tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30778889410606020462024-02-05T10:29:31.434+00:00Mystical FactionMystical adventure by Etienne de L'Amour and soft scifi by H.M. ForesterEtienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comBlogger145125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-49277477959807423862024-01-05T20:08:00.003+00:002024-02-01T19:30:35.420+00:00Our books at the the Internet Archive library<p>All the mystical adventure novels by Etienne de L'Amour, soft sci-fi and psi-fi by H.M. Forester, and some short non-fiction documents by Eric Twose are now available to view, read or download for free at <b><span style="color: #38761d;">the Internet Archive library</span></b>: <a href="https://archive.org/details/@esowteric?tab=uploads" target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/@esowteric?tab=uploads</a> </p><p>Also available for free download at our <b><span style="color: #38761d;">web site</span></b>: <a href="https://sherpoint.uk/" target="_blank">https://sherpoint.uk/</a> </p><p style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-sjxdPfVsDrUIDa__kfDJrqlJ3fmE53gWBc3PJGw5vHj1eB0f1bA9fEUSfT5CbWd09C55y162hXeuag3mUwxmcmyCzvhi_2EDpAJo37l5HrDDfjXg4WuhYpwB5knIg_uYGP8D68Nv4rNAs10mAc9CBDZvK-C15aeDIznJwEUw8yfHmmdBht8MELp1XDcf/s800/Books_HD_(8314929977).jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A display of books." border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-sjxdPfVsDrUIDa__kfDJrqlJ3fmE53gWBc3PJGw5vHj1eB0f1bA9fEUSfT5CbWd09C55y162hXeuag3mUwxmcmyCzvhi_2EDpAJo37l5HrDDfjXg4WuhYpwB5knIg_uYGP8D68Nv4rNAs10mAc9CBDZvK-C15aeDIznJwEUw8yfHmmdBht8MELp1XDcf/w400-h266/Books_HD_(8314929977).jpg" title="A display of books." width="400" /></a></p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>H.M Forester at <b><span style="color: #38761d;">Goodreads</span></b>:</p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5818501.H_M_Forester" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5818501.H_M_Forester</a> </p><p>Etienne de L'Amour at <b><span style="color: #38761d;">Goodreads</span></b>:</p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5397207.Etienne_de_L_Amour" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5397207.Etienne_de_L_Amour</a> </p><p></p><p>Enjoy!</p><p>Image: Books HD (8314929977) / Abhi Sharma from India / Wikimedia Commons (orig. Flickr) / CC BY 2.0.</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-38119289340012623702023-12-21T22:27:00.002+00:002023-12-22T00:14:44.273+00:00Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return (or Rehab?)<p> I've just finished reading Paul Robichaud's excellent work, <i><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;">Pan: The Great God’s Modern Return</span></b></i>, and it's left me with a great many impressions. Not least: I would dearly love to read an autobiographical account of the pastoral protector; something along the lines of “I, Pan: The true story of a much-misunderstood, maligned, and neglected elder god” (or daemon).</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVCP8LjBbEY0yAjeEYIKUc9GvTvKC5aT2qBDgOPJfheVk5zsYzdMW75P-DTCczYjxooJF3052VekQOr6fstiXh7sM1VibyuJNNCRfxW4jMD6shikfuvnHKcL6O7BEqFtb0Pglew33JYhasIkUhzN4nd21SLq6uQfi9x0lROflbQQR7oxVaQSvWhryrIaE/s769/The_venture_annual_of_art_and_literature_-_The_Death_of_Pan.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The death of Pan. Pan lurking in the bushes and watching the Christian nativity." border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="769" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVCP8LjBbEY0yAjeEYIKUc9GvTvKC5aT2qBDgOPJfheVk5zsYzdMW75P-DTCczYjxooJF3052VekQOr6fstiXh7sM1VibyuJNNCRfxW4jMD6shikfuvnHKcL6O7BEqFtb0Pglew33JYhasIkUhzN4nd21SLq6uQfi9x0lROflbQQR7oxVaQSvWhryrIaE/w400-h400/The_venture_annual_of_art_and_literature_-_The_Death_of_Pan.jpg" title="The death of Pan. Pan lurking in the bushes and watching the Christian nativity." width="400" /></a></div><br />On a more serious note, however:<p></p><p>I gather that the Arcadians, from the Peloponnese region of Greece, were an ancient and simple rustic people; indeed, according to the concept of proselenos, they were said to be older than the Moon, Selene, herself. Hence, by implication, pre-dating the Olympian gods of the Greek classical era.</p><p>In his address “On Pan’s Iconography and the Cult in the Sanctuary of Pan on the Slopes of Mount Lykaion”, in which Ulrich Hübinger reports on archaeological discoveries in Arcadia, he asks (given that the first written mentions of the god Pan only begin to appear in the fifth century BCE):</p><p></p><blockquote>“Does Pan’s strange goatish appearance on Attic vases from Late Archaic and Early Classical times reflect earlier iconographical traditions from Arcadia? Did the ancients picture him in the beginning simply as a goat, which revealed its divine status by walking on its hind legs like a human being? Are connections even to be suspected with animal worship in the Mycenaean age?”</blockquote><p></p><p>This was the very question I had been asking myself (albeit with scant knowledge or reading of the field, and quite without evidence).</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Perhaps following Pan's alleged support in the battle of Marathon, in which he induced panic terror in the enemies' ranks, the cult of Pan spread through the Greek lands.<p></p><p>So, when we read about Pan and we see images of him as half-goat, half-man or horned god (equated by many since the 19th century with Satan), and we read about some of his rather unsavoury or even demonic characteristics (connected with “animal instinct” and sexuality or even bestiality) ... how much of that is true to his more humble and less sophisticated origins in Arcadia (or even before that time, if he is, as some suggest, equivalent to the Vedic or Proto-Indo-European pastoral god, Pūshān (or *Péh₂usōn)?</p><p>It's been said that the gods of one culture become the demons of the next, as we can clearly see from the early days of Christianity, and also in other transitional times such as the Enlightenment; we see the demise and eventual death of older beliefs and ways of being. Earlier than that, though: did the Athenian and Attic people take his image and mould it to their own ends, perhaps to promote the classical Greek civilisation and demote the simple, rustic, “noble savagery” of the Arcadian wild[er]ness?</p><p>So, how much of what we are told about Pan is true?</p><p>Though I am more than willing to accept the existence of Shadow elements (not least in my own psyche), to use a term from Jungian depth psychology, I'm wondering if virtually all we know about Pan has come to us through mythological and psychological denigration, embellishment and propaganda; that Pan has been misunderstood, misrepresented, scapegoated, demonised, neglected, and most recently ridiculed along with so much else that is sacred. </p><p>Given a lack of written evidence prior to the classical Greek era, let us hope that modern Peloponnesian archaeology (and even, dare I say it, direct knowledge) can shine a light on these issues and give us a better understanding.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></h3><p>Image: The venture annual of art and literature - The Death of Pan / Louise Glazier / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-11156165029033377152023-10-15T21:14:00.003+01:002023-10-25T18:52:03.700+01:00ishraqi institute: Modus Operandi and Raison D’Etre<p>“I think I'm quite ready for another adventure.” ~ Bilbo Baggins, <i>The Lord of the Rings</i>.</p><p>In this era of global communications and instant connectivity, we're saturated, even inundated, round the clock by sensationalist news and tempting “fast foods” of consumerism, as well as egotistical, even narcissistic, self-promotion and “media influence”, and drowning in shedload after shedload of information. As a consequence, we are suffering cognitive and emotional overload. I trust that a little hopefully quality “time out” will alleviate that, rather than exacerbate matters, and point you in the direction of others who can offer greater help in what is, as Henry Corbin stated, an ongoing Battle for the Soul of the World. Rather than a course following a logical progression from A to Z, this is a deliberately open-ended exploration, and exercise in mental fluidity, learning as we go along.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwtwpjjoT-QRjnXakJ8rTAkQto-0dLeS1uR8rdkuFLWDgIvOsM_RP3wGcMTpmypPN17ZJszb215WyrOjm6w7A7zJOkWI5VaDGZHoNJRIKi2S9CRzeZd2j6JNrDIPauo1VzLRgjZ6jvTFwwfTy-KsxWSHWemjA6fr9tel2L9eNQxe4lvTWK7zn12dlbZGxL/s800/800px-Ship_of_fools._A.N._Mironov.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Ship of fools / Andrey Mironov/ Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0." border="0" data-original-height="550" data-original-width="800" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwtwpjjoT-QRjnXakJ8rTAkQto-0dLeS1uR8rdkuFLWDgIvOsM_RP3wGcMTpmypPN17ZJszb215WyrOjm6w7A7zJOkWI5VaDGZHoNJRIKi2S9CRzeZd2j6JNrDIPauo1VzLRgjZ6jvTFwwfTy-KsxWSHWemjA6fr9tel2L9eNQxe4lvTWK7zn12dlbZGxL/w400-h275/800px-Ship_of_fools._A.N._Mironov.jpg" title="Ship of fools / Andrey Mironov/ Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0." width="400" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>One main aim of the ishraqi institute, then, is to seduce you with a coherent alternative worldview, based on love, wisdom, meaning, soul, beauty, imagination, creativity, and magic, to go a little way toward countering the predominant, soulless and mechanistic, reductionist, materialist, utilitarian, and capitalist worldview, and instead offer rich, complementary, and wide-ranging content, and stimulate your need for engagement, sense of wonder and desire, for truth, unity, beauty, and goodness.</p><p>Jean Gebser wrote about the deficient mode of the mental-rational structure of consciousness that we are currently suffering, and – though he gave no guarantees that we would survive as a species – he offered hope that a new, integral mode is beginning to emerge.</p><p>Thank you for being here in these “interesting times” and for your valuable patience, consideration, and contributions.</p><p>~ ii.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></h3><p>Ship of fools / Andrey Mironov / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-54786702737296656372023-10-11T14:16:00.002+01:002023-10-11T14:16:51.549+01:00The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal: Book Review<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju2BkPHPVYL2TVpBBtthh91aj3eaw_hQpeuv4OGZNZD8rGOlF3O1TtusigmWhCuWBUrVD3pvxt0wHqmhyshgpZWTnbDnP7o5AnMUeMRDHTcWYRBPX2DduV9BDLK0cYRcBT_R9q_fR4dElnLbtpEw9aVb0kvhtcfrqg4D2W_wskwZlP2xffHT7oYwyPnLVd/s1000/The%20Hermetic%20Deleuze%20-%20Philosophy%20and%20Spiritual%20Ordeal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Front cover of The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal." border="0" data-original-height="1000" data-original-width="667" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEju2BkPHPVYL2TVpBBtthh91aj3eaw_hQpeuv4OGZNZD8rGOlF3O1TtusigmWhCuWBUrVD3pvxt0wHqmhyshgpZWTnbDnP7o5AnMUeMRDHTcWYRBPX2DduV9BDLK0cYRcBT_R9q_fR4dElnLbtpEw9aVb0kvhtcfrqg4D2W_wskwZlP2xffHT7oYwyPnLVd/w213-h320/The%20Hermetic%20Deleuze%20-%20Philosophy%20and%20Spiritual%20Ordeal.jpg" title="The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal." width="213" /></a></div>★★★★ Crikey, for me it's certainly a “spiritual ordeal” to get my head round <b><span style="color: #38761d;">Joshua Ramey's <i>The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal</i></span></b>. Understanding perhaps 0.1% of Ramey's interpretation, I should perhaps have eased my way into the terminology (which often reads like a highbrow wine-tasting review with which I have difficulty relating to the reality of actually drinking) via <i>Deleuze for Dummies</i>, or <i>Finnegan's Wake</i>. I was, however, more at home with the author's scattered references to the art of “learning how to swim”, which was, quite possibly, metaphorically one of the main reasons for writing and having interested parties read this and related works.<p></p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>As Jeremy Garber so aptly writes in a review at Goodreads: “Ramey’s reading certainly squares with my life-changing experience of reading Deleuze, an act of tortured comprehension I have frequently compared to having my brain scooped out of my head, thrown against a wall, and then dumped back into my skull. Deleuze’s frequent references to Artaud’s theatre of cruelty are also not accidental. The fruit of such painful endeavors, however, is a renewed capacity to see the world in a way that allows for the real possibilities of change.”</p><p>In the end, I'm reminded that “[t]o ‘learn ignorance’ is to learn one’s limitations”, and “to be conscious of ignorance is wisdom”, to which I can but distantly aspire.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-57539643091735582902023-09-15T19:43:00.003+01:002023-09-15T19:43:48.619+01:00The Golden Chain<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbazSYpcmQkCudNKDLpnQScND4XVOrOrOZJc14IEqU1BPFNRfqXyEhzWCftstw_bQup_b-uXKhwGcoR3653ouMkUwMOZaN22HGDKlIHWrRlruQ4gfHiDC7IxKAdQ5x-Rb5vVpY28TeXawNi87YQYQl1dvlV_ahTxoyTXYotpHbkVoPdqSb4InfWGzz-T5k/s800/800px-Gold-jewellery-jewel-henry-designs-terabass.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbazSYpcmQkCudNKDLpnQScND4XVOrOrOZJc14IEqU1BPFNRfqXyEhzWCftstw_bQup_b-uXKhwGcoR3653ouMkUwMOZaN22HGDKlIHWrRlruQ4gfHiDC7IxKAdQ5x-Rb5vVpY28TeXawNi87YQYQl1dvlV_ahTxoyTXYotpHbkVoPdqSb4InfWGzz-T5k/s320/800px-Gold-jewellery-jewel-henry-designs-terabass.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>“The philosophers who influenced Suhrawardi came from pre-Islamic Persia, ancient Greece and Egypt. Together their ideas formed a potent blend of Zoroastrianism, Plato and the wisdom traditions of Alexandria, what Suhrawardi called a ‘philosophy of light’, a tradition of esoteric metaphysics that was handed down from sage to sage, Suhrawardi believed, through the ages. In 1186 Suhrawardi tried to capture its essence in <i>Hikmat al-Ishraq</i>, translated, as mentioned, as Oriental Philosophy and also as The Philosophy of Illumination, the book that set [Henry] Corbin on his hermeneutical quest. Suhrawardi wrote of an initiatic chain, a school of adepts reaching back into the dim past, and which included the fabled Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, Plato, Plotinus and others. All were informed by the same primal revelation, the <i>prisca theologia</i> or ‘primal theology’, which it was his task to resurrect.”<p></p><p>~ Gary Lachman, <i>Lost Knowledge of the Imagination</i>.</p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36086531" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/36086531</a> </p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>“Throughout their lives W.B. Yeats and C.G. Jung sought out precedents for, and affinities with, their visionary — their daimonic — standpoints. Between them they uncovered and studied just about every major proponent of our tradition. This is not surprising, because it is a feature of the tradition that it threads together all who discover it, to form a series of historical links. The alchemists called it the <i>Aurea Catena</i>, the Golden Chain; and to grasp one link is to be connected to all the others.”</p><p>~ Patrick Harpur, <i>Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld</i>.</p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/920181.Daimonic_Reality" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/920181.Daimonic_Reality</a> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Perennial Philosophy and the Golden Chain</span></h3><p>“The Renaissance magi consciously placed themselves in a tradition which harked back, as they thought, to the Chaldeans, Egyptians, Orphics and Pythagoreans – essentially the same tradition as the Golden Chain of alchemy which anticipated the Romantics from Goethe, Schelling and Coleridge, for example, to W. B. Yeats, T. S. Eliot and C. G. Jung. Whatever the differences in their expressions of the tradition – this ‘perennial philosophy’ – certain tenets (if I may recapitulate for a moment) remain constant: that the cosmos comprises a system of correspondences, notably between microcosm and macrocosm; that the cosmos is animated by a world-soul which links all phenomena together; that the human soul is but an individual manifestation of the world-soul; the chief faculty of the soul is imagination; and that, finally, the experience of personal transmutation, of gnosis, is of the essence.”</p><p>~ Patrick Harpur, <i>The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination</i>.