

Grow More Loving

Copyright © 2015

Terminal Moraine, LLC and Lawrence Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

Intro by T. M. Ganim

Cover by Jeanine Henning

Formatting by Maureen Cutajar

ISBN-13: 978-1984123329

ISBN-10: 1984123327

Contents

Introduction

Sailing the Same Sea

No Where

ET

Earth

Magic and Such

Garden of Eden

One Flood

Guardian Family Gods

Labrador

Ainu

Aboriginal

Peruvian

Native American

Minoan Crete

Indo-Aryans

Mesopotamian God Tammuz

Gilgamesh

Hindu

Babylonia

Harappan

Sargon the Great

Aztec

Egypt

Shang Dynasty

Zoroaster and Zoroasterism

Israel

Olmec

Zhou Dynasty

Greece

Axial Age

Buddha

Jainism

Kongzi

Shinto

Lao Tzu

Buddhism

Taoism

Attis

Zhuangzi

Lung-Kung-Sun

Virgil's Aeneid

Pagan Tradition

Feast of the Unvanquished Sun

Yahweh in Rome

Jupiter (aka Zeus) in Rome

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Yang Hsiung

Philo of Alexandria

Soters and Saviors

Apollonius of Tyana

Jesus of Nazareth

Christianity

Seneca

Epictetus

Pausanius

Marcus Aurelius

Lucian of Samosata

Sextus Empiricus

Gnosticism

Mayan

Plotinus

Mani

Neo-Platonic

Augustine of Hippo

Pelagius

Proclus

Pseudo-Dionysius

Zhiyi

Muhammad

Islam

Cahokia Mound Builders

Ghaylan al-Dimasqi

Sankara

Germanic and Norse Mythology

Neo-Confucianism

Abu'l-Hosain al-Nuri

Zen

Shao Yung

Jetsun Milarepa

Peter Abelard

Zhu Xi

Maimonides

Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit

Inca

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

Thomas Aquinas

Moshe ben Shem-Tov

Meister Eckhart

Alighieri Dante

Duns Scotus

Jan Van Ruysbroeck

Marsilo Ficino

Kabir

Martin Luther

Michel de Montaigne

Miguel de Cervantes

Jakob Boehme

René Descartes

Benedict Spinoza

Matsua Basho

Emanuel Swedenborg

Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire

Gerhard Tersteegen

Deism

Ben Franklin

Thomas Reid

David Hume

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Immanuel Kant

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi

J. W. Goethe

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

William Blake

Friedrich von Schiller

Johann Gottlieb Fichte

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

William Wordsworth

Ludwig van Beethoven

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Friedrich Schelling

Mary Rotch

Arthur Schopenhauer

Percy Bysshe Shelley

John Keats

Thomas Carlyle

Amos Bronson Alcott

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ludwig Feuerbach

Edgar Allan Poe

Abraham Lincoln

Charles Darwin

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Jules Lequier

Henry David Thoreau

Walt Whitman

Mary Baker Eddy

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Matthew Arnold

Thomas H. Huxley

Richard Maurice Bucke

Leo Tolstoy

Emily Dickinson

Moncure Conway

Samuel Butler

Mark Twain

Paramahamsa Ramakrishna

Heinmot Tooyalaket

William James

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

Friedrich Nietzsche

James George Frazer

Sigmund Freud

K'Ang Yu-Wei

Edmund Husserl

Pierre Janet

John Dewey

Vivekananda

Hehaka Sapa

William Butler Yeats

H. G. Wells

Frederick Robert Tennant

Rudolf Otto

Mohandas K. Gandhi

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff

Bertrand Russell

Albert Einstein

Carl Gustav Jung

Albert Schweitzer

Edgar Cayce

Martin Buber

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Rudolf Bultmann

Paul Tillich

Erwin Schrödinger

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

Martin Heidegger

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

Paramahansa Yogananda

Reinhold Niebuhr

Meher Baba

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Feng Youlan

Charles Hartshorne

Werner Heisenberg

Jacques LaCan

John Niemeyer Findlay

Karl Rahner

Bernard Lonergan

Joseph Campbell

John Wisdom

Jean-Paul Sartre

Mary Renault

Viktor Frankl

Simone de Beauvoir

Abraham Maslow

Simone Weil

Marie-Louise von Franz

Pete Seeger

Huston Smith

John Hick

William Sloan Coffin

Carlos Castaneda

Thich Nhat Hanh

Ninian Smart

Anne Frank

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Jane Roberts

Ram Dass

Peter O'Toole

Robert Coover

Tenzin Gyatso

Jorge Mario Bergoglio

Leonard Shlain

Francis David Peat

Fritjof Capra

John Winston Ono Lennon

Stephen Jay Gould

Robert Thurman

Marilynne Robinson

George Lucas

Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

Near-Death Experiences

Rajinder Singh

Albert Lawrence Einstein

Deepak Chopra

Robert Wright

Matt Ridley

Charleston, South Carolina

Grow More Loving

Gratitude

INTRODUCTION

Why You Should Read This Book

(T. M. Ganim—artist and teacher, poet, songwriter, crisis counselor, inspirational force, and lover of commas—offers reader some reading advice.)

We, of a nomadic mind, can't help but blur the boundaries between love and hate. No sooner are we helping our neighbors than are we hoarding more than our portion. Perhaps these metaphysical forms we call love and hate converge in much the same way as light distinguishes itself from dark and polarizing forces interplay in the quanta. There would seem to be an extraordinarily fine line of scrimmage at which duality blows the whistle of life and our experience. In the resistance, lies the game.

"Foul!" we cry. Where is the referee? It would seem human beings have been asking this question long before the luxury of enough free time to draw artificial lines and create our own games inside the grand one.

Many books have been written in and around religion, philosophy, and science, all of them presenting the various flavors on the palate of human consciousness. Few cut to the chase and slap the thesis on the front cover. How the import drives the imperative.

If there is a sense of urgency in the book you are about to read, it is not by accident. If there is a common theme that underpins the requirement of growing more loving, it is that hardship inures and steels the fluid of our awareness and settles in compassion. Though how persistently do our egos become restless? They quickly tire of the talk of love. All the while it is love that consumes the pithy ego and brings us to rind, as Miller would say. The container which holds the flesh. How are the two related? Are they one in the same and not so?

By reading _Grow More Loving_ we are offered a taste of the loftiest of questions as we chase the challenge of its title. In it, we encounter a splay of avatars that mean something of extraordinary significance to the world and their authors. Dots of light, as described by author Lawrence Miller. Whatever their real or supposed history, upon their recognition a name was shaped by and for each, influencing the serpentine river of zeitgeist. Miller playfully transports us along its rivulets, allowing us to stop along the banks. On some we may linger as we scan the formations of the cliff sides and observe the motifs of color and shape.

Our minds are endlessly searching. For what? For love. The dots respectfully suggest we are looking for love. Love is what we understand as meaning. Meaning ignites and continues to fuel love.

We have an idea of who we are, and our experience is indeed our own, however limited. We continue to search for meaning. Is it because we have yet to enjoy sustained fulfillment? Through time we have evolved to become more loving and yet, not quite. The tumultuous maintenance of the ego dances with aggression and cynicism, denouncing love. It travels with the titillating curiosities of thought and obscures our vision of reality. The history of humankind is checkered with intolerance, violence, and oppression for the sake of deluded ego self-preservation. How do we interrupt this destructive pattern? How do we evolve unless we challenge ourselves to grow more loving? Like its introduction, this book will ask many questions of you.

Why is this book important? It pounds the steady, pulsing drumbeat of love with every breath and step. It teaches love in the negative shape contrasts of Gilgamesh and the active and vividly colorful demonstrations of Mohandas Gandhi, among some two hundred others. One may find Miller's brief abstracts on these stars of humanity at most aggrandizing and at worst gently mocking. Nevertheless, they inspire a deeper level of understanding.

Know this book and memorize the lot that speaks to you. As Miller has done, make it personal. Add your own humor and connect your own dots.

I think of my time in Scotland as a young man, a student. I think of the billowing life. I think of the limitless grandeur and the consummation of existence. I search for actualization.

Throughout this fascinating work is the evolutionary synthesis of expanded understanding and extraordinary minds. The commentaries are modestly brief, such that the reader might fill the spaces. My wish is that you enjoy a humble gratitude like the one I continue to enjoy for having found this book. Perhaps, herein, lies your inherent gestalt?

The myriad refractions of universal light assemble to manifest all that is and what we perceive. In our own functioning aggregate of consciousness, we transmute the source of all things and become active players in the culture of the living. Find the light that illuminates your life. Activate your mantras. Drive your ambitions to materialization, each of us creatures within the universal organism, sustaining the whole of it.

—T. M. Ganim

Sailing The Same Sea

What is more revealing than the moment after death? Either one's consciousness is snuffed or it is not. Either the ride ends or the plot thickens. If the former, why worry? If the latter, what next?

## ~

In the material world, the dance wind whirls with water is concentric and hypnotic. Beyond, who knows? Grasping the tiller of a seemingly solitary vessel, a pilgrim is well-advised to full-attentively monitor sights, sounds, scents, and inner shudders possibly indicative of drinkable fluid, digestible food, friendly environments, or—danger, Will Robinson, danger—the darker realms of sharks, and cannibals, and pirates.

## ~

Thankfully, our species is advantaged by an evolutionarily advanced (so far) knack for acquiring, analyzing, and associating bits and chunks of useful information. Among many beneficial and practical applications, these processing skills are helpful in our on-going quest to fathom the operative principles of Consciousness.

## ~

Limited to sensory data, the bit or so of consciousness that functions as human ego is tempted to conclude that what we see, feel, hear, taste, and smell is All There Is. By considering this perception immaculate and inviolate, Ego more or less automatically equates "reality" with "physical universe."

At least one aspect of human consciousness is occasionally aware of the possibility of "something more." People from all lands and centuries have tracked its presence and struggled to comprehend its meaning. Some of their insights—herein more-or-less chronologically presented—track humanity's progress from less understanding to more. Isn't the individual and collective march toward more inclusive awareness a reflection of this growth of consciousness?

## ~

Like many of us, in my heart-of-hearts I'm relentlessly pragmatic, making moment-by moment decisions based upon a continuously updated understanding of reality and my place within it. However, because ego tends to think and choose selfishly, ego-pragmatics are a trap.

In the current moment (gratitude is heart-deep), my _I-Am's_ POV includes that of Ego and the aforementioned "something more"—a more inclusive consciousness enfolding my ego as a rind wraps the innards of a melon.

## ~

Upon noting the value of pragmatism, I never again reckoned the utility of subduing reasoned judgment in deference to the entirety and/or permanence of any single reality theory—including (especially) those of my own.

## ~

The number of viable paths conducive to authentic spiritual and psychological growth might be calculated thusly:

## ~

X = Y*Z

## ~

X counts the total number of beneficial individuation development paths. Y represents every person who has ever lived on the planet Earth, approximately 108 billion. Z is the number of seconds in the life of someone who lives to be at least 70 years old, like me in the present moment. In my case, the numerical value of Z is presently 2,207,522,000. Accordingly, as of right now, one concludes that "the number of viable paths conducive to authentic spiritual and psychological growth" is 238,412,160,000,000,000.

## ~

Resembling Colombo more than Holmes and Sipowicz more than Perot, the _I-Am_ I am sifts heart and history for insights relevant to three questions:

1) Which came first: Consciousness or Biology? (2) Whether source or product, does Consciousness transcend Biology? (3) Is love an elemental principle of Being or a cooperative survival strategy evolved by Ego?

Ego's answers: (1) Biology, (2) Of course not, and (3) Cooperative survival strategy. From experience, observation, research, reason, and introspection _,_ my _I-Am_ has developed different opinions: (1) Probably consciousness, (2) Yes, and (3) Both.

## ~

Preferring to hoard their booty, sharks, cannibals, and pirates rarely coordinate their attacks, and for that we should be grateful, though truth be told, there are those—of a type that drink more than a little and smoke all sorts of things—who swear that more than once they have been forced to swallow the hell fruit of loveless pirate-shark-cannibal cooperation. Fairness notes that a single sip of this ill-brewed gruel could easily launch a person into an imprisoning sequence of compensatory stupefying intoxications. Thankfully, running away and hiding is not the only option.

## ~

Inhale understanding. Grow more loving. Exhale love. Grow more loving.

## ~

While growing more loving, _I-Am_ increasingly gives credence to and acts in harmony with the principles of Fair Play and Free Choice. As many have noted, Fair Play does not necessarily have to be sparked by love. An unloving, pragmatic person might engage in Fair Play for strategic/tactical reasons. While not ideal, this is better than hating. Adds love to the mix.

## ~

From my observation and experience, it seems that as an _I-Am_ grows more loving—no matter how or why—it correspondingly grows more certain that Fair Play is a necessary given in a bigger game than Ego's.

## ~

Fair Play enables Free Choice, which—when unimpeded by force or fear, propaganda, spins, lies, and various nefarious unfair misrepresentations, manipulations, and coercions—allows each of us to authentically demonstrate the essence of our individuality instead of experiencing a never-ending series of shallow pool Ego melodramas.

## ~

By Ego, I mean: (1) an aggregate of awareness completely focused on the physical world; (2) a self-concept of _I-Am_ totally reliant on sensory data.

## ~

Personal observations can be evidence. Here's one of mine. In my lifetime, I have grown more loving. Was less loving when younger than now. Am happier now than when younger.

## ~

The tropism of individuation is toward more love, not less. Even the most unloving human experiences can be illuminated by dots of light—spurs to grow more loving. For me, integrating insights from multiple paradigms in quest of more inclusive perspectives seems an excellent strategy for spiritual progress, as does keeping an open mind, avoiding unnecessary extremes, and nurturing a loving heart. Similar traits have seeded millennia with hint after hint regarding a realm of Being beyond the reach of Ego.

## ~

Every _I-Am_ choice is the stroke of an artist's bristle. Right Now—this Moment—represents an _I-Am's_ up-to-date self-portrait. Experience, when all is said and done, is vivified feedback. Ego is too preoccupied with dubious nonsense to note the fullness of any Moment's textured revelation.

## ~

Okay. A quick review: We each have our own path. There's likely some overlap. _I-Am_ sharing with you ideas that have captured my attention, struck me as meaningful, increased my awareness.

The following comments are not intended to be comprehensive. No one should confuse—and most won't—this little book, _Grow More Loving,_ with a scientific, scholarly treatise—a writing task for which I qualify neither by training nor temperament. Rather, I gratefully rely on the work of fair-minded experts, admired and respected for their step-by-step, generation-by-generation advancement of human understanding.

Why not? Have always been fascinated with the ongoing "nature of reality" conversation between thinkers from a wide variety of times and places. A "thinker" living in our era can track this discussion thousands of years. A "thinker" living ten decades from now will be able to duplicate that feat—plus one hundred years. What will we have learned by then? Talk about your never-ending story.

## ~

My _I-Am_ perceives history's dots of light as non-Ego info originating from an aggregate of consciousness in circumference of a more inclusive point-of-view (including that which is conscious to humans, that which is unconscious to humans, and that which is technically neither, and thus beyond our reach). Many of these hints of love add to the value of archaic teachings by placing them within a more revealing context.

Some dots break new ground by adding fresh light, thereby alerting us to errors and dead ends, or more starkly, to the flaws and shortcomings of previous reality interpretations. Others stagger me with the beauty of human penetrative insight. My encounters with the fruitage of this hint/dot litany occasionally propel my _I-Am_ past its current limits into a more direct alignment with a more complex aggregation of consciousness _,_ not restricted by ego, yet just as much me as the me _I-Am_ now, except more aware, and, therefore, more loving.

## ~

Though my batting average is far, far less than 1.000, _I-Am_ by nature associative and can occasionally perceive (sometimes oddly) how things are or might be connected. Over time, my associations have been sufficiently informative to merit legitimate self-confidence, though certainly not certainty.

My shared extrapolations are offered in the spirit that we are looking for answers together, and every little bit helps. Opinions emerge from my singular _I-Am_ mix of perceptual relativity, imperfect knowing, and gleaning of revelatory glimmers. Sound familiar? The same is true for you.

## ~

Seven billion differing views. Pay your dues. Stand in queues. Sit in pews. Live in zoos. Can a particle grok the wave in which it lives, and moves, and has its being?

## ~

Superficial differences cannot forever disguise fundamental similarities. Though our waypoints vary, our expeditions share a common direction. Why shouldn't they? Our existence can be rationally theorized as the migration of individuating aggregates of Consciousness toward ever more inclusive reality perceptions. Given the logic of this logic, at some aggregation level, you and I and all of us may well exist as the same _I-Am_. At least, that's what the hints suggest to me, although I do not know how such a thing might work in practice. Unless, of course, "how it works" is life as we experience it.

## ~

Forward alone together sailing the same sea.

## ~

A true-hearted pilgrim—any grow-more-loving type—eventually comes face to face with a challenge more difficult than the endless games humans play on fields stuck between the fences of birth and death. Comes a moment in the tickle of the crosshairs—shakily balanced on the semi-eroded entry plank to a rickety bridge spanning an apparently bottomless abyss—when an advancing traveler is required to ask and answer questions two:

## ~

(1) How can _I-Am_ escape the buffoonery of Ego?

(2) How can _I-Am_ live a loving life?

## ~

What I like most about these questions: (1) The answer to the second is easy. (2) The answer to the first is the same as the answer to the second. (3) The answer to both is the title of this book.

## ~

Our physical Universe is continually re-shaped and re-arranged by the dueling energies of entropy and gravity—the tendency of things to separate versus the tendency of things to come together. In the material world, aggregating galaxies occasionally generate a cumulative gravitational force sufficient to curve light—move it out of the way, as it were, to peek at what may be hiding beyond.

Thus, we are able to detect normally invisible objects and—using limited data—imagine theories to explain their existence and situation. In a similar manner, consciousness also aggregates and re-aggregates in ways that reveal the unknown, or why do we know more now than we knew before?

## ~

As we progress from one era's perceptions to those of the next, we constantly redefine reality and the meaning of individual existence. Good. This is a sane and pragmatic approach.

Some are obsessively defensive—too uncomfortable with change to change. Good luck with that. Although fanatical clinging to a favored reality interpretation despite evidence of its growing irrelevance is to be expected at the fringes, psychological and spiritual progress are hindered by the use of power to compel belief. Such an egoistic tactic undermines personal development and un-lovingly impedes the authenticity of individual and collective creative self-expression.

## ~

When choice and circumstance scrape barnacles from I-Am's hull; when wind and water speed one's vessel in a promising direction; when lovers love, and thinkers think, and writers write, behold: dots of light emerge to brighten Ego's firmament of muck.

Hints of Love, Dots of Light

No Where

Nowhere is an odd place from which to launch a material cosmos. Did our 13.5 billion-year-old explosion originate in a similar universe, resembling ours as a mother resembles her daughter? If so, how did that one get its start? Etc, etc, etc.

## ~

Time has moved our universe billions of years beyond the instant of its creation. Expansion continues without pause. In the place where our boom banged, might it be that less than thirty seconds have passed?

What happens when an explosion expands to its maximum and runs out of energy? Do particles blown outward by the blast return—slowly or in an instant—to their pre-blast locations? Not according to the witness of our senses. Nor the direction of our time. When a stick of dynamite detonates, does it eventually re-shape by contraction?

ET

Everywhere, life finds a way to be. Why wouldn't this be true in other galaxies? Science currently estimates the average number of stars per galaxy (including our Milky Way) to be between 200 billion and 400 billion. How many galaxies in the universe? In the present moment, using the present technology, scientists predict a minimum of approximately 500 billion. Let's say only one-tenth of these known galaxies evolve intelligent life on one planet orbiting one of their hundreds of billions of suns. This quite conservative estimate would give our known universe a minimum of 50 billion inhabited worlds, quite a few likely more advanced than us, as probability suggests, and others likely as far behind us as we are in arrears of those ahead.

Is an advanced civilization affecting our physical and mental evolution? Are they presently helping us? Or herding us? Or both? Movies such as _ET, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Independence Day_ , and a myriad of televised speculations present various scenarios—some friendly, some frightening—involving alien interaction with humans. Orson Wells' iconoclastic radio program, _War of the Worlds_ , is another example.

Given the root-deep utility of myth, we might be preparing ourselves psychologically—getting ready not to go nuts—by imagining potential encounters and slowly accepting the realization that we are not alone in the universe and, further, might not be the alpha species in our own neighborhood. One might reasonably think of the attainment of this knowledge as a kind of graduation.

Earth

Inside a section of space considered empty, during a most exciting Moment-at-Hand, one streaking dust molecule smacked into a second. An instant, electric attraction caused them to stick together. More collisions added to the gravity of their burgeoning aggregation. Nine billion years passed. Where does the time go? Behold: empty space coalesces into Earth, the garden of our growth, and what a work of art, this planet we temporarily call home.

## ~

One billion years after the Earth more-or-less settled into its current proportions, conditions were ripe for the emergence of life. Guess what answered the call and pretty much had the planet all to themselves for the next two billion years. Bacteria = 2,000,000,000 years. Compare to: Humans = 150,000 years.

Bacteria are surprisingly influential life forms who put me in mind of the mice in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Science tells us bacteria have much longer life spans than humans. They exchange DNA in ways superior to mammals, cooperate vertically and laterally, are aware of their environment, and manipulate it in a willful manner. In short, bacteria—like humans—seem to be an expression/manifestation of Consciousness of individual and collective perspectives.

## ~

Friendly reminder to myself that a billion is a thousand times more than a million, and a million is a thousand times more than a thousand, and a thousand is a thousand times more than I presently have in my wallet.

Except for the latter, big numbers. Here's a smaller one. I will probably not live to be one hundred years old—a task for which I am inclined to volunteer only if certain mental and physical conditions are a given.

Let's say things work out this old man's way, and Lawrence Miller becomes centurial, a question—if reading this after 2044, you should easily be able to answer, if you decide it is worth your bother. Anyway, a hundred years is a good biological run, don't you think? It would take 10,000 similar-length lifetimes to total a million years, and 10,000,000 incarnations to span a billion.

## ~

One-hundred-fifty million years ago, plants finally poked their stems above water. Eighty million years later, a wide variety of physical forms—still water-reliant—had made their way onto dry land. Many tried, some survived (at least for a while), and a few thrived (at least for a while).

## ~

How can a tree successfully compete for water, root space, and light? How can it reproduce? Comes a new concept: Winged Seeds. Creative breakthrough. Avoids the nuts-falling-onto-a-crowded-forest-floor reproduction dilemma. Did chance—mentally-sorted probability intersecting with the possibilities inherent in the Moment-at-Hand—produce the evolutionarily advantageous flutter-seed?

## ~

Holler monkeys eat their fill of fruit and then move to trees whose leaves they love to more slowly chomp. Their inability to satisfactorily digest the entirety of their previous meal inevitably results in a high number of shit-covered seeds dropping to the forest floor. Excellent growth environment. Therefore, the two trees in which holler monkeys prefer to dine almost always grow side by side. Where there are no holler monkeys, this is not so.

## ~

When it comes to the hunt, both predator and prey possess a personal sense of self and situation, a basic understanding of available means and desirable ends. As a bird has a certain basic psychology adaptive to the wants and needs of being a bird, so too a lion, a snake, an antelope, an ant. What are the limits of the limits imposed on awareness by form?

## ~

Birds and bears know where fish swim. Memory is summoned by association. Animals can associate, remember, innovate. Crows cut leaves and bend sticks to make worm-hunting tools. Lions hunt in prides. Dolphins herd fish into each other's mouths. Ants make the best teammates. Speaking of dolphins, each of them has an individually distinct whistle, serving the same function as a name when mimicked by its friends.

## ~

Components of biological form—such as cells and organs—are constantly replicated and re-generated, even after physical growth has reached maturity. Because the consciousness of a perceived self advances or retreats moment by moment, state-of-mind need not insist that replacements be identical. Tinkering is possible. Improving. Healing.

## ~

What bundles individualized consciousness? A sense of _I-Am_. After a certain point, the physical seems less prone to development than the mental.

## ~

Ten million years ago—plus/minus a few hundred millennia—our tree-loving, primate ancestors left their arbor sanctuaries to risk the danger of walking on the ground. Five million years later (250,000 generations), we had honed the ability to walk on two feet and use front appendages as hands—thus increasing our capacity to manipulate tools for hunting, farming, and, of course, killing each other.

At least 27 different sort-of human species mutated from chimpanzees. What did they have in common? More inclusive cognitive capacities than their animal predecessors. Ergo, more consciousness. The following summaries highlight specific contributions and are not intended to be comprehensive. About 200 thousand years ago, the first true humans—our gritty ancestors—evolved onto the scene. For a while, we lived in Africa, a little bit south of the Sahara desert. Some of us stayed there, others moved on to Asia, Europe, and beyond.

Homo sapiens and Neanderthals lived more or less side by side for about 15,000 years. Neanderthal females were able to become pregnant at age 11 or so. Many modern humans have traces of Neanderthal DNA. Seems we liked to have sex with them, were not impressed otherwise. Very prescient of us, since they're extinct and we're not. Is it prophecy or preview when one causes what one predicts?

One hundred thousand years ago, homo sapiens sapiens was one of a relative few human species extant on Earth—each populated with less than a hundred thousand people. By the way, sapiens means wise, and sapiens sapiens means wiser. Species which didn't make the cut include Neanderthal, Denisovan, Red Deer Cave, homo floresiensis, and others whose bones have escaped our attention.

About 50,000 years ago, the global climate became warmer and wetter as Earth entered into a post-Ice Age mode. Humans began to domesticate animals for labor and food. Cro-Magnon man—possessing pretty much the same human potential as we do today—showed up in Europe about 40 kya. Bad news for competing species, because our direct ancestors were far more capable of coping with changing circumstances—like ice or flood or dearth of food. Simply put, we demonstrated superior mental and psychological flexibility.

## ~

Construction of the world's oldest-known temple of worship took place 12,000 years ago in what the modern world calls Turkey.

## ~

By 9,000 BCE, we farmed cereal grain plants and shepherded domesticated animals (particularly goats and sheep) by managing the movement of herd leaders. These techniques spread quickly throughout the species. Our ability to develop bone and antler blade technology helped push us to the top of the food chain. Cooperation—coordinated efforts to kill game—increased our hunting efficiency. When success moved us beyond subsistence, we began to use sea shells and the teeth of giant cats and bears as personal ornamentation. Cro-Magnon man's cave paintings (which could not be accessed without considerable effort) and burial ceremonies seem to indicate "secret" rituals and preparation of the deceased body for after-death existence.

As far as we know, humanity's first official divinity was a bear. Because bears devoured human flesh, it's hard to say whether the decision to worship them came from respect, awe, or fear. Love is a less likely candidate. Here's a small sample of who else liked to eat us in those days: other humans, primates, lions, tigers, snakes, wolves, hyenas, crocodiles, sharks, hawks, insects, a multitude of other terrifying roaming carnivores, and possibly extra-terrestrials. With the possible exception of insects, each of these predators was worshipped at one time or another.

## ~

Inside a physical body in a physical universe, we live an animal's life—eating, eliminating, mating, aging, dying. We think of ourselves as more than animals—animals plus—and possess a haunting sense we might be more than human. We describe the latter sensation as "numinous." Experiencing the numinous involves acquiring (usually temporarily) a more inclusive situational understanding.

Magic and Such

Organized religion began with ancestor and spirit worship, magic, and shamans. The operative principles of sympathetic magic are "like produces like" and "things previously in contact continue to be connected and act on each other, even from a distance." People were eager—anxious might be a more descriptive word—to gain a worldly edge. Magic, and those able to use it, promised a way to get what one wanted.

Who would want to cross a shaman? Nothing good—and much suffering—were the expected results. Later on, religious movements evolved this type of fear into a claim they had the power to decide who goes to heaven and who goes to hell.

Dreams deliver mysterious and often muddy insights from the unconscious. From one sense of I-Am to another? Maybe. Here are two more certain statements: dreams frequently evade conscious understanding. The origin of mystery is the consciousness.

Description of a shaman: "He who knows." Shamans claim to need no intercession or symbolism to perceive spiritual reality. They try to unveil the mystery by speaking directly to a god or gods. Efficacy is hard to verify, because any poser or psycho can make—and maybe even believe—such a claim. Heck, maybe one has to be unbalanced—at least from the human perspective—to have a meaningful relationship with the divine.

## ~

Primal cultures believe that eating the flesh of an animal (including human) endows the diner with the physical and intellectual attributes of the dinner. When an animal is perceived as sacred, ritualistically killed, and eaten, the primitive belief is that a portion of divinity is also absorbed.

## ~

Representations of pregnant women and other renderings of the female form—carvings and small clay statues—are the earliest human artifacts so far discovered. Many are found near the shores of the Aegean Sea. Worship of a Mother Goddess whose reproductive energies were essential for the continuation of the harvest cycle became the foundation of a variety of religions sacred to the agricultural peoples of Europe and Western Asia. Apparently, farmers like to imagine god as a nurturing mother, similar to the fertile earth. Herdsmen, on the other hand, such as those in Mid-East, tend to view the personalized transcendent as a father figure.

## ~

**Hinotheism:** every tribe worships its own god as supreme. **Penotheism:** One god is supreme among many. **Polytheism:** Unlimited number of gods in a hierarchy. **Monotheism:** One god only. **Pantheism:** The divine is everywhere and life is its self-expression.

## ~

Make it rain? Kill the bear? Win the battle? Get what ego wants? When a god doesn't deliver the desired goods to a sincerely petitioning worshipper, sooner or later, that god is discarded.

Garden of Eden

Descent from the imagined into the created is frustrating. The book I write is never as good as the book I conceive.

## ~

Our realization that we exist is described by Abrahamic religion as part of a sin so odious it damns one and all, those who have been here already, those here now, and those on the way. Yet we might have this all wrong. Descending into space and time, forfeiting one sense of self for another, entering the physical universe for one reason or another, might well be like attending a seminar, taking a required class, or embarking on a field trip.

## ~

The idea of original sin is a projection fantasy. Greeks of an earlier age used the word "sin" to mean "missing the mark." The concept of original sin is an invention of the human ego, and misses the mark. How can we blame ourselves for not remembering our oneness with the Divine? More likely, this is a rule of the game. To label our being here as sin is nonsensical presumption, or as history constantly demonstrates, unloving manipulative propaganda. Does the light sin when it leaves the sun?

## ~

Reverse psychology is a tactic presumably not unknown to a more inclusive intelligence. Forbidding a deed enhances its allure. Telling someone not to do something is a good way to make it happen. Parents know the value of this approach. Presumably, so does transcendent consciousness, the mother-father-self of individuating consciousness. Therefore, in my opinion, we were guided out of the metaphoric Garden, away from an awareness of unity, straight into the succubus of spacetime.

## ~

The myth of the Garden of Eden conveys a theory of creation that suggests we are experiencing the consequences of differentiating consciousness emanating from a common-source. Creation myths from a wide variety of cultures present stories open to similar interpretation. Ego is therein perceived as part of a more inclusive consciousness. So is Rind.

## ~

If the entry price is the loss of one's sense of unity, maybe coming here was a mistake and we are inextricably mired in an imprisoning belief system. To be fair, if the dynamics indicate the existence of other "forgotten" layers of awareness, each with an enfolding sense of _I-Am_ , then, though we may have forgotten our connection, surely the other layers didn't—not all of them, at least, not the more inclusive. So we are not alone. We are not forever trapped.

## ~

Feelings of separation do not necessarily indicate a reality of separation. One can feel alone without being so. Instead of guilt and fear feeding our trepidation, the question should be: "How can I bring more love to the moment-at-hand?"

## ~

Ego throws us off balance, yes, but as long as we're growing more loving, we're on the right path—probably not leading back to the Garden. Rather, we are cumulatively individuating toward greater understanding and greater freedom.

One Flood

In the Mesopotamia account, the Igigi (collection of Sumerian gods) decide there are too many human beings—they don't like us all that much anyhow—and pledge to remedy the situation. They experiment with a variety of methods—mostly famines, plagues, and wild beasts—before deciding on a massive flood. The gods do not debate whether or not to kill us. That is a given. The question is how. The answer is revealing. The Mesopotamian gods embrace a spirit of vengeance against humans. They have the power, intend to use it, and have no prohibitive moral obligations against killing us every one. The only exception is Ea, the god of wisdom.

In the Bible, God, as described in Genesis, desires to punish mankind in the name of justice. Kill every one of us, except one family. Start over. What we have in both flood stories is a general recognition that humans are mostly ego, and what can be done about it?

Guardian Family Gods

Guardian family gods were invoked by male warriors invading and conquering farming cultures. The names of these gods may or may not be familiar: Yahweh of Israel, Zeus of ancient Greece, Ashur of the Assyrians, Tarhun of the Hittites. These men considered female deities as not helpful in battle and, thus, unworthy of worship. The resident of the lands they conquered valued the creative fertility of the female goddess-mother in which all things have their being and whose spiritual body is the entirety of the cosmos. The victorious warriors, however, imposed their patriarchal religious beliefs with clubs, swords, rapes, and thunderbolts of one kind or another.

Labrador

Manitu is the essence of life. A personal Manitu—unique to each of us—resides in each of us.

Ainu

Ramat—soul and spirit—is the foundation of everything that is, animal, vegetable, and mineral.

Aboriginal

The "dreaming" and "daily life" are two aspects of one world. Ritualistic acts help us rise above the day by day and connect with "authentic" life. No priests are necessary, and no congregations.

Peruvian

The huaca is an omni-present divine power.

Native American

(1) The Sioux wakan is an omni-present divine power.

(2) The Navajo define the Supreme Being as too mysterious for human understanding. That which is spiritual is not necessarily connected to a Supreme Being.

(3) The Lakota: "We are earth people on a spiritual journey to the stars. Our quest, our earth walk, is to look within, to know who we are, to see that we are connected to all things, that there is no separation, only in the mind."

(4) Every year, the Plains Indians dance together for "World and Life Renewal."

(5) However, there is this from the Iroquois: "The world rests on the back of a turtle." If this turns out to be true, I will gladly apologize to the Iroquois for my flip dismissal of the possibility.

Minoan Crete Civilization/7,000 BCE

Here is where and when patriarchy(father-god) replaced matriarchy (mother-goddess). The king headquartered at Knossos, ruled from a temple dedicated to the idea that monarchs were gods and the rest of us simply had to get used to it. What kind of gods did kings make? About what you'd expect from egotistical humans with lots and lots and lots of power.

## ~

A king looking for an edge operated by this understanding: "I can make you do what I want. Therefore, as far as you're concerned, I'm a god and you're not. You have to do what I say or else. If you don't like it, too bad for you." The imposition of rules and laws allowed more people to live in close proximity and the extent of a king's power was determined by the number of people he was able to successfully govern. The key word in that sentence and the key challenge to a person wanting to control others is "successfully."

Indo-Aryans/4500 BCE

DNA evidence confirms that Indo-Aryans (also known as the Yamnaya) migrated southward from the Russian steppes nearly 5,000 years ago, and after that lived in Persia for almost a thousand years before many departed for India. Their ideas—developed during somatic visions—became the foundation for the five most popular religions in the modern-day world. While in Iran, they inspired and helped create the Rig Veda (a collection of hymns which became a mainstay of the Hindu religion) and the Avesta, a Zoroastrian book of prayer and worship.

In Russia, the Yamnaya were nomadic herders and hunters. In Iran, they were able to carve out a more settled lifestyle, giving them opportunities to explore the nature of spiritual life. They believed that an invisible, impersonal force saturated their life—and all being. Eventually, they named this force "Braham" and described it as the source and foundation of all. They conceived this transcendent as irreversibly connected to all consciousness, including human.

## ~

In Persia, the Indo-Aryans eventually produced the religion of Zoroaster, whose concepts (good versus evil) dominate the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). In India, their ideas were instrumental in the formation of the Hindu religion and, indirectly, its offshoot, Buddhism.

## ~

From whence their break-through understanding? From whence their enhanced perspective? From drinking Soma, an hallucinatory nectar squeezed out of a plant and made into a drink looking and tasting like honey. Their resultant visions introduced them to a reality whose borders exceed the limits of human senses. Their translations of their experiences formed the template.

## ~

"We have drunk the Soma, we have become immortal, we have found the Gods. The forces of darkness have fled in terror."

## ~

When a person feels herself to be in communion with the seemingly divine, a more hopeful attitude becomes the norm, nestled comfortably in an awareness of a more inclusive level of existence.

Mesopotamian God Tammuz/2600 BCE

The Mesopotamian god of fertility, Tammuz, was the son of the iconoclastic water god, Enki, and the beguiling sheep-goddess, Duttur. His early Babylonian worshippers conceived of Tammuz as a pastoral deity gifted with the power to make grass grow, birth healthy lambs, and help mother ewes produce milk. Since these outcomes are exactly what sheep and their herders need, Tammuz had no trouble garnering shepherd followers.

Tammuz's marriage to Inanna (goddess of love, fertility, and warfare) was celebrated for a month each Spring. As part of the festivities, the reigning king pretended to be Tammuz and had sex with a priestess pretending to be Inanna. It's good to be the king. No word yet on whether it was good to be the priestess. At any rate, their union was believed to ensure the fertility of nature. A second ceremony, held during the summer, mourned Tammuz's death at the hands of some mean demons. No worries. Spring follows Winter and sheep need to make and nurture lambs. That's a job for....Tammuz.

Later, his followers in Assyria worshipped Tammuz as an agricultural deity whose life and death were connected to the grain crop—from planting to milling. When the time came for the death ceremony, the Assyrians concocted an apocryphal body from vegetation and honey to symbolize Tammuz, and placed it on a couch for all to see.

Gilgamesh/2500 BCE

The legend of Gilgamesh seems partially based on the life of an actual Sumerian king. However, the story is about an epic hero who is two-thirds divine, one-third mortal, and 100% dedicated to probing the boundaries of human experience. His appetites for sex and battle were so much more than enormous that Ned Nederlander might have called them in-enormous.

Gil was famous for "leaving no bride for her husband." No doubt, he was a mite self-centered when it came to sharing the love. Before his transformation, Gilgamesh's lusts symbolized the selfishness of ego. Strong and brave enough to take whatever he wanted, why not? He could think of no reason. Until, that is, his friend and equal, Ninkitu, died at the hands of the goddess Ishtar.

Suddenly, the undefeated mortal came face to face with the inevitability of his own death. How can one enjoy the positives of life when death is constantly lurking? He decided to change the equation. If a hero like him couldn't live forever, who could? After an arduous search and years in the wilderness, he found and then lost the secret to eternal life. Which, when you think about it, is worse than never finding it at all.

Gilgamesh's frustration, depression, and existential angst might have drowned him in ego lamentation, but a roadside alewife (beer saleswoman) advised him to make peace with being human and enjoy the pleasures of living. Why waste the years we have? Her reason persuaded the hero, who took her words to heart and, from then on, lived a happy life, helping his people do the same.

Hindu/2500 BCE

Indo-Aryans were already writing the Vedic scriptures—insights into the transcendent—when their migration reached the sub-continent of India. Upon arrival, they integrated with the Indus Culture—the most extensive civilization of the ancient world—whose religious worship centered around sexuality, reproduction, and a Mother Goddess.

Vedic spirituality focused on a continuous and individual search for the true nature of Self. Two thousand years after arriving in India (give or take a few centuries), their insights had been sufficiently sharpened by time and concentration to produce two of the world's classic spiritual texts: the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (including the Bhagavad-Gita).

Beginning around 800 BCE, various poets recorded their spiritual perceptions in a series of writing called the Upanishads—philosophical flashes of an individual and collective reality beyond the mirage of life in the physical world.

Rather than pressuring pilgrims to put faith before evidence, the Upanishadic teachers relied on spiritual exercises to alter worldly perceptions.

## ~

Vedas are optimistic, stressing the kindness of gods. Upanishads are more pessimistic, identifying gods as the chief source of human problems.

## ~

Elements of Hindu religious philosophy: (1) Brahman (one force), (2) Atman (soul), (3) Karma (justice), (4) Reincarnation (born again), (5) Moshka (beyond Ego).

## ~

Foundation of Hinduism: God is one, God is everything. Ultimate reality is unity. We are part of that unity. To realize this as fact is to discover one's atman, one's real self. Such is the goal of life.

## ~

From the Upanishads: "That which is transcendent forms itself and knows its own existence. It says, 'I, Aha!' "

## ~

Hindu Trinity: Brahma, the Creator; Shiva, the Destroyer; Vishnu, the Preserver. Comprehending their balance is the work of lifetimes.

## ~

What cannot be known? What is knowable? Hindu nomenclature distinguishes two types of Brahman, impersonal and personal. Nirguna Brahman is the name given to the concept of a transcendent reality incomprehensible to the human ego. Saguna Brahman describes the many ways humans experience and translate Nirguna Brahman. Helpful here is Huston Smith's brilliant comparison of the relationship between Saguna and Nirguna to light moving in both waves and particles.

Hindu religious tolerance is based on the premise there is more than one way home and each of us has our own path, our own Saguna manifestation of the mystery of Nirguna. Therefore, people are free and able to worship any or all of a huge variety of localized gods without forfeiting their Hindu identity.

## ~

Actual—not theoretical—religious tolerance is the essence of Hinduism. Different individuals have different psychological needs at various points in their spiritual development. The concept of Brahman is useful to some and confusing to others. Hinduism embraces this duality by encouraging—without judgment—the worship of personal, specific gods and, when the individual is so moved, the quest to move beyond the human-made image to the ultimate reality.

All gods, in the Hindu view, are part of the same god, so why not be tolerant? The name and image are not the truth of the god. All paths lead to the same destination. In like spirit, Hinduism conceives that each major religion can be useful.

## ~

From the Vedas: "Truth is one, sages call it by different names."

## ~

Hindu mythology: Again and again, in spans of time beyond the measure of chronology, the universe is created and destroyed, expands and contracts, eon after eon, kalpa after kalpa.

## ~

As any careful and honest observer can attest, full self-development is too large a task for one lifetime. Reincarnation of the soul gives the essence of individuating consciousness—which, in Hindu understanding, survives the body's death—an opportunity to continue its progress or lack of same. Samsara is a Hindu term describing endless reincarnation as an illusionary trap.

## ~

Paramahamsa Upanishad: "The aspirant who is seeking the Lord must free himself from selfish attachments to people, money, and possessions."

## ~

From the moment of birth, children manifest individual personalities. What is their origin? In Hinduism, individuation is differentiated by karma.

## ~

The concept of karma gives responsibility for an _I-Am's_ consequences—what happens during one or more lifetimes—to that _I-Am's_ choices. In other words, nothing is fate, nothing is preordained, nothing is chance, nothing is accident, nothing is caused by an outside force.

The Hindu law of karma: you may think you are doing unto others, yet you are actually doing unto yourself—even if the consequences take several lifetimes to surface. Each of us receives exactly what we have earned. Is this not justice from a more inclusive perspective? What goes around comes around. Reminds me of an echo.

Earned karma may be good or bad, happy or sad, pleasure or torture. Whatever happens is garnered by acts, thoughts, and words. Since the latter two do not necessarily consist of physical action, Hinduism helped expand the interiority of individual spiritual life.

## ~

An unloving state of mind produces unloving conditions (it is a mistake to think of this as punishment) that dramatize the necessity of a more loving attitude. Karma is developmental, which is to say it is an attribute of individuating consciousness helping one escape from ego's fiercely-guarded interpretative monopoly. A way to move beyond karma is to grow more loving. Is this not suggestive of underlying harmony?

## ~

Good works and devotion to the Divine are also recognized by Hinduism as productive paths.

## ~

According to the Bhagavad Gita, detachment from the results of one's actions brings "immediate peace." Non-participation is not the same as detachment. One is required to play the hand one has dealt oneself, ideally without any concern about the game's outcome.

Given that given, thousands of Hindu seekers—called samsarics—left their homes, vocations, and families in an attempt to disassociate their mind from the demands of their body. Silence, fasting, celibacy, poverty, and various physical mortifications were considered useful tools in the quest for liberation from the otherwise endless cycle of reincarnation.

Absent any worldly assets except a begging bowl, samsarics wander India in pursuit of Moksha—escape. An ascetic life is a sparse life, at least in worldly terms. Often sought out for advice, their ubiquitous presence provided a spiritual spark throughout the subcontinent. Samsarics arduously examined the natures of reality and self.

## ~

Hinduism looks at the world and asks "Is this all?" Eventually, as wonderful as worldly experiences can be, as horrible as they often are, the limits of the physical universe—the realm of Ego—reveal themselves to be insufficient for the entertainment and edification of an individuating _I-Am_. Then, in the words of the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, it's time to: "Wake up from this dream of separateness."

## ~

Prajapati: "The Self is pure, free from decay and death, free from hunger and thirst, and free from sorrow. The Self desires nothing that is not good, wills nothing that is not good. Those who seek and realize the Self fulfill all their desires and attain the goal supreme."

## ~

Instead of focusing on ritual, Hinduism put forth various yoga approaches, including Jnana, designed to move one's attention from information provided by Ego to the more inclusive knowledge implicit within one's Self.

## ~

The Hindu theory of god centers around the divinity Vishnu, who—interestingly enough—put a part of himself in the womb of Krishna's mother. Hence, Krishna is not simply the son of god, he is god. Sound familiar?

## ~

Krishna: "You are fit to apprehend that you are not distinct from me. That which I am, thou art, and that also is this world, with its gods and heroes and mankind."

## ~

Brahman is seemingly impossible to comprehend, let alone describe. And yet, and yet, and yet, we try, and try, and try.

## ~

Kena Upanishad: "What cannot be spoken with words, but that whereby words are spoken. Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit. What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think. Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit."

## ~

Bhagavad-Gita: "There is another eternal nature that is transcendental to this manifested and non-manifested matter."

## ~

Chandogya Upanishad: **"** The Infinite is above and below, before and behind, to the right and to the left. I am all this. The Self is above and below, before and behind, to the right and to the left. I am all this. **"**

## ~

Shvetashvatara Upanishad: "The inner Self of all, Hidden like a little flame in the heart."

## ~

Guided by emotion's whim,

we float, we sail, and we swim

imaginary circles interior within

an unbounded sea.

Shaped and unshaped energy.

Such is Brahman. Such are we.

## ~

"Atman" is a Hindu word describing the connection between individuating _I-Am_ consciousness and Brahman. Atman refers to one's inner self—existing beyond the territory of physical life and physical death.

According to Hindu philosophy, every individual is in reality an Atman inseparable and indivisible from Brahman. The personal Self and the collective Self, therefore, are deemed basically identical, although the latter is more or less unrestricted by the restraints of individual human personality. This insight hints at the range of aggregations inhabitable by consciousness.

## ~

What is the fundamental similarity between the god and the human? Trick question, because in Hinduism, "Tat tvam asi" means "thou art that" and signifies that no fundamental difference exists between that which is absolute and that which appears to be individual. The transcendent and the transitory are two aspects of the same consciousness. Bhagavad Gita: "You are the knower and the thing which is known."

## ~

Katha Upanishad: "A sage withdrew his senses from the world of change and, seeking immortality, looked within and beheld the deathless self."

## ~

Self-development, in Hindu terms, is the realization of Self-Oneness by individuating consciousness—and loving use of the freedom this reveals. Huston Smith: "The point is to transcend the smallness of the finite self."

What prompts growth? Progressive loosening of ego's grip, and whether step by step or all at once, any advances in understanding which move us forward. To do so requires the relinquishing of all selfish desires. I think of this as moving one's reality perceptions from the jungle of Ego to the realm of Rind.

## ~

Hindu life phases: (1) Student, (2) Marriage (householder), (3) Retirement, (4) Sannyasin (One who neither hates nor loves).

## ~

Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:" As a person acts, so he becomes in life. Those who do good become good; those who do harm become bad."

Babylonia/2500 BCE

The worship of Marduk, dominant god of Babylonia, began when he was considered the local thunderstorm divinity, Bel (Lord). After a series of triumphal combats including the destruction of Tiamat (god of chaos), Marduk was promoted to sun-god status and given the title "Lord of the Gods of Heaven and Earth."

Through his priests, Marduk eventually claimed the right to 50 godly names, each one descriptive of yet another awesome aspect of his divinity. His followers believed that all existence emanated from Marduk's thought and activity. They credited him with a monopoly on creative power and total control of all kingdoms and individuals.

## ~

Babylonians identified the fertility divinity Ishtar—goddess of vegetation, flocks, herds, sexual love, marriage, and motherhood—with the planet Venus. Nice qualities to worship, yes, though one would be neglectful not to mention Ishtar's niche as the goddess of storms and war.

Harappan/2400 BCE

The Harappans (living in what is now Pakistan) were village people led by relatively modest rulers (didn't build monuments to themselves) and seemed to have been genuinely interested in spiritual development. Their rituals centered around a female deity and ceremonial bathing. Harappans believed that humans lived to serve the gods.

Sargon The Great/2350 BCE

From his kingdom of Akkade, Sargon (the earliest great Semitic emperor) built an empire in Mesopotamia—the first in that region during recorded history. As an infant, according to the legends of the people he ruled, Sargon—not a member of the royal family—had been discovered floating down the river by the gardener of the Emperor. A thousand years later, the same story surfaced in a relatively nearby part of the world. The new hero had a new name. Moses.

Aztec/1800 BCE

Aztec people answered the question "War...what is it good for?" with an enthusiastic: "Everything." To facilitate their military victories, they bribed their sun-god with offerings of freshly bloodied human hearts. Those sacrificed were promised a "pleasant afterlife." Which is nice.

## ~

At least a thousand years before the Last Supper, the rituals of Aztec worship—clever use of smoke and water—included eating bread said to be the body of a god.

## ~

Quetzalcoatl—the name means "feathered serpent"—is the Aztec sky and creator god and the patron deity of learning and knowledge. In Aztec lore, Quetzalcoatl was born of a virgin, died, resurrected, and someday—at a date of his own choosing—will return in a glorious and victorious Second Coming.

## ~

According to Joseph Campbell, the concept "Feathered Serpent" "symbolizes the mystery of a personage uniting in himself the opposed principles represented in the earthbound serpent and the released flight of a bird."

Egypt/1700 BCE

Summarizing four thousand years of psychological evolution in Egypt regarding the exercise of kingly power: (1) Humans are part of and subordinate to the workings of the cosmos—whose mysteries are made known to kings by priests. (2) The king is thought to be divine. (3) Humans—including kings—must rely on human abilities.

## ~

Ancient Egyptians used the growth of grain from seed to stalk as a metaphor for human immortality. Their orientation of divinity with nature also found expression in sun worship. Their first pyramid—designed as a stairway to heaven for the Pharaoh Djoser—pointed to the home of the Sun God.

## ~

Monotheism—God is One—first emerged in the Hindu concept of Brahma and the Egyptian idea of Ra. A 14th century (BCE) pharaoh named Akhenaton led the way. Ra subsumed many gods and ruled all parts of the created world including sky, earth, and underworld.

## ~

Ptah of Memphis is the Egyptian divinity believed responsible for creating the world, humans, and the other gods. Ptah is responsible for the "do the right thing" attitude. Able to create by thought, Ptah's finest work is the sun god Atum (later known as Atum-Ra and, still later, simply Ra), a conscious Being sharing his originator's desire for creation and experience. The last eleven words of the previous sentence hold—in my opinion—an important clue to the nature of consciousness.

## ~

The mystery religions of Egypt were designed to provide "initiates" with unique experiences likely to produce spiritual insights.

## ~

The Egyptian myth of the struggle of good and evil, the immortality of the soul, and the legend of a dead god coming back to life:

Osiris, a harvest divinity and beloved husband of Isis, is murdered by his brother, Set. Isis finds his deceased form, but it is stolen by Set, cut into fourteen parts, and scattered throughout Egypt.

Meanwhile, Isis gives birth to Horus and hides him in the marshes of the delta. She searches relentlessly to find and reassemble the pieces of Osiris' body. Using a magic formula, she restores him to life and he becomes God of the Dead. When Horus grows up, he overcomes Set, though—at the urging of Isis—spares the life of his father's killer.

## ~

James George Frazier: "In one of his aspects, Osiris was the ruler and judge of the dead. To a people like the Egyptians, who not only believed in a life beyond the grave, but actually spent much of their time, labor, and money in preparing for it, this office of the god must have appeared hardly, if at all, less important than his function of making the earth to bring forth its fruits in due season."

## ~

Egyptian religion considered individual life to include individual afterlife. One's allegiance to the rules determined whether such an eventuality would be blissful or not-so-much.

## ~

In Egyptian psychology, the word "ka" describes the part of a person that controls the body with its desires. The word "ba" refers to the individual's sense-of-self that survives death. Once again, if you don't mind, the former references Ego, and the latter describes Rind.

Shang Dynasty/1500 BCE-1045 BCE

The Shang held the opinion that their gods resided on a Chinese version of Mt. Olympus and could be petitioned for assistance. Shang priests came up with the idea of writing questions for gods on animal bones, heating the bones until they cracked, and interpreting the resultant patterns as divine answers.

