As Autumn Approaches

I feel like Einstein working in the patent office. As Einstein worked out his theory of relativity while shuffling papers in Switzerland, because he had time on his hands, so, too, am I able to clarify the mystical experience, as I work in the media room for an institute of "enlightenment". I am now able to see the extreme forms of a path, an approach, or a system of philosophy. For example, the renunciation of material things: There are men in India who abandon all possessions, even clothing. This is the logical conclusion, and then, ofcourse, abandonment of the corporeal self (the body), to renunciation of material dependency.

What does it take to cultivate a better world, one where the best of the material and the best of the heavenly are agreeably blended? Must a Westerner retreat to India? Or, must a little bit of India visit the west? In fact, the western mystical traditions are different from the east, having evolved differently, the way creatures with an exoskeleton evolved differently from those with an endoskeleton. They share a broad, commmon similarity, i.e., head, thorax, abdomen, and jointed legs. They each have eyes located where you would expect eyes to be located, and also a brain and central nervous system. Therefore, the mystical experience is shared by all peoples, as we share the same Breath of Life. Yet, the book is written differently, from left to right, and in a different language. It occurs to me that one need not travel far to be able look within, or to know how to look within. The desire to know of the eternal is woven into the fabric of the self. The pattern changes among the tribes of man, so that the Hopi and the Hermetic both seek the Divine in their own way.

I, too, seek enlightenment in my own way, and I am in a fortuitous position of being free to discover my own way. I will have to write a book soon, to engrave the worth of my words upon the pleroma of civilization.

The Sunflower

I was asked to describe God. I replied, "I cannot, for God is inconceivable." But, wait friend, because God is perceivable. We can know God, without conceiving of the Great Father. Better yet, we can even see God, or at least, when unable to see Him, we can see the shadow of His light as He passes. In all things, there is ebb and flo. I point to the sunflower, that you may form in your imagination how it is that we are connected to God, and thence, connected to one another. For, the sunflower is the perfect simple analogy of how we can be both separate entities, and still share the same common origin. We are the seeds; God is the flower. We are connected to the flower, as if it were a Great Mother. All life is connected to Her so. She is our basis, our platform, until our own spirits ripen and plant anew.

The sunflower represents both the finite and the infinite, the limited and the limitless. Look to her seed, they are numbered, yes? But the seeds, we cannot say, except arbitrarily, that they end here, and the flower which raised it begins there. For, if the seed were pulled from its cradle before it should naturally ripen, would not the life blood of the flower spill a little there? It is a mystery that life commences from life, and this is also the secret of where our Creator lieth: within. As the life force of the sunflower issue from its roots, into its noble stem, and through to the very seeds which gain personality and distinction from one another, this too is the very image one should form to know how our Creator lives within each of us, equally.

Thoughts on Exegesis on the Soul

My soul has indeed been up to no good, and must be reconditioned in order to receive the bridal chamber. What haunting memory have I, that I cannot even feel unashamed in thy Presence? How is it that I am played the part of both the defiler, and the defiled? A pollution is upon me, and I must not turn from it, but turn it out in the blood of my unselfish works.

I was given this soul, and this life, and I have turned it into a play thing. Oh, Father, Creator, Lord Jehovih above all, that you would see the childishness of my wisdom, in operating this imperfect vehicle?

I cannot long dwell on what might have been, had I been touched by spirit then. And even now, demons and lower spirits regularly will ply their influence over thee, and other sisters and brothers of mankind, in ways that make us ashamed in after years. I see your light, oh Lord, but I sometimes make it dim with dark thoughts of my own making. And then, I ask,

wherefore thy thought,
what night hath wrought,
this demon seed inside of thee?

Say this upon the entrance of your terrible idea, and it will dissolve. To ask from whence cometh the bloody idea, is to examine it with the light of truth, and from this the demon hides. It is when we unquestioningly follow the thread of the polluted one that we are his thrall.

Yeah, I have been a prostitute, and I have been the user of the prostitute, and my sould needs cleansing from her iniquity. This question of how, this is the Way. In seeking the solution, we hope to never find. In finding the solution, we have no need to seek.

How deep our roots

How far back can we trace revelation, and what exactly is it, anyway? Revelation is the hearing of intelligence, whether that intelligence is ours, or some other. We call it higher intelligence, because we assume that what is revealed about what had been unknown, must require a perception beyond the ability of mortal human.
We can see that revelation has hardly changed at all, but that the technology is better able to reflect the nuance of the experience. We see time and again how the typewriter, and the printing press before it, were the instruments of revealed scripture.
A question I have. Not the proof of the experience, but, trusting that time and again the phenomenon of prophecy returns to our age, how long have we been on this journey, and asking the same questions, praying the same pleas?

Practical Mystic

It is not uncommon that I have followed a spiritual quest. Having been an independant student of the way of Tao, of zen, of the Buddha's eight-fold path, and through years of psychedelic shamanism and Castaneda, and even unto the present, my studies of Bible, apocrypha, Dead Sea Scrolls, and gnostic texts, Oahspe, and revealed scripture... what is the fruit of my learning?

"Love, faith, and knowledge. This is the sacred trinity. Love above all; faith sits to her left, and knowledge stands to her right. All who have ears to hear, listen."

"The earth may be our mother, but our praise and thanks go to the Most High, our Creator. Our Father wants us to progress toward Him always, and know that we will not lose that which we have, but, rather, we shall gain what is His."

"Do not unto thee, that which thou wouldst not" - is the whole of the law.

Book I, Tractate 1

I Am Brother Harmonius
I humbly, but with gladness, comment on the gnosis of the Nag Hammadi texts, which are brought to the English language under a single marvelous compendium by James M. Robinson; also, my own inspired concordance to the Dead Sea Scrolls texts, the extant of which has been made available to academic and scholarly scrutiny since 1990 CE, and especially through the scholarly treatment of the texts rendered into publication by Geza Vermes, Michael Wise, Martin Abegg, Jr., and Edward Cook, A. Powell Davies, Millar Burrows, Edmund Wilson, and Marvin Meyer. These scholars and editors have given us rope in crossing the threadbare bridge to our past.

Beginnings

Like many of my generation, my awakening came upon me during the battle between adolescence and puberty, whilst in my fourteenth year. It was then that notions of something greater than this farm, these dirty boots, must be. How could it that I, helpless in 20th century America, could be tossed from coast to coast, with no anchor, no savior?

I studied the skies, I studied the animals. Nature became my shelter, swimming through the trees like a marine creature would in its tidal pool. The quest for spirit, the divine presence, occupied my innermost thought. It is only of late that I am wont to tell it out loud, that the purpose of thou may be affirmed, and that your heart may be glad through the dark night.

I am a free monk, one who does not tithe to a single school or way. I cannot be tethered, nor can I be pigeonholed or catalogued, like some antiquarian book. It is preferable that thou, also, should remain free to choose this path or another, as your quest for understanding grows firm and directed.

The sacred trinity - Love, knowledge, and faith

Brother Harmonius