What, then, of the religious cave dwellers?  What of the "Desert Fathers"?  With these, it is often hard to say, for many simply disappear from the human scene.  There are notable exceptions, however: John the Baptist purified himself in the desert before "preparing the way;"  Paul, after his Road to Damascus crises, did the same, disappearing into the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas for two or three years before coming back as the prime mover of Christianity.  In both cases, they succeeded in their purification, without psychotic side-affects.  In the medieval ages, many went to live in the wilderness; for a time, Europeans went to the forests of Russia for the supreme isolation.  I cannot recall any who wrote of this afterwards, however; but there were many who became semi-recluses in the monasteries of Europe, and they have left good evidence of their travails - for travails they were.  These were often bombarded by evil thoughts and temptations, and some found the "Dark Night of the Soul," the withdrawal of the feelings of both humanity and God.  In modern times, I have read the accounts of the English woman seeker, Alexandra David-Neel, who lived in a cave in the Himalayas under tutelage of a nearby monk.  Still, she had months alone in the cave, with blizzards and cold and insubstantial food.  The hardships only strengthened her ardor, and she went on to write a book about her experiences.  She did have moments of terror - of visions both good and evil beyond reckoning - but this fit her adventurer's temperament.  Abishiktanada, the French priest who lived the life of a Hindu renunciate, did much the same; he had to confront his own demons of doubt, but found stronger and stronger experiences of the Absolute as he went on. 

Examples of holy isolation also abound in the literature on Native Americans.  Most know of these as the vision quest.  Among the Plains Indians, it was common for a young man to go to a remote area and cover himself completely, then to lie there for 3 or so days without food or water, until his spirit master "took pity" on him and revealed itself.  It must be recalled that this was standard practice, not isolated to a few chosen for such spiritual endeavors.  The acolytes did indeed suffer and often, if not always, did meet their guiding spirits.  No lasting psychosis have been mentioned to my knowledge.

It would be difficult to exhaust the examples we have of people who were subjected to isolation, both intentionally and accidentally, but I believe the results of such isolation - including those small times many spend in silent meditation - are fairly limited.  For one, even among those of a scientific bent, there are challenging times.  Recall Lilly's "alone with one's God, one has no alibis."  With this, there are differences in the types of isolation: for complete but temporary isolation, such as in the isolation tanks, there seems little trouble, except, I would imagine, to those with particular phobias or emotional problems.  There, we find that the mind is NOT dependent on outside stimulation, and seems in fact to have an independent existence of its own - beyond, as the author of Proof of Heaven wrote, the physical brain itself.  There we find infinite variation, both defined by our own cultural and personal experiences (the Indian finds an animal spirit protector, for one), and completely apart from it - the "communication from a civilization far  beyond our own," as Lilly put it, as well as the universally recognized "Satori," that is, the realization of the Godhead or Absolute, or that which is ALL and beyond words.  


For the longer-term isolation, the affects seem dependent on what Timothy Leary labeled "set" and "setting," the former being one's view on life, the latter being the surrounding environment.  Of the two, the former seems to have the greatest affect.  Pilgrims, whether as part of a religious tradition or not, seem to fair the best: they have set out for a challenge and to learn, and find both.  They are often frightened and shaken to their roots, but that is what they set out to do - to blot out or cover the old to let in Truth.  Monks giving lessons on this do warn the acolytes that there have been those who have gone in the wrong direction with this, at the very least.  But it is worse for those who have become accidental isolates, and who have no intention of contacting a greater power or identity.  The man in Antarctica, the Basque shepherd, the prospectors in Australia - it seems they came away from the experience with unfinished business.  It seems, to me, that they had no predilection towards either the Absolute or to investigate the other odd spaces that are available to the mind.  I think what happened to them is that their world view was crushed by forces they had no intention of ever pursuing, and no concept of what they were.  They were befuddled but could not accept an expanded view of reality.  Some perhaps never did, and so remained in silent shell-shock, while others most likely lived the experience off, coming across that weird space of eternity only on dark, terrifying nights of bad dreams.


For two - for those who don't break, there IS an expansion of  mind.  Again, the affects, whether good or ill, are probably modified by expectations.  For instance, the animal spirit of the Indians might appear as a saint or angel to a monk, but the meaning and power of the image would be the same.  And to those who expect such things, awe might be aroused, but probably not the sort of long-lasting fear that those without such concepts of an otherworld experience.  And there are always the challenges - for the Indian, perhaps tests of courage, for the monk, perhaps a test of will against evil.  For us, we suffer most from psychological and social distress - from perceived inadequacies and Freudian hang-ups to social blunders, both coming forward when the normal chatter of the mind is reduced.  That is our "devil" I believe, and our hardship to overcome in ordinary self-imposed temporary isolation.  


I have to end - that is, for now, even as other questions arise, especially one concerning the limits of the mind as opposed to the Absolute experience - but I must end with this: with long-term isolation, I cannot be certain as to how I would react.  While I might think that I have a firm enough conviction of the Absolute to avoid mental derangement, I will never really know until I am put into such a condition. As the Hindus say, "not this, not that."  That is, we cannot know it until we experience it.  And we might not experience "it", for ultimately, that depends on something that the religious call grace (what scientists might call the right mind set - of which we cannot be sure until the moment arrives).  I might, as others have, get lost in fear or in some psychological ox bow.  With short-term isolation, I am more sure - it seems that in this we have time to incorporate the experience without a total break.  It seems to me that it - meditation, silence, temporary isolation - would be worth the while for most, without exceptional danger.  It is, I believe, the only way to "it" if one has the inclination.  
 
Then there are those who are called to true enlightened, in which a total break must come eventually.  But in that case, it is absolute faith that gets them through to the Absolute, and allows them to stay there.  But of these, there are few.  FK      
  
                


     

This post has continually suggested that some type of introspection is necessary to achieve a valued sense of awareness, at the very least.  This has been taken to extremes by thousands worldwide - from the famous cases of Tibetan Buddhist monks to the Desert Fathers of the early Church to individual cases of hermitage - so we have a broad field to inspect to see just what the fruits of extreme isolation are.  And what we find does vary, but seldom does it coincide with what I saw in an old movie last Saturday.  

