A summary

I had been reading Schuon again, which is a disturbing read for most anyone, at least most anyone who can even begin to understand it. It is a good thing he is as hard to read as he is, but even so I don't really recommend him, except to off-road spiritual adventurers who have been scared to the point of literal shaking in fear repeatedly over the years.

"Don't be too hard on yourself" said the voice in my heart, although the tone of voice was less 'relax and chill' and more 'I know how far from perfect you are'. It continued: "Every second you remember God is eternity ... Every second you remember God is valuable."

Actually I think that is a pretty good take-away.

Chief of sinners?

Reading a little in Schuon's book Prayer Fashions Man, I came across some paragraphs about humility. The fun part was how to him, people who want to call themselves the greatest of sinners weren't different from others who wanted to call themselves the greatest. They all wanted to be special.

This made me think, since we know that good old Paul the apostle did call himself the greatest of all sinners. Like, the worst of them. But there's two things about that. One, he had a pretty good claim to it. Remember he was a smart, well-schooled contemporary of Jesus. He could have just asked those who knew Jesus what this was all about and thought about it in light of the Scriptures, which he knew from his childhood. But instead he was like EX-TER-MI-NATE all the Christians until the Lord stepped in and stopped him. So, one could excuse him for being a bit down about it all.

And there's the other thing, that he did not need to claim supervillain status to be special. The folks he was writing to had largely been converted by him. They had seen him do all kinds of apostle stuff and signs and wonders. Naturally some of the newbie Christians had become Paul fanboys. They were like "Yeah, sure James is the Brother of the Lord, and Peter is the Rock of the Church, and John is the Disciple that Jesus loved, but Paul is really the main man! I'm totally like Paul for boss apostle!" So pointing out that he hadn't exactly been like that all the time was kind of averaging himself out.

And of course, he was trying to give people hope. If he had been that bad, and God's grace had not been in vain for him, there was hope even for the people you secretly hoped would just trip and break their neck before they could do any more harm.  So there was that as well.

So basically what I take away is, don't try this at home kids. If God knows us, that's as special as we ever need to be.

"Then and now"

This little verse appeared years ago in the local newspaper in the area where I grew up. It was in New Norwegian, my mother tongue, so this is my attempt at translation.

"They tried to adapt their lives, at first, to the tenets of religion;
but that turned out, alas, to be a difficult proposition.
So now they have taken the opposite direction:
Adapted religion to their own imperfection."

Holy Mother of ...

I can see now how the pregnant Holy Virgin is the archetype for at least a certain phase of the Christian life. The new life that grows within you, that is not something you create but something that is being created in you, something more precious than anything and yet there is nothing you can do to help it now, just passively try to protect it. Even though it gives you all kinds of trouble and inconvenience and burden and fear. Yeah. I am glad I'll never be pregnant, that's for sure. But ... I can see this now. I think.

Three ways and three levels

This is something I cannot explain, but it seems that in Christianity, the three most common levels of spiritual capacity correlate with three paths of yoga in Hinduism: Karma, jnana and bhakti.

The most common category among Christians is those who have awareness of the realm of Good, in the sense that they can feel directly when they do something good, a sense of warmth and joy that comes into their heart that is not related to the pleasures of the senses. In this direct perception of something spiritual, they are naturally inclined to believe in God and Heaven, and it takes some effort to convince them otherwise, as some people these days do.

It seems to me that the path of karma - action or duty - is particularly prevalent in this group. I guess that makes sense since they feel an immediate reward?

The next and much less common group is what I call "heroes" or geniuses, those who are able to directly receive inspiration from a higher realm. Artists of all stripes, natural born leaders, teachers and scholars. I call us "heroes" because we have one or more abilities that common people cannot understand, kind of like superheroes in contemporary entertainment, although less abrupt. But in truth, no great genius is without a touch of madness, so there is also a potential for damage.

It seems that the way of jnana - knowledge, insight, wisdom - is more dominant here than elsewhere, and is viewed with a little suspicion by most members of the other two groups.

