Learning Experiences

Why does our knowledge of love’s fullness have to be so painful to obtain? Why doesn’t God completely reveal to us our full nature?

By giving His power, the power of the word, to man, God destroyed His absolute power to reveal Himself and the secrets of creation. But before man appeared on the scene, the secrets had been told in mammon – in the temporal – which reflects them oppositely and truly, as though in a mirror, itself material, a form that is real is seen, albeit its “mirror-image” is not its reality in being. Thus, truth-bearer must make unto himself a friend of mammon, “unrighteous” as mammon is, and he must reveal the working of the flesh, offensive and error-provoking though his words may be.

Being part of the material realm limits us in coming to full knowledge of the reality and fullness of God. If we want LIFE, we must deal with the limitations and consequences thereof. The Apostle Paul says as much in his letter to the Romans:

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits in eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Rom. 8:18-21) 

According to Paul here, we were not created by God already perfect, then fell, and now are in the process of regaining paradise. Rather, we have been subjected to futility from the beginning by our creator! Why? In hope that we will come to know the freedom of being children of God (being set free from slavery to mere mammon). It is the only way we can know love for ourselves. In other words, the Eden story isn’t a time-based story; it is rather an eternal happening, goading and guiding us into a better future. The story is a “trap” God sets for us, striving for the “beginning,” which in eternity is also our “completion.”

And here Preston Harold sounds like a modern day Paul:

Mammon is the mirror, and perforce the mirror lies – for it, itself, is not what it reflects in its being or as its being. God, First Cause, love, life itself, is not matter as revealed in mammon; God…is revealed through mammon’s examination to be “spirit,” or a type of “energy” unknown and unknowable in physical terms…. The reality underlying the world of appearances cannot be reduced to physical terms, it is only indirectly knowable as reflected in mammon’s mirror, and as it is intuitively experienced by man…. But in mammon’s mirror, in evil, or in pure matter, or in life’s temporal history with all its evil-doing, the image of good and its working may be beheld. This is to say, there is evidence that life is building into man a factor that will in time deliver him from evil without robbing him of its desirable aspects, and that this factor is in truth the saving grace of life.

Amen! Until next time, 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.

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

Back on the topic of language and communication in the Tower of Babel legend, Preston Harold takes us on an evolutionary journey:

The Babel legend deals also with another aspect of man and the development of consciousness – it indicates the nature of the change evolutionary processes effected as man moved from his preceding state to Homo sapiens generation, and it points to the way he must evolve to meet his future. The Genesis legend says that man must…create words. But the legend also indicates that communication was established in the beginning, and in the dramas of Eden and Noah’s ark there is a broader sense of communication than follows thereafter:

In the days when the whole earth had one language and one vocabulary, there was a migration from the east… 

These words suggest an absolute means of communication, one that was effortless insofar as conscious striving was concerned. Only telepathy or clairvoyance correspond to this. The Babel legend deals with Homo sapiens’ infant being, reflected today in the infant being of any man.

If the Noah legend tells of the birthing process of the human being, what comes next as a person matures is the development of communication and interaction. This is the part of human development which the Babel story conveys to us.

Mothers and their newborns have a means of communication in which words aren’t needed; intuition, gut feelings, premonitions, not to mention the obvious cries for food! Although this non-language based form of interaction is appropriate for a time, it is ultimately wanting for the requirements of humankind:

Unrestricted as telepathy appears to be, it is insufficient to meet man’s need to pass along to the next generation what he gains in knowledge and realizes to be truth. Only language, words, can meet this need. The demand to understand words and to communicate his understanding in words is put upon the child as he passes from infancy to childhood – above all, he must identify himself as a man. A transition must take place within him. The Babel legend would say that some inward power speaks, and the one word it could say that would confound the babble of the childish ego-group and start it along the path of conscious striving the one word that would make all men strangers even to themselves, is “I” – the seed of Enos, mortal, flowering in the articulated vocable, the word, its capacity, content, and meaning is unknown.