I forget the name, although  I doubt if any of the readers would have seen it anyway; made in 1963 England at the height of the Cold war, it concerns a top-secret project at Oxford, where it is found that one of the professors involved was paid by "Eastern European gentlemen with snow on their boots" to divulge the secrets revealed in the experiments.  This professor kills himself, which reveals his payment, and which then sends a major with the counter-espionage force to find exactly WHAT the experiments were and what might have been divulged.  He contacts another professor involved in the experiments who, on hearing that his partner is being written off as a traitor, strives to convince the major that the dead professor could not help his manipulation because of the experiments in which they were involved.  We then find out what these experiments concern - hours spent in an isolation tank!  The major is not convinced, and so the professor offers up his sanity to prove the point to the major. He descends into the tank, and within 8 hours, has become a complete vegetable.  To test the professor's hypothesis, the major then has the other men in the lab try to convince the man in the tank that what he holds most dear - the love of his wife - is a lie.

It works, but not forever, for in the end Love concurs all.

Ten years later, another movie was made, "Altered States" with William Hurt.  In this, the professor (Hurt) also spends long hours in the tank.  In a nod to the 70's, he does not simply become a vegetable - instead, he travels further and further back into his DNA until at last he is a zygote, riven through with cosmic lightening, one in the same with the first speck of matter at the beginning of the Big Bang.  He goes mad, too, although his mind has not turned to jelly.  And he, too, is saved by the love of a woman (I believe his ex-wife who never stopped loving him but couldn't handle the weirdness).   

The former was apparently the prototype for the latter, and both were intense psychological films. But how right were they?  Does isolation really produce a mind of jelly or madness? In some cases, yes.  The first time I came across this phenomena was years ago in an article on the Basque shepherds in Nevada's Great Basin.  There, shepherds will sometimes leave for the big open deserts with the sheep for 6 months, alone.  The author of the article was introduced - or pointed to - a young shepherd who had done just that a few years before.  When he came back, he had the madness - I can't recall the name the Basque's had for it, but it was common enough to have a name - and wouldn't speak.  He was lost in some sort of interior self from which he would not - or could not - return.  

There was also the man who went to Antarctica (many decades ago when this could be done) and dug a hole in the ice with a bulldozer during the summer.  He spent the next 6 or more months in that hole until the icebreaker could come back for him.  He wrote a book about it - or a book was written about him, I can't recall - in which one or the other states that the man never went back to being himself; what he had understood in his solitude had taken all the lightness from life.

There are the stories of men lost in the Nularbor Plains in south central Australia.  This is a vast extension of desert where the highest point in sight might be a short stubble of grass. There it is claimed - corroborated, too, on occasion - that trackers have found the lost prospectors or what have you weeping, clinging desperately to the clumps of grass.  One man found thus said,"I felt the earth would throw me off into the stars."  

What of the hermits in the caves?  And what, first off, of those real-life people who did extensive work in the isolation tanks?  On the latter, the best resource is John Lilly, the original scientist in this area.  Lilly is best known for his experiments with dolphins, the man who made the image of the dolphin that we have of it to this day - that is, of an intelligent and social animal with a great brain and communication skills.  But along side these experiments were the tanks, which he designed himself to minimize sensory perception - to the point where urine bottles were placed so as not to be noticed, so that one could relax every muscle possible (he claimed that this alone sent him into an unexpected bliss; the last time most of us have had this experience was when we were two).  On top of that, he and others working with him often went into the tanks after taking varying doses of LSD.  The results?  Intense experiences both with and without the drug.  With LSD, there were some freak-outs, and people were outside the tanks just in case, but usually the experiences were those of awe.  Without the drug, there was also awe, and learning - I don't believe anyone became psychotic.  


The experiments came about his way: in 1954, Lilly got a job as a young neurological scientist at Bethesda, Maryland.  There, a senior professor wished to test a hypothesis: that without external stimuli of any kind, the mind would go blank, become a void.  Lilly designed the tanks and then dug in.   After tens of hours of this work, he says that he experienced dreamlike, trance-like and mystical states but throughout all, he felt intact, centered and "there" (the senior's theory, of course, was shot to hell).  In other words, he never lost his sense of being, the "center:" his brain never became jelly.  He met a "supraself" and "supra species meta programmers", and had other experiences far beyond words.  He also experienced brain activity at an unknown "sub" level, and communication on a "network" of civilization "way beyond ours." He also did experience the "zygote" phenomena on LSD, but did not go insane, either.  


Lilly, however, was a special man, a true neural explorer.  Others might panic when meeting "supra species meta programmers".  As he himself said, in the tank, "alone with one's God, one has no alibis."  From that, one can see that perhaps there had been some hard times.  But the self was not lost, and insanity was not a natural expectation.  Isolation in this way is not what the movies have told us: that is, we might have heavy experiences, but we will not be destroyed - or at least, it is not a natural outcome, although some may have personalities or disorders that make them susceptible to psychosis under these conditions.    


What of the anchorites, the religious people who live in isolation, sometimes for years on end?  More on that later, FK                                

Finishing the Cloud of Unknowing, it struck me: this is boring.  If you are in to meditation and have been lucky enough to gain some insights from it, the book is very informative, helping to clear some questions.  Well worth it, but at times I had to say to myself, "this is boring." So is church.  My son, and my inner youth, dread it every week.  Same old, stand up - sit down, exhortation to be good and sharing, and so on.   The very definition of boring.  

