Today, a new essay, "Snow Dogs," under Essays in the website.  FK 

McMahon, in "Divine Fury," is convincing in his notion that genius, or the concept of it, has far more to do with how we view the world than meets the eye.  Looking back to the 18th century, when the Age of Enlightenment shattered the remnants of the Old Regime, the now-famous philosophers - Hobbes, Locke and Helvetius - argued that genius was a product of education -  that is, that all had the ability to become geniuses.  It was Locke who first stated that we are "tabula rasas," blank slates whose minds were inscribed only with the annotations of experience (thus founding the English Empiricist School)  As an anthropologist, I know well that this notion, while seldom stated so starkly, is the driving idea behind current social theory.  In anthro, it is so because of the late 19th and early 20th century attempts to classify people's abilities by race; in Locke's time, it was so to abolish the idea of an aristocracy of blood - that is, to open the way for democratic institutions, as no one would then be "born to lead."  

That this is clearly our favored public view of "genius" is also witnessed by the great success of Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers," where he reiterates the 18th century idea that "genius" is born from practice in the "10,000 hour" dictum; that is, that it takes 10 thousand hours of practice to become an expert at anything.  Gladwell also repeats Helvetius's idea that a 'genius' becomes so by being at the right time and place.  Putting these two ideas together, he recounts stories of successful people.  Bill Gates, for instance, happened to be in the West Coast near a major college (I forget which) just at the time that computers were being developed there.  He was able to gain access to them at an early age, spent his 10 thousand hours, and peaked just as the technology was becoming sufficient to go public.  

The account is well verified, but it begs the question that bothered other 18th century thinkers and still hounds us like a shadow: why Bill Gates and not Joe Average?  What made HIM the guy who took advantage of his circumstances and not others?  What gave him the drive and the abilities beyond all others?  

Gladwell remains content with the notion of "hours of practice at the right time in history," staying comfortably in the "politcally correct" zone that we are all equal, regardless, but McMahon does not - it is not his role.  Rather, he continues to show how "genius" was further modified by the French Revolution and other factors to make the uncomfortable blend that we REALLY believe today - that is, that environment has something to do with intelligence, but, really, for those at the high end, it is inborn.  This notion, if we dare mention it, proceeds on to races: Jews, many believe, are smarter in general and Chinese with math in particular, leaving us in our uncomfortable situation: if some races can be smarter, can't others be less so?  Afro Americans, for instance, are believed (with good practical reason) to be better racially at sports; could they not be less capable at things of the mind?  And what of European whites?  Did their culture not conquer the world?  

I can say that anthropology, at least at my time of studies in the '80's, did not have the answer.  There are others, though: Carl Jung believed in racial archetypes, and abilities accrued through them in a non-empiricist fashion that has not sat comfortably with today's social scientists.  Fred Myers, writing from the late 19th century, was more specific, at least concerning genius, and he seems to have solved the problem that I have stated: genius came from a vast "overmind" that was available to all but accessed only by a few because of natural disposition or accident.  Thus we find that there is a natural disposition (which we all must admit), but this does not dismiss the possibility that we ALL are part of genius, just as each island is a part of the ocean floor.  Culture does push us away from or towards this genius, but individually we all have access to it if we wish.  Yes, practice makes good, but genius is something set apart.  While some are born to it, all can develop it using certain techniques of meditation, hypnosis, and several other techniques.

But where resides this "overmind"? It is, believes Myers, in a spirit realm of sorts - which again confounds and frustrates the empiricist.  But as McMahon shows, ours (Western Culture) was the first to abandon God ever.  All others, including pre-enlightenment Europe, believed in the genii - the spirit - of inspiration (literally, the indwelling of spirit); it is ours alone that manufactured, for reasons of expedience (as with Descartes) the empirical model.  But as Fred Meyers stated, we have taken this view and held to a certain notion of it regardless of the proof.  True empiricism lies on experience, and experience has shown to us without question that there is a spirit world, however we wish to define it.  And from that, from that inspiration, the seed of genius is born.  We shall see what McMahon makes of the Myers and the late 19th century in chapters to come.  FK                                  

To continue with "Divine Fury" : As I read McMahon's book, it becomes crystal clear why Frithjof Shuon hated the idea of evolution and the modern view of the Renaissance as a positive thing.  Quoting from McMahon's book regarding the loss of, or alienation from, God in the 18th century: "Bear in mind that this was a predicament without precedent in the history of the world...[people] began to look forward on time's horizon, seeking the unexpected, the original, the unknown...a new figure was seized upon to provide a porton of God's power and an element of the guardian's [guardian angel's) comfort...the genius enchanted a world threatened by disenchantment."  

