denser and heavier ‘vibration’ of these predators would resolve into lower levels or more distant orbits – different stratums. It reminds me of the difference between Song Birds and the birds that give harsh and ugly calls. All Song Birds are seed eaters and they respect each other’s nests and territories irrespective of species -- they consider each other friends and neighbors in their Songs, and in the early morning meadow one can hear each different song bird take its turn as the songs go round and round. The Songs are meant to indicate that all is at Peace, and each bird of the many are reassured to hear each others’ songs. But the predatory birds sound the alarm against even themselves. Their voice marks them as devils. The harsh call of the Jay or the Crow ends the Morning Song Fest and puts the Good Birds on guard. And so it is in the Astral Worlds where the predatory devils can no longer hide behind lies, but are revealed by their very vibrations. If they can keep any company at all, they must enjoy the company of those as bad as themselves.
This brings us to the discussion of what Hell must really be like. The predatory souls would have to have something much like a Metaphysical Jungle which could only be a ‘Paradise’ for the most powerful and dominant of the Predators, in the same way that we understand that ‘lions’ are the Kings of the Jungle. In Hell only the most efficient and effective Predators could have any margin of ease or comfort. So it is that we know from legend that there must be some Chief of Hell, a Satan, a Lucifer; not because of any special Dispensation from God, but because Satan, by his own skill and abilities is simply equipped to be the most effective and triumphant Predator. In the same way that we can assert that all Barbarians are Evil, but that some Barbarians are better at being Barbarians than others, so it is that we should expect that those such as Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun might be enjoying their “Hell” a great deal more than those less potent and expert in their capacities for Evil.
The Black Sins are premeditated evil – Evil done in cold blood, Evil done for profit. The intentional and deliberate crimes that victimize and exploit others are Black Sin. And so it is that Black Sins can be identified as primarily driven by selfish and greedy impulses of individuality. Black Sins are set against Community and Collectivity and are deliberate acts of defiance against Social Cooperation. Black Sins are the blows that bring down Civilizations.
The Red Sins, on the other hand, are the crimes of passion and appetite. Red Sins are the sins of the flesh. Every Red Sin is somewhat akin to that of a poor hungry man stealing a loaf of bread. If the appetite could be removed, then so would be any impulse to commit such a Sin. And this is exactly what happens when the body passes away; the soul is liberated from the Red Sins.
The worst that can be attributed to the Red Sins is that Souls can become habituated and identified within such behaviors – as in the case of a man who makes a hobby of sex or gluttony, and takes pride in such things, to the point in which such behaviors become integral to his definition of ‘self’. The soul who leaves the body and transitions toward a spiritual existence will feel lost if all of its priorities and sense of identity had been aligned around these bodily appetites that had of necessity dropped away when the body dropped away.
If the Soul should identify itself with these old carnal appetites, then these appetites will survive as something of ghost-like remnants – thought forms, or karmic contaminations. These will weigh upon the Soul, or cloud the soul’s clarity. The Soul much stained by Red Sin, clinging to the old appetites, will find itself too dense, and too dark to tolerate the Light of Heaven. You see, to the Pure and Clear Soul the Light of Heaven is a Pure Joy. But to the Dark Soul, the Light is absorbed and turns to Heat. The Pure Soul shines with the Light of Heaven because all such light passes through unobstructed – no light is contained, no light is absorbed. Purity is as clear as glass. But Impurity will block the light and hold the Heat – and this heat is both a Blessing and a Curse for the impure Soul. It purifies but it does so painfully. The Higher an impure Soul can ascend into the Spiritual Realms, by sheer Spiritual Ambition, the more Light it can then absorb, creating the heat that can burn away any trace of the Red Sins. This is Purgatory. But the Heat does indeed ‘burn’ – it is uncomfortable. The Soul requires a degree of positive motivation to tolerate such discomfort. The Soul needs to be reassured that the same Light that comes at first as Heat will eventually become Pure Bliss once its Purgative Functions have been completed.
We can see how certain Catholic Practices incline toward speeding up the process of diminishing the Red Sins. Catholics are encouraged to entirely discontinue sins of passion and appetite. Fasts are common, and in the Religious Orders, celibacy is insisted upon.
When the strength of appetites and passions are beyond the power of the Will to contain them, than remorse, repentance, and atonement are expected. It is hoped that by this, that after death, the Soul will gladly let these appetites simply fall away and not clutch at them – not allowing them their downward pull into the realms of the ghosts and the demons. A Soul only has to sincerely regret his Red Sins and feel relieved that the motivating physical appetites are gone, that is, transcended, for the “Red Karma” to simply drop away at death.
Therefore the Red Sins are not necessarily impediments to Heaven, or what we would call the Higher Spiritual or Angelic Realms.