So is peace.  You don't have to be agogue with holy vapors (I joke - that is often me) to say you want peace, but do you really?  Isn't it boring as hell?  Yes, it is, but we have everyone from the Pope to Kurt Vonnegut, standout atheist, claim outright or with wry prose that this is what we all want.  But we don't.  We want action - "Vegas, baby!," fast cars, good times, lively conversation.  And on the world political scheme, war. Nothing is as fascinating as war.  While my son groans at the thought of church, I can't take him away from his war and death and mayhem video games.  He would rather sit in a moldy cellar playing the same game for hours than sit in a comfortable pew with light streaming in through the stain glass while the mystery of the universe is acted out for less than one hour.  I don't even think of video games, but I understand him completely; I would rather take the same walk I always take, on a cold and rainy day no less, thinking all sorts of excitable thoughts, than plop down in church.  The end results are different, but that is not what I'm talking about here: I'm talking about what draws our attention en masse; I'm talking about war and conflict and how inevitable they are, because they are interesting. 

My (boring) primer on meditation, the 14th century "Cloud...," mentions this often.  "Your mind will try to engage you in all manner of interesting chatter...don't let it.  This draws a curtain between you and God" (my paraphrase).  And we do long for peace: it is an ideal stamped into us - Hawaii and other vacation spots count on it.  But how long can you hang out on a beach?  The surfer bums have their life and death struggle with the waves, and on off-times drink and bong-out.  Just to hang out, even on a beautiful beach, becomes boring.  Sooner or later we long for the active life again. 

But then again, we don't, complicated birds that we are.  Most of us have had our high times one way or another, where we get into the zone of peace and know that this is our home, our place, but we lose it very soon.  We are action addicts.  But action causes anxiety as well, keeps us on an edge we grow uncomfortable with.  We look again for the beach.  Now, the mystics speak of the ecstasy of ONENESS, better than any drug or sex or anything of this world, and I believe we were meant to achieve this.  But to get their is a long - and yes, boring - process.  Meditation.  Long walks in quiet.  Silent prayer.  How long until we start to think, crap, time to get moving, "The Big Bang" is on?  Not long for me.  

I see two reasons for our dilemma, one already mentioned: for most, the state of oneness takes a lot of work, and there are few benefits or ego boosts to edge us on.  It is all based on an inner longing.  The other is less intuitive: our chattering mind likes its central place in our lives.  It knows that peace is the ultimate answer to our longings, but in peace, that voice is annihilated.  It - and in parallel, what we take to be ourselves - does not want to be annihilated.  It fears it as much as physical death, for in the end, both are the same for the chattering mind.  In some people - maybe most - this anxiety-laced mind is a little Hitler, willing to kill the organism that supports it so that it might, ironically, have its way.  Hitler was willing to burn Germany to the ground rather than surrender.  His generals finally refused his orders to do so, but would we, for ourselves?  

Which brings me back to war.  It may take a massive ego to start one, but it often takes we of lesser common egos right along with it.  War is, abstractly, a glorious concept; we rally around a cause, we are part of a movement, it takes us away from ourselves without being boring.  Its fruits are devastating, but so often are our internal dialogues and social struggles.  We would rather be the publicly celebrated sports champ than the quiet fellow absorbed by the mysteries and glory of life.  The latter is the happier guy - corny as it is, but just true - but you have to feel the calling first to turn from the spotlight.  And to get to that point, you have to get away from the chatter; that is, be bored. 

There is absolutely nothing knew in what I've said.  Jesus delivered new wine in an old vase, but this is only old wine in an old bottle.  Still - it's true, and something to consider.  In the active world, don't believe it when everyone is calling out for peace - the only ones who mean it are those recently devastated by war.  This, too, will be forgotten.  Without seriously considering what peace is, and why we push it aside, we will be destined for the same old, same old.  As long as peace is experienced as boring - that is, as long as it is seen as an absence rather than as the fullness beyond measure that it is  - don't expect any real changes, no matter how new the bottle seems.  FK                               
   
           

No, it's not what you think - I do not want to get involved in the polemics of popular culture, at least not at the popular level.  There are plenty of sites for that, with all the vitriol that they bring.  No, rather, it is that the essay I posted yesterday, and a comment by Cal, has made me think: what is it?  What is it that changes popular opinion and makes it part of a new norm?  And in this, can we find something that will encourage us in more important changes?

In Dream Weaver, I began right off with that speculation - what made people of my generation shift so violently away from the views of their parents?  True, it was an uneven change, taking place more rapidly in some areas of the country than others, but it became profound and broad-reaching in a matter of a decade.  How?  

At the time, I felt it was "in the air" and I speculated in my book that it was a cosmic shift, perhaps radiating from a divine source.  The reasons for change now seem obvious: at the time, we were involved in one war after another, the materialistic culture was ruining the environment, and there seemed no worthy goal in sight for the young.  Remember Benjamin in "The Graduate" when a tipsy elder suggested he go into "plastics, my boy, that's the future!"  This was not for Benjamin, but even so, the movie ends with him sitting in the back of a bus with his stolen bride, wondering what he would do now.  He had fought the establishment and won, but where was he going now?

In the past decades, that seems to have been resolved by many advocates: diversity, fairness, an extinction of Euro-Male supremacy.  Like it or not, we are now being handed cultural changes that many would have thought impossible 40 years earlier: legal pot, a non-majority nation (in whatever category you might choose) and gay marriage.  It is as if a tide is hauling everything with it towards an unknown destination with which most of us have little or no control.  Not even the activists really know where we are going.  After gay marriage, what?  After a fully diverse nation, what?  What is pulling us alone, and to where?  This could, and should, be a book, so I will keep to a single, simple issue, gay marriage, to try to understand both the source of the tide and its direction. 

Way, way back in 1970 I recall having conversations about gay activity  with some of my friends, due to a slight stirring of the infant gay lobby and the presence in our high school of an openly gay kid.  For me, it seemed obvious: despite traditional exhortations, my libertarian side convinced me that what two consenting adults did in private was none of my - or the government's - business.  Let God be the judge, but as long as "they" did not interfere with other people's business, what business was it of mine?  My friends were more or less in amazement - none were violent or wanted to do anyone any harm, but to them, "it" was simply wrong, and what was wrong WAS the business of government.  They had never thought of it in any other way. 