There is so much here that it cannot be done justice in a single blog. To start with, note the very clear fact that NEVER BEFORE in the history of Man had human society as a whole lost or felt alienated from their god or gods.  This should come as a wake-up call to those - including myself a times - who think that our era is just another normal passing phase in human history.  It is not - in making man the supreme expression of nature, answerable only to himself, we have become lost in a world formerly crowded with as many gods and spirits as there were life forms and natural entities such as the sky, lakes, the ocean and mountains.  Why this happened is debatable and complex, but the author notes that Descartes purposefully mentions his conflicting demons in his early works, only to later reject them so that he could form the idea of an objective world of cause and effect.  Spirits and god, we might then posit, became hindrances to a notion of 'progress,' that is, scientific and technological exploration and invention, and were thus rejected.  And with this triumph of progress, we began to look for a future that was better than our present, which had become dull and disenchanted - that is, that the two, disenchantment and progress, were linked arm in arm.  

But what enchantment could there be in an objective, cause and effect world?  The author makes this clear: radical innovation, formed by the "genius," which was once considered a spirit but now resides in very special men (and increasingly, women).  In a world without magic, if I may call it that, and in an objective world that declares all "equal" (another sideline of the author, but that is for another time) we need a person linked to something special, transcendent, to give our lives excitement and meaning.  We look for and actually make, then, our geniuses, to deliver us.  We give them quirks and strange behavior and (near) supernatural abilities - just as we once gave these to oracles, prophets, and to our own inner daemons, or angels. 

I will stop here, but the perennialists' damning view of modernity in all this becomes perfectly clear.  Progress, as we now understand it, is the product of a profane-making mentality that cheapens our experience and flattens the world into mere observable objects.  It is not enough - we call, in our misguided turn to progress, for magic in progress, and for the magic-maker, the genius, for only he can now rise above the flatness.  It is still not enough.  And what Schuon and the perennialists have going for them is exactly this: that objectivity and the scientific view are not enough; that is, it is abundantly clear that we were meant for something more.  The perennialists, the religious, the spiritual, all know what that "something else" is; and the dark view that many have of our future is well made, for if our current trajectory can not give us what we need, where will we go?  Until the urge for progress is spent, where will we go?  Ecologists know the answer - we will continue to try to find the spiritual in substance (and in the genius).  Never found, we will (or might) exhaust what we can use in the hopeless quest.  

For Schuon, this is a "given," part of a large cycle that has to play itself out.  It will, he says, but not before some very, very bad history is made.  It is then, from the ashes, that a new age will be born, but not until.  Personally, I have hope that the cycle will not have to complete itself, but I agree with the fundamental idea.  Our unhappiness as a social mass will not decrease with more stuff, but rather with more spirit.  Until the time comes when this movement becomes obvious, there is certainly a lot to worry about.  FK                       

A new book started, loaded with info: "Divine Fury" by Darrin McMahon about the development of the meaning of 'genius' from antiquity through the Christian era to the age of Einstein.  It is an academic book laden with footnotes and references, which in many ways is  a good thing; unlike some of the odd spiritual pieces presented in this blog, the info here has sound backing.  However, as usual with academic books, all information is objectified.  There is no central core, or "guts" to it, leading one to feel as if all of history was a trick of mind, the reality of it being only what we can now clarify through our libraries with hard fact.  Fortunately, the author has no ax to grind, no debunking in mind.  Like Joe Friday, he just wants the facts.  There is another book which I think was mentioned here months ago, "The Axial Age" by Karen Armstrong, which did have an ax to grind.  The author, a nun turned secular academic, "demystified" the development of the great religions in the so-called Axial Age, from about 500 BC to 600 AD (Islam a late offshoot), leaving one feeling as dried as a husk afterwards.  Having read her autobiography (The Spiral Staircase), it seems obvious that she wishes to debunk the mythology that was ground into her.  This is not such a book - but it does call for the suspension of any spiritual beliefs as one passes from one time and culture to another, each with  its own interpretation of the genii, or genius.  

I will touch on much of this in future blogs.  For now, it will suffice to mention one small fact brought out in the book that showcases our changing, or secularizing, mentality.  In ancient Rome, the birthday party was held not for the person with the birthday, but for his 'genius' or companion spirit, which Christians later adopted as the "guardian angel."  Here, relatives were gathered to offer cake and wine to the abiding spirit in the birthday boy.  Candles were lit and wished over to give voice to the spirit world for things that one would like to happen in this.  So our current custom of birthday parties originated as a pagan ritual to the spirit world.

This is no surprise, as all of the customs from ancient times had spiritual overtones.  More than that, all of our verbs and probably all of our nouns (of the latter I am not sure, given my knowledge) also at one time had spiritual meaning beneath them.  For instance, as anyone knows who has read the Bible, even to say the word for God was forbidden, as it was extremely dangerous to do so in most settings.  That is to say that in ancient times, people simply could not avoid notions of the spiritual, and with even the smallest amount of curiosity were invited, by word and custom, to inquire into the deeper meanings of life.  

