Today, an essay, "Arrows," under the Essays section of the website.  FK

Excellent responses from Cal and RB - I have no doubt that prayer is not for the likes of the lottery, but rather to align with God.  Often when we get what our limited selves think we want, it is more a test and challenge than a reward.  To be in tune with the will of God - it is this that we pray for in the Lord's Prayer and it forms the basis of the Tao.  What that is, our true destiny, may come as a great difficulty, but such difficulties are inevitable for everyone.  Even the rich and famous have children die and inevitably suffer themselves.  
From John Hellman's outstanding work on Simone Weil (I recommend it to anyone interested in theological thought), we get Weil's perspective that human life is meant to mirror creation itself. In her understanding, the strength of God is found in his self-imposed weakness - which is us.  True religion reflects this - that God works through restraint rather than power (religions that work through power are false and contrary to the designs of God found in creation).  We are tissue paper in the hands of God, but we are allowed to live our imperfect lives to learn what is to be found in the act of creation itself - to restrain our own power in consideration of others (we are all weaker or stronger than someone else at any point).  At bottom is the lesson of empathy, and above and about that is the lesson of Love.  Care rather than force is the nature of creation, and thus it should be for we who have been given the ability to mirror God.  The lesson is most supremely stated by the story of Christ himself, where God became manifest in man, only to deny the use of His power to show sympathy - in suffering - to those of so little power.  It is, to Weil, the story of creation, of Christ, and the mind and intent of God, all in one.

What is most interesting about Weil is her refusal to bend to canonical understanding.  Dissenting with the clergy of her day, she claimed that, as Christ is beyond time and space, so is his representation on Earth.  By this she means to say that Christ may well have appeared - and continues to appear - in different guises at different times and places.  As God, he IS above time and space, after all; and the parallels to Christ in true religions throughout the world are startling.  Thus, she would both agree and disagree with RB Rooson's comment that one can find salvation only through Christ; she would agree with this on its face - that we must follow God in his utmost humility and compassion in the likes of Christ - but disagree, too, for Christ for her is and has been given to us throughout the ages.  It is, she says, a Roman (and Hebraic) perversion of Christ which nails him to a specific point in history.

And it is because of such perversions that he (Jesus) came as he did to the Romans and Jews - not because the former were better, or the latter the chosen people (as in elevated), but because their style of thought and governance needed the help of Christ the most.  He did not come to serve the powerful, but the afflicted; and in Weil's conception, there were few more sinful groups than the Romans and Jews.  They idolized power; and, worse, were idolaters of the highest order because they idolized themselves.  It was they who needed to learn the lessons of humility and compassion the most.

Such was her position, writing from Christian Europe at the time of the second world war.  Could there be any  LESS Christian nations than those of Europe?  For her, Rome - and the affects of the Old Testament - were still despoiling the West.  Salvation was to be found,as always, in humility and empathy, and ultimately, in spirit.  Can we deny her thesis?  Can we say we see improvement now?  In her view, the power of technocracy reigns, with little thought to the lives of those under its sway.  Her solution, I think, was that we must recognize this and build on the true lessons of Christ, wherever and whatever his representations might be, as individuals, as communities, and some day, as nations.  FK                   

To finish off on science and power, I should like to add that skepticism - as in questioning without bias - is a good thing in both science and religion.  I have read it often that the Doubting Thomases are preferable to those who take to things without question, as those with unquestioned faith can often go off the path with the wrong leaders (although if one were Thomas and had known Jesus and seen the miracles, doubting becomes dubious itself).  There are many caveats, however, the primary being: there is a difference between trying to get at the truth and mocking to preserve one's position and world view.  This works for science as well as religion.  In one reads the critique of some scientists towards others with novel hypotheses, it is often subtly or even blatantly delivered with scorn.  This is a sign that power - whether group or personal - is being challenged, although a belief, say, in the Easter Bunny might warrant a tongue in cheek response.
But it should be first demonstrated fully that such an hypothesis IS completely without warrant.  Such is not the case with UFO and psi phenomena.  