The third group is the saints, whose purity of heart and immediate contact with the holy is beyond the understanding of even those who regularly receive inspiration from high realms. Since it is always harder for someone on a lower level to understand those on a higher, there is not much I can say about these, except that there are more saints than listed in the books, since you have to be involved in miracles or die spectacularly to become an official saint. There are others, but you usually know that after they are gone.

The saints seem to particularly follow the path of bhakti - love, devotion, receiving and giving mercy. That is not to say that they don't also have wisdom and action, but these typically follow as an afterthought to devotion, a fruit of love, if not quite a side effect.

So in Christianity there seems to me such a correlation exists. I have seen mentioned that Christianity is itself predominantly a bhakti religion, even though I frankly don't see this preference in the words of Jesus Christ. What I notice is his overflowing jnana, but that may be just my limited receptivity. I must concede, I don't seem to be made from the stuff that saints are made from.

Genius

There are individuals gifted with particular brands of genius: musical genius, artistic genius, scientific, even philosophical and religious, I believe. And certain cultures, and certain times in history, saw a flourishing of one or more of these. I will not here speculate on how this came to be. But mere biomass is not enough. You cannot assure that a new genius will be there to continue a tradition. An era draws to its close, and the geniuses dwindle and are gone.

Modern society is shaped by an era of unprecedented scientific genius. Even today knowledge increases exponentially. But it seems to me that much of it is ordinary workers picking up the fish killed by the explosive depth charges of genius already gone. And we know not which type of genius will erupt next, or where, or when.

It is easy to get puffed up and identify with the genius whose coat tails we ride. The spirit of democracy says that we are all the same, but that would ensure a hasty decline. As Frithjof Schuon says, the purpose of a civilization is to produce saints. I would say more generally, genius. Those who can directly perceive the crack in the Cosmic egg, where the Light gets in. No quantity of mass produced doggerel can substitute.

Scripture

To argue whether Holy Scripture contains contradiction is like arguing whether a picture is flat. They are both representations, pointing beyond themselves, like the proverbial finger pointing at the moon. If you cannot look through the picture or the Scripture to the higher-dimensional reality it represents, you are merely critiquing art.

Again for the first time

When I was a teenager, my older (and more saintly) brother joined a small Christian church which was rather disdained: The worldly mocked it for being overly conservative and pious, fellow Christians were bothered because of the repeated preaching of victory over sin and the belief that Jesus had been tempted like a human (except for the differences that came from never sinning). I found however that these people had become good from the teachings, and that they had an amazing ability to open the Bible pretty much anywhere and find something useful from it. Eventually I also got that spirit and the Scriptures were opened to me.

A lot of things have happened and that church has changed, and I have also changed but not in the same ways. I set out on a different sort of discovery, learned about different religions and philosophies and the history of human civilizations. I realize that there have been many wise men through the ages from whom I could learn much.

Yesterday I picked up a book I have brought with me through all these years, a collection of articles or very short essays written by the "founder" of that particular church - the guy who managed to irritate the established churches so much that they threw him out. I am not sure how to put this. The clarity of his understanding, and the ability he had to draw from the Bible insights that are applicable regardless of religion, culture or time in history. Of course he frames it all in distinctly Christian words, but it is definitely the perennial religion.

For some of us it is a necessity to learn about different religions and spiritual traditions. But I now also realize that this is not necessarily true for everyone. That one could with just the Bible find all the wisdom in the world. I am not the right person to say whether you could do that with the sacred scripture of other faiths as well. It may well be, what I mean is that it is not for me. The thing is, it is not the letter but the spirit. The actual text is only a container for a spiritual fountain that cannot be exhausted, not in a single lifetime or even by a single church throughout the ages. But without the right spirit, the text will lead one into utter madness.

They say that you do not know what you have until you lose it. But I have now come to believe that you do not know until you find it again.

Valley of humility

St Teresa is awesome as usual.
"One fall is not sufficient for a person to be lost, nor are many, if he loves You and not the things of the world. He journeys in the valley of humility."