Oh, by the way, there is a type of Dream that prepares us for dealing with our Red Sins. Reoccurring Dreams in which we are aware of being lost or having lost some desired possession – such dreams presage the dropping away of the Red Appetites at the time of Death – the Loss of the Red Sins. The ‘trick’ which we must learn from such Dreams is to let go of what was Lost. We must move forward and not look back. We must forget what was “lost” and look forward to new things. This practiced ability for Transcendence will become useful at the moment of our Death when we will by our engrained practice not look back, not feel ‘lost’ for having lost our lives, lost our bodies, lost our life-long acquaintances, friends and family, and that we will not search for our lost appetites and lost habits of the body. Not looking for what was Lost, our Souls will be untethered and free to Rise to the Higher Spiritual Levels. Indeed, even before our Death, we can use our Dreams transcendently, and we can infer the quality of our Afterlife by the quality of Our Dreams.
What makes the Black Sins so much more terrible? Well, there is the inherent Individuality – the Self against the Flock. Intentional Predators are simply unfit for Company. Has it not been said that Hell is simply being alone, or being with others who won’t leave one alone. One loses the right to enjoy the companionship of Social Creatures and must either abide alone, or tormented by predators as sly and ruthless as one ’s self. Anti-Social Beings are spun out from and rejected from Spiritual Society. The denser and heavier ‘vibration’ of these predators would resolve into lower levels or more distant orbits – different stratums. It reminds me of the difference between Song Birds and the birds that give harsh and ugly calls. All Song Birds are seed eaters and they respect each other’s nests and territories irrespective of species -- they consider each other friends and neighbors in their Songs, and in the early morning meadow one can hear each different song bird take its turn as the songs go round and round. The Songs are meant to indicate that all is at Peace, and each bird of the many are reassured to hear each others’ songs. But the predatory birds sound the alarm against even themselves. Their voice marks them as devils. The harsh call of the Jay or the Crow ends the Morning Song Fest and puts the Good Birds on guard. And so it is in the Astral Worlds where the predatory devils can no longer hide behind lies, but are revealed by their very vibrations. If they can keep any company at all, they must enjoy the company of those as bad as themselves.
This brings us to the discussion of what Hell must really be like. The predatory souls would have to have something much like a Metaphysical Jungle which could only be a ‘Paradise’ for the most powerful and dominant of the Predators, in the same way that we understand that ‘lions’ are the Kings of the Jungle. In Hell only the most efficient and effective Predators could have any margin of ease or comfort. So it is that we know from legend that there must be some Chief of Hell, a Satan, a Lucifer; not because of any special Dispensation from God, but because Satan, by his own skill and abilities is simply equipped to be the most effective and triumphant Predator. In the same way that we can assert that all Barbarians are Evil, but that some Barbarians are better at being Barbarians than others, so it is that we should expect that those such as Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun might be enjoying their “Hell” a great deal more than those less potent and expert in their capacities for Evil.
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Some Thoughts on Meditation, Kundalini, White Light
It is a wonderfully convenience that in many contemporary Yogic Systems that the Power of Spiritual Initiation can be passed as easily as by the touch of an authentic Guru – this is called Shaktipat. Otherwise, we can envision taking years of doing the kind of breath retention exercises that are usually the norm with the more aggressive Yogic Programs. But regarding breath retention exercises, one really needs most to exercise caution. You see, it is very easy to suspect that breath retention exercises are most calculated to have the most effect in direct proportion to the amount of brain damage they inflict – hold one’s breath for 4 minutes and one is almost guaranteed to have a very genuine Near Death Experience… perhaps nearer to death than one would wish to hope for. And so it is that Samadhi being passed by the Touch of a Master should definitely be given a chance. It is so much more inherently safe.
So, Shaktipat is a very good thing. But we are left considering the availability of Gurus. Many people have the perception that such Shaktipat Gurus are an extremely rare commodity, and then, even when they are found, may be either too expensive to retain, or may impose a much too forbidding a regiment of conditions – absolute celibacy or absolute obedience, that is, they may ask for more than we are prudently prepared to give. For instance, one of the best Shaktipat Gurus I had ever met was old Kirpal Singh of the Surat Shabd Organization, but he expected his initiates to commit to 6 months of sexual celibacy even before he would give the first Initiation (if I remember accurately), and that was way back during the height of the Sexual Revolution. Well, it would be difficult to give away Bags of Money on those conditions. I and many others waited for more accommodating Gurus while we celebrated the Age of Aquarius.
But are such contracts with these Gurus entirely necessary? While still believing that nothing is more Spiritually conducive than being protégé to an Authentic Guru, I must admit that for someone seeking their Spiritual Beginnings, completely registering under a Guru may not be entirely indispensable. One may make due without. And in this regard, I have found that Shaktipat may be more available than is generally supposed. Allow me to explain – Years ago I read in a translation of a passage from the Upanishads that “In the presence of a God or Saint, the Third Eye will open”. Well, on the very evening that I read that, I saw a poster advertising a lecture to be given by an itinerant Shaktipat-style Guru. One can guess what happened. I felt my Third Eye open in his presence. It was not an overwhelmingly dazzling feeling. Indeed, if I had not been prepared by my Reading to anticipate such a feeling, I suppose it would have been subtle enough to evade notice or slight enough to dismiss as a painless headache. But since I was watching for something of that nature, I felt it. Seeing this as a validation of this Guru’s credentials, I enlisted for his Initiations. And the Shaktipat given officially was not much stronger than what had been felt merely by being in his presence. What this should mean to the keen observer is that Shaktipat can be gleaned from the Spiritual Atmosphere without necessarily subscribing to all of the trimmings and ceremonies that the Gurus would have you suppose are essential and that must come directly from their hand.
