Dear Bishop,
In which:
- Central topics are introduced and addressed in a letter to a certain Roman Catholic Bishop because providentially, he acted when others were only in a daze.
- A personal and Artistic history of Homo Sapiens Sapiens is begun.
- Art is described as the “lie that tells the truth.”
- The method is indicated.
- Spheres of influence are defined in a list of technical definitions.
- The author’s intentions are declared.
-2[2] Distant Horizon/Distant Vision II Oil on Canvas 38″ x 28″ 1973
This caption about my first cycle of formally successful paintings (#s -1 through -5) takes its inspiration from the formal set of Tai Chi wherein the martial artist begins in the “void”, Wu Chi, moves through a prescribed sequence of precise movements, then returns to the “void” at the end. Each position and movement engages an ‘energy,’ Chi, generated from “nothingness” or Spirit, Shin. This first series of paintings represents a cycle of artistic abstraction, a distillation or coalescence of elements; a model, if you like, that breaks through to new realizations or a new form of being. These paintings suggest ‘young, curious, activity gazing at its destiny on the distant empty horizon’ and begin a cycle of thematic considerations that ‘circles back’ many years later in a series of paintings stylistically reminiscent of these earlier works. These paintings lead to other works of mandalic consequence. The material covered in-between remarks upon a relationship with Surrealist Abstract Expressionism, Christian Icon, Shamanistic Fetish, Tibetan Buddhist Mandalas and the practical worldviews associated with these. These begin the cycle continued by paintings #s [6, 7, 14-22, 84-88, 93-96] in the NEPSIS Master List of Paintings. [Brackets around art numbers are from Chris’ 2010 UCB/ECAI Nepsis Art Catalog.]
***
Dear Bishop,
Issues of magic, sex, poison, and violence are topics here only in so far as they can be seen as catalytic agents to the progress of this history. Addressing the “dark” side of personality is fundamental to a healthy psyche. The sexual reference is important to me only as it is able to turn biological cycles and psychology towards a larger vision of Being. The violence and poison themes are useful as they are used to transform leaden religious and secular formulations about the world into the white gold of human realization.
Admittedly, the events recorded in this story are interpreted in an unusual manner. But that yields some high, at times disastrous, as well as colorful, potentially salvific results. It is an interpretation that seems to be the reasonable product of what happened.
Much of this introduction is apologetic and analytical, so a general reader might want to skip to the actual story and then refer back to the definitions and information here, as needed. However, for theological, doctrinal, disciplinary consideration, or just a deep understanding, it is important to read the whole work, including notes and appendices.
When I was in the seminary, Bishop, one of the instructions given us about weddings was that the homily should be delivered specifically to the couple getting married, but delivered so that the congregation will overhear what the priest has to say. (Epithalamia: A concept that was influential in the Renaissance. It refers to the marriage of opposites, i.e., philosophy and theology back then. For me, it refers to “actual” spirituality of religious dialogue, “mutual fecundation,” in particular, the conversation between “natural religions” (Shamanism, Buddhism, etc.) and “revealed religions” (Christianity, Islam, etc.) Finally, for me this epithalamion gesture is the great religious intention of bonding everything together in love that is recognizing the mystical, intimate relationship between all things.) I bring this up now because it is similar to what I am about to do in telling you this story. I am writing to you, but I want others to “overhear.” I am writing to you in this manner because your last letter to me questioned my activities so deeply. … I have tried to explain my position to you in letters and conversation. I continue that explanation here, in much greater detail.
… But for now, to refresh your memory about the larger issue and to present my side of the question, I include here the parts of the letters and conversation that I feel to be pertinent.
The following reference will introduce the topic.
In the May ’87 issue of Smithsonian Magazine an article credits the Biblical account of the Garden of Eden with historical veracity in the sense that it depicts poetically an anthropological reality, a human shift from the relatively natural innocence of “hunters and gatherers” to the “technological” development of agricultural methods and other “civilized” crafts. If we entertain this scenario for a moment we can extrapolate by noting that we are at the other end of the spectrum of human history. If the Fall in Genesis described the human urge to power, to be in control of environment (agriculture), of good and evil (moral order), of life itself; if the Fall described the human urge to reject, or rather to claim the efficacy of the divine power, then we are at the other end of the spectrum of human history, since, now, with the advent of science, we have the powers not only to improve the world materially but to destroy it.