That's an amazing visual. The prideful walks on the ridge, where a single misstep can send him tumbling downward. But he that walks in the bottom of the valley, even if he stumbles, he only falls to his knees.

On the nature of nature

"If we were to present to an aboriginal tribe a portable computer without giving any explanation of it, the men and women could handle, touch, shake and visually examine it at great length and yet could reach no knowledge of computers in general or of this one in particular. Because they have no idea of its origin and purposes, they are almost completely ignorant of its actual reality, So also, if we know creation only on a natural level and aside from its divine Author and purpose, we are next to totally in the dark about it."
-Fr. Thomas Dubay, Fire Within.

The Power of Now (and then)

I think this Tolle guy has understood something with his idea of living in the Now, rightly understood. So, it is kind of amazing that this just suddenly was revealed to him after just sitting around. It is also kind of amazing that he didn't know it already, since it's been part of any number of religious traditions - even in the wider sense of religion - for thousands of years. But such are the times. I guess you really can reinvent the wheel of Dharma.

We can see how unfamiliar this is when we are in any social gathering (of non-Raccoons, obviously). There will usually be one or more or a whole lot of people who are not quite there. Or rather, you are not right there in their mind. Instead, the room is populated by that person and any number of cardboard signs depicting types of humans. They are the only person that is really real. And because of this, you just cannot connect to them. You are not really there to them, even if you are right there. That is why there is no connection, no matter how much you'd want there to be. You are there, listening to them talk to those cardboard signs. It is an unsettling feeling.

(I am pretty sure I was one of those guys when I was younger, by the way. I guess people just took it for granted, because I don't think anyone ever told me. Or perhaps I just did not notice.)

This is what happens when people are not really present in the Now. The pinprick size of their Now has dwindled to near extinction.

The opposite happens through spiritual growth, or the influx of eternity into mundane time, creating sacred time, which is both personal and at the same time freely shared, wide open. As the "bubble" of personal Now-time increases, a person becomes ever more present. So someone who is spiritually advanced, even if it is in a different tradition than yours, will be almost disturbingly present. Even ordinary people will notice it.

I believe that the greater someone's presence, the less presence does it take to recognize it. So if a person was filled with unimaginable amounts of eternity, even the complete amateur in all things spiritual would be able to connect to them even thousands of years later. Well, that is easy for me to speculate since it already happened. ^_^

Saying grace?

Do Americans still say grace at meals? My guess would be not, since I notice that the average American has grown a lot fatter over the last generation. This has happened here in Norway too after most people stopped saying grace. Saying grace was a common behavior when I was a child; in Norway it was called "praying for the food", which caused some confusion since a) the food was already there, or alternatively b) the food was probably beyond rescue. In any case, already in my teens this practice was growing rare outside small conservative sects. And not long after, Norwegians began to grow fatter and fatter until this day.

I am not sure about cause and effect here, actually. I think if I was obese from overindulgence, I might find it hard to commune with the Light at mealtime. Kind of like it is hard to pray before going to bed if there are steadily new people in your bed. But also the other way around, it is probably hard to get ever new people into your bed if you keep praying there. So again, cause and effect is a strange couple. It would be kind of interesting to gather a bunch of obese people and record them saying grace on a regular basis and see what happened to their weight and general health. But I suspect the current government would not fund the research. So how are things over on the west side of the sea?

A collective hallucination

Somehow I had never heard until this week that St Symeon (the New Theologian) actually had seen the Light on a more or less regular basis. The Light, of course, being Jesus Christ or God in general. There is evidently a lot to this and it baffles me that this is not considered a big thing by at least the Christian world. While seeing the Light is not entirely unheard of, it seems to be rare indeed. I can't say I have seen it in any literal way. This is to be expected, given Jesus' words that the pure of heart shall see God.

(Purity of heart obviously - well obviously to some of us - is not really about virginity, least of all in any bodily sense. It is to become transparent, like fine glass, so that the mind does not stop or overly distort the image of what is on the other side. And who is capable of this?)

