- Shalom & Welcome! - Today, perhaps more than ever before, we do well to realize that what limited Dante was not precisely his faith but the shortcomings of the then available theological theories in terms of which its proper relationship to the rest of the believer's life was articulated and, of course, the obvious fact that most human living falls far short of the ideal:
“We have in [Father Bernard Lonergan's] Latin theology that strange combination of outmoded elements - language, style of argument, seminary context - with the most profound rethinking on topics of engrossing contemporary interest: the law of the cross, the consciousness of Jesus, the three divine Subjects in their community, the social order of the people of G-d, and so on. It is a case again of new wine in old bottles, and the new wine, as happened in the Middle Ages, is a new conceptuality for which the old is an adequate container.
An outstanding example is Lonergan's work in De Constitutione Christi ontologica et psychologica on the consciousness of Christ.
The data are the data of the old faith: that Jesus suffered, could say ‘I thirst’, and so on. But the thinking is the thinking of Insight, where experience, understanding, judgement, consciousness and knowledge, insight and introspection are worked out in a coherent pattern of relations. I know of no single work that is at once so topical, so penetrating, and so completely disregarded by established currents of thought as Lonergan's study of the consciousness of Christ.” (Frederick E. Crowe, Lonergan, London: Geoffrey Chapman 1992, p.130, emphasis added.)
The same Love that inspired Dante's Comedy motivated Lonergan's focus on self-knowledge and, eventually, Self-Knowledge - but De Conscientia (1956) and Insight (1957) are neither his only nor his most recent works and, as he acknowledged in an interview, between Insight and Method in Theology (1972) he “had to master interpretation and history and dialectic and get them in perspective” (quoted from P. Lambert, C. Tansey and C. Going, editors, Caring about Meaning - Patterns in the Life of Bernard Lonergan, Montreal 1982, p.59). No mean achievement! One reason why libraries continue both to exist and expand is that few, if any of us would claim that we already truly understand Dante or Plato or, for that matter, Lonergan - even though he is very much a man of our own times.
Nor is there anything at all unusual about this. Let Lonergan explain: “Normally scientific development is a jump ahead of scientific method. Performance comes first. Once performance occurs, especially when successful performance occurs, there follows reflection. Only as a series of diverse reflections are pieced together, do there begin to emerge and take shape the prescriptions of a scientific method.” (quoted from “Method - Trend and Variations” in A Third Collection, edited by F. E. Crowe, New York/ London, 1985, p.13, emphasis added).
We can ill afford to neglect the mutual enrichment that only honest and sincere dialogue can bring. That is one reason why Buddhism and Christianity, why Roman Catholicism and Freemasonry, why traditionalists and innovators continue to stand in need of each other - and it isn't only that we still have so much to learn… A great deal of what we most urgently need to know is something that once was known, but that for all too long has been forgotten. Associated with this forgetting, too, I find evidence of another fault all flesh seems heir to, viz. near-total effective neglect of new knowledge whenever its practical application calls for some sort of change in our familiar world of meanings and values, no matter how provisional the claims we make for the status of these latter may prove to be.
Notwithstanding Pope John-Paul II's open support for the Charismatic Movement within Christianity, for instance, Father Frederick Crowe does well to complain - albeit more kindly than I might be inclined to do - about the present state of “the theology of the Holy Spirit present and active among us”. This, in his view, “is far and away the most monstrous omission of contemporary ecclesial life, doctrine and practice. How account for the neglect? I suggest as a cause the lack of a conceptuality that can unite the outward, organizational, institutional with the inward, mystical, quickening element. This again could be provided by Insight with its generalized empirical method that unites the data of sense with the data of consciousness. That notion, abstract though it may appear, could be basic for relating the Johannine ‘what our ears have heard, what our eyes have seen, what our hands have touched’ with the Pauline ‘harvest of the Spirit… love, joy, peace, patience…’. It would be only a beginning, a first step on the way to a Church in which discernment takes equal rank with power, but it remains unexploited while we drift in the current of an unacknowledged behaviourism.” (Lonergan, p.130, emphasis added).
Crowe's understanding of Lonergan is second to none, but here his knowledge of the man has made him read more into his mentor's text than that text warrants. Three years ago in my still unpublished essay “Aquinas today - tradition and innovation”, after quoting with approval Lonergan's statement (in a letter to Frederick Crowe) that “Method is about surmounting differences in history,” I pointed to Helen Mary Luke's Kaleidoscope (New York: Parabola 1992), Meditations on the Tarot (Element Books), and Joan D'Arcy Cooper's various writings as “a much needed complementary and balancing corrective” to Lonergan's own “crucially and cardinally important methodological contributions.”
No need to repeat all I then wrote, but here is the nub of it. Lonergan's “self-knowledge grew sufficiently for him to master the essence of Aquinas's contribution to Christian self-understanding, to develop it further, and helpfully to communicate the main body of his findings to us. Lonergan, however, perhaps because of his pædagogical and pastoral prudence rather than on account of any remaining blind-spots or notable personal ignorance, failed to acknowledge in Method the existence of what I have now chosen to call ‘enstatic conversion’… Dom Illtyd Trethowan, too, more than once expressed unease at Lonergan's repeated denial of intuition.”
Unlike the Lonergan of both Insight and Method, I, like Illtyd Trethowan, Helen Mary Luke, Joan D'Arcy Cooper and the anonymous author of the only posthumously published Meditations on the Tarot experience no difficulty in assenting to Eric Doyle's claim that St. Francis of Assisi's love of G-d “heightened his sensitivity and endowed him with the precious gift of heart-sight” (E. Doyle, St. Francis and the Song of Brotherhood, Allen & Unwin 1980, p.42). Something like that, surely, is also what Cardinal Basil Hume has in mind when he looks for a “reawakening of that spiritual instinct which I believe to be within each person” and quotes with approval Auschwitz prisoner Viktor Frankl's conviction that “the salvation of man is through love and in love” (B. Hume, “Getting to know the Lord” in The Tablet, 7 March 1998, pp.304-6).
“The unity of what flows out in the kingdom from the centre to which we turn (& which we enter) in prayer is what Christ taught & is the authentic tradition of the Church - to break that unity between turning inward with Mary & outward with Martha is what became inevitable when the active & contemplative lives became separated aspects of the Church which the Middle Ages tried to ‘combine’ in the so called vita mixta [mixed life], whereas of course the Holy Spirit, the Lord & Giver of the Church's Life is One. [That is why, pace Pannikar, I so much dislike the term inter-Faith dialogue. Authentic Faith cannot be other than One…] It is this unity of the two lives that Tibetans understand as YOGA which is the same word as ‘yoked’ in English. The unity between knowing G-d in contemplation and loving him through compassion for the whole of mankind, the unity that began to wither when scholars began to dismiss as a myth the patristic view that the Church was founded on the monastic life of Christ & the 12 who were 1st called only to ‘follow’ Him & then called a 2nd time to ‘be with Him’. The monastic & contemplative aspect of the Patriarchs & prophets was ignored, & even the word ‘monastic’, first used by Philo (the exact contemporary of Christ) was misconstrued, the vita contemplativa or bios theoretikos wasn't just hived off into a theological fairy-land until rescued by Abbot Chapman, but even Dom David Knowles fell into the trap of confusing monasticism with something that began with the 4th century.” (Sylvester Houédard, OSB, “Buddhist Halœs & Catholic Halœs - Are they the same colour?”, text of a talk to the Benedictine nuns of Talacre, a copy of the original typescript of which was kindly supplied to me by the author.)
“The first western writer to mention Buddha by name is St. Clement of Alexandria (150-215), the city founded 500 years earlier by Alexander the Great in BC 331 just before he set off to conquer India. Alexandria never lost its interest in India, but the Indian ascetics written about before Clement seem more like Hindus or Jains than Buddhists. Apollonius, a contemporary of Christ (c. 1-97 AD) visited 18 monks near Taxila in AD 43 (where Iarchos their superior told him the community had numbered 87 two generations earlier) & he also visited monks in south Egypt about 75 AD close to the site later chosen by St. Pachomius (it was here that Thespesion their superior told him about monks from India living in Ethiopia). Apollonius refers to them as 'sages' since the word monastery (from which 'monk' later developed) was invented by Philo (another contemporary of Christ c. 15 BC - AD 45) when describing the Jewish community of therapeutae at Nitria who were later thought to have been disciples of St. Mark following the rule of Jewish-Catholics in Jerusalem living under James the Brother of the Lord as Luke describes in the Acts. For this reason, not only has Philo had an influence on Christian monasticism, but Antony & Amon chose Nitria to found the monastery made famous by St. John Cassian & Palladius through whom it became the principal ideal reflected in the Rule of St. Benedict.
