THE ALBIGEN PAPERS

阿爾比根論文
RICHARD ROSE

Zen Study Group of Taiwan

For personal use study group only. Not distribute in USA.

 Contents
Introduction
First Paper: Social Illusions
Universal Practice of Deception—The Legal Fraud—Semantics

Second Paper: Psychology and the Truth

Psychological Evaluation—A Look at the Mind—The Mind: Some

Observations—Romance and Terminal Cases

Third Paper: The Veil of Maya

Theological Evaluation—Search for God—Life After Death

Fourth Paper: On Gurus and Unique Systems

Cults—Yoga—Magic—The Kabbalah—Gurdjieff and Ouspensky

Fifth Paper: Obstacles to Transcendental Efforts

Argument for Transcendental Research—The Curse of Intellectualism—

The Self as an Obstacle—Oblique Dogmatic Systems—The Trap of

Conditioning—States of Perception-States of Mind—Summary of Blocks

—List of Obstacles

Sixth Paper: The First Steps

The Self—Progression—Friendship and the Search

Seventh Paper: Discernment

Laws—Milk From Thorns

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Eighth Paper: Maximum Reversal System
Three Steps in Using the Maximum Reversal Technique—More Attempts

at Verbalization

The Three Books of the Absolute

An Account of an Experience

Introduction
Richard Rose

The aim of this book is to approach reality. As for reality, I do not define

it in the usual materialistic sense. And, of course, I hope for a cumulative

appreciation of reality as we travel from one chapter to another . I

entertain the premise that all premises are vanity, and yet hope for

some evolution through the vanity of words.

In other words, to start off with the premise that man is that which he

thinks he is, would be to begin with incomplete knowledge, and to

pursue a course of thinking that would not bring any degree of

enlightenment, but instead would encourage us down the greasy path of

wishful thinking.

We cannot launch ourselves into the world of the mind from a platform

of fairy tale make-belief, unless we wish to land in Alice's wonderland.

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Too many of us for instance, are glib with God-definitions, and yet we

know little or nothing on the subject, let alone, a precise definition. It

might be a good idea to begin with a topic not so far removed, namely

our self. And if we wish to know ourselves, we should not be prepared to

settle for a definition that only involves evident mechanical parts , such

as arms, legs, senses, etcetera. And the structure of our thinking must

not be weakened by sophistry, wishful thinking, fear, or fatigue.

Let us take for observation, not some conceptualization for which our

mind has no hope of solution or understanding, but let us take

observation itself and analyze it. Let us look at the looker—and his

observation processes.

Let us avoid undefined terms. Let us work with the idea that things can

be said simply, and yet with some sort of system, methodicity, and

common sense. This business of self-study is not new, so let us look at a

few blueprints, to see if there is any message in their inconsistencies—

inconsistencies both within the blueprints themselves, and in relation to

the other blueprints of authority.

Let us find ways and means for checking our computers, while our

computers are checking the grand project. We must learn to look for

short-circuits, blocks, component-exhaustion, power-shunts, and the

"haywire" mental bedlam that happens when foreign entities try to nest

in the delicate wires.

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It is true that this book covers a wide spectrum and that the first

chapters have more obvious implications than the ensuing ones. The

obviousness of the truth of the later chapters, may be better recognized ,

if the first four chapters are understood.

The first half of the book is projected as a sort of clearing out of the

underbrush before planting. And this first half, being a sort of corrosive

analysis, may be interpreted as destructive criticism alone . However , the

main purpose of this book should reach a compensatory stage in the

second half of the book, in dealing with cosmic consciousness as the

ultimate reality.

There is an excessive amount of modesty emanating from most authors

who write on the subject of cosmic consciousness or satori. I think that

most of this modesty is just another attempt to be mysterious about a

subject which may invite challenges about the author's knowledgeability .

In short, it has been the custom of many writers on occult or

transcendental matters who had only hearsay knowledge of those

subjects, to infer that they dare not tell all.

There is no curse on the proferring of wisdom, or in the transmission of

directions to states of being. There is, of course, a sort of automatic door

which all readers close upon themselves, depending upon the degree of

their capacity in that given direction.

I have repeatedly encountered the catch words that say, in effect, that a

man who knows does not speak, and that he who speaks does not know.

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This dictum can be ignored. It can be lumped with the many slogans

employed to conceal a speaker's ignorance or motives. It is a good

screen for camouflaging a book that tells little but a mysterious story .

There was a time, prior to the turn of the century, when you dared not

divulge an interest in even such harmless things as ESP or hypnosis,

under threat of the rack or stake. Secrecy and symbolism were used to

avoid trouble. And they are still used under the pretence of danger . I

have met several other men who have experienced cosmic

consciousness, and none wrote books about it, mainly because it is a

difficult subject to encompass justly—especially when you have

witnessed, not only the vanity of words, but also the vanity of life.

On the other hand, we do know that from Buddha downward to the

present time, there are men who did talk about their knowledge of

satori, or it would not have been transmitted. It is my belief that satori-

systems flourished only in the monasteries in previous centuries ,

because monasteries were possible. In the western world , most of the

monks are leaving the monasteries, and are going forth to mingle their

perspiration with functional politics, in a vain new, animal-man and

man-god religion. There are no quiet places left, it seems, for finding

the peaceful breath of reality. And with this fear in mind, it is better that

something be written. The chances for making personal contacts for

spiritual purposes are inversely proportional to the density and madness

of the population.

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 FIRST PAPER

Social Illusions

All of us are able to note discrepancies more quickly in our neighbor than

in ourselves. And yet we listen to our leaders, whether they are

politicians, social lions, psychologists, sociologists or ministers as they

point out the discrepancies in their opponents . . . and we accept them,

without bothering to look for discrepancies in the language of those

same leaders. We are impelled by egotism to have great confidence in

our ability to have picked the side of Truth, without noticing that millions

of other people of opposite belief have equal conviction .

Sometimes, we are carried away to the point of murder. Or we are killed

with our own cliches. We become so bloated with egotism that we puff

up and float away into never-never land, and not even our loved ones

can rescue us. We denounce drug-addiction, and yet we are all

addicted, and equally as dangerous as the drug-addict.

Let us, in this work, look at ourselves. Is it possible to understand the

self? We wish to know. Not factual data. We wish, at this point, to

experience the true state of being of the universe, and man's actual

relationship to it. We wish to know man. We start with ourselves, and

learn that we must find that part of man which is real, and that which is

not. We are trying to find reality. And these things are difficult for robots,

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and even more difficult is it for robots to accept from any other robot,

the alarming message that they are robots, and that such an informer

might, by some chance, take over and run the robot's computer.

We must employ a bit of tightrope walking, hairsplitting and shadow

watching. We begin this adventure by focusing the attention—by

thinking. We notice the bigotry of science, yet we must attempt to be

scientific or logical in our approach to the matter. However, we are

absolved, if further along the path we discover that in order to

appreciate or realize reality we must transcend logic . We are absolved , if

for no other reason, than for facilitating this, the first step away from

ignorance. We may never be guaranteed to experience the Absolute , but

at least may be gratified by being able to abandon fragments of illusions

in thinking, and gain hope of greater release from a state of conceit

profiting for us a mountain of nothingness. Or still better, we may gain

confidence enough to climb another mountain, and profit from the

expanding reality we find at thin air, and pure air levels.

We must ride the wild horns of the paradox, all the way. Since this

experiential world is one of polarity, no frontal assault on Truth is

possible for us.

This book may seem largely controversial. The main theme to be

remembered here, is that we shall approach Truth by retreating from

untruth. By truth, I mean, that which is most likely among different

attitudes or evidences. By untruth I mean the least likely. By Truth,

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which I capitalize for emphasis on the difference, I mean—the absolute

state of being. For instance, let us say that when we describe coal as

being black, we speak the truth. It is, however, only relative truth, as are

all things appraised by the bicameral, sensory brain. Another fellow may

come along and indicate that we suffer from retinal illusion, and

convince us that coal is not black but colorless. We then ask ourselves , if

our eyes, our most important contact with the world, deceive us—is it

not then possible that more of the objective world than we wish to

admit, is adjusted to our comprehensive faculty by nature, rather than

exactly understood by the mind.

We become adjusted and we think that we walk in wisdom. Adjustment

may be extolled for temporal contentment, but the contented cows in

the dairy are allowed their contentment only as long as their vegetative

machinery holds up. Their real purpose may be the dairyman 's comfort

or food. Therefore we must take a second look at many of the

philosophical and psychological works which we instinctively accept as

being logical and truthful.

It is important to have harmonious relations with our fellow-man.

Conventionality has its place. However, when looking into the nature of

things, we should not allow a system of social conduct to become the

yardstick for all our thinking. For instance, the psychiatrist is supposed

to be a doctor of the psyche who employs all the scientific data to date

about the mind, to cure the mind of its ills, or to aid the mind. He is, in

reality, something of a veterinarian, interested mostly in the habits of

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vegetating humans, and in the adjustment of those humans to the rules

of the local dairy-herd. Religion finds itself adjusting to the mood of the

times, instead of adjusting man to the Truth. The psychiatrist's therapy is

not aimed at making man a better man, but a better running robot. They

try to check the circuits in the computer so that the robot will do its work

better, but not be a thinker of more clarity.

Are we only insignificant cows in a dairyman's herd? Are we still citizens

of Babel, foolishly building a pyramid of words and sciences in the vain

belief that we can transcend the earth with our own computers? Or is it

possible that man's hunger for definition and individuality may some day

be recognized? When we see our most determined efforts toward Truth

being turned against us, we may even suspect that we are being

watched by the dairyman, so that we may not rebel against our

stanchions. Psychology and transcendentalism came into being , because

man felt that religion had already been pretzled hopelessly contrary to

the enlightenment of man. The transcendentalist followed the devotee ,

but he too became quickly infected with venality and divergence.

Psychology was the first movement that undertook to understand man

by observing the seemingly unobservable mind of man. It started in the

right direction—the essence of man—but it too has succumbed to a sort

of venality, and to a vanity of a priestcraft tolerated by the herd-

government.

The Soviet psychiatrist will not advise you similarly to the American

psychiatrist. Therefore, truth has a geographical condition . Man has been

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a pathetic creature, down through the ages. Each mass-effort, and each

individual effort, to break the barriers of ignorance, has been thwarted . .

. so that it seems as if heaven is plotting against him. Paradoxically , it

may not be so. Perhaps we are overlooking something. Our desire for

Truth need not deny us the possibility of individuality and immortality .

We should try everything and anything, study every cult and cultist—

look under every rock, if necessary. God may be under the next one,

truly.

How many of us are there, who profess that we would desire to know the

Truth, whether or not that knowing be tangible or absolute, yet who

would shrink timidly (before the journey into Truth is half begun ) before

the nakedness of some previously unnoticed disclosures about the

relative world. Too many of us are like the spinster who refused to

disrobe because she considered a naked body to be sinful.

Let us pause and ask ourselves what we are. Are we truly the semi-

divine creatures that we might imagine ourselves to be? Or are we

beasts, according to our own definitions and standards? An article was

published recently by an expert on jungle life which indicated that we

were in some ways, worse than beasts. He pointed out, that of all the

animals, we were the most internecine. The jungle animal may snarl and

strike out in competition, but after a little sparring about, the weaker of

the two retreats and leaves the prize to the stronger. The weaker is not

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foolhardy, nor is the stronger one revengeful. There are very few fights

to the death among animals of the same kind.

Most of mankind's conviction about human divinity comes from man 's

looking downward, not upward. He endows himself with superlatives

because he witnesses other inferior beings. However, man's ideas of

divinity are somehow tied to morality, and most animals (excepting

those who have lived too close to man, and those who resemble man)

have better morals than humans. In a sort of hypocritical dignity man

enacts legislation, affirming the immorality of non-pregnating sex

practices. Vet statisticians such as Kinsey and Stoeckel tell us that the

majority of all humans ignore this legislation, some secretly , some

openly.

Who is it that casts this image that man is innately and irrevocably

divine? Where lie the roots of this farcical pretence into which man

thrusts his children generation after generation, century after century ,

and which is accepted so blindly that it has become highly offensive not

to embrace the farce in its entirety? The implement that nature uses to

bring about this perennial dream of divinity is the human ego. The

pretence of divinity is fruitful for the young females who affect

innocence, virtue, and beauty, or what-have-you. All are prompted to

pose. Then somewhere along the line, with mutual back-scratching

agreed upon, the play-acting becomes law. Language expedited the

making of a complex drama from what was perhaps previously only a

dull biological existence.

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Little did the aborigine, who first adorned himself or herself with a

feather or bone, realize the revolution that he caused. Nor is man in

general, yet aware that our billion-dollar cosmetic industry is the result

of acts committed by primitive ancestors who found a thrill in pretence.

We look further and wonder how much excessive toil and bloodshed

resulted from the encouragement of this same love of pretence in other

fields.

Feathers from the rear of a bird gave dignity to the brow of a chief, who

in turn made a back-scratching deal with a witch-doctor . . . and thus

perhaps our complex society was started.

At heart, each man is a killer, a thief, and a rapist. Yet he shows his

teeth in a smile. He has learned to steal artfully, and his frustrations at

being unable to express himself with true masculine aggressiveness has

resulted in a creature (according to Kinsey) that is inverted, perverted

and bestial. And as a result, his women have become—in their hunger

for genuine male relationship—lesbians, fetish-lovers , and

nymphomaniacs.

And where did all of this start? It started with the game of make-

believe. Three daubs of blue and a bone in the nose makes one a

member of the local medical association. And society was taxed to

support him. Then came titles for the chief, for his son, for his queen,

and for his favorite flunkies. Each found a feather-arrangement peculiar

to his station. Then came the rituals that swelled the chests and egos ,

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and impressed the slaves. Prostration before the chief, and a salute for

his generals. Next came deification. The chief could do no wrong. The

witch-doctor also became infallible, and we trust that the natives

enjoyed the game as much as we do today.

Perhaps there came a day when the natives became restless, and tired

of the game. Like children playing "house", too many were given

insignificant roles, and their little egos hungered for some of the

inflation. The chiefs saw that this would be a job for the generals if the

witch-doctors could not handle it. But the witch-doctors responded to

the occasion. They made everybody important by discovering the gods.

The gods took some of the significance from the chiefs, which gave them

a bloodless revenge. The gods, in turn, through the mouth of the

witchdoctors, told them to obey the chief. Thus the generals no longer

bore the name of executioner, but of a noble hunter. The innate urge to

let blood was vented only on strangers. This further insured the sleep of

the chief and of his generals, when they were at home.

The first gods were pulled fresh from the hat, with little imagination . The

sun remained as a god for many centuries, because the theologians

were accepted as specialists, and they were dealing with simple people .

When contributions slackened, they discovered new gods. And when

language found an alphabet, the need for pattern thinking arose. Now

new gods arose with more meaningful names. One of the early abstract

gods was Jod. This was a personification of the male regenerative

principle. Theology evolved and was improved. However, the

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improvement was dictated by pressuring kings and high priests . In time

the village chief had grown a gold crown, and the witch-doctor had

traded his nose-bone for a tiara or mitre. The natives, now no longer

amused or intimidated by god-stories, were now given individual

godhood. The witch-doctor decided that each had a little piece from

God, and it was called a soul.

The natives, once again were thoroughly frightened. But many of the

chiefs or kings were convinced that their souls were more important

than their gold, and the shamans in the long robes wound up with much

pillage. Incidentally, a study of witch-doctors in Africa, medicine-men

among the American Indians, and the shamans of Mongolia, uncovered

evidence that all of them had a common denominator—they were mostly

homosexual. There is no intention here to evaluate this, as to whether

homosexuality abets psychic prowess, or whether witch -doctoring

became the only haven for misfits. It is noteworthy, for the researcher to

observe the tendency among high priests to wear long robes, and while

pretending this to be a mark of modesty, to decorate these robes with

sequins, gold braid, embroidery, and even jewels.

Again, I wish to insist that this is not an attack upon churches, but upon

the ignorance and vanity of man. This by no means implies that man

does not have a soul, but indicates rather the gradual evolvement of the

soul idea. A very good reference on the matter is Frazer's Golden Bough.

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We now return to the sequence of evolutionary steps in religion. That

which we now call civilization, was emerging. The function of the

witchdoctor became split. The next to appear on the scene were the high

priest and the physician. The world of make-believe was growing. The

men of specialty, naturally studied their parts, and a few of the actors

became interested enough in their parts to quit acting and devote their

time to study. Still, to this day, most men of specialty are mostly actors .

During that period of European history when the high priests overawed

the kings, when the divinity of man was most loudly proclaimed, and

when man was exhorted to reflect the kindly and loving nature of God in

man's relations to his fellow-man—then did the worst savagery of man

break forth. And the high priests led the blood-bath, like their ancestral

witch-doctors. The urge to kill is strongest in the animal that has the

least to fear. The high priests were now the strongest. Their heads were

so bloated with convictions of their own celestiality that they never

dreamed that they would automatically revert to jungle-instincts . They

found excuses to kill their own people who did not pay tribute to their

churches. Then they allowed their celibate imaginations to devise

instruments of torture. They burned women and children at the stake. A

frustrated and impotent priesthood found satisfaction in impaling the

helpless. Next, another theological trend began, away from the abstract

realms of Aquinas and other manufacturers of invisible cloth. The trend

was headed for materialistic thinking—toward science, metaphysics and

occultism. Perhaps the high priests in the old dogmatic eras thought that

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they were preaching the truth, or creating truth through faith, but theirs

was really a period of forgetting. . . forgetting their animal nature and

the ever-present egos that invariably colored their dogma. Their efforts

to impose a dream may have sprung from noble intentions. However,

the natives can be roused from an imposed dream, if the dream

becomes a nightmare.

Now our civilization is becoming increasingly complex, our make-

believe has myriad ramifications. Our theologies have become more

subtle, but they still compromise with the powers that control the

populace, and religion had retreated, becoming now little more than a

social emollient. We no longer put bones in our noses, although the

female still wears rings in her ears and feathers in her hat. And we still

have a massive form of mutual back-scratching in this system of make -

believe. And it grows more absurd, daily. We now have church groups

which are organizing and lobbying, not for control, but for a piece of the

action—for recognition as being functionally important to the state.

Churches (and police fraternities) campaign, not to disseminate the

truth, but to ban certain movies that detract from their image and

dignity.

Each profession paints a nice picture of itself, but it would be

illuminating to see figures on percentages of crimes committed by

policemen, to find the percentage of mentally unstable people among

the ranks of psychologists and psychiatrists, and to find the percentage

of thieves and alcoholics among the members of the legal profession .

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It may shock us to be reminded that a uniformed, cold-blooded killer is

recognized as a brave man. Yet how much braver is the lone, fratricidal

killer, who has neither the protection of his government or his friends,

and is comforted only by his solitary conviction as he goes about his

killing. It will shock us to know that women, once they have decided to

kill, are more vicious than men. And children, trying to be honest, will

even kill their parents. Society utilizes children, as soon as they are able

to bear arms, knowing about their immunity to fear and adult inhibitions .

When we walk down a busy street, let us look about us. We see

charming people, seemingly. Actually, we are inspired by people posing .

The beautiful starlet, on the stage or street may seem to be the epitome

of tenderness, gentility and innocence. But give her a few hundred

thousand dollars and her masculinity will transcend her feminine nature .

She will buy and sell husbands, she will abort unwanted children , and

often die in the process. And her lust will eventually find the headlines of

every paper in the world. The quickest catalyst for changing the

intended nature of woman, whether she be a housewife or a queen , is

power. She is innately hostile, having this mechanism built in to protect

her young. It is not uncommon to sink teeth into the male mate. Of

course this is a trait of all mammals, whose instinct is to protect the

litter, even from the male. The human female is more prone to neglect

or destroy the litter, than the animal, because she is more prone to

vanity. She finds her maternal instincts confused by vanity.

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Let us take another look at the street. We see fancy food-stores that sell

ersatz foodstuffs. We see libraries that pose as truth-factories, but

wherein controversial books are banned to the researcher. We see

automobile display-rooms where vehicles are sold for the curve of their

fenders, but not for the worth of their motors or gears. We find acres of

floor space for haberdashery and women's apparel, but we may search

for a week to find a sensible clothing item. Sturdy building facades have

been replaced by enameled tin, glass and plastic. Frustrated maternal

and paternal instincts are evidenced by the many solicitous adults seen

curbing their dogs. The corner peddler of nostrums is gone, replaced by

loudspeakers and neon lights on the drug store. The brokerage houses

go about their business with a fearful dignity, posing paper empires as

monolithic structures—which in reality are eroded by simple rumor ,

buffeted easily by winds of chance, and can be sent tumbling by

psychological factors not fairly understood by even the most masterful

wizards of brokerage alchemy. We see furniture and appliance stores

whose business-life is inversely proportional to the life of their products .

We now go to the professional people. A professional man is noted for

his reluctance to speak. He proudly indicates this to be a mark of

wisdom, but we know well that he does not dare to open his mouth

before too many people, until he has become skilled in saying nothing

with many words. Even the specialists are inadequate, and they also

substitute the act (the farce) for actuality.

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But we say, still, that people are basically good, and that there is

progress from all of this ego-prompted civilization. And in between our

most savage and internecine wars we advance in culture and improve

our living conditions. And man also continues to lose sight of himself.

People like to be told that they are good. It flatters their egos to be seen

in church. It makes them feel very tall to stoop with a nickel toward the

beggar's hat, or to write a check for a charity if the amount is deductible.

Talleyrand once stated that words were invented to disguise or conceal

meaning. So our acts are often carefully planned to build a certain public

picture for the actor.

The lover charms the mate before beating her. The salesman is

charming to an almost hypnotic degree while promoting a nearly

worthless product. How often must Pollyanna be ravished before she

settles for common sense, and abandons her make-belief? When are we

strong enough or tired enough to see the nonsense of it all? And when

will we be determined enough to try to sort some truth from the jumble

of evidence available?

Do not think that only a small percentage of men are motivated by

primitive drives. And do not think while admitting most men to be

primitive, that you are not—just because you dropped a nickel in the

collection basket, or because you were the actor carrying the basket .

Our kindness is a mask, and our smile is not too much more meaningful

than a similar gesture by an opossum or hyena. It means, stand still, and

do not struggle while I bite you, or put the bite on you.

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We are cowards, and that which we witness about us is a dynasty of fear

in a playhouse of desire. Yesterday, and in ancient times, the man who

manifested indifference to desire was extolled as a sage. Today, our

society legislates that a man must have certain desires or find himself

penalized. You may not be allowed to live in a simple unpainted house,

nor in a shack across the track. The law will put leavening in your bread

regardless of your choice. You must come up to the vanity of your

neighbor or be condemned. Your vehicle must look a certain way, and

function a certain way, or it will not be allowed on the streets . Unless

you have a stipulated minimum of cash in your pockets you will be

jailed, and the crime will be vagrancy.

Our general cowardice manages to keep us from biting one another. In

other words, we muzzle ourselves, and pick those with the sharpest

teeth to go unmuzzled, naming them as our protectors, prelates and

representatives. And, as in the jungle, those with the sharp teeth pick off

the weak and the slow of wit. We have deified our wonderland, and

legislated that all must believe in it to the letter. Only those in charge of

dream-planning may alter the dream, and they may alter it only a tiny

fraction. Philosophy is allowed, and you are permitted to toy with ideas a

bit, but make sure that it enhances the "party-line" of your area—be the

dissertation one of religion or sociology.

Few will say, "I doubt that." It might be fatal to do so. You must be

shrewd, inverted, indirect, and rely on language mechanisms of satire ,

wit, and the use of parable and fable. This you can learn from any

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peddler. And never imply that you do not have freedom of speech. This

will label you, and some of the labels will frighten you into silence.

And now, knowing the risk, let us evaluate the questions that disturb

both the wise and the stupid. What is man? Is he merely a compound of

chemicals and corruption? Is he cast here for a reason, or is he a

complicated accident? Does he have an inner mechanism more

important than the body, which in turn is a teleological by-product of

the growth of the inner mechanism? Is there a God? Is He available, or is

He evasive?

What is the nature of God? And about heaven . . . is it important to know

first about heaven, or first, about God? Or is it not better to know first

about man? These things are important for us to know. Is there really a

divine essence, available to those who seek and are sincere? Or are we

but miserable children, carrying too far, a tale about a fairy godmother

told by ancient parents as a soporific? Or is there balm in Gilead, and a

magic wand that makes the corn grow, that parts the sea, enables us to

kill our enemies, wards off sickness, and forgives us for the errors of the

creator? Does God approve the sin-game?

Why do we presume that God is good, according to our standards? What

do we do, to show a profit for Him? Is God a personal being, or will He

forever remain impersonal and non-dimensional? Belabored as we are

by our competitive vegetative existence, will it ever be possible to

formulate a real theological research? What varieties of approach are

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there to the problem of identifying ourself in relation to the universe ,

and with the ultimate or Absolute? Some say that if you will seek, you

will find. Others say, "Be still. God will choose you . . . you can do

nothing."

It is easy to see that sorting the chaff from the grain becomes a

monumental task. And yet, what is there left to do for those of us who

have tired of the apparent nonsense which perhaps we once appreciated

as the game of life? Of course, a very important point arises here. If we

cannot see the many instances in everyday life whereby we are fooled—

how can we pierce the infinite with this exceedingly finite mind? Still

regardless of the odds, the human mind has a basic curiosity about

itself, and a hunger for a continuance of life, that is, if present in

animals, not as well verbalized by them as it is by humans. The

landscape is studded with steeples. The preachers therein may be

mostly freeloaders, and ninety percent of the parishes may be lazy

religious hopefuls who lean entirely on their preacher to insure

immortality for themselves (even as they confidently rely on the

plumber to keep their spigots running), yet, man maintains by the

steeples an ever-present reminder that vegetable-man is not satisfied

with himself.

If there is a Supreme Conscious Personality which observes the diggings

of man down through the ages, He must be well amused by the pathetic

efforts and methods of man. We ourselves smile, at the aborigines

shuddering at a bolt of lightning, and perhaps at the sacrificing of

23
humans to appease the forces of nature. On the other hand, we may be

quick to take up the hatchet against anyone who smiles at our peculiar

form of worship—of fear and hope.

Scientifically we have evolved, but we have not figured out the puzzle.

We no longer augur the intestines of animals, to find the propitious

moment. . . but we still burn incense to appease the gods, and our

augury has only evolved into such forms as astrology and the I Ching.

There is still an attempt to understand ourselves through philosophy and

religion. However, philosophy is like a tongue that spits in our own eye.

And where once we had a few religions with many prophets, we have

many cults and no prophets.

Is it possible to outline a system of search for mankind, that has

magnified and multiplied its superstitions, and shortened the hours that

might be spent in research, by building a Frankenstein civilization so full

of waste and nonsense that the exigencies of physical existence take up

all of his time? It seems that with each new decade, the chances for

man to have an energetic spiritual aim are less and less.

Where, in our mammoth libraries, will we start? How many lifetimes will

it take to digest all the theories, beliefs, dogmas and sacred writings, if

we are going to proceed in a scientific manner? What an army of

tabulators will we employ if we are going to categorize phenomena that

relate to our quest. If we are going to take the word of certain mystics ,

and approach the problem through faith—how shall we choose the sect

24
to which we will surrender? What questions should precede such

surrender?

Are there steps of preparation for wisdom? Shall we train ourselves to be

as meek oxen . . . who are worked hard and then eaten? Shall we curry

favor with those who pretend to know? Or shall we be sly, ignoring all

ethics and rules, and with studied trickery, outwit the gods who would

keep us enthralled? This may sound like sheer nonsense unless we have

heard of Crowley, Gurdjieff, and some of the thaumaturgists.

We must not fail to mention the hucksters of celestial real estate.

Sometimes those who most loudly extol the truth, commercialize

ignorance. Those who preach humility for others, have the arrogance to

glibly describe in meticulous detail any supernatural dimension , and at

the same time to deny (when cornered) that finite men will ever really

know anything about supernatural matters.

We may feel kindly toward the humble, and humility should be

commendable for us if we are predisposed toward fatalism. If not, we

shall be meek enough when the mortician has finished with us. If we are

not submissive toward our condition of ignorance, or do not feel

complete, then we must proceed as though we expected to achieve as a

result of labor and effort. We must have the courage to strike out on

unconventional paths, or have the patience to follow a well-beaten path

to check out its reliability. In this business of life and death, we should

manifest a life-or-death tenacity. We must be flexible in knowing when

25
to listen, when to be sly, when to communicate to our fellows, and when

to remain silent.

And in conformity with our dual existence, and our bifocusing senses , let

us maintain a double approach at all times. We can expect confusion

and dismay, but we can lessen our confusion by eliminating the most

absurd and the least likely. The frontal attack on ignorance has failed ,

because we struck out for Truth, not knowing its direction, nor its

appearance. Thus we would not know it if we saw it. Flexibility will here

call for a reversal of tactics. Let us retreat from untruth. And while doing

this, let us maintain objective observation, experimentation, and

analysis for common denominators. These common denominators

should be sought in the comparison of religions as well as in the

examination of psychic phenomena.

There are several other questions which will demand answers, sooner or

later. Is man hoodwinked by man, or by the gods? When does a robot

become a self-conscious unit of life? Did God decide to keep us in

ignorance, and manage to by simply instilling in us a complexity of fears

and desires, and a grandiose ego?

In the realization that human frustration and fatigue makes for make -

believe, we come to still another possibility. It is possible that make -

believe is either an intuition of things to come, or is a factor in the

creation of events. We find the Flash Gordon of two decades ago

becomes the John Glenn of today, and this metamorphosis occurs in the

26
destiny of other dreams and desires. Is it possible, that if humanity

believed in God steadfastly—there would come a time when God would

gratefully appear?

UNIVERSAL PRACTICE OF DECEPTION

We begin life with an eagerness to be deceived. There is a delight in

magic and fairy tales. The baby has an utter conviction that its mother is

infallible. It can conceive of no greater security than to have its nose

buried in its mother's breasts, encircled by her arms. This is the

conviction of instinct . . . not of logic yet, nor even of intuition.

As we grow older, we do not of a necessity lose our fetters, and suddenly

become mature. We transfer one slavery for another. We build mighty

rationalizations that are aimed to prove that we are doing or thinking .

And yet, in most cases, all we do is translate the instinctive drive for

foetal security into other symbols. When we get a little older, Santa

Claus will usurp the maternal chair a little. He will be good to us if we are

good, and he will punish us if we are bad. He and his little elves can see

all, know all, etc.

Then as we grow older, there are other substitutes. For some it will be

God, and for others, law. And for some men it will be simply another

person who reminds them of the mother . . . a wife. And through all these

transfers, the idea of authority permeates, and the idea of infallibility .

27
There is magic in being awed, thunderstruck, loved and punished by that

which is all-mighty and irresistible.

And so I come to this question. Is it ever possible to conceive of a grand

architect or first cause without coloring it with emotions that emanate

from prenatal or post-natal instincts and desires? Must desire, in other

words, answer all our questions? And is any reasoning that bears any

taint of desire or rationalization really valid ? And if not , is any reasoning

about God valid at all, until we have more valid information about our

own real essence?

We concoct a heaven for the delights of our desires, and invent a hell for

the wicked—who are those who would prevent us from having our

dream. Of course we do not realize that we are also the wicked, and

must endure the hell that we have created for ourselves.

We like to pretend maturity. We scoff at the immaturity of those who

believe in another Santa Claus. We feel a certain stature in denouncing

all that is not conventional. And we do not hesitate to denounce, even

though we know that individual interpretations of conventionality are so

varied that they cause chasms of misunderstanding between us and our

next door neighbors.

Those of us who wish to stop and think about ultimate directions, are

jostled by the herd, and repeatedly goaded by the exigencies of living.

So that we wonder if it will ever be possible for other than a very few

individuals to pause in this herd-stampede long enough to meditate.

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And among those who have been able to pause for a few hours, there is

always present an insurmountable wall of illusion, greeting the searcher

at every turn. And we must function in the herd, and from it take our

sustenance, security and family survival. I think that nearly everyone

who has tried to manipulate the Gordian knot of self-definition , has

been aware of the near-impossibility of keeping the feet on two paths at

once, while keeping the two paths separate at the same time.

The two paths consist of the world of pseudo-reality, and the world of

ultimate reality. They cannot be mixed, and yet the illusions of the world

of pseudo-reality, or the layman's world of materialism, definitely have

a disastrous effect upon the efforts of a person trying to find the ultimate

reality. A person who has an eye open for honest answers, cannot help

being irritated by the tangles and cobwebs caused by deliberate social

make-believe.

On top of this, the path that he chooses to find the ultimate reality will

have equally confusing cobwebs, although of a different type. These

latter cobwebs will be the result of a relative mind-system's attempts to

work with word-symbols in the abstract fields leading up to an

awareness of the Absolute, and in describing to others his findings, once

he has reached it.

If we take time out to change society, so that it will make a place for the

mystic, we will never accomplish anything—unless we have hundreds of

years to spend. However, unless we point out the illusions of mass-

29
thinking, and identify them as herd-rationalizations, we may be

changed by society into functional parts of it, rather than be allowed to

straddle the two paths at once.

Somebody said that it is better to light a candle than to curse the

darkness. A candle will not do the job, nor would a battery of klieg lights,

if by candles we mean social work, social reform, and a passive

Samaritan attitude. We may as well curse the darkness if the only

medium in which we can work is one of social pretence.

We make much of our "rights" in society. And yet we know, that each

individual man finds himself to be increasingly restricted , and

compressed into a limited circle of activity. Yet his rights do not

guarantee against the invasion of other people into his orbit. The

process by which a right is usurped, is often classified as a duty.

We are addicted with the "freedom syndrome". We have freedom to

worship. . . only in a church chartered by the state. We have freedom of

speech, on certain occasions. But not through the mail, nor in court, nor

in the army. We have the freedom to beget children, but once begotten,

they are the property of the state. We are free to pursue pleasure, but it

must be along herd-lines. We have the right to build a house, but we

may quickly discover that it does not belong to us. That which we really

possess, is a list of obligations to that property. And when the state , or a

clever group of politicians wants it, they will take it—not by legal suit but

by the stroke of a judge's pen.

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We are also addicted to the "equality mania." Man cannot be legislated

equal, he must be found to be equal. And he will be found to be highly

diversified and unequal. Herd-language, instead of becoming more

meaningful with advancing technology, has become merely more

confusing double-talk. So much so. that nearly all of his so-called

liberties and rights have been reinterpreted, his children have been

abused or slaughtered, and yet he has come up dazed and convinced

that it all came about as a result of the perfect balance and justice that

emanates from the very soul of the herd. Human error is still greater

than human understanding, and we must always be aware of the sinister

illusion that the masses can vote on wisdom, and of the illusion that an

elected officer or piece of legislation is infallible simply because it

resulted from voting.

Throughout history, gregariousness has produced group -confrontations ,

and when there no longer remained another herd to confront, it

produced repression within the herd. And this led to a lessening of

quality of the members of the herd. On the other hand, history shows

that the few people whose thinking actually produced some meaning or

definition for mankind, were men of solitary habits . . . men who spent

years away from the herd, often in the desert, in an attic, or in prison.

In this group of contributing individuals, we find Buddha, who sat alone

for years. Christ meditated in the wilderness. Gandhi meditated in jail .

Not only the saints and yogis found the need for isolation, but the life-

31
stories of many scientists, geniuses and artists show them to have been

recluses at least during the incubation of their brain-children .

I am not so sure that man really wishes to be liberated from the

frustrations of trying to guess the will of the Zeitgeist in each of his daily

actions. Herd-living has become so complicated that each man despairs

of ever finding relative sanity, let alone, the ultimate reality. And he also

knows that he may lose his life and all that he loves, in the social

crosscurrents.

He is able to continue living or to tolerate life, by putting the serious

thoughts as far back in the mind as is possible. He consciously

encourages himself and his children to be sleepwalkers of sorts,

sleepwalkers who will act out meaningless lives, just to be allowed to be

mobile vegetables. In other words, if you act like the rest of the herd,

you will be allowed your bread, your roof, and the "right" to procreate.

Man compensates for his frustration by posing. In this he does not revert

to the womb, but only to childhood, and to childish mechanisms for

pretending. By pretending a bit, or a lot, he is able to make his robot-

existence more bearable. But, by this make-believe, he thrusts himself

so far from the urgency of figuring out the labyrinth, that he

simultaneously closes every avenue of spiritual awakening .

We are unaware of this life of make-believe, simply because we live it

as reality. Yet hardly any labor or habit is without affectation . We feel

exalted by soap and water. We don a clean or new outfit and find

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ourselves walking a bit straighter, using more careful grammar ,

possessing more elan, more courage, and more dignity. We view

ourselves in the mirror and are utterly amazed at any previous

conviction of our own insufficiency. A pair of spectacles may induce a

contemplative, scholarly attitude, even though the wearer be illiterate .

Mascara may paint tiger-stripes on a kitten. A head, filled with hideous

thoughts, and distorted in shape, may appear angelic if properly

coiffured.

Perfume and suggestive clothing contribute to cranial confusion , both in

the wearer and in the observer. The one who plays the act, and poses, is

intoxicated by flattery, and he or she who receives the flattery interprets

the flattery as a fiat of validity for the act of pretence. Sometimes the

observer is likewise intoxicated, so intoxicated in fact that he has been

known to change religion, philosophy, or his way of life, in the twinkling

of an eye, and even risk his life in the process of encouraging the make-

believe and in enforcing it upon his fellows.

The nudists have a point. There are enough mysteries to be solved

without the creation of more by men. A white tunic does not make a

doctor, nor a uniform, a general. Strip the populace naked and you will

have trouble determining the professionals or the fools. Drunkards would

he mistaken for priests, and truck drivers would look like business

executives. When stripped, the proud would become humble. The judges

would appear as furtive as perverts and thieves. The exhibitionistic sex-

offenders would probably be the most at ease. The clergy would lose

33
their mask of austerity, and the pedant would begin to stutter. Only the

man who has a deep inner conviction. and a true set of values, would

remain the same.

Vanity, and the desire to force respect, determine the type of vehicle

that we drive, and the type of house we own. And these possessions

should remind us that vanity is compatible with obsolescence. . . for

which we pay an endless price. The world will not change its vanity, even

though a hundred books are written about it. It may evolve toward a

more stable sell-appraisal, but not swiftly. Since it takes poverty to

realize the importance of wealth, it is equally possible that the pinnacle

of wisdom extends from a pyramid of ignorance and despair . Our

bicameral brain, and its sensor, duality, may also be symbolic of the

polarity of all comprehension. So that no thing is fully understood , until

ail things relative to it are understood, including its opposite. So that in a

way, all things have their place and purpose, but it is not prohibited for a

mind to understand this polarity, and to rise above it automatically .

The social illusions are by no means the only illusions. The worst illusions

(those most difficult to overcome) are the religious, philosophic and

scientific illusions. More astute and complex minds draw the blueprints

for religious and scientific illusions, and consequently they create more

complicated labyrinths. And as we penetrate these, we find that the

different sets or kinds of illusions interpenetrate one another , and thus

increase complexity and frustration.

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There comes a time within the lifetime of nearly every man, when he is

aware of the nonsense of life, but unfortunately, this time comes at

about the time of death. The knowledge only comes with a degree of

relinquishment. The whole cobweb of illusion finds roots in the

impressionable mind of man. and is bound to his being by strong

motivating forces, sometimes called instincts or emotional drives , which

I would prefer to label as implants.

Love is one of these, and it probably holds man in slavery more surely

than any of the other bonds. We begin by thinking that love is something

which we possess, and soon find that it possesses us. Next we recognize

it as a sort of capacity for identification with our fellows. We identify in

this manner with our mates, our parents, children and friends. And we

think it quite an exalted quality or ability. That which we find out later, is

that we seek out these relationships, and create them where there is no

reciprocity in kind. We can assume that man wishes to be loved, and

that most of his protests of love toward other beings, if analyzed , would

prove to be frantic pleas for attention. This hunger for attention

provokes all sorts of concessions and promises from the protestor of

love. And of course, the most absurd protestation, emanates from the

mouths of egotistical pretenders who announce their love for God , and

His love for them.

Such a pronouncement has double jeopardy, in that it uses the two most

misused words in the human language—love and God. Both have too

many interpretations. Love can be taken to mean, gentle hypnosis , sex ,

35
lust, the habit of reciprocal sex, or self-indulgence which uses another

person as a mirror.

It is difficult for a person to free himself from the seeming need for love.

Man does not enjoy love more than he suffers from it, and is used by it,

or by the forces that implanted love within him. And as he becomes

aware of his love-slavery, he merely transfers the love-hunger to

another object. He is very slow to give it up entirely.

When sex-love is dissipated, the attachment will turn to children or

grandchildren. Sex-pleasure is often replaced by the enjoyment of a

feeling of nobility in being both more feeble and more extroverted.

Sometimes an old person refuses to let go of his or her ideas of

loveableness, even with the aid of senility.

INHUMAN LEGALITY

It has been said that Karl Marx and Cotton Mather both agreed on one

thing, namely, that the common man (the masses) is incapable of

governing himself. The common man, whether he drinks from the paps

of parental monarchy, stern communism, or undisciplined democracy—

is still like a puppy in an unweaned state. He has implicit faith in the

breasts of that parent. He can be abused and beaten, but he will protect

that parent with his life. And it is doubtful if his masochism can ever be

erased.

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Individual parents prepare their children for the future role of masochist ,

because state-entities are inclined toward the purging of individualists

who might attempt to reform the brutality of the state. It is easier to

make masochists out of our children than to see them electrocuted or

hung. So we begin by paddling, and with a sort of clandestine and

sinister gradualism, finally work up to whipping and beating . I have

repeatedly heard local school teachers describe the procedure used to

induce a child to take his "cracks" without panic or rebellion. They hit him

with less severity at first, so that the surprise is gradual. Conditioning of

the body to assault. The pupil may even give his consent to being

cracked, presuming that there will not be any increase in the severity of

the blows.

By the time the pupil is a man, he is no longer a man. He has

conditioned himself to being on the receiving end of blows. Now he is no

longer spanked, but is now kicked, clubbed by rifle-butts (in service

training) and clubbed by the local police. For failing to act in a cringing

manner before some uniformed sadist, he can be clubbed into

insensibility or suffer excruciating penalties. I know of two cases where

men. who had been clubbed by city police—never regained their sanity,

and they spent the rest of their lives in the asylum.

But these are only the evident cases of brutality. And some sensitive

souls bemoan this disease of civilization which divides all men into two

classes—sadists and masochistic sadists . So that manhood is suppressed

and suspended with always the hope that somewhere in the future, the

37
little masochistic boy will grow up to be a sadist. The fraternity or

sorority pledge pays with pain now, for the purpose and license of

causing pain, later. Sensible parents know that there is no top sadist—

there is only an endless circle of people beating one another . Here and

there an egotistical sadist overplays his part, thinking he is above the

club. But the circle goes on. The man who invented the guillotine, died

on it. The general is spanked by the Secretary of the Army, and the

Secretary is spanked by Congress. And members of Congress take turns

spanking one another . . . consigning an occasional member to jail,

banishment or ruin for hiding unregistered graft.

And a few parents, seeing all of this, have decided to bring their children

up without beating them, hoping that perhaps their example will inspire

others until masochism will be absent from the motivational needs of

mankind. They may produce unusual children, but not enough to put the

rest of mankind to shame . . . which would be necessary to stop the

brutality. And so the madness goes on, and subconsciously all of

humanity is so ashamed of brutality that no one will even admit that it

goes on.

And the result is, that even as a nation, we react as a masochist. We

beat our own soldiers, and shoot them for killing the enemy. We run

about all over the world, apologizing for engaging in competitive

business, or for offending some petulant group.

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Religion helps us with any difficulties which we might have in being good

masochists. We are reminded of the glories of being struck on both

cheeks. i cannot see too much difference between the school teacher

who terrifies with the board or rattan, and the judge who threatens with

the gavel.

Perhaps you think that we do not live under abuse. If you have this

attitude, it may mean that your turn has not yet come. You have not yet

been sentenced by a jury of peers. And of course no one is sentenced by

peers . . . peers do not condemn, they commiserate.

While the actor, who plays the part of beater, beats us, he consoles us

by telling us that we have rights. This makes us feel that the beating has

some meaning. Haphazard jurisprudence now has a meaning. But any of

us can, within a half-hour after leaving our homes, find that our vast

catalog of rights has dwindled down to one last rite . . . and it is handed

to us as a beneficence. It is the right to make a phone call after being

arrested.

We have the right to go to bed, but not to sleep in peace, nor to defend

our families. If a fire-bomb comes through your window, you must while

putting out the fire, overcome and identify the arsonist without hurting

him, and then proceed via legal channels. And when you discover the

efficacy of these legal channels, you will laugh all the way to the

courthouse and back.

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You have the right to "legal counsel" if you are willing to put all of your

worldly possessions in his hands. Even our children know of the farce

that is imposed under the subterfuge of justice. They do not know the

details, but they know that the deck is stacked. They look into the faces

of judges and see senility, and often insanity, depravity, or an incurable

vascular condition caused by alcohol.

Alcohol has been discovered to be a whipping-palliative. It makes the

whip more bearable. And of course the judge (and many aspiring

barristers) cannot forget the slogans issued to them in their masochistic

youth, because at one time they were under the whip, and had to be

convinced of its right.

The result is that the judge has a strong subconscious conviction that he

should be whipped. By all the rules . . . he has sinned. He has taken graft,

or at least, let his friends off easier than the friendless victims who stood

before him. Perhaps he has broken traffic laws, and the troopers

recognized him and turned their heads. This robot expects a whipping,

but no one comes forth to whip him. And the fact that he has wielded the

whip leaves him with the apprehension that his turn may come at any

time. He waits and it does not come. And so unconsciously he punishes

himself. He drinks, and then punishes himself for drinking—by drinking

more, and more.

Is the great Programmer, up there in the sky, a subtle sadist? Does He

feel that this endless punishment of flesh and mind is necessary to

40
prevent the flesh from precipitating into apathy and inertia?

Momentarily, we are aware of our superior status to the animal . . . the

animal is beaten by stronger specie, while man is programmed to beat

himself. And so the ritual of flagellation is not confined to the

flagellantes, or cloistered monks, who in dreary circles, tramp , pray , and

whip the monk ahead. All humanity walks a similar treadmill, in

confusingly interlocking circles, all fustigating, all in turn fustigated .

And therein lies our only equality, perhaps. Our common denominator is

found in mutual misery and helplessness. Each of us is but the space in

the circle between two whips. And perhaps this sick orbiting will not be

stopped until all of society grows tired of it at about the same time. And

when men largely and quietly realize that toadstools have more chance

of possessing equality (with other toadstools) than do humans . Simply

because the more complex and evolved an organism is—the greater the

possibility of variety and consequent inequality.

Of course there is always an escape from whipping. It is suicide. And

suicide may be slow. It may be a heart attack, when the body can stand

no more. It may be insanity, when the mind simply cannot tolerate any

more nonsense, but is not able to plan a suicide. The alternative is

mental retreat. The more masochistic humans die quietly. Those who

thought that they were the masculine aggressors, are those who are

more likely to end it all with an extremely violent form of self-

punishment. The general, whose monumental ego had to be matched

with monumental power, commits suicide when his whip-arm is

41
paralyzed. The psychiatrist goes crazy, cooked in his own pot. The

financier is also inclined to suicide. Suicide is the supreme punishment

for superior people. No one is good enough to whip the king, but the king

himself. It is possible that the only men who might be considered beyond

sadism and masochism, are those who die on the scaffold. This would

apply only to those who are convicted for killing the whipper, thus

knowingly removing themselves from the circle of sickness.

SEMANTICS

We may smile or tremble at the king of liars who sits on his bench and

orders us to tell, not only the truth, but the whole truth—especially when

we know the implication of that order. The whole truth would give us all

the secrets of the universe!

And regardless of all the misery that is caused to the private citizen by

the abuse of words at the hands of his bandit-chiefs, this misery cannot

compare to the trouble that we run into in sincere spiritual searching ,

simply because we have to deal with inadequate language, or the

deliberate misuse of terms which otherwise might be adequate.

Many books on transcendentalism leave us confused because of

difficulties with their terms. We are aware of the glibness with which

some words, such as God, truth, heaven, and love are used. And we are

aware of the bloody battles that have been fought for the difference of

definition. Before understanding any treatise of length we must first

sense and intuit the author's meanings for his terms. It will do us little

42
good to look in the dictionary. Each book has its own little cosmos, the

meaning of which we must sniff out, guess or interpret from the general

text, and at the end, we must be satisfied with the author's sincerity , if

we can detect it.

Some words have several connotations, all of which are added to

meaning-possibilities, arising from inference and interlinear hints . And

on the other side of the fence, we have words that seem to have no

meaning at all, except to a very limited number of people. For instance,

satori has no meaning that can be described. It has meaning only for
those who have experienced a certain state, and for those who have

experienced it, it apparently has different meanings. The curse of Babel

is truly upon us, and especially upon those who look to heaven. Let us

take the words: soul, mind, spirit, astral body, super-ego, oversoul,

universal mind, Brahman, purusha, chakra, and self. Now if we admit

these items to be real characteristics of human beings, we must also

admit that man must be a very complicated character, because no two

of them are defined as synonymous.

We might take the last word—self to use a word for comparison. Writers

use the word profusely, but rarely identify it. The self may mean the

body, the personality, the individual soul as distinguished from other

souls or soul environments, or it might be synonymous with the word

atman. It might even be used to explain the super-ego or the mind. The
materialist might be describing the body when he uses the word self.

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The modern sociologist defines the self as such visible evidences such as

emotions, thoughts and sensations.

No one has bothered to define thinking before making it part of the self.

Infallible science when applied to unprovable psychological concepts ,

simply tightens up the circle . . . thinking is defined as the function of the

mind, and the mind is defined as that part which thinks.

We have two more words which are the luxury of idiots and authoritative

men. They are right and wrong. Right is luck, and wrong is unluckiness.

Right is today, but wrong is tomorrow. Right is strength, and wrong is

weakness. Right is a voted mandate, wrong is wisdom possessed by a

few. Or right is the wisdom of the few, and wrong is the weakness and

delinquency only of those who know the truth.

There are two other words, life and death, which have obscure

meanings. Life is seeming motion, and death is cessation of action . Life

is awareness, and death is oblivion. Yet it can be demonstrated that life

may well be semi-awareness, or fractional awareness, and that death

may bring us to reality, and real activity.

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 SECOND PAPER

Psychology and The Truth

The path to truth begins with the self. We cannot properly identify the

self, isolate it or analyze it, because it is the subject of which man knows

the least. We know that we are talking about "us", but if a convinced

monist is talking, to him the self might be entirely different than the self

that is contemplated by the dualist. Despite interpretations , we still must

try to find out that which we are, and that in turn may involve that which

we were, and that which we will be.

Up until now, most of us accepted ourselves without any examination .

We did not know who we were, or whence we came, but if anyone dared

to challenge the pseudo-reality of our existence, we had recourse to a

game of dotting the challenger's eyes with the fists, and followed this by

asking the educated recipient for the identity of the person who dotted

his eyes. This is a little trick known as parrying a question with a

question.

We accept much. We like to call it faith. But faith is a carry-over from

the trusting days of childhood when we had no alternative to trust.

Maybe there never will be an alternative, but then perhaps maybe we

45
can carry the childish trust too far. We clutch at promises, at words, at

euphemisms,—at magic mirrors even!

To wean ourselves we must learn to doubt, to compare, to analyze, and

also to synthesize. We must have the courage to question authority. We

must have the maturity to wean ourselves from folk-customs, traditions

and conventionalism. We need not look too far in our circle of friends

and relatives to see the varying degrees of weaning or emancipation

that others manifest. How many make conformity a sort of passion ? The

puppets wish to be dressed just like other puppets.

We think that we think. And then we go a step further and announce that

we know. Does a drum think because it reacts noisily when struck? It is

possible that all thought is the result of forces or impressions striking our

nervous systems, and if there is an essence more subtle than the

nervous system, they may be impacting upon that also. We have little to

say about the quality of this impaction upon the senses, and hence we

have a lot to learn about thoughts. Like a baby hanging by its heels, we

do not think too actively until the doctor instills a sensation by slapping

the posterior.

A prominent mental concept, possibly an aberration, is that we think

with our heads, or in our heads. There is no real foundation for this

concept, any more than there is a foundation of any worth for the

parallel or resulting concept that when the head decays, our thoughts

decay and cease forever.

46
If telepathy is possible, then it is possible that our thoughts may be sent

out as a sort of electronic stream from a cranial broadcasting tower . But

telepathy may also function in another manner—as a sort of mental

tenuosity. However, with either explanation, we can see that the mind is

not contained in or restricted to the head.

Paul Brunton demonstrates several of these points in his books on Yoga

and the Overself. Likewise, other phenomena tend to determine that the

mind is independent of the body. Dreams that are later verified as being

actual (mental) visualizations of something happening some distance

away at the same time as the dreaming, are a good example. The

phenomenal visions of seers, especially when accurate and the ability of

clairvoyants—all give us reasons for accepting the theory of mental

tenuosity, or Universal Mind tapping, as opposed to taking the long odds

that successful clairvoyance results from guessing .

It is possible that the idea of thinking inside our heads comes from

reasoning by elimination, and the isolation of nerve-responses . We can

cut away most of the body and still think, or so we are led to believe. But

much has been cut away from the brain, by accident and surgery, and

this varied elimination of brain tissue has failed to localize a thinking

center. A severing of a particular portion of the brain may cause

unconsciousness, which would mean that the head contains a switch -

box or relay for all body-functioning. Unconsciousness is only a

qualification of the thinking process, being a screen that interferes with

the observation of the process. That which would appear to an observer

47
to be unconsciousness in another may well be the detachment of the

senses from their usual manner of functioning.