Yet now we use such loaded words as "awesome" and "weird" with secular nonchalance - just as words for divine beings are used without thought as curses.  Why this is so I do not fully understand - some would say it is because of a natural de-evolution as we slip into the last period of the Iron Age.  But certainly it also has to do with levels of abstraction.  Just as new cities were often built on the forgotten  ruins of the old, so new ideas are built on the forgotten wisdom (and words) of old.  In so doing, we lose the roots and with it the root meaning.  We are suspended high off the ground on the rubble of older cultures, and in so doing, we lose many of the basic and most important elements of these ideas.  We see this happening in America today, as the notions of the Founding Fathers are further subsumed by other ideals which to them would be anathema.  By this example I do not wish to become political, but only to show how roots are lost.  The further we go back, the more we find that our roots are in the mysteries of the world, those mysteries of life and death and fate and heaven and spirit.  For many, these deeper notions have been left behind as if they were so much rubble.  But the rubble touches the ground, and without the ground, all falls apart.  

How different were they from us?  How was it to live in an enchanted world?  And how telling that we have to ask that, for it reminds us of the direction we have taken in our civilization.  While we have gained much - thank god for dentists! - we have lost, or become alienated from, much of our soul.  Whereas once it was in our very words, now we have to read and study and dig to a ground that was once everyone's birthright.  FK  

     


     

The other odyssey at the end of the holidays was a visit to the cabin in the UP of Michigan, which had been vaguely promised to my son with the possibility in my mind, as there always is, that the day would never come.  Ah, but it came.  It is not the 'being there' that is rough, but the preparation and the getting there that are, especially in winter when huge snows and freak blizzards make for all kinds of necessary preparations.  The point of the trip, if you are familiar with deep snow, was to go snowmobiling, for often any other kind of mobility there is nearly impossible.  There is skiing, of course, and snow shoes, if you have a workable pair, which I do not; but for a young guy, such things are slow and boring.  You go for the nerve-shattering roar of the machine and its chilling speeds, people zipping along at 80 mph where cars, if it is a road, would be careening off the sides.  I have long since concluded that snowmobilers, including my son, are nuts.  But a promise is a promise, and last Wednesday began the tiresome routine of stacking up the necessary stuff for the trip.  

The trail to the cabin is located 4 miles from a plowed road, and the trail itself is another half mile in from there.  The 4 mile stretch is maintained for snowmobiles, but that last half mile is always in doubt.  As the nearest town is 20 miles of snowmobile trails away, one has to take everything one needs, or small to great inconveniences will occur.  There must be food, of course; snowmobiles safely fastened for the 330 mile ride up; skiis, for fun (and just in case - skiis don't run out of gas or shoot a spark plug); all the cloths necessary; extra gas, emergency tools, money; and a good book and cards for the long nights.  All these were checked and assembled Wednesday night, but there are always the stray incidentals that can be important: flashlights, snow pants, extra wool socks, butter, all those things that can make or break such a trip.

And so, all day Wednesday and into Thursday morning something would pop into my head that I had forgotten.  One such thing occurred as I wrote a blog Wednesday afternoon - a snow shovel.  Yes! I thought, and wrote it down somewhere, but by the time I went downstairs I had forgotten, and when I went back to find where I had written it, that writing had been taken, apparently, by elves.   When I made the last addition to the blog that evening, it came back to me: snow shovel!  I mentioned my triumph to my wife later and she said, "but we have one up there."  Yes, I said, but it's a bad, broken old aluminum one and it's under the cabin - maybe buried beneath drifts (on reflection, a pretty bad place to keep a snow shovel with winter coming, but there was little time to reflect then).  My triumph of memory clear, I added it to my list of "must haves" that was kept securely at my reading table downstairs.  Thursday morning came and I reviewed the list, adding things to the bags that had been filled with food.  Of course I could not put a snow shovel in a bag, and so I stamped the need into my mind so that I would not forget.  

Thus infallibly armed, we loaded our needs into the Jeep, then backed the car up to the trailer, to spend half an hour lashing the snowmobiles down for the long trip with "new, improved" tie-downs that still, we were to find out, needed some improvement.  Once done, I declared that we were ready and began to open the door to the drivers seat, only to look around for some reason and see, just lying there besides the snowed-under basketball hoop, a snow shovel.  I had forgotten again, but the fates, or my guardian angel or just plain clear magic had set up the snow shovel where I could not forget it.  It was a small, plastic job that I could not remember seeing before, and it looked perfect for the ride in.  Finally and fully packed (I thought - there would still be things forgotten, as always) we took off, over an hour late.

