The Judas Factor; Part I

Jesus promised not heaven, but everlasting life. Life must be lived in the material realm which is shared by good and evil. In it they are reconciled through the one measure that both separates and rejoins the two frequencies that constitute light’s “household” or wave-group, providing a boundary for its action.

Preston Harold here reminds us that we don’t follow Jesus to go to heaven, but to gain everlasting life. And just to make sure that we don’t conflate everlasting life with a heaven beyond, he reinforces that there is no manifestation of life without matter. Scripture reinforces this thought in the Book of Revelation where John confesses to us that he saw a new heaven and a new earth, a new type of mind and a new type of body. The two separate frequencies of mind and body, good and evil, have been reconciled and rejoined through the one measure, Christ, who provides the boundary for the new Jerusalem. But the one measure, Christ, also separates. He doesn’t bring peace, but the sword. He sets the 2 against 3 and the 3 against 2. This is where Judas enters the picture.

In the material realm, the second law of thermodynamics reigns supreme – the law that says any physical system left to itself and allowed to distribute its energy in its own way does so in a manner such that entropy increase while the available energy of the system diminishes. These two aspects of the physical realm are dramatized in the strange play between Jesus and Judas.

If one reduces the diminishing effect of the second law to the smallest or simplest operation conceivable, he must show that one iota of the source energy of a system, or one representative of the energy of a system, must be made unavailable, or “lost,” as the cycle of one full operation is completed, or simply when the time has come. At Jesus’ death, the “system” the disciples represent, left to itself, diminishes by one as Judas dies, and an outside source of energy must be incorporated if another full cycle is to be completed.

Harold says St. Paul comes from the outside to fulfill this role, but what about Matthias? We don’t hear anything about Matthias after he is chosen to replace Judas. Regardless, I think we know what Harold is getting at here. And with that we will look forward to continuing our exploration of the Judas factor in the next installment. Until then, peace.

No Better Symbol

We now pick up where we left off with Preston Harold and Valentin Tomberg having a meeting of the minds on the point where the vertical and horizontal planes meet: the cross. Harold continues his exposition…

Jesus could leave no better symbol than the cross to convey His realization of the opposing lines of motion, and of the two energies man is provided with that give rise to a discrete series of possible energies, just as the atom has. He said the Father knows what man has need of – surely the Father knows the perfection of His own matter, knows that man has need of his evil as well as his good if he would have matter of his own, dominion over it.

Harold goes on to show why mankind must employ these opposing forces and experience the inner conflict that besets him by quoting the psalm of David that Jesus invoked while teaching in the temple:

…(Jesus) asked, “How can the scribes say that the Christ is David’s son? David himself said, inspired by the holy Spirit,

The Lord said to my Lord,

‘Sit at my right hand,

till I make your enemies a

footstool for your feet.’

David here calls him Lord. Then how can he be his son?”

To understand the poetry one must understand the symbolic words. Jesus defined a man’s enemies to be of his own household – thus the opposing forces are original endowment. Jesus says that earth is the footstool of God – footstool must be defined as matter. Therefore, the prophecy lies at the root of matter and man’s relationship to it: to the motions he is making within himself in sequence to the motions God made within Himself to bring forth One in material being.

The prophecy appears to say that alone in all creation God, ALL, has become His own residue: THE Lord which is One-whole, itself finished of inner conflict and therefore unequal to further divisive action on or within itself. Whereas the other, my Lord, is One equal to self-division or self-divisive action, and for this reason they are not now precisely the same. But in a corresponding position, they maintain a balance in one sphere until a new arrangement in the other sphere is completed – until the expressive force, my Lord, expends its own destructive potential and comes to express itself as identity in matter of its own…

Life to be, must express itself in matter. Therefore, a concept of crucial importance is presented in David’s poetry: man’s prime unconscious motivation is to grasp matter of his own. But Jesus taught that it is not the “stuff” itself man must seek – rather, it is understanding of it. The truth of its being is the truth of man’s being, for he is made of it. When he has dominion over it he will have dominion over himself – when my Lord becomes as The Lord, presently active in perfect matter of His own, life begins to be everlasting, expressed as matter under the dominion of full consciousness, the kingdom is come, one’s will is done in earth.

It is only through the cross that Jesus gains dominion over His own matter, arising on the other side of death in His resurrection body; a body of perfect matter under the dominion of His full consciousness. Until next time, peace.