We have the anaesthetized body on the operating table chattering

distinctly about its dream. The patient is evidently unconscious. Yet

when the patient awakes, and remembers that of which he dreamed and

chattered, it signifies that unconsciousness as observed by the doctor is

not the same as was experienced by the patient. At least not always .

Here we see the difference between consciousness and responsive

thinking, and this makes the thought itself very elusive. Of course we

can argue about definitions, in the event that someone might define

dreams as other than thoughts.

One of the greatest contributors to illusion and confusion is the coiner of

scientific words and terms. It is the delight of men with paper laurels in

sight to coin a strange word or two in writing a thesis. And it is an

ensuing error for students to accept such words without proper

judgment, or to parlay them into another vain concept-structure.

Of course, at this point we might indicate that exact definition is

impossible. But we can ask for consistency and for the so-called

authorities to do all possible to avoid building a fabric of thought and

expounding it merely because no one is clever enough or desirous

enough to immediately attack it. It is no great wonder that many

psychiatrists find themselves upon another psychiatrist's couch—

especially if they read one another's writings. We can take the various

48
opinions on the attributes of the mind, and note the divergence of

number and types of attributes pinned on by different authors.

One of these attributes is will. There are two schools of thought on the

matter—the determinists who claim that things are predestined , which

means also that we only have the choice to choose things already fated

or chosen—and the libertarians who see for man various degrees of

freedom in forming his environment and future.

We should not jump to conclusions in a negative manner. It is possible

that there is such a thing as a will. And we have no choice but to act as

though we have one. However we can look upon it in the light as to what

it most likely might not be. It seems highly foolish for this milling mass

called humanity to pretend to have a free will of unlimited range. Can we

choose the thought that inspires us to think that we are choosing ? Does

the hog choose the butcher? Those who stand by fatalism are no more

idiots than those who claim to be libertarians. There are philosophers on

both sides. There are major religions in both camps. And as long as there

is a doubt, the least we can do is to refrain from actions that might result

in remorse as a result of fanatical convictions in the matter .

The paradox remains. It might seem egotistical to presume ourselves to

be free agents, but it also seems foolish to be constrained to eternal

shackles, and at the same time to feel separate from our environment.

And the fact that man is programmed to yearn for separateness, brings

hope that man, by some manipulation, may increase his separateness

49
and individuality. We are almost willing to hold ourselves responsible for

knowing exactly that which a Creator created us for, if He will just cut

the puppet-strings. He can throw us in the fire if we guess wrongly. The

robot bids for life. If the master puts the right amount of electronic tubes

in, maybe we will be self-aware.

We can expand the possibility for freedom, even more. It is possible (to

borrow words from the Bible) that the truth will make us free. The

masses vegetate in slavery, but a percentage, measured in very small

fractions, studies freedom. They create, even as they were created . They

generate a will, knowing that it is not totally free. Their freedom consists

in having "yard privileges" while the other convicts are restrained in the

cells. Those kept in the cells may not have to crack rocks, and may

consider the yard-convicts to be less free than themselves. There is

much labor in working for freedom, and often considerable scorn from

the mob that languishes in its destined groove.

It all comes back to this . . . do we really wish to find the Truth? And how

desperately? If knowing the Truth means upsetting almost all that we

have believed or have been unconsciously addicted to in the past,

should we desert the path? Do we seek for euphemistic truth, or for the

Truth regardless of how it looks? The desire that energized the

beginning of the search for Truth, may be dissipated or deflated by our

findings along the trail. Yet these same new findings will create new

perspectives and a new, but different, desire.

50
Does this mean that we should rebel against convention? It would be

better to advise detachment from conventionality. We cannot rush out

and shoot all the lawyers, judges and theologians merely because their

inconsistencies are noticeable. Such public demonstrations might edify

the masses, but the masses are not interested in pursuing the Truth ,

and the masses value rather highly many of the weavers who are able to

twist an intangible bit of fuzziness into a great yarn.

A word need not have final binding meaning. But neither is it expressive

of a great psychological discovery just because of its prolonged public

usage. Thought is a word that is more accepted than defined. Everyone

proudly lays claim to the ability to think . . . a process is thereby

preempted without the least cerebral struggle, since man is neither able

to begin thinking nor to stop it. His thinking processes originate in

environmental suggestion, or from previous thoughts. They end with

exhaustion, or by mechanical methods of stopping consciousness .

Sleep is not considered a conscious state, but even in the state of sleep

there is evidence that some mental activity continues. Men have been

known to work problems in their sleep. Both the psychologist and the

mystic consider the observation of the dream-process and different

levels of sleep as being very valuable in the study of ourselves.

Scientific men are no closer than laymen to knowing the essence of

thought. Most of the technical data gathered by scientists or

psychologists are observations of somatic references to the thinking

51
processes. Many of these observations furnish data on reaction to

suggestion or stimulus, but these data concern our sensory apparatus ,

and a field or reaction connected with automatic reflexes more than

thinking processes. We have not been able to disprove that our mind

may be part of a universal mind, or that our equally elusive soul may be

only an extension of a soul-matrix or Brahman.

We hear the words of illumined men but fail to evaluate them. "I have no

life, but that God lives within me." "I and the Father are one." "You cannot

find yourself unless you lose yourself in me." Great men openly indicate

a knowledge of their own insignificance. The authoritative technician

struts across the stage of life and bravely postulates himself. Of course

the illuminated men have been unable to prove their claim (of union

with the God-head) by using the implements which we might demand

that they use to arrive at proof, because the intuition does not prove ,

but aims at direct knowledge. A person may try to translate the

convictions of the intuition into a logical presentation , but this is

generally for the benefit of another person not yet illuminated. A person

of a keen intuitive nature generally grasps the idea with a minimum

amount of explanation.

At this point, I would like to reiterate that no particular interpretation is

being endorsed. Yet, as long as the theories about a universal mind or

Brahman are not disproven, they must remain a part of the answer for

the unexplained phenomena of the mind, and one answer is as good as

the next one if it answers with common sense, and if neither is proven.

52
In a way these concepts do not rob us of our individuality. Even as the

cells of our bodies relate to us, we may be both a separate entity, and at

the same time we may be eternally tied up with all other entities who

manifest mental capacity. We must admit and appreciate the paradox . It

is possible to think within our heads, yet know that thinking need not be

limited to the head. It is possible that we think, but that we are also a

thought, a projection, or an extension.

There was once a theory that thought was synaptic. The nerve ends or

synapses act like a set of ignition points, and nerve-impulses are forced

to jump across the intervening space between the synapses . This type of

theory exists only because it is more difficult to disprove it than to

accept it, especially when the disproving is attempted with the same

coined words of the tradesman who concocted the theory.

Saying that thought is synaptic is giving us a mechanistic explanation of

thought. It is an effort to present a tangible concept. We like to be able

to get our hands into abstract matters, and we feel safer if our grand

theory sounds practical.

However, the same technician or psychologist who pretends to build a

tangible concept and who seeks justification in science and common

sense, is not daunted by his presumptions. And he will be the first to

attack another concept-builder by using not only his entire stock in

trade implements, but even pretence of common sense as well.

53
A learned philosopher, or dedicated transcendentalist may devote his

life to the development of a grand theory. A psychologist may cast a

cursory glance at this grand theory, and decide, while using the

particular terminology of his trade, that the entire grand theory in

question was simply a reflection of some psychotic condition of the

writer.

The psychologist pretends to examine the philosopher clinically , and

decides that the writer was merely enjoying a mental catharsis . He

notes, in addition, that the results of the catharsis, the grand theory , or

stool upon inspection, show such ailments as the God-complex, the

narcissus complex, the inferiority, sadistic, masochistic , oedipus , Eros

and Thanatos complexes. And he is also guilty of the survival mania .

And, of course, while the psychological high-priest is making his

damning interdiction, he manages to miss the point or message, if the

philosopher has a worthy point. The chicken may have a mental

aberration, yet may produce a healthy egg.

The complexes mentioned exist in ail of us but an individual may for a

period of time favor a particular complex with more energy than his

neighbor. If these complexes and drives are motivating factors peculiar

to all of us. they are not abnormalities and are not individual

improprieties, but are, rather, functional parts, if such motivating factors

were removed from the constitution of man, he would probably die.

54
I do not wish to justify all of the conduct that results from the various

complexes and would follow this by adding that, if a man is really

pursuing the truth,, his first line of endeavor would be the inspection of

any possible complexes or drives, with the idea of not allowing any

complex or energy-dissipation to take precedence over the pursuit of

Truth. The supposition that he still struggles with complexes should not

infer that he is a liar, nor prove that his motives should be regarded with

suspicion simply because he displays urges or emotions.

Those which are referred to as the narcissus-complex, the superiority -

complex, and the god-complex, may be the necessary pride or self-

esteem that is both a motivating factor for an otherwise poorly

functioning organism and a purposeful personality-glue, without which

the various personality components or drives would become more

erratic. When a better balance comes about through experience and

maturity, those complexes become less significant and the person is

more deeply motivated or dedicated.

Sadism and masochism are carry-overs from our primitive, carnivorous

ancestry. The beast of prey is motivated or helped by sadism to survive,

and the necessary victim is helped by masochism to become the

contributor. True to the patterns of nature, the bird flutters before the

snake, and the martyr finds (and describes) the bliss of his immolation .

The Oedipus and Electra complexes, through the conduct so motivated,

receive much attention from not only our psychologists, but from the

55
legal department of social discrimination, and from the religious

segment of society as well. On the other hand, homosexuality is looked

upon by some psychologists as being merely a stage of development .

The psychologist, who wishes to serve as the high priest of nature,

should realize the degree of usefulness of the homosexual. And the

religionist, should take into account that the survival of Lot's tribe

depended upon that man's relations with his daughters, while the angry

God saw fit to destroy an entire city because of homosexual advances

(which were not even successful, and hence were not homosexual acts ).

Various sexual complexes are simply variations of the survival-drive.

And if the survival-drive were removed, most of the people on this

planet would be removed. The survival-urge is responsible for this

writing, and for all scientific and transcendental quests. This does not

mean that those who are inclined to search along transcendental lines

will still possess the survival-urge with the same urgency which they

possessed when they first began the search. The Truth may develop in

us a reversal of hope, and our urge may then be one of non-survival, or

it may, if nothing else, change our definition of the survival as desired

earlier.

A very important point should not be forgotten, in regard to complexes .

They are sources of energy, and once they are recognized and their

energy is diverted into work-channels, they can aid our upward climb.

To denounce them is to negate them, and to negate them is to pull up

our roots.

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Let us move on to psychological terms that relate to mind-definition .

Both religion and psychology owe their origins to concepts of the

psyche, anima, soul, Atman, purusha, spirit, microcosm, self, "I Am", or

whatever you wish to name the unproven essence of man . Immediately

most authors agree on one thing. Consciousness is evidence of the -

one-who-is-feeling. Aquinas and Descartes both agree. But from there

on, we have immediate dissembling. It is with great difficulty that we are

able to know that which any psychologist-author means by any of the

above terms, other than to know that he is conscious of consciousness .

And the confusion will become more multiplied when we approach the

terms of esoteric religion.

The so-called science of psychology is based upon the study of the

behavior of the individual, and is so defined by authors of psychological

texts or by the masses. It has little to do with exact knowledge about the

essence of the psyche. the essence of man, the limits of the self, or the

true origins of the behavior of the individual.

Psychology uses a yardstick which it calls normality. And from that is , in

turn, spawned a definition for sanity. Without knowing the true essence

of thought or the mechanisms of thought, the psychologist shall

presume to know which thoughts are healthy ones. And when the opus-

writer runs short of material, he resorts to telling the public that which it

wants to hear.

57
I do not wish to discourage the study of psychological works. I would

rather like to be able to create some sort of sieve to separate the gold

from the dross, and thus save the youthful seeker a few months or years

of labor under the impression that just any book is an authority .

One good test for any work, is the application of the work to actual

experience. If there exist cases which are not included in an author 's

theory, then the theory is lacking. If there are cases which throw the

book in doubt, and there is another book with a better explanation, we

must, of course, pause and reflect.

So timid and cocksure have the pseudo-psychologists become that they

have decided to measure intelligence without first defining it. So what do

we have? We have a meaningless charade with which school teachers or

personnel-interviewers fritter away their time. It becomes a dignified

sort of eeny-meeny-miney-mo. As yet, there is no valid calibration of

the mental qualities of men in relation to one another. An I.Q. test

determines only that the group being tested reacted as they did,

individually, and with varied responses to varied symbols . If the tests

have to do with numbers or mathematics, then a person who can count

on the fingers may look like a genius alongside of a person who

coordinates in generalities, or who reaches conclusions intuitively .

It has not been too many years since psychology lay in the womb of

theology. This parent had a peculiar authority in the Middle Ages, and

the foetus has inherited some of its parent's facetiousness. At an auto-

58
da-fe, it was left up to the theologian to decide if the victim were to

have the devil burned out of him, or be locked up in a dungeon with his

presumed insanity. They had various ways of determining his sanity,

such as the ordeal of fire, and the augury of screams.

We have the same, thing today. Pompous alienists today, who have not

the candor or honesty to stand upon a witness stand and simply tell the

court that they know nothing about sanity or insanity, will utter jargon in

a convincing tone which neither they, the court, nor the victim, can

understand or debate. They are driven by a trade-survival urge. If the

court recognizes them, they must in turn, not let the court down—when

the court needs some help with the hatchet.

I must admit that all legal procedure is designed with good intent , and it

must continue until the human family evolves something fairer .

However, we can avoid sitting in judgment or posing as alienists .

Because the masses have a certain fever, there is no excuse for us to

jump up and pretend to be the Zeitgeist.

The office of judge is a result of the masses' illusion that they can

institute a system that will protect them but never take away their just

rights. All this is born of fear. The next illusion is that the judge (and this

term applies to a jury as well as to an individual) is able to determine

guilt. Not even a guilty plea is proof of guilt. Masochists have been

known to plead guilty to the crimes of others. Thus we can see that

much suffering results from unclear thinking, and that the tolerance of

59
one illusion creates more illusions. So that the pattern of wrong thinking

becomes so interlaced and interdependent that many people imagine

the human menagerie to be an articulate and perfect entity just because

it is complex. Weakness employs bombastic oratory.

I would like to make a final observation in regard to psychological

research, such as is carried on currently. The psychologist would like to

copy other material-scientists, so much attention is paid to graphs , and

every little whim is polled and charted. This is like making notes on the

results of fertilizers upon the growth of grass, when the real problem is

to determine the essence of the core of the earth.

A LOOK AT THE MIND

Psychology is definitely in its infancy and infants do some wildly

imaginative things. Modern psychology is mostly behavioristic , which

evolved in a mercenary fashion, to tempt teachers and persons in

supervisory positions into believing that there exists a system of

predicting behavior. Of course, the supervisors hope to control the minds

of men by utilizing a knowledge of the system.

Then we have the psychology of salesmanship. This is purported to

encourage customers to buy things that are useless and enable the

diligent student or salesman to profit astronomically. And we have the

psychology of war, of aggression. This is the study of the capacity of

man to suffer, to kill now but abstain from killing later, to learn to give

chocolates today but rape tomorrow, to learn the profanation of human

60
mind (brainwashing), and to learn to build entire structures of gossamer

concepts that pretend consistency (propaganda).

There is also therapeutic psychology, which may be anything from free

lance group therapy to professional psychiatry. This category has

become a pseudo-science of manipulation, using mechanisms to siphon

off our tensions (pills), to neutralize tangential or anti-social manias

(trepanning, ice-picking, castration), or to give some poor professional

a more magnetic voice (hormone shots).

There is naturally some variance between theoretical psychology , and

utilitarian, applied psychology. But there is also conflict between the

different fields of applied psychology.

We can take the psychology of salesmanship as it is applied to

international diplomacy. The psychology of salesmanship functions

basically by developing in oneself a positive attitude of belief in the

intelligence and probity of the opponent or customer, to such a degree

that the customer is ashamed not to live up to the pretty picture that we

often paint of him. The salesman-technique or diplomatic procedure

avoids direct criticism or confrontation of any kind and employs , rather ,

a "kill them with kindness" routine and an exemplary patience in

outlasting the customer.

The psychology of war, however, is not quite the same. It is based on

confrontation, terror and abrupt actions. With no partisan political

motives, I would like to point out the trouble that has occurred by

61
exposing our general public to both the propaganda put out by the

diplomatic corps and by the war-hawks, which is available on radio and

television.

One segment of our society, consequently, thinks we can "kill them with

kindness" and instill in the enemy certain virtues by simply proclaiming

the enemy to be virtuous. The state department talks of peace, while the

generals are trying to convince the public that killing the enemy is the

real international social remedy. Both are trying to use psychology as a

tool.

We can go a step further and see how a third utility—therapeutic

psychology—becomes involved in the confused mess. The military

system of training men will impose upon those men and encourage in

them antisocial traits (to say the least; that a therapeutic psychologist

would deplore . . . traits which the civilian therapist will later be called

upon to dispel.

Modern therapy has made the confessional old-fashioned. The sins now

are not forgiven, they are blotted out. If you wish, the ability to sin again

can be removed (with the ice-pick) and with the removal you may

become a civilized zombie.

We are learning to drive our vehicular body but we still do not know

about inner motivations. We get inklings now and then but we are

reluctant to settle for less than a very complicated blueprint . Egotism

would not permit anything less.

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In regard to blueprints, there are certain laws concerning the protoplasm

and its relation to the programming of the computer and those laws

favor the protoplasm. After all, the brain must take care of its house.

Action, or reaction, is based upon the endorsement of pleasure-sense

and upon the rejection of pain-sense in the flesh. A stand is taken for

every experience—neutrality would mean no reaction.

If the mucous membrane conveys to the record-room a perception of

intense agreeableness, then the computer might find a pleasantness in

the contemplation of such words as will and immortality . . . for the

mucous membrane. And if our interacting Reactions (Reason) tell us that

the mucous membrane has to go in death, Reason will also find it

pleasant to observe the reaction that the system of Reactions with its

Perception and Memory will, or may possibly, live on without the mucous

membrane and the grey convolutions. And the dallying with this

pleasant thought in turn, may lead us to believe in a personally directed

potential for survival.

We must not legislate that it is impossible to have a Will. It is not

impossible for a robot to become short-circuited by fatigue and begin

operating in a way that would be more conducive to the longevity of the

robot, rather than according to the intentions of the inventor of the

robot. In fact, the combinations of memories and reactions to them,

(Imagination) are infinite. However, the perception of one of those

possibilities and the naming of that same possibility as Will does not add

another attribute to all minds. It would be added synthetically , not

63
necessarily being common to all men—being something like a heart-

pacer installed in a particular entity.

The robot, from the beginning, was programmed with a catalytic

reminder to keep it working. I prefer to call this catalyst an implant.

Desire was one. Desire was not an attribute of the mind. The amoeba

moves toward pleasant liquids and hurries away from irritating

substances. There is a tendency in all living things to avoid irritation and

not to avoid pleasant contacts. So that desire is more of a faculty of the

flesh.

Another faculty that seems to be part of the mind is curiosity. The

amoeba also demonstrates curiosity. Curiosity is an implant possibly

built in the flesh and mind to guarantee a certain life-span. It may have

been inherited in the genes of the species, yet such an impulse poses as

a mystery in that it seems to be a continual irritant and lure, capable of

projecting the host into all sorts of instantaneous, dangerous adventure .

If the young calf and kid did not possess this faculty to a high degree,

they would perish surely before they were able to reason out the

purpose of the mother’s udders. And this is not a quality in the mind of

calf or kid. This is an urge—a force which drives the host—leaving the

host with little evidence of choice in the matter.

Curiosity is a factor that is inversely proportional to advancing age . As it

ages, the host is less able to receive stimuli from outside or less

compelled to because of fatigue. The death-gene would be another

64
implant and if such existed, it would be likely to trigger a series of body

changes long before the day of death. This clash of implants would

account for the ability of the older hosts to manifest more indifference to

the curiosity implant.

Regardless, that which diminishes with proportion and consistency to

the aging process may well be assumed to cease after death. I mention

this because I think we should seize and use this implant, curiosity , and

bend its energy-vector toward the pursuit of wisdom while living , rather

than dissipate that energy in the instinctive search for food and sex—

procrastinating the day of spiritual efforts and rationalizing that we will

be better able to satisfy our curiosity after death.

Regardless of the validity or invalidity of the after-death concepts it is

worthwhile to note that of all the reports of infernal, celestial, astral , or

just uncategorized apparitions, there are none reported that give the

observer an inkling of curiosity on the part of the apparition . Many

phantoms have demonstrated an ability to perceive, to remember and to

react. But none have ever asked curious questions nor betrayed

adventurousness, being more impassive and quietly aware. We might

say that the spirits are not curious because they now know everything ,

but this is not so. I can recall reading many accounts that corroborate

the several experiences I had at genuine materializations , where the

apparitions were asked if they had ever seen Christ. Invariably they gave

vague answers, such as "We have heard that He is here," or "We have

seen His Light." "This Is about the same as where you arc." But none

65
manifested any curiosity to go look up Christ if He were available in that

state. In fact, their attitude toward the question was one of apathy, not

excitement or reverence.

These things, though not sensational proofs of any sort, bring us back to

the definition of mind. Immortality, without including something of the

mind, has no meaning. And to just presume that the mind as we are

aware of it will remain the same after death is not to face a considerable

amount of evidence with honesty. The determination of this book is to

locate that permanent state of mind. This is, likewise, the objective of

the Zen movement which strives to bring our present mind to its real or

unchanging state while we are still living.

In later chapters we will hear much of a technique called reversing the

vector, or the law of the vector. We can see that if our present essence
is motivated by almost irresistible burrs or spurs in order to promote a

biological destiny—then those implants, or burrs, are not part of our

essence nor will they be after death. So that by removing them now,

(and replacing them with intentional self-discipline to keep the

biological pattern going) we may approach a type of mind that would

survive death. It is for this reason that certain schools of yoga advise

hatha-exercises (to keep the body going) while contemplating the raja

yoga philosophy.

Patterns of Instinct and Curiosity are seen in plants. The growing sprout

or delicate tendril of a plant looking for something upon which it might

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climb reaches and probes. Its roots will search and find cracks in the

rocks, and adventure in diverse directions looking for moisture. All of this

is built in, as well as a crude form of memory which is manifested when

the plant is injured. The resourceful method of plant-repair requires this

cell-memory.

If the memory of man has access to knowledge of prenatal incidents and

is supposedly carried over in some depths of lower conscious levels , or

in gene-chemicals, then we might say that Instinct and Curiosity are

merely reactions to a former familiar pattern. Regardless of the origin of

implants, any acts which are the result of Instinct, Curiosity or Desire

should not cause us to be held accountable simply because they are

causes imposed upon us and rarely controlled by man.

We can see that that which religion calls temptation comes from the

outside. Yet, the master word-builders and creators of the guilt -

complex would notify those being swept down the stream of libido that

he, the helpless man, was the creator of libido and that furthermore ,

libido was evil. Man is expected to feel guilty and he is flattered by the

fact that he is able to do such "guilty" feats.

Of course, man reaches the peak of confusion when another authority

(behavioristic psychology) courageously decrees that mass-man is

always right and that anything done by the masses is acceptable or

normal. This does not rescue the man from the idea of guilt because

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libido is still considered to be a private possession, a quality, and not a

prenatal brand upon the genes.

The religionist, sensing somewhere that the computer works better

when free of libido-stimuli, decided that the libido should be controlled

in the layman and avoided entirely by the priests. They may have had a

good idea but they made a mistake in denouncing functions of the body

which require glands, since we need glands to continue here. The

Church protests that God made us but that the glands are of the devil.

And. yet, there is a hint of wisdom in that protestation if by "us" the

Church means our primary essence and if by "devil" it means Nature.

That man may become a true observer is his aim. He may generate a

qualified will. In cybernetics we hear that machines have been known to

adjust themselves. However, the only machine that is able to adjust the

universe to suit itself is the universe. The human will, or the human

body, may exert itself upon the environment to a degree, but in the long

run finds restrictive limits. And when the power-source is pulled out, we

simply have a dead machine, unless by some Herculean feat of magic

we are able to create another vehicle for the indefinite extension of mind

and observer.

When man talks about having a will, he infers that there might be a sly

chance of taking over the computer and being more of a doer than an

observer. It would seem appropriate then, to understand ourselves

rather than to confuse ourselves in our early role of creator by creating a

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picture of ourselves which might later prove to be unreal. If we can will

ourselves to live, and then follow up by conjuring up immortality would it

not be a sad spectacle if we conjured up a stranger to ourselves ?

Meaning that we would, thus, have immortalized a false personality .

We get on now to the attempt to split the mind. Science must be

analytical . . . the mind must be broken up into parts. And many different

scientists, or Quixotes, charged the phantom windmill of the mind with

their axes, and came away with equally imaginary component parts .

Those pieces were called by various names. Subconscious mind, and

conscious mind, Id, Ego, Libido and Superego.

And, of course, we must not neglect the modern psychologists and their

partners in crime—the sociologists. They came back from the windmill of

the mind with the spectacular announcement that the mind was physical

—we only have a body.

We cannot avoid any theory that might well be true. And so we find

ourselves riding the horns of the paradox all the way. An admitted ghost

writes about reality. Yet the system or outline which is stressed

throughout this book is no less true if it is found on the ceiling of the

Platonic cave of illusion and on some strange world of the universal mind

at the same time. We who sit in the cave of illusion will be a part of

illusion until we manage to separate ourselves and reality from illusion .

Are we the chaos from which shall emerge creation?

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Psychology decrees that phenomena that are not explainable by

materialistic standards are non-existent. Likewise, all phenomena must

be recognized by the senses—the five senses—or an instrument that is

able to bring the phenomena within reach of the senses, such as a

microscope.

The five senses which we hear so much about are gross and imperfect.

Knowledge of this led several authors, such as Brunton and Van der

Leeuw, to imply that there might well be an illusory world of experience,

and another dimension or state not yet comprehended, or at least not

yet describable.

When one man sees a mirage, we do not have much evidence. But when

ten men see the same mirage, we have something that might give a hint

of the possibility of illusion. All ten men will agree that actually it did not

exist. But it did exist, in that it was a Perception.

The phantoms witnessed in genuine materializations by us , or the ghosts

encountered by us are not denied existence (although their true identity

may be variously defined). And we have many instances where, out of a

group of observers, only a few witnessed the phantoms or spirits . This

was the case with Joan of Arc and with the little Spanish girls who

claimed to have seen and talked with the Lady of Fatima.

In such instances we can conclude that there are phenomena not visible

to all eyeballs. Joan of Arc and other mystics must have had another

sense. They do not have another attribute of the mind. They have,

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accidentally, or by chance specialization of being, another channel of

Perception. There are, likewise, phenomena which involve the hearing of

sounds inaudible to others and smelling things not smelled by all.

The refusal of modern psychology to understand that the mind is not

limited to the convolutions results in the failure to explain phenomena of

the mind. J.B. Rhine had to laboriously translate this mental ability to his

fellow psychologists, although the ability had been in use for many

centuries by such primitive peoples as the Australian aborigines.

Many rigid ideas have changed in the last few decades. Memory has

been released from its cranial, synaptic prison and is now found to be in

every cell. It has been found to be transferable through the digestive

system to the animal eating another, as in the case of Planarians

recently investigated. There are cases on record of people who have

developed a sensitivity of skin that enabled them to identify light and

degrees of visualization. These things indicate that if memories are

found in the nuclei of cells and in bits of chopped worms, then the mind

is not within the brain alone. And if Perception can come through the

skin, which is usually the domain of touch-feeling, then visual

perception is not limited to the eye.

Complexity may be an inseparable factor of life, but there is no

advantage to adding complexity to the study of life by generating

complexities when simplification aids understanding. Too many terms

have come into existence for their euphemism or palatability .

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It is foolish to pretend that psychology will ever be drawn up on paper

with mathematical formulations that will enable the layman to

understand himself or to plot with graphs and slide rule the distance

between thoughts or the fractional spaces occupied by memories . And ,

therefore, this concept is not designed to answer all or to bring a student

to the truth by way of a symbolical comparison of the mind to a camera.

Symbolism is used to show things more clearly and to indicate that

things are not as muddled as our experts would have us believe.

Psychology, as well as economics, operates according to Burke's law.

Complexity in any system breeds experts in complexity, and the sincere

ones are hard to distinguish from the selfish ones.

There is only one true psychologist and that is he who is able to enter

the mind. Starting first with his own. There is questionable value to

debates on proper thinking—the point is to begin to think.

The subconscious mind in the camera analogy is merely the roll of film.

The data room in the computer. It is unrecalled memories in totality . It is

not half of a bicameral mind-system. To say that there is a segment of

the mind separate from the continuous consciousness of daylight

experiences is like saying that the big roll of film in the movie projector

is not the same film as that which is spinning past the projecting lens.

That there is a relation among memories is not denied. That memories

may be cross-checking with other memories while the attention is

focused upon something entirely different is not denied, and may be

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explained. The synaptic theory is denied. These things are denied, not as

being totally false, but as being incomplete ideas. We still do not know,

and may never know, exactly where memories are stored. The important

thing is not to isolate memory, but to prolong that faculty and improve

it.

Lastly, we come to Intuition. Reason is a pattern of reaction of reactions

among themselves. Many such patterns may form a reasoning. It differs

from intuition in that it is a process that is projected through the window

of consciousness step-by-step. Intuition is that same reaction , or

gestalt interchange, or cross-checking of reaction patterns , without any

projection through the window of consciousness of each step of the

process. Only the answer is projected.

THE MIND: SOME OBSERVATIONS

My quibble with modern psychology is that it not only poses with

inquisitional authority, but also reneges on the basic job of at least

approaching the mind. It tries to make of Psychology a materialistic and

mechanistic science and in the ensuing efforts, aborts the very meaning

of Psychology. It now investigates only protoplasmic and sensory

reactions. The physical senses are part of the body which is visible while

the mind and its projections are not. Of course, the modern psychologist

gets around this by issuing an encyclical . . . "Either the mind is physical

or it does not exist."

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Either the body is part of our environment and is independent of the

mind, or else this observer is merely a chance evolution of flab with

some really fanciful concepts about himself. If memory is synaptic, we

must reexamine our hopes for immortality or be prepared to settle for

immortality that carries with it no memory of living. Likewise, if memory

is something chemical in the chromosomes, or cell-nuclei, we are in a

bad way at the termination of those cells. I should say—if memory is

contained only in the cells we are in a bad way. The mechanics of cell-

memory have not been determined with precision. We have known for a

long time that the genes were memory-pads but they were thought to

be only genetic memory-records and had nothing to do with memories

of current happenings. This evidence (cell-memory) helps us to

understand that thinking is not limited to the head. And the possibility

remains that the mind, rather than being completely somatic , or

confined to the head, is an essence with contact-points in various points

of the body, but without limits to that body in consideration of form,

mass or tenuosity.

The science of Psychology in an attempt to pay its way leaned lately to

the therapeutic or exigent approach. It concentrated upon a utilitarian

enterprise that experimented with physical media and which brought

forth answers, chiefly behavioristic. These findings were limited in that

they related only, or mostly, to those media.

The investigations of such media are worthwhile in that some search is

better than no search, but they should be classified according to their

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limitations. They are the study of the actions and reactions of physical

bodies, chiefly. It is doubtful if Psychology as a science will ever become

a study of the "psyche". You cannot "isolate" the spirit and subject it to

tests and measurements.

The student who is trained from childhood to lean upon authority pays a

dear price for the false pose of psychologists. Only recently have the

colleges decided, in a half-hearted way, to enter the field of ESP. In the

fall of 1958 I paid a visit to the University of Pittsburgh and talked with a

professor of Psychology. He viewed the field of ESP with some temerity

and at the time was playing with ESP cards in one of his classes in a sort

of non-committal manner. In other words, the students would have to

take full blame or credit for any discoveries. There was an outspoken

fear on his part of "authorities."

A friend of mine had been delegated to contact this man in order to

persuade him to head a parapsychological research group which had

been recently endowed in San Antonio by Tom Slick. My friend's blank

check and portfolio of credentials may just as well have been a cobra—to

judge by the man's reaction. He had a strange solicitude for his job . Who

are these mysterious "authorities?" Why must dedicated research be

first cleared by politicians and religionists? Are we to presume that Truth

may not be divulged or approached except in a prescribed and arduous

manner?

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Occultists have known for centuries that telepathy existed and that that

faculty was perhaps more important than the more evident five senses .

Yet mankind had to wait for the scientific world to partially free itself

from the controls of the witch-doctor and prelate. And here as late as

1958 we find science still trembling like a child at the woodshed door.

This trembling child . . . that may be allowed to send you to the electric

chair with his definition of your sanity.

It is demonstrable to a degree that there is another sense which has

more direct access to the mind than through the computer , which is

largely a physical apparatus. It has been found that while the function of

the five senses depends upon a well-functioning physical body (eyes

without cataracts, etc.), the functioning of this outer or other sense

seems to be independent of the body's health or well-being. In fact, in

some cases, the new sense functions better when the body is ill, almost

to the point of death, under extreme alkaline or acid shock, wasted from

fasting or disease, or largely inhibited by prolonged meditation .

We should not confuse the phenomena of such a sense with the mind

itself. And this sixth sense, while being tactically superior to physical

senses, still has its limitations. However, there is evidence to

demonstrate that some of the limitations of the sixth sense are removed

by practice as experiments have shown with the use of ESP cards and

dice. Accuracy increases with practice. With clairvoyance, however ,

there are discrepancies which no amount of practice seems to remove .

This does not imply that the mind (the clairvoyant's) involved was in

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error but that either its faculty of ESP had some difference or limitation—

or that the source of clairvoyant information (spirits , entities ) contained

factors not yet fully explored by us.

Modern psychologists label most of clairvoyant observations products of

mental aberrations. Like the priestcraft of old, what they did not think of

first must come from the devil.

We have many accounts of people who claimed to have visited heaven

or to have seen God. Examples are found in the testimony of world-

prophets, life-stories of Catholic saints, medical records of cases of

persons revived from near death, testimony of spiritualistic

materializations, (these latter give testimony only about their heaven )

and, of course, tales of certain mystics. In some respects, the medical

cases are more evidential in that the records are of people who did not

approach death with the idea of returning to testify, while the evidence

brought to us by mystics is of a deliberate nature. The mystic in so

seeking, qualified the results of his findings since minds have been

known to create desired results.

I hope that it has been demonstrated that there are illusions in the

physical world. The statement that illusions exist implies that there is a

true state of affairs which, when correctly seen by all, will have but one

appearance. The mistake that the observer (who, incidentally , may well

be an "authority" or scientist) makes is in announcing himself to be

above illusion after the first trip to the optometrist. He is no longer

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deceived by mirages or magicians. He may even pride himself with his

new perspectives including space-time concepts and the force-field

concepts of matter.

Our space-time concepts imply that things may not really be as they

appear to be when observed with the telescope. And force-field

concepts imply that a situation may exist that cannot be observed with

the eye, even with the aid of a super-microscope. The senses are,

consequently, inadequate in these cases because they are not able to

perceive the ultimate nature of objects under scrutiny. And being

inadequate in these cases, are no more commendable as senses than

the sense that lays claim to witnessing heaven or God. The varied

testimony of enraptured mystics does not imply mental aberration . The

stuff was seen through a glass darkly. It is true that some of the

testimony of visionaries was caused by a predisposition toward

imagination, and some accounts may be deliberate lies. Some may have

unconsciously copied from earlier authors. We can, however , accept that

those that we feel are sincere did actually witness a state of being if

they attested that they did.

The fact of their difference in testimony lies in the difference of the

vehicles or persons observing and in their individual difference of faculty

that facilitated the observation. When the observer relays that

information to us we have still another refraction, depending upon the

limitations of language.

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I would say that the mind itself is not finite. I would also conclude that

the perception faculties and the translation faculties are considerably

finite.

And there is some explanation for all of the strange and diversified

evidence found in this business of heaven-seeking. Some of the

phenomena may well be conjurations or creations triggered by mental

tricks. Some materializations actually seen by human eye are, in some

ways. less evidential than other concepts because they have been

conjured up—ordered, so to speak—as you would order bacon and eggs

in a restaurant. Eliphas Levi gives us a hint of this mechanism when he

describes the materialization of Apollonius of Tyana. Deeper

investigations of Spiritualism infer (with a degree of justice ) that the

phenomena of ectoplasmic figures are of human creation, being an

emanation from the body of the medium, and being subject to certain

intellectual limitations relative to the limitations of the mind of the

medium and his circle.

It is also believed that the mechanics of the seance are engineered by

entities. William Crookes was supposed to have had a Titania for a pet. It

has been my privilege to meet one of these entities and it was quite the

opposite of a Titania. So there must be other types as well. We come

now to the business of entities, demons or angels. They may or may not

have substance. It depends upon the amount of substance we claim for

ourselves. When we begin to concede that we , as far as our physical

aspects are concerned, are to a degree illusory, then we may assume

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that these other entities may be to a degree illusory. But we should not

assume them to be illusory just because it is not convenient to try to

identify them. We can take accounts from the Tibetan Book of the Dead

and find that the book warns of impressive encounters after death with

alarming, if not terrifying entities. The book wishes us to note that when

these things are encountered they signify that we are still in transition

and not yet fully liberated from illusion.

From what we read of Aleister Crowley, he was really not too happy with

his discoveries up until the time of his death. Yet his metaphysical career

started off with the conjuration of a swarm of demons in a drug-

drenched experiment. With easy access to definitely supernatural

acquaintances, the prospect of tapping those acquaintances for

supernatural information immediately suggests itself. However , the last

moments of Crowley signify that his demon friends were lacking as

informants. Eliphas Levi, after spending many years in the art of

conjuration, is supposed to have had disillusionment that resulted in his

return to the religion of his youth.

It may well be that travel to another planet and the consequent study of

its people or beings may be similar in value to the study of demons. It is

strictly a matter of objective. We may discover that those beings are of

another dimension or rate, but not necessarily of a dimension more real

than our own here in the human bodies. The worth of contact with

demons is questionable in the light of all the information gathered from

them.

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We come to another type of visitation—the projection. This is a form or

phantom projected by another intelligence—perhaps human or perhaps

supernatural. Under this heading come the visitations of witchcraft and

some magical rites. The inference here is that this type of being has no

existence other than mental. They are created by one mind to influence

another. Recently an article appeared in a magazine titled "Does

Telepathy Cause Insanity?" The psychologist who took note of this

particular phenomenon was gingerly introducing the idea in the form of

a question.

I went to school with a man who was convinced that he was God (Jesus

Christ to be exact). He became convinced of this, he told me with

candor, because of voices from beings that spoke to him and addressed

him as Jesus. The man was, to all appearances, a sane man. He was

homosexual and he tried to copy that which he thought to be the

physical appearance of Jesus. He was no apparent lunatic. In college he

was an astute mathematician and by avocation he was a skilled

fundamentalist. He was very practical except on the subject of his own

divinity and on the insistence that he had a vast telepathic following . He

had that which the minister in graveside-eulogy referred to as a subtle

sense of humor. Incidentally, he believed that he would never die

because he believed in himself.

The mental institutions are filled with people who hear voices and see

people and animals quite invisible to the attendants. Yet these same

insane people occasionally come up with startling announcements . At

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one time in Russia about the same time that starets-Rasputin came into

prominence, there was widespread reverence for idiots that bordered on

worship. It was supposed that the miserable condition of the idiots was

the price paid for their unusual contact with higher dimensions.

I was startled a few years back by a young neighbor who had been

released from a mental institution only a few days prior to the following

incident. He sat beside me in my kitchen. Our wives were, for the

moment, monopolizing the conversation. Without facing me or even

looking at me he read my mind aloud. I thought to myself, "He is reading

my mind." He half turned and commented, "I have been able to do that

ever since I have been a child."

These were not his only words. He replied for several minutes to my

thoughts, and replied in depth, being fully aware of things I knew but did

not speak. Nor did I even answer him at the end. I was too surprised. This

particular man claimed to have seen God. But God appeared to him in

human form. He once mistook the family physician for God and knelt

prayerfully before him. The physician, who had recently recovered

himself from a nervous breakdown, became alarmed and ushered the

patient out of his office. The result was an institution for the patient.

The man who thought he was Jesus had been committed once to an

institution. He was picked up for walking the streets of a small town,

dressed in burlap, while preaching the gospel. He could laugh while

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describing the experience. I asked him about his release from the

asylum.

"Heaven knows it was a task," he smiled as he replied. "I never knew

before that I was an actor until that time, nor did I know the full

insidiousness of society and of those in charge of saying what insanity is .

Heavens, yes, it was the best acting I had ever done in my life. I had to

act sane and if you have never tried acting sane, you must try it

sometime, especially when you have to guess what they mean by

saneness—what will pass the board. You learn after a while that sanity is

basically harmlessness, industriousness and gregariousness . You have to

put out the idea that you are just a plain, hard-working chap without a

brain in your head and they will let you go. It is easy to frighten them

and you must not do that. Questions frighten them as do metaphors and

harmless equations. They pretend to be thoroughly logical in their

interrogation, but it is strictly instinctive. If you manifest logic yourself ,

they will manifest fear immediately. I rather think that they are afraid of

a reversal of positions if the logical communication is encouraged ."

Swedenborg was considered insane by his contemporaries . He knew St .

Paul and most of the apostles rather intimately according to his writings .

He had not only visited heaven, but hell as well. His description of these

two regions was predominately one of an objective experience as

distinguishable from the more subjective experiences of other mystics

whose experiences or ecstasies led them to proclaim heaven to be a

state of being for the mind or a state of rapport of the mind with a more

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extensive Being or mindstuff. Swedenborg described not a state of

being, but a place visited by beings.

Swedenborg was not too reliable as a witness about other matters on

which he spoke with authority. He had written scientific treatises years

before becoming a mystic and in one of his scientific books he

proclaimed that the moon was a mirror. He also claimed to have intimate

knowledge of beings on other planets. We can note without prejudice

that his faculty of perception—which he extols as being extrasensory—

was not infallible. And was, in fact, laden with error.

Swedenborg is no reason for a wholesale rejection of all accounts of

experiences of mystics. And records by celebrated prophets and

religionists are not more valid than the information gathered from

individuals who have had unusual experiences and who make no great

fuss about them. The words of a drunk, a dope addict, or a social derelict

are as valid as any other if we are gathering material for the study of the

human mind. The prophet, in fact, may have weighed his words while

the unimportant habitue of the public square may have nothing to gain

and less to hide than the most of us.

I have recently read a book, Modern Clinical Psychiatry by A.P. Noyes. He

tells us much about mental diseases, but does not give us a definition of

the mind. In this book (of mine) it would be impossible to bring to

account every other book on the matter of psychology. It suffices to say

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that I have never found one that properly defines the mind. Noyes avoids

that definition until he can smother us with a hanging garden of Babel.

He then decides, "It will be noted that in the definition of psychiatry and

its discussion as a branch of biology, there was no mention of the word

'mind'. There need not, however, be any objection to the use of the word

provided it is employed as a collected designation for all those activities

and phenomena that occur when the organism functions as a whole and
that represent the product of interactions between it and the
environment."

If you think that that was confusing, he elucidates in the same

paragraph and utters an awesome decree like the witch-doctor of old .

That which the witch-doctor does not know does not exist. The decree

is, in essence, a mandate for religion. Man is monistic. Man has no

indwelling soul. Man has to be the soul or nothing. He also abandons the

whole field of mind-study for the safer ground of what might be called,

"mechanistic observations."

I quote him: "As a corollary to this definition of mind the reactions of

parts of the organism would be designated as physiological . Mind is ,

therefore, the biological expression of the organism responding to its

own needs and to the stresses of the environment. Man is a unitary

organism or being whose physical, mental, emotional and social

reactions constitute but different aspects of one individual whole which

functions as a unit. The mind, therefore, is but one of the biological

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characteristics or functions of the organism and not an entity having an

existence parallel with the body."

If you read this the same as I do, this fellow does not believe that the

mind is anything but the factory control-room. You will see a parallel to

a degree in the concept which I offer that draws a picture of illusioned

man possessing capacity for reaction more than for will. Man does react

and "modern" psychiatry is biological in its scope. But psychiatry is not

then a science of the psyche. This man Noyes is more of a biological

mechanic . . . an electrician skilled in knowing brain areas that are likely

to be undercharged or overcharged in the cases of varying symptoms

and irregularities of behavior.

He tells us that "exaltation" (his word for "ecstasy") is a proper diagnosis

for the state of mind (body mind) evinced by Buddha, St. Theresa, John

of the Cross and any enraptured mystics. The millions of followers of

these mystics must then be psychotic. Yet he defines abnormality or

"undesirable functioning" as that which disturbs the subjective state of

the individual or his relations with other persons. The serenity of the

mystic is surely not a disturbance to his subjective state. And the history

of mystics shows that after they reached the "exaltation " they were more

acceptable than before. The most harmless being on earth is a mystic.

We can note the acceptance of Jesus and Buddha.

We may note here that Noyes relates that which is psychotic to that

which is not desired by other people. Sanity is once more a matter of

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public mandate, not scientific proof. The psychiatrist, having no

intuition, has no qualification for piddling with the minds of other men .

Unfortunately, it is important only that he helps to build a new infallible

priestcraft for courtroom intercourse with the legal profession . And it

seems not important that he is not able to help a person who comes to

him with a sickness that is intangible as far as a biological examination

might show. How would he treat a case of possession? With shock

treatments or exorcism? Never exorcism. How would he treat a case of

mediumship? To him, of course, the medium is schizophrenic. And to

some psychiatrists telepathy itself is only an hallucination . It does not

matter to them that the medium or recipient of telepathic messages

may have data produced that bear no relation to any prior knowledge or

experiences of their lives, nor to knowledge of things happening even as

the medium is speaking. This is in reference to astral projection or its

equivalent.

We must keep our eye on the over-simplifying methods of modern

psychologists. Psychiatrists are simply mechanics . Somatic electricians .

It is true that they observe behavior, and have experimented with

methods and gadgets to alter that behavior to please society, or its

herd-bosses. But watch these gadgets. They include trepanning and

ice-picking, pills of questionable after-effects, and mild electrocution

for mild resistance and permanent electrocution for stubborn resistance .

There are some cases where such a mechanic is useful; but we must

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always keep in mind that this mechanic who treats our body-voltage still

knows nothing about the essence of the electricity of that body.

No man can lay claim to being a psychiatrist until he has learned the

trick of stepping into the mind of the other, to think for a while with his

thoughts. And any other pretensive approach is peripheral.

We should, therefore, not hurry to define the mind, but honestly try to

enter it. To be an authority on life on the moon is expedited best by

going there, not by resorting to scientific daydreams.

If the body is the totality of man, it certainly has subtler extensions not

visible to the eye.

I believe that the computer is perishable. I believe that most insanity , or

that which is diagnosed as insanity, is physical derangement or an

incompatibility or impairment of parts by disease, aging or accident . The

case histories of many people who have been cured or have recovered

from that which the medical profession labeled as insanity show that

they were aware of their affliction at the time of their insanity even

though they were unable to communicate to others.

I believe that this detached witness to this suffering is the mind. It is the

final individual observer. It is not the final Mind however. The individual

mind may yet have contact or union with other Mind-substance. The

body is the observer, but it is not the final observer. We could accept

that memory is chemical, synaptic or genetic (chromosomic) and we still

would not account for the memories transmitted by telepathy . We may

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refer to them as mind-pictures but they are still memories once

pictured. We can readily admit that the five senses will decay some day

but we do not know if that other sense—the telepathic sense—or sixth

sense—will decay. The body, which is like an electrical generator , some

day will lose its voltage. That is true. But the relation of that voltage in

any instance to the final observer is not established. As we have seen,

many of the desired phenomena, such as satori, occur when the voltage

is very low or when the wires are badly crossed or shorted out.

From my own personal experience, I have that which may be to the

reader a strange conviction. I cannot offer it with any pose of proof . It

must be taken as just a case history for what it is worth.

My comprehension of the mind of the final observer is such that it

presumes the observer to have neither need of mundane perception or

memory to BE. It has a different perspective when the body is negated

or removed, in that it no longer particularizes, for one thing. The

memories and personality that we identified as being us in the body-

coat have ultimately about the same dearness and wistfulness as the

characters from a story projected upon a screen for our edification . It

might be like coming out of such a dark theater—out of comfort and

illusion—this business of finding our real selves. For a short while, the

chilly shock of the out-of-doors reality is there.

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 ROMANCE AND TERMINAL CASES

The different sciences of man are interdependent even as the definition

of a word relates it to almost every other word. And in examining the

structure of any science or department of human behavior , we find the

fallacy of one science rooted in mistakes of another. So that it is now a

question whether the symbol of the serpent with its tail in its mouth is

the symbol of wisdom or is actually a hint that all pursuit of wisdom will

bring us to that embarrassing circular position.

Let us look at the looker. Let us examine the postulate that man

observes. All of the sciences postulate that man is not only the observer

but the doer, and what is more, the doer of mighty things, the possessor

of a will, the manipulator of magic, and the artist of logic . He gives

himself the accolade of responsibility and a sinister godliness when he

slyly acknowledges the power to commit sins. He reminds himself

eternally of this prowess by romantic drama, both as an individual and

as a nation or race. In the romantic drama he is only seen strutting in the

uniform of conquest, in the perfumed haze of a Romeo making boudoir

history, or he is seen posing as a saint with eyes averted. The fragile

minds of youth observe these romances and are moved to action equally

fictitious and to write scenes for coming generations. But death is hidden

from the stage. Actually. In some places strong pressure is brought upon

movie producers to inhibit them from depicting a man in uniform in a

horizontal position unless he is a man playing the part of the enemy .

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What does a dying man think of all this romance? In fact, what does an

older man think of the ambitious play and toil of his thirty year old son ?

The freshman is looked upon as being "green" by upper classmen who

view the lower classmen as unwise and unaware of the true state of

things. And the whole lot of them are tolerated for unwiseness by the

bewildered professors. And if the professor is more mature, let us

assume that there is a knight or two still more mature. And ask

ourselves about his reaction to the big question . . . What happens to the

Galahad of a thousand jousts with the windmills when the bell tolls ?

Why do they cover a dead man's face? Or pull the curtains around the

hospital bed? Why do thy wax and paint the face of a corpse, and

murmur in guilty undertones, that the face of the corpse flatters sleep ?

Why do we pay a man to salve our ignorance with a pointless tirade over

the casket? When all romances and pseudo-sciences have failed, there

is one last attempt at histrionics. And refusal to part with make-believe.

If we are to look upon man as a computer we must admit that he is

beset with many problems at once and at all times in his life. The

computer must feed, repair itself and amuse itself, and create other

computers, and feed, repair and amuse them. But there comes a time

when the computer feels itself coming apart. The lights are going out not

only in the viewing screen, but in the whole rotting tangle. Here is a

chance for the computer to forget all functions but one—self-definition .

If the last burst of energy is not wasted on thoughts of escape, the

mechanism might, by shutting off the disturbing environment, and with

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the automatic decrease of sensory impulses, bring about at least one

chance in its lifetime to coordinate all circuits in the memory -bank and

come up with a startling discovery.

Let us go down to the hospital and see what happens to the computer

when it breaks down. Our evidence must be second-handed because

the dying computer loses its communicating power and we can only

attempt to estimate its final deduction by the death-bed behavior. And

what happens? Some are startled, some seem bored, and some smile—

but that smile cannot be always judged as seraphic . . . it may will be

risus sardonicus. We do know, however, that long before the

communication-mechanism is disabled that the aging computer has a

dim view of the romances of the younger computers. Dying is not always

a sudden process and some people take many years in the preparation

for death. Some repent and are quiescent in their later years, but many

a young man and middle-aged man swears off his vices and follows an

abruptly different life.

It cannot be denied that the dying man does come up with a momentous

realization that he may not be able to communicate to us or that which

is not verbalizable even if he were given the mechanism for

communication.

Later on, also, we can deal with the possibility of there being no

separate observers. But to make a beginning we must first examine the

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field of psychology with the assumption that it is possible for us to talk

about it, therefore assuming that we are individuals or observers .

THIRD PAPER

The Veil of Maya

There is some question raised by various philosophers as to the extent

to which we can claim to live or assert consciousness. There is much

more evidence to substantiate death. From our present population of

two billion and more, we can estimate that close to two trillion corpses

are now enriching our soil. And we need only to go back four or five

thousand years to accumulate this total.

The statistics for death are monumental. The statistical percentage of

those who have died and found a life after death might well be said to be

nonexistent in view of evidence available. These odds are very

discouraging—so much so that the average person , seeing them or

sensing them, throws up his hands and refuses to become concerned

about the problem.

There are other statistics, however. These billions of people have built

thousands of civilizations, hundreds of thousands of cities and tribes .

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They have produced scientific marvels that have later been lost and they

have written books that have turned to dust. Yet the earliest history

shows one great movement which has continued until the present time

—the most primitive peoples theorized about a Primal Cause or God and

formed some sort of theology to satisfy their questions. And their

temples and their theologies all have, in due time, proven insufficient

and most of them have vanished from the earth.

We have no more reason to discount theological enquiry on the grounds

that historic theology was found inadequate any more than we should

discontinue scientific research because of the inadequacy of the

phlogiston theory. The living or current efforts to determine about life

after death offer some very interesting statistics. There are hundreds of

movements, religions, cults, societies for psychical research ,

brotherhoods, philosophic clubs and ale-house fraternities that claim

authority on the knowledge of life after death. If we examine them all—

presuming that we possessed the needed life span—we might perhaps

find that none of them knew about the ultimate state of things, or we

might find that each of them contained a grain of fact, surrounded,

pearl-like by a blob of flesh and then a layer of slime. Or we might

conclude that the majority of their concepts are valid in a relative sense .

Still, these deductions leave us only with theories and ensuing confusion

and frustration.