Leaving an hour late meant something, for it gets dark around 4:30, and with the new estimations, I figured we would get at our final stop  around 5.  Damn - but maybe there would be enough clearing in the night sky to let in the moon.  We were going regardless.  I knew that it would be just as I had feared it would be - a late afternoon packing in the final plowed parking area, in the dark with frozen hands without gloves that would be needed for the intricacies of tying and untying, and then a dash in the cold to the cabin, where we would wait, shivering, for an hour or so for the wood stove to warm the place up.  

And so it was, exactly as I figured, at least up to the cabin trail.  Finally, with a faint moon helping, we managed to pack up the sled and lash it down, our fingers frozen, and were just about to go, when I saw with a last look inside the car the snow shovel - which I had forgotten again, and which now seemed to be singing "don't forget me!"  There, I said to Jeff as I pulled it out, the shovel has reminded me again.  Must be my guardian angel!

Four miles later we arrived at the approximate area of the trail to the cabin, but the snow was so incredibly deep, and the light so faint, that it took us several passes before we discerned the slight opening in the pine forest.  As I was pulling the sled with our stuff,  Jeff lunged off the snowmobile trail onto the cabin trail - only to be buried almost immediately in 4 feet of powder.  

We knew the snow was deep - it almost always is up there this time of  year - but we did not know that it was all  powder.  Usually, there is a several foot base and only a foot or so of powder, something a snowmobile can handle.  It cannot handle four feet of powder.  Stuck and with a half mile to go, there was only one solution - get out the shovel!

As it turned out, it took seven or eight dig-outs to finally make the half mile, taking us an hour and a half to do so.  We would never, ever have made it without the shovel.  Once at the cabin, wet and cold, we had to shovel out the steps, and then the long path to the outhouse, an almost impossible walk in 4 feet of powder, and especially grueling if you really had to go.  The next morning, we had to shovel out behind the cabin to get a rotary exit (our crafts are old and have no reverse), an area which was deeper still with the slide-off from the roof.  Five minutes after we had finished, the last of the snow slid off the roof and filled in what had taken us a half hour to clear.  We cleared it again.  

With the snow now packed on our trail, we did not need the shovel again - until we got back to the car for our return.  It had snowed five inches the day before, but not before letting down a coat of freezing rain.  It would have been grueling work to clear off the car and the trailer were it not for our trusty shovel, which, being plastic, could be used safely on the car.  

Saved, saved, saved by a shovel that refused to be forgotten.  One might think that its need was embedded in the top layer of my subconscious (however that spatial metaphor works in the real mind), surfacing again and again to remind the stupid, conscious level, and that indeed is probably true.  But I had gone up without a shovel before and had never had the need to use it before the cabin was reached.  I was also reminded of it just before we left by its actual presence at my elbow, even though I had not put it there or had noticed it until the final moment.  In my understanding, the presence of the shovel went beyond normal expectations.  Was it indeed the work of an angel, as I had joked to Jeff?  Was it the work of a super-conscious that rose beyond space and time and simply knew?  Or are both the same, the angel being the humanized vision of the super-conscious?  And if this is the case, are we then not all metaphors ourselves for a greater super-conscious that has split for its own reasons into multiple, semi-conscious units?

The shovel's not talking; all it knows is that it had to be there, and that's all it needed to know.  Just as we are, perhaps - that we only need to know - or are allowed to know - what is necessary for our part in the great plan of existence.  Why it is that this boundary is sometimes crossed is hard to say, but the shovel, regardless, would have its due. For the bit part it had to play, it would use whatever means necessary to be there.  It is of such needs that miracles are made, both great and small.  FK                             

I was to write a new essay tomorrow, but another odyssey has arisen to take up this long weekend.  

As it is, an addition to today's blog, which calls for so much elucidation, and it is this: as noted, we often seem to be pulled towards transcendental, or greater consciousness, even when those desires of our present perspective remain at least somewhat unmet.  For the wandering siddhus of India, these unmet desires include virtually everything - for their lot is to destroy all desire - but they do so by choice.  For many others, these unmet needs might include basic nutrition and shelter, and it might seem that people in such straights would be forced to concentrate on their present concerns - and I think this is largely true.  For many in this country, however, those unmet desires are mostly social (prestige) in origin or come from needs of passion.  Still, the pull is there, and millions turn from the yearnings of their current status to yearn for something greater - something they (we) really know very little about.

