Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000

RAMANAM
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen.

Countrymen,

ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT

Another thought on this “where does the Kshatriya spirit go” during Kali Yuga?”  The generic and most important answer is that it goes where everything good goes, namely, into the monastery, which is the cultural equivalent of the turtle’s shell.  Sirius Community is a form of monastery.  Of course some people do not think of it as that but that is just what it is. On the bionic model we say, with the Prophets, that the sap goes down into the root for safekeeping while the whole tree down to the stump is whipped and finally destroyed by the demonic forces.  The Prophets were actually giving the operational typology for life during Kali Yuga early in it.  So, where to look?  In the root.  The sap never ceases to exist, it merely finds a place of safekeeping, or to change the metaphor, the turtle pulls its head back into its shell, and to change the metaphor yet again, that shell is the monastery, one way and another.  West Point is a monastery of the Solar Dynasty.  Alone — that I know of — it has kept the sap safe during a 50 year period of intense effort to kill the tree, culminating in a pair of treasonous individuals gleefully hewing down the tree they were elected to foster and going in every way they can for the sap, root and all.  However, root and sap they will not get.  Dharma goes into hiding but cannot be extinguished.  West Point is the cynosure.

 

Thought of what happened to the true Kshatryia spirit intrigues. Solar Dynasty as element of answer also intrigues. How about taking the Community to West Point on a day they are drilling on the Plain or there for a full-dress ceremony. Or just watch a meal formation. Or if people REALLY want to know and feel the Kshatryia spirit, attend a Taps Vigil (taps and pipes for a fallen Cadet, late at night, something “word’s cannot describe” but there are some I could get for you if you would like to show them to the community. The Kshatryia spirit is alive and well at West Point.

On sustainability: it is the formulae, not the constructions, the design of the books, not the books or their verbiage. The latter all pass. The formulae alone are eternal and therefore sustainable. Nothing else is sustainable except the formulae, which are so by nature.

On money:  I think now that money is a reification of wealth which is the ownership of real property or land. Reasoning: food is the root of everything; food is grown in 6 inches of topsoil; ownership of that topsoil (land) is therefore the only wealth and money is a convenient way of trading it. Even specie (precious metal) is merely distilled land.

Swami is going to drop a huge one on Christians (includes Jews) this Christmas.

 

The Flatland social taxonomy is significantly different from the Vedic, which claims to be universal and perpetual and is commended by common sense. Vedic taxonomy is:

Sages
Teachers/Clergy/Scholars
Governors/Soldiers/Judges
Producers (Agriculture and Business)
Laborers

All are equally important — society cannot function without all present and fulfilling their duties — but the taxonomy distinguishes degrees of causitive capacity and so orders the statement in terms of who can have the widest affect.

This taxonomy implies something dear to my heart, which is that when things are in a general screw up, the blame is not with the “kings” but with the “king”-makers, the teachers/clergy. One might suspect it is with the Sages, but this is not the case. The Sages accept general screw ups as Providential just as much as they accept general felicitations as the same. This is not to say that Sages do not periodically decide up or down on things, effectively writing or even rewriting Providence. They can do that and do.

But the primary duty of keeping things on the up and up rests on the teachers/clergy, those who teach the rulers. The principle duty of rulers is to make sure Sages are happy. Alexander exhibited this trait, as did Charlemagne. Just as the welfare of the society is measured by the happiness of its women, the welfare of the world is measured by the happiness of its Sages.

Business people who portray themselves as the ideal (Flatland does this, holding the bourgeois [middle class] as most emulation-worthy) or who try to control society (from below) are dangerous because they are stepping out of duty, trying to arrogate to themselves responsibility that does not belong to them.

And the worst scenario in Vedic taxonomy is when teachers/clergy, whose personalities are fundamentally causative, try to use that capacity to control society (from above). For example, the Harvard crowd from FDR through LBJ trying to control from the role of politicians//bureaucrats/government officers, and Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer trying to control from the role of producer. When these teacher/clergy and producer types go out of role to exercise control (executive authority and responsibility), they really cause havoc (Vietnam [Harvard], attempted replacement of all governments through electronic monopoly [Gates/Ballmer]) because they have causative ability exceeding that of all others excepting Sages.

Teachers/clergy should exercise their causative ability in teaching, bringing up the leaders and followers, both, to their capacity, and not try to use it to control those leaders and followers when they are executing their duties. Teachers/clergy should advise but never hold governmental or business authority. That authority belongs to those called to exercise it: soldiers, judges, politicians, etc., in the first place and CEO’s, etc., in the second. This is why Benedict specified that monastics (prototypical teachers) should earn their living as laborers, so as not to be in a position to act in realms where their activity would actually cause harm. Society has to be both benefitted and protected from the causative capacity of teachers/clergy.

It is an interesting phenomenon and not widely perceived, much less understood.

It is Sages, incidentally, and one in particular, who have determined against the old Harvard crowd (which was/is Fabian) and Messrs. Gates and Ballmer and whose will in this regard is undergoing execution by competent authorities in the academic, governmental and business (producer) realms.

Anyhow, Flatland’s elevation of the middle class to its Parliamentarian pedestal is at variance with the Vedic social taxonomy, which is more in tune with experience.

Still reading.

 

Question:

Tillich is describing the purpose of theology, and says “European theological orthodoxy,” comparable to American fundamentalism, which combines both “wrongs” of confusing the eternal truth with a current interpretation. What is the background of this “European theological orthodoxy?” I was not aware of fundamentalist-type movements before the surges in America. Also, could you quickly explain orthodoxy & neo-orthodoxy.

Answer:

By European orthodoxy Tillich means primarily the Lutheran Church in Germany and the other Germanic countries (mainly Scandinavia) which was sponsored and supported by the governments of those countries. And because of this governmental support, these churches came to espouse patterns of thinking which tended to suggest that the way things are is the way God intends them and especially so because the church has the civil authority to enforce conformity — and taxes — of thought and action. When religious institutions are directly supported (financially) by governments, then they tend to tell people that the governments are God in worldly dress and the status quo Divine throughout. This produces opportunity for mischief and is a major reason for the disestablishment clause in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It is called a “separation” clause (of church and state) but it is not really that. It’s a disestablishment clause. Big difference.  Religion is encouraged by our Founding Fathers but not as established by law — with taxation — as in England then and still.

Question:

I thought the end of the foregoing paragraph a very interesting truth.

Tilich denotes Luther’s “rediscovery of the Pauline message.” What does this mean, in reference to Paul? I would guess this was an important part of the reformation RE the Roman church? Also, what period was Barth, and what was his “rediscovery of the Christian Paradox?”

Answer:

Luther’s exegesis of Paul’s Letter to the Romans precipitated the Lutheran arm of the Reformation. Calvin was the other arm, in Switzerland, from Southern France (both Templar areas), quite different from Luther but mutually supporting. In Tillich’s parlance and generally, the word Protestant means the Luthern aspect of the Reformation and the word Reformed means the Calvinist aspect of the Reformation.

The Pauline message that Luther rediscovered is the passage from Habakkuk 2:4 that the righteous shall live by faith. The technical term for the issue here is justification (as compared with another technical term, sanctification). How is one justified before God, on what account can one stand before God without being annihilated by His Holiness and demand for Purity? This is a theoretical question but even more so an existential one — in the feelings, the gut, the central axis of the personality. God is perfect and Holy, I know I am not. So how can I even hope to ever get ahead and near Him? Luther experienced this question with the most excruciating emotional pain, in the very depths of his being, as the saying goes. it was an existential question for him of the greatest urgency.

The Roman Church said that one is justified by paying amounts of money or saying amounts of specific prayers and doing pilgrimages, etc. In other words, by external acts that the Roman Church sanctioned and controlled. Thus, in fact the Roman Church was saying that you could be justified only if the clergy let you — and who was to keep them from being arbitrary or bilking people for money and goods. Essentially, shaking down (extorting) the population in the name of justification before God. No one. This was going on in truly horrible ways.