Man will spend hundreds of man-hours paying for pills and he often

spends his life savings to treat a terminal disease in the frantic hope of

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adding a few years to his life. Yet, despite modern medicine and medical

research, man continues to die. He invents new cures only to find new

diseases or old viruses that have developed greater resistance by

surviving man's antibiotics. We live in a Christian nation and era that

affirms that man's body is only a coat for a more subtle fabric, yet it

never occurs to anyone to study the subtler fabric or essence that is left

when the coat wears out. In fact, the Westerner (Christian) is likely to

ridicule those who dedicate themselves to esoteric diggings.

It is possible that life after death is more important (so hinted by

theologians) than this grubby life. However, in many religions we find

those same theologians advocating the grubby life, except for a few ,

chosen for their hierarchy. If the death-plane is more important and this

life is only a preparation for it as most theologians claim, then something

sensible should be done about it. We should all do the great work—not

just a fractional hierarchy.

Humanity throughout the Middle and Dark Ages remained in serfdom to

pontifical dogma. Lately, the peasant is somewhat better educated and

the matrix of ignorance that begets faith is demanding more sensible

dogmas and a more scientific or logical approach to theism. The worship

of fear and the masochistic attempt to create godhead from the mingling

of fear and love is melting under the light shed by common sense.

The history of religions, their rise and fall, will afford us a disturbing

suspicion. Many great religious movements have eroded away , leaving

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nothing for our scrutiny but external piles such as the pyramids, Ankor

Wat, the temple at Karnak and the Potala. Which brings us to wonder

why many great religious dynasties have possessed and lost the drive. It

may bring us to wonder if there is not a great natural scheme to prevent

man from expanding his knowledge. We have the "Tower of Babel": story

and the belief that gods do not wish for men to become too clever.

Man, as an individual and as a race, is unable to continue to fruition—the

search for Truth. Man as a race develops great religions but they reach

peaks in growth and then begin to wither almost like a living entity. Man,

the individual, possesses certain years of his life in which he may

dynamically pursue wisdom or religion but then he is overcome by

lethargy, circumstances or despair long before his natural death .

If we examine the problem we may surmise that not all of man's inability

to pierce the veil is because of the jealous nature of the "gods" who

might not wish for man to aspire beyond the pawn stage. We will find

that man is, unfortunately, a race of liars, whose status complicates his

illusion-status bestowed upon him by nature. The man chained in the

Platonic cave, instead of breaking his chains, worships them with

rationalization.

That man lies to himself and that these lies are in greater proportion

than his efforts toward Truth can be demonstrated if it is not already

self-evident. And it is part of the purpose of this paper to indicate many

of the major lies that pose as vehicles for Truth and demonstrate how

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they are manufactured out of smaller dishonesties. The Grand Creed

degenerates into a social institution because members of its hierarchy

use escapes and rationalizations to cover their lack of knowledge , and

when we realize the tricks that they employ, we find them of so petty a

nature that we no longer feel obliged to punish our children for being

truant from Sunday school.

It is doubtful if anyone will disagree with the postulate that the most

important thing in man's experience is survival. Survival may be

concerned with the race, the family unit, the body, or the nameless

essence that might survive corporeal death. Another item of experiential

importance, equal to or greater than survival, is self-definition . In the

quest for soul-survival we come to the business of defining that which

we are and hope to be.

As a result of self-definitive study, there are several camps of

opinion . . . we have the monists, dualists and the pluralists. (Ouspensky

indicates that we are multiple.) We know that it is important for that

which is surviving to know the nature of its survival. Or we might ask—is

it really surviving if it does not have the proper self-awareness ? And is it

not necessary to understand perfectly the essence or soul -matter

before we embark upon any formulation for continuance? The old sage

who indicated, "First know thyself," may have been far ahead of today's

theologians who are the product of a supposed spiritual evolution of

hundreds of years. Here and there a solitary sage points out a formula

but the masses laugh merrily at him as they crowd into chaos. He does

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not of a necessity give a useless utterance. Someone heard and

remembered him and disciples and biographers recorded a word or two

for him. For us.

We might say that the sincere religionist places essence-survival as

being of tantamount importance and self-definition for him is less in

importance. As a result, he becomes bogged down in artificial or

imaginary rubrics, faith-implementations, and priest-formulas . Or in

false translations, or questionable interpretations of the sacred writings .

It is nothing short of amazing to note the brashness with which various

theologians skip across many passages in the Bible (although they

profess to be fundamentalists), especially if those passages appear to

challenge the structure of their own house of cards. How many are able

to explain the lines in the beginning of the Bible? There was a tree in the

garden called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And man was

not allowed to eat of it under pain of death. Now in our botanical

catalogs we find no classification that might indicate a plant possessing

wisdom, so we must deduce that the tree was symbolical . If the edict

meant that man was forbidden under pain of death to seek for wisdom,

then the Master Jesus was giving out some bad advice when he said,

"Seek and ye shall find."

There is too large a gap between Old Testament and Talmudic laws of

conduct—and Christ's attitude. The former commanded conduct by

instilling a fear of a wrathful God. The latter proposed a way of living

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based on love to raise the level of being. The latter declared for a God of

love, not one of anger and jealousy.

There are many puzzling things in the Bible. Careful translation and

comparison should be undertaken by sincere Bible students. We wonder

about frequent references to an angry God. We hear of a God that is

partisan, who helps one little tribe on this little earth to kill off their

adversaries. We are enjoined to love and fear this God, although we may

well be the descendants of survivors of one of the expendable tribes who

found themselves in the path of the Jews. We, who have never had the

rare privilege of seeing the hand of God in a pillar of fire, nor heard His

voice booming from the vault, nor witnessed a sea opening up to let the

chosen ones through, nor witnessed a burning bush—wonder how in the

name of a name those living witnesses to all these marvels could ever

doubt that God enough to worship a golden calf. It would seem that the

narrator of that exodus either waxed hot with imagination or else God

made a mistake and allowed the sea to swallow the better people. And in

the New Testament (at Golgotha) we could really have used a pillar of

fire but did not have one. And the voice no longer roars out of the

heavens, but is plaintive and mild. Saul is not incinerated but implored.

Sodom and Gomorrah, on the other hand, were incinerated because two

messengers were merely insulted, not killed. At the crucifixion Jerusalem

was given very little indication that it had incurred divine displeasure

despite the fact that the Son of God was the victim.

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The human mind is finite indeed. As a few mystics have been honest

enough to admit, the human mind is unable to focus itself upon a

problem for a very long period. It wearies. It loses its chain of thought

and it loses in memory the sequence of important things it wished to

remember and compare with continued exploration. It loses track of the

definitions it applied to basic word-implements. The brain sleeps at

night and wakens oblivious of all the noble intentions of the previous

night. The eye of the ascetic blinks when a symmetrical harlot walks

by . . . and a year's meditation is dissembled. The philosopher gets

hungry and the exigencies of the other survival drive take him away

from the attic and into the hotmill.

The question arises as to that which can be done amidst all this failure ,

uncertainty, and man-made confusion. In a way, it is no more difficult a

project to begin than any other. But to maintain continuity and purity of

purpose is another thing. If man were to bend a percentage of his energy

toward the solution of death's mystery, under conditions that would

exclude from the beginning the possibility of digression,

commercialization, degeneration into cultism, and have built into the

blueprint from the beginning an arrangement for periodical shocks or

hypodermics to revitalize or remind the organism of its objective, then a

greater degree of success might be attained.

We can always find negative statistics to feed our despair. It is a fact

though that prior to Columbus, no one in history wished to venture too

close to the edge of the earth. Had Columbus been daunted by the

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estimates of "bona fide" authorities, he would have made no discovery .

And if we wish to discover that which is not already under the noses of

the masses, we must expect to extend our necks.

Here are what might be considered some pertinent statistics or facts :

Man still dies and is still afraid of death, despite any contrary pretence ;

yet man will bend large percentages of his energy, salary or time to the

taxes that go for making machines to bring death about. Of course, he

will argue that this is race-survival. Life is too short to go about trying to

convince nations that war is useless and distracting to the nobler work of

man, so it becomes a peculiarity to spiritual seeking that only a small

minority will, in this era, take the time and energy to divorce themselves

from the world's travail in order to do something more important.

The individual man is apt to place too much importance on his

gregarious instincts. He is afraid of being unconventional and has fear of

criticism from people. He shrinks from prospects of being called a

crackpot or fanatic by society. And if he shrinks enough, he will never be

able to change or help that society as did men who were monumental

crackpots two thousand years ago. Men generally gravitate to a job ,

trade or profession and content themselves with fighting for more

money. With that money they smugly buy insurance. They pay the

preacher once a week to soothe or shrive them and when the monotony

of their lives sends a ray of truth screaming through their flabby brains ,

they take their wallet to the psychiatrist in the hope that he will purge

them of despair with the proper sophistry. Their only real claim to

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immortality is their undying faith that no matter what dissipations they

suffer, the family physician will come up with a pill to rebuild the fun-

machine.

Let us take a poll of that which the man in the street believes should be

done about securing immortality. Most of them are depending on their

minister to take them to heaven. After all, that is his department. Some

will casually note that millions have died before them, and they expect

to go to the same place to which those went. Another will smile

condescendingly and point you to faith, indicating the magic of simple

belief. Another will want to douse you with baptismal water. And still

another might press you to your knees and have you screaming sins you

never dreamed you had.

Man just refuses to take death seriously. We who are sending rockets

into the outer spaces are not yet out of the jungle spiritually . We are still

consulting witch-doctors, engaging in frenzied religious revivals , and

probing the pages of superstition for our auguries.

We do have need of science if we are to understand the physical aspects

of man and if we are to monitor them—for this monitoring may well be

necessary before we can do too much on the mental levels.

Transcendentalism has need of a system of checks and balances. The

intuition must be tempered with logic. And the paradox is eternal.

Both religion and science have their proverbial heads in the sand. Most

of the errors in the area of religion result from a refusal to look at any

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research with other than an inspirational attitude. On the other hand ,

science would profit by taking on more of an inspirational attitude and

realize discoveries with the employment of variables.

In examining the achievements of religion, we can encounter many

interesting bits of information not necessarily adducive to truth . We have

monasteries famous for inventing alcoholic beverages, but rarely , if

ever, has a monk emerged from a monastery with spiritual

enlightenment for the world beyond the balderdash that has been

warmed over and served for centuries.

We find that the many newer religions born by fission or schism are the

result of politics rather than a change of attitude toward Truth . If there is

but one God, of whom can that God be jealous? And if there is but one

Truth, how can jealousy or any misunderstanding separate men

dedicated to the path of Truth?

We find that mankind periodically takes up the sword and hacks the

monk or witch-doctor to pieces and replaces whole religions. The mass

of mankind, usually stupefied by nature and its exigencies, at times is

roused from its inertia by a prolonged abuse of elementary reason . The

public appears stupid because it is lethargic. Many prelates interpret this

lethargy as ignorance and overplay their mental despotism, never

expecting to be challenged. But man does not revolt by premeditated

plan always . . . the reaction is generally one of nature, identified often

as Karma, or it is the automatic purging by an organism of material that

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can no longer be assimilated. Automatically, unadaptable formulas will

be vomited up from the stomach of mankind.

History is witness to centuries of fat clergy who boldly preached holiness

and asceticism. History is full of Friar Tucks and obese brew -masters in

hooded habits—and modern rectories are no exception. The layman

laughs to find more devils in Loudun than in his favorite bordello and

scratches his ear when he reads Benvenuto Cellini's account of the priest

who sought gold with the help of black magic. And it is no wonder—when

Communism points out the religious affront to common sense—that the

peasant indicates that he would rather accept stark materialism to be

free of the merchants of stardust.

The theological shell-game is about to be challenged on a larger scale

than ever before. Seeds of dissatisfaction are popping through the stiff

crust of the brain of the masses. As many are drifting away from church

because of the secularization of religion, as are drifting away because of

aspects of impossible traditionalism. Some leave on witnessing bad

conduct of their pastors while others leave with rational reservations .

Many are opposed to the excessive institutionalism of churches and

point out that organized religion no longer looks for God or the Truth .

Many such dissidents form the membership of new isms or cults. And

these dissidents find everything in the cult, usually, that they opposed in

the religion.

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Like a physician treating chancres, we are restrained from asking ,

"Why?" upon witnessing the distress of honest seekers. We can only ask,

"How can the distress be avoided?" while we continue to treat symptoms

instead of eliminating causes. We can point out the symptoms and hope

that future colleagues will find increasingly better ways to search .

Public sensitivity is one of the great stumbling blocks before the Truth .

The Truth must be administered subtly. And if we try to offend no one.

nothing will be said. Too many writers, motivated by the purchasing

power of the public, attempt to inject their philosophy indirectly into the

reader's mind by the use of wit, laborious logic, or by emotion-stirring

fiction. This type of writing tends to earn" both writer and reader away

from the importance of Truth, since it appears only in the form of a hint.

It also possesses a vagueness that protects the writer from any need to

defend himself. If the medium is wit, he can pass his controversial

motive off as humor. If the medium used is metaphor, symbolism or

parable, he can attest that the reader took the wrong meaning. And if

the reader becomes quarrelsome about his interpretation of the moral

behind a fictional piece, the writer can deride him for allowing himself to

become agitated over a mere story.

If I can create a hypodermic, it has not been intended for any sensitive

posterior, but is rather aimed at the heart and head. I feel that time is

short and that honest men will appreciate honesty in the long run . I am

not so foolhardy as to undertake to awaken people who are using faith

as a narcotic, nor to disturb the weavers who are using faith as a matrix

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from which to weave a better world. I wish to reach those who prefer to

encourage wakefulness and who would first define themselves and

perhaps even the world before trying to make anything better .

Wakefulness involves keeping an open mind and avoiding prejudgment.

If we encounter books that profess to illuminate us, we should not judge

them because someone else has attacked them. Nor should we be so

blind as to avoid testing the creed upon which we presently rest—we

should examine it with the same critical attitude which might be applied

to any other creed.

Whatever slippages or erosions Christianity manifests , there is no

justification in belittling the image of Christ. The same attitude should

apply to any of the great spiritual leaders, such as Buddha and

Mohammed, who reached a stature of eminence in their lifetime. Christ 's

teachings can in no way be held responsible for the diverse

organizations that resulted from various interpretations of His words . Nor

can He be held responsible for all of the rogues that operate under His

banner.

The progress of a transcendentalist is slow in a world inimical to free

thinking. Books are scarce and over-zealous librarians think that they

are frustrating the devil when they surreptitiously take certain books off

the catalog lists. Personal contacts are even more difficult to come about

because each man must protect his family, even if that protection is only

from public scorn or business losses. I hope to see better contacts

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among honest diggers and hope that some readers will bend an effort to

help bring about better referential association among seekers . There

must be paths in the jungle. There must be places where men of any

faith or fancy can go to meditate or to compare notes with a fellow -

seeker.

To live with ourselves we must take some stand, some line of action .

Nature and society prohibit the complete vacuum. We have the choice of

driving dynamically or being driven relentlessly. We may cease to be a

cork and become a ship.

ON THEOLOGY

Let us survey this massive subject that has furnished mankind with

perennial hope and eternal strife, mentally and physically , individually

and nationally. It would be of scientific value to chart the early origins of

religion and the evolution of those origins in order to observe the

sequence of changes, as well as the religiously revolutionary figures who

expedited those changes.

There are works that deal with the evolution of religion that can be

studied by the reader. They include the heavy works of Blavatsky and

Max Mueller and The Golden Bough, by Frazer. Frazer has done quite a

bit of research on the growth of a complex God from primitive gods of

the fields, of the hunt, or of war.

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Thus, we have the possibility that the early corn-god may be the father

of current religious thinking, or the possibility that there was a divine

emanation waiting for primitive man to divest himself of the corn -god ,

which emanation appeared on earth in widely separated places at about

the same time. The time embraced the period from 563 B.C. to 570 A.D,

Zoroaster was born in the sixth century B.C. Buddha lived from 563 to

483 B.C. Then Christ came in the year 1. And we have Mohammed in the

year 570 A.D.

And so, bypassing historical research, I would like to go directly to the

major categories of religion in order to make a comparative study of

different definitions and concepts. We have the Monistic viewpoint,

which means that God permeates everything, including the human soul

and body.

Next the dualistic God, or God as a separate being.

The regional God, such as Jehovah, who was considered to be only the

God of the Jews, and by some to be a planetary spirit.

Phallic God, a sort of humanized masculine evolution, symbolized from

the Hebraic letter jod.

God, the indefinable, represented by the letters JHVH.

The God within. The inner self.

God as being the automatic law of the universe, but lacking in

personality.

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Any of the thousands of gods worshiped by sects or tribes.

Concerning the concepts of multiple Gods, they are difficult to

categorize because some of the one-God doctrines confuse the layman

with complex sub-theories such as the doctrine of the Trinity. There is

an argument also that there is a hierarchy of Gods and some translators

of the Bible point out that such is meant by the word Elohim which is an

intentional plural word. The Buddhists also mention a God -hierarchy

which they call the Dhyan Chohans or Bodhisattvas which are

sometimes given an exact number. This brings us to the Asian concept

of gods which have evolved from humans, as in the case of Gautama

Buddha.

For future reference I wish to list certain concepts on life after death .

1. Reincarnation, either upward toward godhood or toward dissolution .

2. Reoccurrence. A theory more complex but no more provable than the

others. This has to do with the reoccurrence of a human being, either by

design or accident, identical to a previous human being of another era .

The argument is that such beings, if alike in all ways, are the same

being. Another version of this theory is that the individual man is

actually a life-strand in a timeless continuum, with the only motion

being the progression of that man's consciousness doing that life -

strand. Reoccurrence for him would be a repeat performance of such

life-strand travel. In simple words, it means reliving this same life over

and over. Some Spiritualists claim that this pastime is available to all

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after death, but that after a while the game grows boring and is

abandoned.

3. Reincarnation. White's concept. This theory supposedly evolved as a

result of considerable work in automatic writing with a spirit-guide doing

the dictation. In this theory, the human is born unique, having never

lived before as the same being. "That which is born of spirit is spirit; and

that which is born of flesh is flesh," is used to identify the concept. One

or more spiritual parents manufacture a spirit and then look about for a

woman about to become pregnant or about to deliver. The child-spirit

thus finds itself a child-body.

4. Spiritualism. Spiritual evolution after death through possibly a half-

dozen planes.

5. Christianity's paradise or hell. This belief differs from the foregoing

concepts in that it allows neither for another life in this plane nor any

further refinement or growth after death. One life, one eternity.

6. Immortality through faith. It is held by some that there is a

dimensional matrix that is subject to the faith of men. Levi, in one of his

books of magic, gives the formula for creation.

7. Immortality through mechanical means, concentrating upon a chakra ,

observation of certain sounds, prayers, etc.

8. Translation. This theory claims that some people may develop an

immortal body by means of a slow change.

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9. Union with the Absolute. Satori.

10. Oblivion.

Can we pick up where Max Mueller leaves off and discuss the ineffable?

Still, the hunger in man demands an answer and man is annoyed by the

inconsistencies of the mighty. It is possibly true that all is rationalization

—even this—but if we are to blush at hope then we must pursue some

sort of mathematics and even risk the answer of zero. All of this, in

respect for the straw, or any other tiny foothold of a word or sentence

that might be an anchor. If all else fails, it shall be effort. And effort shall

beget effort. On the other side, silence and inactivity will only beget

silence and stagnation.

Let us look for the reasoning in some of the age-old beliefs and begin

with Monism. If God is everywhere, then He is in complete charge and

the quest for Truth is foolish, as well as the pursuit of any action. We

would be only an infinitesimal expression of this Being. Add omnipotence

to omnipresence and every aspiration becomes vanity for what seem to

be separate mortals. Yet, the religions that preach such Monism still

preach free-will also, in order to hold their flocks accountable. Then we

hear the old expression that God is powerful enough to stop us, but that

He allows us to do evil. This can only read that He allows Himself to do

evil And what could a singular God-entity do that would be qualified as

being less than deific conduct when by His absoluteness (by definition)

He cannot be adjudged one way or the other.

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It is hard to determine if our Christian God is one of Monism or Dualism

The Catholic dogmas and catechisms express beyond a doubt that He is

everything. Yet those same catechisms make much of human guilt.

Would they blame man for the creation of the human being?

Predestination would indicate a monistic concept and an all-powerful

God, but the advocates of predestination also preach morality .

It has been said that man makes God in his own image and likeness.

Could it be that man, being a bifocal, bicameral, polarized creature feels

it necessary to see everything in a relative manner? Regardless , if

everything is God. this writing would appear to be as foolish as any other

action, but the efforts to know such Truth (if it be the Truth) or to find

our true state of Being should not be arrested. We should not qualify the

results of an adventure until the project is completed.

The Summa Theologica pretends to prove the existence of a monistic

God by using a dualistic mechanism. It observes that the universe is in

motion and ergo must have a mover. The mover must be God. This

separates God from the universe and makes Him a sort of chief engineer

over the visible, dimensional universe. Being a mover of physical objects

removes from God the need to participate in functions of non-visible

planes or dimensions, so that such theology is more of a cosmology .

Thomas Aquinas lived before Einstein and Ouspensky and,

consequently, did not have to argue with them about the nature of

motion, which must, of necessity, be relative to time in a timeless

continuum.

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The greatest bit of frustration in Catholic teaching is to be told on one

hand that the Summa Theologica is the "highest theology" and be told by

the same theologian that the finite mind cannot ever perceive the

infinite.

In regard to Dualism, we find that Dualism at least gives us the privilege

of being a searcher with an objective. We must all go along on this tack,

at least until we find out that we do not exist as an individual. Yet, as we

go, and create concepts, counter-concepts are automatically born and

for every virtue that we find, counter-virtue is created. And, thus, is

born the devil.

Sometimes the devil is not the only competitor of God. There is a belief

involving celestial politics, in which sundry Gods hide behind curtain of

dimension and try to entice the souls of men away from other Gods . An

erudite Theosophist recently stated that he held this to be the esoteric

truth behind all religions. In works of magic we find invocations to some

of these ancient Gods, and practitioners as recent as Eliphas Levi

believed that those Gods are still real and still retain the life which

centuries of faith bestowed upon them. It is interesting to note here,

also, the efforts of churches in modern times to promote a drive for souls

and the exhortations of churches to parishioners to increase and

multiply. Why do the Gods need men? Unless this is Dualism, strained to

the utmost, why should these celestial beings have terrestrial roots

dependent somehow upon nourishment from fleshlings?

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There is still another disturbing note that is echoed by scholar and clod

alike . . . Why do the Gods remain hidden? If there is a personal God,

more powerful than man, why does He seemingly impose a set of rules

or conditions upon man and Himself? This rule holds that the fleshling

must guess the correct name, which he must cry out at night, protesting

his desire to be food for celestial roots, or to be a constituent.

The use of logic implies a mechanistic attack upon a problem that has its

answer in the abstract magnitude. Knowing this difficulty, many seekers

use the methods of the mystics which involve intuitional meditation or

some form of concentration.

It would be impossible for a man to choose a path from logic alone.

Reason will sway the mind toward a movement but intuition plays the

larger role in the choosing of spiritual paths. The theory of reincarnation

is an example in that it seems to be more reasonable than the one-life,

one-death theory. But reincarnation has not been proven either, even

though there are many testimonials of the remembering of previous

lives. So that if reincarnation is accepted, the acceptance comes largely

from intuition. It is argued that it is a more just system than the concept

of eternal punishment or reward for helpless reactions to the

circumstances of life. It has an understandable, structural conception of

the relation of action to consequences when it associates the theory of

reincarnation with the idea of automatic Karma. However, we cannot

accept a theory only because it has a conceptual structure that is pretty

or that appeals to human standards of justice.

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On the testimonial side, there have been people who have

demonstrated, honestly or otherwise, that they could recall previous

incarnations. Some cases have been carefully witnessed, especially

cases where a young person described the place of his previous life or

people now living who lived contemporarily with his previous life. There

are rituals in Tibet by which the monks determine the identity of a child

in a previous life. The Tibetans choose their Dalai Lama by this process.

Hypnosis cannot be considered as a valid means for determining

previous incarnations, although it has been used here in the West to

attempt that task. Hypnotic subjects have been found to be able to

assume many characteristics upon command by the operator and have

given evidence about any personality named at random as being their

previous incarnation. I have verified this through hypnotic

experimentation and several other hypnotists whom I know have

witnessed the same results. The subject simply adopts the personality

suggested and, at times, amazingly enough, will come up with facts

about that personality that neither the subject nor operator knew .

The Rosicrucians have a method for seeing your past incarnations , but

gazing for long periods of time into mirrors is not very evidential in

method and the results must be qualified by the knowledge that the

human eye under prolonged strain is not very reliable.

We come now to mechanical means for reaching salvation or for

attaining wisdom. One such is baptism—a sacrament which involves

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water—and a degree of surrender to divine will. Some who believe

baptism to be necessary also believe that without it the soul goes to hell

or to a lake of fire. The Catholic church teaches that the unbaptized go to

Limbo. Baptism, of course, has fundamentalist origins but there has not

been a valid explanation for the use of earthly water to change a

supposed spiritual condition. I can understand the change of being that

may be brought about by the surrender of egotistical aspects of the

personality but I cannot rationalize the use of water as a celestial

catalyst.

Not only is the Christian religion beset with fundamentalism, but every

religion that has inspired writings has the same trouble. And it is not

enough that we suffer our abstractions to be handed to us in the form of

parable and translated histories, but we are subjected to further

confusion by still more tangential philosophies which claim for Truth by

the application of symbolism to the Bible, or the application of

numerology to the original alphabet of the Bible. And this with the

knowledge that the original documents are unobtainable.

Can the Truth actually be this complicated? Can wisdom be rattled loose

from the convolutions by the bombardment of the mind with myriad

symbols? Yet this is a school of thought. It has been said that all wisdom

that is verbalizable is but the result of the juggling of symbols.

With the beginning of symbolism-studies, the intuition recedes from

fundamentalism. Emotional games are not enough to keep the people in

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the churches even though the churches have become social centers,

utilitarian crime-preventers, or conduct-inhibitors of questionable

value. The mass-mind of man as a computer manifests its decisions

more by its apathy than by its interest. Worship consists of a smooth

confluence of egos.

That man can be inspired by reading the Bible cannot be denied nor

could it be denied that he might be inspired by studying Raphael's

Ephemeris. If juggling will do the trick, then why not the Tarot or the I

Ching? I wish to avoid any great amount of criticism of the

fundamentalistic approach. Fundamentalistic interpretations bog down

in the ambiguity and obscurity of both literal and interlinear import , and

we could spend endless hours arguing about intended meanings. And it

is not valid to take the Bible to be of divine voice merely because the

book says so any more than we should fall down and worship a totem-

pole because the inscription on the pole reads, "I am God, worship me."

There must be valid indications or substantiations indicative of the

Bible's authority such as witnesses from outside the Bible,—preferably

from an all-able God.

There is an argument that uncertain, ritualistic steps are necessary for

beings of lesser development whose nature and karma will not allow

them to accept the philosophic side or essence of religion . So that such

people are doomed to spend this life by frittering away their time, by

singing chorales, or quoting the scriptures. And this is both truth and

cleverness. There are people who are unable to seek for truth with

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dynamic energy and average faculties, but I have reservations about

using religion as an anodyne, or,—exchanging lies for tithes.

The time has come when another layer of superstition and fearful

umbrage should be lifted. Believe what you will, but do not legislate.

Belief is no proof for belief. Belief may even create, but then different

beliefs will still produce monstrosities and confusion. God remains

forever hidden from mankind, and to believe our elders. He is only able

to communicate through material objects or through some high -priest

who thinks no more of his altar than to take his meals from it and glorify

his animal exigencies with it. Drinking of alcohol has been justified by

using the Biblical references of Christ's drinking of wine. Quotations can

be found to justify various carnal expressions. You can split yourself like

a schizophrenic and let the breast boast that it is no part of that which

supports it, placing virtue in the heart and head and giving the devil the

hindmost.

It is not possible to understand or follow a system of thinking that begets

sub-sciences and rubrics ad infinitum. This paper is directed to lives of

less than a hundred years—that hope for light within that span of time.

Nor can we study every religion. Such a search would be the equivalent

of the task of the demons at a Chinese funeral who must pick up every

piece of showered confetti in order to find the soul of the deceased.

We are looking for the most consistent. And we must be justified in

abandoning too much inconsistency. For instance in the Summa

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Theologica we find that evil is supposed to emanate from good. Yet the

wee. bipolar, bicameral bipeds are supposed to be headed for purgatory,

limbo or hell for not avoiding evil. This reasoning is the result of a split

purpose by the author who would appear erudite while trying to inspire

fear. We are led to believe, by seeing repeated, conflicting sub-theories

in great religious writings, that some of the authors were interested in

constructing speculative philosophies for the edification of their egos .

Cosmologies abound. Some harmonize a little better than others on a

point or two, or they combine a complex, exotic idea with that which we

wish to believe. And the more complicated the diagrammed treatise, the

more it flatters such minds whose pride would not let them settle for a

simple theory.

Nearly two thousand years of Christianity have not given us one two-

edged sword alone—the blades are like the leaves of grass. Each man's

religion is a stranger to his neighbor's. We cannot expect that it will be

any different in the next five hundred years, but each who sees this

chaos or Babel should want to simplify things a bit. Man should, likewise,

have reverence for honest effort, whether it be in the field of

fundamentalism, astrology, magic or any other. While threading our way

among the many paths, let us do so with respect and yet have the

courage to criticize. And let the criticism be as honest and as sacred to

us, as that which we criticize is sacred to those who hold the different

point of view.

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And if there is a feeling of resentment it can only be for those who treat

truth lightly or who laugh at the hungry while feeding from their sweat.

Let us have a brief look at hell. Celestial schizophrenia and spiritual

masochism. Hell must be the womb of the Almighty from which came

evil or the devil. Evil must have a headquarters. If we go back to the

ancients, we find that those pagans were more civilized. Except for the

Tibetans, they did not believe that the soul was tortured after death. The

pagan feared the shaman's magic, not his cosmology. We do not hear of

an unhappy hunting ground in Indian lore. Valhalla was not a dreaded

place. Hades had no terrifying negative qualities. Gehenna was the city

dump. Sheol was the grave, not a fiery pit.

The early Christian church must have borrowed from Tibetan

"paganism." Dante's sadomasochistic writings may well have been an

attempt at legal pornography in his time. Milton could not admit a

Paradise without admitting its opposite. In the book, Lives of the Saints , I

have read of saints who languished in the contemplation of various

body-tortures for the sake of their sins or for the "love of their Lord ."

Reward and punishment get all mixed up so that the zealot who

professes to be a faithful servant of God still expects to be punished , to

die on the rack. And God benevolently smiles in approval or chooses to

silently ignore this passing of his pawn. The God of the Jews would at

least have manifested anger at losing a pawn. In those days, one man

holding up his arms could turn the tide of battle, but later a thousand

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Christians dying in the arena while chanting the allegiance of God , had

no power over a handful of lions.

It is no wonder that a sobering period was to ensue. And a trend toward

materialism or, as it was called at the time, an Age of Reason. The

inquisition was the final monstrous act of masochism that sent Europe

and Christendom reeling into the age of reason.

Doctrine was replaced by experimentation. Science looked into

everything from magic to alchemy. It was called metaphysics, but it was

actually a sincere attempt to find a tangible religion. Witches , astral

influences, fairies, magi, werewolves, elementals, incubi, succubi,

homunculi, reincarnation and translation were all mixed up together .

This was a commendable investigation, being an objective analysis of

phenomena with an aim at finding the proper relation between these

phenomena and man.

THE SEARCH FOR GOD

We approach this subject with the heavy awareness of our limitations ,

whether our approach to God be direct as a moth flying into the sun, or

indirect and cautious as a tiny bookworm trying to digest every book in

every library. And the task is burdensome enough without harnessing

ourselves with the load of guilt or responsibility even step of the way and

with every mistake in every step.

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The old concepts of sin must go. They represented acts which were

responses to compulsions whose origins are primeval. We are, for the

most part, mobile robots with built-in reflexes. As the Bhagavad Gita

explains. But we are robots that hope to take over our own computers .

And somewhere along the line, someone legislated that if we are to take

over the computers, we must first admit personal liability for any

decisions of the computer. This would be assumed to be a sensible idea

only if we could completely control that computer. And completely

controlling the individual involves controlling his destiny which would

mean controlling the environment with all of its known and unknown

laws of operation.

We arrive now at the conjecture that we are not supposed to presume to

know that which is planned by God for us. This may be true and it is just

as possible that it is not true. There is always the possibility that all

knowledge is available and proportional to our ability to remove

limitations. If we are not supposed to know that which God is doing with

us, then we are placed in a position of insignificance in which any

attitude of ours toward God would not flatter that God one iota . And our

existence would be as meaningless and mortal as an expendable,

erodable cog in a machine of two billion cogs.

There is also the possibility that there is truly a personable God who is

the creator and master of all, but who pays little or no attention to us

because He has more important creatures with which to amuse Himself

We like to think that God created us as perfect creatures for reasons of

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perfect joy. We appraise Him with human standards of pleasure and

flatter ourselves into the picture by claiming that we are giving a

command-performance for His pleasure. We take too big a step when

we conjure up a God that surmounts all time and space and then

pretend to know Him on a first name basis. The one-God theory, as

meaning something synonymous with a First Cause, can be understood

as a concept. But there is evidence that the one-God theory is not the

result of personal knowledge or research, but rather a result of clever

theology or theological diplomacy whereby all the conflicting religions

were ingested and included rather than opposed as adversaries . Even

the ancients realized that the system of thinking which explained the

most would last the longest. The laymen of ancient times, while not as

educated as today's layman, still saw all kinds of advantages from

incorporating the tax-hungry priest-craft all under one roof.

Theosophy has many good points. It neglects to define God as a

personal being both inaccessible to and yet threatening to man . It

emphasizes, rather, the Pyramid of spiritual endeavor and the need to

contact spiritual teachers on higher strata of the Pyramid . The word

Pyramid is intentionally capitalized here because it represents one of the

major concepts of this book. The only hope of man lies in the existence

of a source of knowledge or direction that is human. And while some

may say that all lies within ourselves, we find that even the cloistered

monks find a need for cooperation with other humans to secure their

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meditation. There are, besides teachers of relative wisdom, teachers of

direction which are most rare.

Some mystics depend upon spirits, or angels, presuming that such

spirits are closer to God, or in possession of knowledge of other

dimensions. We have the case of Joan of Arc. If we are to look at the

history of her life we must admit that she was in contact, from

childhood, with elves or fairies and later in life with an angel whom she

identified as St. Michael. Now St. Michael was not a canonized saint and,

in fact, was older than both Catholicism and Christianity . He is supposed

to be the spirit that spoke to Moses in the burning bush.

The voices that instructed Joan were knowledgeable. They correctly

informed her to identify the dauphin, Charles, and betrayed to her a

prayer that Charles admitted was known only to God and himself. With

these angels' help she was able to locate the lost sword of Charles

Martel, which she used to lead the French. The victories which she

predicted came to pass.

Yet, the story has puzzling facets. St. Michael, the archangel, was not

her only prompter. St. Catherine and St. Margaret, two ex-humans, also

prodded her to take over military leadership. The English were Christian

as well as the French. What was going on in heaven? What interest could

angels and saints have in the politics of France, especially when the

mills of God take care of the destinies of men? We are led to believe that

God was in need of Joan of Arc. Yet, if this is true, why did God abandon

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Joan to defeat, to a trial conducted by men, and finally to a fiery death?

Like the daemon of Socrates, when the crisis of death drew near , St.

Michael did not lift a spear.

We may say that Joan knew that all of this would happen. Yet the whole

affair does nothing to promote faith in God among men. And more so, it

is likely to make us think twice before listening to discarnate beings,

regardless of their ultra-mundane abilities. If the philosophers and

saints were left holding an empty sack, what do we have to hope for? As

has often been noted, Christ apparently was abandoned in his final

hours. All of which brings us back to the problem of understanding all the

sources of revelation, whether they be voices, invisible entities who

make themselves known by indirect means, or entities which are visible.

The Bible itself warns of familiar spirits, but nowhere do we find a

formula for distinguishing between beneficial, honest entities and those

which make use of us and then drop us.

In regard to Joan of Arc, I have come to the conclusion that her fate was

somehow related to her virginity. It is said that she was rearrested for

putting on a pair of pants. Previously, she had been arrested and had

admitted certain charges brought against her by the ecclesiastical

inquisition. The male attire was taken as proof of her relapse . In looking

for common denominators, there is evidence that innocence plays a part

in the commerce between humans and entities. The demons invoked by

Cellini and the priest demanded that a virgin boy be brought to the next

invocation. We find poltergeist visitations to be more phenomenal when

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there are children of adolescent or pre-adolescent years involved . All of

which would mean that virginity was the power that Joan possessed and

for reasons unknown to us, it attracted either spirits of stature or spirits

that were able to impersonate biblical characters and saints . And

possibly, as long as Joan was a virgin, (Prince Charles is supposed to

have had her examined) she had the service of those spirits.

We come to one of the great secrets of occult work. As Eliphas Levi

advises, the thaumaturgist observes celibacy . . . at least for certain

periods of time prior to most rituals or invocations.

The dangers of listening to voices are evident in many publicized cases

wherein people have even murdered their children at the command of

invisible entities which identified themselves as God. Such was the case

of Abraham and Isaac, but an angel or voice arrived in time to prevent

Abraham from killing Isaac. I can see the probability of such a sacrifice

enacted in modern times by another Abraham, a trusting, fanatical

fundamentalist, if the latter believed that God actually commanded

Abraham (since the Bible is accepted as the true message of God ). It

follows that if Abraham did not dare to disobey, then neither should

anyone else similarly inspired.

Man has been able to discern that he is not yet fully able to discern.

Whereas in previous times, the populace was quick to accept any

phenomenon on quaking knees—we now take a calmer approach and

look for a more natural explanation. While not being able to categorize

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and explain all phenomena, we have become alert to the ability of the

mind to impose a fraud upon itself—by virtue of its finite nature—and we

realize that the mind responds to severe problems with unconscious

rationalization and weary surrender to the nearest explanation .

We have approached the problem of knowing God objectively and for

many reasons it is impossible. In the first place, we cannot define God

until we create a definition (a definitive philosophy) for God. As a result

of the many God-definitions, it is evident that the word God is a very

uncertain term. Equally portentous is the word gizmogle. A scientist

might spend decades sifting the sands of the sea with a microscope with

the pretence that he was looking for a gizmogle. And in this charade he

might actually find a keytone enzyme containing the secrets of life. This

is a fairytale just concocted, but we should not be surprised, if such a

case actually occurred, to find that the scientist was quickly ordained as

a prophet by virtue of his new power, and find that gizmogle, which

previously meant nothing, would now be capitalized.

It is better to avoid the use of the word God, (or definitions of that not

yet ascertained), except in the magical processes of prayer . In our

objective or relative search we can only retreat from ignorance and

error. We may build imposing conceptual structures whose foundations

are hypotheses, but we should never make the mistake for a moment of

forgetting that the original hypotheses are still there, still qualifying the

whole structure.

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So that for any research value we find that the voices of unseen entities

and the directives of apparitions are unreliable and are no final authority

for the seeker. Nor are they of use in the search for God. It stands to

reason that if God or any other being of bi-dimensional power desired to

communicate with us through an angel, then that God would use its

ultimate power to clarify that medium of communication by denying any

spirit the means to communicate with man in a fraudulent manner . If we

are to presume the existence of an omnipotent God, we must assume

that He is not concerned with our confusion.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

Man is more concerned with the problem or possibility of life after death

than he is with arguments about God. Yet man, being inclined to believe

that which he wishes to believe and to understand problems in

proportion to his understanding, is liable to settle for a wide range of

solutions to the eternal enigma.

If Christian theologists recognized the need to be more than human in

their guesses about divine purposes, they settled for much less and

made God to appear as a sub-human ogre in their conceptualization of a

helpless life followed by a relentless hell.

And while reincarnation may be more digestible than Christian finality , it

still fails to answer all questions and it also bears symptoms of

rationalization. For the poor and oppressed there is a hope of a better

day for themselves and indirect revenge upon the oppressors. For the

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superior, or dominant class of people, there is hope for still better and

greater experiences, and there is more security for them if the less

fortunate majority is placated by a promising philosophy .

Another strange belief is that of assumption. The outstanding cases are

the stories of Elijah and Mary. Some refer to the raising to heaven of

Elijah as being a translation, but today the word translation is used to

designate a slower metamorphosis of body material .Elijah and Mary

were supposedly lifted up suddenly. The Catholic Church in a recent

gesture of sensationalism and dogmatic derring-do decided that the

Mother of Christ was assumed physically into heaven and decided that

all Catholics were required to believe it. This command came at a time

when the Church and all Christendom were struggling with the trend of

humanity toward materialism, pragmatism and utilitarianism . It was a

very bad time to pull a rabbit from the tiara. If Mary was assumed bodily

into heaven then the substance of heaven should be analyzed again.

Is heaven a dimension or a place? Would not Mary's body be a bit of an

impediment in a place where all other creatures arrived bodiless and

possibly subject to laws of another dimension? Evidently Jesus was able

to come back and get his body, since the body disappeared from the

grave, and later reappeared on the road to Emmaus. This does not prove

that Jesus escaped physically from the grave, but could imply that the

spirit of Jesus was able to simulate a body and to discard the mask at

will.

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To say that a personality has found a means to travel from one

dimension to another and to be seen in both is not unreasonable,

although it implies a special talent. The SRF movement claims that some

of its masters were avatars who had the ability to come and go between

the spiritual planes and they were also reputed to have extensive

creative ability. This brings us to the word illusion, for many believe this

world to be one of illusion and that some liberated spirits are able to

evoke the illusion at will.

If a person entered another dimension with his body he would either

experience body-changes that would replace the present body-

exigencies—and hence he would immediately become a different being

than us—or he would have to take some of this physical dimension with

him (food and sanitary facilities) and this might imply the need to take it

all with him.

The business of reassuming the body on judgment day cannot be

comprehended even by a simple-minded cannibal. Would the man who

ate Captain Cook and Mr. Cook travel through eternity together like

Siamese twins, or with interlocking molecules?

Another problem arises with the knowledge that some people die with

disease-wasted or crippled bodies. The aged and crippled are supposed

to find only a healthy, young body on judgment day. If religion can make

this concession to those who see the evident unreasonableness or

pointless possibility of rising from the grave exactly as they entered it ,

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then it is possible that the whole idea of resurrection has merely been a

concession made to the many constituents of the church who could not

visualize any other type of survival.

For those who think themselves to be advanced beyond such primitive

dogmas of the early church, and who still cannot bear the idea of leaving

the body, there is a group who call themselves Translationists. They

believe that a very small percentage of humanity survives death by

translating. This comes about by a progress in spiritual growth whereby

the body, with each year, becomes less and less physical and perishable

until it is really a different substance, immune to death as we know it,

and unhampered by the functional exigencies that we other clods

experience.

Translation theories bring to mind the many spiritual evolution concepts

—theories that involve either a change of being or a growth of

awareness—the growth of awareness interpreted as a necessity for

knowing the future dimension.

There must be some reason for the many divergent beliefs, which is like

saying there must be many types of spectacles for the diverse types of

vision. And with this observation goes the perennial struggle to try to

make everyone accept a uniformly stylized pair of lenses, or to invent a

super set of spectacles that would adjust any and all eyes to spiritual

reality.

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The initial part of any investigative observation must necessarily involve

the study of ways and means of observing. Sometimes it is through the

critical eyes of others.

Science would demand a personal witness of one who had returned from

the grave if science would ever be persuaded to enter the search for a

life-after-death. It would, in fact, demand many witnesses. For this

reason many intellectuals, or pseudo-intellectuals became involved in

Spiritualism. Some courted ridicule in the pursuit of that which might be

called "first hand" information. They sought out mediums and organized

societies for psychical research And they were rewarded with

adventures in a very dramatic study.

Descriptions of post-mortem adventures in the Tibetan Book of the

Dead are not too incongruous with Curtiss' concepts regarding spiritual
planes. We have learned, however, that we cannot learn from the vapid

wraiths that come through the curtains of a medium's cabinet. Their

intelligence is as evasive as their tenuous ectoplasm. They utter

euphemisms, platitudes and encouragement but any explanation of the

nature of their beings and of their surroundings is. vague and indefinite.

We hoped to find evidence that the form of man would find continuation,

even if it were unproven. And to hear the voices of our departed friends

tempts us to embrace Spiritualism. However, the fuzziest minds will feel

slighted when they talk to relatives who, instead of awakening into

greater realms at death, seem to be less intelligent than when they were

living and need to be prompted with every answer. An obscure and

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somewhat secret brotherhood of mystics gives a very interesting

explanation for this lack of intelligence among ectoplasmic spirits . This

brotherhood advises that there are beings who are able to imitate the

forms of the deceased. These beings may not necessarily be human , but

are, rather, creatures of a different dimension. Whether or not they don

the masks left by the astral body is not important here because it

involves more tangential and conceptual thinking not directly relevant .

For those not experienced in Spiritualistic terminology , the planes

referred to are generally listed as seven, with the astral plane being the

plane immediately above, or next in experience, to this plane. Many

students of Spiritualism are likewise acquainted with the concept of the

astral body—a shell left behind on the astral plane-when the spirit goes

on to higher planes. In some writings, we find the word soul synonymous

with the astral body, while the essence that survives the lower planes is

known as the spirit. And, of course, other writings refer to the beings

(supposedly on the astral plane) who haunt houses as being spirits, and

refer to the immortal essence as the soul Such confusion results in

painstaking definition by all parties on all points.

The lay-spiritualist is not aware that cabinet spirits are beings of

another dimension. Western scientists did not suspect that such were

"beings." They suspected trickery.

Spiritualism does not explain away or disprove the counter concept that

other-dimensional entities manipulate the masks of the dead, and until

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it does, one theory shall be as good as the other and the foundation of

Spiritualism shall be in jeopardy.

The unscientific teachers of India and Tibet are responsible for the first

explanations of the counter-concept (or the idea) that beings or entities

could manipulate the ectoplasm. The always ultra-civilized Western

world managed to kill off the witnesses to spirit-phenomena—so much

so that some benevolent entities appeared as deceased saints hoping to

protect the medium from ecclesiastical fire. William Crookes treated

Katie King as a deceased person. Eliphas Levi was of the opinion that

most spirits were somehow created out of the subtler essence of the

medium's body which the magus manipulated as he would theatrical

wax. We cannot say that Levi was entirely wrong, for there is no way to

be sure that some mediums do not have unique talents. The

Rosicrucians believe that in some cases man is able to create such

entities.

If there is any conclusion that can be drawn from these concepts , it is

that the medium's cabinet is not an infallible threshold or two-way,

glass door between the different dimensions. We can recognize that

Spiritualism and thaumaturgy are valuable means of gathering more

information about such entities and their environment.

Spiritualism has degrees of depth as does any religion. The lower levels

have to do with fraud beneath a pretence of being a comforting utility .

And the messages that came from the mouths of genuine

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materializations are no more sagacious than those that are relayed to us

through clairaudient and clairvoyant mediums. When asked to describe

heaven, God, Christ, or even the pastime of the deceased, all of the

above sources reply in a sweet but inane manner that might be

described as spiritual double-talk.

The matter of materialization is worthy of scientific investigation , both in

that it is a phenomenon unexplained and in that it presents a situation in

which man seems to function as a creator. The pretence about apports is

that they are creations. At one seance which I attended the "spirits "

wove a scarf and presented it to a grief stricken, but heavy contributor—

a mother from Eastern Ohio. There was emphasis here by the elated

pseudo-medium that it was created, woven especially for this mother .

Then if such weaving be possible, is it not possible that the phantoms

themselves could likewise be manufactured? The more likely truth is

that the scarf actually came from beneath a cheese cloth tunic and

never had been anything but material cloth. The mention of "phantom

weaving" is not mentioned here to expose a case of trickery but to

indicate inconsistency in a movement that would fail to see the full

possibilities of such weaving.

The significant thing to remember about spirit-materializations is that

regardless of their identity they do not seem to have as much

personality or intellect as the living person did, all of which would not be

encouraging if we were hoping for mental evolution upward after death .

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Not that we should look for that which flatters our hopes. I have been

privileged to witness several materializations that were not cheesecloth .

The figures were recognized by relatives but the control-spirit's voice

bore a remarkable likeness to the medium's voice, as did the voices of

other emerging spirits. Most mediums admit that the spirits use their

larynx, but never mention that the ectoplasm itself may well emerge

from the medium's body.

W.J. Crawford spent a lifetime studying spiritualism and table tilting , and

discovered that the table was moved by ectoplasmic rods or cantilevers

that extended from the solar plexus of the medium to the approximate

center and underside of the table. He established these conclusions with

the use of a soft putty which was placed on the underside of the table.

And he isolated the path of the invisible cantilevers by moving a square

piece of cardboard beneath the table. When the cardboard interfered

with the path of the cantilever, the table would fall. His book. The Reality

of Psychic Phenomena is valuable to anyone interested in this type of

research.

Spiritualism exists all over the world but under different names. The

guides or spirits have different names as well, being demons, djinns,

pitris and elementals. Eliphas Levi charts celestial domain and

categorizes the hosts of angels and demons. It should be remembered

that Levi did not deny the existence of entities or demons, but inferred

that the wraiths that appeared as souls of the deceased were very

probably ectoplasm only. His real name was Alphonse Constant and it is

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presumed that he adopted the pseudonym to stay alive. He had been a

priest but he left the church, married and became quite an authority on

magic. After many years of this research, he is supposed to have

rejoined the Catholic Church, with the comment that everyone should

belong to some church in preparation for the next life. Evidently, if there

is anything to gather from the life's work of this man (presuming that it

is true that he did rejoin the Church), it is that his research gave him no

greater promise than that offered by the Church.

Levi reminds us that his knowledge of entities came from studies by the

Church hierarchy. And this indicates that Levi either left the Church to

marry or else he was restricted in his search by being in the Church. And

all of this also indicates that at one time the Church was searching for

the Truth before it degenerated into secularization and the apathy that

comes from being afflicted with overweight.

Levi, who had lost faith in the Church, based his entire structure of

magic upon faith. He tells us that the apparition of Apollonius of Tyana

may well have been created by his faith and, consequently, was not the

soul of Apollonius which his student would have liked to have seen. This

is worth remembering when we encounter the analysis of faith in later

chapters. And so we ponder the limitations of faith and the coloration

that those limitations place upon the results—the creations of faith .

Let us go now to cases which are known as spontaneous reappearances,

or resurrections of the dead, for it now seems possible that their

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testimony would appear more valid than the testimony of conjured

spirits. It is impossible to review all of the cases of this type or to

examine them for authenticity. If we are to presume that they have any

value at all, we must admit that a percentage of them may well be

sincere accounts. Occult magazines are well supplied with letters from

readers attesting to this type of experience, and occult magazines do

not pay for these letters. Articles written by doctors bear witness that

some patients, on returning from states of unconsciousness peculiar to

terminal patients, relate strange stories and experiences which cannot

be blamed on drugs or delirium.

We can study the many different reports and reach some common

denominators on the evidence available. One factor noticed is the

inconsistency with other accounts of after-death experiences . Another

peculiarity that has been noticed in many medical cases reported is that

the patient had no horror of death and often lamented at being revived.

As regards variance in testimony, we have cases where a dying man saw

his departed relatives but seemed unaware of celestial scenery or

environment. Some noticed beautiful landscapes but saw no relatives .

We have accounts where exotic environment is witnessed, in which

appear strange vistas, colonnades, iridescent geometric figures and

many other phenomena. A very few have mentioned hearing exquisite

music. The nose seems to have no place in heaven,—I do not know of a

single report of reported fragrance. Some have reported a dimensional

world subject to the wishes of the viewer,—and these are rare .

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All of which brings us back to the concept that man may well have, in a

limited fashion, the power to project or create. Man may color that which

he sees with that which he has already seen, desired or contemplated .

Or he may project a picture of his expectancies upon the matrix of mind ,

or next plane-substance with an intensity similar to projections on a

theater-screen, so that it causes an illusion that there is a living movie -

screen life, when actually the only life is behind the audience (us) in the

projector (God). This is similarly maintained but rendered in other words

in the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Some Spiritualists believe in a Desire World, or plane—a realm wherein

the spirit can create any illusion simply by desiring. This could also be

hell. And, of course, the whole concept may be the result of the

testimony of resuscitated persons who manifestly were rewarded with

objects of desire while in the dream or death state.

A significant factor that should not be overlooked is the attitudinal

evidence presented by people who are dying. Medical reports show that

a majority of people who know that they are dying relax and show no

anxiety. This may or may not be evidence that euthanasia is part of the

physiological and psychological progression of terminating creatures . It

is also possible that the computer found a sudden comprehensive

answer thrust upon itself and was delighted in the accident.

We move on to another type of personal witness and that is the

unexpected or spontaneous appearance of spirits. This type involves

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neither invocation nor medium. Typical cases would be the haunts of old

houses, roads or scenes of tragedy. Such cases include solitary spirits ,

armies of soldier-spirits seen by a living army, and convocations of

monks. If their substance is ectoplasm and ectoplasm is somehow

dependent upon human energy, then the visible shells of this type of

spirit must have drawn from the residual energy left behind by people

visiting the spot or as in the case of the phantom army, drawn from

those present.

There are also accounts of people who have been accosted and warned

by spirits that resembled themselves, the observers. We have often

heard of people who claimed to have seen their "double." The so-called

experts have laid this type of phenomenon at the door of the astral

double or astral body.

The significant thing about all of these spirit witnesses is that they show

little sympathy for the momentousness of man's ignorance and the

momentousness of any information that might be extended by someone

we could understand and who would—once having lived in this

ignorance—know that the living yearned for this knowledge.