Although that is the question - do we know little of the greater realms, or do we have a deeper knowledge of the Big Beyond than we consciously realize?  Is this what draws us on?  Or is it God's plan, this yearning planted in us to have us realize 'It' personally?  Then again, why not both?  As the Hindus say, the Brahmin - the cosmos - is in the atman - the individual.  In any case, we are drawn on to something unknown when, by practical standards, we should not be.  Often we are not aware of this draw - it hides itself with a desire, say, to climb mountains or sail the world alone, but they become one and the same, the same drive towards a goal that seemingly has no point.  But it does, and somehow we know it.  FK      

     

"The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."  Henri Bergson   

Synchronicity - it has taken over an hour to get to this site and it is still sticking - does this mean I should not write today, or is its meaning coming from an entirely different direction?  At this point, it all depends on my interpretation.  Which is real?  Where start the boundaries of paranoia?

Thus a way back to Alan Combs's book on consciousness, which at this point in the book is offering a perspective on consciousness evolution that is intuitively clear once outlined.  We have, first, categories of awareness, starting with those comparable to a new-born's, and ending with those comparable to the "unitive" stage of a spiritual master.  Combs matches these with our readiness - our personal level of evolution- to receive such levels of awareness.  Thus a small child might have a "peak" experience (the unitive), but would be unable to comprehend its meaning such that he might reflect on the fullness of the experience later.  Somewhat further along, a Larry or Moe might have a similar flash of deep insight, but would later dismiss it, as Scrooge famously did, as indigestion, "an uncooked potato."  A deeply religious person would grasp the experience, but in the guise of his beliefs - a vision of Jesus,say, or Vishnu - and so on.  

All well and good so far, but how is it that we come to be able to comprehend such insights?  How is it that we mature so that we can expand our awareness of these moments of grace?  And how or why do some receive more of these insights  than others? 

Combs proceeds.  Just as with childhood development, we have to mature spiritually, moving eventually to the level beyond self.  These higher levels Cook-Greuter labels: the autonomous, the construct awareness, and the unitive, each of which preceded the other on a learning curve as to the source of our being.  The autonomous grows from the average adult when he realizes that his well-being is not dependent on others (thus autonomous),while still being comfortable (and I presume charitable) with those others.  In the construct awareness stage, the self becomes aware that its self-perception is based on history - that is, that the "self" is a limited construct made by its location in culture and family and so on; that is, that it is not anything truly real or permanent.  This leads to the ability to supersede the small self, without loosing the larger Self, "being", in the unitive.

And so we will our growth in a way.  And yet, we might be pulled by the divine plan, as many in the evolutionist spiritual camp believe (I will stay with personal growth alone in this blog, although this group especially highlights societal growth).  Why, for instance, should we want to continue this growth which, after all, does not satisfy more basic desires?  More interesting, why are some Larrys and Moes smitten with higher consciousness?  For instance, Combs gives us a story of a man and a wife who were on vacation in Thailand, where a local offered them some candy.  The wife declined, but the man took it, only to find himself in a hospital with a coma a few hours later.  During the coma, though, and then after, he experienced what he described as cosmic truth, and he has remained in that higher plan, with few exceptions,ever since.  

Much more on these things later as the book carries me towards the finish.  There is something more that I wish to highlight, though, and have done so several times before - that is, that higher consciousness is not a place.  It is rather a perspective, just as the perspective of a child is different from that of an adult, the artist's different from a police detective's, and so on.  They see, feel, and understand the very same world both the same and differently.  What we are talking of here in higher consciousness levels are even larger leaps of perspective, the "unitive" being of the highest order, where all things appear as one connected truth.  The person with this perspective will look the same as any other, but will not understand events or even time as the rest of us do.  Life will be much the same for this individual from one perspective, but from his, entirely different.  His understanding and reactions in the world would be as different from ours as a small child's is from a mature adult's.  

For some reason -  because of grace, which is simply undeserved insight - I have briefly experienced some of the "higher" levels of consciousness ("higher" is a debatable term, but we'll keep it for now - meaning, more comprehensive).  There is nothing imaginative or unreal about them, any more than a botanist's perspective of flowers is imaginary when compared to that of the layman's.  Higher states of consciousness can be found through various prayer and meditative practices, but as Combs has begun to show us, they can also be found by making ourselves ready for them.  The eyes will see, after all, what the mind is ready to comprehend.  FK              

I had meant to continue the blog with Alan Comb's book on consciousness, but have had little opportunity to read in the final hubbub of holidays and football games.  It's been fun - and it's time to move on.  I have to say that what little more I have read is fascinating, much of it removed from the evolution controversy.  
Borrowing from the consciousness genius (and I mean that) Ken Wilbur, Combs transports us to higher "subtle" realms under a rationalized system - much more on that later.  

