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Chapter XXVI A walk in Nature
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At this point, I want to share with you the fact that, like many of you who write to me, coming to understand the "whys and wherefores" has been a "process" that has had its moments of extreme frustration and rebellion against what IS. Even if our observations of reality are constantly telling us things that are Truth, we all tend to want to stay "asleep" and "dreaming" in the "Matrix illusion." In the following excerpt, I only wish I could reproduce in writing the frustration and puzzlement in my voice. The words that are placed in caps were practically shouted: This is an allusion to my "immediate past life" in Germany where I jumped to my death after the Nazis took my Jewish husband and children away to a camp.
My beloved grandmother always said to me "a wise man learns from his mistakes; a genius learns from the mistakes of others." (I wonder if there is a special school that grandmothers attend to learn all these clever sayings?) But her point is exactly what we are dealing with here. We need to learn not only from the mistakes of others, but from our own mistakes, and from applying our greatest assets, our minds, to the matter. If all there is is lessons, then it seems only logical to think that we can infer some principles from the world around us, from our studies, and from DIRECT OBSERVATION. Many "occult" teachings state that one can learn all the "secrets" of creation by studying nature. The alchemists say that the truth is "hid in plain sight." As I quoted in the last section, the Nexus Seven guys think that we need "a language of hyper-dimensional symbols that codify human relationship with nature. Symbols and ritual that codify the elements and forces of nature, codify the life processes of nature, from the little insects all the way up to the supposedly angelic and demonic ET's." And I respond that we already have it. It is Nature itself. The only problem is, you cannot obtain knowledge and understanding of Nature by simply reading about it or wandering around in the garden. You have to THINK.
We cannot "rush" the process. Nature's greatest secrets are always close to us. In Nature, God is made manifest in all his many faces. Nature is the organ which proclaims the creator. It is important to learn everything you can about the physical world before you begin to investigate the spirit world because "there are innumerable realms in the unseen world, some of them far more dangerous than the worst jungles of the visible world." [Chittick] Once you have learned about the physical world, many things about the spiritual world which have been inexplicable will then be understood.
Now, notice that the Cassiopaeans have said that "it is FUN to see how much you can access." And what we are supposed to be accessing is universal creative powers that exist WITHIN our own minds - the zero point energy as suggested by David Bohm. But that coy little remark about "fun" also tells us something very important! It tells us that there are "constraints" in place to make the "game" more interesting. The very idea that the whole of Creation is a "game" or a "challenge" that God has set up for him/herself is totally repugnant to some people. And, admittedly, when any one of us is in the midst of many of the various "challenges," it is hard to see the humor. Does the mouse see the humor of God when the cat toys with it before eating it? Is it a monstrous blasphemy to reduce the sufferings of mankind throughout millennia to a cosmic round of hide and seek? The following will certainly illustrate my point:
I guess you can tell that I was feeling pretty desperate with all of this. So desperate, in fact, that I didn't really pay attention to the important things. Notice a couple of keys above: "Change will follow," and the "challenge" of "living through" the "turmoil" will be "ecstasy." As human beings, it seems that an essential part of our nature is to feel that there is more to life than the immediately apparent material world. We don't like to think that our lives are a "game of chance" played by the gods. Yet, we can observe that the heartless randomness of the world is at odds with the religious views of a loving, caring God. It seems, upon observation, that the only constant factor of the physical universe is change. As the Sufis say, "Every day God is upon some different task." However, we can also observe that change operates in a sequential and progressive manner manifested as patterns recognizable to human consciousness. These patterns take shape as the forms inherent in the nature of the instant of time when they are observed. They are manifestations of the present state of cosmic being and have much to tell us of the nature and potential development of that state. Even those things that seem to be random, according to chaos theory, conform to certain mathematical principles of randomness. We also have synchronicity which tells us that all things are, in some way, linked to each other. The eighteenths century Icelandic mystic, Jon Jonsson said "God plays at Forkjaering with man in this world." Forkjaering is a dice game. Later, Albert Einstein said "God does NOT play dice" with the universe. I think the truth is somewhere in between. We ARE pawns in a game, only the players are, in some sense, ourselves. And we are pawns so long as we don't know the rules of the game. Once we have served our apprenticeship as playing pieces, we then are able to take our place with the players. The important thing is that we have to gain a perspective on our existence that is NOT 3rd density in order to fully "enter into" third density with the "proper perspective!" This is reflected in the saying of Jesus that we are to be "of the world, but not IN it." The Cassiopaeans have reiterated this point by saying:
Well,
ha ha HA! Aren't we having FUN?! It reminds me of a passage
from the book of Romans that used to just make
me foam at the mouth!