## ~

Apparently, the Shang gods couldn't care less about punishing people for so-called moral drift. No frogs, plagues, or floods are reported. The demands of deity were limited to requiring sacrifice and worship.

## ~

Fundamental Chinese belief: In return for the gift of life, a child's rightful obligation to her or his parents is never-ending. Filial reverence has been the building block of Chinese culture for thousands of years. Nurturing the happiness and well-being of spirit world ancestors—one of the world's earliest religious motifs—is a logical extension of this belief.

Following the death of a dearly beloved, many report dreams in which the recently dead appears and engages in meaningful interaction (often including conversation) with the dreamer. This phenomena has been noted throughout history and ancestor worship is one demonstration of its impact. Another, at least in part, is burial of the dead.

## ~

Ghosts—spirits of the unburied dead—were an undesirable element of the Chinese spirit world. Ancestors usually were friendly, ghosts not so much. Rituals were developed to make the latter go away.

Zoroaster and Zoroasterism/1500 BCE

In Persia, Zoroaster—some call him Zarathustra—spent his life on a quest for in-depth spiritual understanding. The work he did spawned a fundamental theology, which in turn influenced the major religions of the world.

When he was 30, Zoroaster claimed to have met and conversed with God. The incident, near a river, echoes the experiences of other men during this stage of life. Jesus, for example, began his preaching when he was baptized in a river at age 30. Zoroaster's "face-to-face" with God seems to have happened during the time of Abraham. Zarathustra became a priest by age 15, wrote religious verses called Gathas, and founded Zoroasterism, according to which:

A supreme God, Mazda—the Lord of Wisdom—is the creator of all things. He expresses himself through the Holy Spirit, Good Mind, and Truth. His attributes are Wholeness, Immortality, and Right-Mindedness. Zoroaster believed that Mazda is the only uncreated divinity. Other gods are emanations—his creations. He is the one god from whom all others flow.

## ~

In Z's perspective, prior to its appearance in human form, Divine Light resided in minerals, vegetables, and animals. Into Mazda's creation, presumably by divine design, entered an evil force, and the battle was on. In his time, Zoroaster buoyed his people—who were suffering from a big-time crime wave (cattle rustling and village raiding) by prophesying the eventual cleansing of evil from the order of nature. Human help seemed to be a requirement for this outcome.

## ~

The main thrusts of Zoroaster's religious philosophy:

• The World is divided between Truth and Lie.

• Every aspect of divinity is either good or evil.

• History is a struggle between these two forces.

• Humans, a creation of Mazda, have free will.

• Choose between good and evil and live accordingly.

• It is right to think, speak, and act in support of good.

• One's future depends on one's choices and actions.

• Every individual is judged on the fourth day after death.

• Heaven and hell are temporary.

• A "future redeemer" will be born from a virgin.

• This savior will be Zoroaster's second incarnation.

• Will happen after Armageddon—the Reckoning of Spirits.

• He will resurrect the dead from heaven and hell.

• After which, peace and virtue will reign forever.

## ~

Evil, according to Zarathustra, is an independent, powerful force. We see this same interpretation in Christian and Muslim fundamentalism, whose worldviews seem an extension of Zoroaster's vision. The English word "devil" derives from the Persian "daeva." Z's devil is evil, unlike the original Old Testament Satan, whose main function seemed to be keeping God on the straight and narrow. The Christian concept of devil is more Zoroastrian. Likewise, the Persian concept of "yazatas"—divine assistants—evokes images of angels.

## ~

Mithra was one such yazata, responsible for enforcing contracts and oaths, protecting truth, and guarding cattle. Born of a virgin on December 25, he traveled with 12 companions, and reportedly ascended directly into heaven. The cult of Mithra was extremely popular and well-known in the Roman Empire.

## ~

Individual freedom to choose individual destiny was a brand new idea. Paradise previously had been mainly reserved for royalty. Now—no matter who you were—heaven was a possibility. One's moral choices determined one's future—those who chose good would find paradise.

## ~

Zoroastrian rituals marked "sacred space" with lines on the ground. Animal sacrifices were performed: "We reverence our own souls and those of domestic animals and useful wild animals." To this end, hunters prayed for the souls of the animals they killed.

Prayer seem most effective if evoked in the presence of fire or while standing in the sun. Zoroastrians were expected to pray five times a day. Sample prayer: "May we be such as those who bring on this renovation and make this world progressive, till its perfection shall have been achieved."

## ~

Zoroastrian ideas entered Jewish philosophy sometime around the sixth century, BCE, when Jews interacted with the Persian Empire. Through Judaism, Zoroaster influenced Christianity and Islam. His concepts of (1) a virgin-born universal savior, (2) linear chronology, (3) an end-time apocalypse (won by the forces of good), (4) resurrection of bodies, (5) day of judgment, (6) justice for moral choices, (7) heaven and hell, (8) angels, (9) the importance of moral choices, and (10) the devil were integrated into Jewish lore.

## ~

Zarathustra's ideas were a powerful influence on Christianity and—perhaps most of all—Islam. Despite their important role in Greek thought, Alexander (the Greek) burned the Avesta—Zoroastrian scriptures—including most of the Gathas) in the fourth century BCE.

Israel/1200 BCE

Four thousand years ago and more, nomads roamed the hills and flatlands of Palestine, gradually evolving philosophical tenets that continue to have a major impact on human life. By 1200 BCE, their nomadic base had given way to farms, villages, and cities. The aggregate of these people—a nation known as Israel—centered their faith (and collective identity) on ancient tales passed by word of mouth from generation to generation. The gist of these stories revealed the elemental glory of being Jewish: No matter where one finds oneself, no matter how hostile the environment, a Jew is always in the presence of God.

## ~

In Hebrew, the name of God translates to: _I-Am_.

## ~

Eleven Jewish philosophical tenets: (1) Life has meaning. (2) Creation is good. (3) Progress is possible. (4) Spirit > nature. (5) God intervenes. (6) Jews are chosen by God to help. (7) One God only. (8) Righteousness saves. (9) Right will triumph. (10) Reality is personal. (11) Human interpretation of Divinity never ends.

## ~

God, according to Jewish lore, occasionally reveals "himself" to humans, especially prophets. Usually, though, people must work hard to know the will of the divine. Priests in Jerusalem used oracles (drug-induced visions and commentary). Individuals found it more useful to fast or otherwise retreat from the "things of man." Both techniques seem designed to weaken the hold that ego has on human consciousness.

## ~

During the earliest Hebrew era, government was administered and enforced by "Judges." They remind me of Ayatollahs, formulating rules and policies to keep people worshipping God in the "right" way, which means according to the understanding and self-interest of the Judges and Ayatollahs.

## ~

How does one release oneself from the burden of imperfection? How does one shed the weight of useless guilt? How does one start fresh? Once a year, Israelites participated in a ceremony shifting the consequences of their confessed sins onto the bony shoulders of a hapless goat.

## ~

Six hundred and thirteen mitzvot commandments are the foundation of Judaism. Ten of them—the Decalogue—are rather dubiously attributed to Moses.

## ~

Semites are named after a son of Noah named Shem, whose long line of begetting eventually produced Abraham. Abraham's son, (Call me) Ishmael, was kicked out of the nest because of an intra-wife squabble. Settling in the land that would someday be Mecca, Ishmael's descendants eventually became Muslims. Abraham's other son, Isaac, stayed home.

## ~

(1) Judaism and (2) Christianity and (3) Islam. How did the story of Abraham spawn three major religions? Is the tale of polygamous Abe as told in the Bible consistent with history as we know it? Not really. Timing of details—such as the domestication of camels—doesn't fit. As is generally the case, religious institutions adjusted their scriptures to meet their political and theological needs.

## ~

Jewish courage and wisdom is the mechanism wherein humanity demands more loving treatment from its divinities: Abraham asks Yahweh to play fair with his people and judge them justly. The idea we could make deals with gods was not new. Abraham's add-on to the arrangement: Gods should deal with humans ethically and fairly.

## ~

The agreement—covenant—between Yahweh and Abraham specifies that both sides—God and the people of Israel—will act in certain mutually acceptable ways. In effect, both parties pledge themselves to a suzerainty treaty, when a people say to a candidate for the throne: "If you abide by certain rules and practices, we'll let you be our king."

"You shall be my people and I shall be your God." Yahweh agreed to protect and enable the people of Israel in return for their devotion, which Abraham gladly pledged. "Everything the Lord has spoken we will do."

What happened as time unfolded? When the nation suffered, Israelis wondered why God had abandoned their covenant. Why wasn't He protecting them? Prophets were eager to blame the nation's deviation on its lack of worship, proclaiming that the people—not their God—had broken the treaty. Talk about a boatload of useless guilt. We're not shed of it yet.

## ~

Marie-Louise Von Franz: "Abrahamic religions are book religions, which means that their basic belief is based on a past fact which is regarded as a definite revelation, not one iota of which has to be changed...simply learned by heart and followed. There is to be no analysis of the basic original event."

## ~

Though I have no idea whether or not he actually lived, it seems to me that Moses is best understood as a literary device, rather than an actual person. As such, he symbolizes an heroic attempt to (1) interact with a higher power, and (2) secure divine assistance for one's struggles and endeavors.

To achieve the first almost always requires solitude, and cannot be compelled by human thought or deed. To ensure the second, the people were encouraged to live their lives in certain intelligent ways, most of which were socially useful, especially when traveling in a small group through a hard desert for a long time.

Laws were formulated to fortify the fruitage of divine revelation—rules of living and a code of ethics supposedly derived from godly contact (and believed necessary to follow if one wanted God on one's side).

## ~

Baal, the dominant local fertility and storm god in Syria and Palestine, was challenged by Jewish theology in its battle with polytheism. Initially, Baal was perceived by Jews as an existent god inferior to theirs. At this time, the power of any god was thought to be limited to the geographical location of his or her followers.

During the first stage of their trek to monotheism, Hebrews elevated their tribal deity to a permanent superior and universal status re: other national and nature gods. They didn't deny that other gods existed. Theirs, however, was Number One, and no other contenders need apply. Jewish kings received serious push-back from prophets whenever they worshiped anyone but Yahweh.

Eventually, Israel's understanding of the divine migrated to the concept of monotheism, a belief that there is one god and one god only—transcendent, all powerful, all knowing. By projecting a god inclusive of—but not limited to—nature, Israeli thinkers—like Greeks—reached new heights.

## ~

Psalm 19: "Unnamable God, my essence, my origin, my life-blood, my home."

## ~

Amen is a Hebrew word meaning: "It is so; so be it."

## ~

Huston Smith: "We come to the supreme achievement of Jewish thought—not its monotheism as such, but in the character it ascribed to the God it intuited as One. Whereas the gods of Olympus tirelessly pursued beautiful women, the God of Sinai watched over widows and orphans. For Jews, God is a God of righteousness, whose loving-kindness is from everlasting to everlasting and whose tender mercies are in all his works."

## ~

Genesis: "God created man in his own image."

## ~

Difficult for a thinking person to agree that such a resemblance is physical. However, if we are discussing God and humans as aspects of consciousness— _I-Am_ and _I-Am_ —that's another story.

## ~

The Old Testament is an after-the-fact record of a generations-long conversation about the nature of the Divine. How did the stories enter Jewish lore? People regularly gathered at shrines to renew their covenant with God and poets told tales about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and Joshua. The writing, shaped by era and author theologies, is two-thirds literature and one-third history.

## ~

Jewish prophets kept busy scolding Jewish kings and the Israeli nation for failing to honor their covenant with God. The prophets avowed that God was faithful to his word and, therefore, the nation's suffering had its origin in the unfaithfulness of the people. Main message of the prophets: "Trust and obey the Lord."

Faced with the fact that an all-powerful God—as they understood Jehovah—had allowed evil to befall the people he had vowed to protect—men like Elijah, Nathan, Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, and Isaiah examined the problem and concluded that humans were at fault, thus giving the Divine a free pass. When more powerful countries used military muscle to conquer Israel's technologically less-advanced civilization, prophecy explained the inaction of the latter's god by transferring blame to the victims.

## ~

Job—exploring the limits of human projection—discovered that God (as understood by Israel)—may have been all-powerful, sure, but undeniably possessed traits inferior to those of loving, compassionate people. Jehovah didn't seem to give a gnat's nip for Fair Play and Free Choice. Even if people carefully and enthusiastically followed every rule to the letter, God might still mess with them...simply because He could. "Why," Job asked God, "do you hide your face and treat me as a foe?"

Imagine how startled Job must have been when he perceived that his sense of justice was superior to God's. Job's realization that human righteousness is insufficient to prevent suffering nudged Israel toward knowledge that bad things are not simply the consequence of selfishness or ritualistic slackness. Rather, the very act of living as a human—especially when guided by ego—has built-in limitations.

Buddha, as we shall see, arrived at a similar conclusion and decided that "escape" was the only sane approach. Job, on the other hand, reasoned that "unfair judgments" were out of his power to counteract and thus had to be accepted, even by the righteous.

Our "normal" way of understanding ourselves, Job affirms, is insufficient when it comes to analyzing the divine. Because we're dealing with the extraordinary, we have no criteria. We can, however, use our imagination and derive a more inclusive picture by examining characteristics in our consciousness reflective of a greater, more inclusive _I-Am._

## ~

Ezekiel came up with the idea that God was not limited to a shrine or temple. Rather, in his opinion, God was all-powerful everywhere and anywhere. Ezekiel applied this mobility for the benefit of Jews worshipping Jehovah. In a larger sense, shouldn't a truly divine Presence be with all of us, all the time; no matter who or where we are?

## ~

Somewhere around the 2nd century BCE, a group of Essenes established a Jewish esoteric religious community situated near the Dead Sea, not exactly a tropical paradise. They condemned slavery and endeavored to "purify" their spirit, which I take to mean (surprise): move away from the beliefs of Ego. We have found many of their manuscripts, named the "Dead Sea" scrolls. They wrote of the value of nonviolence and the power of love.

## ~

Persecution—and resistance—produced a series of Jewish martyrs. Those who died rather than abandon their faith were mourned by the community and its leaders. How could such injustice be remedied? The concept of resurrection provided an answer.

## ~

Caught on the powerless side of the "who killed Christ" debate after the Roman Empire absorbed Christianity, Jews suffered centuries of persecution. Dispersed from Israel, they were everywhere a minority, vulnerable to mob violence and the psychological consequences of constant religious and ethnic bigotry.

## ~

Huston Smith: "Israel (reached) an understanding of God that was head and shoulders above that of their neighbors, and deduced from it the standards of morality and justice that still challenge the world. Through the three thousand years that have followed, they have continued their existence in the face of unbelievable odds and adversity, and have contributed to civilization out of all proportion to their numbers."

Olmec/1100 BCE

The Olmec lived in Mesoamerica (basically modern-day Mexico and Central America) and built temple mounds and pyramids. They also developed a writing system and are considered to be the "mother culture" for later Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Mayan.

Olmec religion seems to have worshipped a hybrid god, part jaguar and part human infant. Sometimes the jaguar image is combined with that of a snake. They sculpted enormous statues—some weighing 40 tons and standing 10 feet high—which look a lot like angry babies. Apparently—though not certainly—they practiced human sacrifice.

## ~

Two psychological roots of animal worship: (1) Belief that the animal is more powerful than the human. (2) Fear.

## ~

As for the angry babies: Did the Olmec consider their gods to be infantile as well as all-powerful?

Zhou Dynasty/1045 BCE-222 BCE

Chinese history already had been unfolding for two thousand years before the emergence of the Zhou Dynasty. (As I am writing this, the United States is 238 years old.)

## ~

The Zhou era overlapped the Axial Age—six hundred years (800 to 200 BCE) of unusual global psychological progress. If it were up to me, I would extend the parameters of the Axial by two to three centuries and credit the totality of this span as a "Great Leap" for human consciousness, as a time when astonishingly analogous reality and morality perceptions emerged from thinkers everywhere. For a rough idea of how this might have changed the world, consider the effect of technological advances made during the relatively brief splash of the last 200 years. What was the world like in 1815?

## ~

In Zhou philosophy, the name of their ruling deity (Tian) identifies a principle as well as a god. That principle, based on Fair Play, values moral and virtuous behavior. Living by the Zhou code requires strong impulse control, which for most humans is like saddle-breaking a wild alpha stallion. In both instances, a pilgrim will likely endure many failures.

Zhou leaders authentically respected Tian and lived and governed accordingly. The goodness of their reigns became legendary and iconic. Their inspiration? A little something they totally believed in called the "Mandate of Heaven," which declared that a leader retained the blessing of Tian only when virtuous and moral. Otherwise, time for a new leader.

## ~

European kings reversed the concept by decreeing that they ruled because God chose them and therefore must be obeyed no matter what they chose to do. Ego prefers this approach.

Greece/800 BCE-200 BCE

Robust Minoan (27th to 5th centuries BCE) and Mycenaean (15th to 12th) cultures flourished in and around Greece during the Bronze Age, featuring written language and a religious mythology starring Zeus, Poseidon, and Apollo. The subsequent Mycenaean demise ushered in an era sometimes described as the region's "dark" age—ending in approximately 800 BCE—during which a dwindling few were able to read and write. Developing and promulgating religious myths—stories explaining the nature and activities of the gods—became the responsibilities of storytellers, whose oral renditions functioned as history, religion, enlightenment, and entertainment. In their imaginations, the world of the gods was a super-human replication of the material world.

## ~

The gods of Greece: (1) Humanlike. (2) Not all powerful, yet significantly stronger than us. (3) Much longer lifespan. (4) Strong-willed. (5) Separate from creation. (6) Violent. (7) No special love for humanity. (8) Must be obeyed. (9) Bound by the dictates of fate.

## ~

If gods are subordinate to fate, who or what determines fate?

## ~

The male Ego personified as a god: Zeus. Presiding deity. Sky-father of gods and men. Obsessed with sex. Armed with thunderbolts. Maker of storms. Killed his own father. Divvied the universe (in a game of chance) with his brothers Poseidon and Hades. The Latin word "Deus" (God) is an adaptation of the Greek word "Zeus."

## ~

Athena, the warrior goddess of wisdom, allegedly gifted the people of Athens with one of her favorite creations—an olive tree. Good choice. Olive oil became the foundation of the city's wealth. In return, she was acclaimed Athens' patron goddess. Hence the city's name. Her interests in military strategy and tactics inspired folk heroes like Hercules and Odysseus. A virgin goddess, Athena desired her relationships with men to be based on mutual respect. She disdained using her beauty to manipulate others.

## ~

Though worshipped by the Trojans, Aphrodite's incandescent sexuality made her a favorite of the Greeks. They worshipped her as a sky deity and symbol of light. Conceived from foam generated when her castrated father's genitals were pitched into the ocean, Aphrodite was considered the most beautiful of goddesses. She had the power to drive men and women mad beyond reason, inflamed with desire to have sex, pursuing each other usually fruitlessly, or—if the coupling did occur—with undesirable post-multi-orgasmic consequences. To illustrate, one need only think of Paris and Helen.

## ~

According to Greek myth, there came a time when Zeus traveled the earth disguised as a human. What he saw sickened and frightened him. His conclusion: the existence of humanity threatened the existence of the universe. That's how bad he thought we were. His choice of action: summon a flood to destroy us. Heck of an idea.

Zeus did not make arrangements for survivors. No Noah, no animals, no ark. Down came Zeus' rain. His brother Poseidon added an earthquake. The deluge continued and continued and continued until water covered the land.

To everyone's surprise—it had to be fate to counter Zeus' will—one couple survived. Their first act upon touching dry land was to prepare and make a sacrifice to the gods, though their supposed benefactors had just destroyed everything the survivors possessed and everyone they knew. I think of this as a version of the Stockholm Syndrome—the helpless bonding with their captors.

## ~

Hercules (aka Heracles), like many mythological heroes, was half-god, half-mortal. His father was the noted philanderer, Zeus, and his mother, a comely human female. Zeus' jealous wife, Hera, made Hercules as miserable as she could, for as long as she could. Finally, the half-breed's courage, strength, and sacrifice (he eventually gave his life to help others) convinced Zeus to turn his son into a god, at which point Hera relented and the story had a happy ending in Mt. Olympus.

## ~

Greek lore paints Adonis (the "Good Being") as a mortal man of unmatched physical beauty and exemplary character. Aphrodite was crazy about him. When a young lad, he lived for a time with Persephone in Hades. Smitten, she refused to let him leave. Zeus ordered that he be allowed to spend a third of the year with her, one-third with Aphrodite, and one-third on his own.

During his free time, he learned to hunt, though maybe not as well as one would hope. Adonis died after being speared in the side by the splinter sharp tusk of a wild boar and, as a dead mortal, went to the underworld. Zeus came to his rescue and freed Adonis' soul to spend half of every year in Hades and half with Aphrodite.

Metaphorically, the story of Adonis with its live-die-live cycle is symbolic of the agriculture experience of annual winter death and spring resurrection.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "It is striking to observe the placing of the Easter and Passover festivals together on the date that had been that of the death and resurrection of Adonis."

## ~

Due to his blindness, the Greek bard Homer authored his stories orally, which got the job done well enough in a culture that couldn't read or write. Around the 8th century BCE, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were written down and became cultural staples.

Spiritually speaking, the Iliad describes two parallel worlds—one human and one divine. People are at the mercy of gods, who definitely play favorites and have sex with beings of both worlds. Many of their offspring—such as Achilles (whose mother was a Nereid sea nymph)—were neither human nor divine..

By Homer's descriptions, Greek gods seem primarily the product of Ego imagination. They battle for power, have insufficient impulse control, are sexually compulsive, take what they want whenever they can, reward their favorites, punish their opponents, and, in general, view the world from a narrow, selfish perspective.

Homer reminds us that when a human pisses off a god, amends must be made. His tales focus on the travails of heroes, whose silly goal of earning eternal renown by prevailing in battle puts one in mind of a delusory ego compensation to counter the certainty of death. For all their voluntary and involuntary subservience to gods, Homer maintains that humanity can individually and collectively—by thoughts and actions—shape its own destiny.

Odysseus, the hero of the Odyssey, is one example. Like television's MacGyver, Odysseus' resourcefulness allows him to improvise plans and actions that alter a seemingly hopeless situation, allowing him to escape danger and move forward. Pleased by his cleverness, Athena helps him reach his primary goal—getting back to his wife and family. When Calypso, another sea nymph, entrances Odysseus with the lure of constant pleasure, immortality, and everlasting youth, he enjoys her for seven years, until—thanks to Athena—rejecting Calypso's lush sensuality, freeing himself to return home.

Interesting story line from Homer, especially when one considers that his hero could not find happiness in an ego fantasy paradise. Of his own free will, an extraordinarily capable human chose not to be a god, bowing out of the hero business, preferring the (albeit temporary) love, peace, and comfort of his wife and family.

## ~

In the Odyssey, Homer reintroduces us to Achilles, who was killed by Paris during the sack of Troy. Odysseus meets him in Hades. A dissatisfied Achilles mournfully tells Odysseus that eternal fame is not satisfying and, further, he would rather live as a slave on earth than a king in Hades.

## ~

Aspiring writers in the post-Homeric era constantly re-wrote the Iliad and Odyssey into new stories. Which brings to mind the oft-made comparison between Homer's Odyssey and the Gospel of Mark. Here are five similarities usually cited: (1) Both heroes are carpenters. (2) Both suffer. (3) Both stories include a fateful feast. (4) Both leave their followers to advance alone. (5) Both come back from the dead.

## ~

In the centuries following Homer, Greek religion introduced rituals and celebrations combining the sacred and the secular. Maintaining social harmony remained the primary objective. Games (including the original Olympics), dances, festivals, feasts, parades, and public celebrations were part social and part religious.

Syncretism—identifying one god with another—emerged as one of the main Greek influences. Their ability to blend one local god into another—made possible by a fundamental polytheism—helped spread Grecian lore. Phillip's son, Alexander, made a habit of incorporating the gods of conquered lands into Greek religious ceremonies.

Acutely aware of human mortality and its philosophic significance, the Greeks were comfortable placing a variety of differing religiously-derived reality explanations under one umbrella: their general acceptance of a transcendent force that included all the gods that had and might come to their attention. If each sees a different reflection of the same mystery, why should any take umbrage at another's understanding? After all, the "partial forms" of the various gods are themselves reflections of a more inclusive truth.

## ~

Are humans prisoners of fate? How can one come to terms with the idea that one's destiny is not in one's own hands? Some Greeks were attracted to the possibility that magic might trump fate. Others believed that enlightened spiritual conduct meant seeking knowledge and acting virtuously.

## ~

Minoans went to a lot of trouble to prepare their dead for burial. Inspired by a belief in an afterlife reminiscent to the body's experience on earth, their religious ceremonies were complex and thorough. Many believed a funeral was necessary to ward off haunting. After Homer, Greek religion retained this feature. Prayers and offerings were thought necessary to send the "ghost" on its way.

More fundamentally, though, Greek religion taught that the destiny of a dead person's spirit depends on the choices made and the actions taken during its life in the physical body. Good deeds or evil deeds? Bliss, torture, or life in a shadow world, pending reincarnation?

## ~

Orpheus was a musician, poet, and prophet who—like Hercules and Jesus—visited Hell before returning to earth. The music Orpheus strummed on his lyre allegedly could charm any sentient being and—if legend is correct and likely it is not—also stones and rocks. His followers populated the most popular mystery religion in Greece and, by the time of Jesus, had spread their ideas throughout the Roman Empire.

Why did this good man/myth go to Hell? Sad story. Orpheus' wife, Eurydice—yes, another nymph—was attacked by a satyr and—trying to escape—fell into a pit of vipers, received a fatal bite (on her heel), and died. To rescue the wife he loved, Orpheus went into the underworld, where his music made Hades and Persephone weep. In sympathy, the gods released Eurydice and Orpheus from hell. On the trip up, he made a wrong move and her release was cancelled. Heartbroken, he kept going and brought much wisdom to the mortal world.

## ~

Many mystery religions—popular in Greece and Rome—were built around secret explanations for the nature of reality, including guidance to help initiates find answers to three popular questions:

(1) What can a human do to assure divine assistance?

(2) How can a human be in direct contact with a god?

(3) How can a human win immortality?"

Initiates were given secret answers not available outside their particular cult. Over time, they were meant to increase in understanding. Such progress evokes the image of a soul's ascent into immortality. Free choice—a gift from the gods—meant that one could manage one's destiny. A wise choice can change one's future for the better. If one worships in the right way, gods will automatically respond.

## ~

Each mystery religion based its theological system on the reinterpretation of mythological themes as fertility metaphors. Theories of birth, death, and rebirth—evidenced by the agriculture cycle and the march of the seasons—were at the core of the mysteries. They transformed their chosen deities—with deep roots in many cultures—from local divinities into gods whose reach exceeded the world and thus trumped all geographically-limited objects of worship.

A common theme among the "mysteries" was the symbolic significance of planting, growing, harvesting, and rebirth. Many "mystery" deities triumphed over death and resumed their divine duties, stronger and wiser than ever.

Doctrine meant little to those running the mystery religions, who preferred to stimulate the emotion and imagination of their followers. This lack of credo-allegiance-requirement allowed a searcher to join more than one such cult.

What made mystery religions mysterious? Secret rituals. Exclusiveness. A claim to forge a connection between an initiate and a god. Most of all, I think, we can credit their promise to impart knowledge supposedly important enough to counteract the whims of fate. An excellent proselytizing device, in my humble opinion, second only to a claim of monopolistic control over every soul's post-mortem eternal residence.

## ~

In order to seal the deal with the affected deity, each initiate made a public declaration of faith. The choice to do so—like the decision to join the religion—can only be considered valid when freely made. The real beauty of the mystery religions was a willingness to help a human and a god form a personal bond. How could this be done absent free choice? Viva free choice.

Many individuals were initiated into more than one cult. No need to resign from the first to join the second. Or the third. Simultaneous membership was not taboo. If you think of the mystery religions as a form of social media, joining more than one might be considered networking. Plus, being open to a multiplicity of perspectives is a darn good antidote for ignorance.

## ~

A succession of female priestesses at Apollo's oracle at Delphi (usually called the Delphic Oracle) used drugs for inspiration as they probed the wisdom of the gods. What drugs? Venom from the fangs of poisonous snakes. Blood. Natural hallucinogens.

The Greeks valued the wisdom of the Oracle. Like many a superstar medium, the priestess delivered information deemed relevant by her listeners. They made a long trip to a sacred place to hear her prophecies. The fact that mind-altering drugs were an essential "means to an end" part of the process did not damage its credibility.

## ~

Dionysus (son of Zeus), died after being ripped apart by Titans, and was resurrected as a god after saving his mother from Hades. He is considered a dying and rising savior. He is, after all, the god of wine and that definition has a hidden dimension. Wine-making combines a natural earth-grown fruit—grapes—with labor, innovation, knowledge, and skill. In that sense, wine can be seen as symbolic of the good that comes from human/god cooperation.

## ~

James George Frazier: "Like other gods of vegetation Dionysus was believed to have died a violent death, but to have been brought to life again; and his sufferings, death, and resurrection were enacted in his sacred rites."

## ~

For worshippers of Dionysus, effects of wine were believed conducive to spiritual growth. Rituals were built around drink, food, dancing, music, and sex. As one might imagine, converts were relatively easy to find. Each year, his followers held two celebratory festivals—one in late December (winter solstice) and one in late March or early April (vernal equinox). The religion also promised an afterlife of constant human pleasure.

## ~

J. N. Findlay: "In the various (pre-Christian) religious mysteries of Demeter and Dionysus, bread and wine mediate a full communion and revelation of Spirit to Spirit."

## ~

Dionysus mystery revealed and translated: "Our personal egos get in the way of happiness. Subdue them with pleasures and experience our oneness."

## ~

Demeter is the goddess thought by Greek mythology to make the crops grow. She allegedly launched the Eleusinian Mysteries, a religion featuring huge festivals every five years. In many ways, she is considered the mother of winter, created in grief after her daughter, Persephone, was stolen by Hades. Zeus solved the problem by dividing Persephone's time between mortal life and the underworld. Her life in hell coincides with winter.

## ~

Basic message of Demeter mystery message revealed and translated: "Like grain in spring, the human soul is reborn after its body dies."

## ~

Three genuinely great Greek tragedians—Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides—hammered home reason's judgment: the fate of an individual is not as important as the fate of the collective, especially if the individual in question has offended the gods. In Greek plays, the idea that an offending individual must personally suffer so that the collective will flourish, is taken as a given.

More than a hint of the concept of karma is woven into the assumption that if one irritates, annoys, interferes, or challenges unchallengeable power, one must pay the price. That outcome, as tragic and heartbreaking as it might be, was considered preferable to having gods transfer their anger to the collective.

Further, the Greeks elevated the idea that every person always acts in self-interest—"rational behavior"—into a primary virtue. If someone did something guaranteed to raise the ire of The All-Powerful, say, Zeus, well...are we talking sanity here?

As many have noticed, tragic flaws like hubris, greed, and jealousy are nothing more or less than ego compensations, band-aid placebos, by-products of one or another erroneous belief-constellation. Tragedy happens when the flaw manages the individual more effectively than the individual manages the flaw.

## ~

In the same manner that an audience watches plays, the gods on Mt. Olympus are said to spectate life on Earth. Generation after generation, we are characters in an ongoing drama/comedy/tragedy/farce entertainment. Naturally, the gods have the long eye, like a one-hundred-year-old Cubs fan, which means they understand the values of perspective and patience.

In the play we humans are presenting, what happens to the actors when our characters die? Do we shake off our pretend personas, wipe clean our make-up, dress in normal clothes, depart the theater, and go home?

## ~

A Greek idea: What we experience is a combination (1) of the will of gods and (2) the choices of humans. To choose in harmony with the will of gods is considered wisdom. The gods of Mt. Olympus, though limited as defined and interpreted by human projections, were enemies of egos not their own. In this way, if only for self-preservation, they pulled the human zeitgeist toward the Rind.

## ~

If every sense-of-self is a focus of consciousness (an _I-Am_ ), and multiple senses-of-self are contained within one overall consciousness ( _I-Am_ within _I-Am_ within _I-Am_ ), then reality creation is not an ego monopoly.

## ~

Aeschylus: "The mind of Zeus is an abyss which no eye can fathom."

## ~

Greek fundamental theology: From the flames of divine reason sputtered the spark of human reason. Beyond the human, the Greeks perceived the "psyche"—a realm of Being we share with divinity. Because the essence of the psyche is reason—our common ground—those devoted to reason (philosophers) are allowed to wander in the world of the gods.

## ~

For approximately 400 years—from 700 to 300 BCE—Greek "thinkers" married practicality to intellect. By the latter date, the spread of Greek philosophy to Rome and beyond had begun. Many ideas were suggested which the author personally finds illuminating.

## ~

**Hesiod/700 BCE.** Told of being visited by a Muse and given the power of poetry. Subsequently, his "Theogony" described the world of Greek mythology from creation forward, employing Tolkien-like detail. Hesiod's portrayal made it easier to see the danger of combining Human Ego and God Power. Most importantly for me, Hesiod blended the rational and the spiritual, an inspiring accomplishment.

## ~

**Thales/620 BCE-546 BCE.** Intellectual pioneer. In many ways, reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci, two thousand years earlier. Wide range of knowledge and an urge to creatively experiment. Championed a quest to find the basic operating principles of nature. Searched for matter's "originating substances." Excellent math skills. Introduced deductive reasoning. Astronomer. Predicted eclipses. Determined dates and times of solstices. "Originated" natural philosophy. Described water as the fundamental substance of nature.

Did not interpret mythology literally. Concluded, however, from observation and analysis, that the soul is the source of all motion, penetrates everything and extends everywhere, to the limits of the universe, and beyond, and beyond, and beyond. Thales: "The world is full of gods."

## ~

**Anaximander/610 BCE-546 BCE.** Student of Thales. First to write a book of prose, or so the rumor goes. Proposed natural causes (instead of godly actions) for wind, rain, and lightning. Cartographer (drew a map of the world, the first ever in Greece). Came up with the concept of using models. Conceived the "open universe" theory, moving us past the idea of living in a celestial vault with the night sky as a firmament dome.

Claimed that man originated from another life form, possibly fish. His reason? A newborn baby dies without nurture. Humans could not have reached where we are now by being who we are now. Therefore, we must have evolved.

Sharing his teacher's desire to find basic principles, Anaximander conceived of a "First Cause" beyond the range of observation. The logic he used: (1) All observable elements are changeable. (2) If one is the First Cause, it would dominate the others. (3) Observable elements, in fact, seem to be in balance. (4) Therefore, one must look "elsewhere" for a First Cause. Anaximander theorized this "source of existence" as "boundless." Gave it a name: Apeiron, meaning infinite and indefinite.

Apeiron is where life and elements originate and inevitably return. According to Anaximander, all must "pay penalty and retribution to one another for their injustice, according to the disposition of time."

## ~

**Pythagoras/570 BCE-495 BCE.** Mystic genius. Believed the meaning of the universe could be found in the logic of numbers. Order and proportion, necessary to keep chaos from overwhelming the cosmos, are demonstrated by mathematical reasoning. An understanding of numbers, therefore, points us to an understanding of nature and godhood.

Thought that every physical form contained a spark of the divine, whose existence does not depend on the body. Believed in the transmigration of souls from one body to another (reincarnation). Pythagoras: "The soul is an emanation of the divine." Also taught that people should "walk not on the highways." In thought, and word, and act, we are much better off when we don't drift with the herd.

## ~

**Xenophanes/576 BCE-478 BCE.** Poet/philosopher. Ridiculed anthropomorphism. "If horses had gods, these gods would be horses." Founder of Greek philosophical monotheism. Thought of God as changeless, motionless, eternal, and the form of cosmic unity. Thought of humans as part of "all things hasting back to unity, identity."

Xenophanes wrote that God "Always remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shapes all things by the thoughts of his mind. All of him sees, all thinks, and all hears."

## ~

**Heraclitus/535 BCE-675 BCE.** Defined Greek popular religions as mere superstition. More important to know that "soul" is the basis of human consciousness. Unity of souls is the operating principle of the universe. Thus, the divine is everywhere. "Wisdom is the oneness of mind that guides and permeates all things."

Believed that all life and matter—when examined in depth—are linked within a commonality. Opposites are observable, true, but a more inclusive perspective reveals their underlying unity. Elements interchange in a balanced way, automatically obeying rules—the laws of physical change—and reality formation is thereby regulated. Heraclitus wrote that laws undergirding nature's procession were manifestations of deeper principles with moral and ethical implications.

Time reveals the effects of change, makes them easier to perceive, yet time is correlative to this process, not causal. Change is relentless in and of itself. Heraclitus: "Nothing endures but change."

## ~

**Parmenides/515 BCE-450 BCE.** Considered reality to be "one" and "whole." Theorized that self-existence and logical self-identity are its fundamental characteristics. Describing this ultimate principle—which some call God—is difficult when one is distracted by appearance and opinion. Parmenides thought that individual life in the physical world isn't really happening, is an illusion—a mortal interpretation of immortal thought.

## ~

**Anaxagoras/510 BCE-428 BCE.** Suggested "nous"—a spiritual power in the mode of the Tao—to be the universe's formative operative principle. Nous means: mind. Nous also means: reason. Nous is why we have an orderly universe instead of entropic madness. Nous is a focus of consciousness. In French, "nous" signifies the collective "we," suggesting a migration of meaning from the theoretical to the practical.

## ~

**Empedocles/495 BCE-435 BCE.** Wrote about the struggle between love and hate. In his view, All-that-Is began as a single entity, a God containing the entirety of creation. What is the source of this unity? Love. How does love work? By bonding like with like. Empedocles theorized that a portion of this Whole was overcome by strife—binding like with unlike. From strife, then, came separation (though each of the newly separated elements contained portions of the others). From separation, creation. From creation, physical existence.

Empedocles thought that the struggle between love and strife (hate) affects every generation. Love fights to re-establish Oneness and strife generates entropy. Their battle will continue until a crude unity is re-established, which sets the stage for the formation of a new creation, in which the process will be repeated.

## ~

**Socrates/469 BCE-399 BCE.** The Delphic Oracle proclaimed that no person was wiser than Socrates, though he considered himself ignorant and in constant need of additional wisdom. Thinking he knew nothing of real value, he taught by questioning people who believed themselves wise. Socrates' use of the dialectic revealed the limits of language and enabled him to help his students transcend their normal perceptions.

## ~

Socrates: "Fate has ordained that there shall be no friendship among the evil, yet always friendship among the good."

## ~

Thought is faster than language. Socrates knew he had to slow down his mind to think in words, and more so to speak them. Throw in the physical tempo of sound waves traveling through air, entering an ear, being translated by the brain...and language has no chance to cleanly and precisely replicate thought.

Realizing that a conversation could not easily teach if it triggered a defensive reaction, Socrates' approach was courteous and gentle. Beginning with what seemed more certain, he used induction to contemplate the likelihood of what appeared to be doubtful.

## ~

Socrates: "The discovery of the absolute can be by the light of reason only, and without any assistance of sense."

## ~

Many young Athenian men followed Socrates' lead. He showed them a way of gaining understanding, which they emulated. This irritated the city's political leaders, who preferred that the young men become more traditional citizens and worship the same gods everyone else worshipped. Eventually, legal charges were levied against Socrates for "corrupting the morals" of the city's youth. Found guilty by a vote of 280-220, Socrates was condemned to death.

Despite the protests of his friends, the lightly-guarded Socrates did not flee into exile. Instead, he calmly accepted the fact of his dying. Near the end, Plato reports that Socrates stated: "We can and must pray to the gods that our sojourn on earth will continue happy beyond the grave. This is my prayer, and may it come to pass."

## ~

**Aristippus of Cyrene/435 BCE-356 BCE.** Living in the material world, what is the highest good? According to Aristippus, the answer is "pleasure" and on this rock he founded his theory of ethical hedonism, a logical extension of Ego's conception that it is alone, vulnerable, and finite. Facing the existential abyss of Ego's belief, Aristippus advised people to live in such a way that the pleasure they experienced outweighed (as far as possible) their pain. In this quest for maximum pleasure, however, Aristippus declared it is not ethical to violate the "equal rights" of anyone else. Reminds me of Hugh Hefner's "consenting adults" sexual philosophy.

## ~

**Plato/429 BCE-347 BCE.** Famously, Plato counseled those seeking wisdom to "know thyself." What might that mean? (1) Understand the consequences of thy choices. (2) Understand why thy is disposed to make one choice instead of another. (3) Understand the reality of the thy who chooses. Given my way of thinking, I might rewrite the original quote like this: "Know Thy _I-Am_."

Because our world is constantly changing, Plato taught that we cannot trust the permanent applicability of what it teaches us. How, then, can we gain knowledge? By understanding that the universe in which we live is a "pale reflection" of the divine—which, when everything is sorted out, turns out to yield a deeper understanding, rendering the reality we are currently experiencing as little more than an elaborately detailed dream.

Plato wrote that we acquire knowledge when we recognize things here which resemble things in the "divine world." The Greeks called this anamnesis—"recalling to memory." We remember ideas garnered in previous existences, previously blotted out by the mere fact of our being re-born.

Timaeus, a book written by Plato, identifies the quality of "Being" with an eternal God familiar with universal forms. In the same work, "Becoming" is identified with the World Soul, a sentient entity that contains the Earth, and whose constant change—evolution—is an exploration of organic principles.

Consistent with his conception that truth can only come from God, Plato believed history to be absurd if one only considers wars and material struggles. A deeper reality must exist, and to find it, one must move beyond money and influence. The deeper reality— truer than true—has at its center a passion for love and justice. Love, therefore, is the way forward.

## ~

Plato: "Man is a being in search of meaning."

## ~

A key element in discerning "meaning" is recognizing that the "forms" we witness in the material world are imperfect copies of ideals found elsewhere. The same concept emerged in China a few years later and also was interpreted in psychological terms by Carl Jung in the 20th century. Jung called the forms "archetypes."

## ~

Some horses, being more spirited than others, love to race simply because they love first place. Plato called this passion "thumos" and today we might label it a "burning desire" for victory. Thumos can be uplifting or, as so often happens in humans, morph into selfish desires. When the latter is true, the consequences aren't pretty, especially for the person making this fundamental mistake. Which, not for nothing, I have done myself more than once.

Plato described thumos as useful when managed by a more inclusive sense of self—which he called the "nous." The nous reminds me of what I call the Rind—human consciousness not dominated by ego. Plato considered it to be the source of "highest knowledge." Doubtful. Higher than ego-driven human consciousness, that's for sure. So we'll edit Plato's descriptor to "higher knowledge."

## ~

Plato: "It is the task of philosophy not simply to inform one of the truth, but to free the soul to its own eternal existence."

## ~

Man lives in darkness, according to Plato, while the real world is swathed in light. Moments of illumination expand our understanding. Plato's cave allegory—chained and ignorant prisoners living in a cave mistaking shadows for the real world—praises a philosopher as someone who escapes from the cave, checks out the real world, and reports his new-found information to his still imprisoned companions. Who find it exceedingly difficult to believe him.

No matter what human consciousness apprehends, the real world cannot be found in the cave. Reality is outside. The sun is symbolic of Plato's "principle of the good." Self-development consists of moving from the unreal to the real.

## ~

Plato: "The true order of going is to use the beauties of earth as steps along which one mounts upwards for the sake of that other Beauty."

## ~

**Aristotle/384 BCE-322 BCE.** Master of reason, prime minister of logic. Observed, analyzed, classified, theorized. The power and versatility of his thought affected the philosophies of centuries, up to and including the present.

Expanded the "the possible" beyond what is, or what likely will be, by adding what is reasonably conceivable. Valued the "self-realization" that emerges (1) when a person does what a person likes to do (2) in an intelligent and well-reasoned manner. Self-realization in this case seems to be a combination of "know thyself" and authentic self-expression.

## ~

I am the thinker. I am the thought.

I am the seeker. I am the sought.

## ~

Aristotle applied the concept "nous" to a transcendent so mental that he described it as "thought thinking itself." Argued that every "cause and effect sequence" must be initiated by an uncaused cause, a First Cause. Thus defined, God is "the unmoved mover" and, as such, absolute.

Aristotle's explanation for the twin origins of religious beliefs: our dreams and our contemplation of cosmological order. He also offered a third: "Men create the gods after their own image."

## ~

Quite a leap from "God created man" to "Man created god." Not that hard to imagine a logic-based scenario in which both theoreticals are operative.

## ~

Aristotle: "The soul is the cause and source of the living body."

## ~

What is the relationship between divine consciousness and human consciousness, according to Aristotle? He described the soul as "being everything that it knows." God, "knowing" human consciousness, "is" human consciousness.

## ~

**Pyrrho/369 BCE-270 BCE**. Knew how hard it is to know. In fact, Pyrrho argued, it is impossible to understand the nature of reality or, for that matter, the nature of anything. Any assertion can be contradicted by another opinion, equally valid. When no wise choice is possible, one's best option is to stop choosing. Suspend judgment. Withdraw. Relish the exquisite freedom found in ataraxia (tranquility).

Pyrrho: "Nothing in life needs to be taken seriously."

## ~

**Epicurus/341 BCE-270 BCE**. Happiness—the goal of life—requires absence of (1) physical pain and (2) mental disturbance. Also necessary: emotional self-control and attention to the moment-at-hand.

Epicurus thought that nature constructed itself from atom-like substances. On that basis, he formulated a theory of natural evolution.

The fact that humans believe in God, Epicurus reasoned, is evidence that a god exists. Our interactions with the divine are hard for us to fathom, or even realize are happening. More direct contact can be made in dreams, when worldly distractions are reduced.

## ~

**Zeno of Citium/334 BCE-262 BCE.** First Stoic. Taught that a spiritual force vivifies matter and manifests in many designs, including reason and soul. Used the term "pneuma"—Greek for "air"—to designate the universe's "principle of animation." Compared the new-born soul to a blank piece of paper.

According to Zeno, the world-soul has the same relationship with the world that the individual soul has with the body. Because all parts belong to the whole, God—a reasoning entity—is the universe and the universe is God.

The human soul begins as emanation of the divine and ends when it is reabsorbed into the godhead. The key to re-absorption is to live in virtuous harmony with the ruling principle: All things work together for the good of the whole.

## ~

**Arcesilaus/315 BCE-240 BCE.** Declared that he knew nothing, not even the limits of his own ignorance. Believed in the possibility of truth, but did not see how humans can perceive it, because sensory data cannot be trusted. Saw probability as the key to life. What affects outcome?

Axial Age/800 BCE-200 BCE

Nomads settled, learned to farm, and, natural as sex, gathered more or less in cities—abodes of interactive consciousness in which one's interpretation of reality constantly interacts with the dearly held and often differing beliefs and understandings of many others. Such is the Mix that makes the moment-at-hand.

Where patterns are rendered invisible by life span limits, knowledge requires multi-generation cooperation. Glorious are the eras when millenniums of observation, research, analysis, and unconscious fermentation culminate in the emergence of more inclusive understandings.

The Axial Age—named by Karl Jaspers—is so described by those who value human reason and spiritual inquiry. Over a period of almost six hundred years—effectively simultaneous given the big picture—startlingly advanced and invaluable ideas entered the Mix. Their sources were geographically scattered: China, Greece, India, Iran, Israel.

## ~

Karl Jaspers: "The spiritual foundations of humanity were laid simultaneously and independently...and these are the foundations upon which humanity still subsists today."

## ~

Questions Asked During The Axial Age:

• What is the nature of Self?

• What is morality?

• What is the highest good?

• What is transcendent?

• What is on the other side of death?

Assumptions Conceived In The Axial Age:

• We are separate individuals.

• We are responsible for our thoughts and actions.

• We control our own destiny.

• We are free to spiritually inquire, advance, and attain.

• We are well-advised to follow the Golden Rule.

Religions Spawned Or Shaped In The Axial Age:

• Zoroasterism

• Confucianism

• Buddhism

• Taoism

• Judaism

• Hinduism

• Jainism

A Few People Who Lived In The Axial Age:

• Lao-tzu

• Confucius

• Pythagoras

• Homer

• Buddha

• Socrates

• Plato

• Aristotle

• Isaiah

• Mahavira

• Mencius

Buddha/562 BCE-483 BCE

Born in Nepal, son of a powerful and wealthy ruler, Siddhartha Gautama abandoned a life of regal luxury to pursue spiritual understanding. His insights into the human situation turned out to be a different kind of treasure, much more valuable than the vast material riches possessed by his father. Siddhartha came to think that life in the physical is life in a trap that needs escaping.

"All is sorrow," he noted, "all is loss." Into such a world, we are born, we die, we are born, we die, we are born, we die, again and again and again. Buddha described this quicksand as "Samsara."

## ~

Desire is natural. Intense, self-serving desire is ego.

## ~

Buddha: "I teach suffering and the end of suffering."

## ~

How did we come to be encased in a world rife with suffering? Collective and individual Karma. Good choices (loving) lead to freedom. The bad (unloving) intensify the grip of shackles. Considering how we hate to suffer, why would we choose to be unloving? Ego confusions, ego delusions.

## ~

Wisdom is the result of experience and intuition. After an epic night of struggle and contemplation, Siddhartha's analysis of human consciousness lifted him from karma's grip. Soon after, he met a group of fellow pilgrims, who asked if he had become a god. Upon hearing "no," one of them queried, "What are you?" He answered, "Buddha," meaning, "I am awake."

Siddhartha "woke up" during a full moon. When I was a senior in college, wrestling the world for what might exist beyond ego satisfactions, I used to walk the campus post-midnight during full moons. At that time, I considered the relationship between the moon and the sun to be roughly metaphoric to the one shared by a Transcendently Inclusive _I-Am_ and my personal _I-Am_. One night, I calculated how many more full moons I would likely see during my current lifetime, weather permitting.

## ~

Buddha's rejection of asceticism matched his previous discarding of material privilege. Noting that "the cessation of ignorance occurs through the avoiding of extremes," he saw the Middle Way as the key to balance and harmony. Huston Smith: "It is the concept of the rationed life, in which the body is given what it needs to function optimally, but no more."

## ~

To guide us forward, Buddha recommended detachment or, stated less negatively, "non-attachment." If we make no distinction between winning and losing, success and failure, pain and pleasure, we will be able to return to the unity from which we came. Detached observations neuter ego in time and space.

## ~

Buddha: "You are what observes, not what you observe."

## ~

I think of my passion—originating in childhood and lasting to this day—for University of Illinois basketball. Witnessing my first game on a black and white television in 1953, I entered what psychologists call "participation mystique"—a beyond-the-rational identification (both conscious and unconscious) of an individual with a collective. The sense-of-oneness thus provided (1) is an ego compensation for loneliness and (2) satisfies a spiritual need for communion.

My attachment to Illinois b-ball generates a vivifying passion, win or lose. Should I detach and ascend to a higher level—the Big Ten conference, for example—oblivious to the wins and losses of individual teams, content merely that games are played? Wouldn't I too much miss the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat? What is the reward for such a sacrifice?

## ~

Buddha: "I am free, for my mind is not imprisoned by the delusions of my senses."

## ~

He believed (and preached) that spiritual attainment was not limited by caste, social status, or any other earthly burden. Enlightenment—a frontier-crossing advance of human consciousness—is for everyone.

## ~

For Buddha, freedom from ego automatically elevates perspective. He identified this further POV with Nirvana, where personal awareness melts into a unity of consciousness. Enlightenment (advanced understanding) removes one from the human maze. Here is the path forward as described by Buddha. 1. Detachment from sense objects and calming of the passions. 2. Non-reasoning and simple concentration. 3. Dispassionate mindfulness. 4. Pure awareness and peace.

## ~

Transferring my "sense of self" from the Illini to the Big Ten would not end my "personal" experience and growth, and neither should attainment of Nirvana. One is wise to rest when tired, remembering that ultimate satisfaction requires more than good intentions.

## ~

Buddha perceived physical reality as constantly changing from moment to moment. Nothing lasts. Nothing. Does this thought frighten you? In search of permanence, ego makes many mistakes, and, after each one, more suffering.

## ~

Like Jesus, Buddha mainly interacted with twelve disciples. Joseph Campbell: "The Buddha follows a path very much like that of Christ; only of course the Buddha lived five hundred years earlier. You can match those two savior figures right down the line, even to the roles and characters of their immediate disciples, or apostles."

## ~

Buddha: "There is no way to happiness, happiness is the way."

## ~

Personal development, in Buddha's view, is not concluded in one lifetime. Individuating consciousness is sometimes incarnate, often not. The law of karma applies in either case.

## ~

One aspect of Buddha's teaching I deeply appreciate is his refusal to present himself as a divinity who should be worshipped. Many tried to define him as a god. Declaring himself fully human, he acted as a teacher, example, and inspiration.