Yet, what do we get? The spontaneous appearance or reappearance

while ranking as among the most informative if not authentic , still is ,

largely, a visitation of warning. This means that the deceased are

interested yet in the affairs of this dimension and either cannot or will

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not place the wisdom of the next dimension above the need to warn us

of an accident pending or of approaching death.

Science, of course, would prefer the conjured type of spirit since this

would be a controlled experiment; but the conjured type of spirit rarely

shows the intelligence or awareness that might be associated with a

being that is supposed to be sitting astraddle two dimensions . What

conclusion can we draw except that man is frustrated by what appears

to be a directed blocking, by supervisory powers . . . or simply by the

stupidity of the millions of seekers?

We come now to the group of theorists who accept the destructibility of

the body and believe that the soul rises either to eternal paradise or

descends to hell. They borrow from one another and while borrowing,

protest that the party from whom they borrowed is spurious. So that

while we move from one group to another we can observe several

things. We find the common denominator of all seekers to be ignorance.

And from the overlapping confusion among cults and religions we find

that most conventional movements have similarities and v/e find a

common denominator in them in that they are all offered with ingestible

syrup. The seeker's problem lies in knowing how and when to step with

courage out of the isms which our computer or intuition indicates as

being inadequate for other than a social emollient.

In studying and cataloging isms that cling to the one-life, one-death

idea, we find that there is considerable variance among them. Some do

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not believe in hell and vary in their ideas of heaven. Each heaven is

colored with wishful thinking and sometimes we find a spiteful heaven

wherein only the adherents of particular exponents are allowed .

The interpenetration of different beliefs has a significance. We may not

be as unique as we are led to believe. Christianity has built up an

elaborate theology and mythology that can find no origin in the

teachings of Christ. Christianity and the religion of ancient Egypt are

similar. The Egyptians, several thousand years prior to the time of

Christ, believed in a heaven and an underworld. They believed in the

human soul and in an ethical or moral code that would facilitate their

meeting with God, face to face. Osiris, like Christ, was a man who gave

his life to improve the lot of his fellow man and to secure immortality for

them. There was a Judas in his camp that betrayed him and there is

mention of seventy-two followers. It is suggested that the Copts, or

early Egyptian-Christians, played a big part in adding a few trimmings

to the teachings of Christ, Some numerologists and occultists believe

that the entire story of Christ is a fabrication or translation of Egyptian

names into Hebrew names which would be more palatable to the

Eastern Mediterraneans, For them (the occultists) the word Mary means

Egypt from which emanated Truth.

In Egypt, they believed in a fellow called Aapep, a double for our devil. In

The Book of the Dead (Egyptian), a common vignette shows the

deceased person speaking to the serpent Aapep. The Christians also

connect the snake with their devil. The different houses of Osiris remind

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us of the limbo and purgatory of the Catholic Church. There is

considerable similarity between Catholicism and the religion of Osiris

and less proportionate borrowings by the Catholic Church from Asian

religions. So that it might appear that geography and communication

had some effect upon the ramifications of Christian theology.

The mummies of Egypt and the bodies in the catacombs show no

alarming deviation from the idea of universal salvation . In Egypt , the

poorer people were cremated or buried, but they had a belief in rising

again and it is not clear from the translation of the Book of the Dead

whether they intended to return to the same or another body. Nor is it

clear today why the Christians are so abhorrent of cremation or why the

Catholics go through the exhausting ritual of blessing and anointing

corpses, or of blessing graves to insure a celestial expedition .

Lamentation goes up for the soul of the deceased who is not buried on

sacred ground. And yet the laity meekly accept the explanation that God

bends down with special dispensation for the faithful who were

incinerated at the stake or digested by the lions in a pagan arena. And

are not these martyrs accepted as saints today and are they not saints

in heaven? incidentally, in both Egyptian and Christian religions there is

a belief in a final day of judgment. This implies that heaven is somehow

subject to time for these theologians. Death is not an eternal Now , nor is

heaven an eternal Now, but is measured by the years it will take for

souls to live sun-measured lives up to a certain point in that solar

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system and then to be gathered—the ancients and the modern souls—

for a massive trial.

We come now to Reincarnation. It permeates the Asian religions, mostly.

It can, however, be found like a whisper or hint in parts of the Bible.

Christ's admonition to Nicodemus concerning the origin of flesh and

spirit is one example. John the Baptist is claimed by some to be the

reincarnation of one of the older Bible personalities. The insistence that

Christ will come again in physical form is noted.

We deal with a new type of divine justice and this makes the theory of

reincarnation unique. The earthly sojourns replace the purgatories and

limbos and man is not damned for his ignorance, but is required to work

the lessons over again. Spiritual evolution is tied to the earth and life

becomes more of a classroom than a torture chamber . The weakness in

the theory of reincarnation lies in the inability of the layman to

understand the objective of perhaps millions of years of transmigration .

In other words, where are we aimed and what is the reason for the whole

system?

The presumption is that if we knew, we might employ some of this so-

called free will to accelerate the growth. Another weakness in the theory

of reincarnation is the failure of the believer to remember past lives. Of

course, the authorities maintain that this ignorance is a prerequisite for

our spiritual growth and maintain that if we knew that which was in store

for us we might try to throw our machine into reverse.

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We come now to a school of thought which has very little connection

with the foregoing isms and which has for its objective the Union With

the Absolute. There are many terms, eternally vague to the layman,

such as Cosmic Consciousness, Nirvana, Samadhi, Satori , Awakening

and Enlightenment. The implications of these strange words , while being

vague descriptions of an indescribable state of being , also point to a

change of being for the aspirant. Admitting possibly the need of the

finite mind to adjust to the infinite before pretending to understand it .

Among the so-called masters who claim to know about these states of

mind there is much contradiction. The words "so-called" are not to be

interpreted as being derogatory but denote the uncertainty of the title of

master. There is no way to distinguish a master from a neophyte and if

the reader knew the difference, he would not need to read this. Buddha

once was asked by a candidate-neophyte to prove his claim of being a

master by proving to the candidate that the latter would actually reach

Nirvana by following Buddha's path. Gautama the Buddha replied that

the candidate was unreasonable in demanding an answer to an

impossible question. It would be like demanding proof from someone

describing a long journey or distant scenery. The only proof would be to

go and see for one's self.

So the main weakness in this category is the intangibility of the concepts

concerned and the impossibility of checking the people who claim to be

masters or authorities. In this category we are not dealing so much with

religion as we are with direct experience. We are dealing with systems

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that have no readily accessible temples if temples exist at all. These

systems depend very little on written directives and are so diversified in

form as to confuse anyone not simply drawn, as by a magnet, to a

particular school. And there is much refutation of authority within some

systems.

For instance. P.D. Ouspensky devoted much of his adult life to the

investigation of methods for the "expansion of consciousness ." He was a

disciple of Gurdjieff, a very mysterious and autocratic spiritual master .

Yet Ouspensky, while never denouncing Gurdjieff, nor attempting to

discredit him. nevertheless disassociated with him and founded his own

school. And his books lead me to believe that Ouspensky had the better

system.

Gautama founded the movement now called Buddhism yet the yogic

masters, who admit Buddhistic origins or affiliations, and some Zen

masters, claim that what is now apparent on the face of the earth as

Buddhism bears less resemblance to the original message of Buddha

than Christianity bears to the true message of Christ. According to one

Zen master (who from respect must remain anonymous and may .

consequently, not be personally attacked as false nor hailed as true).

Buddha really started Zen and Buddhism became a personality cult

depending for substance on parables and wise sayings. The number of

people who were really endowed with the teachings of Gautama

(initiated) were few and tremendously out of proportion to the vast

number of Zen Buddhist monks who might lay claim to cognizance of the

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system. This same man claimed that there was a lineage of any true

master that could be traced back to Gautama. This tracing is, of course ,

not possible. If there were no records kept, then we must take people's

word for these things. A man may claim that he was initiated by another

now dead. But unless the dead man left a bona-fide proof of this for

posterity, we are out of luck.

This category (of union with the Absolute) lays claim to a transcendency

over the previous religions discussed. This makes it unique. The

weaknesses that mark the doctrines of various religions are not to be

found in it. The wheel of reincarnation, if aimed at Nirvana, may have

more meaning; but an endless wheel of reincarnation could make

lemmings out of humans. Cyanide would be better to live with than the

knowledge that man can never escape from the misery of eternally

being reborn into the pain of adjustment to nature only to be

extinguished each time by nature.

But heaven and hell as dreamed and depicted by Dante, Milton and

Swedenborg would have to be consigned to the realm of illusion. They

would exist in somewhat the same intensity as the light projected upon

a theatre screen that seems to be animated by the projector. Thus, we

become not the potted but the potter. We become possibly the

projector, but the projections (our physical bodies included) may no

longer be considered as any more real than projections. So away goes

the grave, Sheol, hell and heaven and with them the peddlers of fear-

pills.

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And what do we have? Still there is confusion. We have, first, no clear

knowledge of the state of being implied when any of the words such as

Cosmic Consciousness, Nirvana, Samadhi, or Satori is heard . There are

different schools and approaches. The direct approach method is called

Zen. Nothing about Zen makes sense unless you have become a Zen

Adept.

Then there is the evolutionary approach to the "Union" that may take

many years or incarnations. This is found in some yogic groups. Here we

have an overlapping of dogmatic beliefs with ideas of "change of being ."

Personal immanence is shadowed by concept-building. Some

reincarnationists believe that reincarnation leads to a state of Nirvana

after a long period of evolution through incarnations. Some believe also

in a longer period of evolution on a spiritual plane, after the body is

finally discarded. Thus, the Theosophist Blavatsky speaks of Buddha as

being on a level slightly above the level of the masters Koot Hoomi,

Morya or Christ. And the implication from this form of yoga is that these

levels are somehow related to duration, or time as reckoned in the solar

system, because of the periods of service needed to earn the step of a

master and the service time needed to earn still later the step of

Bodhisattva. This type of Buddhism is a very laborious climb if union with

the Absolute is going to be achieved inside of a million years.

There is much confusion, evidently, between the Absolute state and that

which might be called the Universal Mind—a plane which still may be a

projection. Yogic schools that protest their ability to reach the Absolute

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still compile volumes about phenomena produced and miraculous ability

over the world of matter. Yet, is not he who is able to mold the wax or

reform the matrix of matter still only a mechanic—dealing with material

by his own admission? And, consequently, dealing with illusion by his

own admission?

Blavatsky has two ponderous volumes filled with the wonders of

phenomena down through the ages and with miracles ascribed to occult

groups—all offered as incentive for the reader to become a theosophist .

But from her accounts, heaven is not an absolute state, but an endless

ascension of spirits to nobler and nobler heights. We are dazzled with

timekeeping in yugas that makes the entire life of mankind on earth a

very small point in the overall time during which the great spirits were

building the cosmos.

The progress and time that it might take for an amoeba to become a

Bodhisattvas may be possibly computed. And that is not all. Somewhere

are many masters and Buddhas gone before of even greater spiritual

heights, but nowhere is there an end in sight. So that we begin to

wonder about the purpose of spirituality.

Also in the SRF movement highlighted in America by Yogananda we

have an evolution toward becoming a master or avatar . Yet , we must

ask about the extent to which this adroitness as a master might

contribute to our state of being. Babuji or Babaji (which, incidentally ,

only means "dear one") was always popping up in crowds in India so that

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one of the disciples of the movement might tell of the alarming event.

Babaji also performed sensational feats but only for the elect. There is a

story told about a party of sorts which was given for one of the chief

adepts in which an entire palace, villa or village was materialized for the

occasion and if memory is correct in this matter, an immense amount of

gold was materialized. Would not such a new religion bring the poor

peasants of India on the run?

In America, no group has contributed more to the researching mind

about the religions of India and Tibet than the Theosophists. Where, in

some of the Indian cults that have invaded America there is uncertainty ,

there is a dynamism and a strong appeal to human reason on the part of

the Theosophists. Besides whatever conclusions we may reach about

them, they have provided humanity with an invaluable service—they

have stimulated curiosity about the origin of things and about the nature

of man and they have laboriously compiled information to exercise the

scientific mind.

And if there is one who might be considered a voice or authority about

Theosophy, it must be Blavatsky. Theosophy would incorporate all

religions, echoing Max Mueller with the claim that all spring from the

same hunger and all are aimed at Truth, despite the fact that some

along the way become either sectarian, venal, or are limited by the

understanding of the devotees. Theosophy does not deny Christ, it

enlists Him and places Him in a harmonious relation to Theosophy.

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Theosophy's attempts at a marriage of the utterly profane with the

utterly abstract philosophies is interesting to note.

That Blavatsky decrees the understanding of the Absolute to be the

basic reality can be found in the proem of The Secret Doctrine, on the

15th and 16th pages. She likens it to the Parabrahm of the Vedantists,

inferring that they have a similar concept. Displaying an unusual

familiarity with the relation of man to the Absolute, she goes on to

describe it as the causeless cause from which first emanates the Logos

and from the Logos comes the next emanation, Life, and finally,

Intelligence.

There is considerable confusion to be found by cross-checking the

writings of Blavatsky. Here we are concerned with the confusion that

exists in heaven, or at least Blavatsky's heaven. She also speaks of a war

in heaven. The first cause, or the Logos, should not have too many

meanings. Anything that is first, absolutely, should not have more than

one meaning. At different places in the Secret Doctrine, Christ is

supposed to be the Logos. Jesus (if there is a significant difference) was

supposed to manifest the Logos in Himself as being the Son of the

Logos. On page 232 of Book 2 of the Secret Doctrine, he is described as

an Initiate, a Savior and a parallel of Krishna. In Book 1, page 264, Jesus

or Joshua is referred to as representing the fall of spirit into matter so

that the war in heaven is only allegorical. In Book 2, page 231, footnote,

we find that Jesus and the Father are meant to mean soul and spirit. The

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Logos is not a spirit, as we noted earlier, but the First Cause, antedating

spirit or Purusha.

In works other than the Secret Doctrine, Jesus is looked upon differently .

Blavatsky places Him on the Master level with Koot Hoomi. In Isis

Unveiled, much space is used to discredit Jesus. In Book 2, page 201

Jesus is described as a wise adept of the Rabbi Elhanan who traveled

into Egypt, studied the Kabbalah and was later hanged upon the cross .

This, according to the Talmud. On page 566, Book 2, of the same Isis,

Christ is not the Son of God but only a high priest. (Here goes the Logos

out the window.) On page 574, of the same book, Professor Mueller is

supposed to prove that Paul was the real founder of Christianity and not

Jesus. "For Paul, Christ is not a person, but an embodied idea." Page 239

undertakes to find that Jesus, or Christ, was a man and only a man.

So much for the compilation of confusion. If, by running between the

raindrops, or by treasure hunting in confetti, we are supposed to find the

Truth, then Blavatsky may have some system. The vital issue is time.

How much time do we have to fumble with the variegations of

symbolism? Is there not a simpler way? If man is to become united with

the Absolute in a million years, there is no value in the present

contemplation of sacred writings or histories of erroneous and

incomplete movements.

In summarizing the various approaches to "Union with the Absolute" we

first encounter the slow evolutionary theory. Secondly, we have groups

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of people, or cults, that endeavor simply to expand consciousness , and

whose ultimate aim is Cosmic Consciousness. Gurdjieff and Ouspensky

may well come into this category. Thirdly, we have the direct method

which is Zen. The Zen method is supposed to be quicker and supposedly

brings the individual into maximum enlightenment. We might also

mention another group who expect to join the Absolute in a state of

unawareness by becoming obliviated and returning to the electrical field

of the cosmos.

We cannot discuss any of these groups without participation if we expect

to do them justice. And with the teachers who would lead us into

expanded being there is no argumentation or reasoning. In Zen,

reasoning would only be used by the Master to run your intellect up a rat

hole.

We are left, therefore, with either an emotional magnetism toward such

teachings or else we are selective by virtue of intuition, if we need to

look for a reason for embracing schools of either expanded

consciousness or of Zen. And even after the student has embarked upon

one of the two paths mentioned, at every stage along the way he still

finds himself unable to translate intellectually that which is happening to

him.

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 FOURTH PAPER

On Gurus and Unique Systems

If there were a movement that would lead man or his soul to salvation

there would be no need for books or dissertations. I would simply

recommend that infallible system, embrace it, and write no more. When

I use the word "man" in the above sentence I refer to man collectively , or

every man. There may be a system that will lead certain men, but it

does little good to write it down for the general public as a universal

salvation, since it is evident that only confusion and reaction would

result. The same type of reaction would occur if college texts were

forced upon children in grade school. Books, religions and systems that

pretend to take everyone all the way in one universal class are generally

political.

And there is no doubt that politics has entered transcendentalism. There

are two types of books to be found in the field of religion and

transcendentalism which should bear watching—they are ones which are

either critical or political. Those which are critical are worth the study if

they are unbiased.

The critical writer is a thinker, at least. And being in the field in which he

is, he must be concerned with the Truth. He may be sharp and irritating

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to us if we are clinging to a vain hope instead of hoping to keep an eye

open. He may show anger and justly so . He may go overboard and

overemphasize or pick one religion or cult when perhaps the majority

are equally to blame. He may be motivated by personal encounters with

fraudulent leaders and he may employ a reference to incidents rather

than use a strictly logical complaint. But he must not be taken idly . It is

more important to read criticisms than it is to wallow in the endless

volumes of literature that only encourage belief, that employ color to

enhance ritual, and often extol as absolute Truth a devotion or

technique that has only the external appearance of being mentally

therapeutic . . . to say the most.

A critic would have no cause, except to pick the straw from the grain—

unless he is a political critic. That is, unless he is using criticism to

campaign for recruits by attacking the forces which have followers. The

man who argues atheism is shunned as a leper, but the men who

concoct new and more complicated dogmas to contuse and enslave men

s minds receive praise in proportion to their success in gathering a

following. The fact is that an atheist is actually a man who is protesting

his own insignificance, while rejecting the meaningless and the

unproven. The atheist alarms people because he shocks them from the

smugness of mass self-deception. People pursue their animal existence

and pay some sort of tithe to be reassured that they have immortality .

Now they are not guaranteed immortality for that tithe because they are

usually told that they must besides paving the preacher, also believe . . .

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no matter how hard the job of believing gets to be. So there generates in

religion and cultism a feeling that is something like "keeping up with the

Joneses." Everybody talks it up. Everybody presumes to presume. Going

to church is the thing to do. The results are fat preachers.

Perhaps the public has not really decided to believe everything that is

preached, but one thing that the public has accepted as a group is that

Pollyanna is sacred. People do not wish to be doused with cold water ,

nor with words which have the same effect. If millions of people could be

convinced that they had been effectively baited, their first reaction

would be anger. This anger would first be directed at the critic who

dared to shake them from their pleasant dream. If the critic is aided by

the coincidence of an oppression of his listeners at hierarchical hands ,

then the anger may be directed at the hierarchy or the authorities of the

era. The remarkable thing, however, is that the first and often fatal

anger is directed at the light-bearer. Most of us have heard the sly hint

about Lucifer, the early light-bearer. He was supposedly exiled for trying

to illuminate lesser spirits.

The critic must be read and an attempt must be made to understand the

true reasons for his discontent. The politician must be exposed . The

politician is a sapper of souls and a spender of time that is sacred

because of its paucity. We must be alerted to the tricks of the politician if

we are to avoid being swept into servitude.

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The politician remakes religion or philosophy to suit the desires of the

most people. This is a sort of corrupt democracy which should not be

applied to religion—the Truth is not attained by voting. Financial success

and the perpetuation of the church may be attained in this manner ,

however. Thus, the authorities, or augurs, who pretend to be able to

read the will of God, if not His mind, have decided that God is fickle and

is liable to change His mind.

A sin is no longer a sin. During the crusades, one of the Popes extended

a carte blanche to the Templars, enabling them, for political expediency,

to fracture any commandment with impunity. They were given

absolution in advance of the offence.

We find God and theology being warped to fit the occasion. We find that

purgatory is not a timeless and dimensionless situation. It is subject to

the length of a wick of a candle at the altar of purgatorial souls. And the

candle itself is subject to cost.

Meat was once forbidden on fast-days. The gods have now been

pacified. We can eat meat at any time. On occasion, religious leaders

have inconvenienced the people to an amazing extent. We are bearers

of canine teeth. Our faces are not designed for cropping grass. Our limbs

have lost the skill of climbing trees for fruits and nuts (if they were

originally designed for that). Yet, there are some religions that endorse

total vegetarianism, while protesting at the same time that we were

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created by a God (who gave us the canine teeth) who does not wish for

us to kill other beings or eat them.

These people become fearful and over-zealous. An egg becomes a living

thing. Some deny themselves fish, others rationalize for fish. Soul-

degrees are haggled over and conscience-wrestling becomes the

excuse for complex, so-called "theological dissertations." And finally , the

hierarchical supreme court will decide that fish may not be flesh.

The rubrics of ritual are so numerous as to require volumes. Yet, rubrics

are as important to religion today as they were ages ago when the

mumbo-jumbo of the shaman was a closely guarded secret.

We get into the business of soul-identification. People would not pay

much attention to a creed that allowed all life to be lifted up into heaven .

No one would pay ten percent of his wages to expedite a salvation that

automatically happens to all animal life. So the authorities decided that

a bit of cataloguing was in order. Some could see God, some could not.

Those in Limbo. Some could be prayed out of purgatory or burned out

with candles.

And the animals just did not have souls. We could not have dogs and

monkeys getting the same privileges as the tithe-payers. Yet, even a

casual observer may encounter congenital imbeciles who have less

sense than Jocko the monkey. Of course, we find ourselves in much of a

dither about this thing which we like to call the soul. It is like a car that is

the most recent style. Everybody just has to have one. No one dares to

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be second-best, but we must all seek out some unfortunate being to

denounce as being less equipped—like Jocko. Now this will surely make

us feel more secure, once we find out that there is someone else that is

not so secure. It never dawns on us that Jocko may have it all over on us

in that his simple life may bring him closer to Truth, while our highly

specialized computers of confusion-data may produce kindred hells and

errors that emanate from our fatigue and frustration .

We have observed here just a few indications of the confusion that

permeates the major religions which have held sway over mankind for a

long time. Wars have been fought over the identity of God's

representatives, with the conviction that one was authentic and the rest

were spurious. God allowed his signature to be given to the winner , even

though it was written with the blood of devout unfortunates. Man was

vociferous. The heavens uttered not a word.

People have become less devout—perhaps as a result. Crusades of

children are no longer available. Monks and nuns are becoming

secularized. Heaven is smitten with liberalism, if we are to believe the

mind-readers of God. The minds of men are no longer swayed by threat,

nor are the minds of children inflamed with pious terrors. New

techniques have been devised. Democracy has become the Way, and

man is upon the altar as the deity. The congregation has been invited to

partake of the sacred ceremonies. Deep theological arguments are

avoided. The individual ego is assuaged by allowing it to get into the act .

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We have fewer wars with religious motivation. The religious way at least

served as an instrument of regulation which kept the theologian on his

toes and served to liquidate movements which had grown too monolithic

or cruel. Today, however, we have a growing synthesis of all the grand

old failures. They are flocking together and want to be recognized as a

way of life. No longer touting their singularity or their solitary efficacy ,

they now cling to the shred of hope that they might survive in a

socialistic world as order-promoting agencies.

New isms and religions, coming up out of the ashes of the old—meaning

new concoctions and variations—have taken the cue. They do not

criticize. Nobody criticizes. People proudly assert that they are above the

odious practice of talking about religion.

Thus, we have reasons for rejecting nearly everything until we can

substantiate things for ourselves. It is not enough to have a child's

devotion when it comes to religion. Children of all religions are devoted .

Only the philosopher who has endured the disillusionment of several

isms will fully understand this need for a priori rejection. Each time the

philosopher has changed temples he may have done so with a new,

refreshing vigor emanating from the conviction that he has found the

end of the rainbow. Each time he has lived long enough to be

disillusioned.

It is then that we come to realize that we did something too hurriedly.

We may have purchased that which looked like a beautiful new coat,

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when in reality it was just an old coat made over. The fact that it is

usually tailored to fit the new wearer does not arouse the buyer's

suspicion.

We find Christianity with its Hell and half-hells to be godless or not

commensurate with our ideas or propositions concerning God . We find

God no longer just by human standards and while admitting that God

may have His own standards (perhaps totally incomprehensible), we,

nevertheless, also realize that any other than human standards are not

comprehendible. We realize that the burden of proof lies in almighty

hands, not human hands, so that if there are other standards, man

cannot be held to account for not understanding them. For man has

learned something about himself. He is finite. He has no hopes for

miracles that might enable a finite man to converse with transcendental

gods or beings, with the assurance that his senses are not playing tricks

on him.

So man looked around. The Christian religion became diversified and

various new ideas were added, such as fatalism. Fatalism, or

predestination, seemed to answer some of the unanswered questions .

But we know that answering questions is not enough. For instance, we

might proclaim a kingdom of gnomes or angels and scrupulously answer

every question about details adroitly spun from our imagination . Proving

the existence of the gnomes and angels would be overlooked in the

process of examining a portrait of possibility. And possibility is later

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confused with probability. And then when certainty replaces probability ,

we have the necessary fanatics for a new religion.

Man's desire to improve on Divine Justice resulted in the theory of

reincarnation. The ancient theory of an angry God disappeared in the

Orient long before the scientifically advanced Westerners gave the

second appraisal to Christianity. Even now, the theory of reincarnation

has gained only a slight foothold in the West.

For the Western man, flaccid tolerance seems to have overshadowed

any dynamic curiosity that might exist. This tolerance can only be a sign

of weakness, as it is a tolerance of ignorance and deception . The

Christian hierarchy in its previous refusal to compromise was at least

respected for its vitality, even if that vitality was trapped in dogmatic

assumptions. The modern Christian hierarchy has relented because the

peasants are no longer ignorant, uneducated, or stirred by colorful

stories. The peasants' descendants no longer care if the hierarchy

decrees or utters curses ex cathedra. The new breed of peasant reasons

that you cannot reason with an unreasonable God. Regardless of the

possibly sublime language or motivation of God, the peasant only knows

the language of the peasant.

It is likely that the hierarchies of the sundry Christian sects have decided

that they have merchandise no longer saleable. The Catholics tried for

several hundred years to deny the heliocentric system in order to

maintain a particular interpretation of the Bible and to maintain the

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infallibility of the pope. The telescope—a very simple device—threw the

chains of ignorance aside and threw a doubt upon the whole pretensive

system of authority.

Since each church has a window and the window is glass, a truce has

been called. There is a new approach to the business of religious

competition. Each may decorate its window with any variations that

might attract the eye of the passerby, but it must not damn the efforts

of the others.

The word has gone out to protect all the hucksters. They are doing a

good service. They march for noble causes and keep the neighborhood

children from growing up to be convicts. They promote obedience and

passiveness. But they do not mount any crusades to liberate man from

his ignorance. The ignorance of man is their asset and the experience of

several hundred years has taught the priests that any whittling away of

the ignorance of the peasants may cause reverberations in the

membership—if not in the payroll.

We must beware of the movements that proclaim their alliance to the

syndicate with such admonitions as "There is truth in all movements ."

and "Different religions suit the different needs of different peoples ."

The brave theologians are ail gone. Perhaps Martin Luther was the last

brave man and for all we know, his bravery may long since have been

forgotten. Brave men are born from the necessity for an answer to

tyranny or some similarly impossible situation . In those days the cross

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was the general and the sword was its lieutenant. Now the cross has no

rank at all. The sword has it for a hireling. The church has offered to be a

civil servant. The church cannot live as an entity without a state charter

and the man who issues state charters is a politician. The state secretary

will decide that which is a religion and that which is not. And he usually

decides that the accepted, or well rooted religions, shall be the ones that

shall have a charter. Let God bow down or lose his share of the tax

money.

If we were to believe in a devil, or enemy to the soul of man—we might

view the situation with alarm.

An interesting note is the matter of faith as a factor in religion . The

exhortation to have faith to many seekers seems like the lament of a

hopeless lover about to lose his mate.

It is true that the devotees of almost every religion encounter the word

"faith" somewhere in their career. I wonder at the need to exhort men to

have faith. Is the religion in question so lacking in appeal, intrinsic value

or in evident virtues that one must be exhorted and reminded to believe

or that we must constantly remind ourselves that we must be in an

accepting frame of mind?

Most Christian schools teach that believing must come before knowing .

But if this believing is nothing more than prolonged self-hypnosis—how

can we be certain that the knowing is not also a result of auto-

suggestion?

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Man cannot be damned for doubting, if man lays his existence into the

hands of a creator. If man believes that he was created by God, there

then must be a good reason for the intellect that hesitates, doubts,

dares or chooses to reject.

This is one of the absurd positions of the Christian hierarchy . What sort

of theology is it that makes us creatures fashioned by a personal

Supreme Being, Who, after fashioning us as He is supposed to have

done, with free will and an obligation to choose Him and endorse Him or

be forever lost—at the same time denies us the right to doubt and,

consequently, choose?

In other words, we have freedom of choice as long as we do not choose

anything but Christian recommendations. We have free will, but if we do

not heed mysterious and unproven demands, we shall become eternal,

cosmic criminals.

The emphasis on believing lies most heavily upon the Christian and

Mohammedan religions. Another thing that marks the teaching of both is

the exaltation of a man as a Savior or Prophet and the further demand

that belief in this man is necessary to spiritual survival.

We know, of course, that both of these religions presume the other to be

false. Both used the sword. And strangely enough, both survived the

long confrontation with each other, if God is interested in either

geography or membership, He did not give the human race much of a

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clue as to which of the two was His chosen one and which was,

consequently, the liar and betrayer of man's trust.

The Eastern religions demonstrate themselves to be generally systems

of self-betterment, enlightenment, or liberation. However, many of

them, if not the most of them, employ the "Master" idea and the belief in

total submission to a human master. This has the same conflict with

common sense that the requirements for "belief'" in dogma have.

This is no attack upon faith. Many things may well have been created or

recreated by faith. And it is possible that most of the dynamic nature of

faith has not yet been fathomed. But it must be emphasized that the

mechanism of faith is not a guarantee of wisdom and that we must be on

the alert for any and all movements that demand it in preference to

sincere searching.

Likewise, when we fasten ourselves to a "Master," we presume that all

that is to be learned shall emanate from the bounty of this man. This

does not mean that there are not or have not been eminent men who

have walked upon the earth. It means that when a man demands total

servitude and obedience, he may either be something very special or he

may simply be a hypnotist.

And we have no evidence that entering the valley of death under a spell

of hypnosis is any more efficacious than entering it as just an honest and

ignorant being.

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 CULTS AND OTHER SYSTEMS

All of the movements that concern us in this work were the result of

questions about the following items and they should be judged by their

answers that ably or poorly enlighten us about the same question -items .

1. The nature of man. especially the inner man.

2. Life before birth.

3. Life after death.

4. Relation of man to nature, the world and the visible cosmos.

5. Relation of man to the Absolute. Most people, and this includes

philosophers as well as humble lay-seekers, put the cart before the

horse and proceed to try to understand the universe, or life after death ,

before understanding first their own nature and how they came to be

here.

The following are keys in analyzing the isms.

a. Of the many isms that take on the tasks of explaining any of the

above five items, we determine to gauge for the least unlikely or those

or those nearer to the truth.

b. We take note of the avatar or other original exponent of ism, and we

look for personal inspiration and perhaps miraculous evidence of his

being a superior and, hence, wiser being.

c. We study writings of the isms for contradiction.

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d. We look for isms that explain more phenomena than other isms.

e. We pay heed to isms that appeal to our intuition.

f. We watch all isms for most common factors in the business of equating

that some truth must accompany concurrence by a number of faiths or

movements.

So we look for a workable system or discipline superior to other

disciplines. I would like to take some of the movements that are in a

sense esoteric and in a sense unconventional or of lesser popularity than

the organized religions. In regard to item one, which deals with man's

knowledge of himself, we have already heard from Psychology and

Psychiatry. Chapter three also dealt with principle religious ideas and I

will try to discuss the offerings of movements not discussed in chapter

three.

When we approach these more or less esoteric groups, such as Zen ,

Yoga, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy, Kabbalism, various forms of

thaumaturgy and predictive systems, such as astrology and

numerology, we find that they fall into categories as far as their primary

function is concerned. These are:

The Systems

1. Mechanical means to Spiritual or Truth-bringing end. (Joining the right

church, whirling the right prayer wheel, prayers or magic.)

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2. Physical means to Spiritual or Truth-bringing end. (Pilgrimages,

praying, yoga exercises, fasting, physical mortification or punishment in

the hope of spiritual gain.)

3. Mental means to a Spiritual or Truth-bringing end. (Meditational

exercises as produced by many cults, raja yoga routines, concentration

upon supposed spiritual centers in the body, analytical approach to

religion or the analytical conceit that man can by solving the definition of

matter automatically find the secret nature of that which caused matter .

Or any system that postulates that our finite mind possesses or will

possess the breadth of scope to evaluate all problems and the

concomitant infallible faculties that would make that mind 's conclusions

dependable.)

4. Direct union with the Spiritual end or Truth. (Dying-while-living

techniques, techniques for Satori or Enlightenment, Or accounts of

experiences of those who have died medically and regained

consciousness.)

We know that most movements encompass several of these four

systems. So it is good to know the degree of thoroughness with which

these movements satisfy our enquiry.

Naturally, I am not implying that the purpose of any movement should

solely be the satisfaction of our logical enquiry because our enquiry is

again being carried out with that same finite mind with its weaknesses ,

but we still can employ some yardsticks to save us decades of time. Our

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enquiry must be first tempered with another faculty besides our

analytical sense, or else we will be perennially chasing our tail .

Yoga

Yoga is a wide word. Under the various yogic systems we find all four

paths or means. It would be good at this point to note that these four

systems are all presumptive of a Spiritual nature for man, or

presumptive of man's ability to learn or reach the Truth . We might say

that all philosophic systems herein discussed imply that there is at least

an inadequacy of state of being as far as this present life is concerned or

an inadequacy of our ability to properly appreciate the state of being

now experienced

This book presumes, in other words, that there is hope for man and that

it is possible to better understand both the state we now experience and

that it is not unreasonable to contemplate future states. In making this

notation, I am sidestepping a lot of materialistic thinking and writings ,

but as explained previously, if man is limited to a materialistic existence ,

without any aspirations for immortality tolerated, then writing any

manner of books (except possibly hedonistic books) would surely be

taking up time when we might be vegetating.

Our chief aim in this chapter is to somehow indicate the diverse paths or

metaphysical directions that result from the many unanswered

questions. The many questions that possibly result from diverse

unexplained phenomena, as well as diverse desires and elaborate

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hopes, somehow become all tangled up and the different paths or

systems somehow become all tangled up by trying, it would seem, to

cure all with one system. So that we find a religion or a cult springing up,

pronouncing its findings as being all that is necessary to bring man to a

condition where he will not need to question any more.

We hear of hatha yoga, which is somehow a yoga of health. The main

argument of hatha yoga is not a pretence that by various postures a

body can be made immortal, but that if we wish to progress in any

higher enterprise, we must first have a healthy body Some teachers of

hatha yoga slyly hint but never prove that some yogis live for several

hundred years. This was one of the themes in the book Lost Horizon.

Various books on yoga have hinted at marvelous phenomena performed

by yogis, such as bi-location, astral-projection, dematerialization and

materialization, projection of the body, and quite a repertoire of magic .

It is worth noting that most of these books came out in the eighteen

hundreds or very early in this century. Colonel Olcott and Blavatsky may

have stimulated the public's interest in this type of phenomena by their

works and caused lesser authors to try their hand at even more

sensationalistic fiction and half-fiction.

Blavatsky wrote The Secret Doctrine and Isis Unveiled, and other books .

These two are encyclopedias of occultism. If Blavatsky ever

recommended a system, I failed to find it in either book, or in The Voice

of the Silence. I get the impression that Blavatsky believed that gurus or

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avatars were the only ladder to wisdom or spiritual ends. And since

Madame Blavatsky never gave us the address or phone number of any

of these gurus, we are left with her guidance alone and her scriptural

interpretation of their words. She was an admitted amanuensis .

The movement that resulted from Blavatsky's efforts is known as

Theosophy. Its derivation implies that it is a god-science. Blavatsky's

gods are of human origin. She distinguishes them from the Absolute or

universal mind. Theosophy maintains that there is a spiritual evolution of

men toward godhood, which involves such levels as adept, master and

bodhisattva. There is supposedly no limit to the height to which these

levels extend.

Theosophy is a very worthy work in that it inspires people to look deeper

into the nature of things. Theosophy is commendable in that it attempts

to help man to understand himself, before making him submit to wild

dogmas. Many of Blavatsky's writings betray an attempt to save the

student some time by debunking some of the less meritable systems to

which we are exposed. She spends many chapters explaining the origin

of matter from non-matter and in explaining the evolution of primordial

atoms into humans, and the evolution of the planetary systems .

She does, however, leave little hope for the neophyte-seeker. She gives

no system, except to advise the general pursuit of the theosophical

wisdom and the search for masters or avatars. Perhaps this omission (of

a system) is a passive gesture of honesty, because we receive the hint

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that man progresses only in the appointed hour, and for man to try to

accelerate his development too prematurely would be—according to

Blavatsky.

Let us look at the manner in which Theosophy answers the questions

listed at the beginning of this chapter.

Item 1. The nature of man. Theosophy explains man as a reincarnating,

evolving, immortal being. But it does not explain how we may prove this

to ourselves. It, consequently, utters a most detailed concept to answer

Items 2. 3, 4—but leaves the gap of mystery about the highest form of

god-man and about the Absolute or universal mind (Item 5).

And as I mentioned before, in regard to the systems, it does not really

qualify as a system. Theosophy seems to be about the business of

synthesizing religions and looking into them for their common factors . It

is weak in giving us an invisible avatar, savior or guru.

Theosophy has received considerable criticism by many pseudo-logical

minds who claimed Blavatsky's writings were filled with inconsistencies . I

must also confess that I did not check every foreign reference or

bibliography and translate it again to double-check her, but I did agree

with most of her general criticisms of other movements, even though I

felt that she may have allowed her own intense personality to color

some of her rhetoric.

Theosophy flourished for a while and I believe now that it is waning,

even though there is an increase in interest in occultism. This waning is,

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I think, attributable to its lack of any system or detailed blueprint for

becoming a master or adept, and attributable to its lack of any

sensationalistic advertising, such as is employed by other movements . In

my estimation, the books of Blavatsky are some of the most valuable

handbooks that a student of esotericism might own.

While Blavatsky's mentor or guru appeared to her in his astral form,

most schools of yoga recognize only a living guru or master. While hatha

yoga promises a healthy body in which to meditate, Kriya yoga promises

a system of mental means to a spiritual end. Kriya yoga is a system of

meditation upon nerve-centers or chakras as well as concentration in a

prescribed manner to attain physical objectives. Raja yoga and Kriya

yoga are often confused. Some Indian systems employ Kriya and Raja

techniques without ever mentioning the word yoga.

It might be better if we referred to both as Mental Yoga or mental

disciplines. Steiner's Rosicrucianism is a Christian form of mental yoga .

Steiner's system engenders the concentration upon the chakras.

SRF, or Self Realization Fellowship, belongs to the Kriya yoga, or Mental

yoga class. With the death of Yogananda, it appears to have changed

from a guru-enlightened movement to just a plain movement.

The Vedanta movement is a similar movement. In it there are still to be

found living gurus who are the spiritual descendants of Ramakrishna .

These last three movements are some of the more "respectable " groups

that practice Mental yoga. There are at least a hundred more of the

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same type, but their origin is recent and the honesty of some is

questionable.

The living-guru systems are a nebulous chain. Mental yoga systems do

not always promise Satori or Enlightenment, but refer at times to

Samadhi and Moksa. As has been pointed out before, exotic words like

Satori, Samadhi, and Moksa may have a definite, limited, intended

meaning, or they may have all of the unlimited meaning that American

and peasant-Hindu minds can conjure up. Satori bears more the

connotation of final liberation, while Samadhi is used to determine the

point at which the yoga-attention joins the object of his meditation .

The mental yoga systems presuppose that man must first experience a

change of being before being able to experience Moksa or deliverance

from the wheel of illusion. So, perhaps very shrewdly, most of the

systems of mental yoga introduced into the Western world, emphasize

yoga as being a discipline of change without ever explaining the end

result of the business of being changed.

I am not opposed to the idea of change. I realize that our being must go

through much catharsis in order to get rid of erroneous thinking. If

nothing else, we are to advance upon a Truth-searching drive.

But many good people, also sensing this need for a change of being,

lazily and blindly seize upon any cult or turbaned guru that promises a

change of being. Most of these gurus, when questioned about end-

results, refer you to their guru or quotations from the predecessor . We

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obtain a mental cartoon of a staircase with a guru on each step, pointing

to the one above him.

I observe sometimes with amazement that that which the enquiring

mind finds satisfying is too often a mere seat in the shadow of

pretension.

Nearly all of the cults in this country are maintained by a solid upper

layer of professional people and a low proportion of working -class

people. We find doctors, lawyers and scientists paying humble tribute to

an illiterate swami who in turn has very little philosophy outside of a

catechism of his own particular sect.

I visited the Vedanta temple in Hollywood and met the Swami in charge.

His name. I believe, was Probhavananda. He was a dignified, quiet,

priest-like man. He was, however, living in the shadow of his guru and

eating from the table prepared by a man, dead quite a few years—one

Ramakrishna.

Ramakrishna was not a dignified or priest-like man, judging from his

picture. We all know that external appearances are not measurable for

picking a man who lays claim to spiritual enlightenment, but on the

other hand, spiritual enlightenment leaves its mark upon the recipient

and there are, consequently, traits that would cause us to doubt spiritual

enlightenment for a particular possessor of such traits .

Ramakrishna looks wild and almost idiotic in the picture of him that is in

the Vedanta temple. Probhavananda looks serene. Those in search of

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advice and paternalism might well be inspired by Probhavananda . But

that swami points upward to Ramakrishna and the latter is deified as a

sort of avatar. Ramakrishna, as a figure to be deified and meditated

upon, had a negative effect upon me. I am sure that he would never

have been deified in the United States, nor would he have ever received

a fraction of the welcome that Yogananda or Probhavananda have

received.

Ramakrishna was chosen in India. And in India, some gurus are chosen

out of emotion. It is good to note that at this point, Ouspensky indicates

that "man number two," (the second from the bottom) is the emotionally

oriented man. If you read the accounts of some of the young yogis in

their early encounters with their "Masters," and listen to accounts of

Europeans and Americans who have witnessed enough of India's

spiritual procedure, we find that the reason a young neophyte in India

chooses a particular Master is love. Now we can confuse this love with

intuition, which is often the projection which we are supposed to seize

upon as the meaning of the word love in these instances. However, we

must also bear in mind the mores and general philosophy of India in

which, despite emancipating laws, the female is still thought of as an

inferior and the male as a superior. A young mind of homosexual

inclination in a country that looks kindly upon homosexuality might well

also be inclined to worship the male godlike human so deified by his

imagination.

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This deduction has been proven true in some cases recently investigated

by two Americans to whom I talked concerning one of the gurus who

now holds a fairly high place in American minds The guru in question

managed to find himself and his movement listed in Life magazine as

the head of one of the more popular movements. But this guru had

about him, in India, disciples that not only worshiped the feet of their

guru, but the body-wastes of that guru also. Of course, when this guru

comes to the United States, he does not get this sort of attention . . . he

is satisfied with our money and the publicity. We fail to go back a step

and realize that were it not for this abject attention by native disciples in

India, and their blatant, nauseous masochism, or eroticism, his

popularity would never have grown beyond the borders of India.

Of course, the perennial optimist (or rationalist for possibly effortless ,

tantric salvation) will indicate that perhaps underneath all of this

"natural man" there is a duality wherein atavism and avatarism live side

by side. So I must leave the observation for what it is worth, having in

mind only the purpose of looking for reasons for the growth of cults—

thus looking for qualifications that might make cults valid or invalid .

To get back to Ramakrishna, he was not in any sense the top guru. The

stories about his career tell us that he had gurus of his own. The man

who initiated him into mental yoga is rarely mentioned. Ramakrishna

had been worshiping another goddess when this man happened to

witness Ramakrishna's limitation and introduced him to the higher yoga

—Kriya yoga or mind-chakra meditation. About this life-story are woven

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many other stories to give it wonderment and to form the body of the

Ramakrishna movement.

The Ramakrishna movement and the SRF movement are mostly pious

systems of hero-worship.

We can take the kernel out, which is chakra-concentration, and forget

all about Ramakrishna, Yogananda, Lahiri Mahasaya, and any of the

others in the two movements. In SRF, I find the stories that embellished

the movement to be too fantastic. In SRF there are hints of ever-living

avatars. Yogananda hints of having met Babuji once or twice. There are

tales, of golden cities created for the entertainment of adepts, and of

the translation of the "Masters." Also stories of levitation and

teleportation.

The main criticism of these movements is not their outward structure or

possible internal inconsistencies. The main criticism for them is that their

yoga-function is like a rope that would hold the ship to the shore, or a

rope keeping heaven in contact with earth, but apparently having

anchorage at neither end. They seem to be systems unconcerned with a

valid foundation and negligent of ultimate aspiration. They are systems

that go nowhere. If concentration upon a plexus makes a better artisan ,

or poet, or mathematician out of you. then your interest is in being

such . . . not being a chanced being with a spiritually scheduled aim for

changing. If any yoga system brings you peace of mind, and peace of

mind is what you want, then you are getting what you pay for. And cult

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lessons may well be cheaper than tranquilizers. However, if your

objective is the understanding of the relation of man to the Absolute or

even the understanding of post-mortem existence, then we will not wish

to linger too long under the influence of tranquilizers.

We now come to Rosicrucianism. There are several schools of

Rosicrucians. In the investigation of Rosicrucianism we encounter from

the first the obstinate insistence on a mythical heritage.

I use the word "mythical" because most Rosicrucian movements

obstinately protest that they have a beginning which they are both

unwilling and unable to trace. The heroes in the stories of Rosicrucianism

are "Elders" or "Elder Brothers" whose secret hideouts are somewhere in

Central Europe. And we cannot help but enquire . . . why Central Europe?

We are reminded of some of the stories about the avatars and adepts

mentioned in yoga-literature who supposedly lived to be several

hundred years of age. This appeals to people whose instinct for survival

leads them to believe that immortality must of a necessity include the

body.

Rationalization, like temptation, comes to the human mind in ever

changing form.

I expect that this book will largely appeal to people who are dissatisfied

with organized religion and the paths thereof. If you ask an occultist or

plain cultist for his reasons for abandoning the church of his ancestors ,

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he will give you fairly reasonable answers. He will generally point out

what he considers to be the childish or absurd tenets in the faith of his

ancestors. But when he joins an esoteric cult, he begins to practice even

more absurd rituals and relays to the listener even more childish dogma

than that which enthralled his forebearers in the organized "old-

fashioned" religion.

I would like to take a moment here to indicate that in many movements

we will find absurdities that should be explained by the promoters of the

particular cult, or eliminated. The first yardstick that we apply to any

movement is simple truth and when our intuition tells us this simple

truth may be twisted or prostituted, then there is no further reason for

following such a cult.

I can see no reason for the emphasis on fantastic claims that are always

impossible to validate. Many discerning minds have abandoned

Christianity because they could not believe that Jesus was divine . They

may have come to this conclusion after studying Josephus and

personally translating the New Testament. Yet, after doing all that work ,

they will trot out and join a cult and accept its tenets merely because

this new movement promises a form of immortality that appeals to

them, or for even lesser reasons.

This may seem inconsequential—this business of lamenting the failure of

the seeker in his second try for the Truth. However, the purpose of this

writing is to try to help the people on the ladder, whether it be the

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second or third rung, or attempt. It may well be a wonderful thing to

rebel against the almost concrete restrictions of hereditary religious

thinking, but it will do us absolutely no good to rebel if we do not have,

or determine to have, discernment.

It seems that every movement wants to be rooted in antiquity. This

implies that the modern mind is somehow feeble and that men were

either very wise or very holy back in antiquity, and in those days were

able to meet saviors, avatars and master-gurus face to face. This must

be recognized as an evident bit of rationalization. In such rationalization

we are clinging to "authority" by virtue of our own mental fatigue.

Capitalizing on our mental fatigue and love of authority, many new cults

inculcate bizarre history into their philosophy—almost to a point where

the fantastic elements are more emphasized than the factual ones .

We find that different Rosicrucian orders make different claims. One

group spends fabulous sums on advertising, leading us to believe that

they believe that advertising brings proportional business returns . The

claims in some of these ads alone are enough to throw a shadow on their

claims to honesty, much less any addiction for Truth. The Encyclopedia

Britannica lists some of the claims of the Rosicrucian order . One is that

their arcane wisdom is the result of a pilgrimage to the East by one

Christian Rosenkreuz in the fifteenth century. The encyclopedia also

points out that there is no supporting evidence for this claim.

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There is evidence that in the eighteenth century there were many

writers who manifested dissatisfaction with the doctrines preached in

their time. Luther's intrepidity led other minds to speak out. Because of

violent, repressive measures practiced by ecclesiastical powers in those

days, secrecy became a requirement for survival, especially if your

philosophy ran counter to those authorities. However, in later years the

bloody power of the church was wrested from the church of Rome. And,

yet, the secrecy continued.

There is no need to have secret orders now, and secrecy gives us a sort

of foetus complex.

It is possible that many political coteries possessed and needed to

possess rules of secrecy. The fact that they were both religious and

political complicated the material that was kept secret . We must surmise

that this material, passed on to followers in secret, was of a rebellious

and theological nature. It is natural that in any rebellion against Rome

the promoters of rebellion would use more ancient authority, or more

exotic authority, to replace the Roman church in the minds of men.

Once the church of Rome began to crumble from different schisms and

was relieved of the scourge and sword, the secret lodges lost some of

their reasons for existing. However, no entity gives up its life once it

begins to function. I surmise that many of the secret societies discovered

that they could maintain their life after the politicians deserted them by

encouraging the type of people who love secrecy for the sake of secrecy .

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How many adults among us are still children! I have been to

encampments of cults where the members seemed only to know that

they had a secret and were part of a secret organization. The

Rosicrucians, in some instances, are so secret that they do not give out

names of brother-Rosicrucians even to members.

My reaction to this is that it is a protective device not intended to protect

the individual members from pests as much as to protect the mother

lodge from the results of intercommunication of members .

Another claim that is occasionally employed by a movement is the

hidden manuscript trick.

How often have we heard this. God gave so and so tablets of gold with

the law written in His handwriting. Another found a manuscript giving all

the secrets of life. However, when we ask to see these heavenly

"apports," we are told that something happened to them. The gods were

displeased and took them back like petty, resentful playmates. Or the

manuscript is kept in the temple and is only available to the higher

adepts . . . who have paid in for twenty years.

We proceed now perhaps from the trivial external appearances of

Rosicrucianism to the inner core of their teachings. In doing so we

abridge a few bales of lessons and mandami.

What do they really have to offer? As far as I can see, one group offers a

symbological philosophy and a promise of meeting a Master in his astral

form.

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As for the symbology, it might be valuable if you need something to

occupy your mind. But, again, why do adults need complexity when

simplicity is possible in the exposition of ideas? I am reminded of

Nostrodamus' prophecies in which we find prophecies that concern an

eagle, or a lion, or a symbol such as the crescent. Of course, we

immediately conclude that he means Islam when he speaks of the

crescent, but in the event that the prediction does not fit Islam, then we

can never accuse him of being in error. For all that we know, he may well

have been referring to anything or anyone else. The book of Revelations

is filled with symbols, and I have never heard Revelations explained in

such a manner as to give a composite picture wherein all of the symbols

have incontroversial interrelation and meaning . Revelations has been

used, as a result, in a very uncharitable manner by many zealots who

occupy "authoritative" places in theological circles. Revelations has

become a cudgel.

Let us now get to the matter of the living master. Or master in astral

form. I have over a period of thirty years talked to every Rosicrucian who

would talk to me about the matter. And most of them were frank. None

but one had witnessed the "Astral Master." The one who had was an old

lady who had spent her whole life in the movement.

She said that he allowed her only three questions and she only saw him

once. There was no elaboration on the questions. He gave her a simple

answer of "No." And that was all she had.

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There is at least one Rosicrucian group that protests that it does not

charge. I visited the grounds which evidently are the main center for this

group in the United States. This is in Oceanside, California. These are

followers of Max Heindel. I visited the place more than twenty years ago

and it may have been changed since then. In the main reception room

stood a table with some books on it. I asked about the price and the lady

in charge said they had no charges, but that I could donate something in

return for any books I might like to have. I took their Cosmo-Conception

with me.

I told the lady that I would like to communicate with them since they told

me that their instructions were free. When I returned to Ohio, and wrote

the letter as directed by the same lady, I never received an answer .

The book, Cosmo-Conception, pretty well explains that which they are

about. As in some forms of spiritualism, they believe in subtle physical

vehicles, such as the astral body, and they believe in reincarnation .

Of all the American forms of Rosicrucianism, this is the only group that I

think I would care to look into further. I know very little about them

because they did not correspond with me—but I have never seen them

advertise, so I feel that they are not spending their supporters ' money

on pulp-advertising.

There is yet another group which is very select, and it is located in

Pennsylvania. It seems to be run from behind a cash register. In my

communications with them, they had things to sell, but no explanations.

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Rudolph Steiner founded a school of Rosicrucianism in Germany and

wrote a series of books. Steiner is widely read in this country and I am

somewhat surprised that someone has not by now commercialized his

name. If a student wished to get a fair idea of Rosicrucianism without

spending too much time and money on lessons, he might acquire some

of Steiner's books. (I am not endorsing Steiner or Rosicrucianism by that

remark, but am merely making an observation for the benefit of any

researcher.)

One book in particular brings you to the objectives of Steiner's

Rosicrucianism—Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment .

This book was published in 1947 in London. His signature is appended to

the preface of 1918. In this preface he refers to "anthroposophical

spiritual science" in discussing his own work. This gives us an inkling

about the trend in human thinking that draws mankind into the fold of

cults that might be of pseudo-scientific origins.

It is evident that mankind, or at least the better educated segment

thereof, is somewhat tired of the childish fantasyland of threatening

devils and angels with wands all supervised by a very sick (by human

standards, I'll agree) God that incinerates any microscopic human that

makes the wrong guess.

It is possible that this type of anthroposophy as seen in Rosicrucianism

and other yogic cults, is not a long submerged Truth at last revealed, but

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a creation of new fantasy, palatable to a hungry mouth with a bad taste

therein from former digestion.

In the beginning of this chapter I have listed, alphabetically , a series of

keys to gauge any ism that we might be investigating. It might be good

to list a few of the keys that we should avoid.

A. Does it lessen your fear or raise your hopes by means of concept-

building?

B. Does it hint of sensual license?

C. Is it cheaper to subscribe to, or to follow? Is it venal, or more

expensive and are you deluded into thinking that it, being select and,

consequently, more expensive, is only for financially successful people

(perfected men, meaning the select)?

D. Does it have a power structure that may bring you to power some

day?

E. Does it appeal to any other vanity?

F. Did you join it because you were too tired to go on looking?

Philosophic movements have failed to replace Christianity , because for

all of our education, we are still like cavemen groveling in the sand at

the sound of thunder. We are still waiting for a sign or a Messiah. We

refuse to have the sense to simply start looking and working while

applying simple yardsticks to the business of investigating.

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Annie Besant and other Theosophists saw that mankind might respond

to a new Messiah and were accused of attempting to endow

Krishnamurti with divinity. Aleister Crowley and Gurdjieff tried to endow

themselves.

Gradualizations of Eastern thought did manage to make a pretty sound

and lasting foothold in Western thinking. As a result of these, we have

Mary Baker Eddy, who kept Christianity, but inculcated in it the idea of

Universal Mind and the potency of man's mind. Universal Mind is similar

to that which is understood as Brahman. Steiner also kept Christ, and

spent much of his time building an image of Christ. Swedenborg retained

Christ while formulating a new Jerusalem along esoteric lines.

The gradualization was not quick enough for the peasants of Europe .

Under communism they threw out many nauseous peccadilloes and

shook the very dogmas that supported the church.

We are entering into a new era and I am not convinced that it is good. It

is the era of the Man-God. From many Gods, to One-God, to Man-God.

The Man-God era was not created by communism. However, the

followers and promoters of both communism and the Man-God theory

have common ground as a foundation for the structure of their thinking .

The communist is weary of being exploited by the state powers that are

reinforced and justified by a venal church. Mysticism and metaphysics

find too many followers weary of the persecution of common -sense

postulates by organized religion. Organized Christianity, while professing

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to believe in One-God, has fractured itself until its polymorphousness is

not much different from polytheism. Whenever tithes are the rule of the

church, ten men in the congregation will support a minister in a manner

even better by one tenth than that of any of the supporters. So every

potential minister is inclined to create a schism and look for ten

members. Tithing becomes a schismatic factor among the many other

factors.

These ministers place themselves above their objective, which is God ,

and they too hurry along the Man-God trend. Another trend is for the

Christian world to produce healers rather than for a preacher to lead a

group of men in the studies that might lead to wisdom or to lead a group

in meditation that might bring them to a better mental condition, or

change of being. In this respect, most healers become expediters of the

Man-God concept.

Nearly all of the yogic movements are conducive to Man-God

production. The master-chela relationship in some Raja yoga groups

plainly states that the only chain the chela has to immortality is the link

he has with his Master.

Somehow, I believe that most yogic systems are emanations from the

Krishna movement which is older than Christianity and may have

suffered or enjoyed a sort of evolution of its own.

The Krishna movement is still alive but it may have changed a bit or

evolved into other schisms also, when some observers took the courage

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to point out the inexorable fate of a bald-headed man, or to note that

the hair goes up in smoke with the body on the funeral pyre.

The tuft of hair has since been replaced by things more subtle and more

difficult to evaluate, such as the astral cord, the sound current, or the

fixing of the master in the pineal chakra, so that we will have his picture

with us after death and, thus, be able to recognize him.

Rosicrucianism, while borrowing much from the East, failed to bring the

concept of the Master-chain with it. It could only have been out of fear

of massive reaction from a Christian-controlled society that claims

Christ as its living master. And if this is true, or if it is reasonable to

accept the Master-chain concept as being a valid means to immortality,

then Rosicrucianism is entering into a compromise rather than bravely

bringing out a new system of thinking.

With the advent of the Man-God cults, we fail to observe that they may

well appeal to our vanity to the point where our heads are turned. That

man is finally becoming more radical and appealing to man is very

commendable. However, before we legislate or indulge m too much

concept-building, we must be aware of our vanity.

The fact that mankind may well have created most of his gods and other

entities does not exclude the existence of real gods or entities, nor does

it make him a creator of any merit. When man looks upon himself,

witnesses his own unsureness, his finite and relative nature, then it

behooves him to double-check anything traceable to human creation. It

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has been hinted that the materializations that occur in a medium's

cabinet are human creations, with or without the help of other entities . If

this is possible, then the astral master or the guardian of the threshold

might bear a second glance, if for no other reason than to check

ourselves for their origin. Eliphas Levi, the expert on magic, tells us that

he suspects all of the phantoms that he produced may well have been

mental creations!

Let us summarize or evaluate Rosicrucianism according to the five

possible functions:

1. About the nature of man, Rosicrucianism offers a concept.

2. About life before death, the theory of Reincarnation.

3. About life after death, the theory of Reincarnation.

4. Relation to nature, vague, nothing definite.

5. Relation of man to the Absolute, no tie.

In response to the tests:

a. Subject to your judgment and lengthy comparisons.

b. No avatar or outstanding original prophet.

c.,d. This would be a lengthy undertaking as the writings are not

scientific.

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e. There are things about it that appeal to our intuition, but some of the

very foundations of Rosicrucianism do not.

f. It has common denominators with Eastern religions.

g. It does usually extend a discipline and lays claim to efficacy for the

system in relation to spiritual growth.

Let us take each cult and each movement and ask ourselves these same

questions about the functioning of the movement, apply the tests and

test it with the keys A., B., C., D., E., and F.

I do not wish to imply that this is a complete system of evaluation. You

may wish to add a few keys of your own, since the reasons for a person's

joining a movement are not six alone. This will give you some idea of the

weak spots in any movement and may help you decide the direction in

which you wish to apply yourself.

Magic

The world of magic comes under the first of the systems—those which

use mechanical means. This is not a field to be ridiculed because it

seems to be rooted in things tangible or materialistic. Under the many

categories of magic we find scientific results once the unknown

processes are understood.

Hypnosis and mesmerism were once in the province of magic. But there

is no better lever than hypnosis to understand the human mind. The

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herb of the medicine man often becomes the life-saving drug for those

who ridiculed the medicine man.

Much magic is rooted in intuitional procedures so completely intuitional

that there would be no logical way to explain the rituals that are used to

bring about predicted results.

We might say that Magic is in many cases the science or ability that

goes directly to nature for the understanding of nature, rather than an

aloof, perhaps impossible, appraisal with rubber gloves and scalpel .

Magic has one great stumbling block. It can become an endless trip to

fantasyland. And many of the so-called discoveries of deeper magic

have never been properly explained.

Let us take some of the cases. Benvenuto Cellini relates one in his

autobiography. The priest was able to bring up, literally, legions of

demons. It is difficult to believe that the priest would be interested in

gold alone, and that Cellini would be interested in seduction alone. There

seemed to be no great interest into the nature and origin of these

demons. All we know about them is that they were very powerful, that

they (or at least the speaker among them) liked virgin boys, and that all

of them had an aversion for asafoetida.

Eliphas Levi, perhaps the foremost author on Magic, leads us to believe

that Magic may well be the utilization of mechanical levers to facilitate

mental creativity. It is said that a lifetime of magical studies and

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exercises did not bring him happiness and he supposedly rejoined the

Catholic Church later in life.

The life of Aleister Crowley is another instance of a very unhappy man . A

life that began perhaps as an earnest drive into high magic soon became

mixed with drugs and sex. His historians indicate that his direction

degenerated quickly into a combination of nature-worship and

witchcraft. And to ail appearances, most of the rituals were sex-

sessions, stimulated by drugs.

The magus should never allow himself to be absorbed into the

experiment. We find magic to have been perhaps a factor in older

religions that spelled for those religions permanence or transience . We

find the Jews gaining power with the rod of Aaron (which ate the snakes

from the rods of the Egyptians). We find the magic of the apostle Peter

frustrating the levitations of the magician Simon.

Miracles come under the heading of Magic and we find that almost every

major religion finds it necessary to list miracles performed by its

members at one time or another.

Miracles have been somehow accepted as the external form of divine

contact on the part of the practitioner. If we were to remove the

changing of the wine at the wedding feast, the raising of Lazarus, the

feeding of the multitude on insufficient bread and fish, and the casting

out of devils—the message of Love may never have gained the footing

that it did, nor would Jesus have gained the stature of Savior.

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There are limitations to Magic, however, and this fact or phase of Magic

has not properly been explained to the devout followers who imagine

that the powers of the magician are without limits. A hint of the nature of

Jesus' works of magic is given in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew ,

verses 53 to 58. The last verse reads: "And he did not many mighty

works there because of their unbelief." Jesus had gone back to his home

town to do a little preaching and met some skepticism.

Miracles do not come entirely from a divine source, if at all. Even those

miracles brought about with the aid of the faith of the believers or

followers are subject to natural laws. The phenomena that are listed as

miracles are mechanisms that do not upset any natural laws, but are,

rather, natural phenomena just not yet understood or explained by what

we understand to be scientific explanations at the time.

The question has often been raised concerning the reluctance or inability

of Jesus to embarrass his enemies with magic at the time of the final

agonies. It is argued that since he predicted His death, it would have

been unwise for Him to have escaped the enemy. But the fact that He

predicted it may well mean that He recognized inexorable karma or

natural laws that could not be breached. The argument has often been

brought forth that His success in centuries to come depended upon the

spectacle of an ignominious self-sacrifice being imprinted upon the

mind of mankind.

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Such a display was not necessary for Gautama the Buddha and , in fact ,

Gautama advised his followers against using magic. Let us suppose (with

justifiable supposition) that the changing of the water into wine was

done with hypnosis, that Lazarus was either hastily interred (an epileptic

or hypnotized cataleptic), that the feeding of the multitude was either

hypnosis or sleight of hand, and that the casting out of devils was simply

exorcism. Exorcism has been demonstrated by many primitive shamen

since the time of Christ—these shamen being not even Christian

converts, let alone priests.

Every magician gathers belief about him like a snowball and as the belief

snowballs bigger and bigger, he is able to do more marvelous things.

But, as I said before, all the while the magician is dealing with a science

of which he knows very little. He plays by ear. as it were, until one day

he almost surely tries some trick that does not work. The factors which

made his success vanish like a puff of smoke. These factors are his

ever-inflating ego and the belief of the audience. The factors which he

does not know, and the ignorance of them, brings about his failure.

Some of the magi have come to the conclusion that the visible world is

an illusion. This can only be understood properly when viewed from the

position or attitude of the Absolute. And this is saving little more to

relative man than to assure him of a possible situation that cannot be

proven. From the material standpoint, we cannot argue that the

material, visible world is illusory. However, the magus presumes that

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proper knowledge of the nature of this illusion will somehow give him

power over it.

Those who have really experienced sentience of the Absolute and have

viewed life from the direct appraisal of things—lose all inclination to

change any part of the theatrical mental reflections. An adult simply

loses interest in the toys of childhood and it matters not who has the

marbles now.

The Qabalah

I do not wish to deal extensively with the Qabalah because I have

encountered too many diverse authorities or pseudo-authorities on the

basic value of the Qabalah. There are evidently two uses of the Qabalah .

The lesser of these deals with magic and the higher use is in pursuit of

wisdom. MacGregor Mathers lists four forms of the Qabalah: Practical

Qabalah, or that which is devoted to talismanic magic; the Literal

Qabalah, or that which deals with a numerological analysis of the sacred

word; also, the Unwritten Qabalah and the Dogmatic Qabalah .

If you are not interested in talismanic magic, or in playing with word

numerology, but in the part that deals with man's relation to God and

the universe, you will want to go on to the Unwritten Qabalah. The

wisdom of the Unwritten Qabalah, or Dogmatic Qabalah, is practically an

endless study, especially if we are to launch into Literal Qabalah as well .

If the great secrets are transmitted orally, I conclude that years might

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well be wasted in study . . . when a few words whispered into the ear will

do the trick.

We are here again faced with the negative aspect of a movement—

which is secrecy. Discovery of which is always followed by the question ,

"What are they hiding, an explosive fact or an embarrassing ignorance?"

Additional Yoga Comment

I would like to omit any evaluation of the various types of hatha yoga.

And if possible, ignore the hundred or so cults that have sprung up in

this country whose only evident aim is to collect money and delude their

supporters.

I would like to presume that if the reader has read this far, he will be

aware that I have no interest in any movement that does not honestly

work toward the Truth. I consider it foolish for those who work for power

to subscribe to any "power system" that lacked the functional wisdom for

managing the power promised or that failed to forewarn the student of

all results of their actions.

I would also like to avoid, as much as possible, the endless and

confusing use of Indian terms. It is my belief that wisdom is not the

property of one race alone and, hence, it can be expressed in any

language. If at all. I borrow some words from the Indian language, such

as yoga and karma, because they are almost lay terms.

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While we are memorizing new symbols to understand a chapter, we

might be reading an entire book. The same thought applies to Qabalistic

studies. Many seekers are over-impressed by Hindu terminology and

lose their way through the woods by studying the trees. For instance, the

word transmigration is easier to understand than the word samsara

because, for one thing, the latter word is too often confused with

samskara which means karmic memory.

There is much to learn from the various Hindu schools. India is split up

into many religious factions which made for competition and stimulation .

India is situated close to Tibet and Tibet has long been the living

stronghold of occultism and transcendentalism. The prevalence of the

God-Man attitude, or theory of the evolution of man's soul toward

godhood, encouraged Indians and Tibetans for centuries to continue the

exploration of man.

If we are to take the axiom-directive seriously ("First know thyself"),

then we must realize that the Orientals are far ahead of us. A theology

that expects us to know the nature of God when we do not even know

our own nature is manifestly absurd. If, on the other hand, the Orientals

—like today's Westerners—have taken the Man-God attitude up because

of laziness and moral decay or out of rebellion against a priest-craft and

temple-taxes, then they are no further along than us.

The prevalent theme of nearly all yogic systems is the upward evolution

of transmigration to a better state. Some go as far as to set their sights

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upon a particular zenith at which they aim, such as Nirvana. In nearly all

yogic systems there is a noticeable absence of the worship of a deity .

Graduation from the worship of a non-human deity is looked upon as a

favorable step by mystics on the path of yoga. Ramakrishna supposedly

worshiped the goddess Kali for some time until a monk came along and

taught him to meditate upon his own spiritual centers. Thus,

Ramakrishna is supposed to have found all within himself.

In this case, the guru-monk became more important than Kali. I have

previously referred to the guru-chain—a very significant mechanism for

immortality.

THE CULTS

There are many cults flourishing today. Some promise an advantage for

the applicant that is similar to mental yoga. I have a filing cabinet filled

with papers from different "brotherhoods," "orders," and simply nameless

gurus. I am indeed puzzled to understand or evaluate some of them for

motives. Some do not have the circulation necessary to bring in any

periodic flow of money. I have to conclude that this type of venture had

to depend upon a big financial killing by a complete takeover of the

finances of the enquirers.

This practice is not unusual. The Radha Soami group, while not asking

for money, instructed their followers to place all of their physical karma

in the hands of the master. This placing of the "whole being" in the hands

of the master would, naturally, endanger any bank account.

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I received certain "documents" through the mail from a man who

inferred that he had membership in a brotherhood of universal

dimensions and ancient origins. Questions by me about seeming

inconsistencies were answered with vague replies or confusing allusions

to general ethical postulates. Some of the "documents" had interesting

information in them, but nothing was in them that could not be found

somewhere else. They were unique in their manner of presentation only .

One clever "document" tried to demonstrate that wisdom was somehow

dependent upon the proportional ability to purchase it. With that one I

called a halt.

Another cult professing to be reliquary of ancient wisdom used the trick

of mailing me a letter from Greece. It informed me that I would soon

hear from one of their "elders" in California.

Most of these cults protect themselves by initially confiding to the

applicant that the rest of mankind is vulgar and unable to contain the

powerful medicine which the cult is about to bestow. The next step is the

swearing of the applicant to secrecy, under pain of causing kinks in the

cosmos or his own convolutions, if there is any divulgence to the

profane. This manages to screen the operation.

For this reason, secrecy itself has become something to look for if you

are looking for indications of trickery. Secrecy appeals to many business

men or prominent professional men because, to begin with, they are a

bit ashamed to have their colleagues or drinking companions hear about

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their joining a cult. A person may also be very hungry for the truth, but

still wish to check it out before sacrificing too many of his business

contacts or risking social criticism.

We should not be afraid of social criticism if we have the conviction that

a search is necessary for finding. And the search is more important than

static membership in an organized religion.

When there is a liability of hurting the feelings of our friends, it is

advisable not to preach an unsure doctrine or cult, but there is quite a

gap between discretion and total secrecy. In the days of the inquisition ,

or the Salem witch-hunt, secrecy was a necessity, of course . . . for

students of witchcraft. But too many cults have sworn their members to

secrecy, only to be proven fraudulent themselves.

A man, now deceased, who was known to have spent his entire life

looking for the truth, spent many of his valuable younger years in a

movement operated by a man and wife. This couple seemed very

sincere and had written several books that showed no great

inconsistencies. Their works did contain a considerable amount of

unprovable concept-building. My friend, who had gathered quite a bit of

money as the result of inventions, had evidently contributed to this pair

for a period of over fifteen years. The couple was involved in a scandal

when some unsatisfied victim exposed them to the world. They were

found to be drug-addicts and prone to sexual excesses and

abnormalities with quite a circle of co-conspirators . And in the event

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that these things seem inconsequential, the crime was really

inconsistency . . . they had been preaching quite the opposite of that

which they were practicing.

Too many of us are led to the acceptance of cults by our eagerness to

accept strange terms. Many cults are nothing more than a slightly new

twist to older speculative theosophies. We are enchanted, as neophytes ,

by the use of new exotic terms, such as the word, "chakra."

While one group of philosophers is desperately trying to establish

understanding of the body that is visible and the mind that has evident

relationship with that body, other people are inventing and designing

systems, both intangible and vague, and elaborating on details with

imaginative, detailed charts. The latter do not bother to explain either

their system or their charts thoroughly so that the viewer may clarify the

system with his own personal experience outside of twenty or thirty

years servitude to a cult.

And the final frustration is that even those who profess to have seen

chakras still have no better knowledge than ourselves about the post -

mortem destiny of man—other than a vague belief in reincarnation .

An analogy might be given. It is like giving a condemned man a tedious

course in anatomy so that he will know the precise functioning of his

nervous system when he experiences the gas chamber. The thing with

which that condemned man is concerned is the condition in which he will

be after he has breathed the gas and expired. This analogy-reference

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takes into account the possibility that there might be such a thing as a

chakra.

There exists a very valid argument that applies to systems that purport

to change our state of being or to sharpen our intuition or

understanding. This same argument is used to justify a lesser or venal

cult. The argument is, of course, that proof of the claims of a discipline

aimed at changing our state of being lies in the end result and cannot be

demonstrated beforehand.

I do not flatly accept this argument in either case. We still must make an

effort to make prior evaluations. And it would appear that a developed

intuition is our only alternative.

GURDJIEFF AND OUSPENSKY

In the Gurdjieff-movement we find a refreshing lack of oriental

terminology. On the other hand, Gurdjieff has his own unique brand of

confusion. To learn of Gurdjieff, you might read Ouspensky's, In Search

of the Miraculous, and Rom Landau's, God Is My Adventure. Kenneth

Walker also wrote a book about Gurdjieff, Venture With Ideas, which was

reviewed in Time magazine.

The review in Time has little mention of Walker except to say that the

latter believed Gurdjieff to be an outstanding philosopher -psychologist .

Gurdjieff died in 1949 at the age of 77. Ouspensky, his chief disciple,

died two years before. The article depicts Gurdjieff as a gourmet and a

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"shearer of sheep," or confidence man. The author does credit him as

being the container of a vast amount of knowledge.

From reading, All and Everything, and from reading what I could that

had been written by those close to Gurdjieff, I have come to believe that

he fathered an interesting metaphysics and had an astute insight into

psychology. Some of his followers lost faith in him and left his

Fontainebleau retreat after Gurdjieff became injured in an automobile

accident. He is supposed to have led them to believe that his system

gave him control over accidents.

I am much more interested in the way Ouspensky deals with the

Gurdjieffian philosophy. Ouspensky presents more of a serious ,

methodical approach. The Gurdjieffian fanfare is lacking in Ouspensky's

explanation of the work. With Ouspensky we recognize that learning to

think correctly is more important than concept-building , because the

latter may lead to fantasy. Some psychoanalytical systems are good ,

therefore. The self-observing system gives us something to do with our

meditations besides just allowing the thoughts to wander. We must

indeed observe ourselves first.

Another very good point about the Ouspensky lectures is his insistence

upon the School as a means for growth. The implication—a very valid

one, incidentally—is that man must have his fellowman, even in the

business of spiritual development.

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Gurdjieff has now been dead for twenty years and his movement is still

alive, but some of the people who are giving lectures with a pretence of

authority as Gurdjieffian heirs are either functioning under conjecture or

inaccuracy, because their movements are fanning out in all directions .

I heard that lectures were being given at Virginia Beach a few years back

and decided to make the trip. I sought out the lecturer. He was a young

man of twenty-five years, if that. Twenty minutes of conversation with

him started me in a homeward direction without listening to any of his

lectures. In a brash manner he announced that he knew all there was to

know about the movement. I protested that he was only in his twenties

and could not have known Gurdjieff in his lifetime. The boy had a ready

answer. He announced with the same blandness, that he had quite a

start on me, since he had known Gurdjieff in his previous lifetime, or

incarnation!

There are about a dozen pretenders to Gurdjieff's throne and none of

them flatters the memory of Gurdjieff. I had a particular encounter with

one such sell-appointed guru of the Gurdjieff line. This encounter may

serve to demonstrate the extreme caution that a person must exercise

in order to choose not only a teacher, but each acquaintance or co -

worker. This man came to me practically out of nowhere. He came

unrecommended and unsolicited.

This fellow did not write and get acquainted by mail before making his

appearance—a custom required for those coming to the Ashram . He

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made several flamboyant phone calls and had his "disciple" make one.

He next sent a very wordy and flattering telegram and followed the

telegram in person, accompanied by two men—one crippled and the

other hirsute.

I picked them up at the nearest train station and drove them some forty

miles. Their smell was an ordeal in itself. Had it not been that part of this

smell was an alcoholic one, I might have excused their untidy condition

as the result of traveling and poor accommodations.

The leader was an oily, hairy man with a weak but cunning face. I

listened to his tales about Gurdjieff for several days before I realized that

he really knew no more about Gurdjieff than myself. He was an unctuous

name-dropper and at first some of the Ashram-residents were

impressed by him. Soon I noticed that the other residents of the Ashram

were leaving and new arrivals were dissuaded from staying. I also

learned that he was running a confidence racket. When questioned, he

did not deny it and claimed that Gurdjieff had certain sincere students

whom he did not charge, but that Gurdjieff, like himself, had no qualms

about fleecing "the little old ladies." With an affable smile he would

spread his hands and remark that Gurdjieff extracted large sums from

people because money was the only contribution that some people could

make.

This impostor, whom I shall call Mr. A, took a few pages from Gurdjieff's

history that were to his liking. He consumed a quart of wine a day—if he

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could get his hands on it. "For his low blood-sugar." The crippled man

was receiving a small pension and I discovered that the other two were

using and abusing the crippled man. Finally, the crippled man left.

The younger companion, Mr. J.G., was a very clever disciple. He

constantly sang the praises of his leader. He would drop little tidbits

regarding the long wait that he had to endure before his teacher

answered any of his questions. They spoke nonchalantly about raising

the dead, about curing with herbs, and about their common Master who

walked through walls.

Then other little stories began to trickle out. They told of having a sort of

commune in New York in a condemned building. The police evicted

them. Mr. J.G. bragged that he had shot a policeman in San Francisco. In

one city on the West Coast, Mr. A. had his followers carry him upon a

horizontal cross upon which he stretched, dressed in sundry clerical

vestments, and wearing a crown. This travesty he considered to be very

comic.

He also told of serving thirty days in jail for contempt of court. I decided

that I had two impostors on my hands and possibly two extortionists ,

judging from the money that came to them through the mail. So I moved

them out of the house and told them that they would have to leave the

premises. They asked for permission to stay a few days in a house trailer

until some important mail came, which they were expecting soon. I

agreed, mainly because they did not argue about leaving.

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It was very close to Thanksgiving and they asked me to meet the bus in

town and pick up a young lady who was coming in from the South to

spend the holiday with them. They had no car. I picked this visitor up

late in the evening before Thanksgiving. Since neither of these men

believed in work, there was no adequate fuel at the Ashram, so I

suggested that this girl stay in my house in town for the night. I found

that she was sixteen years of age and that she knew many startling

things about Mr.'s A. and J.G.

She told me that she did not wish to come and visit them, but that she

came out of fear . . . of physical violence and black magical powers . She

had met them in Colorado. J.G. had encouraged her and a group of

hippies to join with Mr. A. This little colony was evicted from the area and

they began to hitchhike toward New York.

When the group arrived in New York it only consisted of the two men and

this young girl. They immediately tried to put her to work as a prostitute

and when she resisted they beat her and broke her nose. And, yet, this

same girl was ready to go back for more punishment. The girl's mother

had been sending them large sums of money. When I talked to the

mother by phone, she admitted that the money was sent out of fear.

When I ordered the two to leave the trailer they threatened me and

burned the trailer completely as they left. This is the price that can be

paid for being impractical or being slow in setting oneself up as an

arbiter of people coming to stay and work at the noblest of undertakings .

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I believe that the only way to get anything from the Gurdjieff system is

to study the books by Ouspensky and the other disciples. After having

done quite a bit of research, I fail to find anything about Gurdjieff that

would give him the position of a spiritual leader. That he had wide

experience is true and that he was also gifted with extraordinary

common sense is also true.

He comes in with a new approach. We do not have to listen to an

interminable symbology of no worthwhile meaning. We do not have to

memorize a foreign vocabulary to study Gurdjieff. Yet, he says many of

the same things that we could learn if we labored through oriental

philosophy and transcendentalism.

Gurdjieff furnishes us with a system by which we can escape

mechanicalness and find self-determination. He also proposes the

school, or brotherhood. He is one of the few authors that emphasize that

man is victimized by nature.

The theory of Kal tells us the same story that Gurdjieff tells but in a

different way—about man's hopeless condition as a slave to nature.

Gurdjieff also reaffirms the "Many are called but few are chosen" line that

relates to the percentages of people who have evolved sufficiently to

desire to escape or search for an answer. Gurdjieff categorizes the

evolvement of man as having seven steps and claims that most of

mankind falls into the first three steps or numbers. Thus, man number

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four is the one most likely to escape from the net of nature. Gurdjieff

also places significance upon that which he calls the "sly man."

This little reference that we find in the Gurdjieff teachings is often

overlooked. It has significant meaning. It means that we do not get to

heaven by being saintly, because trying to be saintly is a fool's endeavor

. . . a fool who pretends to envision the will of some invisible deity and to

judge that that deity sees mankind acceptable if sweet and gregarious .

Likewise, in ancient times the same class of fools butchered human

sacrifices because they thought the act of sacrifice to be pleasing to the

gods.

The Gurdjieff-system teaches that a man must first have common sense

and must discover the many, many ways in which each human being

outwits himself about the most serious of subjects—self-identification

and survival. It is worthwhile to note that if a man does not know the

looker—there is little use in looking. The evidence which has been

brought back by lookers whose cognitive apparatus has not been

checked out is not very reliable. In fact, down through the ages the

masses have chosen to use their emotions and desires as eyes. The

Gurdjieff-system automatically places man as the field of study . This is

nothing new either. There is a very ancient adage, "First know thyself."

The Gurdjieff teachings have some inconsistencies. Much of the writings

consist of a complex cosmology and this comes as a bit of extra padding

—if his system is designed to bring man into the exaltation of being fully

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"awake." Knowledge of the universal cosmology has no value to us if we

cannot utilize that knowledge in the direction of our own immortality .

Also we can only conclude that being "awake" in the fullest sense is

synonymous with reaching the Truth in the fullest sense. And since

Gurdjieff does not describe for us this ultimate goal, but recommends a

path similar to the three-fold directive of Buddha, we can only assume

that the goal must be the same in any case. And if the goal of the

Gurdjieff or Ouspensky system would be (even without their intention)

cosmic consciousness—there would not be much use in categorizing ,

cosmologically, an illusory world.

Unfortunately, neither Gurdjieff nor Ouspensky tries to describe the

condition of the man who is fully "awake." We do learn that man number

seven is more awake than man number four. But a person almost gets

the impression from the writings of both and from the lives of both that

they were not sure about the state of being that might be expected from

a "man number seven." In other words, the goal is never really named.

And for this reason, I have come to the conclusion that the Gurdjieff-

system is a good and worthy system for a person starting out on the

path of self-liberation. But it is not complete. Perhaps there was a

personal teaching that was not recordable because it would naturally

differ in each student-case. If this latter supposition is true, then, of

course, the Gurdjieff-system would be more complete, but it would still

leave us in the dark about the reasons for the complex cosmology which

is part of the writings.

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I realize that many opinions have been given in this book and only a little

information has been given as to the manner of collecting the

information that must necessarily have led me to my inflexible

conclusions.

When I was about twenty-five years of age, I began to meet other men

who were of the same mind as myself about the search for Truth. Since I

do not have their permission, I will not identify them. Not that they

would object to being known perhaps. But they have grown families and

children and grandchildren who may feel that such divulgence would not

be compatible with a particular game of life that they may be playing .

We were not many . . . the more faithful ones numbered six or eight.

Then there were other contacts who knew of our interests, and these

friends also supplied us with information and attended our meetings . We

decided to prospect in separate environments for systems and for

people who might know more than ourselves. In the early days of the

search we were afflicted with the "Hunt the Guru Syndrome." We

promised one another to learn all that we could, and then compare

notes. Each of us joined different sects and became initiates of those

sects which held initiation requisite to learning that which the sect

claimed to be valuable, esoteric knowledge. Needless to say, on many

occasions we were disappointed with the trivial offerings of most sects .

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In this manner we learned, as a group, that which could not have been

learned in three lifetimes by any of us alone. We became acquainted

with the initiation rites of SRF and Radha Soami. We obtained heaps of

Rosicrucian private lessons or mandami. One of our group was "opened "

in the Subud movement. Two others attended latihan sessions.

We made lone trips to investigate materializations, spiritualistic

phenomena of all sorts, and individuals who had particularly unique

talents. We visited witch-doctors, priests, Protestant ministers , and

fortune-tellers. One member took time out to help set up a scientific

research group—the Mind-Science Foundation of San Antonio (endowed

by Tom Slick). We worked with smaller "psychic research" groups whose

investigations were along the lines of ESP, table tilting and hypnosis .

We subscribed to magazines that dealt with occult or transcendental

matters and occasionally placed ads in them to contact people who

might be sincere.

We had several things in common besides ignorance and the admission

of it. We agreed that moneyed cults, power and glory cults, and

movements with excessive secrecy were not worth the bother . Of

course, we argued among ourselves over the relative worth of some

movements;

I feel that the history of our search is secondary to our conclusions . The

history of our diggings would include many movements and teachers not

even discussed in this book. Some are not worth mentioning. Some were

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found to be created out of whole cloth. And a few of those mentioned in

this book are not worth the following of one day, but they are examined

here, nevertheless, to demonstrate the negative effect they have upon

the minds of too many people.

By the same token, there are individuals who were instrumental in either

encouraging me to continue my work or who were directly helpful, and

who, beyond a doubt, held the rank of teacher, who will not be described

here because their value was recognized only by their conversations and

their manner of working. If any sort of bridge has been built by our

collective labors, a picture of the bridge is more important than a

portrait of ourselves.

And still, in this chapter devoted to observations of teachers and unique

systems, I should admit that those who played possibly the most

valuable role for the most of us were not the teachers of any cult or

well-known system, but were individuals largely unseen by the general

public . . . whose real value to us was forever unknown to their next door

neighbors, employers and associates.

To give them justice would require a chapter or a book for each of them.

And to write less would leave the reader with fragmentary evidence or

would give only the human picture of mistakes made, and blind

struggling. It might be interesting here to give a sort of summary

conclusion of our group as regards the systems encountered.

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I am sure that nearly all of us would agree that systems that aid in

"becoming" rather than "learning" are endorsed. The real science, we

concur, is knowing the self, which we somehow sense is the door to

Reality. The observation of magic or the study and classification of

phenomena is mostly an interesting divergence for the mind when it is

too tired to do anything else. The study of phenomena and phenomenal

men does us no good if we cannot relate that study to the better

understanding of our self, or at least formulate laws of phenomena by

studying them.

An example of one of the phenomenal men is Edgar Cayce. I made a trip

to Virginia Beach to see his place and talk to some of the people who

came there. I did it only as part of a family vacation. Edgar Cayce was

dead and his son Hugh Lynn manifested none of his father's psychic

ability. And Edgar Cayce, while living, gave reams of advice and perhaps

issued some semblance of a philosophy, but he left behind no system

nor explanation of his own peculiar powers answerable to scientific

investigation.

Nor did he give a formula for a student who might like to be a psychic

doctor or even finder of lost items. Cayce was a phenomenon, not a

teacher. And now being gone, he is only a history of a phenomenon. It is

good to read of him and to read his writings. It is not wise to make of him

a religion or a solitary path to Truth.

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Phenomenal men are more valuable contacts than are phenomena . The

study of phenomena includes the wide range of flying saucers, Fortean

research, spiritualistic phenomena, magical mantras, astrology ,

numerology and thaumaturgy. None of these deserves an all-out

application of our life's energy, but they are more commendable pursuits

than remaining inert on the soft bed of organized religion.

FIFTH PAPER

Obstacles to Transcendental Efforts

ARGUMENT FOR TRANSCENDENTAL RESEARCH

Transcendentalism not only provokes more negative argument than

positive argument, but it also provokes more ridicule. The ridicule is

inspired by the comic or pathetic appearance of some transcendental

poseurs, fanatics, and psychic ripple makers who make up some of the

motley classes of transcendental effort. We can never be sure, except in

certain individual cases, whether occultism and transcendentalism

causes or worsens the mental conditions which are likely to be described

as "sick" or "crazy". And it may be true that some sincere people may

have submitted themselves to deprivation, asceticism, or some painful

experimentation which may have left them in worse shape than they

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were before they became transcendentalists. In any event, we should

not criticize this latter group, until we have walked a mile in their

moccasins.

As for argument . . . it is not hard to find arguments against spiritual or

transcendental prospecting. The arguments come in from all sides , and

especially from those well-organized groups whose concepts might be

jeopardized. Religion is content to bed down with the politician and

sociologist and make any sort of compromise to protect its slumber .

Religion evidently wants no amateurs adding to its enlightenment.

Psychology is alarmed by various transcendental findings which might

upset the entire psychological pretence.

We can dispense with the arguments from religious sources, because we

should know by now that transcendentalism is actually religious

research, and most of the criticism from religion is recognizable as

sectarian or political—meaning that some sects embody in their religious

practices things which other sects persecute.

That which diverts more minds from psychic research than anything else

is the persistent scientific sophistry of pseudo-scientific writers . It might

be said that material scientists and those esoteric groups which

specialize in mind-science or systems aimed at states of being , are the

most polarized. The material scientist claims that the transcendentalist

cannot prove anything, and implies that the latter makes no sense. The

transcendentalist, on the other had often does not try to make sense,

219
because he feels his development to be superior to logical processes.

And he, in turn, also accuses the material scientist of being only a sort of

animated slide rule, without the necessary feeling-ability to actually do

research work in dimensions other than the apparent one.

However, both work from the same base. Neither denies the existence of

man, and their sciences or meta-sciences are the results of and concern

for. understanding man's relation to environment whether that

environment be the visible world, the invisible and molecular man, or

the still more invisible, and seemingly remote God-spark, of which

molecular man may only be a reflection.

We must abridge all such argument and admit that man is a fact, and in

being a fact, immediately is assured of the immortality and

indestructibility of the fact-state. Whatever his limits are as regards his

immortality or mortality, or as regards his degree of consciousness , his

fact-status is permanent. Of course, the concept of the nature of, or the

exactness of, that fact-state is interpreted differently by the two

polarized groups, and therein lies the root of the misunderstanding .

Man is a physical fact in that he (particularly the material scientist ),

recognizes as man. only that man-being, or man-object, which is

witnessable by the physical senses. And it is true that man is such a fact

for such an observer. However, the transcendentalist may go as far as to

say that the physical body and the senses themselves are both illusions

and the results of illusions. Yet, the transcendentalist (as in the case of a

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Zen student or aspirant to Satori) still views man as a fact. The amazing

thing is that this latter group (of transcendentalists) views their concept

of man's fact-status as more concrete and real than any other . Their

fact-man is indestructible and complete. The fact-man of the material

scientist is a transitory creature and a limited one.

Another argument against transcendental work consists of complaints of

supposedly infinite and insurmountable difficulties involved in such

research. This argument bears some truth, but this not valid in the long

run. An equivalent argument might have been handed to the cave men

to discourage them from embarking upon their primitive and seemingly

hopeless research, which must have ultimately led to our present

technology. In other words, it is better to look back upon the successes

of past programs if we need assurances for future efforts, regardless of

the field,

It is true that we are working with abstractions, but it is also true that

even in abstractions, patterns have been discovered. These patterns , in

turn, lead to either a better understanding of the phenomena involved,

or to new angles from which the phenomena can be studied. The sad

evidence remains that such patterns have been discovered decades and

centuries ago, but the material scientists, ever on the alert for things

apparent, failed to see these apparent patterns. Such a pattern is

expressed in ancient occult books with the words, "As above, so below."

This ancient allusion to the relation of the Microcosm to the Macrocosm

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is still missed by many physicists who are aware of the orbital systems

of both atoms and solar systems.

Hypnosis was practiced by primitive humanity, but it was many

centuries later that either the scientist or medical practitioner of our

quasi-civilized society admitted the validity of the phenomena of

hypnosis. And it was probably a half-century later, after that admission ,

that it was used as a therapeutic instrument as well as a parlor pastime .

If it was possible for primitive peoples to come up with such an

instrument long before Galileo demonstrated his lenses, (he was

belabored by the Church of Rome because he was unable to prove, as in

a court of law, beyond all cavil and doubt, that the pope was not the

center of the universe), then there surely must be hope for the modern

researcher. All the latter needs is the courage and basic intelligence of

an aboriginal shaman.

We find another argument which claims that all occult phenomena are

the result of fraudulent manipulations, and that all transcendental cults

result from the hunger of the needy layman and from the greed of the

dispensers of nostrums and gimmicks. And I must admit that this

argument has a true bearing on ninety percent of the cult movements ,

for if I did not recognize considerable and manifest fraudulence, I would

have omitted much of this work.

Yet, even in some of the movements that have been proven to have

fraudulent directors, we find some material borrowed from other sources

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which, in their own right, were not money-motivated. And often, if we

submit to dig through this type of re-digested material, we will

eventually come across evidence of historical research and note -taking ,

so that even the charlatan hacks of such evidence may have some

value.

Above all, no man should enter transcendental work with fear-

expectations. He should attack it with the same energy that he would

apply to mastering calculus, and with the knowledge or conviction that

he can study either calculus or esoteric philosophy and still be a man .

There is no reason for any man to anticipate any metamorphosis of his

physical body or deterioration of his mental processes because of such a

search. It is possible that preconceptions of angelic development for

men of the cloth and of saffron robes alike have resulted in their acting

the part to a point of affectation of strange poses and states of mind.

If we are male, we should advance upon the battlements of ignorance

with the tools of the male, with aggressiveness. The female may find the

mark better with passiveness. In any event, there is no danger of her

becoming less feminine by being passive, and. less danger of losing her

femininity. Both parties should never lose sight of human exigencies ,

right up to the day of final victory or cosmic-consciousness . Until that

final day our role can only be that of the fact-man that is knowable.

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 THE CURSE OF INTELLECTUALISM

We are continually subjected to the fallacy that an intellectual is a wise

mam Let us ask ourselves about the nature of our real objectives in

pursuing the study that leads to being an intellectual. And then after this

self-scrutiny, let us ask our neighbor-intellectuals, our colleagues,

about their motives for becoming scholars or experts in an intellectual

field.

The human being goes into higher education because of primitive drives .

The main factor in a young man's decision to fight his way through

college is competition. To strive with greater facility for the material

things of life . . . which is the same as saying that he is putting a bit more

effort into satisfying his physical seizes, his appetites, or his fears.

An engineer will have twice the earning potential of a shoe salesman ,

and perhaps three times the earning ability of a farmer. With that

proportion of earnings he is better able to afford the type of fear or

desire that might stimulate him. He does not specifically enter into the

study of calculus to find the Truth. And too often, once he has become a

"qualified" engineer, he is apt to scorn anyone who overlooks his

importance, or who might question the infallibility of science as the

engineer sees it.

In days gone by, there was a tremendous reverence for even a school

teacher. Anyone who showed a love for learning was automatically

presumed to be wise. A school teacher is little more than a memory bank

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for the community. They are the custodians of information. They

memorize, but the nature of their work causes them to fall into the habit

of acceptance of authority, which does not make for philosophers or

thinkers. They drill themselves as well as their students.

The college student who takes up a more scientific course and avoids

the teaching profession may well become an efficient slide rule or

computer to enhance the environment, or to aid the interminable

scientific pursuits of society. But once the engineer has mastered the

slide rule and become an extension of it, he has little time left to look

into the nature of life and reality. The difference between the intellectual

and the farmer (besides their earnings) is that the farmer sells his

physical energy while the engineer sells his mind. And for this simple

reason, the mind of the engineer is of less value to his Self, or to that

part of him that depends upon the mind to evaluate itself.

Go among your colleagues, if you associate with intellectuals , and ask

them for the reasons for their pursuit of education. And ask them for

their opinions about the scientific investigations of phenomena as yet

unexplained by our sciences . . . such as are approached by

transcendentalism. Ask them to define themselves, or to give reasons

why they have not bothered to define themselves.

You will find that nearly all intellectuals and scientists see no urgency in

defining themselves before they define the material world about them.

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The appalling thing in the world of religion, and up or down to the world

of psychology, is the manifest confusion. We have a painful weakness in

regard to authority. Even the most absurd concepts will, by some twist

of statistics or intuition, appear to be valid. And on the other hand , those

concepts born out of reason, or legalized by pseudo-authority , will be

constantly attacked by unexplained phenomena or contrary evidence . Of

course, the main weakness of both categories is that they are both

mostly concepts rather than discoveries.

Frustration besets us at every starting point and at every attempt at

definition. We start off proclaiming nobly that we are in search of the

Truth and are determined to find it. Immediately there are authorities

that will rise up and denounce us for fools, saying that the finite mind

will never perceive the infinite. Yet, the same theologians who utter this

also attest to the teachings of Christ, Who advised us to seek in order to

find, and Who also declared that the Truth would make us free. I am not

eager at any point to ridicule the honest theologian, nor to belittle any

effort toward genuine understanding. We may justly lament the fact that

there are people who stand in the pulpit of authority whose only cause is

their own and whose words are geared to manifest their cleverness in

argument, and whose arguments are oriented toward profit. These

people are not always itinerant, back-woods preachers or curb -stone

orators. Some of them have dictated the policy of major religions and

others have dominated entire nations.

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Which brings us to another facet of terrestrial thinking. We are inclined

to think that that which everyone believes in must be true. We have

carried our gregariousness over into a massive respect for mob -opinion .

Eminent theologians will proudly cant in tones acceptable that there is

immortality because everyone believes it, while the truth that they hide

is that everyone desires it. Of course, we are immediately open to

confusion, even with that criticism, because it is possible that if

everyone really believed in immortality, that belief might create some

form of immortality, if it were not otherwise a fact. However, we

immediately come back to the factual statistics of the number of people

who sincerely and unwaveringly believe that we will survive death . Many

honest theologians feel that the only immortality-hope lies in keeping

the masses reassured, so that their faith will be mountainous and

creative to the point where the postmortem status of their own

particular religious group will be assured.

I am inclined to believe that about ninety percent of the people desire

immortality. There is a small percentage who do not even think about it ,

or who desire the eternal rest of oblivion. I doubt that a majority of the

human race actually believes in a life after death. I think that even the

zealot has a moment of uncertainty or light, whichever it might be, when

he senses his own gullibility and gains a bit of insight into the

complexities of his own rationalizations.

I ask nearly everyone I meet to give me their beliefs on immortality and

their reasons for thinking as they do. I am always looking for an account

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that will manifest conviction, and I am aware that perhaps I am seeking

for some sort of magic that will give me a pattern of the Truth that I had

not previously contemplated. Regardless of motives, the answers that

people gave me, although possessing little of the magical or the

illuminating, betrayed the trend of the thoughts and aspirations of the

masses. It can be summed up best by the expression, "Me too." They do

not presume to know that which is going to happen to them, and they do

not presume to be big enough to find out. The layman points out that

billions of people have gone on before him, and he expects to go to the

same place with them. He might even remind me that he is paying his

minister a salary to insure his celestiality. If we approach the

professional man, or those who might be labeled the intelligentsia , we

will obtain some really complex rationalizations or indications of very

brave futilism. The layman is often more honest than the well-educated

man, because he is conscious of his lack of learning. His intuitional

doubts are equally as valuable as those of the pedant or philosopher .

The layman is lazier because he allows another man to do his theorizing

for him, but his laziness may be also intuitively inspired, since for some

it is just as well to begin with frustration as to end with it. And it is

human to clutch at straws.

We are reminded of the force called Kal, which in Radha Soami literature

is mentioned more frequently than the name of God. And I think that the

one-sided amount of emphasis is appropriate. Kal is the force that keeps

men in darkness, and when we start to recognize him, we see him all

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about us. God is not so apparent. I have always been conscious of the

existence of opposition to spiritual growth, and I prefer to label this

negative force as "The Forces of Adversity." I prefer this label over such

limited words as Kal or Satan. These items also imply personal

opposition or the conspiracy of a particular being against humanity , and

when all the evidence is in, we have no foundation for such a belief. In

the search for reliable translations of the Bible, we find that Satan should

really read as "adversary."

I am opposed to advocates of "positive thinking," and to disciples of the

omnipotence of belief. I maintain that we are relative creatures . We have

not yet merged with unity and lost our identity. We look at all things with

two eyes, a bicameral brain, a mind that appraises with alternate logic

and intuition, and we wallow in the misery of the paradox and the

confusion of the polarity in our thinking. We attempt to utter our

anguished message and we find that we must use a relative language,

and we are snowed under by heaps of words that can only express the

difficulty of trying to say something accurately before we have lost the

thought that fathered the effort.

There are those who deny negative powers. Yet, if man can conceive of

positive powers, he must admit the negative. All is not sweetness and

light, unless somewhere there is bitterness and darkness, I cannot

visualize a time when all will be wise simultaneously, for wisdom

depends upon ignorance. Nor can I visualize an era when all men will

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share alike in a great economic brotherhood because wealth depends

upon poverty.

If positive thinking means negating of negative forces, then I can concur .

But I cannot place my head in such optimistic sands that promise for my

leaving my unfeathered rear exposed, that no harm will come to me.

Nature has a way of gleefully awakening the ostrich-type. Those who

have too great a faith seem to encounter disastrous opportunities to test

that faith. One great Christian controversy centers around the despairing

words of Christ upon the cross, since some feel that even Christ had a

loss or weakening of faith. The type of "positive thinking" that has been

offered to us as salutary in spiritual endeavors is better adapted to

salesmen and persons who wish to free themselves psychologically from

some mania or habit with the help of auto-suggestion. "'Positive

thinking" does not bear the characteristics of a law, but rather identifies

a technique or psychological lever.

Kal is supposed to permeate all human thinking. Of course, this may

leave us a bit confused. But, when we first begin to read philosophically

we get a hint that much of the world in which we live is an illusion. Kal

says that religions themselves were invented and diversified to dismay

the sincere and persistent seekers. We have the Biblical tower of Babel .

There is a story of a sort of Maya that resulted from the eating of the

paradisiacal apple. (The desire to be like God.) These little legends seem

to indicate that for a long time man has had a whispering feeling that

the game is fixed.

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We generally go through several stages of dismay that might be

interpreted as education. We align ourselves with a religion or are

aligned with one at birth. Then we notice discrepancies of dogma and

the hypocrisy of the clergy. We become disgusted with yesterday's

beliefs, and we are attracted to another and often opposite system of

thinking. Then we find the second system equally as transparent as the

first, and we increase our despair. But our attitude is broadened. We

start looking for the good points of various movements, and from such

an optimistic endeavor, plunge into a way of life that may reward us

temporarily with a great feeling—one of bliss or illumination . However , it

must be emphasized that such exaltation is temporary. We cannot

understand this bliss, and when we try to analyze or prolong it while

living the vegetative life, it leaves us. And when it goes, we stand and

wonder if we have not been the victim of self-hypnosis or hysteria of a

sort caused by the chemical changes in the blood or glands wrought by

the spiritual practice engendered. And then, suspiciously once again , we

look over our shoulder to see if Kal is standing with his feet in our hip-

pockets, laughing.

In the early stages of enlightenment we look with pity on the old lady

who takes her pennies to church for the padre to buy beer. We think we

are smarter because we can analyze her blindness, or because we have

been lucky enough to catch the pastor tippling, or overhear the preacher

confessing to be only an oratorical emollient. Yet, while we are

convinced that the cult to which we are paying tribute is beyond

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suspicion, and often think ourselves fortunate to be picked by one that

makes masters out of muttonheads . . . it will be good to pause and

remember that it may be the same with the semi-exalted as with the

lowly lady supplicant. As above, so below.

It is often the case—when a seeker is dismayed at the lack of truth in his

native religion—that he is very easily satisfied with a foreign creed that

he understands even less. A new hypnosis is established, and the person

who smugly thought he was above being hypnotized, again is entranced .

The Christian religion generally pictures a benevolent God who has

scattered us like seeds, some among the cockles and stones, and some

on warm manure where we will prosper. In the Christian religions we do

not feel very important, so when we hear of a system of thinking that

endows us with a godhood of sorts, we lift our ears readily. It is not the

ignorant layman alone who is responsible for oriental leanings . Some of

our eminent lodges borrow from Indian literature and pass it on to their

applicants as arcane knowledge. Many serious philosophers founded

schools based on systems studied in the orient. And sitting in the chair of

the Western hierophant, we again see Kal waving his wand and laughing .

The lodges employ secrecy, even as the quasi-gurus of India. The

secrecy is treasured with the same zeal as the horseplay at the

initiations.

Those who decide to join an Indian cult may agree to an even more blind

servitude to a teacher who speaks in a jargon more confusing than Latin .

And while the candidate may have previously bought beer for one

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teacher, he will be possibly now buying hashish for another teacher . And

after paying years of his life into a cult or lodge that promises everything

in the line of secret revelations, he may discover that Freud was a

greater revelator than any of the high-priests.

I have labored through some very dense writings in which the wisdom

pretended therein was certainly circular, and like the symbolical serpent ,

managed to continually bite its own tail. And yet, most of them stand

abashed in the presence of a simple story "like the Bhagavad Gita or the

Rubaiyat. We attempt to analyze the worth of a theory qualitatively and

quantitatively, and in the process invent a storm of complex words, each

bearing a dozen facets of meaning. Although the writers, too, must

become confused—those abstruse, scholarly writers on esoteric matters

surely must enjoy the confusion that they know the reader undergoes in

attempting to first understand them, and then to seek the loose raveling

that will enable the reader to pull the whole cloth apart. I think Kal

invented all the big words . . . and maybe is responsible for inventing all

words.

The inquirer goes out to seek understanding of these creeds or

movements that promise immortality. He is often awed by the first books

that he picks up, or the first "authority" he meets on the subject. I

wonder at this point how many people would have pursued the study of

yoga and kindred subjects, if certain words of the original Indian

language were omitted and instead were replaced by simple

synonymous English terms.

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For instance, let us take some of their words and place them alongside

an English equivalent. We have a juvenile abhorrence of the word

"teacher" but we will climb the Himalayas in search of a guru. And by

uttering the word "guru," we manage to add another point of argument

to our dictionary.

Cultists talk glibly of Nirvana, Devachan, Brahm Lok, and Sat Desh as

though the use of the words took them there magically. Heaven has lost

its magical sound. Another term used with much abuse is the word

"chakra." Cult-students will use the term with a glibness that would hint

that they had actually seen one. If the word chakra means a nerve-

ganglion or gland, then we might as well call it that. On the other hand,

if the word signifies a luminous focal point in the astral body, then, of

course, we must presume that the speaker is quite sure of the

mechanics of astral bodies, and we must be convinced that there is such

a body with such points.

The cultist is hard to retrieve. He embarks upon the path of cultism

because of a disappointment with conventional faiths, or because of a

particular intuitive appeal from the cult's ism. He is taken in because the

cult has a pretty composite blueprint that explains much that his old

religion did not explain to him. Let us note here that explanation is not a

system of proving. There are many concepts which are structurally

symmetrical and congruous, but which bear no more value than a pretty

picture.

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It is not enough to create a creed that fits together like a jig-saw puzzle.

It must also try to prove its point and be beyond being simply desirable .

