TO JOSEPH: THAT YOU MAY UNDERSTAND WHAT LIFE WILL
BRING
YOUR SEARCH FOR CONTEXT, ORDER AND MEANING
I began questioning what I
had assumed to be reality at the age of seven. At that point I wasn’t so aware
of a dilemma involved in human existence or that any particular choices were to
be made. My awareness was one of recognition of other dimensions of existence,
beyond that which I had understood to be real. In addition the different
reality of other people and how they affected me became very apparent. Three
events occurred that affected me deeply, causing me to want to know and to
understand what life was all about and who was I in it.
First, after moving into a “new” house in Albany, New
York, in 1954, I awakened one night to see the figure of a man standing at the
bottom of my bed looking down at me. He was very tall and wearing a dark
pin-striped three-piece suit. His head was tilted to the right in an extreme
angle, his tongue hung out of his mouth to the side, his eyes protruded like a
frog’s, and his arms swung limply at his sides. I was so horrified that I was
paralyzed, unable to utter a sound or to move. A few nights later, the man
returned, but not visually; rather, as an invisible presence with a soft voice.
He apologized for frightening me, for he realized quickly the effect of his
visual presence upon me. In time, he became my friend and close companion,
returning almost every night for probably two years. We talked and discussed
many philosophical points about life and living and what it was to be human. He
also comforted me when I was in pain. Much later in my life, when I was
twenty-one, I was motivated to research in the local newspaper, the
Times-Union, and found an obituary and a short news article about a man who had
committed suicide six months at the house I moved into with my family, six
months before we moved in. He was a banker whose wife and children had left him
several months earlier because he drank too much. One day he came home and hung
himself in what probably was his bedroom, now my bedroom. He was very sad but
very kind and knowledgeable. I never told anyone about him until I was
twenty-one. When I finally told my mother, she was aghast, and asked, “How did
you find out?” That is another story I will tell in due time.
Second, my father, who was a decorated World War Two
“hero,” and who had been in the Medical Core, serving on D-Day at Omaha Beach
and in the Ardennes Forest in the “Battle of the Bulge,” had been through the
profound horrors and confusion of war, and, though undiagnosed (as was the norm
for most returning veterans from that war in those times) probably suffered by
PTSD. He often saw me as a “defiant child,” though I probably suffered from a
degree of autism as a result of being born six weeks premature. I exhibited
various signs of autism and was slow to develop verbally and auditorily; in
other words, I didn’t hear adequately and therefore was slow to respond, thus
seeming “defiant.” My father lost patience of my “defiance” and began taking a
belt to my back, not stopping until he was either too exhausted or he drew
blood. At these times, which were extremely frightening and painful to me, I
couldn’t understand why he was doing this to me. I knew he loved me and could
not comprehend why he was doing this. In time, though, I did understand. I
would see in my mind bloody, deafening, explosive battlefields in which men
were dying and bodies and parts of bodies were strewn upon the ground. I felt
absolute fear and confusion and paralysis. I wondered why I was having these
thoughts and then I realized that I was seeing into my father’s mind, into his
thoughts. I also realized that in his mind he was on that battlefield that I
was seeing and reacting to. I understood that my father was “somewhere else”
when he beat me. This didn’t lessen the physical pain or damage but it did
diminish my inability to understand what was happening with him. And though I
had an understanding, I still harbored much resentment that he somewhere within
himself chose to take his rage out on me, his small child. I realized that
other people, even if they loved you, were capable of utmost cruelty. At these
times, I would try to flee into the safety of my bedroom closet, where my
mother kept her fur coats reaching down to the floor from hangers. I would curl
up in the fur coats like a small wounded animal. My friend, the “ghost in my
room,” would talk to me at these times and console me, telling me that my
father was a “victim of war,” that I should forgive him, that I was “good,” and
would “get through it and be ok.”
Now, during these beatings, I would find myself hovering
above the scene of me and my father, looking down at the action, watching us
both without any pain or suffering whatsoever. I became aware that I had
inadvertently “left my body” in order to avoid the intense pain being inflicted
upon it. In time it became almost second nature for me to “leave” whenever I
was faced with physical pain or discomfort or even in confrontational
circumstances. The fact that at these moments it left my body to seem almost
catatonic bothered and affected others and their assessments of me, but I did
not particularly care at all; I felt “safe.” Later in my life, when I “sat
zazen” absolutely motionless for hours on end, I was judged to be quite “advanced”
by Buddhist teachers, however, I was just out of my body; it was easy for me.
The real challenge was to learn how to fully inhabit my body again.
Third, in the fall of 1954, I got very sick, probably
with a flu, though I’m not sure what it was. I lay in my bed in my room gazing
out the window at a cold, orange sunset. I had a very high fever. As I lay on
my left side, looking upon my body covered by a blanket, I saw a mountain range
in the setting sun. As I watched, clouds came and enveloped the mountains,
pouring down endless rain for an eternity, after which the mountains were
totally washed away. I lay there now seeing nothing where my body had been. An
eternity had passed and my body no longer existed. Even my ability to “see” had
vanished and I found myself in a state that was without any senses except an
awareness of self. I assumed it must be “my” self.
Who is to say what causes a person to “question
existence”? Each of us has his or her own causes, reasonable or unreasonable,
conscious or unconscious. There is much that has occurred during my life that
has led me in many directions. I have thus sought to “understand the dilemma of
human existence,” for I do see that the many directions offer many choices, or
even just two choices, both of which must be understood to be co-existent. It
may be possible to “transcend” physical existence while living in a human body,
and to do so makes a certain definite sense, however, such an “achievement” may
be “pure nonsense.” I have been living in this question ever since I arrived at
the “age of guilt,” a result of Roman Catholicism indoctrination during my
childhood. Even beyond religious teaching and belief, the issue of “spirit vs.
matter” is certainly ancient and modern, without solution, but understandable in
its paradox and irony. In due time I will get to its gnostic roots and the
damage done to the human psyche. But damage without destruction may be seen as
evolutionary change. If one believes that what happens is “meant” to happen,
that omens are not necessarily ominous, and that each of us is part of and
integral to our own fate, then one may learn to be able to ride upon the
“horns” of the dilemma of being human.
I am writing this in what is
to be book form because I do not believe that electronic transmission will be
permanent but will, sooner or later, abruptly end. At that point we humans may
all abruptly end, but, if not, someone may read my book and find something of
value in it that might aid him or her in the living of their life. I want to
“leave something” of what I have learned in this life and this is one way to do
it. There are other additional ways, such as living by kind and loving example.
In this book there is a smattering of knowledge, including cultural and
philosophical correspondences, some of which seem to be beyond what is
generally or even specifically known, at least as far as I know. There is some
“tongue in cheek” in my writing, which is my way of expressing my particular
anecdote: “Too much irony makes one overwrought.” If one person smiles, it will
all have been worth it. If one laughs, I get my wings. My references indicate
my age and generation: old.
Much of this book is taken from my journals and from
essays and “putting together of information” I’ve written over the years, arranged
by different themes and topics. All of it relates to “understanding the dilemma
of human existence.” What else is there, anyway? I will try to provide
connection and explanation when it seems necessary, and may become quite
tangential at times, as the spirit moves me. I will also let the spirit speak
whenever possible. I might just as well have asked, “What is real?” or “Who am
I?” We each have our own questions that come to us and for which we seek to
understand an answer. And, while it may be quite true that legions of people do
not question at all, preferring to avoid all discomfort and to believe contexts
presented to them, be they business or religion or sheer survival, are able and
willing to contort themselves to fit and to belong without question or even
apparent awareness, these are those many others who find themselves unable and
unwilling to do so.