## ~

Buddha: "Strive with diligence, the Buddha only shows the way."

Jainism/550 BCE

Jainism aims to help pilgrims escape from the effects of karma, mostly having to endure an unending series of incarnations in the physical world. Though never able to rival Buddhism and Hinduism in numbers of followers, its impact—especially on those who abandon society in search of spiritual release—is significant.

In many ways, Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, experienced a life similar to Buddha. The two men were contemporaries living in roughly the same neighborhood, though they never met. Like Buddha, Mahavira was the son of super-rich and super-powerful parents. Like Buddha, Mahavira set out to shed all desires and attachments.

Unlike Buddha, he took off his clothes and lived nude the rest of his life. Mahavira also went to great lengths to avoid damaging or killing other life forms, including insects. When he was 42 years old, perceiving that the world of appearance is not the actual environment in which we exist, Mahavira attained what he called "perfect enlightenment" and spent the next 30 years teaching others how to do the same.

## ~

Mahavira described the reality in which we live as a Mix of infinite spiritual and infinite material possibilities. The complexities of our Mix—combined with the relativity of our perspectives—make difficult the search for truth. Therefore, one should practice Non-Absolutism and avoid mistaking temporary opinion for permanent insight.

According to Jainism, all souls are real, equal, and migratory—taking temporary residence in wind, fire, water, earth, plants, rocks, animals, humans, and everything else. Individual characteristics change, but the soul does not. The "pure" soul is perfect in knowledge and power. Mahavira's system does not include a god. Souls, once liberated, are immortal and omniscient.

However, because of passion-birthed karma, our souls are more or less trapped. We have freedom of choice and this can be either blessing or curse. Good deeds and unselfish asceticism—up to and including fasting to death—take us in the right direction.

Escape—crossing the bridge to a further shore—takes more than one life and requires right belief, right knowledge, and right conduct. Right belief to Jains, naturally, is acceptance of Jainism, right knowledge is understanding nature, and right conduct involves the five virtues: nonviolence, truth-speaking, non-stealing, chastity, non-attachment to worldly things.

Deemed more valuable by Mahavira is the choice of a soul not to harm any living things. He taught that purity of intent is not a defense when it comes to harming life. Even unintentional injuries to life forms cause one to accumulate negative karma. One must take steps—such as wearing a cloth over one's mouth and nostrils to avoid breathing in insects—to limit or eliminate hurting others. What else causes negative karma? Ego excesses, such as anger, greed, and hatred.

Ahisma is the name given the Jainism practice of "not harming living beings." This sophisticated theory—involving truth-telling and non-violent resistance—influenced Mohandas Gandhi in the 20th century and led to the liberation of India from colonial exploitation. Gandhi thought of ahimsa as "enlightened self-interest" protecting both victim and the perp.

Kongzi (Confucius)/551 BCE-479 BCE

Kongzi proclaimed harmony to be a psychological, spiritual, and social necessity. Less harmony, more suffering; more harmony, more happiness. The Chinese philosopher valued the quality as if it were an elemental operative principle of consciousness.

## ~

Preferring practical thinking over abstract philosophy, Kongzi lived the life he taught: humble and modest, attentive to personal development, which he called self-improvement. His underlying themes were ethics, morals, family values, and the path to happiness. Kongzi's concepts influenced Chinese religious and political life for almost 2,500 years, and may someday do so again.

## ~

Kongzi: "If one puts duty first and success after, will not that improve one's character? If one attacks one's own failings instead of those of others, will that not remedy personal faults?"

## ~

Social harmony—in Kongzi's view—requires competent and moral government. Because virtue inspires virtue, and those who are governed follow the example of those who govern, harmony can be generated and maintained. Virtue begets a deeper loyalty than can be compelled by force. To Kongzi, the Zhou Dynasty provided a leadership ideal from which China had sadly strayed.

## ~

When questioned about what happens when the body dies, our man replied, "You do not even understand life. How can you understand death?"

## ~

Shang Ti—meaning Supreme Ancestor—was the name Kongzi used to describe the most powerful divinity he could imagine. He also wrote in his Analects: "Be reverent toward the gods, but keep them at a distance." For rules of conduct, Kongzi favored morality, goodness, and kindness. He scoffed at the "Realist" notion that "might makes right."

## ~

Kongzi used the phrase "Chun Tzu" to describe a state-of-mind he believed should be the goal of individual human self-development. To become a chun tzu, one had to escape the gravity of ego. Music was helpful, if appropriate.

## ~

Huston Smith: "A chun tzu is a fully realized human being, brought about through expanding one's sympathy and empathy indefinitely."

## ~

Until transformed by Kongzi into a virtual universal, the word "Li" exclusively described the mutual-support environment of religious rituals. Master Kong came up with a more inclusive definition. He advised people to interact with each other constantly in the same manner they did during their worship ceremonies, to live each moment as if it were sacred, bringing to their choices dignity, attention, compassion, and purpose.

Shinto/500BCE

In ancient Japan, religious efforts included shamanism, respect for nature, hero deification, fertility evocation, and a quest for divination. From this cauldron emerged Shinto—a religion without a founder or written scriptures.

Adherents of Shinto use the word "Kami" to name their guardian gods. Nature abounds with Kami, who–among other things—sustain and protect human beings. Why? Because all human life is "Kami's child" and therefore sacred. So is nature, where one goes if one desires to be close to one or more Kami.

What is the will of Kami? One can find it in the sincerity of one's heart-of-hearts. What is the skill of Kami? The power to harmoniously create. What is the Shinto way forward? Right attitude and right practice.

Lao Tzu/500 BCE

Lao Tzu, a legend who may have never lived, is credited with writing a short book—81 chapters, one page each—during a long weekend twenty-five hundred years ago. The words on those pages have been translated into English more frequently than any book except the Bible.

Given the psychological tendency of thirsty humans to describe dirt as water and otherwise cough stuff up, it's not surprising that many consider Lao Tzu to be a divinity walking on earth. Others predict (promise) a second coming. So far, nothing, as far as we know.

## ~

From Chapter One of Lao Tzu's _Daodejing (Tao Te Ching)_ :

## ~

"One who knows does not speak. One who speaks does not know. The way that can be spoken of is not the constant way. The name that can be named is not the constant name. The nameless was the beginning of heaven and earth. That which can be described in words is merely a conception of the mind."

## ~

"In all the world, nothing is more supple or weak than water. Yet nothing can surpass it for attacking what is stiff and strong. And nothing can take its place. That the weak overcomes the strong and the supple overcomes the hard are things everyone in the world knows but none can practice."

## ~

Lao Tzu's practical advice for living in harmony with the Tao encouraged the reduction of a sense of being a separate individual and an increase in the sense of being part of a much greater reality. Though he did not use the word Ego, the thoughts and action he described were aimed at eliminating a misleading sense of self.

## ~

Lao Tzu: "We shape clay in a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want."

## ~

Whether a man so named and described is actually the author of the _Daodejing_ , I do not know. Fact is, the book has existed for millennia, meaning somebody wrote it a long, long time ago, and the pages are crammed with dots of light. Here are a few more:

## ~

• "There is a being, wonderful, perfect; It existed before heaven and earth. How quiet it is! How spiritual it is! It stands alone and does not change. It moves around and around, but does not on this account suffer. All life comes from it. It wraps everything with its love as in a garment, and yet it claims no honor, it does not demand to be Lord. I do not know its name, and so I call it Tao, the Way, and I rejoice in its power."

• "Tao is the infinite ontic (real) substance, the fathomless unity of all beings, prior in existence even to God, infinite in nature, invisible in shape, but really great in function because all creatures are begotten from it."

• "Tao is invisibly subsistent up in the transcendental realm...darts itself out and down into the realm of Being."

• "The universal subtle essence is to human beings what the great ocean is to the rivers and streams of the earth."

• "All creatures under heaven are born from being; Being is born from non-being. Each separate being in the universe returns to the common source. The way is vague and elusive."

## ~

Lao Tzu's counsel on spiritual progress:

• "Heaven is able to be long lasting and Earth is able to endure, because they do not live for themselves. This is why sages put themselves last and yet come first; treat themselves as unimportant, and yet are preserved. Is it not because they have no thought of themselves, that they are able to perfect themselves?"

• "They produce without possessing. They act with no expectation of reward. Is it not just because they do not strive for any personal end that all their personal ends are fulfilled?"

Buddhism/483 BCE

After Buddha died—in counterpoint to his words, wishes, and wisdom—his followers in north India started a religion. A key element of its scriptures came from people reciting Buddha's words as they remembered them. This continued for approximately 400 years, which is a long time to retain oral accuracy, especially considering the likelihood of personal preference editing. One has to wonder how many of Buddha's original Suttas survived intact until first written, and what has happened to them since. For what founder and what religion is a similar tale not true?

## ~

Essence of Buddhism: Something has gone wrong. Life is unfulfilling. Life is suffering. The situation can be improved. Wake up and pay attention.

## ~

Jack Kerouac: "Death comes from birth, birth comes from deeds, deeds come from attachment, attachment comes from desire, desire comes from perception, perception comes from sensation, sensation comes from the six sense organs, the six sense organs come from individuality, individuality comes from consciousness."

## ~

Eightfold Buddhist path: Right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

## ~

"Right" in this context means "away from Ego, toward Rind." Once authentically begun, the process appears to be self-generative.

## ~

First Noble Truth: Birth is suffering, growing old is suffering, death is suffering, union with what is displeasing is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering."

## ~

In Buddhism, the word "Dharma" has a second meaning, signifying any actions or beliefs that might either impede or protect a person.

## ~

Buddhist Trinity: (1) Body of Transformation. The body in which one lives on Earth. (2) Body of Bliss. The next level. Rind? (3) Body of Dharma. Further. Ultimate reality. A body beyond the physical. Immortal.

## ~

Surangama Sutra: "You should know that your mind is fundamentally wonderful, bright, and pure and that because of your involvement with the things of the world you have covered it up and lost it. In this way you are caught on the endless wheel of becoming this or that, sinking and floating in that sea of endless becoming. Awaken yourself now to your own bright mind."

## ~

The logic of Buddhism: What causes suffering? A mistaken belief. Which is? That the Ego is the entirety of the Self. Does this make us evil? No. We are not evil. We are ignorant. What is the solution? More inclusive consciousness.

## ~

Dhammapada: "It's easy to see the errors of others, but hard to see your own."

## ~

The concept of original sin does not resonate in Buddhism. Why? Because Buddha taught that all of us are already immortal, and have nothing to do but realize the extent of our existence. Ego—attached to "physical mortality in obsessive fear of physical death" (Joseph Campbell)—is unable to do so. In this view, the problem is one of "mistaken focus" (more Campbell) rather than our breaking bad and being kicked out of a nice garden where we could eat most every fruit and run around looking good naked.

## ~

Desires advocated by Buddha:

• Desire for liberation

• Desire for the happiness of others

• Desire to grow more loving

Desires not advocated by Buddha

• Desire for private fulfillment.

## ~

"Tanha" is Ego's gravity, pulling _I-Am_ into the matrix of its myriad personal desires, each one—according to Buddhism—separating instead of unifying. The inevitable result of such an approach is suffering. To escape Tanha, one must accomplish two feats. (1) Act and think selflessly, if only for a moment. (2) Repeat as necessary.

## ~

Desire —> Attachment —> Addiction —> Change —> Suffering —> Grow more loving —> Freedom

## ~

Edward Conze: "It is assumed first of all in Buddhism that there is an ultimate reality, and secondly that there is a point in ourselves at which we touch that ultimate reality. To get somehow to that ultimate reality is the supremely worthwhile goal of the Buddhist life."

## ~

Seeking medicine for a miracle healing, a woman hauled her son's dead body around the neighborhood, knocking on every door. Finally, she came across Buddha. He advised her to use mustard seeds gathered from any family "untouched by death." After a lengthy and unsuccessful search, she left her child's corpse in the forest and once again found Buddha, who emphasized the point in words: "Death comes to all beings. Before their desires are satisfied, death takes them away.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "The goal of Buddhism is to make the individual aware of the Buddha-consciousness in (him) (her) self."

## ~

Though reincarnation is the cornerstone of Buddha's reality analysis, he did not believe that the "soul" was a wispy substance animating and outlasting physical form. In his opinion, "Mind" emanates from a single source of consciousness and does not need matter to "be."

Freedom requires liberation from multiple levels of illusion. When all layers are seen as imaginary, Buddha thought an individual sense of self would disappear. Thus Buddhism distinguishes itself from Hinduism, which preaches that the sense of self is expanded and altered upon enlightenment, but still present. In either case, as Huston Smith pointed out, "an individual is wrongly situated until connected with the only adequate context for human self-understanding—the All."

## ~

Whereas Hinduism disdains the world, Buddhism is more affirming of it, because the world makes more sense—from a Rind point of view—to the enlightened.

## ~

Samyutta Nikaya: "Monks, we who look at the whole and not just the part, know that we too are systems of interdependence, of feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and consciousness all interconnected. We come to realize there is no me or mine in any one part, just as a sound does not belong to any one part of the flute."

## ~

Buddhism on God:

• Gods are as real as people. None of them created the universe. None of them are all-knowing. They live what Ego considers "the good life." Which traps them in illusion. Therefore, they need help to gain their freedom as much we do—maybe more, as their surfeit of pleasure tends to numb them to the truth of their situation.

Buddhism on religion:

• Ritual and worship do not lead to enlightenment.

Buddhism on humans:

• We are foci of consciousness that create and experience personal illusions.

• Forward is not forward when one is traveling in a circle. Our progress requires our perception that our experiences are not real and—in fact—neither are we.

• Realization of unreality is necessary for us to escape ego's chain gang of thought and belief, action and reaction, life and death.

• Until we realize that life is unreal and we are unreal, we are imprisoned in a physical world where suffering is a given—life after life, birth after birth, death after death.

• How do humans find genuine freedom? By virtue of accumulating understanding over lifetimes and/or a moment of enlightenment.

• What is enlightenment? A more inclusive POV. The night is dark. Boom goes the dynamite.

• All beings, in sum and in part, share an identical wish, to live happily and be free from suffering.

• An enlightened person in Buddhism is called an "Arhat."

• An enlightened person in Buddhism who postpones the experience of Nirvana in order to stay around for one or more lifetimes and help others is called a "Bodhisattva."

## ~

Huston Smith: "Buddhism is a voyage across life's river, a transport from the common-sense shore of ignorance, grasping, and death, to the further bank of wisdom and enlightenment."

## ~

The further _I-Am_ distances itself from Ego, the closer _I-Am_ identifies itself with Rind.

## ~

Absent Ego's misperceptions, Nirvana is a pragmatic understanding of reality. The candle of delusion is blown out by the clarity of expanded vision, clearing the way for an awakened mind no longer addicted to ego's desires.

Nirvana is not a total void. Nirvana is not nothing. Nirvana is bliss, fulfillment, perfection, a spiritual singularity, not the end of Being.

## ~

Buddha: "What is meant by non-duality? Light and shade, long and short, black and white, can only be experienced in relation to each other. There is no nirvana except where the world of suffering is; there is no world of suffering apart from nirvana."

## ~

Buddhists—like Hindus and Indo-Aryans—name the source and nature of all life "Brahman," and declare it incomprehensible and unknowable.

## ~

Kena Upanishad: "What cannot be spoken with words, but that whereby words are spoken. What cannot be thought with the mind, but that whereby the mind can think. Know that alone to be Brahman, the Spirit; and not what people here adore. Sight does not reach there, neither does thinking or speech."

Tao/400 BCE

Taoism (also Daoism) is a perception that the universe—and humanity—are foundationally spiritual. The entirety of creation—including that which is divine and that which is inanimate—is unified by an unknown and unknowable (to human consciousness) energy.

## ~

Zhuangzi: "Where is the Tao found? There is nowhere it is not to be found. Tao is the wind blowing on the ten thousand things, the music of the spheres."

## ~

Everything that has ever been, is now, and ever will be has emerged, is emerging, and will emerge from this mysterious Force, which—as a matter of human convenience and not ultimate description—is referred to as the Tao (Dao).

## ~

Karen Armstrong: "The Dao...was not a god, it predated heaven and earth, and was beyond divinity....contained all the myriad patterns, forms, and potential that made the world the way it was and guided the endless flux of change and becoming that we see all around us."

## ~

The Tao is the cause of change and the source of balance. Why do we suffer? A lack of balance and resistance to change. Ego, of course, fears any impermanence, especially its own.

## ~

In light of this, how can one participate in the experiences one desires? How can one lead an authentically loving life? Where is happiness in this equation? What is the best way forward?

## ~

Lao Tzu: "By non-action, everything can be done."

## ~

Wu Wei, baby, is not doing nothing. Wu Wei is non-ego thought and action, Taoism's antidote for the jungle way of living, in which the big ones eat the little ones, etc., etc., etc., and that's all there is to it. Doing what needs to be done, that's Wu Wei. Simply, naturally, harmoniously.

## ~

Move past the severely limited perspective of Ego, laden with its worries, fears, obsessions, and other non-productive foolishness. What is the result? Think of athletes and writers in their respective "zones." Think of driving a car using cruise control. Think of a baby's apparent helplessness and the love that provides.

## ~

D. Howard Smith: "Te is the efficacy, power or vital force of Tao, that which gives to a thing its form and characters and potentiality to become. Te is an inner quality of character which is powerfully effective in influencing others and molding events without conscious efforts. Te is the actualization of the cosmic principle in the self."

## ~

Two competing and complementary aspects of the Tao are called yin and yang. Yin is flexible and feminine. Yang is aggressive and masculine. Their interactions are the roots of ceaseless change. Though they are opposite, each contains within it a portion of the other. Life, for instance, leads to death, and death to life.

As a person grows in understanding, she or he naturally chooses to become less yang and more yin. Why? As time passes, the yin of water—without extra effort—dissolves the yang of stone. In a similar way, the Rind rescues _I-Am_ from Ego's domination.

## ~

Niels Bohr: "It is the hallmark of any deep truth that its negation is also a deep truth."

## ~

Zhuangzi: "Opposites are true together, and the deeper fact is that opposites produce, imply, and are identical with each other. The One is the operation of destiny and divides into Yin and Yang, producing all things through movement and rest."

## ~

The "I Ching"—book of changes—tracks the dance of yin and yang in a person's life by using sticks or coins and 64 hexagrams. One is guided toward balance and encouraged to think more deeply in an attempt to bypass the ego and connect one's human consciousness with a more inclusive awareness.

## ~

Taoist adherents seek to overcome ego's tendency to tilt selfishly and, thereby, cause an unbalanced life. Simplicity is their oft-chosen remedy. Perceiving the world around them as real, they harbor no ambition to escape samsara for nirvana. In many ways, their philosophical approach anticipates what is currently labeled as "post-modern" thinking—giving little credence to human explanations, strategies, and alleged absolutes.

## ~

What does Taoism mean in terms of individual daily action? Love those who are good. Love those who are not good.

Attis/400 BCE

Note the date, because the pagan tale of Attis—a shepherd who evolved into a god—may seem familiar to you. During the pre-Christian era, the legend of Attis spread from the country of Phrygia (in what is now called Turkey) to become famously-known throughout the Roman Empire. Here are the vital elements of Attis' path to divinity:

• Birth date: Dec. 25th.

• Mother was a virgin.

• Worked as a shepherd.

• Nailed to a tree on a Friday.

• Flow of his blood redeemed the earth.

• Descended into the underworld.

• Resurrected after three days (on March 25th).

• "Divine Son" now also became "Sacred Father," "Most High God," and Logos (Word).

• At sacrificial meals, worshippers ate pieces of bread intended to symbolize his body.

Zhuangzi/369 BCE-286 BCE

Zhuangzi—aka Chuang Tzu—valued individual spirituality, measured in his mind by the extent a person lives in harmony with the Tao. Z's book—titled with his name—is poetry presented as prose. From its pages:

## ~

"In the Beginning of Beginnings was Void of Void, the Nameless. And I the Nameless was the One, without body, without form.

"This One—this Being in whom all find power to exist—is the Living. From the Living, comes the Formless, the Undivided. From the act of this Formless, come the Existents, each according to its inner principle. This is Form. Here body embraces and cherishes spirit. The two work together as one, blending and manifesting their Characters. And this is Nature.

"He who obeys Nature returns through Form and Formless to the Living, and in the Living joins the un-begun Beginning. The joining is Sameness. The Sameness is Void. The Void is infinite.

"The bird opens its beak and sings its note and then the beak comes together again in Silence. So Nature and Living meet together in Void. Like the closing of the bird's beak after its song."

## ~

Chuang Tzu introduced the concept of a surrealistic, shifting POV-relativity motivated by non-human based consciousness. He wrote: "I dreamed I was a butterfly, flitting around in the sky; then I awoke. Now I wonder: Am I a man who dreamt of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming that I am a man?"

## ~

Zhuangzi perceived all things as equally important and Nature as a constant whirlwind of change. This perpetual movement is unifying for everything in the universe, including us. Accordingly, we live better and happier lives when in harmony with nature, and suffer when opposing.

## ~

Zhuangzi: "One can do more by doing nothing. The perfected man forgets himself and forgets that he is really immersed in the bliss of Tao, just as fish swim in the river and sea and forget all about it."

## ~

In his thought, the higher, timeless Way—operating by a principle over and above physical world phenomena—is more intrinsic to our Being than anything in the material universe. To know, to understand, to articulate the substance and qualities of this Way is beyond the power of human consciousness.

## ~

Zhuangzi: "If it could be talked about, everybody would have told their brother."

Lung-Kung-Sun/325 BCE-250 BCE

Like Plato, Lung Kung-Sun pondered the distinction between human consciousness and reality. Like Plato, he conceived of "ideals" existing independently of life in the universe. Sun called these ideals "indicators" ("chih") and described them as the sources of our perceived experience.

Inevitable differences between actual reality and perceived reality make interpretation personal. Lung-Kung discerned no transcendent justification for preferring one interpretation over another. This approach foreshadows post-modernism by two millennia.

## ~

Lung-Kung-Sun: "Names are to be distinguished from the actualities they designate, and care must be taken in determining what names designate."

Virgil's Aeneid

The Roman Empire ended in 476 CE. The Aeneid tells the story of its founding in 750 BCE by survivors from Troy. As Homer did in the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil describes the interaction of two worlds—heaven and earth. What happens in the upper sphere—decisions and actions of gods—affects the choices available to humans in the lower.

## ~

Virgil: "Strewn across the world, we all have borne unspeakable punishments, yet, we've paid the price in full for all our crimes."

Pagan Tradition

Early Christians made up the name "Pagan" to describe and deride a panoply of long-existent spiritual interpretations, lore, myths, beliefs, histories, and practices relied on by people living in Europe and around the Mediterranean, whose religions were popular—in one form or another—throughout the Roman empire.

## ~

Jonathan Kirsch: "The core value of paganism was religious tolerance—a man or woman in ancient Rome was at liberty to offer worship to whatever god or goddess seemed most likely to grant a prayerful request, with or without the assistance of priests and priestesses."

Feast of the Unvanquished Sun

During our holiday gatherings, the most sacred day, in my opinion, should be Dec. 22. Regardless of transitory religious interpretations, humankind has been celebrating this particular day for thousands of years. Why? Because Dec. 21 is the shortest day of the year and Dec. 22 is not. I like to imagine the relief of our ancestors when they realized that the sun wasn't going to shrink to nothing.

## ~

Of course, one day the sun will disappear for good. Will we have found another planet for home? Or, as individuating aspects of consciousness, will we have moved along to a better forum for self-expression than life in the material world can provide?

## ~

Here is the hope of mortals: That the dimming light of consciousness inevitably brightens. Thus the winter solstice is our spiritual antidote for the horror of the existentialist abyss.

## ~

James George Frazer: "In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice and it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the days begin to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that turning point of the year."

## ~

From Frazer's research, a partial list of winter solstice traditions:

• Rome paid homage to the births of a plethora of pagan gods during Saturnalia.

• Druids held astronomical ceremonies at Stonehenge.

• Europeans burned Yule logs to attract sunlight.

• Iranians lit fires to strengthen the sun.

• In Syria and Egypt, worshippers emerged from their shrines at midnight, shouting, "The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing."

• The virgin to which the Syrians referred was named either Magna Mater (Great Mother of the Gods) or Cybele (or one of a dozen other names). The Egyptians, on the other hand, were describing Isis, whose followers were with her "forever." Both virgin mothers were popularly worshipped in Rome.

• Mithra (bull-slayer), a Persian god nicknamed "the Unconquered Sun" by his followers, was said to be born on Dec. 25. His nativity allegedly was witnessed by shepherds.

## ~

Frazier: "In respect of doctrines and rites, the cult of Mithra—immensely popular throughout the Roman Empire—appears to have presented many points of resemblance not only to the religion of the Mother of the Gods but also to Christianity."

• The name of the Roman sun god, Sol Invictus, means Unconquered Sun.

Yahweh in Rome

By the first century of the Common Era, approximately ten percent of the Roman empire was Jewish. Theologically curious Romans attended synagogues and described Jews as "God-fearers."

Jupiter (aka Zeus) in Rome

The Romans took the idea of Jupiter from the Greeks (who called him Zeus). In Roman mythology, Jupiter rules. If there had been tall buildings to leap in those days, or speeding locomotives to stop, Jupiter would have been the go-to guy.

In Latin, his name means "God and Father" as one. Jupiter is Ego's idea of an all-powerful deity—possessing the same weaknesses as humans, yet much, much more powerful, able to fulfill every fantasy, indulge every pleasure, revenge every slight (real and imagined), and, of course, live forever. Dream come true for Ego.

## ~

James George Frazier: "Piety in children is instilled by their fear of some divinity."

Marcus Tullius Cicero/106 BCE-43 BCE

Roman philosopher and politician dedicated to protecting the principles of a free republic: "There is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked."

Yang Hsiung/53 BCE-18 CE

Human nature, Yang Hsiung theorized, is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Rather, each of us is a mixture. A Supremely Profound Principle—the source of Yin and Yang—creates, upholds, and manages the world.

Philo of Alexandria/20 BCE-50 CE

Combining Greek and Jewish philosophy, Philo conceptualized that Plato's "ideal forms" had their origin and situation in the mind of a Divine Being. Applying reason to religion, in Philo's opinion, strengthened both.

## ~

Believing that the Bible's symbolism far outweighed the value of its literalism, Philo's interpretations were allegorical rather than factual. His approach is often called "Hellenizing the Old Testament." In particular, Philo rejected the anthropomorphic idea of God, declaring it totally allegorical. He also described the "six days of creation" as the time it took God to create the Logos, which in turn created the earth and its creatures.

## ~

Philo: "It would be a sign of great simplicity to think that the world was created in six days, or indeed at all in time. Time is a thing posterior to the world. Therefore it would be correctly said that the world was not created in time, but that time had its existence in consequence of the world."

## ~

When it came to talking about God, Philo valued "negative theology." "One can only say of Him what He is not."

## ~

Robert Wright: "Philo's theology: First God conceived the Logos in his mind. The he, in a sense, uttered the Logos, infusing matter with it. He spoke to the universe at its beginning, and via the ongoing guidance of the Logos, he speaks to us now."

## ~

Philo: "The Logos was conceived in God's mind before all things and is manifest in connection with all things."

## ~

Is the previous quote similar to the Chinese concept of the Tao? Is the following reminiscent of Buddha's nirvana?

## ~

Philo: "The logos or thought within the mind may be left behind by itself alone, destitute of body, destitute of sense-perception, destitute of utterance in audible speech; for when it has been thus left, it will live a life in harmony with solitude."

## ~

A vital challenge for humans, Philo thought, is to find a way to act in greater harmony with others. A necessary component is to respect one's own freedom and that of others. Is such a thing even possible? What in the material world supports the value of freedom? Philo: "We have a very clear evidence of freedom in the equality recognized by all the good in addressing each other."

## ~

Advice from Philo to scientific materialists searching for a Theory of Not Nearly Everything: "Learning is by nature curiosity...prying into everything, reluctant to leave anything, material or immaterial, unexplained."

## ~

Philo: "Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

Soters and Saviors/100 BCE-100 CE

Around 100 BCE, the idea that a "special" person could end personal and collective suffering became highly popular throughout the Roman Empire. Such people were called "soters" or "saviors" and their appearances were eagerly anticipated. In general, people most likely to gain the title were political and military leaders who credited their success to being in good standing with the right gods.

Many hoped for another kind of savior—a divine man possessing usable spiritual powers. Using the tools of miracles and healing insights, people hoped saviors could bring peace and comfort.

Apollonius of Tyana/2 BCE-90 CE

Humble, wise, and courageous, Apollonius spurned his inheritance for poverty and roamed from town to town, searching for wisdom, performing miracles, casting out demons, healing the lame and blind. His disciples proclaimed he could do this because he was the son of God. How did they know? When he was in his mother's womb, a "heavenly figure" informed her of her child's divinity.

Apollonius brought two messages to the people: (1) Pay less attention to material comforts and more to the "fates of their souls." (2) Live generously and compassionately.

Rome didn't like this kind of message much, as we know from at least one other example. Their soldiers arrested Apollonius and, after a trial before the emperor, murdered him. According to his disciples, he rose from the dead, showed himself to them, and ascended to heaven.

Jesus of Nazareth/33 BCE-0 BCE

The life and times of Jesus—as reported in the New Testament—closely resemble those of other heroes who preceded him historically, Reverence for a half-divine hero has long been appealing to human consciousness. Hercules comes to mind, and Achilles. Warrior fantasies. Violent. Lustful. Hubristic. Hercules, half-human, learns to manage his ego...and becomes all-god. Achilles, similarly a half-breed, doesn't learn the lesson...and dies a human death.

Tales such as those told about Attis, Apollinaire, and Jesus are non-violent and kind-hearted. The essence of their message: grow more loving. Featuring death followed by renewal, these biographies originate in the hearts and minds of planters and gatherers mindful of the seeding-harvest cycle. They expect life to be followed by death and death to be followed by life.

Given historical evidence regarding the lives of Paul and a few others, it's more reasonable to think that Jesus walked this earth than to believe that Lao Tzu did. Yet who knows? In both cases, a real person must have inspired the beginning of the myth and shaped the story, even if it all got a little crazy later.

The cloak of myth clouds the minds of most. When examining speeches and actions attributed to Jesus, how can one shake the shit off the straw? Separating the legend from the man is always difficult—especially given the defensive tendencies and editing opportunities of organized religion. Albert Schweitzer's approach is useful. In brief, he suggested ignoring any so-called holy messages that serve the propaganda needs of the people in charge of the process. Applying his principle strips layers of self-serving pseudo-sanctities from the pages of scripture. What is left in the instance of the New Testament? Lo and behold!

## ~

Leonard Shlain: "As Homer stressed courage, Moses the Law, and Plato knowledge, Jesus emphasized mercy and compassion."

## ~

The Sermon on the Mount is chock full of advanced understanding. The wisdom of Jesus—and his pithy eloquence—add valuable insights to the Mix regarding the power of love and the existence/nature of a more inclusive aggregate of Consciousness. Jesus also described an individual cause and effect link between state of mind and experience—we reap what we sow and our thoughts attract our experience. Most of all, he stressed the necessity of living a loving life.

## ~

Jesus: "You have heard that it was said, You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

## ~

A.N. Whitehead: "Jesus' teaching are not formularized thoughts. They are descriptions of direct insight. The ideas are in his mind as direct pictures, and not as analyzed in terms of abstract concepts. He speaks in the lowest abstractions that language is capable of, if it is to be language at all and not the fact itself."

## ~

Jesus: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "Jesus deliberately rejects showy demonstrations of external power in favor of something deeper."

## ~

More Jesus Dots:

• The more love given, the more love received.

• Love is the way forward.

• To be forgiven, it is necessary to forgive.

• Ask and it will be given.

• Search and you will find.

• All of us have the power to escape from ego illusion.

• Exterior reality manifests internal belief.

## ~

Jack Kerouac: "Jesus' life and main teachings, though embedded within the metaphysic and presented in the culture of a fearsome Omnipotent Creator, could have been that of an itinerant Buddhist 'Great Adept'. His central message was the same: divine love and compassion are the essential and most powerful energy of the universe.

## ~

The heartbeat of the book you are reading, and the essence of Jesus' teaching—stripped of nonsense, of course—is that no matter where you are, the best way to proceed, the arrow forward, the key to ongoing individuation, the heart of spiritual progress, is to grow more loving.

Christianity

According to his disciples, Jesus was crucified to death on a Friday afternoon and buried in a tomb near Jerusalem. Early the next Sunday morning, two of his female followers went to visit his tomb. They reported that Jesus had risen from the dead.

Their story—soon accepted by the disciples as true—launched Christianity. Encouraged by the religion's founders, Jesus' idea that heaven and hell were not the exclusive prerogatives of a Pharaoh or King or Emperor or Mythological Hero spread like wildflowers. Christianity preached that everyone had a life after death and—here's the closer—Jesus (and only Jesus) was in charge of who went to the Good Place and who suffered eternal punishment.

Heck of a recruiting device, don't you think? Puts quite a capper on the urgency of the Christian message: "The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe in the good news."

What was the good news? That Jesus was the Messiah—the son of God—whose death would usher in a new era in which God would keep the promises he had made to the people of Israel. Fair Play and Free Choice would be the basis for life. The powerful would be made weak and the weak powerful.

Twelve years after Jesus died, Paul of Taurus—a Greek-speaking Jew— transformed his personal state-of-mind from that of a Pharisee to that of a Christian disciple. He marketed Christianity as a mystery religion, with elements of initiation and magic. His success built the early church.

Paul traveled from city to city, living in each for a few years, organizing Christian communities. His letters to these communities were intended to govern spiritual growth according to his understanding. One of his biggest moves was to advocate for Gentiles to become Christians without having to undergo the Jewish rite of circumcision. More importantly, Paul is the person who first expressed the idea that Jesus was the son of God.

Paul's message: (1) Jesus was the Messiah, the Christ. (2) He died for the sins of mankind. (3) Believe this and have eternal life. (4) Hurry, because Judgment Day is right around the corner.

## ~

Jesus preached that the current world—ruled by Rome in the manner one expects from narrow-minded Ego—would end within the lifetimes of the people to whom he spoke. Here are two of quotes attributed to Jesus: (1) "There are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God." (2) "This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place." Naturally, this titillated expectations.

Despite the inaccuracy of his "this generation" prediction, the promise that Jesus would save his followers from hell and reward them with heaven provided a powerful inducement to join his church. After the original leaders—Jesus' disciples—died, dozens of varying Christian interpretations emerged. Adherents to this or that dogmatic variation often killed each other while in the grip of theological rage. Historical fact: More Christians were killed by other Christians than by Roman authorities.

Three hundred years later, Christianity became the official religion of Rome and the Emperor under which this happened—Constantine—launched an empire-wide process of replacing paganism with Christianity. With Rome on its side, the Catholic Church flourished for the next thousand years, governing its hierarchy and membership on the model of the Roman Empire, with the Pope playing the role of Emperor. After Roman power faded, Christianity split again and again and again. Currently, more than 900 separate and different Christian denominations exist.

## ~

Equality of men and women was valued by the early followers of Jesus. Over time, this dedication to gender Fair Play was abandoned and replaced by the same old, same old, same old patriarchal tyranny.

## ~

Jesus: "But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

## ~

Christian scriptures are labeled the "New Testament" and included in the Bible. Though they appear to be written by eyewitnesses, this does not seem to be true. As far as we know, none of the original twelve apostles wrote down their impressions and memories of Jesus. Assertions to the contrary seem to be religious propaganda rather than historical fact. The first official gospel, titled Mark, appeared 40 years after Jesus' death. The last, John, showed up twenty years later. Over the centuries, the entire New Testament has been re-edited and re-written many times.

## ~

Christian Dots:

• There is more to Being than the Ego knows.

• The transcendent is more real than the physical.

• Spiritual development is individual growth.

• A search for meaning is a search for transcendent principles.

• Fear-based religions do not foster love.

• Goodness is all-powerful, stronger than death.

## ~

Jesus—like Buddha—did not seem to be a fan of the luxuries of organized religion. In particular, he lambasted the Pharisees for their hypocrisies, luxuries, and literalism. "For ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones, and of all uncleanness."

## ~

Jane Roberts: "Without exception all of the horrors connected with Christianity's name came from following the letter rather than the spirit of the law, or by insistence upon literal interpretations while the spiritual, imaginative concepts beneath were ignored."

## ~

Jesus: "Love your neighbor as yourself."

Seneca/4 CE-65 CE

How does one achieve peace of mind? By paying "full attention" to the moment-at-hand.

## ~

Seneca: "It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable. The happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast...beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things.

"A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys."

Epictetus /55 CE-135 CE

Born a slave in Rome and eventually freed, Epictetus lived a simple, solitary life. Unencumbered by possessions, he devoted his life to philosophy. A quest for self-understanding, he believed, is the foundation of personal existence.

## ~

Epictetus: "We have no power over external things, and the good that ought to be the object of our earnest pursuit, is to be found only within ourselves."

## ~

Like Buddha, Epictetus advised people to avoid the snares of gossip. "It is only our opinions and principles that can render us unhappy, and it is only the ignorant person that finds fault with another."

## ~

Epictetus: "We ought not to forget the transitory character of all external advantages, even in the midst of our enjoyment of them; but always to bear in mind that they are not our own, and that therefore they do not properly belong to us. Thus prepared, we shall never be carried away by opinions."

Pausanius /110 CE-180 CE

The Roman writer Pausanius traveled to sites where mythological events were said to have occurred. His commentary applied rationalism to irrational stories. In this spirit, Roman philosophy examined the origins and psychology of religious mythology. By so doing, Roman philosophers came to believe "philosophy is piety" and "philosophical investigation is the highest form of religious practice."

Marcus Aurelius/121 CE-180 CE

For nineteen years (161-180 CE) Marcus Aurelius ruled Rome as Emperor. During the last ten, a period of turbulence and war, he wrote down his thoughts and observations, eventually published as the book, _Meditations_.

Influenced by Epictetus, Aurelius adapted many Stoic ideas, concluding that the universe is a unity of consciousness inclusive of every human soul. For an emperor, especially one who lived nearly nineteen hundred years ago, Marcus was unusually hip to relativity.

## ~

Marcus Aurelius: "Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."

Lucian of Samosata/125 CE-180 CE

An unusually capable thinker and Christian writer who garnered widespread respect, Lucian examined (and generally ridiculed) mythology posing as religion. He enjoyed mythology more when properly understood as imaginative literature.

## ~

Lucian: "Everything has a beauty peculiar to itself; but if you put one instead of another, the most beautiful becomes ugly, because it is not in its proper place."

Sextus Empiricus/160 CE-210 CE

Sextus Empiricus guided the development of skepticism and wrote of his search for truth: "I cannot say which of things proposed I should find convincing and which I should not find convincing. I now feel in such a way as neither to posit dogmatically nor to reject any of the things falling under this investigation.

"To every account I have scrutinized which purports to establish something in dogmatic fashion, there appears to me to be opposed another account, purporting to establish something in dogmatic fashion, equal to it in convincingness or lack of convincingness."

Gnosticism/200 CE

Mixing philosophy and religion in a quest for self-understanding, Gnostics theorized/believed that knowledge (gnosis in Greek) is the source of salvation. Not good works. Not faith. Knowledge. What kind? Esoteric knowledge. That which leads to a sense of One-ness with God.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "The ultimate mystery is found in the mystery of one's own being but that mystery is deeper than any individual's thinking can go. This spiritual experience has been termed Gnosticism and it describes this intuitive realization of the mystery that transcends speech."

## ~

Acquiring such knowledge is an internal process, but must also rely on the efforts and thoughts of others. To progress, one blends information from many sources. Introspection is the straw that stirs the drink.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "The Gnostics are the introverted thinkers par excellence of the early Christian era. The North American Indians also constituted a relatively introverted civilization, where the emphasis lies on the inner potentialities of man. In Asia, that is self-evident."

## ~

To deal with the reality that life in the physical world is no picnic, the Gnostics theorized that creation of the universe was an act of an evil God (Yahweh). By this theory, a higher God (Elohim) sent Jesus here to save the suffering people and lead them to sanctuary.

## ~

Thus spake Zarathustra and the Gnostics took heed. In Gnosticism, the universe is split into opposing forces. Good is against bad, light is against dark, love is against hate. The knowledge to liberate humanity was brought to earth by Jesus.

## ~

The "best" and "highest" God is a spiritual monad of awareness—self-created, self-motivated, and self-reliant. This "pure" divinity spontaneously creates a less knowledgeable divinity, and the latter, in turn, creates a lesser aggregate, and so forth. When this turns out to be a trap, the monad sends a redeemer so that the divine spark of those redeemed can find its way home.

## ~

Gnostic precept: "The divine spark is a prisoner in carnal humanity."

## ~

Elaine Pagels: "Orthodox claimed the Gospels were history with a moral, while Gnostics believed they contained myths with meaning."

## ~

In Gnosticism's interpretation of the Garden of Eden, the serpent is more or less a hero, helping free humans from the tyranny of an evil God who mistakenly thinks himself the Absolute.

## ~

Condemned as heresy, Gnosticism was severely repressed—but not snuffed out—by the Catholic Church and the storm troopers of its Roman allies. Disguised as alchemy, Gnostic practice survived for more than a thousand years. Some of its ideas—such as the pleroma—continue to have an impact today.

## ~

The pleroma is a Gnostic name for the ultimate source of all reality. Three other terms with similar meaning are "ground of being" and "godhead" and "Tao."

## ~

Gnostic Jesus as reported in the Gospel of Thomas: "The Kingdom is within you and it is without you. I am the All, the All came forth from me, and the All attained to me."

## ~

The noted magician, Simon Magus, theorized an eternal and incorruptible force which created and co-inhabits All-There-Is. Magus described this power as "subdividing into the above and the below, its own father and mother, brother, husband, daughter, son, one, the root of all things."

## ~

Simon Magus: "The origin of creation is the desire to create, which comes into everything which enters existence."

## ~

Valentinus, a leading Gnostic with a reputation for unflinching integrity, did not believe that sexual abstinence was necessary for spiritual growth. He taught his followers that "all Christians are equals and should love and help one another" without regard for gender or sect.

Mayan/200 CE-900 CE

Science and religion coincided in the Mayan scheme of things and everyone involved seemed content with the arrangement. How about that! Apparently, scientists in this northern Central American nature-worshipping civilization were not required to doff their thinking caps in service to an ideology they found incredible. Rather, their math and astronomy were good enough to serve as the foundation of religious ritual. Mayan astronomers made sophisticated calculations—measuring a solar year, precisely tracking the Moon and Venus, and predicting eclipses. Their priests used this information as a guide to choice-making.

## ~

Mayans, by the way, built pyramids, elaborately buried their royalty, and had a written, hieroglyphic language. There is no known connection to Egypt. What might this tell us about the evolution of human psychology?

The main Mayan religious ritual was human sacrifice. If they didn't kill their captives, they rationalized, the universe would dissolve into chaos. On a more pleasant note, Mayan aristocrats, promoting themselves as closer to the gods than ordinary folk, were required to shed their own blood in sacrifice. How? Let me count the ways: (1) Pricking the ear with a sharp spine. (2) Pricking the tongue with a sharp spine. (3) Pricking the penis with a sharp spine. Which body part would you choose? The most powerful aristocrats were required to give the most blood. Sometimes it's not so good to be the king.

## ~

Like the people of most nature religions, the Mayans were polytheistic. Their gods each had two aspects, one friendly and one not. Reminds me a little of the psychology of yin and yang. When it came to the afterlife, the Mayans believed in a hostile underworld populated by Unfriendly Type Gods. Every soul had to travel that hard road. Except, of course, for souls of people sacrificed and those who died in childbirth.

## ~

The Mayans had a savior god named Kukulcan, which means "Feathered Serpent." As Joseph Campbell pointed out, "This represents the mystery of a personage uniting in himself the opposed principles represented in the earthbound serpent and the released flight of a bird."

Kukulcan (later renamed Quetzalcoatl by the Aztecs) was credited with three major savior qualities frequently found in nature-based religions:

• Born of a virgin.

• Resurrected.

• Second Coming.

Plotinus/205 CE-270 CE

At home in both Alexandria and Rome, Plotinus extended Neo-Platonic thought to new heights and depths. He described the "One" (Divine Being) as Intelligence (the Nous) and a "fountain ever on."

Reminiscent of Lao Tzu's and Zhuangzi's descriptions of the Tao, Plotinus further defined the One as an "absolute unity superior to existence or idea" and an "undifferentiated divine" from whom all individuation originates and proceeds—a deeper and more fundamental initiating force than the Big Bang.

## ~

Plotinus: "Everything emanates or flows out from the One, the ultimate power and unity of things. The first emanation is thought or mind, meaning the whole range of ideas from which in turn the whole range of tangible things and beings emanate."

## ~

A second emanation of the One is labeled by Plotinus as the "World Soul"—a greater than the sum of its parts aggregate of all the individual souls who have ever lived on Earth.

## ~

Plotinus: "The soul is immaterial and immortal; consciousness is the image of the Divine One and as such is present at all levels of reality."

## ~

What emanates? How can we define it? How can we understand it? How can we talk about it? How can we think about it? Plotinus: "We must go away silent, involved in our thought in utter perplexity, and seek no further; for what could anyone look for when there is nothing to which he can still go on? Every search moves to the first principle and stops when it has reached it." Again, this description of Ego's innate inability to comprehend ultimate reality echoes the admonitions of Taoists.

## ~

Plotinus: "The final stage in the developing self-consciousness of the individual soul is a mystic union of the self with the One in an ecstasy characterized by the absence of all duality."

## ~

Individually and collectively, how can we find our right path forward? How can we increase our understanding? By relying on our ability to receive and process sensory data? This is Ego's strategy. Is it sound? Not according to Plotinus.

"In the vision of God what sees is not our reason, but something prior and superior to our reason. He who thus sees...changes, he ceases to be himself, preserves nothing of himself. Absorbed in God, he makes but one with him, like a center of a circle coinciding with another center."

Mani/240 CE-277 CE

Twice in his young life—once at age 12 and again at 24—Mani (in a vision) encountered a "heavenly twin" who encouraged him to preach the "true message" of Jesus Christ. What might that be? An oft told tale: good and evil are in the midst of an eternal conflict. The path to human salvation against the power of the dark god, Mani declared, requires education, self-denial, and fasting.

According to Mani, two completely separate universes exist—one light and one dark. Each is ruled by a different god—one good (the god of Jesus) and one evil (the god of the Old Testament). Mani used this distinction to explain the presence of suffering, Unfair Play, and Unfree Choice in the human world.

Two gods—equal and opposite—are locked in a relentless, ongoing struggle—one imprisoning human consciousness and one trying to liberate the divine spark within. The good god sends various helpful messengers—such as Jesus. However, a more important prophet, according to Mani, was Mani, who also described himself as the reincarnation of Zoroaster, Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus. Fantastical compensatory delusion of an over-inflated ego? Regardless, Mani had many followers and represented a theological challenge to orthodox Christianity (which insisted that only one god existed and he was good. Therefore, evil was the result of human failing).

## ~

By order of the King of Persia, Mani was arrested, flayed, and his body eaten by birds. For many days, his air-filled skin dangled from the city's gate.

Neo-Platonic/250 CE

Based on precepts first offered by Plato six hundred years earlier, Neo-Platonism flourished in Alexandria before migrating to Rome. Here are the most impressive Neo-Platonic dots (in my opinion):

• Physical reality emanates from a Divine Being.

• All that is comes from that Divine Being.

• All-That-Is is that Divine Being.

• Human consciousness is part of Divine consciousness.

• Individual humans all have souls that survive body death.

• Each of these souls is able to harmonize and unify with the Divine Being.

• Acquiring the capacity to do so is the direction of individual development.

Augustine of Hippo/354 CE-430 CE

Augustine Aurelius Augustinus of Hippo grew up a pleasure-seeking libertine periodically riddled with shame and guilt. As an adult, working from the premise that spiritual growth requires rigorous self-examination, he is credited with synthesizing the philosophy of Plato with the doctrine of Christianity. His main idea was that a person can gradually learn to authentically and lovingly interact with "inexhaustible, intelligible light."

In his opinion, we live in the midst of evil and suffering. Why? Because we chose to leave a happier home to come here. The fault is ours, the blame is ours, the sin is ours. Those living now are imprisoned by the choices of our distant ancestors. God, therefore, is still batting 1.000 in the Goodness League.

Augustine interpreted Garden of Eden mythology as if it were literal history. His approach is psychologically akin to Old Testament prophets declaring that human actions offended God and we were being punished accordingly.

## ~

Where Consciousness is dominated by ego, it purposely and solely focuses on sensory-derived information and reality explanations that derive from that limited perspective. How can _I-Am_ fathom the streams of consciousness beyond Ego's relatively narrow banks?

## ~

Augustine: "Evil is just the absence of good."

## ~

How does good change to evil? Ego's interpretations are laden with opportunity to choose unwisely and unlovingly. Selfish choices stem from a belief in separation and a consequent isolation.

## ~

Augustine: "From a human nature, which is good in itself, there can spring forth either a good or an evil will."

## ~

Jesus inspired Christianity by preaching love. Augustine changed Christianity by preaching guilt and punishment. "The great law of retribution, that they who do evil should suffer evil." To be fair, Augustine also wrote: "Love is the beauty of the soul."

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "Theodosius (378-395) proclaimed Christianity to be the only religion permitted within the Roman Empire, and only the Augustinian interpretation of the doctrines was accepted. So you have a system set up principally by a small group of theologians, and this becomes enforced to the advantage of the institution."

Pelagius/360 CE-420 CE

Born in Britain and respected throughout Roman territory for his character and intellect, Pelagius balanced the idea of free will against the concepts of predestination and original sin. Here's a paraphrase of his argument:

## ~

How can there be sin where the will is not free? How can an _I-Am_ be held accountable for a mistaken choice if that _I-Am_ had no power to choose otherwise? How can there be free will if the affective choice has been made by another _I-Am_ in another place and time?

## ~

Here's a summary of the paraphrase:

• Predestination excludes free will.

• Sin requires free will.

• No free will means no sin (including original).

• We have free will.

• Free will excludes predestination.

• Free will excludes original sin.

Proclus/410 CE-485 CE

For nearly 50 years, Proclus directed the Athenian Platonic Academy. In his quest to harmonize ancient Greek religious insights (Homer, Hesiod, Orphic and Chaldean) with Greek philosophy, he systematically examined the works of Aristotle, Euclid, and Plato.

Proclus wrote that life (Being) is an emanation (dictionary definition: to flow out and proceed, as from a source) of consciousness. He dissected the process of emanation into three aspects:

## ~

(1) Identity, referring to "divine unity." (2) Difference, that which is emanated (for example, human consciousness and god consciousness) from the One. (3) Return to unity.

## ~

According to Proclus, "henads"—functioning aggregates of godlike consciousness—are intertwined into an existential, cooperative hierarchy. Each of them—like each of us—are parts of the same emanation. In the opinion of Proclus, henads are much wiser than mortals.

Pseudo-Dionysius/500 CE-600 CE

The original Dionysius studied with the original Saul (aka Paul). Hundreds of years later, another fellow borrowed the young man's name. We call the latter: Pseudo-Dionysius. Apparently, P-D was a Syrian monk. His definition of God reminds me of Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi describing the Tao.

## ~

Pseudo-Dionysius: "God, the ultimate one, is not soul or mind, nor does it possess imagination, conviction, speech, or understanding...it cannot be spoken of and it cannot be grasped by understanding...does not live nor is it life. It is not a substance, nor is it eternity or time. It is neither one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness...it is not sonship or fatherhood. There is no speaking of it, nor name nor knowledge of it."

Zhiyi/538 CE-597 CE

A Chinese Buddhist monk, Zhiyi respected many variations of Buddhism. His open mind led him to combine them into a new Buddhist sect, called Tiantai. Zhiyi concluded that Buddha's teaching advanced in five phases, each keyed to the mental (spiritual) development of his students. The more they learned, the more they could learn. To facilitate spiritual progress, Zhiyi encouraged intellectual analysis and contemplative meditation.

## ~

Zhiyi: "What exists in reality is the one Pure Mind, called True Thusness. This exists changelessly and without differentiation. Enlightenment consists of understanding one's unity with the Pure Mind."

Muhammad/570 CE -632 CE

Born in Mecca, orphaned at an early age, protected and raised by wealthy relatives, Muhammad exhibited the talents of prophet, general, and ruler. In his impact on history, he's a never-so-far-duplicated combination of Jesus and Alexander the Great. Unlike most founders of a major religion, he personally used an army to establish and manage its growth and credo.

Deeply spiritual from childhood, Muhammad prayed frequently and listened carefully. Though apparently illiterate, he knew stories of Zoroaster, Abraham, and Jesus. His zeitgeist—good is in a battle with evil, and we all have to do our part, and woe to those who don't—was thoroughly Abrahamic.