The Serpent, Science, and Religion

It’s time for us to step aside and take a deeper look at the serpent and it’s role in the human story. To do so I will quote at length from Valentin Tomberg’s magnum opus, Meditations on the Tarot. This is from his meditation on the ninth major Arcanum, “The Hermit:”

…the serpent of Genesis “who was the most cunning of all living creatures” (Genesis iii, 1),…aspiration is the expansion of consciousness in the horizontal (“the fields”). The ultimate aim of the logic of cunning, that of the serpent, is not to become God but to become “like God.” “To become like” – this is the essence of cunning and is also the meaning of scientific faith, the scientific creed, which is at the same time only a paraphrase and development of the promise of the serpent: “your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil”(Genesis iii, 5).

To open your eyes, to be like gods, knowing good and evil – this is the great Arcanum of empirical science. This is why it is dedicated to the cause of enlightenment (“open your eyes,” for the horizontal); this is why it aspires to absolute power for man (“be like gods”); and this is why, lastly, it is intrinsically amoral or morally neutral (“knowing good and evil”).

Does it deceive us? No. It opens our eyes in fact, and thanks to it we see more in the horizontal; it gives us power over Nature in fact, and makes us sovereign over Nature; it is useful to us in fact, no matter whether for good or for evil. Empirical science in no way deceives us. The serpent has not lied – on the plane where its voice and promise were audible.

On the plane of horizontal expansion (“the fields” of Genesis) the serpent certainly keeps its promise…but at what price with regard to other planes, and with regard to the vertical?

What is the price of scientific enlightenment, this “opening of the eyes” in the horizontal, i.e. for the quantitative aspect of the world? It is at the price of the obscuration of its qualitative aspect…Science reduces quality to quantity…It [uses] formula[s] expressing quantitative factors…of something deprived of all quality.

But here’s a wrench in Tomberg’s spokes. Although he acknowledges the serpent’s honesty in regards to the horizontal, biological evolutionary plane, he speaks as if the serpent has always been only in league with the horizontal. Yet the Genesis story implies the serpent’s stature used to be vertical, upright. And the serpent’s promise was audible on the plane of the vertical, while Adam and Eve were still in full relationship with God. It is only after imparting it’s knowledge via the Knowledge of the Tree of Good and Evil that it became the serpent that we know today, “cursed” to only existence on the horizontal plane (“eating dust”).

The serpent wasn’t just cunning, but was wise. Even Jesus himself told his followers to be wise as serpents. Yet the serpent’s cunning/wisdom seems to be only self-referential, not being able to reach beyond it’s own needs. That’s why Jesus tempers his saying by finishing with the injunction to be innocent as doves. So a valid interpretation overlooked by Tomberg is that the serpent makes a monumental sacrifice for all of humanity. Without the serpent’s “gift,” we would never have inherited the values and ethics of the vertical plane. Yes, friends, the story is a bit more complicated than Tomberg would have us understand. It would seem for there to be an expansion of consciousness in the horizontal, it is necessary for the vertical to be imparted. It is this point that Preston Harold seems to overlook as well in his comment from our previous post where he said, “But man, the only true biped, posed himself uprightly- alone in all the world, threw himself transverse the ‘natural’ line, became a vertical being, in truth measuring more than he was and more than evil measures.” Nowhere does Harold mention how man posed himself uprightly.

Yet both Harold and Tomberg speak the truth as to our current predicament, as our journey back to the source must always begin right where we are. And so we return to Tomberg:

What should one do, confronted with the choice between science and religion?…is it necessary to choose? Does it not suffice to give each of these two aspirations its place – not that which they arrogate to themselves, but that which is their proper place?

In fact, if there is not a religious empirical science or a scientific religion, there are religious scientists and scientific believers. In order to be a religious scientist or a scientific believer honestly, i.e. without compromising one’s conscience, it is necessary to add to the definite horizontal aspiration the definite vertical aspiration, i.e. to live under the sign of the cross:

It is at this point where “The Shining Stranger” enters the picture. Not only does “The Shining Stranger” postulate that science and religion must work in tandem, it reaches beyond and claims that scientific striving has already “crossed” over the strictly horizontal realm and found itself smack dab in the middle of exploring Jesus’ Kingdom of God, itself the very same quantum realm that science has been attempting to come to terms with since the early 20^th century. In other words, the serpent of materialistic science has been crucified on the cross of matter and now must come to terms with its resurrection. The question for humanity now is will it heed the prophetic truth proclaimed by Tomberg, Harold, and those akin to them who had eyes to see and ears to hear? In other words, “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on the earth?”

Until next time, peace.