A great example is that of Global Warming.  This has become unfortunately very political, and I do not want to go in that direction; but the models to the theory have been less than accurate.  This warrants respect for those who, with good evidence and faith, question the theory - which itself still merits serious consideration.  However, those who disagree with the theory are called "deniers" and are scorned by the current mainstream of Western scientists and leaders.  It is obvious what is going on: the power elite are feeling vulnerable and as such have stepped up the marginalization of the "deniers."  A similar movement was seen in the late Medieval period when the Church, feeling increasingly vulnerable, instigated the Inquisition.  While its claim was to champion Truth, in hindsight it was obviously about maintaining power.  The same is happening in scientific circles, although we have banished the rack for the pillory of public mockery.  

Much more on Power and Simone Weil later - I must admit that this writer has found himself to be a "Weilian" in spirit - but now, on to the Lottery.  A recent post on the MSNBC page has an interview with the bearded winner of a share of the mega-lottery in Jersey.  His take-home after everything was 4 million, "not worth shit these days" according to the man (I'd take it), but his claim is that the winnings are a burden and he wishes it had never happened.  He had liked his life and cannot have it back.  His wife bluntly calls it a curse.  Besides having to contend with the moochers and crooks, one can read between the lines - he is seen as a different man now.  He liked the man he was.  Lottery winners, beware!

There is the old proverb "be careful what you wish for - you just might get it."  Does this only apply to self-aggrandizement?  It would seem so - one doesn't hear complaints about a miracle recovery of a child, but only about getting fame and/or fortune.  We see the crack-up of stars and the rich all the time - but we also read about the lost lives in the poverty neighborhoods as well.  Which is worse?  I personally would rather come to terms with wealth than poverty, but is this wrong?  Or is it all about balance and moderation, the "Confucion" (as in Confucius) way?  I believe that is the answer, but there remain two question for me: one - why is it that happiness depends on moderation?  And - what of the exceptional people?  What of the saint who lives his life in poverty?  What of the genius who becomes a cultural center through his brilliance alone, without desire for fame and fotune?  More on both it another time.  FK                
   

Well, Mr. Roeker, that's part of the conspiracy: the Breakaway Group keeps the evidence - think of Roswell and the several people who said they saw alien technology and even aliens themselves there.  There are many other similar cases, and you have to admit, some things cannot be duplicated in a lab - you have to trust the source.  However, I, too, am skeptical - not about something strange happening, for something certainly is, but about the specifics.  I don't know, but I will say that, given the circumstantial evidence, one would not a fool to investigate or to believe that some other intelligence is interfacing with us.  

However - you went to the easier "odd thing" to dismiss.  Psi events have been investigated in the lab and elsewhere, and the results have been, overall, millions to one against chance.  True, verifiable info has gotten to people through telepathy, and telekinesis has been demonstrated even in the lab - although the savants cannot always produce on demand, just as a musician cannot always come up with a new tune on demand.  And yet, those in charge of science deny this.   For some reason, they don't want to believe even though it is in front of them.  It is not the scientific method so much as the scientists themselves that deny these phenomena.  

"The rejection of any source of evidence is always treason to that ultimate rationalism which urges forward science and philosophy alike." (Whitehead, 1929)

This segues nicely into the new book I am reading, "Simone Weil, Her Thoughts..." by John Hellman.  Weil, a French intellectual of the 1920's to 1940's, began as an agnostic Jewish Marxist, but her trajectory led her to become a major influence on the future Pope Paul VI and she is considered by some to be a Catholic saint.  In her day, her sex and upper-middle class status led her - and nearly all the intellectuals of her day - to speak of the plight of the working class without ever having stepped foot in a factory.  Weil, however, did, spending two years in the 1930's in a factory, and what she came away with amazed her contemporaries.  Proletariat work, she claimed, would NOT change the thinking of the worker into one for revolutionary action - rather it made slaves of them.  This  she blamed - again, heresy for her day - not on capitalism, but on technocracy, making all the political institutions of the day - communist, socialist, capitalist -more or less the same.  Science, she claimed, has become the new religion, oppressing just as religion had once done, and its chief priests were the scientist.  This creates a power hierarchy of technocrats, no less oppressive than the classical capitalist model of owner and worker.  This led her to believe in empathy, or internal humanistic change, that would be necessary to alleviate world suffering - which eventually led her to strong spiritual and religious beliefs.  More on that in other blogs, but for now, the point is that SCIENCE has become the new religion with its structure of power, and the dogma of scientism that which protects that power.  It is our new priesthood, the scientists, and our new dogma, technology, that is now keeping us from the truth that shall set us free.