But, one might still suspect that “Gods and Saints” are very rare entities. But this is not at all so. Since my Third Eye has become open and sensitive to such things, I find that any number of people are walking around with Chakras open and radiating enough Spiritual Energy in order to resonate with the Chakras of those within their vicinity. Ordinarily it passes without notice – a pressure sensation in the forehead, or in the case of an open Heart or Throat Chakra, a pressure sensation in those corresponding locations.
So, how can a person take advantage of these Atmospheric Shaktipats? Well, simply by being aware. If one is uninitiated but would like to be as one who is Initiated – with open Chakras and control over one’s Energies, Kundalini and Qi – then one need only visit venues and activities where one might suppose one could meet with some moderately spiritual people. In Sanskrit I think it is called Satsang – the beneficial effect of being in Spiritual Company. If one notices that slight feeling in the Chakras, then the Technique for Auto Initiation is to focus on that Sensation and to hold onto it. Ordinarily, such feelings are ignored and allowed to pass. But if caught by awareness and focused upon, they can be as effectively enduring as any Initiation given at a Weekend Retreat for the price equivalent to that of a down payment on a car.
Sometimes even reading a particularly cogent passage from a Spiritual Book, or in thinking of especially powerful Saints or Gurus from the past, will cause the third eye to open, that is, there will be that feeling of Pressure.
How does one maintain one’s Initiation? Well, simply go about your ordinary business, but remind yourself several times daily to keep some attention on what goes on in your forehead -- up slightly from between the brows. And if you ever feel a slight pressure sensation, then lock onto it immediately -- rub your finger into it; make a buzzy noise with your mouth and modulate its tone until it resonates into that Sensation Point. For the first day, try not to let it totally go away -- remind yourself to keep the sensation open. Rub it with your finger and use that buzz tone to vibrate it. If you can keep it there for just a solid day, and bring it back after a good night’s sleep, then you’ve got it. Then, meditate on it for about 10 or 15 minutes morning and night. After about a week you may begin to feel some heaviness in your head, or you may even have developed a headache. Great! Now you will want to bring the Energy down to the base of your spine where you can give it and yourself a bit of a respite. Do the following: get yourself a nice glass of cold water and drink it, and feel that the Sensation is attached to it and that it drops down, all the way to your lowest vertebrae -- your little triangular tailbone. Reach back there and rub that little tail bone and feel the Sensation there. And keep it there for a couple of weeks. Learn to keep the energy down. That is your Safety Practice. Before the Energy gets too strong to handle you must learn to be able to pull it down at will. So don't keep the Energy up always in your head, supposing that unless you do you might be missing something. You have your entire life to raise up the Energy. For a couple of weeks you need to work on the certainty of being able to lower the Energy. You must be able to control it.
After you’ve developed this ability to control your Energy, being able to drop it down at will, you become ready for a new and very powerful exercise. If you do not feel any sensation in your head -- in and around your brain, then my instructions here might be a bit incomprehensible, but if you do feel some sensation in your head, this is what you should do: If your Energy Sensation is up in your forehead, then use your will to guide it back along the top of your pallet to the back of the roof of your mouth to the Swivel Point at the top of your spine. That point is easy to locate -- you just swivel your head around, and, well, the swivel point is the swivel point. Put the energy sensation there. Point your tongue up to that point. Now, it will feel as though the energy sensation is about the size of a golf ball or a bit smaller… maybe a brussels sprout. What you will now try to do is focus the energy smaller and smaller, as though penetrating the layers of an onion. Smaller smaller smaller -- it will take awhile, but not more than a few minutes. The energy will seem as though it is stuck at a particular size, then suddenly shrink down a bit more. Still you want it to center on that Swivel Point. Eventually it will be about the size of a pea and you will feel it oscillating back and forth like a pendulum. This is really the Key to Kundalini. Once you find that Spot, you can move the Energy anywhere in the body -- up to the Crown Chakra, or down to the heart, or in fact anywhere. But you want to move it down to the heart. That oscillating sensation that you feel is the top of the Heart Chakra anyway, so all you would have to do is let the energy just sink down into the Heart. That should give you a bit of stability.
There is also a trick you could use, and I've only found one other person who can do it. It is to flex a muscle in your head in order to start a roaring noise. The muscle is back there at the top of the pallet close to that swivel point, and the roaring noise is great at collecting Energy. It think it may be a reflex like rolling ones tongue or wiggling one's ears and not everybody can do it. It really is a muscle and not a mental phenomena, because it gets fatigued and one can only hold the flex for 7 or 10 seconds.