Of course, at this point, Paul diverts off into his "Wrathful theology" and starts ranting about Divine judgment and doom. But, what he was saying above is, actually, quite similar to the mystery teachings that were prevalent at the time, and which were preserved and expanded in the Gnostic and Sufi paths. And, it is in these teachings that we will find the "rest of the story." But, getting back to the Bible for just a moment: in my reading of years past, I came across several passages that really struck me as curious, considering their "origins." The first is, of course, one that I quote frequently from the Book of Romans in the New Testament. It is generally attributed to Paul, and actually has been computer analyzed and the result of this analysis was that whoever wrote the book of Romans, also wrote the two epistles to the Corinthians as well as the epistle to the Galatians. Internal evidence from these documents indicates that they were written before 70 A.D., probably close to 60 or even 40 A.D. That is to say, they were written BEFORE the Gospels. These epistles make no allusions to Jesus as a historical figure as depicted in the Gospels. They say absolutely nothing about the parents of Jesus, the virgin birth, a time or place of earthly existence, a trial before the Romans, an execution in Jerusalem, or any of the main characters of the "Jesus story," with the exception of Peter who is referred to as a hypocrite by Paul. If there had been a real incident such as the denial of Jesus by Peter, it is fairly certain that Paul would have brought it up and used it in his "flame war" against "the Rock of the Church." When Paul DOES refer to Jesus' death, he says repeatedly that he was "crucified" or "delivered up" but NEVER that he was killed! And, we know from many ancient sources that to be "crucified" meant an initiatory event rather than being nailed to a wooden cross and dying in a physical sense. When Christianity originated, Jewish writings included a considerable body of "wisdom" literature that had been, to a great extent, "borrowed" from more ancient sources with whom the Jews had come in contact throughout their period of formation as a national entity. A lot of this literature derived from Egyptian and Babylonian sources. Very often, this material was modified or "interpreted" to suit the Hebrew perspective, and was often ascribed to their god, Jehovah or Yahweh in terms of source, even though more contemporary research clearly shows it to have been more or less plagiarized. Thus, within the pages of the Bible, there are many passages in which this ancient "Wisdom literature" makes itself known. It is also now generally thought that the Bible itself was pretty much "written" during the Babylonian captivity by the Scribe, Ezra. [See Who Wrote the Bible, Richard Elliot Friedman, 1987 for a fascinating analysis.] The interesting thing is that, even though it much of the Wisdom Literature was borrowed and redacted, it often appears to have been included with very little modification. Apparently, those who were engaged in assembling the Bible either did not understand the material fully, or they were unable to change it completely because it was so generally known at large. So it happens that, in some passages, wisdom is not merely abstract, but personified as a supernatural being created by God before he created heaven or earth. Very often, Wisdom or Knowledge figured as "a breath of the power of God." It is written that "SHE is the sustainer and governor of the universe who sits by the throne of God," (Wisdom of Solomon, 8:1; 9:4) and "SHE comes to dwell among men and bestow her gifts on them," but most of them reject her. Hmmm... the "Mother Stone" that is rejected as the corner of the foundation? Paul, as an educated Jew, was strongly influenced by the wisdom traditions. Paul's Jesus, like SHE/Wisdom, assists God in the creation of all things (1Cor. 8:6) If we do not begin with the assumption that Jesus was a historical person AS DEPICTED in the Gospels, there is little in the writings of Paul to suggest that he was. And there is a great deal to suggest that a different explanation for the expression "Christ Crucified" must be considered. But going in that direction now will lead us too far afield from our purpose here. The point is, in Paul's day, the Wisdom literature DID exist, and he seemed to be in the habit of musing on it and extracting meanings from it to serve his own ends. With this in mind, let's have a look at something else Paul said:
This remark is so similar to the following that one cannot help but think that they are obtained from the same ancient "source."