</p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/664216 " target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/664216</a> </p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></h3><p>Image: Gold jewellery / Terabass / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-81198655768417418952023-09-13T12:22:00.004+01:002023-09-30T12:32:16.726+01:00Meeting the Shadow: Book Review<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge0UbycWrPVknr9XVeVsekDcutS_QAcnEbVUyhk8Tq0uFEfo5Kcvot2tPoaxs7kj-gr18svwaKyX4VmvLbnq2DTpWzptWyX3qcL8n4-DEEa2eRlt6iDFqA5sdx9t-wSBKg5UHWmtj5HFr5joWhl_ZS7dbue5KF-im2I37m3BwRBalR_4-zOfcjOSNWyOVh/s935/meeting-the-shadow-front-cover-tight.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Front cover of Meeting Your Shadow." border="0" data-original-height="935" data-original-width="677" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEge0UbycWrPVknr9XVeVsekDcutS_QAcnEbVUyhk8Tq0uFEfo5Kcvot2tPoaxs7kj-gr18svwaKyX4VmvLbnq2DTpWzptWyX3qcL8n4-DEEa2eRlt6iDFqA5sdx9t-wSBKg5UHWmtj5HFr5joWhl_ZS7dbue5KF-im2I37m3BwRBalR_4-zOfcjOSNWyOVh/w232-h320/meeting-the-shadow-front-cover-tight.jpg" title="Front cover of Meeting Your Shadow." width="232" /></a></div>★★★★★ <b><i style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Meeting the Shadow</span></i></b> is not one of those books to read, tick off the list, and casually cast aside: it's a real eye-opener.<p></p><p><i>Meeting the Shadow</i> is a potentially life-changing, psychoactive work; a potent initiatory experience; and the first, necessary step on the winding path not toward betterment, godliness or some unattainable perfection but toward more wholeness of being.</p><p>As Jeremiah Abrams writes in the Epilogue: “We each contain the potentials to be both destructive and creative. Admitting to the dark enemies within us is really a confessional act, the beginning of psychological change. Nothing about ourselves can change unless we first accept it and grant it reality. Shadow-work is the initiatory phase of making a whole of ourselves.”</p><p>And he concludes: “Here is the golden opportunity in realizing the shadow: the gold is in the awareness of choice, made possible by mediating the tension between our shadow and our ego. If we have choice about who we enact in the world, then it follows that we can take responsibility for the kind of world we create.”</p><p>Enjoy!</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-48310115137845915692023-04-17T11:58:00.003+01:002023-04-17T12:53:07.611+01:00A Topical Experiment in ESP Using Wordle<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKoKj3HJaf6iAvpCLsKqVC4H5uEfOkblIJCGZVnRCwM16JBKBk6vkjESy8h2MZFFtEctv4Ym7oYdJiX2uNZgwBQt868r1hZjbxEktLVEYwRNac_s8UTHPn0yyNUhQyNxDo5FapPfye0hCsd90eOR11ilYvYfU2WEE4h8FqaflLxidJ1XJmX4dFYyeig/s963/Wordle_196_example.svg.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="An example of the online game, Wordle." border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="963" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxKoKj3HJaf6iAvpCLsKqVC4H5uEfOkblIJCGZVnRCwM16JBKBk6vkjESy8h2MZFFtEctv4Ym7oYdJiX2uNZgwBQt868r1hZjbxEktLVEYwRNac_s8UTHPn0yyNUhQyNxDo5FapPfye0hCsd90eOR11ilYvYfU2WEE4h8FqaflLxidJ1XJmX4dFYyeig/w320-h255/Wordle_196_example.svg.png" title="An example of the online game, Wordle." width="320" /></a></div>Here's a topical experiment in telepathy that might be fun for someone like Rupert Sheldrake to carry out:<p></p><p>Have one set of candidates with no knowledge of the current day's <i>New York Times</i> Wordle puzzle try to guess the answer (perhaps allow them two or three guesses, to counter any internal delinquency, or “being in two minds” and not listening to intuition), with no feedback about success or failure, unlike the real puzzle.</p><p>As the (US) day progresses, more and more non-participating people will discover the correct answer or, if they fail the puzzle, will be told the correct answer.</p><p>A second group of candidates could also attempt to guess the answer to the same day's puzzle, but the day before, so the answer would not be “floating in the air” at that time.</p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>The guesses could be scored with so many points for a correct letter in the wrong place, in the right place, or a miss.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;">Note</span></b></h3><p>Note, that in the real puzzle, some words have a better chance of reducing the number of remaining possibilities, but using the same word would overcome this issue.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></b></h3><p>Image: Wordle 196 example / Josh Wardle (website/game), Berrely (vectorizing) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-20490282931360937382023-03-10T20:23:00.002+00:002023-03-10T20:24:02.372+00:00The Science and Art of Dreaming: Book Review<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0p_fUQKh81IRVe7eOj4Oc4FwJtVdmrHa17OLdmHMxhTPk6kfG1p6ai3l5HANRGwyL9N7Li-5wRUn6LefQ7NWN4ClV--OzGHlyfse9AywoOKXXGUAE_xI3s15Kt5VqKqoaE7Y-VORmrX0vWYpyUneVmFAVKRcf7m3NO-e6GpB6bqfeH43AkWeta-30g/s640/the-science-and-art-of-dreaming-640-for-blog.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Science and Art of Dreaming, by Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart." border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="435" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjl0p_fUQKh81IRVe7eOj4Oc4FwJtVdmrHa17OLdmHMxhTPk6kfG1p6ai3l5HANRGwyL9N7Li-5wRUn6LefQ7NWN4ClV--OzGHlyfse9AywoOKXXGUAE_xI3s15Kt5VqKqoaE7Y-VORmrX0vWYpyUneVmFAVKRcf7m3NO-e6GpB6bqfeH43AkWeta-30g/w218-h320/the-science-and-art-of-dreaming-640-for-blog.jpg" title="The Science and Art of Dreaming, by Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart." width="218" /></a></div><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 14.85px;">★★★★★ </span><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;"><span style="color: #333333;">I really can’t do better than point the would-be reader to the publisher’s description at the top of the book page, because from reading and thoroughly enjoying </span><i><b><span style="color: #38761d;">The Science and Art of Dreaming</span></b></i><span style="color: #333333;"> by Mark Blagrove and Julia Lockheart, “it [really] does what it says on the tin.”</span></span></span><p></p><p></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;">This book is a blend of rigorous documentation of scientific research and theory from dreams researcher Mark Blagrove, and more intuitive appreciation of dreams that are presented, with Mark guiding discussion with the dreamer (primarily using the eminently practical Montague Ullman dream appreciation method and free association, which we can all use at home or in groups), and the resultant and inspired artwork by Julia Lockheart (performed live on camera as each session progresses), which brings the process full-circle from the original dream imagery back to the visual; wonderful artwork that the dreamer gets to keep for further exploration by them and with friends and family.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span></span></span></p><a name='more'></a><p></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;">Later on, the book turns to the 20th-century avant-garde movement of Surrealism, and its practitioners’ influence on literature, art, and film, designed to provide an oneiric (dream-like) experience, rather than to be understood with our rational mind – indeed, to actually outwit or thwart the latter process.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;">In addition – and of considerable importance – the co-authors discuss the link between dreams and empathy, and provide evidence that “[t]he sharing of dreams leads to increased empathy towards the dreamer from those with whom the dream is shared” (while there are many who dismiss dreams and even some who maintain that dreams serve no useful function), and this has many worldly implications and opens up new possibilities.</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;">Book at Routledge:</span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;"><a href="https://www.routledge.com/The-Science-and-Art-of-Dreaming/Blagrove-Lockheart/p/book/9780367479947" target="_blank">https://www.routledge.com/The-Science-and-Art-of-Dreaming/Blagrove-Lockheart/p/book/9780367479947</a></span></span></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;">Book entry at Goodreads:</span></span></p><p></p><p><span face="Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif" style="color: #333333;"><span style="font-size: 14.85px;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61391527-the-science-and-art-of-dreaming" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61391527-the-science-and-art-of-dreaming</a> </span></span></p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-29900290305071595612023-02-12T22:08:00.003+00:002024-02-04T13:41:06.600+00:00The Imaginal Veil, by H. M. Forester<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVwB7yTI0PMoUPeaAkteOvM-Et-0lIVFksK64efscNDJkDP7qkcPQ_Zp88riQwaCVxA_2DRcI46cc6eeXQUc2qBmAUUnjXm1fr8-0TDaoSwdILvX9f0KtNAihZhXgEicpAYwsIXg1Kei-C6PkjA5iPy2JG_l-Pmo27_tNMatl4zb9WH_wcm53O69pxEA/s853/imaginal-veil-smaller-cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="853" data-original-width="640" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVwB7yTI0PMoUPeaAkteOvM-Et-0lIVFksK64efscNDJkDP7qkcPQ_Zp88riQwaCVxA_2DRcI46cc6eeXQUc2qBmAUUnjXm1fr8-0TDaoSwdILvX9f0KtNAihZhXgEicpAYwsIXg1Kei-C6PkjA5iPy2JG_l-Pmo27_tNMatl4zb9WH_wcm53O69pxEA/s320/imaginal-veil-smaller-cover.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>The first draft of <b><i><span style="color: #38761d;">The Imaginal Veil</span></i></b> by H. M. Forester is now available for free download.<p></p><p>You can preview or download it at <a href="https://archive.org/details/@esowteric?tab=uploads" target="_blank">The Internet Archive</a></p><p>or download it at the Sher Point Publications, UK <a href="https://sherpoint.uk/sherpoint/review-copies.htm" target="_blank">web site</a> (just scroll down the page).</p><p>There's also an entry at <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/112817241-the-imaginal-veil" target="_blank">Goodreads</a>.</p><p>First draft edition, 12 February 2023, 268 pages.</p><p>Enjoy!</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-89381035611206832082022-12-14T18:11:00.007+00:002023-01-08T14:55:20.514+00:00This Post-Enlightenment Era of Post-Trust, Post-Truth, Post-Rationality, Post-Honour, and Post-Chivalry<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">We are so far down the wrong rabbit hole here, people</span></h3><p>There's something gravely amiss with, and missing from, a post-Enlightenment society that elevates rich, charismatic, unempathic and sometimes sociopathic, narcissists to positions of power in society, even though that might risk a fall into a rigid, divisive, violent and authoritarian regime. This often employs viral iconography and near-deification of a supposedly 4D-chess-playing pseudo-messianic cult figure come to save us all – or at least come to save the Real Patriots or True Believers who surround the leader and form a protective thought-bubble around the beloved leader, insulating him or her and themselves from a more objective and realistic reality. What makes matters worse is that this movement is feeding into religious narratives such as the fight between good and evil during these Christian End Times – at the very time that benevolent communion with traditional establishments such as the Church is most needed. And what makes matters far worse is that such leaders find themselves advised by people who really want to “bring it on!”: not only keyboard warriors but self-appointed and zealous Agents of Chaos, sometimes backed by adversarial foreign states. This, on top of the influence the latter or the leader's regime have on compromised public figures.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2O8uhQba8wBDddqS-3HbYHMMjYCmEmEXTvPoglBK5VBQZ9FoYZjL1ubcFwJ9E9s5EUC5f7qsoEtwFY8ShpUzDknjD0pBROrf_2qNGavJ3y1cmrCkzIp7C9_7f49Kl__fToF-hYLps91WCUXTgYkS82TGE68Q4fG56cEn_uWMjKH6aOpk5UzFiNmICSg/s900/Hope_in_a_Prison_of_Despair.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Hope in a Prison of Despair / Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain." border="0" data-original-height="796" data-original-width="900" height="354" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2O8uhQba8wBDddqS-3HbYHMMjYCmEmEXTvPoglBK5VBQZ9FoYZjL1ubcFwJ9E9s5EUC5f7qsoEtwFY8ShpUzDknjD0pBROrf_2qNGavJ3y1cmrCkzIp7C9_7f49Kl__fToF-hYLps91WCUXTgYkS82TGE68Q4fG56cEn_uWMjKH6aOpk5UzFiNmICSg/w400-h354/Hope_in_a_Prison_of_Despair.jpg" title="Hope in a Prison of Despair / Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919)." width="400" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Post-Trust in traditional figures and pillars of the Establishment has given rise to populism, often resorting to simplistic but emotive and attractive solutions to the many fears and complex crises we face; to arguments against those who warn of such crises, and denial that these crises exist – or indeed promoting and reliant upon ever-more elaborate and far-fetched conspiracy theories attached like a bed of limpets, or leeches, to some basic truth about which many could agree, such as cases of deceit perhaps in science, and even widespread corruption in business and politics.</p><p>This has given rise to an era of post-Truth and its alternative facts, and has led to post-Rationality, post-Chivalry and post-Honour, where rather than resign (or in earlier times fallen on their sword), the accused or disgraced go into a state of denial and even double down on their rigid stance, buoyed-up by legions of fanatics who would earnestly believe and willingly swear that black is white, that wrong is right, and down is up – a situation that is exacerbated by hate speech masquerading as free speech in the popular social media, at a time when traditional news media are struggling and also facing much opposition (the mainstream media being called-out for either right-wing or left-wing bias, and being labelled by some on the right as “enemies of the people”). Truth itself has become so fragmented and abused (as also have latter-day audiences), that in many instances it is virtually impossible for the average and even intelligent citizen to navigate the resultant mess, to decide what is true and what is false, or even tell truth from parody and fact from fiction, or fact and fiction from a blend we might term faction. Faction is all the more alluring for having a degree of truth at its core, surrounded by layers of glittering and enticing illusion, and very often playing on age-old or primitive, black-and-white modes of perception, and deep societal division, at the expense of rationality and nuance, and on instincts such as a need for certainty and security, feelings of alienation and abandonment, hope, fear, resentment, and anger.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSq-UO6oFBp_9jsQyraLWHjZVQ3qcCmEe2lgwzc4YIAeEwFqYS6bUGY5qfMnZD1uOE2K18biOJyFlpWeQZ4eSagkd5Gq1VgLJlgRkpUyBkJsoqViCQVr7WKmJK5OZ4h-9JuPpCCJbVzwyffxE4EiMea43uIxNRcLNK0zUmr4FmITiEpO34tCLkmvFNLA/s640/red-pill-youtube.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Red pill or blue pill? From the film The Matrix." border="0" data-original-height="380" data-original-width="640" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSq-UO6oFBp_9jsQyraLWHjZVQ3qcCmEe2lgwzc4YIAeEwFqYS6bUGY5qfMnZD1uOE2K18biOJyFlpWeQZ4eSagkd5Gq1VgLJlgRkpUyBkJsoqViCQVr7WKmJK5OZ4h-9JuPpCCJbVzwyffxE4EiMea43uIxNRcLNK0zUmr4FmITiEpO34tCLkmvFNLA/w400-h238/red-pill-youtube.jpg" title="Red pill or blue pill? From the film The Matrix." width="400" /></a></div><p>When it comes to a solution to this current set of problems, I personally don't have five major bullet points that I could offer you. What I can do, however, is point you to a number of other contemporary writers and thinkers whose work I've been studying over the years, and leave it to you to follow the breadcrumbs:</p><p><a href="https://mystical-faction.blogspot.com/2019/11/re-enchantment-in-material-world.html" target="_blank">Re-enchantment in a Material World / the Battle for the Soul of the World</a></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></h3><p>Image 1: Hope in a Prison of Despair / Evelyn De Morgan (1855–1919) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.</p><p>Image description: Allegorical, pre-Raphaelite painting showing Hope as a woman or very young man holding a lamp, entering the dungeon where Despair is shown as another human figure bowed down with grief. Hope's saint-like halo suggests the comfort brought by religious faith.</p><p>Image 2: Morpheus offering Neo a choice of red pill or blue pill, in the film <i>The Matrix</i>. Source: YouTube.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-20080699079193897502022-11-20T17:04:00.001+00:002022-11-20T19:06:43.778+00:00Resistance and Submission to Necessary Change<p> “Once one is on this mystical path – not merely talking the talk, but actually walking the walk – self-change can become at length dire necessity, because as synchronicity becomes more and more evident in one's life, as well as presenting welcome facets it also takes on dangerous aspects, resonating with one's inner state, thoughts, and actions. Or inactions.