Do you know any Mantras? Or you can try an easy Power Meditation -- simply count up from 1 to 24 for each of your spinal column bones, moving your concentration up the spine as you count. Your Kundalini Energy, your Chi, will follow up during the count. Now, such power meditations are a hundred times more impressive during a Dream than while awake, making them always an interesting experience when you can remember to do them while dreaming. Indeed, I once had a Dream in which a Dream Guru told me that even a moment’s Meditation in a Dream is worth thousands of hours of waking Meditation. And having experienced Dream Meditation myself, I don’t doubt the Dream Guru’s math even a little bit.
There is another trick that I developed because I could never really find out what the Buddhist One Finger exercise was (it was mentioned in a Buddhist Treatise by Huang Po), but in experimenting around I found that by twiddling the thumbs -- twirling the thumbs -- right thumb counterclockwise and left thumb clockwise, for just a minute or so, that when you stop, the subtle Kundalini Energy centers in the spine and rises up. I think that the Thumb Nadis are in the Central Channel and that by exercising the Central Nadi Channel at the thumbs, it is exercised everywhere else as well. But the energy only begins to rise after you STOP the exercise, so don't twirl your thumbs indefinitely while waiting for something to happen. Just a minute or two is fine, and then stop.
You should be able to get to the point where you can more or less summon the energy sensation. You are allowed to cheat and point your fingers into the Third Eye Chakra. In fact any pointed object can only help. I once studied Pyramid Power and discovered that there is nothing special about pyramids except that they come to a point. The pointier the better, the steeper the better. Cones work even better but apparently the Egyptians could not carve a curve. Perhaps the handiest and best pyramid available to you would be your very own ballpoint pen – a virtual little Magic Wand.
Oh, and recently I may have found an effective White Light Exercise, as I discovered in a dream:
White Light Exercise from a Dream
While my father was alive I did not get along very well with him, but as the years since his decease have gone by, my relationship with him in my Dreams has been improving. Last night we were sitting at the old dining room table. He was at his customary seat, but I was not at my old seat but, significantly, at the seat ordinarily assigned to the oldest brother – apparently I had been promoted. In the Dream my father tells me that he will show me an exercise for communicating with Spirits using this small device that was set up close to the window. All I could infer about this machine was that it emitted white light. So my father begins this exercise, and it is quite simple – he takes a deep breath and then hisses out the exhale, and then his entire cranium began to glow with White Light. So I began to hiss out my breath and my brain case took on the same glow of White Light. It was like our brains became florescent filaments for the White Light and I could see our brains glowing.
When I awoke, I had an open Crown Chakra. Then, throughout the day, I tried the Exercise a few times. It is easy to do, but there are a few details. It seems that the proper ‘hiss’ involves having the tip of the tongue positioned close to roof of the mouth at that spot that is the best compromise between the forward position which sounds very ‘sssssssssss’ and the position further back which is more purely ‘shshshshshshsh’. Coincidentally, that sound that you would be making is very close to what they call ‘White Noise’.
It really does seem to open the Crown Chakra. Now, the thing I have found about the White Light is that one can see it while in the Dream State, or even while in the hypnogogic state, but while awake it resolves into a feeling of a pressure sensation.
Not only is this White Light Exercise appropriate for waking applications, but more particularly it may be useful to try during Lucid Dreaming, since it would be in such a context that the White Light would sure to be visible.
Also, I might suggest the Gayatri Mantra. After having done the Gayatri Mantra for a year, I had a dream in which the space out in front of me rended open and the White Light came pouring out. Since the Gayatri Mantra is fairly an evocation of the Light, I naturally suppose it must have had something to do with it.
The Gayatri induced White Light Dream may be interesting in itself:
White Light Paramahansa Dream
I knew the dream was becoming spiritual when I looked down and noticed I was not wearing shoes. Here is a Hint! When you are not wearing shoes in a Dream, it means you are on Holy Ground. I levitated up and folded my legs into a lotus position and intoned an AUM. The air around me seemed to turn violet (pinkish purple) and the air rippled and shimmered in waves and then about 20 feet in front of me the very fabric of Space tore open and out poured the Pure White Light. It was like magnesium burning before a chromium mirror, bright and real.
The substance of the Light quickly took up a form – a Paramahansa Swan… not a living bird but a very ornate statuesque representation of one. It was large – more than a meter high and wide. And it was amazingly beautiful – in the brightest White Light but still one could discern the textures of the shapes and detail. But there was little time for amazement when the Swan shot across the distance and into my forehead. And then a new swan formed up to replace it, and it too shot into my forehead as well… and again and again and again, each time more quickly, but each time the ornate and elaborate Paramahansa Swan became simpler, more streamlined. As they formed up more rapidly, they became plainer and plainer. Finally they were coming at a rate of 8 or 10 per second, and the birds were mere ‘Vees’, like as in the way young children draw birds flying in the sky, as two joining lines tapering outward. And they were all flying into my forehead.
When I awoke, the sensations I had felt in the Dream persisted. My Agna Chakra was still pulsating with the feeling of this Spiritual Energy, no longer perceptible as Light but tangible as a pressure sensation. The sensation by proximity also energized my Crown Chakra as well as my throat and heart chakras.