For now, though, it is hard to avoid the controversial debate on global warming, with the plunge in temperatures in the eastern half of the US of late.  Of course it is only a small portion of the globe, but I knew the anti- warmers would be using it to mock the pro-warmers.  I also knew that the pro-warmers would equal their opposition by proposing that the cold was due to global warming.  On cue, both assumptions proved immediately correct.  As many know, behind the controversy are concrete material goals: many of the pro-warmers wish to use this possibility (so far, the science has not been proven in reality, as the "hockey stick" progression of temperatures model did not pan out as promised, although that may change) to alter or annihilate the industrial world.  Environmentalist wish this to restore nature to a past state, while the political left wishes to use it as an excuse to destroy capitalism and promote a stronger and more centralized - and monetarily equal - state.  To the right, many are reacting to the left by promoting an "unfettered" capitalism, where the hidden hand of the market place takes control, to largely beneficial effects.  If the climate starts to change drastically, they say, the markets will respond, just as they will to pollution, low wages and so forth.  They claim the science behind it is a hoax expressly continued to destroy capitalism.  

I will not go on to say which side I believe more, and for  reasons beyond a desire to avoid controversy.  On the one hand, there must be something behind the science, as not all scientists are ideologues.  On the other, the early, now testable models, as stated, have not proven themselves, and the left is indeed going to extremes to use warming as a political device.  But what I am more interested in here is, what spiritual beliefs (if any) are uncovered by the controversy?  Much of this is implicit, but often it is quite explicit, particularly on the right.  The world, many of them think, is too large and complex to be heavily altered by Man.  It is, instead, a realm of God, who is the ultimate judge of exactly what weather patterns we might have.  The world, they say, has and will adjust to our follies because of fail-safe mechanisms divinely created.  If a new Ice Age, or Tropical Era, come, that would be from God's will, not our own doing.  They do not think that catastrophes cannot arise, but rather that they would come from our moral pollution, not from our factories.  Leave the free will that is in the capitalistic marketplace so that we may exercise our free will in all areas - as God has planned.

On the left I see a strong divergence.  The environmentalists believe that god (small "g" intended) is to be found in nature - or more correctly put, that our soul and spirit is best reflected in nature.  Because we have separated ourselves from nature through civilization (unlike primitive humans, who they admire) we are out of harmony with it, and global warming is one of the consequences.  For them, they work from a subtle new-age idea that often parallels those on the right - that the world is a living system capable of self-adjusting.  For the right, this living system comes directly from God - for the left, from "Gaia" or the spirit of the earth.  Both insist we must behave in accordance with natural law; they differ only in where natural law resides.  For one, it comes from a supreme creator, and the other, from nature herself.  For the former, our fortunes ride on obeying the moral laws codified in religions; for the latter, in being in harmony with nature-made laws.  

Both sides also have their atheists of sorts as well.  For some on the right, anything that gets in the way of production and consumption is nonsense.  From an outside perspective, these people simply won't believe in anything else.  They may or may not base their assumptions on God - but ultimately, "It" is besides the point.  There is always, in the end, the reliance on the "invisible hand of the marketplace." For many on the left, atheism is an actual doctrine, found in various forms of neo-Marxism.  Nature to them is also besides the point - all revolves around human activity.  Marx directly and purposefully opposed his "dialectical materialism" to Hagel's spiritualism, using the same format but starting from the point of human activity, and how THAT made spirit.  Like the "hand of the marketplace," collectivist ownership and thought will make all things come out right - global warming and all the other problems being solved by the ownership of production (etc).

Ah, what a headache!  While this author is in neither extreme camp concerning global warming, I do see that the spiritual and the material affect each other.  The Pope, I think, is right in his criticism of "unfettered" capitalism.  Rush Limbaugh, et al,  are right in stating that capitalism has brought more people into prosperity than any other system.  The environmentalists are right in that we CAN affect world systems (for instance, poisoning large lakes and land masses through pollution), and the religious from both the pantheistic and monotheistic modes are right in that our spiritual makeup affects the physical planet.  A much larger thesis could be drawn from this, but blog space is limited (thank God!, many are saying).  But I put these ideas out as starts for thinking about this issue.  Where in the global warming story sit humans, nature, spirit, God, and society?  FK       

Reading a new book, "Consciousness Better Explained" by Alan Combs, we come up again with the question posed by Schuon and de Chardin - is the evolution of consciousness imaginary (Schuon) or real (de Chardin)?  In this, Combs (at this point in my reading) has now doubt - it is evolutionary.  Within a vast sweep of philosophy and psychology, he sketches the work of Piaget, whose ground-breaking  efforts on child development is well known to all who have taken an undergraduate course in psych, and maps this onto the work of Jean Gebser, who sees the same patterns unfolding within social development.  Gebser, looking into anthropological ethnography for resources on pre-historic humans, sees human societies as a whole progressing from the "archaic to the magical, mythical, mental and integral" modes of thinking for populations at large.  The archaic would represent stone-age peoples, including the few vestiges left in near - modern times in such places as New Guinea and Australia, the magical to early historic and late prehistoric populations - and many "primitive"cultures such as certain American Indian groups into the 19th century- the mythic to early literate cultures  such as the Greek, Roman, Judaic and early Christian ascendancies, the mental to the current modern stage, and the integral to that which is to come.  I have yet to reach the integral stage in my reading, but I am sure it will be good - Combs will probably have us casting off our lonely modernistic view to hold a more quantum-related idea of the wholeness and interrelated-ness of human kind and the universe at large. 