“All About Eve: Biologists Offer a Variation on the Theory of Evolution” Los Angeles Times. December 14, 1987/Part V, pg. 9. “About 200,000 years ago there lived one woman who was a maternal ancestor of every human being living today, a team of biologists has concluded after analyzing special genes in the cells of people from the world’s major racial and ethnic groups…” “If you believe in evolution, it’s not remarkable to say that we are all descended from a common ancestor. What we’ve done is find a way to estimate when the most recent common maternal ancestor lived.”
Bishop, I realize that my experiential studies of world religions are not the usual interests of a diocesan priest. But in this age of religious dialogue, these interests are pertinent to the mission of religion in the world.1 In fact, there is reason to suspect that information revealed in this study is vital to the success of that mission that I will soon describe.
After/during my training and experience in monasteries and seminary, I conducted several “experiments” that I will describe later at length. But, for now let me mention that one was to test the practical effect of certain devotional and ascetical practices. That “test” brought me into contact with unimaginable darkness as well as light. Another such test was to use abilities and insights thus developed to cure myself of a disease. After that, I tried to extend the healing beyond myself. The experiments were at once universal in their dependence on classical mystical traditions and creatively personal in how they finally worked themselves out. The method of this research is to use one’s ‘self’ as the ever present field for investigation of ‘Self’, the universe and God. ——— You will see how that expands to a cosmology as well as expanding global disasters.
I have written up this account as truly as I can, Bishop. Most of it is actual history with reference to pertinent works of my art and poetry since those best describe this developing theory about human personality and the personality of the world.
It is a Personal Artistic History of Homo Sapiens Sapiens (…as a Young Man). It is written to display the “Way of the Warrior” as a fundamental definition of the human character and why as a result, the Lord Christ (and the Lord Buddha) is a major step forward in human evolution. It is an “apology” to you because of regret about the troubles it involves and (an explanation) to the world because the world should know these things about itself.
Any history is fiction, because we include what we want to include or what we happen to remember to present the picture we prefer. What I am presenting to you here is not so much an historical account of my activities as it is an explanation of the world-view that has resulted in my actions. This is completely a fiction because “Art is a lie,” but it is the kind of fiction that tells the truth better than any history. I, in imitation of a Tai Chi master, go to the “place of the void” and let the “no-thingness” that is there create the resolution of our personality and our “problem.” I use poetry, art, Christian practice, Tantra, Shamanism, and Martial Arts to illustrate the point. The point is about human personality and the “personality” of Being. Therefore, it is religious. (One section is a consciously fictionalized rewrite of these same elements, included in the overall framework for purposes inherent and necessary in the history itself. In doing this, I am trying to engage more of the perceptive capacity than just the intellective process which is not sufficient alone to grasp the meaning of this story.)
A friend has noted that
“many events in this account can be mis-interpreted, since you do not offer much interpretation… You could be interpreted as a New-age spiritual shopper, a repressed bisexual, an aging Jack Kerouac-style hippie, a would-be magician, a rainmaker kook, a megalomaniac, and God knows what else….”
Bishop, however wrong I might be, such an evaluation as my friend (rightly) thinks possible does not describe what happens in “Nepsis.” In order to help you follow more easily the course of this investigation, I supply below some definitions of central words and concepts as I use them in this story. Thus, I will hopefully avoid being dismissed immediately as a “bi-sexual-aging-hippie-kook.”
Religion: This story concentrates on two elements in the genesis of religion-
- Death and suffering. Death and Suffering. Panikkar once said to me that grave contents and associated funerary rituals are the first evidence there is of religion.
- The mystical intuition of the intimate connection of all things.
This story does not deal critically with religious institutions, traditions, except when unavoidable.
Religion, through history, “bonds” together the sometimes schizophrenically divergent aspects of our experience, especially those vast generalities, the “divine” and the “mundane.” It tries to communicate the meaning and value of that experience. To date, this seems to me to be an ironically fragmented effort. Though the religious mission varies in emphasis from tradition to tradition, I believe it to be based on an intuitive sense of the intimate relationship between all things and is a salvific configuration of Being itself. Religion usually tries to overcome the finality of death and suffering. Thus, the nearly universal significance of compassion as a primary spiritual value; the Body of Christ as the model of the Church and the world, the Eucharist; the Buddha Body as the model of ultimate existence [or non-existence].) However, “I am not making propaganda for religions, this is playing with fire.” I am not dealing with religion as ‘religions,” i.e., institutions, organizations with the usual accouterments of material resources and involvement in the affairs of the world except when religion is a critique of human foibles and formulations, or the traditions of religious practice have informed my story.