It thus becomes clearer why science refuses to acknowledge certain facts of life - not because such facts of life are not amenable to the scientific method, but because they are inconvenient to the current power structure.  I do not say that a cabal is deciding this, but rather an attitude that dismisses what might upset the apple cart. It is about power and control - and at bottom, the complete ascendancy of the superficial ego.  But there could be cabals who help maintain this control - it makes sense.  And while it is not the individual scientist or technocrat who is a sociopath, the designs of the scientific collective is sociopathic, formed not to better mankind, but to further its grasp on power.  Thus the cover-up or denial of certain forms of knowledge.  And thus Weil's turn to religion and the spiritual.  FK      


               

While reading "Irreducible Mind," again on mysticism, I was reminded of two other books recently read, "AD" and "The Synchronicity Key."  In both these latter books, there is a conspiracy group at the center of the theses: for AD, the "Breakaway Group" and for The Synchronicity Key, the Federal Reserve.  The former most people know about, although not by that name; these would be the Men in Black, the small group of people - and perhaps aliens - whose job it has been to keep the world at large from acknowledging alien contact.  Historically, the group (supposedly) was formed after WWII when contact was made (Roswell and more) and the government decided for reasons of national harmony that the disclosures should not be made.  There may be other reasons as well, including hiding new technology from competing nations, but in any case, the inside group was formed to dis-inform the public - to ridicule any who said they had contact - and to deal directly with the alien threat and/or contact.  The thesis is that this group became convinced that mere elected officials could not be trusted with this information, and thus became a "Breakaway Group," accountable to no one and now international in scope.  Secrecy is kept through ridicule of exposers and death threats or actual murder.

In The Synchronicity Key, it is the Federal Reserve that becomes the boogeyman.  This group is international and has existed for centuries before the Reserve was formed under Woodrow Wilson, using the Reserve as a continuation of their dominance of human history.  Their silence has been bought through a hierarchy consisting of sociopaths, no one reaching high into the organization without having been told to do unconscionable things, things that only sociopaths could do and still live with themselves.  Thus for self-preservation, self-aggrandizement, and with no sympathy for human kind, silence has been maintained.  The two books cross paths over UFO's - where the same  control freaks might be running the show.  

Both try to cover the obvious fault of all conspiracy theories - that any organization of any size would never be able to contain the information for long.  In a way, both books' explanations are plausible - many people, including these authors, HAVE exposed the conspiracy, only to be ridiculed by mainstream commentators. Unfortunately, the logic is circular - they prove their theses through their own subjection to ridicule, but without the nuts and bolts, or indisputable facts, that are necessary.  But how could they get them? - again proving their theories through lack of proof.

I do not write this to ridicule the authors, but rather to show that they have a point.  Let's take psi phenomena - esp, clairvoyance, telekinesis and the like.  If one - anyone - looks at the evidence, it is clear that these "powers" exist.  Exactly how, or whether for good, evil, or both, is another matter, but the proof of these abilities is nearly 100%.  And yet - mainstream science and the dominant culture at large refuse to budge on the issue.  We have to ask "why?," and when we do, it is easy to subscribe to a conspiracy theory of sorts. Who is insisting that things that exist must NOT exist?  Why is this error so dominant in the mainstream world culture?  

We can look at another issue.  In "Irreducible Mind," the authors show how unconvinced mainstream science is of the authenticity of the mystical experience - this despite the undeniable fact that the mystical experience is at the basis of all the great religions.  Has humanity been that stupid for so long?  Are the Buddha and the Christ simply misunderstood (or psychotic) philosophers?  Millions have had some contact with this experience - as has this writer - and I understand the reluctance of empirical science to believe in it. In much of its essence, it IS beyond the empirical scope, although the authors of "Irreducible" believe it is testable to some extent - just as all the psi powers are (for instance those in ecstatic states are able to control breathing and body temp, and some can make permanent changes to their physical bodies).  Yet the fight against these things - from fact-based psi phenomena to deep religious beliefs to international cabals to UFO's - is so strong, so dominant, that the view towards life as we are told to understand it refuses to change because of this resistance.  