Luther got from Paul’s Letter to the Romans that one is justified not by externals but by something internal, not by something someone else has to give or withhold but by something one has inside already, part of one’s inalienable (cannot be taken away) nature. That something is called faith, which is not subscribing to a set of beliefs but is, rather, participation in Being Itslef, in the process we call life, but without attachment for the fruits of our participation. In this realm of participation in Being, in one’s own nature, one is justified or allowed to stand before God not because one is made holy or pure as He is but because one trusts Him as a child does a parent through participation in His life, which is Being. In other words, Pauline justification is an emotional movement towards the experience of non-duality by means of increasing experiences of non-duality. The engine of it is Grace, freely given. This is the key Pauline ingredient. One cannot be justified before God by anything one can do. Only freely-given or, technically speaking, prevenient grace can justify one before God.  And this occurs through the internal activity of faith or participation, which activity ITSELF is a product of prevenient Grace.

Luther discovered in Romans the key to relaxing and not getting brow-beat by the clergy. The key is understanding that the remedy is internal, not external, that we have it all along, within, as prevenient Grace impelling faith, which may be called envelopment in Grace for participation in the Divine Life.

This understanding of the truth regarding the phenomenon of justification is what broke the back of the Roman Church. This is one example of what Tillich calls “the Christian Paradox,” by which he means the principle in Christian Theology and history which continuously causes the unexpected to emerge.  Paradox means that which is unexpected, a surprise.  It does not mean that which is self-contradictory or any kind of contradiction.  It means a surprise.

Someone is going to come along and discover something, usually small, that wipes out the hegemony of full-court-press of any system that tries such a thing. There is always the unexpected. The unexpected is called, technically, a paradox. You will hear people using paradox to mean something which does not make sense, is internally self-contradictory or inconsistent. That is not what the word means. It means something unexpected, which is very different from nonsensical.

Karl Barth was a Swiss Theologian of this Century who was a contemporary of Tillich’s and his principle foil. Tillich liked Barth, while disagreeing with him on many matters, and Barth did not care for Tillich.

Barth initiated the Neo-Orthodox movement in Europe that was carried by Niebuhr and Union here in the USA. Tillich is often called a Neo-Orthodox Theologian here because of his association with Union when it was Neo-Orthodox. But he was nothing of the sort. Tillich is a Franciscan Theologian, in the tradition of Bonaventure and going back to Augustine.

Barth appreciated the ability of the transcendent power of God — the unexpected — to enter into history and do something either novel or unprecedented, as suits its own omnipotent Will. This was an important point Barth made. He vigorously and successfully maintained the principle of the Christian Paradox, the breaking into the world of seeming stability of the transcendent creative energy, the Divine Principle, sometimes as principle and sometimes, as with Jesus (also Rama, Krishna, Sages), as personality. The point is the continuous possibility of the unexpected, by transcendent intervention. This is an important principle to maintain. People want to forget it or ignore it in order to further petty agendas.

Question:

Saying “–strengthened all trends toward a theology of repristination in Europe–.” “Repristination” is not in my dictionary. Any thoughts?

Answer:

Barth and others after WWI and especially after WWII wanted to get back to basics (fundamentalism in a guise). The question then was, what are the basics to get back to? (They did not take Tillich’s approach which was to go forward to basics.) They settled on certain dogmas and procedures and attitudes all of them tending to call the world as we know it unregenerately corrupt and the transcendence of God the key focus of religion. They despised mysticism — e.g., Tillich — as being fuzzy headed and denying the transcendence of God. (Niebuhr once said in exasperation to Tillich, who was admiring a sunset, “I always knew you were a goddam pantheist!” And they became what we now think of as fundamentalists, people who appear to talk religion but are usually just interested in business ventures or networking for business ventures. For these people, the language of religion becomes divorced from the phenomena of life and they end up in truly ludicrous situations, such as cutting business deals and gambling while claiming that the Holy Spirit is leading them to do these activities.

 Question:

Some messages I found in the text:

Types: kerygmatic, apologetic, fundamentalist, orthodoxy, neo-orthodoxy, roman, humanistic, naturalistic. Fulfilling the theological function of the Church (which is not preaching or teaching) requires kerygmatic theology (seeking the eternal truth in all) to meld with apologetic theology (answering theology), thus overcoming kerygmatics arrogant exclusivity and relating its language to a contemporary situation. However, apologetics must be sure it continuously heeds the kerygma — the eternal truths. Tillich’s system is based on “correlation” in which he correlates the questions of the contemporary situation with the answers of the eternal truths and divine manifestations.

Answer:

Excellent summary. And you need me? Yes, that word correlation is key to understanding Tillich’s methodology or way of doing theology. Today, the liberals have become all apologetics, disregarding the eternal truth, and the fundamentalists have become all kerygmatics (evangelicals as they call themselves), disregarding the facts of life around them. The liberals have become fanatical voluptuaries and the fundamentalists have become voluptuarial fanatics.

What keeps one from falling off on either of these sides is the constant attention to phenomena, to what is going on in the internal and the external realms. The issue of justification that Luther faced and resolved is directly on this all-important epistemological methodology of attending first, last and always to phenomena. Being being is the salvation of man. Participation is the key to happiness and welfare. More and more that participation is towards the internal realm, which correlates with the external realm but is more manageable.

This is excellent work you are doing. I am totally impressed.

You will be a superb officer and theologian.

The reason you will be a superb officer is that you quickly apprehend the gist or heart of a situation.

Good pick up on the word apologetic. It is a technical word, often misunderstood. You are right, it does not mean a humble sorrowful attitude, feeling sorry for what we believe, such as many take it to mean. It means something very specific, very strong and very good. Tillich uses these old words and this is the value of knowing his work, because you actually learn the language of the art and the art of the language.

Apologetics is the approach of entering into the discussion with non-believers WHERE THEY ARE rather than as in Dogmatics (Barth) making non-believers discuss only in your terms. In other words, in apologetics — the Greek root does not mean feeling sorry it means being strong and fearless in the hurrly-burrly of life — we talk with people  where they are and help them forward from there rather than laying something on them and expecting them to accept or reject it.

Tillich and I are both apologetic theologians in this sense. All the great ones are, starting with St. Paul.

Theologians tend to become dogmatic — laying things on people — and leave off the apologetic approach. This is wrong at any time. Christianity got strong in Rome because the early fathers were mostly apologetic theologians.  They entered into discussions from where people were, no matter where they were, and worked them forward from there. This is actually the TRULY humble approach, where humble does not mean weak but just the opposite, so strong as to fear going nowhere and able to stand on one’s feet and handle affairs no matter what. That is true humility, born of faith in the Everlasting Arms of the Father supporting one.

It is said of Barth that he answered students’ questions in Barth’s terms and of Tillich that he answered students’ questions in the students’ terms.

 

Military is very sensitive to passing of info to Chinese. Public statement mentioned prior warning to Clinton made by Pentagon. Treason is a word not far from the private operational context nomenclature. Politics is not mentioned in military circles, of course.

I have never been with a group of people whose company I love more than the West Point graduates. Where else in this world can you set down thousands of dollars of Nikon equipment in a public meeting place and KNOW that it will be there, untouched, when you get back? That Honor Code is the heart of the nation. I just love being at West Point. I love the people. I love the way they work. I love what they are doing. I am doing all I can to support West Point, what they stand for, the moral base.

I suspect Hillary is going to run now in place of Gore. She’ll probably do well. But there’s a string of murders in the closet that may get mentioned. I doubt that the Starr report will indicate these except obliquely if at all. As you know, the business of state is conducted out of the public eye.