Where my opinions came from could be easily traced - my parents were liberal, somewhat bookish East Coasters.  But now, it is I who stands outside the movement in amazement.  "Gay" and "Marriage" to me are incompatible terms, like "dog" and "cat."  With no judgement on right or wrong, to me it is a case of cultural definition.  A word or custom that is defined by the collective over thousands of years IS the definition, for there is no external force (that we can see, anyway) to do it for us.  In this, Man is the measure of all things.  But now, my high school aged son and all of his friends and acquaintances merely shrug at old fogies like me.  Gay marriage?  Why the heck not?  It's only fair.  They equate it with civil rights, as if these were denied to anyone through standard cultural definition.  I mean, is a nudist denied his civil rights when he wishes  to be naked in a public space?  Even to this, some say "yes" as they did until very recently in San Francisco.   


In a nutshell, here is what I think is going on, both for the marriage issue and the matter of the beginnings of vast cultural change in the 60's:  it is not so much that a certain man-made agenda, one to which we seem driven, is right (or wrong) or inevitable; it is rather that the status quo has already become unacceptable by the very traditions it purports to uphold.  The Renaissance, the Reformation, the Age of Reason, the Industrial Revolution, all the changes stemming from the disaster of the plague and the corruption in the western Church, had been movements to replace a system which was deemed no longer capable of upholding its ideals.  It was not, I think, that the age of science was inevitable, but rather that a change had to occur and this aspect, quickly evolving into an enemy of the Church, was what took its place.  In hindsight, it seems logical, but I don't think that this was the only, necessary path.  The Church could have brought real reform earlier,for instance, and saved the best part of the medieval period (believe it or not, there were good parts) and the fundamentals of the culture as well.  But an antagonistic element took hold instead, trying to fill a vacuum which it did not create but it did exacerbate.   Thus, in the 60's, the feeling was that we had to "get back to our roots," get back to the farm, live a life on the land in a strong, spiritual community - that is, go back to the ideals of the medieval period.  We did not think of it that way, but the initial hippy movement was an atavistic one, one that tried to reclaim the culture's roots by  going against the prevailing trend (scientific materialism), which ran definitely in another direction.

That movement was quickly co-opted and transformed into the "progressive" politics we see today.  The point being, it was the dissatisfaction of the people towards a culture that did not deliver its ideals that supplied the energy for massive change, even if the changes did not bring the desired results.  

Back to gay marriage.  I think, in the same vein, that this is now seen as acceptable because the ideals of traditional marriage have been so badly abused; that is, that the corruption of marriage has made it susceptible to radical change.  It is not so much that gay marriage will destroy traditional marriage, but that traditional marriage is already down for the count.  Now, it is all about romantic love - a superficial aspect of traditional marriage, and I believe the wrong tact to take, but it resonates with the young, just as hedonism  resonated with the young in the 60's.  It did not make the world better all around then, and neither will gay marriage make marriage, or society, stronger.  But the crack in the facade was already there, and a replacement was ready and waiting to take advantage. 

It can happen so suddenly, this change of perception, not because the basic epistemology - that is, the basis of cultural reasoning - has vanished, but that the means for its fulfillment have not been met (note: the leaders of communistic leaders have well understood this.  That is why they attempt to wipe out all the remnants of the old ways - including millions of people who the deem "counterrevolutionary").  We have argued here that perhaps the down-drag of certain forces will inevitably co-opt the best intentions, and that may be so; but it might not be so.  All we know for certain is that the cultures of the world are in dire straights, being supplanted by an unsatisfactory world culture based on production and consumption at an alarming rate.  And we also know that startling changes can occur in times such as these, so startling that they seem unbelievable to many of the rank and file.  

And so we have our opportunity.  The world is open for good ideas - not new ones, in the sense of fundamental change, but ideas that will reestablish the highest of the old ideals.  The forces of co-option are powerful, but so is the deep desire of people to re-find meaning in their lives - the real thing, not shallow baubles.  I believe I am reiterating the conclusion we have reached here before - that the current era of turmoil must end, but that it does not have to end with either a bang or a whimper.  It can just change overnight.  We have already seen this happen many times over in our lives.  FK                

First off, I've published another essay (in the Essay section) called "Boy Scout Jamboree."  It is a little out of season, for I had started it in the winter and forgotten about it.  It has a late-winter pessimistic feel, too, but this is necessary sometimes.  No matter what, our winter, at least on this earth, will come, and it is important to realize that this is for real to live a full life.  For me, this is very  hard; in America, death is kept far, far away.  

To Rooson's new comment, Christianity's role in recognizing women is huge - it was the topic of one of those classes I was made to teach at the church.  With a little thought, it becomes obvious - look back on Martha and Mary.  They were not subordinate players, but stars of the cosmic drama.  And so it continued with the Apostles, until the powers that be of the Mediterranean cultures just couldn't take it any longer.  But in Catholicism, Mary remained queen.

To continue on Power and the Feminine: if the feminine should not have power as the masculine does, that is, does not take it and keep it aggressively, how could it ever have power at all?  I have to ask the question, but even in asking the question I betray my environment.  It's really very simple: the "Yin" power comes into being through voluntary acquiescence.  I have mentioned before how the peace chiefs of the Indians were recognized - exactly through non- aggression and benevolence.  Such is often found in families, where a supportive and caring mom comes to have more real power than the big-voiced dad.  Dad you can confront; mom you just feel ashamed for not being the good boy she thinks you should be.  

Western churches are now run on the same principal.  As patriarchal as the Catholic Church  seems to be, all its power nowadays comes from acquiescence.  It really is Mother Church, sole male leadership aside.  (this is why the pederast problems recently have had such and affect.  We have this problem in our communities, in our leadership and our schools all the time, but the Church survives by being better than us).  The power of gurus in India and most Imams in the Muslim world comes from the same source: respect and acquiescence.   This is the power of the feminine, regardless of the often masculine face.  

