Cycle III – Part Three

NEPSIS APPENDICES

FATHER ADAM’S LAST WORD   485

NARRATOR’S FINAL SAY     498

LETTER TO A BISHOP, PART III Chapter 4:        503

92 [53] Pure Fall: Crucifix

Mixed Media 6′ x 4′ 1983

…Needless to say, there is more to it.  Or, should I say the path to such radiant simplicity is not as simple as it sounds, thus this tale of Fr. Adam’s Adventures:

FATHER ADAM’S LAST WORD,

Or,

Steam of Consciousness Streams to the Sea,

+

From Priesthood to Sorcery,

And

Back Again(?)

Color has its own existence, you know.  Before light and energy to carry it.  Before matter to bounce off…  All that is subsequent to color.  One must be able to draw out this spirit or essence of color.  It’s what one does with it that matters– this emanation of God, like all creation.  For want of better language…  But it’s best not to speak of such things at all.[1]  Even that word ‘God’ is crude blasphemy compared to an experience of it, to the thing itself.

Color has its own existence.  I discovered that when I went to the Achekale in eastern Turkey on the Russian border.  That worn out brown landscape– violet circle of flowers around the red-yellow-white flame of the sacred fire released its color from that ritual for the dragon of that place. Six weeks of hitchhiking across the U.S. from California to N.Y. England and Europe then the transportation systems of oriental Turkey to the Soviet Russian Border, East of Kars.

Color was released and we still dance to its whipping undulations.  ‘He’ called me a white wizard. How different it all is than white and black–the magics.  How much more a delight its variations, its colors, its terrors…

Dance with me for a bit as I recount my spell.  Our spell– that will save or destroy the world.  Walk with me along this forest path

so this knowledge may pass

on

for the comfort of mystics

and a warning to the world

The dignity of our age is to improve the world–to try to perfect it.  But there have been other eras also with dignity and character.  Hunter-gatherers ran with the Gods.  ‘Civilized’ groups participated in rites of  ‘sacrifice’ and  ‘mysteries’ to help maintain creation, then the Modern Age, the rule of right and reason.

Now we begin something else…

Now we have the power to destroy everything

Color has its own existence.

This is how I conjured its sympathy:

For me, from San Francisquito Canyon, [CA-before-School] and Metaphor with and without reference–Then Monastery and Sacrament–Where the real human adventure in states of perception, is recognized and pursued along certain channels.

Enormous rain drops fall– seem an inch across, splatter across the dusty cement of our hilltop patio near our small pond–we could see for miles from that hill–The night sky crystalline black–and the smell of rain day or night in our desert that runs gulch and gullies deep.

Arizona summer monsoons reach across California and Nevada in big rain years.

Curious what was instilled in me then in those hills, canyons, sage, chaparral with its Ticks and Deer, Coyotes and Bobcats,

Quail Dove and passing Geese.  Sacred.  Sycamore and Oaks, wild Oats green and golden blond, flowers that swim to the clatter of cottonwood leaves,

whispering of leaves and grass…

I first encountered the psyche of nature there, gen loci-the spirit of the place, whispers of the world’s divine energies.  Our psyche is conjured of the same stuff.

Out there, I was hungry for culture and fascinated by art. I think I largely ignored school, got by, nothing wrong with education.  As a matter of fact, I’m all for it.  But so much energy goes into socialization–and socializing. So much time, just socializing.  But in spite of the passage of times, that character of where I was raised, out away from the suburbs and … away from much human passage at all.  Though, Wells Fargo used to run their stage-coaches past our place and through its clear air and remarkable natural herbal fragrance.

In autumn ’73, I was there to admire the jet trails across the clouds and blue refractions… (See First Series in the art catalog, After Bolivia.)

…was grounded early in the earth charkas.  Exposed to its mysteries.  Psychic energies that are the ambience and means of passage through…  but those are stories of early exploration of the physics of my body and the body of creation.  One’s own inner vastness and powers…  That comes from the furthest dark matter of deep, deepest outer space…

But its too early to talk of such things– this experience that I sometimes call “the spell’ builds in intensity, along with sublimation of desires and focus of intention.  Yoga, or in the monastic West, Asceticism, modifies normal aspect of life such as eating, or sexuality or bodily postures, or breathing in such a way as to accommodate alterations in perception, in awareness and energy (Chi, Prana, Tsa…) flows of these are the type of energies that create or destroy the world, at least one’s perception.  Some that can be used for magic are really meant for enlightenment and the salvation of the world. Woe betide the foolish seeker who forgets…  Some of these encounters are the point of passage, the space of exchange between this world and the spirit world.