Mission: The mission of religion is to gather together the various aspects of our experience into an integrated context of existence, promoting cohesion, salvation, realization, enlightenment, completion. The mission of the Church specifically, I believe, is to deal with the problem of human genius and power as result of the Fall. This ancient mythology describes succinctly the central “problem” of our existence. The current, dangerous manifestation of this “problem” in this story is militant, commercial, technacracy, a cancer in the body and spirit of the world.
Priesthood: The seminal concept of priesthood is a mediatory capacity inherent in creation, in human personality, that facilitates between this world and the world of “divine energies.” (Energies. The “Divine Energies” see Meyendorff or Maloney. Compare with Sanskrit Tapas, Prana, and Kundalini; Celtic Sidh or Shee; the heat of warrior heroes such as Cuculain and shamans; Tibetan Tum-mo; Chinese chi.) As a symbolic function of personality, priesthood solves the “problem of existence” by connecting absolute meaning with individual life or action. The result is mystical union. As in Tantra, the human personality and body is the locus of divine-mundane integration. The mission of the Catholic priesthood is to focus this mediation on the “problem” of human power and the effects of human genius described in the story of the Fall.
Shamanism focuses the primordial religious matrix to shift into an ecstatic consciousness that appeared in the Stone Age and is still operative in the modern world. It pervades to some degree all religious experience, though the classically “pure” categories of its practice are characterized by: abilities to alter states of consciousness for contemplative, therapeutic, or magical purposes- ecstasy; manipulate heat and cold, that is, the “energies” (Prana and Kundalini yoga in India); provide spiritual guidance (psychopomps), often healers, teachers; and finally, to have mastery over life and death, (resurrection motifs and other-world travel). Transsexual experience, psychic or actual, is often part of the Shamanistic quest to transcend dualism in search of the unitary vision and power. (Androgen: In the history of religion, with a roughly equal degree of both male and female gender identity, the androgen seems to transcend both and become the spiritual guide between the dualities of the world to a deeper realization and experience.)
Tantra is the religious phenomenon in both Hinduism and Mahayana Buddhism that combines philosophy with esoteric mystical practice. (Tantra: See Appendices from “Interstates, a Dissertation”, Nepsis Foundation Table of Contents, Section II.) Two concepts of major importance to me in Tantric practice are “visualization” and the analogous comparison of the “microcosm” with the “macrocosm.” That is, the human body and the Universe.
Visualization, at the heart of Tantric techniques, refers to absolute identification of one’s person with the “deity.” One visualizes, then becomes the deity. This is for purposes of worship, empowerment and self-transcendence. If such is possible then anything is possible. It might be interesting for you to compare this with the Church’s third century dogma about the “deification” of the believer. The comparison of this state of being and that of the resurrected Christ, body, soul and, spirit in so far as this identifies human potential, is important to this work. The analogy between one’s own body, the “microcosm,” and the body of the universe, the “macrocosm,” carries a similar importance in my eventual practice, as you will see. The fundamental techniques particular to Tantric Buddhist practice are: mantra yoga, visualizations, prostrations, mandala offerings, and guru/deity yoga.
Tantra is also known for its interesting, esoteric sexual doctrine. Since according to Buddhist Tantric teaching, if Creation is originally pure (void, immaculate), then anything in it might be used as a vehicle by an advanced, altruistically motivated adept as a means to full divine realization, including sexual intercourse. However, tantric sexuality can only be practiced for the union with God and the World. It must be practiced with the celibate’s highest intention of contemplation–the great epithalamion gesture, a sacramental marriage of opposite things. If properly practiced, one might regard it in a scientific way wherein the phenomena studied has no more or less moral content than the probings of a gynecologist. In this process, male and female duality is transcended and Godhead is realized. In this process, the male should not ejaculate. But rather use the energies aroused to realize a carefully defined spiritual Bliss and Wisdom that leads to full Enlightenment. I can imagine the potential abuse inherent in such an approach, but the abuses of prudery or clerical legalism about chastity and puritanical tyranny in religious practice also miss the mark and are just as damaging to the salvation of individual and culture.