Going further afield, the power of the contemplative is the power of the feminine multiplied many times over.  His (or hers, of course) is a life of complete surrender - complete submission - to God.  It is from this that he gains all his "powers" which are not powers at all as we understand them, but are powers nonetheless: peace, love, union.  And oddly, these powers that are not powers have been seen to be much more powerful than traditional powers of the world.  Some saints relate that in opening up to God, they open the community up to God, whether it knows it or not - just as a household based on love offers something to the outside world (and one based on fear another thing).  To them, it is a matter of scale: willed acquiescence is greater than forced submission, just as total submission to God is greater than human to human reverence.  Thus the paradox of the power of the feminine: the more it avoids power, the more it gets.  "The meek shall inherit the earth."  None of this should be strange to us.  FK                            

A new commentator, and I'm glad to able to clarify this: Nick wishes to know if, in my comments, I meant to mean that the rise of feminism will lead to destruction if men maintain a "logical" perspective and accept the rise of feminism.  In reply, I would have to say, "no."

First, feminism has been taken on by many new-age spiritual thinkers, Fr. Bede only one among many, and it has been used by deep-ecologists as well, the scientific often crossing with the theological (for example, Fr. Tielhard de Chardin).  What is meant by this "feminisation" is not a desire for a Matriarchy (to replace an historical Patriarchy), in that it must be led by flesh and blood women, but rather by a way of knowing the world which is often paired with the feminine, such as the Ying and Yang of Chinese philosophy/ theology.  It is in this latter perspective, the Chinese, that it is best understood.  To the Taoist, everything contains, or reflects, both the Ying (female, passive, intuitive) and the Yang (male, aggressive, rational), including nature.  Hard for some to conceive, but various elements in the natural environment are said to be weighted towards the Ying (earth) or Yang (air), the interactions as such creating the overall balance of the forces within the dynamics of the material (and spiritual) world (only the absolute is beyond the interplay, being all things and spirit at once).  A preponderance of one, which often occurs in nature as well as society, creates an imbalance leading to storms (for example) or unjust or unhappy societies.  And although these imbalances are bound to occur, it the work of the wise to look to nature to see how  it retains balance around a center to do the same for society.  In simpler words, when there is a preponderance towards one polarity, we must pull it back towards an equilibrium by accentuating the other polarity.

Thus, in a society weighted towards the masculine - that is, towards rationality, power, and dominance, the antithesis, that is, the intuitive, the nurturing and the passive must be emphasized.  This is not because one is superior to the other - both poles are necessary according to our view of the Tao here - but each must have its say.  It is obvious to Bede and others that through our historical emphasis of the Yang principle, we are ruining the earth and disrupting traditions, traditions that in the past have helped people at least maintain an idea of God or the Absolute.  

Nick refers to my comment on this - that much of contemporary feminism has focused on the physical form, or genetics, of the female, while it seeks the very same ways and means of power as men, or those with power in our society.  This goes back to the blog I wrote the other day about "co-opting."  That is, the "Ying" that is materially represented by females, has been replaced by the "Yang" mentality, while still referring to physical females.  And so it might appear that the Feminine is gaining power to balance our society, but in many cases, it is only physical females  who are gaining power via the masculine route, with all that this implies. 

So, it is not that we will come to our end because males continue to be "logical" - or, really, continue to emphasize the rational at the expense of the intuitive - AND accept feminism.  Rather, further harm (and maybe social - environmental collapse) will occur if both men and women do not understand that what is important is not the physical form in positions of power, but rather the nature of that power itself.  That is, is authority more holistic?  Does it work from an intuitive view that shares ineffable knowledge with others and the environment? Or is it only interested in control, profit, and raw, physical power?  

I hope I have clarified my position, which is really the position of the many deeply wise people that I read, hopefully translated correctly through me.

That was longer than expected, so a short one on the Work Ethic, which does have something to do with the above. I am currently reading a book called "The Cloud of Unknowing" written in the 14th century by an English monk who preferred to remain anonymous.  It is done as if it is a series of lectures by an experienced monk offered to a neophyte on the values of the contemplative life.  It is interesting to learn that even in that period, monks who spent most of their time in meditation were seen as wasting their time - especially those who were so immersed that they lived by the charity of others.  He brings up the gospel of Martha and Mary to console the neophyte.  This is the one where Jesus visits the house of the two women.  It is a great honor for these believers, and Martha naturally goes about making food and washing feet or whatever else were the duties then of a host towards an honored guest.  Meanwhile, Mary simply sits, in rapture at the feet of her master.  Martha then complains, asking Jesus to tell Mary to share in the work.  Jesus replies "Martha, Martha! You are worried and distracted by many things...Mary has chosen the best part, which will not be taken away from her."  That is, that things of this earth are not only short- lived, but distract from the complete attention that must be given to the eternal if it is to be realized.  "Anonymous" then goes on to say that these two represent the two parts of the Church, the Active and the Contemplative.  Both, he says, are necessary, but as far as approaching God is concerned, contemplation is the gold standard.

Given the first part of this writing, we can say that the Active principle is the Masculine.  It is essential for survival in this world.  And that the Contemplative is the feminine - where a willed passivity and humility brings one closer to God, wisdom and the eternal.  Overemphasis of the masculine can lead to forgetting God - or deep wisdom, however you wish to label it - and with that, the principles that are necessary for a holistic, balanced and just society.  Overemphasis of the feminine in a society at large would lead, eventually, to annihilation.  

And here we also see that the masculine and feminine principles are both embodied by woman - which was part of the first point.  A man can veer towards Ying just as a woman can veer towards Yang. It is the confusion of the spirit and the physical form that allows co-option in this case to occur.  FK                                      

Monday and feeling it, but spring is coming nonetheless.  I could ponder the workings of nature endlessly, but the enjoyment comes in what it wishes to show us.  A pastoral scene is pleasant because it strikes something within us, and is made no more magnificent by knowing that the blue sky is made blue by the solar spectrum refracting off dust.  It is not necessarily made less by this, either, but sometimes we are pulled to the detail and disregard the whole.  I believe the expression is "missing the forest for the trees."