So what about this moment that confounds us, the moment when we realize that we are an “I” and not a “we?” Dr. Franz Winkler says:

“In his second or third year, every sane child undergoes an inner experience of utmost significance, an experience which radically changes his mental life. From that moment on he ceases to refer to himself in the third person and conceives of “I.” Some endowed with an unusual memory will recall this event later and will consequently not easily be swayed by philosophers and psychologists who deny the reality of selfhood.”

Harold begins to wrap things up for us:

The concept offered here is that when something within man and beyond his consciousness sounded through him, destroying his pre-Homo sapiens means of communication, the forces of extrasensory perception began to be dispersed, as were the tower’s builders, and this drama is repeated in the life of the child today… The Babel Tower legend suggests…that man moved away from his old means of communication, that he is still on the move, his development not to be arrested by any social structure he contrives.

But wait, is this all? Is there no room for any development of the mind in the area of communication with one another? Harold will end his wrap up by looking ahead:

But it must be pointed out that mental and spiritual powers rise in a spiral – ESP appears now to be returning in a form refined, for at the height of modern man’s intellectual powers he is apt to experience intuitive prompting, a sort of inward clairvoyance, that vastly enhances his mental reach. Jesus, himself, personifies the return of the power as empathy grows and intellect comes full flower.

And as a matter of fact, as we will explore later in this blog, for Preston Harold this mind power is essential if we are to understand Jesus’ miracles and resurrection.

Oh, and before we go, one last lesson from our story…

The Babel legend expresses a noble intellectual ideal – the fallacy is that not even Nimrod is named responsible, for it begins, “They said,” so that responsibility does not come to rest anywhere, or upon anyone engaged in the gigantic group effort. The legend says that something in man prohibits the completion of any irresponsible effort to solve any problem or reach any goal. In Eden, in the beginning, man is human and is given dominion over all other life because he was made to be responsible for self and acts. Trying to know by eating any fruit represents a thoughtless, mechanistic effort to achieve life’s goal automatically and irresponsibly. The Eden legend says such effort will fail – and the Babel legend confirms the dictum.

Until next time, peace…

 

 

 

 

From Seth to Jesus

The third offspring of Adam and Eve is the oft overlooked Seth.  Of Seth Eve says, “God has appointed for me another child instead of Abel, because Cain killed him.” So essentially Seth is Abel’s replacement in the legend.  Preston Harold says

If one elects to tell the story of evolution in terms of the Genesis legend, he cannot overlook Seth, meaning compensation, replacement seed, third son of Adam-Eve, his life paralleling Cain’s in the wilderness.  From Seth come the beings the legend calls truly human for “to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos (meaning mortal); then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.”

From an evolutionary viewpoint, what would Seth have been like?

Seth, in Adam’s own image and likeness, must have inherited nakedness, must have been an unspecialized omnivore, who needed tool and weapon; but to triumph in the evolutionary play, he must have a superior brain, or cortex, and a superior power such as speech is.

Current thoughts on who along the chain of man’s evolution Seth represents are not totally agreed upon and more time will be required to come to terms accepted by the majority of anthropologists.  But Genesis does tell us a bit more about him.  Our author continues…

Although the Genesis legend indicates that man is Seth’s child, it does indicate also that there was a crossing of Cain’s progeny and Seth’s: the type called by the name Lamech, meaning wild man, is in the line of both Cain and Seth.  Enoch, teacher, appears both as son of Cain and son of Jared, descendant of Seth.

It is here that we run into the first “end of creation,” as Lamech begets Noah.   Genesis tells us that Noah was “perfect in his generations,” apparently steering clear of Nephilim, or “giant” genetics, which resulted in “great wickedness” and “hearts and thoughts set on evil continually in the earth.”