Proportion is the metaphysical exercise.  It does not matter how much yoga or asceticism, except it be enough, perfectly enough for some purpose, for one’s personal chemistry so to speak…

My intention is the intention of high religion: To save the world.  From what, or for what, is not always perfectly clear, except that there are certain problems that threaten the biosphere–no not just that–there a real problems that threaten Godhead itself!  In the worlds, as in you

and each part the whole…

God makes the world out of himself.   …though not just existence- consciousness.  Can it be that the divine spirit i.e. what we experience as pure consciousness can be threatened?  Would existence still be, if consciousness were finally eradicated–the contemporary technocratic system has reduced human experience to a much narrower and pragmatic materialism.

We are now in the forth age.  The most dangerous…

Freedom, freedom from gangsters would be nice, especially from those who are always waving the Flag or shaking the Cross.

You know the problems, environmental problems, issues of justice.  Nature has rights as well as people.  Dear God there are so many people…

In any case, I stray from our story.  Huge raindrops drink up the dryness in miniscule cavities in the cement and red brick patio– summer monsoon. Seasonal rain in this desiccated country.  That is the ‘the way,’ that is the relationship.  That’s my youth.  Things like that.  That’s the value that I learned…

Then I went to school/university.  I was very impressed with writing, classical music and art.  And biology, of course.

Then the monastery:  Different values there– I remember Bro. Dominique hugely sweeping down in full monastic garb of black cape over black Benedictine robes of obedience and stability that cold Advent night to greet my parents and I with my suitcase.

I thought there was a love of art there.  But the love of art there was more tolerance, a romantic fervor in some cases.  More than that really, but always second to the lifestyle.  The value there was their lifestyle.  The Hours, silence, rhythms of waiting, cycles of prayer, work and spiritual reading, relationships of a quality- a system of authority that allows for personal growth along a particular channel to the sea…  Return to the Origin …splendor–doesn’t usually feel splendid.  But there are moments of vaulting splendor and unqualified spiritual intimacy.

This dissertation marches along a timeline, but some of the moments along the way engorge to meanings that make life bearable, even enthused– (Little bits of that tied to a myth and/or sacred scripture and tradition (and the offer to help raise your children) and the promise of salvation –from guilt, failure, passion, is the backbone of modern pop religion.  Real Salvation is always at hand every moment.  Nobody owns it.  Access is the issue.  Most don’t have a clue, all have the capacity for it. ‘The Kingdom really is at hand.’  We live in the presence of God.  Every moment is the end time.  –and begins with unspeakable sentience.  But few want it that much right away… until each realizes one’s need for it.  It is as much a part of oneself, the character of self, as is the heart or brain any other organ or appendage.

But the monasteries are fragile places–can’t handle much variation from their norms in a hostile culture. But at least they maintain a strong core of singular beauty with all its facets to catch the light.

Variation seems to be the nature of life.  Expansion and maintenance.  The monastic vision is to maintain and conserve–that one may know… and know deeply the source of life.

[Editorial: ‘They’ are ruled now by sex!  Not that they are particularly unchaste, they are not.  But the hysteria-bathed-market and media-amplified-clergy-sex scandals are an excuse for authoritarian careerists to clamp down, to take command. No redemption there.  …for the Right Wing to take control. (So does the Left when they occasionally have power.)  … If there is no crisis, they create one.  Clever really.  But it has nothing to do with science or religion, truth or mysticism.  Conservatism does not justify authoritarian control–right or left.  Scientific materialism and secular rationalism may have their shortcomings, but Christian fundamentalism has little to offer.  Just another escape.  Another opiate.  ‘Wolves in Shepard’s clothing!’  More and more, especially in Protestant circles, its heterosexual couples, that odd social disease of the nuclear family, a cancerous phenomenon that might be useful for a capitalist, technocratic or consumer worldview, but its hell for old people and it contributes little to human meaning or satisfaction.  Rather its members get paid off with material securities for spending their life energies maintaining a world economy.  …under the guise of progress… Growl the appetites.]