I do not know what Swami has planned. A trip here is possible. I would regard it likely. [Name] is no ordinary savant. He is a very good one. I deplore his conducting sales under guise of religion (he calls it yoga because he is uneducated) but that does not affect the fact that his intuitive capacity is very acute. The principle things Swami has to do in re Christianity/Judaism (which is a Christian denomination) and Islam are put the provincials into a route, which in both cases is essentially the entire organized representative bodies. They are all entirely off course and promoting faction. The Christians (includes Jews) have been warned fully now so their time is ready to be up. I assume the Moslems — all of them — have been also.

Another way to put it is, the wall has been sapped and the charges set in place, so the only thing to be done now is to set the charges off and retake the sacred ground. That metaphor comes from one Swami used years ago when he referred to the Devotees as sappers and miners for the Golden Age. He meant this particular military operation of laying charges under a castle/edifice wall inside a mine which has been dug for the purpose.

Time will tell. The Sai Org people are going to have a hard time because they disavowed the Sarva Dharma Symbol, which is the conceptual key to the Golden Era, the times incipient. They still flatter themselves on being the prelates of a “Sai Religion.” If they had learned Christian theology instead of despising it they would have been protected from this egregious infantilism.

I am looking forward to the future, as always. I think it is going to confirm what we stand for. I think it is making us happy. I already am. I suspect you are, too.

 

Here are two of mine on pythmens, here and here, and one related.  The word pythmen is cognate of Pythagoras and Pythian Oracle (Delphi) and our python, generically, snake. Actually the snake in question is not a python but a cobra and is the Greek version of the Vedic Adisheesha, the cobra on whose thousand-hooded head rests the universe, the cobra who is the embodiment of Dharma (Proper Conduct) and who incarnated during the Rama Era as Rama’s brother, Lakshmana. This cobra is also shown twice on our Pythagorean-derived medical symbol, where it refers to the bi-polar life/energy fields embodied by the nerve paths of the spinal cord. The Hippocratic Oath is Pythagorean. The essence of the world is this cobra, who is also in the Bible under an inappropriate referent.

The last mentioned has the 12 grouping of Fibonacci — with pythmens going to 9, the number of the universal. (Circle has 360 degrees = 9.) 12 is the number of the perfect group — the dodecahedron in Platonic solids — because structurally it allows the most efficient/agreeable packing-to-freedom ratio. Don’t ever take more than 11 wives!  🙂

In the “related” URL I have structured the statement of the Fibonacci Series to approximate a spiral, which I believe is its actual morphology — the universe’s actual morphology being two pulsing cones joined at a common apex.

Your comment that the farther-on sets of 12 in the Fibonacci Series are more evolutionarily advanced — because approximating closer to the Divine Proportion (Golden Section) — is brilliant. I never thought of that and it must be the case. Simple and elegant, the fragrance of truth.

 

 

I was searching the web for anything on J. William Jones when I came upon your treatise, Theology of the Mass, talking to your friend, Stephen. The web’s an amazing thing. This was the first time I’d used J. Bill’s name in toto to search and your discourse came up rather quickly.

I was interested in your saying that you were in the first of the Chapel Singers. I graduated from [University of] Redlands in 1958, but I had attended in a prior stretch from 1951 to 1953 and sang in the U. Choir during those years. Jones trusted me enough to put me periodically in a quartet (I was a baritone in those days) during that stint as the music warranted. Today, I recognize what an honor that was. What an exciting time! Ken Folsom had just begun to tape record the Choir, and we would hear playbacks occasionally which added to our understanding of the choral sound and blend in the wonderful Memorial Chapel (unfortunately, it was “renovated” in later years which lost some of the enhancement. A new financial push is afoot to reestablish its earthquake specifications and, hopefully. its old acoustics).

I returned to the U.of R. in 1957 after two years in the Army and one year working of working in the mail room of ABC Television in Hollywood (I ended up as a motion picture editor). In 1957, Jones used a smaller group of sixteen voices in two compositions, one of which was Charles Davis Smith’s setting of “O Little Town of Bethlehem”. I remember and have verified with another of our singers that Jones called us, The Chapel Singers. I’ve discussed this with Jeff Rickard, the current director of the Feast of Lights and the church music division of the School of Music, although I haven’t talked to him since I verified it with my choirmate. I think the distinction that Jeff and others make is that the official Chapel Singers recognition didn’t start until the ’60’s when the Office of Compline services began as a regular part of the University life. Ironically, Jones and those who prepared the Order of Service programs of the ’50’s didn’t list the members of the U. Choir, let alone the designated Chapel Singers. Later, they were identified by an asterisk next to their names in the U. Choir credits.

You may be interested to know that last December was the 50th anniversary of the Feast of Lights and that 136 alumni responded and perhaps approximately 100 showed up to sing in five prepared anthems and settings during the Saturday presentation, December 6, 1997. It was truly a wonderful experience. I asked Jeff if anyone was recording it for posterity. On receiving a negative reply, I trekked down there on the Friday preceding and video taped sections of that service as well as covering the Saturday rehearsals, luncheon and bits of the Saturday presentation (I was limited in that since I was busy singing my guts out). I’ve just finished editing the next to last touches on a two hour and fifteen minute video which Jeff wishes to release hopefully by Christmas. My biggest accomplishment in the production is creating a mini Feast of the music, readings and candle lighting for the end of the tape. I was able to use a Canon Hi8 camera that works in low light (candle light, in this case). I’ve got a way to go yet, what with recording voice overs of Jeff and Doug Bowman who returned from retirement specially to do the Fiftieth narration, but I think I’ll record them this next weekend.

Another fascinating project I have is the cataloging of the 1/4″ master tapes that were made by Ken Folsom during the ’50’s and ’60’s given to the University by Ken’s widow. Believe it or not, they sound as good as if they were recorded yesterday. Jeff has the tapes of his period on. We think that we may market them in the near future for alumni whose LP’s and audio tapes have long since perished.

I thought you’d like an update on what’s going on in California (I live in Valencia, just north of the San Fernando valley). As usual, I get carried away when writing. One thing with which you might be able to help me. One of my classmates is “Pat” Don Vieten who still lives in Redlands and was good friends with Jones and kept in touch with him until he passed away July 10, 1985. He wants to find more information about his career in New York during the ’40’s before he came to Redlands. After I send this email off to you, I’m going to check the Cathedral of Albany, New York’s web site to see if I can find anything on a publication of a 150th year history that Pat understands was just released. He also understands that a good portion of the history was devoted to Jones, and we’d both like to get a copy. If you know anything, I’d appreciate a response.

We’d also like to know more of your career and how the experience of Redlands and the U. Choir has affected your life. I know that I still hear many of the texts and settings that we sang those many years ago in my head, and they still thrill and uplift me.

Thank you for the wonderful reply. It’s wonderful to be sharing the memories of JW and of those “halcyon” days when we were young and full of the idealism that was nurtured by singing and creating “the music of the spheres” (at least, for us). If you don’t mind, I’m going to share your electronic letter with Jeff and some others of the choir alumni who hold the same love of the folklore associated with those times of wonder. Of course, it’s not just folklore, since it all really happened, but the mystical sense of those times seem like an idyll looking back.  [Emphasis added. Indeed it does!]

I have a few comments regarding what you wrote:

Really, it was an extraordinary group of people that drove it, inspired JW to ask us — and he did actually ask us — to work together. When most of us left in June 65 he said to us that he would never see the likes again and he did not, nor has the school. It was one of those historical coincidences, a moment. He went downhill from there from heartbreak. He told us he would and he did.

Was the heartbreak from the changing of guard, as it were, or from the passing of his best realizations of what he wished to accomplish and couldn’t or hadn’t?

He got angry at me two years later because. as an Assistant Chaplain on intern year from Union, I forced Armacost to shut down compulsory chapel. Major public stink and personal recrimination with pursuit through the years. I have the distinction of having closed that epoch. It cost me dear but it was the correct thing to do. But it destroyed JW’s audience. I effectively closed his era, too.