Well, all of the above was about getting the Spiritual Energy and the White Light. That should be enough, but often it is asked “what good is it?” “What does it do?” Many people answer that it is conducive toward psychic and supernatural powers, or that such Energies bring Spiritual Enlightenment. It would be wonderful if this were absolutely certain, however, a great many people have experienced this Spiritual Energy and White Light who are not especially remarkable for any of these extraordinary traits. But still I believe there is some value to the Spiritual Energies. My Old Kundalini Guru would simply assert that it would make people smarter, but perhaps it would be better to express the distinction by saying that it increases the faculty of Discernment. And this brings us to a dream I had years ago:
The Faculty of True Discernment
The Dream Scene was a well sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that created a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down and rest. There was this woman who was sitting down and playing a guitar and she was... I have to say it ... an extremely ugly woman. But her guitar playing was the most beautiful I had ever heard. Then came along these men, crude fellows, who approached, and gathered around her to ridicule her merely for being so remarkably unattractive. I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and I became irritated that the boisterous laughing itself was making it difficult to hear the beautiful music being played, and so I told the young men, "Listen! Everything else aside, can't you hear the quality of that music. We are in the presence of some real talent here. So Shut the ____ up!" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worth cultivating, is the faculty of True Discernment".
In an instant I was transported to a moon-lit arbor. It was a young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them, which formed a low canopy. The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be. Much of the Moon light came through and gave a silvery glow to the furry little down-covered pods on the drooping branches of the willow trees. I was a disembodied presence, simply witnessing; I would not be an Actor in this Dream; I would just watch. What I witnessed was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, belted at her waist, and she was barefoot. With a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, she was serenely languid and in no hurry. It was breathtaking, and I knew this was a special vision. But the tranquility was shattered when along came this strong coarse bearded man – too old to be called young, but not old enough to be supposed wise. He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty woman and of course wanted to make her acquaintance. He said, boastfully, as if boasting could endear himself to her, "I am on the hunt tonight and it is a great misfortune for the poor animals, because I am such a good shot that they surely don't stand a CHANCE".
Diana remained silent and seemed in no hurry to reply, but rather pulled a strangely unique arrow from her quiver. She held it out a moment so that the hunter could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot. SHHHOOOOPP, the arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush I could see the arrow’s feathers sticking out. She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".' Then I awoke.
What does it mean? The first part of the Dream was prelude to the second part. If I had not seen behind the appearances in the First Dream, that is, if I had not recognized the Beauty behind the ugliness, I would not have been shown the Second. The injunction "The faculty most worth cultivating is the Faculty of True Discernment", was to be my guiding mantra if I were to properly understand the next dream, indeed, to understand my subsequent Life. The Night, the Trees, the Moon Light, the Anima Goddess. This was my inner life. The Bearded Hunter was the invasion of my aggressive persona, my conceit, pride, perhaps even my intellect. The Huntress provided a lesson that teaches that a Greater Unity would always subsume and transcend any actions of the Hunter. Could this Unity be understood? No. The Arrow was crooked and no deliberation guided its aim -- it was released into Fate. Yet there was Intention, there was Will. The Goddess meant to hit the Bird. Apart from Design, pure Volition can resonate well enough to evoke its own Results. But the dynamics here are beyond ordinary cause and effect. It happened because it was both destined to happen and willed to happen. So, what is left for True Discernment to discern, if we omit the rational? Why, the Importance of It All, that is what. If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a riddle with imbedded meaning makes us look at it harder and deeper. We can understand it as Mystery, but in the positive sense.
Allow me to conclude by saying that where normal physical light allows us to see normal physical reality, the Spiritual Light and Energies help us to both see and feel our Spiritual Reality – to see the Meaning of our Lives.
So, Shaktipat is a very good thing. But we are left considering the availability of Gurus. Many people have the perception that such Shaktipat Gurus are an extremely rare commodity, and then, even when they are found, may be either too expensive to retain, or may impose a much too forbidding a regiment of conditions – absolute celibacy or absolute obedience, that is, they may ask for more than we are prudently prepared to give. For instance, one of the best Shaktipat Gurus I had ever met was old Kirpal Singh of the Surat Shabd Organization, but he expected his initiates to commit to 6 months of sexual celibacy even before he would give the first Initiation (if I remember accurately), and that was way back during the height of the Sexual Revolution. Well, it would be difficult to give away Bags of Money on those conditions. I and many others waited for more accommodating Gurus while we celebrated the Age of Aquarius.