Well, that’s the extent of my concern for the current expression of our human project.  Now pre-imminent drives and personal gen loci demand my attention:

From a critical perspective the issues above contribute to a ‘fragmentation of knowledge’ since one’s education no longer includes all categories of perception as did the theory of the old liberal education–certainly not an older schema that included metaphysical training. Rather preference is given to applied technologies, especially if they turn a profit.

Union of knowledge?  Metaphysics as well as physics are relegated to a few specialists of those popular devotions easily manipulated by televangelists and political masters like Karl Rove and his clients; the Bushes and the other ‘Butchers of Baghdad.’  They toy with powers that would terrify them to their core if they realized…  Self delusion, even corporate delusion is a gift of the Prince of lies who, by the way, must also be redeemed if God’s Love is to reign.  There can be no permanent Hell.  What sane person would choose torture and misery forever.  The insane have no free will.  But such images as the fire and brimstone of Hell is helpful to control the brutally boneheaded and the intricately selfish.

Enough of that!  That was from thirty years ago.  Cut these knotted thoughts.  Must get free of the intrigues of thinking… and the flesh.

Our experiment, a response to these horrors has produced some remarkable occasions, horrors of their own.  Co-incidents if you like, that alter the world’s course.  But so far seem to have affected the cancer of human existence very little.  There is still some hope from the little ones.  Categories of little things like virus and bacteria.  Or such self-destructions as cancer–A firm mystery that there’s still hope in tragedy.

On to something else:  If one can believe the Neo-cons that the American Way is the only way–brutally crushing any other way, good or bad… gentle systems as well as brutal… out of ignorance?  Or overly successful, but still selfish greed?  If only those Protestant/merchant ‘Reformers’ 500 years ago could have known.

Excuse me! I digress again.  Let me instead review our experiment and its intentions: Turkey, Yemen, Mexico, Sex Magic, Tantra and the Holy Spirit.  All turned to the service of the world; the Great Basin and the disciple (be wary of disciples…)  Freedom (The fiction of freedom?)  Freedom to channel all one’s personal energies into service. Freedom to do what’s right with the experience and hope for the Holy Spirit to channel those energies in its will–It has been my helping spirit after all, my familiar, most powerful magic after all…

Let’s back up a bit.  As a successful, smart, Hollywood movie producer once remarked, “…your book has some brilliant things in it, but it rambles, it roams, it circles, it meanders, and it really goes nowhere…” However, a famous, world class scholar remarked about this work: ‘it is just this labyrinthine fantasy, this tortuously circuitous, often obscure expression and re-expression of an inner experience, turning again and again in on itself, that is the success of the pilgrimage, art and stories. It is exactly in real symbols of the inner processes of this erring way that the art has its meaning.’

I say that there is material of interest here for both a critical, i.e. analytical, as well as popular sensibility.  Part of the genesis for this project is an artist’s resentment of the domination by rationalist/intellectual forces in the western Christian spiritual formation and in western culture generally. But, the real motivating force behind this project is much more positive. This motivation is to explore through the use of my own artistic intuitions, intellections; psychic, subtle and physiological sensitivities what is the fullest human response to reality, to the spiritual, the Holy; how we perceive “what is” and how we awaken to absolute reality. By doing that, I hope to aid in the resistance to an overly cerebral, material culture’s drunken stumbling towards nuclear or technological self-destruction, and its viciously aggressive, political and economic systems.

The magic and sorcery is just spin off from an essential processes of enlightenment, of Kundalini yoga, from the earth chakras seeking union with of the celestial, sky chakras.  So it is with science, compared to the core mysticism of the human quest–for ‘a light that casts no shadow’–the ground and foundation of all things…

Some of these explorations stray into formats of popular fiction as well as the more elite realms of art and critical theory to discover among other issues, how both popular and critical compassion is defeated by other less altruistic forces.

…Of concern is the wholesale destruction of the world’s natural resources and the sacred, wild places so important to human life both physically and spiritually. Witness the destruction of the rainforests worldwide at the rate of 5000 acres per day. What will be left of our world in 100 years, or even 50 years, if such technological power is not restricted? Bush’s good science.  The prognosis is diabolic.