As noted, there is much of the Wisdom Literature preserved in the Old Testament even if it is interspersed with plagiarized myths, mythicized histories, and entirely fabricated genealogies. Many of the Psalms have been identified as pre-existent Egyptian songs and writings:
These passages, which reflect very ancient sources, reveal to us a very great truth: Nature and the cycles of Nature reveal to us the Faces and Names of God. God has many faces, not all of them pleasant to behold! All around us in the natural world there are wonders and horrors. Mountains are not only being built but simultaneously worn down by glaciers and rivers. Rivers clog and change their courses. Lakes fill with sediment and turn into swamps and eventually grasslands. Some creatures adapt and survive these changes, some do not. On almost every corner of the planet, from the highest mountains to the lowest valleys, from the hottest to the coldest climates, above the oceans and within them, there are populations of interdependent plants and animals. Most of the time this term "interdependence" really means that they "eat" one another. At the bottoms of the deepest oceans, there are huge "tube worms" that feast on bacteria that consume the chemicals that result from volcanic energy of the planet. On the summits of high mountains, where nothing else can survive the most ferocious winds and lethal cold on earth, there are lichens composed of symbiotic algae and fungi. The fungus produces an acid which etches the surface of the rock, enabling the colony to attach to the smooth surface and the acid also dissolves the minerals into a chemical form that the alga can absorb. The fungus provides a spongy framework for the colony which absorbs moisture from the air. The alga, with the help of sunshine, synthesizes the rock minerals, the water and carbon dioxide from the air into food substances on which both it and the fungus feed. Both plants reproduce separately and the next generations have to reestablish the liaison afresh. The partnership is not equal, however. Sometimes the fungal threads inside the lichen wrap themselves around the algal cells and consume them. And the alga, if separated from the fungus, can lead an independent life, the fungus cannot survive without the alga. The fungus seems to be using the alga as a slave to enable it to colonize these bleak areas otherwise closed to it.
These examples of life existing in some of the most extreme conditions on our planet serve not only to frame the picture of our reality, they manifest great truths about our own state of being. Creatures of all sorts live under all kinds of conditions, from icy tundra to seething swamps, from incandescent deserts to sweltering jungles. And all of them express fundamental essences of the Faces and Names of God just as humans do, individually and collectively. On the great Serengheti plains of Africa there are herds of many different kinds of animals. Anybody who has watched the "cycle of life" presented in the animated move, The Lion King, can see a colorful depiction of the play of forces that exist in our natural world. There are elephants, antelope, giraffes and zebras moving across the landscape in great herds, eating the plant life and moving on. There are lions and cheetahs on the plains, and crocodiles in the rivers, lying in wait for a young, weak, or feeble member of the antelope, zebra or giraffe herds to be "available" so that they can have dinner. Then there are the hyenas and vultures that eat the remains of the predators' feasts. In the jungles, there are great serpents among the amazing varieties of predators and prey. There is also a great assortment of plant life, much of which serves as food for some of the creatures. In the simple garden behind my house, there are birds and lizards, insects and plants of all sorts. The lizards eat many insects and they are, in turn, eaten by the birds. There are roses - beautiful but deadly - which grow in soil composed partly of plant detritus converted by earthworms into usable nutrients. There are also grubs and mole crickets that seem to do nothing but destroy what I work so hard to produce and maintain. In the evenings, the bats and mosquitoes both come out in force, the former preying on the latter (thankfully) and the night blooming jasmine opens to feed a particular species of night moth that delights in its nectar. The earth spins around its axis bringing night to cool the planet and to provide rest for the sunlight seekers of our world. Night also provides an environment for the night creatures to come forth in their shy or sinister forays for food. The earth, spinning on its axis, circles ponderously around the Sun, which drags all its planets in a mad dash around the outer reaches of the galaxy. The companion planets seem to have significant influence on the lifeforms on earth, most particularly our own satellite, the Moon. Not only that, but they mark seasons. And, according to the Wisdom literature, the celestial bodies "pour forth knowledge." There is spring, when I spend eight hours a day "getting the garden" in shape; there is summer, when I relax and watch my efforts grow and blossom; there is fall when I pull up the dead annuals and prune the overgrowth; and there is winter when everything