What was your rationale for getting rid of compulsory chapel. Was it because of the times where people no longer took for granted what had been accepted in the past or because the school no longer had a Christian affiliation?

A guy in the development office, Jack somebody, was especially vitriolic and pursuing in his resentment.

I think that was Jack Cummings, and I think he had graduated from Redlands, so you were changing what he felt was a tradition that probably was dear to him. Or, maybe you have another take on this.

It was too bad, however, because they lost the good will of a major theologian

Who was the major theologian? You or Jones? Or someone else?

and although the world doesn’t value such things, they are to be valued nonetheless. JW knew it. I knew I had to sadden him and was unhappy about that, but the larger picture was critical in 1965 and compulsory chapel had to be ended, God take the consequences.

If your tape of the feast comes available, I’ll like to purchase a copy.

According to Jeff, it will be offered for sale in the Feast Order of Service on the back page, I would guess, as the recordings have been listed in the past.

The Folsom tapes are a world treasure, as well you know. Please get them to the world on CDs!

I agree and that is in our plans. Right now, I’m trying to document all the recordings as to soloists (Jones and group didn’t do too much about that in the beginning). Any non-Feast service bulletins you or others might have will help us figure out who did what in each era.

All I remember of JW at Albany was the story he told of dedicating the new organ. The first thing the congregation heard was Old One Hundredth in unison in the pedal, doubled for the full intro.

Some the accompanying and arranging that Charles Smith did still has the same affect on me when I play some of the recordings; I know why Jones kept him around as long as he could. James Todd was also his favorite tympanist, and JW kept having him come back for the Feasts.

The hair on my neck stands up now just thinking about it.

I used the entrance a couple of times in later years myself during my several stints as a church organist.

He was the dramatist, par excellence. I’ve never heard anything like it before or since. The tapes are a treasure I hope you will be able to get duped and shared. He always wanted a company to take it up and never got top label at Columbia, as you know.

I’m not sure if I understand. Two LP’s did carry the Columbia Masterworks label: Hymns and Anthems, ML 4866, and God Be with You, ML 5370. The first was released in May of 1954, and the second, April 30, 1959.

Bob Ramsay, one of my classmates feels we could re-release the best of the archives through some label such as Delos, but I have already tried to interest them in the Feast of Lights and was turned down. I think we should start our own label as Chanticleer did. We could contact them as to their marketing strategies. I like the name, Redlands Recordings. I’ve also thought of contacting Dale Warland. His label is American Choral Catalog, Ltd. We shall see. The quality of the early fifties sound is still fantastic even though it’s not in stereo. Somehow Folsom found the perfect spot to place his mikes, not too close and not too far. And, the personel of that period were also top-notch: Larry King, Roy Reed, Arleen Crow, his favorite soprano, and others that he kept bringing back.

Anyway, it’s great to share. Thank you very much for your observations.

 

One of the little moments [Name] and I shared in August was on the realization that whereas Lucien Truscott had got rid of compulsory Chapel at West Point — according to [Name] — and never been forgiven in many circles, I had accomplished the same service at the University of Redlands, in 1968, when I was on intern year from Union as Assistant Chaplain to the University, at cost of my career in academe. We reminisced that whereas both actions were correct and someone had to do it, they were incalculably costly actions personally.

Vedas are the foundational religious literature of the race, written in Sanskrit and dating from an incalculable time. By their own witness, they date from the moment of creation. They cannot be dated. They were brought West in recent memory by the great German scholars of some 200 years ago who translated them and realized that Sanskrit is the root of most European languages and numerous others spread around the globe. Our recent scholars have not been able to stand the racial leveling this insight implies and have since decided Sanskrit is a result of a meta-language they speculate and call Indo-European. Actually, Sanskrit itself is that meta-language and the others, such as German and English, derive from it, as the Germans pointed out.

Vedas have undergone several major collations, the most recent about 3800 BC by Sage Vyasa. The word itself means “whisperings,” meaning, Vedas are the whisperings of God in the ears of Sages.

Vedas cover every aspect of human activity — every single one. Their content varies widely, from legalistic proscriptions and prescriptions to ecstatic Huzzahs. In addition, Vedas express all three of the fundamental philosophical points of view which it is possible for someone to have: dualism, qualified non-dualism and non-dualism. They also express the the view-less view, the overview, and it was this which caused certain Germans, following Hegel, to develop by way of distortion the notion of the superman or ubermensch and then the uber-race. Weak minds are prone to take great insights and deform them for ends not contemplated by those insights. Humanity is rather continuously dealing with the effects of this phenomenon. We have theologians and philosophers to keep before humanity the real reason and the real nature of these great insights: catholicity, inclusiveness.

Vedas are mankind’s foundational catholic literature — despite the vagaries of weak minds. 🙂

 

Eadem Mutata Resurgo  means Though Changed I Rise Again the Same, and if you pronounce “Changed” in Old English with a second accent on the “ed” you will have the correct syllablification of 9.  The Latin is three words of three syllables each, which is important.  English at least gets the 9 syllables if pronounced as indicated above.  On Jacques Bernoulli’s tombstone, along with the Spira Mirabilis  — the spiral made by the Divine Proportion (Golden Section) — which has this property indicated by the words when acted upon mathematically.  Chambered Nautilus sea creature makes shell in the Spira Mirabilis.  Thus significance of Holmes’ poem, Build Thee More Stately Mansions ….

Eisenman is unknown to me however the purport of his work as you explain it is of long-standing, serving for centuries as one of several lines of Masonic lore and recounted several times in recent publications (Hiram Key, etc.). Essentially it is not totally wrong, it is just not fully right and ergo is deceptive and ergo is used for inappropriate purposes, e.g., Paul-bashing, which is infantile.

Jesus was an Herodian. There’s more yet.

Swami has said Paul was the greatest of the Apostles. He has always spoken approvingly of Paul and Jerome, who are equally and thoroughly hated by this generation whose tastes are defined by adharmic impulses. The NT is emphatic on the reverence for Paul — by volume of text. Thiering has the take on Paul that will make you feel you are home.

The public has access to the Scrolls. Be circumspect in believing anything from an academician, especially one bearing a “Jewish” name and blasting Paul. There is too much history to that one to just accept it without a very wide inquiry. Anti-Semitism has its equal and opposite: Anti-Christianity. Well-published authors are tendentious and the publishing/entertainment industry is that and nothing more. Their spiritual interest is zero.

Update: Eisenman’s dating is all wrong. Jesus survived James and wrote NT with Paul and somewhat James plus others. Jesus had three children and two wives.

I have mentioned before that the Jewish Calendar dates exactly to the time of Krishna (3800 BC), saying that this world is this old, roughly 6K years since creation. Well, the meaning is that this Yuga (Era) is this old. A Yuga (one of the four periods of the cycle of time) is a world. The start of a Yuga is the creation of a world. So when the Jewish Calendar says our world is 6K years old, that is the truth. Creation occurred 6K years ago. We can take the Bible and the Calendar made from it at its face value on this.

Krishna is a Yug-Avathar, Avathar that comes at a change of Yuga.

The memory of Divinity which underlies the Old Testament (OT/Hebrew Bible) is that of Krishna, the most recent Yug-Avathar and the One from which the OT itself dates Creation. This figures. Look at the God of the OT. He behaves as Krishna did — destroying here, building there, answering to no one, apparently random, a perfect law unto Himself, walking in wherever He wants, not taking account of anything He does not want to take into account, having no regard for laws of civility or culture. The God of the OT is deprecated by moderns for just these traits. But we fawn over Krishna, Who has these same traits.

Krishna is the model for the God of the OT. The Calendar confirms it. With many memories of teachers thrown into the literary mix we call the OT, still, the substrate is Krishna.

Mary drew a picture years ago titled The Call of Abraham. Abraham has his back to the viewer and is looking at a figure on a dais, with the tell-tale peacock feather in His headpiece, who is issuing him his Call.