Thanks for the comments,  Cal and Rooson - such make the blog a living thing rather than merely an exhibition of my own thoughts (taken from others thoughts).  But onward with the 'forest for the trees - and a tangential comment on the comments:

I think I've written before about the inevitable draw of gravity in this world - not only the planetary kind, but its corollary in the psychic/spiritual realm.  That is, no matter the exaltation of one's experience, no matter the awe that may come one's way, bidden or unbidden, we are always drawn back to our feet of clay.  With a very few saintly exceptions, biographies of all the greats show weaknesses regardless, some of them as dismal as their accomplishments are great.  Name the man or woman - Lincoln and his depressions, FDR and Martin Luther King in their mistresses, and even - I was told, but must read myself - Gandhi and his callous treatment of his family.  It is obviously a condition of the world, no less so than the gravity of astral masses, and it brings to mind a conundrum we always faced in Anthropology: that is, WHO first formulated a cultural  system?  This is such a hard road to travel that I will approach it from an angle that was much used in the then-new field of cultural philosophy known as "post-structuralism."  


Here, I can recall one professor always going back to the term "co-option."  That is, say, when an apparently good and pro-people alternative to the current system is proposed, it is often taken up by the very people and organizations that the alternative was meant to change, which then uses the new idea to promote the old.  This is everywhere - for instance, BP, or British Petroleum, had become a great promoter of "green" technology, its obvious contradictions being exposed in the New Orleans oil spill fiasco.  Too, everywhere "junk" food labels proclaim that they are healthy, that they use sea salt or do not using hydrogenated fat, but they still remain fundamentally junk food.  

Now, there are real people behind this commercial form of co-opting, but where are the people behind greater, more subtle forms in culture?  In my own lifetime, I saw the hippy ideals of the 60's - those of peace and love and spirituality over materialism - turn rapidly into an excuse for drug and sex parties, and into rabid, very materialistic radical politics (as I mention time and again in my book Dream Weaver.  It was the dark side to the New Age.)  Bigger still, in the course of centuries, religions of peace were turned again and again into instruments of war and imperialism.  Who in each case did all these things?

The Christians and Muslims call this "who" Satan, the Hindus and Buddhists Desire, but here I will simply call it Gravity.  It cannot be pinned on one man or cabal, or even on one culture.  Rather, it is the universal call - the natural law - that is at the very heart of our existence in this world.  What draws the individual back to the sod relentlessly also brings groups of people back, regardless of the ideals they may have experienced or been given.  Jesus (or any of the other spiritually perfect) did not create wars, people did.  And they (we) would do it with ANY ideology or belief, for we are (almost) all drawn back to the sod.  It is not, then, Islam or even or any other large idea that are primarily responsible for creating an imperfect world, but rather the very nature of being in this world itself (I was going to add "even capitalism", but capitalism is really not an ideology but rather the expression of man's imperfect nature itself.  My brother calls it the "Tao" of the world, and in a way, he's right.  Like the weather, it is neither good or bad, but reactive to wants and needs, which might be good or bad.  Marxism, on the other hand, seeks to perfect humans and is thus a perfect example of an ideology.  That it is solely the work of Man is clear in its inevitably deeply flawed expressions).     

Time and again, in Peter Matthiessens's book on Zen (Nine-Headed Dragon River) we are reminded of this.  The rishis, or holy men, are almost all flawed, either by cravings for sex or alcohol or by ego, even though they go to great lengths to practice what they preach.  Thus it is for almost all of us, and of all things human-made.

Which brings me to a conclusion I had not anticipated: if all things made (or formulated) by us are necessarily flawed, then who and what do we turn to?  The answer for my Traditionalists are the "Revealed Religions" and those who (imperfectly) serve them.  And I think that is at the heart of the materialistic perspective - to disprove any form of "revelation," for that has moral certainty, and moral certainty they abhor.  This brings up problems for both the materialists and the traditionalists; for the former leave us with nothing, no ground work for society that is not the work of a specific person or committee, and so guaranteed to be flawed and to favor certain groups or very limited ideas; while the latter lead us to the question: how can we know what is truly "revealed?"  


So, I have come to jump into a shallow pool and landed in the bottomless pit.  Off the top of my head, I would say that a "revealed" religion 1) does not cater to one segment of society and 2) it is new, that is, at the time of its revelation, it is a quantum leap beyond the society it comes into.  But I am not certain about either - and I welcome any input to clarify this.  I will keep searching myself.  Perhaps it is self-evident to the enlightened - which obviously brings up other problems (who,m for instance, determines for sure who is enlightened?).  Perhaps only time can tell.  Hopefully, more on that later, FK  


                 

I had  intended to write more about Bedard's account of William Blake, and will do so below in a truncated form (more later), because everything everywhere right now is about The Bombers.  Apparently they WERE Muslim fanatics, not a hard guess, and were (and one still is) armed to the teeth.  As everyone must know, Boston has been locked down and a staggering amount of law enforcement personnel have been deployed.  From watching the coverage, it seems like America is under attack, and it might seem that this would be an appropriate time to talk about the Apocalypse.  But this is not the Apocalypse.  This is one event, not separate  from many others since 9/11.  We have known this sort of thing was possible and even probable since 9/11, and have been fortunate that several others were stopped or botched by would-be terrorist killers.  This time they got through, and it is a horror, but not a great turning point or further evidence that the horsemen of the Apocalypse have stepped up their stride.   

It reminds me of my time in Venezuela.  At one point, I had spent 6 months in the field without TV, radio, newspapers, without any news of the Outside.  Coming back to Caracas for supplies, the first thing I did besides getting a good cup of cafe con leche was to buy a newspaper.  OMG!  It was the end of the world!  Markets were crumbling, nations were rattling sabers, we were all doomed, doomed!  It took a few days before I realized that nothing really had changed; this was the way newspapers and other media were sold.  The NOW was made the only point in time that mattered, by which I mean, all else in the past was NOTHING compared to the calamity of the present.  Yes, we were on the edge - yes, we were now at the pinnacle of history, unlike any other - yes, we must worry, worry, worry and, above all, keep informed!  

That  was over 20 years ago.  The world did not end.  And while it is true that we are living in unprecedented times, we have not yet re-faced the horrors of the early and mid 20th century, of great wars and ideological murder on a scale of tens of millions.  Bad things have happened and undoubtedly will happen, but the Apocalypse - no one, not even Christ (as he said himself), knows the time, and, the horrible symbolic visions of John's Revelations aside, no one really knows how it will happen.  I do maintain that the world system as we now have it cannot continue indefinitely - and I hope that great horrors will not accompany his change.  But it is not here, not yet.  