In my own life I have always tended to write down these
choices made to not fit in and often the pain involved as a result of not being
part and parcel of the “world,” that is, of the way in which life is “expected
to be lived” by the greater majority. Some of us are aided in our eventual
understanding of such a situation by what happens to us in life that is
seemingly much beyond our control. For instance, I refer to my own premature
birth “forced” upon me by my mother slipping on icy stairs, “breaking her
water,” thus forced against the time of nature itself, to bear her baby six
weeks early. From the beginning, then, I was not quite “normal” and spent the
first two months of my life in an “incubator,” a small container with a light
bulb for warmth used to hatch motherless chickens. I was so small and frail,
for my father chain-smoked as well, that I was not touched or held except by
nurses when they changed my linens and diapers. “Human touch” was infrequent
and without love, warmth, or gentleness. Physical touch became overwhelming,
uncomfortable, and even painful to me. I squirmed like an animal to get away,
kicking and screaming and flailing; in time, people were not intimate with me
and I felt safe though always alone, always different. Then, thirty-four years
later, when my daughter, Sarah, exhibited signs of profound autism at two or
three months, I understood how that was for her, and she understood that I
understood. A very close bond was formed between us. I kept a detailed record
of my own thoughts and feelings and still do almost thirty-five years later.
I have also always read different sources, particularly
of philosophy, religion, and history so that I might have some kind of
understanding of what human beings have to say about themselves, their lives,
and their worlds. I have sought to see what they have done and how they acted
throughout history all over the world. Their thoughts over time and their
consequent actions taught me much about what it means to be human, both for
better and for worse. Much of what I have read has resonated closely with me,
had “spoken” to me clearly, and has explained, in some respects, not only how I
“hold” the world or “see” it, but why whole cultures have come to do what they
have done and why they still hold such views of God, themselves, and humanity.
For we are not so separate as we may think we are; we actually operate as a
whole, especially now with the technology of the internet which provides an
immediacy without time or space to give us a chance to weigh and to think, to
reason. Much of what I include in this book is a result of my thoughts, some
with particular purposes to bring new thoughts or evidence to light especially
to specific audiences. There is much here that therefore sounds rather
“academic,” containing footnotes and sources for the quotes I use. If, in my
reading, I find that someone else has come quite close to articulating my own thoughts
or something quite close to them, I have no problem in letting them do much of
the speaking for me. Sometimes they are so well-spoken, in fact, that it would
be a disservice to them for me to even attempt to paraphrase them. And the fact
is that I find myself “in” various historical views and even in those who spoke
them, as if I actually were the person who articulated them. I do not quite
know just what will be included in this book, but whatever lends itself to an
“understanding of the dilemma of being human or of human existence” is apropos.
For, if something “speaks” to me, it may speak to another as well. The beauty
that I am fortunate to be able to see may possibly be seen by another. The
questions and needs that well up from my own soul and my own heart may very
well reflect those of others, just as the questions of the most ancient
philosophers are questions that I too have asked before I ever even knew of
them.
My writings here, then, will cover a spectrum of that
which is quite personal, such as my own life, to that which is very abstract,
such as my philosophical thoughts on cosmological topics. Some will be
paraphrased renditions, primarily through the use of quotes, of various
historical narratives or overweening points of view, such as the fascinating
mythologies of the various Gnostic schools of early Christianity and from what
they are derived. For, to understand the reasons how things are now and the
foundations from which they arose does provide an understanding of current
human nature and thought which is utterly vital if we are to survive and even
thrive in our current world. The primary cause of the problems humanity is
faced with throughout the world is a lack of historical and therefore
foundational awareness. Those who do not know history are bound to repeat it in
their overweening ignorance. To know history is to know oneself.
Central to this desire and
need to understand this “dilemma of human existence” is the need for context,
for a context for ourselves in which we may “belong” and thus “be a part of
life.” Without context, we are lost; we do not even know what we are, much less
who we are, or even why we are. Context most often takes the form of a story of
ourselves in some way. It may be a story of our “people,” our race, our
religion, our society, our nation, our family, or it may be more individualized
into a story of “my spirituality,” my relationship with the universe, with God
or gods, with the earth, with my “true nature.” And so we may spend our lives
searching for stories, for cosmologies, that “resonate” with us, that “speak”
to us, in which we can find ourselves. We may, in fact, discover many such
stories that, themselves, overlap in so many ways, with us able to find a bit
of ourselves in each and consequently coagulating them all into a still greater
story, a still greater context and place of belongingness in which we are able
to exist as we are, though still always searching for still greater boundaries.
It is similar to Siddhartha moving from one guru to the next, absorbing what
each teaches and presents, but then having to discover the next guru with the
greater teaching. Each time he is filled to the brim and realizes that reality
is bigger and more inclusive than he has been able to hold; he must
consequently expand himself, his own reality to be able to contain that which
is to come. I have gone to many religions, many philosophies, many ways of
seeing, many experiences of being, often enough then returning, able to
traverse a higher spiral of that particular story, and noticing that, at a
certain point, the stories become much more entwined in the same spiral. The
Gnostics present incredible “creation” stories, differing according to the main
schools, but with quite similar results. The Plato-Christian stories, though
different in the telling, also have quite similar worldviews and virtue. The
Buddhist and Hindu and Daoist are not so different from the Plato-Christian,
though they are utterly different in their telling and even in their
conclusions. Then, of course, there are the philosophers and the mystics who
also skirt and parallel the religious correspondences. Their various
“movements,” from those of Blavatsky and Bailey, to Krishnamurti and Steiner
are fascinating and amazing, all as sparks of intelligence and great heart
permeating all existence. They all sit with me here in my office library,
waiting patiently to “hold company” with me, weighing the issues closest to the
human heart and its existence with the human soul and divine spirit in the same
body. If people but knew what they had to convey of their own experiences and
their understanding and interpretation of that experience, they would not be
the same. I am not the same. The gods and the God have spoken and continue to
speak, but we do not believe that we can hear them any longer, and so we do not
listen. But I have listened and, in the most profane and prosaic moment, have
heard. It is not so much what they say but the fact that we realize that they
have spoken to us; that they, as the ancient Greek “pagans” and Christians
believed, walk amongst us still. Such realities, which we now hold to be more
“sentiments” than truth, are noted in the NT, as when Christ says, “You shall
find me in the very least of my brethren.” He is being both metaphorical and
literal, which is exactly how both the Greek “pagans” and Christians believed
that the statues or images of the gods and of God were “alive” with the
presence of the god and God. Such statues were placed in locations where not
only could they be visited by people, but where they could walk, frolic, make
love, and otherwise romp in the absence of human beings.
Previously I
spoke of the necessity of “finding context” for oneself, noting that we are
“lost” until we “find a center to ourselves,” a place in which we belong and in
which we are “safe.” Context, in itself, may internal and/or external, that is,
we may have it “within” ourselves and/or find “belonging” outside of ourselves.
Some of us attain an internal context while never finding an external one,
while others find an external context, such as religious group, nation,
“cause,” etc., without ever having an internal one. Of course it is probably
best if one can attain to both contexts, though external contexts change over
time rather too quickly and radically at times, while internal contexts may
also change as we change in our self-interpretations and worldview. While
“having a context” is utterly important if one is to have a “ground of being”
within oneself and a “place” in one’s community, if such a context is in fact
false, we have a problem with and in our very existence and being. People may
collectively choose a religious or a political context for themselves which
leads to their individual and collective destruction due to its inherent
falseness and unreality, as when the Germans elected Hitler as their leader in
the 1930s. Individuals may also interpret their own “true feelings and
insights” incorrectly, for instance, if they have a belief that God does or God
doesn’t exist, or the body is good or the body is evil, or people of a
different race are a threat or are also human and can be trusted as such. Thus,
a wrong context can lead us to personal and/or collective disaster, as
evidenced throughout history.
In my blog, Metaphysical Forces in
Flux: What on Earth Is Happening? (metaphysicalforcesinplay.blogspot.com), I
asked a question of the Yijing (I Ching), the ancient Chinese oracle,
which I have studied and worked with over the last fifty years. I would like to
be able to provide the history of this oracle system with its 4096 possible
permutations that occur in the moment and movement of time but will resist in
this moment. On October 28, 2016, I specifically asked: “What is happening in
the world at this juncture in time?” I posed this question with a desire to
understand what was occurring politically and socially in the United States,
given the upcoming presidential election. Normally I tend to ask questions
relating to my own life but this was more of a collectively-focused question.
The response was telling. Rather than interpreting it myself, I will convey the
actual words of the text, The Taoist I
Ching translated by Thomas Cleary, both quoted and somewhat paraphrased. As
you read, consider it a response to the circumstances of the presidential
election process that had been continuing for eighteen months. My minor
comments are in brackets. I have italicized sections that are worthy of note. I
would hope that the reader will draw his or her own conclusions.