Flinders Petrie found a stone in Alexandria inscribed with the Wheel & Trisula which he dated as contemporary with Philo & Apollonius & which must be the oldest dateable evidence of Buddhism in the West. By the time St. Jerome mentions Buddha in 393, the history of his birth had become known. From all this we can infer that a meagre possibility does exist that some Buddhist influence might have filtered via Philo, Nitria & Alexandria into the Rule of St. Benedict.
In spite of the West knowing about Buddhism for over 1800 years, & in spite of the scholarship of the last two centuries, it is only in this century that a deep & monastic understanding of Buddhist spirituality has become possible in general, & for Mahayana in particular the West had to wait till 1906 when SOKATSU SHAKU the Rinzai Master of RYOMO-AN temple then at Nippori in N. Tokyo, took 6 disciples to California. He was the disciple of SOYEN SHAKU (b. 1858) Abbot of ENGAKO-KYO ('The Sutra of Perfect Awakening') in Kamakura, founded 1278 by the Shogun TOKIMUNE (famous as defender of Japan against the invasion by Kublai Khan 3 years later) for the Chinese monk SOGEN MUGAKU (his prayers were answered by the KAMIKAZI wind that destroyed the invading fleet) known as Bukko Kokushi (The National Master of Buddha Light) whose Chinese name is TSU-YUAN WU-HSUE. Of the 6 disciples only SOKEI-AN (SHIGETSU SASAKI b. 1882) remained in America, & though he wrote only one book (other than articles for his periodical CAT'S YAWN), he taught Zen till he died at 63 in 1945.
Abbot Soeyn Shaku had suggested the American visit to the Master of Ryomo-an because he himself had attended the 1893 Parliament of Religions in Chicago where he met Paul Carus the publisher at whose request in 1897 he sent the 27 years old Daisetz Teitaro SUZUKI to America to prepare a translation of the Tao Te Ching, though it wasn't till 1927 that Suzuki published the first of his 30 English books on Zen. In 1936 Suzuki attended Younghusband's World Congress of Faiths in London & visited Prinknash to meet Dom Theodore Baily.
This Ch'an or Zen (same root as THINK & THANK in English, same root as TONSERE in Tibetan) of Tsu-yuan Wu-Hsue which was so much a rage in the 50's certainly prepared the West for the texts & commentaries made available after the exile of the Tibetans in 1959 who, under the guidance of the Dalai Lama, set themselves to explaining exactly what they taught, not only in Tibetan to scholars like Dr. Hopkins, but by learning English, French, Italian & German, so as to teach & write their own books. Two of these exiles, Akong & Trungpa, visited Prinknash in 1963 just 3½ years after leaving Tibet & founded the senior Tibetan monastery of the West at Sam-ye in Scotland, naming it for the oldest monastery in Tibet founded by Padmasambhava in 749.
This is why it is only now that Catholics & especially Benedictines are beginning to find themselves able to start talking about Buddhism, not from its outer edges, but from its centre, from the essence of its teaching on the spiritual life. Speaking about Buddhism is only a preparation for monastic ecumenism which is speaking with Buddhists, the single aim of which is to understand each other so that each will understand itself more deeply. The possibility of doing this fruitfully would be increased if each were concerned as we are with the salvation of the whole human race, & if each were equally aware of the sacredness implied in the mystery of being a human being. It is exactly these two aspects of Orthodox-Catholic teaching, the VAST & the DEEP, that the West has begun to discover in Mahayana since the coming of Tibetans into exile, & which they too are beginning to discover in our teaching.
We receive the two Tibetans (being sent by the Dalai Lama at our own invitation) in the light of chapters 53 & 61 of the Holy Rule: On Receiving PEREGRINI & On Receiving PEREGRINI MONKS as guests. We remember as Jewish-Catholics our own sojourn in Egypt & our exile in Babylon; we remember as Benedictines the exile so many monasteries have known since the Reformation, the French Revolution &c, & we remember all this because G-d has told us to do so (Lv 19:34, ‘If you have resident aliens in your country, you will not molest them. You will treat resident aliens as though they were native-born and love them as yourself - for you yourselves were once aliens in Egypt. I am Yahweh your G-d.’) whenever we meet Peregrini [pilgrims, wayfarers, travelling companions] in the Holy Land - so we receive them, as Benedict says, with the verse: Suscepimus Deus misericordiam tuam in medio templi tui, we have received your compassion, Lord, in the inmost part of your temple - the temple that the monastery is as the Domus Dei, the House of G-d, & the temple that each of us is as the temple of the Holy Spirit.
As Bernard says, the monk is one who shews to all others the same compassion he has received by having been led into the true Holy Land of likeness, out of the Egypt of unlikeness.
The study of patristics is imposed on us by St. Benedict: 'what book of the Holy Catholic Fathers does not proclaim LOUDLY the most Direct Way of reaching our Creator?' What led up to Vatican II was the extent to which the Church at large, outside monasteries, took up this teaching of the Holy Fathers on the Direct Way. Whatever the cause, something had happened about the year 1000 AD that made St. Bernard (b. 1090) "the last of the Fathers & first of the scholastics" & started the slow erosion of our Jewish-Catholic contemplative tradition.
Some have blamed the seculars for relegating contemplation to monasteries, others blame regulars for not instructing seculars - but any historian will know that the way things develop in human society can never be reduced to simple explanations - it's like blaming the monasteries (especially the Benedictines) for the Reformation when the causes are much more complicated, but the end result has been that thousands of young people, mostly Catholic (if the surveys are correct) have been flocking to what the papers call 'eastern cults' in search of what the West has failed to hand on to them in spite of the adage 'contemplata aliis tradere' - handing on to others that which has been contemplated - an adage that is based on the unity of temple & kingdom: as G-d reigns through the human only when the human is a living temple - so the contemplata are manifested to others by the human who turns to the East, to that interior Orient as the Fathers call it in a phrase taken up repeatedly by the Sufis of Islam. The temple surrounds the inmost room that we enter to pray; the kingdom is manifest in the deeds that flow out from that centre.” (S. Houédard, loc.cit.)
Dante's Comedy was written to communicate his identical conviction. According to Julius Evola (The Mystery of the Grail, p.146, note 5; p.170, note 6): “There is a good book by R. L. John, Dante (Vienna, 1947), in which the author tries to adduce many proofs of Dante's membership in the Templar organization, which he did not consider to be incompatible with Catholic Doctrine…
The Ritual of the XXXth Degree of the Supreme Belgian Counsel (sic) of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite (Brussels), 49-50. In a dramatic ritual action, Squin de Florian, the alleged accuser of the Templars, is made to say as his justification: ‘The Church is above freedom!’ This is countered by the Master of the Great Lodge, who says: ‘Freedom is above the Church!’ Obviously, the first statement is correct if we are dealing with the claim to freedom on the part of any individual; the second statement is true if we are dealing with a person who has the required qualification to put himself beyond the inevitable limitations proper of (sic) a particular historical form of spiritual authority.” [Et antiquum documentum novo cedat ritui, as Aquinas puts it.]