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkSx0adQPbLBBr4Gs36z-dzEY1n0_5YmwZ5y3Nkh5DZc4qFlxBzwnx1cck1DL038oQg6rCvw8Kv_bU5JioJTHJpxFjlvMVgvDTZ55RUuWYBc9SPeEgrg-KuskRuqBX08kW6MEkcS83oQx2Q8l_aAZQ1-wTqPf_MgqNuevTMk8-3lmbpVprZRdP4kYa-g/s1000/Change-1080x675.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Sign reading "Change ahead"." border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="1000" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkSx0adQPbLBBr4Gs36z-dzEY1n0_5YmwZ5y3Nkh5DZc4qFlxBzwnx1cck1DL038oQg6rCvw8Kv_bU5JioJTHJpxFjlvMVgvDTZ55RUuWYBc9SPeEgrg-KuskRuqBX08kW6MEkcS83oQx2Q8l_aAZQ1-wTqPf_MgqNuevTMk8-3lmbpVprZRdP4kYa-g/w400-h240/Change-1080x675.jpg" title="Sign reading "Change ahead"." width="400" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>“Thus it is that supposedly-external events are repeated again and again in one's life, not only until one gets the message but until one finally takes responsibility and does something to rectify or transcend the situation; takes on this task rather than avoiding, denying, or repressing it. Faced with an irresistible inner force, if one resists – if one struggles to remain an immovable object – one may well face crushing defeat, and ultimately only have oneself to blame. And those who are playing a role in helping others, perhaps at the behest of their own daemon, shoulder a still-greater load. But always remember that help is at hand.”</p><p>~ ishraqi institute.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Notes</span></h3><p>Synchronicity: an apparently meaningful coincidence in time of two or more similar or identical events that are causally unrelated.</p><p>Jung described synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle” in which events, both large and small, in the external world might align to the experience of the individual, perhaps mirroring or echoing personal concerns or thoughts.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></h3><p>Image: Change [with wider border] / Amman Wahab Nizamani / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-82646082170948648482022-10-21T19:25:00.002+01:002022-11-17T09:02:54.496+00:00Finding Our Books<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCY6EC3t4E76Jqx9CwKQ70oB2fBwsttIN-4OFIBNB5dptecQya8XU8BYsSD65fkbcuzUkJGwZ1I2lJWSaor0yXf1WC-zFO_95LRbimZmdlYKZTqqU6cIwJshzEUt66XqDxWWoXNkaTnSB8PA1C8HV-vWVDe0_r0epOZL0QVYXs7LKYhoe2rTnlGUD10g/s640/Open_books_stacked.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="A stack of open books." border="0" data-original-height="410" data-original-width="640" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCY6EC3t4E76Jqx9CwKQ70oB2fBwsttIN-4OFIBNB5dptecQya8XU8BYsSD65fkbcuzUkJGwZ1I2lJWSaor0yXf1WC-zFO_95LRbimZmdlYKZTqqU6cIwJshzEUt66XqDxWWoXNkaTnSB8PA1C8HV-vWVDe0_r0epOZL0QVYXs7LKYhoe2rTnlGUD10g/w320-h205/Open_books_stacked.jpg" title="A stack of open books." width="320" /></a></div>Etienne de L'Amour's books:</span></h3><p>1. The Lost Treasure of Roth Nagor.*</p><p>2. Life on the Flipside (or In Two Minds).**</p><p>3. Escape from the Shadowlands.</p><p>4. In Search of Destiny.</p><p>5. The Lucian Uprising.</p><p>6. Time and Time again.</p><p>7. The Gift.</p><p>8. The Host and the Guests.</p><p>9. Whisperings of Love.</p><p>10. The Insiders: Exploring the higher realms of possibility.***</p><p>* Historical prequel.</p><p>** Prequel (You can start at book 3, if you like).</p><p>*** A response to Rafael Lefort's The Teachers of Gurdjieff.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">H.M. Forester's books:</span></h3><p>1. The Dissidents.</p><p>2. Game of Aeons.</p><p>3. Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul.</p><p>4. Secret Friends: A Collection of Poetry.</p><p>5. The Scent of Reality and other short stories.</p><p>6. Philip K. Dick's Lateral Worlds: A Glimpse of Track C.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Borrowing Our Books</span></h3><p>You can now borrow most of our works from the <b><span style="color: #38761d;">Internet Archive</span></b>:</p><p><a href="https://archive.org/details/@esowteric?tab=uploads" target="_blank">https://archive.org/details/@esowteric?tab=uploads</a></p><p>To view borrowed and downloaded texts you may need to install software such as Adobe Digital Editions (double click/tap on the URL file that downloads and the document will be opened in ADE):</p><p><a href="https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html" target="_blank">https://www.adobe.com/uk/solutions/ebook/digital-editions.html</a></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Enjoy!</span></h3><p>Enjoy, and if you're a member at <b><span style="color: #38761d;">Goodreads</span></b>, your ratings and reviews would be most welcome and much appreciated. Many thanks!</p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5397207.Etienne_de_L_Amour" target="_blank">Etienne de L'Amour</a> and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5818501.H_M_Forester" target="_blank">H.M Forester</a> at Goodreads</li></ul><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Image</span></h3><p>Image: Open books stacked / Hh1718 / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-79029105195938778552022-10-08T20:24:00.016+01:002022-10-09T15:49:30.894+01:00Philip K. Dick's Lateral Worlds: A Glimpse of Track C<p>In “If You Find This World Bad, You Should See Some of the Others”, an essay delivered as a speech at the second <i>Festival International de la Science-Fiction de Metz</i>, France, in September 1977, science faction author Philip K. Dick talks of his experiences in alternate realities, which resulted from the sodium pentothal (colloquially known as a “truth drug”) administered to him before dental surgery; experiences which gradually began to unfold over a period of weeks.</p><p>Dick asks “what if there exists a plurality of universes arranged along a sort of lateral axis, which is to say at right angles to the flow of linear time?” That is to say, in branches of alternative history that are imminent, penetrating our own, yet not discernible, nor experienced, by all, since most are largely confined to the everyday consensus reality of the masses. That is, the predominant worldview which is generally agreed to be reality, based on a consensus view, but not the only possible reality, and quite probably a rather lowly conception of reality, due to the low levels or crudity of consciousness of we beleaguered citizens of dear Mother Earth.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEEF0K2RtlDG2zes6kon-Akb6LJq9gH8qQz51dhpBsZqDdSXdzJeHwKPhLCLwCynIXlOtwsUenOombUqjIOFcV0IsDQPRV4TkgPoYuL9p_kFH1PJkkmFIpH4xk4e_rudOx2M1d6Drurelr1jTTJIeFKs639AhIbms9rzN9oPmCcay9bVXEszYgC5dQpg/s1023/1024px-Cole_Thomas_The_Course_of_Empire_The_Arcadian_or_Pastoral_State_1836.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State / Thomas Cole." border="0" data-original-height="638" data-original-width="1023" height="250" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEEF0K2RtlDG2zes6kon-Akb6LJq9gH8qQz51dhpBsZqDdSXdzJeHwKPhLCLwCynIXlOtwsUenOombUqjIOFcV0IsDQPRV4TkgPoYuL9p_kFH1PJkkmFIpH4xk4e_rudOx2M1d6Drurelr1jTTJIeFKs639AhIbms9rzN9oPmCcay9bVXEszYgC5dQpg/w400-h250/1024px-Cole_Thomas_The_Course_of_Empire_The_Arcadian_or_Pastoral_State_1836.jpg" title="The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State / Thomas Cole." width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>He further suggests that there is an ongoing tussle between a cosmic entity he terms The Programmer or Programmer-Reprogrammer – whom many would call God – who manipulates variables in the historical “code” of our existence, or matrix <span style="text-indent: 1.27cm;">(yes, he actually used that term)</span>, in order to make improvements, and what he terms a dark counterplayer (the Programmer anticipating and successfully meeting the counterplayer's chess moves). This causes branching, and yet when we encounter or temporally pass through the changes that have been made, we will find ourselves on a modified trajectory, yet crucially with no knowledge or memory remaining of our previous trajectory, other than either vague feelings of deja vu, or else (as in Dick's own case) perhaps a strange experience, or recovered memories, of perhaps having lived through a rather different reality to that of the consensus ... and a desire to keep these revelations to oneself out of fear of being thought delusional.</p><p>Regarding the branching, Dick recalled two tracks, A and B, and had a brief glimpse of another: Track C. Track A was a realm of brutal tyranny, and a dark prison of existence. Track B, he saw as “a much lighter tyranny, a far stupider one”, through which those of us still continuing on this earthly journey had passed to get where we now are. Track C he saw as the prospect of a wonderful “garden or park of peace and beauty, a world superior to ours, rising into existence”, which he likened to the “Arcady of the Greco-Roman pagan world” (the beloved Arcadia, seen in the art and poetry of, for example, the Romantics; an earthly paradise).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Consensus Reality and the Real World</span></h3><p>Let's leave Philip K. Dick's ideas aside for now, and I'll attempt to offer some of my own ideas.</p><p>The Sufi mystics talk of a Real World – a much more refined world in sharp contrast to what we mistakenly term the everyday “real world” of concrete, glass, sex, politics, addiction, delusion, sham materialism; etc. I see this as an imminent world, coexistent with our own; that is occupying and commingling with our own space and, being outside linear time, touching our time at all times. I believe that the dark magician Aleister Crowley said that we are as close to ancient Egypt as we ever were, and others have said that at certain times of year, and in certain places, the veils between this world and that of “spirit” are thinner.</p><p>I'm drawn to the thoughts of physicists when, in considering material objects such as planets, they speak of the creation of gravity wells, or the deformation of space-time in the vicinity of especially celestial, but to a lesser extent less massive objects. You could also look at existence as consisting of an increasing density as we proceed from gaseous states down to gross physical solids, and spiritually- or mystically-inclined folk often think along similar lines with a continuum between what they see as spiritual, soul, astral, ethereal, mental and physical planes or levels of reality; or they speak of the influence of stars, the Sun, successive planets, our own Moon, and Mother Earth herself.</p><p>If I may tentatively adopt an analogy, again along similar lines: I see the everyday consensus reality as being a very deep gravitational well, not of materiality but of consciousness itself, and here I see consciousness pervading the cosmos, not simply in human life, and certainly not just in our heads. I see the brain as a receiver and a transducer, not as the originator of consciousness, and I certainly don't agree that consciousness is a mere illusion. I see cultural phenomena and movements as exerting a “pull” on humanity as a whole, on civilisations and societies, enterprises, groups, families, and individuals – indeed, on all of nature, of which we are a dominant part. We “gravitate” to certain ideas and phenomena, you might say. And, if we can overcome or override the peer pressure of consensus reality in certain situations and, more globally, if we can achieve the necessary “escape velocity”, then we can indeed come into contact with alternative worldviews or alternative realities that are closer than our jugular vein – so near and yet so far, because this is not an easy task for most, and nigh-impossible to achieve for many, especially given the state of the world today.</p><p>As James Hillman and Michael Ventura write in <i>We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy & the World's Getting Worse</i>:</p><p></p><blockquote>“Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment.”</blockquote><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Ways and Means</span></h3><p>Psychoactive substances will give you glimpses through the veils – perhaps even truly cosmic experiences – but that can be a dangerous and perhaps counterfeit path to go down, without experienced instructors. On the one hand you could say that there are no shortcuts to wholeness of being or enlightenment; on the other hand you could say that shortcuts abound to fool the unwary and unprepared.</p><p>And exploration of the depths of the Self through Active Imagination, spiritual practises, and mystical paths can lead you toward emancipation, welcome, and peace (<i>sakina</i> and <i>itmi'nan</i>), often at the expense of surrendering one's everyday preoccupations, the sovereignty of the ego (the ego making a poor and overbearing master, but a useful servant), and submission to one's teacher, one's school, and ultimately to the Divine or Sacred – however you want to conceive that, be it the Soul of the World (<i>Anima Mundi</i>), Tao, Source, One, God, Essence; etc.</p><p>Educating yourself can help you so far (so long as you do not get waylaid), as can developing a passion (becoming wholehearted in your approach). A. Hameed Ali (aka A. H. Almaas) asserts that there can be more to reading than “merely reading”:</p><p></p><blockquote>“[There] are books written by realized individuals and teachers, from various traditions and teachings ... In this kind of reading the learning is not cerebral, but more of accessing the states of consciousness of the writer or teacher. The books function as conduits for the transmission of their states of realization. I happened to develop the sensitivity to be open to such direct transmission through the word.”</blockquote><p></p><p>Active engagement with the materials and intra-psychic and inter-psychic processes is more important than the defaults of left-brain intellect and consumerism (as are “beauty, truth and the good”, cultivating a sense of wonder, and engaging in the arts, crafts, and humanities). As the healer Mair Freida tells her students in Etienne de L'Amour's <i>The Host and the Guests</i>: “Don't just stand there and nod. The mind observes and cogitates, the heart engages, and I would encourage you to engage with the process.”</p><p>This way of being is <i>caught</i>, not taught.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Three Forms of Knowledge</span></h3><p>“In <i>The Way of the Sufi</i>, however, the thinker, writer, and Sufi teacher Idries Shah writes about the three forms of knowledge, and it is the third form that we are concerned with here:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Ibn el-Arabi of Spain instructed his followers in this most ancient dictum:</p><p>There are three forms of knowledge. The first is intellectual knowledge, which is in fact only information and the collection of facts, and the use of these to arrive at further intellectual concepts. This is intellectualism.</p><p>Second comes the knowledge of states, which includes both emotional feeling and strange states of being in which man thinks that he has perceived something supreme but cannot avail himself of it. This is emotionalism.</p><p>Third comes real knowledge, which is called the Knowledge of Reality. In this form, man can perceive what is right, what is true, beyond the boundaries of thought and sense. Scholastics and scientists concentrate upon the first form of knowledge. Emotionalists and experimentalists use the second form. Others use the two combined, or either one alternately.</p><p>But the people who attain to truth are those who know how to connect themselves with the reality which lies beyond both these forms of knowledge. These are the real Sufis, the Dervishes who have Attained.”</p></blockquote><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Before Enlightenment, the Laundry ... </span></h3><p>That can be a long road, though there may come a point when everything “clicks” – perhaps after a constellation of minor impacts and “Aha!” moments – and one finds enlightenment (or, more rarely, one can be suddenly enlightened); even finding oneself present in a whole new reality, like a stranger in a strange and yet strangely-familiar land where the majority of other people are going about the same, old everyday lives as usual, and yet now conscious of also being among kindred spirits. This could be likened to crossing over to the sunny side of the street. Or simply crossing a threshold. There's no need to knock, the door is already open; inside the tavern there is revelry, and a welcome chalice of mulled wine awaits. But do leave your donkey at the door. As the Buddhist or Zen saying has it: “Before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry” or again, less pithily: “Before I sought enlightenment, the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers. While I sought enlightenment, the mountains were not mountains and the rivers were not rivers. After I reached satori, the mountains were mountains and the rivers were rivers.”