First, the “current moment” is
presented. Hexagram (or gua) 32:
Constancy. Long persistence. Thunder, active, above, wind, penetrating, below.
Acting gently as the breeze, active yet serene, neither identifying nor
detaching, the mind steadfast and the will far-reaching, therefore constancy. This is genuine application
in real practice. Following upon the previous hexagram fire, or illuminating the inward and the outward, aiming at
profound attainment of personal realization, so that illumination is
all-pervasive. But this is not possible without a constant mind, which means
single-mindedly applying the will, the longer the stronger, not slacking off.
Thereby one may comprehend essence and life, revealing a path of development.
[18 months of campaigning definitely demonstrates “constancy.”] However, constancy must be correct;
abandoning the real and entering into the false is not developmental and is
faulty. Blind practitioners in the world go into deviant paths, taking what is
wrong to be right, aggrandizing themselves, boasting of their practices and
cultivating vain reputations, striving all their lives without ever awakening;
most assuredly capable of constancy but constant in aberrated paths, not in the
right path. To seek eternal life in this way hastens death; when your time is
up, you will have no way out and cannot escape the blame. Therefore correctness
is necessary. Even correctness is only possible through constant practice of
what is correct. What is correct is the true principle, which is the Tao of
body and mind, essence and life. This path appropriates yin and yang (or
negative and positive), takes over creation, sheds birth and death, escapes
compulsive routine. It requires flexible, gentle, gradual advance, ascending
from low to high, going from shallow to deep, step by step treading in the
realm of reality; only then can it be effective. A great affair which endures
long unchanging requires great work that endures long unceasing before it can
be achieved. The constancy that is
beneficial if correct is the constancy that is beneficial if it is going
somewhere. But if you want to practice what is right, first you must know what
is right, investigating truth, reaching the basis of essence, thereby arriving
at the universal order. The work of comprehending essence and arriving at the
universal order of life is all a matter of thoroughly penetrating truth.
Next, there are the “moving lines”
which denote changes that are occurring and will occur or are recommended to
occur before the final “outcome” hexagram. They are in chronological order. As
the “current situation” hexagram, the parallel and correspondence to that of
the presidential election is, to my mind, uncanny, and evident enough:
Moving Line 1. Deep constancy; fidelity brings misfortune.
If one does not distinguish right from wrong, one enters deeply into false
ideas so that they persist extensively. If one plunges in deeply without
clearly understanding true principle, even if one wants to seek what is right,
on the contrary one will bring on misfortune. [This occurrence can pertain to both
leader and followers.]
Moving Line 3. If one is not constant in virtue, one may be
shamed; even if right, one is humiliated. One may be strong and correct and
determined in practice of the Tao, but if strength is not balanced and one is
in a hurry to achieve attainment, one may advance keenly yet regress rapidly,
thus not being constant in virtue, and shaming oneself. What is the shame? It
is the shame of setting the heart on virtue but not being able to be constant
in virtue, setting the will on right yet being unable to constantly practice
what is right. Following the path in practice yet giving up, even though one is
correctly oriented, one is humiliated. [I would say that we have seen this
occurrence come to pass.]
Moving Line 4.
No field, no game. When strength is in the body of action, the time is for
doing, like having fields to plow. If one dwells in a position of weakness, the
will inactive, constantly embracing the Tao but unable to put it into practice,
is like empty fields. This is constancy without action.
Moving Line 6. Constancy of excitement is bad. Thinking one
has what one lacks, that one is fulfilled when one is really empty and
aggrandizing oneself, concerned with oneself and ignoring others, is called
constancy of excitement. With constant excitement, the culmination of
aggrandizement is inevitably followed by ruin, the culmination of elevation is
inevitably followed by a fall. Ultimately one winds up being destroyed. This is
constancy fooling oneself and bringing on misfortune. The proper way was never
taken. [It seems that the “fall” with its “ruin” and “misfortune” are yet
to happen, however, they are
foretold.]
This is
followed by the “outcome,” the hexagram that follows from the current situation
and the changes it holds:
Hexagram 41:
Reduction. Diminishing excess. Above,
still, mountain; below, joyous, lake. Having something to rejoice over, yet
immediately stilling it; by stilling the joy there is no errant thought. Strength and flexibility are balanced,
emptiness and fullness are in accord; strength does not become rambunctious,
flexibility does not become weakness. Reduction
is therefore diminishing what is excessive, adding to what is insufficient.
This is the existence of increase within reduction. Previous to this is halting, in which one can stop where there
is danger, preserving the primordial Tao in the midst of the temporal, which
requires the removal of acquired conditioning [which is social and cultural
belief that has been “learned”], i.e., traveling the path of reduction. Reduction as a path means not following
desires but stopping desires; many people cannot be sincere in it, and if one
is not sincere, one cannot finish what is started, will fail, and will also
bring on blame. Whereas if one can be
sincere, every thought is true; sincerity of mind naturally shows in action.
Good fortune comes even though one does not try to bring it about. However,
such sincerity must be correct, such reduction must be correct. People in the
world who contemplate voidness, stick to quietude, forget about people, forget
about their own bodies, and go on like this all their lives without change, are
certainly sincere about reduction, but they are faithful to what they should
not be faithful to, and reduce what they should not reduce—thus there is
decrease with increase, which is still faulty. So if one can be correct in
sincerity in reduction, discern whether it is right or wrong, whether it is
false or true, understand it in the mind and prove it in actual events to the
benefit of all. Actual practice in real life is most important, to finish what
has been started. As long as one has
not yet reached the serene, equanimous realm of the middle way, work cannot be
stopped; one must daily reduce for the sake of the Tao, daily increasing
one’s accomplishment. When strength and flexibility are balanced, there is
flexibility in strength and strength in flexibility; strength and flexibility
are as one. One has gone back to the origin; the spiritual embryo takes on
form, and from this one receives the bliss of freedom and nonstriving. One’s fate now depends on oneself, not on
heaven. Be sincere in reduction, and within reduction there is increase.
This is no small matter. [The “serene, equanimous realm of the middle way” in
which there is “balance” between “flexibility” and “strength” is the kind of
reality that is seen as our future.]
* * *
I felt
compelled to present the oracular view of “context,” both as truth and as
untruth. Now, how do we find real, true, “correct” context? Reality and Truth,
that in which we seek “live and move and have our being,” are most elusive,
though not illusive. To see it, we must be it. there have been many people
throughout history who have given themselves to this quest for reality and
truth. I am aware of the sentence in the preceding hexagram: One’s fate now depends on oneself, not on
heaven. There is a Tibetan Buddhist chant: Om mani padme hum. It was
translated to me as “You hold the lotus in your hand,” which can be taken to
mean that we contain our fate within ourselves. Our fate lies within our hands.
Like “God” or “the universe,” it is not just “out there”; it is also “in here,”
within ourselves, even as we are within it.
* * *
--
The “dilemma”
of being human, as noted, is that of our relationship with ourselves as both
physical and spiritual existing together within each other. These two modes of
being are quite different. The spiritual exists within the physical body,
animating it with life. To be able to co-exist as matter and spirit together is
the challenge of our lives. Ultimately, the body gives out and the spirit
continues on. Soul is seen as the quality of spirit within the body.
But there are two main worldviews
of those that include both the physical and the spiritual in their cosmology,
for many exclude one or the other. These two worldviews I would classify as
Platonic-Christian and Gnostic. They are reflected also in Buddhism and
Hinduism and other major and minor religions and indigenous beliefs. But how
existence and the world is viewed and held makes a great difference in our
ability to live with the dilemma, the paradox, of human existence.
The Platonic-Christian are noted as
one because they are quite similar, with the Christian flowing from both
classical Greek “pagan” religion and Judaism. They reflect an ordered universe
in which a central deity reigns through universal truths and laws. Nature, or
creation, is considered overall to be “good,” as least in its essence, and the
central deity is as a center to all creation, all life. In Buddhism, this
center is seen not as a deity as such but as our “true nature,” as our “ground
of being.” This “universal center” provides a sense of meaning and place for
all creation, including humanity. “As above, so below,” means that the earth,
the creation, is a reflection of heaven, the place of the gods. There is an
order, a logic, a reason, a purpose for our existence. We were created to give
praise to the Creator and to learn to live in the image of the divine goodness
and express it in the physical world through our living and being. All society
is based on this integrity and center of the universe, and the belief in this
system is the glue that holds society together.