rests and builds strength to burst forth the following spring, to initiate a new cycle. Cycles within cycles. Birth, growth, maturity, reproduction, decline and death. To everything there is a season. Now, imagine that you are observing the Earth with a high powered telescope from a point out in space. This telescope gives you detailed close-ups of any point on the planet, but you cannot hear anything. You can only SEE. Forget everything you think you know about the "principles of biological life." Forget that you think you know anything about what living things are or how they are "supposed" to behave. Now, what do you see? The first thing you notice is that the surface of the planet is teeming with activity. This includes areas under the soil and deep within the ocean. The activity on the surface of the planet consists of an immense number of different shapes and sizes of "living things" going about in circles EATING each other! Further, you notice that there is a whole class of these living things that are, essentially, immobile; incapable of escaping being eaten. In fact, they don't seem to object being eaten at all. Maybe if they COULD run away, they would, but they can't, so it may only seem that they don't object. But, the fact of the matter is that these immobile beings, (call them "plants") use this fact of being eaten to their advantage. By being eaten, they are often able to propagate themselves in far distant places that they would otherwise be unable to populate on their own. However, all the other living things clearly resent being eaten. They very often make strenuous efforts to NOT be eaten. By now, you have probably decided that this planet is a MONSTROUS environment, and hideously dangerous to boot! We are already learning from Nature! Nevertheless, if you begin to examine the situation in another way, you begin to notice that many of the living things have fundamental similarities in shape and behavior and this leads you to think that maybe they ALL have something in common. After a bit of reflection, you come to the idea that this thing they all have in common is the "faculty of assimilating a food and transmuting it." This process of transmutation of food seems to be directed at reproduction and INCREASE. When the living being achieves this aim, the organism begins to deteriorate and die. But this death is not an extinguishing of life in all the "component" parts of the being, because they are assimilated by other forms and recycled into new life whether animal or vegetable. But, in considering the matter even more deeply, we discover that even those things that are not considered to be capable of assimilating and trasmuting food, ARE part of the cycle. Such things as minerals become part of the cycle and therefore DO partake of the process through various chemical reactions. So, perhaps we are looking for an even deeper principle: that of the faculty of REACTION. The VITAL phenomenon is that of REACTING. But, to have reaction, or LIFE, there must be ACTION and RESISTANCE TO ACTION. Action + Resistance = Reaction/Life. We have learned something else from Nature. There are TWO fundamental forces which result in a third. So, we begin to think that all of these many living beings we are observing have a common, structurally very simple, origin. We begin to think that they are all not only manifestations of a single source, but that they have all been changing their shapes over an immense period of time. And we now come to the critical questions as to HOW and WHY this endless process of change has been occurring. Of course, we can easily comprehend the first question in a general sense: the How of all the changes occurs is via reproduction. These creatures we are observing, not having eternal life, begin to reproduce themselves as early in their life cycle as possible. Now, in a static and stable environment, it might be expected that all of the creatures would be exactly alike. They would reproduce copies of themselves that would be the same from the beginning to the end. But there is something else to consider. The planet is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays of various sorts that affect the "blueprints" that determine the offspring's likeness to the parent. Sometimes, these "blueprints," or genetic codes get changed in one way or another. Many of these altered copies do not survive - in fact, most of them don't. But every once in awhile, one of them does and reproduces. And sometimes the altered copies have some feature which actually makes them BETTER than the original. These individuals not only reproduce, they thrive. So, we see a certain pattern emerging here: the variations of biological systems have to do with whether or not one variety of creature can survive the competition in the terrifying planetary game of life and death. It is clear that danger is omnipresent and only the most vigorous and adaptable survive. This is another important rule that Nature teaches us. Many of the creatures that are most often considered "prey" are equipped with elaborate sensing organs that help them to stay out of harms' way. Many of the creatures that are the predators have horrifyingly efficient organs of destruction such as teeth and claws. This terrible vista is what we see