One would at first thought assume that someone who literally saw the Light was having a hallucination. And this is in some way true, I guess, since it probably is not photons striking the retina. Probably. But in a more straightforward definition of hallucination as seeing something that isn't there, it would be right to say that the rest of us are hallucinating. We are seeing a world without the manifest presence of the Light. Even though we know that this ain't so.

Ah, but as the saying goes: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is a freak.

Leisurely digging for saints

As the always helpful Norwegian government will start collecting 25% sales tax on e-books from abroad starting July 1st, I have stocked up liberally from my own recommendation list. One such book, that I just opened today, is called "Holiness is always in season" by a certain Benedict XVI.

The main appeal however is that it supposedly presents a generous heaping of certified saints, an area that I have formerly explored only haphazardly. This brings to mind a reflection by my old friend Al Schroeder: In days of yore, people studied hagiology, while these days we study criminology. He did not see that as an improvement, and neither do I.

In the introduction are these encouraging words: "If we were more familiar with the saints, we too might become more faithful, more loving, more Christian." Wouldn't that be nice. I assume however that they did not have that effect on everyone who was exposed to them, considering the large proportion of them who were brutally killed.

Still, I like the idea that the Light is somehow becoming... if not amplified, then at least made more accessible, by its passing through certain people. I have experienced this even with the living, but I am still no closer to knowing what qualifies one person to mediate light or grace for a specific other person. Still, it seems worth a look.

Young people these days

A recent Norwegian study of middle school students shows that compared to 1992, they show more discipline, quarrel less with teachers, have less truancy and are happier at school. They are also closer to their parents, says Tormod Øia at the NOVA institute.

Uhm, I wonder if that last part is not the explanation for the first... I have noticed that fathers in particular spend more time with their children than a generation ago.

Days of reluxation

I bought another Kindle book by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, this one called The Candle of God. It seems to be a collection of essays or some such, spanning a few different topics. I thoroughly enjoyed his book The Thirteen-petalled Rose, which was more of a unified work, but I don't expect that to stop me. I am at chapter 2 and already enjoying it greatly. As in palpably missing the physical ability to whine like a slightly underage teen fangirl. There are some phrases there that I just read, then stop, then read again several times, not willing to read on for a while because that would mean having to let them out of my sight.

I don't really think any random raccoon would have the same experience with the same book, though you never know. It may be another book that makes you go wheee in the night.

There is some exclusively Jewish stuff, of course. And then some, given that the Rabbi is a kabbalist. But he is not sneaky about it, so it bothers me not.

About the Sabbath, the Rabbi writes: "The essence of Shabbat is really a trickle, an infiltration, of the next world into this world. It is a percolation and diffusion of an existing Divine Reality." So now I better understand the Gag: "Relux and call it a Diety." It is not merely a day of relaxation, as common people have thought, but a day of reluxation, to draw the Divine Light into the soul of man which is the Candle (or lamp) of God.

Literature like this is actually a kind of reluxation in itself, at least the books that happen to find us home, wherever that may for each of us.

Who the hell would do that?

After reading recent entries about Dante's Divine Comedy over at One Cosmos, I became ashamed of never having read one of the most influential works in western literature, so I downloaded it to my mobile phone's Kindle reader. I may have made a mistake in picking a poetic translation for my first read through, as it is rather old-fashioned and I am not a native English speaker. But I am pretty sure I understand almost everything and misunderstand nothing, at least linguistically. The deeper meaning may be another matter.

The other day I came to the part where Dante accuses romance novels of leading people in perdition. As proof, his literary self interviews an otherwise nice couple who were reading a Camelot novel together and, as the novel neared its climax, they fell into the same mood and ended up in the Hell of Lust together.

My immediate reaction on reading this: "Who the hell would read a romance novel alone together if they did not already plan to do the deed?"