</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvOzk8kHTV2hNNQxYmi0IdPWfUdvWCQxmGO3JuxSIV_cP56FAd7jFE01C7UszX5sQ4IkTLidpRn6cP4ivvz0PMUlrDsiD8SmIwzJvfVgpeTqLfniU8VqUrEtP_zkeevqKN0l7-tZt3j88R7DEnLLC2Zkg2M6jyYp0qVGk1DDWtiguDVw0Zf19lqIEV2g/s800/Jan_Steen_-_Merrymaking_in_a_Tavern_WLC_WLC_P158.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Merrymaking in a Tavern / Jan Steen." border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="717" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvOzk8kHTV2hNNQxYmi0IdPWfUdvWCQxmGO3JuxSIV_cP56FAd7jFE01C7UszX5sQ4IkTLidpRn6cP4ivvz0PMUlrDsiD8SmIwzJvfVgpeTqLfniU8VqUrEtP_zkeevqKN0l7-tZt3j88R7DEnLLC2Zkg2M6jyYp0qVGk1DDWtiguDVw0Zf19lqIEV2g/w359-h400/Jan_Steen_-_Merrymaking_in_a_Tavern_WLC_WLC_P158.jpg" title="Merrymaking in a Tavern / Jan Steen." width="359" /></a></div><p>In such a station (or in a transient state), one may also be conscious of the fact that “wisdom” can be found not only in and through interaction with these everyday people, but in the most apparently mundane incidents and experiences. Someone may be talking about working in their attic over the weekend because there's no point in mending their fences while the wind was up, and you suddenly “twig” that there's a parallel conversation going on here, with deeper meanings, like a fine signal superimposed, multiplexed, on the everyday carrier wave.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">The Hidden World</span></h3><p>As Idries Shah quoted in his book, <i>A Perfumed Scorpion</i>: “What the self-imagined mystic seeks only in his meditation is visible to the Sufi on every street corner and in every alleyway.” Or as Rumi wrote, again quoted by Shah:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>The people of Love are hidden within the populace;</p><p>Like a good man surrounded by the bad.</p><p>The hidden world has its clouds and rain, but of a different kind.</p><p>Its sky and sunshine are of a different kind.</p><p>This is made apparent only to the refined ones—</p><p>those not deceived by the seeming completeness of the ordinary world.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>In “Confessions” by the poet Kathleen Raine, we read:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>Wanting to know all</p><p>I overlooked each particle</p><p>Containing the whole</p><p>Unknowable.</p><p> </p><p>Intent on one great love, perfect,</p><p>Requited and for ever,</p><p>I missed love's everywhere</p><p>Small presence, thousand-guised.</p><p> </p><p>And lifelong have been reading</p><p>Book after book, searching</p><p>For wisdom, but bringing</p><p>Only my own understanding.</p><p> </p><p>Forgive me, forgiver,</p><p>Whether you be infinite omniscient</p><p>Or some unnoticed other</p><p>My existence has hurt.</p><p> </p><p>Being what I am</p><p>What could I do but wrong?</p><p>Yet love can bring</p><p>To heart healing</p><p>To chaos meaning.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Only now do you realise that all this wonder was around you, and even running through you, all the time – except that you, like so many others, were blisslessly ignorant and unaware of it. As the Sufi mystics would way: “She who tastes, knows”, to which Shah added: “But he who only thinks he tastes – will not leave anyone alone.” As Tenzing Jangbu Rinchen maintained, however: “All that matters is that you <i>have</i> made it to my door.” Sin is transcended; missing the mark is transcended; even the need for forgiveness, though on offer to those of us who need it, is nevertheless transcended, because as errant wayfarers in this land of degeneration, we really are all in the same boat (if not in this phase of our life, then some other phase, or other incarnation, or in some other way).</p><p>As William Shakespeare wrote in <i>As You Like It</i>:</p><p></p><blockquote><p>All the world’s a stage,</p><p>And all the men and women merely players:</p><p>They have their exits and their entrances;</p><p>And one man in his time plays many parts.</p></blockquote><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Never Lose the Way</span></h3><p></p><blockquote><p>Don't lose the trail</p><p>of wisdom's scent.</p><p> </p><p>While on this hunt,</p><p>don't go astray,</p><p>worrying if every little thing</p><p>is good or bad.</p><p> </p><p>You are the traveler,</p><p>you are the path,</p><p>and you are the destination.</p><p> </p><p>Be careful</p><p>never</p><p>to lose</p><p>the way to yourself.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>~ Shihab al-Din Yahya Suhrawardi, <i>Love's Alchemy: Poems in the Sufi Tradition</i> by David Fideler (translator), Sabrineh Fideler (translator).</p><p>Remember the old saying and take heed:</p><p></p><blockquote>“Man is asleep. Must he die before he wakes up?”</blockquote><p></p><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0.35cm;"> (From the BBC television documentary, <i>One Pair of Eyes</i>:
“Dreamwalkers”).</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Notes</span></h3><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Sakina: peace, stillness, serenity, tranquility, indwelling presence. See also Shekhinah.</li><li>Itmi'nan: satisfaction, peacefulness, surety.</li></ul><p></p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Images</span></h3><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State / Thomas Cole (1801–1848) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.</li><li>Merrymaking in a Tavern / Jan Steen (1625/1626–1679) / Wikimedia Commons / Public domain.</li></ul><p></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-41613540100851778072022-10-01T18:40:00.005+01:002022-10-02T09:31:16.985+01:00Knowledge of the End Creates the Means<h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">A Framework for New Knowledge </span></h3><p>“The desire for an 'awakening', often used as a technical term, may or may not be accompanied by the information and experience essential to precede this stage. The Teaching, for its part, is carried out — and is able to cross ideological boundaries — because of a knowledge of the objective: an objective which is at worst postulated as an assumption that it exists; at best glimpsed: and thenceforward is the subject of repeated attempts to devise a means to recover this glimpse.</p><p>“The working hypothesis or traditional framework provides the structure by which the would-be illuminate attempts to approach this goal. In the case of the School, knowledge alone provides the basis upon which the structure can be devised.</p><p>“‘Once you know the end, you can devise the means.’ The end does not justify the means - it provides it. The means, employed in this sense, is the structure referred to in some literature as ‘The Work’.”</p><p>~ Idries Shah, <i>Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way</i>.</p><p>[<a href="shttps://www.goodreads.com/book/show/181256.Learning_How_to_Learn" target="_blank">Book at Goodreads</a>]</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim37Wlv8sZAAxX5oaalvTQi5ADeo3q7ziZ34Y2ysPeAGhlNHqY4NftdkzlUaOxfLyAv95quM-GS9uJ01ATA5shF02brHiNv1ToOhUR1mc0GsvpCL3mgbZea9cpPBQNEmIFrmkzHtGE8CIFq5f9yv6okgrMBn0i3KU2K3u4mu_DvUOGcUg8FvfXo2Z0vA/s1024/this-is-where-the-magic-happens.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="A framework for new spiritual knowledge (israqi institute)," border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim37Wlv8sZAAxX5oaalvTQi5ADeo3q7ziZ34Y2ysPeAGhlNHqY4NftdkzlUaOxfLyAv95quM-GS9uJ01ATA5shF02brHiNv1ToOhUR1mc0GsvpCL3mgbZea9cpPBQNEmIFrmkzHtGE8CIFq5f9yv6okgrMBn0i3KU2K3u4mu_DvUOGcUg8FvfXo2Z0vA/w400-h300/this-is-where-the-magic-happens.png" title="A framework for new spiritual knowledge (israqi institute)," width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Image: Cycle of mystical development / Esowteric /</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">Click to enlarge image.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Sakina and Baraka</span></h3><p>“Sufism is the teaching as well as the fraternity of the Sufis, who are mystics sharing the belief that inner experience is not a department of life, but life itself. Sufi means ‘love’. In the lower reaches the members are organized into circles and lodges. In the higher – <b><span style="color: #38761d;">sakina</span></b> (stillness) – form, they are bound together by <b><span style="color: #38761d;">baraka</span></b> (blessing, power, sanctity) and their interaction with this force influences their lives in every way.”</p><p>~ Idries Shah, T<i>he Way of the Sufi</i>.</p><p>[<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/914743.The_Way_of_the_Sufi" target="_blank">Book at Goodreads</a>]</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Sakinah, the Purged House & the Indwelling Presence</span></h3><p>QUTUB: “This is the reputed invisible head of all the Sufis. The word literally means the Magnetic Pole, Pivot, Polestar, Chief. Transposed into figures, it totals 111—the thrice-repeated unity, the threefold unity, the threefold affirmation of truth, which is a unity. If this is split up into 100, 10, 1, and substituted, we get the letters Q, Y and A. The word QYAA, spelled from these letters, means "to be vacant, voided." It is the vacant, voided, purged "house" into which the <b><span style="color: #38761d;">baraka</span></b> descends (the human consciousness).”</p><p>~ Annotation “QUTUB” in Idries Shah, <i>The Sufis</i>.</p><p>[<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/450553" target="_blank">Book at Goodreads</a>]</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">“A Kind of Magic”</span></h3><p>Performed by Queen</p><p>[<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0p_1QSUsbsM" target="_blank">Music video at YouTube</a>]</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Footnotes</span></h3><p>Under normal circumstances, the Sufis could fill their ranks by those few who have access to a Sufi circle, or manage to make their way to, and join, one.</p><p>These are not, however, normal circumstances. If there was a global DEFCON warning system (or “doomsday clock”) – one, that is, not only for military purposes – then we would surely be at DEFCON 2 (5 being the lowest, quiescent state, 1 being the highest), if you leave out the rise of neo-fascism, the rise of Christian nationalism (and other fundamentalisms); the threat to Europe and the world from Russia; and the threat to the Far East and the world from China. We’re teetering on the brink of DEFCON 1.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuk76RfiA2OQ-uuON5Wy_VKscgHXETSTnSiO1_3Doq46fHvL37iqrlbJkm6T6VVXoxZ4UTDp4h-H8Ku8qvh_W9kCSkUB5jI3fKRzA8-9hb5TeBsCdO5ap9IM8eutN9RB9CVBQIxj_ugyl725WKdGcpWBM5GatW-AZRUmVT6Fuf2wNJETS7c3YQXq4fA/s400/defcon2.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Defense Ready Condition (DEFCON) 2." border="0" data-original-height="188" data-original-width="400" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNuk76RfiA2OQ-uuON5Wy_VKscgHXETSTnSiO1_3Doq46fHvL37iqrlbJkm6T6VVXoxZ4UTDp4h-H8Ku8qvh_W9kCSkUB5jI3fKRzA8-9hb5TeBsCdO5ap9IM8eutN9RB9CVBQIxj_ugyl725WKdGcpWBM5GatW-AZRUmVT6Fuf2wNJETS7c3YQXq4fA/w320-h150/defcon2.png" title="Defense Ready Condition (DEFCON) 2." width="320" /></a></div><p>There is no time for the traditional route (the slow boat to China for the Few, like the old “11-Plus” exam that favoured a small elite and relegated the vast bulk of the population to second-class – or third class (underclass) – citizenship or subjugation), and there never has been sense in the absurd and elitist notion that there is only one way to skin a cat, be that “the Sufis” or Idries Shah.</p><h3 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Notes</span></h3><p>Sakina: peace, stillness, serenity, tranquility, indwelling presence. See also Shekhinah.</p><p>Itmi'nan: satisfaction, peacefulness, surety.</p><p><br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-78830012883271915782022-05-28T16:20:00.003+01:002022-05-28T16:20:59.265+01:00Freedom, Resistance and Change: Ursula K. Le Guin<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu6TkCpOT_2Fzl_XYFeTJpHZ-5bLnSPHZoRCYAfyOUNmBSBZAEOMNkq6cux380oXVCYXxHHeIoC3dNNStAC56OHsWROjhPuLex7QAVdh6zHLaBWpqAWwSgDNUgUGuZ7AxLBoJVVlMJVjaTeOmY-5q0g2NDC9tbH2rhR9TBizNRitsg-SFBqWYEei5gBg/s768/Ursula_Le_Guin_(3551195631)_(cropped).jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Ursula Le Guin / Marian Wood Kolisch / Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0." border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="645" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu6TkCpOT_2Fzl_XYFeTJpHZ-5bLnSPHZoRCYAfyOUNmBSBZAEOMNkq6cux380oXVCYXxHHeIoC3dNNStAC56OHsWROjhPuLex7QAVdh6zHLaBWpqAWwSgDNUgUGuZ7AxLBoJVVlMJVjaTeOmY-5q0g2NDC9tbH2rhR9TBizNRitsg-SFBqWYEei5gBg/w269-h320/Ursula_Le_Guin_(3551195631)_(cropped).jpg" title="Ursula Le Guin." width="269" /></a></div>“I think hard times are coming when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies to other ways of being, and even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality ...”<br /><br />“... Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art, the art of words.”<br /><br />~ Ursula K. Le Guin, <a href="https://parkerhiggins.net/2014/11/will-need-writers-can-remember-freedom-ursula-k-le-guin-national-book-awards/" target="_blank">Speech at the 2014 National Book Awards</a>.<br /><br />Image: Ursula Le Guin / Marian Wood Kolisch / Wikimedia Commons / Creative Commons CC BY-SA 2.0.<p></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-22149033533570773282022-05-05T14:50:00.003+01:002022-05-11T14:51:15.825+01:00The Scent of Reality and other short stories, by H. M. Forester<p> “A number of people find themselves at a strange and unexpected meeting in the back room of an English pub with an elderly lady, Gladys Merrywether, and tell their stories about why they are there and what led them there.</p><p>“The shrewd lady opens their eyes to all manner of possibilities – some of which are welcome, and some decidedly not.”</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ17nIrNDeP0A6fk6Zu5ZBsWVl8JrdA9tZtIxVe2Ch15EMZUMzvLskCe4vvsBsQ6gMK-dUS2HGJKwvD2k6ET0XlWhn2qTWFs7d_QJAUnTkZkyhpi_q6lQyiMAzaCJMVKA8SJeG0-UGZ7HFdZ0vTSA0pDBdDNK37qJNiRaXkWpj5R70u0fbPVBJOGlWCg/s1200/1182px-Philippe_Mercier_-_The_Sense_of_Smell_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Sense of Smell, by Philippe Mercier." border="0" data-original-height="1042" data-original-width="1200" height="348" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ17nIrNDeP0A6fk6Zu5ZBsWVl8JrdA9tZtIxVe2Ch15EMZUMzvLskCe4vvsBsQ6gMK-dUS2HGJKwvD2k6ET0XlWhn2qTWFs7d_QJAUnTkZkyhpi_q6lQyiMAzaCJMVKA8SJeG0-UGZ7HFdZ0vTSA0pDBdDNK37qJNiRaXkWpj5R70u0fbPVBJOGlWCg/w400-h348/1182px-Philippe_Mercier_-_The_Sense_of_Smell_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg" title="The Sense of Smell, by Philippe Mercier." width="400" /></a></div><p></p><span></span><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Most up-to-date edition for free download (just scroll down the web page):</p><p><a href="https://sherpoint.uk/sherpoint/review-copies.htm">https://sherpoint.uk/sherpoint/review-copies.htm</a></p><p>You can find “The Scent of Reality and other short stories” at Goodreads:<br /><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60913157-the-scent-of-reality-and-other-short-stories">https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60913157-the-scent-of-reality-and-other-short-stories</a> </p><p>Many thanks. Enjoy!<br /><br />Art: <i>The Sense of Smell</i>, by Philippe Mercier (1689–1760).</p><p> </p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-21904937976793361552021-11-15T17:33:00.012+00:002022-05-18T14:57:54.252+01:00The Matter with Things: Book Review<p>★★★★★ I've just finished reading the first two parts of <i><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World</b></span></i>, by Dr Iain McGilchrist, and begun part 3 in the second volume. This book follows on from his earlier epic work, <i>The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World</i>.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0b1tVvvGJ3m2Qgp56bUQbS1RfbxtZGHWAmu_aRJAgtJz6CwcXmpQHWujTgwqWdG4cdTZwAQvZVKt3DlYT-SD8SpaWm4Kj4pWPIAz048O848iOdqOBHSkosaWdjW1TD9akJBNFIpPTbutI/s1022/the-matter-with-things-fb.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="The Matter with Things." border="0" data-original-height="706" data-original-width="1022" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0b1tVvvGJ3m2Qgp56bUQbS1RfbxtZGHWAmu_aRJAgtJz6CwcXmpQHWujTgwqWdG4cdTZwAQvZVKt3DlYT-SD8SpaWm4Kj4pWPIAz048O848iOdqOBHSkosaWdjW1TD9akJBNFIpPTbutI/w400-h276/the-matter-with-things-fb.jpg" title="The Matter with Things." width="400" /></a><br /></div><p>Rather than attempt to summarise the voluminous, varied and rich content of the book (and fall far short of doing it justice), let me simply say that this work does not simply talk about science, reason, intuition and imagination (among so many others), but is masterfully crafted by an author who has much life experience and insight to offer and clearly embodies the best of such paths and qualities.