Combs will not be simplistic in his expose, and I look forward to it, but the development of his thesis is already problematic.  To site a few examples, he is right in ascribing a sort of childishness to the "magical" peoples,with whom I lived in South America.  Never able to quite pin down exactly what was childish about them, I should have resorted to Gebser for the answer.  For instance, one member of the tribe I lived with who had heard about the Christian god from missionaries asked me, in all frankness, "Does God have shoes?"; that is, is our god a reflection of us (or rather, we a reflection of him)  who would wear shoes?  From another angle, we can go back back to the 19th century in the last desperate years of the Plains Indians, when many tribes gathered for the Ghost Dance which included a belief that the magic buffalo would come forth and cast Western man from his territory, reclaiming it for the Indians.  Part of the magic of the ceremony, too, was that warriors would be immune from bullets.  Neither forms of magical thinking proved correct, appearing all the world as childish wish-fulfillment.  

Yet, we have in Harner's book on shamanism an entirely different picture of magical thinking: that it is not only real (the spirits and the miracles that they can produce in middle earth), but integrative; that is, that it relies on the belief that all beings, human and otherwise, as well as  all things, are connected.  Is this not integrative?  Harner would claim that these archaic or pre-modern "doctors of spirit" were - and are now - more integrative and thus more advanced than we of the modern, particularist way of thinking.  Frithjof Schuon might disagree on this one point - he saw pantheistic forms of thought (that is, a belief that spirit resides in things alone rather than emanating from one integral source) as degenerate, although Harner believes that the shaman DOES understand this single source - but he certainly believes that modern thought has fallen - from the heights, as he saw it, of the high middle -ages.  By contrast, this is a time that Combs sees as others do - as a dark age.

In their discrepancies, I will note the two's different views on art.  Combs takes the standard belief that Renaissance art shows a great stride in evolution by creating perspective.  In creating perspective, it not only made art look real, but gave the viewer a sense of his own individuality by locating him outside the picture. For Schuon, this was a catastrophe and the sign of the impending fall of humanity.  By locating the viewer outside of art, the new perspective made the art -work itself the most important element, not what the picture (painting, frieze, whatever) DID for the viewer.  The central idea of old art, according to him, was to provide a bridge to the Transcendent - to God - not to elevate the artist and his skills.  Thus for Schuon, integration was lost to isolation and individualism, which he foresaw as accelerating to the point of human societal collapse - both physically and morally.  Without God as the ultimate symbol (as we can understand God) of integration, what would we have left?  

And yet - the early cultures, as I understand them, were so tribal. The Jews, for instance, were furious that Paul preached an equality with gentiles - so much so that many rejected the divinity of Jesus on the face of it.  Early Christians were far more open, it is true, welcoming in just about anyone - with a strong caveat.  If you did not accept the invitation, you were either physically destroyed or considered psychically damned.  Schuon would have an answer for this - I'm sure he would say that the world was not perfect then, but better - but this leaves room for much doubt.  Certainly, Combs and de Chardin have a point - that we are, physically and emotionally, more accepting now of a unity of man.  But as many in the West, and now other areas, plummet into a lack of a belief in the sacred, are we really advancing?  

I will keep open for Comb's next chapters.  Really, this question is the question of the era - are we rising into a more integrative spirit, or plunging more into a near-sighted materialism?  Much more to come, hopefully from a new and encouraging vantage point, FK                      

Because it was the holiday, I had myself watch a movie, "The Life of Pi," expecting the usual Hollywood formula - and was surprised.  First, the story (originally a book) was brilliantly original: an Indian boy growing up at his father's zoo in Pondicherry (sp), where he learns about the viciousness of their Bengal tiger, and where he also becomes a follower of all the great religions that are represented in India, from Islam to Christianity to Hinduism.  We then have the family begin a move to Canada to start a new life after financial difficulties, where they board a Japanese vessel with all their animals aboard.  During the transits, the ship is sunk by a storm, with only the boy, now a teenager, and several animals, including the tiger, left to board the life boat.  In time, only the tiger and the boy (Pi) remain alive, and it is Pi's chore to keep from being eaten by the tiger.  He does so by learning to train him, and then they float for over 200 days.  Near death, they arrive at a strange floating island, which he discovers is carnivorous - like a Venus fly trap - during the night.  Leaving the island, the two eventually make it to Mexico, and the story comes to a close - almost.