…If religion has failed to convert the hearts of humankind as a species, science has succeeded in placing at the disposal of unconverted hearts power sufficient to destroy or corrupt our very gift of being. Nuclear holocaust might end up as preferable to biologically engineered warfare or capitalist/socialist exploitation.

The intention of this project is to address these issues and to aid in their resolution. I believe that these are the proper territories of care for the catholic priesthood since the Holy fire of divine concern for all creation, for the sacredness of being itself, most profoundly describes this priesthood.

A worldview without a sense of the sacred is really an excuse for the world’s exploitation. Slavery was once thus justified. (A slave is somehow less than a person, therefore its value is only in its utility. Nature is devoid of sacred character, i.e. the spiritual (godly) quality of personhood, therefore use it as you will.) The animistic, or immanence of the divine in nature must once again be realized.

Another way to explain this project is by explaining its title. NEPSIS, sobriety or spiritual clarity, is a New Testament Greek term compared to the five Gospel virgins replete of oil for their lamps and the five without. (Matt. 25:1-3) Allegorically the first five were spiritually prepared for the coming of the Lord. The others who were not so prepared were left out in the cold when the party started. The first group represents an important condition: For these, there had been a process of preparation for direct spiritual experience. This preparation or way, this yoga, associated with becoming spiritually awakened is significant in religious studies because it is a bridge for conversation about spiritual experience with other religions, especially Buddhism, and indicates a likeness of experience.

The process of preparation indicates a decision for spiritual experience and a spiritual wisdom or way that can be understood or practiced, to catalyze spiritual experience and salvation. Orthodox Bishop Timothy Kallistos Ware made such a comparison at a workshop given in June 1976 at Immaculate Heart Hermitage in Big Sur. This occasion introduced me to the word nepsis, which caught and catalyzed my imagination. For me now, it refers to this whole experience of spiritual awakening and practice still applicable at this millennial turn.

In NEPSIS, the practice and study of these ways of spiritual awakening form a dialogue about spiritual conversion, initiation, and practice between Christianity, Buddhism, Shamanism and my own experience of essential categories. To clarify later development, I will state here that any autobiographical material has been included to discuss/enhance the discussion of these topics that is at once intensely personal and intensely universal. I have used the always-available field of “self” for the research.

There is a quest in this work that involves personal spiritual growth. That’s safe enough. But there is a problem as well inextricably linked to the quest. The only way that I can express the problem and its potential for resolution is in analogous relationship to a problem in my own life. That is severe and frequent migraines and other, perhaps related, dysfunctions. These had recently reached a severity that was…

…I suggest, for example, that this psychosomatic problem of migraines is more than the result of neurosis or genetic defect, but is a response in empathy to the world’s evolution and victim of the current radical imbalance of the earth. There is potential resolution to both these personal and universal levels of tension.

That resolution results from the shamanic/priestly/artistic gift in the world–when such was not separated from science. This inherent “gift”, I have come to believe, is a dimension of being. When this capacity is needed to balance, to heal, to save, it is, or can be, raised up….

…The body and soul of a shaman is sensitive and responsive to these conditions (of the world) and its responsibility is to participate creatively in the creative gesture of the Spirit(s’) salvific intentions.

…

The development of the problem might be better understood from a mythic or archetypal perspective: Greek philosophy, i.e., rational critique/logic/scientific method, and Christian institutions, backed by the converted Roman Empire, defeated the Greek Gods. (Not only the Greek Gods…) And Greek philosophy, in the form of technology and materialistic rationalism, has nearly defeated Christianity, i.e., as in materialistic Marxism or technological Capitalism. This is especially the case, as media generated appetites breed mass states of consciousness unable to access the in-depth justifications of ancient worldviews such as pre-reformation Christianity and the rest. But from a mythic perspective, the Gods are having their revenge. The fiery python at Delphi might yet have her oblation—in atomic proportions. The Gods will not be ignored. This may seem preposterous to a modern mind. But if we define the Gods psychologically as intelligent projections of human and universal psychic structures, or even elemental powers, then we may be able to understand the violent results of our drastically out of balance Western way of being–the East, as well, is in increasing disarray culturally and spiritually. We might yet, however, discover in the chaos, salvific dimensions sufficient to…. To what? Solve the problem? Transcend ‘problem and solution’ format itself? Get lost…

