Time the Conundrum

Jesus often preached and taught on the “coming of the kingdom,” an idea which has held captive the imagination of his followers for millennia. Many have predicted the return of Jesus, also known as the “second coming” (and along with it the kingdom of God) for generation after generation, only to be let down and confounded by the failure of their prognostication. But this understanding concerning the coming of the kingdom just will not do. Preston Harold helps us to get a hold on reality:

All that Jesus said of the coming of the kingdom does not refute its existence and present operation, but serves to identify that of which He speaks as being completely involved both in being and in becoming, just as entropy is involved in that which is and is coming to be – with becoming in the universe – which is to say, time.

It is time – real time and the meaning of time – that unites the unconscious and nature’s supreme law which, in Jesus’ teaching, therefore, share the words: kingdom, heaven, realm, and reign of God. In the physicists’ view, entropy “points time’s arrow,” and the unconscious in man is capable of calculation of time, as is demonstrated in posthypnotic response to suggestion made to the second after a span of minutes, days, months, or even years.

If one will not concede that Jesus’ references to the kingdom of heaven pertain to the unconscious and to the working of supreme natural law in man’s being and throughout the universe, he must ask himself anew what these passages refer to and concede that they cannot deal with any sort of eternal abode for the “redeemed” because Jesus says that “Heaven and earth shall pass away…” but not “my words,” not consciousness’ manifestation.

How many Christians are willing to “ask themselves anew what these passages refer to?” How many teachers are willing to leave behind the comfortable and traditional teachings and lead the Church into a new understanding of the teachings of Jesus? The modern knowledge of the quantum realm and the second law of thermodynamics have thrown the door wide open to understanding “open secrets” of scripture in a way that our current times demand. It is TIME for us to grasp the purpose of TIME!…

The passing away of “heaven” indicates that the unconscious domain will at some point no longer exist as such because its content and power will be realized – herein is the becoming, or the coming of the inner kingdom unto each man. The passing away of “earth” indicates change born of the operation of the second law of thermodynamics, and it indicates also that flesh expressed by partial consciousness will pass away as a material embodiment born of complete comes into expression. But Jesus said of the kingdom’s coming – of time’s working in the unconscious and in the universe through entropy’s increase – “The kingdom of God cometh not through observation (Or, with outward show)…” as man expected it to come in His day. Perhaps it is as unlikely that the “end of the world” will come as the physicists expect it today as that it will come as the early Christians expected it, for the meaning of the supreme natural law and its working in universal terms is not yet known – cannot be known entirely until the innermost workings of the universe are known, and until time’s meaning is grasped.

Jesus said that the answer as to when “becoming” will be achieved is not accessible to Homo sapiens’ consciousness: “But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but only the Father.”

We will continue exploring time in our next post. Until then, peace…

A Strange Twist

What is the goal of mankind? What are we meant to become? Genesis clues us in right from the beginning:

There is a strange twist in the Eden legend that bears examination. Eve speaks of the tree in the midst of the garden, but earlier in the legend this plant is described as two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Not until after Adam and Eve had partaken of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is man driven from the garden, lest he also partake of the tree of life and live forever.

This always struck me as a point we can tend to slide right past. The reason for expulsion from the garden wasn’t merely because the fruit of knowledge had been eaten, ie Adam and Eve sinned, but rather that the fruit from the tree of life may not be partaken of. Not only does the expulsion happen, but a Cherubim with a “turning, flaming sword” is stationed to guard not the way back into the garden, but rather “the way to the tree of life.” One must also wonder what life process this “turning, flaming sword” represents.

Why was deathlessness then a danger? For life to express itself eternally in sentient flesh that could feel the extremes of pain and want, and in consciousness that could suffer intolerable boredom as want is surfeited, is a curse beyond the imagination of man. But had man partaken first of the tree of life, life must express itself eternally in a form that could not know love or a reason for being. Thus, the “fruit to be desired” was the fruit of knowing, so that this fruit was forbidden, thereby making it attractive.

Here Preston Harold tells us that our reason for existing, our task, is “to know love; a reason for being.” It is this thought we will continue exploring in our next post. Until then, peace.

