A Smattering of New Age Theosophy

Anyone else have New Age parents?  I'm referring here to Baby Boomers: people old enough to have dodged the draft and/or been to Woodstock.  My parents skew young for that generation, but not too young to have been influenced by the Krishna consciousness, communal living and astrological thinking of that time.

I suppose my own thinking is to some extent a reflection of theirs.  I'm an empirical sort of person, and my embrace of logic and factual accuracy is in part a reaction to the theosophy I was exposed to as a child.  My parents never forced their beliefs on me, and my inborn character had something to do with it, but my fondness for philosophy and the scientific method was in some contexts a deliberate reaction to discussions of past lives, astral healing and the like.

What follow below are some excerpts from books in my parents' library.  I chose these books randomly, and the sections quoted were also chosen randomly.  Maybe you'll find them insightful enough to embark upon a new spiritual path.  Maybe you'll just find them amusing.  Maybe they'll remind you of your own parents, in this life or the next.

"Free awareness, or from our standpoint, 'pre-perception,' is the basis for our physically focused sense perceptions.  Pre-perception is undifferentiated; it is an ability to, or potential for, organizing awareness along certain specific lines.  Our regular perception brings the earth alive for us by structuring our basic awareness, sifting it through the differentiated senses and alternately blocking out other data that might otherwise also 'come alive' to us."

- Adventures in Consciousness by Jane Roberts

Q: Deep waters here.  Or are they?  Sometimes piling on intellectual (scientific) terms can give the illusion of meaning.  This is one of the cornerstones of Scientology.

"Free awareness" seems to imply a lack of subjectivity.  If the barrier between subject and object (i.e. one's individual self) has been removed, IS there such a thing as awareness?  If we are existing (or perceiving) in a state of oneness with the universe, can such a thing as "awareness" even occur/exist?  This mention of "undifferentiated" awareness also begs the question.  While remaining open to new information seems necessary, isn't it also necessary to filter information through an individual being?  Isn't that the essence of individuality?

Also, is perception possible without sensory input?  Without physical being?

"Power goes into our word according to the feeling and faith behind it.  When we realize that the power that moves the world is moving on our behalf and is backing up our word, our confidence and assurance grow.  You do not try and add power to power; therefore, there must be no mental striving, coercion, force, or mental wrestling."

- The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Dr. Joseph Murphy

Q: Strong Gospel of John vibe here.  "In the beginning was the word (Logos)..." and so forth.  And yet the last sentence seems very Buddhist.  I suppose it all depends on the author's definition of "power," which could just as easily be the Holy Spirit, individual spiritual power, or the ultimate nature (perhaps negation) of all existence.

"Many mediums have 'spirit controls,' guides who take over and protect them while the physical body is in a trancelike state.  Sometimes these guides are exactly as presumed, discarnate entities who lived many years ago and have now dedicated themselves to aiding in this work.  In certain instances there is a different element involved.  Several years ago I went with a group to a Spiritual church conducted by a very successful medium.  His 'guide' would apparently take possession of his body as soon as the trance state was established."

- Psychic Energy by Joseph J. Weed*

Q: I fail to understand what "discarnate" means in the context of an entity that somehow still exists.  Maybe the author explains it elsewhere in the book.  But um yeah, cool man, guides who take over and protect us while we're in a trancelike state.  Good to know!

"BB turned and faced a woman who seemed to be walking in slow motion, in one place.  She appeared middle-aged, overweight, tears running down her face... (I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Mommy didn't mean to leave you, baby doll, but she just couldn't help it, but I'm coming back, I'm coming back to help you just as soon as I can... I'm coming back somehow...)"

- Far Journeys by Robert A. Monroe

Q: I seem to remember that this book is about astral projection.  Certain people expend a lot of time and energy toward contacting loved ones who've died.  I'm never quite sure how I feel about the idea that we all have a spirit that lives beyond our physical selves.  I understand why people find it comforting, but it seems to me that the erasure of such individuality could be equally comforting, if you believed that nothing is truly gained or lost in a closed system.  Given such a closed system, even in death we're still part of the totality of things.

This of course begs the question as to whether our universe is a closed system.  Do I know the answer to that question?  Of course not.