The intuition of this project is that the quiet, personal quest mentioned earlier will lead to a spiritual awakening that also will address what I sense as an essential issue of our time. That is, the real sacredness of the world is ignored in favor of technological commerce. The human soul is besieged and festering from being ignored. The very dragons of being turn and kick in angry discord at such play of the diabolic. The soul of creation is denied. Thus, we are torn apart and religion is defeated. Science as well…

…The point is to strike the sacred fire of the Divine and to startle ourselves awake with our own divine presence. I intend that the shock of such ignition will appease the gods and set at rest the dragons set to devour us with our own unbalanced wit.

The means that initiated this intention were pilgrimage, studies and service. The studies involve an exploration of Shamanism, Buddhism, especially Tantric Buddhism, and the Byzantine Christian Hesychasm–as well as contemporary Roman Catholicism, Christianity in general. Though I have had strong opinions about the differences and similarities of various religious tracts, finally I must leave that discussion in order to effect the salvific and shamanistic act of this project. I seek the way to ignite the Sacred Fire, the Love of God, Nirvanic Bliss, the Heart Sutra, and to sing the silent hymn of the Holy that heals, nourishes, creates, and satisfies.  (And administration of some ecclesial pastoral programs,  as well as spontaneous giving and receiving Charity as needed along the way.)

All of this will leave us, hopefully, watchful and active in the solemn game of God’s delight .

But that was long ago.  So much has happened since.  Troubling. Very troubling.

No more time.  No more time for it.  Must be on with the thing itself.

POINTS TO REMEMBER as we proceed to the end.

*Georgia:  She faced nothingness alone, without the cloisters or corporations.  She blessed me with the beginnings of my life and the conclusions to her own.  Fights the battle–of detachment, liberation, spirit.

*Siwa and the aquifers of Egypt.  See “Egypt Paintings” from 2004.

*What is noticed in one’s travels.  How does one enlarge one’s awareness…  control of passage, comfort, hotels or hitchhiking.  Asceticism.

*Point of impropriety– leave something normal or essential out: speech, society, food, ego, etc…  Create focus by turning the powers of convention around.  See what happens.

*Right wing fundamentalists claim that 10% of general population is too high-  That the real number of homosexuals is more like 2%.  Of course, they have demonstrated the willingness to bend scientific statistics (as well as sacred scriptures) to their PR or economic agenda.  None-the-less, there might be something to the 2%: as in fiction one can create an effective and evocative scenario that might be more true than history.  I’d say the 2% is perhaps the precious gift of the divine androgen, the guide between worlds–sometimes the diabolic hermaphrodite as needed.  This figure is a real part of creation as God created it, not the sanitized, right/left, PC, made up, artificial social norms—usually by certain breeding couples– reacting against or dependant upon the memories of a primordial example.

*What happened to the 300 billion dollars in Fr. Adam’s account?  What of the access codes?

*The two exiled spirits…?  Golem and Savage beautiful young man are in the world and actively about the issues of the Spell.

*A short passage to describe the place of Tantra in the world’s religions?

*Crystal cave above the perineum, between the Caribbean and the Yucatan.

*Art, paintings generally, but also sculptures, poems, etc., are episodic moments of ecstasy.

I’d had enough sexual experience, both mental and physical, when I was young to know its delights, drives and heartbreak.  No wonder most opt for the confinements of marriage.  (Benefits…)

But then, we wanted to know something else. I wanted to know about the mysteries of chastity, its secret delights, abstinence and the speculations of a Tantric worldview and magic… and the shaman’s way.  All of my partners when I was adult, were adults, most were assertive successful seekers at a point in their lives when they were most open to alternative explorations.  They were houses with windows open for a time.  Nothing illegal, or manipulative– on my side at least.  Rather, brushes with the abyss sufficient to know its relationship with the mountains of our lives.