Again, why?  We do know that the Reformation period led to questioning of ecclesiastic authorities, and for good reason, but to question the base of all religions themselves?  To become so blinded in so many ways as to not allow ANYthing beyond a certain materialistic scope to pass? 

In the past, and still today for a few groups, mystical traditions and truths were kept away from the masses until, as initiates, they understood enough to know.  I understand the reason for that with mysticism - for me, it is the un-explainable that we with such experiences cannot help but try to explain - because unless one is truly "in" or near a certain point of knowledge, one can really misunderstand and misuse what is being said.  But no one, or few, questioned the validity of such knowledge centuries ago.  Why then are we now constantly being told that all this other stuff, from God to UFO's to telepathy, is nonsense?  Is someone in control, some conspiratorial cabal that wished to retain all this power for itself?  It is logical.  Or is it merely the ego that has finally dominated the conversation, to the exclusion of all knowledge and  power that is beyond its control?  I believe the latter, but in light of the suppression of knowledge that is happening today, I can understand the belief in the former.  FK                       
 

Today, an essay, "September Sail," under Essays in the web site.  FK 

Last night I finished David Wilcox's "The Synchronicity Key," its ending filled with hopeful prophecy.  This, more than anything else, is the draw of the New Age in a time of cosmological uncertainty - that nature, the cosmos, harmonic resonances and convergences, will rescue us from our anxieties.  I certainly hope so, and in many ways, the theories fit: we ARE made of stardust, after all, and there is every, or at least many, reasons to believe that we are affected by the properties of what we are made of.  Further, what is creation but a particular illustration of the powers of the creative aspect of God?  Would his/her creation tilt towards dismemberment, entropy and meaninglessness?  Some people think so, as they can see no evidence of God anywhere - I don't know how, but so it is with many of the academic elite. 

And yet, in nature - the fullness of creation around us - there often does not seem to be this fullness of God's "love" : insects eat other from the inside out; the big fish always eat the little fish, from the bottom on up; and those at the top of the food chain, including humans, are invariably subjected to death, sometimes a very painful one.  We might see that humans create their own misery with free will, as my mother always said, but nature creates it, too, regardless of our feelings towards our fellow man.  The phrase, "The good die young," did not come from lack of experience.  

But my book told me otherwise; we are at a certain level of creation that necessitates what we call suffering, for without suffering we cannot learn, and without learning, we cannot advance.  This is part of the plan of God, we are told (or more specifically, the Source), in an infinite movement meant for this source to fully realize itself.  And it does make sense; there are points in our lives when we feel elevated, moved beyond the daily grind where things seem perfect. For myself, I am often confronted by the reality behind the veil, a reality perfect and whole that somehow, inscrutably, incorporates the imperfect and contingent in its fold.  I do not know how this is done, but when experienced it makes perfect sense instantly, beyond thought.

And so I can believe that a New Age is possible - that a convergence of energy or whatever is possible that will whisk us away to a higher, more harmonic level.  According to Wilcox, this will happen very soon, and he uses all manner of models to buttress this.  I do hope so.  However, as I finished the book, I noticed that a light rain had started, rustling the last leaves of the year, falling in a darkness that made of it a soft cocoon.  It seemed more perfect than any cosmological model, than any new waves of thought or arrival of UFO helpers who would send us to a new level.  In the gentle rhythm of the rain, it was all there: perfection in a moment.  And it is all there still.  Perhaps a convergence will come that will have us know it all the time, all of us, but it is there already, greater in its wordless presence than any text.  FK                  

To continue with the New Age: is it a curse or a blessing?  Or is it - as I believe it is, a harbinger of something to come?  