Noah, meaning rest, may be seen to represent Cro-Magnon man, for his progeny take over the earth.  The legend indicates that in the Noah type or Cro-Magnon man there was awareness of mortal error in shedding human blood, in eating human flesh, and that this type man developed into a great hunter of the beasts so beautifully depicted by some ancient Nimrod on the walls of the Cave of Lascaux.

So how do we get from Seth to Jesus?  Harold ruminates

According to the legend, Seth’s progeny, adulterated by Cain-type genes, came to rest in the Noah type.  Man’s brain and chin were there, in evolution’s play compensating him for lack of a coat, and for lack of a true killer instinct which mankind at large does not unanimously possess.  Man, however, has not come through the years uninvolved in Cain’s crime of brother-murder.  The legend says men bear Cain’s trace – Cainan, meaning acquisition, appears on the family tree but on it there is no trace of Abel – purely carnivorous? – whose name means transitoriness.  The legend says that all races evolved from an ancestral type in whose genes lay the specialness man exhibits, making all humankind brothers, equals in being.  This truth Jesus sought to establish.  In His words, one confronts man’s original endowment: the kingdom of God within him.  The Eden legend may be trying to say that the garden man must tend is within himself – was so from the beginning.

Until next time, peace…

Male and Female – A Balancing Act

As mentioned in our last post, the human being shares much in common with his insect friends.  But at a certain point he must deviate to tread the path of “irrationality” that is his destiny.  How might this deviation come about?  What roles do the male and female play?  Our esteemed author asks:

In the insect kingdom subordination of all else to survival of the species leads to enthronement and enslavement of the female while manhood becomes a mockery, as with the social bees where the queen must murder if necessary to secure her throne, killing her mate in the act of fertilization.  What biological turn could work to set both sexes free of an insects life by “making a man” of the male? 

Harold wonders if it might be Cro-Magnon man that reveals the deviation.  Why?  Because in Cro-Magnon the female was physically much smaller than the male, which meant her brain was probably not quite as efficient.  He ruminates:

Upon her shoulders the whole responsibility for the social order and survival of the species could not rest, as it does upon the queen bee and her like in the insect’s world.  Perhaps by evolving away from equality in physical stature ancestral female induced ancestral male to participate directly and share the responsibility that knowledge imposes, even as Eve did in Eden – Adam’s participation and shared responsibility are points upon which the drama turns.

So in Harold’s view, the female decreases so the male may increase.  Some may reflect that history shows the male may have “increased” beyond a reasonable balance to the point where females have often been viewed and/or treated as second class, subjugated citizens.  Absolutely.  And yet the image of God is male/female equally.  With that in mind, Preston Harold reassesses something he said in the previous quote and sees the female now rising to take her appropriate place at the table:

Certainly, woman lost her physical and social equality long ago, but now the female is gaining in stature and she bids fair to gain equal status on the social level.  It is difficult to believe that there has ever been a time when in actuality the female’s brain was not as efficient as the male’s, because woman carries the heaviest part of the load of bearing life, as the legend states Eve must do, and this responsibility must tend to sharpen her wits.  The Eden legend indicates that Eve’s was the questing mind.

So where does this leave us?

The quality of the female mind versus the male mind always has been and no doubt will be for some time to come debatable: there is the question of ways and means of opportunity for expression, the question of the female mind bringing to bear upon the male mind, and the part woman has played in bringing to life the reward of mental effort, civilization… Homo sapiens cultural development allowed him to adapt to widely varying environments, but this serves only to present the deeper mystery of the human mind, male and female, which led mankind in time to state the Golden Rule.  Man’s ability to learn returns one to the mystery of his brain which, in Arthur Koestler’s words, is an “evolutionary novelty…quite out of proportion with the demands of his natural environment.”