But are such contracts with these Gurus entirely necessary? While still believing that nothing is more Spiritually conducive than being protégé to an Authentic Guru, I must admit that for someone seeking their Spiritual Beginnings, completely registering under a Guru may not be entirely indispensable. One may make due without. And in this regard, I have found that Shaktipat may be more available than is generally supposed. Allow me to explain – Years ago I read in a translation of a passage from the Upanishads that “In the presence of a God or Saint, the Third Eye will open”. Well, on the very evening that I read that, I saw a poster advertising a lecture to be given by an itinerant Shaktipat-style Guru. One can guess what happened. I felt my Third Eye open in his presence. It was not an overwhelmingly dazzling feeling. Indeed, if I had not been prepared by my Reading to anticipate such a feeling, I suppose it would have been subtle enough to evade notice or slight enough to dismiss as a painless headache. But since I was watching for something of that nature, I felt it. Seeing this as a validation of this Guru’s credentials, I enlisted for his Initiations. And the Shaktipat given officially was not much stronger than what had been felt merely by being in his presence. What this should mean to the keen observer is that Shaktipat can be gleaned from the Spiritual Atmosphere without necessarily subscribing to all of the trimmings and ceremonies that the Gurus would have you suppose are essential and that must come directly from their hand.
But, one might still suspect that “Gods and Saints” are very rare entities. But this is not at all so. Since my Third Eye has become open and sensitive to such things, I find that any number of people are walking around with Chakras open and radiating enough Spiritual Energy in order to resonate with the Chakras of those within their vicinity. Ordinarily it passes without notice – a pressure sensation in the forehead, or in the case of an open Heart or Throat Chakra, a pressure sensation in those corresponding locations.
So, how can a person take advantage of these Atmospheric Shaktipats? Well, simply by being aware. If one is uninitiated but would like to be as one who is Initiated – with open Chakras and control over one’s Energies, Kundalini and Qi – then one need only visit venues and activities where one might suppose one could meet with some moderately spiritual people. In Sanskrit I think it is called Satsang – the beneficial effect of being in Spiritual Company. If one notices that slight feeling in the Chakras, then the Technique for Auto Initiation is to focus on that Sensation and to hold onto it. Ordinarily, such feelings are ignored and allowed to pass. But if caught by awareness and focused upon, they can be as effectively enduring as any Initiation given at a Weekend Retreat for the price equivalent to that of a down payment on a car.
Sometimes even reading a particularly cogent passage from a Spiritual Book, or in thinking of especially powerful Saints or Gurus from the past, will cause the third eye to open, that is, there will be that feeling of Pressure.
How does one maintain one’s Initiation? Well, simply go about your ordinary business, but remind yourself several times daily to keep some attention on what goes on in your forehead -- up slightly from between the brows. And if you ever feel a slight pressure sensation, then lock onto it immediately -- rub your finger into it; make a buzzy noise with your mouth and modulate its tone until it resonates into that Sensation Point. For the first day, try not to let it totally go away -- remind yourself to keep the sensation open. Rub it with your finger and use that buzz tone to vibrate it. If you can keep it there for just a solid day, and bring it back after a good night’s sleep, then you’ve got it. Then, meditate on it for about 10 or 15 minutes morning and night. After about a week you may begin to feel some heaviness in your head, or you may even have developed a headache. Great! Now you will want to bring the Energy down to the base of your spine where you can give it and yourself a bit of a respite. Do the following: get yourself a nice glass of cold water and drink it, and feel that the Sensation is attached to it and that it drops down, all the way to your lowest vertebrae -- your little triangular tailbone. Reach back there and rub that little tail bone and feel the Sensation there. And keep it there for a couple of weeks. Learn to keep the energy down. That is your Safety Practice. Before the Energy gets too strong to handle you must learn to be able to pull it down at will. So don't keep the Energy up always in your head, supposing that unless you do you might be missing something. You have your entire life to raise up the Energy. For a couple of weeks you need to work on the certainty of being able to lower the Energy. You must be able to control it.
After you’ve developed this ability to control your Energy, being able to drop it down at will, you become ready for a new and very powerful exercise. If you do not feel any sensation in your head -- in and around your brain, then my instructions here might be a bit incomprehensible, but if you do feel some sensation in your head, this is what you should do: If your Energy Sensation is up in your forehead, then use your will to guide it back along the top of your pallet to the back of the roof of your mouth to the Swivel Point at the top of your spine. That point is easy to locate -- you just swivel your head around, and, well, the swivel point is the swivel point. Put the energy sensation there. Point your tongue up to that point. Now, it will feel as though the energy sensation is about the size of a golf ball or a bit smaller… maybe a brussels sprout. What you will now try to do is focus the energy smaller and smaller, as though penetrating the layers of an onion. Smaller smaller smaller -- it will take awhile, but not more than a few minutes. The energy will seem as though it is stuck at a particular size, then suddenly shrink down a bit more. Still you want it to center on that Swivel Point. Eventually it will be about the size of a pea and you will feel it oscillating back and forth like a pendulum. This is really the Key to Kundalini. Once you find that Spot, you can move the Energy anywhere in the body -- up to the Crown Chakra, or down to the heart, or in fact anywhere. But you want to move it down to the heart. That oscillating sensation that you feel is the top of the Heart Chakra anyway, so all you would have to do is let the energy just sink down into the Heart. That should give you a bit of stability.
There is also a trick you could use, and I've only found one other person who can do it. It is to flex a muscle in your head in order to start a roaring noise. The muscle is back there at the top of the pallet close to that swivel point, and the roaring noise is great at collecting Energy. It think it may be a reflex like rolling ones tongue or wiggling one's ears and not everybody can do it. It really is a muscle and not a mental phenomena, because it gets fatigued and one can only hold the flex for 7 or 10 seconds.