“In the Scottish Rite of the Supreme Counsel of Germany… in [the 13th] degree, the initiate who knocks down the Temple's columns and steps over the cross, being admitted, after this, to the Mystery of the ascending and descending stairs with seven steps, must swear revenge and ritually actualize this oath by striking with a dagger the Crown and the Tiara [no longer worn by the Pope], which are the symbols of the traditional double power, namely, of the regal and pontifical authority. All this properly conveys the meaning of what Freemasonry, as an occult force of global subversion, has precipitated in the modern world… While in the cycle of the Grail the initiatory realization was conceived in such a way as to be connected with the goal of resurrecting the king, in the abovementioned ritual we have exactly the opposite… In any event, the reason behind these considerations is to indicate the point where the ‘legacy of the Grail’ and of analogous initiatory traditions stops and where, with the exception of the survival of a few surviving names and symbols, we can no longer detect any legitimate filiation from them. In the specific case of modern Freemasonry the following factors would make it appear as a typical example of a pseudoinitiatory organization…” (op.cit. pp.70-71)
Evola's encomium of 14th-century Templars is in some respects excessive and in others historically ill-founded. He claims that “among the various knightly orders, the Order of the Knights Templar was the one that more than others overcome the double limitations constituted, on the one hand, by the mere warrior ideal of the secular knighthood and, on the other hand, by the merely ascetic ideal of Christianity and its monastic orders. [ And I have already noted Sylvester Houédard's complaints about monastic life after 1000 A.D.] The Order of the Knights Templar approached more than others the type of the ‘spiritual chivalry of the Grail’; moreover, its inner doctrine had an initiatory character. For this reason it was singled out and severely repressed by the alliance of the representatives of the two princes whom the order ideally transcended (emphasis added), namely, the pope and his ally, Philip the Fair, a secularized, profane, and despotic king who hated the aristocracy.” (ibid., p.128)
Hold on! “As Sigmund Freud remarked, we may love simplicity if we like. But this will not solve any of our problems for us. We have to make up our minds at the outset to accept the fact of complicated relations. We need to be humble and put sympathies and antipathies in the background, if we wish to learn to know about reality.” (Colin Hamer, Voice in the darkness, Zennor: United Writers 1978, p.13)
Alfred Weysen's careful research has enabled him to furnish his readers with what is very probably an accurate account of the Templars' trials and tribulations, from which I here quote only one short extract (L'Île des Veilleurs - À la découverte du Temple du Saint-Graal et du trésor des Templiers, Paris: Robert Laffont 1986, 430 pages including an 11-page bibliography, pp.156-9, emphasis added):
“À l'aube du 13 octobre 1307, toutes les prévôtés de France possédaient le document qui les habilitait à l'arrestation des Templiers.
Comme il fallait atteindre simultanément les localités les plus lointaines et les plus inaccessibles, dans les Pyrénées ou dans le Nord, que les messagers les plus rapides mettaient plusieurs jours à atteindre, on imagine aisément que l'ordre fut émis plus tôt, le 26 septembre exactement, qu'il requit de très nombreux messagers, ce qui rendait une fuite d'autant plus plausible. En Provence, ce berceau du Graal, il n'y aura de mise en scène d'arrestation que le 24 janvier 1308, soit trois mois plus tard.
Jacques de Molay, et la plupart des dignitaires du Temple assistaient par ailleurs le 12 octobre, c'est-à-dire la veille, aux obsèques de la comtesse de Valois.
C'est Nogaret lui-même qui arrêtait le Grand Maître le lendemain 13 octobre à l'aube.
À peine séquestrés, les prisonniers passèrent à la torture, car Nogaret et le roi souhaitaient livrer à l'Inquisition et à la Justice d'Église des Templiers déjà reconnus coupables sur aveux.
C'est par les mouvements de la populace dans les rues, et par les proclamations des hérauts aux carrefours que les camériers de Clément V lui apprirent la nouvelle.
Sur-le-champ, le Pape écrivit une lettre très sévère datée de Poitiers invitant Philippe le Bel à libérer derechef les Templiers. Mais il était trop tard, et les premiers aveux avaient commencé.
Il faut retenir une enquête double, royale d'abord et papale ensuite qui dura d'octrobe à décembre 1307, l'institution en juillet 1308 de commissions pontificales et diocésaines, le Pape se réservant surtout le judgement de Jacques de Molay.
En 1314, le procès ne sera pas encore terminé, Jacques de Molay et Geoffroy de Charnay se rétractent une fois de plus. Le bûcher mettra fin à cette parodie de justice.
Ce sont les aveux des dignitaires qui sont indicateurs. D'autre part, selon le dernier livre de Raymond Oursel Le Procès des Templiers (Denoël, Paris, 1955) on trouve une répartition assez curieuse sur la carte de France des Cammanderies ayant permis l'identification des Templiers torturés, où se manifestent comme de grands vide-blancs les territoires de la Guyenne, du Languedoc et de la Provence, enfin de Bretagne, ce qui se comprend, puisque les territoires de Guyenne et de Bretagne sont l'apanage du roi d'Angleterre, et que la Provence est le domaine de la maison d'Anjou.
Ainsi, les commanderies les plus suspectes d'hérésie sont pratiquement intactes de toute enquête. Certes Charles d'Anjou arrêtera les Templiers de Provence plusieurs mois plus tard, mais il ne les malmènera pas comme ils le seront en territoire de Philippe le Bel. Emmenés à la prison d'Aix, ils seront libérés sans peine par lui-même ou par son fils Robert (1309-1343).
Or, ce sont les importantes commanderies du Var qui voisinent comme on l'a vu les gorges du Verdon qui paraissent les plus dignes d'intérêt, car les plus voisines de la Tête templiste.
On revient ainsi à l'idée d'une sorte de parodie de justice provoquée semble-t-il par les Templistes gardiens du temple du Saint Graal ayant voulu se débarrasser d'un poids mort ou des branches mortes d'un arbre malade, à savoir les Templiers éloignés de la base occitane. Comme Guillaume de Nogaret est un Occitan, l'idée se fait jour assez rapidement qu'il aurait pu être délégué à son insu par les Templistes auprès de Philippe le Bel pour créer le conflit avec Boniface VIII qui aurait évincé illégalement le pape Célestin V. L'étude détaillée de la vie de Nogaret pourrait révéler sans doute une partie importante de la vérité…
Dante qui est un guide assez sûr… place Clément V et Philippe le Bel au XIIIe cercle de l'Enfer, ce qui les écarterait de toute possibilité d'entente avec les Templistes dont Dante semble bien avoir fait partie, mais ce qui n'exclut pas que Clément V ait été joué par les Templistes, comme de Molay, Nogaret et Philippe le Bel. La tête sculptée de Dante apparaît sous le rocher de Saint-Jean-des-Gorges-du-Verdon. C'est un Veilleur et un grand initié…”
Full Moon: Friday, 13 March 1998.
Following Jesus Christ we, indeed, do well to prefer Life to death, Wakefullness to sleep, Memory to forgetfulness. According to the Anglican exponent of Ancient Sumerian Yoga, Joan D'Arcy Cooper (1927-1982) “All true teaching is about the spiritual evolution of individual men and women, about their growth of being, and about the ‘new man’ which is ultimately possible for each person”. In this new sense, as in its original meaning, ‘man’ for Joan is not a gender-discriminatory term, but signifies a being with a mind at any stage in the growth of its one life through many etheric life-times.
Associate Professor of Architecture Bodvar Schjelderup has lived and worked for most of his life at Trondheim in Norway nd, even if you can't read most of his latest book on account of its being written in Norwegian, the many illustrations in Loggbok for en Helgen - A Saint's Logbook, which was published recently by Genesis in Oslo, repay careful study.
His Pilegrim (“Pilgrim”) in 23 languages was published in Trondheim a few years ago and, before that, after thirty years of relevant research, he published Evidence - Book One: The Language of Recognition in Trondheim, but in English rather than Norwegian. Evidence is also lavishly illustrated and contains significant references to Stonehenge.
That both the descending-passage and the ascending-passage in the Great Pyramid diverge from the horizontal at the precise angle of 26.28° is common knowledge, and many books also mention that Bethlehem lies precisely 26.28° North of due East from the Great Pyramid. The illustrations in Bodvar Schjelderup's latest book additionally show that Stonehenge is situated 26.28° West of due South from Trondheim, that Byzantium was situated 26.28° East of due South from Trondheim, that Trondheim is 26.28° North of due West from Novgorod, and that these undoubted facts of geography were taken into account by the original builders of Trondheim's mediæval cathedral.
Having been for many years, when he was younger, a teacher of, among other things, literacy and basic mathematics, the Preliminary LibrArian knows from experience that, properly presented, truths of this sort can make learning much more enjoyable and rewarding all round. Nevertheless, suffice it here to mention only one more detail from among the many more that are relevant. The distance between Jerusalem and Trondheim is exactly twelve times that from Jerusalem to the Great Pyramid, and Pope John-Paul II's most recent visit to his native Poland positioned him just halfway between Jerusalem and Trondheim; the concentration of human genius during the last thousand years in and around the indicated area, as shown on the preceding pages, also affords food for thought. Jesus of Nazareth said that the very hairs on our head are all numbered, and the longer one lives, and the more one studies, the more one realises that this is most precisely True.
Joan D'Arcy Cooper teaches that medi(t)ation is the attitude of listening or awareness that grows out of inner stillness. “The word ‘meditation’,” she explains, “is said to derive from the Latin meditatio, and there are various connotations of the word in most European languages which cover a wide range of meanings: to plan something, to give attention to one thing by a process of limitation or exclusion, absorption in an interior state to the exclusion of exterior phenomena, attentiveness, etc. To go further back, the word derives from a word meaning to be in the middle, and it is this which gives a clue to the true meaning of meditation, that is, to stand in the middle of life with interior and exterior awareness.” (The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man, 1979, currently obtainable from Culbone Community Trust, Porlock Weir, Somerset, U.K., p.143.)