<br /></p><p></p><blockquote><p>“If we want others to understand the beauty of a landscape with which they may be unfamiliar, an argument is pointless: instead we must take them there and explore it with them, walking on the hills and mountains, pausing as new vantage points continually open around us, allowing our companions to experience it for themselves.</p><p>“Such, at any rate, is my intention in this book.” ...</p></blockquote><p></p><blockquote>“What I hope for my readers is that, if they are willing to accompany me on this adventure, they will never see the world the same way again; that they will have a <i>Gestalt</i> shift ...” </blockquote><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Sadly, I've already seen some comments in the social media from certain detractors who, in spite of not having read this book, believe that they can dismiss the work – which is 1,500 pages in print and 2,997 pages in the Kindle edition, and contains hundred of pages of closely-argued, liberally-referenced and deeply-nuanced text in Part I of the book alone – by posting single articles these “Google scholars” have found while carrying out their “research” (that is, searching the web for material with which to debunk the work). <br /><br />In my opinion (for what little that is worth), it's not a matter of agreeing with the author 100% or, on the other hand, utterly dismissing his work (or even damning it with faint praise), in terms of either/or, black and white, or even shades of grey – which is surely the domain of left hemispheric thinking – but rather a matter of and-both, often in glorious Technicolor; an open-ended exploration and a varied and rich experience, more characteristic of the right hemisphere and with the holistic, transcendent experience of both (where the left is servant to the master, the right).<br /><br />No matter: as the author quotes Friedrich Waismann: “No philosophic argument ends with a QED.” It's not a finite game but a wonderful infinite game, as James P. Carse proposed, in which playing the “game” rather than winning, the journey and the companionship rather than the final destination, is what it's all about.<br /><br />Sooner or later, I trust that we will come to see this in a whole new light (a <i>Gestalt</i>, even) – see that what we are not only witnessing but in the throes of here, in these increasingly “interesting times” is nothing less than a “Copernican Revolution” and “Fall of the Roman Empire” of the psyche (and hence <i>Being</i>. Or rather, <i>Becoming</i>). And in this, Iain McGilchrist will have played a major pivotal role. His work could not be more timely and apposite.<br /><br />Having said that: of course your mileage may well vary. Indeed, it would be strange if it did not.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Eureka!</span></h2><p>Well, I've finished reading the work now, though I'll be dipping into it often again. I've read a few good books in my time, and <i>The Matter with Things</i> is the best book I have ever read. 1,001 thanks!</p><p>Left brain rationale: Money very well spent.</p><p>Right brain: My soul is singing.</p><p>I'd love to see a <i>loya jirga</i> (grand assembly) convened with a wide range of leading luminaries, for an open-ended exploration of Iain McGilchrist's work and its implications to, and overlap with, their own work, and possible ways ahead; perhaps also a collection of essays along the same lines.</p><h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #38761d;">Foot Note</span></h2><p>I'd be interested to see what research has to say about hemispheric lateralisation in John Heron's six‐category intervention analysis: Authoritative (Prescriptive, Informative, Confronting) and Facilitative (Cathartic, Catalytic, Supportive), in which I'd also consider the transpersonal. Similarly other management styles, such as Douglas McGregor's Theory X and Theory Y.</p><p>Have just written a brief overview of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matter_with_Things" target="_blank"><i>The Matter with Things</i></a> across at Wikipedia.</p><p><br /></p>
Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-90511526733763981742021-10-17T13:08:00.011+01:002021-10-26T20:47:05.933+01:00God 4.0: Book Review<p>★★★★★ Psychologist Robert Ornstein and Sally M. Ornstein published <i><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>God 4.0: On the Nature of Higher Consciousness and the Experience Called “God”</b></span></i> on 15 October 2021 and you can find it worldwide in affordable paperback, ebook, and audio editions, and <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58652862-god-4-0" target="_blank">at Goodreads</a>.<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCkipgx9xpmnrgkOoOa6FCffX3alCeZJGTE01yLjrtDS3fEvPJjquPvhmryWUu4XIiMz78jnLg5mZh91rBCwq52ZpIHeH0IayESk4dLyaUY5MzHQ6Acj0fyoqstUzXJH57686cDPWIjJ1S/s800/god4.0-for-blog.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="God 4.0 front cover." border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="563" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCkipgx9xpmnrgkOoOa6FCffX3alCeZJGTE01yLjrtDS3fEvPJjquPvhmryWUu4XIiMz78jnLg5mZh91rBCwq52ZpIHeH0IayESk4dLyaUY5MzHQ6Acj0fyoqstUzXJH57686cDPWIjJ1S/w225-h320/god4.0-for-blog.jpg" title="God 4.0 front cover." width="225" /></a></div><p>According to the publisher's blurb, the work is “A stunning unification of science and tradition for a revolutionary new concept of spirituality to address the challenges of the modern world.” It follows on from Robert Ornstein's pioneering research laid out in <i>The Psychology of Consciousness</i>, and <i>The Evolution of Consciousness</i>, among many other works, and draws on modern research "from neuropsychology and religion, to evolutionary psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and genetics".<br /><br />Followers of the Sufi thinker and author Idries Shah, and fans of Robert Ornstein, Sally Ornstein and the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK) will lap this book up, as will those with an interest in spirituality, those hesitant to dip their toes into spiritual waters, and like-minded heretics (ie "free thinkers").<br /><br />God 4.0 is quite sharply focussed, whereas Iain McGilchrist's magna opera <i>The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World</i>, and <i>The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World</i>, which explore similar and other topics, are panoramic in scope.</p><p>The critical path here is the gap between the theory (“know what”) and praxis (“know how”) of nurturing and developing higher consciousness. Things like immersion in Sufi teaching stories and in poetry (among other arts, crafts, and creative and imaginative endeavours) that stimulate the right hemisphere of the brain (and promote holistic experience – though with the left brain a faithful servant of the right) can hopefully bridge that gap and provide a new pathway that is available to the many, rather than how it has been in the past only open to a select or elite few largely under the direct physical guidance of teachers.</p><p>In this age of ever-increasing escalations in our societal and global woes and crises, there is a desperate need for change before it's too late to act – change that must come first and foremost from within each of us. And this is where this work can make a useful and timely contribution.</p><p>On this basis, I unhesitatingly give the book 5 stars.<br /><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The assertion that “We need to move beyond beliefs, to perception” is fine – as far as it goes. And yet there must be more to life than even this. Though there is much traditional objection to it, the – potentially revolutionary – idea of panpsychism is gaining traction, just as the old materialist models are being found lacking, and failing. So there is yet hope for us and for our co-inhabitants on this planet. But we can't afford to stand back and passively, anxiously, or impatiently observe: we have to roll up our sleeves and engage in self-work right here and now.<br /><div><br /></div><div>Maybe it's just me, but given that the book calls for a new spiritual literacy in the world (a task that will require a great deal of real effort from both a few key players and from the many tasked with implementing it), I was hoping that there would be more crossover and outreach to others who are looking beyond the current materialism, scientism and the late stages of the "deficient mode of the mental-rational structure of consciousness", who express a need to re-enchant the world, and who are engaged in what has been termed "the battle for the Soul of the World".<br /><br />However, as I say, this is just my own personal bias, and this in no way detracts from this wonderful, very readable, inspiring, and timely work.<br /><br />If you're wondering who these other folk are, see my <a href="https://mystical-faction.blogspot.com/2019/11/re-enchantment-in-material-world.html" target="_blank">blog post</a> “Re-enchantment in a Material World”.<br /><br />This also forms part of <i>Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul</i> (<a href="https://sherpoint.uk/sherpoint/review-copies.htm" target="_blank">Free PDF</a>), both of which pale in comparison to the magnificent work of the Ornsteins and Iain McGilchrist.<p></p><p></p></div>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-14251947748063618412021-09-23T20:43:00.003+01:002021-09-23T20:46:43.031+01:00The Winds of Change in the Twilit Hours: A Poem<p>The winds of change<br />are blowing a gale,<br />rattling my old sash window frame,<br />and a draft is sneaking past<br />the sleepy door snake<br />guarding my humble parlour. </p><p>A wayward leaf,<br />its short life spent,<br />flutters against the window pane —<br />a timely reminder that<br />like most things in this life,<br />this sojourn, too, shall pass.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7uQshIEp5p7BRll6VhLtP-Nl6ocGlJY1F_ugRv9lg3K1n4awdnodlIhzvy3ZzF1RXyteE7MVotTGATbjfMiYWMT-BNML9v3_SzPLjMUK0QJFcziAguoSXaE0K_nqJlmwqSiJIurYIR-A5/s800/800px-Autumn_Leaf_08Nov17.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Autumn leaves." border="0" data-original-height="536" data-original-width="800" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7uQshIEp5p7BRll6VhLtP-Nl6ocGlJY1F_ugRv9lg3K1n4awdnodlIhzvy3ZzF1RXyteE7MVotTGATbjfMiYWMT-BNML9v3_SzPLjMUK0QJFcziAguoSXaE0K_nqJlmwqSiJIurYIR-A5/w400-h268/800px-Autumn_Leaf_08Nov17.jpg" title="Autumn leaves." width="400" /></a>. <br /></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>In the touch of the air on my skin<br />and in the strange — yet somehow familiar — <br />smell of freshly turned earth,<br />I sense the call of my beloved<br />Heartland, beckoning to me; whispering,<br />like Rumi: “Come, come, whoever you are.”</p><p>Perhaps if I were younger<br />I'd pull on my coat and scarf<br />and set out to meet my fate.<br />Instead, I put on another log<br />and curl up by the hearth<br />to finish another page in my storybook.</p><p>I've arrived at the age, you see,<br />when little is guaranteed any more,<br />and so at the end of each day<br />I like to tie up any loose ends<br />in case my feeble grip on life is lost<br />and I don't awaken again with the new dawn.</p><p>“Once upon a time,” I'd begun, long ago,<br />“not a thousand miles from here ...”<br />Those words — about the young fool —<br />this old fool knows by heart.<br />But as for the elusive “happily ever after”,<br />that is an ever more distant borrowed promise.<br /><br />“Hope is born of lack of hope,”<br />a quiet inner voice reminds me,<br />adding: “Intense hope leads easily to fear<br />that the hope may not be realised.”<br />On that note, the pen slips from my fingers<br />and I drift off toward the Land of Nod.<br /><br />Blessèd Eugenie is waiting for me there<br />as I cross the narrow Cinvat bridge.<br />“You are not an old fool,” my Fravarti insists,<br />clearly privy to my deepest, darkest thoughts.<br />“And for you, real life has only just begun,”<br />she gently chides me, as she leads me on.<br /><br />~ ET. Yorkshire, England, © Thursday 23 September 2021.</p><p>Image: <i>Autumn Leaves</i>.<br />Image author: Masaki Ikeda (Wikimedia user 池田正樹)<br />Image source: Wikimedia Commons.<br />Image licence: Public domain. <br /></p><p> </p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-21123499474934469262021-09-19T16:28:00.003+01:002021-09-23T20:34:33.783+01:00A Subtle Reminder: A Poem<p>I'm burning sandalwood today,<br />and its fragrance reminds me<br />of the subtle realm<br />ever-present behind – and beyond<br />the cheap plastic façade<br />and gossamer-thin veils<br />we foolishly think of<br />as civilisation<br />and “the Real World”.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipgbfhA_IQ99WGuBc2aewR3aU_BNJvLQMMN3UeIFw_dKrnP40Mso_h5_stvokL2Fp-bpXOAFh2D9DyyZMie2-Nep4w4AA6emdc47qFlGKtsBXIZiHkrWF338QWTyxUO400D-3IPVbTUwx-/s800/Smoke_from_Incense_sticks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Smoke from Incense sticks." border="0" data-original-height="533" data-original-width="800" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipgbfhA_IQ99WGuBc2aewR3aU_BNJvLQMMN3UeIFw_dKrnP40Mso_h5_stvokL2Fp-bpXOAFh2D9DyyZMie2-Nep4w4AA6emdc47qFlGKtsBXIZiHkrWF338QWTyxUO400D-3IPVbTUwx-/w400-h266/Smoke_from_Incense_sticks.jpg" title="Smoke from Incense sticks." width="400" /></a></div> <br /><span><a name='more'></a></span>And if you listen closely,<br />you will hear<br />a thousand-and-one voices<br />quietly whimper – or scream:<br />“Please forgive me”,<br />and “Let us back in” ...<br />yet we so often fail to notice<br />the “Welcome, friend!”<br />which echoes without conditions in return.<br /><br />~ ET. Yorkshire, England, © Sunday 19 September 2021.<br /><br />Image: <i>Smoke from Incense sticks</i>.<br />Image author: ਮਨਜੀਤ ਸਿੰਘ.<br />Image source: Wikimedia Commons.<br />Image licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).<p></p><br />Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-40990675917878951792021-07-25T18:52:00.000+01:002021-07-25T18:52:46.824+01:00Okay, So. But Listen: A Poem<p><b><i>Okay, so ...</i></b><br /><br />The politician<br />Is a nasti piece of work,<br />And the oligarch<br />Really is a callous jerk.<br /><br />All the world's oceans<br />Are a filthy toilet bowl,<br />And the floods and fires<br />Are raging out of control.<br /><br />I down two cans of beer<br />Oh – go on! – let's make it three,<br />To wash away all <br />My blues and anxiety.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKLfdPHZRsxxTSmgHrIlY-Sb2N4hmL8QEpepFWvROP2mJ8LMAay14ONdvsN6uhJqdq-clqk5L-aZL_k9XBbR22Df8BdGAlk9lytlkplBUzu3a_veMR5OPtIq3EftveNlewBKLs_-NI_eZm/s600/340px-William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%25281825-1905%2529_-_Whisperings_of_Love_%25281889%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Whisperings Of Love." border="0" data-original-height="599" data-original-width="600" height="399" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKLfdPHZRsxxTSmgHrIlY-Sb2N4hmL8QEpepFWvROP2mJ8LMAay14ONdvsN6uhJqdq-clqk5L-aZL_k9XBbR22Df8BdGAlk9lytlkplBUzu3a_veMR5OPtIq3EftveNlewBKLs_-NI_eZm/w400-h399/340px-William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%25281825-1905%2529_-_Whisperings_of_Love_%25281889%2529.jpg" title="Whisperings Of Love." width="400" /></a></div><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>I boot up my computer<br />For “therapeutic shopping”<br />Click, click, click the remote<br />For an evening's channel hopping.<br /><br />So many temptations<br />For my little monkey mind,<br />So many sideshows<br />For me and my human kind.<br /><br />I must do something;<br />I'm tearing myself apart,<br />To deflect me from<br />The yawning void in my heart.<br /><br /><b><i>But listen ...</i></b><br /><br />For here She is again,<br />Whispering in my ear.<br />With words of love<br />And wisdom for to hear:<br /><br />“The Garden's still beneath your feet,<br />Though so very overgrown.<br />The Secret Friends they walk the street,<br />Though you may think you're all alone.<br /><br />Stir, stir,<br />Stir your dying ember.<br />Wake, wake,<br />Wake and you'll remember.<br /><br />Turn, turn,<br />Turn the light around.<br />Sing, sing,<br />Sing, let love abound.<br /><br />Dance, dance,<br />Dance and dance some more.<br />Laugh, laugh,<br />Laugh: that is the cure.<br /><br />Turn, turn,<br />Turn from the lure.<br />The answer lies within<br />And that's for sure.<br /><br />Seek, seek,<br />Seek and you'll be found.<br />Swim, swim,<br />Swim or you'll be drowned.<br /><br />Wipe, wipe,<br />Wipe away your tears.