…sufficient, it appears, to have evoked dark deities– and to distract the diabolic intention just long enough to use its powers for the salvation of all.  Like a space ship might use the gravity of larger bodies, planets or stars, to change direction and sling our lives in the direction of our better intentions.  Most people live lives of fiction, even modern people.  Fiction that is more evasive than the characters of these books, the Bible, Myths or even serious history–whichever best interprets all levels of perception in a cultural or personal, and environmental format.

Whichever gets to the truth of the matter is what we seek.  In any case, some traumatic experiences and 5 years of austerity has opened a new chaste blossom on this old tree…

The Head Geshe of that important Tibetan Archive told me as I was instructed in the efficacious use of initiatory Mandalas that the monk, nun (or celibate priest) must create these scenarios sufficiently in their minds to effect the necessary perceptive resolution.  What is true of the microcosm applies as well to the macrocosm.

…

Of course, the counter culture revolution of the 60’s failed with all that flower power hype about free sex and drugs.  But then, that’s the image, the bill of goods, sold by the enemies of reform.  The real reform was meant to prevent the soul killing war machine that’s taken our culture, line, hook and sinker.

Gandhi failed.  Panikkar failed.  The murderous Reagans and Bushes have won, etc, etc, etc… Viet Nam, Iraq -whose next?  ‘They’ revel in blood to their necks.  Glory in crushing the poor.   But the losers in these great battles often win in the end.  The Romans defeated the Greeks, but Greek culture ruled the empire for centuries and in some ways still does…

Still, we give away billions of tax dollars to developing countries, but with the caveat that they use the money to buy our weapons.  And George is Born Again!  Alleluia!  Better to have died a drunk.

Clinton was no better…  Both Gore and Kerry are pro military, but not so radically, (profitably) gung ho about it.  I’m no better… willing to engineer the death of billions of people to relieve the 6th extinction.  What’s the alternative?  No final solution.  Progress creates problems increasingly proportionate to the progress.

Fallacy of strength and dominance:  1. Quadriplegics can be as spiritual as the most supple yogi or martial artist. 2. Ego Strength. 3. Overly successful business interests…

A subsistence economy is one answer based on sustainability rather than progress at all costs.  A dignified, seriously joyful life with basic human values…  it could be way that would satisfy most. Not very exciting, but it might be ultimately more satisfying, fulfilling.   Seamless garment of life, physical and spiritual…  Might be.

I find it harder and harder to resist editorials but let’s try to focus just a while longer on ‘The Spell,’ my spell, and all its allegories to the salvation/destruction of the world and, uh… mysticism!

But who’s going to give up on ‘progress.’  Complete propaganda control.  Mostly money making schemes.  How is it that so many Pro-lifers ironically are also so Pro-war.

One is tempted to cynicism…

But it doesn’t matter what I think.  The spell now is constructed and sent.  Does not require mental consent or even attention.  The unconscious is operative here. Makes itself known after.  Intuition tells one what must be done…  the forms have been learned, inculcated and forgotten.

The pilgrimage to Siwa is its denouement:  The great experiment started with the Achekale in eastern Turkey, then Yemen.

THE GREAT OLD MAN IS WITH ME NOW.  THE ‘GREAT MONK.’  DARK– DARK– POWERFULLY DARK,

but approaching the light that has no shadow!

BISHOP, I warned you about the coming scandals and that an inadequate response by the Church would bankrupt us spiritually and fiscally.

…finally, I see  stillness- Great Spells take years to construct and require the full attention of our core relationships… Don’t know what more to say, except to say that what has been said has been heard and once heard, the Seraphim who sing the Glory of God in Creation will bring a response–

NARRATOR CONCLUDES:

[The characters mentioned above and below are from the Nepsis Narratives, or Nepsis Fiction. Curious that this author/editor should make the major male speaker in these fictions, (the Narrator- a businessman),  such a negative model.  Maybe it will all make sense before the end.]

Fr Adam? University?  Art and Poetry– Religion of rigorous study and truth. Spirit of Place(s), energies, plants animals rocks…?

Ag/Cat Stephanie:  Caves beneath the sea.  Cashes of crystals.  Dragon hordes.  Life, psyche of the planet. Patterns and rituals over-come the fragmentation of knowledge. But that’s another story…?

Integrates pop fiction with archetypal figures; elite scholarship/mythic cycles with lyric fiction and free flow random intention?