Pope Leo XIII in his great Encyclical Providentissimus Deus said of the original biblical writers: “By supernatural power G-d so moved and impelled them to write, he was so present to them, that they first rightly understood, then willed faithfully to write down, and finally expressed in apt words and with infallible truth the things which he ordered, and those only”. And he reaffirmed the decisions of the Council of Trent and emphasised that the Bible in all its parts was inspired and that a stated fact must be accepted as falling under inspiration, down to the most insignificant item; that is, the whole Bible is the Word of G-d.
Iman Wilkens reminds us that the Greek word histor (= one who holds knowledge) is related to another Greek word histos (= loom, or cloth), and that Homer frequently praises the Wisdom of one famous woman weaver, Penelope. Homer also attributes to Circe “a great imperishable web, such as is the handiwork of goddesses, finely-woven and beautiful, and glorious” (cf. Where Troy Once Stood, London-Sydney-Auckland-Johannesburg: Rider, 1990, especially pp. 94, 185-7, 212, 273-4.):
“In the Odyssey, we will find a Troy town of the figurative sort, a labyrinth containing knowledge. We will make acquaintance with the goddess Circe, the Great Initiatrice into the Mysteries and, as such, the central figure of the epic. Her name, Circe, is not accidental, for in its dialect form, Kirke, it is related, amongst others, to the word kirkos, which designated any bird of prey that circles above its prey, such as very appropriately, Circeatinæ. Although these birds disappeared from western Europe as they fell victim to hungers and agrochemicals, it is well known that they glide first in large circles above their prey, then spiral upwards, finally to drop like a stone on their victim. In a very similar way, a person eager to learn turns around the mystery, gradually approaching the centre in the learning process. Since the epics of Homer are deeply rooted in the teachings of the Mystery schools, it is not surprising to find that the Troy town or spiral labyrinth is the key symbol of both the Iliad and the Odyssey…
After proving himself a Man by passing through all the harsh trials imposed upon him by the gods, Odysseus is now ready for initiation into the Mysteries, to be performed in the holy of holies of the Gnostic religion (Greek gnosis = knowledge) of that time, the island of Circe, the high priestess of the cult. Judging by the detailed descriptions of the region, Homer himself must have been initiated there…
According to the Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the word ‘church’ comes from Old English cirice or circe, a word that clearly seems to be cognate with Circe. We also know that the dialectal form of Circe (also found in Greek) was Kirke and etymologists are agreed that the Dutch word for ‘church’, kerk, the German Kirche and the Scots kirk all come form the Old Saxon kirika, another word cognate with Kirke or Circe.
If Zierikzee, for which many different spellings can be seen on old maps, such as Ziericxzee, Sierchzee, or Zircze, was also the same word as circe meaning ‘sacred place’ or ‘church’, then Circe, the goddess whose name was Church with a capital ‘C’, must have been the highest authority of the Gnostic religion. In the Bronze Age, Zierikzee must then have been the religious centre of the Gnostics, invariably associated with initiation into the Mysteries, the knowledge of the universe that surrounds us. Therefore the most important Gnostic school of Homer's time must also have been located there…
The Odyssey, being an initiation story, is clearly a quest for the Grail, thus explaining the vase on the arms of Vlissingen. The Odyssey is therefore the oldest epic about the Grail, which was to be found exactly where, in the Bronze Age, the initiation rites were performed: on the Nolle beach between Dishoek and Vlissingen, the latter name meaning: ‘the Rebirth of Ulysses’, after its founder, the archetypal initiate of Homer's time…
The Grail's transition from a Gnostic to a Christian symbol is described by Paul Le Cour, according to whom the first and last patrons of the Grail were Poseidon and St John, who were considered to be patrons of the initiates. This provides us not only with the explanation of why, of all Olympians, it is precisely Poseidon, god of the Ocean and the subconscious whose golden statue is maintained on top of the town-hall of Zierikzee, once the site of Circe's Mystery school, but also why the tallest church tower of Middelburg, which was built close to the Grail, is called Sint Jan (St John)…
Homer calls Circe the ‘dread goddess of human speech’ (Od. XI,8), an expression that may make us smile today, but knowing that the poet always chooses his words very carefully, we must try to find an explanation… Just as in schools and universities today, the Mystery schools counted many drop-outs. Cæsar recounts that the Druids had many pupils but that very few made it to the end. The reason for this was not only that the teachings in the higher grades were increasingly difficult, but also because the final degree - the initiation of Hades - was a dangerous ritual. No wonder then that Circe was a ‘dread goddess of human speech’, the latter epithet being a reference to the Word which… confers consciousness to human beings, which is a prerequisite to discovering the transcendental reality behind the apparent world.”
Joseph Blenkinsopp wisely asserts: “What should be affirmed at the present juncture is the need for coexistence between different interpretative systems with their quite different but not necessarily incompatible agendas. We need an edict of tolerance to discourage the tendency of new theories to proscribe their predecessors. This might, for example, encourage us to recover the insights of the patristic writers or the great Jewish exegetes of the Middle Ages. It would leave us free to look for the æsthetic aspects of the ‘text in itself’ without feeling obliged to condemn the quite different project of the historical practitioner.” (The Pentateuch - An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible, New York: Doubleday, 1992, p.28.)
“The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It stood on its own and looked out over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means - it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of London because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about thirty as well, tall, dark haired and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought. It was, too - most of his friends worked in advertising.
On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the lane was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent's house for what was to be the last time.
It hadn't properly registered yet with Arthur that the council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead.
At eight o'clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn't feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash.
Toothpase on the brush - so. Scrub.
Shaving mirror - pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur Dent's bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried, and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.
Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something to connect with.
The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.
He stared at it.
‘Yellow,’ he thought and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed.
Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. ‘Yellow,’ he thought and stomped on to the bedroom.
He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed important. He'd been telling people about it, telling people about it at great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people's faces. Something about a new bypass he'd just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself out, he'd decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn't have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
God what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in the wardrope mirror. He stuck out his tongue. ‘Yellow,’ he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.
Mr L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn't know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L. Prosser of his might ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.
He was by no means a great warrior: in fact he was a nervous worried man. Today he was particularly nervous and worried because something had gone seriously wrong with his job - which was to see that Arthur Dent's house got clear out of the way before the day was out.
‘Come off it, Mr Dent,’ he said, ‘You can't win you know. You can't lie in front of the bulldozer indefinitely.’…
On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds. They soared with ease, basking in electromagnetic rays from the star Sol, biding their time, grouping, preparing.
The planet beneath them was almost perfectly oblivious of their presence, which was just how they wanted it for the moment. The huge yellow somethings went unnoticed at Goonhilly, they passed over Cape Canaveral without a blip, Woomera and Jodrell Bank looked straight through them - which was a pity because it was exactly the sort of thing they'd been looking for all these years.
The only place they registered at all was on a small black device called a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic which winked away quietly to itself. It nestled in the darkness inside a leather satchel which Ford Prefect habitually wore slung around his neck…
A sudden silence hit the Earth. If anything it was worse than the noise. For a while nothing happened.
The great ships hung motionless in the sky, over every nation on Earth. Motionless they hung, huge, heavy, steady in the sky, a blasphemy against nature. Many people went straight into shock as their minds tried to encompass what they were looking at. The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't.
And still nothing happened.
Then there was a slight whisper, a sudden spacious whisper of open ambient sound. Every hi-fi set in the world, every radio, every television, every cassette recorder, every woofer, every tweeter, every mid-0range driver in the world quietly turned itself on.
Every tin can, every dustbin, every window, every car, every wine glass, every sheet of rusty metal became activated as an acoustically perfect sounding board.
Before the Earth passed away it was going to be treated to the very ultimate in sound reproduction, the greatest public address system every built. But there was no concert, no music, no fanfare, just a simple message.
‘People of Earth, your attention please,’ a voice said, and it was wonderful. Wonderful perfect quadrophonic sound with distortion levels so low as to make a brave man weep.
‘This is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council,’ the voice continued. ‘As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you.’
The PA died away.
Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth…
The Vogons turned on their PA again. It said:
‘There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now.’…
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
The Vogon Constructor Fleet coasted away into the inky starry void.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, London, Pan Books, 1979, pp.9-31.