According to Huston Smith, those who knew him personally described Muhammad as: "Pure-hearted and beloved, sweet and gentle, always ready to help others, especially the poor and weak."

One day, at age 40, while meditating in a cave, Muhammad heard something identifying itself as the angel Gabriel. For the next 23 years, guided by this voice—which often sounded to him like the "reverberating of bells"—Muhammad received and recited 114 chapters (suras) of the Qur'an (Koran). His book—considered by Islam to be the word of God—gives rules and guidelines for religion, culture, law, and politics.

After beginning his recitations, Muhammad went to work building a religion. A year later he had eight followers (including his wife and son). As the years passed, the number grew to twenty, and then several hundred. Eventually, his persistence paid off and he had sufficient followers to withstand—and then defeat—various enemies. This tactic—combining the power of religion with the power of the state—also worked well for Christianity and Rome.

Muhammad believed himself to be the last of a long line of Abrahamic prophets, including Jesus. His work, he felt, confirmed the revelations they had delivered from the Transcendent to Humankind. From the Qur'an: "We never sent a messenger except with the language of his people, so that he might make it clear for them."

## ~

Robert Wright: "Muhammad claims that the God who spoke through him is the same God who had spoken through Moses and Jesus."

## ~

Abraham: God is One.

Moses: Ten Commandments.

Jesus: The Golden Rule.

Muhammad: How to surrender to God.

## ~

Like Moses, Muhammad did not tolerate idol worship, once smashing more than 300 of them with his own staff. Attention to idols, he thought, interfered with one's focus on the actual, unseen Divine.

## ~

Muhammad Dots:

• "Allah is the Creator of all things."

• "God does not judge you according to your bodies and appearances, but He looks into your hearts and observes your deeds."

• "Kindness is a mark of faith, and whoever has not kindness has not faith."

• "Whoever is not merciful to others will not be treated mercifully."

• "Even as the fingers of two hands are equal, so are human beings equal to one another. No one has any right, nor any preference to claim over another. You are brothers."

• "To you your religion and to me my religion."

## ~

Huston Smith: "Truth to tell, the religious differences...are so small that Muhammad could hardly have been more surprised when he discovered that the Jews and Christians of his day did not accept him as an addition to their own prophetic lines."

Islam/610 CE

Muhammad's careful planning and attention to detail became the backbone of the religion he founded with the intention of helping people live more loving lives. To achieve this end, he put forth rules of behavior categorizing a wide variety of human actions and reactions as "forbidden," or "indifferent," or "obligatory." It's important to remember that the resulting Muslim laws and practices—though inspired by Muhammad's wisdom and experiences—are based on cultural and scientific understandings prevalent in the 7th to 12th centuries of the Common Era.

## ~

Tor Andrea: "Religion is primarily a voluntary surrender in trust and faith. To designate this voluntary self-surrender of a believer to the Divine will Muhammad coined the term Islam."

## ~

According to Muhammad, one who surrenders in this manner is a Muslim.

## ~

John Hick: "Islam teaches the unqualified unity and the absolute sovereignty of God, the sole ultimate reality, so that our appropriate human response to God is one of total submission and of trust in the divine goodness and mercy."

## ~

On any list of what is easier said than done, the shedding of Ego is at or near the top. Ego does not glide gently away. Ego is not inclined to surrender. Ego divides and conquers.

As in Christianity, bitter theological disputes resulted in acrimonious Muslim splits and—all too often—violence and murder instead of love and compassion. Hard to grow more loving when all sides involved in a dispute are disciples of the idea that the world is a ceaseless conflict between good and evil. When one is good, it is easy to consider one's enemies as evil. In such a circumstance, death works up quite a sweat. Prayer is helpful.

## ~

Qur'an: "Call upon Allah or call upon Rahman: by whatever name you call upon Him it is well: for to Him belong the Most Beautiful Names. Neither speak thy prayer aloud, nor speak it in a low tone, but seek a middle course between."

## ~

Core Muslim belief: Each soul is responsible for its actions on earth and what happens after death depends on what is done and/or not done while here.

## ~

Most interesting to me of the three major Muslim divisions are the Sufis, whose asceticism and mysticism aim toward a more complete harmony with Allah. Their emphasis on love and renunciation moves them on a decidedly anti-Ego arc.

As mentioned, given its Zoroastrian and Abrahamic origins, two (Sunni and Shiite) of the three main Islam sects perceive the world as a battleground between good and evil. In contrast, Sufis understand reality as the emanation of an Ineffable Ultimate. Is this not Tao-reminiscent?

## ~

Huston Smith: "The Sufis change 'There is no god but God' to read, 'There is nothing but God."

Cahokia Mound Builders/700 CE–1400 CE

Around 1150 CE, a city described as a "North American Jerusalem"— more populous than that era's London or Rome—flourished near the confluence of the Illinois, Mississippi, and Missouri rivers. Approximately 25,000 Native Americans lived within the six square miles of Cahokia, a city-state organized in harmony with unanimously-held religious principles. Another 25,000 lived outside the walls.

The people of Cahokia built more than 120 mounds, including a massive temple as tall as a ten story building with a base wider than any Egyptian pyramid. The religion they practiced focused on agricultural fertility and life-renewal. In their view, religion and society were "inseparable" and the world was the site of an ongoing battle between good and evil.

Given their North American geography, I don't see how they derived this philosophy from Zoroaster. Is this perspective an independently derived phase of human awareness? Is it reflective of a deeper psychological truth?

At any rate, in Mound Builder belief, the good are rewarded and the evil punished. Each person cannot help but choose a side by the way she or he thinks and acts toward others.

## ~

Close by the Cahokia temple mound is a circle of holes filled with tall, red cedar posts. These posts perfectly mark equinox and solstice sunrises in the same manner as Stonehenge. Hence the name "Woodhenge" is used to describe the Cahokia solar calendar. One of Mound Builders' basic beliefs seems to have been that "all things are related" and therefore worthy of respect. That's nice, for sure, yet they practiced human sacrifice.

## ~

Growing up in central Illinois and living many years in and around St. Louis, I am familiar with Cahokia, having climbed to the top of the temple mound dozens of times. Sometimes I sleep overnight on the high ground, including one remarkable Easter eve. The vista helps me clear my head and gather my courage. Looking down at the land and waters, my perspective is refreshed and enhanced.

Ghaylan al-Dimasqi/Circa 750 CE

Ghaylan al-Dimasqi's study of Islam brought his understanding to a point where he refused the idea that those who ruled did so as a "gift from God." Instead, he argued, leaders needed to run society in full awareness of their responsibility to the people under their control. In response to this idea, the men in charge of the Umayyad Empire brutally killed Mr. al-Dimasqi.

Sankara/788 CE-820 CE

Famous for his commentaries on Hindu and Buddhist texts, Sankara (aka Shankara) roamed the Indian subcontinent, looking for meaningful spiritual conversations.

## ~

Sankara: "The world which is full of attachments, aversions, etc., is like a dream. It appears to be real, as long as it continues but appears to be unreal when one is awake."

## ~

According to Sankara, the difference between Hinduism and Buddhism is nothing less than root deep. Hinduism perceives that the Self exists. Buddhism says it doesn't. Given his knowledge of both, what did Sankara think about Self-existence?

## ~

Sankara: "I am the nature of Pure Consciousness...I am the highest Brahman, which, like the sky, is all-pervading, imperishable, auspicious, uninterrupted, undivided and devoid of action. I do not belong to anything since I am free from attachment."

Germanic and Norse Mythology/Circa 800 CE

Influenced by both Greek and Roman mythology, Germanic and Norse gods are basically supermen and superwomen. More to the point, they are motivated by ambitions and desires comfortably familiar to the human ego. The extent of their power seems compensatory for the latter's relative powerlessness to grasp and keep what it wants and/or thinks it must have.

## ~

The Norse named their most powerful god "Odin" or "Wotan" or "Othin" and the Germans called him "Woden." Odin was a one-eyed wonder relentlessly searching for knowledge. He willingly endured intense suffering in order to learn the Runic alphabet and share this knowledge with all humankind.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "In the Icelandic 'Edda,' the All-Father Othin, to acquire the Wisdom of the Runes, hung himself for nine days on the world tree."

## ~

Loki, a Norse god with a sense of humor similar to that of Don Rickles, travels around the world causing trouble. Why? To create challenges which make growth possible and move people forward. In particular, Loki liked to upset the applecart of potential heroes. When a woman or man successfully solved the problems presented by Loki's mischief, greatness (or at least substantial progress) resulted. Some of these situations were individual and some collective.

## ~

In a concept vaguely similar to Biblical predictions of Armageddon, Norse and Germanic mythologies forecast an "apocalyptic catastrophe." The Gotterdammerung is an end times battle between the old Gods and the demons of hell. Most of the gods will be killed, but a new and supposedly better world—less beholden to human ego—will be created.

Neo-Confucianism/800 CE

Neo-Confucianism integrated ideas from Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius. It centered on the concept of Ch'i—a form of matter ever present and never seen. Some thinkers compare Ch'i to what physicists call the quantum field.

## ~

Fritjof Capra: "Like the quantum field, Ch'i is conceived as a tenuous and non-perceptible form of matter which is present throughout space and can condense into solid material objects."

## ~

Within the field of Ch'i, each and every individual object acts and reacts with each and every other individual object. This interaction—either wave-like or vibratory—depends on the "rhythmic alternation" of two fundamental forces: the yin and the yang. Each object has its own intrinsic pattern, and each individual pattern is part of an overall harmony. To me, this is suggestive not only of the quantum world, but also of the deeper reality which theoretically gives birth to the quantum—the vibration of energy into matter described by modern science in string theory. Fascinating insight, considering it originated more than 1,300 years ago.

## ~

Chang Tsai: "When one knows the Great Void is full of Ch'i, one realizes that there is no such thing as nothingness."

Abu'l-Hosain al-Nuri/ 899 CE

Abu'l-Hosain al-Nuri was a Sufi poet. Because of his eloquence, those who heard him gave him the name: "The Tongue of Sufism."

## ~

"Light gleamed in the Unseen. I gazed at it continually, until the time came when I had wholly become that light."

Zen/1000 CE

Zen combines elements of Taoism and Buddhism. Originating in India, the singular life approach spread first to China and then to Japan. Basically, Zen teaches two ways to enlightenment—gradual and sudden.

## ~

Huston Smith: "Zen is not trying to placate the mundane mind. It intends the opposite: to upset the mind—unbalance it and eventually provoke revolt against the canons that imprison it."

## ~

The goal (or non-goal) of those who put this philosophy into practice is to unite one's individual sense of self with the impersonal divinity transcending ego's imagination and understanding.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "Where is God? Within you. This is the sense of Zen Buddhism. You must find it in yourself. You are it."

## ~

Zen Buddhism perceives the Buddha-nature as ubiquitous, which means we all can be Buddha, which means we all can attain enlightenment. The founder of Zen in Japan was a man by the name of Dogen who lived a simple life practicing Zazen and—eventually—experiencing the oneness of all-that-is.

## ~

Ikkyu: "Rain, hail, snow and ice are divided from one another; but after they fall, they are the same water of the stream in the valley."

## ~

In Japanese, Zazen means "sitting cross-legged in meditation." Dogen stressed the beautiful utility of focusing one's awareness in the moment, which he called "is-ness." To him, the inadequacy of words and concepts to accurately describe reality are barriers to enlightenment.

## ~

Zen proverb: "Open mouth, already a mistake."

Shao Yung/1011 CE-1077 CE

Shao Yung progressed the idea that one operative and generative principle underlies all reality and engenders all things, including yin and yang, number, and form. He wrote the _Huangji Jingshi_ (Book of Supreme World Ordering Principles).

Jetsun Milarepa/1052 CE-1135 CE

Known for the strength of his mind, Jetsun Milarepa relentlessly worked to shed his ego's perspective. His success made him a highly influential Tibetan yogi and poet. To do so, Milarepa overcame a plethora of obstacles, including his youthful use of "sorcery" to take revenge on those who hurt him and his family. The precision, clarity and insights of his poetry helped shape Tibetan Buddhism.

## ~

Jetsun Milarepa: "Accustomed, as I've been, to contemplating both nirvana and samsara as inherent in myself, I have forgotten to think of hope and fear.

Accustomed, as I've been, to meditating on this life and the next as one,

I have forgotten the dread of birth and death.

Accustomed long to studying, by myself, my own experiences, I have forgotten the need to seek the opinions of friends and brethren.

Accustomed long to applying each new experience to my own spiritual growth, I have forgotten all creeds and dogmas."

Peter Abelard/1079 CE-1142 CE

A prodigious intellect, Peter Abelard wedded reason and faith. He examined religious beliefs with penetrating logic. His ill-fated romance with Heloise humanized him for the many who thought him the brightest mind of the 12th century. Considered the father of modern theology, he courageously and brilliantly examined the viability of long-held religious ideas. Most famously (as far as I'm concerned), he concluded that sin had two components: (1) Knowledge that one's action is evil and (2) Doing it anyway. This insight undercut the influence of the doctrine of original sin.

Zhu Xi/1130 CE-1200 CE

Zhu Xi, a revered thinker influential in developing Neo-Confucianism, defined the "Great Ultimate" as an operative principle of Being in its totality and therefore identical with all things.

Maimonides/1138 CE-1204 CE

Exceptionally intelligent and relentlessly logical, Maimonides—a Jewish philosopher living in Spain—perceived God as "radically other" than the world. Thus, descriptions of the divinity—which originate in the worldly mind—actually can only be indicative of what "God is not."

Maimonides postulated that at a certain stage of individualized spiritual development a person may well benefit from the simple comfort of anthropomorphic characterizations of the divine. Thus the Torah, the New Testament, and the Koran use simple language to tell simple stories. As a beginning, fine and dandy.

It is not the final stage, however. According to Maimonides, the work of religion is to help people move beyond superficial concepts into a deeper and more fundamental understanding of their relationship with the divine.

## ~

Maimonides: "Whoever moves from a haughty heart to the opposite extreme so that he is exceedingly lowly in spirit is called pious; this is the measure of piety. If someone moves only to the mean and is humble, he is called wise; this is the measure of wisdom."

Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit/1200 CE-1350 CE

Perceiving God as incarnate and immanent everywhere and always, the B & S pondered: (1) How does one move beyond the "things of this world?" (2) How can one unite with the deity in an ineffable manner? (3) Who among us is free to do so?

## ~

James George Frazer: "In the 13th century there arose a sect called the Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit, who held that by long and assiduous contemplation any (person) might be united to the deity in an ineffable manner and become one with the source and parent of all things."

## ~

The Brethren and Sisters of the Free Spirit—a 13th century gender equality congregation, if ever there were one—believed the way forward into union with God was extended thinking aimed at annihilating one's ego. Doing so meant that answers would emerge in a devotee's mind, though it would probably take years of serious effort. As for who is eligible for such unity, the Brethren and Sisters were unequivocal: Anyone and everyone who does the work.

## ~

Sister Catherine: "I have become God. When I looked into myself I saw God within me and everything he has ever created in heaven and earth. I am established in the pure Godhead, in which there never was form or image."

## ~

This individualized approach, of course, negated the necessity of organized religion. As a result, the Brethren and Sisters were branded as heretics and persecuted accordingly.

Inca/1200 CE-1575 CE

Based in modern-day Peru, the Incas transformed themselves into a powerful warrior tribe during the 13th century and ultimately conquered a large slice of South America. At their peak, this once relatively small village controlled twelve million people. Many of their religious concepts are typical of warrior cultures.

Of greater interest is their belief in reincarnation and the idea they developed that while waiting to be reborn, those who had acted properly enjoyed themselves in a sunlit, pleasant land. Those who had failed to do so were sentenced to spend the gap between lives in the cold, cold earth. To Incas, acting properly—as is true in every paradigm—meant following paradigm rules, in this case, Inca rules.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi/1207 CE—1273 CE

Rumi, a Sufi mystic poet, articulated a concept of unified Being that extended much further than the range of sensory data. He provided us with a plethora of hints and dots. For instance: "I want to sing like birds sing, not worrying who listens or what they think." And:

## ~

"The lamps are different but the Light is the same; it comes from beyond."

## ~

"I am neither Muslim nor Christian, Jew nor Zoroastrian; I am neither of the earth nor of the heavens, I am neither body nor soul."

## ~

"You take blood and make sperm. You take sperm and create an animal. You use the animal to evolve intelligence. Life keeps leading to more life."

## ~

"If you cause injury to someone, you draw that same injury toward yourself."

## ~

"It is the love of the manifest world that makes you an unreliable witness."

## ~

"Eyesight is in conflict with inner knowing."

## ~

"My soul is from elsewhere, I'm sure of that, and I intend to end up there."

## ~

"Love is the whole thing. We are only pieces."

## ~

"When you eventually see through the veils to how things really are, you will keep saying again and again, 'This is certainly not like we thought it was.'"

Thomas Aquinas/1225 CE-1274 CE

In the medieval era, Thomas Aquinas interpreted Aristotelian metaphysics from the viewpoint of Christian theology. The resulting synthesis of "Athens and Jerusalem" combined intellect and faith. Yet he did not pretend to understand God.

## ~

Thomas Aquinas: "The First Cause surpasses human understanding and speech. By its immensity, the divine substance surpasses every form that our intellect reaches."

## ~

Three dots of light from Aquinas: (1) Love is the fundamental relation of God to the world. (2) Because God knows himself, he knows every particular thing. (3) The world is arranged so that God works all in all, yet we also have our own roles to play.

Moshe ben Shem-Tov/1250 CE-1305 CE

Moshe (aka Moses) ben Shem-Tov, a Spanish rabbi, became famous when his book of Jewish mysticism, _Zohar,_ emerged as the most well-known Kabbalistic manuscript. For nearly 300 years (between 1500 and 1800 CE), ideas found in the Zohar were highly influential and still inspire many today.

Moshe's work brought _Zohar_ —sometimes called "The Book of Splendor" into the world, although some of its content allegedly originated in the second century CE.

Zohar is composed of commentaries on Biblical symbolism, integrating scripture, magic, astrology, and mysticism. The intended outcome is an expansion of the reader's understanding of divinity.

## ~

John Hick: "The Jewish mystics of the Zoharic and Lurianic Kabbala distinguished between the Eyn Sof, the Infinite, and the God of the scriptures."

## ~

Kabbala explores the relationship between the immortal and the mortal, the infinite and the finite, the unchanging and the relentlessly changing. A "redeemer" named Adam Kadmon is theorized, a hero who helps those who are ready to connect with God. Stories of Kadmon demonstrate how the individual soul can acquire more inclusive consciousness.

## ~

From the Zohar's interpretation of Genesis: "Within the most hidden recess of the infinite Eyn Sof—the divine essence—a dark flame went forth, issuing in the sefiroth."

## ~

A sefiroth, then, is an emanation of Eyn Sof and, as such, represents and reveals the Divine. According to Kabbala, ten sefiroths were emanated, each representative of a specific intelligence of God.

## ~

From the Zohar: "Whatever happens here in our universe is happening there within God, for justice and mercy, male and female, good and evil, six days of creation and Sabbath, and all other constituents of reality are also the various names of God, pointing to the infinite modalities of his being. The world is created and God is revealed in the progressive unfolding of God out of himself."

Meister Eckhart/1260 CE-1328 CE

Leader of the Dominican Order, professor of theology at the University of Paris, and practicing mystic, Meister Eckhart blended the precepts of Neo-Platonism and Christian mysticism. To what purpose?

In Eckhart's thought and mystical experience, "absolute principle" and "absolute cause" are pure intellect—consciousness itself. In his words, "the principle itself is always pure intellect." Life in the physical world, according to Eckhart, is the "self-movement" of intellect, which—in its differentiation (individuation)—is the "only possible form of life."

In the revelatory throes of mystical spiritual experience, unity is not seen as a far-away, hard-to-reach goal. Rather, unity is an indisputable fact. "We are already unified," Eckhart proclaims, and what else matters? He further explains: "Here, God's ground is my ground and my ground is God's ground."

## ~

As John Hick points out, Eckhart distinguishes the absolute principle from any God that humans can understand. Hick: "Eckhart does not mean that with the creation of humanity the Godhead ceases to exist, but that there then also came to be the humanly experienced God." In the Godhead, Eckhart reports, "there is no one at home, yet the spark of the soul is more at peace than in itself."

## ~

Meister Eckhart: "It is neither this nor that, and yet it is something which is higher above this and that as Heaven is above earth. It is so utterly one and simple, as God is one and simple, that man cannot in any way look into it."

Alighieri Dante/1265 CE-1321 CE

Dante's book, the _Divine Comedy_ , is a report of a visit he made (in spirit, not body) to hell, purgatory, and heaven on Easter weekend in the year 1300. Dante emphasized the importance of personal choice and stressed that every decision has a consequence, either in this life or beyond. What a person chooses initiates a sequence of events which continues beyond body death. The completion of individual development does not happen in the physical world.

## ~

Dante: "Ineffable providence has set before two goals to aim at: i.e. happiness in this life, which consists in the exercise of our own powers and is figured in the earthly paradise; and happiness in the eternal life, which consists in the enjoyment of the vision of God (to which our own powers cannot raise us except with the help of God's light) and which is signified by the heavenly paradise."

## ~

In his personal contemplation, Dante examined faith without disparaging it. His respect for reason held the upper hand. "Every miracle," Dante pointed out, "can be perceived by a superior intellect to have a reasonable cause."

## ~

Dante: "I see well that never is our intellect satisfied, unless that truth illumines it beyond which no truth may soar."

## ~

During his "visits in spirit," Dante had a vision combining the power of love and the wisdom of "one simple light."

## ~

Dante: "I saw how love held bound into one volume all the leaves whose flight is scattered through the universe around. How substance, accident and mode unite. Fused, so to speak, together in such wise. That this I tell of: one simple light."

Duns Scotus/1265 CE-1308 CE

A mighty intellect, Duns Scotus offered a complex "proof of God's existence" based on the necessity of a "first cause." More importantly for this book, he valued individuation and articulated a theory of "particularization of the essence of each thing differentiating it from every other." Additionally, he expanded the idea of free choice with this thought sequence:

• Human nature is a consequence of God's creation.

• God is not required to command or forbid acts.

• What is commanded is not necessary for happiness.

• What is forbidden is not incompatible with happiness.

Jan Van Ruysbroeck/1293 CE-1381 CE

A Flemish mystic and Catholic priest, Van Ruysbroeck asserted that "the soul finds God in its own depths." He described God as a "common light and a common splendor, enlightening heaven and earth, and every man, each according to his need and worth."

## ~

Jan Van Ruysbroeck: "All our ways end in superessential Being."

## ~

Per his thought, somewhere in human consciousness, at varying depths each of us must personally plumb, is a more inclusive consciousness, which includes each of us, and all of us, and more than us, simultaneously perceiving reality from more than one perspective.

## ~

Jan Van Ruysbroeck: "We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold."

Marsilo Ficino/1433 CE-1499 CE

Growing up in 15th century Italy, Marsilo Ficino identified himself as one in a long line of "interpreters" who—with God's blessing—progressed human understanding of divinity and reality. For him, love—emanating from God—sustained all life, all creation, all being.

Ficino considered "true philosophy" and "true religion" to be one and the same, since the purpose of each was to ascend to a "union with God." As a Neo-Platonist, he "interpreted" the insights of Plato, paying particular attention to the immortality of the soul.

## ~

Marsilo Ficino: "Were the soul not immortal, no creature would be more miserable than man."

## ~

Living in an age where heretics could be tortured and/or killed, he struggled to reconcile Plato's concepts of transmigration and reincarnation with Christian orthodoxy. Reincarnation jibed with his view of "internal ascent."

## ~

Marsilo Ficino: "Man alone never rests in his present habit of living: he alone is a pilgrim in these regions and cannot rest on the journey as long as he aspires to his celestial homeland, which all of us seek, although we proceed on sundry paths on account of the diversity of opinion and judgment."

Kabir/1440 CE-1518 CE

In Arabic, the name Kabir means "The Great" and in Islam is the 37th name of God. A poet who lived in India, Kabir lived as a the hope for the poor and a bastion for those against bigotry and selfishness.

A fierce opponent of dogma (both Hindu and Islam), Kabir preferred to ignore officially sanctioned scriptures and concentrate on a more natural way to achieve (or realize) one's Oneness with the divine.

## ~

Being uneducated and illiterate, Kabir (like Homer) recited his poetry, which combines Hindu, Sufi, and Bhatki ideas, including Brahman, karma, personal love for the divine, and the utility of the Sahaja (spontaneous and natural) path. Bhatki denotes the "share" or love one feels for the divine.

## ~

Kabir:

"The bhakti path winds in a delicate way.

On this path there is no asking and no not asking.

The ego simply disappears the moment you touch him.

The joy of looking for him is so immense that you

just dive in,

and coast around like a fish in the water.

If anyone needs a head, the lover leaps up to offer his."

Martin Luther/1483 CE-1546 CE

An Augustinian monk, Martin Luther took exception to the Catholic Church's selling "Get Into Heaven" tickets. These so-called indulgences were power-marketed to the deceased's loved ones under the slogan: "The moment the penny in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs." Hard to say no when it's someone you love—maybe your mother—don't you think?

Luther's resistance to this and other positions of the Catholic Church—combined with the political intrigue of European kings—essentially resulted in the creation of Protestantism.

Luther argued that (1) "Indulgences cannot remit guilt or punishment for sin; this power lies in God alone." (2) "A truly repentant Christian has already received God's pardon."

## ~

Martin Luther: "God's love is in men even before they search for him."

## ~

In his mature thought, Luther concluded that the relationship between God and an individual—any individual—is direct and pristine. So-called intermediaries are bound to honor the always unique sacredness of this bond. No one has the right to violate it.

## ~

Martin Luther: "Every man is his own priest."

Michel de Montaigne/1533 CE-1592 CE

A "liberated" thinker and philosopher, Montaigne decided that creatures living in the world can rely on one—and only one—certainty: we share a common home, but each of us has a unique way of perceiving it. He included his cat in this evaluation.

## ~

Michel de Montaigne: "When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me. If I have my time to begin or to refuse, so has she hers."

## ~

When it comes to discovering truth—increasing our understanding of reality—what is the natural extension of this "one certainty?" Montaigne: "The observer is as unreliable as the observed." Given this circumstance, what should an honest thinker think? How should a philosopher philosophize? Montaigne: "I hold back." Which, according to his brilliant biographer, Sarah Bakewell, lends these foundational phrases to his thought process: "Perhaps. I think. It seems to me."

## ~

Michel de Montaigne: "We have formed a truth by the consultation and concurrence of our five senses; but perhaps we needed the agreement of eight or ten senses, and their contribution, to perceive it certainly and in its essence."

Miguel de Cervantes/1547 CE-1616 CE

Innovative in form and content, this Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright is best known for his novel _Don Quixote_ , an exploration of human psychology. The work demonstrates, among other things, that jousting with windmills can be a spiritual exercise.

## ~

Miguel de Cervantes: "He got the better of himself, and that's the best kind of victory one can wish for."

Jakob Boehme/1575 CE-1624 CE

Living a contemplative life built on prayer and meditation, Jakob Boehme, an uneducated craftsperson, chose the personal spiritual path—being alone with God—over the regulated orthodoxy of organized religion. His mysticism earned him revelatory visions, one of which seems to have been enlightenment. As a result, he wrote a series of powerful, insightful, influential books—all spurred by a flash of light reflecting in a pewter plate.

## ~

Jakob Boehme: "In one quarter of an hour I saw and knew more than if I had been many years together at an University. For I saw and knew the Being of all Beings, the Byss and Abyss; also the eternal generation of the Holy Trinity; the descent, and origin of this world, and of all creatures, through the divine Wisdom...and I saw, and knew the whole working Essence in the evil, and in the good; and the mutual origin, and existence of each of them."

## ~

The experience led to his first book (never finished, though widely read), _Aurora_. Boehme: "Thus now I have written, not from the instruction or knowledge received from men, not from the learning or reading books; but I have written out of my own book which was opened in me." He followed _Aurora_ with the _Three Principles of the Divine_ _Essence_ and the _Threefold Life of Man._

## ~

In Boehme's mind, existence in the world requires opposition. Evil, he argued, is a necessary prod to keep goodness on its toes. What is evil? "The striving of single elements of Deity to become the whole."

## ~

According to Boehme, God is "the nothing and the all." From God's depths, consciousness expands, using the power of "creative will." As a part of this process, the Father (groundless Will) creates the Son (love).

## ~

The Church, unsurprisingly, did not condone Boehme's approach. Their pressure to silence him never abated. After pausing for a few years, finally—secretly—he began to write again. The authorities snooped around, found out, banished him from his home, and he soon died. Last words of Jakob Boehme: "Now I go hence into Paradise."

René Descartes/1596 CE-1650 CE

Descartes helped found algebraic (analytic) geometry. As a scientist, he developed a "naturalistic" (as opposed to the Bible's Genesis) explanation for the formation of the universe, and ultimately, our home planet, theorizing that particles of matter interacted according to established properties and laws. As a metaphysician, he suggested the existence in nature of an immaterial mind.

## ~

Descartes: "God is pure intelligence."

## ~

In search of a "point of certainty," Descartes eventually relied on what he considered the indisputable existence of his own "consciousness." In specific, the only information about his life he ultimately felt he could trust was the fact that he was aware (in the words of Marilynne Robinson) of "his own mind thinking."

## ~

Descartes: "I am thinking, therefore I am."

## ~

Sensory evidence did not necessarily prove anything to Descartes, who wrote: "I will suppose that the heavens, the air, the earth, color, shapes, sounds, and all external things that we see are only illusions and deceptions." In short, and famously, Descartes "doubted all things of which he could not be certain."

## ~

In essence, Descartes perceived the transcendental as absolute. Interplay between the absolute and the world as we know it creates individuality and its by-product, ego. He seemed to harbor no doubt that the transcendental existed and gave his reason why:

## ~

Descartes: "While from the fact that I cannot conceive God without existence, it follows that existence is inseparable from Him, and hence that He really exists; not that my thought can bring this to pass, or impose any necessity on things, but, on the contrary, because the necessity which lies in the thing itself, i.e., the necessity of the existence of God, determines me to think in this way.

"For it is not within my power to think of God without existence (that is, of a supremely perfect Being devoid of a supreme perfection) though it is in my power to imagine a horse either with wings or without wings."

Benedict Spinoza/1632 CE-1677 CE

Growing up in Amsterdam, Benedict (Baruch) Spinoza became "god intoxicated." His quest to understand the divine convinced him that "God's truth cannot be found in a book, but in the human heart and mind." Spinoza's ideas contributed to the development of modern Pantheism, a belief identifying God with the inherent physical laws of the universe.

Consequently, he did not value organized religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam—which Spinoza considered originating in "human imagination." Consequently, the people who ran those religions hated Spinoza and considered him to be in league with the devil. Consequently, he didn't care.

## ~

Benedict Spinoza: "God has infinite attributes, of which only two, thought and spatial extension can be known by us. The universe that we apprehend is but a limited portion of the whole."

## ~

In his two main books _, Ethics_ and _Tractatus Thologico-Politicus_ , Spinoza laid out his conclusions: (1) God is not an object to be catalogued. (2) God is the "principle" of human thought, the sum of natural law. (3) God is an intrinsic aspect of the material world, immanent everywhere and always, the spark of unity, the resonance of harmony.

## ~

Benedict Spinoza: "By God, I mean a being absolutely infinite—that is, a substance consisting in infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality."

## ~

A tireless advocate of religious tolerance and impeccable foe of tyrannical religious orthodoxy, Spinoza suffered for his beliefs. He never backed down.

## ~

Spinoza: "Desire nothing for yourself which you do not desire for others."

Matsua Basho/1644 CE-1694 CE

Basho, a Japanese poet famed for his haiku mastery, often abandoned the security of civilization and embraced the open country dangers of wild paths rife with robbers and murderers. His friends took it for granted he would be killed. Yet his experiences fueled his poetry, whose form and insights earned him a deeply admired world-wide reputation. A practitioner of Zen meditation, Basho's careful scrutiny led him to write about "stillness and movement" in the natural world. As for the nature of the divine:

## ~

Matsua Basho: "It baffles the tongue, it cannot be named, it is a god mysterious."

Emanuel Swedenborg/1688 CE-1772 CE

After a lifetime of quality scientific thinking, Sweden's Emanuel Swedenborg experienced an "awakening" that convinced him to change his life course, abandon science, and concentrate his thought on spiritual inquiry. Prior to this decision (at age 56), Swedenborg demonstrated unusual scientific prowess. Included among his accomplishments was a concept on how to establish terrestrial longitude using the moon, a new approach to dock construction, a nebular theory explaining the formation of planets in the solar system, and speculations about submarines and airplanes. More importantly, he postulated that matter consists of "indefinitely divisible" particles in constant motion. Sounds a lot like an atom with its electrons, don't you think?

All in all, Emanuel was unquestionably a bona fide genius. Which adds the allure of mystery to his post-awakening claim that he could "visit heaven and hell at will" and hold conversations with angels.

## ~

Emanuel Swedenborg: "First of all it must be known who the God of heaven is, since upon that all other things depend."

## ~

Swedenborg's spiritual writing focused on interpreting the Bible according to what he had "seen and heard in the world of spirits and angels." These visits were supplemented by other visions and dreams. From his experiences, he "reported" that "works count as much as faith" and "the infinite, indivisible power and life within all creation" is God. He also noted that each of us has sufficient freedom (using will and reason) to remedy our apparent separation from the divine.

## ~

Emanuel Swedenborg: "The true order of creation has been disturbed by man's misuse of his free will. He has diverted his love from God to his own ego, and thus evil has come into the world."

## ~

Intuitive experience, Swedenborg taught, is blocked by ego. Absent ego's obstructions, the soul is free.

## ~

Emanuel Swedenborg: "They ate of the tree of knowledge, that is they began to give credence to what their senses told them."

## ~

His theory of "correspondence" originated in his perception of God's "three degrees" of being: (1) Love, the divine realm. (2) Wisdom, the spiritual realm. (3) Nature (natural), the effects realm. What happens in one is related to what happens in another. That is correspondence.

## ~

Emanuel Swedenborg: "A person is a person because of his spirit, not because of his body. In the spiritual body, man appears such as he is with respect to love and faith, for everyone in the spiritual world is the effigy of his own love, not only as to the face and the body, but also as to the speech and the actions."

Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire/1694 CE-1778 CE

Here is the essence of Voltaire, French Enlightenment philosopher, advocate of skepticism: "I don't believe a word you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." A faithful friend of religious freedom, civil liberties, and social reform, Voltaire detested religious dogma and intolerance. To him, "all men are brothers, regardless of religion, as they are the same creature created by the same God."

Given the apparently inevitable suffering of we creatures within Creation, Voltaire echoed Job by asking: "Is God good? Is God just?" Questions like these, he reasoned, are impossible for humans to answer.

## ~

His recipe for life-long satisfaction: (1) Help people. (2) Be skeptical about ultimate questions.

## ~

Voltaire: "Doubt is not a pleasant state of mind, but certainty is absurd."

## ~

The era's power elite eagerly defended religious dogma, and consequently were intolerant of his work, punishing him frequently. Exiled from his birthplace city of Paris in 1715, he returned in 1717, was arrested and cast into the Bastille for a year. In 1726, back into the Bastille, followed by banishment to England. In 1759, after sneaking out of England to live and work in Lorraine, he wrote the novel _Candide_. My advice is "read it if you can." Returning to Paris in 1778, Voltaire died on May 30. I can't help but notice that this is a death date shared with my beloved friend Cam, killed by an Amtrak train in 2012.

## ~

Voltaire's _Candide_ chronicles the adventures of a much-suffering protagonist who frequently dies a difficult death at the end of one chapter, only to resume his travels—as if nothing untoward had disturbed them—at the beginning of the next.

## ~

The author's point? "If this is the best of all possible worlds, can it really be the best that God can do?"

## ~

Voltaire: "God is a comic playing to an audience that's afraid to laugh."

## ~

Though he distrusted the authenticity and efficacy of religious tradition, his skepticism did not extend to the existence of God. Voltaire analyzed nature and concluded: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. But all nature cries aloud that He does exist, that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it." To Voltaire, a healthy thinker valued "reason and observation" rather than faith.

## ~

Voltaire: "If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."

## ~

Karen Armstrong: "Voltaire thought the true religion should be 'easy,' its truths clearly discernible, and, above all, it should be tolerant."

## ~

Voltaire: "Would (true religion) not be that which taught much morality and very little dogma? That which tended to make men just without making them absurd?

"That which did not order one to believe in things that are impossible, contradictory, injurious to divinity, and pernicious to mankind, and which dared not menace with eternal punishment anyone possessing common sense?

"Would it not be that which did not uphold its belief with executioners, and did not inundate the earth with blood on account of unintelligible sophism? Which taught only the worship of one god, justice, tolerance, and humanity."

Gerhard Tersteegen/1697 CE-1796 CE

As a young man in Germany, Gerhard Tersteegen walked away from a comfortable life as a successful merchant to live in isolation and search for God. His hymns proved popular as did his idea that "God is in every man" though often obscured by ego's "focus on outward things." To seek the "kingdom of Heaven" within oneself is the source of "great joy."

## ~

Gerhard Tersteegen: "A God comprehended is no God."

Deism/17th and 18th Centuries CE

Deism, from the Latin word for God (deus), was primarily an English and American phenomenon, with the delightful exception of Voltaire in France. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson—three of America's founding fathers—were among many Enlightenment "thinkers" of the 17th and 18th centuries working to advance the tenets of Deism. Their idea—in their minds uniting all creeds—was simple and direct: religion should be based on reason. In this interpretation, underlying "natural principles" became more important than differences in belief and faith.

## ~

Deism beliefs: (1) Using scientific principles, God created the world. (2) After creation, God has not been and will not be active in the world. (3) There is a difference between right and wrong. (4) Humans need to do what is right. (5) The soul is immortal. (6) What we do now affects what happens to us later. (7) Faith is subordinate to reason.

## ~

Enlightenment philosophy—valuing progress, democracy, empirical evidence, and the scientific method—spawned Deism in opposition to superstition, tyranny, bigotry, and revealed religion.

## ~

Deism's God of Reason so far transcends human experience that an authentic meaningful relationship seems impossible. How could such a Being have any interest or curiosity about the relative narrowness and tedium of human life?

Ben Franklin/1706 CE-1790 CE

Combining careful observation, a knack for the practical, pragmatic creativity, and an unmatchable work ethic, Benjamin Franklin brought excellence to his every endeavor. That's a fact, not a brag. What could he do well? Almost anything. What did he do well? A few examples:

## ~

Printer, author, postmaster, inventor, scientist, diplomat, philosopher, civic leader, founding father.

## ~

When it came to understanding and explaining the nature of reality, Franklin disdained the thought that any religion or person had sufficient clarity of vision. "Like a Man traveling in foggy weather. Those at some distance before him on the Road he sees wrapped up in the fog, as well as those behind him, also the People in the fields on each side; but near him all appears clear. Tho' in truth he is as much in the Fog as any of them."

## ~

Franklin's scientific reputation was built on his experiments and theories with electricity. His inventions include the lightning rod, the Franklin stove, and bifocals. Ben also helped establish Philadelphia's fire department. And, as noted, was a leading advocate of Deism.

## ~

Ben Franklin: "The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason."

## ~

Franklin's diplomacy with France helped America win the Revolutionary War and his intellect helped shape the Declaration of Independence. Working with Ben elevated the thinking of the Declaration's author, Thomas Jefferson. The essence of Franklin's contribution: Let us declare the making of a country dedicated to equality, justice, freedom. To him, these were vital elements of human life, and a person had a spiritual duty to do what she or he could to protect and nurture them.

## ~

Ben Franklin: "I do not think that thanks and compliments, tho repeated weekly, can discharge our real Obligations to each other, and much less to our Creator."

## ~

Believing in reincarnation, how did Franklin regard Christianity?

## ~

"As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of morality and his religion, as he left them to us, the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes, and I have...some doubts as to his divinity. I think it needless to bother myself with it now, when I expect soon an opportunity of knowing the truth with less trouble.

"I see no harm, however, in its being believed, if that Belief has the good consequence of making his doctrines more respected and better observed; especially as I do not perceive, that the Supreme takes it amiss, by distinguishing the Unbeliever...with any peculiar marks of his displeasure."

## ~

As he did by habit and choice in his every endeavor, when it came to exploring the nature of reality, Franklin applied his intelligence, work ethic, and creativity. How did he perceive Divinity?

## ~

"Here is my creed. I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him is doing good to his other Children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its conduct in this."

## ~

If our souls are immortal, and they are—in the opinion of Ben Franklin, a most capable thinker—we are more than Ego thinks we are. Therefore, isn't it a mistake to define a soul by what happens to it between point of birth and point of death?

## ~

Ben Franklin: "We are spirits. That bodies should be lent us, while they can afford us pleasure, assist in acquiring knowledge, or in doing good to our fellow creatures, is a kind and benevolent act of God.

"When they become unfit for these purposes, and afford us pain instead of pleasure, instead of an aid become an incumbrance, and answer none of the intentions for which they were given, it is equally kind and benevolent that a way is provided by which we may get rid of them. Death is that way."

## ~

To further explain his conception of death as a friend, Franklin wrote: "It is the will of God and nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside when the soul is to enter into real life. (Where we are now) is rather an embryo state, a preparation for living. A man is not completely born until he be dead."

Thomas Reid/1710 CE-1796 CE

Scotland's Thomas Reid considered himself a "common sense" philosopher. He resisted those who relied solely on reason, preferring the concept that "many legitimate beliefs are instinctual." While his ideas on divinity were uninspiring, he did pose a relevant question.

## ~

Thomas Reid: "Are we to admit nothing but can be proved by reason?"

David Hume/1711 CE-1776 CE

A thinker of rare and precious quality, England philosopher David Hume advocated empiricism as vastly superior to a priori metaphysics (especially theology). The latter approach pretends to know and present ultimate principles, but...(its theories) attempt "to penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding." Therefore, in the final analysis, they demonstrate no worthwhile comprehension or truth and, when viewed with a free mind, are ridiculously misleading and confusing.

## ~

David Hume: "Reject every system...however subtle or ingenious, which is not founded on fact and observation."

## ~

Hume's analysis of the human mind led him to value as fundamental to its operation the "principles of association," which he compared to gravitational attraction. Gravity automatically coalesces the material world and association does the same in the mental sphere.

## ~

How does Hume's approach define God?

## ~

David Hume: "The question is not concerning the being but the nature of God. This I affirm, from the infirmities of human understanding, to be altogether incomprehensible and unknown to us. However consistent the world may be, allowing certain suppositions and conjectures with the idea of such a Deity, it can never afford us an inference concerning His existence."

## ~

"All perfection is entirely relative, so we ought never to imagine that we comprehend the attributes of this divine Being, or to suppose that his perfections have any analogy or likeness to the perfections of a human creature."

## ~

"If you accept that God's attributes are infinitely perfect, you are using ordinary terms without their ordinary meaning, so that they do not have any clear meaning. If you deny God's infinite perfection, you can give him understandable attributes, but only because they are amplified human characteristics."

Jean Jacques Rousseau/1712 CE-1778 CE

Rousseau conceived humanity as "good by nature." In his thought, our goodness, our freedom and—by extension—our happiness have been twisted, deformed, and corrupted by our historical experiences. This corruption is neither necessary nor does it reflect who we really are. Rather, the "progression of the sciences and arts" has taken us in the wrong direction. Authentic man is "isolated, timid, peaceful, mute" and doesn't worry about the future. War is not natural to human beings.

## ~

Jean Jacques Rousseau: "Man was/is born free; and everywhere he is in chains."

## ~

Knowledge of God, in Rousseau's view, can be drawn from "observing the natural order and one's place in it." When a religion is willing to ascribe creation to God and teach virtue and morality, it possesses these truths...if no other. Each person had the duty to follow the religion of her/his own land as long as it is in harmony with the morality of nature. The authorities in Geneva and France, where Rousseau lived much of his life, took this to be anti-Christian and harassed him accordingly. They almost certainly were unaware that their actions supported his "natural man" is corrupted by ego thesis. By the way, how do we leave this wrong path?

## ~

Jean Jacques Rousseau: "We will together collectively."

Immanuel Kant/1724 CE-1804 CE

Immanuel Kant, a German philosopher who seldom left his home, traveled far in the field of epistemology and grappled for a lifetime with the concept of transcendence. For him, the latter meant probing for the "ultimate mysteries of being" which by their nature—alas and hurrah—transcend thought.

## ~

Immanuel Kant: "Let us assume that the world without depends on the nature of our intuitions. This is key to the whole critical philosophy, the very essence of which consists in proposing an absolute self as unconditionally existing, incapable of being determined by anything higher than itself, but determining all things through itself."

## ~

Kant perceived reality as composed of "phenomenon constituted by our mental processes." Throw those out with the bathwater, and what's left? Something independent of our experience? Being "in itself?' How can we understand what that might be? By Kant's reasoning, we cannot. Therefore the Divine is not to be known by us, though God is the organizing principle of existence.

## ~

Immanuel Kant: "A rational psychology of the soul transcends the powers of human reason."

## ~

As part of his epistemological analysis, Kant argued that each of us independently, as a natural part of living and thinking, using inner beliefs and expectations, shapes our personal experiences and the meanings we draw from them. Therefore, understanding is individualized and any attempt to self-testify a more inclusive meaning is doomed to failure. Not too difficult to link Kant to post-modern narrative distrust, is it?

## ~

A believer in moral progress, Kant's work pointed at the impossibility of knowing God. However, this did not lead him to refute the idea of a Deity.

## ~

Immanuel Kant: "Only endless progress from lower to higher stages of moral perfection is possible to a rational but finite being. The postulate of the possibility of a highest derived good is at the same time the postulate of the reality of a highest original good, namely, the existence of God. Therefore, it is morally necessary to assume the existence of God."

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi/1746 CE-1827 CE

Switzerland's J. H. Pestalozzi, considered the father of modern education, brought democracy to the public classroom. He believed—and worked to achieve—universal education. Everyone, in his opinion, has the right to learn and society has an obligation to provide opportunities.

## ~

J. H. Pestalozzi: "I wish to wrest education from the outworn order of doddering old teaching hacks as well as from the new-fangled order of cheap, artificial teaching tricks, and entrust it to the eternal powers of nature herself, to the light which God has kindled and kept alive in the hearts of fathers and mothers, to the interests of parents who desire their children grow up in favor with God and with men."

## ~

To Pestalozzi, the way to help an individual develop is by providing the resources and space to "achieve a private truth." The "inner dignity of each individual" is "sacred space." What's the best way to teach? By enabling children to find their own answers.

## ~

Authority, especially in the school, Pestalozzi maintained, should be based on love, not fear. His efforts to make education more democratic were seated in his compassion for the nearly endless list of those of us who suffer. If people can learn, he argued, they can progress.

## ~

J. H. Pestalozzi: "Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own."

J.W. Goethe/1749 CE-1832 CE

Goethe is the author of _Faust,_ and that's enough for anyone to contribute. Sure, and he also was a scientist, specializing in geology, botany, and anatomy. Living in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, he discovered the human intermaxillary bone. Additionally, he proposed a theory of evolution fascinatingly similar to the one later produced by Charles Darwin.

## ~

_Faust_ is the verse-told story of a man with an insatiable desire to experience all that life has to offer. To make his dream come true, the protagonist sells his soul to the devil. Time passes, and our hero accumulates a variety of experiences, sometimes by doing nasty things to people, including the woman he supposedly loves. And yet...and yet...he comes to regret his bargain, increasingly perceiving the shortcomings of his agreement with Satan. Eventually, via an act of love, he repudiates the arrangement. After all, what is of greater value to human consciousness than the soul's freedom and independence? Certainly nothing the Ego desires.

## ~

Goethe: "The human mind will not be confined to any limits...Life is the childhood of our immortality."

## ~

And what is the secret of nature? And what is the reason why?

## ~

Goethe: "Transformation and again transformation, the eternal entertainment of the eternal spirit."

## ~

And what is beauty's toll?

## ~

Goethe: "The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone."

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/1756 CE—1791 CE

When he was three years old, Mozart learned to play the piano by watching his father give lessons to his sister. At age five, he wrote his first music. In the next thirty years, he composed six hundred sonatas, concertos, operas, and symphonies, elevating the standards of excellence in every musical genre of his era. Quick and inventive, gifted with an instinctual grasp of chords, tonality, and tempo, Mozart's "child-like" passions and profound psychological insights fueled his creative process.

## ~

Musicians say that Mozart's compositional clarity leaves them "no room to hide their errors" and "demands the best they have to give," which—viewed from an alternative perspective—gives them an opportunity to marshal all they have done and learned and "give the best they have to give." Rare are those moments and worth the work to get there.

## ~

Mozart's testimony re: the nature of God is given in the language of music rather than the language of words. Though he has been described in pop culture as taking "dictation from God," my impression when listening to his compositions is one of eavesdropping a conversation.

Note by note, moment by moment, Mozart and his unseen conversational Companion explore the probabilities inherent in the question: "Given the present moment, where can this music go? In other words, what's next?

Choices must be made. Each moment is built from the previous. Mozart, inspired—one assumes—by his conversation with the Transcendent, employs relentless mathematical logic, advancing his compositions in ways that are both spontaneous and adapted to form (Puts me in mind of evolution). Listening, we find ourselves in the midst of beauties unanticipated and unexpected. Their source?

William Blake/1757 CE-1827 CE

Mostly due to his rejection of (1) organized religion, (2) governmental authority, and (3) social/sexual norms, William Blake lived a life of poverty. Which is not to say he wasn't happy. Regardless, his death—like his writing—went generally unnoticed. Nearly two hundred years later, his contributions to our historical conversation are widely noted.

## ~

Blake: "I looked for my soul but my soul I could not see. I looked for my God but my God eluded me. I looked for a friend and then I found all three."

## ~

From early on, Blake's "visions" shaped his reality interpretations. At age 4, he saw the head of God in his window. Later he witnessed the prophet Ezekiel and "a tree filled with angels."

## ~

Blake: "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

## ~

In thought and work, Blake explored two realities—outer and inner. From that contemplation, derivative themes emerge, including the role of the individual in the ongoing struggle between good and evil, the nature of the afterlife, and the difference between innocence and knowledge.

## ~

Blake: "As I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyment of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity."

## ~

Who or what is God?

## ~

Blake: "Jesus Christ is the only God, and so am I, and so are you."

## ~

Why are we living in the material world?

## ~

Blake: "Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

Friedrich von Schiller/1759 CE-1805 CE

German poet and philosopher Friedrich von Schiller defined man "as the being who wills." Not an easy task, Schiller continued, because "the forces of nature" can easily overwhelm any individual. Yet our intelligence gives humankind a formidable weapon. We will eventually triumph over nature and the prison of the physical world. And isn't this what God intended?

## ~

Friedrich von Schiller: "From the chalice of this realm of spirits foams forth for Him his own infinitude."

## ~

A celebration of unselfish love from Schiller's _An die Freude_ (adapted by Ludwig Beethoven for his Ninth Symphony):

## ~

"Whoever has created an abiding friendship

Or has won a true and loving wife,

All who can call at least one soul theirs,

Join in our song of praise;

But any who cannot must creep tearfully

Away from our circle."

## ~

"You millions, I embrace you.

This kiss is for all the world!

Brothers, above the starry canopy.

There must dwell a loving Father."

Johann Gottlieb Fichte/1762 CE-1814 CE

Fichte, the son of a German ribbon weaver, based his systematic analysis of transcendental idealism on the "pure I," a subjective sense-of-self roughly analogous to our understanding of _I-Am_. Fichte attempted to show the inescapable connection between the "existence of man as an intelligent agent" and "the necessity of freedom."

In Fichte's system, the freedom of the "pure I" is limited and finite. If this is true of freedom, it must—in Fichte's opinion—also be true about the "I itself." The engine of history is the struggle between individual consciousness and an awareness of unity.

## ~

Dogmatism is an enemy of freedom. Idealism is a friend of freedom.

## ~

What is the reality of consciousness, according to Fichte? "The I is aware of itself as an I." In fact, the "I must be aware of itself in order to be an I." What is the first principle of consciousness? "The I is aware of itself as self-aware."

## ~

Fichte asserted that consciousness presupposes self-consciousness. Further, the "original unity" of self-consciousness is contained within every facet, fact, and act of "empirical consciousness."

## ~

Fichte: "Our moral consciousness is that spiritual and moral order, which can be identified with God himself—God not as a separate Being, Creator, or Cause of the world, but as the Word, or Logos, in all that truly is."

## ~

By Fichte's reasoning, the concept of an "absolute I" is nothing more than an abstraction and has no possibility of Being. Only one type of "I"—finite, empirical, embodied, and individual—exists.