While elements of New Age thought have always been with us - from the gnostics of the early Christian era to the communitarians of the medieval ages to the schisms of the Reformation to the colonization of America, it really picked up steam during the social upheaval of the 1960's, and it is easy to see why.  While social change has always been with us, it was at this point where all authority - ALL - was put to question, and for many, laid to rest.  For its persistence and dissemination, we may site advances in communication and travel, the two combining to make the present era a world-wide phenomena where all authority is questioned.  This has led many - such as fundamentalist Islamists - to become further entrenched, although by doing so, they alter the fundamental principles of their religion, unwittingly advancing the very sort of fundamental change they wish to deny.  Such tottering of old beliefs has opened the door for all manner of idiosyncrasies, which, in sum, has come to be labeled the New Age. 

Good or bad?  In a New Age way, I would have to say "both" in the short term.  Many of the new ideas, for instance, are little more than paranoid tracts of world cabals and sinister plots and alien abductions that do more to highlight our dis-ease with the current era than the un-moving truth.  But we also find good, for new doors have been opened for a re-framing of traditional ideas that have very obviously gone  stale.  

Overriding all, however, is the current lack of center for a vast number of us, something unheard of just a few centuries ago.  Recalling the Founding Fathers of America, not one of them questioned the existence of God.  Although they did question his/her nature, the idea that life and natural structure could come from nothing was more than ludicrous - it was madness.  

Not now, and that is our problem and our opportunity: our problem because many now have no certain idea about the meaning of life and death - that is, of existence itself; our opportunity, because, as stated, something more relevant  for our very different human world of the current era may arise.

But think of the negative side: humans, as Kurt Vonnegut cynically put it, have to tell themselves that they understand the reason for our (their) being.  Once we did; absorbed in our cultural traditions, we did have the fundamental layout of our inner cosmology.  Dante's Divine Comedy illustrates what it was for the West - that life was a test made inevitable through Adams and Eve's fall, that Christ showed us the way back to grace, and that, at death, we would have to undergo the eternal punishment of hell, or the purifying flames of purgatory, before we returned to he Divine Father.  Many of us from the Western tradition do not find this adequate any longer, just as many from other cultures - from American Indians to Han Chinese - no longer find the template of their lives in the old traditions.  But think what that leaves us with?  We have science, that offers us tools, but no one on whom to depend who can tell us what we most need to know: why are we born?  What is there for us after death?  How did being and thought arise, and for what purpose?  

Without answers to these, we run adrift - into "multiculturalism" and extreme relativism.  And under such a basic (lack of) belief system, even the most ardent of socially concerned groups will eventually, given several generations, run astray from standard morals and beliefs.  How did the monstrosities of many of the old theocracies arise?  How did the monstrosities of the atheistic totalitarian states  arise?  Where there is a vacuum of meaning, meaning will come in - although it might be evil, from any broader standpoint (that is, against life and free will).  We must have our answers to the ultimate questions.  We are built to have them.  With their lack, almost anything will do, for a while.

We are not, however, on the verge of re-installing Baal or a Hitler-like leader, at least not in the countries open to international media. We are,rather, adjusting to cross-cultural awareness and to new technology.  Reading the New Age literature, as well as the new voices of the traditional religions, we do not seem to be going astray from fundamental principles - and, against all assurances of the Victorian empiricists, we are not simply packing away spiritual beliefs in the belief that they were silly anachronisms from an ignorant past.  Something else is going on: we are finding another path to the same place.   In this, we have to keep in mind that social movements, just as much of our personal movements, are not run by conscious reasoning.  Rather, a deeper, more intelligent aspect of our collective being is at work.  This may be distorted and perverted temporarily by charismatic leaders, but such movements cannot last.  We are, as the anthropologist Gregory Bateson put it, whole beings, fully in sync with the natural world, although seldom seen by ourselves as such.  What is happening now is a natural movement towards a more effective mode of understanding, of what Religion has always explained - the core of our meaning withing the cosmos.  We cannot help but find it, eventually.  What that core is has been said many, many times  before in many different ways, but what we know it as is encapsulated in the the word "love."  Not Hollywood love, but Love, the gleaming essence of the universe.  With it, we might burn to ashes or not, but always, in the end, rise again towards it.  I do not believe we are in the process of becoming the Sphinx at the moment, but perhaps we are.  Regardless, I do believe a new age is coming, and in a relatively short time, on the tail coats of the New Age.   FK  

       
     

           

Yes, we are back to a New Age book - "The Synchronicity Key" by David Wilcock - and I have to admit to being partly embarrassed because I read so many of them.  This does not mean that all books written about psi, UFO's or other unusual events or possibilities are "soul candy," as I call them.  The book that I have often mentioned and will return to again, "Irreducible Mind," is about as serious and well-documented as a book can be.  But most others have so many holes in them that they cannot be taken seriously, and I do take the weird, the mystical and the psychic seriously.  