There are Teachers, such as Jesus, Francis, Shankara, Aurobindo, Mohammed, Baha’u’llah, Nanak, Gauthama, Moses, Zoroaster, Jerome, Paul, Augustine, Apollonius — a steady stream of them through the years. And these found or reform religions, which are time-and-circumstance-sensitive and therefore answerable to the collective will of the planet’s residents during a specific duration of time. These Teachers instruct in the details of Dharmic behavior relative to a duration of time. When that duration is past, the instruction of the Teacher whose labor was meant for it is archival rather than vibrant.

And then at intervals there are Avathars and especially Yug-Aathars. These adjust circumstances, answerable to no one.

Right now, the Teacher whose instruction is vibrant is Baha’u’llah. The Avathar, of course, is Swami.

I think it is of the greatest importance to recognize the God of the Old Testament as Krishna, or more specifically, memories of Him, discussed under a plethora of Names, which, in the event, are actually names of sages dating from 3800 to roughly 300 BC and even before that time, back into Dwapara Yuga.

 

Barbara Thiering, Jesus and the Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls and Jesus the Man plus piecing together from Swami.

Quotes I recalled to you from Him in re Paul I now think were in Kasturi’s Loving God which our son has at the Academy. They are very old, before you were brought in. Essentially they cut off the wide-spread demonization of Paul and Jerome that is so popular for decades not only in the churches of all flavors but also outside them. The way He spoke of them together once made me take it that He was implying they are the same person. I could believe that and in fact have, but that was not the direct import of what He said about them. What He said was that Paul was the greatest of the Apostles — meaning Christian Apostles — and that Jerome was something, I forget what, but it was to elevate respect for him to the top. Had to do with Jerome’s asceticism and scholarship.

Most Masons elevate James over Paul, especially today. And Stuart claimants do, as does my friend Margaret Starbird. All New Age and all standing Christian clergy of my acquaintance scoriate Paul for deforming the religion. So you are in numerous and distinguished company. And you are all wrong on this point. The truth is the opposite of what you take it to be on this point.

Ask Swami yourself and you will hear and see that He backs me 100% on what I say in this and in any other well-considered matter. Ask Him ASAP in Person, to His Face.  Or look it up in Loving God.

 

For a long time we considered Melchizedek as Krishna or Dharmaraja but then the Hebrew of the passage — little related outside the guild because it is indeterminate — combined with the history of Jerusalem, especially that Joshua specifically spared it, drove me to consider and finally settle (so far) on another take: that Melchizedek is a Saivite, from the orbit of Egypt/Ethiopia, meeting Abram, a Vaishnavite from Persia, showing the two strands of “Hebraism” or later called “Judaism.”

The Hebrew of the passage does not specify who gives the gift to whom. It says “he gave … to him” and rabbinical tradition never settles the question of who gives. I have settled it oppositely from the church way for reasons suggested above but too involved to discuss here. It’s all in this poem, Aetiology in two parts: one and two.

 

Every proof rests on the premise that the thing it is going to prove is real.

Every proof, therefore, assumes its conclusion, making it tautological, that is, no proof at all.

Therefore, nothing can be proven.

This restates Godel and Zeno and, by implication, Heisenberg, from another direction. It’s not original, but the wording is. Principia Mathematia (Whitehead/Russell) foundered on this phenomenon of inprovability. It is all physicists’ nemesis: bursts their pretension.

 

The Essene Gospel is not a problem for me. Gnostic is a catch-all word for a rather extensive range of insight and opinion that is persistent and worth knowing about. Its soteriological puissance or fecundity also ranges across a spectrum that itself shifts with the assiduity of the inquirer.

On the usefulness of the Bible, this thought might be helpful: that its editorial history is stopped at least by the time of and by Jerome, whom one may not care for but whom one could not disregard. This fact of editorial surcease — and of canonical unity — at that date, by Jerome, has implications for the tendency to deprecate the text on a basis of presumed checkered/indeterminate history.

On the Church, one may already make the distinction between Church and churches. It is a useful and I might suggest necessary distinction. The Church is always fine, as Dharma, which the Church is, always is. The churches more or less approximate the Church during the exigencies of time and place. In this context, it is also useful to see that the churches are a corpus mixtum, that some of its members belong to the Church and some do not. It could be suggested, from this fact, that as churches veer away from the Church — making God so small — they do so because non-Church members control them more and churches’ members less.

So that in general when we deplore the Church we are really deploring the churches in bondage to non-Church members. The observation, I believe, is an important one. It follows the observation that Dharma is not deplored because history exhibits anti-dharmic tendencies.

However, there is also the condition — and it is actually ours today — when the Church itself, Dharma itself, restructures its lineaments to what is for contemporaries a new set of operational conditions or parameters. This is now our estate and we are getting used to it. It is prefigured in our spiritual literatures, but we are also to a very large extent developing it de novo as we go along responding to events.  Not really, of course, but it appears that way and operationally is that way because we have forgotten so much of our pre-history.

Best I know on origins of Hebrews:

I agree with Kirsten that Kashmir is indicated. The insolent epithet Kyke or Kike for Jews is, I feel, from Kaika, Kaikeyi, born to the King of Kashmir, the third wife of Dasaratha, and refers, ungenerously, to her original unkindness to him, later atoned, and one Rama said DID NOT exist — in fact, she only asked Dasaratha to keep his word in re the succession! Anyhow, indications are to Kashmir (Heaven).

However, there is more. Distinction between Sephardic and Ashkenzy Jews is significant and has to be followed through.

There is a report through Michael Blate of a Brahmin who told him that Ashkenazy Jews descend from the Yadus of Krishna era. They were of the clan of Kamsa whom Krishna plucked from his thrown and dashed on the ground, breaking his head wide open, and with whom Krishna was partying when He got the arrow in the back. The tendency of this indication is that Ashkenazy Jews are something less than upstanding in ancestry and Sephardim are not part of that ancestry and are part of an upstanding one. Blate, who is Ashkenazy, supports this implication, saying that so far as he can make out the only real Jews are the Sephardi — an interesting development.

No doubt it is not quite that clear-cut, but there is something there of significance.

The origin of Hebrew in seminary was hotly disputed and still is. Look for no resolution from that source because wider context will not be considered in our life-times.

I agree, it is an important question. I agree with Blate that Sephardi carry the line of Hebrew and with Kirsten that this line is from Kashmir. Beyond that I am not sure. I would not write off Ashkenazys as not Hebrew or at least not upstanding ones, but there is some kernel in the story Blate relates of Jews from Yadus, a certifiably nasty crowd during the Krishna era.

On which, one may be interested in this on the Balkans as a lesson in political philosophy.

 

This experience is not uncommon but it is usually unreported.

When the experience is calming it is Divinity taking a stronger than usual presence. When the experience is unsettling and to a clear point, it is also Divinity with a didactic purpose that is deemed necessary. (Divinity’s presence, settling or unsettling, is redemptive, beneficial to one.) When the experience is unsettling and NOT to a clear point, there are several possible causes of it, none involving Divinity.

The experience you relate appears to be of this last type. There are several possible explanations.

If you are living in an older house that was inhabited by a person for a lengthy time, or in which a prolonged or especially gruesome violence occurred, the presence could be the ghost of that person or persons. Ghost in this case means the mind and part of the remnant of the physical body of that person. The mind can takes several years to cease following the medical death of the body. Not the brain, the mind, which is the thoughts we constantly have that are the actual energy of life. The mind should cease when the body does, but it does not always.  The mind also is capable of keeping attached to itself some of the subtle aspects of the physical body, which I am sure you know is far more substantial than medical science customarily gives it credit for being. So one possible explanation of the experience you had is that it was the mind and probably part of the subtle body of a previous inhabitant who was attached to the place — usually through lengthy residence or through an incident of great violence.