Let us divest ourselves of the deluding dignity we assume at the

instance of uttering a string of alien words. It only adds to our confusion

and to the increment of the "forces of adversity."

Not only does a concept need to be structurally perfect to be

acceptable, but it must be more all-inclusive and explanatory than any
other concept.

As long as there can be no philosophies that are proven beyond

uncertainty, then we can only keep replacing new ones for old ones, and

the new ones being those that by their propositions explain the most

unexplained phenomena, and satisfactorily answer the most questions .

It is not enough to explain that the finite mind will never perceive the

infinite, we must prove that the finite mind can or cannot ever be less

finite. We must keep on looking.

We know not where Truth resides. There can be no paths to Truth, only

paths away from untruth. There is nothing proven for us in advance. We

must experience for ourselves, and at best can only begin with a

"working hypothesis." And we cannot spend too much time developing

yardsticks to measure all the hypotheses for workability . We must find a

yardstick that can be applied to all situations, and that yardstick must be

very reliable.

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This book does not profess to solve the riddle, or to be orderly in the

presentation of a philosophy. I doubt that you could call it a philosophy ,

nor would I want it called that, because a philosophy, in attempting to be

orderly and systematic, tries to build words upon words and syllogisms

upon syllogisms. And I fear that such building involves sophistry . Being

clever is commendable perhaps for survival, but being clever for the

sake of ego or for the entertainment of others will not help the cause of

Truth. And although I may try to get my point across with some skill, or

with an accent of humor, rest assured that my main motive is to hold the

attention, not to entertain. I hold that these things which I say are those

which I have come to believe, and I consider any medium or expression

inadequate to the serious compulsion I have to communicate them.

In this careful attempt at honesty, there shall be no attempt to prove

absolutely. And truth (with a small t), if it is to have a definition, would

be that which is the most consistent, and that which is the most

inclusive of all human findings. For no matter how consistent our

thinking may appear to us, as long as there remains a single

phenomenon unexplained by it, or there remains another system in

which there are no more flaws than our own, but which may have

alternate or opposite claims to ours,—we must continue to search .

OUR SELF AS AN OBSTACLE

Most obstacles that inhibit the research or search for Truth find their

roots in the discrepancies in our evaluations described in previous

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writings. The greatest difficulty for man lies in his imperfect vision . We

need to see things more clearly. The philosophy of the past has been

beset with confusion by taking a positive approach to this business . It is

impossible to state our aim beforehand. It is foolish to assess the utility-

value of religion or philosophy. We are dealing with the essence of

things, not their effects. "By their fruits you shall know them" does not

belong here, regardless of its piety as a quotation.

We are not interested in greasing the axle of the wheel of Nature with

utilitarian platitudes. We must not tremble that our search and our

discoveries cause unhappy ripples in another man's religion , or in the

fashionable thinking of any particular era. We are busy with too many

obstacles to bargain with anyone, or to gamble away verities or the

possibility of arriving at verities, out of tender solicitude for venal and

transient religions or mores.

The first obstacle is ourselves. We are limited. Our limitation is

demonstrated, not by our cosmic insignificance alone, but by our mental

uncertainties, by the extremely qualified aspects of human

comprehension, and by the emotional apparatus with its inclination to

wear the respectable mask of intuition.

We are inclined to seek out that which makes us happy. And as a result,

some of the "happy boys" with scholastic knighthood and title get things

mixed up with their own adolescent unhappiness and decide that

happiness is the goal, the god, and the way. Momentarily, because they

237
have studied about aberration, they imagine that knowledge of the

disease of rationalization makes them immune to rationalization .

We must be aware of the influence our desires have in motivating for us

our choice of religion or life's work. We must put some time into

observing our limitations and determining, if possible, ways to allow for

the percentages of error caused by these limitations. Now this sounds

like a bit of formulation, but it is not. The business of such observation is

not to be evaluated quantitatively. It means that a man groping in the

dark must learn to protect himself, not only from uncertainty, but from

his own reactions to the gropings.

Physically, man imagines himself to be the supreme animal, but his

sensory efficiency is often inferior to lesser animals. He cannot smell as

well as most animals. The dog seems to be able to hear sounds that the

human misses. At least the dog reacts to such sounds. Let us take into

consideration the powers of lesser animals and contemplate our status if

we had them.

In rooms where poltergeist-phenomena or spirit-like manifestations

occur, dogs have shown by their attitude and bristling hair that the

manifestations to them were real. These dogs, incidentally, had not been

previously brainwashed by books or theories. Their reactions were

spontaneous. Perhaps if we could see with their eyes, we could evolve

better spiritual concepts.

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It has been demonstrated that many animals have telepathic ability .

Stranger still is the homing instinct of pigeons, and the habits of birds

and animals that are generally labeled "instinctive." These abilities are

fairly accurate mechanisms similar to radar. Some of these talents are

most noticeable in fish. The animal also has a direct and quick

understanding with other animals. The herbivorous animal knows the

propitious moment for eating and for running at the approach of the

predator. Specialization or other skills has lost these abilities for humans .

On the other hand, our senses are often deceiving, besides being weak

and inadequate. Vibrations and rays must surely have a wide range of

meaning for different animals because of diverse sensory apparatus in

different species. Which means that the human appreciation of what he

sees and hears is not by any certainty a real understanding of the

projection or projector.

We do not know if having animal intuition would help us in any great

way. But we can lose a little of our stuffiness if we observe the animal .

We may sit in a church or lecture hall for twenty years listening to the

same preacher and never know the most elementary thing which we

need to know—namely, the veracity of the speaker. Whether or not he is

a liar. The twenty years would be spent in evaluating, arguing, and

weighing one elusive sermon against another . . . when it may have been

possible to have gone directly to the mind of the man. I did not mention

that the man may have been misguided. However, if we cannot

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determine if that man is a liar or not, what other evaluation has any

validity?

But let us look at word-evaluation. This is necessary because we might

spend our twenty years taking correspondence courses in salvation , or

we may be obsessed with fundamentalism or the intrinsic value of some

manuscript. Words are like refractions and bear to the perception or

perceptee a variation of refraction in proportion to the position and

capacity, and to the conductivity of the environment which stands

between the meaning to be projected and the perceptee.

When the idea of this language barrier comes into view, I immediately

think of the tower of Babel. I find it easier to believe that this story is an

allegory of early theological frustrations brought on by language barriers

of the era, rather than an account of a petty God dispersing His

supplicants. Christ advised us to seek. But the Old Testament execrates

the seeker and almost implies that God was alarmed at the height of the

tower of Babel. Since there has been no celestial reaction to the sending

of rockets to the moon, we must reappraise the significance of God 's

anger at a pile of rocks.

There is another explanation to the story of the tower of Babel . It may be

that the early Hebrews or inhabitants of that region were being directed

by an entity that posed as a deity, which or who, being desirous of

maintaining its powers over the tribe, resorted to noisy manifestations to

keep the people in line. Thus, we have a hint that the "Lord" of the Old

240
Testament was human, which would account for the descriptions of

personal appearances, instructions given vocally and heard by the

multitudes, besides other phenomena attributed to God.

The physical body also places limitations upon the mind of man . William

James makes quite an issue out of this aspect of man. He calls "medical

materialism" that school of thought that looks into the human body for

disturbances that limit the mind and religion of each man. He infers that

it might be possible to diagnose a man's physical diseases by listening to

his philosophic or religious protestation. Medical Materialism may well

have a point, but we, in turn, may diagnose it as emanating from minds

diseased by egotism and laziness. While it is true that a person 's

religious zeal may suddenly increase with old age, it is also true that we

can find many religious zealots in healthy individuals under twenty.

We cannot trace the zeal of man to a disease, unless we admit that

disease to be common to all protoplasm, if we wish to call it a disease .

Such diseases would be curiosity, and anything that might help us to

overcome the obstacles listed in this book. The amoeba manifests

curiosity. Curiosity is found in all forms of life where any degree of

individual consciousness is found.

If we presume ourselves to be of divine origin, then curiosity is a divine

mandate. If we are considered to be evolutionary products of lesser

beings of accidental origins, then that curiosity is as normal as any

animal function, and is of tantamount importance to any animal's

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survival. And a goat need not have a diseased liver or mind to have the

compulsion to climb to the top of a barn roof just for a look around. The

medical materialist fails to take into consideration the ramifications of

curiosity. And he implies that a man is sick if he is neither eating,

working, or being happy according to the restricted pleasure -code of

society.

Still, we must not miss a good point. There are people who are quite a

bit off base, and some of them gravitate toward transcendentalism . Yet ,

I still cannot see a clear line drawn that would make all seekers out to be

sick, any more than to presume that all sick people are

transcendentalists. Not long ago, a seemingly healthy ex-marine shot

and killed about a dozen people from a tower of a Texas university.

Despite his previously normal behavior, a postmortem examination

showed that he suffered form a brain tumor or lesion. On the other side

of the fence, I knew a man who lived outside of San Antonio who was

respected as a psychic healer. He was just an ordinary fellow, until a kick

by a horse caused a brain tumor. The accident happened when the man

was young, but he lived beyond the sixty-year mark before the tumor

killed him. He ascribed his healing ability to the kick in the head. If we

are to judge him from a functional viewpoint, this second man helped

thousands of people and had visions as a result of mind or brain

impairment. He was not irrational, unless we wish to define the whole

healing system as being irrational. He maintained that diseases were

caused by demons or entities, and he had the ability to banish the

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entities. It was simple, and it evidently worked to the satisfaction of

thousands.

We find that some sects candidly admit that a spiritual breakthrough is

often coincidental to a mental breakdown, or follows on the heels of

somatic suffering or disaster. In the history of the Zen masters , we find

that one fellow applied to the monastery and was rejected. He tried to

pry his way into the gate. The attendant slammed the gate and cut off

his leg. "Whereupon he received enlightenment." Evidently.

Our smile may not be justified. I have been acquainted with quite a

number of people who were striving for Satori. Some of them were taken

right to the door of death by some cause, and after operations or a

damaging siege of illness, they came out with the claim that they had

reached the state beyond concern. One man had colitis that nearly killed

him, and I presumed at the time that his stay in the hospital was for a

colostomy. I think I have mentioned elsewhere in a previous writing , the

case of the woman student of Zen who attempted suicide. There may

have been such attempts that were successful. However, all movements

have their share of suicides. There is no prophetic pattern , and Zen does

not require colitis, ulcers, or amputations.

The sedentary life of a clergyman is liable to produce an occupational

peculiarity or ailment. A trend toward effeminacy may be a corollary of

clerical occupations. Even as a coal-miner may develop silicosis , so a

priest, whether he preaches asceticism or Pollyanna, may come up with

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ulcers, thyroid trouble, or prostatitis. It does not follow that all priests

became priests because they had prostatitis.

There are hazards to each profession. The metaphysician has his share .

And I do not intend to brush aside either the motives for becoming a

seeker, or the illnesses that result from the work as a seeker. We can be

too careful of being guilty of some complex or other, and inhibit our

drive down to zero. On the other hand, we must be able to recognize the

signposts given us by the medical materialists.

We must neither work too hard nor sit too long. With the former comes

callouses of the mind and body. With the latter comes sleep and

fatalism. With excessive preoccupation with the works of others , or with

scholastic successes, comes an intellectual conceit that is a web as

effective as a concrete wall. And with such also comes the confusion of

words. On the other hand, abstinence from books and teachers results in

a lack of source-material, source-material that might save us years and

health. We cannot do it all with our intuition alone.

We must know ourselves in order to find the obstacles that find their

roots within us. Too often our decisions are influenced by emotions.

When this happens we will pick a teacher for his personality and pick a

system that harmonizes with our appetites.

Another obstacle within us is fatigue. The mind goes to sleep after so

many hours on a subject. The mind retreats from problems that hold no

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hope of immediate solution. Our attention goes tumbling off, accelerated

by desires and rationalization.

Some physical and mental obstacles can be surmounted by observing

and correcting chemical conditions and glandular secretions . When we

take into account the enormous amount of and weight of factors that

influence our thinking, and hence affect any spiritual drive, we are apt to

throw our hands up in despair. We might, in fact, decide to throw the

entire world's library into the flames, presuming that everything could be

discounted by virtue of possible chicanery by the authors , or by virtue of

our susceptibility to hypnosis, manias, and body chemistry .

The coffins of Poe, Coleridge, and Oscar Wilde may contain nothing but

empty dope capsules and alcohol bottles, but their writings give me the

feeling that they experienced something that the ordinary "normal "

citizen does not find. Their occupation had its hazards.

Naturally, the experience (of permanent physical disease) is not

desirable, in that it is surely not necessary for spiritual enlightenment .

We find that alcohol can immediately change the conviction of the user .

And the same is true about the user of narcotics. An alcoholic sometimes

develops two or more attitudes or personalities. When the great thirst is

upon him, he will be vindictive and full of praise for the grape. When the

thirst is softened by a few drinks he develops a second personality,

which may be the dramatization of a personality that he wishes to

possess. The hangover-stage introduces the third personality , in which

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physical conditions render the alcoholic despondent and remorseful . He

now hates the grape and himself for the alliance.

Strangely enough, out of all of this conflict of attitudes have occasionally

emerged men of great spiritual stature. I would not advise anyone to

take the alcoholic path in order to find spiritual amazement, for the

simple reason that the gods seem to desert alcoholics in great numbers .

The percentage of alcoholics that free themselves from the depths of

addiction is very small in comparison to the number of alcoholics that

die in the addiction or commit suicide.

OBLIQUE DOGMATIC SYSTEMS

Various authors and systems, whose works fall short of being valuable in

relation to the pursuit of Truth, are generally not aware of their

particular tangential direction which removed them from the functional

position which they covet. These sources digress along recognizable

lines, and can be identified by their chief feature or style.

There are, first of all, the Utilitarians, of which we have heard. To them,

religion has a value if it serves as a social lubricant, if it heals, if it aids in

business ventures, or if it comforts the troubled.

Healing itself may often be recognized as a vain implement for the

healer's glory or monetary gain, in exchange for a health-gift to those

who do not even seem to be grateful. If, as some believe, the energy for

healing actually comes from the combined energies of the minister and

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the congregation, then healing may well be a prostitution of valuable

energy on a lost cause, or upon a person who will, in turn, only spend it

again with poor spiritual thrift.

To this group (Utilitarians), we must consign the pollyanna of Unity

which labels its periodical, "Better Business." To it also we must consign

almost every organized religion that boasts of its value to society by

keeping its members in line, and those which seek survival and

acceptance by virtue of their social usefulness.

A second category of thinkers are the Pseudo-Practical Critics . They are

the scientists who have momentarily invaded the field of

transcendentalism, or are the various tumid reporters who exude the

attitude that they are able to look at all things objectively . They tackle

every concept with a sort of conservative attitude. They might excuse

ESP or other phenomena as not being illogical, but they would be careful

not to associate their own beliefs with the issue, and they employ a

detached literary style to give the impression that they are a popular

and irrefutable medium of common sense.

They who manifest this attitude are the literary barristers who would

rather settle out of court than admit a position that would require a

vigorous defense. They are not barristers of hope or principle, but men

of glory in a show of intellectual cleverness. They go into the court of

human reason halfheartedly and are very careful not to establish a

position that might indicate that their own thinking is on trial. They are

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careful not to endorse anything that might at a later date undergo a

qualifying change. If they endorse the field of mysticism, they will do so

timidly.

A third category of pseudo-authorities are the Piddlers. These treat

mysticism as a hobby, or as an excuse for social gatherings. They are

often part-time mystics, or are those who indulge in the solemn-faced

mummery of lodge-work. A few will be extremely well-read in many

different philosophies, but will treat the whole field with little more

respect than they would bestow on fiction. They may become engrossed

in a cult or ism whose main substance is the endless juggling of symbols

with questionable results. They may become so engrossed in the

juggling that the pleasure of juggling becomes an intellectual titillation

and conceit, rather than a potential means of finding Truth. And yet, the

juggling of symbols, under control, may well bring us results in the

scientific field, and in the sharpening of the faculties that aid in direct

experience.

Thus, we have astrologers who only tell fortunes, and numerologists who

would predict our political or amorous compatibilities . These are the

augurs who examine the flights of birds and the entrails in the

slaughterhouse for a hint of heaven. They are the strangely inspired ,

who allow superstition to overbalance reason and intuition . They will

write books filled with symbols and invocations that do not work. They

will compound secret codes that will consume years of the reader 's time

before their meaninglessness is exposed. To compound the mystery,

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these authors will assume pseudonyms, or may even remain

anonymous.

The Concept Mechanics are piddlers of a more complicated type. They

build new concepts by borrowing choice tidbits from the old ones. They

observe the dying of current religions, and fancy themselves to be

phoenixes that will sprout from the ashes of the dying religions. Their

inability to supplant current religions or theories lies in their inability to

think with their intuition, or to realize that another, the reader, might

penetrate their processes and reject such concept-building . For the

Concept Mechanics are fabricators, not believers. They speak with

cleverness rather than sincerity, and they are rewarded with our

admission of their cleverness and little more. They note the

discrepancies of other concepts, and their limitations. Then they go

about dreaming up a celestial science that will answer all our hopes and

desires and will explain some previously unexplained phenomena .

The writings of Concept Mechanics are generally very complex , but in

the last analysis are no more than presumptive formulae and Utopian

air-castles. Their concepts are built upon accepted axioms which we are

more eager to accept than to deny. Yet, the numerous cosmo-

conceptions that result from the same set of axioms bring the student to

much bewilderment and leave him wishing he had examined the

foundations first.

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Instances of concept-building may be found in most Rosicrucian

literature, in some Theosophical literature, and in most cult-literature

that borrows from or pretends to borrow from Hinduism, Eleusinian lore,

Essene wisdom, the Qabalah, from any ancient religious writings, or

from combinations of any of these sects.

Readers of such concept-structures are often, besides being misled ,

titillated by suspense . . . and come to expect that the Truth will come on

the next page. The actual subscriber will hold his breath waiting for a

Master or for Initiation. Steiner writes profusely, describing a way of

self-development which he admits is all meaningless, unless we are

initiated. Yet, there is a discreet silence about the nature of initiation , so

that that which might bring some element of verification to his writings

hangs like a golden plum, always beyond our grasp. Tantalization

becomes the chief feature of the cult-vendor.

Another category is that of the Quoters. Here are the writers who shrink

from standing alone, even as the critics do. In their writings, they seem

to be trying to tell their message indirectly. Some will use only

occasional referential quotations, but others may compile entire books

of copied material. Such is the style of Aldous Huxley's Doors of

Perception. There is a subtle cleverness in this attempt to inspire

conviction by summoning another's ghost, and forcing that ghost to

testify for your cause, while inhibiting and limiting the testimony so that

only those words are taken out of the text that will flatter the Quoter .

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The thundering fundamentalist is an example. Occasionally the sacred

books of the East are quoted, and then often in an apologetic manner .

The chief feature of the Quoter is his manifest cowardice and inability to

outline in his own words, that which he believes. His main tool is the

inference that backing by important people makes for the Truth .

The Gimmick-Users are a very subtle group. These have discovered that

which a scientist would call a law, and they gain either fame or following

by either demonstrating the law, or by extolling it with more significance

than it deserves. Thus, some are unselfish and devote the knowledge of

the law to the betterment of mankind, but some become so enthralled

with their discovery that they do not bother to progress further

themselves—to the discovery of more laws or to self-improvement in

general.

There has existed in occult writings, for centuries, the explanation of the

law that governs healing. It is not the sole property of Christians. The

Mohammedans recently challenged Billy Graham to a healing contest,

which he politely rejected. This supposedly happened on his tour of

Africa. Mr. Graham may not even profess to be a healer, but if he were,

he would have difficulty in a Moslem country, or in an area where people

strongly disbelieve in Christ.

The amazing thing about some healers is that they do not even

understand the law, but use it instinctively.

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Another of these gimmicks is the law of love. It has been found that love

begets love and hate begets hate, and that hate destroys the hater.

Love may also be self-destructive, if we do not know which types of love

are to be inhibited. Somerset Maugham hints that Christ may have been

destroyed because of his unqualified love (Razor's Edge).

As a result of the knowledge of the ultimate value of love, quite a few

isms have incorporated themselves around that law, forgetting all other

endeavors. Ramakrishna was supposed to have attained a deep spiritual

position because of his intense love for Kali. Some Christian mystics

have employed the same process to achieve rapture.

Another gimmick is "positive thinking." There can be no denying the

power of positive thinking, but we can really run into error if we do not

know its limitations. Partisans who try to gauge their lives by N.V. Peale's

handbook, find that they still clash with society and other obstacles .

"Positive thinking" can mean only "conventional thinking," and is limited

as to effectiveness, regardless of the nobility of a purpose, if that

purpose is not popular.

Mary Baker Eddy discovered the illusory nature of the material world .

However, things get complicated when a person attempts to heal the

illusory body of the illusory disease. It would seem that the real project

would be to first find reality.

Centuries ago theologians discovered another law, but they continued to

misunderstand and misuse it. This is the Law of Proportional Returns , or

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that which the Indians might call Karma. We borrow from physics and

state that any object being struck manages to afflict the striking object

with the same force. That which you sow, you will reap. Hate begets

hate, and if you hurl negative thoughts you will, in turn, be visited by

others with negative attitudes.

All of these things seem possible, but to affix to this law the idea of

personal guilt may be the needless weaving of a whip for the already

belabored mind of man. There is a considerable amount of friction over

the ideas of guilt or degrees of guilt. The fact that there are two schools

of thought on Will—Determinism and Libertarianism—means that man

cannot quite make up his mind whether he should accept guilt or not.

The proponents of guilt claim that guilt is the sense of responsibility that

man must accept if he, man, wishes to have any right to function as an

individual in charge of his own destiny.

Thus, we have sin cataloged and categorized. We have analysts who

have examined sin qualitatively and quantitatively and proceeded from

there to prescribe to the gram and grain how much pain or money must

be paid to take the vigor out of the inevitable repercussion .

Thus, also in India we have much confusion among believers in Karma .

Some Hindus breathe with apprehension, lest a microscopic retaliator

gets caught in their intake.

The Oversimplifiers. These are not to be confused with men who

honestly try to avoid complexity and verbosity. We get the idea from the

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Oversimplifiers that the mystic and the transcendentalist take

themselves too seriously. The former would have us believe that there is

a very simple explanation for all phenomena. They would say that a man

did not see an apparition, he merely thought he saw one. And the man

who was healed, to judge by them, was not sick in the first place.

Precognition to them is coincidence. The man who performed a miracle

simply hypnotized his audience. Spirit-manifestations are merely mental

extrusions, etc.

Now the Oversimplifiers may be nearly right in some instances, even

though they are looking for an easy explanation. They are not idiots , but

they are uninspired, even though they sense that others tend to confuse

inspiration with superstition. Their chief error comes from being

unacquainted with the field which they criticize. To criticize a mystic , one

has to be a mystic—one cannot view mysticism objectively and do it

justice.

The tired thinker is apt to rationalize with oversimplification . From his

inability or fatigue comes a weird sort of bravery. After a prolonged

contemplation about life-after-death, he will announce that since there

is nothing that can be done about death—it is foolish to give death a

second thought. Eat, drink, and be merry.

Let me summarize a bit in the above categories. We cannot speak

without quoting to some degree; we cannot simplify without running the

risk of oversimplification; we may all be unconscious concept-

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mechanics, since we may be so impelled by our gestalts; and we are all

piddlers when it comes to our attitude toward the Absolute. There is not

so much damage in erratic thinking as there is in the conscious

employment of erratic thinking and techniques of writing that might

promote confusion. And all of this criticism is designed to save time for

the seeker.

THE TRAP OF CONDITIONING

There are many obstacles to mental clarity, but the most insidious is

mental conditioning. The voice of the appetites is easily recognized , and

its form wears little or no mask—but conditioning is subtle. Conditioning

probably contributes more to the spiritual inertia of man than any other

factor.

Other minds have seen the adverse effects of conditioning. We can read

Huxley's Brave New World for example. Huxley seemed concerned more

with the intellectual enslavement of man and the social results , but he

depicts the man of the future as a conditioned zombie.

It is bad enough that we are conditioned by nature to function as well-

behaved, potted plants—in this terrestrial greenhouse. It is quite another

thing when we start doing it to one another. We begin by conditioning

our children to save them a few knocks in life. Teachers use about fifty

percent of the classroom time in conditioning children for plasticity . This

process is called "citizenship-training." Next, a good percentage of the

young men will have to take military training, which process is designed

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to produce automatons to do any bidding, take any insult or

degradation, and be convinced of individual worthlessness and

individual inability. They are also trained to be proud of this treatment .

Of course, men who are conditioned for the axe should not be burdened

with too much thinking, but this is as tyrannical as expecting a rabbit

that you are eating for dinner to provide the napkins and gratitude.

Lodge members condition other members with asinine initiations .

Mankind is basically afraid of individualistic men. We do not like to face a

brave, independent man nearly as well as a harmless, inoffensive one.

We elect to office mostly people who avoid positive attitudes and ,

consequently, we rarely get men of principle. Businesses set up schools

to brainwash candidates for sales and executive positions , in order to

have a minimum of trouble with the business organization . They are

taught to "handle" people. What this actually means is that a sort of

professional behavior pattern is adopted, to which they want all people

to conform, including both workers and clients.

We are cast into a state of awe by the choice of words used by mere

mechanics who are conniving for some justification for public support

and for livelihood. One such word was the title "doctor." But let us read

the history of the Mayo brothers. A century ago, a doctor was revered

almost the same as a priest. But now we find that they knew very little,

took only a short course in medical training, and robbed graves by night

to get cadavers. Yet, they held their head high by day, and literally

commanded respect.

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We have conditioned ourselves to accept excesses in government. We

are stunned into silence by "authority" in uniform, in gown and gavel,

and by the ruthless glint in the barrister's eye.

And all of this happens for the benefit of Nature, which scarcely needs

any help in running this greenhouse. We are not becoming, as human

beings, more compassionate and loving, or more filled with

understanding for our fellow man. We are only becoming more docile

and faceless, out of compulsion.

Everything possible is employed to grease the sloping path to the

slaughterhouse, including theology. Such is the calloused efficiency of

those who feel themselves called upon to take charge of the propaganda

and literature of conditioning. Modern drama now depicts the mother

betraying the son, or the daughter betraying the parent for the

meaningless codes of the state. At the turn of the century, this betrayal

would have been considered an act so base as to invite the hate of all

humanity. Now it is noble!

No matter how well it is welded together, the social entity is no better

than its individual parts. The expansion of the individual is, in the long

run, for the betterment of the state. A shrinking of the individual has

already, in our time, begun to show signs that lead to social chaos.

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 STATES OF PERCEPTION

I have noticed that all (or most) psychologists or claimants to authority

on matters psychic, carefully minimize the difference in states of

perception, or else write or speak as though every reader should be

compelled to interpret their words in one incontrovertible way.

And all the while, most of the difficulties in the social world are the result

of differences in mental states and the complete failure to understand

the other fellow's state. Marital incompatibilities, both mental and the

mentally inspired physical ones, come as a result of different mental

states. Factional conflicts likewise have the same roots , whether they be

of religious, political, or ethnic nature.

Let us look at the different states of perception. I am sure that when a

person understands the wide range of perception-states and mental-

states he will begin to wonder if the human mind will ever be able to

discern, among these many states, that singular state that might be

called sanity.

States of Perception, in turn, affect states of mind. They are not the

same. The former involves qualified means of seeing or perceiving. The

latter involves periods of conviction marked by related attitudes . States

of Perception are those states that may be produced by sensory

imperfections, drugs, chemicals, or other conditions.

Anyone who has gone through the alcoholic experience will know that a

few ounces of alcohol will change the world's aspect for the user . That

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which is perceived, is a new state of perceiving. The new aspect may be

so different that it shakes the validity of prior states which we identify

with convention and sanity. The drinker may find the new, ensuing state

of mind, and not be aware that it is caused by an abrupt change in his

perceiving apparatus. States of Perception are generally of short

duration, and while they may trigger or reawaken states of mind , they

are more factors of coloration than lasting states of conviction .

Subliminal states of consciousness are perceptions of longer duration

and of greater intensity, and they have the ability to dominate the entire

perspective or perception field. More will be said of them later .

To give a further explanation of this mental vacillation (inaccurate states

of perception), let us look through the romantic eyes of younger days,

when a particular mood descended upon us at sunset or sunrise. Upon

entering a cave. Upon watching lightning. Now, these are outstanding

incidents which may have changed our mood, if not our mind,

momentarily—and which left strong memories behind. Examining the

possible causes of these States of Perception may help us to be more

aware of their influence.

The sunrise seems to fill us with awe and vigor, even though our training

tells us that we are probably only experiencing a combination of the

quiet hush, and slow-changing light and color patterns. It may be that

that which occurs is the remembering of a primordial urge to go forth in

search of food. Also, dawn usually comes when a person is rested, and

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when there are no pressing worries on the mind. The mind has rubbed

out the worries in the forgetfulness of sleep. So, now the mind and the

eye have time to dawdle, as the mind of a child, upon such things that

are momentarily "new." We now have a combination of "rememberings"

that are not conscious memories. We have a combination of vigor , a

carefree mind, and an infantile pleasantness, along with the hypnotically

changing panorama of dawn. And even after reading and believing this

paragraph, if we walked in the meadow at dawn, we would still feel the

awe, and the mystery would momentarily put our philosophic attitude to

the test.

Our daily life is a concatenation of changing moods, some diametrically

opposite to the predecessor of an hour. We are hypnotized by objects

and by other people. Some of the spells are short-lived harmless little

excursions into a fragrant flower or a poem. But the concatenation

literally becomes a chain and our years are bound in chains that resulted

from the hypnosis of a few moments that caused us to make decisions

that tied up our direction for decades of our short life. Some of the

results of such hypnoses, or attitude compulsions, are marriage (or

mating), murder, enlistment in organizations, and the development of

habits that cannot be abandoned.

You may say, "Oh yes, we know all about the traps" . . . while uttering the

words from the midst of several traps that have been nobly rationalized .

But, unless we are constantly conscious of ourselves in each reaction to

the environment, we will succumb. And I doubt, in all sincerity, that even

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a select and dedicated group of men could free themselves completely .

They could free themselves to the point of knowing their chains, and

being able to resist them in incidents really critical to their spiritual

growth. The evidence of this inability is observed in religious

monasteries and in very active transcendental movements that either

pick out one of the traps and rationalize it into deific status—justifying

the trap as divinely imposed (such as marriage), or they carefully avoid

identifying something as being a trap, if it helps their business. It is hard

to find, in non-sectarian groups, any harmony or even desire to work

together, because each is laboring under the rationalization of some trap

or other. If we were all laboring under the same trap, then cooperation

might be somewhat possible . . . as in a factory. But, the different

degrees of addiction become at first, an interminable harping point, and

finally—a mood of intolerance.

So let us stop occasionally and think of the simple and yet profound

effect of color. We find that colors bring certain moods to us, and we find

that they do not—always as individual colors bring the same mood to all

people. That which elates one may depress another. We are not only the

unconscious victims of color, but of many other mood-impellers .

STATES OF MIND

States of mind are like massive gestalts. Psychologically, they have

never been given the proper consideration. Most people are not aware of

the existence of a state of mind, other than one similar to their own.

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When they encounter another state of mind, they may reject it as

aberrated or abnormal. Normality is always that which we are , not that

which the other fellow is. And because of this lack of understanding ,

friction and even violence result.

Psychologists try to create a sort of universal state of mind, in regard to

conduct and behavior. They have recently gone a step further and

imposed "sensitivity sessions" upon some of the students of the country

to force a precipitation of tensions, and to bring about a homogeneity of

reaction-patterns.

The psychologists and psychiatrists will fail because, again , they do not

know all the factors, and specifically because they can, at best, be

responsible for creating newer states of mind which shall conceal more

deadly resentments than the possessor had before.

Some of us are aware that we have different states of mind. However,

most of us are unaware of the many states of mind that exist among

different people, nor are we aware of the tremendous role that these

states of mind play in religion, politics, and war. Some states of mind are

easy to see. For instance, similar states of mind are found in close

families and among people of restricted social contact, such as the

inmates of monasteries and prisons. Inmates of such institutions or

families have several other states of mind, besides the one which is

common to all of the other members or inmates.

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Let us not confuse the term "state of mind" with mood. The mood is

transitory and lacking in conviction, and could be better explained as a

state of perception, a clouded glass.

We are lucky if we only have two or three states of mind. We are still

more lucky if we know that they are there, within us. A state of mind is

invariably a fairly composite thinking pattern , which has as its chief

characteristic one of the basic desires of the individual in question . A

more dominant state of mind may result from the synthesis of two or

more desires, and the synthesis of their corresponding philosophic

rationalizations.

It is easier to describe states of mind, and the manner in which they are

altered, than it is to define them. We may take the case of two men, Mr.

A. and Mr. B., meeting at a bar. Mr. A. uses a perfectly harmless word,

penguin. Within a few minutes, and with little or no explanation, Mr. B.

has knocked him to the floor. Mr. A. leaves, and within the hour is robbed

by Mr. C., and finally, in another hour, Mr. A. may encounter Mr. D, and

kill the latter when Mr. D. places his hand in his pocket, thus reminding

Mr. A. of the robbery of an hour before.

And yet, three hours before, Mr. A. may have been a benevolent

extrovert. An analyst might ascribe the violent action of Mr . B. to

paranoid foundations, or might say that Mr. C. was a robber because his

mother tried to abort him. Paranoia is not a state of mind, but a singular

example of a state of perception in which we can see the difference

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between the two—state of mind and state of perception . With paranoia

as a qualification of perception, or as a manner of looking at incoming

impressions through bruised sensitivities, there is no doubt that some of

our states of mind will be affected, but not necessarily replaced.

Any creature that has been repeatedly injured becomes paranoid . In

Hubbard's Dianetics, such repeated injury leaves a mental scar which is

called an engram. This scar or engram must be reckoned with in all

future experiences related in any way to the experience that caused the

engram or scar.

If the being were not paranoid, it could be more easily killed or crippled

as an individual, and eliminated as a species. Paranoia says to the body

—people are going to hurt you as they did before. You must adjust and

train your personality to either frighten them, or train yourself to be

more aggressive.

States of mind are various massive concept-structures which usually

come about over a period of years of evaluation and increasing

conviction. However, it is important to remember that they can be

brought about very quickly as a result of an extreme physical or mental

experience. The case of Mr. A. is given to show roughly how this may

happen.

We take Mr. A. and suppose that he was a young ministerial student. He

has led a rather sheltered life, but there have been times when he was

insulted or in some manner afflicted for his gentle ways. His gentle ways

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were part of a passive state of mind, and his reactions to a life of

mysticism helped form his passive attitude. And he may have also

developed an additional, tangential philosophy, which saw God's will in

his work—and God's protection.

The man who knocked him to the floor was a Catholic. Mr. B. thought

that Mr. A. was poking ridicule at the Catholic nuns by his reference to

the penguin, and Mr. B. also thought that he was doing God's will.

The violence suffered by Mr. A. caused an abrupt change oi mind. And

when the threat of continued violence aids the paranoid element in his

thinking, he feels quite justified in taking quick and violent action.

The man subject to an abrupt change of mind-state need not be timid .

Strong, brave men have suddenly been reduced to tears, and bullies

have suddenly become cowards under brutal treatment, or in an incident

of terror. Drugs inflict a similar sort of punishment upon the addict, but

the metamorphosis is so subtle and gradual that only after the victim is

hopelessly addicted will there be any intense suffering.

It might be said that a traumatic experience or incident of intense

suffering are about the only things that will actually bring about a

change in the state of mind.

The congestion of the population has brought our attention to a sharper

awareness of many different states of mind in different people, and the

need to understand such states is also felt. Of course, understanding

them is better than trying to alter them before understanding them. And

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understanding them in ourselves is of greater priority—even in the

search to understand others.

I think that the study of states of mind is far more important than the

focusing of attention on incidental reactions or behavior patterns . Such a

study can come about only by direct experience, and the faculty for

having direct experience can come about by particular systems of

developing sensitivity, or by a change in the being or nature of the

observer that will facilitate his rapport with another mind .

States of mind are not easily supplanted, and a person capable of

switching quickly to an alternate or opposite state of mind could well be

labeled schizophrenic. We are all schizoid to a degree, but not as

obsessed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. We do have such obsessions, and

they do change us for a period of time. We can examine the act of

sexual intercourse, and note that most people (if not all) have states of

mind that vary or change with the act. The person who begins is not the

same person who finishes. This has baffled people for ages. It can be

blamed on abrupt chemical changes brought on by intense physical

activity, (endocrine influence) or it may be an automatic governor ,

which is part of the human structure to alter the pleasure-drive, once

nature has attained its goal . . . so that the potential parent will not

endanger his or her health in the pursuit of more pleasure, since nature

is interested in the children.

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It is because the sex act has such a pronounced ability to change the

state of mind, that we find so many violent and bizarre murders

connected with sex. Sometimes the partner who acts as a devastating

catalyst is resented.

Different ethnic groups have different states of mind, and there is no

crime in this difference. The crime lies with the psychologist who thinks

that he can banish it by denying it. The Negroes are aware of this wall of

difference, and protest (this is the admission of the knowledge of

difference) that the Whites do not "think black." And, of course, the

standard reply is that the Blacks do not "think white."

It would be laborious, if not impossible, to go into all the factors that

trigger conflict between states of mind. Some may be genetic, and some

may be acquired. For instance, the mouse has a state of mind quite

different from that of the cat. And the cat's is different from that of the

dog, unless the cat is a lion. The cat has no respect for the mouse. There

is no rapport. The mouse is geared for terror. It is numbed or hypnotized

by terror and does not utilize any proper degree of resourcefulness when

confronted by the cat. Perhaps, like the Christian martyrs, the mouse is

also geared to enjoy his own immolation.

The same occurs with people. Those who have been raised for

generations to have a contempt for fear will also have a contempt for

those whose chief feature is fear. Or an ethnic group that practices sex

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control may have difficulty in having rapport with another ethnic group

that believes in no sexual restraints.

The effect of these states of mind on political levels is not our concern

here. We are concerned with those states of mind which stand like

towers of Babel between religious, philosophical, and transcendental

minds. We only need to pick up some of the books that are being printed

today on psychology, sociology, and theology to witness with

amazement the many approaches to a common central point. If Aldous

Huxley seemed to test our flexibility in reaching out for new

understanding, he could not hold a candle to such artists of confusion as

Brown and Roszak. And perhaps this writing will come to many as a

hodge-podge of emptiness or a surfeiting of deliberate complexity .

Let us examine the drug-state of mind . . . if it is possible to find rapport

with addicts without smoking from their pipe or drinking from their

needle. Or let us begin to study religion. We may be attracted to a

spiritual teacher who is "hooked" on drugs, and despise the teacher who

is addicted to alcohol. We may never know that the alcoholic had as

much or more to offer. And what's more, we may wind up with an aura of

injected needles instead of a halo.

We can take a step further, and presume that men of the four major

paths—the fakir, the yogi, the monk and the philosopher-have divested

themselves of all obsessions, such as sex, drugs, or alcohol And we will

still be confounded by their distinct states of mind.

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The monk, on a lesser level, is a person who thinks he is fully evolved,

spiritually. His conviction marks his state of mind. He eats, works, and

sleeps the part of the monk. And he finds peace of mind which he

identifies as God's hand.

The fakir works on a lower level than the monk. He feels that he will find

spirituality by controlling the body and its sensations. He does not

understand the monk. The monk may understand him, but will be unable

to get through to him long enough to convince the fakir in regards to the

efficacy of a milder form of asceticism.

The yogi occupies a rung above the monk, but the monk does not always

understand him. The yogi understands the monk. He sees the monk

wrapped in the confusion of sublimated sex, and in autohypnotic

techniques which seem to be crude. The monk is begging the answer,

rather than seeking it. The raj-yogi is looking for the true state of

consciousness, and is aware that others only think they have it .

Still more free, and advanced, is the Fourth Way Traveler. This is the sly

man, or the philosopher. It is apparent to those on the fourth step that

they themselves, while they were on the lower rungs, could not

comprehend or tolerate those who were later discovered to be on more

advanced steps. And now, viewing those, who, in turn, cannot tolerate

them, the Fourth Way Travelers are amazed that sincere, dynamic

individuals dedicated to finding the Truth can have so much lack of

understanding and rapport.

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So that the thing to observe (for each level) is the level upon which you

stand. The pursuit of Truth necessarily involves the understanding of

present states of mind, first. Then there follows the automatic shedding

of nonsense-components of these states of mind, from which comes an

evolution of mental purity, approaching, all the while, that state which is

called satori or cosmic consciousness. And by whatever name, we can be

sure that it is the only true state of mind.

It follows then that this writing is not intended to be an attempt to

change human conduct, except in the individual, by the individual. We

must first be aware that we are the victims of our states of mind, not

proud possessors of them. And we can be aware of them, (to take a

page from Ouspensky) by self-observation.

Self-observation, meditation, or self-remembering generally have

automatic self-correcting result. It is almost as though we were

operating on a cybernetic law. The circuit is apt to clear itself, once the

trouble is located and admitted.

Strangely enough, this automatic clearing of circuits through the

application of energy inward, may be the first realization for the

individual of free will. This process involves the slave knowing the

degree of his enslavement, and utilizing mechanical processes to put an

end to his present state of mechanicalness.

When we embark upon a course of self-change in order to purify our

consciousness, the first nice thing that happens to us is that we develop

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a new compassion for our fellowman, and tolerance for his moody

moments. We realize that he, too, is laboring beneath circumstances

that are not of his making. And his states of mind have been imposed

upon him by his environment and by his colored perception apparatus .

But what is more important and more wonderful is that we realize that

we are at last on our way to becoming a vector of Truth. We also learn

that there are ways to change our dominant state of mind that do not

involve the use of drugs. We find, if we look hard enough, that there are

helpers, or teachers, even if such are only books.

There is somehow an urge within each man that wishes for him to be

whole. The designer of our computers did not program us to be totally

responsive to the hypnoses of nature. It is possible that we are. in fact ,

programmed to periodically resist any dominant state of mind , so that

we will be prevented from destroying ourselves in dissipation—thus

destroying nature's most valuable herd in the process. This concept finds

more meaning if we observe the innocence and conscience of children .

And all of this implies that the designer of the computer had no other

choice than to let us get a glimpse of those things which obsess us.

To observe these states of mind we need only to sit quietly and observe

the present troubles that we have. It is best done when we are troubled,

because then we have a high incentive-impetus to use for energy.

We should also do a little remembering and go back to the days when

we were able to think more clearly, when our thinking bore convictions

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by which we risked our lives and our fortunes. Those convictions may

have changed, but it is not appropriate that we look back upon those

years as being foolish just because we were young. We must remember

the factors which made us think clearly then, if we wish to think clearly

today. And it is in this fashion that we must become as a little child.

There can be no successful, scientific study of psychology , nor can there

be any promising individual search for Truth without a better

understanding of these phases called states of mind. Any attempt at

analysis by viewing behavioral causes or environmental factors will only

bring us to a knowledge of that which causes the state of mind, and then

only if we absolutely know all of the factors. These factors include all

things in our transcendental environment, as well as the manifest

environment.

Most of us have awakened from a convincing nightmare, or have

recovered from a very hypnotic love affair. Some of us have been

brutalized into accepting a state of mind common to our fellows, such as

is found in armies and penitentiaries. And we have shaken our heads in

amazement to think that our mind could be changed so easily. Yes, the

psychologists and 'psychiatrists have experienced this confusion of

convictions too, or else the high rate of suicide among them would not

exist.

Men have had dreams that have shaken their lives. The augury of

dreams or the dreams themselves, have caused battles or wars.

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It is also true that transcendental phenomena have a great influence on

states of mind. Hypnosis is no myth. And witchcraft has been used

successfully against people who did not even know that a spell had been

cast. We can only surmise that beings of another dimension, being

strategically invisible or superior, may have profound effects upon us . If

this is true, then the modern psychologists will have trouble finding

compatibility with such evidence, because they have agreed to believe

that man is only a body, and that transcendental experiences are really

somatic maladies.

So that when St. Paul was struck down on the road to Damascus, and

endured for the rest of his life a profoundly altered state of mind, we are

told by the psychologists through the lips of Huxley, that Paul did, in

reality, fall victim to an epileptic attack . . . possibly. We could go a step

further into absurdity, and say that Paul had just returned from visiting

the local psychiatrist, the witch of Endor, who had just succeeded in

purging him of his violent homicidal syndrome. This explanation would

prevent any shame for Christianity, by showing that Paul was cured of

his epilepsy and violence by the local witch-craft union.

We like to think we are logical people, living in an orderly manner.

However, when we experience a change of state of mind, all of our logic

and all of our so-called professional and authoritarian attitudes are of no

use to us. We find that we have been changed, and it disturbs us.

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Jung found it expedient to examine the Tibetan Book of the Dead. For

therein is a hint that all that exist are states of mind. And unless the

individual finds some stable manner to keep track of the true self, in the

many turbulent and often terrifying nightmares of life, what will happen

to us hence, when we can no longer flee back into the living body by

simply awakening?

I have only found two systems that I would recommend for studying the

mind directly. One is the Gurdjieff-Ouspensky system, and the other is

Zen.

SUBLIMINAL STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

AND THEIR EFFECT UPON DISCERNMENT

In matters of religion, a field where the guiding intuition is of subliminal

nature (being intangible and inscrutable), we find that many deciding

factors for religious judgment are related to subliminal impressions .

There is a large gap between the thinking of the scientist or materialist ,

and the pursuer of abstract values. There are always doubts in the minds

of these two adversaries about their own individual infallibility . The

hardheaded materialist may come to doubt himself, if he falls in love or

has a precognitive dream. Or if he witnesses a miracle. (Something not

explained in his orderly book of rules on the behavior of matter.) On the

other hand, the religious zealot who is convinced that the mundane or

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sensory world is illusory, or illusory to a great degree, will have his faith

shaken (if faith happens to be for him an accepted force), when some

person closely related to him becomes seriously ill or dies . He rushes out

and calls a doctor or lives to curse the beliefs, or to doubt them seriously

. . . if he fails to call the doctor.

A subliminal state of consciousness is a state of awareness that is very

strong, and yet very elusive as regards scrutiny or analysis. We may be

conscious of something, of a force or strange ability within ourselves ,

and yet not be able to identify it or describe it.

This state manifests itself to people under the influence of certain drugs ,

under mental shock, under prolonged mental fatigue, and sometimes in

the period between wakefulness and sleep. They are not states of mind,

if we are to identify states of mind with self-observation and conviction .

It is almost impossible, if not impossible, to study subliminal states ,

except subjectively. They are worthy of mention here, because they

invariably have an ability to affect states of mind and affect them in a

drastic manner. A person on the brink of a nervous breakdown, or the

physical breakdown that is often labelled as insanity, generally is

disturbed by many of these subliminal states of consciousness . A dying

person, judging from deathbed testimony, has confusion of some

magnitude, as a result of strange consciousness-states.

We may correctly decide that subliminal states of consciousness are

more dangerous in being blocks to finding our true self, than those

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experiences which are labelled "states of mind." This would be

determined by the recognition that subliminal states are more difficult to

apprehend and examine than are states of mind.

I remember the early hours of anguish that preceded the great spiritual

revelation, which is described in the Three Books of the Absolute. I saw

the entire population of humanity, milling upward as a heap of maggot-

men . . . Their pleasures were pathetic. The whole scene, as viewed from

my body-consciousness state, was dismal and so filled with despair that

I wrestled with my sanity, or that which we call sanity—that which

affixes to the body-processes, a pretence of reasonableness and

ultimate reality.

Only when my cherished sanity seemed to evaporate did I realize that

this vision was only real as regards the perspective of the minds of men .

In relation to the Absolute (which is real Reality), the whole thing was a

mental tableau. It was a tableau of physical existence as opposed to

ultimate Essence. The tableau is very much alive until we realize that it

is mental. When we are about to step out of the mental into pure

essence, we still have with us the memories of our evanescent

intelligence, and the memories of relatives (particularly those of our

children) who are but the sad extensions of our game-playing. We are

aware that these children still believe that they are real (meaning that

their self-estimate is not questioned by them), and this is momentarily

torturous, since in our memory' they are tied to us with love.

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I might liken the situation to one in which a person might fall in love with

a mannequin or robot . . . or with a Galatea. In the game of life, such a

Galatea has life breathed into it, but of itself, it is nothing, and that

which it imagines itself to be is nothing. The being that loves the Galatea

is no better than the statue. When the creator of the Galatea comes into

the deeper realization, it sees the Galatea as ego-born fiction. This

observer still has not crossed over and seen his corporeal self-belief as

fiction. The observer is also a statue, except that part of him that is

Absolute. For the Absolute is forever impersonal.

A GENERAL SUMMARY OF BLOCKS

Everything cannot be verbalized. And the emphasis upon the "states"

above is an attempt to show that things happen to us, and have a great

influence on our essence, and cannot always be described with words .

Likewise, there is no book of symptoms that covers all of the blocks that

may be generated by these "states," nor is there an instruction-book of

any sort that will list the manners of surmounting each block. Without

perfected intuition, we are lost.

In examining the systems that have endured in whole or in part down

through the ages, we find that nearly all religions recognized that a sort

of battle had to be fought to achieve anything that might be identified as

spiritual accomplishment. Now, we might say that we are not necessarily

interested in religion in this writing, as much as we are in thinking and in

understanding the essence of man . . . all of which might well come

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under the heading of psychology or super-psychology. And, of course,

when we say that we are interested in psychology here, we are not

referring to the pseudo-science that is peddled by the political hucksters

of social amenities.

When we find ourselves dealing with mental processes, we find

ourselves dealing with the battleground of mystics and theologians . And

while we may wish to pretend that we are philosophers, and above ail

the weaknesses that might be earmarked as having religious origins—we

can only so pretend with facetiousness. We are looking for the tool to

probe the abstract plane, and we find that the mind is about the only

tool we have for the venture. Next, we are looking for yardsticks to

gauge and keep a check on the mind, because we have discovered that

the mind is unreliable and elusive. We are in extremely bad shape, in

fact, unless we can find some way of monitoring this computer which is

continually suffering from emotional interference.

Let us look at the advice given us by the earlier prospectors of this field ,

and consider the things which they considered to be obstacles to

progress or success in mental and spiritual achievement.

We have the seven deadly sins. They could also be called the seven

obstacles to understanding. Pride, covetousness, lust, hatred , anger ,

envy, and sloth. These were published by the church long before the

science of psychology was invented. Let us look at some of the mental

blocks outlined by psychology, and compare them.

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What is procrastination, but another form of sloth? Exhibitionism is

another term for pride. There are many trade terms for lust, such as

satyriasis and nymphomania. Anger is considered an aberration—the

result of incomplete knowledge, or frustration with diverse objectives .

Paranoia in some diagnoses as such, may be nothing more than envy

and fear. It can be seen that the seven deadly sins can be seven

obstacles to clear thinking. But there are more.

The first and chief obstacle to the pursuit of Truth is Nature, and nature.

Meaning both the nature of man and external Nature—which is

capitalized to distinguish the two. The nature of man is such that it

hinders his thinking, since he must spend a good bit of his time thinking

about survival in its several forms. By that-meaning his personal

survival, family survival, and herd-survival. Under the heading of

personal survival we may find his motives for seeking immortality , but

his immediate daily survival needs do and must have precedence over

post-mortem survival.

So the appetites are a block or impediment. The exigencies of living are

obstacles. And bodily or physical limitations are an obstacle to the quest .

We will get tired if nothing else. The body may be in pain and while it is

in pain, we will not be able to think. And most men wait until they are in

pain before they feel compelled to think about life-after-death. Our

glands may not be functioning properly, and all sorts of complexes and

confusion may result.

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We are pretty much at the mercy of our natural limitations, which can be

overcome to only a very small degree at a time. Consequently, the major

religions hedge-hopped the issue of Nature and concentrated on the

mental obstacles. Only the priests and nuns undertook to negate the

physical, animal nature implanted in us by Nature. They seemed to

bargain the spiritual chances of the laity away for a respite for

themselves—during which time they practiced celibacy, poverty , and

fasting.

As for mental obstacles, the word that expresses the most adverse force

is called "Ego." We define Ego here, not only as egotism, but also as

being that composite of voices or urges known as personality , which in

the final analysis is always false. Because the Ego is such a significant

negative force, we will come back to it later to give it wider examination .

Let us examine a few more things which are obstacles. There is the

laziness of the mind which somehow must be tied up with physical

incapacity or brain-limitations. There is a fugue, or flight from the strain

of thinking. Our curiosity will take us occasionally to the threshold of

study, but something in the mind sees the work coming and takes the

thoughts away in flight and escape. There are tears. There is fear of

social rebuff-fear that the neighbors might find out that we are standing

on our head or chanting mantras, or fear that they might discover that

we have joined a group. There is the fear of hobgoblins. Brave men who

have survived the battlefield cannot be dragged into a haunted house .

There are fears of incubi or succubi. There are fears of spiritual

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contamination, and even fears of losing the soul (which we cannot

intellectually isolate).

Blind faith is an obstacle that comes in the category of rationalization .

We should believe only tentatively. When we build on belief, we build

cement around our mobile mental faculties. Or in other words, we

stagnate.

Robert S. DeRopp recently wrote, The Master Game, a very good book

for serious researchers, and for psychologists in the true sense of the

word. He lists six catches: the think-talk syndrome; the starry-eyed

syndrome; the false-Messiah syndrome; the personal salvation

syndrome; the Sunday-go-to-meeting syndrome; and the hunt-the-

guru syndrome.

Number one and number six speak of procrastination. Number one

differs from number six in that the former may never get anything done

but talk. Number six wanders from guru to guru, never stopping long

enough to work diligently with any. The second syndrome, the starry-

eyed, refers to those who, from a combination of emotionalism and

weakness, blindly follow a particular teacher or system. This is an

example of blind faith and aptly describes some of its motivation .