Dilemma of the Ego-Group

In his poem “Tintern Abbey” William Wordsworth describes an all too rare state of consciousness:

…I have felt

A presence that disturbs me with the joy

Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime

Of something far more deeply interfused,

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,

And the round ocean and the living air,

And the blue sky, and in the mind of man.

Poetry is necessary because nothing yet in psychology’s concepts of ego or superego provides for humanity’s direct correspondence with complete truth and joy.   Nor does psychology provide concepts for the inner certainty of infinity, or deathlessness. According to Wordsworth’s poem, the sublime sense of joy and eternity is based on the sense of a “presence.” Usually our sense of “presence” is rooted in a person, or some living being. Yet in our everyday lives we regularly identify with groups, becoming a different personality depending upon the group with which we are interacting. Harold says:

Dependency upon the group means loss of one’s individuality – this is seen…to be the growing problem. Dr. Van den Berg says, “We are not ourselves; actually there is nothing we can call a ‘self’ anymore…we have as many selves as there are groups to which we belong.” In simple truth man does present a different self to every person, to every situation – he always has, always will…

This reality of different selves leads to an issue that needs to be solved:

Man’s consciousness is not expressed by an ego, but by an ego-group which includes an image that corresponds to each person he knows, sees, or thinks about. His Dr. Jekyll selves are haunted by his Mr. Hyde selves, and these graduate one into the other – but none of these selves are the man himself. Only as he tries to merge these ego-members into a Self-consistency, into a Group-ego, to replace Authority-Ego must his identity incorporate every degradation he has suffered, inflicted, witnessed, or read about. Attempting to be one-self by making of the ego-group a Group-ego causes the personality to reflect all that characterizes the group in society – no part of it is responsible for one’s failure or misery, no part is wholly mature.

So what is the remedy for making a person wholly mature?

A governing authority, one central to man’s being, appears to be necessary to him. Jesus teaches that this authority, which upholds social and moral law even as it transcends law’s limitations, cannot be found in society nor in man’s conscious domain where conscience operates. But such an authority is within each man: it is a certainty in being that accords with truth and turns consciousness to experience truth as it works in life. Upon this Authority’s shoulders the government of one’s life rests; in time it brings him to reap as he sows; it refuses much that consciousness accepts; it returns the forgotten errors the ego-group refuses to face; it will call itself only by its God-given name, “I.”

And there it is, our remedy, our answer: the sense of “presence,” an “I,” an experience of “one person,” each person’s Authority-Ego. We will explore our Authority-Ego’s leading in our next post. Until then, peace…

The Tower of Babel and the Mystery of Language: Part II

What is the reason that the Tower of Babel cannot be finished? What is the legend trying to tell us?

Consider that each man speaks a language of his own begot of his understanding of any word. Where his understanding stops, or veers off in tangent, the babble of words falling upon his inner or outer ear serve only to confuse the issue and disperse the force of those who strive to control his thinking. Thus, he can be conditioned so far and no further – no utopian dream can permanently adjust him to Homo sapiens’ insufficient lot in life: the tower cannot be finished because man, himself, is not finished. Man is only partially conscious, his body is an expression of mind power only partially in use; and powerful as it is, the subconscious is not the end of his being.

The subconscious is constantly trying to make itself the distinctive, identifying factor of the human being, attempting to “reach heaven” on its own while overriding the Authority-Ego’s proper administration.

Dr. Rolf Alexander likens the subconscious to a factory that needs an over-all understanding to direct and coordinate the know-how of each laborer. But he sees that the “factory” does not identify the man: “Search as we will, we can never find the reality we all hunger for in the conditioned illusions of our subconscious, nor in our intellects which are oriented to these illusions….we must return to the task of developing the instrument of conscious perception abandoned by us in childhood – the true personality.” This echoes Jesus: one must become as a child to receive his name, to enter the kingdom of God within him.