Another possible explanation is that one of the individuals who is opposing our efforts at community building is on the prowl mentally and is able to project both mind and much of subtle body into your immediate orbit. The engine of this activity is ordinarily a great hatred, fear or anger or some combination of these negative emotions. If this is the explanation, it means that this individual — and it is an individual, not a group — is feeling that they are losing the struggle to your efforts and are resorting to subterfuge to advance their agenda. Usually after such a nocturnal visitation the perpetrator shows themselves in a comely guise the next day or very soon after the visitation. They are very attached to you and not in a redemptive or loving way.

Some form of this scenario is the usual explanation for the type of unsettling experience you relate. We — myself included — usually have these experiences during times of creativity that is opposed by others for this and that reason. In war this capacity is used by some commanders to contribute to and cause much of the fog of war. There is more to the fog of war that this, of course, but this can be a considerable factor in its generation.

Another explanation is that you had a bout of food poisoning of a kind as not to cause more typical symptoms.

And finally, this sort of experience can be caused by psychotropic drugs singly or in combo. This is a sub-set of food poisoning, and I am sure it is not indicated in this instance.

Summary: I would guess that someone is pissed at you and is trying to terrorize you to un-focus you from your mission.

The appropriate treatment for such experiences is to laugh and/or to sing quietly — or loudly if severe trauma/terror exists — a favorite spiritual song or song that indicates the victory of love over malice, cheerfulness over terror, family over separation and light over darkness. Laughing and singing such songs unsettle these presences, unravel their ability to terrorize and make them disappear. Laughter and spiritual song are our way to stay detached from malicious agendas.  Without an attachment to us, those agendas have to leave and cease.

Usually the individual causing this experience shows up physically or in other close communication the day after. They want to view the effect of their activity on its target.

 

As your PI (Philosophical Intelligence) Officer, I want to mention that [Name’s] quip in re [Name’s] experience, suggesting an MSFT connection, albeit made jocularly, is probably close to the fact. That is my estimate. Here is the story:

The individual here who most opposes my activity on behalf of WP, and in the process releases a stream of scorn for WP-ORG, is a Grad/MALO/ZAC and MSFT employee. The scornful treatment of WP-ORG, especially as to relationship to AOG, could be just that of an AOG-centrist. But it consistently has struck me as something more than that. This individual masters their Class website on the AOG server and that site appears to plug MS-IE at least as prominently as it celebrates the Class: the MS-IE plug is in the Class Masthead instead of, traditionally and tastefully, near the page bottom.

I deal with MSFT employees — all grades — daily in large numbers and observe that their reputation for ruthless partisanship masked by a facade of caring is deserved. For days now I have been hearing the tone of this individual’s attitude as an MS-centrism aroused by their awareness that WP-ORG is a Sun/Netscape shop.

Yesterday in particular, all day, my awareness was continuously compelled by a fiercely anti-WP-ORG agenda emanating from this individual, and I recall canvassing the depths several times to see what was being planned. The center of the awareness was and still is that if this individual is as MSFT-partisan, as I hear, and is in a reasonably influential position in MSFT’s relatively flat hierarchy, WP-ORG is in MSFT’s cross-hairs.

Whatever WP does — as USMA or as some other element of the WP Community, e.g., WP-ORG — engineers the world. That has been the case for 200 years and will continue so so long as WP maintains the moral strength to support that level of universal authority — a continuation that is secure, by the way. MSFT intend to replace governments through a de facto software ownership of hardware. WP-ORG is engineering a global paradigm not based on MSFT-centric software and therefore, because it shares WP’s general engineering authority, threatens MSFT’s agenda for hegemony.

I think [Name], partly from inadvertence and partly from prescience, probably has identified the midnight visitor.

These things do not just happen. There are causes for everything, more or less remote. If we do not see the causes, this does not mean they are not there. Suggest a heads-up on traffic to/from MSFT.

Update I, 20FEB14: As of 2007, USMA Class of 1977 Website, mastered by said individual, is hosted by WP-ORG.

 

Question: Talking about classical idealism. Is there any specific area of Christianity where this sort of theology is prevalent? Could you also explain the connection of metaphysics to idealism.

Answer: Tillich himself is an example of classical idealism, accommodated to modern linguistic tastes. His ancestry is Plotinus and the Pythagoreans, who marginally included Plato, of whom I think we get a warped view. 19th Century popular American Christianity was idealistic in its flavor, without being self-consciously so. And of course Augustine, who Christianized it, is in the line of classical Greek Idealism. But in general in the Latin Church idealism is not the preferred format, although it underlies everything in the Latin Church that is good. The term idealism used by Tillich does not mean high-minded ideals. It means neo-Platonic Realism, a philosophical system having specific parameters the most important of which is emphasis on the prius, the a priori, the ineffable Given that is assumed necessarily as the basis of everything and anything at all. In West Point parlance, idealism is the philosophical system that underlies the use of the concept of a moral base line (which is a prius or a priori or existence). Technically the word is capitalized, Idealism, to indicate that it is a philosophy, a formal, technical system, and not just high-minded thoughts, which can or cannot be based on any prius. In Idealism, everything is taken as derived from the prius. Idealism, of which there are several varieties but having a common theme of reliance on the Ground or Being as the prius of everything, is usually promoted by non-Christians, such as Hegel, but during the Middle Ages it in Christian form was promoted by the Franciscans and the Templars and is in Masonic tradition right through the years. Although they do not call it that, that is what it is. When it is used Christianly, it is called, during the Medieval years, Realism. Realism then was just their word for Idealism. But modernly the word Idealism refers most memorably to Hegelian philosophy, which is good stuff, in general, but has problems in details,m especially at its denouement. Hegelian Idealism is a response to the awareness of Vedas — the original Idealistic Philosophy — which were being translated just before Hegel’s life and which deeply affected the German people, to include Hegel.

Metaphysics is an area of philosophy, not a philosophy itself, such as Idealism is. All philosophies have metaphysics, they all have to come up with a metaphysics in order to qualify as respectable. Metaphysics is the area of philosophy which deals with the causalities that underlie the tangible world, or in other words, underlie physics, which has to do just with the realm of the tangible. Behind or under or prior to the tangible realm there is at least one realm that is intangible, and that realm is metaphysics. Tangible means accessible to the senses, an epistemology (process of knowing) based on information provided by the five senses. Whatever underlies in the sense of providing the causality for the realm of the tangible is metaphysics. Physicists today pretend that they are addressing this world of the metaphysical with their physical theories and mathematical theories but they are not because their theories are sense-based. The metaphysics a philosopher or theologian makes or uses derives from their philosophical type. The metaphysics is secondary to the philosophy type, in other words. Modern physicists’ metaphysics are not that.  They are physics in fancy language and their general theories are sense-based and so infructuous metaphysically.  They do not get down to brass tacks. Idealism elicits the only satisfying metaphysics, and that at numerous levels of subtlety. Causation goes by subtlety: the more subtle the more causative, the more gross the less causative. So for example, a murderer is gross relative to the society and weaks mayhem but on a comparatively limited scale. But a legislative body, an executive’s bureaucratic agency or a judicial system is subtle relative to the society and can wreak mahem on a comparatively large scale. So the laws of the legislature, the regulations of the executive and the decisions of the judiciary are more subtle and therefore more powerful and affective than the gross behavior of a murder. The more subtle a thing is, the more power it is, the more it can cause things to happen. This is what makes MI so pleasant to work with: finding the subtleties, such as that the harbor of Inchon was not protected at certain tide times, offering possibility of a landing.

Question: What exactly does he mean by a priori of experience? Is this just a fancy word for base or a more specific reference to theological background?