A mystery indeed.  Until next time, peace…

Leaving the Nest

The human being is driven by irrational desires to push the body and mind to the limits constantly.  Who hasn’t heard the inquiry, “Why  would a person want to climb Mt. Everest?,” followed by the answer, “Because it’s there.”  Even great personal risk cannot inhibit the human spirit’s thirst for knowledge and discovery…

The Eden legend says a “serpent” induced Eve to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, saying, “Ye shall not surely die…,” and she gave of it to Adam… the important point is that neither the threat of death nor the promise of life influenced Eve – it was her “irrational” desire to know that led her to accept this food: the fruit was desired to make one wise….ancestral-man began to be a thinking creature early in the day of his being and thought irrationally enough to risk death to gain freedom from ignorance though he was well provided for in his bondage.  

Man’s irrational desire to know leads to his having to work.  He leaves his parents home and strikes out on his own.  But where does he learn his skills to survive and fend for himself?  Harold ruminates:

Man’s life changes completely as it shifts from Eden to the ground of this world wherin work, now seen to be his saving grace, has been imposed on him…. Who taught him to work?  Did he learn from the ants – oldest cultivators of the soil and keepers of flocks, making war and capturing slaves, suggesting human beings – pyramid, apartment house, and tunnel builders that they are?  Man appears to possess many of their instincts, and yet he is not of them. 

 Irrationally, man keeps on seeking more than survival; irrationally, he still thinks he would rather his species die than survive in a new type of society resembling all too closely an old, old ant heap.  He cannot function as a human being without love…Eve’s act precipitated ancestral-man’s expulsion from a gardener’s job in a world that knew not love and hung only upon the idea of survival. 

Once work outside paradise becomes a reality, what roles do the female and the male play to survive?  We will explore that in our next post.  Until then, peace…

Death: It’s all Volvox’s Fault!

Do you know what Volvox is?  According to the Princeton University website “Volvox is a genus of chlorophytes, a type of green algae. It forms spherical colonies of up to 50,000 cells. They live in a variety of freshwater habitats, and were first reported by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek in 1700. Volvox developed its colonial lifestyle 200 million years ago.”  And According to Harold, Volvox is the key to understanding death and the role it plays in life:

The chain of life moves from unsexed, potentially immortal amoeba to multicelled creatures engaging in sexual reproduction and subject to death – so, too, does the Eden legend.  In their beginning, Adam-Eve may be seen as symbol of a multicelled individual which, like Volvox, cannot be decisively placed in the plant kingdom or in the animal kingdom.  In Volvox’s beginning it is more plantlike, but Leeuwenhoek, who first described it, “did not know that after a few generations have been vegetatively reproduced by the process he observed there comes a generation that will produce eggs which must be fertilized by sperm before they can develop.”  Volvox, like Adam-Eve, brought natural death as well as sex into the world.  Apparently, death is the price life must pay to become sexed.

One might ask why this is so.  The great American naturalist, Joseph Wood Krutch, approached this question.  With keen insight he tells us, “Off hand most of us would…say that sex is necessary to reproduction…. But as every biologist knows…it isn’t.   Its biological function is the mixing of heredities, not reproduction.  Indeed, we might say that what it actually does is not permit but prevent ‘reproduction’ – if by that you mean complete duplication.”

 Harold seizes on this quote and goes on to explore what Krutch has to say concerning Volvox:

 Krutch says, “Once you had invented the differentiation of the sexes you had started on the way to poetry as well as to rich variability…” for only mortal creatures evolved; and “if there had never been any such thing as sexuality evolution would have had so little variation to work with that today we all might still be protozoa – or at least some sort of very simple animal.”  Krutch says he assumes that the biologists are right “when they tell me that Volvox, having got as far as it did, seems to have got no farther.  Perhaps some other creature independently paralleled his inventions – which would make the whole thing at least twice as remarkable.”  One senses that he feels a kindredship between this bit of life and man.  His words, “we might all still be protozoa,” show that man thinks of his ancestral forms in human terms – and in these terms legend tells the story.

Adam is the Genesis legend “code name” for amoeba.  Adam-Eve is the  “code name” for Volvox.  This is how sacred scriptures begged to be approached; poetically and allegorically.  Looking beyond the letter for the spirit. Until next time, peace…