The story unfolds with Pi telling it to a young Canadian writer who has heard that the tale will "make him believe in God." As we become enmeshed in the story, we find that Pi witnesses amazing things, and has cosmic experiences during his human isolation.  We see that he sees that the universe we live in is a "big fish eat the little fish" Darwinian reality, but that behind it is something else - he finds a connection with the stars above that also reflect the stars - the infinity - within.  We see in his story the beginnings of belief, of witness to the miraculous, and we wait for the final drop of the shoe, where God makes Its presence in an irrefutable way.

Throughout the movie, I admired the originality of the tale, and the idea that a big Hollywood film would be so overtly theistic, or at least spiritual.  I waited for that last shoe to drop, drawn in - only to find that I had been duped.  Let me explain.

After his rescue on the Mexican shore, Pi tells the writer (and us) that, once he had recovered enough, two Japanese executives from the shipping company came to him for his account of what happened.  Specifically, they wanted to know how the boat sunk - which Pi could not tell them.  Instead, he speaks of his adventures with the tiger and the floating island.  The execs were not satisfied - could you tell us something more "real" for our bosses, they plead?  He then does - a very different story.  In this, his mother, the cruel ship's cook, a Buddhist passenger and Pi were the ones to make it to the lifeboat.  The Buddhist has a wound which becomes gangrenous, and the cook amputates - resulting in the death of the Buddhist. As Pi's mother protests his cruelty (there is more, but I could not understand everything Pi said, with his Indian accent), the cook kills the mother for her exhortations, which incites Pi to kill the cook.  We find, then, that the animals were really people, and Pi, through his revenge of his mother, had become the tiger.  Thus, instead of a strange journey of awe, we have a tawdry tale of humans joining the ranks of the animals, locked in the cold reality of the Darwinian struggle for survival.  

He tells this other story with tears in his eyes, so you know it is the true one - and then he asks the writer, "which story would YOU prefer to believe?"  Of course, the writer, with paternalistic indulgence, chooses the former, that of the Tiger and the floating island.  

And so we are left with this: the writer does NOT come to believe in God, but only to understand that religion and spirituality must be indulged, for Man needs such a crutch to make life livable.  He does not come to a belief in God, but rather to believe in believing in God.  And so, unfortunately, we are again left with a Hollywood ending - where secular humanism, through its great compassion for humanity, comes to indulge the ignorant believers of spiritual reality.  Why not leave the suffering masses with this crutch?  The worldly, intelligent writer knows better, as does the now worldly, intelligent Pi, but, please, let us live out our fantasies for comfort!

It pained me considerably to see this excellent movie ended this way, and I asked others who had seen it if they came away with a different conclusion.  Most said they had reached no conclusion at all - that, in fact, they had let the ending pass to allow themselves to enjoy the story.  And  so I must conclude that my understanding of the movie is correct - though I, like the ignorant believer, don't want to.  

This brings me to the very reason this website exists (besides selling my books, a passing fantasy so far, alas).  Like the great, late theologian Frithjoff Schuon, I try not to waste too much time convincing others that the spiritual realm exists.  I have and do experience it regularly, and, just as the chair I am sitting on now, I cannot question its reality.  Just as I will not spend hours convincing others that my chair exists, so I will not do with spiritual reality.  Instead, I point to discovers I and, more likely, others have made about this reality.  But I must confront non-belief now and then as it is so pervasive - pervasive enough to have a Hollywood movie ruin its own greatness with this blind ignorance.  Yes, religion and spirituality might help us in times of trouble, but as has so often been pointed out, religious belief ALWAYS has a dark or hard side.  In Christianity, it is suffering for your sins committed on earth, even to the point of damnation; in Hinduism, one must relive one's selfishness in another body, and another, until it is purged.  In others, where the soul is less prominent, transgression of the rules means more suffering on earth in some way.  Religion, then, and spirituality in general, is no easy way out.

More so, as the movie shows at times, we must look at the wonder and infinite mystery of even ordinary reality.  Using an empiricist's model for determining the real, is there ANY plausible materialistic explanation for existence?  For consciousness?   And what of the innumerable exceptions to ordinary reality in even our little lives - of miracle cures, of impossible synchronicity, of verifiable out of body experiences, of spirit possession that allow some people to, say, speak fluently in Etruscan, or to know where that old family relic was buried by Uncle Mort?  Of ESP such as telepathy and telekinesis?  Of unexplainable (in the materialistic view) cures by shamans?

It has always appeared to me that secularists are either simply blinded by ordinary reality, such that they cannot admit to anything else, and/or that they are too afraid of the unknown to admit to something infinitely larger than their own understanding.  

And so the website will continue.  But if anyone has seen the movie and finds my summary conclusion to be false, let me know.  I would be delighted to find that I am wrong.  FK