There are good things in this book, as there often are in this type of publication.  For instance, on synchronicity the author makes a wonderfully insightful note.  Now, many of us have noted surprising synchronicities in our lives - what Carl Jung called "non-causal coincidences" - and in my own life, they seem to come in clusters, with several happening within a few days or a week, only to stop for any length of time.  Jung fudges on the meaning of these clusters, only noting that they are getting us in touch, for some reason, with the collective unconscious.  Wilcock does no such thing, but rather immediately tells us what they are about: that is, reminders or bookmarks of important things that we must now decide in our lives.  For instance, a meeting with the person you will marry is often preceded by these "non-causal"coincidences, which to the author sounds the bell in the spiritual unconscious that tries to impel you to act.  To understand this fully, we must first understand that he believes, along with many others of this type of work, that after death we eventually end up in a kind of workshop where certain things we must improve in our next life are identified.  Here, key markers are set that will joggle our conscious mind to an alert state in our next life, in hopes that we don't miss out on the opportunity that has been made available by our spiritual guides in-between lives.  This scenario has been made clear by many observers of NDE's (near-death experiences), hypnosis, and mediumship, with the bulk of the information confirming (surprisingly) this scenario.  

Recently - two days ago - I did have one of those experiences; while on my way to grocery shop, I flipped on the radio and got Gerrison Keiler doing his "Lake Wobegone" monologue, and in it he mentioned a young man who was selling corn for "10 for $3.00."  This immediately struck me as odd, for I had never heard of selling corn by 10 - only by a dozen or parts of it - and I remembered it well as I walked into the grocery store, only to see, immediately, corn for sale at "10 for $3.00."  Because of the book, I have been looking for important things to do ever since (and haven't found any, but there are things on the horizon...)  In other words, the book has given me an explanation and a comfortable magical meaning to heretofore unexplained things.  

Which is why I like soul candy, and am an apologetic but irredeemable addict.  In so many ways, these books are superficial and coincidental - that is, they take the smallest threads of possibilities and weave whole cloth from them.  But they also 
offer easily accessible hope and understanding.  The old-time religions are just so much tougher.  For instance, while many religions, including some offshoots of Christianity (the gnostics), take reincarnation as a fact, they do not describe the after-world as a pleasant classroom.  Rather, it is a vortex of emotion and danger, where nearly everyone is shot back to earth to suffer the consequence of their negative actions.  Rebirth for them does not last forever, but almost so - for thousands or millions of lives.  What a nightmare!  For much of Christianity, reincarnation became verbotten shortly after it was integrated into the Roman Empire -according to the above author, at the Nicene Counsel in the 6th century.  Since then, Catholicism has created a purgatory for most of us, giving us an equivalent of  a rebirth where we can "burn off" our sins, but most of the Protestant religions give us only heaven or hell - and few there are who can pass into heaven (like a camel through the eye of a needle; yes, with perfect faith in Christ it can be done, but how many among us really have that?  According to many, like the Calvinists, very, very few).  Enter the tender New Age.

The New Age also gives us answers to such things as psi and UFO's and other weird phenomena, something left out of most religions (but not all - see Tibetan Buddhism and Hinduism.  For instance, a major Indian newspaper recently reported as fact that army officers at a nuclear facility had direct discussions with aliens regarding the use of nuclear weapons.  The people took it in stride) And so we have it: mind excitement, hope, comprehensibility - all there in the New Age.  No, it is seldom as deep or true as real religion, but I must have my desert.  And in it, I insist, are traces of important nutrients that are either not in or are overlooked by traditional religions.  FK                  

Today, an essay, "Tear Down This Wall!" in the "essays" section of the site.  FK