Non-fiction to short fiction to novels to Cyclic, mytho-poetic clusters of stories, studies, art and metaphysical exercise…

A literary puzzle for the erudite?

An internet oracle for the intuitive and the seeker?

Who owns the church?  Everyone senses their ‘need’ or ‘realization’ of the sacred.  Few know much.  Very confused with all the history…  Thus the need for churches.   But they aren’t really necessary, except …?

Harder and harder for Adam to stay in this world.  I.e. on this merely, rational plane, down to earth, pragmatic, common sense.  Well, as he has often said “Common sense is for the common.”  The ‘other’ dimensions, states, sensations are a better experience, anyway.   I’ve come to agree with him about that–he prefers a different combination, or composition as he would say.  But I can’t change my habits.  Too long, too addicted.

Kabloona is a story about a real paradise in this world…  Paradise of ice gardens and simple splendor.  ‘Kabloona’ is the Eskimo word for the European or Canadian, American or Russian arrivals- and commerce at the gates of their ice world.  Pure experience of the hunters of the north revealed the rule of survival, good humor, fortitude, humility, consciousness as vast and varied as snow. Not competition, not greed; rather satisfaction.  Kabloona is also the title of a book that describes how this format was discovered and who was there to be satisfied.  Read it for yourself.

The Golem, the Twins? Chris and Simon?  Xibalba is the underworld of dark archetypes that are conquered by the Twins.  It’s a realm through which everyone must pass TO LIBERATION.

Currently religion is modified to the standards of an international corporation.

This ‘SCHOOL’, Adam’s model of learning, assumes a ‘liberal education, as well as mastery of metaphysical techniques. Christian, Buddhist, etc… i.e. pedagogy, an ordering of perception, then on a more refined level, of Love.  Wisdom and compassion–  People must go through the first school, i.e. master the content of one’s dreams.

The second school is an increasingly refined mastery of compassionate relationships.  Then, the Bodisattva vows… and inspired method.

The third school is union with God and commitment to service, i.e. that all sentient beings, in fact all of creation animate with the divine presence, i.e., that all creation may know the perfect union of matter and spirit, i.e. the Christ (Might be called other names, Prajnapati, Brahma, the Tao, etc. and experienced in the identity described by the such saints as Anthony of the Desert and the Advaitic sadhus of the east.

…

(Beautiful, but savage young man?  An archetype. What is he so mad about?  From high school, his ambition is unmet by accomplishment or recognition.  His is a longer pedagogy…  His is the spirit of the migraine– finally finds his peace as an old man.  His drive was to discover the ‘pearls beyond price,’ a dragon’s horde.)…

Narrator:

Well, we don’t need a Lord anymore in any case–Dread or otherwise!  We are sufficient onto ourselves.  We no longer need the Dark Lord any more than Evangelical Christians need God. Can you imagine it!  The Gospel and brutal massacres in the Middle East in this day and age.  To bring back Christ for a second coming.  When we want, not when he chooses.  A forced Coming of it.  Christ without the Beatitudes, an excuse.  The Sermon on the Mount abrogated along with all those pesky environmental regulations!  Rich, too, too rich.  As if He would have anything to do with schemes like that.  What would we do without such people.  Look what we did with Japan- 19 million Chinese killed in our occupation of China and Manchuria.  300,000 in Nanking alone, in six weeks! Now that’s a good time. Thank you Admiral Perry.  We’ve started again with the ‘neo-cons’ of America.  It’s amazing how easy it is. Think of the profits.  Think of the munitions and reconstruction contracts.  Trillions of happy little greenbacks, devalued and deflowered dollars. Washington, Jackson, Franklin…  Beautiful, just beautiful.  And our hero can hardly admit how successful he’s been- The Twin Towers and another war in Mesopotamia.  Little does he suspect…

Of course, there is another way to look at this.  There is another figure even older, more primordial than St. Anthony who might provide some perspective about Adam’s choices.  This one is described in Rg Veda X, 136:

1  Within him is fire, within him is drink,

within him both earth and heaven.

He is the Sun which views the whole world,

he is indeed Light itself–

The long-haired ascetic.

2.  Girded with the wind, they have donned ochre mud

for a garment.  So soon as the gods

have entered within them, they follow the wings

of the wind, these silent ascetics.