The false Messiah syndrome refers to those who have come to believe

that they are a teacher or savior, simply because they desire to be a

figure of prominence. These sometimes are psychopathic pretzels or

oversized egomaniacs.

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Which brings us to the business of Ego. There is much confusion with the

word "Ego." There is a big difference between the implied meaning of

"Ego" when Jung uses it, and when Gurdjieff uses it. The Gurdjieff system

teaches that there are many "I's," which, by their multiplicity, split up the

energy of men and weaken the power that might be spent upon self-

development. The system further indicates that these "I's" should be

developed or used in such a manner as to lead to a more coordinated

being.

The system of Zen, on the other hand, leans more to the esoteric

Christian view of the Ego as being the unhealthy part of the self. This

Zen interpretation in contrast to the Gurdjieff system, says that there

can be only one "I" for a perfectly functioning person. All of the rest must

be discovered to be inferior and unimportant in relation to the ultimate

destiny of man.

It is almost amusing to witness the attempts by the mind-mechanics to

define the word Ego. I maintain that the Ego is false and has no

functional value for the essence of man, anymore than an ingrown

toenail would. To me the Ego is the aggregate of many urges whose

ultimate value is more negative or harmful than good. The modern

psychologists dare not quibble with nature, and are obliged to rationalize

for anything that is in that nature—that is manifest.

Let us examine Webster. Under "psychology" we find ego to be the self

—"the self, whether considered as an organization or system of mental

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states, or as the consciousness of the individual's distinction from other

selves." The dictionary cannot take up too much space with each

definition, and it is difficult to incorporate all that modern psychology

does not know in a few lines. However, the first line of the above

definition might refer to uncertain mental states, or false states , while

the second line refers to the opposite—the final observer that is aware of

the other "selves." Some psychologists see that there is an incomplete

description of the evident phases of consciousness, or the complex

conglomeration of thought-origins and mental reaction . . . and so they

coined another word, "Id." From Id, Ego and Libido are supposed to

emanate.

As long as the "alienists" continue to operate as public utilities, instead

of functioning as scientists looking for the Truth, they will manage to

keep doors closed that might allow them to understand the mind. Having

denounced most mystics as being psychoneurotic, they will hardly dare

to approach the understanding of the mind through any of the formulae

approved by mystics.

The three horsemen of dark visage and apocalyptic message for

mankind are not pestilence, famine, and death. They are: Authoritative

Ignorance, Enforced Conditioning of the Individual, and Enforced

Conditioning for the Masses. The first horseman is only ignorant. The last

two are mad. They are, respectively. Psychology, Psychoanalysis , and

Sociology. And we are the unfortunate horses who support them.

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The obstacles of Nature are the most subtle opponents to Truth , and the

exigencies of everyday living are the most immediate obstacles .

However, the most formidable obstacles are contained in the Ego .

The sad part of this business of seeking for the Truth is the fact that

man's greatest enemies in the field are his external fellow man, and his

internal schizoid nature. There is no doubt that Zen attracted many

great minds, because those minds saw the inescapable dangers of the

attempts to categorize and scientize a study before all the data is in . The

most that we can do by way of a rational study of the definition of the

essence of man before all the data is in (which means too long a wait),

is to devise systems of study, or to design new tools with which to

evaluate the abstract values of the mind-states. Zen, of course, goes to

the heart of the matter. It is one also that works with the negation of

untruth, or a retreat from error, rather than a proud, frontal assault on

ignorance with such primitive wall-scaling devices as concept -building .

So that even as the churches have become the enemy of Truth by virtue

of a downward chain of attitudes, into rationalization resulting from

fatigue, into concept-building or dogma, into ritual as a replacement for

interior effort, and finally into a domineering and fear-inspiring

mundane authoritativeness—likewise the mind-mechanics have aborted

their noble cause. Those brash young men of the adolescent mind-

sciences are trying to reach suddenly in a couple of decades, a line of

corruption which took several hundred years for the church to

accomplish.

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So it cannot be advised too many times that we should beware of

seeking the Truth through modern psychology. Zen, I consider to be the

greatest psychoanalysis, but I use the word "psychoanalysis " only to

convey the manner in which Zen functions . . . to the best of my ability.

Zen works by negating errors and false structures, with the aim at

finding our essence.

LIST OF OBSTACLES

Of External Nature:

Visible, terrestrial life and planetary relationships .

Invisible, or dimensions beyond our senses.

Of Internal Nature:

The appetites.

Sex

Security

Food

Pleasures other than sex

Curiosity

The Fears.

Fear of dying

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 Fear of scorn or social harm

Fear of mental or spiritual harm

The Blocks.

The seven deadly sins

The six catches

Physical limitations

Economic exigencies

Forms of Rationalization:

That we will be able to do the thing better at a later date.

Procrastination.

That we will ride the tide of humanity into heaven.

That social services or "good works" have spiritual gain.

That the gods have ears. Salvation through prayers.

That the gods have noses and eyes. Incense and displays.

That positive thinking will make gods of us or lead us to liberation.

That the guru will save us.

That faith will save us.

That spiritual paths may be evaluated by their popularity.

That we can "feel" our way alone. Intuition alone.

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That we can do it with our omnipotent reason.

That God (or Mr. X) will take care of everything. This is a variation of the

"Knight on the white horse" rationalization.

That our present belief shall be our final evaluation of Truth.

That everything is hopeless or useless.

SIXTH PAPER

The First Steps

Of course, in order to begin a work we must have an objective. And the

objective need not be immediately negated by declaring that we do not

know that which we expect to find, when we announce our objective to

be the Truth. Such a stated objective actually means that we aim to

come to a point of no-ignorance and being. Our objective is to find our

definition, whatever the finding entails. Our objective is to find our origin

and destiny, if we can do so, but these are secondary to self-definition

or the finding out of who is doing the seeking.

There is only one time to start and this is now. And we can expect to

battle the urge to procrastinate from now on. The place is right where we

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are now, not in Tibet or some nebulous material land of magic. The

manner of searching is to use the tools at hand until better methods are

discovered.

Now all of this above advice involves no great arcane secrets, no

magical formulae. It could be used in any research laboratory , or by any

man building a shelter. The sad part is,—just that which the simple

analogy implies,—that man can begin on any level, with any tools, yet

he always hangs back, waiting for the electrifying Messiah or the more

propitious setting.

The greatest of journeys is started with a single step. It is that simple.

While the feet are making a pilgrimage, the mind is reminded and

brought back to the problem at hand. Thus, physical exercises of the

hatha yoga type may do little more than promote health, but if they are

done in conjunction with meditation, or the repetition of the spiritual

objective, then the mind is reminded and it, in turn, will evolve more

useful exercises and more sensible spiritual objectives.

For those who think only in terms of their own inadequacy and

consequent despair, let us outline the simple steps of beginning that

lead to more and more organized systems of climbing and seeking.

To begin with, we have at least our bodies and minds.

We also have available, written works or references on the subject.

We have, if we wish to seek them out, co-workers. And so we can sit

alone with the body and meditate or do exercises. Or we can pick up the

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body and go down to the library and read everything we can find on

subjects related to transcendental prospecting. Or we can pick up the

body and take it to places where we might meet men who have spent

their lives searching for the Truth.

We can look at a successful businessman and look at his competitor who

failed. While an occasional failure may be attributed to adverse luck ,

wherein it was impossible by any sort of planning to prepare for the

disasters that wiped out the man who failed, we find generally that the

losers applied less energy and less consistent attention to their project .

And we are reminded of the simple adage, "If you throw enough mud at

the ceiling, some of it will stick."

The same thing applies to a man who may have no competition, a man

who might be building a shed in which to live. If his mind wanders, or if

he procrastinates, he may begin the foundation but never complete any

more of the structure. As the years go by he will observe his unfinished

work, and each year come to believe that the task is more impossible or

beset by some curse. In the meantime, his neighbor, or many of his

neighbors, may have completed the task in a few weeks.

What we are coming to here is that man must develop a system of work,

and work with persevering dynamism. And the results are manifest

everywhere—he will succeed. So, he must observe the proper manner of

working, and the best manner of seeking. And this involves the

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knowledge that man must become a vector and must employ the laws

that expedite success.

Even as we study the man who was unable to finish a shed, we may

discover that some of his frustration may have resulted from his having

too many irons in the fire. And the same factors are involved in the

search.

By this we interpret that man needs to be dynamic, if he wishes

proportional results. Piddling at a major task will bring less than minor

results. If the search for our identity is not the major task, then it is

eventually going to be rationalized more and more to the rear of the

attention, until it is finally forgotten.

All men are seekers. However, the degree of energy applied is the

difference among them,—and we might add that the amount of honest

intelligent study of ways and means also marks the difference. The final

page of the last paper lists the general obstacles that a person

encounters, once the person tries to wake up and tries to search for the

sake of Truth itself.

If we examine our lives and the spiritual lives of people around or we will

begin to see how they were blocked by these obstacles at different

stages or levels of work. We may be able to see the other fellow's blocks

before we see our own, and if this is so, then it is good to ask ourselves,

regardless of the level that we might imagine ourselves to be on—

whether or not we too might be incomplete—we might be resting on a

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step that is still far from the top and one that is itself still a creation of

many desires and rationalizations.

Let us take the whole of humanity and take a sort of "Gallup" poll. We

will find that the majority of the people are more interested in somatic

functions than anything else. Between these body functions they have

moments of curiosity and some of them may spend an hour in church on

Sunday. This group of people occupies the lower strata of the pyramid -

form that is representative of all human action. Gurdjieff speaks of this

category or strain as being composed of "man number one," or

instinctively motivated man.

The second layer (man number two) may be our habitat for a few years

or for a lifetime, but most of us have experienced it.

We weary of the outgoing forces of emotion that identify the emotional

approach to religion and graduate from the second level. We eventually

come around to doubting the autosuggestion that brought us

quiescence. We realize that our mind over-intuited, and this came about

by our listening to an emotional zealot who, while being self-hypnotized ,

in turn, transferred to us his rapture. We also realized that our intuition

was not infallibly guided by some soul-faculty or guardian angel .

As Ouspensky so well states it, these first two levels are very deeply

asleep. And people on those two levels would not even open this book or

one similar to it. So we go on to the third level of the pyramid, or man

number three. (These layers do not represent clear-cut division of

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advancement, as there are many layers within each category-number .

Nor do I maintain that this is the only method of categorizing the

evolvement of man from ignorance. However, Gurdjieff is one of the few

philosophers who was in any way meaningful in his outline of the upward

struggle. He does not use the pyramid corollary, but my reference to the

pyramid should be easy to understand.)

The third level is that of the intellectual man, the man who employs logic

and common sense along with his emotional approach. This man is

showing more signs of wakening, but if he is predominately intellectual ,

he will remain trapped. His trap will consist of excessive attachment to

the tool which he proudly labels "reason," and with which he thinks he

can solve all problems. This man winds up chasing his own tail . . . or an

endless tangent.

We have been operating on the third level in the first five sections of this

book, in the hope of stimulating the intuition for those approaching the

problem with only logic, and in the hope of applying common-sense

analyses to movements that have only an intuitional appeal. It may be

said that I have been saying things that would be either told to a

sleeping person who had some chance of being awakened by the shock

of the words, or else I have been talking to people who have already

gone through these three stages—were somewhat awake—and would be

stimulated to more effort by knowing that they were not alone in this

type of thinking.

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Those who are getting ready to graduate from the first three levels are

not above conceit, and conceit can be a block in itself. We are now able

to look back and see the mote in some other people's eyes, but may still

have some big blinders on our own vision. So if any of us think that we

can gloat over the discovery of a new cult or ism, which we are sure of

for salvation purposes, let us be reminded of the Salvationists on the

emotional level. The fact that we have erred before means that we may

be capable of erring again.

The time is not for resting or gloating at any stage of the game. The

history of the most eminent sages is one of men who never stopped

working, if for no other reason than to amplify their vector by helping

others.

It is only when you are at least partially awake that you are able to do

anything . . . except as a robot. And so we ask, how will a person know

when he is partially awake? He will begin to realize that he has been a

sort of a robot, and still is a robot largely, and he will have the

advantage of presently being aware of his robot condition.

It may seem that I have further complicated things by first advising the

reader to begin in any manner available, and followed this advice by

stating that man is largely incapable of doing anything. This is naturally

paradoxical, but both are true. Any waking must be gradual at first. It is

understandable to reckon that a man partially awake, or largely in a

robot condition, would not be aroused to suddenly do great things or

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undertake disciplines of a complex nature. Nor would he immediately

grasp a concept that was not worded with all the gestalts of his robot

nature.

We presume now that we have reached the stage where we are eager to

do something about defining ourselves. To feel that we are robots is not

to know of our total nature, our total potential to operate as an aware

person, or of our essence. It may be better to use the word "sleepwalker "

instead of the word "robot," because the latter implies an object without

any essence beyond that which is visible. A sleepwalker may awaken

some day.

The first questions are, "How do I start?" and "How will I know to trust

any advice on the subject?" This means that we are looking for

yardsticks and human guides. And, of course, we may realize that we

must find some means of checking our own thinking to see if it is

impersonal, and not the automatic reactions of a conditioned mind .

And knowing all of these things, together with an awareness of all of the

obstacles,—all of this will not get us started. We must, if we are not

inspired to a singular method, look to our fellowman for his record of

experience on this path.

If we are going to build a shed, it is usually advisable to spend a few

hours getting some advice from a carpenter. And so, automatically , we

gravitate toward men who have a reputation for being seekers after

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Truth. The blueprints left behind by Christ and Buddha were both

threefold directives. "The Way, The Truth, and the Life," (John 14:6) is

given as the means of coming to the Father. We find other directives

that fit into and explain the threefold message of Christ. We are told to

"seek and ye shall find." "The Truth shall make you free." The Way is the

particular path of seeking. The Truth is the objective. The truth is also

the practice of honesty. There are naturally many opinions as to the

exact meaning of these words, but I believe the "Life" refers to the type

of life that is led by a seeker, and to the collective spiritual life of a

church or brotherhood of souls. It was in his final order, given to his

intimate apostles, in which he repeated, "Feed my lambs, feed my

sheep," that he spelled out the "life" of His group.

Let us compare the directives of Christ with those of Buddha. The three

ways of Buddha were, the Buddha (the Way of Discernment), the

Dharma (the life of Truth and duty), and the Sangha, or brotherhood.

Next, we go to the teachings of Gurdjieff, and we find that he

recommended the Way of self-observation, and the School; and the

latter may be synonymous with Sangha. It may be said that Gurdjieff

was aimed at truth or greater understanding, by virtue of his strenuous

efforts to produce reasonable concepts and techniques.

Now this does not by any means say that we have uncovered the only

way to start identifying ourselves. And the three systems just mentioned

are working hypotheses . . . until enough results are obtained to bring us

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to the point of witnessing such systems as worthy. Again, until we know

all things, we remain on the unsure ground of relative knowledge. So in

order not to remain forever inert, we must begin with some working

hypothesis and work with it until it is no longer endurable, or until it is

transcended and replaced by a better working hypothesis.

It is not difficult to accept the Truth as an objective, unless we prefer

blind dogmas and fairy tales. It is not hard for us to understand the

advantages of a brotherhood, sangha, or school (or the Contractors Law

which will be explained in another section), because man has come to

realize that nothing much is accomplished by a solitary individual .

However, the other directive, which has reference to Path, brings with it

some controversy, since Paths are recommended.

And it is this fact of divergence that makes more literature on the

subject necessary. Christ admonished his followers to "seek," but he

spent many more words and verses in admonishing them to "believe in "

Him. Blind belief is somehow contrary to "seeking and finding." And,

again, we must retire in confusion unless we interpret his teachings to

have an esoteric and an exoteric meaning, and conclude that the

esoteric teachings were not printed, since he was killed for the exoteric

teachings. My interpretation of his words allocates the admonition for

blind belief to the laity, and is thus an exoteric instruction. Other

admonitions, such as "Seek and ye shall find, knock, etc.," were meant

for those in a position to do so.

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So that many a fundamentalist will contradict my interpretation of that

which I claim to be Christ's esoteric intention, but I give this because

nearly all men who have received a glimpse of enlightenment, whether

it came from worshiping Krishna, Zen contemplation , or a Gurdjieffian

system,—all wind up with a sense of harmony with other systems and

recognize in Christ's system a roadmap which most Christians fail to see .

In any event, I recommend for those not otherwise addicted, to embark

upon a threefold path, without the fear of being accused of being a

follower of any particular religion. I would explain the mechanism as a

sort of troika, the vehicle being the individual, and the three powers that

are pulling the vehicle with proportionate pace are the Truth , the Law of

the Contractor (brotherhood), and the Life of Search. And this system

involves and includes all of the levels and the evolvement of one

working-hypothesis to another.

THE SELF

It is expected of us, if we wish for results, that we will not leave a stone

unturned. And this means reading and researching until we come to a

movement that we wish to join or to a teacher that we need. And in

order to properly evaluate these different systems, we must have some

type of yardstick. We must find a method to measure movements before

we dive into them too deeply.

And in attempting to be objective, we should not begin the search with

presuppositions or refuse to listen to a concept because it promises

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nothing to us, or promises something not to our liking. Vanity is the

worst enemy of the seeker. As we have seen in previous pages, man

seems unable to contemplate a God that does not have human form,

human concepts of justice, plus a human appreciation for our corporal

love. We spend so much of our time gloating over our superiority over

animals that we neglect to see our own meaninglessness. Yet, we never

stop to think that a genuine comparison of ourselves to the Beings that

rule our lives may prove to us that there is a more remote relationship to

those Beings than there is to the animals that we use.

The conviction,—that all animals were placed here by a humanly

sympathetic Creator, so that we could kill for sport, make trinkets of

horns and other body parts, make clothing from others, and use some

for food,—is no more valid than to entertain the conviction that we are

merely planetary food (Gurdjieffian suggestion), or that our protoplasm

or ectoplasm is our chief value, and not any undefined soul.

From the very beginning of our search we should realize our

insignificance, as regards our present, unproven state. We should take

note of the diffusion of our attention among our many "I's" or

personalities. And when we add to this the knowledge that we are

almost hopelessly buried under a heavy pile of conditioning that may go

back many generations in regard to genetic influence, we can realize

that we have a task, and the task is not to be taken lightly.

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But by the same token, the task also becomes easier if we keep these

things in mind. Because now we will not make the mistakes we would

make if we were unaware of our limitations.

We can now dispense with movements that would not have been

cognized before for what they were, but which were followed because

they encouraged our harem or blessed our marriage, or helped our

business. We will dispense with those movements that bring us peace of

mind but not wisdom. We can dispense with movements that appeal to

our weaknesses, excuse our laziness, or soothe our weariness.

We begin to see that certain "religions of wisdom" were nothing more

than theological systems of politics. Under the vanity of our "wisdom,"

we accepted the religion that seemed to answer all our questions , or to

be more precise, we accepted the religion that promised everything but

proved nothing.

Of course, the Ego intrudes in many still more subtle forms. And we find

ourselves clinging to the hope that we are going to take our personality

with us beyond the shadow of the grave. Another turn that we take is to

try to give all our weight to a concept that will require more time than

we can afford. In other words, we know in advance that some

movements require endless practice and rubrics that are primarily

designed to keep us busy rather than develop us.

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We must be on the alert for impediments that are physical as well as

mental. We must begin by setting our house in order, and this means

the dwelling in which we live, as well as our physical body. This business

of putting the domestic situation in order need not be an enormous

undertaking, nor a drive for wealth. It simply means that a person

;
cannot think, study, or carry on work w ith a group or school, if he is

beset by domestic irritations and interruptions. And even after the

household has been placed in order, as long as we live we must still

work to keep it in order, or run the risk of traumatic interruptions.

So that in this work as in a business or any complex type of work, the

degree of our success in the big things depends on how many little

things we can manage simultaneously.

The process of setting the body in order may be very complex , and it too

will demand consistent attention. Sometimes yoga exercises help , but

the practitioner must watch for signs of sleepiness and the type of

peacefulness that drowns out any desire for exertion.

PROGRESSION

In this section, I would like to deal with the need for cooperation in

things spiritual, regardless of the path chosen. There are many paths

and we must be patient with honest men, even if we honestly believe

that they are on the wrong path. Words and their interpretations form a

high barricade between seekers, but even more formidable is the

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barricade of Babel that results from different intuitional interpretations

of concepts dealing with abstract matters and subjective thinking .

And this brings us to that which this book proposes. We can enter the

brotherhood of the ignorant and climb and study together. If this makes

for us a wide field in which to work, we can find friendship and comfort

at least in the large number of people found there, and we can still find

the select few among them that can work more dynamically with us by

virtue of their nearness to our level.

Not all of those who read this will be instantaneously satisfied with this

system, but all should see the need for helping one another in the

ultimate friendship. And so, there is much to be done. There are books to

be read. There are experiments which many would like to try. There are

scientific compilations, cataloguings and syntheses that some of us

might feel compelled to build. There are eminent wise men whom we

shall certainly desire to meet, even if they are on the other side of the

globe. We must amass knowledge and then whittle it down and simplify

it.

Can the mystic relax his ego a fraction and take a lesson from the man

with the hoe? Too many of us, having heard that we are a part of God,

decide that we alone are possessed of divine intuition , and

consequently, we sever valuable contacts . . . a valuable contact possibly

meaning some kindly soul capable of tapping our inflated ego-balloon if

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nothing more. Some of us who have been freed from tobacco or alcohol

think that we have crashed through the perimeter of outer space.

Like the pioneer, we are pioneers. Possibly, eternally so . Like the

pioneer, we must work collectively, yet with a guarantee of our

individuality . . . at least as long as we desire to cling to our individuality .

The solitary mystic still needs an ashram. Yet, unless his solitude is

respected, we must, like the pioneer, invent and employ commerce

between fellow-seekers.

We come now to the concept of an Ashram. To differentiate somewhat

between "Ashram" and "monastery", the word Ashram is used to define a

system that would overcome the inadequacy of monastic life, and the

insufficiency of having just random contacts in our field, whether that

field be philosophy or religion.

The monastery has a closed door, the Ashram, an open one. The

monastery suppresses individuality and doubt, the Ashram must not .

While the monastery keeps wisdom in, it also keeps much more wisdom

from getting in.

We need a spot on earth upon which to meet. A homing ground, but not

an intellectual prison. A library and a clubhouse of philosophers . A place

with quiet rooms where a person can be alone if he desires. A

clearinghouse of contacts, or a place where a card-file might be kept

with names of those who wish to be contacted. In philosophical research ,

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access to personal contacts is more valuable than any card -index of an

esoteric library.

Many people of philosophic drive feel no compulsion to mingle with

anyone except their colleagues. But these people must be unaware of

future growth possibilities for themselves, and they must be unaware

that they must help others in order to grow themselves. This is the Law

of the Ladder, which will be discussed later. The Ashram brings the

different levels together that are needed for the growth of each member .

It is understandable that if an Ashram were formed by people without

teachers or leadership, if that Ashram were managed in a spirit of

tolerance and brotherhood, it would either form the matrix that would

attract worthwhile teachers, or it would generate and develop them from

the membership.

This atmosphere of brotherhood does not mean one of quiet patience

alone, but of consideration for the members who might require degrees

of anonymity, if they are to function with the Ashram and still carry on

professional lives not connected with the Ashram. Some of this

protection may be automatic, if the members concentrate their work

with people on or near their own level. Procedure for insuring protection

can be found and made the custom of the Ashram, and then it should be

accepted by all members.

We get into quite a question when we ask for a solution to the problem

of protecting members from the human traits of other members. To

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begin with, we must have a trustworthy person in charge of the gate , in

charge of screening those who are admitted to the physical premises . All

newcomers should be endorsed by some active member who will vouch

for them.

If there are various groups meeting apart from the general gathering,

these groups must be protected in the same manner from those

admitted to the premises.

There must be this focal point. But there must also be a focus of time for

meeting. Not all participants need to be at the point which is the Ashram.

The Ashram, where intensity of effort breathes life into the focal point ,

cannot survive by itself. There must be a much wider association that

includes those who are unable to stay in one place, and for those who

have not yet decided to enter the work with fuller participation .

However, many organizational problems will take care of themselves if

the initial nucleus of founders take sensible precautions in their early

planning.

I feel that a sincere seeker who possessed the determination to find the

Truth at any cost, suffering, or expenditure of energy, would most

certainly find the Truth, if he followed the threefold th with an open

mind. The part of that path which is hardest to realize is that dealing

with the brotherhood or school. We can begin work upon ourselves with

a spiritual discipline, and we can follow the truth in all our words and

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deeds, but it is quite another thing to be part of a brotherhood. This

latter requires compatibility with a group of people and requires that we

find a group that is doing something worthwhile.

But, given that group, we begin to experience results according to a

process which I will call Progression. This means that evidence of a little

of something may automatically imply that more may evolve from a

little. If we find some men's minds capable of great knowledge, there

must be some capable of greater knowledge. The concept of Progression

is related to the Law of the Pyramid. Each layer of capacity in the

Pyramid automatically presupposes the existence of another higher

layer or level.

The suppression of Galileo, if successful, might have retarded the

present explorations of space, but that suppression would never have

removed the potentiality of man for spatial exploration. His suppressors

presumed even to read the mind of God and imagined that God, as well

as Nature, planned for man to remain helpless and ignorant. Progression

is opposed by fanaticism and futility.

If there is a recognized pyramid of knowledge, and of effort, then it is

possible to have a larger pyramid. If the mind of man is changing and

growing in complexity to meet the complexities of its problems, it is

possible that that mind might change and adjust to meet the infinite

scope of spiritual problems. Only the foolish ones are suppressors . They

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should know better, because today's suppressors were yesterday 's

oppressed.

FRIENDSHIP AND THE SEARCH

There generally comes a time for all searchers when an individual

becomes significant to us, if we believe him to be capable of being a

guide or consultant. There are many little gossamer threads of

understanding and decision points in which a good friend with

experience would be of value.

In most instances, and on most levels of spiritual work, the friendship of

a guide is not of great importance . . . we can listen to words often while

not accepting the speaker. However, there are levels in which the

personal guide is in a position to do us some damage, if he is not

motivated by compassion at least.

We must be fairly sure of those teachers who would have us dedicate

our lives to them. We realize that we must experience a change of

being, if we are to experience or feel the Absolute in all things. And as

we approach this challenge, near the end of our quest, we are eager to

be helped by someone who is able to push us over the goal. Our error

lies in our haste to leap and embrace any teacher who promises to

annihilate our ego. The "ego" that he may annihilate may be the only

awareness that we have.

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The teacher must show some reason why it is advisable to lose your ego ,

must try to explain the process, and somehow manifest the loyalty of a

friend that would survive any test. We must reject the "Master" who

commands us to believe without explanation.

It is true that much of our mind is filled with garbage that clings like

barnacles to a stem of make-believe, vanity, or ego. But we need not

subsidize a marble palace in Kashmir just to remove those barnacles .

The barnacles will start to fall away with meditation, self-analysis , and

the encouragement of analysis and criticism from our friends.

In being alert for various tricks, it is good to know a little of the history of

trickery, and of the history of movements that are based on the use of

"gimmicks." Rom Landau mentions that some Tibetan priests have a trick

by which they can hypnotize at a distance. By using such mechanisms,

they manage to hold the laity. The African sorcerer has a trick by which

he can hypnotize the minds of his victims, to bring their bodies to the

point of suffering or death. These tricks do not enhance the soul of the

victim.

Some of us will say. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." But it is also

unwise to put everything upon the single roll of the dice, if there is a less

risky manner of bringing about the same result. It has been argued that

certain wonderful secrets are available to men who may be trusted . In

order to prove that trust, the applicant must be made subservient to a

point where he will not be strong enough to betray the master. And we

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wonder why the master should need to fear betrayal. This demanding

pose is often encountered in the persons of those who pretend to be

able to initiate us into magical rites and powers.

I have the highest respect for Zen as a system, but I cannot convey that

same respect to all who claim to be Zen teachers or masters. I have

written evidence that one Zen student, a lady, slashed her wrists .

Another lady admitted that she was driven to the point of insanity , but

still she never reached Satori. She came to the conclusion that her

teacher was a sadist of some peculiar type. She studied under him for

over twenty years. The lady who slashed her wrists also became an

alcoholic. Is all this necessary for spiritual development and the

identification of the Self?

The Zen master is a very mysterious character. The mysteriousness is

necessary, he tells us. A hypnotist finds that an atmosphere of

uncertainty and mystery expedites the hypnotic processes. Hypnotism

may have therapeutic value, and in such a case the end might justify the

means, if therapy alone resulted. In which case the subject would at

least know that therapy was the reason for being hypnotized, and would

possibly know the hypnotist long enough to trust him.

We come now to a very important conclusion. There is no religion

greater than human friendship. Now this conclusion should not be

quoted out of text. It does not mean that people are greater than truth . It

does not mean that we should worship humanity or individuals. In fact, I

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strongly oppose getting the idea of love and friendship mixed in deciding

the attitude of the student toward the teacher, especially if the student

cannot discriminate between physical love and platonic devotion .

Nor does the above mean that we should reject a particular religion , if it

interferes with friendship. That which is meant is quite the opposite, in

that a religion should not be found acceptable if it holds that human

friendship as a principle should be cast aside. Strangely enough, this

demand, if made, has to emanate from the mouth of another human,

not a divine spirit. It has been a long time since man has received any

messages from burning bushes or voices in the sky. So that to our

knowledge, our whole spiritual education and help must come from

other humans or their books.

We need to trust any man whom we accept as a teacher, because he

holds in trust our hopes for salvation or enlightenment, as well as our

sanity which, until we make the final jump, is the only true

communication with our essence or absolute being.

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 SEVENTH PAPER

Discernment

Some of the preceding papers have been critical of the lack of

orderliness in the outstanding sects and movements. Now this does not

mean that I wish to be destructively iconoclastic alone, or that I intend to

build a better icon. If I have a system, it is simply a system by which

Truth is reached by the continual analysis (not breakage) of various

transcendental poses, and by a constant vigil over the many factors

within the self. I make this statement because it worked for me, and in

my lifetime. The system, is not new, nor mine alone. I only hope to

clarify things a bit.

If the Truth is within us, and we do not see it, it can only be that we see

through the glass darkly,—at this stage of the game.

This book has been in the writing-process, for about ten years. This

time, while it should have given me ample time and opportunity to

rewrite and rewrite again, was also spent in studying ways in which to

express that which few people ever try to express, once they have

reached the experience.

Consequently, I chose to ignore grammatical symmetry , and worked

more in fear of not saying enough to describe an abstract goal.

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We come at this point to the business of the paradox. Which may have

been explained before. However, to point at myself for a moment, you

will find that I attack many movements for their lack of common sense. It

must follow then, that there must be a way,—using a little more

common sense,—to outline a sort of summary of what this book is about .

Of course, the ultimate paradox lies in the knowledge by me, or the

intuition of mine, that there is not any common sense method of

describing that which I presume to be the discovery which might be

labeled cosmic consciousness.

However, until such time as when we are wired to this wheel no longer,

we must make out the best we can with words. And pray for the proper

intuition to speak the best ones, and pray that the reader has an

intuition of rapport.

I would like to list the five following premises as a summary to the

previous papers:

1. That the majority of the isms that serve as religious and

philosophical guidelines for humanity are permeated by

inconsistencies, and that in these isms many of the so-called facts

are illusions or half-truths, and that most of man's beliefs are the

products of fear and wishful thinking rather than an unbiased

search for Truth.

2. That the human mind is not infallible in its processes, and that it

suffers errors as a result of many factors, such as the conflicting

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 clamor of appetites, intellectual limitation, fatigue, inadequate

intuition, inadequate reasoning (or inadequate common sense

faculties), difficulties of the dual mind in the solving of abstract or

absolute considerations, and the lack of individual control over

states of mind.

3. That there is a system of overcoming these errors, and the system

is practical, and Truth may be realized.

4. That the rate of realization is directly proportional to the amount of

and quality of energy and attention applied to the quest.

5. That illusions are the great obstacles to Truth, and that the

dispelling of these illusions involves the improvement of the

inadequate factors mentioned in premise 2, and better control over

them. This process involves an ever-conscious schooling of the

mind, so that it will be an instrument of Truth.

In reference to the message of premise 3 and 4, I have come to the

following conclusions:

A. That there is a path to Truth. From ignorance to relative

knowledge. From relative knowledge to an awareness of the

limitation of such knowledge. And finally we pass from that which

we recognize as loosely associated intelligence to a reality of

Being.

B. That this Path is not visible even by many who profess to be on a

"Path." It is true that there are many paths, and it is also true that

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 most people on those paths are quite convinced that theirs is the

only real path. It is not until after they become broad enough to

see that their path is at most only equal to many other paths, that

they take another step and look about for a path that will lead

them still further.

C. That the graduation from the field of many paths to a more

selective path among the decreasing choices of paths (as the

searcher retreats from incomplete or lesser paths), is a phase of

entering the final Path.

D. That the Path does not require years of lesson-taking, and it is not

bought with money. By the same token, we should not expect it to

be brought to us on a gold server. Money spent should be so used

as to hold a particular group together.

E. That if we applied the same amount of energy that is wasted in any

of the material pursuits, we would see spiritual results . And as in

any material venture, the results of transcendental efforts are also

proportional to the efficient interrelation of workers and brothers ,

whether it be in a study-group, or in some act resulting from

mutual convictions.

We go back to premise 2 and add the following notes. A lot can be said

about techniques that are relative to our thinking processes, or that help

in understanding ourselves. This is a partial list:

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 1. Progressive elimination of concepts and concept-building by

eliminating those not as consistent within themselves, not as

inclusive, and those whose scope does not bridge the range of

unexplained phenomena as well as some other system of thinking

does.

2. Self-observation.

3. Self-remembering. (Looking at our past.)

4. The respectful doubt.

5. Application of the paradox.

6. Development of the Intuition.

7. Retaining the identity of the Real Observer in various states of

mind.

I do not wish to give the impression that I am about to embark upon a

course that will employ premises with pursuant conclusions , and thus

produce facts from a jumble of words. I only wish to list some

observations in an orderly manner. If the reader is looking for syllogistic

proof, he can quit reading now. if psychology is in its infancy,

transcendentalism, its parent, also has its share of confusion . And the

application of logic to transcendentalism will, in most cases , increase

that confusion.

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A lifetime accumulates for us experiences, and the hope that a new

slant, and the description of such, will, if nothing else, bring a new type

of enquiring mind into the search. The slant is not all new, either. Many

of the suggestions found here will be found elsewhere, but not always in

this combination.

We come now to laws. Down through the ages, mystics and scientists

regarded the finding of laws to be the equivalent of finding milestones of

progress. The discovery of natural laws has had a profound effect upon

theological convictions. And the observation of laws of nature has

caused some theologians to claim them as proof that a central , or

singular intelligence was running the universe. The notice of the same

laws has caused materialists to proclaim that the universe is running

itself.

For an example we refer to the Law of Equilibrium. Everything seems to

be in balance. At the same time, everything is changing. The planets are

not bumping into one another, but the whole universe is either decaying

or growing. So that the Law of Equilibrium is conditional to the Law of

Change. And all of this operates in pre-established, particular degrees .

These degrees are gauged by the environment of each entity, over

which that entity has no control. We might liken it to the cohesiveness of

the water in the ocean. There is a built-in equilibrium system in the sea

levels. Water is supposed to How toward its lowest point, yet we know

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that the water is humped up in the middle of the ocean to conform to

the shape of the earth. The ocean is not flat across, in other words.

Supposedly, the centrifugal forces balance with gravity, and the

continents are neither flooded, nor is the water flung out into space.

Yet there is something that is not built into this earth-system, such as

allowances for catalytical results of other celestial bodies , when those

bodies come too close. Thus, when the moon and the earth are in a

certain relationship, we have the tides. That cohesiveness -quality

diminishes, and a part of the shore is flooded.

The same discrepancy occurs within the human body. There is an

equilibrium among the cells of the body, but each cell is dying and being

replaced. There is an equilibrium between the bodies or persons of

humans, but these same bodies are being replaced. We notice that the

stars are floating in what seems to be an eternal pattern, but we have

learned that they too, are either changing or dying. Each in its own

environment is subject to laws controlling its environment but such laws

do not effect the environment which is a degree or more above.

Recent observations in ecology have demonstrated that man can upset

the equilibrium of the balanced aquaria of lower forms of life. Perhaps

thousands of years of organic growth and soil-balance may be

destroyed when the farmer plows in the cold winter, freezing out the

grubs, and altering perhaps the whole ferment of life that differentiates

soil from clay. At any rate, the grub is certainly deprived of his

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equilibrium in his dimension. Man can seine the seas empty of fish, and

possibly create in a test tube the proteins that have been lost by the

forfeiture of our natural food-source. And by the same token, we are

expendable. But man is somewhat inhibited from depleting the human

population, either by the killing of an individual or the slaughter of an

army.

So that equilibrium is a changing thing, and is subject to the eternal

paradoxes brought about by incomplete human knowledge of our final

resting place, and the final resting place of all things, including the

planets and suns. Equilibrium is a changing thing, because the

equilibrium that existed among animals and plant life in the days of the

dinosaurs is not the same as that which exists today.

And so it is with things spiritual. There is a Law of Equilibrium here too. It

is called Karma, the Law of Retribution, or Divine Law. It is viewed as

being punitive, while in fact it is only regulatory.

The Law of Equilibrium, or Karma, says, in effect, that a being may kill

its inferiors, but not its equals or its superiors. It may offend its inferiors,

but not its peers or its superiors. So that we suffer no great consequence

if we kill off spirochetes or mice, but we rarely get away with killing

another human. I am aware that most Indians define Karma as being a

chain of responsibility that ties men to animals in their temporal destiny ,

and this Indian definition leads me to use the word "equilibrium." Many

Christians prefer to use the word Karma because of their abhorrence of

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the word sin or any word that might imply personal guilt. But they still do

not agree with the Indian that man is held responsible for every ant on

his path.

It is good to note, that if we follow this neo-karmic line of thinking,—

(that of non-responsibility for lesser beings), there is no reason for us to

presume that creatures superior to ourselves are restricted to our laws

or our concepts of generosity. Different moral and ethical standards may

be found in different environments and dimensions. This has been

perceived by some transcendentalists, who have taken advantage of the

knowledge by first claiming themselves to be superior , and secondly

claiming themselves to be above the karmic laws of this environment .

We can see. however, that if entities of a superior degree are not held to

our laws, it is rather vain to presume that they operate on our code of

justice. We may be either the goodies in their garden, or the grubs.

Man cannot help looking desperately for changelessness,—immortality .

It is evident to us that all of nature is a dying process, from the virus to

the constellations. The urge to live is as meaningless as the fear of

death. We do not really know the reasons for either life or death. It is a

fair guess, however, that we are able to point upward, and note that

there is a higher degree, using the concept of Progression. We feel like

microbes dying on the face of the earth in order to promote something

for the well-being of this planet, but we must not hurry to deify the

planet. It too, is dying, waxing or waning.

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A few of the laws:

The Law of Equilibrium.

The Law of Change. (This negates anything as being constant, outside of

the absolute state.)

The Law of Proportional Returns.

The Law of Extra-Proportional Returns.

The Law of Relativity.

The Law of Paradoxical Immanence in All Things Relative.

The Law of Complexity.

The Law of Love.

The Law of Faith.

The Law of the Ladder.

The Law of the Vector.

These are by no means inexorable laws, which, once broken, will damn

us to the world of the crustaceans. It is not a complete list, nor would a

study of their interrelation give us the final key to the ultimate cause or

the final end. The application of them, or the observance of them, will

help us understand things not previously understood. They may also

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save us a few sore spots which are normally incurred by banging our

heads against walls that do not move.

In the process of setting up a system of work for achieving Truth or

appreciating Truth, these laws have a very important place . . . There are

laws which we find expressed in occult works, and I think that they are

all worthy of notice if they were not invented to impress the reader .

Gurdjieff speaks of the Law of Three and the Law of Seven. There is a

certain periodicity and reoccurrence that pervades the physical world ,

but I consider it tangential at this time to study all of the material laws.

Let us run through some of the Laws and apply them to the Work. The

Law of Proportional Returns is another way of saying that you will get

that which you give. This is the reversal of retribution. We offer instead

of taking, and we find that it works.

The law also implies that we can cause a ripple . . . that we can

accomplish something and still not upset the equilibrium of our

dimension. We may say that effort is rewarded, as long as it works within

the laws of our dimension. We take another step, and say that helping

others inspires help. Helping also develops in us a more acceptable

attitude, but these social advantages do not measure a law . The

mechanism of a law implies an automatic result.

Historically, the Christians were the first to utilize this business of giving

and to make it a functional part of their philosophy. They gave of

themselves to the point of self-immolation. They practically worked the

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law to death, along with themselves. Another law should be observed

concurrently with the Law of Proportional Returns. It is the Law of the

Ladder. The ladder is here used as a symbol to show that there should

be a selective giving of goods, energy, or spiritual help. The Law of the

Ladder simply says that you should not reach below the rung upon which

you stand, except to the first rung below you—in order to help people. If

you reach down too low, your efforts will be wasted, and you may be

hurt. Or crucified.

The Law of the Ladder also says that you cannot be helped by anyone

too far above you, because you are not prepared to work with that

person on the same level at which he is working.

The Law of Love is another law which brought trouble to the early

Christians. It was discovered that hate only generates hate. Killing

invites killing. Love, on the other hand, invites love. I doubt if there is

any advantage for a person who loves someone who would like to kill

him. Such a union might bring about a homicidal child that might really

kill and love the killing. In fact, Christianity bore such a child . . . it was

the monstrous acts of the Inquisition.

It has been said of the Sikhs that for generations they were a peaceful

people. I do not have the exact figures as to the years involved, but a

guru of an Indian sect who was formerly a Sikh (he may be a Sikh still),

told me that there had been quite a long line of peaceful gurus. The

Mohammedan invasions repeatedly afflicted the state of Kashmir which

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is the Sikh home-ground. Holy men were tortured and slain. Finally one

day, one of the gurus rose up and told his people that passivity was a

mistake. He advised them to defend themselves, and as a result of his

advice, we have a very formidable group of people who find the sword to

be the partner of the Granth Sahib, the Sikh bible.

The proper application of the Law of Love should be in the direction of

the friends upon the path, meaning those on our rung, and the two

adjacent rungs. This love can be expressed as friendship of the most

unselfish type. For those too many rungs above us we can only offer

respectful silence. For those who cannot see us too well, being less

fortunate,—we can only afford compassion. Anything other than

compassion may verge on self-deifying egotism.

The Law of Extra-Proportional Returns can be effected only with the

cooperation of friends. The Law of Proportional Returns tells us that we

can count the number of yards that a gallon of gas will take a truck. It

adds, that if we put two gallons in, we can expect only to go twice as far.

The Law of Extra-Proportional Returns implies an unexpected increment .

To draw an analogy, two factors (human) will accomplish more results

together, than will either of the two factors in twice as much time.

This is also known as the Contractor's Law. If this law did not exist, no

contractor would hire men. The work would all be done by individuals

working alone. It was only when Henry Ford progressed to the assembly

line production that he really started making money.

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The principle works in somewhat the following manner. One man can

build a certain type of house in ninety days. Two men working together

will be able to build it in forty-two or forty-three days. And five men,

each specializing in a particular trade, may build it in fifteen days, or

seventy-five man-days. And with more men, the work will be closer to

perfection.

We apply the same principle to spiritual work. Since we are working with

inadequate tools, in the hope of doing something more difficult than

building a rocket for the moon, it is a good idea to give some of these

laws a practical appraisal. Especially in view of the fact that men ,—

whom we have recognized as being spiritual authorities,—have found

the employment of the Law of Extra-Proportional Returns to be

expedient in the same way that it is recommended here. We must work

in groups, in other words. You can call them brotherhoods or societies ,

or you can work in groups without a name.

Gurdjieff called it the school. It is very difficult for a man to work alone.

He tends to drift. If he does not drift, he may slip off on a tangent,

become hallucinated, self-hypnotized, or plainly obsessed. He needs a

mirror to watch for his own possible deviations, and he finds such a

mirror in the minds of his colleagues, if nothing else. And when he

realizes the value of cooperation, the only sensible thing to do is to form

a pattern for cooperation, which pattern should allow for new brothers

on the path.

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Now the Law of the Ladder has more meaning. We do not visualize a

single man upon each rung, reaching down, pulling up the man below.

We find that the ladder is "A" shaped, pyramid in form, for one thing.

There are less people on the higher rungs than on the lower rungs. We

will be lucky if we can find one man who can help us, but we should be

working with six or more on the rung below. We also find a new meaning

for the brotherhood now. The man above may be pulling up the man

below,—but they are pushing him a bit, at the same time.

It is good to read books, hold meetings of sundry types, and even join a

cult or two to hear that which they have to say, but there is no substitute

for the Ashram or School. Forty years of solitary reading will not do for

the individual that which would be accomplished by a two year stay at a

genuine Ashram. If this were not true, monasteries would not have

endured down through the centuries, and monasteries are not always

ideal Ashrams.

We come now to the Law of the Reversed Vector. This is first recognized

by the student who has become mature enough to define himself as a

student and not a god or perfect being with perfect understanding . In

spiritual matters, man must become identified as a vector, or force, if he

wishes for results. If this vector is aimed in the wrong direction, his life is

wasted. Most people do not even bother to make of themselves a vector ,

even in positive spiritual drives. They announce their objective before

they begin to study, and then later announce that they have reached it .

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The Law of the Reversed Vector states that you cannot approach the

Truth. You must become (a vector), but you cannot learn the absolute

Truth. Not knowing the Truth in the beginning, nor even the true path,

we still wish to move toward the Truth. We find that there is only one

way, and that is to first build of ourselves a very determined person,—a

vector. We cut off tangential dissipators of energy and ball up this

energy for the work ahead. And then like most of the clergy, we make

the mistake of putting years of this precious energy into first one blind

direction and then another . . . until we learn that we must reverse the

vector.

We must back into the Truth by backing away from untruth. We still may

gamble a bit, because we will not know those things which are untrue in

every case. We must develop a faculty, consequently, for being more

aware of the difference between things true and things untrue. And it

will not come suddenly. But we must begin with a simple start, and with

faith in Progression. All of us can discern between things ridiculously

unlikely and things possible. Later we will take the category of things

possible, and search it for those things which are more possible ,

brushing aside the category of things unlikely. And still later we will

begin to realize our reasons for making erroneous choices in the early

stages of discernment.

Research or study along transcendental lines cannot parallel material or

objective scientific research. The laws of physics, as we can see, hold

some good, or hold inspiration for psychic research. But when we reach

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the point that we feel that we must become, rather than learn,—then

many things operating as physical laws must be looked at in a new light.

We are still relative creatures, in a relative world, trying to find that

which may be an absolute value. And those who find it, call it the

Absolute. But this word has about as much meaning as the mathematical

term "infinity." One divided by zero. In a way it is useless to use the term

until we know that which we are discussing. And when we know that

which the Absolute is, we may feel that it is useless to discuss it or use

the term.

Being relative creatures, we must use words. They are still the language

that makes the ladder possible. Words are the cursed cause of nearly all

confusion and lack of understanding, but also the means of considerable

rapport on abstract ideas not communicable with telepathy .

When we reach the stage at which we decide to become, we have to

launch this reverse-vector, and only after it has cleared the last heavy

interference from any obstacles listed in the Fifth Paper . And as we

launch it, we find ourselves receding away from the relative world and

its laws to a point where we find things in a paradoxical state of flux,

rather than answering to laws of physics.

Here is not here, and it is not there. Time does not exist apart from

space, and yet time is eternal.

We now come to the Law of Paradoxical Immanence for All Things

Relative. Very early in the search we get a hint of this. We find at first

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observations, that the visible world is in a relative state. We identify an

interdependence among all things and their definitions. Everything is, for

instance relative to the ability for measuring by the eye of the beholder .

We notice a mental dependency upon relationship or association . We

cannot think without association, and this form of identification with

ourselves, is expressed in the words "Law of Relativity" (which has

nothing to do with Einstein). Paradoxically, we are related to all things ,

even to our hallucinations, illusions and intangible emotions. We are

related, but we cannot ever clearly think, until we come to a process of

disassociation from the endless tangle of identification . Buddha hinted of

this process when he advised, as a third step, that we "think of nothing."

There is another instance of relativity. We find that the cycles of the

electrons are similar to the circling orbits of the planets around their

stars. We find that the single reproductive cell may be a microcosm of

the relatively huge human being or elephant. We find that the size

(mass) may be affected by speed.

Then we go a step further and notice that things may often be, or

appear to be, the opposite of that which they were originally.

We discover what appears to be an immanent paradox in all of our

findings and postulates. This tends to confuse and deter most minds

from coming to a positive stand on many matters. And this may be a

good thing. Too often the critical mind poses as being infallible in its

concept-building.

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The paradox, while disquieting, is often for the thinker, the first real hint

that there is a transience about the observable, physical world that will

always elude his enquiries. There are several paradoxes in physics which

have to do with the curvature of space and the nature of time.

The paradox only exists in the relative phases of analysis, or in the

observation of laws with this relative viewpoint,—and this includes

spiritual laws. The student must keep the application of these laws

within the dimension in which they were intended and m which they are

operative.

For instance, we may observe the Law of Love. And conclude that love

has a power over hate. Then perhaps the student, a bit bravely, or

stupidly, launches out to conquer some space with love . . . and finds

that he comes under increasing attack. And in another compartment of

space, he observes that another human being is conquering quite a bit

of space or people with hate. So that, for a while, he thinks that the

opposite of the Law of Love may also hold true, or thinks that the Law of

Love is spurious, or is mere pollyanna.

In the first place, if the student abided by the Law of Love, he would not

have played politics with it, nor tried to change people. And secondly , he

would have known that the Law of Love has definite limitations in the

natural world. It cannot clash with other laws, and least of all , with the

"Law of the Jungle." All of the love in the world will not avert the

carnivorous functioning of nature.

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The Law of Inertia is likewise paradoxical. The definition of the Law of

Inertia reads that things tend to remain inert, or in status quo. Things

actually tend to change, to drift into inactivity, and to burst forth into

life, as well. Some theorize that the universe is dying, and others

theorize that the universe is ever expanding. And still others theorize ,

with equal reasoning that the entire universe sprang forth from a black

hole of inactivity. We witness the death of a planet or a man, or we note

the disintegration of an atom, and say that everything tends to die.

However, we witness that throughout nature, the process of dying is

simultaneous with the process of birth.

And there is an innate essence that goads all forms of life against the

inert tendency. Of course there may be some argument as to whether

this force is innate or external to the organism. Sometimes it is

apparently internal (as the procreative urge), and while it seems to work

from within us, it has no long range benefit for us as an individual

organism. And thus we may be slow to own an urge that seems to be

using us for the benefit of others or other purposes.

This force manifests itself upon us in the form of curiosity and desire . We

do not plan to have desire or curiosity. Consequently, while seeming to

be motivated from within, we are moved by "implants."

Some parents, such as certain spiders, and caterpillars, are eaten by

their mates or by their young. Actually, all parents are, to a degree,

eaten by their young. But when we witness the mating instincts of this

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spider, we must assume that such instincts are powerful indeed , to

prompt it to copulate when it must almost immediately die when the act

is performed. The same situation applies to the salmon, which literally

tear their bodies to pieces to find a remote sanctuary for their eggs.

Unless these urges are exerted upon the salmon, spider, caterpillar and

the man, from outside (meaning a possible directive force in his

environment not necessarily visible and not yet properly subjected to

scrutiny),—they would try to prolong their lives rather than submit to

momentary pleasure.

It is reasonable to presume that all forms of life (and even matter) are

similarly inspired, or forced.

The Law of Faith is another law that has its limitations. Faith will not

move mountains, possibly because of other laws. Too many people

believe that the mountain will remain at rest, and not be moved by faith .

This is counter-faith. The Law of Faith does have to do with the changing

of the apparent status of matter by means of human belief. It has been

recognized by some occultists as being the actual method of the

creation of the physical universe.

We might say that the limitations spoken of above, concerning the

capacity of faith to affect material objects, are dependent upon the

mind-quantum factor. This presumes that there is a quantum called

faith, which though evidently immeasurable except by result, would

signify certain units of faith-power per mind-unit (per person). The size

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of the miracle would depend upon the intensity of the belief of those

minds. Healers are found to be most effective in multitudes, and less

effective among people from their home town.

Since the Law of Faith is generally applied for ostentation, and applied to

physical bodies, much of its value is overlooked. Some quiet theologians

indicate that our very post-mortem existence hinges upon the creation -

through-faith of lands to come, by combined faith-acts of all men, or a

majority of them.

The Law of Complexity may well be called the Law of Life, since life is

found only in very complex structures. Some thinkers take another brash

step and announce that life is in fact nothing but complexity.

Cybernetics indicates that complexity may be related to responses

which might be identified with life.

The Law of Complexity, in application to the Work, has a Particular

meaning. While the complexity of molecular structures forms a life -

matrix, it cannot be denied that such structures are highly unstable . So

that protoplasm is forever dying and being replaced.

We also note that any transcendental movement that has allowed itself

to become complex, and to sprout all sorts of ramifications is in the

same jeopardy as protoplasm. It tends to die.

And the avoidance of this complexity makes the work of members in a

brotherhood even more difficult and complex. They must be vigilant for

symptoms of any tendency toward becoming a vegetating institution ,

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and must at all times follow the path of simplification rather than that of

elaboration and dogmatism.

MILK FROM THORNS

It may be said that the Absolute is a state or essence from which all

untruths have been subtracted, leaving behind a region of pure fact.

Such a statement as "pure fact" would, of a necessity, mean non-

relative fact,—a state undefinable, because all facts , if described , or

states, immediately are qualified with colors not intrinsic to the fact -

state itself.