when we look at Nature. So, what are we to think? Is it mindless cruelty, or purposeful activity from another level of being? Are we to think that this is the "sinful" natural world that has nothing at all to do with our spirituality? Is this what we are to "change" or "lift up" or "spiritualize" so that all of this monstrous eating and being eaten is done away with or transformed into a blissful garden where the Lion lies down with the Lamb and everybody munches - well something? Is this dreadful condition of Nature an ERROR? Is it the result of the sin of Adam and Eve? Or, is there a great truth there for those who will open their eyes and look? The Secrets of Nature are there for all to see. Nature is its own Priestess/Teacher. She initiates and shows her inner sanctum to those who search and labor in the "vineyard." Even the most wholesome herb can, through lack of knowledge of its power, turn into a dangerous poison. It is the nature of the moth to fly into the flame because it lacks the knowledge of what effect the flame has. It is the nature of a spider to spin a web. It is the nature of the cat to torture the mouse before eating it. It is the nature of some creatures to eat their own young. It is the nature of the Black Widow and the Preying mantis to eat their mates during the act of mating. I once read a saying that goes: "A bird doesn't fly because it has wings; it has wings because it flies." That is to say: a bird is the incarnation of "Bird-ness," which includes flight and, in many species, song. Taking this idea a little further, we could think of a Black Widow spider who kills and eats her mate right after mating as the embodiment of a certain combination of Names at that moment. Destroyer, Slayer, Devourer, and Terrible come to mind. The same would be true for a cat torturing a mouse before eating it. But, when NOT torturing the mouse, the cat is embodying other Names or Ideas. A cat is a Dreamer, Sensitive, Proud, and many other essential things. The same is true for many creatures, but it might be thought that each class of them has some essential spiritual idea that is exclusively theirs. But, in their physical nature, they are basically Devourers, slayers and terrible! Human beings, individually and collectively, are the incarnation of specific "ideas" as well. In fact, it could be said that they are the embodiment of ALL the things we see in the Natural world.
We have a clue then, that we can learn a great deal about ourselves, our reality, our destiny, and our proper response to our environment by studying that which surrounds us in the physical realm. But, it is not just observation of the outer structure that we are after; it is the discovery of the "inner nature," or the Idea of a thing. The "Platonic Idea" of a thing is referred to in some philosophical systems as "Noumena." In Kantian philosophy, this is an "object reached by intellectual intuition without the aid of the senses." It is the "essence of the thing." We have already mentioned the fact that the Sufis, using Islam as their operational platform, refer to something that amounts to an "inclusive principle". The Sufis refer to the "qualities" or "essences," as the "Names" of God. A "name" is thus a "principle/function." These names include: Alive, Knowing, Life Giver, Slayer, Powerful, Weak, Forgiving, Vengeful, Mercy, Compassion, and so on. Now, an important thing to consider about this is that these names are ordered according to a sort of "essential preeminence." This means that the "highest name" designates the widest specific reality, or relative relationship. It does NOT mean that any one of them is "better" than any other in terms of value. A man who is a genius is as valuable as an idiot in the scheme of the Cosmos, just as a maggot is as valuable as a peacock. All are made of the "stuff of God," and therefore, all are equal in those terms. But, what we are talking about here is something akin to the Cassiopaean concept of "density," or "relative relationship." For example: the name of "fatherhood" and "sonhood" are based on the relationship that the son comes into being through the father. In this sense, neither the father or the son are more "important," it is just that the son "archetype" is relationally an "offshoot" of the father archetype. The "relationships" of the names distinguish between God and the Cosmos and, according to the Sufis, the Names manifest the realities of the Divine. That is to say, the Names/Faces are like templates through which the Divine Creative force "extrudes" into "beingness," and this process of extrusion is followed by "mixing" and mingling the principles and functions to result in the great variety of "engendered" or "created" beings/things. Some of these Names have more inclusive connections than others and some of them "make use" of others; some of them are opposites, and it seems that they all occur in BALANCE. For example: the Name "Alive" designates the "precondition" for the existence of ALL the names, and is thus at the top of the "scale." It is ALL INCLUSIVE. The Sufis then go on to postulate that KNOWLEDGE is born from Alive and it includes AWARENESS of all the other names as intrinsic to its own Existence. Knowledge, as an all-inclusive principle, necessitates knowledge of ALL.