## ~

A "transcendental philosophy of religion" emerges when "practical reason" interrogates nature. What kinds of questions are asked? Those touching on the "nature, limits, and legitimacy" of a belief in God. Fichte stressed that this has "nothing to do" with the claims, traditions, and practices of revealed religion—which are articulated by theologians, not philosophers.

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher/1768 CE-1834 CE

Theology, Schleiermacher proposed, cannot be created out of whole cloth. Rather, as a "critical principle," valid theological insights can only emerge from the "immediate content of religious self-consciousness." Such a definition de-values dogmas like Original Sin and Virgin Birth.

When it came to organized religion, Schleiermacher declined to make judgments on the basis of "reason or morality." He valued "feeling" as spirituality's most important element.

## ~

Schleiermacher's God definition: All-there-is, when considered as a collection of separated objects, is the world. All-there-is, when considered as a unified whole, is God. On one hand, the world is "real, changing, and in God." On the other, God, being already absolute, is not "affected by the world."

## ~

Schleiermacher: "An individual comes to himself in developing his proprium, that inward differentiation of the individual which expresses his particular place in nature and history, or, to speak more generally, his finite place in the infinite whole."

## ~

Despite Ego's limitations, human consciousness is ripe with spirituality. Part of individual growth is the identification and cultivation of our spiritual feelings, including a recognition of "something more," plus an apparently unquenchable desire for ever-deeper intimacy and the experience of a sense-of-oneness that can transcend our ego's isolation and loneliness.

## ~

John Hick: "Whether we are parts or aspects of the Infinite Spirit, somehow separated from it (even though the separation be an illusion of our finite consciousness) or are real beings created by the Infinite Spirit, we have in either case a certain all-important affinity with that supreme Infinite Spirit.

"And such a conscious relationship, which Schleiermacher called God-consciousness, and which more broadly we can call consciousness of the Transcendent is...the essential religious or mystical experience."

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel/1770 CE-1831 CE

To fuel his creative thinking, G.W.F. Hegel sought the kind of "long eye" view of history available only through obtaining a more inclusive mental perspective. From his work, he concluded that "the history of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of freedom."

What is the process that enables our progress? Hegel described a dialectic—a conversation with sharp teeth. Foundational ideas about the nature of reality (and the social patterns they evoke) rise and rule for a time, until—as is inevitable—they are replaced.

Think of a "foundational idea" as a theory of everything—a thesis. Think of its opposite as an antithesis. The outcome of their struggle and blending is a synthesis which becomes a new thesis. To Hegel, this is the march of history. When one idea of unity is found to be insufficient, as is inevitable when freedom is suppressed, the result is disunity, which, eventually resolves itself into another experimental unity. The direction of this movement is toward more freedom, not less.

## ~

Visiting Lone Elk Park during the fall rut, one notices that elk, deer, and buffalo reproductive protocol—power based—minimizes female free choice. For thousands of years, humans more or less followed that model. In our contemporary world, "no means no", as it damn well should, and free choice means consenting adults, because the deeper beauty of sex is triggered by freely given consent. This is an example of the "progress of the consciousness of freedom" articulated by Hegel.

In today's history, the unity provided by traditional cultural values has dissolved. An antithesis—postmodern—has emerged. We have not yet imagined our new unity. Here, as described by Bob Dylan, is what we have learned: "The times they are a-changing."

## ~

G.F.W. Hegel: "We stand at the gates of an important epoch, a time of ferment, when spirit moves forward in a leap, transcends its previous shape and takes on a new one. All the mass of previous representations, concepts, and bonds linking our world together are dissolving and collapsing like a dream picture. A new phase of spirit is preparing itself."

## ~

Consciousness is a series of self-comprehending concentric circles of awareness. Utilizing this visual metaphor, Hegel described the self as "growing out of itself" and thus continually increasing consciousness. What limits the self's development? According to Hegel, nothing.

## ~

Christa Davis Acampora: "For Hegel, all human beings have a desire to connect themselves with whatever they take to be the ultimate reality or the divine."

## ~

G.F.W. Hegel: "The True is the whole. But the whole is nothing other than the essence consummating itself through its development."

## ~

Describing "consciousness" as working toward "the experience of what Spirit is," Hegel gave his definition of divine self-consciousness: "The Spirit of this world is a spiritual essence that is permeated by a self-consciousness which knows itself. The whole is a stable equilibrium of all the parts, and each part is a (free and independent) Spirit at home in this whole."

## ~

J. N. Findlay: "Hegel's phenomenology of Religion runs through all the forms in which men have conceived and must necessarily conceive, a spirituality which transcends their own, and which as much lies behind nature as behind the personal and social life of men."

## ~

G.F.W. Hegel: "The unchangeable consciousness renounces and surrenders its embodied form, while the particular individual consciousness gives thanks for the gift, i.e. denies itself the satisfaction of being conscious of its independence, and assigns the essence of its action not to itself but to the beyond, through these two moments of reciprocal self-surrender of both parts, consciousness does gain a sense of its unity with the Unchangeable. But this unity is at the same time affected with division, is again broken within itself, and from it there emerges once more the antithesis of the universal and the individual."

## ~

Hegel defined God as "spirit, Geist." By this he did not mean to convey the impression of a living, breathing entity. Rather, he postulated the existence of an "inner being of the world," containing all-there-is, including that which is theoretically possible, though unrealized in our individual and/or collective experience of emerging probabilities.

## ~

G.F.W. Hegel: "Self-identity is in the form of the understanding. Consciousness knows an absolute unity when the understanding only sees separation."

## ~

Speculate a deeper dialectic. Wherein love changes I to We, _I-Am_ to _We-Are_ , _We-Are_ to _I-Am._

William Wordsworth/1770 CE-1850 CE

Under attack by capitalists during the early days of the Industrial Revolution, Nature needed the protection of friends. Romantic poets rose to its defense and Wordsworth helped lead the way. Valuing the suppleness of consciousness, he made a long-eye observation.

## ~

"My voice proclaims

How exquisitely the individual Mind

(And the progressive powers perhaps no less

Of the whole species)

To the external World

Is fitted:—and how exquisitely, too,

Theme this but little heard of among Men

The external World is fitted to the Mind."

## ~

And how does Wordsworth (pretty good name for a poet) define his comprehension of the divine?

## ~

"While with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. 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; a motion and a spirit, that impels all living things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things."

Ludwig van Beethoven/1770 CE-1827 CE

Beethoven, considered by many to be humanity's finest composer, used his music to wordlessly communicate a humanistic philosophy based on Free Choice and Fair Play. Deep passion infused his music with the power to advocate and foster individual freedom. His will to create helped him overcome many difficult obstacles. Some critics suggest that "in certain of his compositions is to be found the strongest assertion of the human will in all music, if not in all art."

## ~

Beethoven: "Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy...music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life."

## ~

During the last decade of his life, Beethoven lost his hearing. His struggle to compose while deaf, undoubtedly heroic, spurred him to some of his greatest accomplishments. Perhaps the most striking example is his Ninth Symphony, especially the Song of Joy, linking nature and spirit, evoking the transcendent.

## ~

Beethoven: "Don't only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets; art deserves that, for it and knowledge can raise man to the Divine."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge/1772 CE-1834 CE

A groundbreaking poet, Coleridge—whose work includes _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_ and _Kubla Khan—_ affirmed that a search for truth using the "logic of poetry" was "more difficult than a search for truth using the logic of science." Why? Because "poetry is more subtle, more complex, and dependent on more, and more fugitive causes." Of the knowledge we have, Coleridge wrote, "the largest and worthiest portion consists of aphorisms: and the greatest and best of men is but an aphorism."

## ~

Coleridge: "Is man truly made in the image of his Creator, and hindered only by the ruthless conditions of his environment from realizing the glory of his true identity?"

## ~

In Coleridge's worldview, nature is life's constant, friendly companion. Creativity—especially when poetic—is one of nature's wide variety of tools, an arrow in its quiver, an instrument in its symphonic orchestra.

## ~

Coleridge: "Our noontide majesty, to know ourselves parts and proportions of one wondrous whole! This fraternizes man, this constitutes our charities and bearings!"

## ~

Poets are inclined to be effusive because love is insufficiently valued by ego.

Friedrich Schelling/1775 CE-1854 CE

In Schelling's understanding, nature's reality remains independent of ego consciousness. Good thing the Universal Spirit is present in nature, he writes, or else empirical consciousness (individual and individuating egos) would not be possible. The "Absolute"—Schelling's conception of God—is the comprehensive identity of the Universal Spirit.

## ~

Schelling: "There is in every man a certain feeling, that he has been what he is from all eternity, and by no means became such in time."

## ~

Schelling's insights re: subjectivity remain influential in our non-narrative trusting, culturally confrontational, post-modern era. He concluded that a "thinking subject" does not have the capability to be "fully transparent to itself." This realization is more valued today than when he penned it.

## ~

Evolution—the process by which nature becomes its ideal—is analogous to spiritual progress. Spirit works to become "conscious of itself."

Mary Rotch/1777 CE-1848 CE

A confidant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ms. Rotch—a strong-minded Quaker turned Unitarian—"had so much dignity and strength in her character and bearing that it was impossible for any one to speak of her lightly."

## ~

Mary Rotch: "The Light Within not the Bible is the final authority in religion, for the Bible was only one expression of the spirit constantly active in every human soul."

Arthur Schopenhauer/1788 CE-1860 CE

Human life is a self-reflective dream, Schopenhauer writes, generated by the mind in the same manner that nerves in a tongue stimulate the taste of sugar in the brain. Two universes exist. One is Will—reality as it is in itself. The other is a mental universe, composed of ideas, objects, and appearances.

## ~

Schopenhauer: "Individuation is but an appearance in a field of space and time, these being the conditioning forms through which my cognitive faculties apprehend their objects. Hence the multiplicity and differences that distinguish individuals are likewise but appearances. They exist only in my mental representation.

"My own true inner being actually exists in every living creation as truly and immediately as known to my consciousness only in myself. This realization is the ground of that compassion upon which all true, that is to say, unselfish, virtue rests and whose expression is in every good deed."

## ~

What is the source of our intense desire for sex? The answer, according to Schopenhauer: More than a desire for pleasure, or intimacy, the real motivator is the will of the Will, utilizing, among other tools, a reproductive biological imperative to ensure a constant supply of forms for consciousness to inhabit, albeit temporarily.

## ~

Personal self-development entails substituting a universal perspective for a personal one, perceiving from the Rind rather than the Ego. What is gained? Enhanced awareness. What is learned? We're all in this together. My self is the same self as your self.

## ~

A person's life, Schopenhauer reports, is a self-written novel. Do you know how to read the book you personally are writing? One can track one's plot lines, choices, and consequences. One can connect one's dots.

## ~

Panentheism theorizes that everything we can imagine, everything we can contemplate, everything we can understand—the totality of our mental and physical universes—is God. Not the entirety of God, of course. God is much, much more than we can imagine, contemplate, understand. God is much, much more than universal.

## ~

Schopenhauer: "The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable."

Percy Bysshe Shelley/1792 CE-1822 CE

Best remembered as an eloquent, freedom-loving poet dedicated to what reasonably can be described as spiritual progress—though he called it a "shift in consciousness"—Shelley lived, loved, and explored profound themes with courage and compassion. Many of his ideas—and life choices—challenged English (and Christian) paradigms. (One example is his advocacy by word and deed of free sexual love.) Loyalty to his principles cost him many a hardship, but he willingly made the necessary sacrifices. Not surprisingly, given their aversion to his ideas, the powers-that-be hounded him to an early death.

## ~

"And what were thou, and earth, and stars, and sea

If to the human mind's imaginings

Silence and solitude were vacancy?"

## ~

"Where is the love, beauty, and truth we seek, but in our mind?"

## ~

"Nothing in the world is single, all things by a law divine in one spirit meet and mingle."

John Keats/1795 CE-1821 CE

Living only 26 years, Keats' poetic insights represent a profound, non-chronological maturity. Author of the much-lauded _Ode To A Grecian Urn_ , his observations that "beauty is truth, truth beauty" and "a thing of beauty is a joy forever" and "love is my religion" hint at the existence of standards transcending the swirl of subjective realities.

## ~

Keats: "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter."

## ~

Perhaps as foreshadow, Keats spent a lot of time thinking about death. He told a beloved woman he could either think about their love or his death. Those were his only two choices.

## ~

Keats: "My spirit is too weak—mortality weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, and each imagin'd pinnacle and steep of godlike hardship tells me I must die like a sick eagle looking at the sky."

## ~

What are the boundaries of human nature? Are Ego's limitations ironclad? In his philosophy called "Negative Capability," Keats articulated his belief that we can escape Ego's orbit, acquire more awareness, and move forward. Further, that's exactly what we should be doing.

## ~

Keats: "Call the world, if you Please: "The vale of Soul-making."

## ~

After Keats contracted tuberculosis, his doctor—not on purpose, one presumes—did his best to hurt and kill him. First, Doctor 19th Century insisted that Keats restrict his daily food intake to one anchovy and one slice of bread. His reasoning? Didn't want blood to flow into the stomach. Speaking of blood, the doc drained his patient heavily and frequently. Given the givens, Keats felt as if he had already died. He asked, "How long is this posthumous existence of mine to go on?

## ~

Keats: "Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"

## ~

The combination of tuberculosis, oxygen deprivation (from medical bloodletting), and lack of food ended Keats' life. In an odd way, the situation confirmed his opinion that creativity and imagination were essential elements of human consciousness.

## ~

Keats: "The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were."

Thomas Carlyle/1795 CE-1881 CE

Carlyle, a Scottish philosopher/historian, relied on the universe's ultimate goodness. He theorized the existence of a "divine will" that manifested itself in "heroes and leaders." Sadly, organized religion, in his view, contains an apparently irresistible tendency to ossify dogma. Therefore, new forms of religion are periodically required, as a way to communicate basic "essential truths."

## ~

Carlyle: "Divine Idea means under what other names and in what other formulas do I already know the same thing, which thou expresses by so strange and to me so unknown a symbol."

## ~

His most famous work, _Sartor Resartus_ , contrasts the Everlasting Yea—the spirit of faith in God—with the Everlasting No—the spirit of hostile unbelief. By increasingly understanding the "essence of being human" as growth and development without a fixed end or goal, Carlyle's protagonist develops the capacity to note and value evidence pointing to Yea rather than No.

## ~

Carlyle: "When the oak is felled, the whole forest echoes with its fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze."

## ~

How does one turn one's No into one's Yea? One becomes "detached" and "agnostic" in order to enter a "Center of Indifference." In other words, Carlyle, like Buddha, counsels pilgrims to discard belief "certainty" and ego desires. He also reminds his readers: "A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge."

## ~

Carlyle: "Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world."

Amos Bronson Alcott/1799 CE-1888 CE

Winner of the mythical "Mr. Optimism" award every year of his life but one, Alcott—friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson and father of Louisa May Alcott—taught himself to read and write, using charcoal letters on a kitchen floor. His self-education never flagged. Eventually, Amos joined Emerson's transcendental circle of friends and became a leading education theorist.

## ~

Bronson Alcott: "Infinity is too wide for man to take in. He is, therefore, permitted to take in portions and spread his vision over the wide circumference by little and little; and in these portions doth the Infinite shadow forth itself, God in all and all In God."

## ~

Alcott's one non-optimistic year was triggered by the failure of Fruitlands, an agrarian-based utopian community experiment in which he participated. When money troubles ended Fruitlands, it took Amos a while to recover emotionally. Eventually, he founded a more successful project: the Concorde School of Philosophy.

## ~

Bronson Alcott: "We climb to heaven most often on the ruins of our cherished plans, finding our failures were successes."

Ralph Waldo Emerson/1803 CE-1882 CE

Descended from a long line of clergymen, Waldo Emerson helped shape the educational zeitgeist of two of his alma maters—Harvard University (Class of '21) and the Harvard School of Divinity (Class of '26). Though ordained by the Unitarian Church, his work reached a far broader audience.

## ~

Emerson: "It is not what we believe concerning the immortality of the soul or the like, but the universal impulse to believe that is the material circumstance and is the principal fact in the history of the globe."

## ~

This "universal impulse to believe" manifests itself individually rather than collectively. At its core, spirituality is personal, and that is as it should be.

## ~

Emerson: "How dear, how soothing to man, arises the idea of God, peopling the lonely place, effacing the scars of our mistakes and disappointments! It inspires in man an infallible trust. He is sure that his welfare is dear to the heart of being."

## ~

Blending West and East, Emerson explored the nature of the Divine in essays such as _Self-Reliance_ , _Nature_ , and _The Oversoul._ But he did not do so as a representative of organized religion. Grief from the death of his wife, Ellen Tucker, and his own doubts led him to resign from the clergy.

## ~

Emerson: "Historical Christianity has fallen into the error that corrupts all attempts to communicate religion. As it appears to us, and as it has appeared for ages, it is not the doctrine of the soul, but an exaggeration of the person, the positive, the ritual. It has dwelt, it dwells, with noxious exaggeration about the person of Jesus. The soul knows no persons."

## ~

Rather than single out Christianity as the sole cause of this corruption, Emerson scoped a bigger picture.

## ~

Emerson: "The history of hierarchies seems to show that all religious error consisted in making the symbol too stark and solid and, at last, nothing but an excess of the organ of language."

## ~

Different paths, different phases. At certain points in personal development, if one cultivates a loving heart, losing one's religion is often the key to finding one's spirituality. To this end, Emerson gathered several extraordinary thinkers into a cadre of "American Transcendentalists." The touchstone of their philosophies? Using free will and intuition, every individual has the capacity to transcend (move beyond) this earthly prison of sensory-based Ego delusions.

Thus God did not have to be forever mysterious. When new mysteries arise, a human person—via self-examination and harvesting the spiritual bounty implicit in nature—can evolve an ever deeper understanding of the Divine.

## ~

Emerson: "Spirit is the Creator. Spirit hath life in itself. And man in all ages and countries, embodies it in his language, as the Father. It is one light which beams out of a thousand stars. It is one soul that animates all men."

## ~

As his thought matured, Emerson's essays attracted sufficient attention to make him a sought-after speaker throughout America and beyond. Traveling extensively, Waldo became increasingly convinced that God was "immediately" present in human experience.

## ~

Emerson: "God is like the blood flowing in your veins or the air that you breathe or the orchestrator of your dreams at night. The Creative Force is immanent; it is present in all your experiences. God is the individual's own soul carried out to perfection."

## ~

Is there a correspondence between the human soul and the physical universe?

## ~

Emerson: "The universe is the externalization of the soul...ever beyond the coarse effect is a fine cause, which being narrowly seen is itself the effect of a finer cause."

## ~

What is the source of the coarse, the fine, and the finer? Functioning aggregates of consciousness, I think, create a series of ever more inclusive sums of awareness, each acting with the free will, interdependence, and artistry of an individualized, creative _I-Am_. Circles within circles within circles—overlapping center-points of _I-Am_.

## ~

Emerson: "The life of man is a self-evolving circle, which from a ring imperceptibly small, rushes on all sides outwards to new and larger circles, and that without end."

## ~

When it comes to reality construction, how might this work? What are the operative principles of creativity?

## ~

Emerson: "A rule of one art, or a law of one organization holds true throughout nature. So intimate is this Unity, that, it is easily seen, it lies under the undermost garment of nature, and betrays its source in Universal Spirit. For it pervades Thought also."

## ~

How can one best understand the art of creating physical reality? How does evolution move forward?

## ~

Emerson: "The river, as it flows, resembles the air that flows over it; the air resembles the light which traverses it with more subtle currents; the light resembles the heat which rides with it through Space. Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same."

## ~

Not for nothing, but given the presence of evil, suffering, and other Ego-choice consequences, is there such a thing as justice, or is Fair Play nothing more than a Missouri boat ride, with the evil on deck and the good bobbing in the water, trying to avoid being hit by the hull?

## ~

Emerson: "In the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. If you love and serve men, you cannot by any hiding or stratagem escape the remuneration. Secret retributions are always restoring the level, when disturbed, of the divine justice. It is impossible to tilt the beam."

## ~

Christianity preaches Original Sin and the Fall of Man. Emerson put forth a different interpretation of the Eden myth, centered around the sacrifice Consciousness makes when it puts itself in the hands of Ego.

## ~

Emerson: "As soon as the youth of the universe has felt and uttering the great fact of being (I Am), he transfers this "me" from that which it really is, to the frontier region of effects in which he dwells, to his body and its appurtenances, to home and land. This is the cost of consciousness, this is the Fall."

## ~

What is the source of human unity? What is being forgotten?

## ~

Emerson: "Out of an unknown antiquity...an unlooked-for wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, divided Man into men, that he might be more helpful to himself; just as the hand was divided into fingers, the better to answer its end."

## ~

You are reading a lot about Emerson, don't you think? In my opinion, the man is worth it, bringing forth, as he did, a plethora of dots of light and hints of love. He believed in "underlying laws of nature" that were also operative principles of consciousness.

## ~

Looking with the long eye, do you think all personal development can be concluded in one lifetime? Doesn't seem possible, especially given the abundance of contrary evidence and the distance between ego-awareness and one's ultimate goal.

## ~

Emerson: "This is the ultimate fact, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed One. Man's life is a progress, and not a station. The mind now thinks, now acts, and each fit reproduces the other. The end of being is to know; and if you say, the end of knowledge is action—why, yes, but the end of that action again, is knowledge."

Ludwig Feuerbach/1804 CE-1872 CE

Ludwig Feuerbach's analysis of history matured the discernment of many that humanity's evolving definition of the Divine is actually a series of mental projections.

## ~

Feuerbach: "The historical progress of religion consists in this: that what by an earlier religion was regarded as objective, is now recognized as subjective...God is the highest subjectivity of man abstracted from himself."

## ~

In his book, _The Essence of Christianity_ , Feuerbach called religion "a consciousness of the infinite and nothing more." The specifics of any organized religion are a reflection of the human psyche at any given time. Therefore, because we are constantly learning and expanding our awareness, a religion which fixates on yesterday's knowledge and opinions is soon enough obsolete.

## ~

Feuerbach: "That which is given to man's God is in truth given to man himself; what a man declares concerning God, he in truth declares concerning himself."

## ~

His assertion that Christianity had "vanished from reason and life" alienated the wealthy and powerful. Undaunted, Feuerbach declared that the dominant religion of his time was not immune from the intrinsic limitations of any and all organized religions. Christianity, in his opinion, had become "nothing more than a fixed idea."

Edgar Allan Poe/1809 CE-1849 CE

Made famous by his authorship of _The Raven_ , Poe later reported experiencing a mystical moment, during which he shed Ego's carnival fantasies and joyfully perceived the universe as an undivided whole. Subsequently, he wrote his little book, _Eureka_ (meaning: "I found it."). Like many undergoing similar experiences, the poet lamented the difficulty of reconciling daily life with transcendent insight.

## ~

Poe: "A certain petulant, impatient sorrow at our inability to grasp now, wholly, here on earth, at once and forever, those divine and rapturous joys, of which through poem or music, we attain but brief and indeterminate glimpses."

## ~

In _Eureka_ , Poe anticipated by more than fifty years our discoveries of the Big Bang and universal expansion. Will his conceptions of "spiritual reality" someday also be verified? In his own words, here is the philosophical essence emergent from his vision:

## ~

Poe: "The utter impossibility of any one's soul feeling itself inferior to another; the intense, overwhelming dissatisfaction and rebellion at the thought; these, with the omni-prevalent aspirations at perfection, are but the spiritual, coincident with the material, struggling towards the original Unity.

"To my mind, this is at least a species of proof far surpassing what Man terms demonstration, that no one soul is inferior to another.

"That nothing is, or can be, superior to any one soul—that each soul is, in part, its own God—its own Creator: in a word, that God—the material and spiritual God—now exists solely in the diffused Matter and Spirit of the Universe; and that the re-gathering of this diffused Matter and Spirit will be but the re-constitution of the purely Spiritual and Individual God."

Abraham Lincoln/1809 CE-1865 CE

Most people know that Lincoln's resolute leadership helped free America's slaves and maintain the American union. After all, more than 15,000 books have been written about the sixteenth president. In many ways, he has become a national and international avatar representing intelligence, courage, eloquence, and integrity. Growing up in central Illinois, as I did, one is frequently reminded of Lincoln's unique beauty. How poignantly his story tugs the hearts of like-minded women and men.

## ~

Honest Abe had little faith in the claims and dogmas of organized religion. He did, however, detect and respect a transcendent force—which he was glad to call God. Consequently, his thought and choices were guided by spiritual (non-Ego) considerations.

In many ways, Lincoln is our "spiritual, but not religious" archetype. Unpersuaded by dogma, disdainful of hierarchy, seeking harmony with the transcendent, Lincoln successfully governed a Christian nation through an exceedingly difficult ethical and political transition. One of his most effective tools was his sense of the practical. His ability to distill "tells" from an individual's actions and words helped him perceive the truth of an argument ...or the full meaning of a moment in time.

## ~

Lincoln: "I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it."

## ~

In his second inaugural address, the re-elected president shared his long-eye understanding of karma.

## ~

Lincoln: "Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war will pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said 'the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'"

## ~

In the same speech, the president who won the war to free the slaves offered mercy and forgiveness:

## ~

Lincoln: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work."

## ~

What work?

## ~

Robert C. Ingersoll: "Human history has been scarred by a 'deadly conflict' in which the brave, lonely champions of truth, 'straining against fear and mental slavery, prejudice and martyrdom' had dragged humanity 'inch by inch' closer to the truth."

## ~

Lincoln: "It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity, and the other the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You toil and work and earn bread, and I'll eat it.'

## ~

If a person prays and asks God to defeat his enemy and his enemy asks God to defeat him, what's a divinity to do?

## ~

Lincoln: "Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes."

## ~

Are you saying, Mr. President, that God is not on our side? Doesn't that worry you?

## ~

Lincoln: "Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right."

## ~

Did Lincoln's attitude toward organized religion mean that he did not believe in life after death?

## ~

Lincoln: "Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist for only a day! No, no, man was made for immortality."

## ~

Implicitly valued by the choices he made, though never specifically articulated, was a steady course of self-improvement based on ever-increasing compassion and ever-enhanced understanding. In short, as he matured, Lincoln grew more loving.

## ~

William Lee Miller: "Lincoln came to be unusually respectful of the dignity and independence of the human beings with whom he dealt. That had not necessarily been true of the ambitious younger Lincoln, with his awareness that he was abler than those around him, and with his satirical inclination and self-confident polemical power—his power to hurt. But as he matured, one can almost observe him curbing that inclination and becoming scrupulous and respectful."

## ~

Lincoln: "When I do good, I feel good. When I do bad, I feel bad. That's my religion."

Charles Darwin/1809 CE-1882 CE

Native to England, born during the Napoleonic wars, Darwin developed sweeping insights into the purposes and mechanics of evolution. In so doing, he greatly advanced human understanding. His books— _The Origin of Species_ and _The Descent of Man_ —presented the essence of his theory: above all else, nature valued survival and reproduction. The evidence of evolution reveals no presence of a God.

## ~

Darwin: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars."

## ~

The two most significant aspects of Darwin's Theory of Evolution are (1) descent with modification and (2) modification through natural selection. The first suggests that life at all levels is descended from a few simple organisms, and differing evolutionary paths are determined by environmental variations. Plenty of evidence supports this generally accepted contention. As for the second, more later. But first (CNN style), here's some breaking news from the 19th century:

## ~

Darwin: "I had gradually come to see that the Old Testament...was no more to be trusted than the...beliefs of any barbarian."

## ~

The aspect of Darwin's theory most contested is his hunch and conclusion that natural selection—survival of the fittest—is evolution's engine and chance (random mutation), its fuel. What do you think? Is merciless competition "red in tooth and claw" our primary operating principle? Many people—particularly of the type described in these pages—think "cooperation" might be a better answer.

Stipulating for a moment that Darwin's analysis—modifications advance by chance, trial, and error—is at least two-thirds correct, one finds it necessary to ask with an open mind: Might evolution have a goal? Scientific materialism, displaying no worrisome symptoms of open-mindedness, thunders an answer. "No."

## ~

Darwin helped launch the cult of scientific materialism by postulating matter as reality's be-all and end-all. Emotional, mental, and spiritual effects are derivative. How did this "consciousness is subordinate to biology" starkness affect Darwin's perception of life after death? I think it made him want to vomit.

## ~

Darwin: "Believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress. To those who fully admit the immortality of the human soul, the destruction of our world will not appear so dreadful."

## ~

Are humans the end product of evolution? Please. Are we the crown of evolution? Of course not. Like all, like each, like every, humanity evolved over a long, long period of time. The process continues. What's next?

Consciousness, now visibly part of the evolutionary equation, enables choice. Choice enables probability resolution. Probability resolution is evolution in action.

Maybe some form of Consciousness always is involved with creation and evolution—always has been, always will be. The more we know, the more we grow. Sooner or later, why should time be an impenetrable barrier?

## ~

Darwin: "Another source of conviction in the existence of God, connected with the reason and not with the feelings...follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look for a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man."

## ~

Within the parameters of Darwin's evolutionary theory, how does a person—and a culture—move forward?

## ~

Darwin: "A man finds, in accordance with the verdict of all the wisest men, that the highest satisfaction is derived from following certain impulses. If he acts for the good of others...by degrees it will become intolerable to him to obey his sensuous passions rather than his higher impulses."

## ~

Sounds like a primary operating principle, don't you think?

## ~

Darwin: "The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man."

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard/1813 CE-1855 CE

Thought by many to be the "father" of modern existentialism and psychology, Kierkegaard considered the individual self as constantly "relating itself to the absolute." Its _I-Am_ being both subject and object, the self is able to review the consequences of its decisions, and with the fruitage of analysis "move itself" toward God. In this way, according to Kierkegaard, we have the freedom to "choose ourselves."

## ~

Kierkegaard: "The whole of existence makes me anxious, from the smallest fly to the mysteries of the Incarnation. It's all inexplicable, myself most of all. For me all existence is contaminated, myself most of all.

"Great is my distress, unlimited. No one knows it but God in heaven and he will not comfort me. No one but God in heaven can console me and he will not take pity on me."

## ~

By the dictates of Kierkegaard's reasoning, the limits of what we can know about the unknown infinite do not "satisfy the demands of passion." The ache of our spiritual disconnect is a primary condition of human existence.

## ~

Kierkegaard: "To say that it is the Unknown because it cannot be known, and even if it were capable of being known, it could not be expressed, does not satisfy the demands of passion, though it correctly interprets the Unknown as a limit; but a limit is precisely a torment for passion, though it also serves as an incitement.

"The Unknown is the limit to which the Reason repeatedly comes, and insofar, substituting a static form of conception for the dynamic, it is the different, the absolutely different."

Jules Lequier/1814 CE-1862 CE

Lequier, a French philosopher, argued that the existence of free will curtailed God's ability to "know the future." Freedom—a condition of knowledge—means that an individual's choice in any specific situation might be predictable, but can't be known for certain. Therefore, God's understanding of the future is understanding that one experience will emerge from a range of possibilities. While it can be said that God is aware of all of the possible choices, it remains intrinsic that the individual is free to make whatever choice she or he desires. Therefore, God cannot be sure of the outcome and thus cannot know the future. That's the nature of freedom. Lequier described this situation as "dynamic divine omniscience."

## ~

Lequier: "If freedom is possible, then what I choose is not known in advance by God. God can know certainly what has been realized; but can know only conjecturally what is still to be chosen. It follows that humans have independence, even against God, that God, seeing things change, must change in beholding them; that the future is contingent; and that God and the world have a reciprocal interrelatedness, each affecting the other."

Henry David Thoreau/1817 CE-1862 CE

Combining his talents as a philosopher, poet, and naturalist, Thoreau—who from time-to-time earned money by teaching, making pencils, and surveying land—perceived the universe as an "inseparable" blend of mind and matter. His two books, _A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers_ and _Walden_ , feature keen observations about nature and profound self-examination.

## ~

Thoreau: "I learned this: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

## ~

In his view, the spiritual world and the physical world are one and the same. Events and interactions that occur in nature—if one takes the time and trouble to notice—provide surprising insights into the transcendent.

## ~

Thoreau: "I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight. New earths, and skies and seas around, and in my day the sun doth pale his light."

## ~

One should "be always on the alert to find God in nature." The revelations of nature can be of significant religious value, though this is not widely understood by urban society.

## ~

Thoreau: "If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen."

## ~

As an author and a reader, Henry David (born David Henry) respected the power of books and regarded a "truly good" one with special reverence.

## ~

Thoreau: "A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting."

## ~

In 1854, HDT published _Walden_ , a book that roused world-wide interest and respect. The book lauds—by demonstration—a life of "knowing oneself" and also shares what Thoreau has learned from nature. As a whole greater than the sum of its impressive parts, Walden is fulsomely spiritually evocative.

## ~

Thoreau: "Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand."

## ~

Urging his readers to search for a "broader perspective," HDT understood that every one of us has a singular perspective. "How novel and original must be each new man's view of the universe!" This relativity, however, does not extend to the truth itself. The truth is one. The truth is the truth is the truth is the truth. Relativity is individual interpretation.

## ~

Thoreau: "Every people have gods to suit their circumstances. Goodness is the only investment that never fails."

Walt Whitman/1819 CE-1892 CE

To mourn the death of Abraham Lincoln, Walt Whitman wrote _When Lilacs Last In the Dooryard Bloomed_ and _O Captain! My Captain!_ He also lived a singularly authentic poem of a life. What messages did he communicate to his readers, then and now? Have courage, be who you are, think for yourself, put as much love as possible into the mix of the moment.

## ~

Whitman: "Love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men. Re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul."

## ~

Sojourner Truth's reaction to Whitman's poetry: "It was God who wrote it, he chose the man—to give his message."

## ~

Whitman: "In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass. I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God's name. And I leave them where they are, for I know that wherever I go, others will punctually come for ever and ever."

## ~

What is the nature and essence of God?

## ~

Whitman: "I say to mankind. Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God—I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least."

## ~

In _Leaves of Grass_ , a multi-level mix of lovely, insightful poems created, written, and grouped by Whitman, the author gloried in the beauty of _I-Am_ and the reality of unified consciousness. "I celebrate myself, and sing myself. And what I assume you shall assume. For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you."

## ~

In your opinion, Walt Whitman, how can a person discern truth?

## ~

"Whatever satisfies the soul is truth."

## ~

And what does the soul say about the truth of death?

## ~

"To die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier."

Mary Baker Eddy/1821 CE-1910 CE

Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), Mary Baker Eddy authored her religion's guidebook— _Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures_. Both book and church expound her assertion that "man is idea, the compound idea of God." Does this relationship with the Divine mean everything's going be all right? She found hope in history.

## ~

Mary Baker Eddy: "In the Saxon and twenty other tongues, good is the term for God."

## ~

MBE was a founding mother of a highly respected newspaper, _The Christian Science Monitor_. Her creativity made her a public force during an era when women were fenced from power and not allowed to vote. Overcoming barriers, Eddy's creations remain influential.

## ~

Mary Baker Eddy: "The true theory of the universe, including man, is not in material history, but in spiritual development."

## ~

Christian Science perceives the universe as spiritual (mental). Matter, on the other hand, does not exist, is merely an illusion of Mind. The beliefs of individual Minds (functioning aggregates of consciousness) determine the experience of individual Minds.

## ~

Ego seems convinced that there are billions of us, each isolated within the confines of a separate, mortal, body. My body, my self. Your body, your self. MBE strongly disagreed.

## ~

Mary Baker Eddy: "It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent, war will cease, and the true brotherhood of man will be established."

## ~

After experiencing a personal healing from a troubling illness while reading the Bible, Eddy concluded that if matter is not real, the same had to be true for disease and death.

## ~

Mary Baker Eddy: "The central fact of the Bible is the superiority of spiritual over physical power. The material body manifests only what mortal mind believes."

## ~

Disease, MBE argued, is an error of Mind. Correct the error, cure the ill. Prayer helps. And how does Eddy define prayer?

## ~

"True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection."

Fyodor Dostoyevsky/1821 CE-1881 CE

As much a psychologist as a novelist—as shown by his treatment of depth concepts—the Russian thinker Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote exquisitely profound novels, especially _Crime and Punishment, The Demons and Devils, The Brothers_ _Karamazov_ and _The Idiot._ Some people (including me) consider him one of the greatest writers in history.

## ~

Albert Einstein: "Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist."

## ~

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "In every idea of genius or in every human idea, or, more simply still, in every serious human idea born in anyone's brain, there is something that cannot possibly be conveyed to others."

## ~

Although each of his novels is fascinating and informative, my favorite is _The Idiot_. Dostoyevsky presents a pure-of-heart hero, Prince Myshkin, as a Christ-like figure so generous, and compassionate that the world considers him a fool.

## ~

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "Don't let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them."

## ~

Though by far the most loving character in the book, Prince Myshkin—is unable to bring happiness to those he helps and to himself. Eventually, he suffers a complete nervous breakdown.

Dostoyevsky's exploration of the emotional and intellectual complexities shaping and motivating this "perfectly good man" made me tremble with excitement during my first read of _The Idiot_ and still stirs me deeply. The question he asked and answered: How can someone emulating Christ survive in the world?

## ~

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "Love equates people. To love someone is to see him as God intended him."

## ~

In 1849, Dostoyevsky was arrested and imprisoned for eight months. In December, he was taken outside, sentenced to death by firing squad, and lined up to be shot. The orders "Ready" and "Aim" were given and the soldiers raised and targeted their rifles, prepared to shoot. Before the command "Fire" was issued, a messenger brought word of a pardon from the Tsar.

## ~

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "It's life that matters, nothing but life—the process of discovering, the everlasting and perpetual process, not the discovery itself, at all."

## ~

What is the appeal of believing in God?

## ~

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "My friends, God is necessary for me if only because he is the one being who can be loved eternally."

## ~

Ironically, Dostoyevsky used the Christ-figure, Prince Myshkin, to present a most scathing condemnation of Christianity. After delivering the following remarks—which caused me to throw down the book and pace nervously around the room like a caged animal—Myshkin retreats from his companions and the world they think of as home.

## ~

Fyodor Dostoyevsky: "Roman Catholicism is even worse than atheism—that's my opinion. Yes, that's my opinion! Atheism merely preaches a negation, but Catholicism goes further: it preaches a distorted Christ, a Christ calumniated and defamed by it, the opposite of Christ! It preaches Antichrist—I swear it does, I assure you it does!

"That's my personal opinion, an opinion I've held for a long time, and it has worried me a lot myself. In my opinion, Roman Catholicism isn't even a religion, but most decidedly a continuation of the Holy Roman Empire, and everything in it is subordinated to that idea, beginning with faith.

"The Pope seized the earth, an earthly throne and took up the sword; and since then everything has gone on in the same way, except they've added lies, fraud, deceit, fanaticism, superstition wickedness. They have trifled with the most sacred, truthful, innocent, ardent feelings of the people, have bartered it all for money, for base temporal power. And isn't this the teaching of Antichrist?"

Matthew Arnold/1822 CE-1888 CE

Supporting his family by inspecting schools for the English government, Arnold, a constant reader, successful poet, and famed literary critic, did not hesitate to write what he believed, no matter how unpopular it might make him.

## ~

Arnold: "The personages of the Christian heaven and their conversations are no more matter of fact than the personages of the Greek Olympus and their conversations."

## ~

In the critic's view, what do these two ways of fictionalizing divinity have in common?

## ~

Arnold: "The word 'God' is used in most cases as by no means a term of science or exact knowledge, but a term of poetry and eloquence, a term thrown out, so to speak, as a not fully grasped object of the speaker's consciousness—a literary term, in short; and mankind mean different things by it as their consciousness differs."

## ~

Do people make more spiritual progress in isolation or community? Should a person dedicated to growing more loving live in the world—or away from it? Maybe there is no permanent answer.

## ~

Arnold: "Where shall a man fly then? Back to men? But they will gladly welcome him once more, and help him to unbend his too tense thought, and rid him of the presence of himself, and keep their friendly chatter at his ear, and haunt him, till the absence from himself, that other torment, grow unbearable; and he will fly to solitude again, and he will find its air too keen for him, and so change back; and many thousand times be miserably bandied to and fro like a sea-wave."

## ~

According to Arnold, individuals naturally expand their awareness, thereby increasing the volume of the aggregation of consciousness they identify as self. This seemingly intrinsic desire slates into the category of a "prime directive" or "operative principle."

## ~

Arnold: "The need of expansion is as genuine an instinct in man as the need in a plant for the light, or the need in man himself for going upright. The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion."

## ~

In MA's view, science is incapable of rendering a genuinely satisfactory reality explanation. What partner does Arnold feel science needs? Here's a clue: more people pay attention to and draw inspiration from poetry today than at any time in human history. Do you doubt this? Do you think song lyrics are poetry?

## ~

Arnold: "Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry."

Thomas H. Huxley/1825 CE-1895 CE

Huxley, known as "Darwin's bulldog" for his tenacious defense of evolutionary naturalism, invented the word "agnostic." Why? Because, though he did not subscribe to any religion's reality interpretation and therefore was not a theist, he rejected atheism for concluding there is no God on "insufficient evidence." Roughly speaking, or—more accurately—roughly writing, agnostic means "I do not know."

## ~

Thomas H. Huxley: "In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated and demonstrable."

Richard Maurice Bucke/1827 CE-1902 CE

In his book, _Cosmic Consciousness: A Study in the Evolution of the Human Mind_ , Maurice Bucke, a Canadian psychiatrist, proposed that the next rung up on the evolutionary ladder is what he named "cosmic consciousness" and others call "enlightenment." Researching history, Bucke found evidence of a number of "enlightened" people whose epiphanies—taken together—indicate the evolutionary emergence of an enhanced mental capacity.

## ~

Bucke: "I saw that the universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in myself of eternal life. It was not a conviction that I would have eternal life, but a consciousness that I possessed eternal life then; I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that without any peradventure all things work together for the good of each and all; that the foundation principle of the world, of all the worlds, is what we call love, and that the happiness of each and all is in the long run absolutely certain."

## ~

Cosmic consciousness interprets Self from a more inclusive perspective, further from Ego and closer to Rind. Mental evolution delivers us from the simplicity of animal mentality to human self-consciousness to cosmic consciousness to...what? Talk about a singularity. How can one imagine existence two levels more evolved?

## ~

Bucke: "The marks of the cosmic sense are: the subjective light, the moral elevation, the intellectual illumination, the sense of immortality, the loss of the fear of death, the loss of the sense of sin, the instantaneousness of the awakening.

"To this is added a state of moral exaltation, an indescribable feeling of elevation, elation, and joyousness, and a quickening of the moral sense, which is fully as striking, and more important, than is the enhanced intellectual power."

## ~

George Acklom: "The new (stage of consciousness) enables man to realize the oneness of the Universe, to sense the presence in it and throughout it of the Creator, to be free of all fears of evil, of disaster or death, to comprehend that Love is the rule and basis of the Cosmos—this is Cosmic Consciousness, which Bucke prophesied will appear more and more often until it becomes a regular attribute of adult humanity.'

## ~

A glint of light. Hope flood my heart. Turning quickly, almost seeing it, not quite. Disappointment. Frustration. Here's something true: What I feel in this moment is the doorway to a deeply pleasant truth about myself. Patience.

## ~

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Satori Night Live. Tonight's guest host: John Hick: "Liberation is achieved by transcending the ego point of view in order to participate in a more universal perspective."

## ~

Henry Miller: "At no time in the history of man has the world been so full of pain and anguish. Here and there, however, we meet with individuals who are untouched, unsullied, by the common grief. They are not heartless individuals, far from it! They are emancipated beings. They see with other eyes. We say of them that they have died to the world. They live in the moment, fully, and the radiance which emanates from them is a perpetual song of joy."

## ~

Jane Roberts: "An open-ended consciousness will feel its connection with all other living beings. The continuity of consciousness will become apparent. As a result, the social and governmental structures will change, for they are based upon current beliefs."

## ~

Bucke: "The world peopled by men possessing cosmic consciousness will be as far removed from the world of today as this is from the world as it was before the advent of self consciousness."

Leo Tolstoy/1828 CE-1910 CE

Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy authored _War and Peace_ and _Anna Karenina_ , two of the most respected novels in literary history. Prior to breakthrough success, the uber-talented scion of Russian "nobility" struggled to find his way.

## ~

Tolstoy: "During the whole course of this year, when I almost unceasingly kept asking myself how to end the business, whether by the rope or by the bullet, during all that time, alongside all those movements of my ideas and observations, my heart kept languishing with another pining emotion.

"I can call this by no other name than that of a thirst for God. This craving for God had nothing to do with the movement of my ideas—in fact, it was the direct contrary of that movement—but it came from the heart."

## ~

Apparently, Ego's reasoning could not satisfy Tolstoy, nor did he believe it could ultimately bring satisfaction to others. Happiness is beyond.

## ~

Tolstoy: "The idea of an infinite God, of the divinity of the soul, of the union of men's actions with God—these are ideas elaborated in the infinite secret depths of human thought. They are ideas without which there would be no life, without which I would not exist. To acknowledge God and to live are the same thing. God is what life is."

## ~

Death, and the blank mental slate he felt it created, seemed a major benefit.

## ~

Tolstoy: "Generally people regret that the individuality does not retain memory after death. What a happiness that it does not! What an anguish it would be if I remembered in this life all the evil, all that is painful to the conscience, committed by me in a previous life. What a happiness that reminiscences disappear with death and that there only remains consciousness."

## ~

Memories aside, what are the secrets to living happily? Here are three from Tolstoy:

## ~

"If you want to be happy, be."

## ~

"One of the first conditions of happiness is that the link between Man and Nature shall not be broken."

## ~

"In the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you."

Emily Dickinson/1830 CE-1885 CE

A powerful poet and prolific letter writer, gifted in her imagery, Dickinson lived a mostly secluded life. Her letters, however, kept her in touch with her era's intellectual churn.

## ~

Dickinson: "The unknown is the mind's greatest need, and for it no one thinks to thank God."

## ~

With careful self-examination and a studious appreciation of nature, Emily fueled her poetry. Here are a few more excellent lines:

## ~

"It yet remains to see if immortality unveil a third event to me, so huge, so hopeless to conceive, as these that twice befell, Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell."

## ~

And this:

"I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; yet know I how the heather looks and what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, nor visited in heaven; yet certain am I of the spot as if the chart were given."

Moncure Conway/1832 CE-1907 CE

Born and raised in Virginia to a wealthy slave-holding family, Conway grew up to be an ardent abolitionist and an inspirational minister. During the Civil War, he helped thirty-one of his father's slaves escape to Ohio. Eventually, with the assent of his slaver father, Conway was banished from Virginia.

His religious views evolved to a point where he could not stop himself from alienating his congregations. This ended his days as a minister. No problem. Conway believed his rejection of traditional Christianity freed him for a more meaningful spirituality.

## ~

Conway: "Eyes turned from phantom gods have caught glimpses of a divine life in the evolution of nature, and the mystical movement at the heart of man."

## ~

Here's a children's song that suggests physical life is illusion and offers a plan of action. "Row, row, row, your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream." If accurate in insight, what do these lyrics tell us about God?

## ~

Conway: "The best thing in every noble dream is the dreamer."

Samuel Butler 1835 CE-1902 CE

Butler, son of a religious hardliner, abandoned his faith as a matter of spiritual honor. Among other topics, his novels— _Erewhon_ and _The Way of All Flesh_ —closely examine evolution and Christianity. ( _Erewhon_ is a re-arrangement of the word "nowhere").

## ~

Butler: "He had lost his faith in Christianity, but his faith in something—he knew not what, but that there was a something as yet but darkly known, which made right right and wrong wrong—his faith in this grew stronger and stronger daily."

## ~

One of Butler's characters, while trying to convert a "heathen" to Christianity, asks himself: "What should I think if she were to tell me that my God, whose nature and attributes I had been explaining to her, was but the expression for man's highest conception of goodness, wisdom, and power; that in order to generate a more vivid conception of so great and glorious a thought, man had personified it, and called it by a name.

"That it was an unworthy conception of the Deity to hold Him personal, inasmuch as escape from human contingencies became thus impossible; that the real thing men should worship was the Divine, whereinsoever they could find it.

"That 'God' was but man's way of expressing his sense of the Divine...the expression which embraced all goodness and all good power. People (would not) cease to love God on ceasing to believe in His objective personality...nay, that they would never truly love Him till they saw Him thus."

## ~

As a young man, Butler became familiar with Darwin and embraced many of his ideas about evolution, eventually weaving them into a spiritual narrative. He perceived machines and other tools as extensions of human limbs and thus an evolutionary advance for consciousness.

## ~

Butler: "Surely when we reflect on the manifold phases of life and consciousness which have been evolved already, it would be rash to say that no others can be developed, and that animal life is the end of all beings."

## ~

If the architect and heartbeat of evolution is consciousness, what are its limits? How can we know when we rely on the understanding of Ego?

## ~

Butler: "It is hard to think that man could ever have become man at all, but for the gradual evolution of a perception that though this world looms so large when we are in it, it may seem a little thing when we have got away from it."

## ~

Must include this Butler bon mot: "All philosophies, if you ride them, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others."

Mark Twain/1835 CE-1910 CE

Part-time steamboat pilot and landmark American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, a sleepy, slaver, Mississippi River town. Eventually, he adopted the pen name of Mark Twain. Translated from the slang of its genre, the measuring phrase "mark twain" signifies the water below is "twelve feet deep." By comparison, in Twain's opinion, most of us live in depths too shallow for swimming. We are chronic waders.

## ~

Twain: "I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning religion and politics a man's reasoning powers are not above the monkey's."

## ~

If this is true, why?

## ~

Twain: "People's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing."

## ~

Dedicating his life to writing, Twain—especially in his early years—supported himself as an editor and journalist. He also piloted riverboats. Two of his novels— _The Adventures of Tom Sawyer_ and _The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn_ —are considered historically significant.

An intellectual cynicism—the heartbeat of his particular wisdom—permeated his thought and work. Like many of history's thinkers, including today's post-moderns, Twain did not trust self-promotional narratives. When it came to God, at least, he provided an alternative.

## ~

Twain: "To trust the God of the Bible is to trust an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master; to trust the true God is to trust a Being who has uttered no promises, but whose beneficent, exact, and changeless ordering of the machinery of His colossal universe is proof that He is at least steadfast to His purpose;

"Whose unwritten laws, so far as they affect man, being equal and impartial, show that He is just and fair; these things, taken together, suggest that if He shall ordain us to live hereafter, He will be steadfast, just and fair toward us."

## ~

Like most of us, I've read the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn books. In point of embarrassing fact, the first novel I wrote was titled _Huck_. After working on it for two years, late one snowy December evening in a halfway up the mountain cabin bordering the Delaware River, warmed by a hungry fire, I burned every copy, page by page by page by page.

Having told you this, I don't mind adding that my favorite Twain works are _Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven_ and _A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court_.

## ~

With reason and humor—like a funnier Socrates—Twain examined the claims of politics and religion. For instance, take the religiously-induced concepts of sin—original and otherwise—and guilt.

## ~

Twain: "God ingeniously contrived man in such a way that he could not escape obedience to the laws of his passions, his appetites, and his various unpleasant and undesirable qualities. The tyrant has no right to do that; no right to put command upon him of any kind, and require obedience; no right to compel him to commit murder and then put the responsibility for the murder upon him."

## ~

When it came to resolving conflicts between various organized religions, Twain offered a solution, but no hope that it would work.

## ~

Twain: "So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: 'Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is.' Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code."

Paramahamsa Ramakrishna/1836 CE-1886 CE

When Ramakrishna attained the age of twenty-three, he married Sarada Devi, a five-year-old girl. Their marriage—never consummated because of his life-long celibacy—lasted until he died.

## ~

Ramakrishna: "God is consciousness that pervades the entire universe of the living and the non-living."

## ~

While a young Hindu sage, depressed because his quest to know God seemed unsuccessful, he decided to commit suicide. At the crucial moment, Ramakrishna experienced a burst of "blissful light" followed by a vision of Kali— "a limitless, infinite, effulgent ocean of spirit."

## ~

Ramakrishna: "When the divine vision is attained, all appear equal; and there remains no distinction of good and bad, or of high and low."

## ~

Throughout his life, he continued to have similar mystical experiences. What did his perceptions teach him about God?

## ~

Ramakrishna: "Knowledge and love of God are ultimately one and the same. There is no difference between pure knowledge and pure love. Brahman-Existence-Knowledge-Bliss-Absolute is like a shoreless ocean.

## ~

Gifted with a talent for parable, Ramakrishna taught that this "ocean" is the source (and unity) of all religious traditions.

## ~

Ramakrishna: "A jar kept in water is full of water inside and outside. Similarly the soul immersed in God sees the all-pervading spirit within and without. The Hindus draw out the liquid and call it jal. The Muslims draw out the liquid and call it pani. The Christians draw out the liquid and call it water, but it is all the same substance, no essential difference."