3.  Intoxicated, they say, by our austerities,

we have taken the winds for our steeds.

You ordinary mortals here below

see nothing except our bodies.

4.  He flies through mid-air, the silent ascetic,

beholding the forms of all things.

To every god he has made himself

a friend and collaborator.

5.  Ridden by the wind, companion of its blowing,

Pushed along by the gods,

He is at home in both seas, the east

and the west–the silent ascetic

6.  He follows the track of all the spirits,

of nymphs and the deer of the forest.

Understanding their thoughts, bubbling with ecstasies,

their appealing friend is he–

the long-haired ascetic.

7.  The wind has prepared and mixed him a drink;

it is pressed by Kunamnama.

Together with Rudra he has drunk from the cup

of poison–the long-haired ascetic.[2]

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1. Long-haired ascetic:  Kesin,  the wearer of loose long hair.  Fire:  visa, poison, poisonous drink, or as here, intoxicating liquor which burns inside like a fire (as confirmed in v. 7).  He “carries” earth and heaven, like Prajapati, to whom he approximates by divinization.
2. Silent ascetics:  munis.
3. This stanza is put into he mouths of the munis themselves.
4. Beholding the forms of all things:  there is here a double meaning, a spatial one, due to the association with the sun (seeing all things from above) and a more spiritual one (from a higher perspective).
5. The wind:  vata.  Companion of its blowing:  vayu, the divinity of the wind.
6. the spirits, nymphs:  Gandharvas and Apsaras.
7. Wind:  vayu.  Kunamnama:  possibly a female spirit connected with vayu.  Cup of poison:  visasya patra.  Cf. The later myth of Shiva drinking the poison.

________________________________________________________________________ 

NARRATOR:  And We might yet still be regulated.  Perhaps, there is a new form, a new integration that will satisfy us all.   Or an old … and thus save the world!  It is not hard to move what is already teetering on the edge!  But which way will it fall?  And how hard?

In this pursuit, this quest for Fr. Adam and access to his extraordinary accounts, I’ve heard of something call Advaita– non-dualism.  That is, simply put, we are both spirit and matter at once in some ineffable way.  The whole world is. The end times and judgment are always upon us.  But so is the other option–salvation and paradise!  Enlightenment!  A tendency we share though, is to believe rather in practical, material, obvious things.  It’s not rational.  Certainly not scientific.  We ignore, or put off, or dismiss entirely the spiritual, ineffable, non-temporal aspect of perceptive experience…

Hell, I’m getting to sound like Father Adam, or Agnes.  Can’t have that… Bad for business. What would we do with ourselves…

***

NEPSIS FOUNDATION

LETTER TO A BISHOP

PART III  (THE LAST)

Preview

“…During one of the rituals mentioned previously, all of my spirit animals gathered: The eagle; the Black Widow was there as principal spirit guide; the great old man and the dragons. My parent animals also were there. All are gathered in the “land”, the inner landscape of perception, to observe something. We waited and watched for several days. Then, ‘it’ appears. It was awful. A terrible thing. A vast thing. Something out of a primordial place, black with fecund decay.  It emerges. It wakes. Vast. My pantheon seems rather paltry in comparison. But then, after several days of dismay, I remind myself that the spider is a feminine aspect of God himself, and the Great Old Man is the Christ. But still, this new beast is horrible. It is like a great black snake. I waited for several days as it continues to rise. I have to go into it. Awful. I do. I must enter into the (feminine?), earth, fecundity, must identify with it. Sex, death, life; a swamp. I fit into a moist slit in its body. We begin to travel. Travel at a speed unimaginable even in these days of imaginable light speed. Then we arrive somewhere. I won’t describe that. What I am sure about is the rising and the travel of the beast, it is “neg-entropy.”

…The black ‘worm’ is a beast of vast power, raised to effect what is necessary for a broader vision of God’s intention in creation than what urbanized, humanistic and religious motives usually allow.

Finally, the black snake entered my central nervous system—macrocosm into microcosm—through the perineum. It stayed stretched through my spinal column, tail to crown. In fact, psychically, it is that bone and nerve structure even now and will become a white and gold being that is the skeletal, nerve structure of the world.

 Shri Chacra Mandala