Zecharia Sitchin writes: “On July 12, 1988, the Soviet Union launched an unmanned spacecraft called Phobos 2 and may have provided Mankind with its first Star Wars incident - not the “Star Wars” nickname of America's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), but a war with people from another world…
All went well until Phobos 2 aligned itself with Phobos, the Martian moonlet. Then, on March 28 1989, the Soviet mission control center acknowledged sudden communication ‘problems’ with the spacecraft…
The evidence of an ancient space base on Mars and the odd-shaped ‘shadow’ in its skies add up to an awesome conclusion: What the secret frames hide is evidence that the loss of Phobos 2 was not an accident but an incident. Perhaps the first incident in a Star Wars - the shooting down by Aliens from another planet of a spacecraft from Earth intruding on their Martian base…” (Genesis Revisited - Is Modern Science catching up with Ancient Knowledge?,Santa Fe, Bear & Co., 1991, pp.272-84.)
Jesus of Nazareth declares: “The greatest love that a man can show is that he should lay down his life for his friends; and you, if you do what I command you to do, are my friends. I no longer speak of you as servants because a servant has no comprehension of what his master is about. And if I have called you friends, that is because I have made know to you everything which I have learned from my Father.” (Jn 15:13-15.)
The Apostle Saint Paul authoritatively concludes: “Through him we all, both Jew and Gentile alike, have access to the Father by the one Spirit. The status you hold is no longer that of aliens or of people making a temporary stay. No, you are fellow citizens of G-d's consecrated ones; you are members of his household.” (Eph 2:18-19.)
Zecharia Sitchin believes that the original reading of Genesis 1:1 is very slightly but most significantly different from that given in all known versions of the Hebrew-Christian Bible, and that the correct text reads: “Ab-reshit bara Elohim et Ha'Shamaim v'et Ha'Aretz”. This may be translated: “The Father-of-Beginning created the Gods, the Heavens, and the Earth.” (Divine Encounters, New York, Avon Books, 1996, p.376.)
Bonnie Gaunt reminds us: “There is a Hebrew word that embodies not only the concept of beginning, but it also includes the idea of that which has no beginning - eternity. The word is kedem. It adds to 144. Although kedem is used as a root for beginning, or origin, it strangely carries the thought of no beginning nor ending - eternal, everlasting. The meaning of the word is best represented by a circle, which, of course, has no beginning nor ending point. The word circle, in Hebrew, multiplies to 144.” (Beginnings - The Sacred Design,510 Golf Avenue, Jackson, Michigan, 1995, p.172.)
Alan F. Alford, B.Com, FCA, MBA, who was born in 1961 and is acquainted with Zecharia Sitchin's epoch-making series of books: The Earth Chronicles, proposes (in his Gods of the New Millennium - Scientific Proof of Flesh & Blood Gods, Hodder & Stoughton, 1997, pp.411-12) this essentially similar but somewhat modified:
B.C.:
Unless you have already read the original German text published in 1995 by Albert Langen Georg Müller Verlag in der F. A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH, München, Peter Plichta's most recent book, God's Secret Formula - Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code (ISBN 1-86204-014-1: Element Books, Shaftesbury, U.K. - Rockport, U.S.A. - Milton, Australia, 1997) also deserves to be brought to your attention:
According to Professor Father Rupert Lay S.J. of St Georgen College, the German Jesuit University in Frankfurt: (1) Mr Plichta's earlier and more technically written books are fascinating to read; (2) their contents are faultless from a mathematical point of view; and (3) “Mr Plichta's scientific research constitutes the first fundamental statement ever made on our concept of the physical world: everything before Plichta - from Newton to Einstein - has only been theory.”
“The third law of thermodynamics says that at the lowest possible temperature of -273.2°C, or absolute zero, no more movement of atoms takes place… The experiments of Gay-Lussac proved that gases expand and contract by 1/273.2 of their volume for every degree of heating or cooling… The time the Moon requires for its orbit of the Earth is one sidereal month or 27.32 days… The length of an Earth-year measures approximately 365.25 days. Because we count 365 days for 3 years, we have to count 366 days for 1 year. This natural 3 + 1 law is not affected by the fact that every 400 years a further day must be added… 1/27.32 = 0.03660… and 1/366 = 0.002732… The acceleration of the Moon in its path around the Earth is measured as 0.273 x cm/s² and the Moon radius measures 0.272 Earth radii… The acceleration of the Earth and the Moon behave reciprocally as the squares of the radii of the orbits of Earth and Moon… What is the relationship between the mass of the Moon and that of the Earth?… The ratio is 1:81.”
There are only 81 natural chemical elements, and:
Wisdom 11:20
Joan D'Arcy Cooper teaches: “Man - not plant or animal life - was the original ‘creation’. All men were created simultaneously. A few evolved spiritually but the vast majority did not evolve or evolved very little. The ones who did evolve were concerned with the state of other men and, discovering the capacity in themselves for creation, created other forms of life as forms only for men to enter into and gain varieties of experience through and provide what they hoped would be an impetus to man's further development. These forms were plant and animal forms similar to (but not identical with) those which exist today, only they did not then have independent existence as separate species but existed solely as forms for the experience of human beings on the etheric planes. This was the first creation undertaken by spiritual beings - that is, by more highly-evolved men - to help the rest of mankind evolve spiritually. The creation of plant and animal forms as separate species, with independent existence, was a much later creation, undertaken by individual persons who had themselves evolved through the different forms. They created the separate species out of gratitude for their own experiences and because they had come to love the forms. (The physical creation of these species was yet another and very much later creation, which was part of the creation of the physical Earth, undertaken for the same reasons as the original creation of the plant and animal forms, namely, to provide an impetus for the evolution of individual men, as well as to remind them of their experiences within these forms.)
From the middle of the nineteenth century onwards the nature of physical life on Earth had so changed that there was need for a much higher degree of spiritual evolution before the individual person could benefit from his incarnation. If someone were born on Earth today in a more primitive (that is, undeveloped but not distorted) etheric state, he simply could not benefit from his experience in the complex, machine- and material-oriented social structures which exist everywhere. His spiritual being could become distorted and his own spiritual evolution set back for a long period of time.
For the past hundred years and more the Earth has become increasingly peopled with persons who have arrived ‘before their time’, that is, been born before they were sufficiently advanced spiritually for the experience of an Earth-life to be of value for them. By the last quarter of the twentieth century, 70% of the people on Earth had taken on physical lives before they were sufficiently evolved for their lives to be spiritually fruitful. Moreover, through a preponderance of spiritually under-developed people on Earth, the conditions of life under which all people had to live had deteriorated so much by that time that it was difficult for anyone to find his own individual expression through normal physical life, and a natural form of growth for his etheric being was impossible. Social structures had become more gross and all-encompassing and, by stressing the collective groupings rather than individual expression, made it increasingly difficult for any person to stand out against collective pressures, to take individual decisions and personal initiative, and to become truly accessible to the voice of his own conscience. The quality of life - which resides wholly in the ability of individuals to express individually - declined and is continuing to decline throughout the whole of the twentieth century.
This lack of spiritual development in the majority of people on Earth may be defined as an insufficient development of the three upper chakras through which a person's etheric, or spiritual, body expresses. One of these centres might be more highly developed in some people, but usually all three centres are under-developed and the etheric beings of these people express solely through the three lower centres. The evolutionary stage has not yet been reached where there is either the necessity or the possibility for a sense of purpose, direction, or guidance. In all these people the preponderance of development lies with the chakras belonging to the physical body, through which the physical or animal nature expresses. This represents the stage of expression natural for their etheric beings. If they had remained in the etheric sphere, instead of incarnating, their evolution would have proceeded gradually and naturally; but by their precipitate entrance into physical bodies, they run the risk of prolonging this stage and making their evolution beyond it much more difficult. For their etheric beings are wholly caught up in a material-physical orientation that structures and even ensnares their minds far beyond the natural limitations of the physical life. Futhermore, a preponderance of such spiritually under-developed people on Earth influences the structuring of all human societies to the detriment of those people who are more evolved spiritually and who need a more differentiated social environment and culture for their beings to express through and grow.
The majority of people who are ‘born before their time’ enter an Earth experience because of their dependence upon other persons who have taken on, or are about to take on, a physical life. They may also be drawn into physical life through some vibration of excitement which attracts them. But it is always their dependence upon - or their identification with - another person which is the primary cause of their will to be born into an Earth-body. (The ‘other person’ may or may not have been before his or her time. If he or she is born with sufficient spiritual preparation - that is, at the ‘right time’ for him - the physical life-experience will proceed naturally and not be adversely affected by the subsequent birth of someone who is so closely dependent upon him.) It is not impossible for a person who has been born before his time to develop spiritually, but it depends upon the strength of his own will and the stage of its evolution, for great efforts have to be made to do so. If there has not been sufficient development of will, the ability to make such effort does not exist.