Daoist Warrior: I am using this rather romantic title to refer to the practitioner of certain Chinese martial arts- Tai Chi, Xing I, Pau Qua. There are venerable traditions of the spiritual warrior in Shamanism, Buddhism, Tantra, and Christianity, but I have chosen to study this specific tradition that specializes in the characteristics of this path. I have chosen the “Way of the Warrior” to be the persona whose development in this work supplies the connective thread throughout because the main action in my story is of battle. The battle is the battle of “self.” As Fr. Thaddeus Yang, the monk/priest who baptized me said, “the monk goes into the desert to fight demons. That is, the ‘self.’” Or the aberrations of ‘self.’ The Dalai Lama expressed a similar view in an interview I had with him fifteen years later. “The real battle is always with the ‘self.’” The Chinese martial arts have taught me a lot about how to fight. You, and others like you, have helped teach me how to fight. I am about to describe what I believe the fight is about.
THE PROBLEM
The Fall from the Garden of Eden depicts poetically an anthropological reality, a human shift from the relatively natural innocence of more primordial “hunters and gatherers” to the technological development of agricultural methods and other civilized crafts. To extrapolate from that, if the Fall describes the human urge to self-determination and power, (The snake said to Adam and Eve “you can be gods yourselves if…”); to be in control of environment, of good and evil (morals), genetics, of life itself; if the Fall described the human urge to reject, or rather to claim the power of the Divine, then we are at the other end of the spectrum of human history. Since now, with the advent of science and technology, we have the power not only to improve the world materially, but to destroy it. The warning in Genesis is for human genius. The answer is the identity of the resurrected human nature, the human being, the living image of the resurrected Christ, the Body of Christ, the Church- Or, from a different vocabulary, the Emptiness of Inherent Existence and Enlightenment, the Buddha. Both of these if real, result in real compassion and kindness. That is an option to self-destruction. Or is technocracy a means to through or this era of desperate challenge?
TECHNIQUES OF RESOLUTION
Pilgrimage is probably the major “technique” for spiritual transformation and empowerment used in this story. It is discussed later in the text. Suffice it to say here that arduous pilgrimage is an exterior manifestation of the interior spiritual process. (In Ambulando Salvitor) It involves travel, physical activity, mental, visionary, psychic, and devotional aptitudes to effect its intent.
Ritual is probably the other main “technique” described in this work. “Ritual” is a sub-category of liturgy. Liturgy refers to the basic elements of life symbolically understood, represented and artfully organized in a formal, public context to effect communion in all things with the “Tremendum,” the divine. Other than my celebration of the Mass as a Catholic priest, my rituals are generally private, mostly solitary and sometimes have stretched over months with results that are likewise long term.
Often they have taken place in wilderness waste places. Some amazing meteorological and geological disturbances have happened in coincidence to these rituals that seemed to justify, indeed require further investigations as to the nature of such coincidence, as you shall see, Bishop. Once, a shaman told me that the ritual for casting a spell is the same general and classical “ritual” pattern as the structure of the Mass. (Do not be offended, Bishop. What we are dealing with are concepts and patterns. These, sometimes, are profound insights into the fundamental structures of human consciousness, if not the structures of the universe as well.)
Art is the systematic and gifted use of symbols inspired to communicate about the “most real” (or anything else for that matter). In traditional art forms such as the Tibetan Mandala, the Byzantine Icon and the Shamanistic fetish, art is metaphor with a specific reference and power that both artist and audience innately understand. In “Modern” art works, such as those of the Abstract Expressionists, art can be metaphor without reference. In other words, experience of such art, is of an immediate and absolute nature, so one need not refer to something further along a chain of understood ideas and metaphors to assign meaning to the experience of the art, but is direct experience of non-time, eternity if you like. Nature does not require an intermediary agent to touch the absolute. “I am nature,” said Jackson Pollack. I have chosen these examples among artistic categories, i.e., Abstract Expressionism, fetish and icon, Bishop, because they have been the catalytic agents in my own artistic development. I have come to regard art production as a process of creating occasions as well as objects of “power” wherein resides a transformative spirit. The connection will be clarified further along in our story. However, this example might be helpful. Among the ancient Celts, to become an artist, (i.e., poet/bard), was the preliminary preparation before advancing to training as a Druid, wielder of myth and paranormal power and spirit.