The Gnostic views are in opposition
to this. These will be closely examined in due time and are also discussed in
the next few pages, but suffice it to say that they hold that our universe and
all creation, including ourselves and all nature, was created in error by an
ignorant deity, the son of the First Cause, our of his own desire and egotism.
As such, all creation is a mistake that should never have happened. The world
itself is to be shunned, even hated. Jesus Christ came to destroy our belief
and faith in our creator and to lead us to the First Father who is unknown and
alien to us, and who does not love us, have any regard for us whatsoever, and
who does not even know we exist. There is no center to our universe, no God of
our universe, no purpose to our existence except to no longer exist and to them
return to the Source from which we came. We are trapped in these tainted bodies
in this contaminated, ignorant world. We know nothing of ourselves or our true
nature and we are not even supposed to exist. We are a mistake created by a
demonic demiurge. There is nothing to love and nothing worth loving. Life in
its essence is hateful and miserable; no one cares about us humans.
There is much more to Gnosticism
but this is a major part of its teachings and beliefs, which do vary according
to the different Gnostic confessions. Some of this is reflected in various
statements of Jesus, Paul, and others such as Augustine. It is clearly
reflected in Calvinist Protestantism, which carried it to even greater
extremes. It is both highly individualistic and collective. When a Savonarola
takes control, heads roll. Society does not hold together under a religion that
makes people go against their own better nature, their own human-kindness, and
teaches them to hate both themselves and others, all in the name of God. Hans
Jonas, author of The Gnostic Religion, pursues the Gnostic tradition to a more
gentle, though still nihilistic, modern Existentialism, which puts more
emphasis into the value and relationship between human beings who are all
“thrown” into existence together and should therefore help each other, since no
god or God is going to do it for them. In this respect, the Daoist notion that
“one’s fate now depends on oneself, not on heaven,” rings quite true. Human
beings must learn to be responsible to themselves and for themselves, and “God
helps those who help themselves.” Sophocles and Euripedes wrote similar phrases
in their plays and Benjamin Franklin made the quote famous in his Poor Richard’s Almanack. In the Middle
Ages, the Cathars of southern France and others parts of Europe expressed quite
Gnostic views and
In early
October, 2016, I received an on-line invitation to a Jungian webinar that
presented an agenda that examined what was happening in the American political
election and why there could be so much expression and acceptance of racism,
misogyny, anger, violence, hatred, etc. and what might we possibly do to bring
about an atmosphere of understanding and reconciliation. It was to be hosted by
five or six Jungian authors and depth psychologists. I was very interested in
its purpose, especially since it corresponded closely with my own blog, Metaphysical Forces in Flux: What on Earth
is Happening? At that point I wrote the following post (with some minor
editing here) to my blog and sent it to Chiron Publications, which was hosting
the webinar:
The
Jungian webinar jogged my memory of the poem by William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming. Having spent the last
few months reading and absorbing many of the original Gnostic sources and texts
from the first through the third centuries CE, I realized that I had a response
to the overall questions of “what is happening and why”? I also realized that
Yeats, who wrote this poem after the end of World War 1, is making particular
references to the ominous consequences of a devolved Gnosticism being reborn in
our postmodern world. A historical perspective of the effects of the original
Gnostic cultural wave is valuable if not vital to the understanding of our
current world situation. It seems that there is a new, dark, dualistic,
puritanical, Gnostic current flooding the world now and that conscious choices
must be made now to stem the tide. I do hope that the presenters in the
webinar, the “six blind Jungian monks,” take the time to consider this “food
for thought” offered here.
THE SECOND
COMING by William Butler Yeats
Turning and
turning in the widening gyre
The falcon
cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall
apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is
loosed upon the world,
The
blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of
innocence is drowned;
The best lack
all conviction, while the worst
Are full of
passionate intensity.
Surely some
revelation is at hand;
Surely the
Second Coming is at hand.
The Second
Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast
image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my
sight; a waste of desert sand;
A shape with
lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank
and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its
slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of
the indignant desert birds.
The darkness
drops again but now I know
That twenty
centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to
nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough
beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward
Bethlehem to be born?
When the
Gnostic mind reigns, the center does not hold; the God of this world, this
cosmos, and nature itself, is not to be trusted and no longer exists as
unifying force. The unified universe of Platonism and Christianity (with
counterparts in Buddhism and Hinduism and many Indigenous religions) is gone.
That which was seen as a revelation or a reflection of divine beauty and order
within all nature and all matter throughout the cosmos, no longer makes sense,
and is no longer understood or accepted. The glue of society, culture and
civilization is weakened. Nothing makes sense except to those who have lost
hope in humanity and the world, have lost their senses, their connections with
nature and themselves as “parts of nature,” instead, seeing existence as revolving
around only themselves or, conversely, are no longer able to even see
themselves but can only give credence to visions of unknown saviors; visions
put forth in manipulative lies of hope and salvation. People lose their own
vision, having given up their own minds and souls, their own ability to
understand, and their own willingness to think for themselves. They lose common
identity except that defined by fear and its unbalanced elements: hatred of and
violence towards any imagined enemy, any “other,” which have been made real
through absolute loneliness, alienation and despair. They gather then as
hateful predators to insure their own survival even as they consume what is
left of their souls and the world itself as if it were meat. For their God whom
they had worshipped and held as sacred has become the Devil himself; they have
been thrown into the world unawares and then out of the Garden to survive as
dumb animals, but animals who are unnatural and do not belong in this landscape
of earth, much less in their own physical bodies. In their state of darkness,
ignorance and sleep, they are unable to see any goodness, any divinity within
themselves, within nature or within their world, seeing only the dark images of
their own thoughts and imaginations. And they see their lives only in and
within the power of the great beast, the Demiurge, their Creator, rather than
in any loving, merciful, universal Father.
When we can no
longer see the beauty of nature or find ourselves in nature, when we can no
longer trust nature and ourselves as the reflection, order and goodness of the
“Divine,” that is, a principle of essence or ground of being, we lose hope,
understanding and direction. For, from the perspective of the first Gnostic
cultural wave in the first to the third centuries CE, the whole universe was
created in error by Error, and we ourselves cannot escape imprisonment in such
a world of ignorance and evil. Yet, as social beings, there is an innate need,
or at least tendency, to find “divine essence” within ourselves and others. The
ignorance that comes to possess human minds and souls devolves into the form of
anti-social actions, to the point of “evil” itself. But, at that moment, does
the Truth then finally arise within us? Within humanity itself? Are we suddenly
somehow “made aware” and able to “see the light” of understanding? Do we become
aware of the great goodness and love that exists within and among us? Or, do we
fail as a species, never fulfilling the potential of our “spiritual destiny,”
destined to fade away or otherwise destroy ourselves?
I see that this
as a choice we must make. Though it may seem to be the other way around, being in the world is far more challenging
than avoiding the world; the via positiva
is far more difficult than the via negativa,
the kataphatic far more harsh than the apophatic. This a choice which requires
that we sacrifice such pleasures as avoidance of the world’s helter-skelter and
learn to find peace and quiet in the very midst of frenetic, distracting
existence. It requires that we come together, cease our endless judgment and
division, and be willing to trust others and ourselves. It is our purpose to
create a “center to hold” if human life is to be able to continue in love,
goodness, reason, and heartfulness.