## ~

From his insight that all religions emanate from the same source, one can reasonably agree with his conclusion that no one of them is the single correct path forward.

## ~

Ramakrishna: "God has made different religions to suit different aspirations, time, and countries. All doctrines are only so many paths; but a path is by no means God Himself. Indeed, one can reach God if one follows any of the paths with whole-hearted devotion. One may eat a cake with icing either straight or sidewise. It will taste sweet either way.

"In whatever name and form you worship Him, through them you will realize Him. The important thing is to reach the roof. You can reach it by stone stairs or by wooden stairs or by bamboo steps or by a rope. You can also climb up by a bamboo pole."

## ~

Love is the common ground of all paths. Growing more loving is spiritual progress.

## ~

Ramakrishna: "Through selfless work, love of God grows in the heart. Then through his grace one realizes him in course of time. God can be seen. One can talk to him as I am talking to you."

Heinmot Tooyalaket/1840 CE-1904 CE

Heinmot Tooyalaket—aka Joseph—became Chief of the American Nez Percé Indians during the American settlement of the West. As one might reasonably conclude by even a cursory review of American history, Tooyalaket's tribe was hounded, harassed, deceived, and eventually wiped out by the United States cavalry. Despite the danger and turmoil, Tooyalaket kept a gentle heart.

## ~

Tooyalaket: "The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers."

## ~

White America, after all, needed the land and had the means to take it. Though eventually forced to fight, Tooyalaket strongly preferred peace. He resisted Christian culture and tried to help his people escape to Canada. The Nez Percé were pursued by the military for sixteen hundred miles, surrounded less than twenty miles from the border, attacked, and destroyed.

## ~

Tooyalaket: "We do not want schools...they will teach us to have churches. We do not want churches...they will teach us to quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that. We may quarrel with men sometimes about things on this earth, but we never quarrel about God. We do not want to learn that."

William James/1842 CE-1910 CE

A pragmatic approach is best, James decided, because "usefulness" is a more reliable guide than measuring one's choices by their adherence to an unprovable "truth." An apostle of pragmatism and the founder of modern psychology, WJ authored many helpful books. In my opinion, the most "useful" are _The Varieties of Religious Experience_ and _The Principles of Psychology_. The range of his understanding provided him (and provides his readers) a more inclusive perspective.

## ~

James: "I can, of course, put myself into the sectarian scientist's attitude, and imagine vividly that the world of sensations and of scientific laws and objects may be all. But whenever I do this, I hear that inward monitor of which W. K. Clifford once wrote, whispering the word 'bosh!' Humbug is humbug, even though it bear the scientific name, and the total expression of human experience, as I view it objectively, invincibly urges me beyond the narrow 'scientific' bounds."

## ~

Philosopher, William, and his novelist brother, Henry, earned international acclaim for their respective labors. Two aces from the same deck. Hearts and Diamonds. Which is which?

## ~

James: "Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it."

## ~

A "should not be overlooked" aspect of spiritual inquiry, in WJ's opinion, is the undeniable fact that so many of us desire to make such an inquiry. Why? Could such an impulse—an urge to explicate and harmonize with an unseen, higher order—be integral to human consciousness? If so, religion is individual and collective. According to James, "I believe that no so-called philosophy of religion can possibly begin to be an adequate translation of what goes on in the single private man."

## ~

Though his noun and verb seem fatally estranged in the quote which follows this sentence, James found an important clue to the efficacy of the religious impulse in "mystical utterances."

## ~

James: "There is in mystical utterances an eternal unanimity which ought to make a critic stop and think, and which brings it about that the mystical classics have neither birthday nor native land. Perpetually telling of the unity of man with God, their speech antedates languages, and they do not grow old."

## ~

What happens to an individual when spiritual progress aligns "in harmony" with the aforementioned "unseen order?"

## ~

James: "Realizing that a better part of him exists, the individual becomes conscious that this higher part is conterminous and continuous with a MORE of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him, and which he can keep in working touch with, and in a fashion get on board with."

## ~

God is not a superhuman person, according to James' understanding. Rather, God is the "immanent divinity in things."

## ~

James: "The characteristics...can be easily enumerated, though it is probably difficult to realize their intensity, unless one has been through the experience one's self. The central one is the loss of all the worry, the sense that all is ultimately well with one, the peace, the harmony, the willingness to be, even though the outer conditions should remain the same.

"The second feature is the sense of perceiving truths not known before. The mysteries of life become lucid. A third aspect of the assurance state...an appearance of newness beautifies every object."

## ~

What a person believes to be true "creates the actual fact" is a James proposition. Why? Because "our view of the world" determines what we "decide to hear."

## ~

James: "It makes a great difference to a man whether one set of his ideas or another, be at the center of his energy, and it makes a great difference, as regards any sets of ideas which he may possess, whether they remain central or become peripheral in him."

## ~

What hope for the loving in a world dominated by ego?

Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin /1842 CE-1921 CE

Peter Kropotkin—man of multiple talents and disciplines, including geographer, writer, zoologist, evolutionary theorist, and anarchist—lived an eclectic life dedicated to re-organizing human society by re-organizing human thinking.

## ~

Kropotkin: "The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested—rulers, lawyers, clerics—have carefully enwound her."

## ~

PAK challenged the Darwinian assumption that competition was the sole driving force of evolution. His observations of animals convinced him that "mutual aid" could not be discounted as contributing to the survival of many species—including human.

## ~

Kropotkin: "As soon as we study animals...we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defense amidst animals belonging to the same species, or, at least, to the same society.

"If we ask Nature: 'Who are the fittest: those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?' we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest."

## ~

Examining human interaction, PAK identified as central to morality the concepts of "no revenge for wrongs" and "freely giving more than one expects to receive." These principles, he argued, are superior to "mere equivalence, equity, or justice, and more conducive to happiness."

## ~

Kropotkin: "Man is appealed to be guided in his acts...by the perception of his oneness with each human being."

Friedrich Nietzsche/1844 CE-1900 CE

The will to power is the essence of human psychology. Thus spake Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher more interested in the "realities of the world we live in" than those of a "world beyond." A composer of piano, choral, and orchestral music since his teenage years, N advocated "honest questioning," critical "self-awareness," and awareness of the relativity of individuality.

## ~

Friedrich Nietzsche: "You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."

## ~

Disdaining concepts of guilt, Nietzsche urged us to resist religious theories regarding the fall of man and original sin. We are certainly not perfect, he wrote, but we are not "fundamentally guilty." In fact, we are evolving in the right direction to produce a new and superior species—Supermen and Superwomen—embodying and perfecting the best human traits, such as compassion, integrity, and intelligence.

## ~

Friedrich Nietzsche: "It is the history of the development of a higher body that emerges into our sensibility. The organic is rising to yet higher levels."

## ~

To do so, "the organic" must overcome Ego's limitations. Which is difficult, as you might have noticed, if you are anything like me.

## ~

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Whenever I climb I am followed by a dog called 'Ego'."

## ~

Like Hegel and Schopenhauer before him, Nietzsche thought collective humanity to be one single aggregate of consciousness. Thus, N conceived our sense of "individuality" as illusion. Time and space are "individualizing principles" but in the real reality, "we are all one."

## ~

Is this "single aggregate of consciousness" the God of the Bible? Or more in accordance with the arc of the Tao?

## ~

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Have you not heard that God is dead?"

## ~

How so? Here's N's logic tree:

## ~

• Humans define God by projecting their own psychology.

• Religion often requires acceptance of outdated projections.

• Biblical-era projections are outmoded.

• The idea of a God-King ruling from a heavenly throne is no longer credible.

## ~

Friedrich Nietzsche: "God as defined by religion is unbelievable. The death of God has two results. Some will still believe by habit and increasing anxiety. The majority will fall into nihilism (a belief that all is force)."

## ~

Karen Armstrong: "When Friedrich Nietzsche looked into the hearts of his contemporaries, he found that God had already died, but as yet very few people were aware of this. The fact that the Christian God had become incredible was beginning to cast its first shadows over Europe....like the ancient Sky God, the remote modern God was retreating from the consciousness of his former worshippers.""

## ~

Na. Na. Hey. Hey. Kiss Him. Goodbye.

## ~

Not necessarily a bad thing. Can't be open to new interpretations (modern projections) until previous incarnations wither and release. Only then can fresh flowers bloom.

## ~

Nietzsche: "Thus spoke Zarathustra and left his cave, glowing and strong, like a morning sun emerging from behind dark mountains."

James George Frazer/1854 CE-1941 CE

At age 36, the Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer completed _The Golden Bough_ , one of the most influential intellectual books of the 19th century. By researching a plethora of cultures and combining insights from anthropology, mythology, magic, social taboos, customs, beliefs, folklore, and religion, Frazer demonstrated world-wide, cross-culture similarities of spiritual inquiry. Most importantly, his work revealed the commonality of themes—birth, growth, death, and rebirth, showing that no one religion or tradition had a monopoly of interpretation. Rather, the path to wisdom is to compare and contrast a variety of responses, and by so doing, penetrate our way to a deeper comprehension. Of course, his book irritated (infuriated) priests and other advocates of traditional Christianity—mostly because it linked their religion and its (hated by them) pagan predecessor.

## ~

James George Frazer: "In the Julian calendar, the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice and it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the days begin to lengthen and the power of the sun increases from that turning-point of the year. The ritual of the nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was remarkable.

"The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, 'The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!'

"The Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ's birth and accordingly the early Church did not celebrate it. The Virgin who bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte. Now Mithra was regularly identified by his worshippers with the Sun, the Unconquered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the 25th of December."

## ~

Frazer described Christianity and Buddhism as "ethical reforms born of the generous ardor, the lofty aspirations, the tender compassion of their noble Founders, two of those beautiful spirits who appear at rare intervals on earth like beings come from a better world to support and guide our weak and erring nature."

However, he continued, "spiritual decadences are inevitable" because the "world cannot live at the level of its great men." As a result the two religions, in Frazer's opinion, "absorbed more and more of those baser elements which they had been instituted for the very purpose of suppressing."

## ~

What does Frazer mean when he uses the word "religion?"

## ~

James George Frazer: "By religion, then, I understand a propitiation or conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the course of nature and of human life. Thus defined, religion consists of two elements, a theoretical and a practical, namely a belief in powers higher than man and an attempt to propitiate or please them."

## ~

The following quote dumped quite a load of crap on Frazer, but he weathered the deluge and was eventually knighted. Widely considered to be the founder of modern anthropology, his ability to appreciate, associate, and appropriate local theories about common human concerns provides us a tool to advance our understanding.

## ~

James George Frazer: "The flesh and blood of dead men are commonly eaten and drunk to inspire bravery, wisdom, or other qualities for which the men themselves were remarkable, or which are supposed to have their special seat in the particular part eaten. By eating the body of the god, he shares in the god's attributes and powers.

"And when the god is a corn-god, the corn is his proper body; when he is a vine-god, the juice of the grape is his blood; and so by eating the bread and drinking the wine the worshipper partakes of the real body and blood of his god."

Sigmund Freud/1856 CE-1939 CE

Freud, one of the most influential thinkers of the early 20th century, is an outlier in this book, primarily because I do not see him as a "dot of light" or a "hint of love." Too much ego, not enough rind. Many respectable scholars and intelligent people value his life and work and for that I have no complaint. To each her own.

He did make me think deeply about the role of ego in individual and collective life. Not surprising. Freud's work is excessively dominated by his ego. In fact, he seems to be ego's spokesman in the physical world, as demonstrated by his well-documented desire for fame and control, and his strident denial of any aspect of human consciousness which might be classified as spiritual.

Putting aside as a youthful folly (I can itemize many of my own), Freud's premature claims regarding the therapeutic healing efficacy of cocaine, one cannot ignore his obsession with being considered "scientific," and his inability to give a fair hearing to opposing points of view. The latter trait made it impossible for him to collaborate with a cadre of first-rate thinkers.

## ~

Sigmund Freud: "I have found little that is 'good' about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all."

## ~

Why, then, am I referencing Freud in this book? Because I first learned about the existence of an aspect of human consciousness named "ego" from reading his writing. That's important enough to warrant inclusion. Other aspects of his theories—including his extrapolations regarding ego—seem out of balance and do not resonate with me. The fault for this may well be mine.

From my perspective, the ego is nothing more or less than an aggregate of consciousness that receives and acts on information provided by the senses. Though it processes sensory information, it neither possesses or is a complete sense of self.

## ~

Sigmund Freud: "The ego hates, abhors, and pursues with intent to destroy all objects which are for it a source of painful feelings. The ego perspective is a literalism that takes things from one side only and so is always in need of compensation."

## ~

In fairness, as noted, many first-rate thinkers value Freud and appreciate his thorough analysis of human consciousness. His work has been a jumping off point for further study and theoretical speculation. Three cheers.

## ~

Sigmund Freud: "The goal of all life is death."

K'Ang Yu-Wei/1858 CE-1927 CE

Yu-Wei, philosophical descendant of Kongzi, described "history" as having three "ages." (1) Disorder. (2) Rising Peace. (3) Unity. Observing most of life involves suffering, Yu-Wei identified its cause as "distinction," aka artificial separation, aka Ego error. Want some examples? Okay, here is a partial list of distinctions made by humans ignorant of their fundamental unity: Species, racial, class, family, occupation. According to Yu-Wei, in the third age, the sources of suffering—ego-based—will no longer hold sway over human consciousness.

## ~

Yu-Wei: "The whole world a unity—love, equality."

Edmund Husserl/1859 CE-1938 CE

Born in Moravia, Edmund Husserl's contributions to 20th century philosophy are widely appreciated. He disdained any science restricting itself to empiricism, maintaining instead that knowledge comes from experience.

## ~

Husserl: "We would be in a nasty position indeed if empirical science were the only kind of science possible."

## ~

Psychologically experienced consciousness, in Husserl's view, is an attribute of embodied consciousness. "Lived embodiment is not only a means of practical action, but an essential part of the deep structure of all knowing."

## ~

Embodied, we are "no longer pure consciousness." Rather, by Husserl's definition, embodied consciousness is transcendent consciousness. We transcend because we differentiate. We transcend because we individualize.

## ~

Does consciousness in whole and part follow operational principles?

## ~

Husserl: "If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reality is subject to mathematical laws, then these essential laws will be of most fertile significance in investigating facts of the conscious life of human and brute animals."

Pierre Janet/1859 CE-1947 CE

Janet, a French psychiatrist and neurologist, preceded Freud in his concept of a human "unconscious." An expert in hypnosis, he pioneered the diagnosis and treatment of mental and emotional disorders, especially anxiety and phobias like hysteria, obsession, and amnesia. Janet also studied the effect of traumas on mental health.

## ~

Pierre Janet: "Traumas produce their disintegrating effects in proportion to their intensity, duration, and repetition."

## ~

More importantly for the purposes of this book, Janet concluded that the spiritual aspect of consciousness was real and enduring. A doctor hoping to heal a damaged psyche and bring an out-of-balance patient back to plumb could not ignore this aspect of being human.

## ~

J. F. Bierlein: "Janet felt the key to understanding many forms of human behavior was to understand the spiritual nature of human beings. Janet believed that spirituality was an essential part of being human and not merely a phase in human cultural development to be 'outgrown' and supplanted by 'scientific thinking.'"

John Dewey/1859 CE-1952 CE

Can an atheist be a dot of light? Can a secular humanist provide a hint of love? In the case of Dewey, both an atheist and a secular humanist, the answer seems to be yes. A life-long teacher, educator, and advocate of democracy, the Vermont born pragmatist (he called it "instrumentalism") dedicated his life to refining ideas that "improved the human experience."

## ~

John Dewey: "The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity."

## ~

As a teacher and social activist (he even founded his own school), Dewey consistently worked to improve democracy, believing it the source of humanitarian progress.

## ~

John Dewey: "Democracy and the one, ultimate, ethical ideal of humanity are to my mind synonymous."

## ~

You've heard of the Dewey Decimal System? John had nothing to do with it. Melvil Dewey, no relation as far as I know, deserves that credit. John, on the other hand, advocated "learning through doing." He believed a universal education could enable people to break away from old habits and think more creatively, more productively.

## ~

Here is his definition of pragmatism: "The function of consequences as necessary tests of the validity of propositions."

## ~

How does an atheist distinguish a "good" man from a "bad?" Dewey: "The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better." This reminds me of the fundamental freedom inherent in human consciousness: the freedom to grow more loving.

## ~

As a person who has failed often and succeeded occasionally, I take (perhaps overly prideful) comfort from recognizing that my response to both is consistent with Dewey's thinking. "We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience. Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes." This thought helped me realize that my willingness to risk failure was a plus.

## ~

Though he never acknowledged the existence of a transcendent Divine, Dewey did feel that individuals were somehow connected in the collective.

## ~

John Dewey: "Within the flickering inconsequential acts of separate selves dwells a sense of the whole which claims and dignifies them."

Vivekananda/1863 CE-1902 CE

From early on, Vivekananda lived an exceptionally devout life, working to help people relate to the deep seated unity underlying varying religious beliefs. He understood the ego as a "lousy master but a wonderful servant."

## ~

Vivekananda: "The mind itself has a higher state of existence, beyond reason, a superconscious state, and when the mind gets to that higher state, then this knowledge beyond reasoning comes."

## ~

Two trips to the United States from his native India made it possible for Vivekananda to extend his "unification" philosophy beyond the bounds of Hinduism. The clarity of his teaching attracted and intrigued many Americans. After he spoke at Harvard University, Vivekananda was offered a leading position in its Eastern Philosophy department.

## ~

Vivekananda: "There is no feeling of I, and yet the mind works, free from restlessness, objectless, bodiless. Then the Truth shines in its full effulgence, and we know ourselves for what we truly are, free, immortal, omnipotent, loosed from the finite, and its contrasts of good and evil altogether, and identical with the Atman or Universal Soul."

## ~

How does Vivekananda react to the thought of death?

## ~

Vivekananda: "It may be that I shall find it good to get outside my body, to cast it off like a worn out garment. But I shall not cease to work. I shall inspire men everywhere until the whole world shall know that it is one with God."

Hehaka Sapa (Black Elk)/1863 CE-1950 CE

Black Elk, a "medicine man" of the Oglala Lakota Indian tribe, fought in the Battle of Little Bighorn against the vaingloriously doomed George Custer. He suffered mightily during the era in which the United States took control of Indian lands and Indian lives. While a young man, he fell deathly ill for twelve days, during which he experienced a guiding vision.

## ~

Hehaka Sapa: "I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. At the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Taka (the Great Spirit) and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves.

## ~

Circles within circles within circles.

## ~

"And I saw the sacred hoop of my people was one of the many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the center grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all the children of one mother and one father."

William Butler Yeats/1865 CE-1939 CE

In an unusual creative arc for a poet, William Yeats' finest works were produced after he was 50 years old. Generally considered one of the best 20th Century English-language poets, Yeats received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1923.

## ~

Yeats: "All life is thought."

## ~

WBY emphasized the mystical, especially focusing on prophetic and visionary writers. Years of spiritual study aided his accumulation of wisdom.

## ~

Yeats: "I have made a new religion, almost an infallible Church of poetic tradition, of a fardel (bundle) of stories, and of personages, and of emotions, inseparable from their first expression, passed on from generation to generation by poets and painter with some help from philosophers and theologians."

## ~

Singular benefits can be extracted from the mature wisdom of older poets, who somehow survive their lesser fruitage and grow, especially considering that many of those who shine bright and early are destroyed by mistakes of ego-indulgent excess that older minds are wise enough to avoid.

## ~

Yeats: "I have observed dreams and visions very carefully, and am certain that the imagination has some way of lighting on the truth that the reason has not, and that its commandments, delivered when the body is still and reason silent, are the most binding we can ever know."

## ~

Given these givens, how does a late blooming major poet define the act of being happy? More importantly, what can humans do to find and keep happiness?

## ~

Yeats: "Happiness is neither virtue nor pleasure nor this thing nor that but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing." Especially, I might add, when we are growing more loving.

## ~

While living in the physical world, at least, what does human consciousness want? An end to loneliness?

## ~

Yeats: "It is love that I am seeking for, But of a beautiful, unheard-of-kind, that is not in the world."

H. G. Wells/1866 CE-1946 CE

Noted for his science fiction (particularly _The Time Machine_ ), the English writer, Herbert George Wells, described a personal religious rebirth "neither atheist nor Buddhist nor Mohammedan nor Christian."

## ~

Wells: "All these religions are true for me as Canterbury Cathedral is a true thing and as a Swiss chalet is a true thing. There they are, and they have served a purpose, they have worked. Only they are not true for me to live in them. They do not work for me."

## ~

Did he have a better idea?

## ~

Wells: "A profound belief in a personal and intimate God."

Frederick Robert Tennant/1866 CE-1957 CE

Can a rational non-mystic dedicated to empirical evidence justify a belief in God? The English philosopher Frederick Tennant—questing to harmonize his religious and scientific understandings, especially in the fields of psychology, epistemology, and the natural sciences—answered this question with a qualified yes. The qualification? Reasonable belief is the limit to human inquiry. Rational demonstration is not possible. So how does one arrive at reasonable belief?

## ~

F. R. Tennant: "The issue narrows to whether what we may generically call the order in Nature is to be accounted an outcome of wisdom or of undesigned coincidence."

## ~

Taking into consideration Darwin's ideas regarding evolution and the Big Bang Theory, Tennant advocated the concept that a "guiding intelligence" designed the Earth as "just right for human existence." He came to this conclusion after noting "order, regularity, beauty, life, and self-conscious beings" in the universe. Evolution, in his view, supported rather than contradicted this understanding.

## ~

F. R. Tennant: "The fact of organic evolution is not incompatible with teleology on a grander scale. This kind of teleology does not set out from the particular adaptations in individual organisms or species so much as from considerations as to the progressiveness of the evolutionary process."

## ~

Teleology means "the study of the evidence of design or purpose in nature."

## ~

Accepting that life on earth has evolved, Tennant went a step further and focused on its origin. He declared his "reasonable belief" that the material world was designed by God as a haven for consciousness. Evolution, in his view, serves this purpose.

## ~

F. R. Tennant: "The survival of the fittest presupposes the arrival of the fit."

Rudolf Otto/1869 CE-1937 CE

Otto, a German theologian whose book, _The Idea of the Holy_ , had a significant impact on 20th century religion and was printed in twenty languages, identified a life-changing interaction (between God and individuals) underlying all religions. His analysis led him to believe that an encounter with the "numinous" led to a belief in the reality of Something More for human consciousness beyond the limits of the physical world.

According to Otto, the "numinous" is our translation of a transcendent, sacred experience consistent with and revelatory of the non-rational nature of God. In other words, each of us—no matter our religion or lack of same—comes to know the Divine via individual contact with a mysterious and overwhelmingly powerful force Otto called the numinous.

The numinous (or "wholly other") is non-rational, meaning Otto's ideas contradicted the then traditional concept that religion should be based on rational, logical, universal, ethical precepts. Perhaps that is why his book became so popular.

## ~

To me, Otto is describing the awe and gratitude felt by an individuating consciousness when it leaves the orbit of Ego to catch a glimpse of the realm of Rind.

## ~

Rudolf Otto: "The apprehension of the numinous cannot be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind, as everything that comes from the spirit must be awakened."

Mohandas K. Gandhi/1869 CE-1948 CE

Gandhi's successful non-violent civil disobedience campaign to free India from England's colonial tyranny is well chronicled and widely known. He believed nonviolence to be the key to political and spiritual progress. The book you are reading in the present moment is about the latter.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. Truth is my God. Nonviolence is the means of realizing him."

## ~

Growing up in a religious home, Gandhi valued (in addition to nonviolence) the concept that all parts of the universe, including human consciousness, are eternal. He accepted the Jainism idea of ahimsa (non-injury to all that lives) and vegetarianism, ahimsa's natural derivative. He also learned the utility of fasting. As an adult, he made each of these practices fundamental to his daily life. Interestingly enough, when Gandhi traveled, he brought his own goat so he could always have fresh milk.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "Where there is love, there is life. Where there is love, there God is also."

## ~

The Christian-based essays and novels of Leo Tolstoy (especially _The Kingdom of God_ ) inspired Gandhi. The two men became regular correspondents. Gandhi admired Jesus, though he felt that Christians were not following in their leader's footsteps. He also studied Muslim, Christian, and Hindu scriptures and came to the conclusion that all religions were both true and imperfect.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "We are all children of the same god. No one faith is perfect. All faiths are equally dear to their respective votaries. What is wanted, therefore, is a living friendly contact among the followers of the great religions of the world and not a clash among them in the fruitless attempt on the part of each community to show the superiority of its own faith over the rest."

## ~

Deeply spiritual, Gandhi yearned to "see God face to face." Yet he did not retreat to a fortress of solitude, such as a cave in the Himalayas, or an ice castle at the North Pole. Instead he focused his love of God on the needs of others. Truth, in his opinion, required dedication to Fair Play and Free Choice in society and politics. A lover of simplicity and austerity, Gandhi established four farms and ashrams, where he and others could grow food and spin clothes.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."

## ~

Once, after the British arrested him, the guards gave Gandhi a prison uniform crawling with lice and made him wear it while he cleaned the diarrhea soiled latrines. He thanked them.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind."

## ~

The Mahatma (great soul)—a title he discouraged—coined the word "Satyagraha" to designate the "truth force." Living in harmony with Satyagraha requires one to identify with all that is, whether alive or not-alive, while enjoying a simple life, practicing chastity, self-control, and self-purification. In other words, overcoming the delusions of ego.

The "truth force" is universal and does not distinguish "between kinsmen and strangers, young and old, man and woman, friend and foe." Rather, it is powerful enough to end disputes without harming those involved. How? Because it possesses spiritual power superior to physical power.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us. Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone."

## ~

What is truth? Truth is God. Nonviolence, ahimsa, and growing more loving help us discern what is true from what is not. The way is not always easy. Gandhi's autobiography, _The Story of My Experiments with Truth_ , detailed his ongoing battle to overcome fears and insecurities.

## ~

Mohandas Gandhi: "Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it."

## ~

As usually happens to the greatest and most loving souls who come into our midst, Gandhi was murdered. In 1948, less than a year after India regained their independence from England, a religious fanatic shot and killed him.

## ~

Jawaharlal Nehru: "Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it.

"Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions."

Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki/1870 CE-1966 CE

Zen Buddhism, born in Japan, was popularized in 20th century America by D. T. Suzuki, a reverent Japanese scholar and thinker. His interpretation of Zen, especially in his book, _Introduction to Zen Buddhism_ (which he wrote while living in LaSalle, Illinois), included insights into its history, philosophy, and practical applications. For several years after writing this highly popular book, he taught university classes in America.

## ~

D. T. Suzuki: "There is something rejuvenating in the possession of Zen. The spring flowers look prettier, and the mountain stream runs cooler and more transparent. The subjective revolution that brings about this state of things cannot be called abnormal. When life becomes more enjoyable and its expanse broadens to include the universe itself, there must be something in 'satori' that is quite precious and well worth one's striving after."

## ~

Satori means sudden enlightenment about the true nature of consciousness and reality. Suzuki could write with insight because as a young man studying Zen at the University of Tokyo, he attained satori. He considered such an advance in understanding—the "intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality"—as the highest act of wisdom.

## ~

D. T. Suzuki: "Acquiring a new viewpoint in Zen is called satori. Without it, there is no Zen, for the life of Zen begins with the opening of satori. Satori may be defined as intuitive looking-into, in contradistinction to intellectual and logical understanding. Whatever the definition, satori means the unfolding of a new world hitherto unperceived."

## ~

Huston Smith shared an anecdote about the first successful climb of Mt. Everest, the earth's highest mountain. In the West, the deed was called "the conquest of Everest." Upon hearing this, Suzuki remarked, "We Orientals would have spoken of befriending Everest."

## ~

D. T. Suzuki: "Life, according to Zen, ought to be lived as a bird flies through the air, or as a fish swims in the water."

## ~

Conceding that the intellectual approach of the West works well when it comes to daily conduct, Suzuki noted its failure to perceive the bigger picture, the ultimate reality which frames our existence and informs our consciousness. Absent such a framework, how can one choose wisely? To reach a perspective from which one sees the totality of creation and understands one's place and responsibilities requires intuition rather than logic.

## ~

Suzuki pointed to art as a prime example of intuition interacting with the world in a creative and divine manner. "The greatest productions of art, whether painting, music, sculpture or poetry, have invariably this quality-something approaching the work of God."

## ~

D. T. Suzuki: "Zen professes itself to be the spirit of Buddhism, but in fact it is the spirit of religions and philosophies. When Zen is thoroughly understood, absolute peace of mind is attained, and a man lives as he ought to live."

## ~

Dismissing concepts of the unconscious, subconscious, or super-conscious, Suzuki asserted, "As a matter of fact there is no 'beyond,' no 'underneath', no 'upon' in our consciousness. The mind is one indivisible whole and cannot be torn in pieces."

## ~

Suzuki clarified the emptiness of Nirvana (as described by Buddha): "Emptiness which is conceptually liable to be mistaken for sheer nothingness is in fact the reservoir of infinite possibilities."

George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff/1872 CE-1949 CE

Gurdjieff, a truly odd fellow, evokes for me an image part Rasputin, part Jim Jones, and part Carrie Nation. I once stayed for a short while (it may not have seemed brief to them) with friends in a cabin on the slopes of an Appalachian mountain. Advocates of Gurdjieff had built a retreat on the mountain top. Most of what happened there did not resonate with me, yet the basic premise held my interest.

That premise—most people are spiritually unconscious and sleep-walk through life—described a mental state dominated by ego. The resultant delusional self-centeredness was labeled by Gurdjieff as a form of slavery. He developed a plan to help people "wake up."

## ~

G. I. Gurdjieff: "In order to awaken, first of all one must realize that one is in a state of sleep. And in order to realize that one is indeed in a state of sleep, one must recognize and fully understand the nature of the forces which operate to keep one in the state of sleep, or hypnosis. It is absurd to think that this can be done by seeking information from the very source (ego) which induces the hypnosis.

"One thing is certain, that man's slavery grows and increases. Man is becoming a willing slave. He no longer needs chains. He begins to grow fond of this slavery, to be proud of it. And this is the most terrible thing that can happen to a man."

## ~

To prod people into awakening, Gurdjieff developed and taught methods to increase and better focus attention. He insisted that his students cease their daydreaming and equated "waking up" with being more attentive to the realities of life and the nuances of existence. The aim of the "Work" (as he called it) was the development of a higher form of unified mind-body consciousness. To reach that goal, one must work hard and long, for the ego is intrinsically resistant.

## ~

G. I. Gurdjieff: "Every time we take a positive step to start some new activity, we quickly confront a counterforce that resists and reacts against our initiative. This can come in the form of circumstances in our outer life or as an inner impulse in our thoughts and feelings."

## ~

Every "sleeping" individual's identity, in Gurdjieff's view, constantly changes, because each _I-Am_ is composed of a "legion" of smaller "I-Ams," each of which is hostile to the others in its quest for self-expression. Managing this process is a difficult task. If not done consciously and willfully, an individual is at the mercy of a myriad of whims and desires.

## ~

G. I. Gurdjieff: "Life is real only then, when _I-Am_."

## ~

What has my _I-Am_ learned during my lifetime as Lawrence Miller? How have I progressed? How can I know if every narrative is suspect and nothing is certain? Yet, given that nothing is certain, how can I be certain that nothing is certain? I have grown more loving. I am more loving. I am growing more loving.

Bertrand Russell/1872 CE-1970 CE

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950 "in recognition of his varied and significant writings championing humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought," Bertrand Russell was a philosopher and campaigner for social reform. Among other contributions, his ideas advanced our understanding of mathematical logic.

## ~

Bertrand Russell: "The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry."

## ~

Living and working in England during World War I, his anti-war articles and proselytizing for peace drew the ire of authorities. Punishments included fines, loss of employment at Cambridge University, and prison. Russell, not a man to be swayed by public opinion, undauntedly continued to oppose war and defend Fair Play, eventually authoring more than 70 books and almost 2,000 articles, most of them challenging conventional thinking.

## ~

Russell: "The fact than an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

## ~

BR explained his four marriages and three divorces by describing love as "something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives."

## ~

Is all life on earth doomed to eventual extinction? Russell's answer supports the position of secular humanism. "Yes, certainly." Comprehending this apprehension as an unchangeable fact while growing more loving is—in his eyes—the real essence of the human challenge.

## ~

Russell: "Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."

Albert Einstein/1875 CE-1955 CE

As a lad attending elementary school in Munich, Albert Einstein had difficulty dealing with the school's rigid approach to education. He worked hard to overcome a speech impediment. The young student found solace in classical music and, as part of this passion, learned to play the violin. Perhaps more importantly, he demonstrated a powerful urge to push his understanding of the universe beyond the norm.

## ~

Albert Einstein: "The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."

## ~

In 1905, while employed as a clerk in a Swiss patent office, Einstein formulated the general and specific theories of relativity, which—when interpreted both physically and spiritually—basically suggest that every aggregate of human consciousness—every single one of us—perceives self as the center of the universe, whether in spacetime or beyond. As part of his theory, Einstein visualized spacetime as part of a unified, flexible, dynamic whole.

## ~

Albert Einstein: "No matter where you are, it looks like you're in the center, because the universe is so vast, everything is moving away from you.

## ~

As for how consciousness experiences relativity in time: "When you are courting a nice girl, an hour seems like a second. When you sit on a red-hot cinder, a second seems like an hour. That's relativity."

## ~

Albert Einstein: "A human being is part of the whole we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thought and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature."

## ~

Einstein won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany, he ordered his Nazi minions to kill the Jewish scientist, but Albert escaped and eventually made his way to the United States. During World War II, he helped convince President Franklin Roosevelt to prioritize the construction of an atomic bomb, squaring his military advocacy with his pacifism by noting the horror that would ensue if Nazi Germany developed a nuclear bomb first and thereby won the war.

## ~

In the USA, Einstein continued his research as a professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. His ongoing work dealt with unified field theory, wormholes, time travel, black holes, and the creation of the universe.

## ~

Albert Einstein: "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind."

## ~

Though he mainly focused on physics, Einstein's lifelong unquenchable thirst for inquiry extended to the nature of God. Here are a few of this thoughts:

## ~

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds. My firm belief (a belief bound up with deep feeling) in a superior mind (more inclusive consciousness) that reveals itself in the world of experience represents my conception of God."

## ~

"A person who is religiously enlightened appears to me to be the one who has, to the best of his ability, liberated himself from the fetters of his selfish desires (ego) and is preoccupied with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations to which he clings because of their super-personal value."

## ~

"God may be subtle, but he isn't plain mean. I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil."

## ~

"It is only to the individual that a soul is given."

## ~

"A third stage of religious experience belonging to all, even though rarely found in a pure form, I shall call cosmic religious feeling. The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought."

## ~

"Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the universe as a single significant whole. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it."

Carl Gustav Jung/1875 CE-1961 CE

C. G. Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist, and one of the most impressive thinkers I've ever encountered (solely through his work), founded analytic (depth) psychology—one goal of which is exploration and integration of the personal self into the collective self—individuating consciousness with transcendent consciousness, if you will. Through this work, he developed a "let's think about the nature of the divine" framework. His ideas influenced anthropology, archaeology, literature, psychiatry, and—more importantly for the purposes of this book—spiritual inquiry.

## ~

Jung: "The living spirit grows and even outgrows its earlier forms of expression...is eternally renewed and pursues its goal in manifold and inconceivable ways throughout the history of mankind. Measured against it, the names and forms which men have given it mean little enough; they are only the changing leaves and blossoms on the stems of the eternal tree."

## ~

Perceiving the unconscious as a friend and ally of consciousness, Jung itemized three aspects of the human mind: Ego, Personal Consciousness, Collective Unconsciousness. With this as a base, here are the psychological and spiritual themes Jung identified: Archetypes, Complex, Synchronicity, Psychological Types, Collective Unconscious, Extraversion, Introversion, and Individuation.

## ~

C. G. Jung: "Man's task is to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable."

## ~

He identified and named archetypes of the collective unconscious as "symbolic themes" found in all eras, all cultures, and all individuals. These themes underline human experience and help shape our understanding and interpretation of reality. One of them he called the "Wise Old Man." Here are some fictional examples whose creation he influenced: Gandalf, Dumbledore, Yoda, Morpheus, and Obi-Wan Kenobi.

## ~

C. G. Jung: "In a real way, the gods we imagine become part of the mix, and therefore part of the sum, and in that way, part of the greater than."

## ~

Renowned quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and Jung worked closely together in an effort to harmonize insights from psychology and physics, thereby unifying concepts of mind and matter. Their collaboration focused on the idea of synchronicity.

Given that it has become a modern-day meme, what is synchronicity, really? Jung's answer: Two simultaneous events that are not causally related, yet demonstrate meaningful connection. Working with Pauli, the two men expanded the definition by adding: "The meaningful (and usually revelatory) coincidence of an inner image with an outer event."

Jung found the psychological application of synchronicity to be relevant to psychology, and also felt it had another, more important, significance. "I am equally interested, at times even more so, in the metaphysical aspect of this phenomena, and I cannot deny my fervent interest in this aspect."

What about it, Carl? Can synchronicity provide clues to the existence and nature of a more inclusive consciousness? If so, what is the relationship of that consciousness with human thought?

## ~

C. G. Jung: "The unconscious is useless without the human mind. It always seeks its collective purposes and never your individual destiny. Your destiny is the result of the collaboration between the conscious and the unconscious."

## ~

Individuation (self-development) is fundamental to depth psychology. In Jung's view, it generates an expansion of perspective, capacity, freedom, and more. In fact, he concluded that individuation—a whole voluntarily dividing—demonstrated an intrinsic aspect of consciousness and is essential to its development.

The process of individuation is one of integrating opposites—most notably, blending what is conscious with what is unconscious. Sometimes called "soul-making" and "self-making"—authentic maturation "inherent in the nature of human beings"—is the healthiest form of individuation.

During individuation, every whole one of us—including you, and you, and me—more or less automatically grows into a unique individual with a unique viewpoint. Though some aspects of individuation are common enough to be considered typical, the most important are individual and personal. In this way, consciousness diversifies and aggregates.

## ~

Jung: "The only road on which we can approach the wholeness which unites the outer and inner world is the road to our own wholeness, the process of individuation. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases."

## ~

Mental projection describes the human tendency to assign our own beliefs and motives to the acts of others. Jung's progression of this idea gives a healing spin to the process: "Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves."

## ~

As a working professional psychiatrist, Jung analyzed more than 80,000 of his patients' dreams, thus aiding his therapeutic efforts and providing the raw material for his analysis of consciousness, self, and God. He described dreaming as "a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the soul, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness extends. For all ego consciousness is isolated; because it separates and discriminates, it knows only particulars, and it sees only those that can be related to the ego."

## ~

Randall Verarde: "Jung describes intuition as the capacity to make connections between things otherwise disconnected. It is the visionary function, the one that seeks the widest range of possibilities."

## ~

C. G. Jung: "The psychic equality of all men is an unspoken assumption deriving from the individual's original unconsciousness of himself. In that far-off world there was not individual consciousness, but only a collective psyche from which gradually an individual consciousness emerged on the higher levels of development."

## ~

In his books, especially _Memories, Dreams, Reflections_ and _Modern Man In Search Of A Soul,_ Jung openly and without undue regard for the opinions of others, discussed his personal spiritual experiences and shared his insights regarding religion. He began his attempt to portray the divine by labeling numinosum, "a dynamic existence or effect, not caused by an arbitrary act of will."

## ~

C. G. Jung: "God within the frame of psychology is an autonomous complex, a dynamic image, and that is all psychology is ever able to state...and if I talk of the God-image I do not deny the transcendental reality. I merely insist on the psychic reality of the God-complex or God-image. God needs man in order to become conscious, just as he needs limitation in time and space."

## ~

Jung's ideas provoked enemies on many sides. Freud and Freudians scoffed at his work. Scientific materialists labeled him mystical (and therefore unscientific). Organized religion rejected his thinking. Not hard to see why. On the other hand, many others were attracted to the quality of his content and the integrity of his inquiry.

## ~

C. G. Jung: "I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life—that is to say, over 35—there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life."

## ~

Did Carl Jung believe in God? Near the end of his life, in response to this very question, Jung made the following statement, which I first came across on YouTube. You can see it for yourself, if you care to take the trouble.

Realizing that he had died between the moment he made this statement and the moment I witnessed it, something about seeing him—testified to the value of his words, elevated their credibility and strengthened their impact.

## ~

C. G. Jung: "I don't need to believe, I know."

Albert Schweitzer/1875 CE-1965 CE

For generations preceding his birth, Albert Schweitzer's family of ancestors dedicated their lives to religion, music, and education, producing a plethora of ministers, organists, and scholars. Schweitzer lived a life that gladdened and satisfied his family tradition.

Written in 1906, his seminal book, _The Quest For The Historical Jesus,_ categorized much of what is termed "holy scripture" as propaganda manufactured to bolster the power of organized religion. While believing that the original passages were written by people grasping for spiritual insight, Schweitzer noted that the Bible had continually been revised by religious authorities to meet their needs. By eliminating passages from the New Testament that served the ideological and political interests of church dogma and leadership, he redefined Jesus.

Schweitzer's scholarship convinced him that the life and death of Jesus were not aimed at "atoning for sin," as Christianity maintained. Rather, Jesus—believing the end of the world to be imminent—sacrificed himself on the cross to help birth the Kingdom of God.

Though obviously mistaken about the "end of days," Jesus introduced to the West a new level of knowledge regarding ethics and the nature of God. This is the beauty of the Sermon On The Mount, which Schweitzer believed to be an authentic representation of Jesus' thought and reverence for life.

## ~

Albert Schweitzer: "Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace."

## ~

After publishing _The Quest For The Historical Jesus_ and establishing himself as a world-class organist and musical theorist (I remember once making love with my wife while a recording of him performing Johann Sebastian Bach played in the background), Schweitzer returned to school and earned a medical degree. He then headed for Africa, where he founded a hospital, primarily funded with royalties from his music. Most of Schweitzer's life from 1924 on was spent there. Eventually the facility grew to include seventy buildings with sufficient resources to care for 500 patients.

## ~

Albert Schweitzer: "You must give some time to your fellow men. Even if it's a little thing, do something for others—something for which you get no pay but the privilege of doing it."

## ~

True Christianity delivers the message that all life is sacred, Schweitzer maintained, and this is good, because it emerges from the ideas of Jesus, not church dogma. The spirit of Jesus has been obscured by human limitation, so it is safe to say that we have not yet encountered authentic Christianity.

## ~

Albert Schweitzer: "A man can only do what he can do. But if he does that each day, he can sleep at night and do it again the next day."

## ~

Sympathetic to other religions, Schweitzer concentrated on "service rather than conversion." This allowed his compassion to continually renew itself, whether expressed in his music or his healing.

## ~

Albert Schweitzer: "Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success."

Edgar Cayce/1877 CE-1945 CE

Nicknamed the "sleeping prophet" because his "readings" were given while self-hypnotized, Cayce concentrated on diagnosing and helping cure the physically sick. During the last 43 years of his life, he did this approximately 22,000 times. His working theory: the unconscious mind is more knowledgeable than human consciousness.

Cayce's non-health readings dealt with spiritual topics, most notably reincarnation and karma, which he described as tools of a loving God purposed to facilitate self-development and—sooner or later—free the human soul from the trap of physical life. His extensive reincarnation references are specific with seemingly credible details and spell out the connection between an _I-Am's_ succession of lives and its spiritual progress.

## ~

Edgar Cayce: "It is thought and feeling which guides the universe, not deeds."

## ~

Born in Kentucky, Cayce identified sin as selfishness—either inflating our ego (personality) self or deflating our higher nature (in his term, our individuality). He regarded both courses as self-indulgent. The remedy for either is administered by a more inclusive consciousness and driven by karma.

## ~

Mark Thurston and Christopher Fazel: "The individuality is the real self in the sense that it is permanent and continues from one lifetime to another. It is capable of authentic creativity and free choice, while the personality self is rooted in habit and rarely exercises the will.

"The mission that the soul has selected for a lifetime resides within the individuality. You begin to fulfill your soul's mission when the individuality starts guiding those abilities so that they are fully creative and used for service in the world."

## ~

Edgar Cayce: "When ye are prepared for a thing, the opportunity to use it presents itself."

Martin Buber/1878 CE-1965 CE

How does one _I-Am_ relate to that not recognized as Self? Martin Buber, a German-Jewish poet/philosopher whose courageous resistance to Nazi tyranny won world-wide admiration, perceived two possible approaches for building a relationship. (1) As an "it." This is the way of Ego. (2) As a "thou." This is the way of love.

According to Buber, only an I-Thou relationship provides genuine intimacy. Why? Because such an approach enables two or more beings to display and share their primary, authentic selves. In an I-It encounter, each ego tends to objectify, qualify, and project itself onto the other. As a result, two beings in such a condition cannot be said to have actually met.

What can an _I-Am_ relate to as an I-Thou? Buber's four answers: Another _I-Am_. An animal. An inanimate object, such as a rock or tree. God.

## ~

Martin Buber: "Beyond the context of social relation, in the ultimate context of things, one confronts reality appropriately in finding there is an eternal 'Thou' in relation to the 'I' of one's life."

## ~

Although Buber felt the existence of an all-encompassing communion makes I-Thou relationships possible, achieving the actuality requires the openness of participating beings surrendering their preconceptions regarding the other(s). Such an act—made possible by yearning and learning—liberates the essence of authenticity from the misconceptions of ego.

Easier said than done. Ego's I-It mentality conceives of things and people as objects to be "used, known, or experienced." In Buber's thought, each of us experiences both kinds of relationship during our life. By being alert to the possibilities of I-Thou and striving to avoid I-It, we can grow closer to the Divine.

## ~

Martin Buber: "All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware."

## ~

Recognizing that the materialistic underpinnings of technology and science are too impersonal to be inclusive and tend to strip meaning from existence, Buber asserted as an antidote his belief that every I-Thou moment is a meaningful "God experience." In other words, I-Thou is how _I-Am_ knows God.

## ~

Martin Buber: "Men have addressed their eternal Thou with many names. The first myths were hymns of praise. Then the names took refuge in the language of It; men were more and more strongly moved to think of and to address their eternal Thou as an It. But all God's names are hallowed, for in them He is not merely spoken about, but also spoken to."

## ~

And in Buber's understanding, who and what is God?

## ~

Martin Buber: "God is the wholly other; but he is also the wholly Same. He is the mystery of the self-evident, nearer to me than my I."

## ~

I-It is prison. I-Thou is progress. I-I is destination.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin/1881 CE-1955 CE

A French Jesuit priest and scientist (paleontology and geology), Teilhard assisted in the discovery of Peking Man and, as a philosopher, articulated a theory of mental evolution suggesting an "omega point" emergence of a "hyperpersonal consciousness"— God unbounded by place or time.

He described the realm of mental evolution as the "noosphere" and the omega point as a "maximum level of complexity and consciousness." Therefore, "realization of unity" is the work of mental evolution.

## ~

Teilhard de Chardin: "The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed. Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come to being."

## ~

Believing that human spiritual progress and material evolution follow the same operative principles, Teilhard advocated "self-creation," praising the "self-evolving power of spirit, endless, generator of new ends...there is nothing, not even the human soul, the highest spiritual manifestation we know of, that does not come within this universal law."

## ~

Teilhard de Chardin: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience."

## ~

According to Teilhard, God unifies the world by "partially immersing himself in things...and from this point of vantage in the heart of matter...assumes the control and leadership of what we now call evolution."

Rudolf Bultmann/1884 CE-1976 CE

Son of a Lutheran pastor and grandson of a missionary, Rudolf Bultmann lived the life of an academic theologian and for thirty years served as professor of the New Testament at Marburg, Germany. During this time he developed an existentialist Christian philosophy based on "living every moment as if it were the final judgment." Practicing what he preached, he resisted the Nazis when they controlled his native Germany.

## ~

Rudolf Bultmann: "Man is always on the way."

## ~

His highly influential book, _History of the Synoptic Tradition,_ analyzed the gospels using "form criticism" to distinguish the myths of Jesus from the actualities of his time on earth as a Jewish teacher. In this way, the essence of Christianity can be liberated.

## ~

Rudolf Bultmann: "We cannot use electric lights and radio and, in the event of illness, avail ourselves of modern medical and clinical means and at the same time believe in the spirit and wonder world of the New Testament."

## ~

Form criticism seeks to "de-mythologize" the words and acts of Jesus by examining them in their original, historical context rather than the explanations offered by religious tradition. Though he did not find the resurrection of Jesus to be credible, he thought it spiritually significant. "An historical fact which involves a resurrection from the dead is utterly inconceivable." Yet the fact that the disciples believed it real enough to change their lives reveals the authentic meaning of Easter. Here we have an example of form criticism re-interpreting myth consistent with modern understanding.

## ~

Rudolf Bultmann: "The motive for criticizing myth, that is, its objectifying representations, is present in myth itself, insofar as its real intention is to talk about a transcendent power to which both we and the world are subject is hampered and obscured by the objectifying character of its assertions."

## ~

Existentialism, as conceived by Bultmann, is the path to authenticity, which in turn is the path to God. The present moment holds an opportunity for each person to reject or accept the call of Love, as received by the human heart. Authentic acceptance leads one away from the intoxication of ego desires.

## ~

Rudolf Bultmann: "Christian life is not realized in developing the personality or in shaping human community and somehow changing the world but in turning away from the world and becoming free of it."

Paul Tillich/1886 CE-1965 CE

To give meaning and balance to existence, the sacred must permeate the secular. When might this happen? Paul Tillich named two such occasions. (1) When Jesus was on earth. (2) Europe after World War I. During that war, he served as an army chaplain. After the conflict ended in his country's defeat, he taught theology and philosophy at various German universities. When the Nazis came to power, they disdained his ideas and forbade his friendship with Jews. As a result, he was unable to continue his teaching. Tillich then traveled to the United States, where he became a citizen and taught at Union Theological Seminary.

## ~

Paul Tillich: "There is no love which does not become help. The first duty of love is to listen."

## ~

In his considered opinion, virtually any religious/spiritual/loving paradigm could lead a person to God. Personally, he preferred the religious path. How did Tillich define religion?

## ~

Paul Tillich: "Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life."

## ~

Known as a Christian existentialist philosopher, he felt his religion needed to be more philosophically credible and dedicated himself to making it so. As part of this effort, Tillich argued that God could only be understood by those who perceive His non-existence.

## ~

Paul Tillich: "God does not exist. He is being itself beyond essence and existence. Therefore to argue that God exists is to deny him."

## ~

What is Tillich saying? Simply this: any human conception of God categorizes Him as "a limited object of thought. This falls so far short of the mark that it blocks our authentic and direct apprehension of the Divine.

## ~

Paul Tillich: "The idea that the human mind is a perpetual manufacturer of idols is one of the deepest things which can be said about our thinking of God. Even orthodox theology is nothing more than idolatry."

## ~

The only authentic way to experience God is an in-the-moment interaction of human consciousness with Being itself. The vehicle for this has to be intuition rather than intellect. Otherwise, what one encounters is not God, but an individual or collective projection which inevitably fails to satisfy.

## ~

Paul Tillich: "The concept of a 'Personal God,' interfering with natural events, or being 'an independent cause of natural events' makes God a natural object...one among many...a being among beings, maybe the highest, but nevertheless, a being. This is the destruction of any meaningful idea of God."

## ~

Extending this thought, Tillich argued that God must be understood as "beyond being, above finitude and limitation, the power or essence of being itself." One of his names for the Divine is "Being itself," also described as the "ground of being," the "God beyond the God of theism," and a "self-validating concept of existence."

## ~

Karen Armstrong: "Tillich liked to call God the ground of being—something that could never be an object of cognition. He believed that we experience the divine in our absolute commitment to ultimate truth, love, beauty, justice, and compassion."

## ~

Tillich explained existentialism as originating in the human fear of non-existence. Realizing that what is born must inevitably die puts us eye to eye with the terrifying horror of personal "nothingness." Is there an antidote, something which might sustain finite beings in the grip of terminal angst? Tillich's answer is the "ground of being" also known as "being itself" also known as God.

Erwin Schrödinger/1887 CE-1961 CE

As a youth in Austria, Schrödinger disliked the kind of second-hand learning one gets from reading books. Despite this apparent handicap (and maybe spurred by it), his extraordinary intelligence enabled him to make "significant contributions" to a variety of scientific and philosophical fields. The range of his interests and thought ran counter to his era's emerging emphasis on specialization.

## ~

Erwin Schrödinger: "The task is...not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees."

## ~

While working in Germany as a theoretical physicist, his ideas about quantum mechanics, especially the wave theory of matter, earned him a share of the 1933 Nobel Prize for Physics. That same year Hitler came to power and Schrödinger left Germany. Eventually, he accepted a teaching position in Dublin, where he remained until retiring in 1955.