"Every cell of the body is enveloped in soul or thought, and its initial impulse is to conform to the divine-natural law.  When this law is not observed by the will of man and cells are reduced to the slavery of lust, they combine with other cells of like condition, and, rather than submit longer to the debased condition, they destroy the organism.  But the destruction of the cell as matter does not destroy it on the mental plane; the mental entity survives, and again seeks to carry out the great law of soul evolution that was implanted in it from the beginning."

- The Twelve Powers of Man by Charles Fillmore

Q: Shades of Zoroastrianism.  This could easily be a passage from the Zend Avesta, or even Herman Hesse's most famous work.  The old duality between mind and body, flesh and spirit.  Without getting into whether or not such a duality really exists, this passage seems to hinge upon this "slavery of lust" mentioned by the author.  No idea what that means, and I'm not about to read "The Twelve Powers of Man" in hopes of finding out.

Related Entries:

"Misbehaving" by Richard Thaler (2015)
"The Dharma Bums" by Jack Kerouac (1958)
"What Money Can't Buy" by Michael Sandel (2012)
"The Anatomy of Violence" by Adrian Raine (2013)

*That's really his last name.  I swear.

NOTE: No offense intended toward anyone who adheres to any of the authors, books and ideas quoted above.  I wrote this entry with a lot of affection for my parents, who are able to overgeneralize on any number of topics.

Conversation with Bertrand Russell

The quotes below were taken from Bertrand Russell's essay "Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilization?"  This essay is part of the 1957 essay collection "Why I Am Not a Christian."

B.R.: "My own view on religion is that of Lucretius.  I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.  I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilization.  It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them.  These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others." 

Me: I guess I'll have to take your word for it, Mr. Russell.  It's been a while since I read any Lucretius.

But I think there is a lot to be said for this "disease born of fear" bit.  Much of our impulse toward religion is born of fear, though one might argue that the same impulse, with regard to more mystical traditions, can also spring from love.  To be sure, the superstitions of prior generations have caused untold misery, but I think that one has to be alert to the superstitions held by the present generation, too.  In the wrong hands any belief system, however well-intentioned, can became superstition.  Even the Science you so stridently espouse.

And I think you ought to give Religion a little more credit.  If we consider this impulse to religion a natural part of the human character - a point that I doubt even you would argue against - then many other branches of human knowledge can be traced back to it.  Religion stands at the very beginning of human civilization, and for this reason those priest-kings you despise could also lay claim to the development of writing, agriculture, and a host of other things.  Even atheism has theism as its antecedent.

B.R.: "The worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex - an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman empire was decaying.  We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women.  This is one of the greatest perversions of history that it is possible to make.  Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code."

Me: I agree wholeheartedly, and I think that the historical argument you're making here is also sound.  There is a kind of sexual sickness at the heart of traditional Christian belief, and the type of morality advocated in the Bible - if understood and taken seriously - can do nothing but diminish the stature of women.  In this our attitudes - even those of us who claim other faiths - ought to be examined.

B.R.: "The objections to religion are of two sorts - intellectual and moral.  The intellectual reason is that there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel than they are and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow."

Me: I should add that in this instance there is a difference between the "religion" you are discussing and "belief in God."  You don't make this distinction in all of your essays, but it is fairly obvious in the parts of this essay that aren't quoted here.

I'm still working out how to define "more cruel" in a historical context.  Would this be the sum of all cruelties performed during a given time?  Or over the course of a historical epoch?  And what about the role of population?  Considering that during medieval times the world's population was only a fraction of what it is now, wouldn't that mean that the sum of cruelties was smaller?  Or is it a matter of quality over quantity?  How is one to assign a greater or lesser amount of cruelty to any act?

But I think that on the whole you are pointing to the fact that the moral conscience of previous ages should belong only to previous ages, and should not be carried into future ages via scripture or established ritual traditions.  With this I would tend to agree.