Gnosis has devolved into dark division and separateness; the
“elect” judge and condemn those who do not “know the secrets of God” but are
simply of kind and good heart. Living is not a mental exercise, no matter how
erudite or impressive. Rather, it is an act of love and faith in that love of
all that lives. If we cannot act lovingly towards others, ourselves, and the
planet itself, we are doomed. If the split way of seeing continues, we will
continue to split ourselves, to disconnect and destroy ourselves. The Gnostic
vision of cosmic duality must by choice and understanding be replaced with an
evolved Platonic vision and version of existence in which we are able to
experience and recognize a “center that holds,” a center that exists throughout
the cosmos and that is one of love and awareness of others as ourselves, in
which we treat each other as we would like to be treated.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Gnosticism, so
far presented here, has historical substance and reality, however, Gnosticism
is also an archetype, a set of aspects ever-present, manifesting anew as
powerful cultural and epic waves in the currents of history, often as seemingly
necessary and worthy purging social movements but resulting in chaos and the
destruction of order, including any sense of “center.” Yeats, well-versed in
Gnosticism, Hermeticism and Theosophy, in The
Second Coming, recognizes the “widening gyre” of the cosmic spheres meant
to both define and contain the differing cosmic elements, as becoming
unbalanced and unable to “hold its center.” We “falconers” who had once been
able to merge and find ourselves within the “falcon” and act as part of and in
accordance with nature, have lost this ability as we have accepted the Gnostic
tenets of the essential “error” of our being, nature, and all creation, in
which we reject the material world, including our own flesh, as anathema to our
“true divine being.” In the Gnostic view, we are prisoners of ignorance and
evil in this universe of matter: there is no virtue, no trust, no innocence, no
“conviction,” no consciousness (for we have been created by a lesser god of
pride and ignorance, who is compelled to imprison us in his world and maintain
darkness so that the other-worldly light within us may not be revealed to us).
And those minions, called Archons, of this mind come to dominate and to infect
and enthuse humans to the point of “passionate intensity” in the creation of a
world of even greater loss and depravity. Yeats recognizes this “Spiritus
Mundi,” this Spirit (God) of the World as Evil personified, perhaps as the
Antichrist, as Ialdabaoth, the Creator of the cosmos, the Demiurge, in the form
of the Sphinx (with human head and lion’s body) arising from the desert, the
realm of the dead and the remote past. These images are Gnostic ones. Has the
“rough beast” been born into the world?
Commentators on
Yeats’s poem note that this was the world he had witnessed during the First
World War and was now observing—and experiencing—as the devastation of the
civilization he had known. Perhaps what is occurring in the world now is simply
an extension of that process, made here and now through the immediacy and
strange intimacy of the internet. Perhaps it is quite similar to the “Gnostic
revolution” that occurred twenty centuries ago and brought down the “pagan”
Platonic and Christian “universal orders” held in place by “divine powers.” But
then, Gnostic duality (with its Manichean-Iranian version deriving from the
dual and independently “good” and “evil” gods of Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda
and Ahriman, and the Syrian version of Valentinus, deriving from Greek
philosophy itself, perhaps Egyptianized) has remained quite alive throughout
history to our current time. Sts. Paul and Augustine carried it into Roman
Catholicism and Calvin and Luther into Protestantism. Existentialism and
Marxism hold much of Gnostic archetypes, if not actual beliefs. And now it
surely appears that “things fall apart” and “the center cannot hold.”
I would be
remiss if I did not elaborate a bit more on “original Gnostic tradition,” since
this is, as I see it, the archetypal and metaphysical force that has come into
play in a most powerful way in our world. In his Preface to The Gnostic
Religion, Hans Jonas summarizes the “Gnostic epic,” so to speak, as
follows:
Almost all the action would be in the
heights, in the divine or angelic or daimonic realm, a drama of pre-cosmic
persons… And yet that transcendental drama before all time, depicted in the
actions and passions of manlike figures, would be of intense human appeal:
divinity tempted, unrest stirring among the blessed Aeons, God’s erring Wisdom,
the Sophia, falling prey to her folly, wandering in the void and darkness of
her own making, endlessly searching, lamenting suffering, repenting, laboring
her passion into matter, her yearning into soul; a blind and arrogant Creator
believing himself the Most High and lording it over the creation, the product,
like himself, of fault and ignorance; the Soul, trapped and lost in the
labyrinth of the world, seeking to escape and frightened back by the
gatekeepers of the cosmic prison, the terrible archons; a Savior from the Light
beyond venturing into the nether world, illumining the darkness, opening a
path, healing the divine breach. (xiii)
Let us briefly compare what might be
called “classical Greek Platonism” and “classical Gnosticism,” as presented by
Jonas:
Plotinus maintains the unity of all being in the universe,
with no essential separation of the human and the non-human realm. Man is in
his essence kindred to the whole cosmos … [and he is endowed with] the best in
him, namely reason… He actualizes his kinship with the cosmic powers, that is,
… he increases the original generic community of his being and that of the
total cosmos [when he utilizes reason].
Gnosticism, on the contrary, removes man, in virtue of his
essential belonging to another realm, from all sameness with the world, which
now is nothing but bare “world,” and confronts him with its totality as the
absolutely different. Apart from his accessory outer layers contributed by the
world, man by his inner nature is acosmic; to such a one, all the world is
indifferently alien. Where there is ultimate otherness of origin, there can be
kinship neither with the whole nor with any part of the universe. (263)
I quote Jonas on Gnosticism’s
historical and culture influence and effect in the first few centuries CE and
ask the reader to compare the Gnostic archetype and historical reality as it
affected that world to its seeming affect in our current one:
The gnostic movement—such we must call it—was a widespread
phenomenon in the critical centuries indicated, feeding like Christianity on
the impulses of a widely prevalent human situation, and therefore erupting in
many places, many forms, and many languages. First among the features … is the
radically dualistic mood which underlies the gnostic attitude as a whole and
unifies its widely diversified, more or less systematic expressions. It is on
this primary human foundation of a passionately felt experience of self and
world, that the formulated dualistic doctrines rest. The dualism is between man
and the world, and concurrently between the world and God. … In this three-term
configuration—man, world, God—man and God belong together in contraposition to
the world, but are, in spite of this essential belonging-together, in fact
separated precisely by the world. To the Gnostic, this fact is the subject of
revealed knowledge, and it determines gnostic eschatology: we may see in it the projection of his basic experience, which thus created for itself its own
revelatory truth [my emphasis]. Primary would then be the feeling of an
absolute rift between man and that in which he finds himself lodged—the world.
It is this feeling which explicates itself in the forms of objective doctrine.
In its theological aspect this doctrine states that the Divine is alien to the
world and has neither part nor concern in the physical universe; that the true
god, strictly transmundane, is not revealed or even indicated by the world, and
is therefore the Unknown, the totally Other, unknowable in terms of any worldly
analogies. Correspondingly, in its cosmological aspect it states that the world
is the creation not of God but of some inferior principle whose law it
executes; and, in it anthropological aspect, that man’s inner self, the pneuma (“spirit” in contrast to “soul”
or psyche) is not part of the world,
of nature’s creation and domain… . (326-327)
… whoever has created the world, man does not owe him
allegiance, nor respect to his work. His work, though incomprehensibly
encompassing man, does not offer the stars by which he can set his course, and
neither does his proclaimed wish and will. Since not the true God can be the
creator of that to which selfhood feels so utterly a stranger, nature merely
manifests its lowly demiurge: as a power deep beneath the Supreme God, upon
which even man can look down from the height of his god-kindred spirit, this
perversion of the Divine has retained of it only the power to act, but to act
blindly, without knowledge and benevolence. Thus did the demiurge create the
world out of ignorance and passion. (327)
The world, then, is the product, and even the embodiment, of
the negative of knowledge. What it
reveals is unenlightened and therefore malignant force, proceeding from the
spirit of self-assertive power, from the will to rule and coerce. The
mindlessness of this will is the spirit of the world, which bears no relation
to understanding and love. … Power
thus becomes the chief aspect of the cosmos, and its inner essence is ignorance.