This  does lead me back to Blake.  Living at the time of the Industrial Revolution, from the late 1700's to the early 1800's, Blake was appalled at the hideous effect it had on the working people - of the shipping of orphans to work and die in the mills, of the 100's of thousands condemned to live in misery and starvation because the Lords threw the people off their farms to raise sheep and cattle for profit, the wool and imported cotton being worked for pennies by the  very people who were dispossessed.  The inhumanity, the destruction of skilled crafts, and the sheer ugliness drove much of Blake's poetry and engravings.  He was, then, naturally allied with those who despised the new system, but he could not become an ally of their "cure" - that is, to end religion and  rationalize government and society.  To quote Bedard: "It was always his view that the gospel preached by Jesus was "a perfect law of Liberty, " that to reject state religion and enshrine reason was simply to replace one form of tyranny with another." 

We have in that light come a long way from the early days of the Industrial Revolution,although much of that inhumanity has merely  been exported.  Still, it is better than it was.  But I believe Blake was right: we have replaced one form of tyranny with another.  While material well- being has been gained, much psychic and social well-being has been lost.  We are further and further fragmented while we cry out for wholeness, for unity, both of individual being and of place - that is, for community and ecological sanity.  

In Blake's time, he witnessed the French Revolution, a reaction to the changing times, and then the aptly named Terror.  In America, we had to die by the thousands to rid ourselves of another evil of mass production - the re-institution of slavery.  Later came the Russian Revolution, Mao, Cambodia...and none of them, with all their deaths, solved the fundamental problem of lives torn from the holistic meaning that Tradition had once, if imperfectly, given to us.

The Muslim Terrorists are of the same cloth.  They kill and die for something they see slipping away.  We know it's not the way.  I think we know the way, and it as close as our skins - within us all.  It just needs prodding, some help, and hopefully not with the violent end of the world, but rather with a transformation that will mean the end of the old as we know it and the beginning of something much better - all with a simple but sublime change of vision. 
                                    

First off: a new essay to be found under the heading "Books by Frederick Keogh", subheading, "Essays."  Titled "The Well."  Listen up, Cal!

Am reading a deceptively simple biography of William Blake by Michael Bedard called "The Gates of Paradise."  I go to Blake not only for his poetry - as the father of the Romantic poets who linked imagination to the Divine - but for that link to the Divine itself, one that he had in spades.  He would, for instance, see angels in trees, or Christ and the Apostles walking in a field.  At the age of 4 (or there abouts) he came running down the stairs of his London home to tell his parents that he had seen the face of God looking in his window.  And we all know that snippet of poetry that sums up his visions:

To see the World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour

And of course Blake is one of those about whom biographies are written: that is, a person much more hard-working, inspired and just all-around better than me.  I have to admit that I do spend a little time with each of these biographies of the Greats wondering - and lamenting - about why I am such a sod-footed clod.  On the other hand, thank God for the gifted, and for the gifts they have given us.

They also suffer.  Blake often sounds like a schizophrenic and so was often treated as a nut case in his day, but he clearly was not crazy.  He learned quickly that others did not have his visions and he fully understood their lack of it - identifying their (our) flatness with deadly accuracy.  His was an addition, not an alternative.  He was simply given more than the rest of us.

He also struggled for a definition more precise than his poetry for his overall world view, and at last he found it in Jacob Boehme, a German shoemaker who was blessed - and cursed - with visions as clear as Blake's, but also with a clear understanding that was lent to him through his celestial conversations.  It is to one of these understandings in particular that I am drawn.  It is not new, but put so concisely that even we clod-footed can understand.  It is this: First, that God is present in everything - and thus we have only to look withing ourselves to find God "shining in and through all things."  But "we do not live steadily in the light of this vision.  In all things there is light and darkness, joy and sorrow..."  If we do not know the former, we certainly know the latter, but the big question to be answered is, why is there the latter?  If God is perfect light and love, and God is within everything and everyone, why is there this darkness?  Simply, as Bedard states it through Boehme, "Were not this so, nothing would exist.  There would only be a vast stillness."  

And there it is in a nutshell: to exist is to have darkness mixed in with light, just as to have light there must be shadow - there MUST be.  And it is in this darkness, this shadow, that the opposite of light MUST exist.  To human understanding, this means that there MUST be evil, death, disease and so on simply because without these, existence could not be.  And why existence?  I can only answer here for myself: because creation is the nature of God.  I cannot go beyond that.  But we can see that in the contrasts necessary for existence there comes the possibility of choice, of fluctuations between good and evil, and of every kind of sorrow and of every kind of joy but the one transcendent.  Let me allow Bedard to finish it:

"The kingdom of darkness is the part of us that seeks to enclose us, that surrounds us like a shell, constrains us like a cocoon.  Boehme calls it Selfhood.  Its light is reason; its rule is law.  It denies vision and delights in power.
Constantly opposed to it is the kingdom of light - the part of us that strives to open, to expand its wings, to break through the shell that constrains it and fly free. As the world opens in us, we see the same world opening in all that lives and are one with them.  This condition of harmony and freedom, where each creature strives to bring the life that opens in it to bloom, is what Blake celebrated in his Songs of Innocence."

This still does not explain exactly what I have felt about life, but it comes close: that is, that the way we think and experience is a necessary part of existence itself.  That is, we would not be here without our stunted understanding - it is how we must be just as the flowers must bloom in season, and die in season as well.  It is our condition.  It is up to us, if we like, to peel back the shell and see more and more of the light that is really everything - but by so doing, we of course lose ourselves in the light.  This is what the mystics have all been saying.