B.R.: "The Christian emphasis on the individual soul has had a profound influence upon the ethics of Christian communities.  It is a doctrine fundamentally akin to that of the Stoics, arising as theirs did in communities that could no longer cherish political hopes.  The natural impulse of the vigorous person of decent character is to attempt to do good, but if he is deprived of all political power and of all opportunity to influence events, he will be deflected from his natural course and will decide that the important thing is to be good.  This is what happened to the early Christians; it led to a conception of personal holiness as something quite independent of beneficent action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action.  Social virtue came therefore to be excluded from Christian ethics... with this separation between the social and the moral person there went an increasing separation between soul and body..." [underline added]

Me: I think that the missionary activities of some present religious institutions speak against your charge that they lack social conscience.  In many poorer countries, in fact, the humanitarian work of such organizations overshadows that performed by other, non-religious, public or private institutions.

There is also the fact that some of your argument above isn't as novel as it first seems.  This is merely a reinterpretation of the "faith vs. works" argument that so preoccupied medieval theologians.  It was, moreover, one of the great arguments leveled at the Catholics by the early Protestants.

I like, however, the connection you're drawing between the social aspect of Christianity and the Christian idea of the soul.  This, I think, is something I haven't heard before, and I believe it's worth contemplating the inward, non-physical leanings of Christianity to the lack of social progress in many Christian settings.  Have Western societies experienced most of their social progress because of Christianity?  Or in spite of it?

B.R.: "It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians."

Me: Yes, it is.

B.R.: "Now, what is 'unrighteousness' in practice?  It is in practice behavior of a kind disliked by the herd.  By calling it unrighteousness, and by arranging an elaborate system of ethics around this conception, the herd justifies itself in wreaking punishment upon the objects of its own dislike, while at the same time, since the herd is righteous by definition, it enhances its own self-esteem at the very moment when it lets loose its impulse to cruelty."

Me: I can only say "Amen" to that.  When I think about my own life, and when I think about the moral judgments, handed down to me from "on high," I can only reflect upon the times when what is said above has been proven true.  We would like to think we moralize for the sake of improving our fellow man, but more often this trend toward moralization points toward a herd mentality, a desire to belong, a desire for self-aggrandizement, and a disposition toward cruelty.  It is a state of affairs no newer than the scapegoat mentioned in the Bible, and we are cautioned to remember that those who most often claim to be speaking for the community, and in the common interest, are often those who, in the long term, are doing anything but.

But anyway, I've got to go do something less philosophical now.  I thank you, Mr. Russell, for your time.  I've enjoyed your book, even though some of your arguments could have been made in greater detail.  Next time let's invite Mr. Sartre and Mr. Aurelius over.  It ought to be an interesting conversation.

Sayeth the Preacher

I am not a religious person, but I have read the Bible many times.  I think the Bible, if approached critically, offers many insights into what makes people the way they are.  It is also a book full of stupidity and superstitious nonsense, but I guess you have to take the good with the bad.

One of my favorite books of the Bible is the Book of Ecclesiastes.  This is a book that any Greek philosopher could be proud of, and I often return to it when I am feeling sad, confused, or just wondering where life is taking me.  The Book of Ecclesiastes has offered me a lot of comfort over the years, and it is to this book, along with Marcus Aurelius's "Meditations" that I most of look for wisdom.

My favorite quote from Ecclesiastes has to be:

"Of making books there is no end, and in much study there lies a weariness of flesh."

I can relate to this quote because I have been, for much of my life, a writer of stories.  No, I'm not famous, and no, I've probably never written anything you've heard of, but I have been published a few times, and I am always glad when someone reads something I wrote and gets something out of it.  That is one of the things I live for.

But of course, every story written is only a link in a great chain, and this chain has no end apart from that ultimate end: death.  So I have to remind myself to calm down sometimes, and not regard anything I write as the last thing I will ever write.  I am still learning, and hopefully I improve with each thing I write, but every story is only ever part of a sequence.

The second part of this quote, regarding study, also applies to me.  I have been a student for much of my life, and even though I am a teacher now, there are also times when I must study.  I remind myself that my capacity for study has limits, and it is better not to exceed these limits.  When I first came to Taiwan, for example, I studied Chinese HARD.  I had to learn how to not study so hard, if for no other reason than that life is about balance, and too much study is never good.  Yes, there are times when cramming is justified, but even cramming should be done in moderation.

I have read the Book of Ecclesiastes in English, Latin, and Chinese.  If you ask me, it is a fantastic piece of literature, and well worth your time.  Perhaps those looking for neat, easy answers to the questions of life will not like it, but for me it has been a good companion, of many years' acquaintance.