To this, the positive complement is that the essence of man is
knowledge—knowledge of self and of God: this determines his situation as that
of the potentially knowing in the midst of the unknowing, of light in the midst
of darkness, and this relation is at the bottom of his being alien, without
companionship in the dark vastness of the universe. (327-328)
What sticks in my mind is our
“situation as that of the potentially knowing in the midst of the unknowing, of
light in the midst of darkness.” As I previously noted, this is precisely the
choice that must be made by those who “possess knowledge,” specifically,
“knowledge of God.” Jonas notes the presence of “understanding and love” as, in
my estimation, our proper and true ground of being. I do not wish to present
Gnosticism as inherently wrong-minded or “evil”; it is a creation of dualistic
perspectives with their own mythology and cosmology that took root in the minds
of many at a juncture in history. It is nihilistic, anarchic, and even anti-social
in scope and practice. I would submit that my criticism of Gnosticism may be
more of a criticism of a most diminished human condition. Historically, those
who “possess gnosis” of the
transcendent, believe that they possess such knowledge or are the “elect of
God,” have tended to see themselves as “superior” to others, and conveying this
“superiority” to their impressionable and “passionate” followers. Even if they
did not impose their beliefs upon others, their belief in their exclusivity was
socially and culturally separative and divisive. They often chose to no longer
operate within the common law and only recognized their own. Society broke
down: the center could not hold. This is not to say that they did not possess
true knowledge or even transcendent gnosis; they very well may. But, in the
world of human beings, such gnosis “goes to the head but not the heart,”
feeding their sense of separateness—and paranoia. When fear for survival takes
over, there is no gnosis, no matter how right or how true; there is only
catastrophe.
There are a number of other “Gnostic
sources” I have consulted, including Forerunners
and Rivals of Christianity from 330 BC to 330 AD by Francis Legge, Pagans and Christians: Religion and the
Religious Life from the Second to the Fourth Century by Robin Lane Fox, The Other Bible edited by Willis
Barnstone, The Confessions of St.
Augustine (which is quite Manichean) translated and edited by Albert Cook
Outler, and others. So far, Jonas seems to have the deepest understanding and the
most thorough research. As a philosopher himself, he is familiar with both
ancient and modern philosophers as well as both “pagan” classical Greek and
early Christian apologists who understood Gnostic teachings well in order to be
able to provide persuasive arguments against them. These apologists and critics
of Gnosticism include Plotinus, Augustine, Irenaeus, Origen, and Tertullian.
Jonas realizes that Gnosticism is informed by Christianity and Classical Greek
thought and vice-versa. The threads of each are interwoven and Jonas is quite
careful when separating them in order to reveal how Gnosticism is much the
opposite of the other two, which are quite similar in many ways. Finding the
“right” quotes from Jonas in order to display the various essential Gnostic
teachings and their applications has been a most difficult process, for
Gnosticism has many different threads. This one, by Jonas pertaining “gnostic
dualism” and the consequent view of the psyche, also in light of the fact that
Jung himself claimed to be “gnostic,” provides food for thought:
Gnostic dualism … regards the “soul” itself, the spiritual
organ of man’s belonging to the world, as no less than his body an effluence of
the cosmic powers and therefore as an instrument of their dominion over his
true but submerged self. As the “terrestrial envelopment of the pneuma,” the
“soul” is the exponent of the world within man—the world is in the soul. A profound distrust,
therefore, of one’s own inwardness, the suspicion of demonic trickery, the fear
of being betrayed into bondage inspire gnostic psychology. The alienating
forces are located in man himself as composed of flesh, soul, and spirit. The
contempt of the cosmos radically understood includes the contempt of the psyche [my emphasis]. Therefore what is of the
psyche is incapable of being elevated to the condition of virtue. It is either
to be left to itself, to the play of its forces and appetite, or to be reduced
by mortification, or sometimes even extinguished in ecstatic experience. [This]
indicates that the negative attitude to the world, or the negative quality of
the world itself, though it does not give room to virtue in the Greek sense,
still leaves open the choice between several modes of conduct in which the
negativity is turned into a principle of praxis. (269)
The praxis may therefore be that of the
libertine, the ascetic or puritan, of the loss of self in fantasy or altered
reality (which is not so different than the first two).
I introduced “Gnosticism” as a major,
if not the major, influence of change that has occurred in civilization in our
present time. I believe it affects the whole
world at this point. In Gnostic cosmology (of the Valentinian-Syrian
school), the realm of Light is attacked by the powers of Darkness, which have
each so far existed separately and independently of each other. Light
sacrifices a part of itself, seemingly losing the battle to Darkness, believing
that the devouring (and consequent absorption) of Light by Darkness will bring
imbalance and disorganization to the Dark, thus halting its invasion of Heaven,
the Pleroma. This is how the Light-Dark polarity works out in the West. In the
East, the Daoists of two thousand years ago were able to maintain “Heaven” and
“Earth,” “Light” and “Dark” separately but equally and in relationship to each
other, each in its proper place and, in that respect, keeping the other in its
place. But now it seems there is no longer any safety from the loss of the
“center that holds all together.” I believe the “Gnostic” archetype and
historical image is an effective and perhaps true representation of a force now
both loose and loosed upon the world. It is insane, without any center at all,
and it spreads itself like an infection of fear, loss of self, and extreme,
passionate, and violent quest for this lost self. We who claim and believe
ourselves to know point righteous
fingers at “those others” who are “ignorant, irresponsible, inferior.” Each
individual believes himself or herself to be “right.” We may have reached a
crisis of individuality in which the pursuit of the “rights of the individual”
destroy the cohesiveness of the whole. Or separate, warring groups of people destroy
the cohesiveness of the whole.
To me, as noted
earlier here, it seems that the answer begins with each of us choosing to be with others rather than against them. To
do that we must be able to recognize ourselves as the other. This is most
difficult for those with the Gnostic temperament of distrust of the
world-as-ignorance. The world we see is the world we have created through our
beliefs. If we loved one another, the world would be a loving place. If we
forgave one another, the world would be forgiving; we would have another
chance. This requires profound sacrifice from each of us who may actually
“possess gnosis,” but also possess an
inherent fear for our own survival and see ourselves as quite separate from the
person next to us or from the group of others who seem so different from us. It
has to start somewhere. What comes to my mind are the Irish women, Catholic and
Protestant, who chose to stand in between the Irish men, Catholic and
Protestant, who were all ready to start firing at each other towards the end of
“The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. Our lives may not be so immediate or
dramatic as that, but it does become a matter of “turning the other cheek”
(which is a “Lighting of the Dark”) in a world of intolerance, fear, and blame.
How do we change what people think,
much less how they think? By changing
what we think, how we think—of ourselves, others, the world, and life itself.
Kindness, love, forgiveness, understanding, appreciation, trust have to start
with ourselves. We bring a calmness and then a peace; a sanity and a sense of
safety and acceptance. I think this is how the world changes. This is how we
bring about “Heaven on Earth.”
I have thus far
avoided using Jungian terms since this essay is meant also for the general
public. Of course I am speaking of individuation and how to get there. The
process of individuation itself can make us too separative in our
individuality. Daryl Sharp, paraphrasing Jung, in The Jung Lexicon, writes:
The aim is not to overcome one’s personal psychology, to
become perfect, but to become familiar with it. … Individuation involves an
increasing awareness of one’s unique psychological reality, including personal
strengths and limitations, and at the same time a deeper appreciation of humanity in general [my emphasis]. (68)
Jung’s own
thoughts regarding the pitfalls in the process of individuation, as noted in
his Collected Works, also come to the
fore:
As the individual is not just a single, separate being, but
by his very existence presupposes a collective relationship, it follows that
the process of individuation must lead to more intense and broader collective
relationships and not to isolation
[my emphasis]. (“Definitions,” CW6, par. 758)
Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but
gathers the world to itself. (“On the Nature of the Psyche,” CW8, par. 432)
Individuation has two principal aspects: in the first place
it is an internal and subjective process of integration, and in the second it
is an equally indispensable process of objective relationship. Neither can exist without the other …
[my emphasis]. (“The Psychology of the Transference,” CW16, par. 448)
Sharp
interprets the split that can occur in the process of individuation, according
to Jung, and Jung more specifically presents the consequences if there is not
adequate “production of values” to the collective world in which one lives:
Individuation and a life lived by collective values are
nevertheless two divergent destinies. In Jung’s view they are related to one
another by guilt. Whoever embarks on the personal path becomes to some extent
estranged from collective values, but does not thereby lose those aspects of
the psyche which are inherently collective. To atone for this “desertion,” the individual is obliged to create
something of worth for the benefit of society [my emphasis]. (68)
Individuation cuts one off from personal conformity and
hence from collectivity. That is the guilt which the individuant leaves behind
him for the world, that is the guilt he must endeavor to redeem. He must offer
a ransom in place of himself, that is, he must bring forth values which are an
equivalent substitute for his absence in the collective personal sphere.