Moses and Khidr

Continuing from our last post, we now go into the psychic parallels which arise from the science of light. Preston Harold continues…

Thus, in psychic parallel, one might say that as a person comes into each life experience, the measure of good and evil he must or can expend is determined by the measure of the opposing frequencies associated in his ego-group, and there is one measure in him that can act as (+) or (-), to give or to receive, and it terminates each action, providing also the boundary to his life-experience when his capacity to exert constructive and destructive force is both fulfilled – that is, both expended and received to the precise extent premeasured for this only life experience. How he fulfills this measure is a variable, but with each move some of both forces is expended and received – the man is “salted”: he gains a measure of immunity to evil-doing because the sum of his memory-images, and thus his capacity to act and react to any stimuli or the suggestion of it, is altered and his empathy turns him out of certain paths, into others.

Most of the time it is difficult for us to see the reason or sense in any evil. We usually equate all evil to be of the same measure; to transgress one part of the law is to transgress the whole. But the wise among us are able to see so-called evils in a larger, wider context as is illustrated in the legend of Moses and Khidr:

That a creative process is involved in much that appears on the surface to be purely evil is projected in the legend of Moses and Khidr which Dr. von Franz presents in discussing the aspect of the unconscious that Jung called the “shadow.” She says:

The ethical difficulties that arise when one meets one’s shadow are well described in the 18^th Book of the Koran. In this tale Moses meets Khidr (“the Green One” or “first angel of God”) in the desert. They wander along together, and Khidr expresses his fear that Moses will not be able to witness his deeds without indignation. If Moses cannot bear with him and trust him, Khidr will have to leave. Presently Khidr scuttles a fishing boat of some poor villagers. Then, before Moses’ eyes, he kills a handsome young man, and finally he restores the fallen wall of a city of unbelievers. Moses cannot help expressing his indignation, and so Khidr has to leave him. Before his departure, however, he explains the reasons for his actions: By scuttling the boat he actually saved it for its owners because pirates were on their way to steal it. As it is, the fishermen can salvage it. The handsome young man was on his way to commit a crime…By restoring the wall, two pious young men were saved from ruin because their treasure was buried under it. Moses, who had been so morally indignant saw now (too late) that his judgement had been too hasty….Looking at this story naively, one might assume that Khidr is the lawless, capricious, evil shadow of pious, law-abiding Moses. But this is not the case. Khidr is much more the personification of some secret creative actions of the Godhead. 

The legend would seem to say that one is short-sighted when he turns his back on humankind or God because he cannot reconcile within his concept of morality life’s apparently witless, useless evil.

Job (oil on canvas) by Bonnat, Leon Joseph Florentin

In this sense one recalls the Book of Job, one of humanity’s oldest books asking one of humanity’s most important questions: why do we suffer? Good and evil can certainly be relative when the big picture is seen. This is why Jesus tells us not to judge. It is with this thought in mind that we continue on to our next installment. Until then, peace.

Evil’s Quota

In order for love to thrive in its fullness, it must travel a difficult road:

By his presence a man creates a situation: poses the possibility of exerting or receiving the force of destructive or constructive potential. Is this an accidental creation? This question is not to project that the helpless victim of disaster or crime and his grieving relatives must suffer because of like suffering imposed upon another, somehow, somewhere, sometime. Rather it is to say that man’s quota of violent, destructive potential must be expended before Love can complete itself, can complete him. This quota is the same for every person, for he is no more, no less, than one and can but contain its measure, expend this measure, receive this measure. What then, is one’s measure of good, evil – the two major influences or ideas pervading the consciousness of man, causing him to express the energy of both?

Good and evil cards on a gold scale.

Both positive and negative forces pervade this world. Both are necessary for life’s manifestation. It is here that we constantly fool ourselves, thinking that we must do all we can to destroy or overcome evil. But Jesus tells us not to pull up tares, because in so doing we will pull up the good wheat with them. Both must grow together until the harvest which will be the appropriate time for separation. There is obvious moral evil we should stand up against and do our best to overcome, but we fool ourselves if we think we can in someway rid the world of all evil. If we do so we rid the world of ourselves! So what is the balance between good and evil, positive and negative that is necessary for life’s manifestation.

In the physicists’ wave theory, one finds a division of energy in the frequencies associated in a light wave-group which moves like a particle localized somewhere within the area of the storm of space. A boundary to the wave-group “is provided by interference of waves of slightly different length, so that while reinforcing one another at the center they cancel one another at the boundary.” As example, in the light wave theory one finds, roughly speaking, that 1001 of the shorter, interfering, limiting waves of a wave-group occupy the same distance as 1000 of the longer waves. The numbers in themselves have no significance…274 and 273 (would work), for example. For the sake of simplicity it may be said that one frequency has a measure more in count than the other. The two frequencies are equally essential to bear light energy.