A person may also have a will which is one-sided in its strength and direction or closely identified with the will of the person through whom he was attracted into a physical life in the first place. A strong and rigid self will is evidence of obsession or possession - or sometimes both. More than a third of the people who are born before their time have strong and rigid wills.
The strength of will which a person possesses in his physical life has always been developed through the effort needed to pursue a specific line of direction while still in the etheric spheres. A specialised or one-sided development in the person's being appears in the form of a ‘talent’ on the physical plane: a talent for some form of art, music, research, money-making, and so on. Whatever the talent, it represents a direction set before the entrance of that person into his physical life; his being was already centred upon this single expression or this one-sided development which his will procured - and in relation to which his will was vastly strengthened.
Some people, who nevertheless belong to this group of strong willed people, appear passive or ‘weak’ willed. Seeming passivity often hides obstinacy, and the will in this person may be strong in its resistance to other wills rather than in expressing its own. This kind of one-sidedness takes a negative form and attracts to itself various forms of frustration or depression, and usually possession by discarnate spirits whose expressions take the same form. In fact, even strong-willed people with a more positive form of expression can also exhibit a pronounced obstinacy and the accompanying negative forms of expression as well.
People with this kind of will always attract, at some point during the course of their physical lives, discarnate spirits with a similar one-sided development who add force or strength to their own wills. Such possession, even of a temporary nature - which it rarely is - makes a new evolution of will for that person almost impossible. His physical life is usually ‘wasted’ and he must await a return to an etheric plane of existence before his will can be extricated from the will of the discarnate spirit - or spirits - and from his own one-sided development, and begin anew the slow process of evolution.
In about half the cases of people with this kind of strong will, a more comprehensive form of spirit possession is expressed which, again, originated in experiences prior to the person's physical life on Earth. These experiences - unresolved on the etheric plane - are carried with the person into his physical life and affect that life in the form of being possessed (from time to time) by the discarnate spirit to whom these previous experiences relate. Because the unresolved relationships are usually of a negative nature, so the form of possession is usually a negative one and hangs over the physical life of the person like a cloud, interfering with and often cutting him off from a natural expression of his life. The lives of 18% of people on Earth today may be described in this way. (It is important to realise that the personal attachments which draw these people into physical life in the first place are never identical with the possessions which hold them back and make impossible a natural and complete expression of that life. These ‘attachments’, representing the weak and under-developed side of the person, are always to members of the opposite sex; whereas the ‘possessions’ occur through the developing will and its experiences which one or both parties failed to work out or resolve before entering upon a physical life.)
Strong will and single-mindedness are often highly valued as attainments worthy of emulation by whole societies on earth, whereas in fact they represent as much a spiritual weakness as do any forms of so-called neurotic obsession. the apparent ‘strength’ is a kind of rigidity which will have to be broken down before any real growth in being can take place.
Slightly fewer than two-thirds of the people who have been born before their time - that is, forty-five per cent of all people on earth today - should not have been born at all because their beings are too undeveloped and primitive for them to make use of the opportunities for growth which life in a physical body presents. Their entrance into physical life, while made possible by a close relationship with someone already in or entering into a physical body, was motivated solely by a form of greed; without this motivation of greed, a physical life would never have been sought at this stage. While still living in the etheric spheres, these people were attracted by the baubles of material civilisation - the possessions and the activities which they saw people on earth enjoying, and it was these sights which fascinated and awoke in them a desire for physical life. This was not a desire for experience but only for material possessions and activities that would titilate the senses, for they as yet knew nothing about the spiritual growth which is possible for every human being. They came into physical bodies solely to enjoy: there is no other purpose for their life on earth; they have completely forgotten their previous existence and the etheric sphere in which their beings have true reality.
Only thirty per cent of all people on earth at this time, in the last quarter of the twentieth century, are capable of profitting from their experience in physical bodies; for them alone is experience in itself of primary importance, and the wisdom or understanding which can be learned from such experience. Among the first group of people with strong wills, there are those who know about spiritual growth and the purpose of spiritual life - but are unable to act from that knowledge during their lifetimes. It is only people in this last group - that is, people who have incarnated at the right time for them - who are capable of real growth and development during their physical lives. They alone have the potentiality for taking on added responsibilities for other people and creating conditions within which not only the flowering of men's physical natures becomes possible but also opportunities exist to learn about the true nature of man and his potentiality for spiritual growth. They alone can give society the structures men need for their spiritual evolution.” (The Ancient Teaching of Yoga and the Spiritual Evolution of Man, pp.136-41. Note, however, that “there is a source of healing which transcends the creative forces and is used by persons who have evolved beyond the etheric sphere altogether; but a discussion of this does not belong to the the teaching about pranayama and healing by the pranic forces.”)
“If you are going to evolve in your spiritual uniqueness and individuality of expression, it is essential to become aware of the sharp differences between people (and influences) who nourish and encourage it, and those who seek to limit or even destroy it. It is necessary to discern clearly between good and evil as it affects your own identity. Evil is anything which makes you feel guilty about having a self, that seeks to destroy your individuality, or imposes the belief that the meaning of your individuality consists in giving it up to another person or deity or abstract image, such as ‘the people’ or ‘society’. Anything or anyone that denies, explicitly or by implication, the meaning of every person's uniqueness and spiritual potential is evil. On the contrary, everything and everyone that encourages it, reveals it, helps it to grow and evolve towards the Light of greater understanding and awareness is good.” (Corner-Stones of the Spiritual World, p.12.)
The Life Lesson Number is calculated from one's full date of birh, the Soul Number from the vowels, the Outer Personality Number from the consonants, and the Path of Destiny Number from all the letters in one's full name at birth.
In the diagram AD, DG and AG are the vertical and horizontal sides and the hypotenuse of the right-angled triangle ADG, on the sides of which have been built the three progressively larger squares ADCB, DGFE and AGHI. The person's consecutive ages in years are thus represented:
|
AB = 0-9 |
BC = 9-18 |
CD = 18-27 |
|
0-27 = Youth |
|
DE = 27-36 |
EF = 36-45 |
FG = 45-54 |
|
27-54 = Power |
|
GH = 54-63 |
HI = 63-72 |
IA = 72-81 |
|
54-81 = Wisdom |
The numerological values of the vertical and horizontal sides and of the hypotenuse of the central triangle are those of the birthmonth, birthday and birthyear respectively, with all double digits here reduced. (The meaning of reduction is best explained by an example - 123 reduces to 6 because 1 + 2 + 3 = 6. Similarly, 897 also reduces to 6 because 8 + 9 + 7 = 24 = 2 + 4 = 6.)
Omitting the surname as insufficiently personal in its vibration, and progressing cyclically from the first letter of the first name, letter by letter, assign the corresponding numerological values to the sides AB, BC, CD, DE, EF, FG, GH, HI, IA. A line to which the last letter of any name is assigned finishes at a particularly significant point in that person's life unfoldment.
The total values of the Youth, Power and Wisdom Squares are determined by adding together the four unreduced values of their respective sides. The Life Lesson Number is in the centre of the triangle.
In merest outline: 1 is the male/yang aggressive heart of reality; 2 an adaptable, productive, rhythmic pair; 3 the self-expressive, magnetic, effervescent, perfect, whole, consciously extended communication of 1=2; 4 physical, material, stable, lawful concentration; 5 complete, perfected, illuminated freedom of adventure through the chance of change; 6 incomplete, imperfect preparation, consciously responsible truth and social harmony; 7 inner or psychic culmination, integration or perfection of philosophical transpersonal relationships in solitude with magical, apparently effortless success; 8 manifest result, acknowledged power based on the quality of achievement; 9 utter perfection, love, selflessness and compassion, perhaps expressed through art; 10 age or era; 11 realisation or achievement; 12 humankind; 13 higher Self; 19 mortality; 25 illumination; 153 wholeness.
Persons not in possession of their mental faculties at age eighty-one begin their youth squares over again commencing, as in childhood, with the first letter of their first name. Individuals who have kept their wits about them, however, return to what for them will be a renewed and higher-energy youth squares beginning with whichever letter comes next in the sequence already initiated.