## ~

The essence of his wave theory substituted "probability" for Newton's "what happens is what happens." In turn, "probability" is linked to consciousness.

## ~

Erwin Schrödinger: "Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else."

## ~

His thought experiment— labeled Schrödinger's cat and demonstrating the entanglement of consciousness with matter—envisioned a scenario in which a feline can be simultaneously alive and dead. In his own words:

"A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with a Geiger counter (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat: In the counter, there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one atom decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if the decay happens the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer that shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic acid."

After an hour, how does an observer know whether or not an atom has decayed and, consequently, whether the cat is alive or dead? By opening the box and looking. In other words, by an act of consciousness.

Until the result is observed, the cat is both alive and dead. By extension, this experiment suggests the determining role consciousness plays in the resolution of probability and formation of experience. And what is consciousness? _I-Am_.

## ~

Erwin Schrödinger: "What is this 'I'? If you analyze it closely you will, I think, find that it is just a little bit more than a collection of single data (experiences and memories), namely the canvass upon which they are collected. And you will, on close introspection, find that what you really mean by 'I' is that ground-stuff upon which they are collected.

"You may come to a distant country, lose sight of all your friends, may all but forget them; you acquire new friends, you share life with them as intensely as you ever did with your old ones. Less and less important will become the fact that while living your new life, you still recollect the old one. That you that was 'I', you may come to speak of him in the third person. Yet there has been no intermediate break, no death.

"And even if a skilled hypnotist succeeded in blotting out entirely all your earlier reminiscences, you would not find that he had killed you. In no case is there a loss of personal existence to deplore. Nor will there ever be."

## ~

Throughout his life, Schrödinger remained skeptical about the power of science to understand or explain the "ultimate mysteries of human existence."

## ~

Erwin Schrödinger: "This life of yours that you are living is not merely a piece of the entire existence, but is, in a certain sense the whole; only the whole is not constituted that it can be surveyed in one simple glance."

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan/ 1888 CE-1975 CE

Radhakrishnan, the first vice-president and second president of newly independent 20th century India, was also a teacher and philosopher credited with explicating Hinduism for the Western world. He firmly believed that teachers "should be the best minds" and, as a measure of respect, his birthday is celebrated in India as "Teachers' Day." As a thinker and writer, Radhakrishnan bridged the philosophical gap between East and West.

## ~

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: "Hinduism is wholly free from the strange obsession of some faiths that the acceptance of a particular religious metaphysics is necessary for salvation, and non-acceptance thereof is a heinous sin meriting eternal punishment in hell.

"For the Hindu, every religion is true, if only its adherents sincerely and honestly follow it. They will then get beyond the creed to the experience, beyond the formula to the vision of the truth."

## ~

Here is the religious hierarchy (from least advanced to most) articulated by Radhakrishnan: (1) Worshippers of petty forces and spirits. (2) Worshippers of ancestors, deities and sages. (3) Worshippers of incarnation such as Rama, Krishna, Christ, and Buddha. (4) Worshippers of the personal God. (5) Worshippers of the Absolute.

The culmination of life on earth is the moment when individuals awake to an awareness of their oneness with the Divine. The ultimate goal of human consciousness is that every one of us achieves this realization.

## ~

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: "The self (Soul) is the constant-witness consciousness. Through all months, seasons and years, through all divisions of time, the past, present and future, the consciousness remains one and self luminous. It neither rises nor sets.

"God is the Soul of all souls—The Supreme Soul—The Supreme Consciousness. This ultimate self is free from sin, free from old age, free from death and grief, free from hunger and thirst, desires nothing and imagines nothing."

## ~

His idealism combined recognition of the reality of world experience with the idea of a wholly transcendent Absolute (Brahman) identical to the Self. Brahman, unlimited and whole, is the source of the universe and all its manifestations. Atman (soul) is the immortal element in humans, what is left when all that is not-self is eliminated.

## ~

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: "Love they neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is illusion that makes you think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself."

## ~

Believing in "an essential commonality of philosophical and religious traditions from widely disparate cultures," Radhakrishnan urged tolerance and understanding. "Tolerance is the homage which the finite mind pays to the inexhaustibility of the Infinite."

## ~

Because he considered intuition "self-revelation of the divine," he described it as the most vital and integral aspect of human experience. Intuition, in his view, takes us beyond reason, logic, and the power of language. Further, through intuition we most fully perceive Brahman.

Religions interpret experience. Intuition regarding the Divine is what the various interpretations have in common. The spiritual person is prodded by intuition to grow more loving and advance understanding—individually and collectively. This belief helped Radhakrishnan to reconcile his academic life with political activism.

## ~

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: "Faith in conceptual reason is the logical counterpart of the egoism which makes the selfish ego the deadliest ego of the soul."

## ~

And what of death and reincarnation?

## ~

Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: "Death is never an end or obstacle but at most the beginning of new steps."

Martin Heidegger/1889 CE-1976 CE

During the year 1927, in an attempt to articulate his understanding of reality's truth and the role of consciousness in world construction, Heidegger published _Being and Time_. His ideas influenced a plethora of intellectual disciplines, including philosophy, architecture, literary criticism, theology, psychotherapy, and cognitive science.

## ~

Heidegger: "The question of the essence of truth arises from the question of the truth of essence. The essence of truth reveals itself as freedom. Forgetting the truth of Being...is what ensnarement means in Being and Time."

## ~

Wasn't sure whether Heidegger's mid-1930's two-year public embrace of Nazism should be mentioned. Apparently, I've made up my mind. Seems like he felt Germany could lead the peoples of the world to a happier place. Thought the Nazis might be the spark to light the fire. How did that work out? We all realize the horrors of the monsters they released and so, eventually, must have Heidegger, who apparently changed his mind about them, though he never—even after World War Two—admitted his mistake.

Should the value of his work be discounted because of his Nazi affiliations? That's up to each of you. Though I am sensitive to such things, I do not detect any Nazi influence in his writings about Dasein, God, Time, Existential Angst, Thinking, and Progress. (FYI, each of the following quoted sentences is from Heidegger.)

## ~

**Dasein**. Consciousness interacting with the physical world. "The entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term Dasein. Da-Sein literally means 'Being There.'

"The kind of Being which Dasein has...lies existentially in understanding. Dasein...is primarily Being-possible. Dasein is in every case what it can be, and in the way in which it is its possibility. Dasein confronts every concrete situation in which it finds itself."

## ~

How does the concept of Dasein relate to the concept of _I-Am_?

## ~

"The I is the pure concept itself, which as concept has come into Dasein. The I, however, is this initially pure unity which relates itself to itself. Thus the I is universality, but it is individuality just as immediately."

## ~

Which is a way of saying, _I-Am_ is _I-Am_ at more than one level, all at the same time.

## ~

"To understand Dasein we need to understand Dasein's existence as a whole."

## ~

**God**. Is there such a thing? Here's an important clue. Heidegger observes that "the epistemological Subject does not express the most meaningful sense of Spirit, much less its full content."

## ~

We have reached a psychological milestone. "The era is defined by the god's failure to arrive, by the 'default of God'—meaning that no god any longer gathers men and things unto himself, visibly and unequivocally, and by such gathering disposes the world's history and man's sojourn in it."

## ~

Heidegger regarded Being as the real God, or Supreme Reality. Interestingly enough, in his analysis, Being is not a being. Accordingly, in terms of our reality, Being is more accurately described as Nothing. How can we understand something that is nothing? Carefully. Slowly. Bit by bit, maybe, given our individual ability to utilize patience and primordial thinking (attentive listening).

## ~

**Time**. The arrow moves forward. From a more inclusive perspective, what is really happening? Heidegger perceived Time as a divider. "Time in the sense of 'being in time' serves as a criterion for separating the regions of Being."

## ~

**Existential Angst**. What is its source? "In anxiety I realize that I have been thrown into the world and that my life and death—my Being as such—is an issue I must face."

## ~

**Thinking.** The fact that humans are able to think is not enough. "Man can think in the sense that he possesses the possibility to do so. This possibility alone, however, is no guarantee to us that we are capable of thinking. For we are capable of doing only what we are inclined to do."

## ~

**Spiritual Progress**. Heidegger theorized a way of advancing awareness that applies what we know of physical growth to our understanding of mental evolution. He noted that growth is a matter of choice and an essential element of choice is the capacity to exclude from current self-understanding ideas previously thought worthy of inclusion.

## ~

"The progression of the spirit which actualizes itself in history, carries with it a principle of exclusion. In this exclusion, however, that which is excluded does not get detached from the spirit; it gets surmounted. The kind of making-itself-free which overcomes and at the same time tolerates, is characteristic of the freedom of the spirit."

## ~

I think the previous and following Heidegger quotes describe humanity's efforts to overcome ego's monopolization of reality interpretation.

## ~

"Progression is done knowingly and knows itself in its goal. In every step of its progress, spirit has to overcome itself as the truly malignant obstacle to that goal. In its development, spirit aims to reach its own concept. The development is a hard, unending battle against itself.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien/1892 CE-1973 CE

Good-minded people, Tolkien wrote, if willing to risk a challenge despite the possibility of dire personal consequences, can band together and defeat evil. Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_ gives testimony to courage and suggests (in fiction) the existence of forces greater than human—both good and bad. In order to succeed, at any level, those involved must take personal responsibility.

## ~

J. R. R. Tolkien: "A man that flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a short cut to meet it."

## ~

One of the finest creations of 20th century literature, The _Lord of the Rings_ is an illustration of how consciousness can create and maintain a thoroughly detailed cause-and-effect, suspend-my-disbelief illusion. No small task, especially when one is dealing with fantasy.

## ~

J.R.R. Tolkien: "All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost."

## ~

Both Tolkien and C. S. Lewis—for a time as close confidants and friends—belonged to a literary discussion group (The Inklings) in which they shared their work. Both were professors at Oxford, where Tolkien taught and researched Old and Middle English. Lewis, however, did not approve of Tolkien's style and subject matter, although he gave _Rings_ a positive review upon its release.

## ~

I am drawn to the half-human, half-transcendent figures that Tolkien envisions as protecting Middle Earth. First and foremost is Gandalf: warrior, wizard, friend, and mentor. Given the comfort with which Tolkien references such beings, their existence seems natural and right, and one begins to accept their presence as part of the overall picture. Allegorically, this calls to mind the power of Divine Consciousness to nurture and protect human consciousness. Here is an example (in fantasy fiction) of Rind's versatility in diverting _I-Am's_ attention from ego's hypnotism.

## ~

Because so many of Tolkien's literary scenes involve violence and killing, I especially value the following quote, in which Gandalf counsels Bilbo.

## ~

J. R. R. Tolkien: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

Paramahansa Yogananda/1893 CE-1952 CE

From childhood on, though naturally playful, Yogananda worked hard to become "God-conscious." Best known for his book, _Autobiography of a Yogi_ , Yogananda eventually left home to export the spiritual traditions of his native India to the West, particularly the United States. In addition to his book, Yogananda gave hundreds of speeches in America and founded the "Self Realization Fellowship" organization (which still exists). His message? (1) We are more than human. (2) Despite differences of interpretation, all religions share the same underlying principles. (3) Love of God is an essence of all spirituality. (4) Realization of one's divine self is another. (5) Balance of body, mind, and soul is the key to health and well-being.

## ~

Paramahansa Yogananda: "Man is a soul and has a body. God is consciousness. There is essentially nothing in the universe but mind or consciousness. The more (we) realize (our) unity with Spirit, the less (we) can be dominated by matter."

## ~

The name Paramahansa is earned rather than given at birth. It means "Supreme Swan" and signifies a person in "constant communion" with the divine. Yogananda (also an awarded name) means "bliss through yoga."

## ~

Paramahansa Yogananda: "You are, and ever will be, a perfect reflection of Spirit. You were spirit; now you imagine yourself to be mortal; but by meditation on your true Self, and by performing God-reminding actions constantly, you can remember your forgotten Spirit-nature and remain in that consciousness through all futurity."

## ~

A devout practitioner of Kriya Yoga, Yogananda advocated its efficacy as an "easy, effective, and scientific approach to the Infinite." His remarkable and mind-shaking reports of interactions with spiritual figures (including one with Jesus) were the fruitage of his Kriya Yoga meditations. Yogananda claimed that "the joy that comes with Kriya is greater than the joys of all pleasurable physical sensations put together."

## ~

Basically, Kriya Yoga extends spiritual awareness during meditation by lengthening the pause between a person breathing in and a person breathing out. The art of Kriya Yoga is still taught by Self Realization Fellowship.

## ~

Paramahansa Yogananda: "Being infinite, God cannot be limited to any form, human or stone; yet He is manifest in all forms. One can rightly say that God manifests in every man as well as in great saints, for He is present in all."

## ~

And what can we do with this insight? How can we make up for the errors of ego?

## ~

Paramahansa Yogananda: "Forget the past. The vanished lives of all men are dark with many shames. Human conduct is ever unreliable until man is anchored in the Divine. Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now."

Reinhold Niebuhr/1894 CE-1962 CE

Born in Wright City Missouri (Town slogan: "You can't go wrong in Wright City"), Reinhold Niebuhr advocated "Christian Realism." By that he meant that the tenants of Jesus must be applied in the real world. For example, Christians of one nation must not war against Christians of another. Christians of one class must not exploit Christians of another.

After World War I, Niebuhr became a leading pacifist and socialist. When World War II erupted, he abandoned pacifism and fully supported the USA's fight against Japan and Germany, though he consistently disdained American claims to superior virtue. All his life he worked to increase the presence of conditions favorable to Fair Play and Free Choice.

## ~

Working as a minister in Detroit, Niebuhr rallied his parishioners to resist exploitation. He fought to dissolve the egoism and false pride that divides social classes and nations. In his opinion, Ego's "evil" is spawned by its fear of extinction. By believing we are born to die, Ego accepts an "original sin" that torments human consciousness. However, the Divine that is in each and all of us cannot be destroyed. God is more powerful than sin and this is true independent of Christian redemption.

## ~

Reinhold Niebuhr: "Forgiveness is the final form of love."

## ~

Niebuhr identified two aspects of being human. (1) Nature. Having the body of a creature. Finite, bound, and limited. (2) Spirit. Transcendent to the physical. An element of God. Infinite and free. Without limits.

## ~

Reinhold Niebuhr: "The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism."

## ~

He is generally recognized as the author of a well-known prayer: "God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

Meher Baba/1894 CE-1969 CE

Though he never attempted to create a religion, Meher Baba identified himself as the avatar of his age, the "Ancient One come again into your midst." Born into a Zoroastrian family, Baba lived a life of loving service to the poor, the ill, and the confused. He did not speak from 1925 until his death, because "things that are real are given and received in silence." How, then, did he communicate? With gestures and an alphabet board.

## ~

Meher Baba: "Don't worry, be happy."

## ~

Describing the various religions as "different beads on the same string," Baba worked to help humans escape from the selfishness of Ego. He believed the material world to be an illusion and saw reincarnation as a necessary element of spiritual progress. In the end, though, nothing is more important than compassion and love.

## ~

Meher Baba: "No amount of prayer or meditation can do what helping others can do."

## ~

The rock-opera _Tommy_ was inspired by Pete Townshend's appreciation of Baba's philosophy.

## ~

What is spiritual progress, according to Baba? Self-realization. How may one reach for God? By the renunciation of evil in favor of good. What is the goal of life? To realize the absolute oneness of God. To apprehend that there is no other, no outlier _I-Am_.

## ~

In his book, _God Speaks_ , Baba described the universe as a product of the "imagination" of God. God is all that really exists, and each person, each soul is an indivisible portion of God's consciousness. The universe exists because unconscious divinity desired to know itself as conscious divinity.

## ~

Think of an infinite ocean as Baba's metaphor for God and bubbles of water contained therein as individual souls. These "bubbles" contain nascent consciousness and desire for self-knowledge, twinned attributes which help God probe the question, "Who am I?"

Seeking an answer, souls live life after life after life, gaining experience and expanding consciousness. Such an adventure requires a multitude of forms with differing capabilities, which explains reincarnation.

## ~

Meher Baba: "The soul must go through male incarnations as well as female incarnations if it is to have the richness of experience which is a condition of attaining the realization that the soul, in itself, is beyond all forms of duality."

## ~

The soul's journey is one of imagination. Nothing is real except the divine. All else is delusion.

## ~

Meher Baba: "Mind is the universe, Mind is the man, the woman, the beast. Only God is real, and everything else is a mere motion picture."

## ~

During the process of acquiring additional consciousness, we human beings—misguided by Ego—all too easily forget our divinity. Conditioned by belief, ego consciousness prefers sensual experience. But sensual experiences are imaginary. Thus humans are trapped in illusion. Thus humans suffer. Why?

## ~

Meher Baba: "Suffering is essential for the elimination of the ego."

## ~

How may we remember that our real self is God? By transcending the barrier of Ego's false impressions. To do so requires many births and many deaths.

## ~

Meher Baba: "Life is a series of experiences which need innumerable forms. Death is an interval in that one long life. Neither seek death nor fear it, and when death comes to you it is converted into a stepping stone to the higher life."

Jiddu Krishnamurti/1895 CE-1986 CE

Disdainful of allying himself with any one nation, philosophy, or religion, Krishnamurti—born in India—roamed the world, speaking to interested audiences about meditation, relationships, religion, and spirituality.

## ~

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "I maintain the Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. The moment you follow someone you cease to follow Truth."

## ~

A prolific writer, three of his books caught my attention— _The First and Last Freedom_ , _The Only Revolution_ , and _Krishnamurti's Notebook_. Urging personal, psychological revolution as the basis for improving the world, he spent his life examining human consciousness and its search for meaning.

## ~

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear. A religious person is not one who worships a god, an image made by the hand or by the mind, but one who is really inquiring into what truth is, what God is; and such a person is really educated. He may not go to a school, he may have no books, he may not even know how to read; but he is freeing himself from fear, from his egotism, from his selfishness, ambition."

## ~

When people in his audiences asked him to explain the after-death experience, he cited spiritual progress as a foreshadowing. "If you have died to one of your pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, without any enforcement or argument, then you will know what it means to die. To die is to have a mind that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longing, pleasure; and agonies. Where there is death, there is something totally new. Freedom from the known is death, and then you are living."

## ~

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "The first step is to be free to think fully, completely and independently, which means not being bound by any belief or crushed by circumstances. The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence."

## ~

Ego fear distorts consciousness. What is ego fear? Fear of life, fear of suffering, and most of all, fear of death. "If you cannot understand what it is that causes fear and be free of it, then it does not matter very much whether you are living or dead." To move away from Ego's influence requires the development of honest self-examination.

## ~

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "Pride brings a great deal of vanity, an egotistic inflation. This feeling of the importance of the 'me' inevitably brings conflict, struggle, pain, because you have to maintain your importance all the time."

## ~

How to find the right path? "In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself." For those interested in putting the key in the door, Krishnamurti offered sage advice: "Do it or don't do it, but get on with it."

## ~

You say you want a revolution? Krishnamurti gave the Beatles food for thought: "We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love. It is love alone that leads to right action. What brings order in the world is to love and let love do what it will." Un-love, however, often masquerades as its opposite.

## ~

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "You say you love your wife. You depend on her; she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of security and well being. Then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else, and your whole emotional balance is destroyed, and this disturbance, which you don't like, is called jealousy."

"There is pain in it, anxiety, hate, and violence. So what you are really saying is, 'as long as you belong to me I love you but the moment you don't, I begin to hate you.'"

Feng Youlan/1895 CE-1990 CE

Educated in the Confucian manner by his Chinese parents, Youlan (aka Yu-Lan Fung), dedicated his life to harmonizing traditional Chinese ideas with modern thinking, including Western ideas and Chinese communism. To this end, he re-translated Chinese philosophy, with a particular eye for identifying "the heavenly level of living." In so doing, he announced a startling insight:

## ~

"As I further studied the history of philosophy, I discovered that what is considered to be the philosophy of the East has existed in the history of the philosophy of the West as well, and vice versa. I discovered that mankind has the same essential nature and the same problems of life."

Charles Hartshorne/1897 CE-2000 CE

After serving two years as a hospital orderly at the end of World War I, Pennsylvania born Charles Hartshorne earned three degrees from Harvard University in four years. He described God as both absolute and relative. That is, as an eternal, temporal, and conscious supreme being always in the process of "becoming."

Though he rejected the idea of immortal identity separate from God, he did think that the beauty created in a person's life exists for eternity in the reality of God. Despite this link and the fact that Divine consciousness is always growing, he argued that the human chain of choice and consequences does not alter the nature of God's being.

## ~

Charles Hartshorne: "God thus excludes the world; he is only its cause; in no sense is he effect, of himself or anything else."

## ~

In my understanding, this analysis suggests an _I-Am_ overlap, so that human consciousness and experience—mine, for instance, and yours—are integrated with Divine consciousness and experience.

Werner Heisenberg/1901 CE-1976 CE

Heisenberg, a highly intelligent and highly creative German theoretical physicist, won the 1932 Nobel Prize in physics for "the creation of quantum mechanics." His contributions were crucial to many breakthrough theories involving a variety of topics such as ferromagnetism, turbulent flow hydrodynamics, cosmic rays, and subatomic particles. WH's influence as a dot of light, at least for me, is based on his ingenious development of the uncertainty principle.

## ~

Werner Heisenberg: "We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning."

## ~

The uncertainty principle basically states that consciousness interferes with probability outcomes in ways that affect experience. How is this so? In quantum science, observation requires consciousness to choose between measuring the speed of a particle and determining its location. An observer cannot perform one of these tasks without creating a "disturbance" making it impossible to do the other. The original measurement alters the particle's reality. True at the quantum level.

## ~

Werner Heisenberg: "Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think."

## ~

The efficacy of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle invalidated direct causal determinism at the quantum level, which requires the use of probability-outcome calculations. He began to push the idea that quantum particles have their origin as vibrating energy. This reminded him of Plato's "ideal forms."

## ~

Werner Heisenberg: "I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato. In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be express unambiguously only in mathematical language."

## ~

Heisenberg's uncertainty principle illustrates the unavoidable influence of consciousness in reality construction and the role we must play in the emergence of one experience rather than another. Is the relationship that consciousness has with chance anything like the relationship between a quotation mark and period at the end of a sentence?

I don't believe in luck. But how much of a factor is chance when it comes to probability selection? How much can it be given the presence of consciousness? I credit consciousness as having a more significant impact on probability selection than chance. State-of-mind in the present moment is the far more powerful reality determinant.

History and evolution are bringing us closer to grasping more of the meaning of this realization. The more we learn, the more we love, the more experience we garner, the more science, the more spiritual inquiry, all-in-all the ever closer we migrate to a level of understanding that can (within the bounds of reasoned wisdom) naturally include Heisenberg's perceptions that (1) matter is energy and (2) energy is consciousness.

Here is an area where the imaginary distance between science and spirituality seems to mostly disappear. Is such a thing possible?

## ~

Werner Heisenberg: "In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on. Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of thought, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point."

## ~

As I grow more loving, my life grows more satisfying, fulfilling, and happy. Thus it seems to me that the value of love does not derive solely, or even primarily, from the utility of social cooperation, but rather that the recognition of the value of social cooperation derives from the recognizable value of love.

Jacques LaCan/1901 CE-1981 CE

Born in Paris, LaCan dedicated his life to the study of psychoanalysis, eventually becoming a leading (if controversial) theorist in the field. He classified the ego as an object rather than a subject. Why? Because he believed it was not autonomous, not free, not an authentic _I-Am_ , and therefore incapable of determining its own fate. He further categorized Ego as "compromised" and "neurotic" and willfully ignorant of the unconscious.

## ~

Jacques LaCan: "The will of the unconscious can express itself in language and the conscious Ego should recognize the priority (of the unconscious) with its linguistic depths and plurality of meanings."

## ~

According to LaCan, the ego is "congealed" instead of fluid. From birth, it absorbs the desires and fantasies of others. When a person confuses the ego's sense of self with its authentic identity, she or he lacks authentic self-understanding and, in fact, is a prisoner in a self-constructed mental jail.

John Niemeyer Findlay/1903 CE-1987 CE

Scientific materialism flourished in the 20th century and its non-advocates were generally scorned and ridiculed, especially in America and England. Undismayed, Findlay took an opposite path. His scholarship—inspired by Hegel, Plotinus, and Buddhism—developed a philosophy of cooperative consciousness he called "rational mysticism."

## ~

J. F. Findlay: "Self-consciousness, being self-conscious, cannot avoid the differentiation which self-consciousness involves. The various aspects of self-consciousness appear in the epic as separate individuals and forces (including the dead), all spurred into activity by someone's deed."

## ~

A dedicated teacher, Findlay taught philosophy in one or another classroom for 62 consecutive years. His basic premise of rational mysticism, refined by a life of thinking and teaching:

Human experience of "universals and particulars, mind and body, knowledge and its object, the knowledge of other minds" and questions of "free will, determinism, causality, teleology, morality, justice, and the existence of temporal objects" require the "postulation of higher (more inclusive) spheres."

Individuality and material constraints progressively diminish as these spheres ascend. The most inclusive sphere is recognized by Findlay as "The Absolute." He likened this system to the steady advance of human understanding.

## ~

J. F. Findlay: "Philosophical systems do not replace falsehood by truth: they represent the ever clearer development of truth, which is as much present in earlier forms as in later, and which is only complete in a total development which includes all earlier stages."

## ~

Conceiving of God as Universal Consciousness and the Creative Force, Findlay maintained the Divine "initiates relationships" with humans. Evidence for this can be readily found in the individual experiences which constitute every person's lifetime.

## ~

J. F. Findlay: "God exists and is active because He lives beyond any form of reasoned consensus. To be distant from God is to be distantly God: nothing can lie outside of the Absolute Being. The self-centeredness, which is the root of evil, is an essential moment in the life of the Absolute."

## ~

Noting the desirability of happiness and the fact that humans are most often unhappy, Findlay's analysis revealed an apparently inescapable bifurcation between the individual and the Divine.

## ~

J. F. Findlay: "The Unhappy Consciousness's relation to its embodied Transcendent appears as its own self-feeling connected with its desires and the work it performs. This desire and this work do not give its existence positive meaning, or make it confident of itself, or enable it to enjoy the Transcendent.

"What the Unhappy Consciousness works upon is given as having two sides. In one of them it belongs to the Unchangeable, in another to the realm of variability."

## ~

Delving ever deeper, Findlay detailed the primary limitation of science materialism.

## ~

J. F. Findlay: "The Unhappy Consciousness yearned towards the Absolute, but did not recognize the Absolute as itself. Reason missed the Absolute because it found itself in only what was immediately before itself."

Karl Rahner/1904 CE-1984 CE

Rahner, a German Jesuit heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger, considered God to be Absolute Mystery. Therefore, he did not believe that human beings could understand God, even through revelation. The more one learned about God, the more one cognized "an always-ever-greater Mystery." Death itself—and post-death existence—does not change the fact that knowledge of God makes the Divine ever more incomprehensible.

## ~

Karen Armstrong: "Rahner...insisted that theology was not a set of dogmas, but must be rooted in the actual conditions in which men and women lived, reflecting the manner in which they knew, perceived, and experienced reality. People didn't come to know what God was by solving doctrinal conundrums, proving God's existence, or engaging in an abstruse metaphysical quest, but by becoming aware of the working of their own nature."

## ~

Karl Rahner: "The Christian of the future will be a mystic or he will not exist at all."

Bernard Lonergan/1904 CE-1984 CE

Believing that Catholic theology needed to be modernized in a way that does not discard past achievements, Canadian-born Bernard Lonergan, a Jesuit priest, dedicated his life to contributing to this achievement. Though he never claimed to be a genius, he seemed to feel that one (or more) was needed.

## ~

Bernard Lonergan: "Genius is creative precisely because it disregards established routine, because it originates the novelties that will be the routines of the future."

## ~

He developed a process he called GEM, short for the "generalized empirical method," which divided knowledge into (1) experience, (2) understanding, (3) judgment. The basis of this approach was his belief that consciousness is capable of knowing the difference between what is true, what might be true, what is dubious, and what is false. Once the facts are known, an informed choice can be made.

## ~

Bernard Lonergan: "Choice is a determinant in my personal development ...by my free acts I am making myself."

## ~

He believed that GEM, or critical realism (as Lonergan labeled it), was the key to finding within consciousness the "sources of all the meanings and values" affecting individual and historical outcomes. GEM is useful, he felt, because Being (as opposed to non-Being) is the objective of human consciousness. And how might this be accomplished?

## ~

Bernard Lonergan: "Total surrender to the demands of the human spirit: be attentive, be intelligent, be reasonable, be responsible, be in love."

## ~

Easier said than done. Ego's stubbornness can detour spirit's drive to Being. Lonergan called this phenomenon, "radical unintelligibility." When ego is in the driver's seat, one can refuse to make a choice that one knows one should make. We've all done that, and even when we learn better and move along, we still have to deal with others who have not yet figured it out.

## ~

In the end, though, all human consciousness must overcome ego delusions and awaken to the realities of unity. This is the key to Being.

## ~

Bernard Lonergan: "In God, whatever really is, is the same as God, is the same as that which is, is the same as that which subsists, and hence necessarily subsists."

Joseph Campbell/1904 CE-1987 CE

At age of 25, former world-class half-mile track star, Joseph Campbell, rented a shack in Woodstock, New York, and spent five years studying myths, religions, and fairy tales. From this, and continued study, he became an expert in comparative mythology and comparative religion. Campbell developed a theory (the Monomyth) that local mythical variations derive from a single myth originating in the realities of human consciousness.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "The root of mythology and religion is an apprehension of the numinous. Elemental ideas emerge everywhere and everyplace, and it is the truth beyond the symbols which matters, and no local interpretation can stake a legitimate superior claim. The local interpretations are not the truth. The truths are the truth."

## ~

His books, including _The Masks of God_ and _The Hero With A Thousand Faces_ , continue to influence academics, artists, students, and the spiritually inquisitive. In 1974, I carried _The Masks of God_ , and a manual typewriter, and a NFL football (given to me by Dan Dierdorf) to the Canary Islands, Madrid, Barcelona, and Ibiza.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "Looking today over the twelve delightful years that I spent on this richly rewarding enterprise (The Masks of God), I find that its main result for me has been its confirmation of a thought I have long and faithfully entertained: of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony, with its themes announced, developed, amplified and turned about, distorted, reasserted, and today, in a grand fortissimo of all sections sounding together, irresistibly advancing to some kind of mighty climax, out of which the next great movement will emerge."

## ~

His principal advice for living was short and simple: "Follow your bliss." This path, in his opinion, is the key to living happily and to opening one's heart to the transcendent. His studies of myth convinced him that an "eternal source" supports and makes possible the world of phenomena. The proper way to interact with this "source" is to manifest what is in one's heart.

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and the doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

"If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path."

## ~

Mythology, according to Campbell's analysis, has a four-fold function: (1) Metaphysical. Explicate the mystery of being. (2) Cosmological. Explain the universe. (3) Sociological. Legitimize the existing social order. (4) Pedagogical. Guide the individual.

## ~

What is God?

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "God is a personification of the world-creative energy and mystery which is beyond thinking and beyond naming. God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought, even the categories of being and non-being. The idea of God is innate in man's mind from the beginning. The God we have is the one we're capable of having—no matter what name we give it."

## ~

What is religion?

## ~

Joseph Campbell: "Every religion is true one way or another. It is true when understood metaphorically. But when it gets stuck in its own metaphors, interpreting them as facts, then you are in trouble. Every local image of a God is but one of many thousands, millions, or perhaps even billions, of locally useful symbolizations of that same mystery beyond sight or thought."

John Wisdom/1904 CE-1993 CE

Arthur John Terence Dibben Wisdom, a British philosopher and advocate of assessing reality through the lens of scientific materialism, argued that the beliefs of atheists and theists were not limited to abstract ideas about life after death, but also affected their daily experience. He looked to nature as a way to measure the relative merits of each interpretation. Although I don't imagine we would see or give equal weight to the same things during our respective examinations of nature, Wisdom's "reasonableness" statement seems to me to be, well, wise.

## ~

John Wisdom: "The question of the reasonableness of belief in divine minds becomes a matter of whether there are facts in nature which support claims about divine minds in the way facts in nature support our claims about human minds."

Jean-Paul Sartre/1905 CE-1980 CE

An honest, sane person is sooner or later staggered by the realization that it is possible—maybe even probable—that the death of the body is the termination of consciousness and the end of being. Everyone dies. Is everyone snuffed out? Is life nothing but point of birth to point of death?

Scientific materialism proclaims the answers are yes. If they are, as many believe, life has no purpose, no meaning, no hope. The state of mind resulting from this recognition is known as the existential "abyss." Without the courage to face such a dismal possibility as if it were an inescapable reality, human consciousness is forever enslaved to the fears and delusions of ego.

## ~

To me, the above paragraphs are Sartre's "dot of light," simply because the intellectual and spiritual courage required to fully face this realization is elevating and liberating. Plainly put, the ego has no interest in this line of thought, yet I don't know how a person can spiritually progress without experiencing and dealing with existential angst.

## ~

Jean-Paul Sartre: "Life begins on the other side of despair."

## ~

French philosopher, freedom fighter, politician, and novelist Jean-Paul Sartre did not believe in God. Rather, he felt that—as a result of their innate freedom—humans were responsible for "everything." Why? Because the act of choosing carries with it an inescapable responsibility to deal with the consequences of the choice. Here we have the essence of Existentialism.

## ~

Jean-Paul Sartre: "The idea of God is a projection which man makes, and must make, being what he is. The best way to conceive of the fundamental project of human reality is to say that man is the being whose project is to be God. To be man means to reach toward being God. Or, if you prefer, man fundamentally is the desire to be God."

## ~

And how does Sartre define being?

## ~

Jean Paul Sartre: "Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is."

Mary Renault/1905 CE-1983 CE

British born Eileen Mary Challans—aka Mary Renault—wrote historical novels about life in ancient Greece. Fictional portrayals of Socrates, Plato, Theseus, and Alexander the Great explored the ethical pathways of love and leadership. Her ability to evoke classical history and legend resulted in a string of well-received books, including _The Last of the Wine_ , _The King Must Die_ , and _Fire From Heaven._ She also wrote a biography titled _The Nature of Alexander._

## ~

Mary Renault: "What did you mean when you said you served the god? It means not setting oneself above one's poet, nor being false to the truth one knows of men. When one can see that audience wants the easy thing, or the thing just in fashion, and even the judges can't be trusted not to want it too, for whom does one stay honest? Only for the god."

## ~

Using as a backdrop the warrior society of ancient Greece, Ms. Renault's stories often involved homosexuality. By removing this theme from the 20th century, she hoped to avoid the prejudice and hatred of her era.

## ~

Mary Renault: "In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul."

Viktor Frankl/1905 CE-1997 CE

Trapped in the abyss of a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents, the Vienna born neurologist and psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, secretly wrote _The Doctor and The Soul._ Two years later he was transported to Auschwitz (without his family, who subsequently were murdered) and his manuscript was discovered and destroyed by guards. Undaunted, and not knowing his kin were dead, he retained a hope of family reunion, and—using stolen pieces of paper—continued to work on his book. In 1945, Frankl was rescued by U.S. Army troops.

## ~

Viktor Frankl: "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given circumstance, to choose one's own way."

## ~

Yes, no matter what, no matter when, one can always choose to grow more loving.

## ~

What sustained Frankl during the horror of three years in a monster-conceived and administered concentration camp? "A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the 'why' for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any 'how.'"

## ~

Frankl believed that all human activity is witnessed, whether by the living or the dead, by friend, or family, or God. Therefore, why would a good person not do her or his best?

## ~

Viktor Frankl: "Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."

## ~

In his view (that of a holocaust survivor and a first-tier intellect), freedom is a byproduct of the spiritual aspect of individual humanity. Further, the spiritual is the essence of being human and is superior to body and psyche.

## ~

Unusual for a working psychiatrist, Frankl valued the souls of his patients and in his books and lectures consistently called on others to do the same. He outlined six tenets that should be incorporated into psychotherapy. (1) The human being is an entity consisting of body, mind, and spirit. (2) Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable. (3) People have a will to find meaning. (4) People have freedom under all circumstances to activate the will to find meaning. (5) Life has a demand quality to which people must respond if decisions are to be meaningful. (6) The individual is unique.

## ~

Where might one look to find meaning in life? Is it a once and for all discovery? Doubtful.

## ~

Viktor Frankl: "The meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment."

## ~

Whether in the grip of empowered sociopaths, or suffering the bereaved loneliness of losing wife and family, or experiencing the successful years of scholarship and psychiatric practice that followed, what did Frankl ascertain to be the most important aspect of life and spirit?

## ~

Viktor Frankl: "A thought transfixed me: For the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and is love."

Simone de Beauvoir/1908 CE-1986 CE

A fine example of a person of courage and independent thinking, and therefore a dot of light, Ms. Beauvoir considered herself primarily an author. The world, however, noting the efficacy of her thoughts about ethics, politics, existentialism, phenomenology, and feminist theory, belatedly came to recognize her a first-rate philosopher.

## ~

Simone de Beauvoir: "One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, and compassion."

## ~

Her writing, especially _The Second Sex,_ played (and continues to play) a vital role in the world-wide struggle to elevate women from the grip of patriarchal tyranny. She advocated women's rights and equality of opportunity, sure, but more than that, Ms. Beauvoir's cogent philosophical analysis of the root causes of men suppressing women still resonates.

## ~

Simone de Beauvoir: "The most mediocre of males considers himself a demigod as compared with women. No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility. Society, being codified by man, decrees that woman is inferior; she can do away with this inferiority only by destroying the male's superiority."

## ~

Her work influenced her life-long companion, Jean-Paul Sartre, as his influenced her. She also had many sexual relationships with women, including threesomes with Sartre.

## ~

Simone de Beauvoir: "The ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being, without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation."

## ~

Living an unconventional life, in the face of public fear and prejudice, takes courage, more so for a woman in her era than for any man. It also bestows benefits. "Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay. I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth—and truth rewarded me."

## ~

For reasons unknown to me, Ms. Beauvoir didn't write much about the existence of a God, either pro or con, perhaps because of her existentialist scorn of traditional religion or her rejection of yet another male authority figure. This does not seem to make her an atheist. "I am incapable of conceiving infinity, and yet I do not accept finity."

## ~

Simone de Beauvoir: "It is old age rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time."

Abraham Maslow/1908 CE-1970 CE

The son of Jewish parents who came to America from Russia, Maslow helped develop transpersonal psychology, which proved an effective counterpoint to the mechanistic materialism of behaviorism and, most tellingly, to Freud's theory that humans were dominated by the reproductive, sexual urge. More important to us, he wrote, are human needs such as love and self-esteem.

## ~

Abraham Maslow: "When you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

## ~

From analyzing "exemplary people" such as Albert Einstein and Frederick Douglas, Maslow constructed a "hierarchy of needs" that humans seek to satisfy, moving up step-by-step. When one need is met, he wrote, another emerges. The higher needs often are perceived only after the lower ones are met.

He preferred to study more successful people because he believed "the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens" would only yield a "crippled psychology" and a "crippled philosophy."

## ~

Abraham Maslow: "All the evidence that we have indicates it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization."

## ~

Maslow's need hierarchy: (1) Physiological needs, including freedom from pain. (2) Security, safety. (3) Love and acceptance from family and friends. (4) Respect. (5) Self-actualization. (6) Self-Transcendence (acceptance of death).

Where should one place sex in this hierarchy? Candidly, it's not even the most important physiological need. One must breath, drink, and eat to live, but the absence of sex is not life-threatening.

## ~

Abraham Maslow: "What a man can be, he must be. This need we call self-actualization."

## ~

Self-actualization is the human need to be "more fully" oneself. Maslow gave three examples: "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself."

In order to self-actualize, a person has to gain authentic self-understanding and meet her preceding needs. Only in this way, can she overcome ego fear.

## ~

Abraham Maslow: "We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves, but we fear even more to know the godlike in ourselves."

Simone Weil/1909 CE-1943 CE

A crusader for working class rights and an advocate of ascetic living, Ms. Weil made an unusual philosophical migration from Marxism to Christian mysticism. Though her parents were wealthy, she joined workers in fields and factories to sharpen her understanding of the realities of life on the margin between poverty and near-poverty.

## ~

Simone Weil: "I can, therefore I am."

## ~

After spending a year assisting General de Gaulle in his efforts to help the Allies win the war and free France from Nazi tyranny, Ms. Weil died from tuberculosis. Her death came before she could be sure her side would win. How did this affect her mindset? Not in a negative way, apparently. She became less political and more spiritual. Her book, _The Question of God_ , achieved widespread popularity after she died in '43 and the war ended in 1945. Her solution to the conflict between the spiritual and the material? A state-of-mind she called "decreation," in which individuation embraces mystic experience in order to relinquish individuality.

## ~

Simone Weil: "Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link."

## ~

The wall is symbolic of two aspects of Being. Ms. Weil asserted a reality "outside space and time, outside man's mental universe, outside any sphere whatsoever that is accessible to human faculties." This reality corresponds to a "longing for an absolute good at the center of the human heart."

## ~

Simone Weil: "We can only know one thing about God—that he is what we are not. It is only the impossible that is possible for God. He has given over the possible to the mechanics of matter and the autonomy of his creatures."

Marie-Louise von Franz/1915 CE-1998 CE

As a young girl being educated in a religious school, Marie-Louise von Franz rejected dogma so vigorously that the priest charged with teaching her insisted on private lessons, thinking this the best way to persuade. During those encounters, her arguments shattered his faith and he left the priesthood.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "Slipping into a purely formalistic religious attitude is supposed to effect redemption, saying your prayers mechanically, or believing mechanically is supposed to effect redemption. But that has just the opposite effect and poisons or petrifies people."

## ~

A first-rate analyst, she collaborated with C.G. Jung for over 30 years. Their discussions—and many of her ideas—helped advance his thinking, especially in the field of psychology. Many people describe her as Jung's closest colleague and the one whose mind he respected the most.

## ~

When she wrote in English, her second language, a simple and direct style delivered complex ideas in an accessible, readable manner. Aside from assisting Jung, her main work demonstrated the similarity of fairy tale themes from a wide range of cultures. She emphasized their importance for adults as well as children.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "As long as we live, our reflection tries to penetrate into the deeper secrets of our innermost being, but what urges us to this is the Self itself, for which we search. It searches for itself in us."

## ~

Three of her books, _Problems of the Feminine in Fairytales, An Introduction to the Interpretation of Fairytales_ , and _Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales_ continue to influence modern psychology. She also wrote _Number and Time_ , exploring the connection between psychology and quantum mechanics, and a biography of Jung. All this while working as a therapist in the Jungian mode. Oh, and she also researched and compared creation myths from many cultures.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "All over the world there is the tendency to ascribe the act of creation to one figure who then retires and stays outside, while another figure steps into the act of creation. This is an archetypal motif which describes the separation of individual consciousness from its unconscious background, the two together representing the pre-conscious totality."

## ~

Most human beings, she wrote, realize they have an ego complex. They are generally unaware, at least early on, of the "cloud" of autonomous complexes which surround them. Gaining awareness is essential for further development. At a certain point, one realizes that the entire bundle of complexes, including ego, is "ruled by another center, namely the Self." The Ego, thank goodness, is unable to provide overall direction. Rather, it needs to find a way to connect with the Self.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "For the ego to say, 'let's take all the djins and demons, and instead of putting them in the bottle, extract their power and use it' is a dictatorship ideal. The unconscious will not cooperate with such a thing. So if you really want to transform them, you need the help of the Self and therefore, finally, the Self has the power, not the ego."

## ~

Her articulation of Jung's definition of individuation: "The psychological process of inner growth and centralization by which the individual finds its own Self." Note that she does not say "find its own ego-identity. Rather, the Self is an "ultimately unknowable inner center of the total personality and also the totality itself." In an authentic way, individuation is a search for and a quest to be connected to the transcendent. For many people (perhaps for all after a certain point), nothing is more important. I think of this as the journey from Ego to Rind.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "The ego complex has a certain tendency to repel the unconscious complex; you need a certain force to bring them together. The right interpretation clicks and vivifies you."

## ~

Why do civilizations—even the most powerful and productive— eventually fall apart? Because each of them is built on an understanding of the nature of reality. In turn, those are based on in-common ideas of who and/or what is God. These concepts, as this book demonstrates, are constantly evolving.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "The conscious idea we have of the Godhead undergoes the same fate as all other contents of our consciousness: it suffers from the tendency to wear out, and becomes mere words which lose their emotional and feeling substructure. It becomes an abstract formula and thereby completely meaningless and inefficient."

## ~

Generally, ego concepts of the Divine are ego projections. Over time, as humans gather more information, projections seem to be automatically altered. "First a new viewpoint from the unconscious grows underneath and then at a certain moment the other is shed, so to speak, like an old husk." In her opinion, the reason one projection is replaced by another can only be explained by "an unconscious need." An individual's response to this need is the engine of spiritual inquiry.

## ~

Marie-Louise von Franz: "Every question you touch leads from hundreds into thousands of problems; you go deeper and deeper, and then have to make up your mind how much you will set out and how much you will omit, and how far you will make your investigations."

Pete Seeger/1919 CE-2014 CE

A gentle man devoted to music, Seeger lived a life during which he gave Ego no sanctuary. He never seemed to be tempted into selfishness, or inflation, or bad pride. Difficult when one is widely known and widely admired. Dangerous when one is living in Ego-World.

Pete endured a few hardships, like being convicted (quickly overturned) of contempt of Congress. He was blacklisted in the 1950s and censored in the 1960s. Despite these attacks, he lived as a dot of love, manifesting extraordinary compassion and in the process mentoring many, including young singers, like Bobby Dylan.

## ~

Pete Seeger: "None shall push aside another. None shall let another fall."

## ~

A champion of labor, civil rights, pacifism, and the environment, Seeger's commitment to the principles of Fair Play and Free Choice is the second most notable aspect of his character. The first? His love of music from the perspective of singer, writer, and musicologist. Among his notable composing achievements are writing _Where Have All The Flowers Gone_ and updating an aged spiritual, _We Shall Overcome_ , into the main anthem of the civil rights movement.

## ~

Pete Seeger: "My job is to show folks there's a lot of good music in this world, and if used right it may help save the planet."

## ~

Lambasted by the usual suspects for his (1) non-belief in the virtues of capitalism and (2) his atheism, Seeger responded:

## ~

"According to my definition of God, I'm not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes, I'm looking at God. Whenever I'm listening to something, I'm listening to God."

Huston Smith/1919 CE-

Born in China to American missionary parents, Smith spent his first 17 years there, balancing values and practices of two cultures. That experience helped prepare him to become a leading figure in the study of comparative religions. His book, _The World's Religions_ has sold over two million copies. Taught me quite a bit.

## ~

Huston Smith: "The human spirit is too large to accept a cage for a home. The point of life is to transcend the smallness of the finite self."

## ~

What did Smith do to understand the world's religions?

## ~

Huston Smith: "Try to listen carefully and with full attention to each voice in turn as it addresses the divine."

## ~

Common theme found by Smith in all religions: Shrink the ego. Obtain a new vision of self. Get to know God.

## ~

Huston Smith: "What are the ingredients of the most creatively meaningful image of human existence that the mind can conceive? Remove human frailty—as grass, as a sigh, as dust, as moth-crushed—and the estimate becomes romantic. Remove grandeur—a little lower than God—and aspiration recedes. Remove sin—the tendency to miss the mark—and sentimentality threatens. Remove freedom—choose ye this day—and responsibility goes by the board. Remove, finally, divine parentage, and life becomes estranged, cut loose and adrift on a cold, indifferent sea."

## ~

Happiness, in Smith's opinion, "is the human birthright. And if we are not happy, then that's a sign that there is something wrong with what we are doing—to alert us to the fact that we must change."

## ~

Huston Smith: "The soul's progress through these ascending strata of human wants does not take the form of a straight line with an acute upward angle. It fumbles and zigzags its way toward what it really needs. In the long run, however, the trend of attachments will be upward—everyone finally gets the point. By 'upward' here is meant a gradual relaxation of attachment to physical objects and stimuli, accompanied by a progressive release from self-interest."

## ~

Can science ever prove the existence of God?

## ~

Huston Smith: "You cannot—not in the lab. You cannot test it in the way that delivers objective certainty in the way the scientists can. To perform a laboratory experiment, the first thing you have to determine is what the relevant variables are. But we're talking about an intelligence that is greater than ours, much greater than our intelligence is greater than a dog's.

"Just as a dog would not know what would be the relevant item in terms of our mental framework, there is no way, since a superior intelligence lives in a wider world, that we're going to know what are the relevant variables, and so, in principle, it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God by the scientific method."

John Hick/1922 CE-2012 CE

As a Christian philosopher, John Hick traveled the long road from traditional evangelicalism to religious pluralism, from biblical literalism to biblical metaphors. Born and raised in England, Hick spent almost two decades teaching in the United States.

## ~

John Hick: "As I spent time in mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras, and temples as well as churches, something very important dawned on me. On the one hand, all the externals were different...and not only the externals, but also the languages, the concepts, the scriptures, the traditions are all different and distinctive.

"But at a deeper level it seemed evident to me that essentially the same thing was going on in all these different places of worship, namely men and women were coming together under the auspices of some ancient, highly developed tradition which enables them to open their minds and hearts 'upwards' toward a higher divine reality which makes a claim on the living of their lives."

## ~

Countering naturalism's narrow interpretation of human consciousness, Hick pointed out that parapsychology—dismissed off-handedly by mainstream science—provides evidence that "considerably decreases the a priori improbability of the survival of the mind after the death of the body." Hick describes the formative, growing process involving human consciousness in physical bodies as "soul making."

## ~

John Hick: "We are all the time both expressing and forming our deeper self by our responses to the circumstances, both agreeable and disagreeable, in which we find ourselves. And it is this cumulative quality of response that is built into the basic moral/spiritual character that will be re-embodied in another conscious personality."

## ~

How did Hick define religious and mystical experience?

## ~

John Hick: "Whether we are parts or aspects of the Infinite Spirit, somehow separated from it (even though the separation be an illusion of our finite consciousness) or are real beings created ex nihilo by the Infinite Spirit, we have in either case a certain all-important affinity with that supreme Infinite Spirit. And such conscious relationship...we can call consciousness of the Transcendent, which is, as it seems to me, the essential religious or mystical experience."

## ~

Are molecules stupid? Is God goodness?

## ~

John Hick: "To say that molecules are not stupid, although true, is misleading because it assumes that molecules are the sort of thing of which it makes sense to say that they are either stupid or not stupid.

"And to say that God is not 'one nor oneness, divinity nor goodness,' although true, would likewise be deeply misleading because it assumes that God is the kind of reality to which such qualities could be rightly or wrongly attributed."

William Sloan Coffin Jr./1924 CE-2006 CE

A man of courage and an advocate of civil disobedience, Coffin focused his ministry to help the poor, question America's commitment to military power, increase interfaith dialogue, campaign for nuclear disarmament, and guide students to resist the draft.

## ~

William Sloan Coffin Jr.: "The world is too dangerous for anything but truth and too small for anything but love."

## ~

Ordained as a Presbyterian minister (he later shifted to the United Church of Christ), he became an early admirer of Dr. Martin Luther King. In that spirit, he became a Freedom Rider, and for that, was arrested. While chaplain at Yale University, Coffin guided students to resist the draft. The American government—most especially Attorney General Ramsey Clark—resisted his resistance by charging him and three others with conspiracy to encourage draft evasion. All four were found guilty, but their convictions were overturned on appeal.

## ~

William Sloan Coffin: "Christ came to take away our sins, not our minds"

## ~

In the years following World War Two, Coffin served as a CIA agent, believing that Stalin was "worse than Hitler." That he could in good conscience reconcile his CIA activity with his ministry demonstrates his courage to act in ways consistent with his highest sense of right. Also: he was not afraid to change.

## ~

William Sloan Coffin: "The demand is not for self-denial, but rather for self-discovery."

## ~

What happens to the individual after his/her consciousness no longer has a physical body in which to exist?

## ~

William Sloan Coffin: "The afterlife I leave to God, who is merciful and far too busy for impertinent questions from me. I may want to know more, but I don't need to. 'One world at a time'—that's my feeling and that's more than enough given the present anguish that engulfs it."

Carlos Castaneda/1925 CE-1998 CE

While a graduate student in anthropology at UCLA, the Peruvian-born Castaneda traveled to Mexico and purportedly met a Yaqui Indian shaman named don Juan Matus, who spent the next ten years teaching him shamanistic techniques, often with the assistance of psychedelic drugs, such as peyote. Based on what he learned from Don Juan, Castaneda wrote 12 books, including _The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge_ , _A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with Don Juan_ , _Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan_ , and _The Art of Dreaming_.