Do you know any Mantras? Or you can try an easy Power Meditation -- simply count up from 1 to 24 for each of your spinal column bones, moving your concentration up the spine as you count. Your Kundalini Energy, your Chi, will follow up during the count. Now, such power meditations are a hundred times more impressive during a Dream than while awake, making them always an interesting experience when you can remember to do them while dreaming. Indeed, I once had a Dream in which a Dream Guru told me that even a moment’s Meditation in a Dream is worth thousands of hours of waking Meditation. And having experienced Dream Meditation myself, I don’t doubt the Dream Guru’s math even a little bit.
There is another trick that I developed because I could never really find out what the Buddhist One Finger exercise was (it was mentioned in a Buddhist Treatise by Huang Po), but in experimenting around I found that by twiddling the thumbs -- twirling the thumbs -- right thumb counterclockwise and left thumb clockwise, for just a minute or so, that when you stop, the subtle Kundalini Energy centers in the spine and rises up. I think that the Thumb Nadis are in the Central Channel and that by exercising the Central Nadi Channel at the thumbs, it is exercised everywhere else as well. But the energy only begins to rise after you STOP the exercise, so don't twirl your thumbs indefinitely while waiting for something to happen. Just a minute or two is fine, and then stop.
You should be able to get to the point where you can more or less summon the energy sensation. You are allowed to cheat and point your fingers into the Third Eye Chakra. In fact any pointed object can only help. I once studied Pyramid Power and discovered that there is nothing special about pyramids except that they come to a point. The pointier the better, the steeper the better. Cones work even better but apparently the Egyptians could not carve a curve. Perhaps the handiest and best pyramid available to you would be your very own ballpoint pen – a virtual little Magic Wand.
Oh, and recently I may have found an effective White Light Exercise, as I discovered in a dream:
White Light Exercise from a Dream
While my father was alive I did not get along very well with him, but as the years since his decease have gone by, my relationship with him in my Dreams has been improving. Last night we were sitting at the old dining room table. He was at his customary seat, but I was not at my old seat but, significantly, at the seat ordinarily assigned to the oldest brother – apparently I had been promoted. In the Dream my father tells me that he will show me an exercise for communicating with Spirits using this small device that was set up close to the window. All I could infer about this machine was that it emitted white light. So my father begins this exercise, and it is quite simple – he takes a deep breath and then hisses out the exhale, and then his entire cranium began to glow with White Light. So I began to hiss out my breath and my brain case took on the same glow of White Light. It was like our brains became florescent filaments for the White Light and I could see our brains glowing.
When I awoke, I had an open Crown Chakra. Then, throughout the day, I tried the Exercise a few times. It is easy to do, but there are a few details. It seems that the proper ‘hiss’ involves having the tip of the tongue positioned close to roof of the mouth at that spot that is the best compromise between the forward position which sounds very ‘sssssssssss’ and the position further back which is more purely ‘shshshshshshsh’. Coincidentally, that sound that you would be making is very close to what they call ‘White Noise’.
It really does seem to open the Crown Chakra. Now, the thing I have found about the White Light is that one can see it while in the Dream State, or even while in the hypnogogic state, but while awake it resolves into a feeling of a pressure sensation.
Not only is this White Light Exercise appropriate for waking applications, but more particularly it may be useful to try during Lucid Dreaming, since it would be in such a context that the White Light would sure to be visible.
Also, I might suggest the Gayatri Mantra. After having done the Gayatri Mantra for a year, I had a dream in which the space out in front of me rended open and the White Light came pouring out. Since the Gayatri Mantra is fairly an evocation of the Light, I naturally suppose it must have had something to do with it.
The Gayatri induced White Light Dream may be interesting in itself:
White Light Paramahansa Dream
I knew the dream was becoming spiritual when I looked down and noticed I was not wearing shoes. Here is a Hint! When you are not wearing shoes in a Dream, it means you are on Holy Ground. I levitated up and folded my legs into a lotus position and intoned an AUM. The air around me seemed to turn violet (pinkish purple) and the air rippled and shimmered in waves and then about 20 feet in front of me the very fabric of Space tore open and out poured the Pure White Light. It was like magnesium burning before a chromium mirror, bright and real.
The substance of the Light quickly took up a form – a Paramahansa Swan… not a living bird but a very ornate statuesque representation of one. It was large – more than a meter high and wide. And it was amazingly beautiful – in the brightest White Light but still one could discern the textures of the shapes and detail. But there was little time for amazement when the Swan shot across the distance and into my forehead. And then a new swan formed up to replace it, and it too shot into my forehead as well… and again and again and again, each time more quickly, but each time the ornate and elaborate Paramahansa Swan became simpler, more streamlined. As they formed up more rapidly, they became plainer and plainer. Finally they were coming at a rate of 8 or 10 per second, and the birds were mere ‘Vees’, like as in the way young children draw birds flying in the sky, as two joining lines tapering outward. And they were all flying into my forehead.