But this, of course, is just one example. The truth is that very often, it requires careful planning to fail properly. Or in other words, picking the wrong battle ground and sticking to it is half the lost battle. Or three quarters, more likely. A kind of perverse patience may even be required, as in the above example, "Ofttimes by that reading our eyes were drawn together, and the hue fled for our alter'd cheek." Ofttimes, huh? Each of which times would cause another person to go "What the Hell are we doing??" and hastily arrange for some diversion. It requires perseverance to sin properly. But it is definitely doable. I can tell that by experience, albeit not such a romantic experience as that.

The thing is, this does not apply to lust alone, of course. The habitually angry will seek out sources of anger like a hungry looking for food, and the fearful will seek out what scares them, and the cynical that which confirms their low opinion of others. It is hard to explain modern news media in any other way. Who in their right mind would spend large portions of the day following that litany of ill, if their mind was filled with Light?

And so on. The voice in your heart knows better than I what applies to each.

"Parasites on the holy"

I've been reading a bit in Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz' Thirteen Petalled Rose, a surprisingly approachable book. (At least after having rammed my head against the walls of Schuon and Aurobindo repeatedly...) Some things, I can see, are not right for me. But other things seem quite helpful. Anyway, I came across a drive-by mention in his chapter on holiness, that there exist entities that are parasites on the holy.*

At this point, of course, my thoughts went to One Cosmos Under God (another fairly easy read), where Robert Godwin uses the phrase "mind parasites" to describe the unhelpful complexes that plague our species. Given that Rabbi Steinsaltz considers the human being a line or ray that stretches all the way from the Holy One to the material plane and beyond, or that humans are said to be in the image of God, it makes perfect sense to have parasitic entities swarming us. This is not a purely religious observation: The very fact that we have creativity and imagination is what makes it possible for us to also play host to all kinds of weirdness.

(* Steinsaltz believes that approaching holy places or times without proper preparation, or at the very least proper attitude, may be worse than nothing. The New Testament expresses a similar view in regards to the Eucharist, to the point where indifference to its spiritual nature may even be life-threatening. In light of this we may surmise that Jesus' warning to not give dogs what is holy is also an expression of concern for the dogs. On the Internet, nobody can see that you are a dog, so take care.)

A long canvas to bleach

That is a common expression here in Norway, or at least it used to be, back when patience still was considered a virtue. It means a project that takes an inordinate amount of time. (Bleaching canvas was presumably a familiar drudgery back in the age of sails.)

Analects of Confusius, Book 2.

The Master said, "At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning.

"At thirty, I stood firm.

"At forty, I had no doubts.

"At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven.

"At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth.

"At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right."

Confusius died at the age of 74 according to one history book (or 71-72 according to Wikipedia). Was it worth it? I think so.

When someone is transformed into his highest aspiration, something is created that transcends time. That's what I mean when I say, you have to open the present to open the future and the past. The only way to make our past better is by making progress in the "reception of truth", so that the things that made no sense begin to make sense.

I hope to also live to an age where I can follow what my heart desires, in every way, without transgressing. But in any case, whenever our journey comes to its end, I believe we will not regret a single step of it. We may however regret the steps we did not take. In fact, I do that pretty much each night.

"There is plenty of love"

This morning as I was slowly waking up, I was lamenting the lack of love in the world and particularly in my contribution to the world. At least, I said to myself, I have heard of God. Where would an atheist get love from? There are limits to how much love you can make, after all.

"There is plenty of love" said the voice in my heart. "Everyone has lots of it. But much of it is misguided: You love your own desires, or attachments, rather than other people. The old classics like lust and gluttony, sure, but in this age people particularly love status, or respect. If they worked as tirelessly for others as they now work to be recognized, respected and looked up to, the world would be overflowing with love. Just like everyone has got a certain number of hours a day, so each has got a certain amount of love, but it too can be wasted on yourself."

There is more to this, like, once your love runs in the right direction, its quality can still be improved. But this is a start, to recognize that everyone loves, but to a large degree we love "in the wrong direction", toward ourselves rather than toward others.