I chose to explore religion as an artist, because, among other reasons, so many (not all) of my Art heroes of the modern age ended badly; suicides, alcoholism, insanity, or they were seduced by materialistic values of their patrons in the upper middle class. I did not want to end up like that. I thought that these unfortunate “endings” happened because they tried to handle sacred things without the preparation and protection that the ancient wisdoms in some religious traditions provide and because their only support community really preferred middle class values for the most part. In other words, they gazed upon the face of God and died as the result.
Hero: The archetypal figure of the “hero” is one that may be called upon when needed by persons or cultures to perform paranormal feats in this world and the “other” one. Often, they arise on their own. In this sense, the “hero,” or the calling up of an archetype like the “hero,” is a technique. In Robert Graves’ Greek Myths, a Sacred King/Hero figure is described who at the end of a set period of adulation, was tortured, sacrificed, and thought somehow to have become immortal or divine after that. Sometimes his flesh was eaten and his blood drunk. This complex is the heart of mythic structures in many, even most parts of the world, according to Graves. The figure of such heroes as Herakles (“glory of Hera”) is one such sacred king and is characterized by his, sometimes transsexual, relationship in worship of the principal deity, the Goddess. You will see the significance of such a figure as this story unfolds.
The part that dysfunction plays in religious vocation in general is very interesting- (Dysfunction: Some dysfunctions [homosexuality?, migraines, schizophrenia, epilepsy, crucifixion, in this work] as possibly necessary agents for evolution and salvation… in certain circumstances.) The hero is usually tragically flawed or fated.
In this following story, what is the grain of sand that produces the pearl?
(List of other archetypal figures also active in this story: Puer (young man), Great Old Man, Goddess (light and dark), creative Muse, Hierophant (i.e. shaman, monk, priest, pilgrim, yogi). See story in Chapter Seven of Frost Ph.D. dissertation for Young man and Old Man.)
Bishop, I am exploring some of the main threads of what is available, potent in, 40,000 years evolution in universal human consciousness. Homo Sapiens Sapiens. To do that or to really understand any of this, one cannot just study it or have “an experience” of it. It must be lived. One’s personal life must become the laboratory, one’s experience of Being the field of investigation. In the process, I became an artist and a Catholic priest before I explored employments with a related job description; the Shaman, Hesychast, and Tantrika. I am now studying the ways of the Daoist warrior. (Taoism: According to Panikkar, some aspects of Taoism are the most profound spiritual encounters in the world.)
Needless to say, these are not the memoirs of a saint, pure and unassuming. Rather this story is a “grimoire” of a psychic explorer, in love with the Church and Creation, exploring along the boundaries of what is possible for ordinary human beings.
Bishop, as the Church teaches, I was ordained a priest by the Holy Spirit. According to that teaching I was ontologically changed to effect Christ’s mission as a priest. I intend to complete what has been begun in me.
Christ as the Messiah fulfills the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament. Christ as the Lord of all reality, fulfills/completes the yogic and the Tantric intention. Christ as Master of the “energies,” life and death, spiritual guide, as ecstasy itself, fulfills the Animist and Shamanistic intuition. (See Eliade) As the Sacred King sacrificed to become immortal not only that earth should be fertile and prosper, but that we all may be saved, Christ fulfills and completes the intuition of the agriculture, fertility cycle religions and breaks through biological cycles to… what? (The practice of Buddhists, yogis, shamans would all be valid and applicable in this discovery, this “Grand Affair.”) The Christ is then, from my perspective, the last great step in anthropological evolution,.. But that was 2000 years ago…
This is not a sectarian issue. It is the issue of human identity and power; it is the religious question. “Who is it that climbs up on the Cross?” Why? Or who is the Buddha, for that matter- (Who is it that can help themselves or anyone?) What is a Shaman? Saint? Sorcerer? Poet? Artist? Scientist? What spell is cast to fulfill the human capacity? And who casts it?
God? Ourselves? To what end? What is the Warrior (The Artist?) And what does he/she do? Is the simple Technologist the real hero as advertised?
This, Bishop, is what I intend to discover and display for you.
-1[1.] Distant Horizon/Distant Vision I
Oil on Canvas 36″ x 30″ 1973
- I include with that the beliefs of our secular culture and scientific philosophy. Panikkar is the great bridge spanning these vast differences. [↩]