But still I feel that something is missing.  Maybe that can only be found in the Light itself, but I'll keep trying, even if I can never keep up with the likes of Blake.  FK                            

I have long been a fan of long distance running, and did a bit of it in my youth for exercise before age and weight made it too destructive.  Still, I might be one of the few current non-runners to love watching the marathon, and the Boston Marathon has been not only the best (besides the Olympics) but also the bookmark of true spring, a time when the disheartening lapses into winter are generally over.  So, had I read the sports section better, I might have been watching - although at the 4 and one half hour mark, maybe not - when the explosions  went off.  I heard about it almost immediately, as I had the TV on for weather when I set into my daily guitar practice.  It was not as breathtaking as 9/11, but you knew when you saw it that it probably heralded the beginning of something worse in America: more security checks, less access to events, and overall less access to group events without the mechanisms, however necessary, of fear.  And in the back  of everyone's mind  is the feeling that at last we will join those other nations where the possibility of bombings is real enough to make them actual on a regular basis.  

The  bombing was coordinated, and so was not the work of some
loner demon like Timothy  McVeigh, although the date for it is suspicious, matching the dates of his bombing and that of the Branch Davidians, which McVeigh was reportedly avenging.  Still, we all probably assume that it was the work of Muslim Extremists, either foreign or home-grown, and we are probably right, giving Islam another black eye by some of its fiercest supporters.  

It may or may not be odd that I believe I understand the motivation for the Muslim terrorists.  Don't get me wrong - I do not approve of their methods, nor do I think their methods will achieve what they want - but in understanding there is often some sympathy, and I can find it here, just as I can for the screaming little kid in the seat next to me in the airplane.  Airplanes are uncomfortable and many of us sometimes want to scream, but we know it only would make it worse, and is a selfish act inconsiderate of the other passengers.  So, in a way, I see these bombers - as little kids who don't like what is happening around them, so they're going to vent.  It is just unfortunate that they vent with bombs.   

My understanding  was aided by, of all things, a class I was arm-wrestled into teaching at my local church.  When they found that I was an anthropologist, one nun who could not hear the word "no" thought that I would be just great as a teacher of middle eastern culture at the time of Jesus.  As it was, I had no more knowledge of that era than one could gleam from Cecil B. DeMill's extravagant productions, but there I was, as ignorant as the rest, condemned to pretend I knew something.   And so I read.  The reading of such things has continued to this day, but it was in the first months of research that I came across this little nugget that has proven useful to me in understanding the Mideast situation better.  

Now, in this blog I have commented many times on the inadequacy of the scientist-materialist point of view that is the residing spirit in the new World Culture.  Making it worse is its inherent aggressiveness - because it rests on material wealth it not only has to expand for new markets and resources, but it plays to the most basic of human weakness - the amassing of wealth and power through wealth.  As I see this as our modern plague - not "progress" itself but the blindness to the more essential meanings for life that has come with it - so I can relate to the terrorists.  They are, after all, fundamentalists who rightly see that their sacred way of life - inherent in their traditional culture as Christianity was in Europe's - has been diluted and is now being fundamentally undermined by World Culture.  That Christians didn't react so when this was happening in Europe - from the Renaissance onward - was because it was an internal, home-grown movement.  To the terrorists, it is a form of the most pernicious cultural imperialism - the usurpation of God from their lives.  If God is All, they think, then what are a few lives for His continued reign?  

Still, what kind of nuts are these that can't see that blowing off children's limbs will gain no sympathy either in the world or in the heavens?  This is where the nugget comes in.  At the time of Jesus, the conquering Romans had given in to the cynicism and relativism that great power and dominion creates, having lost both their republic to Caesar and their religion to ennui and multiculturalism.  As anyone who knows of Pontius Pilot, the Romans couldn't care less about the Jewish religion or their prophets or whatever, as long as they stayed in line and paid tribute.  Being sent to this area was a sort of punishment or booby-prize for those in public service at the lower end of the totem pole, for the Jews were recognized for their fanatical adherence to their silly religion.  Romans were seen as intruders, both on the promised land and on the minds of those of weaker faith (such as Herod).  God had a special covenant with the Chosen People and would aid them in their fight with the heathen enemy.  Thus they formed what the Romans called the "sicari" or dagger-carrying assassins.  These were men who would walk up to Roman soldiers and then quickly stab them with daggers.  These were for the most part suicide missions, but to die for God...

The familiarities with the Muslim terrorists is obvious - and the method did not work.  Because of these radicals, the Jews were expelled from the holy land for nearly 2,000 years.  As a footnote which may or may not be relevant, it is thought by some experts (most? I do not know) that Judas was a member, or at least sympathizer, with the Sicari; that his betrayal of Jesus for 30 pieces of silver - money he definitely did not want out of greed, and so bolstering the idea - was a plot to force Jesus, the King of the Jews, to play his hand, for surely the Son of God would not allow himself - or be allowed by the Father - to be crucified.  Judas was, by this, part of the faction that believed that the Messiah would rule on this earth.  He just needed a little prodding...

And so we have more parallels with Muslim terrorists.  With the exception that Muslims cannot be expelled from their homelands - they cover large portions of the earth - they are playing with the same fire as Judas.  They must know that their acts of terror cannot dominate the secular powers of the world.  Some, at least, probably guess that they cannot even intimidate them into changing international policy (we go back to Israel here).  Some also must believe, and perhaps correctly, that their actions might help foment revolt against secular leadership in the Muslim countries.  But I bet a lot - perhaps most - are like Judas; I bet a lot are trying to force the hand of God.  They wish,  I think, to place His servants - themselves - in dangerous positions, showing to God (Allah) that "we are willing to die for You, so - when are You going to do something for us?"  For even they must understand that only the hand of Allah can stop the tide of World Culture.  

Who knows?  In the weakening social and religious lives of the Western countries, it is possible that Islam will win out by shear default - that is, that the others will care so little about their culture and traditional religion that they will let the Muslim faithful take over with a whimper rather than a bang.  But I don't think so; I think that just as the Covenant was succeeded in world influence by Christianity, so something else will succeed one or two or all of the Great Religions.  One is Law, the other is Love, another is Surrender, another is Ego Death - all are essential sooner or later, but which will succeed?  Or what will succeed them all?  FK