In thinking about the Names of God, and hypothesizing that each and everything that exists is a manifestation of one or more of these Names in its essential nature, we begin to get the idea of what it is we must understand in terms of our reality. The Sufis say that we are to learn to "put each thing in its proper place." That means, we are supposed to learn from it so that we can NAME it. Umberto Eco writes in The Search for The Perfect Language:
Aside from the fact that, in pre-biblical myths, Adam was a creature formed by the Goddess of Earth from her own clay, and given life by her blood, the issue of the Nomothete, as Dr. Eco points out, is a theme common to other religions and mythologies. Nevertheless, when we consider the later "Tower of Babel" issue, in which the theme was the "confusing" of languages, we find that Names, or words, as a significant motif, keeps coming up to remind us of something crucial. The theme of "Names," or "words" as something that gave one power is brought forward again in the Bible when we are told that, after the Flood of Noah, "the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech." [Genesis 11:1] At this point, mankind decided to build a tower. The passage reads:
Now, it is very curious that the very idea we are discussing is specifically identified here. "Let us make a NAME for ourselves." What happens next is most interesting.
Now, just what the heck happened here? We can easily figure out that it had nothing to do with "language" in the sense of variations in spoken speech because in Genesis 10:5, 10:20 and 10:31 we find references to the diffusion of the descendants of Noah after the flood "...in their lands, each with his own language...; their families, their languages, their lands, and their nations..." and so forth. So, again, we find ourselves in the presence of a very subtle idea that needs our attention. Why is it that the tradition focuses on a story in which the "confusing of speech" was understood as a tragedy; as a divine malediction? If the languages of man were already numerous after Noah, why does this story of the "confusion of tongues" exist as an allegory of a curse upon mankind?
We already have disclosed a little clue from the Cassiopaeans on this matter, but let's look at it one more time and see if we can't discover something more that will help us to understand:
Having already talked about mankind being a "Fragmented Soul Unit," we now have the idea that "making a NAME" as it was described in the Biblical text, had something to do with "spiritual unification of the masses" - possibly "reassembling" members of that Soul Unit. We also have a clue that this action was NOT acceptable to the Drachomonoid Control System because the Bible clearly says:
Aside from the fact that this passage pretty much confirms the Cassiopaean's interpretation of the event, it suggests other possibilities that we need to consider, namely the idea that, with spiritual unification, "nothing they have imagined they can do will be impossible to them." WHAT A CONCEPT! But we need to note another thing about this Tower of Babel business: The Cassiopaeans also said that it was designed to function via "electromagnetic concentration of all gravity waves" and that this would accomplish the "mind alteration of masses." Now, let's think about this for a moment. They said "all gravity waves," as in plural. Let's go to another series of curious remarks made by the Cassiopaeans. And, it should be noted that this series of remarks was initiated by my questions about the Sufi teachings:
And we have just discovered that "Ba-Bel" means "God's Gate." Hmmm...
Now, let's run some of those key points by one more time:
Now, remember that the Cassiopaeans said that the Tower of Babel was designed to artificially concentrate all gravity waves and that this would result in "unification" which the Control System immediately saw as a threat. From the above, we can conjecture that the remark about "concentrating ALL gravity waves" must refer to the aligning of individuals as containing access to God, considering that the "sum total of all existence exists within each" human being in the form of gravity. Sounds to me like they are describing what is known today as the zero-point energy state. David Bohm computed the "zero-point energy" due to quantum-mechanical fluctuations in a single cubic centimeter of space, and arrived at the energy of 10 38 ergs. This amounts to the energy equivalent of about ten billion tons of uranium. Joseph Chilton Pearce compares this zero-point energy proposal to the saying of Jesus that if we have the "faith of a grain of mustard seed," we might move mountains. There is a little catch, however: according to David Bohm, under present conditions this energy is inaccessible in the material sense. It is merely a mathematical representation of a theoretical "state." But, as we have already proposed, this "zero point energy" source is really the state of pure non-anticipation of the left brain in its analysis of the observations made through the right brain thought processes - it is the mirror of mirrors of Grail consciousness.
