Begining the universe with a word

William James once asked Helen Keller to describe what life was like prior to learning her first word, her response was that there was nothing, no description, nothing to re member, a gray miasma; it was when t that first word, water, became real that ideas became real,that Helen Keller became a human being. Her universe was created.

It is reported that as a species we have been around for about 180,000 years, a number that becomes more accurate as scientists examine new evidence using new techniques; but examples of what we are as human beings goes only to cave paintings, the oldest writings are but a few thousand, does no one want to talk about that gap? What about the first 150,000 or so years? The animal that is us existed, ate, fornicated, shat and begat for a long, long time, but apparently without language.

From the mists of our past a truth came through far enough to be put down in what was to become part of the bible, something to the effect that-the word was the beginning. It was not until the first of our ancestors put her hand on something and uttered ‘rock’ that rock was created, and then she gave her partner that look, look was all she had to give him as she had no other word, gave him that look that says ‘pay attention to me the one with the vagina, this is important what I have just done, she repeated the sound until he understood, until he slapped an object and made the sound ‘rock’, I can only imagine the joy them both as they created a world ‘rock’, and then he slapped another object, what we now call ‘tree’, he repeated ‘rock’, she gave him that look again, he eventually came to see that the world was ‘rock’ and not-’rock’. In the beginning was the word.

A baby sees that the object incessantly put in front of its face, and the sound ‘ball’, are the same thing, object is ball, ball is object, there is now a world and it is ‘ball’. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t enjoyed watching an infant with the first word, the world is ‘ball’, the word is repeated ad nauseum; remember the look on the infant’s face, pure joy, the first joy of a human being. That child has become a being with a universe, has the joy of creation.

Periodically the New York Times reports or copies the bleatings of physical scientists and the bible-beaters as they throw their paper weapons at one another in exasperation, frustration arising from the intuitive knowledge that neither one has anything worth while to say.

Newton, and then Einstein, stated clearly, without evasion that this is what we have, there can’t be more and there can’t be less; Einstein made it even more inclusive by adding energy to matter, making the point even stronger. This is what there is, there can’t be more and there can’t be less.

So what the hell is a physical scientist doing talking about creating the world, that ain’t his game, he has all that there is, the scientists job is to explain it.

So what the hell is the bible-beater doing talking about the physical world, that ain’t her game, she has all that she needs, if she would just examine herself within.

It is that that arises from being, from knowing, from learning that the spiritual world is about; examine what happens the first time you fall in love, that surprising event that defines fifth grade, that took over my life bringing great adventure and sorrow, examine what that is about, that is the world of creation and the spirit, perhaps even the Spirit.

This is what I have seen

It has been at least six months since I wrote the ‘Lydia Aello’ thing, it was a way of tying a few things together, to see how they looked on paper and screen. It is a good time to add something to the business of experiencing whatever it was that I experienced.

All my bridges were burning, there was no way out of this horrible mess that my life had become, death was my only option. I had gone over my situation repeatedly, had burned out a number of therapists in attempts to find a solution to the depression and anxiety that destroyed all that I might have been. I truly believed that I was going to use the setup I had made, that I would no longer be alive in fifteen minutes, no hope was left unturned.

It was the absolute belief that nothing I held important was useful, no cavalry troop was going to ride in from off stage at the last minute; no smooth, moist thighs were going to open as a safe harbor; that is when I began to sense something else, I now call it ‘Presence’ even though it was and is not a thing, a presence. It is more like a verb than a noun, and it has no character other than it was through me, about me, it was me and more than me, I would never be alone again.

In the months and years to follow I went through James’ Varieties of Religious Experience, fought my way through a number of Tillich’s books, listed myself at the University of Wales, Lampeter where religious experiences can be registered. I have come to believe that I had what those others have had over the millenia, and it has led me to a few notions:

Jesus couldn’t have experienced the ultimate transcendence if he had not been brought to death by the Romans, Jesus the man teaching what all men can know.

That the guy who stood on the dessert and said ‘God is God’ pretty much said it all, and I empathize with his experience.

That people who have spiritual knowledge did not all stop two thousand years ago, there is no reason to think that there is less opportunity to know the divine than there was in Palestine back then, no reason at all.

That it is the goal of everyone to have this knowledge, whether that goal is expressed or kept hidden, there is intuitive knowledge of what it is.

I will post this as is, even though I know its inadequacy, know that what was experienced can never be portrayed accurately and fully: not by Bach, Jackson Pollock or Jesus, but we feel the need to try.

A man from Darfur

I met a man from Darfur; it was an early evening in August, I was walking in the livery staging area at O’Hare. The lot can hold about 200 livery cars and over 300 taxi cabs, a lively place to be on a pleasant evening. I doing what exercise I do, he the same, we walked and talked together for a while, I never saw him again.

The man told me that he had just returned from Darfur, that he had grown up in that area, emigrated to the U. S., had just returned from a visit. He described holding a child as it died, knowing there were other children in the village who were about to die, so many had died in the place he had grown up, so many more would die in the future. There was nothing he could do about it. He was sad, angry, confused, frustrated, and had to come back from that place.

He told me that he was a Muslim, but not a practicing one, that the religion based destruction and killing kept him from the rituals and ceremonies that he had learned growing up. They were responsible for the death of this child, the other child, and all of the others, they who were supposed to be his spiritual guides.

His angry argument against the religious authorities was familiar, I don’t imagine that there is anyone growing up in our culture who has not gone through the argument and history of religion based cruelty, it is something that we start in high school and keep through the early years of college: examples and blame, the frustration of not having a spiritual organization with clean hands. That there is no religious group that has not killed and injured. I don’t need to go through this old harangue, there isn’t anything new about it.

I suggested that he should temporarily lift the words from this business, Allah, Muslim, whatever the nouns are they should be set aside for now. Don’t throw them away, keep them close to hand, within sight and reach. Then go to how he had once felt, what feeling that the practice had given him, just the feeling experience. Stay with just that for a while. He understood what I was offering, agreed that it felt good, was a comfort against his frustration.

All of the words of a Spiritual life carry baggage, so much of it that it is almost impossible to grow from under that weight. Put aside God, Jesus, Christianity, Jehovah, Allah and whatever words, and let whatever it is that is behind those words rise to the surface. There is, always has been, something that needs to be felt, that can’t be ignored, it is the basis for all religions and cults. Just go to that place within, relive the feeling that that you find.

This is nothing more difficult than doing this, nothing takes more courage, and it is the most wonderful. Leave the safe words passed down from your father and mother, the authoritarian laws and directions that were to give lifelong guidance; set them aside, for a short time, be courageous.

The symbols, ceremonies, laws will always be there, they can be picked up and carried at any time—-but for just this short time set them beside me, when I come back to them they will have even more power than previous.

This piece has been the most difficult to complete, has taken nearly a week to get this far. It is far from complete, is disjointed, the words not exact. Writing about this is like engraving smoke. I feel as if I had done too much exercising, I am sore and creaky, and I have a headache; all for those couple of paragraphs. I’ll post this today, will come back to it again, and then once more.

Slicing through the now

Yesterday I received two different comments that disturbed me. They disturbed me in that good way, put me just somewhat askew, and I thank both of my correspondent friends for sending them to me, they were just what I needed. I have spent much of the last day trying to nudge my gyroscope back on course. The first comment was in reaction to a shot I’d made about the U/Us, that she felt ‘at home with this bunch of seekers’. The second comment had to do with the birds at the feeder experiencing the joy of being in the present to an extent that man cannot. (I hope that I have transferred both ideas in the correct spirit.)

In 1960 I went to Europe on an ocean liner, the Q. S. S. Arkadia, quadruple screws was the reason for the Q. S. S.; this was still the standard method of going overseas, we were 7 days Montreal to Bremerhaven, with a couple of intermediate stops.

I liked to go to the bow and look down to where the prow cut the water, fascinated by looking slightly ahead at the smooth surface that will be cut and disturbed by this monster shoving through. Tens of thousands of horsepower drove us at 25 knots through cold dark water; the North Atlantic Ocean in October is cold, the water under our keel several miles thick; the contrast of this great ship as just a speck; the little curl of the bow wave and the wake changing nothing of the 2,000 fathoms.

Perhaps a foot or two in advance of the prow a small hill of water formed from the standing pressure wave of our progress, in a way this bump was as looking into the future, the present was where the steel split the ocean, the mound was just prior to that. Looking into the future is impossible but here it was happening, and it was irrelevant, by the time the hill of water was recognized it was under us, gone under foot. Seeing that short distance meant nothing, and once it passed under us it meant nothing. One couldn’t contemplate that patch of water rising to meet us, it would be gone by then.

The only thing that mattered was our moving through. The present is only important because it is now become the past. It is the becoming that is important to our being. One can focus on the wake of the ship, as would a conservative; one could look a mile ahead, as foolishly optimistic as Mr. Micawber; but it is where that hull disturbed the surface of the great ocean that one knows excitement.

To say that the birds feel joy is to misunderstand what joy is, it is because the present passes us and we know it, that is what makes us special, we know that what is is now gone, and that there is more coming. We know grief, despair, surprise, we feel joy in all of it.

I don’t know if any of this makes sense, it did for an hour or so at 5 a. m.

I am not sure that I feel less disturbed than I did, but I sure feel alive, feel the joy of sailing the deeper ocean.

I find nothing enlightening in organized religion: Some guys sitting around a table, deciding a program, that doesn’t enlighten in any way. The only thing holy about that scene is the word hot-stamped on the cover of a book. What I get from the business of Jesus, Judas and the Romans is that Jesus intuitively knew that to transcend what came before he had to feel the depth of scorn and rejection, feel the impersonal indignity of torture, feel the despair of certain and prolonged dying. Jesus had to feel the knowledge that God was not about relieving that pain, it was then that he could and did leave port on a new course. His boat then sailed a different sea. It is now our opportunity and obligation to gain a grain of wisdom from that unique example.

About God, Jesus & the Bible

This in response to something from a week or so ago:Of course Jesus was and is Man, how else could He be relevant for these two millennia? Another definition would involve magic, the supernatural, a suspension of reason, and that has always been a weak theological line.

And yes, anything other than God is blasphemy, that is the definition of blasphemy; what Jesus did and does is enable us to transcend the mundane, to assist us in joining the Spirit.

The whole point of the spiritual journey is to become one again, to become more than we were, to get as close to the ineffable as possible.

And, as a last note: The bible becomes holy only when it assists us in going to where we ought to be. If it is just a recipe book to be memorized and followed mindlessly, it remains merely a book.

I think that how I understand the Spirit, the direction along the Path, that it is in the spirit of Luther, that he showed us the courage to know directly.