Answer: Yes, sort of a fancy word for base. It goes back to the phenomenon of the prius, the that-before-which which is the defining premise of Idealism and genuine Christian Theology (and Vedas). a priori means literally before the fact. a posteriori means after the fact. Tillich and all proper Theologians assert that the most important things in life are a priori, before the fact of experience. So that to one who says I will not believe it unless I experience it — or even worse, it does not exist unless I experience it or acknowledge it or declare it to exist, which is the popular position today — a Theologian points out that this is nonsense, that there is a huge a priori to such an attitude, namely, the I who is doing the talking, and that when that a priori is examined it turns out to be the Gound of Being itself, the immutable Base. Very few clergy today would assert that there are any a prioris, mirroring the popular attitude. This is just a way for people to try to do what they want without having accounts. A prominent example of this is in the media. It is pretense, however. The a priori is there no matter what — the moral base line is one way of describing it — and this phenomenon accounts for the fact that people, even when they say they can do anything they want, express disapproval when they see someone doing something that they considered wrong. The fact that there is a sense of right and wrong, no matter how that sense is expressed, itself demonstrates the presence of an a priori, a reality that is brought to an experience rather than being dervied from that experience. Our scientists, of course, want to say that the only things that exist are those that derive from experience — and we need more funding to expand our experience. Sages go the other way, into the a prioris and from there they experience the experiences that the a prioris emit. Why do people seek reclusive Sages? Because the a priori is the key to experience. Experience is good and necessary, but it makes sense only from the base of the a priori, the Gound of Being, to use Tillich’s Idealism-derived word.

Question: “…based on an immediate experience of something ultimate in value and being of which one CAN become intuitelvy aware.” I thought most every one had at least some intuition of this. What is he referring to?

Answer: Actually, everyone does have some intuition of this, but you have more than most and you must allow for this privilege you have. Most have far less of it than you do and many very little and very few have awareness of having this experience via intuition. What he is getting at is experience — intuitive, or better, direct — arising from an existential (felt) participation of the subject in the object and vice-versa. He is confirming Heisenberg’s Indeterminacy Principle from another direciton. Participation in the occasions of life is something most do not do, are not able to do, but all the zest and thrill of life is in this sort of living. I tell you to relish WP and your experience there, but most will be treating it as a thing to do, a stepping-stone or rung in a ladder. Rather, I urge you to relish the moment, to participate fully and enthusiastically in the routine, to live it and the reason is that true wisdom emerges from this participation or what some call knowledge from intuition. Actually, it is just participation in which the thing experienced, the experience and the one experiencing are taken to be one and the same. Life is this triple thread — one thread of three strands, the seer, the seen and the sight. Relishing the moments one is in is the way to genuinely understand and learn about that thread, by enjoying it and observing it as one participates willingly in its drama. This is the opposite of being swept along by outside events. It is an irony, that the deepest freedom comes from the deepest participation. The key is the intuitive awareness that one IS the a priori, the prius, the Ground. That awareness makes one free and happy and relaxed no matter what.  Knowledge is ecstatic union of subject and object.

Question: Could you explain again the difference between orthodox and pietism methods.

Answer: This refers to a period of German theology — 17th to 18th Centuries — when the orthodox Lutherans went to a dry formalism, devoid of the sense of feeling (existentialism), and there was a reaction from a group who came to be called pietists. The same thing happened in the Reformed (Calvinist) circles about the same time. What happened was Reformation theology matured and got leaden and some folks came along and reintroduced the element of zest or feeling based on the love of God. Bach was in the pietist tradition and so is Tillich. Tillich graduated at Halle, the pietist center. However, Tillich, being the universalist that he is, also appreciates what the orthodox had. The specific disagreement was, as usual, over the issue of how one knows that one is saved or technically, regenerate (re-generated, born again). The orthodox said, following long tradition, there is no real way to know — Calvin: “There are no visible signs of either election (regeneration) or reprobation (un-regeneration).” In other words, all the signs of one’s estate of grace are a priori, prior to experience. So the question emerged, if we cannot tell if we are saved or not, how can we know who is a theologian to be trusted or not? This is an important question, going to the heart of the daily life of the Church and of the whole humanity. Tillich points out that both pietists and orthodox are right so far as they go and wrong if they try to exclude the other — this is Tillich’s usual method, why I like him, the method of correlation by inclusion and expansion. His last sentence in that paragraph is the summation. The theologian must be in the circle of faith if he or she is to be honored and their advice followed.  And the way one knows whether or not they are inside that circle is whether they accept the Christian message — the religious message, the Kerygma — as their ultimate concern. If they discuss theology as a pass-time, if they are merely students or scholars of religion — of which the schools today are full — then they merit no attention at all. But if the transforming message of God’s love in Jesus the Christ, or any other figure whose Name is a Name of God, is their life’s absolute focus, then one knows that they are indeed a Theologian and merit attention and can be relied upon at least to some extent, which one still must gauge for oneself. Always test everything on the touchstone of one’s experience, direct and mediated, but if the theologian is ultimately concerned in the right way, then they are worth heeding. This is a very important point Tillich is making, about the authenticity or non-authenticity of the leadership.

Question: I think I understand everything from p.11-15 (dealing with the term “ultimate concern” and it’s meaning in theology) but please add anything or point out anything you find important.

Answer: Ultimate concern is Tillich’s unique term for describing what religion is at its very most simple and plain. He uses it in succession to several famous terms made to express the same thing, the heart of religion, and in particular Schleiermacher’s word that comes to us, inappropriately, as “feeling.” Tillich wants to avoid the unfortunate misinterpretation of Schleiermacher’s word while still holding its wonderful existential flavor. Ultimate concern is his answer to the problem in English. It think it is a good one. It allows us to do Christian Theology in an apologetic context again, which we really must do, that is, a context in which we discuss with non-Christians on THEIR terms or at least on neutral middle-ground terms based on phenomena where we are allowed to make up new words to describe religious impulses and strivings just as much as non-Christians are, and may the best terms win. Tillich’s phrase ultimate concern has stood the test of time and is used widely in popular context without an awareness of where its origin. This means it is a good term, meaning, it communicates at the level that is needed, a non-proprietary level. Christian Theologians need to be cross-platform, interoperable, to use CS jargon, and this is what apologetic theology is. It is what I like, and Tillich, and to a lesser extent Teilhard, are the pioneers of it in this century.

 

We are each here for a purpose that is intrinsic and ante-dates our birth (Jeremiah discusses this).

The intrinsic purpose one has is divinely given and beyond our capacity to establish or control. Our contribution as parents is to provide the means — the body, mind and intellect — for fulfilling that purpose. We repay, in this way, the debt we owe our parents, who gave us this precious means, our whole self, to fulfill our intrinsic purpose.

Harm does not come to one who is fulfilling their intrinsic purpose, only to one who is not. Grief can be felt by observers but not by the one happily fulfilling the reason for their birth.

 

An old Franciscan Aphorism was: Ideals must be put into practice.  Morality is not a state or a static thing, it is the ground of being that is practiced, made manifest, done as the dynamics of history. It is not something different from history, it IS history. Dharma is what history is doing. Some may have to adjust their vision to see that this is the case, but whether they make the adjustment or not, it is the case!

 

Here is strong — and unfriendly — proof that the universal moral base line exists regardless of whether one wants to accept it or think it does or not:

In the final months of WWII, Himmler, the SS Chief, was feverishly closing down the concentration camps and even trying to eliminate all physical signs that they had existed. In addition, he met with a World Jewish Congress leader, Norbert Masur — IN GERMANY! — within 24 hours of his last visit with Hitler in order to arrange a soft landing for himself.

This shows two things important. First, Himmler, like all tyrants, was a coward — he later tried to escape through Allied lines in disguise but was caught, recognized and finally bit a poison pill. Second, that he knew he had been doing bad. In other words, even the worst person is aware of the universal moral base line — Dharma — and its perpetual presence as the one and only standard. If he had truly thought what he had done was appropriate he would not have tried to cover up the evidence — or run from consequences. His actions demonstrate awareness of the universal, eternal presence and standard of Dharma. An unfriendly witness proves the point.