Ancient alphabets were more than a means by which phonetic symbols were put together to make words which denoted people or things. These signs had "concepts" associated with them. The word "rune" is related to the meaning "to whisper," (as Wisdom is described doing above), or to give indications of the nature of something. Each sign of the ancient symbol systems was a unit encapsulating a wealth of information. They represented a formless, eternal reality which is manifested in the world we experience as the objects, powers, feelings and attributes. Going back to our right and left brain functions, we find that it is the left side of the brain that possesses the abilities needed for reading and writing in our modern sense of the words. But the ancient symbol systems represented logographic imagery that was more efficiently recognized by the right side of the brain. The key is to unify the two halves of the brain in response to a "sign." In the Edda, Odin makes this synthesis. In the Song of Havamal (The Utterances of the High One), stanzas 138-139, we read:
What does this have to do with "making a NAME" for themselves? And what can it tell us about the Names of God? And how does this relate to our own, individual access to the zero-point energy function? A name, in esoteric terms, is considered identical with the thing itself; it is a spiritual "handle" by which one becomes aware of how to deal with a person, thing or issue. Ancient Britons believed that the name and the soul were the same and there are many stories about Celtic heroes refusing to give their names to strangers. In some myths, knowledge of the name could bring destruction as is noted in the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltzkin. From all the things we have discussed so far, it seems reasonable to assume that the oldest civilizations had some knowledge of sound as a means of creation and destruction. The belief that such forces could be activated by pronouncing a divine name is only a pale remnant of that knowledge. It could even be said that there was some element of this idea behind the saying of Jesus that "In my name shall they cast out devils." It is also reflected in the idea that one could only be saved "in the name of Jesus." However, if we track this idea back to the Wisdom Literature, we find that "Wisdom/SHE is the sustainer and governor of the universe who sits by the throne of God, and SHE comes to dwell among men and bestow her gifts on them, but most of them reject her." Nevertheless, the tradition has been passed down that the holy names were not merely symbols because words spoken "in the name of Jesus" or in the name of the "Father, son and holy spirit" were supposed to have absolute efficacy in expelling demons. The Christian church taught that no demon could be exorcised before his own name was known, following the example of Jesus who demanded to know the names of the devils that were possessing the Gadarene. We can see that there is a key in this "shadow of the truth." If these ideas are twisted perversions of the idea of Knowledge and Wisdom as the giver of all good things and protector of mankind, then we come face to face with the realization the NAMING something is to KNOW it. And, by the same token, naming it is to separate it! In the passage quoted from Genesis about the creation of the world being accomplished by Naming things, the thing that we really need to notice here is that the "let there be light" business was essentially the fact that "God separated the light from the Darkness" by NAMING them. The One became Two. The Infinite Unmanifest Parent contracted infinitely, leaving a void, or zero-point, and everything else, or One. Everything in the cosmos can be expressed by two figures, 0 and 1. This "zero point" function with its incredible energy potential is known in the Sufi teachings as the "Breath of God." God was "constricted" and so "breathed out" to "ease His constriction." This "breath" is the "cloud," or the "mirror" in which God sees his reflection. And the reflection is seen in everything that comes into being through the constant "fluctuation" of God's being as he "looks in the mirror." As God "looks" he is activating the positive creative potential of the "idea" which is responded to by the "zero-point energy potential" of the "Breath," and all creation comes into being. That which is dispersed toward the periphery, the Breath of God, becomes the "clay" of creation. Without it, Light would not shine and the cosmos would not come into existence. And, once this full outward manifestation is achieved, it is time for the unitive movement to take over, and an active and conscious participation in this movement is the prerogative of human beings. And here we come to another great mystery:
As an aside, we deduce from the above that Love serves Knowledge, not the other way around. Getting back to the matter at hand, thus breath is a vapor, relieves constriction in the breast, and is the vehicle for words. The existent things or words come into existence within the Breath as the result of God's speech. This "word" is described as "Be!" yet this word is addressed to each "thing" in its state of nonexistence. And, thereby, the thing becomes existent. The place of articulation is that which determines what comes into being. In bringing the cosmos into existence, the Breath of the All-merciful assumes the contours defined by the Names. Just as each word that a human speaks issues from a particular point, known as the "place of articulation" within the vocal apparatus - depending on how the breath passes through the throat and mouth, that is, which "place of articulation" is employed, letters are produced which may be guttural, velar, palatal, dental, labial, and so on - in the same way, each letter/reality of the cosmos manifests Being in a specific mode different from other modes. Each, therefore, is connected to a specific divine name. "The One" or the Divine Presences, comprises Essence, Attributes and Acts. This, according to Ibn al-'Arabi, embraces all that IS. The Essence is God without reference to relationships. The Acts are all created things, including man. The Names are the Barzakh, or "isthmus" between Essence and Creation. In other words, the Names define the "relationships" between God and the Creation. The Names are not like the creatures of the universe which can be noted as separate things, rather, they are relationships, attributes, ascriptions or correlations between God and the Cosmos. The Created things are the "secondary causes" of the Names.