<br />And sweep, sweep,<br />Sweep away your fears.<br /><br />Dream, dream,<br />Dream the whole night long.<br />Wake, wake,<br />Wake and sing our song.<br /><br />Be, Be,<br />Be just as you are.<br />Destiny awaits<br />The shining of your star.”<br /><br /><b><i>And listen again ...</i></b><br /><br />“The Garden's still beneath your feet,<br />Though so very overgrown.<br />The Secret Friends they walk the street,<br />Though you may think you're all alone.<br /><br />Stir, stir,<br />Stir your dying ember.<br />Wake, wake,<br />Wake and you'll remember.<br /><br />Turn, turn,<br />Turn the light around.<br />Sing, sing,<br />Sing, let soul resound.<br /><br />Dance, dance,<br />Dance and dance some more.<br />Laugh, laugh,<br />Laugh, let spirit soar.<br /><br />Be, Be,<br />Be just as you are.<br />Destiny awaits<br />The shining of your star.”<br /><br />~ ET. Yorkshire, England, © Sunday 25 July 2021.<br /><br />Image: <i>Whisperings of Love</i> (1889).<br />Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905).<br />Image source: Wikimedia Commons.<br />Image licence: Public domain.<p></p><br /><br />Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-12789618273505820662021-07-11T18:37:00.001+01:002021-07-11T18:37:58.131+01:00Lines Drawn in the Sand: A Poem<p>Oh, subtle intimations of the hidden world<br />That grace our dreams by night and inspire thoughts by day,<br />Every which way I turn I glimpse some deeper truth<br />And yet – what use to me, if here unmoved I stay?<br /> <br />There's an incoming message I must deliver,<br />A note to myself and “To whom it may concern”,<br />Things are coming to a head, more storms are brewing;<br />No time for delay – nor yet to the bar adjourn.<br /> <br />In film, book, poetry, art, and common street talk<br />Blessèd, subversive, kindred souls of secrets hint,<br />Stirring the dying embers of some age-old fire<br />Or striking new sparks in kindling with their sharp flint.</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYumakN3Xe1r0P6TdVOETw6Ud8NJnRiU9DfeDBMm72y1p1hs32GpbjfaW1UjDra5geL1H0B7FUS4OILl7o1SSc16U4V9HbINpjIkIUMJZP-47yJZF9z2z9kn_Hys-kkJ1MsTM34oxY9ai1/s800/800px-Writing_in_sand%252C_by_Mrs_Logic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="509" data-original-width="800" height="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYumakN3Xe1r0P6TdVOETw6Ud8NJnRiU9DfeDBMm72y1p1hs32GpbjfaW1UjDra5geL1H0B7FUS4OILl7o1SSc16U4V9HbINpjIkIUMJZP-47yJZF9z2z9kn_Hys-kkJ1MsTM34oxY9ai1/w400-h255/800px-Writing_in_sand%252C_by_Mrs_Logic.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> <br /><span><a name='more'></a></span>But fellowship and moral support won't suffice,<br />Nor getting lost in the muckle of sideshows,<br />Whether nature, dirty business or politics:<br />Whatever cause where raw emotion overflows.<br /> <br />Yes, we're in a deep pit; ropes short, ladders broken<br />And the world is so crazy, beyond parody,<br />But there's no sense in trying to outshout the world:<br />I see, you see, and “Why don't they listen to me!?”<br /> <br />I'm not talking 'bout marching to Trafalgar Square,<br />I'm not talking 'bout Twitter or In-Your-Face-Book.<br />Real, lasting change can only come from within,<br />Not by reading the menu, but learning to cook.<br /> <br />I know there's only one way out of this morass,<br />Other than a pine box, with other expenses,<br />And that is to break the habit of a lifetime,<br />To wake to World Soul, and return to my senses.<p></p><p> <br />~~~oOo~~~</p><p> <br />Heed this Call as best ye may,<br />Our hour of need is at-hand.<br />This is all I have to say,<br />Lines drawn in blood in the sand.<br />. <br />~ ET. Yorkshire, England, © Sunday 11 May 2021.<br />. <br />Image: <i>Writing in sand</i>.<br />Image author: Mrs Logic at Flikr.<br />Image source: Wikimedia Commons (orig. Flikr).<br />Image licence: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-19730222195249115152020-12-05T19:22:00.003+00:002020-12-10T15:44:46.178+00:00Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul<p>The first draft of the psi-fi work <i>Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul</i>, by H. M. Forester, has just been released.</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3QKggucQkH6rDhzzr4n1sT7OXn8Ke0R6t6hzA8XrmWG_29gzsIXBZrGGw4vdPkM6owlAiDeyB7Lw3zGAJRe6xxf9Y_ddagG89vLbwYKGE1AMBq-M6LL6FQShTvzQ_hnpiSAhfUCvlGyx/s1024/secret-friends-pdf-book-cover.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Secret Friends book cover." border="0" data-original-height="1024" data-original-width="768" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG3QKggucQkH6rDhzzr4n1sT7OXn8Ke0R6t6hzA8XrmWG_29gzsIXBZrGGw4vdPkM6owlAiDeyB7Lw3zGAJRe6xxf9Y_ddagG89vLbwYKGE1AMBq-M6LL6FQShTvzQ_hnpiSAhfUCvlGyx/w300-h400/secret-friends-pdf-book-cover.jpg" title="Secret Friends book cover." width="300" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>The writer and thinker Idries Shah laid out his contemporary, Western projection of the Sufi Way in a great many books over the years, and <i>Secret Friends</i> draws, in part, on the inner experiences of Robert Llewelyn George in his faltering attempts to follow that mystical path.</p><p>The intrepid psychonaut, Carl Gustav Jung also documents his own inner travels in his <i>Red Book</i>, and later in his published journals, the <i>Black Books</i>.</p><p>This, then, you might call Louie’s <i>Little Green Book</i>.</p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>The new book is available for download as a PDF document from <a href="https://sherpoint.uk/sherpoint/review-copies.htm" target="_blank">our web site</a>. Just scroll down the page.<p></p><p>I wouldn’t know where to start in writing a blurb, my dear reader, to give you a better idea of what this book is about, except to say that all the books (including the mystical adventures written as Etienne de L'Amour) have this one surprising thing in common: the largely unsuspected presence of the Hidden World and of the “Secret Friends” who are here to help us in our hour of need.</p><p>But, dear reader, should you eventually arrive at the conclusion that this work is little more than the incoherent ramblings of a madman in search of sanity, then that’s fine by us; and were this book not given to you free of charge, then you would be fully entitled to demand your money back. But if the work touches your heart in some way, then please feel free to pass it on.</p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-16972592820815443022020-11-05T15:04:00.005+00:002020-11-05T15:05:29.199+00:00The Early-Morning Briefing: A Poem<p>Eugenie breezed back into my life this morn,<br />and stirred me from the most sublime slumber.<br />There I was floating aloft a twilit cloud,<br />when – “Presto!” – my soul was jerked back down to earth.<br /> <br />“This is your early-morning wake-up call.<br />Rise and shine and show a leg there, shipmate!<br />Jump out of bed and fling the curtains wide,<br />rub your sleepy eyes, and turn on the telly.”<br /><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0fP9kEBhjdBCcOYLoS1dZCRwWaHkGhtswhuVodW243IB_rdzJ81bXIbwvXkurJBdh2mkIOA4yqZp9EEU0RO7j4w31BYPgyuoRBszuBojR23ufQw49UV6yW166Lrlqxc5JI0NeG-kA-2E/s479/272px-William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%25281825-1905%2529_-_Whisperings_of_Love_%25281889%2529.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Whisperings of Love." border="0" data-original-height="479" data-original-width="272" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgI0fP9kEBhjdBCcOYLoS1dZCRwWaHkGhtswhuVodW243IB_rdzJ81bXIbwvXkurJBdh2mkIOA4yqZp9EEU0RO7j4w31BYPgyuoRBszuBojR23ufQw49UV6yW166Lrlqxc5JI0NeG-kA-2E/w228-h400/272px-William-Adolphe_Bouguereau_%25281825-1905%2529_-_Whisperings_of_Love_%25281889%2529.jpg" title="Whisperings of Love." width="228" /></a></div><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>I really could not see the point, but complied,<br />and I idly flipped through the many channels.<br />So, another crisis had gripped the nation;<br />yet more panic buying and civil unrest.<br /> <br />So many lies from the political class<br />in this uncaring, post-honour, post-truth era.<br />Saying black is white, wrong is right, down is up,<br />to advance their left brain, neo-fascist bull.<br /> <br />Polarisation, head-banging division,<br />dissonance, energetic entanglement,<br />conflict and fear-mongering, twenty-four/seven ...<br />There’s only so much sentient souls can bear.<br /> <br />Okay, so that’s too much “Shock! Horror!” today.<br />I hit the off button and fast turn away.<br />Eugenie stands there, and she nods sagely.<br />“Indeed,” she smiles, and claps her hand on my back.<br /> <br />“Behold, the folly of the world laid bare.<br />Surely now you can see right through this tyranny?<br />If you’ve forgotten, you’ll remember soon enough,<br />when you’ve opened the sealed orders in your Heart.”<br /> <br />Eugenie isn’t one to sweeten her words,<br />let alone filter them through a meat grinder.<br />She’s a good friend, but she has real work to do,<br />waking this reprobate from a deep sleep.<br /> <br />“But don’t think this is going to be easy,<br />the censors’ raised eyebrows are the least of it.<br />Someone’s bound to hit the Big Red Button<br />and the guards will call for reinforcements.”<br /> <br />What she means is instead of a single “I”,<br />a squadron of simpletons live in my mind –<br />each with their own myopic agenda,<br />and no unified command and control.<br /> <br />“Think not that a civil war is raging within;<br />make a declaration of independence.<br />Keep a calm head and hold off the attacks –<br />at least until help arrives from afar.<br /> <br />“You’ll need a noble heart to weather this storm<br />and a strong and sturdy constitution.<br />But don’t forget you are only one of many<br />entrusted with this most important task.<br /> <br />“This is the Moment of Truth – right here and now –<br />and there is no room for ‘ifs’ and ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’.<br />Unless you are with us, we cannot help you,<br />so get on board while we still have a chance.<br /> <br />“Take your preconceived notions and toss them aside.<br />Better to lose your mind and come to your senses.<br />There’s no room for intellectualism:<br />you’re here to walk the walk, not talk the talk.<br /> <br />“Trying to force the issue is foolish:<br />that’s a sure way of preventing change and growth.<br />Let inner-tuition come of its own accord;<br />allow things to unfold as nature intends.<br /> <br />“Don’t set yourself impossibly high standards,<br />because you will always seem a failure.<br />Just set yourself reasonable goals and excel,<br />and overall you will feel and fare much better.<br /> <br />“We’ve waited an age for this moment to arrive,<br />and it quietly crept up on us, unawares.<br />Make yourself ready to receive the Gift<br />when Destiny comes knocking at your door.<br /> <br />“Realize this: the honeyed flow of inspiration<br />doesn’t come <i>from</i> you, but <i>to</i> you and <i>through</i> you.<br />Make of your own self a noble vessel<br />to store these psycho-cosmic energies.<br /> <br />“We represent a long chain of grail keepers:<br />something attained when we become worthy within.<br />But beware of unholy ego-inflation:<br />what’s needed is humility and dedication.<br /> <br />“Here’s a love-cup of nectar to slake your thirst<br />and fill you with fresh courage and resolve.<br />Drink this blessèd sustenance, but pass it round:<br />thrift is theft where ambrosia is concerned.<br /> <br />“This is the Secret of the Hidden Economy:<br />that the more you give, the more you receive.<br />That’s the true nature of this bottomless purse:<br />to simply give, give, give and keep on giving.<br /> <br />“Don’t look for peer recognition or laurels,<br />breathe deep and witness your transformation.<br />This is all your hopes and wildest dreams come true:<br />this is it – the one true initiation.<br /> <br />“And now, your real work in this world may begin,<br />in service to Mother Earth and humankind.<br />And if anything is needed for the Work,<br />it’ll arrive before you’ve even thought of it.<br /> <br />“Trust that the rule of Newtonian clockwork<br />and scientism is coming to an end.<br />Trust that the whole cosmos will support you<br />in this battle for the Soul of the World.<br /> <br />“And look forward to the time – not far away –<br />when the world enters a new Renaissance,<br />casting off the threadbare Cartesian robes,<br />and the good and simple joys of life hold court.”<br /> <br />~ ET. Yorkshire, England, © Tuesday 3, Thursday 5 November 2020.<br /> <br />Image: <i>Whisperings of Love</i>.<br />Artist: William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905).<br />Image source: Wikimedia Commons.<br />Image licence: Public domain.</p><p> <br /></p>Etienne de LAmourhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16291731924515126757noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3077888941060602046.post-50559592431749490382020-10-16T00:00:00.008+01:002022-10-25T19:45:24.765+01:00Re-enchantment in a Material World<div style="break-before: page; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm; page-break-before: always;">
<i>O stars,</i></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>isn’t it from
you that the lover’s desire for the face</i></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>of his beloved
arises? Doesn’t his secret insight</i></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<i>into her pure
features come from the pure constellations?</i></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
~ Rainer Maria
Rilke, “<span style="font-style: normal;">The Third Duino Elegy”</span>.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
From <i>The Selected
Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke</i>,</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
(transl. Stephen
Mitchell).<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Boiling frogs</b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
It’s said in fable
that if you take a frog and plunge it into boiling water, it will
experience shock and immediately jump out. But if you place a frog in
tepid water and slowly heat it, the frog will not sense the change,
will not see the danger, and will be slowly and inexorably boiled to
death. More than a fable, this is a metaphor for where we are right
now, as individuals, as group members, as a culture, and as a
planetary collective – some materialists, illusionists and sceptics
might say a slime mould on Earth’s surface, a cancerous growth, or
a plague. The mystic and philosopher Gurdjieff would say that we are
asleep; his student P. D. Ouspensky, that we are automatons.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdeq8fOpk5O3x87uJe3dOkXr53Bo0AOJLZkGn7GcK__oQ9hDX1zEzZ87-IwanajEkhjpTVn2V2g3N9UtjG7YaEhbGmY1H0dVpGi6X4o9GjLEZ7dj9wn036a_SN9VEq_YBi0Nal_bedv9Qu/s1600/640px-Secret_world_copy.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Secret world: A hidden waterfall." border="0" data-original-height="470" data-original-width="640" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdeq8fOpk5O3x87uJe3dOkXr53Bo0AOJLZkGn7GcK__oQ9hDX1zEzZ87-IwanajEkhjpTVn2V2g3N9UtjG7YaEhbGmY1H0dVpGi6X4o9GjLEZ7dj9wn036a_SN9VEq_YBi0Nal_bedv9Qu/s400/640px-Secret_world_copy.jpg" title="Secret world: A hidden waterfall." width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Squadron of Simpletons</b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
As psychologist
Robert Ornstein pointed out, we are not one single, unified “I”
but are largely governed by a “squadron of simpletons” or idiots,
between which we frequently shape-shift, each running his or her own
sub-program, with an outlook that is often myopic and blinkered, and
with little effective central command or coordination. Many of these
psychic simpletons were acquired in more primitive times when we were
daily faced with dangers that demanded a swift reaction – “fight,
flight or freeze” – and which are simply not geared-up to
noticing or thoughtfully responding to the sort of slow-moving creep
of trends such as nuclear proliferation; global warming – which has
at long last been recognized by some as a climate crisis, though of
course disparaged by denialists, contrarians and conspiracy theorists
who dub themselves “climate realists” – biodiversity loss; and
sham-materialism – Shammat, which is documented in Doris Lessing’s
<i>Canopus in Argos</i> series of sci-fi novels.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a><div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Post-Truth</b></span><br />
<br />
More recently, we’ve
reached the lowest common denominator, and populism, politics and
media have dispensed with old-fashioned values such as truth, honour
and chivalry, to the point of arguing, in an Orwellian way, that “up
is down”, “wrong is right”, and “truth is fake news”.
Proponents, acolytes and followers don’t “do” rational
argument, and don’t sense hypocrisy, irony, and other subtle arts,
as intelligent or sentient people might foolishly think; they thumb
their noses at the “fact-checking libtard expert elite”;
evangelists who blindly or even wilfully worship morally-bankrupt
neo-liberalism, wealth and other gilt-edged idols. They turn their
backs on the very traditional Christian or spiritual values and
virtues that they might reasonably be expected to uphold at all
costs, such as the tragic plight of refugees (from wars and disasters
that the West has helped create), the poor, the disenfranchised, and
the homeless – as the most financially-wealthy 1% look on and rub
their hands with ever-increasing lust and glee. Wingnuts who are
determined to bring about the prophesy of the End Times, through some
horrendously-beautiful Armageddon, to Resurrection, ultimate supposed
Rapture, and Blessed and Eternal Life.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Warners and Arks</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Of course there are
warning voices: Author Margaret Atwood has brought us <i>The
Handmaid’s Tale</i>; and Philip Pullman has much to say about the
politico-religious and paramilitary body which he calls the
Magisterium, in his <i>The Dark Materials</i> and in his <i>The Book
of Dust</i>, which he has affectionately referred to as “His Darker
Materials”. There are, of course, many warners (though as Doris
Lessing once lamented “the wind blows away our words”) – but
what we desperately need right now are more <i>arks:</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">physical, metaphorical or
otherwise.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
How much more
utterly bizarre and crazy do things have to get before we are finally
shocked out of our sleep and apathy, and realize that our dreams of
fame and fortune, burying our heads in the sand, and thinking sweet
and happy-happy thoughts, aren’t going to get us out of the fine
mess we’re in; and realize that we are up the proverbial and stinky
creek without a paddle? As Roger Waters of Pink Floyd asks in the
song “Comfortably Numb” which I grew-up listening to in the
1970s: “Hello? (Hello, hello, hello) / Is there anybody in there? /
Just nod if you can hear me / Is there anyone home?”</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Sufi Mystics</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
This isn’t a new
problem, of course, though things are becoming more and more
exacerbated in this post-modern era. The writer, thinker and teacher
in the Sufi mystical tradition (which preceded and flowered in the
classical Islamic era), Idries Shah wrote at length about the
commanding self – that “mixture of primitive and conditioned
responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human
progress and understanding”. He writes: “The Commanding Self ...
can be seen as a sort of parasite, which first complements the
personality, then takes over certain parts of it, and masquerades as
the personality itself.” Shah states that there is “no intention
of destroying or undermining the Commanding Self”. Instead,
would-be students are encouraged to “divert vanity from the
spiritual arena ... to channel the Commanding Self’s activities to
any worldly ambition: while continuing to study the Sufi Way in a
modest and non-self-promoting manner,” according to Wikipedia.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Shah’s approach is
only partly direct or didactic, however: the Sufi materials are
interleaved or interwoven with what are specially-designed teaching
stories (and poetry) which approach issues indirectly, so as to
smuggle themselves past our defences and inner censors, and hence not
provoke our opposition and defeat the object of what is a more
intuitive exercise (ultimately provoking inner-tuition, as it were).
One such story illustrates aspects of this approach, and features in
Idries Shah’s <i>The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin</i>:</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>The Smuggler</b></span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Time and again
Nasrudin passed from Persia to Greece on donkey-back. Each time he
had two panniers of straw, and trudged back without them. Every time
the guard searched him for contraband. They never found any.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
‘What are you
carrying, Nasrudin?’</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
‘I am a smuggler.’</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Years later, more
and more prosperous in appearance, Nasrudin moved to Egypt. One of
the customs men met him there.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
‘Tell me, Mulla,
now that you are out of the jurisdiction of Greece and Persia, living
here in such luxury – what was it that you were smuggling when we
could never catch you?’</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
‘Donkeys.’</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
As ever, the wise
fool Nasrudin hides his light under a bushel.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghpWMA4fzXyTm9IX7eYfeEhyWqucElgmXLdT2W2kPLzoOtg8PdpuRYZCPwarjimCaRJ8ryR5IZWQquxBPYyClu-DOg98bh74Vh1lqR_XtH8XwNmk5fiWvpYFwLbhUM3YiMWhq9yR7iq09W/s1600/woman-crone.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Trick image of young and old woman." border="0" data-original-height="514" data-original-width="476" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghpWMA4fzXyTm9IX7eYfeEhyWqucElgmXLdT2W2kPLzoOtg8PdpuRYZCPwarjimCaRJ8ryR5IZWQquxBPYyClu-DOg98bh74Vh1lqR_XtH8XwNmk5fiWvpYFwLbhUM3YiMWhq9yR7iq09W/s200/woman-crone.jpg" title="Trick image of young and old woman." width="185" /></a></div>
In addition to this,
the Sufis use a technique termed “scatter”, rather than
presenting the materials in a logical and systematic A-Z fashion as
one might in a modern Western school, and this is in part so that the
picture presented to the student – composed of a constellation of
minor impacts – is not brought into premature but incomplete focus,
which might lead to him or her settling for the comfort of a stunted
psychic development (the result of premature “paradigm fixation”.
Once you’ve seen one coherent image or gestalt, this can make it more
difficult to unsee that and see further alternatives or additional
dimensions).</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Henry Corbin and Tom Cheetham</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Our western philosophy has been the theater of what we may call the “battle for the Soul of the World.” ~ Henry Corbin.</blockquote>
<br />
The philosopher and
ishrāqī mystic, Henry Corbin also sees our current predicament as
symptomatic of a much earlier onset of dis-ease. Corbin’s work is
densely packed and not an easy read, but fortunately the author Tom
Cheetham has written several books that are useful in interpreting
Corbin’s thoughts.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Much of what Corbin
wrote concerned what he termed the <i>mundus imaginalis</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">or “Imaginal World”, an
intermediate world between that of our own mundane world and that of
spirit, and Corbin is at pains to inform us that </span><span style="font-style: normal;">it
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">(and its angelic inhabitants)
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">is as real, if not more real,
than what we call our everyday, supposedly-real world of concrete,
glass, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">consumerism, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">sex
and politics; and it is most certainly not “merely imaginary” or
a fantasy. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">There are three
ways into this world: </span><span style="font-style: normal;">through
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">dream; active imagination (of
the type Carl Jung and JRR Tolkien engaged in); and, ultimately,
death. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Being an ishrāqī
mystic, too – that is, of the School of Illumination – the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">nature, gradation and </span><span style="font-style: normal;">role of Light features
much in </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Corbin’s</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
work.</span></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In the first chapter
of <i>Green Man, Earth Angel</i>, titled “The Mundus Imaginalis and
the Catastrophe of Materialism”, Cheetham writes:</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“In language that
I’ve learned since, this is the history of what the French call
<i>mentalité</i>, and this shift in the relation between the subject
and the object involves a “withdrawal of participation.” Many
people have discussed this phenomenon from a variety of viewpoints.
For instance, you can analyze the Neolithic transition in terms of a
kind of disjunction between humans and nature: outside the walls of
the city lies the Wilderness, within them, the Tame. It has been
argued that by a similar process, the immanent, female deities of
Earth were severed from the remote and transcendent masculine gods of
the Heavens. Another disjunction, another loss of participation,
accompanies the transition from oral to literate society. For
European history the crucial transition occurs in Greece roughly
between Homer and Plato. The techniques of alphabetic writing and
reading forever changed the relation of humans to language and to the
nonhuman world. Socrates was very concerned about this new
technology, and was afraid that it signaled the death of real
thinking, and that education would suffer irreparably. In fact the
great sweep of Western history as a whole has been read as a story of
withdrawal and the progressive “death of nature,” and the birth
of a mechanistic cosmology based on abstract materialism.”</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
And Cheetham goes on
to say: “[In Henry Corbin’s view] all the dualisms of the modern
world stem from the loss of the <i>mundus imaginalis</i>: matter is
cut off from spirit, sensation from intellection, subject from
object, inner from outer, myth from history, the individual from the
divine.” Those of you who have read Philip Pullman’s <i>His Dark
Materials</i> or <i>The Book of Dust</i> may find a resonance with
this aspect of Corbin’s work.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Then, on a related
note, there is also the question of whether Eve was framed, and of
whether it was wrong to “steal fire from the gods”.</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>The Real Corbin and the Inner Church</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">S</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ince
Corbin is such a central figure in this, and many would dismiss his
contribution as merely intellectual and philosophical </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(“you
can talk the talk, but can you walk the walk?” </span><span style="font-style: normal;">as
the refrain goes</span><span style="font-style: normal;">)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,
if you’ll forgive the digression, it’s worthwhile clarifying his
status in this arena:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">According
to Wikipedia, Henry Corbin (14 April 1903 – 7 October 1978) was a
philosopher, theologian, Iranologist and professor of Islamic Studies
at the </span><i>École pratique des hautes études</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
in Paris, France.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">According
to his widow, Stella Corbin, as reported by Peter Kingsley in his
book </span><i>Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(p364), however, Henry Corbin’s “real identity and purpose” was
“not as a scholar with some minor mystical leanings but as a
mystic, inwardly directed to play the role of academic.” She
described to Kingsley how in Iran, “the great spiritual teachers or
sheikhs often offered to initiate him as a Sufi on condition that he
converted to Islam; and how he always politely refused. ‘Thank you
for your invitation but there is no need, because I already have my
own inner sheikh inside me.’” (pp364–365)</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Corbin
(who knew and understood Jung and his work so well; </span><span style="font-style: normal;">they
were colleagues at the conference venue Eranos</span><span style="font-style: normal;">)
spoke of an “inner church”, echoing Jung fifty years previously
when Jung explained how “if we belong to the secret church, then we
belong, and we need not worry about it, but can go our own way. If we
do not belong, no amount of teaching or organization can bring us
there.” (p366).</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Corbin
writes of his years of retreat in Iran with his wife, “I learned
the inestimable virtues of silence, of what initiates call ‘the
principle of the arcane’ (</span><i>ketmân</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
in Persian). One of the virtues of this silence is that I found
myself placed, I alone together with him alone, in the company of my
invisible sheikh, Shihâb al-Dîn Yahyâ Suhrawardi,” (p367) and he
goes on to say that “when these years of retreat finally came to an
end I had become an Ishrâqi.” (p368) Ishrâq means the point of
dawn in the East – not, to Corbin, the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(horizontal)
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">geographical East, but the
mystical Orient </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and Celestial
Pole</span><span style="font-style: normal;">; (p368) and the Ishrâqi
is a “tradition of those who appear with the dawn; who belong to
the moment of dawning; who tirelessly and timelessly work at fetching
the gifts of the sacred into the light of day.” (p368) The Ishrâqi
are the “eternal leaven” (p369). According to Kingsley, Corbin
was an Uwaisî (p372), one of those Sufis who happen to be without a
physical teacher, and who are guided and sustained by those like the
mysterious invisible guide, Khidr (p372). </span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>The Invisible College</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">T</span><span style="font-style: normal;">here
are several other authors whose work, topics of interest, and
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">enthusiasms</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
overlap with that of Corbin, indeed in a sense you might call this an
“invisible college”:</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">As
a starting point, T</span><span style="font-style: normal;">om
Cheetham </span><span style="font-style: normal;">has written several
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">useful </span><span style="font-style: normal;">books
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">interpreting </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Corbin’s
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">dense and voluminous </span><span style="font-style: normal;">work:
</span><i>The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic
Mysticism</i><span style="font-style: normal;">; </span><i>All the
World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings</i><span style="font-style: normal;">;
</span><i>Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the
Battle for the Soul of the World</i><span style="font-style: normal;">;
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Imaginal Love:
The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>James Hillman</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">James
Hillman has written a number of books such as </span><i>Re-Visioning
Psychology</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and </span><i>The
Soul’s Code</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, about which the
publisher’s blurb reads: “Plato and the Greeks called it
‘daimon’, the Romans ‘genius’, the Christians ‘Guardian
Angel’ – and today we use terms such as ‘heart’, ‘spirit’
and ‘soul’. For James Hillman it is the central and guiding force
of his utterly unique and compelling ‘acorn theory’ which
proposes that each life is formed by a particular image, an image
that is the essence of that life and calls it to a destiny, just as
the mighty oak’s destiny is written in the tiny acorn.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">And
then there are several authors </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
poets </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(the latter such as
William Blake, Kathleen Raine </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Rainer Maria Rilke)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
who survey </span><span style="font-style: normal;">or convey
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">important </span><span style="font-style: normal;">events
and movements in the past, such as the “</span><span style="font-style: normal;">good
times” of the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">pre-Socratic
philosophers, neo-Platonism, the Renaissance, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Romanticism, and the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">terrible
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">decline from the time of the
so-called Enlightenment – which some have </span><span style="font-style: normal;">more-</span><span style="font-style: normal;">wisely
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">termed “The Endarkenment”,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">the Industrial Revolution,
and the rise of Scient</span><span style="font-style: normal;">i</span><span style="font-style: normal;">sm
and other fundamentalisms </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
extremisms</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> – </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
seek to rediscover and bring about a new renaissance rooted in
largely-lost native Western tradition, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">rather
than</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Eastern
imports </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and modern kitsch</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Regarding the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Industrial
Revolution, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">see the last two
chapters of JRR Tolkien’s </span><i>Lord of the Rings</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
beginning with “The Scouring of the Shire” that were lamentably
omitted from the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">otherwise-excellent
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">film adaptation.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Richard Tarnas and the Soulless Vacuum</b></span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;">Richard Tarnas, quoted in Jeremy D. Johnson</span><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-style: normal;">’</span>s <i>Seeing Through the World: Jean Gebser and Integral Consciousness</i>, has this to say: “By the late modern period, the cosmos has metamorphosed into a mindless, soulless vacuum, within which the human being is incongruently self-aware. The <i>Anima Mundi</i> has dissolved and disappeared, and all psychological and spiritual qualities are now located exclusively in the human mind and psyche.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"> <br />“The forging of the self and the disenchantment of the world, the differentiation of the human and the appropriation of meaning, are all aspects of the same development. In effect, to sum up a very complex process, the achievement of human autonomy has been paid for by the experience of human alienation.” </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Gary Lachman and Jean Gebser</b></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Gary
Lachman </span><span style="font-style: normal;">has written two
important books, </span><i>The Secret Teachers of the Western World</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
and </span><i>Lost Knowledge of the Imagination</i><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">In
</span><i>The Secret Teachers of the Western World</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Gary Lachman writes: </span><span style="font-style: normal;">“The
central argument of [philosopher, linguist and poet, Jean Gebser’s]
</span><i>The Ever-Present Origin</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
is that human consciousness is not static. Throughout its history, it
has gone through several changes—what Gebser calls
“mutations”—before arriving at our own form of consciousness.
These mutations transform consciousness from one “structure” to
another. There have been four such structures so far, what Gebser
calls “the archaic,” “the magical,” “the mythic,” and the
“the mental-rational,” ranging from our prehistoric ancestors to
modern times. Gebser also posits a fifth “structure of
consciousness,” what he calls “the integral” </span><span style="font-style: normal;">[influenc</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ing</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
many, such as Ken Wilber]</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,
which is an integration of the previous four structures, and he
believed that we, in the late modern world, were beginning to
experience the effects of the shift from the mental-rational to the
integral structure.” </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Each
structure is latent within, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">like
a seed,</span><span style="font-style: normal;"> until actualized.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
According
to Gebser, we are in the late stages of “the deficient mode of the
mental-rational structure”, and the rise of left-brain dominance –
up the proverbial creek without a paddle, you might say. Hopefully,
we will make it more fully into the “integral”, but such an
outcome is far from guaranteed.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Iain McGilchrist, the Master and His Emissary</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Psychiatrist
and author </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Iain McGilchrist
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">has much to add to the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">topic
of the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">hemispheric</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
working of the brain and its influence on the history of Western
civilization. T</span><span style="font-style: normal;">he RSA lecture
on the Divided Brain </span><span style="font-style: normal;">provides
a useful introduction </span><span style="font-style: normal;">(there’s
a fun RSA animation, too)</span><span style="font-style: normal;">,</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
and </span><i>The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the
Making of the Western World</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> </span><span style="font-style: normal;">is
an epic read with more </span><span style="font-style: normal;">studious
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">footnotes than you can shake
a stick at.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">McGilchrist
echoes words that may or may not have been those of Albert Einstein,
that: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. The rational mind is a
faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant
but has forgotten the gift”, and Philip Pullman has </span><span style="font-style: normal;">expressed
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">similar sentiments about
reason and rationality. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">In a
similar vein, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Gary Lachman
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">writes in </span><i><span style="text-decoration: none;">Lost
Knowledge of the Imagination</span></i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">there are two main modes of
working: </span><span style="font-style: normal;">“Pascal was
admirably equipped to follow mathematical reasoning, but he knew of
other reasoning too; as he famously wrote, ‘the heart has its
reasons that reason does not know’. It knows them through the
spirit of finesse, the intuitive approach, one of the two directions,
as Barzun says, that the ‘one human mind can take’, [the other, rigorous approach being the ‘spirit of geometry’].”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">A</span><span style="font-style: normal;">s
Khalilullah Khalili once wrote (quoted in Idries Shah’s </span><i>Learning
How to Learn</i><span style="font-style: normal;">):</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“In
every state, the Heart is my support:</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
In
this kingdom of existence it is my sovereign.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
When
I tire of the treachery of Reason -</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
God
knows I am grateful to my heart.”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">In
</span><i>The Master and His Emissary, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">McGilchrist
goes on to write: “Our talent for division, for seeing the parts,
is of staggering importance – second only to our capacity to
transcend it, in order to see the whole. These gifts of the left
hemisphere have helped us achieve nothing less than civilisation
itself, with all that that means. Even if we could abandon them,
which of course we can’t, we would be fools to do so, and would
come off infinitely the poorer. There are siren voices that call us
to do exactly that, certainly to abandon clarity and precision
(which, in any case, importantly depend on both hemispheres), and I
want to emphasise that I am passionately opposed to them. We need the
ability to make fine discriminations, and to use reason
appropriately. But these contributions need to be made in the service
of something else, that only the right hemisphere can bring. Alone
they are destructive. And right now they may be bringing us close to
forfeiting the civilisation they helped to create.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Patrick Harpur and the Soul of the World</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Another
author who writes along the same lines as Gary Lachman is Patrick
Harpur, such as </span><i>The Philosopher’s Secret Fire: A History
of the Imagination</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and </span><i>A
Complete Guide to the Soul</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> (UK)
or </span><i>The Secret Tradition of the Soul</i><span style="font-style: normal;">
(US).</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">In
</span><i>A Complete Guide to the Soul</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">Harpur writes: </span><span style="font-style: normal;">“What
you knew in your childhood is true; the Otherworld of magic and
enchantment is real, sometimes terribly real – and certainly more
real than the factual reality which our culture has built up, brick
by brick, to shut out colour and light and prevent us from flying.”</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">In
</span><i>The Philosopher’s Secret Fire</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
he </span><span style="font-style: normal;">lays it all down</span><span style="font-style: normal;">:
“According to the Neoplatonic tradition, psyche or soul is the
underlying principle </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
the very stuff </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
of reality. It is, as we have just seen, ambiguous. It is imagined
both as a macrocosm, ‘great world’, and as a microcosm, ‘little
world’. It is both a collective world-soul, containing all daimons,
images, souls, including the human soul; and an individual soul
containing a profound collective level, in which we are connected to
each other and, indeed, to all living things. Depending on our
perspective, then, we can see ourselves as either embracing the Soul
of the World </span><span style="font-style: normal;">[</span><i>anima
mundi</i><span style="font-style: normal;">]</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">or as being embraced by it,
although both are the case. Or we might say that soul manifests
itself both impersonally, as world-soul, and personally as individual
souls. At any rate, we can begin to see that the ancient laws of
sympathy and correspondence which modern science has discredited are
not primitive scientific laws at all, but profound psychic principles
which express the way each microcosm </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
each of us </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
potentially reflects and participates in the entire cosmos.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">In
Plato’s </span><i>Timaeus</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
where the Soul of the World is first described, it is infused
throughout the cosmos by the Demiurge, Plato’s creator-god, who
thus makes a living ensouled universe. (The Soul of the World remains
the root metaphor for all conceptions of the world as organism,
including modern ecological ideas.) In other words, as well as being
transcendent, one level above our world, the Soul of the World is
also immanent, just as traditional cultures imagine it. Not that they
always have a concept for the world-soul </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">they do not abstract from the
world but rather see it in the first instance as animate, instinct
with soul. ‘All things’, according to the ancients, from Thales
to Plutarch, ‘are full of gods.’</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-style: normal;">The
very people who have emptied Nature of soul and reduced it to dead
matter obeying mechanical laws, pejoratively call the traditional
world-view animism </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
a term which effectively writes off what it claims to describe. To
‘animistic’ cultures there is no such thing as animism. There is
only Nature presenting itself in all its immediacy as daimon-ridden.
Every sacred object or place had its genius or jinn, numen or naiad,
yes, even its boggart and hob, as the case may be.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“The
Romantics imagined Nature in this way. Imagination was coextensive
with Creation, just like the Soul of the World. They were identical.
Every natural object was both spiritual and physical, as if dryad and
tree were the inside and outside of the same thing. Thus every rock
and tree was ambivalent: a daimon, a soul, an image. ‘To the eyes
of a man of Imagination’, wrote William Blake, ‘Nature is
Imagination itself.’”</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b>Follow the Breadcrumbs ...</b></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">Well,
I’ve set up the stall and laid out some </span><span style="font-style: normal;">perhaps
unusual </span><span style="font-style: normal;">borrowed </span><span style="font-style: normal;">wares,
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><span style="font-style: normal;">invited
you to enjoy a sample of what </span><span style="font-style: normal;">alternatives
are </span><span style="font-style: normal;">on offer to us, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">to</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
get an intuitive “feel” for them</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">I’ve tried to paint a
picture </span><span style="font-style: normal;">with some broad brush
strokes</span><span style="font-style: normal;">, if you like. </span><span style="font-style: normal;">I
leave it to you to pick and choose what appeals to you, and to follow
the tempting breadcrumbs that others have left, in their turn, for
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">our benefit</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
– </span><span style="font-style: normal;">who knows where they may
lead? – </span><span style="font-style: normal;">in the hope of
bringing a little </span><span style="font-style: normal;">blessèd </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">if </span><span style="font-style: normal;">at
times </span><span style="font-style: normal;">heretical </span><span style="font-style: normal;">–
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">re-enchantment into th</span><span style="font-style: normal;">ese
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">wondrous and wuthering
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">S</span><span style="font-style: normal;">hadowlands</span><span style="font-style: normal;">
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">in which </span><span style="font-style: normal;">we
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">currently </span><span style="font-style: normal;">find
ourselves </span><span style="font-style: normal;">exiled, marooned;
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">forgetful, </span><span style="font-style: normal;">and
largely out-of-touch with the Source</span><span style="font-style: normal;">.</span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Thankfully, we are
not alone. Bahaudin Naqshband reminds us:</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
You may have
forgotten the Way:</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
But those who came
before</div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
Did not forget you.</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-style: normal;">I’ll
leave the </span><span style="font-style: normal;">second-to-</span><span style="font-style: normal;">last
word to Iain McGilchrist, as expressed in his </span><i>The Divided
Brain and the Search for Meaning</i><span style="font-style: normal;">,
and as a </span><span style="font-style: normal;">cautionary </span><span style="font-style: normal;">note
to myself: “Meaning emerges from engagement with the world, not
from abstract contemplation of it.” </span><span style="font-style: normal;">Or,
as someone once </span><span style="font-style: normal;">cogently
</span><span style="font-style: normal;">remarked to me: “Don’t
just stand there and nod. The mind observes and cogitates, the heart
engages, and I would encourage you to engage with the process.”</span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">May
you find your Shangri-La. </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">May
we all find our </span></span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Sangrael!</span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">~~~oOo~~~ </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Bibliography, reading and viewing delights</span></span></b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></b></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">AH Almaas, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/610678.Essence_With_the_Elixir_of_Enlightenment" target="_blank">Essence with the Elixir of Enlightenment</a></i>.</span></span><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><br /></span></span></b></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></b></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
</div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Tom
Cheetham, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/348284.World_Turned_Inside_Out" target="_blank">The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Tom
Cheetham, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13152141-all-the-world-an-icon" target="_blank">All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Tom
Cheetham, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249862.Green_Man_Earth_Angel" target="_blank">Green Man, Earth Angel: The Prophetic Tradition and the Battle for the Soul of the World</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Tom
Cheetham, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25220444-imaginal-love" target="_blank">Imaginal Love: The Meanings of Imagination in Henry Corbin and James Hillman</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span><br />
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Henry
Corbin, “Mundus Imaginalis or the Imaginary and the Imaginal”.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Henry
Corbin, “The Theory of Visionary Knowledge in Islamic
Philosophy”.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Henry
Corbin, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/288107.Alone_with_the_Alone" target="_blank">Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sūfism of Ibn 'Arabī</a></i>. </span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> <br /></span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">David Fideler, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20736619-restoring-the-soul-of-the-world" target="_blank">Restoring the Soul of the World: Our Living Bond with Nature’s Intelligence</a></i>.</span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Scott Duncan Gilliam, <i>The Angel's Call: The Angel and the Individuation Process</i>.</span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">James Harpur, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxPdyrjiS2U" target="_blank">Drinking at the Fountains</a>”.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Patrick
Harpur, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/664216.The_Philosophers_Secret_Fire" target="_blank">The Philosopher's Secret Fire: A History of the Imagination</a>.</i> (Includes material relating to Reverend Robert Kirk's <i>The Secret Commonwealth</i> (1691) which also influenced Philip Pullman).</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Patrick
Harpur, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8100486-a-complete-guide-to-the-soul" target="_blank">A Complete Guide to the Soul</a> (UK) or The Secret Tradition
of the Soul (US). </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> (overlaps
with his earlier work).</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">James
Hillman, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/970831.The_Soul_s_Code" target="_blank"><i>The Soul's Code</i></a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">James
Hillman, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/324172.Re_Visioning_Psychology" target="_blank"><i>Re-Visioning Psychology</i></a>.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Robert
A. Johnson, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/579455.Inner_Work" target="_blank"><i>Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth</i></a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Carl
Jung, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/729924.Aion" target="_blank">Aion: Researches Into the Phenomenology of the Self</a>.</i></span></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Peter
Kingley, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8798672-a-story-waiting-to-pierce-you" target="_blank"><i>A Story Waiting to Pierce You: Mongolia, Tibet and the Destiny of the Western World</i></a>.</span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Peter
Kingley, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1020277" target="_blank"><i>Reality</i></a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Peter
Kingsley, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41741940-catafalque" target="_blank">Catafalque: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Gary
Lachman, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24612120-the-secret-teachers-of-the-western-world" target="_blank">The Secret Teachers of the Western World</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Gary
Lachman, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36086531-lost-knowledge-of-the-imagination" target="_blank">Lost Knowledge of the Imagination</a>.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Iain
McGilchrist, “The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”: <a href="ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbUHxC4wiWk" target="_blank">lecture</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFs9WO2B8uI" target="_blank">animation</a>.</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Iain McGilchrist, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18901042-the-divided-brain-and-the-search-for-meaning" target="_blank">The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning</a></i>. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Iain
McGilchrist, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6968772-the-master-and-his-emissary" target="_blank"><i>The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World</i></a>. </span></span></span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></span></span></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Iain McGilchrist, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58955313-the-matter-with-things" target="_blank">The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World</a></i>. </span></span></span></span><br /> <br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Michael Meade, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9460810-fate-and-destiny-the-two-agreements-of-the-soul" target="_blank"><i>Fate and Destiny, The Two Agreements of the Soul</i></a>. </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div lang="en-US" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Seyyed
Mohsen Miri, “Henry Corbin and the Resolution of Modern Problems
by Recourse to the Concept of the Imaginal Realm”.</span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Kaleb Perl, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53840350-tyranny-against-human-consciousness" target="_blank"><i>Tyranny Against Human Consciousness: A Revolution in Human Becoming</i></a>. <br /></span></span></span></span></div></div><div lang="en-US" style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Philip
Pullman, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18116.His_Dark_Materials" target="_blank">His Dark Materials</a>.</i></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Philip
Pullman, </span></span><i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/199547-the-book-of-dust" target="_blank">The Book of Dust</a></i>.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Jeffrey Raff, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/729910.Jung_and_the_Alchemical_Imagination" target="_blank"><i>Jung and the Alchemical Imagination</i></a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Jeffrey Raff, <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/790892.The_Wedding_of_Sophia" target="_blank"><i>The Wedding of Sophia: The Divine Feminine in Psychoidal Alchemy</i></a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<span style="color: black;">Jeffrey Raff and Linda Bonnington Vocatura, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/451856.Healing_the_Wounded_God" target="_blank">Healing the Wounded God: Finding Your Personal Guide to Individuation and Beyond</a></i>.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black;">Jeffrey Raff, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24867294-the-practice-of-ally-work" target="_blank">The Practice of Ally Work: Meeting and Partnering with Your Spirit Guide in the Imaginal World</a></i>.</span><br />
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Mohammed
Rustom, “Suhrawardi on Sacred Symbolism and Self-Knowledge”.</span></span></span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/32851.Idries_Shah" target="_blank">Idries Shah</a>. </span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> <br /></span></span></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">David Tacey, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15927859-the-darkening-spirit" target="_blank">The Darkening Spirit: Jung, spirituality, religion</a></i> </span></span> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Becca Tarnas, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkF2LOtX5AI" target="_blank">Talking Tolkien and Jung</a>”. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Richard Tarnas, “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lqv78W13Fo" target="_blank">The Great Initiation</a>”.</span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span style="color: black;"><span>Richard Tarnas, <i><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/586992.The_Passion_of_the_Western_Mind" target="_blank">The Passion Of The Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View</a>.</i></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Mary Watkins, <i><a href="https://mary-watkins.net/books/" target="_blank">Waking Dreams</a>.</i></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Mary Watkins, <i><a href="https://mary-watkins.net/books/" target="_blank">Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues</a>.</i></span></span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><i> </i></span></span></div><div style="font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><b><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">Secret Friends</span></b></div><div style="font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></div><div style="font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">This article also forms part of <i>Secret Friends: The Ramblings of a Madman in Search of a Soul</i> (<a href="https://sherpoint.uk/sherpoint/review-copies.htm" target="_blank">Free PDF</a>). </span><br /><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"> </span></span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"></span></span><br />
<b><span style="color: #38761d;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;">The ishraqi institute</span></span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-style: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Image:
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world</span></i></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "liberation" serif , serif;"><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-variant: normal;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="letter-spacing: normal;"><span lang="en-US"><span style="font-weight: normal;">mage
description: A hidden falls in the Brisbane Waters National Park.</span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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Author: Dongoldney.</span></span></div>
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