Although the frequencies are not equal, they occupy the same distance, are equal to each other in the sense that they are equal to sharing the same “house,” the wave-group that acts like a particle. To call one of the frequencies good and the other evil is pointless. Most important is their difference that allows for interaction to provide a boundary for the wave-group’s action; the one measure of difference may be seen as more: (+), good, or as less: (-), evil, or vice versa, depending on how one views the situation.

Could we think of the wheat and the tares as the different length light waves? If so, then Jesus saw both as needed to bear light energy. No wonder he told his disciples to let the “field” be, and no wonder Preston Harold claims that it’s pointless to invoke good and evil as descriptors. Could the boundary at which they cancel one another out be the harvest Jesus spoke of? Both wavelengths are necessary to create this boundary. In our next post we will explore more of the psychic parallels of this science of light. Until then, peace…

Reversing the Rules

Preston Harold shows us how empathy aligns with religious thought. He says:

The effect of empathy and its meaning to life may be likened to Tao: Tao is obscured when you fix your eye on little segments of existence only…” but when Tao is grasped universally, “Without law or compulsion men [will] dwell in harmony.” In individual terms, empathy is realizing on one’s own being the Golden Rule. Empathy is Jesus’ new commandment as an act in one’s own soul – love one another, love the Lord your God with your whole mind, heart, and soul, and your neighbor as yourself. Only through empathy is it possible to step into another’s shoes without displacing him or foisting oneself upon him or losing one’s own precious identity; empathy not only makes this possible, it makes it mandatory.

Mandatory?! Maybe that’s why Jesus couches empathy’s impetus as a commandment. It seems ridiculous to me to make loving someone a commandment that must be fulfilled, but through genuine non-judgmental empathy a slight crack in the door may open that invites me to walk through.

When empathy exists, one experiences in his own being what is happening to another and understands that another suffers whatever is happening to oneself. Empathy is direct, involuntary. It cannot be vicariously expressed because it is borne from out the boundless deeps of a man and, to borrow words from Alfred Lord Tennyson, rises, “too full for sound or foam, but such a tide as moving seems asleep,” and with certainty “turns again home” whatever one does or witnesses.

And here Harold will explain how empathy is born out of the interplay between good and evil:

Because empathy is begotten only of the wholeness of experiencing good and evil involved in any decision, situation, or act, it exerts an incomprehensible power – which is to say, unconsciously it is expressed and it cannot be called into action. Because it is an unconsciously made automatic response, through it man gains freedom from having to make a choice between what appears to be good and what appears to be evil, for his response is both unconsciously tempered and in accord with the reality of the situation. Huxley says: “The fullest freedom is the expression of an inner compulsion of our being, of a choice, which we have come to feel as inevitably necessary…In general, once we manage to ‘see things steadily and see them whole,’ the choice is made for us.”

And with this one can understand Jesus’ breaking of the religious “rules” in order to meet people where they are, with their immediate hopes and needs. Empathy can be summed up in one phrase of Jesus that echoes the Tao quote above and bears along with it huge implications.  Jesus grasped the Tao and stated: “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Until next time, peace.

Love and the Authority-Ego

Through the cycle of life and death we come to know the fullness of love. Up through the “twisted tree of knowledge of good and evil” our Authority-Ego within leads the way.

In rebirth, one partakes of love’s spirit…He is reclothed in the flesh of God, virgin flesh, that he may live again to learn the cost of evil doing and through learning, be redeemed. In death the Authority-Ego divests man of his garment: it is this psychic factor that sheds one’s blood for the remission of the many sins of his ego-group; it is this factor that determines life or death…Love itself, which is his Authority-Ego, resurrects and holds inviolate in the id those of the ego-group whose own expression of love has redeemed them; and love resurrects also those that must live again unto the resurrection of damnation until their forces of good and evil are recast into a nonmaterial responsive factor that will prevent abusive exercise of power, and into the pure or purified evil that matter in itself must be seen to be; and in each rebirth love brings to life something of its whole being that has yet to partake of the tree of knowing.

What might this “nonmaterial responsive factor that will prevent abuse of power” be? Preston Harold will ultimately turn once again to William Wordsworth for a poetic description:

Thus, into a new world of being, the Authority-Ego brings its love of life, the ego-group restated: “he was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” In time, as consciousness comes to the ego-group, the voice of worldly experience is heard: conscience sounds its note from one’s subconscious depths. And then, the superego is formed of that element in the id that is responsive to truth and can carry a word of it into the world, as the Authority-Ego “elects” them, giving to these the “keys” to the kingdom within. Through the superego, love speaks, and makes its presence felt in:

…that blessed mood

In which the burden of the mystery,

In which the heavy and the weary weight

Of all this unintelligible world,

Is lightened: -that serene and blessed mood,

In which the affections gently lead us on,-

Until, the breath of this corporeal frame

And even the motion of our human blood

Almost suspended, we are laid asleep

In body, and become a living soul…

Here Wordsworth describes an “out of body” experience, a body-free state of rapture; a “nonmaterial responsive factor.” As we become a living soul, there is no need for abuse of power, no need to flaunt ourselves, just increasing knowledge and assurance of blessedness. But why does this knowledge have to be hard earned? Why can’t God simply and totally reveal Himself and our full human nature to us? Let’s ponder this in our next installment. Until then, peace.

A Reason to Be

The goal of our existence is not to become “a good person” but to understand and know love. But to know love, one must participate in a paradox. Preston Harold opines:

Once man had partaken of the fruit of knowing, consciousness stood naked, until clothed in the flesh of God, in the “skins” of the animal world, and in this flesh the pain of knowing good and evil, the pain of knowing love, is borne. To know love, man must know pain. Love incorporates a degree of agonia. Pain, patheia, tends to be pathological. But pain agonia, or the word agony incorporates in its meaning: contest, celebration, violent striving, sudden delight – it involves a “wrestling” that blesses, an intensification of meaningful being that allows it to be joyfully accepted.

In terms of violent striving, one is reminded of Jesus’ words, “The kingdom of Heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force.” In terms of a wrestling that blesses, one is reminded of Jacob’s wrestling with the angel and refusing to let go until he is blessed.

Harold continues by opening a door into the secret of good and evil…

The fruit of the tree of life…could not be partaken of, after knowledge of good and evil had been incorporated in his consciousness and being, until life had taught him the secret of these opposing forces and had attenuated through many generations the virulence of both. For the secret of good and evil, insofar as human experience can determine it, appears to be that good turns into evil in the maximum expression of good, and evil turns into good in the minimum expression of its force. For example, utter surfeit that gives rise to loss of appetite or desire is little if any better than hunger or extreme want. Want (evil) must be attenuated so that it cannot express beyond periodic and diversified desire; surcease from want (good) must be attenuated so that it cannot express beyond periodic and diversified satisfaction. Both good and evil must be recast in life to make everlasting life endurable and to be desired.

And so let us be thankful that love is beyond good and evil:

Up through the strange, twisted tree of knowledge that turns good to evil and evil to good, man must grow, led by the spirit of attraction first to the one idea and then to the other, to become neither good nor evil, but divinely human – as love is. Although love and life may be corrupted as lust expresses itself, though one’s “sins be as scarlet,” love’s returning washes them “white as snow.”

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.

Error, Forgiveness, and Resurrection

“The hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.” John 5:28

Preston Harold tells us that the “end of the world” is subjective and comes for each person at the moment of his or her death. But there are many “small deaths” that occur before that:

…the conscious domain [is] peopled with countless images of oneself and others, images born of one’s experience with them. Thus, within this domain man lives a world of lives, and each day that passes leaves a grave in the subconscious, a self-of-himself has expired.

Notice in the gospel passage quoted above that

Jesus does not say, “shall hear MY voice.” He says, “shall hear HIS voice,” and thus He is speaking as symbol of the Son in man. His words present the concept that those of the ego-group in bondage to sin and error are returned to consciousness unto the resurrection of damnation in this domain until they spend themselves of their destructive potential and grasp truth as it works in life. Thus, the “lusts of your father ye will do.” But in the process truth disciplines – it does not destroy. In the legend God does not destroy Cain. ALL that is given man is precious – even his evil. Nothing of IT is to be lost. The resurrection of good AND evil in man presages the build up of something of value to be realized in time to come as evil’s destructive potential is spent.

Forgiveness is the key to expending the fullness of our evil:

Jesus says that the Son in man is the Self-factor that will lead him to reap in kind his sin and error. Thus, each punishes himself. But Jesus proclaims also that the power to forgive is vested in the Son, and that one’s return on the bread he casts upon life’s waters is hundred-fold. He saw that in reality a man cannot forgive a brother-being without forgiving himself a like measure of the evil he has done. As though the poet senses this, Goethe writes in Iphigenia:

Life teaches us

To be less strict with others and ourselves:

Thou’lt learn the lesson, too.

Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. Amen. Until next time, peace.