I have tried to describe the effects of this coloration upon the mind of

man, so that we can expect to suffer its removal. The most treacherous

coloring agent for all fact-finding is the self with its emotions and voices.

By the self is here meant, not the final, absolute self, but the apparent

self,—the self which we accept as "us."

As we run the gamut of many religions, cults or teachers, we discover,

(only later), that they were acceptable in the first place because they

flattered our self. Rarely are they accepted because of their logical

symmetry. And rarely do we try to protect them with logical

implementation or common sense, but choose to confound our critics

with such protests as divine visitation or intuitional guidance.

If our intuition is not perfected, this maneuver will only serve to bury us

deeper. We are only setting up a smoke screen to prevent further

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questioning. This paper is not designed to muckrake religions that are

sincere, nor to bring despair to people who are sincere, but whose

capacity will not allow them to probe into clearer waters. I doubt if

anyone will experience too great a feeling of despair, because those who

cling too tightly to blind belief have a perception apparatus that blinks

shut at the mere approach of the next step. They have an automatic

control-valve.

I must admit that I have depicted man as being little more than a

helpless fish out of water. Gurdjieff depicts man as being asleep,

functioning in graded stages of sleep-walking. Van der Leeuw sees man

as being the figure in the cave, chained to his ignorance, and beguiled

by shadows.

If all this is true, we are at a terrible disadvantage, to say the least . So

much so that most men sense this from the beginning, and decide not to

try to find reality. Like a drowning man, who is beginning to relax and

find peace in giving up the struggle, we weigh the effort that is needed

to keep ourselves awake long enough to solve the problem.

A true seeker is a very unique person. Outwardly he will not appear to be

different from anyone else. His uniqueness comes from the particular

game that he plays. He allows himself to become addicted, or to become

a vector,—once the idea of being a vector makes sense to him. He is like

an eccentric deep sea diver who has experienced the rapture of the

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deep. He needs no motive to live, except to live to continue the pursuit

that seems to hold the most promise.

The enlightened man has nothing to live for (by most people's

standards), and yet he continues to live. Everyone else seems to have

something to live for, but they are always ultimately disappointed . The

seeker gradually grows indifferent to the objects of his appetites,

continues to move, even though those objects are the only motivation

for other people.

And with this thought we come to the business of taking advantage from

a negative situation, or taking milk from thorns. It has been said

previously that the man who begins the search, changes as he goes

down (or up) the path. The man who arrives is not the same man who

started out.

Many a person has entered a religious life in order to get rich, or to set

up a foundation to avoid taxes. Others have gone into occultism with the

idea of getting power. Some have entered monasteries because they

had homosexual inclinations. Yet many who so began became fascinated

by the study of the Truth, and lived to observe the untruthfulness of

their initial motives, and also lived to make progress on the path.

These errors are not to be laid at the feet of mankind, but largely at the

feet of nature. I have proposed that nature is both waxing and waning .

And that in order to prevent all of the visible universe from collapsing

into a void of inertness, there are certain "implants" or revitalizing

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factors that charge the ever-collapsing fountain of Protoplasm and

planets alike. These implants may be a dynamic catalyst that is not only

present in the genes of the chromosomes, out in every atom-nucleus as

well.

And I noted that they stir us in the form of curiosity and desire. This

power-source is like controlled atomic energy. It is as relentless as

death. Why not tap it?

Some of us do. Some of us allow our curiosity to study curiosity. We go

along for the ride. Gurdjieff studied the behavior patterns by doing the

opposite of expected behavior, so that he could observe the results and

possibly be freed by those observations.

It is evident that the purpose of curiosity is to move the being or person

from his immediate environment in search of food and a sexual mate.

The curiosity-urge thus promotes a healthy species because without it

the mating would occur within a sibling circle with consequent

degeneration of the species.

When man began to consciously focus his curiosity upon something

besides food and sex, the era of science began. And, of course, it looked

as though man was on his way to becoming a free agent, or an agent in

charge of his environment, at least. But nature managed to move back

in, at almost every effort which he made to liberate himself. At this

point, we do not need to enumerate the means by which nature brought

this about. We can look at the list of obstacles in the Fifth Paper.

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Only the relentless study of curiosity itself will give us its meaning . and

point to us the worth of applying that curiosity to self-definition, rather

than to the creation of mountains of scientific definitions, relative only to

the functioning of bodies.

The observation of sex will show that animals build up energy to a point

where they are of an age and ability for reproduction. Then they are

either allowed to grow weaker because their purpose is attained , or else

the process of reproduction triggers a weakening process. We have

heard of the death-gene, and it may be that such exists, and if it exists ,

it must find its cause before or beyond the individual's life-experience.

For centuries mystics have looked upon sex with a seemingly

unfavorable eye, and some pledged themselves to a life of celibacy.

They did this because some of them thought that sex was an

entrapment. But some went a step further, and tried to use sex, or the

inhibited sexual energy to build for themselves and of themselves,—a

new mental mansion.

The inhibition of the appetites, for a period of time, is conducive to the

development of the intuition. Sex, being the appetite with the strongest

influence, must be proportionately inhibited.

A variation of this idea is found in a yoga-science devoted to raising the

kundalini. The illumination of the chakras is supposedly effected in this

manner. In the Western world, Percival came up with his book, Thinking

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and Destiny, the keynote of which claims that man is able to raise and
transmute his seed-atom and thus bring about immortality.

These concepts should not be called absurd until we know the complete

line of thinking. I do not believe that they (the concepts) were created

out of whole cloth. I do believe that we certainly will attain a new

perspective if the usual sex-flow, or expected sex-flow, is inhibited, or

rechannelled. Mystics must have found that celibacy was amenable to

the search, or they would have given up after a hundred years or more

of the experiment.

Since the sex-act has a definite impact upon the mind, inasmuch as it is

able to alter states of mind, or to bring about deceptive states of mind , it

is worthwhile to assume that the inhibition or control of the sex-act will

somehow inhibit or control a state of mind that is not conducive to our

search. I do not presume to identify the complex mechanics of this tool ,

or lever.

In other words, the sex-instinct that has been implanted, may be used

to promote other than its manifest purpose. We can even speculate that

the Intelligence that designed this scene (the creation), planned it so

that some shrewd and determined beings might find their maker, if they

discovered and followed some labyrinth leading from illusion into the

sunlight, and thus discover the Truth subtly woven into the fabric of the

living-dying drama.

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In dwelling on the topic of sublimation, we are talking about the easily

understood process of invention. The wonders of invention are brought

about by using things in new combinations and in ways, that to all

appearances are contrary to the original design.

Out of the horned, paradoxical world of philosophy, and out of the

thorny, relative world of pretensive beauty, we must surely draw some

studies of worth. Only through the word Satori, will we know of Satori.

We may experience it, but each of us will never know but that it was an

experience unique unto each one's self, unless someone makes the

effort to talk about it.

Like the fakir who stands upon his head to gain new circulation for

inverted lobes in need of blood, so the mystic must stand occasionally

upon his intellectual head, and look at things from different angles.

Relative words are supposedly used in the form of koans to bring about

a wordless state of being. Prolonged observation of sense , leads to an

attitude or conviction that it is nonsense. It follows, especially with the

koan, that a prolonged observation of nonsense may bring us to a

conviction of sense.

We like to think that a system that brings peace of mind is one that has

the answers. But we know that peace of mind is mental lassitude, and to

be really awake, it may be necessary to find an irritation to galvanize the

mind from its "tendency toward inertia."

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We like to think that scholarly study will keep us awake, and we rejoice

that we have developed an interest that keeps us awake, as we absorb

concept after concept. But after a while we discover that study is just the

roiling up of a huge ball of yarn of relative world-observations . that can

go on forever and never bring us closer to the understanding of the

mind.

We come to the conclusion that the finite mind will never pierce the

infinite. Nor will a cast iron ball soar into the sky by itself. However , the

vehicle can change. The mind can become, at least for a short time, less

finite, and the balloon can be made of cloth instead of cast iron .

When a sewer is plugged it can be opened sometimes by forcing water

through from the opposite direction. When the human nervous system

becomes fouled, we use shock-treatments . . . a sort of clearing of the

circuits by changing the current direction or the voltage. These same

"reversal" techniques aid in the clarification of the mind in relation to

reality,—meaning final reality.

There are two schools of thought about the advantages to be gained by

harnessing those which are generally accepted as negative or energy-

spending emotions. In dealing with emotions, we find society aware of

the .danger that results from emotions, and lately we find society trying

to rechannel that energy. It is far better if the individual finds a way to

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identify his violent emotions, and shunt their energy by observation and

analysis.

In the child, the mind is not self-conscious enough, so we find children

being slapped when their anger reaches a certain point. One school of

thought indicates that the "voice" or "particle-self' that boils with anger

or hate, should not cause the host to be slapped, suppressed or

eliminated. Ouspensky talks of the strengthening of these voices, rather

than their elimination. By observing them, we find new faculties, which

can be very useful if properly directed.

The other school of thought, which is party to most theologies, holds

such voices to be evil, and holds that they should be purged from the

system.

We might say that the observation of hate should not be strengthened

for us to learn to hate haters, but rather to be unshackled from the

whole impulse, and to hold that the impulse is utterly absurd and

energy-consuming. Once this energy is loosened, we find more time and

vigor to pursue that which takes so much time and effort.

We come now to systems that give credence to the concept of cosmic

consciousness, and we will undertake to observe them, looking for a

chance to learn, if possible, the mechanism by which such an experience

can be brought about.

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One of the most lucid books written on the subject is the Conquest of

Illusion, by J. J. Van der Leeuw. Most authors claim that it is useless to try
to talk about Nirvana, Satori, or Cosmic Consciousness, or to try to

verbalize phases or findings relative to such.

It is just as foolish not to talk about it. I personally have encountered a

few pseudo-mystics, or pseudo-masters who sold their wares under the

impudence that showing their proof, or attempting to demonstrate the

end-result of their teachings was impossible. They chose to quote a line

that is heard in relation to Zen teachings about one who has reached

Satori,—"He who talks does not know, and he who knows, does not talk."

Armed with this bit of incomplete truth, they manage to get by with a lot

of quackery by parrying any pertinent question with the above

quotation, and the sly wisdom of silence.

It is true that most people who have reached any such realization are

generally reluctant to talk to those who are not close enough to their

"rung of the ladder" to understand. It is more a matter of not wishing to

waste one's energy, or of avoiding the giving of an impression that might

cause bad reactions. After a person has left some listeners with the

impression that, as a speaker, he is a sly huckster, or a lunatic,—he will

be slow in speaking of his discovery before all levels of minds. I

remember recently the aftermath of a meeting with a group of ladies.

They remarked, after I left, that I sounded like a communist. This did not

result from their exposure any arcane secrets, but to the simple

exhortation to look within themselves for the Truth.

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It is good to take a note from this. I did not check out the capacity of the

members beforehand. I was invited to speak by a well-meaning lady,

and succeeded not one iota in being of any help for them. None of them

were prepared to hear anything with which they did not already agree.

To get back to Van der Leeuw, we find that book describes the possibility

of an Absolute state. This is a powerful book in that it pioneers the

attempt to explain at least, Satori, or Cosmic Consciousness from a

viewpoint of common sense. "The mystery of life is not a problem to be

solved, it is a reality to be experienced."

This book, however, does not tell you precisely how to reach cosmic

consciousness. Because of individual, personal factors , no book can

furnish a complete, guaranteed roadmap. The author is very good in

listing other authors such as Ouspensky and Plotinus who seemed to

know about the subject. Van der Leeuw is also very good in his

diagrammatic explanation of the relation of restricted or relative

consciousness to absolute consciousness.

We come now to Ouspensky, and his book, The Fourth Way. This book as

well as In Search of the Miraculous is written as a result of his

association with Gurdjieff, and is an effort to convey the teachings of

Gurdjieff about the liberation of the mind from illusion.

Gurdjieff, via Ouspensky, does go a step further than Van der Leeuw. He

comes right down to the individual and shows each of us how we can

start to eliminate self-delusion from ourselves. In practical language ,

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Ouspensky gives us techniques for emancipating ourselves from the

cave of shadows. And we feel that many of these techniques were used

in monasteries for decades before the time of Gurdjieff, but no one ever

bothered before to explain them in laymen's terms.

Another author, Rolfe Alexander, has come up with a variation of the

Ouspensky system. Mr. Alexander leads the reader to believe that his

system will enable the student to control the physical environment .

There is a frontispiece in the book, showing the author in the act of

dissipating some clouds by concentration. That little picture ordinarily

would discourage quite a few from reading the book, if such readers

were interested in finding the Absolute. And especially if such readers

have an inkling that the physical, relative world is not the object of

conquest. No true possessor of Cosmic Consciousness would ever try to

change anything but his own erratic view of the world-picture.

And yet, I found the book by Rolfe Alexander (the name of the book I do

not have) to be of some value, in that he gives specific exercises for

"expanding the consciousness." Alexander brings into use the lever of

hypnosis. I have never encountered this means in any other system

which purported to lead man to the Absolute.

Naturally, I have not tried his system, and so my comment on its success

must be limited. I have explored several systems which told of levers or

techniques for shattering the illusion. His is one of them. Having worked

with hypnosis, I realize that man is hypnotized nearly all of the time , and

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there is no better way to demonstrate man's sleepwalking condition than

with hypnosis. It may be fair to presume also, that, by using the

technique of reversal of negative influences,—it is possible to awaken

man by using hypnosis to direct the subject toward being a reverse-

vector.

The point to consider about autohypnosis is the qualification we must

place on any state of mind that is reached by autohypnosis. When you

are hypnotized by another person, a state of mind is imposed upon you

also, but you remain more in control over it because an external

intelligence has control over it. In other words, a person may become

very hysterical, as in the case of a young lady who had come to believe

that she was being executed. If this condition had been induced by the

lady herself, she may not have been able to extricate herself.

The next thought, of course, is,—can we trust anyone that far ? What

assurances have we of his expertise, his morality, etc.? Or his ability ? Or

the outcome of such experimentation?

And, of course, the only answer to these questions is that if we desire

such a short cut, we must either take our chances with autohypnosis or

with a hypnotist with whom we would trust our very mind.

There is another method, but this alternative has its risks and

uncertainties as well. But it is better than doing nothing, and it can be an

interim-gamble, while you are waiting to find a better teacher. A group

of people can form a work-society and use "sensitivity" techniques to

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open one another's eyes to some of our thinking techniques, and our

errors. It is similar to a psychological group-therapy session. Thus, we

may free ourselves by accident, from many illusions, using other people

as irritants and critics. Such a system would be especially valuable if

each person coupled with it, a subsequent hour of meditation , or if the

group managed to adopt a skillful mentor.

To summarize the observations on the different methods of

enlightenment, we can conclude that man, in his quest to find himself,

has intuited the need for a catalyst. The catalyst takes on different

forms, because of the uncertainty of any human mind as to the type of

catalyst it thinks it needs. The catalyst, if it is a system, bears the stamp

of the originator, because it worked for his type of personality , or was

accidentally discovered by him.

That which occurs by accident is more reliable (for evidence-value) than

that which is born out of an intense desire of faith, because the human

mind is the matrix from which many weird things are hatched by faith.

We must be careful not to conjure up a preconceived idea of the

Absolute.

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 EIGHTH PAPER

Maximum Reversal Technique

THREE STEPS IN USING THE MAXIMUM

REVERSAL TECHNIQUE

As I noted in the last paper, in the diagramming of the mind, there are

two important goads implanted within us from the very beginning of our

lives. I also talked of finding reality by focusing on the focus of the

projector—looking back through our source, and the source of our light.

The two implants, desire and curiosity,—the catalysts used to force us to

keep going in life,—can be used by us by the same simple reversal, to

keep us going forward in the pursuit of spiritual life. In fact, this is a

primary' step, and unless this is done first, we will not have the "desire"

to concentrate very long on the projector.

We must use that which uses us. And when we employ curiosity and

desire to search for our definition, we are on the path. Curiosity and
desire are a team of sorts. Without curiosity we would never bother to

find the intended objects of our desires. We would not forage for food,

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and our bodies, the vehicles of desire, would perish. And by the same

token, without desire, we would not reproduce, nor produce the energy

which occultists believe is used by creatures in other dimensions or

other world-views.

We take the energy away from the source (of curiosity), which is

identified for want of a better term as "Nature." We pay less and less

attention to curiosity for food and sensual pleasure-means . We learn not

to try to negate curiosity all at once, but employ gradualism,—even as

gradualism was employed against us.

We automatically absorb some of the energy from desire, and turn it in

the direction of its source, for the study of and penetration of that

source. We encourage a desire for Truth, and for all that might expedite

our work in that direction. And at the same time we ignore the desire for

pleasure, sensuality and diversion. As Buddha advised, we must first

learn to think of "one thing." Again, we do not negate pleasure, but

reverse it by means of honest analysis.

We do not eliminate the objectives of desire,—those intended by Nature.

We still eat, but eat for the sake of nutrition rather than epicurean

pleasure. We still function sexually, but in no way that would enslave our

thoughts, tie up our time, or chain us to a personality whose unbridled

desires will cause frustrations and conflict.

The Reversal Path is the surest path. There are other means that have

been used, and the users claim some success, but other systems are

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either so slow that nothing is achieved in an entire life, or they are so

violent that they form a slow suicide. In this latter category we find

people who have tried to blast their way into Reality with the harsh use

of drugs or alcohol.

Step-two deals with developing the intuition. The reversal of desire and

curiosity, affects the natural, relative vehicle,—the relative mind . And

while such a process does lead us to the state of Reality, the process

may be slow because of the limitations of the relative perspective . An

intuition with some degree of infallibility is needed.

And the intuition is automatically developed, but its development can be

accelerated by personal techniques. We must get into the habit of taking

this energy which is projected into us, and channeling it into exercises

that consist of looking into pertinent things for their consistency or lack

of it, which exercises are the first steps, or are meditational techniques

that lead to becoming. Finally, this habit develops a sense,—an

automatic computerization of greater and greater accuracy . This is

needed to abridge the massive libraries on transcendental writings, and

to quickly scan the many paths or pseudo-paths. And concurrent with

the developing of this sense, should be the developing of a system of

checking. We must find a way to periodically check our intuition to see if

it is straying into hallucination or an egotistical belief in its own

infallibility.

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The third step involves a conscious effort to retraverse our projected ray .

It does not involve the reversal of the projection from the Absolute,

because it is impossible to reverse that which IS, or is the final Reality.

We can only reverse the forces of Nature, because Nature is part of the

relative world-view,—which being relative, automatically possesses

negative characteristics. I have used the picture of peering back into the

focus of the projector, as the final step of being one with the Absolute.

Actually, we go back in one sense, and at the same time we find that we

were back there all the time.

Some transcendentalists have described the Absolute or Brahman as

having tentacles or rays that touched upon, and were one with, every

particle of moving matter in the universe. We can understand this

possibility only when we travel back along that particular ray which is

aimed at our relative mind. It does no good to describe Brahman, unless

we describe the means to witness that which we describe.

Buddha supposedly advised three steps, of which the second step was to

think of all things. This seems to be a vague directive, until we are able

to project ourselves back into the Manifested Mind. I am quite sure that

he did not mean for us to study all relative science and statistics , but

rather to see that we are both a mental experience, and a mental

inhabitant of the mind-dimension which is the matrix from which all

things are launched into (illusory) existence.

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Likewise, his third step,—to learn to think of nothing,—does not imply

unconsciousness, but implies the acquisition of thinking techniques

which will bring the mind to a stop. I think that many students have

come to think that Satori or enlightenment is the experience of a reality

of nothingness. It might rather be called the experience of

everythingness.

As we project ourselves back through the mind-ray, we naturally come

to the universal, or Unmanifested Mind-Matrix. Specialized mind is the

result of absolute mind-stuff. And here, it is true, we do experience the

truth of our own insignificance, or nothingness in relation to values once

assumed by the Individual Mind. Thus, we are still observing with traces

of the Individual Mind. This viewing with the Unmanifested Mind is often

mistaken for Satori. It is, in fact, the "mountain experience" which we

often hear described. Often it is quite depressing, depending on how

much we remember of our relative selves.

It is only when we completely forget our relative selves that we

transcend the Unmanifested Mind, and enter the Absolute. And when we

do, it shall only be a glimpse. However, the glimpse will be enough to

carry the Individual Mind in unshakable conviction for the rest of its

relative sojourn.

MORE ATTEMPTS AT VERBALIZATION

That which follows must be read with some intuition. Seven bundles of

relative words have now been passed. Their purpose is to illustrate the

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treacherousness of words and the instability of the reasoning faculty .

The mob looks at everything with two billion eyes. No two people see the

observations the same. But they agree to accept things or rules, and

suffer the foolishness of such rules, to avoid physical mayhem. And

having sunk into the habit of accepting rules "and laws, they become the

victims of pattern-thinking, or convention. And egotistically, they begin

to think that the mob can make things right by simple legislation.

We pass over the sciences, since they are very adequate for measuring

a relative dimension, only. We pass over religion with sadness. It is born

in the fears of children,—who were inspired to fear by a ruthless, venal,

priest-craft. It is at best, motivated by curiosity, and if it served that

purpose truly, it would admit that motive and place no limits on the

solution of the unknown. We must not neglect to admit our motives, nor

should we anticipate that which we expect to find, nor should we

rationalize our position at any time along the path.

Let us for a moment, review our motivations, such as curiosity or desire.

We can do so without harm to our altered objectives. In fact, the

admission will clarify the mist between us and the objective. In other

words, we begin life as a justifiable coward, quaking at the observation

of the corpses of our friends. We visualize that we too, will become

corpses. It may well be that Nature has instilled that fear into the

animal-being in order to maintain animal life. If animals had no fear, the

herbivores would be quickly eaten, and the result would be the end of all

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carnivores. Evolution, or the drama of life, would be in retrogression

because of the removal of the fear-instinct.

So man, at length, comes to the point where he neither wishes to be

digested by other animals, nor by Nature. Nature seems to have the

animal programmed to survive long enough to reproduce. In most

animals, the fear instinct is neutralized by another instinct when the

babies are threatened. This implies that only the new seed is important,

not the old individual, nor any individual. The cycle of the moth ends

with the laying of the eggs. Some parent-insects are devoured by their

offspring, or their female mates.

Likewise, when the animal has passed the peak of reproductive ability ,

the fear of death wanes. The organism, in its decline and weariness,

changes its views and looks apathetically upon death. From this pattern

of nature we can learn two things. First, we can decide to use the

survival urge placed in our beings by nature, to carry survival -anxieties

beyond the natural purpose of those fears. Secondly, we must employ

that fear while young. The man who has not begun to seek before

senility sets in, will naturally view the search with apathy and

rationalization.

The young man who observes the foolishness of man in relation to his

function as soil-fertilizer, will turn his back on nature. And he does so at

considerable risk. There seems to be an awareness on the part of nature

to any force that might try to change the direction or mechanism of any

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part of nature. There seems to be more evidence for this type of

awareness and Nature-control than there is for any supervision by a

personal God not associated with nature or earth-progress .

It is possible that we have been taking the wrong meaning from some of

our scriptures. The story of the Garden of Eden is an example. We have

an account of two unfortunate wretches, punished for wishing to be like

"the gods." What happened there? What is the relation between eating,

knowing good and evil, and death? Today we see nothing wrong with

wanting to be like God. We are puzzled by God's behavior in this story of

contradictions. Pious fundamentalists have filled the Bibles with

footnotes, attempting to apologize for God, and in so doing have only

succeeded in exhibiting egos whose pretence would make them superior

to That for which they apologized.

Do we have a God that plants trees, and makes men out of mud, or is

the whole thing allegorical? There are many explanations when we take

the interpretations of symbolism, and we can build symbolism until it

becomes as unwieldy as the tower of Babel, and as useless. Why do not

the theological giants speak more plainly? Is it because they fear that

the Lord will hear that they are plotting to get at that tree that stands in

the middle of the garden? The story of the tower of Babel is another

example. Can we picture to ourselves a God becoming furious because

people wasted their time piling up rocks? I am more inclined to believe

that nature has a way of confounding those who build an open effort to

understand nature. It is more understandable to me, that the tower of

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Babel represented the scientific beginnings of man, or the early use of

symbols to disguise those beginnings, or represented the confusion that

automatically resulted from mountains of those symbols .

It is not advisable for us to worry about the symbolism of the Bible, or

any other work. We need to know only ourselves to see the conflict

between nature and the survival-urge of man. In the writings of

philosophers we find many books that bear out the cognizance of

learned men of this conflict, and show their intuition that primitive men

are beguiled about concepts of a personal God. Frazer goes to great

historical lengths to show the evolution of the "corn-god." The intuitions

of primitive men were not originally confused with complex

rationalizations, such as that which created God in the image of man .

They saw God simply as the being that favored the growth of life, and"

their prayers were for food and existence, not for immortality. They may

have had more sense than their civilized progeny. The story of Christ is

one of a man who was physically punished for encouraging the pursuit of

immortality. He is spoken of as a sacrifice, and yet the writers do not

make it clear as to the need for the sacrifice, nor do they say who was

the recipient of that sacrifice. I can only conclude that the mechanism of

nature, using the fickle emotions of the local mob that denounced him,—

was operating automatically if not sentiently against a contrary principle .

Not only did Jesus fail to reproduce, but He encouraged others to

abandon their families in the pursuit of Truth.

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Mystics have decided that desire is the cause of suffering. This is another

way of saying that nature implants in the animal an irritation of

magnitude so intense that the release from it brings joy or ecstasy ,

depending upon the degree of suffering. Nature also implants in the

body of man and animal a capacity for nervous titillation , or mucous-

membrane sensitivity. The implanted curiosity helps to locate the

membranes whose titillation will lead to the reproduction of the species .

What the average man does not realize, is that the same curiosity ,—that

may later spur us to look for immortality,—discovers the titillation , and

the titillation brings on more irritation. The offspring are a result of that

irritation.

Now man's computer occasionally takes the position of observer of this

process of the reproducing slave. Yet, for some reason, nature

confounds the computer. Frantically, the man tries to block the irritation ,

inhibit his sex, and focus his attention upon the "Path," or upon anything

that might negate sex or other chains. He tries to meditate and he falls

asleep. He tries celibacy and fouls the gears of his body, or imagines the

joy of the temporary liberation from sex to be indicative that he is on the

right path, or that God is smiling at him. The irritation eventually returns .

He tries exercises, prayers or pills. He may even turn to alcohol.

By now we have a middle-aged man or woman. Still driven by sex, but

now ulcered by anguish, and pickled in some cases by alcohol. He has

lost some of his ego, like an old goat about to die. But he manages to

still hold on to the egotistical pose that he is a philosopher of sorts , and

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that he has been able to see some of the nonsense of nature and life, by

simply being buffeted and used. He sees time getting shorter, however.

He finds his vehicle less elastic and less and less able to cope with the

demands of the competitive organic existence. He is still trying to carry

a young man's load of emotional involvements. His children are tugging

at his emotions, and his mate is testing his mettle. He runs like a rat in

the maze to first one voice, and then another . . . until some of his ego

breaks down and he lets go of things.

He or she will never let go completely, because until death occurs, we

must all work to eat. But our friend breaks down under the pressure of

all of the irritations. He runs to the confessional, or to the psychiatrist .

He has a nervous breakdown, or enters into shock. And for a few hours

or days, he is free. His joy, or peaceful release, becomes a sort of

milestone. He loses his taste for alcohol, and for his mate as well. He

relegates his children and property to their destiny.

The burden is lifted. The alcoholic thinks that he is cured. He looks at the

sky and imagines that God is smiling at him again. He thinks that he

sees the pattern of creation because he is no longer fighting nature . The

unity that he feels is the intense rapport with nature at work in all its

magnitude and marvelous complexity . . . in the interdependency of

beings. He will tell his friends that he has really found God this time. But

we notice a blatant difference in testimony of the many people who have

similarly witnessed this release. Their description seems to be altered in

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proportion to the severity and manner of irritations which preceded the

surrender.

We come to the word surrender again, and to the word joy. Surrender

may bring joy, but this is no guarantee of a spiritual value nor is it a

symptom of Truth. I do not wish to deprecate the mystical experience

just described. To be free, in any degree, is desirable. The point I wish to

make is that we are not completely aware of the nature of our own

essence because of the joyful experience. Joy is still the tool of Nature .

The Absolute has neither joy nor sorrow.

Our aim is not to sink back into irritation and despair again. The joy that

is followed by anguish cannot be said to be real joy even, for it then

becomes the root of anguish. We must always bear in mind that when

the load is lifted from the weary beast of burden, the beast experiences

that which is known as joy. If the burden is taken away for any long

period of time, the beast will instinctively go about looking for another

burden, in hopes of experiencing joy again.

This is the difficulty of the mystic. They speak of the dark nights of the

soul. Each time that the burden is lifted, it requires that the burden be

heavier, and be carried longer the next time, in order to bring about

proportional peace or release. So that the patterns of both physical (or

sexual) release, and the joy of the mystics, are tied up in the relative

world of pain and necessity. It is for this reason that female or feminine

male-mystics enter into rapture more quickly with the contemplation of

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a male God. The ecstasies described by some of the female saints may

have been intensities resulting from prolonged sublimation and from

pious fetishism.

The mystic is both blessed and pitied. He must go back time after time,

wearily bearing his burden for a few moments of relief, until one day he

sobers himself, and casts the discipline in question away forever . The

fact that the mystic must return from joy to suffering again, indicates

that he is lacking in a sound appreciation of his state of mind (and

being) at both times or experiences. He does not have the final answer.

If he has really found God. he should be happy forever . . . if finding God

brings to people the feeling of divine acceptance.

The mystic is blessed, however. He should not be condemned even

though,—to all human standards,—he is psychotic. He is a pioneer and a

heroic casualty. He has dared to stand alone against nature. He has torn

from his being the egotistical drives that beget children and enslave

mates. He has struggled against the instincts of gregariousness and has

ignored the customs and mores of his age. He has compounded his

irritations, and so has stimulated his computer. He has gambled

everything with the expectation of "nothing for certain ." but prefers

gambling to the game of desire and reward. He has fasted, sublimated

and meditated to sharpen his intuition. He should be able, therefore, to

sense the sensible when it is advanced to him.

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Thus, if we can catch the mystic at the moment of his exaltation , he may

be disillusioned enough to be thrown off his pleasant tangent, and he

may be brought to the door of the Absolute. The mystic must pause, and

know, deep in his being, that joy and sorrow are emotional reactions,

and are polarities in feeling, in relative experience. He should sense that

he must never try to identify the Absolute according to relative values or

measurements of appreciation. He calls for joy, and he receives joy. He

unconsciously does this, because his nature misses the physical joys .

That man should look for peace, is another thing. But man must realize

that man expects a reward sometimes for a particular discipline. The

rewarder is man, in all cases. And man as a rewarder, can only give that

which he already has.

When a mystic tells you that he has found God, he does not realize his

own facetiousness. In the first place, his meditations on the subject of

God or gods, will make him aware of the misuse of the word "God " and of

the myriad different interpretations of the word that have rendered it

meaningless and useless in describing the Real Essence, or the Real

Experience. It has been abused to such an extent,—by traffickers in

theology,—that it has no sound meaning, relative or absolute. The

mystic should also know, from his long and arduous life of mental

struggle, that hardly anyone will understand that of which he talks , if he

were only to describe his mystical experiences as such. And he is

actually doing the field of mysticism a bit of damage if he leaves himself

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open to the pointed finger of psychiatry because of his inability to get his

point across accurately.

When I speak of Nature, I refer to any part of our environment that

affects us or controls us, regardless of the nature of such forces or

factors. Nature, I believe to be a coordinated pattern of control , or a

coordinated pattern of intelligence or laws that bring about such control .

The human keeps bees. When Winter is long, and the human overlord

has taken too much honey, he may return a little sugar. The same

human is lord over the cattle. He kills the nonproductive steers, and

keeps the heifers for breeding. This analogy between the farmer and

Nature is strained because we cannot visualize Nature as being used in

turn by a higher force unless we are to turn to the concept of Kal. We

can understand, however, that bees or cattle might take a reverent

attitude toward their human lord, if they came to a clear understanding

of his intentions.

Our destiny in Nature is uncertain. This uncertainty causes us to be

circumspect in making a final appraisal of our relation to Nature, or of

any duty to Nature. It takes no intellectual giant to see the balanced

aquarium of life, and humbly take note of our place. We sense that we

are under some kind of law. Nature has evidently set up a fantastically

complex coordinating and governing system. Man has tried to guess

about it. Those who guessed that the tower of Babel was a sign of man's

limitations and restrictions may have to take another guess, now that

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rockets are piercing the blue. Or it may be that rockets are part of

Nature's plan as well. There may be a swarming of the bees for another

hive . . . one of these days.

It is idle and foolish to guess that Nature is aware of each of us

individually, or that Nature is a computer-operator, aware of the two

billion units or factors that comprise our computer. The operator alone ,

would be interested in the answer and results. Yet the computer may

well have a mechanism for automatically sifting the sands of humanity .

We need not be concerned with the chemistry of planetary functioning . It

matters not if the earth has a spirit. It matters whether or not the human

unit has an individual spirit, or whether or not the human can find for

itself an extension of its being which is beyond the dominating power of

Nature.

We contemplate the possibility of eternal life, and at times, grow weary

at the thought of it. Any proof of such endlessness is not likely to come

with a feeling of joy, unless there is evidence of a state of being that

would patently be adaptable to such endlessness. We may find joy in the

assurance that we will not die, but that is not describing the state of

being after death. We may have sorrow in the observing of the

difference between the state of the finite man and that of the absolute

man,—but that sorrow is not hell, nor is it a true characteristic of our

state of being in the Absolute.

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There is an account of an experience, appended to this Paper. It was

written over twenty years ago. The experience described,—had all the

symptoms of sorrow and despair, which changed as I progressed in the

experience. I tried then to convey the unusual conviction that settled

upon me, and do not think that it can ever be said better with any other

words, by me.

It happened when I was thirty-two years of age. I had reached a sort of

culmination of physical desire and spiritual frustration . My spiritual

objectives were still hounded by my intellectual ego, and to compound

the foolishness, I was indulging a few other personality-voices. That

which I am trying to say here may not be clear enough (about my

personal life), but one need not advance into morbidity to describe a

dead horse.

I was playing the drama of life with one face, and was looking eagerly to

heaven with the other. I came apart at the seams. Very quickly. It was

almost as though a chemical catalyst had been dropped into my mind .

At the time, I was sure that I was going insane. I should pause here to

acknowledge the many psychiatric fingers pointing in my direction . . . at

that admission. You may even say that I was preparing for this admission

when I attacked psychiatry in my previous writings. Perhaps I was. But, if

I have been there and back, I should know a little more than the

mechanic who has had a more limited confusion of the mental type

because of his protected vegetable existence. And I should be more

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reliable than any ink-blot specialist who may have "been there too " but

whose professional pose prevents him from admitting it.

I did not do anything rash. I had no reason to. I had no reason to do

anything. While the ego is being melted, there is no joy. Sorrow

permeated my whole being . . . sorrow for myself and for humanity. The

distress became almost unbearable, and it came upon me from the field

of my mind, not from emotion. Emotion may have triggered it. Or a brick

in the pavement may have caused it, or my emotional experiments may

have triggered it. However, once the catalyst started the change of

mind, absolutely nothing mattered I had no attachments beyond myself .

. . once I became . . . more deeply.

The initial attachment for myself became the prime source of my sorrow .

I met myself face-to-face, and the division shocked me. Everything

upon which I looked had a different meaning and aspect from previous

comprehension, and was impossible to convey in language. Things in

their essence are tangible only to mind-essence, and not tangible to the

mind of everyday cognition. Somewhere in the being of man there is an

eye that must open. We open it by closing all other eyes or egos.

Many things might qualify a deliberate attempt to arrive at such an

experience. This is where a brotherhood or sangha becomes useful . It is

like walking a tightrope in the dark. A friend to guide each step saves

many a fall or loss of time. The friend needs to have walked the

tightrope himself, before, to know what it is all about.

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The term "tightrope" is used to signify the precariousness of the position

of the mind which adventures into intangibles. This acrobat must be

balanced by intuition and common sense. He must be eager, but his

eagerness without some skill may cause much spinning of the wheels .

He must keep his attention on the search for Truth for years, and

decades, if need be. If he is young, he must look forward to a relentless

struggle with no guarantee of immediate success. I remember that when

I was twenty years of age, I decided to make this search my life's work. I

decided then that I would try to change my being (I thought that it was

that simple) within a couple of years. However, I was determined that if

it took my entire life, and if at the end of that life I had still tailed to

pierce the veil,—I would be nevertheless more satisfied than if I had

never tried.

I thought that I had a powerful mind in those days. I mistook a healthy

body for a dynamic mind. I found myself able to decide on plans and

carry them out. I made a few predictions that came true, and I thought

that I had a superior computer. It helped a bit, but I was living in a glass

house. Now and then emotion would settle on me like a stifling fog, and

it would interrupt my meditations or studies-Irritation set in and the

respites from it were brief periods of mystical peace or joy . I found yoga

to be a wonderful sedative. I thought at the time that I was dialing

heaven. Years went by, and with the years, my conceit began to shred

away. When I reached thirty years of age, I decided that I had been

kidding myself. My intense hunger for Truth was waning. I was not sure

364
of anything except that which I could see in the mirror, and that image

was not faring too well at the hands of time. Then came the accident, or

the event which is referred to as cosmic consciousness. It is important to

remember that this was an accident. I had never met anyone previously

who had that type of experience. My previous preconceptions about

spiritual awakening were the result of readings of lives of mystics , and

their glowing personal accounts. These readings brought me to the

expectation that enlightenment was coincidental with overwhelming joy .

The fact that I experienced almost the opposite of that which I expected ,

convinces me that wish was not a father to the result. In other words,

the state spontaneously evolved.

I was on the Pacific coast at the time. I hurriedly left for Cleveland. I had

a friend there. I did not wish to go home in my stunned condition. I

remained relatively stunned for several weeks. The world was still a very

strange place. The people moved about like robots, but gradually they

became people again. Then I found a kind of gentle amusement in the

apparent foolishness of their aimless scrambling.

I took a job in Alliance, Ohio, and rented a room there. My friend had

moved there from Cleveland, and he managed to get me a job with the

company that employed him. I do not think that his recommendation of

me added any to his prestige with the company. I did not care for the

future of the company, and that is not an attitude conducive to social

harmony in a research-laboratory. My objective then, was to write a

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poetic book. The physical world had now become very beautiful to me. It

was as if I had died, and had come back to life, to a drama with new

meaning. Actually, I was losing contact with the motionless condition

imposed on me by my momentarily becoming a part of motionlessness .

Motion was once more enchanting. A rose was once more a rose. I came

home from work each day and propped myself up in front of a

typewriter. I thought that I had a message of joy and beauty for the

world

Then one day I began to write my feelings about the strange experience.

Previously I had avoided writing anything down because I felt that there

was no use in trying to describe it or account for it. I am still not too sure

about the value of efforts to convey it. I used an emotional medium to

describe that which ultimately was without emotion—that which gave

way to nothingness. I called this writing, The Three Books of the

Absolute.

They were written automatically. They were not composed. I just began

writing, and my thoughts flowed through the typewriter. I did not realize

completely at the time that my experience came under any mystical

category, or had any label known to the general public. I read the Three

Books of the Absolute to my friend, and he was impressed by them. But

then he was impressionable, or so I thought.

I filed them away because I did not encounter many people who were

interested in the apparently temporary derangement. Between five and

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ten years later, while working with a psychic-research group in

Steubenville, Ohio, a thoughtful lady gave me a book called, Cosmic

Consciousness, by Bucke. As I read it, I learned for the first time the

extent to which it was possible for laymen to experience the same thing

that I had. By laymen, I mean, people with no religious affiliation or

mystical discipline. The layman, in fact, may be better able to encounter

the experiences needed to bring about the grand experience more so

than a cloistered monk. And so I became convinced that it was not

impossible to communicate the idea to others, if I took enough pains ,

perhaps.

A writing of this type was planned over ten years ago. I realized that

man's thinking apparatus was almost hopelessly programmed to give

out rationalization and wishful errors. I realized that man was not only a

prisoner of space and time, but also a prisoner cast in an unreal world ,—

completely out of touch with his unidentifiable brothers. All of humanity

are hopeless robots, even though their egos are as eminent as their

skyscrapers. Occasionally and accidentally, a robot puts to his own

computer a question and comes up with an answer about himself, which

tells him that he is a robot. And, thus he becomes less of a robot.

And so now, I am trying to contact the other robots . . . especially the

robots who have progressed to that accidental computerization that

makes them aware of their robot state. I have seen this theme portrayed

in science fiction stories, and marveled at the hint of truth in them, and

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wondered about the authors of some of those stories. Could they too , be

trying to give the robots a hint?

The Three Books of the Absolute

by Richard Rose

Book I

Out of the valley of the river came a wanderer. Peace was in his eye and

his soul was wrapped in Nirvana. Peace to the wanderer.

O Eternal Essence, I was that Wanderer. I it was, who left the gardens of

tranquility that I might labor for Truth.

I sought Thee, O Eternal Essence, in the grottoes and in the tabernacles .

I called out thy name to the stone ears of statues. And thou answered

not.

I sought Thee in the voice of nature. I looked for Thee in the footprints of

animals, in the habits of birds. I listened for a revelation in the

murmuring of waters and in the soft moaning of the forests. I laid my ear

against the roaring cataracts and bared my head to the tempests. But

Thou answered not.

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I have sought Thee, O Eternal Essence, within my self. I have sought

Thee in my mind until I was cursed with confusion. And I saw Thee not.

Then, O Eternal Essence, I sought Thee whence I came. I sought Thee in

my womb. As the wild beast flees from the elements into his cavern

where his wild dam littered him, so I fled the darkness of my clay. And

naught did I find but the turbulence of my imagination. There in chaotic

pattern did I find the seeds of all confusion that pretended to be wisdom.

Where man was born was also born his gods. Where man was born was

also born his demons. And where in glorious pain, man first raised his

foetal head, there too in ignominious joy was he devoured.

My eyes are extinguished although I see the earth beneath me. And my

ears are destroyed and my mouth speaks no words for my feet carry me

through a realm that needs no language. And my mind is silent and

humble in its dismay, and all within that House there is not one thought.

And within that House is heard the painful tolling of a tiny silver bell, and

within that dome is felt the surge of mighty roaring tides that will not be

stopped.

For the keeper of the House is gone, and all that remains testifies that

he never was. Exploding thunder shakes its walls, and heaven and hell

are within its region. For All is within that House, swelling it to burst its

comprehension. All joy is here, and all joy is pain, torturing the House

that cannot contain it.

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All of joy is tears, and the world will not contain the reaving sorrow of

this House. All this House is fire, straining to burst forth until these walls

stand no longer.

O lamentations of lamentations, has thy agony no tongue? O sorrower in

the spaces of desolation, who shall hear thy anguish, and unless it be

heard, how shall the pain be stopped?

I, O Eternal Essence, beseech Thee,—where within Thee have I dissolved

myself?

Where are prisoned those who follow love? Where have I left my I-ness,

and now having left it, who is it that cries out to Thee? Where is the

dirge of sorrow that is all that remains of me? Who feels this pain that

burns and consumes, yet is felt not by I-who-am-no-more? Who is it

that looks from the windows of my mansion like a strange prowler? Who

is it that hears and hears not, that yearns for life and lives not, that

seeks out death and dies not . . . . ?

O Ever-Allness, what is Thy pleasure in my sorrow? Thou hast damned

me to thoughtlessness, and yet I cannot leave off thinking, and still my

thoughts are not words. Thou hast robbed me of my soul and mind, and

my body laments for all ages, for my body dies not nor yet walks among

men. Thou hast delivered me from my Ego, and what is there that

remains? O Ever-Allness, forever insensate, pitiless to entreaty,

speechless to my prayers,—weep Thou with me for I am of Thee . . . . and

all that remains of me is Thee.

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What is the magnitude of Thy nothingness! O what are the limits of Thy

plentitude! . . . . What is the thunder of Thy silence! . . . . How quiet are

Thy cataclysms! Thus shall I sing the praises of myself.

Peace to the wanderer!

Book II

Who shall hear of Moses, Gotama, or Amenhotep, if hearing is not?

Although Jesus weep and Socrates drown, who shall hear their anguish if

there is not hearing?

Who shall know of love and godliness, of peace and serenity, if

knowledge is not?

Who shall not perish in the heavy seas of forgetfulness if knowledge is

not . . . . Though his convulsions and agony for life be mountainous,—

shall he not perish . . . . ?

Though the worlds scream from their vertiginous orbits, how can they

cast themselves down while knowing is not . . . . Though the stars roar in

anguish at their distances, who shall know of their roaring?

How can the atom know of the sea . . . . How shall the atom know of the

universe . . . . ?

How shall the spaces know of their nothingness . . . . How shall

nothingness hear the agony of nature that cries out against it . . . . ?

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Where, where is where . . . . ? Why, why is why? Where O wise among

wise, is when . . . . ? In what drifting sandheaps are its footprints . . . . in

what continuum is etched its lightning rate like music etched on ice?

Who, who is who . . . . ? Can the sage, more the fool, say that which is

being . . . . and among beings, who are what? Is the spark an entity, or is

it merely part of the flame, and is the flame only illusory heat, or does it

live?

Is not man a question asking questions, frustrated by the unanswered ,

laboring to answer himself . . . . and creating a mountain of questions in

the answer . . . . yet who shall know?

Who shall know the circle that has no radius, and who shall know the

point that is a line of infinity . . . . ?

Where is maya . . . . If all is maya, who, knowing, sees this illusion? Is not

his knowing also maya . . . . ?

In what pitiful hells are the wise . . . . In what blackest abysses are the

oblivious ignorant . . . . ?

How shrill is the hunger of inertia,—how maddening the stupor of

extinction that comes from action?

O wise and foolish, look about you in your joys. Where are the joys of

yesterday . . . . and being gone, did they ever live? Did you enjoy, or was

it another's lips that drained thy cup?

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Hear the voice of shadows . . . . Look about you into the invisible

memories of the ether. Where are they?

What matters it if the infant staves,—if the angel is raped,—or if the

saint burns upon the spit? Are they not gone . . . . is not the sorrow

gone? And who shall remember . . . . since knowing is not . . . . who can

hear their anguish?

Where are the beautiful . . . Where is their beauty washed by the years . .

. . where are the years drowned in the ocean of the Unknowing?

Think ye on the folly of light. Does it not perish when the eyes are

closed? But the power over us by light is feared by man. He sleeps and

dreams of darkness, and wakens, screaming into it . . . .

Relax ye and die and live the darkness, and enter the impassive pool of

the Unknowing . . . .

Who shall extol the memory of man that leaves him often before his life .

. . . Who remembers after life? If man forgets his infancy before his

manhood is upon him,—what shall he remember hence . . . . shall he

remember nothingness? Desist and enter the pool of the Unknowing . . . .

What is time, O mind . . . . ? Is it the number of steps in a day,—the

number of thoughts in a step . . . . ? Then of the thoughts in a day, how

many years of days would it take to know all that is known, and then

how long,—to know the magnitude of the Unknowing . . . . and how many

steps will take thee from here to there? Who shall anoint thy limbs?

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Though he who forgets more seems greater than he who strived not and

died in ignorance . . . . who shall know . . . . who shall know? Mourn ye for

the hour when the cloud of the Unknowing passes and the falseness of

light dazzles the eye. For the light is a liar unto the Light, and the light is

the darkness of the mind. Yet who shall know . . . . ?

I is dead. Death is dead and life has no living . . . . All that remains is All.

I of the cloudier corpus is slain. It is slain that the "I" of the mind might

live.

"I" of the mind is slain, for the "I" of the spirit to live.

"I" of the spirit is slain that the spirit may come into its glory.

"I" of the spirit shrinks from the vanity of life. Space is upon it. Space

towers above it, silently mocking its absence, and the spirit takes its

leave like a thought . . . . like the vapors and like the solitary sound that

is heard not . . . .

Eternity wanders through infinity like a blind minnow in an empty ocean

whose bounds are limitless . . . . Yet who can see its boundlessness?

Eternity probes itself like a blind idiot for it know not its immensity, and

it roars and rages in its madness because it cannot find its edges. Yet

who can hear its roaring . . . . ?

And the candles of time are lit, and their wax congeals in cold

spheres . . . . but they burn so long and die so quickly that no man knows

if they burn.

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Eternity convulses in its pralaya, seeking for definition.

Death agonizes silently for motion . . . . And all that remains is All.

O who shall hear of this anguish, for all that remains is All.

Book III

O Dream of Dreams, tell me, where is the dreamer?

O Dream of Dreams of Dreams, tell me, where is the dreamer?

O Dreamer, speak unto me,—in which of these dreams wilt thou be

found?

O Dreamer, speak unto me, art thou the dreamer in the Dream, or the

dreamer of the Dream?

O Dreamer, answer me,—if thou speakest unto thyself, and hear the

sound of thy voice and reply unto it,—are there then two people

speaking, or is it but one?

O Dreamer answer me—how many people are dreaming thy dream?

O eternal spaces, art thou black or white . . . . Is thy form clothed in light

or darkness?

Reply unto me

Who walketh in wakefulness,

Knowing not if wakefulness be but an illusion of wakefulness,

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Or if sleep be the door of the Absolute . . . .

Or if sleep be the dreamer awake . . . .

Speak unto me

Not in the ringing of my ears

That know not if such stridency be the dawning of new perception,—Or

the damnation of all that was real.

O world, where are thou, that but a second past, clung to my feet?

Wherein space am I caught?

O love, where are thy children,—the friends of my youth?

Who has frozen them in eternal ice until they stand in transient memory,

seeming as statues . . . . ?

Who has placed the halter of time upon their necks, to swing them in the

listless abysses of silence . . . . ?

O never-never-forever . . . . why art Thou?

O tender I-ness forgive me . . . . O lovable I-ness forgive me . . . . for my

hand has shattered the mirror, and I can see thee not.

O hunger that begets creation, O wistful memory of myself, O transient

I-ness, forgive me . . . . for the probing finger has shattered the veil of

illusion.

I have shattered the chimera of all Knowing . . . . and all that I know is

naught.

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Time did I seize in the fingers of my mind, and that which seemed to

move as a phantom did I hold in my fingers . . .

The peoples of the earth did I see, all that had lived or will live, and their

thoughts were upon their faces.

Beneath my feet did I seize space, and that which seemed afar was

near, and beneath my feet I suppressed the mountains . . . . and yet did

the cool oceans rise harmlessly to my nostrils.

And in all this land there was not one sound, for my fingers held all time,

and in time are the fields of motion. So that no atom stirred, nor did one

audible wave afflict the ether.

For the blood of the serpent is coagulated, and in its mind all thoughts

are one.

And I saw the voices of men . . . . and I saw the beautiful patterns of

motion . . . . but the world was as still as death.

And I saw the beauty as it liveth . . . . yet no color was upon the eye.

The rose upon the bush was only a pale weed, yet Red and Pink shook

the shimmering twilight with their loveliness . . . . and the soft perfume of

memory tinted the Void with its essence.

I saw the flight of the swallow, rolling across dimension like a silent surf.

And as I looked, I saw the emerald dye of the deep, drawn from the

ocean's waves . . . . and even the whiteness melted before the snow on

the mountaintop.

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Plain was the picture. Plain was the picture for I had concentrated upon

color and motion . . . . and now they were no more.

Strange was the land for I concentrated upon dimension until it waxed

and waned, and that which seemed small was as great as that which

seemed great.

The nightingale sang in the gloaming . . . . but his beak is now silent . . . .

and yet his song liveth forever.

O friend of my childhood, O lovable I-ness, what have I done to my

world? For I have turned my eye upon it and delivered it unto chaos!

And now I look upon the looker . . . . Twice I see myself and then I see

myself no more.

I see myself as a suppressor of mountainous space and a conqueror of

time. Mighty are my sinews, as I stand upon the mountain.

Then I see myself as an infinitesimal man in the infinitude of humanity . .

. . caught in the congealed blood of life.

I see this tiny man, happy, living, responding to illusions of color and

motion and dimension, and happy in his response, knowing not the

illusion of his indulgence in non-existent happiness.

And looking upon the tiny man, I see his joys leave him, for joy is a thing

apart.

And looking upon him I see his response leave him because motion is a

thing apart.

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And seeing these things my heart burns with love for existence.

Yes, I on the mountain, conqueror of illusion, now weep for the beauty of

illusion.

And looking back into the panorama below, I, the mountained man,—I

the consciousness absolute, see that the tiny man now no longer

liveth . . . . for life is a thing apart.

And since he no longer liveth, he cannot see me as I see him, nor can he

see himself as I see him, nor can he ever know of his joys that are things

apart . . . . or know of his love which is now a thing apart.

And knowing his love and his longing for the pattern, I on the mountain

bewail and sorrow in his loss.

Great is my anguish in his silence, great is my agony in his loss.

And feeling my agony, I on the mountain, know that I am the tiny man in

the endless cavalcade.

And soon I see, looking ahead, that all my joys are not, that all my love

is not, that all my being is not.

And I see that all Knowing is not. And the eminent I-ness melts into the

embraces of oblivion.

It melts into the embraces of oblivion like a charmed lover, fighting the

spell and languishing into it.

And now I breathe Space and walk in Emptiness. My soul freezes in the

void and my thoughts melt into an indestructible blackness.

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My consciousness struggles voiceless to articulate and it screams into

the abysses of itself. Yet there is no echo.

All that remains is All.

My spark of life falls through the canyons of the universe, and my soul

cannot weep for its loss . . . . for lamentation and sorrow are things apart .

All that remains is All.

The universe passes like a fitful vision.

The darkness and the void are part of the Unknowing . . . .

Death shall exist forever . . . .

Nothingness is Everywhere . . . .

Silence is forgotten . . . .

All that remains is ALL.

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