But even though the subconscious is trying to override its proper jurisdiction, it is still a necessary part of the picture; life is impossible without it:

If one accepts the teaching of Jesus as revelation of the Authority-Ego in man operating from the unconscious domain, then one accepts the concept that the over-all understanding to direct and coordinate the subconscious is there; and that the yoke of the subconscious mind has been assumed by Self in order to enter life through nature’s avenues, for nature appears to operate the animal kingdom through a subconscious, mechanistic process – that is, through converting experience into instinctive, conditioned responses.

Jesus indicates that the Authority-Ego has willingly taken this yoke upon Self because through the subconscious mind’s working, the burden of accumulated knowledge is carried easily; because of it man learns rapidly; and it relieves him of the operation of his mechanistic body. As symbol of Authority-Ego, Jesus
says to the ego-group: 

Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me…

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light…

These words and the Babel legend indicate that man need not fear the hold his subconscious mind has upon consciousness, for man cannot be confined within its limitations or be enslaved by its mechanics – he is more than the “computer” that operates for him.

So what about the themes of language and communication we explored in part 1? We will return to these in our next post. Until then, peace…

The Hidden Meaning of Noah and the Ark; Pt. 3

What are the Biblical writers trying to tell us about our inner worlds through the storied roles of Ham, Shem and Japeth? According to Preston Harold…

Ham appears to represent a preconscious ego-sense which is one of both helplessness and cunning, subject to all other psychic factors. Having looked upon the naked parent, it is subject to the Oedipus curse – the curse so involved with the physical intermingling of person and parent, of impotence despite man’s might and cunning.

Japeth appears to represent a subconscious ego-sense which is enlarged as its store of data grows through experience and learning – it becomes “a mighty one in the earth…the beginning of his kingdom was Babel…” and man’s subconscious is indeed a babble of selves within him, subject to an enlarging and mighty conscience.

Shem, the blessed, appears to represent the superconscious ego-sense as it is described in this study: a natural grasp of truth, a natural responsiveness to right that needs not to be belabored by conscience or memory.

The Lord God who shuts in the ark and sets the rainbow is seen to be a visitation in man’s consciousness – this, the Authority-Ego, his sense of certainty in being, dwells in the “tents” of Shem. The word, “tents,” indicates that consciousness is always on the move.

One might also be reminded here of the prologue to the Gospel of John, in which the Logos, the Word, is said to have pitched his “tent” among us, referring to the Incarnation. And as much as we receive Him, this visitation of our Lord God, our Authority-Ego, our inner Christ, to us He gives power to become “Children of God.”

So what about Noah himself? What does Harold have to say about him? Here he conveys while wrapping up the roles of Ham, Shem and Japeth nicely…

Noah appears to be representative of man’s sense of having been – he represents memory residue, which resides in infant consciousness long enough to ratify or to activate God-consciousness in man and then to create a schism between itself and the preconscious level before it subsides into the unconscious. Noah’s demise coincides with infant amnesia, and his cursing of Ham indicates that every person suffers a trauma in infancy as a result of his partial glimpsing of his naked past. But the legend tells man that he cannot know himself through the exposure of his unconscious memory although it is parent of his present consciousness, for this memory spends itself in the constructive work of fetal development and birth. Thus, prior life or generation is a closed episode: the head of its household sinks into the unknown realm – a part of man’s consciousness may have glimpsed it in infancy, but a part refrained from viewing the naked body of the past and this part will always cover it quickly, hiding it from curiosity’s eyes. Thus, the Noah legend reveals the inner drama.

Amen, brothers and sisters! Although Harold’s approach isn’t the only way to understand the Biblical text, it is certainly the deepest and most relevant to understanding ourselves as part of the legend. The challenge for us is to interpret the other Biblical stories in this same manner. Preston Harold will continue to help us do so. Until next time, peace…

The Factor of an Open System

Why has the human being taken the irrational path?  What is it about mankind that makes him an “open system,” not closing off at a particular point in evolutionary development?

From Ardrey’s summary of man’s specialness, it looks as though this one creature has possessed from his beginning a presence, or God-sense, that acts as a lamp unto his feet and a light to his path.  The Genesis legend says this presence was in man’s garden-being and that it has never left him.  It would have required a knowing Authority within to guide ancestral-man-cell along the irrational path that led to the pinnacle.  If from the beginning this presence guided ancestral-cell into and through every necessary step by blinding the creature to much in the outer world while giving it inner vision, this would make all the difference there is between man and other forms of life.  This Authority would have had to insist upon a selection not of more sensory, but of more mental equipment than the creature needed…

But what sort of factor would be a true and sure guide?

This must be a factor which beforehand had known every form and being, the way into and out of each mode of life.  One cannot give this factor a satisfactory name.  One can only say that it is the Self-sense of the Creator, the “I-sense” of being, or “God-being” in the one-cell creature that became man, a cell resembling amoeba but different from the amoeba that man knows today; for such a cell would be and would evolve into a form like unto but not identical to any other form of life, because an essential ingredient abstracted from the creature’s consciousness and hidden within would chart its course.

 We will further explore this factor of “I-being,” “God-sense,” in our next post.  Until then, peace.

The Adam-Cell

Let’s jump train!  But in order to make sure we have a safe landing, let’s be reminded that “Harold believed that the laws and findings of the sciences are simply developments in the expression of truth that has been intuitively grasped and poetically stated in the great religions.  He believed that as Jesus studied the Scriptures he saw in them the same thing that he, Harold, saw in them and also in the records of Jesus’ drama: these writings embody a symbolical representation of the underlying laws functioning throughout nature.” (Winifred Babcock)

With this firmly under our belts we let Harold begin:

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin postulates that consciousness is the force that raised up life from matter, and that consciousness is life’s goal.  The Adam-Eve drama depicts life’s seeking an enlarged consciousness… The legend presents them first in what might be called “plant life” or “garden-being” – other legends and symbols dealing with “Cosmic Man” also indicate that he, or life, must be seen first as plant…  To examine man in his original form, one must examine animal life in its first form, in the form of a one-cell creature.  Thus, in his beginning, man must be seen as a one-cell creature, and one fold of the Eden legend tells of the Adam-cell – which is to say, Adam may be seen as a symbol of the simplest form of life, amoeba, for he follows amoeba’s path.

 It is at this point, approaching the human being beginning as amoeba, that we turn aside to briefly examine one of the 20^th century’s greatest inner archeologists, Rudolf Steiner.  The founder of the Waldorf Schools and Biodynamic agriculture among other movements, all of these outer initiatives were based on Steiner’s extensive inner digging.  He called his approach to spiritual investigation Anthroposophy, and defined it as “a path of knowledge to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe.”  He also called Anthroposophy “spiritual science,” and unlike the Biblical writers who sought to put volumes of information in as short a communication as possible (The shape of the legend follows the shape of the brain) and who therefore used legends, Steiner left us with volumes of books and lecture cycles filled with his spiritual scientific research findings.  In his “Cosmic Memory” and “Mystery Knowledge and Mystery Centers” he gives us page upon page of information on how man began as a single celled creature.   Cultural historian William Irwin Thompson has studied Steiner extensively and in his masterful “Coming Into Being” not only describes Steiner’s findings for us, but also clues us in to how the Biblical authors may have come across their “Divine Revelations:”

In his book Cosmic Memory, Rudolf Steiner claims to be able to take us to the edges of history in an archeological excavation that he calls “reading” the akashic record – the etheric image in the structure of space-time that holds the record of the past… the template for registering this crystalline structure is Steiner’s own imagination, and what Steiner “sees” is a negotiable instrument that brings forth a relationship between himself and the akashic record of the collective unconscious… For example, when Steiner talks about the ancient body of man swimming in the sea, we should not picture some comic book Aquaman swimming around in a submarine Atlantis, but the evolution of the cell.  Take this description from “Cosmic Memory:”

“Thereby the likeness of man is in a position to attract certain substances from the environment and to combine them with itself, secreting them again later by means of the repelling forces.  These substances, of course, can only be taken from the animal realm described above, and from the realm of man.  This constitutes a beginning of nutrition.  Thus these first likenesses of man were eaters of animals and men.”