The Names are also called "realities." As Qualities, or Essences, they are the Genetic Code of the Offspring of God - and it is really uncertain how many there are. Each system has its own list. Some commentators on Judaism says there are 72 names of God. The Islamic view is that there are 99 names of God. Some esoteric literature lists the "Twelve Pairs of Twin Characteristics." My guess is that to try to list them all would be limiting. And it should be noted that the Judeo-Christian view is that anything other than the "Beautiful Names" do not apply to God, but rather are the "error" or the result of sin. In this respect, they effectively judge and condemn fully half of creation, and seat this judgment upon fully half of humanity, i.e. women.
Now here we come back to the same issue the Apostle Paul was working with when he was musing about why one "vessel" should be called to "grace" and another to "wrath." Paul's view is exposed as very narrow and presumptuous when compared with the Sufi view.
The word "Demon" comes from the Greek daemon, which was something like a "guiding spirit" or guardian angel. The medieval concept of the demon evolved from the Christian blanket condemnation of all pagan ideas. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, all bad weather and natural catastrophes were brought about by demons. But, we can see that the archaic idea that the daemon, as a divine power, inner spirit, fate or "secondary divinity" is rather close to the idea of the Names of God. Now, in this following dialogue from the writings of the Great Shaykh, Ibn-al'Arabi, note how close to the concept of the daemon, as the ancients understood, it the Names are:
Here is a HUGE clue to our problem. First of all, we learn that each and every human being is under the "call" of one or more of the Divine Names. It seems as though one particular one must be "in charge" at any given time, until it has "finished" with the person. If another Name "calls" to the person, it has less influence over him than the one that "possesses" him at a given time. Now, we already know that there can be a great multiplicity of names in operation at any given time and that this is the reason for the great variety of manifestations of "secondary causes" or "created beings and situations" in the Cosmos. These can be macro-beings and situations or micro-beings and situations. There are Universal, Galactic, Solar, global, national, racial, metropolitan, social, familial and personal manifestations of the Names or of "dispute among the names." Gurdjieff talked about this problem in a somewhat different way, though we can see his Sufi roots showing through rather plainly.
And then, in the same vein we have Don Juan telling Carlos Castaneda in The Active Side of Infinity:
All of the above sounds absolutely crazy! Here we have a Sufi mystic from hundreds of years ago, a peripatetic jack of all trades, (including mysticism), from Asia Minor living in the first half of the 20th century, and a semi-mythical shaman who may have been a figment of the imagination of a peyote- eating, contemporary anthropologist, all saying something that is absolutely savage to our ideas of the Love of God, self, personal sovereignty, free will and enculturated belief systems! They are all saying that there is clearly some larger force or being or influence behind our reality about which we desperately need to become aware. Are they the only ones saying such things? Barbara Hort, Ph.D., a jungian psychologist is saying something quite similar. In Unholy Hungers she writes:
Well, that's a good question. There are other Jungian psychiatrists and psychologists who have been working with the idea of Archetypes who have suggested that our myths and folktales have a great deal to tell us about our reality, both apparent and that which is hidden. And, the plain fact is, the stories about vampires are so widespread and prevalent that trying to account for it by many of the |