## ~

Carlos Castaneda: "Only a warrior can survive the path of knowledge."

## ~

Don Juan taught Castaneda that reality is layered like an onion and the world of our experience is one of many. The others, as real as ours, are reachable, especially if one emulates the ways of a shaman. To do this, a person must proceed as a "spiritual warrior" dedicated to increasing and expanding awareness.

## ~

Carlos Castaneda: "A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else."

## ~

How does a spiritual warrior regard death?

## ~

Carlos Castaneda: "Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm's length behind us. Death is the only wise adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he's about to be annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, "I haven't touched you yet."

Thich Nhat Hanh/1926 CE-

A leading contemporary Buddhist philosopher, Vietnam-born Nhat Hanh has written (and published) more than one hundred books centered on nonviolence, peace, and meditation. His articulation of spiritual progress champions the concept of growing more loving, though he never uses the phrase.

## ~

Nhat Hanh: "When we understand that we are more than our physical bodies, that we didn't come from nothingness and will not disappear into nothingness, we are liberated from fear."

## ~

Hanh perceives human experience as a series of "movies and pictures" absent the quality of absolute reality. One comes to this understanding through the practice of mindfulness. Mindfulness is the quality of "living in the present moment."

## ~

Nhat Hanh: "Our true home is the present moment. To be in the here and the now—solid and fully alive—is a very positive contribution to our collective situation. The place where you should look for the kingdom of God or the Pure Land of the Buddha is in the present moment."

## ~

Buddha: "It is possible to live happily in the present moment. It is the only moment we have."

## ~

Nhat Hanh: "As we become freer and happier, we refuse to act in ways that make others suffer."

## ~

The previous quote, of course, provides insight into one of the benefits of growing more loving. Why should we choose this path? "There is no separate self. We are a current. We are a stream. We are a continuation."

## ~

Karma, in Hanh's view, is a continuous accumulation of what we have thought, said, and done. "There's a river of mind in which every thought is a drop of water." The more love in our karma, the more love in our experience. We have the freedom to love, which means we have a choice, which means we can be unloving, if that's the karma we prefer. The more unlove in our karma, the more unlove in our experience. Each of us makes that choice. When? In the present moment.

## ~

What is the object of our greatest fear? Most would nominate death. How can we deal with this insidious and debilitating emotion? Not with denial. Might as well face it.

## ~

Nhat Hanh: "I'm of the nature to die. I cannot escape death. If we're afraid of death, it's because we don't understand that things do not really die. There is manifestation, and there is the cessation of manifestation in order to have another manifestation."

Ninian Smart/1927 CE-2001 CE

The aptly named Smart added to his native English by acquiring fluency in Chinese, Sanskrit, and Pali. Consequently, he could read Buddhist and Confucian spiritual texts in their original language, aiding his analysis comparing and contrasting world religions. In his work, he stressed the need for facts "objectively considered and contemplated."

## ~

Ninian Smart: "Just as it would be unwise to make claims about the nature and scope of science without understanding something of the present state of the sciences together with their methodology and history, so it would not be helpful to speculate about religious truth without a proper knowledge of the facts and feelings of religion.

"The intention is not to speak on behalf of one faith or to argue for the truth of one or all religions or of none. Our first need is to understand. The result, I hope, will be that the reader will be in a better position to judge wisely about religious truth."

## ~

Smart described three often seen religious interpretations: (1) The numinous. God is remote, accessible through worship. (2) The mystical. My _I-Am_ is an expression of God's _I-Am_. (3) Incarnation. God is living in our world. His work convinced him that the overlaps in religious beliefs were more important than the differences.

## ~

Ninian Smart: "I believe we are moving toward a global ideology that has a place for religion and recognizes the contributions of the different traditions. Hopefully, it will have an overarching view as to how we can work together for the promotion of human values and spirituality."

## ~

To properly study religion requires (according to Smart) integration of insights from a diversity of academic disciplines, including, but not limited to philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and psychology. Smart also identified seven dimensions (elements) of religion: materialism, ritual, mythological, doctrinal, ethical, social, and experiential. In one guise or another, these seven aspects are found in every major and not so major religion.

## ~

A Christian, Smart's findings led him to call for more tolerance. Love is stronger than hate, but—absent love—hate pretty much has the field to itself.

## ~

Ninian Smart: "Tolerance has been a very important feature of Christianity from its very roots, despite all the other things that have gone on since. And that, I think, must be the global perspective.

"Tolerance applies more than saying, 'Well, let the Muslims go on with what they are doing.' It also means trying to learn something from them in addition to your own tradition. That is the attitude I think needs to inform the global citizen of the future."

Anne Frank/1929 CE-1945 CE

Evading Nazis trying to kill her because she and her family were Jewish, teenager Anne Frank spent more than two years hiding in a secret room in the family's Amsterdam home. During that time, she kept a diary recording her courageous response to the horrors of the holocaust.

## ~

Anne Frank: "And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world."

## ~

The Frank family were arrested by Nazi bigots and sent to the concentration death camp at Bergen-Belsen. This tale is similar to that of millions, some of them my Jewish relatives.

My mother's family left the Ukraine in 1917 to escape from Cossack violence and made their way across Europe, and finally to the United States, where my grandfather became a Chicago policeman. A day after Pearl Harbor, my father left his downstate Illinois farm village and volunteered for the Navy. During training at Great Lakes, he met my mother.

When the war concluded, my father settled the family into a village of 500 Christian farmers. Dad, raised as a Baptist, paid no attention to religion. When I reached the age of 13, I was baptized into the nearest church (less than a block away), which happened to be Methodist. Lived (and living) a happy life, I remain relatively protected from the virulent prejudices apt to tarnish our religious beliefs, whether Christian, Islamic, or Jewish.

## ~

Anne Frank: "Whoever is happy will make others happy too."

## ~

Nine months after being arrested, Ms. Frank, not yet sixteen and still imprisoned, died of typhus. A month or so later, Germany surrendered and the holocaust survivors were liberated by the American and Russian armies.

## ~

Anne Frank: "Despite everything, I believe that people are really good at heart."

## ~

One member of Anne's family, Otto, survived and eventually made his way home, where he published Anne's book under the title, _The Diary of a Young Girl._ Available in many languages, her words have inspired people around the world.

## ~

Anne Frank: "I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains."

Martin Luther King, Jr/1929 CE-1968 CE

The mind, the will, and the energy of Martin Luther King, America's Gandhi, played an indispensable role in the advance of civil rights during the 50's and 60's. King, a Baptist minister, maintained a strong and steady commitment to nonviolence as the tactic most likely to lead to political success. Why?

## ~

Martin Luther King: "At the center of nonviolence stands the principle of love."

## ~

Four of the most important events in his life are iconic: (1) the Montgomery bus boycott, (2) the march on Selma, (3) his composition, _Letter From A Birmingham Jail,_ and (4) his _I Have A Dream_ speech at the Lincoln Memorial during the March on Washington.

On each occasion, and many others, under crushing pressure from people (both friends and enemies) infatuated with violence, his commitment to nonviolence inspired and advanced the consciousness of those who witnessed his life and death. Who wins when someone of this quality is successful in the world? Every One. Every Where.

## ~

Martin Luther King: "I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend."

## ~

The meaning of the word "nonviolence" has very little overlap with the meaning of the word "passive." King and many other courageous individuals (black and white) were relentlessly active. Under King's leadership the Civil Rights movement repeatedly "seized the moment" with deeds and words.

## ~

Martin Luther King: "We have no alternative but to protest. For many years we have shown an amazing patience. We have sometimes given our white brothers the feeling that we liked the way we were being treated. But we come here tonight to be saved from the patience that makes us patient with anything less than freedom and justice."

## ~

In 1964, King was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Some in this country—one sniffs bigots—decried the selection as undeserved. Of those who took notice, most people living on this planet (and most in the United States) were delighted.

## ~

Martin Luther King: "I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."

## ~

What is the psychological benefit of nonviolence?

## ~

Martin Luther King: "Nonviolence means avoiding not only the external physical violence, but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."

## ~

Abraham Lincoln is said to have had premonitions regarding his impending death. Probably most Fair Play and Free Choice movement leaders, especially when they become a pain in The Man's ass, must make peace with their heightened vulnerability.

## ~

Martin Luther King: "I just want to do God's will. And he's allowed me to go to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land! I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land."

Jane Roberts/1929 CE-1984 CE

Author, poet, mystic, Jane Roberts earned early respect for her poetry, children's stories, and science fiction. In her early thirties, she moved to Elmira, New York, and her life changed when she began to "channel" a non-physical entity calling itself, "Seth."

From 1967 through 1982, Roberts and her husband, Robert Butts, held twice weekly sessions dedicated to producing books—Jane, in trance, speaking as Seth, and Butts taking notes. During this time, ten Seth books were written. Though each of the individual dictations were brief, Roberts was struck that each one started exactly where the previous one had ended, even if days (and sometimes weeks) had passed.

She wondered whether Seth's "time" allowed him to participate in one continuous interaction without the breaks she required. She did not claim authorship, saying that Seth was the actual creative source and her only role was that of a medium. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the material world, the credit is hers. Here is the core of Seth's message:

## ~

Jane Roberts: "You create your own reality. Your environment is the physical picture of your thoughts, emotions and beliefs made visible. Ideas have an electromagnetic reality."

## ~

Seth described himself as an "energy personality essence no longer focused in physical matter." In one book, he remembered his last life—characterized as bland—in Ohio. The voice of Jane when channeling Seth was distinct from her usual tone—deeper, masculine, and distinctly accented. Many people heard her speak as Seth, either through recordings or in person. While living in New York in the early 80's, I became one of them. The effect was disturbing, the philosophy comprehensive and thrilling.

## ~

Jane Roberts: "You cannot begin to have a true psychology, unless you see the living self in a greater context, with greater motives, purposes and meaning than you now assign to it, or for that matter than you assign to nature and its creatures."

## ~

My first encounter with the Seth material was in 1976. Astounded by the beauty of its clarity and logic, I bunkered down for a weekend and completely immersed myself, digesting a lengthy book in two intense days. Many of the ideas I recognized as Buddhist and Christian, but the stretch of the work transcended ideology. Naturally, this did not sit well with the orthodox. Many Christian sects labeled her work "books entirely written by a demon."

## ~

Jane Roberts: "From one end of reality you shout: Where is God? And from the other end the answer comes: I am Me. From the other end of reality, God goes shouting: Who am I? And finds himself in you. You are therefore a part of the source and so is everything else manifest.

"Because God is, you are. Because you are, God is. You are at once the self through whom the lives are led and at the same time the lives that are being led."

## ~

Seth is an example of a more inclusive aggregate of consciousness, one that both includes and transcends human ego. "Ego is a part of identity, rather than the other way round, and it is only a part of consciousness." From Seth's perspective, the ego is merely one aspect of being human, limited to helping manage our life in the body. "The physical self, as you know it, is a focus of consciousness that forms a personality in response to that focus."

## ~

Jane Roberts: "You may think of the life that you know as LIFE. It is only the manifestation of what in those terms can only be called the greater life out of which your life springs. Your own world contains, as each other world does, a uniqueness and an originality that in those terms exists nowhere else—for no world of existence is like any other."

## ~

According to Seth, human experience is merely one expression of being. Many others exist and are available for exploration.

## ~

Jane Roberts: "Each self has its own soul within the oversoul, and the oversoul is itself a part of the entity's multidimensional picture. Each self would call that portion of its greater reality within the whole unit its own soul."

## ~

If our _I-Am_ is subsumed in a more inclusive _I-Am_ , is our identity temporary? Do we lose it when we die?

## ~

Jane Roberts: "Though you are a portion of your psyche, your identity is still inviolate. It will not be submerged or annihilated in a greater self. It carries a stamp—a divine mark—of its own integrity. It follows its own focus, and knows itself as itself, even while its own existence as itself may be but a portion of another identity.

"There is nothing to stop it from exploring this other greater identity, or moving into it, so to speak. When this happens both identities are changed. In greater terms, the psyche or soul nowhere exists as a finished product or entity. On the other hand, it is always becoming, and that becoming happens on the part of each of its own portions."

## ~

Do we have free will?

## ~

Jane Roberts: "In your realm of reality, there is no real freedom but the freedom of ideas, and there is no real bondage except for the bondage of ideas, for your ideas form your private and mass reality."

## ~

Seth's term for the transcendent aggregate: All-That-Is. Each human is an individualized expression of All-That-Is.

## ~

Jane Roberts: "Pure energy contains within itself the creative propensity toward individuation. The psyche is a manifestation of pure energy in a particular form. The psyche is a conglomeration of energy gestalts."

## ~

How does probability resolve into experience?

## ~

Jane Roberts: "The conscious mind is itself developing and expanding. It is not a thing. It learns through experience and through the effects of its behavior. The inner self brings about whatever results the conscious mind desires."

## ~

The quest for perfection, in Seth's view, is a reach for the unattainable and undesirable. "Perfection is not being, for all being is in a state of becoming. Not becoming perfect, but in a state of becoming more itself."

## ~

What is the power of love?

## ~

Jane Roberts: "All emotions are based on love, and in one way or another, they all relate to it, and all are methods of returning to it and expanding its capacities."

## ~

Do we need religion?

## ~

Jane Roberts: "You were born into a state of grace. It is impossible for you to leave it. You will die in a state of grace whether or not special words are spoken for you, or water or oil is poured upon your head. You share this blessing with the animals and all other living things. You cannot fall out of grace, nor can it be taken from you."

Ram Dass/1931CE-

Born into a wealthy and powerful family, Ram Dass pulled a Buddha and—in pursuit of spiritual progress—left it all behind. Given the name Richard Alpert at birth, he displayed unusual brilliance both as a child and an adult. He eventually taught at Harvard, working with the Psychology and Social Relation departments, the Graduate School of Education, and the Health Service.

## ~

Ram Dass: "You have at this moment many constellations of thought, each composing an identity: sexual, social, cultural, educational, economic, intellectual, historical, philosophical, spiritual, among others.

"One or another of these identities takes over as the situation demands. Usually you are lost into that identity when it dominates your thoughts. At the moment of being a mother, a father, a student, or a lover, the rest are lost."

## ~

At Harvard, Alpert worked closely with his good friend, Timothy Leary. Research they did together tested the therapeutic effect of hallucinogenic drugs, including psilocybin and LSD. The two men collaborated on a book, _The Psychedelic Experience_.

Their work proved an irritation to more traditional elements within the public, a factor which eventually motivated Harvard to remove them from the university. Leary and Alpert were fired. No matter. Both men had adjusted their understandings of reality and were ready to move on.

## ~

Ram Dass: "We grow up with one plane of existence we call real. We identify totally with that reality as absolute, and we discount experiences that are inconsistent with it as being dreams, hallucinations, insanity, or fantasy.

"What Einstein demonstrated in physics is equally true of all other aspects of the cosmos: all reality is relative. Each reality is true only within given limits. It is only one possible version of the way things are."

## ~

I compare their use of hallucinogens (especially the more natural psilocybin) with drinking and/or eating soma, an activity whose consequences either launched or heavily influenced five major world religions. Changed Alpert's life for sure. He traveled to India, met his guru, Neem Karoli Baba, and became Ram Dass. In 1971, he wrote _Be Here Now_.

## ~

Ram Dass: "We are what we are, and what we are is God."

## ~

Thoughts on Ego from Ram Dass. (1) Ego is a structure of mind that organizes the universe. (2) Ego is a set of thoughts defining an individual's universe. (3) Ego is a steering mechanism. (4) While spiritually evolving, one doesn't destroy the ego, one ceases to identify with it. (5) Let ego do its proper job, not too much, not too little. (6) The ego controls by evoking fear of death. (7) Remember, each of us has a circumference of consciousness containing far more than ego. (8) The ego is more properly our servant rather than our tyrant.

## ~

Ram Dass: "Who are we really? If we are the same as our ego, then if we open up the ego's filters we shall be drowned. If, on the other hand, we are not exclusively what the ego defines us to be, then the removal of the ego's filters may not be such a great threat. It may actually mean our liberation. But as long as the ego calls the shots, we can never become other than what it says."

## ~

Liberation is enlightenment. Comes a moment. Up goes the curtain. So much more to see. What now? Ram Dass calls a liberated being "someone who has moved out of the reality that they initially thought was the absolute reality."

## ~

Ram Dass: "If I go into the place in myself that is love, and you go into the place in yourself that is love, we are together in love. Then you and I are truly in love, the state of being love. That's the entrance to Oneness."

## ~

What is meditation? If a movie one is watching is insufficient to lure one into suspending disbelief in its unreality, one's attention is naturally focused on elements present in the moment, but previously unnoticed. Such as the power of love.

## ~

Ram Dass: "Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It's not 'I love you' for this or that reason, not 'I love you if you love me.' It's love for no reason, love without an object."

## ~

If we are God, why do we live in a world where death is a given and suffering is rife?

## ~

Ram Dass: "A soul takes human birth in order to have a series of experiences through which it will awaken out of its illusion of separateness. The physical experience of being incarnated is the curriculum, and the purpose of the course is to awaken us from the illusion that we are the incarnation."

## ~

What is the value of growing more loving? What is the value of expanding our awareness?

## ~

Ram Dass: "As we grow in our consciousness, there will be more compassion and more love, and then the barriers between people, between religions, between nations will begin to fall. Yes, we have to beat down the separateness."

Peter O'Toole/1932 CE-2013 CE

A highly successful actor and constant rogue, O'Toole once coached a professional cricket team in London. His portrayal of T.E. Lawrence in the movie _Lawrence of Arabia_ was spectacular. Personally, I enjoyed his performance in _The Ruling Class,_ a movie that earned him widespread disdain from—you guessed it—England's ruling class. Intelligent and independent, he was not afraid to speak his mind.

## ~

Peter O'Toole: "When did I realize I was God? Well, I was praying and I suddenly realized I was talking to myself."

Robert Coover/1932 CE-

Magically mixing reality and illusion, Iowa-born Robert Coover, post-modern author, lecturer, and teacher, produced one of my favorite baseball books ever: _The Universal Baseball Association, Inc., J. Henry Waugh, Prop._

## ~

Robert Coover: "American baseball, by luck, trial, and error, and since the famous playing rules council of 1889, had struck on an almost perfect balance between offense and defense, and it was that balance, in fact, that and the accountability—the beauty of the records system which found a place to keep forever each least action—that led Henry to baseball as his final great project."

## ~

_The Universal Baseball Association_ is more not about baseball than it is about baseball. Protagonist J. Henry Waugh, an accountant with little zest for life, creates a baseball league whose game progressions and outcomes are determined by throws of the dice. Waugh imaginatively builds a back-story and a living environment for every player, manager, and participant in his league.

The players who live in Waugh's mind and whose lives are ruled by his dice tosses, are unaware of this aspect of their reality. Their reality interpretations do not have access to such information. Living in a moment as real to them as the present moment is to us, they have no idea they exist in a world created for them by a bored, imaginative accountant with a love for baseball. Some of them have a vague notion that a God—in this case Henry—might possibly determine fate by throwing dice.

Tenzin Gyatso/1935 CE-

When he was two years old, Gyatso was recognized as the reincarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama who'd been recognized as the reincarnation of the twelfth, and so on, and so on. Accordingly, Gyatso became the fourteenth. The first was Gendun Drup (born 1391, died 1474). The title "Dalai Lama" also means "Ocean of Wisdom."

An incumbent Dalai Lama is the spiritual and political leader of the Tibetan people. Gyatso's challenge? Making sure the latter didn't erode the former. Hard enough to do in the best of circumstances. That he was 15 years old when China invaded Tibet, and had to flee his beloved homeland, and live most of his life in exile, are circumstances rightfully labeled dire. Yet he had a remedy at hand.

## ~

Dalai Lama: "We all want to be happy and avoid suffering, and we all have a right to be happy. That's why I say we are all the same. If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion."

## ~

To Tibetan Buddhists, a Dalai Lama is a bodhisattva—a person advanced enough in consciousness to sever the karmic link and move along—but compassionate enough to stay around and help the slower learners.

## ~

Dalai Lama: "There is a common consciousness which is our own ground and so in consciousness we are one, insofar as you identify yourself with the consciousness that moves and lives in your body, you've identified with that which you share with me. If you fix on yourself and your tradition and believe you've got it, you've removed yourself from the rest of mankind."

## ~

The fourteenth Dalai Lama won the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, ostensibly for his attempts to harmonize China and Tibet. In a larger sense, I think the award came in recognition for the totality (as it so often does) of the awardees' contributions. By the way, despite many pressures to act in traditional ways, the 14th became the first to open himself to the Western World.

## ~

Dalai Lama: "The important thing is the individual. It's very important that you find and do something appropriate and suitable for yourself as an individual. The ultimate authority must always rest with the individual's own reason and critical analysis."

## ~

Gyatso's position gives him the opportunity to meditate for long periods of time. Most frequently, from early morning to noon. The cumulative effect of this work on his personality—increasingly compassionate, increasingly nurturing—is evidence meditation helps people—even a Dalai Lama bodhisattva—grow more loving.

## ~

As the main man in Tibetan religious circles, what does the Dalai Lama think of religion?

## ~

Dalai Lama: "My religion is simple. My religion is kindness. Religion should be a remedy to help reduce the conflict and suffering in the world, not another source of conflict. One way of strengthening the mutual respect between religious traditions is through closer personal contact between those of different religious faiths.

"Narrow minded attitudes lead to extreme thinking. The idea that everyone should be Buddhist is quite extreme. Through closer contact with other traditions you realize the positive things about them."

## ~

How can one be sure that one is on a right path?

## ~

Dalai Lama: "When one experiences the subtle sense of self, the gross body becomes irrelevant, and fear of losing one's self vanishes."

Jorge Mario Bergoglio/1936 CE-

How does one keep a traditional religion relevant in a postmodern era? That's the question facing Bergoglio—aka Pope Francis. Perhaps it helps that his non-traditional persona makes him a non-traditional Pope and Catholic. Please don't take this to mean he doesn't adhere to most aspects of his church's dogma, such as opposition to abortion. He definitely does. However, from his early life in a Buenos Aires barrio, Bergoglio has led an extraordinarily loving life—in quantity and quality—and this love manifests itself in his beliefs and leadership.

## ~

Pope Francis: "I believe in God—not in a Catholic God; there is no Catholic God. There is God, and I believe in Jesus Christ, his incarnation. Jesus is my teacher and my pastor, but God, the Father, Abba, is the light and the Creator. This is my Being."

## ~

By his actions, how does Pope Francis answer the question leading off the first paragraph? By adding more compassion to the equation. By advocating Free Choice and Fair Play. By opposing greed and exploitation. By growing more loving.

## ~

Pope Francis: "Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that create huge inequalities."

## ~

Maybe I've seen too many Godfather movies. Something in me thinks that the most traditional elements in this most traditional religion would very much like this Pope to go away and are not adverse to the use of violence to invigorate the traditional politics of monarchial succession.

Leonard Shlain/1937 CE-2009 CE

Surgeon, philosopher, historian, author—Leonard Shlain probably is best known for his _The Alphabet Versus the Goddess: The Conflict Between Word and Image._ Shlain equates the Word with left-brain (ego) literalism and the Image as free flowing and associative, hence right-brain. He notes that when alphabets emerge, idols get smashed. Men rule. Right-brain insights are devalued. History is replete with examples.

## ~

Leonard Shlain: "The West sees its history as a series of events; the East tends to perceive patterns that recur."

## ~

Fifteen years old when he graduated from high school, Shlain earned his MD at 23. During a successful medical career, he continued to write. Other books: _Art & Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time, and Light_ and _Sex, Time and Power: How Women's Sexuality Shaped Human Evolution_.

## ~

One of Shlain's favorite stories (from the Talmud): "God begins by chiding Abraham: 'If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't exist.' Abraham answers: 'Lord, and for that I am very appreciative and grateful. However, if it wasn't for me, You wouldn't be known."

Francis David Peat/1938 CE-

Born in Waterloo, England, F. David Peat followed his bliss and became a holistic physicist noted for helping develop quantum theory. Always an independent, courageous thinker, Peat was not intimidated by the constant drumbeat of disrespect shown him by scientific materialists.

In his maturity, Peat combined his expertise in physics with psychological insights learned from Carl Jung. This led him down many new paths, including collaboration with David Bohm, a well-respected quantum scientist. Together, they generated the book, _Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind_. Peat also authored Bohm's biography. In the year 2000, he founded the Pari Center for New Learning, a haven for creativity.

## ~

F. David Peat: "Synchronicities, epiphanies, peak, and mystical experiences are all cases in which creativity breaks through the barriers of the self and allows awareness to flood through the whole domain of consciousness. It is the human mind operating, for a moment, in its true order and moving through orders of increasing subtlety, reaching past the source of mind and matter into creativity itself."

## ~

What is the source of synchronicity?

## ~

F. David Peat: "It is as if the formation of patterns within the unconscious mind is accompanied by physical patterns in the outer world. In particular, as psychic patterns are on the point of reaching consciousness, the synchronicities reach their peak; moreover, they generally disappear as the individual becomes consciously aware of a new alignment of forces within his or her own personality. It is as if the internal restructuring produces external resonance, or as if a burst of 'mental energy' is propagated outward onto the world."

## ~

In another book, _Gentle Action: Bringing Creative Change to a Turbulent World,_ Peat urges a "toleration of uncertainty" that opens our mind to a more inclusive perspective. According to Peat, we are wisest (and more effective) when we use gentle, repetitive actions to bring about desired change. Peat suggests similarities between his Gentle Action, active listening, and the Chinese concept of Wu Wei. The one-time big splash (even if humongous) has entertainment value, but when looked at with a long eye, doesn't necessarily result in meaningful change.

## ~

F. David Peat: "If you happen to hold that human consciousness is no more than the epiphenomenon, or secretion, of our individual brains then you are more or less trapped in your own skull. But if consciousness is open, if it can partake in a more global form of being, if it can merge with the natural world and with other beings, then, indeed, it may be possible to drop, for a time, the constraints of one's personal worldview and see reality through the eyes of others."

## ~

From the beginning: (1) Seemingly nothing exists. (2) the universe arises from a "sea of energy" and is sustained—in whole and in part—by creative consciousness. (3) No fixed order. Content is ever changing. (4) Mind and matter are two sides of one reality.

## ~

F. David Peat: "Creativity permeates the cosmos. It is the driving force that sustains the particles, the stars and galaxies. It surges through the body with each beat of the heart.

"We all have access to creativity. At times, we summon it to use in our work and daily lives. It can arrive in a dream or it may result from a long struggle. It can appear as a sudden, dramatic insight.

"One thing is certain—Creativity is ever present. It is a force to be enjoyed or endured, but above all celebrated. Creativity is free, alive and spontaneous."

## ~

While retaining a theory of self consistent with Darwinian insights—(including the idea of natural selection)—are we able to imagine how "information from the environment" might affect evolution? Noting that growth "involves an element of wholeness...not totally determined by DNA," Peak presented an idea of development" centered around "information" provided by the "wholeness."

## ~

F. David Peat: "Evolution would therefore be driven both by internal molecular processes, produced by random mutations of DNA, and also by the active information of the whole environment. In this way the developing organism can have an effect on its environment and, in turn, the environment can act back on the developing species to help it follow more appropriate pathways of growth."

## ~

Is the universe all-there-is? Is physical evolution a subset of a more inclusive one-set? How, then, might consciousness advance beyond the limits of material world self-expression?

## ~

F. David Peat: "According to the traditions of the Far East, and the writings of certain Western mystics, it is possible for there to be an 'ending of time' which suggests that the attachment to a limited order of becoming may itself cease.

"This is also referred to as the 'death of the self,' a death in which the absolute image of eternity, which the self has created for itself, dies away and with it all the rigid, mechanical, and limited orders that block the flowering of creativity.

"In such a transformation the division between mind and body, individual and society, will end and consciousness will stretch out to embrace the global order of all nature and beyond. Clearly, such a transformation is not confined to the mind of the individual but involves the whole of society."

Fritjof Capra/1939 CE-

Fluent in German, English, Italian, and French, Vienna-born Fritjof Capra combines a talent for writing with a head for physics and mythology. His main book, _The Tao of Physics_ , analyzed the link between ancient spiritual writings and modern physics.

## ~

Fritjof Capra: "The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all the phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe. The Hindus call it Brahman, the Buddhists Dharmakaya (The Body of Being) or Tathata (Suchness,) and Taoists (Tao); each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concept and defies further explanation.

"This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to the very nature to manifest itself in myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves into one another without end."

## ~

How is this similar to the wisdom of physics?

## ~

Fritjof Capra: "A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement.

"Quantum theory thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. It shows we cannot decompose the world into independently existing smallest units. As we penetrate into matter, nature does not show us any isolated 'basic building blocks,' but rather appears as a complicated web of relations between the various parts of the whole."

## ~

Is this fledgling quantum perception valid when the "whole" and it's "various parts" are non-physical, when all-that-is is recognized as naught but the energy of consciousness?

## ~

Capra theorized that evolution is sequentially constructed by the "creative unfolding of life in forms of ever-increasing diversity and complexity as an inherent characteristic of all living systems." Conceding that mutation and natural selection are "important aspects of biological evolution," Capra argued that the process is actually designed, driven, and shaped by cooperating aggregates of creative consciousness.

## ~

Fritjof Capra: "Co-evolution is an ongoing dance that proceeds through a subtle interplay of competition and cooperation, creation and mutual adaptation."

## ~

From whence the music? Remember, creative dancing requires at least a modicum of free will. What determines the limits?

## ~

Fritjof Capra: "The relative autonomy of organisms usually increases with their complexity, and it reaches a culmination in human beings. This relative concept of free will seems to be consistent with the view of mystical traditions that exhort their followers to transcend the notion of an isolated self and become aware that we are inseparable parts of the cosmos in which we are embedded."

John Winston Ono Lennon/1940 CE-1980 CE

His middle name, Winston, honored Churchill. An element of his married name, Ono, of course, came from the woman he loved, Yoko. As for Lennon, well, he came from Liverpool.

He and Paul McCartney wrote songs together and co-founded the Beatles, arguably the most successful musical ensemble ever assembled. A few years later, Lennon flourished in a solo career. All in all, as a writer and/or performer, by himself or in collaboration, he generated 25 number-one singles. How did he do it?

## ~

John Lennon: "All you need is love. All you need is love. All you need is love, love. Love is all you need."

## ~

Witty, and gifted with the long eye, Lennon's music, poetry, and art reflected his perspective and an unabated rebellious streak. Because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon tried to kick him out and keep him out of the United States. Meanwhile his songs became anthems of the anti-war protests and, in a large sense, of the counterculture he encouraged.

## ~

John Lennon: "All we are saying is give peace a chance."

## ~

In his heart, Lennon was a post-modern poet and philosopher. He did not trust self-serving narratives. "I don't believe in Bible, I don't believe in Jesus, I don't believe in Kennedy, I don't believe in Buddha, I don't believe in Elvis, I don't believe in Zimmerman, I don't believe in Beatles."

## ~

John Lennon: "Imagine no possessions. I wonder if you can. No need for greed or hunger. A brotherhood of man. Imagine all the people sharing all the world...Imagine there's no countries. It isn't hard to do, Nothing to kill or die for and no religion too. Imagine all the people living life in peace.

"You may say I'm a dreamer. But I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one."

Stephen Jay Gould/1941 CE-2002 CE

Not many hints of love emerge from materialists of any ilk, including the scientific variety. And Gould—in his work as a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist— is accurately rated as a five-star materialist. His widely read series of magazine articles in Natural History and his "general public" science books earned him a large following.

Gould helped develop the theory of punctuated equilibrium—an idea that evolutionary change is neither steady nor continuous. Rather, change occurs relatively rapidly from time to time. Usually, evolution is dormant (in equilibrium). When the washer goes tilt, evolution's equilibrium is punctuated until an acceleration of adaptations eventually restores the balance.

## ~

Karen Armstrong: "Everything in the natural world could indeed be explained by natural selection, but Gould insisted that science was not competent to decide whether God did or did not exist, because it could only work with natural explanations."

## ~

As the concept of punctuated equilibrium became widely accepted as a major revision to Darwinian theory, Gould came under attack from Darwinists. His success as a popular writer led his critics to suggest he shouldn't be taken seriously. My personal preference is to judge the work by quality, not popularity.

## ~

Three ways of thinking vexed Gould: (1) Biological determinism. (2) Religion's claim that human beings are the pinnacle of evolution. (3) The refusal of scientists to fair-mindedly consider all available evidence.

## ~

Stephen Jay Gould: "What an odd time to be a fundamentalist about adaptation and natural selection—when each major sub-discipline of evolutionary biology has been discovering mechanisms as adjuncts to selection's centrality."

Robert Thurman/1941 CE-

Credited with bringing a heightened understanding of Buddhism to the West, Thurman, professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University, is the first American ordained as a Tibetan Buddhist monk. Is this a good place to mention that his daughter, Uma, is a popular and successful actress?

## ~

Robert Thurman's many books, lectures, and tweets help popularize Buddhism in the United States and generated a parade of insights from him and his friend of long standing, the 14th Dalai Lama. Thurman's intelligent and easy-going exposition of Buddhism has proven helpful to thousands. From a distance, he has worked with diligence to self-apply the dot-of-light principles he advocates.

## ~

Robert Thurman: "I am daily making myself what I am. We are in one long infinite moment that's all that we are ever in and it has no time to it. It is both timeless and infinite. Remember, we are in the between."

## ~

The "between" is transition, like the space dividing womb and birth or the gap between death and rebirth.

## ~

When one takes Buddhism as seriously as Thurman does, one eventually, almost inevitably, launches a self-quest to liberate one's consciousness from ego delusions—in other words, to seek enlightenment. What's success in this endeavor all about, Robert Thurman?

## ~

Robert Thurman: "To become enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria, an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula to control reality.

"Rather, it is an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevant subject of knowledge. Having attained enlightenment one knows everything that matters, and the precise nature of all that is."

## ~

Who can reach enlightenment? Who can emulate the Buddha?

## ~

Robert Thurman: "Buddha liberation is so happy and complete that it can effortlessly include without distortion or separation the infinite realm of all beings and things as inseparable from oneself; one feels the condition of others.

"One is sensitive to the continual suffering that arises from their imprisonment within a rigid self-image opposed to an apparently overwhelming objective and alien universe.

"One's beatitude thus naturally reacts against the self-created suffering of other beings. For them one manifests educational events that help them see through their beginningless delusions and arrive at freedom by coming to an understanding of their own deeper nature."

## ~

Tibetans, Thurman observed, believe "the spiritual" (active energy) is more elemental than is the material.

## ~

Spiritual > Material.

## ~

So why do most of us prefer to pretend we're living in a material world?

## ~

Robert Thurman: "Commercial interests with their advertising industry do not want people to develop contentment and less greed. Military interests in economic, political, ethnic, or nationalist guises, do not want people to develop more tolerance, nonviolence, and compassion.

"And ruling groups in general, in whatever sort of hierarchy, do not want the ruled to become too insightful, too independent, too creative on their own, as the danger is that they will become insubordinate, rebellious, and unproductive in their allotted tasks."

## ~

The faith of many is shredded by reason. Is it possible to reconcile religion with science?

## ~

Robert Thurman: "There is no reason for a sound faith to be irrational. A useful faith should not be blind, but should be well aware of its grounds. A sound faith should be able to use scientific investigation to strengthen itself. A nourishing, useful, healthful faith should be no obstacle to developing a science of death."

Marilynne Robinson/1943 CE-

Winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Ms. Robinson also writes nature-of-reality, nature-of God essays. Her creative foundation is a belief that "the voices that have said there is something more, knowledge to be had beyond and other than this knowledge" have always been right.

## ~

Marilynne Robinson: "Our religious traditions give us as the name of God two deeply mysterious words, one deeply mysterious utterance: I AM. These are words any human being can say about herself, and does say, though always with a modifier of some kind. I am hungry, I am comfortable, I am a singer, I am a cook.

"The abrupt descent into particularity in every statement of this kind, Being itself made an auxiliary to some momentary accident of being, may only startle in the dark of night, when the intuition comes that there is no proportion between the great given of existence and the narrow vessel of circumstance into which it is inevitably forced."

## ~

For Ms. Robinson, an _I-Am_ includes (1) Consciousness of identity. (2) A flow of thought, perception, memory, and desire. (3) The self that questions, reconsiders, appraises. The work of individuation is to understand, develop, and progress one's _I-Am_ into more inclusive aggregates of consciousness.

## ~

Marilynne Robinson: "As proof of the existence of mind we have only history and civilization, art, science, and philosophy. And at the same time, of course, that extraordinary individuation."

## ~

Science and religion no longer have the field to themselves when it comes to debating the reality and relevance of spirituality. Both camps have split in two. What is the nature of these divides?

## ~

Marilynne Robinson: "The great breach that separates the modern Western world from its dominant traditions of religion and metaphysics is the prestige of opinion that throws into question the scale of the reality in which the mind participates. Does it open on ultimate truth, or at least potentially or in momentary glimpses, or is it an extravagance of nature?"

George Lucas/1944 CE-

A most successful filmmaker and mythmaker on many fronts, Lucas combined story-line quality with spectacular special effects. Two of his "movie franchises"— _Star Wars_ and _Indiana Jones_ —are among the most successful ever. In the former especially, Lucas made both a conscious and an unconscious effort to create mythology.

## ~

George Lucas: "The Western was possibly the last generically American fairy tale, telling us about our values. And once the Western disappeared, nothing has ever taken its place. In literature we were going off into science fiction...so that's when I starting doing more strenuous research on fairy tales, folklore, and mythology, and I started reading Joe's (Joseph Campbell) books.

"Before that, I hadn't read any of Joe's books. It was very eerie because in reading _The Hero with a Thousand Faces_ I began to realize that my first draft of _Star Wars_ was following classic motifs...so I modified my next draft according to what I'd been learning about classical motifs and made it a little bit more consistent."

## ~

Star Wars is mythology, complete with a struggle of good against evil, freedom against tyranny. And, more importantly for our immediate purposes, containing a working metaphor for transcendent, non-physical consciousness. It's no small matter to mass communicate spiritual concepts. A person needs help.

## ~

George Lucas: "May the Force be with you."

## ~

What is the Force? Combined, cooperative consciousness. Whose? The Living and the Dead. How is it aggregated? By geography (remember Alderaan?). By intent. Loving or selfish. By perspective. Beware of relativity. By degrees of love. Grow more loving. Basically, given the freedom to choose, individuals select their own zones of cooperation. Ultimately, all consciousness is cooperative, because, ultimately, all consciousness is one.

## ~

Lucas emerges as a dot of light, in my opinion, because his rendering of the transcendent morphed into a meme and, as this happened, legitimized in the minds of millions (mostly young) a belief that there is more to our human situation than can be grasped within the limits of scientific materialism. An almost casual acceptance of the Force as a clear and present reality permeated his films and encouraged many, perhaps especially those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. And, by explicating the Force, Lucas helped ease the fear of death for millions.

## ~

George Lucas: "Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them, do not. Miss them, do not. Attachment leads to jealousy. Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose."

Thubten Zopa Rinpoche/1945 CE-

Shadowed by the ever-awe-inspiring Mt. Everest, Lama Zopa Rinpoche formed his opinions about reality while growing up in Nepal. At an early age, he was acknowledged to be the reincarnation of a deceased lama who had lived nearby.

## ~

Lama Zopa Rinpoche: "Approaching enlightenment is a gradual process, but once you attain it, there's no going back; when you reach the fully awakened state of mind, the moment you experience that, you remain enlightened forever."

## ~

My favorite Rinpoche quote: "If you want to be loved, love others first." We recognize the sentiment, as it has been delivered by many of our prophets and poets—including Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, Moses, Krishna, and John Lennon. I remember the day—the moment, actually—when I connected the reality of the lack of love I was experiencing with the lack of love I was inserting.

## ~

Concluding that "all the faults of our mind" are temporary, Rinpoche suggested a solution: meditation.

## ~

Lama Zopa Rinpoche: "We are not compelled to meditate by some outside agent, by other people, or by God. Rather, just as we are responsible for our own suffering, so are we solely responsible for our own cure.

"We have created the situation in which we find ourselves, and it is up to us to create the circumstances for our release. Therefore, as suffering permeates our life, we have to do something in addition to our regular daily routine. This 'something' is spiritual practice or, in other words, meditation."

Near-Death Experiences

A person seemingly dies, her or his consciousness departs the body, is overwhelmed by a bright, white light, moves toward it in preparation to enter, is intercepted by friendly entities, counseled to return to the physical world, agrees, and wakes up in the here and now. Survivors tend to be more loving than they were prior to these episodes.

The number of near-death incidents fitting this general description is not easily tallied, but the phenomenon—crossing social, political, religious, educational, and other culture divisions—appears widespread. My mother shared her story of undergoing this experience. Likewise, many trusted and beloved people have made similar reports to their friends and families, giving NDEs direct and impactful credibility.

When considering local beliefs and traditions regarding the afterlife, one is struck by similarities between NDEs and these archetypal stories. Science, of course, has a material world explanation. Which Is: In the throes of death and near-death, the brain unspools itself, as it were, and our life review and non-ego insights are merely the last acts of a finite and expiring human consciousness.

Logically, to me if no one else, the spiritual explanation for NDEs hits closer to the mark than does the scientific, especially when one remembers that the events and experiences described are a smooth enough fit—but not an exact copy—of a wide variety of cultural and religious renderings.

I am not certain that science is wrong. Yet it is fair to say that reports of NDEs—including one from my mother—are hints of love for me.

Rajinder Singh/1946 CE-

Educated as an engineer in India and Illinois, Singh succeeded his father as the leader of Science of Spirituality, an interfaith organization based in India. His work and that of SOS is to proselytize meditation as useful for followers of all religions.

## ~

Rajinder Singh: "Within us is a divine spirit from which our intelligence and wisdom is derived. The process of accessing that inner divine spirit, intelligence, and wisdom is called meditation; if we transform knowledge to wisdom by meditating and experiencing the driving force behind all existence, then we have the key to human unity.

"This experience will transform our individual life and the lives of those around us. These individual transformations will ultimately bring unity and peace at the community, national, and global levels."

## ~

Singh teaches that spiritual consciousness is a process of extending one's awareness of the soul and "God within us" by living life in such a way that "our consciousness remains centered in our soul while we are attending to our worldly duties and responsibilities.

"This means that we develop spiritual qualities such as nonviolence, truthfulness, purity, humility, and selfless service. Spiritual consciousness is actually all-consciousness. The soul is a drop of God's essence."

Albert Lawrence Einstein/1947 CE-

AKA: Albert Brooks. Director and writer. Thinker. Actor. Comedian. Included in this book for conceiving, writing, acting in, and directing the movie _Defending Your Life_. Therein, Brooks imagines individual life as it continues immediately after death. One rule is vigorously enforced: Face your fear and advance. Don't face your fear and try again. Reincarnate!

Fear, after all, is the enemy of authentic self expression and what's the point of being here and now if one can't authentically self-express? In the end Brooks' hero, overly fearful during his life on earth, succeeds in overcoming his angst. How? Inspired by love.

## ~

Albert Brooks: "If you paint, write, do mosaics, knit—if it's solving that part of your brain saying, 'I need to do this,' you've won."

## ~

Brooks uses the cinema to demonstrate the possibility of Something More and, by putting forth his own idea of what it might be, encourages us—including many who disdain traditional presentations of Heaven's charms—to develop our own. That his guidance is gentle is a character tell.

## ~

Albert Brooks: "Be generous and you can be the best person who ever lived."

## ~

His baseball film, _The Scout_ , further endeared Brooks to me. An honest, good man and hard-working scout (played by Brooks) discovers the best baseball prospect ever. Absolutely. Yet the young man is out of balance. Psychological havoc ensues. Will King Kong be able to pitch in the majors?

Personally, I rank _The Scout_ in my top seven most enjoyable movies in this particular genre. Other baseball favorites not created by Brooks and beloved by me include _Bang The Drum Slowly_ , _The Great American Novel_ , _The Natural_ , _Major League_ , _The Cardinals Movie_ , and _Ozzie_. (By way of explanation, I had the pleasure of writing and directing the final two listed. Dubious at best that many—if any—other people's lists would include them.)

## ~

Albert Brooks: "It's better to be known by six people for something you're proud of than by 60 million for something you're not."

## ~

Speaking personally, I think growing more loving is not confined to one lifetime or one physical form.

Deepak Chopra/1947 CE-

Medical doctor. Advocate of "living healthy" to nurture mind, body, and spirit. Alternative medicine. Holistic health. New Age spirituality. Logic and reason. Freethinker. Doesn't consider himself a guru. Values meditation. Books and lectures have made him wealthy. Forty-two books. Twenty million copies sold (worldwide).

## ~

Deepak Chopra: "If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up."

## ~

Born in New Delhi, India, Chopra moved to the United States. His dissatisfaction with modern medicine, as practiced in America, increased with experience. To improve the healing mix, Chopra added the holistic principles of Ayurvedic medicine. Eventually, he founded the Chopra Center for Well Being in California.

## ~

Deepak Chopra: "The physical world, including our bodies, is a response of the observer. We create our bodies as we create the experience of our world."

## ~

Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. Chopra applied Hegel's formula to the projections humans use to define "God." Acceptance of any God Theory begins with an individual sense that the idea is "great enough to be God, interior enough to be me" and moves forward to include a "personification of that world-creative energy and mystery." Additionally, a viable theory of divinity allows for mystery beyond the reach of human thought.

When it comes to explicating the Transcendent, we've traveled a long way, babies, in an attempt to distance ourselves from anthropomorphic projections, but we've still got a long way to go. Right now, we're conjuring up a projection taken from our synthesis of the scientific and spiritual.

## ~

Moncure Conway: "Eyes turned from phantom gods have caught glimpses of a divine life in the evolution of nature, and the mystical movement at the heart of man."

## ~

What is the most effective method of expanding one's totality of awareness? According to Chopra, the answer is: "Pay attention in the present moment."

## ~

Deepak Chopra: "The possibility of stepping into a higher plane is quite real for everyone. It requires no force or effort or sacrifice. It involves little more than changing our ideas about what is normal."

## ~

What is normal? What is the essence? More love, better; less love, worse.

And what makes for more love? The individual's choice to grow more loving. What puts more love into the mix? Growing more loving. True this, at every level, within every aggregation, as a foundational element of consciousness itself.

## ~

Deepak Chopra: "We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being."

Robert Wright/1957 CE-

Though not born in or anywhere near Wright City, Robert Wright didn't go wrong. His best-selling books on science, history, psychology, game theory, and religion summarize and advance our understanding of human consciousness.

## ~

Robert Wright: "I think gods arose as illusions, and that the subsequent history of the idea of god is, in some sense, the evolution of an illusion. On the other hand: (1) the story of this evolution itself points to the existence of something you can meaningfully call divinity; and (2) the 'illusion,' in the course of evolving, has gotten streamlined in a way that moved it closer to plausibility."

## ~

What can we learn from the evolution of an illusion?

## ~

Robert Wright: "Projection of the deity is constantly evolving. Of course, the projection teaches us much about the projector. It also teaches us about the divine. When the projection is a natural outgrowth of what went before, and when it represents the best of human thought and imagination, when it incorporates the core values, when it 'feels' right, then it teaches us more about the nature of reality, the nature of the divine."

## ~

And who or what is God?

## ~

"The word 'God' belongs in quotation marks, because what's growing is people's image of God, not God—who, for all we know, may not exist. Still, this growth could be evidence of, if not God with a capital G, higher purpose in some sense of the term."

## ~

If the sum of an interaction is "zero" then the amount won by the winners is equal to the amount lost by the losers. Wright perceived that if zero sumness were the engine of transactional history, the world would not value compassion and love. He submitted as evidence of the power of love the increasing tendency of humans to find "non-zero sum" solutions—where the plusses don't have to equal the minuses. In other words, no one has to lose. In game theory, this is called "win-win."

## ~

Robert Wright: "On the one hand, the divine being you sense 'out there' is actually something inside you. On the other, this something inside you is an expression of forces 'out there;' it's an incarnation of a non-zero-sum logic that predates and transcends individual people. The logic in this theology of the Logos—can be called divine."

Matt Ridley/1958 CE-

Author of a string of popular science books (including _Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature_ , _Genome_ , and _Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves),_ the British born Ridley is renowned for having the mindset of a successful scientist and the communication skills of a successful journalist. One of his main themes is the idea that (1) "population growth has driven human development because (2) "individual interactions lead to new ideas." Ridley doesn't write or say much that I might consider a "dot of light" or "hint of love." However, he does provide a way of thinking (model) about the relationship between various aggregates of consciousness.

## ~

Matt Ridley: "At the cellular level: knowing where you are, knowing what to do. Gene switches on gene which switches on gene. Totally decentralized process. Since every cell carries a complete copy of the genome, no cell need wait for instructions from authority; every cell can act on its own information and the signals it receives from its neighbors."

## ~

Is the preceding quote a dot of light? Ridley probably doesn't view it that way, but interpretation is not the author's monopoly. What gets stirred is what gets stirred. To me, the quote highlights a biological model possibly representing a similar-in-approach spiritual cooperation, aggregates of consciousness (least inclusive to most) interacting in a democratic assembly.

Charleston, South Carolina/2015 CE

During a June 17 prayer service at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, nine African-Americans were shot to death by a hapless, white bigot hoping to initiate a war between the races. One of those killed was the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney. A mood of helplessness and hopelessness descended like a shroud. Is there anything we can do? Are we doomed forever to be the victims of hate-induced violence?

Two days later, as a shocked nation tried to deal with the anger and hatred generated by that vile act, relatives of the victims came forth with words of healing, forgiveness, and love.

## ~

Bethane Middleton-Brown (sister of one of those killed, the Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor): "I'm a work in progress and I acknowledge that I'm very angry. She taught me we are the family that love built. We have no room for hate. We have to forgive."

## ~

Felicia Sanders (mother of one of those killed, Tywanza Sanders): "Every fiber in my body hurts, and I'll never be the same. Tywanza was my son, but Tywanza was my hero. May God have mercy on you."

## ~

Nadine Collier (daughter of one of those killed, Ethel Lance): "I will never talk to her again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you. And have mercy on your soul. You hurt me. You hurt a lot of people, but God forgive you, and I forgive you."

## ~

Connect the dots. Grow more loving.

Grow More Loving

Flick of a switch. Welcome to the last keystroke. What happens at the moment of death? _I-Am_ is ready for a new birth. What happens to Consciousness-Identified-as-Self? Light my pyre.

## ~

Consciousness is self-attractive. Consciousness transcends physical limits. Consciousness is mental.

How much of this life will I retain? What memories? What strengths? What friendships? What strategies? Will I enjoy the games people play? What might I add to the Mix?

My portrait pixels oscillate a private and peculiar silence, soon to be uniquely my own. Goodbye. Oh, how I love to read and write, and think and walk, and run, and run, and play.

## ~

Examining my life so far, cognizant of many fears and shortcomings, pleased to note that I have grown more loving.

## ~

Try this for a jump start: The physical universe is swaddled in energy. What is energy? Energy is the illusion of truth and the truth of illusion. Energy is mental.

## ~

What aggregates?

Love.

What resonates?

Any individual choice to grow more loving.

What transcends?

Any collective choice to grow more loving.

## ~

What is the personal developmental imperative? How can we add love to the moment-at-hand?

## ~

How can Consciousness affect experience? Try this. Perceive guidance, shed limits. Try this: Grow more loving.

How can Consciousness become more inclusive? Try this. Perceive guidance, shed limits. Try this: Grow more loving.

## ~

What is guidance?

(1) Continue to grow more loving.

(2) Increasingly more lovingly participate in the simultaneous personal unfolding of various aggregate energy cooperations, combinations, dreams, projections, and sundry illusions.

Gratitude

_While writing_ Grow More Loving _, I was often homeless, having frequently made time-use decisions favoring this project over other, more financially rewarding endeavors. Thanks to the love and support of friends, my writing continued. As the book neared completion, my doctors diagnosed a cancer and forecast a radically shortened lifespan._

_Because_ Grow More Loving _represents decades of thought and work, I was determined to finish before departing for ports unknown. My conceit is that my desire and effort are able to add love to the Mix. That I might come up short and fail to publish has been a source of angst._

I wish to give thanks to all the loving people helping me. Their intellectual companionship, spiritual nurturing, and shelter from the storm make this book possible. The list easily could be a hundred times longer. Here are a few of the many to whom I extend my heartfelt gratitude:

Tom Ganim, Rebekka Boswinkel, Sue Herrin, Sara Herrin, Nick Herrin, Ben Vennard, Cam Vennard, Matthew Herrin, Jean Keller, Steve Nowels, Laura Valerius, Molly Irene Huber, Pat Dulle, Jamie Kelly, Susan Adams, Ted Moniak, and Kevin Cowell.