When Steiner uses the word “man” here, one should think of the German word Mensch or, even more generally, of “creature.”  Steiner is describing the cell, the chemotaxis of the amoeba.  We were the cell.  The origin of life is the origin of us.  Steiner’s vision is one in which humans are deeply embedded in the whole of natural history, of the planet and the solar system.  And he’s right… Steiner is an amazing visionary, but if one becomes a fundamentalist follower of his, an Anthroposophist constantly intoning “Der Doktor hat gesagt,” then one destroys the spirit with the letter of literalism.

 

Fundamentalists everywhere!  In that last quoted paragraph, we can simply substitute “Steiner” with “the Bible” and, well, there you have it.  Thus Harold’s warning from our previous post about poetic license.

We will continue to explore Harold’s “Adam as amoeba” idea in our next post on Chapter 4.  Until then, peace…

Jesus’ Messianic Mission

“Prayer for Messiah” by Ghenadie Sontu.

As promised, we now come to the point of exploring the main themes of Harold’s interpretation of Jesus’ mission.  In Gerald Heard’s introduction, he wastes no time in getting to the point…

THE SHINING STRANGER is based upon a revolutionary and, insofar as I am aware, unprecedented interpretation of Jesus’ Messianic mission which Harold develops as the discourse progresses, drawing upon Jesus’ own words and actions to support his thesis.  This interpretation involves the following points:

1. Jesus recognized the Messianic hope to be valid and universal, but misdirected when man looked beyond his individual being to find the Christ (Logos, God-Son) which Jesus saw to be incarnate in every person, revealed through humankind’s unique power of speech and expression of the Word, God, One, I.

2. Jesus realized that until the ancient Messianic doctrines were superseded by a valid, ethical concept of the Christ, of God, and of man, the individual and society would suffer the ravages of Messianic pretension, as well as the curse of Messianic delusion which Jesus suffered but from which he recovered before beginning his ministry, recognizing himself to be no more, no less, than any other human being.

3. Jesus was convinced that until man ceased to look for a Messiah to come and solve all problems, the development of human consciousness would be arrested because man would not seek his “inner kingdom” to find the Christ of himself, the Authority that governs his life and inevitably leads him to become responsible to and for himself as well as a responsible member of society in which truth alone actually governs and reigns, in time destroying whatever is false, spurious, and incompatible with man’s true nature and need.

4. Therefore, Jesus’ purpose was to complete and destroy the Judaic Messianic tradition together with any Messianic concept akin to it through a withering of this idea as the Messianic idea he espoused, the idea of the Christ in everyone, took root and flowered to overshadow prevailing Messianic expectation. He knew exactly what he was doing and was in no sense victimized.

5. Jesus’ mission was to destroy Messianic tradition creatively by making “Israel” and its history a symbol of human personality or consciousness, while making himself a symbol of the Christ in every person which insures his eternal life and the evolution of his consciousness through dealing with his own forces of good and evil which Jesus saw to be equally essential to life and satisfaction in it, but he saw also that each force was in process of regeneration; Jesus made himself a symbol of the Logos in humankind to establish the pattern of the operation of the Christ in Homo sapiens’ evolution from child to man free of destructive impulses by virtue of being fully conscious and completely empathetic, with dominion over himself, his flesh, and his life.

6. The Bible, one body of words encompassing the limits of human consciousness, truth bearer that can dwell always with men and which Jesus knew must be brought into being as a result of his works and his command to his disciples, is itself historical Judaic Messiah.

Pretty provocative stuff, no?  Hopefully some of these ideas are new to you, or if you are familiar with them the approach to them will be new.  Both of these are true of me when I first encountered this work, and I was certainly intrigued enough to delve into the book and explore further.  At this point I must confess that one of the main reasons for this blog is for me to “journal” my own thoughts as I read through the book, and to use the book as a launching pad for journaling thoughts and observations from other momentous works I have read in the past.  I would certainly appreciate any and all comments, and feedback from you, the reader, as there are many ways of understanding, as the Logos expresses itself individually and creatively through each human being.

OK, we’re almost ready to start Chapter 1.  But before we do, my next post will deal with the ground rules Harold sets if we want to take this journey with him.  We’ll examine his view of the historicity of the Gospels, and the importance thereof.  Until then, peace…