[MD] philosophers stone

Tue Aug 19 12:45:24 PDT 2008

"... the resolution to forego until the end of time (which never ends) immersion in the untroubled pool of eternity, represents a realization that the distinction between eternity and time is only apparent - made, perforce, by the rational mind, but dissolved in the perfect knowledge of the mind that has transcended the pairs of opposites.  What is understood is that time and eternity are two aspects of the sam experience - whole, two planes of the same nondual ineffable; i.e. the jewel of eternity is in the lotus of birth and death...
     The first wonder to be noted here is the androgynous character of the Bodhisattva:  masculine Avalokitesvara, feminine Kwan Yin.  
     Male-female gods are not uncommon in the world of myth.  They emerge always with a certain mystery; for they conduct the mind beyond objective experience into a symbolic realm where duality is left behind.  Awonawilona, chief god of the pueblo of Zuni, the maker and container of all, is sometimes spoken of as he, but is actually he-she.  The Great Original of the Chinese chronicles, the holy woman T'ai Yuan, combinded in her person the masculine Yang and the feminine Yin.  The kabbalistic teachings of the medieval Jews, as well as the Gnostic Christain writings of the second centruy, represent the Word Made Flesh as androgynous-which was indeed the state of Adam as he was created, febore the female aspect, Eve, was removed into another form.  And among the Greeks, not only Hermaphrodite (the child of Hermes and Aphrodite), but Eros too, the divinity of love (the first of the gods, according to Plato), were in sex both female and male...
     The understanding of the final - and critical - implications of the world-redemptive words and symbols of the tradition of Christendom has been so disarranged, during the tumultuous centuries that have elapsed since St. Augustine's declaration of the holy war of the Civitas Dei against the Civitas Diaboli, that the modern thinker wishing to know the meaning of a world religion (i.e., of a doctrineof universal love) must turn his mind to the other great (and much older universal communion:  that of the Buddha, where the primary word still is peace - peace to all beings.
      I do not mention Islam, because there, too, the doctrine is preached in terms of the holy war and thus obscured.  It is certainly true that there, as well as here, many have known that the proper field of battle is not geographical but psychological... nevertheless, the popular and orthodox expression of both the Mohammedan and the Christian doctrines has been so ferocious that it requires a very sophisticated reading to discern in either mission the operation of love."

     (Campbell; "The Hero with a Thousand Faces")

SA:  Once one is beyond this duality stuff, then what I find is woods.  Now surely values still pigeon-hole our understands and what we find of good spirit.  So I can see, growing up and living in woodsy places, how cities become something of a scare. As follows:

     "The sight of your cities pains the eyes of the red man.  But perhaps it is because the red man is a savage and does not understand.  
      There is no quiet place in the white man's cities, no place hear the leaves of spring or the rustle of insects' wings.  Perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand, but the clatter only seems to insult the ears.
      The Indian prefers the soft sound of the wind darting over the face of the pond, the smell of the wind itself cleansed by a midday rain, or scented with pinon pine.  The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath - the animals, the trees, the man.
     Like a man who has been dying for many days, a man in your city is numb to the stench." 

     (Native American Wisdom; Chief Seattle, Suqwamish and Duwamish))

SA:  Yet, blue jays and trees, and even the sky can be experienced in cities, though I still can't stay in them too long, I still find them deadening, but that's my pigeon-holing.  So the jumping mouse looks for the experience to sustain itself.  This is a walk through a cave were something happens for the better on the other side of the cave, but you must walk this.  It is the fire burning with smoke rising into the sky... disappearing.

     "Sometimes we boys would sit motionless and watch the swallows, the tiny ants, or perhaps some small animal at its work and ponder its industry and ingenuity; or we lay on our backs and looked long at the sky, and when the stars came out made shapes from the various groups.
      Everything was possessed of personality, only differing from us in form.  Knowledge was inherent in all things.  The world was a library and its books were the stones , leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth.  We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty."

     (Native American Wisdom; Chief Luther Standing Bear, Teton Sioux)

SA:  Now experiencing and detailing life in a quality way... duality, uh?  Left in the dust long ago.

     "She is the womb and the tomb:  the sow that eats her farrow.  Thus she unites the "good" and the "bad," exhibiting the two modes of the remembered mother, not as personal only, but as universal.  The devotee is expected to contemplate the two with equal equanimity.  Through this exercise his spirit is purged of its infantile, inappropriate sentimentalities and resentments, and his mind opened to the inscrutable presence which exists, not primarily as "good" and "bad" with respect to his childlike human convenience, his weal and woe, but as the law and image of the nature of being."

     (Campbell; "The Hero with a Thousand Faces")

SA:  As many have said here, the SOM "primarily as 'good' and 'bad'" is the child or infantile intellect (Campbell mentions this a handful of times in this quoted book above too), and what many look for here is what that beyond dualistic world is.  It is lived.  It is the "image of the nature of being".  As Lennon said, "Let it be."  It is an act.  It is words coming spontaneous as one lives, as the wind blows, without getting bogged down and trapped in ones own mind.  It funny, but not surprising that I'm thinking of the "listening by the fire" story that I posted recently.  As Chief Seattle felt his ears hurting by all the noise, how many people can listen and really do anything about their lives?  All the wisdom in the world and through the ages is here and now, not just in living, but in books.  Books are everywhere like no other time in history, but it's all these words, everywhere, saying something very good, can they be acted upon?  Does a
 geography exist where ones code of art can find expression?  Can ones routine be spontaneous, ever more so?  Questions for this culture at large.  For this world at large.  

woods,
SA

--- On Tue, 8/19/08, Ron Kulp <RKulp at ebwalshinc.com> wrote:

> From: Ron Kulp <RKulp at ebwalshinc.com>
> Subject: Re: [MD] philosophers stone
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Date: Tuesday, August 19, 2008, 6:31 AM
> -----Original Message-----
> From: moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org
> [mailto:moq_discuss-bounces at lists.moqtalk.org] On Behalf Of
> Arlo
> Bensinger
> Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 1:14 PM
> To: moq_discuss at moqtalk.org
> Subject: Re: [MD] philosophers stone
> 
> [Ron]
> [The philosopher's stone is a] metaphor for spiritual
> transformation 
> in the Hermetic tradition.
> 
> [Arlo]
> Manly P. Hall wrote a fascinating and comprehensive
> overview of 
> Hermetic (esoteric) thinking throughout the ages. Titled
> "The Secret 
> Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic,
> Hermetic, 
> Qabbalistic & Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy"
> (the full text of 
> which can be found at
> http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/), it opens 
> with a very MOQish (in my opinion) premise, "Man's
> status in the 
> natural world is determined, therefore, by the quality of
> his 
> thinking." (Introduction)
> 
> Hall's sentiment continues, with my MOQish pointers
> added, "He whose 
> mind is enslaved to his bestial instincts (Biological
> Quality) is 
> philosophically not superior to the brute-, he whose
> rational 
> faculties ponder human affairs (Social Quality) is a man;
> and he 
> whose intellect is elevated to the consideration of divine
> realities 
> (Intellectual Quality) is already a demigod, for his being
> partakes 
> of the luminosity (Dynamic Quality) with which his reason
> has brought 
> him into proximity." (Introduction)
> 
> Consider, too, his last word there "proximity".
> There is a 
> foundational theme in Hall's narrative that
> mirror's Pirsig's "All 
> this is just an analogy" sentiment. The Tao, the
> Godhead, can only 
> ever be "approached", orbited, seen out of the
> corner of one's eyes, 
> expressed only "proximally" via art, music,
> activity, metaphor. It 
> can never be "reached" or "held" or
> even captured "literally". Great 
> esoteric philosophies always "point" (to the
> moon), but they can 
> never articulate a path (let alone the One True Path).
> 
> For Hall, all religion/scripture/theology/theosophy is
> always both 
> exoteric and esoteric. The exoteric, the "literal
> stories", are what 
> (to Hall) "small minds" latch onto, as they are
> incapable of grasping 
> the deeper, profound, esoteric meanings. The role of the 
> priest(ess)/shaman/druid is to guide one from an exoteric
> to an 
> esoteric understanding, and THIS is (again for Hall) the
> moment of 
> Enlightenment, the moment when the human mind
> sees,suddenly, the 
> esoteric metaphor hidden beneath the Word. Hall, a
> self-described 
> "Neo-Platonist", points to the collapse of
> Esoteric Traditions as a 
> point-of-collapse in Western Culture, a malady that has led
> to the 
> debasement of man and the reign of materialism.
> 
> There are few who seek the "philosopher's
> stone". And when you 
> consider that the most powerful "religious"
> organization in America 
> draws its power not only from an un-esoteric view but an
> aggressively 
> anti-esoteric view of "Faith" (an organization
> with power to arrange 
> its own "morality session" with Presidential
> candidates), one wonders 
> what chance any philosophy has that draws from a mystic,
> undefined, 
> central "Void".
> 
> While for Hall this modern malady is one where
> "exoteric" views are 
> the dominant paradigm, I think it maps well onto
> Pirsig's criticisms 
> of the modern malady being one where "SOM" views
> are the dominant 
> paradigm. (To note, Joseph Campbell's notion that the
> modern malady 
> is one where "amythological" views are the
> dominant paradigm also, 
> for me, maps onto this well.) If for no other reason than
> it seems 
> that "literalism", "subject-object
> duality" and a decay of 
> mythological narrative all seem to go hand-in-hand.
> 
> I encourage you to read Hall's introduction, if only as
> an 
> "esotericist's" overview of philosophy's
> history 
> (http://www.sacred-texts.com/eso/sta/sta03.htm).
> 
> 
> Ron:
> Many thanks Arlo, I just caught the end of a program where
> it was
> mentioned in regard to a local legend. The legend has it
> that the stone
> was buried on 
> the banks of the Schuylkill river, I laughed, I immediately
> said to my
> wife how what they were talking about was a concept, an
> understanding
> not
> a material thing. 
> All I got was a wrinkled brow, but it rang my MoQ bells.
> Reading up on
> it
> I was quite surprised to have Thomas Aquintas name figuring
> prominently.
> One of those "connect the dots" moments for sure,
> I have suspected that
> MoQ figured into the early Christian church, but could
> never put my
> finger
> on anything substantial. This just might shed some light on
> the subject.
> Thanks for the links.
> 
> 
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