Mollie, a theosophist/spiritualist who lives in Bristol, used to live in Brighton and elsewhere in the U.K. and who is well known in the U.S.A., writes (p.68): “‘Love!’ How glibly that word has been bandied about! It just means ‘Wisdom’, that's all! Not cheap sex or sloppy sentiment, nor even affection. It's odd, but such simple truths do not seem to occur to people. If you mention them, some sort of penny drops, and then they do understand.”
In The Knee of Listening - the early life and radical spiritual teachings of Heart-Master Da Love-Ananda (Da Free John) Da Free John states: “real existence is apart from every kind of seeking. It is from the beginning radically free of any goal of liberation or salvation.” (p.158).
Also according to Sri Ramana Maharshi: “Moksha (Liberation)… is getting rid of non-existent misery and attaining the Bliss which is always there,” and “the Heart, which is different from the blood vessel, so called, … is not the Anahata Chakra in the middle of the chest.” (p.150)
“Recently there has been a tendency among spiritual teachers to speak of a path of ‘synthesis.’ Sri Aurobindo is one of the leading exponents of this inclusive mentality. But it is also visible in lesser teachers of yoga, as well as in the various synthetic paths of modern Western occultism and religiously motivated spirituality. Sri Ramakrishna, the great Indian teacher of the 19th century, perhaps initiated this trend in the East. And H. P. Blavatsky may be the sign of its origin in the West, also in the late 19th century.
But the trend to ‘synthesis’ is only a synthesis of the kinds of seeking. It adapts the various separate activities of the great search to an inclusive philosophy and technique. But it remains a form of seeking…
I [not, therefore, necessarily a recommendation for others!] saw the entire fruitlessness of seeking in any form. Thus, the way of understanding, as it developed in my case, is not a synthesis of the ways of seeking. It is a single, direct and radical approach to life. And that approach is itself, from the beginning, entirely free of dilemma and search. It has nothing to do with the various motivations of the great search. From the beginning it rests in the primary enjoyment and truth that all seeking pursues. Thus, the way of understanding is founded in the radical truth that is fundamental to existence at any moment, in any condition. And it is also the genuine basis for creative life, [essentially and primordially if not always chronologically explicitly] prior to all the magical efforts toward healing, evolution and the victorious appearance of ‘spiritual’ life…” (pp.165-6)
Incidentally, by “kriyas” Da Free John understands “the purifying activity of the Shakti as it moves through the various nerve channels and the physical form.” (p.73)
By “Shaktipat” he understands “the process of initiation by the Guru's touch or thought.” (p.75)
“Meditation” should be “a mere act of witnessing, not an effort. I should only sit calmly and observe the working of the Shakti in myself. I should relax, and with each cycle of breath recite the mantra So-Ham (I am He, I am the Divine or the Guru), or the primary sound ‘Aum’.” (pp.75-6)
“Mahasamadhi” is the “abandonment of the physical body.” (p.95)
“Sat-Chit-Ananda” is “the perfect, infinite, unmoved… the pure existence-consciousness-bliss of the Indian Godhead, my own nature as the Divine Being of all the world's Scriptures.” (p.101) [A Western distinction between physical and intentional identity may prove helpful in certain contexts.]
I thank G-d that reading Da Free John's book has been for me a watershed experience, and the 21 May 1979 issue of Brain/Mind Bulletin offers a summary account of what I believe to be a helpfully relevant even though incomplete explanatory theory put forward by the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ilya Prigogine:
“The more complex the structure, the more energy it must dissipate to maintain all that complexity. This flux of energy makes the system highly unstable, subject to internal fluctuations - and sudden change. If these fluctuations or perturbations reach a critical size, they are amplified by the system's many connections and can drive the system into a new state, even more ordered, coherent, and connected. The new state occurs as a sudden shift.” (Quoted from Jean Houston, The Search for The Beloved, Crucible paperback edition, 1990, p.11.)
As Jean Houston comments: “This process can also be applied to human development, the evolution of cities, theologies, systems of knowledge, nations, and perhaps the planet itself.” (Loc.cit.)
“We are in a time of radically changing story, dying to one and waking up to another [so that the structures of sin mentioned by the Pope may be identical with structures of virtue?]. We are in a time of great shaking up, of bridging and interaction with a veritable smorgasbord of realities. And it seems [no more than that!] that all of the systems, psychologies, and symbologies that ever existed, à la Prigogine, are needed to stimulate and drive us to a whole new regime…
What is happening, I believe, is way beyond what has been called ‘paradigm shift.’ It is whole-system transition, a shift in reality itself…” (p.12)
And, I feel it is appropriate to add, such a shift cannot occur without the silent breathing of G-d's Holy Spirit. As Dudley Wright states in The Eleusinian Mysteries & Rites (Theosophical Publishing House, London, and The Square & Compass, Denver, with an Introduction by Rev. J. Fort Newton, D.Litt., D.D., Past Grand Chaplain of the Grand Lodge of Iowa, undated): “Great importance was attached to the quality of the voice in the selection of the hierophant, the chief officiant at the celebration of the Mysteries and at the ceremony of initiation… It was essential that the formulæ disclosed to the initiates at Eleusis should be pronounced with the proper intonation, for otherwise the words would have no efficacy. Correct intonation was of far greater importance than syllabic pronunciation…” (p.35)
And the author quotes Maspero the Egyptologist at some length before further developing this theme himself by reference to the Rig-Veda and also to the traditions of the Parsees and the Moslems… R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz similarly attached great importance to this.
This mystic mantra means (since Õm, the great and universally powerful goddess Kundali or Kundalini Shakti-Isvari ascending Sushumna when aroused from her coiled sleep near the base of the spine - and possessing all the attributes of all gods and goddesses, is the abbreviated form of Aum): “A, The Primordial Being & Supreme, Eternal, Omnipresent Lord, u, is the true essence manifesting endlessly in all material shapes and forms, m, that exist as a phenomenal world because of the real maya of illusion and ignorance, which is dispelled and annihilated by the Tantric teaching and practice of the conjunction of opposites that abolishes all experience of duality by destroying the cosmos and restoring original Oneness by TRULY uttering the five letters: ci-vã-ya-na-ma, the five-fold mantra that corresponds to the five senses, the five elements, the five states, the five qualities of Shiva, and the five koshas or bodies of Yoga (the gross physical body, the subtle body, the desire-mind body, the wisdom body, and the body of bliss).
Precisely how Tantric sexual union realizes primordial unity is very briefly explained by Tirumular in section 813 of his Tirumantiram: “The age reached by the woman should be at least twenty and that by the man at least thirty. The woman with rich tresses and the splendid man who are sexually united experience highest pleasure. Consciousness has blossomed and spread and dissolved in bliss after man has arrived at union with woman without any semen at all either trickling out and without any withering.” Naturally this must all happen effortlessly within the Love Ritual.
Every naked woman is said to be the embodiment of prakriti-Nature. Therefore, she is to be looked upon with the same awe and adoration that one feels when contemplating the secrets of Nature and all its creativity. Thus, this nudity is itself a ritual. Woman-Nature is to be alchemically transmuted and transformed to really and truly embody Shakti-goddess as she relates to Shiva-god, and their ritual copulation IS the divine coupling that creates everything and preserves it in Being…
“The sex act is not a profane act but a rite, the partners are no longer human beings but gods, sexual union becomes the union of opposities. The arresting of the flow of the sperm, like the immobilization of respiration and the suspension of thought are the three formulas expressing one of the great paradoxes, destined to conquer our ‘historicity’: the abolishment of time… The sexual act, if it indeed is a tantric act, must never terminate in the emission of sperm. The Sanskrit texts say again and again: bodhicittam notsrjet, the semen must not be emitted.” (Kamil V. Zvelebil, The Poets of the Powers, London: Rider & Company, 1973,p.48, and cf p.53.) Otherwise, one falls under the laws of time and death.
In Tantric texts it is the Moon that stands for Shiva, the male semen, the left channel (Ida), the left nostril and perfect Wisdom, while the Sun stands for the woman's menstrual blood, the right channel (Pingala), the right nostril and the essence of Shakti.
He quotes her Treatise on White Magic (p.425): “Should the new mode of work appeal to you, see to it that the personality is subordinated, that the life of meditation is kept paramount in importance, that sensitivity to the subjective realm is cultivated, and any necessary outer activities are handled from within outwards. Avoid a purely mystical introspection or its opposite extreme, an over-emphasized organizing spirit, remembering that a life of truly occult meditation must inevitably produce outer happenings, but that these objective results are produced by an inner growth and not by an outer activity. An ancient Scripture teaches this truth in the following terms:
When the sun progresses into the mansion of the serving man, the way of life takes the place of the way of work. Then the tree of life grows until its branches shelter all the sons of men. The building of the Temple and the carrying of the stones cease. The growing trees are seen; the buildings disappear. Let the sun pass into its appointed place, and in this day and generation attend ye to the roots of growth.” Master D.K. recommends (ibid.,p.430): “Learn to practise harmlessness; then desire nothing for the separated self; and thirdly, look for the sign of divinity in all. Three simple rules, but very hard to accomplish.”
Sinclair identifies 3 desirable aims - unity, peace, prosperity, and notes that prosperity cannot be achieved without first attaining to both unity and peace, nor peace won without first arriving at appropriate unity.
The fisherman draws out with his nets. He casts them where he hopes a catch might come. Then he has to wait. It happens he is lucky. It happens his nets are empty. It even happens that currents have taken them. Then he must find them again. If he finds them, he may have to mend them. If they are lost he must get hold of new ones. And then it is to try his luck again.
The potter takes a lump of clay, weighs it in his hand, adds a bit or takes away a bit, weighs again - and begins working on it. Little by little form appears, according to the way he works. this work takes time, but time is on his side. The clay takes on new shapes. And the moment arrives when a new object is completed. The weight of passive earth is drawn into another field of validity.
It happens that the potter fails and must start again at the beginning. Or that the vessel cracks and bursts in the oven. But every time he makes a new beginning, he creates something that was not before. The new object has never been. A something is fetched out from nothing.
Does the fisherman dive down to guide the fish into the meshes of the net? Does he determine how many fish he will be going to catch then and there? Or does the potter sit back, waithing for the clay to form itself into a pot or a vase?
These two, the fisherman and the potter, are as different as water and fire.
Two herds that He should drive forth… for one day ‘there shall be one herd and one shepherd’. These two herds belong to two different worlds. They don't speak the same language even though the two worlds reside within each and every one of us. They cannot accept or understand each other, though we are of both.
To fishermen potters are sleight-of-hand magicians who conjure up something out of nothing, suspicious people who handle dead silent matter. Out of their hands come vessels for water and oil, flour and spices. fish and flowers.
To potters fishermen are strange beings who float between chance and luck, completely dependent on the whim of nature and the rhythm of time.
The potter has always the clay between his fingers. Even when he sleeps it is with him. And when he raises his head to rest his bent neck the fingers are his eyes.
The fisherman rocks on the water. All he sees is above this surface. All he hopes for is beneath it.
They are different, these two. And yet, both reside within you and me.
The potter's territory is one of insight… into the elements of form and transformation. The metamorphosis of creation is here. The molecules and the universe are here. And the clay is his speaking mirror, the vessel his own image.
The fisherman looks toward the heavens, watching the weather. He studies the patterns of winds drawn on the sky and on the water. He tries another cast. Hundreds and thousands are down there! Today he may have a good catch…
The potter's territory is a dangerous one for the fisherman, a mine-field for one who happens to tramp into it, a wild and rocky desert for one who always saw it from a distance. It is at once dead and alive, open and closed, loaded and empty.
Only one who has a potter's hand and eye should venture there. But once he has entered it, it is difficult to turn back. If he tries he will always feel sort of homeless. The insight of making has another direction than that of catching. And the passage to that insight is for the fisherman like a vacuum between emptiness and blasphemy. And yet there is peace and order and solemn security. The fisherman takes off his cap and waits till the potter lifts his head.
The fisherman's territory is awkward for the potter. An utter im-possibility. Just to hold such slimy creatures in one's hand fills him with panic. At the same time he smiles condescendingly; this frank-ness without other mysteries than those of whim seems to him rather childish. But he knows that this childishness can be trusted. How different these two are!
What are you…? - Well, you are both, because both are in you. If you don't know what you are, you are more close to the fisherman than to the potter. Most likely it's so. Or, maybe not.
The shepherds that came in from the night, were some. We don't know how many. they are somewhat like the fishermen waiting for a catch. Some fishermen who catch some fish.
The magi from the East were (according to tradition) three in number. Their way, their appeance and their number have the potter's definite sense about them, a ‘must’ and a ‘know’ and a ‘will’ which fishermen do not know. The cold night of the shepherds had been a usual one. The unusual which had appeared, made the big change. The change that had been foreseen by the three men of wisdom. At least to some degree. But foreseen.
You can live in only one of the two landscapes. Both are in you. And sometimes you may feel you are in both. But most likely one one of them can be your home and your secure reference.
Only He was present in both. He is the one rock with the two faces. He is the one stem for the branches of the living tree… of fishermen and potters. He said, ‘Where I go, you cannot follow’, and yet He says repeatedly, ‘Come and see’. For He is the One who can join the two. The branches grow in opposite directions. They form the balancing image of the tree. But to see that is quite impossible for both of them.
The stem nourishes both. The only way to that insight is to keep on consuming what's coming from the stem.
Only in Him can fisherman and potter find and accept each other. Not so that the one can do the other's doing. But a feeling of a secret belonging together is there.
It is in Him that the fisherman sees his master, his teacher, the genius who knows how to force winds and waters, he who sees the bottom as if it were the top. And the potter sees in Him the initiated master potter, who makes matter and masses obey his creative will, the one which every successful vessel reaches up to serve.
He is for both of them.
The turned-away potters will make life a hell for the fishermen. They don't understand fish and currents and changing weather. And they won't understand. - The turned-away fishermen will distrust and refuse the potters. They will fight against each other.
The fishermen loathe to be struck by hands of ingenuity. Just as the potters detest being hit by babbled fists of chance. They will both seek to destroy each other.
But no matter how they try, they will just as much destroy them-selves.
Both potter and fisherman reside within you. In this ambiguous whole which is you… a whole which can only be a whole when it's made one. When it's composed… by the composer.
To turn back home gives an endless relief. That which was chaos becomes order. An unheard of expectation and a till now unknown joy unfolds. But the images are not yet clear. The fisherman will still see the master fisherman, and the potter identifies the master potter, in Him. And that is how it must be… until the very day when the basis of unification is complete.
You and I are created this way. The entire world is made this way. Perhaps in order to make this human matter complete… I mean, to bring about a fully mature material for that union. Only by Him can this happen. He is the union.
To serve unity by seeking Him! Working for unity without Him is to stand in the way of His work. In Him you needn't strive for unity. He will unfold it, in time, fully. Having joined it you will unfold with it.
He is the Capstone whose features will be recognized in the Deep. He had to walk the way of the potter, but with the fisherman's goal in sight, and the fisherman's path with the potter's destination in view. When He comes, He will bring the union. The beginning and the end He makes one. And the potter and the fisherman see, for the first time, into each other's eyes, and see, in deep wondrous joy, their own reflection.
This will be an unheard of and undescribable event. Something so ridiculous as to turn away, something so dumb as to neglect seeking Him!
Words are little more than flecks of dust. They must be swept away immediately. Truly enough they were put into function by necessity: they sprang forth to draw the picture, to serve the union… by way of the picture. But as soon as they have served their purpose they must be swept away. To save them is to collect dust. To celebrate them ends in difficulties in breathing.
So it is with all things which are to help us on the way. Numbers. Geometry. The screens of the Earth and of the human body. The text of signs and temples. When they have served their purpose they become anachronisms. They are but dust and soil the path of validity.
He who spoke through them yesterday says the same thing today. He always says the same thing. But not in the same way. The former forms are in the way.
Even the seemingly permanent and indestructible tools have their cessation. The highest order and the most perfect formula have their end. To hold on to their abilities is perhaps already to look back, to repeat obsolete mantras. When laws and temples have served their purpose the Lord will not use them any more. His past words are gone, and He doesn't stammer.
‘My word shall not cease’ means that It lives behind and within the temporal words, those which cease, and that It survives them. Only a full, true, listening attention can read It. It is so valuable that even the greatest crime is unimportant by comparison.
But in this moment of crosslight there is a need to remain steady. The fisherman concentrates on sight and signs and duty. The potter forms his vessel with intensified ardour and skill. This has to be done for the sake of consistency. If not, the potter himself may burst and be smashed, and the fisherman may be tangled up and lured on in the twilight of this hazy eve. And flames may be choked in lamps that still give light.
But the workings of the master potter-and-fisherman will be more and more penetrating, challenging, enlightening. And the mountain will speak.
extracted from
The Language of Recognition - Book One: Evidence
Forlaget Fredag, 1986. ISBN 82-90206-03-8
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