Without this production of values, final individuation is immoral and—more than that—suicidal [my emphasis]….
The individuant has no a
priori claim to any kind of esteem. He has to be content with whatever
esteem flows to him from outside by virtue of the values he creates. Not only
has society a right, it also has a duty to condemn the individuant if he fails
to create equivalent values. (“Adaptation, Individuation, Collectivity,” CW18,
pars. 1095f)
What I refer to
as “devolved Gnosticism” is a description of the “negative values” that derive
from it and draw one into oneself and out of the world and being in and
connected with the world, with others. Jung recognizes this as well and says,
to paraphrase, that there must be a “balancing out,” as it were, between that
which one takes from the world and that which one gives back to the world, the
collective. He pointedly notes, “Without this production of values, final
individuation is immoral and—more than that—suicidal.” It seems that there has
been much taken and not enough production of values in service and contribution
to the world, that the movement inward of those modern-day Gnostics has
metaphysically and literally “sucked the world dry,” that the negative,
hopeless mind-set of too many people of influence has become a self-fulfilling
prophecy spreading throughout the world. And so, those of us who may and can,
must now make the choice to change the way we think, the way we see, and what we think and what we see. It is up to us to “turn the tide.”
* * *
TO JOSEPH: THE
STRANGE BUT TRUE STORY OF YOUR LIFE
Dearest Joe,
As I look at your school photo
probably from 1955, I know exactly the bewilderment and confusion you felt. I
see the sorrow and disappointment in your eyes, and the grimness through which
you try to smile for the photographer, who tells you to “say cheese,” but you
cannot; you can only move your lips into a line of resignation. You are
wondering, I know, “Where is the hope I’m supposed to have? Where is Jesus who
is supposed to love me, to take care of me?” I know that these were your
prayers, which are not supposed to be the prayers of a child. I know that you
had already had experiences and memories that let you see through and even
beyond time and space and form, but that you did not understand them and found
yourself even more confused and disappointed and alone. I know that you lived
in fear, both at home and at school, and that only when you were alone in
nature, away from home and school, did you feel any peace. I know that you
lived very much in your own world, which became too large to bear at times but
never too small. I know that you did not understand the world very much, even
feeling that you did not belong in this world, even in the body you possessed.
And that you could not understand any of these things to the point that you
were almost constantly overwhelmed by it all, bewildered by life itself,
especially by people, and particularly by people who came too close to you, and
that you either became paralyzed or like a wounded animal when they tried to
touch you or hold you. You had been like this from a very young age. I will
tell you more.
I know that you sensed and had
learned from your own experiences, even at a very young age, that you were
neither locked in to time or space, and so you were aware of yourself in many
times and many spaces. In your despair, you called out to your future self, me,
to come and help you, for it seemed that you would be trapped in this existence
as a child forever. You knew you could not comprehend or help yourself, but
that perhaps I, the future you, might be at least able to explain to you what
was happening and how you would finally be able to get through it all and
survive as yourself. Well, Joe, I have finally come, finally arrived, to help
you. I know you are still trapped as that bewildered little boy and I have come
to free you after sixty-two years. It has taken me this long to find you and to
understand exactly how you feel. It has been too long but I am here now for
you. And I love you very much. It has taken me this long to even realize how
fettered I was in the same chains that have imprisoned you for so long. I am
with you now, Joe.
When I tell you things about your
life and about you, you may remember them well or not. Sometimes there is too
much pain in remembering, so we choose not to, and try our best to get on with
living our lives. I did this, but eventually we have to return and unravel and
unlearn all that became twisted and consequently learned in the wrong way. I
have tried to do this.
You were born six weeks before your
nine-month birth date. You realized that you had to free yourself then or that
you would die before you could be born. Your mother had to inhale your father’s
cloud of constant cigarette smoke and it was filling your little lungs and
choking you, smothering you. So you kicked hard and she fell on the ice and
down some stairs, breaking her water. You were born in the taxi on the way to
the hospital and were so small and frail that the doctors had you put in an
incubator, a little box with a lamp inside it to keep you warm, just like the
kind that was used to hatch motherless chickens. You were fed with a bottle and
were so small and frail that you were not held much in the two months that you
were there before you were allowed to go home. You did not learn to “bond”
through human touch and had become solitary and alone in your existence. When
your mother tried to pick you up, you squirmed, fought, and screamed; human
touch was overwhelmingly intense, even painful to you. It felt as if you were
being shocked with electricity. Even when people looked directly at you into
your eyes, that too was overwhelmingly intense and painful; you could feel the
energy from their eyes going into you through your eyes and it was so powerful
that you felt as if it would literally cause you to explode, as if you were
being electrocuted. You could only bear to look at people peripherally and
could not bear being touched or even having people in your close proximity.
Your mother would bring you in your carriage to the park and place you under
the trees blowing the wind, where you would watch for hours on end. I am still
mesmerized by trees blowing in the wind and still could watch for hours.
You were not a “normal” child. I
know you really did try to “fit in,” but even your parents couldn’t understand
the topics that you brought up at the dinner table. Once you got over the shock
of transferring from a small, “country” public school, Roosevelt School, in
Colonie, New York, to a large city, Catholic school in Albany, you did “take”
to the whole concept of “Jesus, my friend” thoroughly, and would talk about
concepts from the Baltimore Catechism such as the “nature of God as Supreme
Being,” the “nature of the essence of love,” and other such topics with your
parents. They had no idea what you were talking about whatsoever, and could
only shake their heads and make fun of you by calling you, “Pope Joseph”; “The
Pope speaks,” they would say in their inability to understand the
philosophical, theological, ethical and moral issues that you were trying to
convey. It had taken you much longer than normal to learn to talk; your parents
thought you were “retarded,” though were too embarrassed to seek medical
attention for you. And then when you did start talking, you immediately started
asking philosophical, existential questions that were beyond their level of
superficial conversation. You were serious and wanted to understand what life
was about, but your father could only ridicule you. This is when you developed
a level of stuttering equivalent to a speech impediment. You could barely get a
sentence out without severe stuttering and having to stop speaking. Within a
year you became a child who hardly ever spoke, and so your teachers thought you
were “retarded” (which was the word commonly used at that time) as well. You
were anxious and distracted. Perhaps it was that you had to be “somewhere else”
in your mind because the invasiveness and demand of your environment and the
world itself was just too unbearable, too difficult to satisfy. I know that at
school you would look out the window at the trees blowing in the wind and lose
yourself in that movement and beauty, only to be sharply interrupted by the
nun’s shrill demanding voice: “Joseph, pay attention. Answer my question.” You
would look up, now afraid, licking your lips, and suddenly would feel sharp
pain on the knuckles of your right hand as she hit you hard with a ruler. You
would cry out but more inside than out, and then become very quiet and afraid.
You felt so forsaken you could not even cry; but tears flowed inside your
being. You would stammer something in response to her question that you could
not even recall hearing. In disgust, she would then call on someone else, and
you would go back into your sad, lonely dream. The other children did not
laugh; they too were afraid. Going to this school with its demanding, harsh
nuns all dressed in black, with clicking rosary beads around their waist,
clicking as they rushed down the aisle with a ruler in their hand to smack your
knuckles or to hit you upside the head with their open hand, made living into a
constant hell for you.
I suppose it is
a bit unfair to say that you were not “a normal child.” Are there actually any
“normal” children at all? There are definitely “normal” adults. They are the
ones who carry on their lives without ever questioning who or what they are or
what they are doing. They go through their lives as they believe they’re
supposed to and then they die as they’re supposed to. This is not a bad thing
at all; in fact it may be quite fortunate for those who are not “normal.” You
were normal enough to pass for normal to a certain extent. In today’s world you
might have been diagnosed in one way or another and even placed in “special
ed,” but now is now and then was then.