When I awoke, the sensations I had felt in the Dream persisted. My Agna Chakra was still pulsating with the feeling of this Spiritual Energy, no longer perceptible as Light but tangible as a pressure sensation. The sensation by proximity also energized my Crown Chakra as well as my throat and heart chakras.
Well, all of the above was about getting the Spiritual Energy and the White Light. That should be enough, but often it is asked “what good is it?” “What does it do?” Many people answer that it is conducive toward psychic and supernatural powers, or that such Energies bring Spiritual Enlightenment. It would be wonderful if this were absolutely certain, however, a great many people have experienced this Spiritual Energy and White Light who are not especially remarkable for any of these extraordinary traits. But still I believe there is some value to the Spiritual Energies. My Old Kundalini Guru would simply assert that it would make people smarter, but perhaps it would be better to express the distinction by saying that it increases the faculty of Discernment. And this brings us to a dream I had years ago:
The Faculty of True Discernment
The Dream Scene was a well sun lit grassy field with large rocks and fallen trees that created a natural gathering place for hikers and nature lovers to sit down and rest. There was this woman who was sitting down and playing a guitar and she was... I have to say it ... an extremely ugly woman. But her guitar playing was the most beautiful I had ever heard. Then came along these men, crude fellows, who approached, and gathered around her to ridicule her merely for being so remarkably unattractive. I was concerned that this would annoy her enough so that she would stop playing, and I became irritated that the boisterous laughing itself was making it difficult to hear the beautiful music being played, and so I told the young men, "Listen! Everything else aside, can't you hear the quality of that music. We are in the presence of some real talent here. So Shut the ____ up!" Then the lady, who had seemed oblivious to all of us, suddenly looked up, and looking me square in the eye said, "The faculty most worth cultivating, is the faculty of True Discernment".
In an instant I was transported to a moon-lit arbor. It was a young growth forest with as many bushes on the forest floor as the trees around them, which formed a low canopy. The air was cool, and this felt like a nice place to be. Much of the Moon light came through and gave a silvery glow to the furry little down-covered pods on the drooping branches of the willow trees. I was a disembodied presence, simply witnessing; I would not be an Actor in this Dream; I would just watch. What I witnessed was a beautiful Greek Goddess… I would guess, Diana, Goddess of the Hunt. She was clad in a pearl-white translucent toga, belted at her waist, and she was barefoot. With a bow in her hand and a quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder, she was serenely languid and in no hurry. It was breathtaking, and I knew this was a special vision. But the tranquility was shattered when along came this strong coarse bearded man – too old to be called young, but not old enough to be supposed wise. He was delighted to happen upon such a pretty woman and of course wanted to make her acquaintance. He said, boastfully, as if boasting could endear himself to her, "I am on the hunt tonight and it is a great misfortune for the poor animals, because I am such a good shot that they surely don't stand a CHANCE".
Diana remained silent and seemed in no hurry to reply, but rather pulled a strangely unique arrow from her quiver. She held it out a moment so that the hunter could see that it was probably the most crocked arrow that could still be straight enough to be shot from a bow. She loaded it onto the string and pulled back in preparation of shooting... then turned her head to the side so it could be seen that she obviously had no intention of aiming, and she released the shot. SHHHOOOOPP, the arrow whistled off and lodged inside a bush I could see the arrow’s feathers sticking out. She walked over and took hold of the arrow’s shaft and withdrew it from the shrub, and, amazingly, there impaled on the arrow was a limp dead game bird. Then she spoke, not to the Hunter, but to me, "Chance? Nothing happens by Chance".' Then I awoke.
What does it mean? The first part of the Dream was prelude to the second part. If I had not seen behind the appearances in the First Dream, that is, if I had not recognized the Beauty behind the ugliness, I would not have been shown the Second. The injunction "The faculty most worth cultivating is the Faculty of True Discernment", was to be my guiding mantra if I were to properly understand the next dream, indeed, to understand my subsequent Life. The Night, the Trees, the Moon Light, the Anima Goddess. This was my inner life. The Bearded Hunter was the invasion of my aggressive persona, my conceit, pride, perhaps even my intellect. The Huntress provided a lesson that teaches that a Greater Unity would always subsume and transcend any actions of the Hunter. Could this Unity be understood? No. The Arrow was crooked and no deliberation guided its aim -- it was released into Fate. Yet there was Intention, there was Will. The Goddess meant to hit the Bird. Apart from Design, pure Volition can resonate well enough to evoke its own Results. But the dynamics here are beyond ordinary cause and effect. It happened because it was both destined to happen and willed to happen. So, what is left for True Discernment to discern, if we omit the rational? Why, the Importance of It All, that is what. If we see Life and the World as arbitrary, a conglomeration of accidents, then we dismiss it. But to see it as a riddle with imbedded meaning makes us look at it harder and deeper. We can understand it as Mystery, but in the positive sense.
Allow me to conclude by saying that where normal physical light allows us to see normal physical reality, the Spiritual Light and Energies help us to both see and feel our Spiritual Reality – to see the Meaning of our Lives.
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