Spiral Coils

A few images to meditate upon before reading this post:

 

The same principle is involved in each of these phenomena: a coiling, or spiraling action/motion. These forms are an open secret; the spiraling/coiling movement is the principal of life itself.   This movement appears from the smallest forms of life to the largest, from DNA to galaxies. One must wonder if the entire universe is one constantly rotating, coiling spiral! Science and technology have done a great service in helping us to see both DNA and galaxies with our own eyes so that we may understand and make the spiraling connection between them. But how does religion and spirituality approach these marvels? In her “Palestinian Mystery Play,” Winifred Babcock writes:

It is time for Science to take a deeper look into religious expression.

Is there an ancient and intuitive understanding of DNA-RNA, which takes the shape of a coil, a double-helix, a spiral, and is today known to be the “very stuff” of life? Genesis says that the “play of energy” that leads to the expression of life is “serpent” – a coiling action – involving an “intertwining” code script (the tree of knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life), so that a double helix and spiraling form is basic in energy’s expression.

The Shining Stranger states:

Consider that the real problem of the truth bearer who has realized hidden, inner working and would share it, is how to transmit the information. Before the second or third century B.C., a man devised a symbol to convey his realization that life is involved in a coil and coiling action, which he named Kundalini, the Serpent Power lying at the base of the spine. Did he see in his mind’s eye “something” akin to DNA, the mysterious “coil of life” that seems to be at once the mind and matter of flesh? The symbol, Kundalini, has inspired the Yogi to fantastic manipulations of the flesh. But Jesus said, in effect, that manipulations of the body are futile, for the flesh itself “profiteth nothing.”

And yet, for there to be biological life, flesh/material being is necessary. We will look at the marriage between Spirit and matter in our next installment. 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…

Innate Equality and “The Gift”

My apologies for being away for so long!  Life gets really busy sometimes and before you know it, poof!  Time has kept slipping into the future.  I’ll be more regular in my postings for a good while now – promise!  Now, onto today’s installment…

Genesis 5:1-2 states: “…the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made He him; Male and Female created He them; and blessed them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created.”

About this Harold says…

These words present the bisexual nature of Homo sapiens, the equality of man and woman; but they also suggest that, male or female, each person is as Adam: a body of consciousness through which is expressed a body of his own that he takes to wife, for Adam is joined to his own flesh in Eve.  Thus man cannot separate himself from the desire for a body, or from the desires of his body, on the assumption that life can be divorced from physical manifestation and the need of male and female in Homo sapiens generation to express their sexuality.

We see here that “Adam” poetically represents spirit, the groom, the active principle, while “Eve” represents matter, the bride, the passive principle.  Spirit wedded to matter is that which makes up an individual human being, male or female.  Harold continues…

But Jesus’ listeners did not grasp the poetry of the Adam-Eve legend: humankind wedded each to himself in the beginning, and then each sex to the other.  Nor would they accept his presentation of the equality of the sexes, and so they replied, “Better not to marry at all!”  Jesus answers this plaint, “True, but this truth is not practicable for everyone, it is only for those who have the gift.”

Of course “the gift” refers to those able to abstain from sexual intercourse; eunuchs and all.  Right?  Au contraire, says Harold!  Let’s see what his take is.  Picking up immediately from where the last quote left off he says:

These words [of Jesus referring to “the gift”] do not prohibit the indulgence of sexual desire.  To the contrary, they are utterly permissive.  But they are also practical, for few have the gift to live and love freely.

So there you have it.  Harold sees this gift NOT as the gift of continence, of abstaining from sex, but rather as living and loving freely, without the emotional and social attachments that a sexual relationship in our day and age would usually entail.  In “The Palestinian Mystery Play,” a commentary on “The Shining Stranger,” Winifred Babcock helps explain:

Jesus saw that man’s nature is changing.  In time he will not need the bonds marriage imposes to make him behave responsibly toward the other sex and the children that derive from the union.

“But it’s obvious from the context that Jesus equated ‘the gift’ with being a eunuch!” I can hear you yelling at me through your computer screen.  You have a good point.  Let’s look at the original passage:

10 His disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry.” 11 But he said to them, “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given [who have the gift]. 12 For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.” -Matt. 19:10-12

With verse 12, Harold says…

Jesus then lifts the discussion to another level: continence.  He says that men are born eunuch, are made eunuch, or make eunuch of themselves for the sake of the realm of heaven, which is to say, in response to inner need.  Such continence is to be practiced only when practicable.

Because Harold understands that man “cannot separate himself from…the desires of his body…and the need of male and female in Homo sapiens generation to express their sexuality,” he sees the comments about the eunuchs as the raising of the discussion to another level, not a continuation of Jesus’ previous statement about “the gift.”  While this is another long stretch for me, in the context of Harold’s understanding this is a completely valid interpretation.  I challenge you to meditate on this!

Until next time, peace…