You did eventually adapt yourself
to the social world of your peers and the adults, perhaps by the time you
reached puberty. But prior to that you were very solitary, not so antisocial as
aloof and unsocial. At age ten, a boy, Frankie D., who lived three houses down
the street, who was sickly and frail, perhaps having been affected with polio
at a certain point earlier in his life, and who the kids on the block called
“Drizzlepus” because he looked so sad as if he were going to cry, invited you
to his house. In truth his mother invited me in as I was walking by to have tea
and cookies with Frankie, who was a bit younger than me, whom I didn’t know
well and wondered why he moved so slowly and stiffly like an old man, but I
never thought any less of him. All I remember is that he brought me to his room
and proudly showed me his stamp collection, with the stamps mounted in books
with pictures of stamps. The moment I saw the collection and how dignified and
cool he felt about it, I was hooked on stamp collecting. He had been able to
create a whole world for himself that he could call his own. For the next five
years or so I would spend every dime and all my time on creating a most
incredible stamp collection, alone, sequestered in my bedroom. I would relish
and cherish every single moment of it. I would be able to shut out the whole
world and live in one of my own making in which I was the master. I absolutely
loved it. And I became quite knowledgeable in the hobby in its myriad and
esoteric details. In this time I somehow found a Russian penpal, probably
through Cub Scouts, who sent me letters with Russian stamps on them, which I
soaked off for my collection, and found a message scribbled underneath the
stamps, that said “Please help me.” I put a dollar, earned from collecting
bottles and hauling them a mile away to the closest store to collect deposits,
in the next letter I sent and never heard back from my friend again. But the
stamp collecting saved my poor little psyche from having to deal with an insane
world. I still had to go to school but I played sick as often as possible by
pressing my forehead up against the warm radiator, sprinkling some water on my
face, and going into my sleeping parents’ room and telling my mother, “Mom, I
don’t feel so good.” She would put her hand up to feel my forehead, and would
say, “My God, Joseph, you have a fever. Go to bed.” She would call the school
and I would be home free. I was able to miss many days of school this way,
which was wonderful. As time went on, she paid me fifty cents an hour to collate
her many Chamber of Commerce mailings consisting of so many pages that I lined
them up from the dining room into the kitchen which included the dining room
table, the buffet, and the kitchen table. One these days she would tell my
father I was sick and call the school. I would collate while watching Truth or Consequences and I Love Lucy, and get paid for this. It
was like heaven.
* * *
I know you seek
to understand what is happening in your life now at age eight. I know you seek
to comprehend the very dynamics of life itself, wondering why it is as it is
and even why and how you can come to such false conclusions. You have already
begun the “quest” of your whole life: to find context of being, order, and
meaning. You will seek it everywhere: through relationship and love of others,
through nature and the physical pleasures of the body and mind themselves,
through detail and focus of mind in minute work, through spiritual paths and
the many ways to God and many divinities, and spiritual paths and others ways
that avoid God altogether, through the responsibilities of caring for others
and your family, for taking care of those who need you and upon whom you may
focus your attention rather than only yourself. Such choices will lead you into
great anger and despair but also great joy and fulfillment. You will experience
profound pain on many levels of being as well as the pleasures of life. You
will suffer for others and for yourself. Your remembered mistakes and oblivious
hurting of others will cause you heartache and regret throughout your life. In
the end you may become a decent human being who loves and cares about others
and knows yourself to a much greater degree. You may attain an understanding of
who you are and what life is, where you meet and what is required. You will
find that there are as many vantage points as there are contexts and that all
orderings must give way to chaos so that you may pick up the pieces and
reconstruct order in a manner than now fits who you are, for old ways die hard.
Yet context and order must be sought, found, created, destroyed, remembered,
and recreated. In this process meaning is found and purpose exists. To be human
is to climb the highest mountain and gaze upon all existence and to descend
into the deepest, darkest abyss and experience the inherent agony of humanity,
especially your own. Though life be Heaven, it is also Hell. One must learn to
seek the Heaven within themselves and how to maintain it without themselves
leading them astray so that they forget who and where and what and why they
are. If we cannot find the Heaven, we are destined to Hell until the next
opportunity, the next quest, the next lifetime, the next form, presents itself,
which all, as is taught by some, is our own choice.
I have searched
for “understanding of existence” which I see as “context” since I was quite
young. I went in many directions, perhaps all leading up (or down) the same
mountain. There was always love for a woman which I did find and which is quite
real to me. There is also love for my children, one of whom, with autism, I
helped to care for for many years. Those were “immediate” directions. But
before that, even as a younger child, I sought to understand why I was here and
who I was, believing that a relationship with God would accomplish that. At the
time, while being “taught” and otherwise indoctrinated in a Roman Catholic
school, it was quite “natural” for me to foster a relationship with Jesus. I
became a very devout little boy, going to Mass and receiving communion every
day before school. I felt very good and blessed. This went sour as a result of
continuing physical abuse upon me and my own guilt about all my various “sins”
which “hurt” Jesus. I figured that if I distanced myself and he were no longer my
friend, he would not be so hurt. I was also of the belief that he would either
protect me or I would have enough faith that I would no longer have to live in
fear or experience physical pain. So, due to my over-expectations of what God
was supposed to do, I lost much faith in such a context. This process of strong
belief and faith fading away would come and go many times in my life. At this
point, I live with the facts that I have very great faith and that I have no
faith at all; that all depends on what I do with it, and that in the context
that God loves me almost unconditionally, though not quite.
But “context”
is not something to be found by “searching,” for it is always present; we just
don’t see it and think that we must “find it.” There is “realization of
context” which we can and do experience, usually without awareness of it. When
one “sits zazen” beneath the great clouds of one’s thought, there may be times
when it seems that the clouds of thought part and one sees the sun shining in
the heavens, even for just a moment. That is context. When there is no thought
of oneself, one ceases to exist, even if just for that moment. And one realizes
that the sun shines above the clouds and is there whether it can be seen or
not. That is “realization of context.” A religious person might realize, “God
is always with me,” in the same sense, though it must be a God free of all
responsibility for “saving” anyone. It is this kind of context that provides us
with the ability and the knowledge that such a force or power, of God or
life-giving sun, is present within our humanness, within ourselves. We tend to
literalize everything, “seeking a way,” a method, a technique, a belief, a
ritual to “make things happen” as we would like, to make a God in our likeness
and image to serve our needs and wants. If we have a realization of context
that is strong enough and makes enough of an impression upon us, within us, we
do not forget. We may not want to remember but we do not forget. We discover
and finally have to admit to ourselves that we “know,” even though a great part
of ourselves would much prefer to remain in the seeming bliss of ignorance.
But one cannot
cling to any kind or any remembrance of “knowing”; it can only be known in each
moment. “Context” is not a mental construct but a state of being that can only
be known in each moment. Such knowing is something I have not accomplished or
attained well enough that awareness of it dominates my thought, my state of
mind and being. Such “knowing” or “context” does not mean that one is always
“aware” or “content” or “in control.” Great waves of sadness and despair, I
believe, are inherent in the human condition. Paradoxically, such “knowing”
causes one to doubt and to question the so-called “truth” even more. I question
my own sense of awareness, my own ability to discern and discriminate and
interpret what happens within myself and within life, most of all. And another
paradox is that I do believe in a “merciful and loving God” just as I was
taught, which is so difficult to reconcile with an often unmerciful and hating
world I cannot avoid seeing. It may be that “we see ourselves in the world,”
that we “project ourselves” upon that which we see. It may also be that there
are elements “out there” that are dangerous to us, physically, psychologically,
and spiritually. And we are consequently drawn to believe and to have faith in
a God who can and will help us, and that, to complete the apparent tautology of
such belief, if we are not helped as we would like, we are willing to accept
what happens as “God’s will,” in the belief that we do not know God’s mind or
the “plan” for us. And so we maintain hope and faith even in “all
possibilities,” including “the impossible.” I am faced personally every day
with someone who suffers in excruciation, as if she were verily nailed upon a
cross. I am to believe in a “merciful and loving God” even as I witness her
intense suffering and pain. I am to believe that there is “purpose” in this,
that there are “vital spiritual lessons to be learned” through all this. Her
pain is and becomes my pain. Her suffering is my suffering. There is no
possible way to shield myself from her pain, or even the pain of others. This
is “context”; this is learning to “be with” that with which one comes face to
face in life. And when these “great waves of sadness and despair” pass over me,
even overwhelming me for a time, I am in it and am with it; I know that there
is no escape, though life provides us with so many distractions from being with
ourselves in this way.