Cynics will still carp in ignorance, but the evidence of the universal moral base line is solid in even the worst people’s behavior.

 

On religious people with children at West Point. Two levels of answer:

1- As a Brigadier mentioned to me, clergy and military are related: if he had not gone military, he would have gone clergy. At WP, you would find that practically all Cadets and virtually all officers are more or less religious deliberately. As the old saying goes, there are no atheists in foxholes. Also, prayer and religious language is openly used at WP, ACLU notwithstanding. Same at all the military academies. Tax payer money directly supports numerous chapels as well as a chaplain corps in each service branch. I have often amused myself as to what would happen if ACLU confronted the academies and the services for so-called separation issues. 🙂

2- Clergy and warrior are related but not the same. It is immoral for clergy to be combatants on a field of battle. They must not fight. But warrior is a calling intrinsic to the moral structure of the universe — to protect from bad people, of whom there are many — and that calling is supported by all theological and moral systems ever devised for the
uplift of mankind, including Jain.

Which raises the question of war and religion, war and pacifism.

There are no religious wars. Never have been, never will be. Wars which appear to be religious are for other reasons and religion is called in cynically to seemingly support the real reasons. Religion supports war in specific cases for specific reasons and within specific parameters — which are long known and spelt out — but never for religious reasons. The reasons for war are always the same and involve one or more of three factors: wealth, dominion, women. Religion is never a factor in war because religion never has to be fought for — because it is never threatened. Religion supports war within specific parameters but is never an object or a motive for war. When religious people conduct war, it is always for the same reason, to protect the weak, the abused, those who are getting trounced on account of motives involving wealth, dominion and/or women. Religious people never fight for religion because there is never a need to do so. Religion is entirely pacifistic, just as people expect it to be.

 

When he finished the Summa, Aquinas offered it to God and felt it was and so reported it publicly as “So much straw.”

Embellishments have come up around the incident, largely from the Vatican PR machine, which needs to gloss it, because from Trent (first Jesuit ecumenical council) on, and especially since Vatican I (1870s or so, when Jesuits got infallibility and others things put through), then Summa has been the official systematic theological foundation of the Vatican.

In other words, Vatican policy builds everything on something its author walked away from.

The philosophical issues are extremely significant, what caused Aquinas to walk away from the work and what causes Vatican to take it for foundation. Summa is Aristotelian, employing sense-based epistemology. This epistemology, of course, is not the whole truth, part but not all. (The rest — and larger — is participation or ecstatic union-based epistemology, represented by Augustine, Luther, Guyon, Calvin, etc.) But it is the easiest epistemology to use to handshake with the masses, which any large institution must needs do to survive. At root, sense-based epistemology is nominalistic — it is not there unless I say/accept that it is — and nominalism is the favorite philosophical environment of tyrants. The Vatican is intrinsically tyrannical, by intent. It is a nation state, also, not a church, which could not be tyrannical.

Realism — Augustine, Luther, Templars — which uses participation epistemology — direct experience of divinity in the heart — cannot be used for tyranny because its premise is that truth is inside. But nominalism can be used for tyranny because, as Ockham says and Vatican follows, nothing can be relied on (because of sense-based epistemology) so let us just put faith in an almighty power which is close to hand — Vatican — that can tell us everything we need to do. In other words, the weakness of nominalism — its guarantee of epistemological anarchy — is used as the invitation to epistemological tyranny. It is a neat trick and it works very nicely, thank you very much. At least for not a few. Many great intellectuals have ended as Vatican adherents merely because they threw up their hands — because they were using nominalistic premises — and said, because nothing can be relied upon we will rely on the Vatican, which clearly knows everything and has everything. It is an attractive course to take and not only the weak-minded take it.

Aquinas saw all this, declared its root “straw” and wrote nothing further excepting some of the world’s loveliest hymns. He had it together. There are stories to the effect that he was not quite dead yet when they cut up his body, parboiled it and passed out his bones for relics. I can credit the stories on the basis of the motivational power of commerce in the hearts of not a few.

… in other words, Aquinas became an Augustinian. This is significant. All the great theologians are Augustinians. Who repudiates Augustine repudiates truth. Practically the entire clerical/academic establishment of which I am aware, today and for long, repudiates Augustine. Pays respects as an intellectual heavy-weight but fundamentally repudiates his epistemology, which is not sense-based. So powerful are sensory blandishments. Did I hear right that Madrassa Harvard Divinity Dean was put out for porno on machine? Not even Augustine’s coal black African skin is sufficient to commend him to our racist society, which one would expect to lionize him for it, so repugnant is his correct epistemology.

Augustine and Jerome — who fought over how Jerome should translate the OT, Augustine being younger, less experienced and wrong — are the criterion for theologians. If these are cherished, the theologian is one. If they are not, the so-called theologian is a poser.

 

JFK and his circle of friends and associates were reaching for world unity beyond the UN’s failure in that regard.  But they lacked conceptual clarity regarding the goal as well as means to it.  Their intellectual obscurity weakened them, exposed them to bullying and put them on collision course with two true hegemons, the Kremlin and the Vatican.  At least one of them killed him.

 

Did I ever tell you that I never wanted to leave Claremont.  I never wanted to go to college and I was miserable at Union.  That is the truth.  After the class all night party in 1961, I sat on the curb early morning and cried because I knew I had to leave.  I never wanted to.  I did not want a college education.  When I got to Union I also sat on the curb and cried because I knew I was not among friends.  Look at me, I do not need any of that for what I do.  So I am happy to just be back at high school, figuratively, at this point and tell myself that this time I am going to be strong-minded and tell Christiana and Russell, figuratively, that if they want me to go to college, then THEY go and tell me all about it.  I do not want to go.  It did keep me from getting chewed up in Vietnam, but then I would have been ineligible because of the asthma anyhow.  Soldiering was not my calling.  I have always been a child.  I will never be an adult.

 

200 years of existentialist philosophy of many flavors has been making the point, in more or less technical philosophical language, that besides the rational there are also, in existence, the irrational and the non-rational. Reality is not only mechanical or linear. Nor is it only circular or pentagonal. It is all of these things and more. The and more is the essential point. But in the proximate view, the near term, the basic point of the existentialist philosophers is that besides the rational there is the irrational, or as some would say, besides the divine there is the demonic. It is this fact which forces businesses to advertise — because the value of their product is only part of the story. The rest and ofter determining part of the story is in the indeterminate of cache, or what the advertisers call engineered consent. But that consent is so unstable that it must be continuously fortified with billions of dollars of re-advertising.

An epigram on this subject came to mind this morning: Leadership is evidence that the universe is not mechanistic.

 

The subject is a genetics one, touching on the phenomenon of aggregation causing heat.  Internet is not a driving force but evidence of a driving force, namely, concatenation of will and bodies (population). Similarly, no one is driven by the profit motive but rather all are driven by the law of expansion, the will to produce.  The relish of doing is the motivation of doing.  Profit comes willy-nilly and no one seeks it who is sane.  If they say they are profit-driven they are saying they are pay-off driven — corrupt.  All appropriate activity is profitable by its very nature.  Profit is always present where creation is.  Phenomenon of genetics.

 

Religion is the state of being ultimately concerned. If the concern is with the actually ultimate, well, if with what is less than ultimate, then … disharmonies.

There is an order of Saints and Sages, always, always sensed by the members, who are not always in direct contact.

The other efforts at religion coordination have in mind world governance by religious leaders. This will not be allowed, not their calling. Their calling is teaching, not governance, which belongs to secular leaders, principally warriors. So the concept here is deliberative and amounts to a making patent the implicit order of Saints and Sages, or at least an aspect of it. It would be for a period of time, say, until the era of peace gets on its feet.

 

The Five Human Values.

Update 1: Dan Koboldt: Building A Fantasy Army: Leaders

Joel D. Harrison: The Most Important Thing You Need To Know About Friedrich Schleiermacher’s Theology

AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA