The State of General Semantics at Home Farm

Time Blinders

One of the ironies of Old Age may be that an institution may become a caricature  of its own original intention.

Such is the case for School of the Un-Natural Order, where General Semantics lies in state.

www.lulu.com/philalethes

How do I love the ironies?  Let me count the ways!

One of the basic principles of GS is being EXTENSIONAL. By this we understand that whatever model of “how it is” and what we perceive of Reality is limited, filtered, and massaged by not only our mental constructs, but also by the wetware of our nervous system. Korzybski classed these modelings of Reality as EVALUATIONS.

To be “extensional” means to be on the look-out for new ways of perceiving, to be open to new data, to know that all models are limiting, and that as we grow (IF we grow) we let go of what was workable for a while, as a learning step, and incorporate new facts into our worldview.

People today have a more fluid idea of what Reality might be, having absorbed over generations Sci-Fi ideas of projection, teleportation, being at a distance, being non-local on the internet, living in virtual reality, having an avatar. But in Ralph’s day, the consensus reality of the culture was much more cement-like, or “canalized” as he would say.

It was more or less Ralph-Vitvan’s Mission Statement to break through this rigid idea that everyone perceived the same reality, and to shake people out of their unconscious assumptions.  This became such a “major intent” that he literally threw out his entire corpus of work, started over, and created a new version, Ralph-Vitvan 2.0, which he called the School of the Natural Order.

Folks, it is time for another OS upgrade. We need to move to version 3.0.  But as normal in a paradigm shift, the Old Guard (Marj Coffman, Pat and Jane Murray, Susan Wetmore, and their sidekicks) cling to a romanticized version of 2.0 because it offers them privilege and status in Neverland.

Vitvan embraced new beginnings, he would toss out what was not working. He was a true Seeker for WHAT WORKED. (once again we mock Marj who puts the words Chela and Seeker on her license plate, but that’s as far as it goes for old cement-paradigm Marj Coffin).

Vitvan was EXTENSIONAL.  The Spirit never rests, always incarnates into new forms, new expressions of understanding.

Knowing that even his work might one day be dated in some respects, he said it wouldn’t be a bad thing if ALL old descriptions of things spiritual were lost and we had to start over from scratch, because then, those who knew from direct experience would restate the Wisdom in the vernacular of the day.

One of the mental practices Korzybski used was time-dating your statements. That is, I might have a picture in my mind of Marj but she has changed over time. So I would make an effort to “consciously abstract”  by reminding myself that Marj₁₉₉₀   is not the same as Marj_{2013 .}

We need to take a moment here and remind all of those who have or once had some affinity for the Good Times at Home Farm, to get over your sentimentality about Home Farm –in-the-past.  That Home Farm is gone. WAKE UP people!  Stop being “nice” about not calling a spade a spade.  An entrenched Board, no new students, chased away their best talent.

This, in GS formula, is what the Bored offers today:  Home Farm _{1964  .} Actually much worse, it is a cartoon version. A scary cartoon. The dwarfs have killed SNO-White (see www.Reform-SNO.org)

Korzybski offered the idea that humans are “time-binders,” meaning we can learn from the past and not have to start at square one every generation. But there is also a black humor flip side to this: people who are STUCK in time, Time-Bounded.

Bruce Kodish is a lecturer and scholar of General Semantics; he was guest lecturer on GS during better days at SNO in the last decade. His biography of Korzybski plus his other works on GS such as Dare To Inquire, and Drive Yourself Sane would be excellent textbooks to use, but we hear that Baby Jane “I am not a student of Vitvan” Murray pulls out her Hayakawa when she lectures.

Hayakawa is considered someone who drifted away from the heart of GS to become Korzybski-Lite. (see Bruce’s comments at http://korzybskifiles.blogspot.com/2011/09/2011-hayakawa-book-prize-to-be-awarded.html).  I hope the irony is not lost on you that what goes around pretending to represent the spirited love of Inquiry that Vitvan had, has devolved into SNO-Lite.

Robert Anton Wilson wrote about Dare to Inquire: "This seems to me a revolutionary book on how to transcend prejudices, evade the currently fashionable lunacies, open yourself to new perceptions, new empathy and even new ideas, free your living total brain from the limits of your dogmatic verbal 'mind', and generally wake up and smell the bodies of dead children and other innocents piling up everywhere. In a time of rising rage and terror, we need this as badly as a city with plague needs vaccines and antibiotics. If I had the money I'd send a copy to every delegate at the UN."

Another area of developing thought (not stuck Marj Bizarro World) is Open Systems and Closed Systems. Ilya Prigogine received in the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977. His work largely focused on Non-equilibrium thermodynamics. What he found is as fascinating for scientists and non-scientists alike. It turns out, according to Prigogine, closed systems are destined to collapse or fail. Open systems, by contrast, will usually grow and evolve. SNO under the Coffman Junta is a brain-dead CLOSED SYSTEM. Coffman says she is not interested in anything but editing Vitvan for punctuation; she doesn't care about updating Vitvan as channeled through Ralph.

The new non-Aristotelian system, to be effective, must be an open system.(http://www.gwu.edu/~asc/people/new/korzybski/vak.html)

Not only does the Board think it owns the Vitvan Brand name, which, if it were a product like a soft drink, we might call Vitvan CLASSIC; but they now substitute watered-down ersatz versions, Vitvan ZERO, Vitvan FREE, and of course, for the sweetness and lighters Jane and Susan, an ironic Vitvan SUGARY, which nonetheless is free of nutrient.

Nor would it be out of place to state that Bruce is a good friend of Jim Woolsey, and we visit when I am in Los Angeles. He totally gets my war for Reform against the mediocrity that prevails at SNO and Home Farm.  The same decline came upon his once-beloved Institute of General Semantics, which under corrupted leadership, was even caught burning piles of Korzybski archival material.

(In the same way, we hope that the Vitvan-Archive.com is saving Vitvan’s legacy from the bowdlerizers and PC editors at SNO. You will get the Pollyanna version of Vitvan if you go to their classes. I love Sacred Geometry, but if you think that watching slideshows of patterns in nature, and helices in vegetables at the Michael Schneider magic lantern shows is “doing the Work,” you are deluded.)

We have also shared some pleasant psychoactive times together which deepens bonding. To the unprejudiced mind, such forms of "Holy Communion" enhance the very thing Vitvan said we are trying to achieve through General Semantics :  Conscious Abstracting, that is, the ability to watch one's mind as it constructs their model of Reality. Of course it's not for everyone, especially children.  Susan and Jane will be glad to serve you up grape juice and flour wafer communion at a childish candlelight ceremony.

I doubt that Kodish will ever lecture at SNO again until this deadwood of a Board is composted as the winter of the Old Cycle is completed. Ever optimistic we hold out hope that (H)offman will differentiate herself from the legacy of (C)offman. As to the so-called “advisors” they are not even worthy of naming, as so far we have seen no original thought from them.

So, to recap. Who are the players, the dramatis personae at Happy Land Farm?

There’s Marj, the old witch and the rest of the cast

http://cista.net/reform/satires.htm

The Crypt keeper Marj is the titular guardian who has overseen making SNO into a Mausoleum to Vitvan’s once vibrant spirit. 

Next in the Graveyard we have the Dancing Flower Newhouse Muppets, Susan Wet-no-more and Baby Jane Murray.

Other zombie inmates spend their time shuffling around, chiefly working in the Grounds and Landscape division of Forest Home Lawn Farm, raking the roads, watering the flowerbeds,

In the classroom, re-runs are played weekly, while the audience knits, purls, and SNO-ozes (www.sno-oze.com)

And finally, for the children who ask, “Mommy, what is an Aristotelean”  they can just point to that specimen in formaldehyde Frank Burney and say, "here kid, take this coin over to ole Blind Lemon Jefferson Burney and watch him bite it."

*******o0O0O0o*******

p.s. you can get your very own copy of the 2013 Reform SNO calendar with satirical depictions of the Bored, by going to http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/philalethes

Seeker and Finders

Get Out the Raid

Seekers feel there is something missing, and they have to find it to be complete. They look around for the best club or movement or fashion, or teaching, to join. They get a contact high from being around the teacher and they are always looking backwards to that time. They hear about grades and levels and initiations, and hope to climb the ladder into whatever it is they imagine inchoately this “success” or achievement will be. Yet if they knew what it looked like, how it felt, they would already be there.

So most of us have been striving to something our ego cannot identify.

When a Seeker is disappointed over time with the rewards and experiences that didn’t come, they go thru phases of doubling down and intensive ego planned-out spurts, alternating with reluctant acceptance that “heaven” is far off for them. Maybe next lifetime.

But they don’t give up and let go. They cling jealously to their notions and “position” on the ladder, whatever that might be imagined to be. And if they have risen into a bureaucratic managerial position in an organization, like on a Board, they cling to their little scrap of turf  like a barnacle on a ship.

After all, they reason in the hidden corners of their hearts, I have served for a long time. I am of the “faithful” and therefore, I must not be bumped from my position. It’s all that I have after all this time.

It is like some sort of analogy to standing in a movie line, or bank line, or serving line at the soup kitchen.  If they get bumped they will miss “their turn”  which they imagine is based upon time spent in office.

But it’s not.

Finders by comparison have graduated from being Seekers. I will be so bold as to claim to finally be a Finder, but in all honesty, it wasn’t my egoic plans that pulled this off. In fact it doesn’t seem like one can take much credit from the aspect of being a personality. In general by hook or by crook, by accident, fate, luck, it so happens that one has an experience of the mind “stopping” and finding that there is “someone” still there who is conscious of this event, yet not identified. In fact, possibly terrified at the loss of familiar identities and being tossed about on the white water rapids of the Tao, you only cautiously re-approach such experiences. But you also know, THIS is the Way.

But despite the scare, there is also the thrill. New vistas open. You decide it is worth the ass-kicking and undoing to get another taste of THAT. Or, we come to see, is there really a “me” who “decided” anything at all? (Like a politician who gets out in front of the parade and acts like he is leading, the ego keeps rewriting our personal story to make it look like “we” were in charge!) 

Or could it be that IT comes into the temple on Its own schedule, and as Vitvan says, “Go along or be dragged along.” “When the Fire is lit, who can put it out?”  But if this is what the Purificatory Process really is, surrendering to the ass-beating, you less and less grudgingly go along with it, until you stop making plans and just say, “What do I need to do today Lord?”

And if the answer that comes that day is “Go kick the ass of some mealy-mouthed Seeker who is clogging up the pipes and backing up the Flow of the Tao,” that’s what you do. In real life we deal with clogs as well as happy flows. If you can’t take doing the dirty work in the basement, better stay in a bubble on your couch watching Happy Days.

When one takes the teaching of someone like Vitvan whose essential message was “You already have the answer in yourself. You are an expression of the I AM. Find yourself and let IT flow”, when a Seeker bureaucrat type takes this kind of teaching and imposes their personal values on how the Tao may flow, and is a literalist fundamentalist who objectifies a teaching into “it’s not in the printed material so it’s not allowed” and they throw around words like “Official site” and so on, you know you have a person who doesn’t get it.

If this sounds like Marj Coffman and her posse to you, I won’t disagree.  

 Imagine Vitvan as mountaineer who wanted to inspire YOU to climb mountains too. He might even leave behind a map of his ascent. He might offer shortcuts, warn you of pitfalls, but still encourage you to GO ON THE ADVENTURE.

But do you really think he would be saying, “Climb ONLY the mountain I did? ONLY go by the path I used?” Or would he say “GO. Explore. Be courageous!”

How does one deal with a Seeker and their glommy little hands on the Teachings who sit on their asses in their easy chairs, pencil out and correcting spelling errors in the Climber’s Guide, and then they have the nerve to pronounce:

“Well, MY Vitvan didn’t do it that way. He didn’t approve of other routes. WE can only slavishly cling to his outline. NO other exploration is allowed around here.”

Honestly, no one would take such an attitude seriously in Mountaineering. How is it this great Guide and his work has fallen into the hands of such uninspired penny-ante narrow-minded schoolmarms? And their coffee-roasting doily-arranging  Hell-circle of people who don’t pursue their own Purificatory Process with any enthusiasm?

I was trained as a Roto-Rooter man. You get over being delicate and PC and going all squeaky-googly in front of a germ or two like Wet-her-pants does.  You look at a clog and say “This turd has to go.”

When the Augean stables need cleaning, who ya gonna call? Miss Eek-a-germ, or Ghostbusters?

People who have to be “nice” are generally tools and dupes, easily manipulated by the more cynical forces of the status-quo. Just roll over and be "humble." That's the "spiritual" thing to do.“Nice” people will never stand up to the  entrenched whose rule just seems to go on, and on, with them telling you that ONLY they are the “guardians” or know enough. That they will never surrender their offices to "anarchists."  (But then, it’s understandable why they can't let go. All they have to show after all these years are the gold stars they have awarded themselves)

These foot-dragging featherbedders are named Marj Coffman, Pat and Jane Murray, and Susan Wetmore. They keep trying to clone themselves and we can only hope that the latest recruits to their good-ole-boy club Board will wake up soon before everyone with any spirited enthusiasm is gone. Before the smouldering embers are doused forever.

It’s beyond sad and unfortunate.

It’s Perversion and Paralysis by Parasite. Get out the Raid!

Psychedelic Vitvan

Psychedelic Vitvan

How the Field Works

Vitvan was an expression of the Wisdom Teaching of the Last Age in its summation, and in anticipation of casting its seeds over the waters into the New Cycle he spoke of. 

But frankly, he had no idea of what form the New Cycle would take; he projected his Old Cycle ideas forward, imagining a world where people grew up talking physics and General Semantics. He departed discovering at the end that he was really one of the "Dharma Bums" he had disparaged, he left as the First Wave of the New Cycle expressed as the psychedelic 60's hit the Old Guard like a thunderclap. He did not see or predict our rapidly etherealizing world knit together electronically in the non-local reality of the World Wide Web, our playful sense of virtual personalities, and the flood of information that will lead us into that future he anticipated when "secrets shall be no more." He, as the enthusiastic learner he was, would have been thrilled at all the new discovery and methodologies open to us.

As part of this transitional spirit he attempted to rephrase the older “metaphysical” language into a more scientific verbiage that he hoped would appeal to the technical and precise Western mind. He tried to make metaphysics respectable so as to build a bridge to unite the apparently separate worlds of spirit and science.

It seems to me that Vitvan’s use of the term “Field” to replace the more animistic ideas of Self-organizing Intelligence called Spirit, was an experiment of dubious success. We will never be certain what kind of effect however it may have had in the hidden worlds of hacking the human psychic code; perhaps infusing scientific materialist terms with his higher frequency consciousness floated a Trojan horse into the materialist worlds and paved the way for the plethora of Quantum Jumping Many-Worlds blendings of Science and Spirit we find in so many New Age ideations.

Most people have a general sense of a “field” as in “electromagnetic” field, an energy structure produced by the lines of force in the polarity of a magnet, or of the earth’s magnetic field.  First comes the magnet, then is produced the field.

But Vitvan was using the term as in a newer model wherein the Field exists PRIOR to the appearance of the lines of force. That before what we call our world comes into being is an "underlying" Reality that is Source. Today we might substitute the now much more commonly understood terms Source Field, Zero Point energy, Vacuum, or even more ancient terms like Plenum, Hyle. Here the term Field points at the Innate Function of Cosmos as Mind to Self-organize. In other words, IT is the principle of growth and coming into existence out of Beingness.

While this “something-out-of-nothing” sounding concept sure sounds like metaphysics, Vitvan would say there is only One Reality, and not something “meta” or “beyond.” The models of Nassim Haramein are now a beautiful bridging of this gulf, for we see how the Plenum is invisible to our senses because IT is a perfect balancing of all forces which puts IT at rest and beyond perception which is based on comparing similarities and differences.

But ENOUGH of this “physical” referent for Field. Vitvan still meant by the term Field that Fiery Spirit that is our very life, that brings us into this world, and is our true nature as Consciousness on Mind Level. And being as IT is our Root and true nature, IT is our Real Teacher to be found within each of us, not as projected onto some man named Ralph, or Jesus, or Buddha. And yet, we still have those who would objectify the “teaching” as being that which Ralph brought through.

Vitvan wanted his students to find that Spirit within, that I AM at our core, and then follow ITs dictates to each of us personally, to listen to the still small voice of our Higher Self, and to trust ONLY our own experience.

To find this Fiery Spirit within after you have grown up and lost the Joy of a child is not easy. One of the functions of a teacher or “master” is to infuse the student with their Darshan, a higher stimulating energy, higher frequencies, which act as a stimulant for growth.

These higher frequencies can produce results varying from taking the student completely out of their normal frame of consciousness to have a “mystical” or psychedelic experience.

Or applied more gently, to stir up the subconscious of the student causing unprocessed psychic materiel to bubble to the surface of awareness, producing a “purificatory” or psycholytic experience.

Over time Vitvan learned that most people could not withstand his full-on force and that such amplified frequencies can even make people sick, as he discovered back in the 1920’s when he enthusiastically let his forces out on a church congregation. So he learned to scale it back, to veil his forces, and apply them “homeopathically.”

In fact he stated that he did NOT want his students to practice chanting AUM too much as it would precipitate the purificatory process in them too strongly and he wanted most students to proceed homeopathically. He was a very kind man to his students whom he referred to as “babies.” But once in a while he would let the cat out of the bag and state that only 2% of them had what it took to really do the Work. For the other 98% he told stories in Sunday School, and wrote EXOTERIC books and lessons.

The real Teacher is not conveyed in words and tapes, but is met within the Student in the Fire of their own Spirit. For the sweetness and lighters who could not stand in this Fire he suggested they go on down the road to Flower Newhouse’s ashram.

Alas today it is those very same Flower Newhouse students such as Marj, Susan and Jane, and their gelded consorts Pat and Dan, who lord it over Vitvan’s School.

And they, lost in their sanitized confusion between the work of a real School, and that of garden puttering, comma nit-picking, and potato planting that belongs to a Farm, attack those whose enthusiasm for stepping into the Fire threatens them.

Stan Grof, the great psychedelic researcher, refers to the action of psychoactive substances as “non-specific amplifiers;” that is, JUST LIKE the higher frequencies that Vitvan would put on a student thru Darshan. These historically sacred plants and substances stir the student’s psyche, revealing the hidden (psyche-delic “revealing the psyche or soul”). In small amounts they produce the psycholytic effect of making the content of the psyche available to consciousness; in larger amounts they take one on the Hero’s Journey into mystical worlds within, including fearful confrontations, and ecstatic revelation.

Isn’t it ironic that these self-proclaimed “protectors” of the Teaching on the SNO Board can miss what is so clearly in front of their noses? And that they have become the prime OBSTACLE?

They maintain that any open discussion about the uses of psychedelics as an adjunct in spiritual work is "criminal" and could endanger the existence of SNO. Meanwhile Universities and many other government permitted non-profits such as MAPS.org hold annual psychedelic conferences where 100s of  credentialed researchers share research and hold workshops. Prestigious publications such as The Lancet, NY Times, Scientific American, The Chronicle of Higher Education, etc., have published even-handed articles on the return of research interest into psychedelic studies.

And it's not just the medical and psychiatric applications. "The expansion of psychedelics beyond medicine also received support. While Dr. Schuster was happy to see psychedelic research being conducted for specific psychiatric purposes," wrote MAPS deputy director Valerie Mojeiko, "he also actively advocated for exploration into the potential application of psychedelics for spiritual and personal growth and development-quite a refreshing perspective from a former [National Institute of Drug Abuse] Director!" (2010, 18)." (as quoted from the book The Psychedelic Future of the Mind: How Entheogens are Enhancing Cognition, Boosting Intelligence, and Raising Values by Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D)

SNO's letter to students explaining the eviction and ban states that "The Board’s decision was based solely on Jim’s public advocacy of illegal drugs." And yet, in the paragraph above you can read that even a former Director of NIDA "actively advocates" the very same things Jim did.

While the SNO Board rattling around in their bubble of fear saw fit to evict this student and ban him from even setting foot on the property for sharing information on these very same interests, which then led to other long time students leaving and breaking with this Board over these flagrant displays of paranoia and repression, it actually hasn't been all bad for reviving the Spirit of Vitvan before Its flame guttered under the suffocating atmosphere that prevails at SNO and Home Farm.

The eviction and ban led to the birth of the Vitvan Archive, these various blogs, and the birth of the Reform-SNO.org movement. And it will eventuate in the shaming and removal of these petty tyrants.

O you vipers and cowards and Pollyannas, you whining  prohibitionists who offer grape juice and wheat wafers for Communion, one day One will come who will sweep you out of the Temple.

For Vitvan, children, WAS and IS psychedelic, and his teaching was about the Entheogen within. The plants and the trees who have stood in unwavering devotion worshiping the Golden Sun in the heavens for millennia, also have provided the true seeker the fruits from the Tree of Knowledge to find the Golden Sun within. For the Kingdom of Heaven is within.

And it is within you NOW.  JUST SAY NO to those who would deny you the right to find your own Path, to seek where the Spirit takes you, and who have not the courage to stand for your Freedom, and who ask you to depart and leave Vitvan's ship in their hands as they let it drift onto the rocks. 

We ask THEM to depart. You have failed to protect the Spirit of the Teaching. You have failed Vitvan.

 

posted by JW 3-16-13

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

What do we glean from these comments from The Problem of Good and Evil?

"For students of the Gnosis, let it be said:

Do not rail at or about what for the moment seems

to be evil; and particularly do not fight that which

is called evil.

Rather, learn its purpose - which is never 
the obvious or given one - and work with
that purpose, in oneself and in general.
The comprehensive explanations for saying this will,
little by little, 
be found in the instruction;
 

Carefully analyze this, and see what you are going to do about it!
For if you begin to call your own sense of guilt
the devil, unconsciously conditioning yourself to
fight the devil, you will be fighting your own sense of guilt.

If you cannot find and work

with the real purposes of evil, then forget the

shadow, study the light; don't look at the shadows

at all, just keep your mind on the light.

 In due course you will find that The Good is all;
 there is nothing but The Good
 including the hidden purpose of that which is called evil."     
-- Vitvan

Vitvan says if you don’t understand the purposes of evil, and can work with them, you should avoid this Shadow work for now, and stick to the happy Light side.  

What do we call "evil?"  Evil is that which opposes us, would take our life, would dine on us. That’s a relative position. When we fight to emerge from the cocoon of a state we are outgrowing, we have to struggle to get free. And those in the old state or Matrix don’t want you to take your energy from their group field.

When you go beyond them they feel it as a threat to their consensus reality. If someone leaves them, it calls into question the value of what they do. They need to find reasons why there is something wrong with you, rather than them.

Because we shared consensus values with them on a frequency level, these strings need to be pulled off of us so we can separate as in mitosis, as a daughter cell leaving its mother and childhood. Those strings now become values in us we have to shed, but heretofore they have been part of our survival construct, our emotional feeding trough. 

Now those strings and guna-constructs are to be abandoned. We want to get any trace of our Marj-ness, our Susanity, our Danity, our Unsanity, OUT OF US. (our Patsy-ness, our Baby Jane semantics-lite, our auto-plate Sikhers, our Dilly-Daltons...) These people and what they represent now to us have become as “evil,” that which opposes our life purpose. They say, “can’t we all just get along?” Meaning, don’t rock the boat WE have constructed for you.

Confrontation with them heats things up and exposes IN US what is left of those no-longer-functional guna-constructs, or threads. So we USE their “evil” to expose any remnants in ourselves, in order to get past them. Thus if we understand what is “evil” to us, we do not resist it in the sense that it has no place in human ecology, but we USE it to test and temper ourselves, to REMOVE those old survival modes that now hold us back.

NOR do we condemn ourselves for using our energy (anger to defend ourselves, and smiting back assholes who tread upon us) to break these ties and get their parasitical hooks out of us. We do NOT feel there is something wrong in us and therefore feel “guilty” over our actions. “OH WHY didn’t I meekly turn the other cheek and let them run over me??” Surrender doesn’t mean give in to THEIR values of what you should be doing, but to follow the Crazy Wisdom of your own Higher Self.

WE WORK WITH EVIL. It's all energy. We do not run away from confrontation and the fight. The fight is to separate and come out, and to do that, to be able to stand on your own, we need to be tested to see if we can hold our new grade. Without that testing, that fighting to re-order our forces and structure, it is just pretense and a mental model, or a hot-house Flower Newhouse state, that will collapse when put through the wringer.

We need to be challenged and beat up by the “evil” that is in us (old, no longer functional states). Those who run from the battle will not have their mettle and metal forged by the Fire. So, don’t be afraid to FIGHT and RESIST. This is Natural Order. Those who don’t see that and go boo-hoo about fighting don’t understand why we don’t resist evil , but embrace it, take it head on, say to it, “do your best. I’ll kick your ass and THEN I’ll move on.”

I have often had a vision of myself gradually moving away from all acquaintances... but I could say nothing... There were many old family-related emotional modules that could not be sustained, but unless they were stirred up and exposed again, I could not move past them (forced to let them go against my will), as long as their “evil” remain hidden in me. Eventually separation would occur.

How indeed can we find what is next as we explore the Unknown Continent, unless we leave the village?

But we have a Mythos told in our village, stories that we tell for those who will follow and who are called to the Hero’s Journey of Separation, Wandering, Exploration and Discovery. We owe it to those ones to keep the Mythos alive and clean. It is part of our duty to trounce and put back into their place any who shit on the Mythos, who only give it lip service and do not hold it Sacred.

Thus you can leave (for higher studies) at the same time you kick ass on those who run the middle schools, because it’s NOT about them and their little sinecures, but about keeping the Flame alive in the Temple. Their job is to sweep the porch.

All of us must undergo periodic review by the Father to see how we are investing our talents. And the older students are authorized to kick ass on the younger when they turn Home Farm into Animal Farm.  

So some might say that if we characterize the level of behavior at SNO as “evil” then we make a “mistake” by fighting against it. Detach. Do nothing is their advice.

But what Vitvan is saying is that if you consider things in YOURSELF to be evil, and you reject part of yourself, push it away, you will never escape “evil.” (Shadow self). Therefore recognize it as something to be looked into, accepted and studied. 

In a similar way others can be projected on and made to seem evil, that is, their purposes thwart ours. So we use their opposition to us to drive to the surface our hidden reactivity, so that we can not be controlled, but rather to work with the script we have been handed. Everything that exists is part of the Wholeness, of the Good. If we see that, then whatever happens to us we roll with. But this does NOT mean that we let ourselves be rolled over.

The Good has put in us the URGE to flower, to protect ourselves, and to multiply. Likewise the Good has put that urge into others who may oppose us. What we are to do is NOT do nothing, but to accept our part in the battle of Kurukshetra, to defend our ground, our existence, to let no one trample us, and so, support the Good. If our fight against those who seek to control and trample us pushes back on those others, then that is THEIR chance to deal with what they might call “evil.”   Krishna did NOT advise Arjuna to non-action, to do nothing, but to plunge in and play it out.

Egos have this idea of wanting to escape karma, so they live the life of pussies afraid to do something “bad” so that they can reincarnate to some kind of undefined nebbish life where they are happier and suffer less. But that’s the ego’s excuse to avoid discomfort NOW so that it can (it hopes) avoid discomfort in a FUTURE life.

What BS. When one starts to realize there is NO escape from being an expression of the I AM, and you have to flow with it, IT, then who cares if “you” fuck up in this life going overboard? Were you following your inner prompting? So you veer on and off some imagined course “up the mountain” and it takes a few more lives. Big deal. You’ve got millions. So play around with it.

Lions and Lambs don’t get along. Neither is “right”. Both should fight for their existence.

We have not told the Flower Newhouse babies they can’t have their symbolic garden work. We have even helped in the spirit of joining them as a group. But they have told us we cannot have our kind of "garden" work, and have thereby broken our willing spirit to continue to work with them.  Which of us then is more supportive of the Good when it comes to giving more than lip service?

Eckhart Tolle and the Art of Dying

Eckhart Tolle is a New Age teacher, who exhorts his listeners to stop the mentalizing and be in the Here and Now. He is quite popular with the sweetness and lighters of SNO who hear in Eckhart’s message a repetition of Vitvan, and this validates their doxology.

Many people can feel the authenticity of Eckhart, that he has achieved “stopping the mind,” or “conscious abstracting.” His cadence is slow, almost as if he has trouble forcing himself to compress his consciousness down into using words to point at an essentially non-verbal experience.

Eckhart says we need to practice dying before the life of the body actually ends. And HOW, we ask, does one do this?

We first might ask, how did this happen to Eckhart? He tells the story of how utterly depressed he was, until one day he took up a gun to end his miserable life. He heard himself say “I’m going to kill myself.” And something snapped. He wondered, “Is there some part of me that is NOT the self that 'it' is going to kill?”

Eckhart had discovered the Witness, the root of consciousness that Vitvan calls the I AM. That is, at our core, there is someone 'behind' the mask, that we are not the personality we believe ourselves to be. For the Greeks, a “per-sona” meant a mask actors wore which acted as a megaphone and amplified their voices in their outdoor amphitheaters. “Per-sona” means “sounding through” or amplifier. The I AM of us is that imperishable root of consciousness that we are, who talks and acts through the role it is playing as “me.”

Following that radical experience in which he permanently broke the software of the ego, Eckhart spent years in a non-mentalizing state, radiating out Here-Now-ness, a kind of bliss that magnetically attracted people, who then wanted to know how to get where Eckhart was.

Alas, most just want to buy a CD or attend a lecture to hear him talk about it. But do they really LISTEN to Eckhart and DO the Work? Sadly, most probably do not.

Eckhart's comments on television watching...

To practice dying while still alive requires heroic efforts. One must break on through past the constant survival scheming of ego, the endless internal dialogues about being “right or wrong,” of being attractive, sexually desirable, lovable, accepted, fitting in, being “on the winning team.”  How many are that desperate to experience being in the Now that they would take their own life? Or to even surrender ego-control for a few hours? You have to be willing to lose your mind in order to come to your senses.

Vitvan summarized the Work of the First Crossing (which is the CORE of the work he established) as “bringing up the entire content of the unconscious so it becomes fully exposed and conscious.” And he added, “In the average unregenerated person this amounts to a prodigious feat.”

That is, it can’t be accomplished by listening to tapes, reading books, tending a garden, chanting AUM in small multiples of three, seeing spirals in cabbages, sleep-meditating for 30 minutes, or any of the other nonsense that passes for “doing the Work” at today’s School of the Natural Order.

The ego, no matter what it might say, will NOT design a program to be its own undoing. It will scheme to make itself survive as a better version of itself, like people who attend the endless get rich or self-improvement seminars that keep retreading Napoleon Hill; nowadays we throw in some Bruce Lipton updated positive thinking so we can alter DNA functioning through epigenetics. Or watch The Secret with its quasi-quantum “you can get whatever you imagine” make-a-better-ego success package.

The ancients, in their wisdom, already knew this. The ego has to be unhorsed in order for the I AM to emerge from the background. This takes undergoing a powerful experience that shocks the chatterbox in the head and shuts it down. The classic methods of overstressing the running software of the manager ego run a spectrum from soft to hard.

HARD would be immediate threat of death. Being thrown off a cliff; facing wild animals, hanging from hooks in your chest. Wartime has often produced such moments of high awareness in soldiers who thereafter look back at wartime experiences as high points in their existence, even despite the horror and misery.

SOFT are more gradual methods, that simply wear out or hypnotize the mentalizing ego. Extended chanting, dancing, fasting, running, and so on, exhausting methods that must be pursued with intense effort until there is a sudden waking into the Here Now, which is accompanied with a sudden Light and Stillness of awareness.

But the most reliable and effective and quickest method that has always been used when available, was the use of psychoactive plants, which were looked upon as special gifts from God, manna from heaven, a Sacred Meal that really did open one’s eyes to the world of the Divine that surrounds us. “Eyes open” is a level in the Mysteries called Epoptae, which even those students of Vitvan who practice mentalizing-only may well have heard of. The ancients considered these plants to have more of the Divine Fire in them; Mani* called them the plants that had more of the essence of “Jesus” in them. These were the fruits that hung on the Trees of Life and Knowledge of Who-we-really-are.

These sacred medicines take away all control from the self-justifying ego manager, and one must surrender to being exposed to the Deep Self, even if it means confronting the “jackasses and peacocks” of our unconscious. The positive side is that we can then discover the Radiant Higher Self at our center.

Vitvan called the unconscious the Psyche. How ironic is it that that the very God-given fruits that are even called "psychoactive" (Activators of the Psyche), that will accomplish much of Vitvan’s Level II work in the First Crossing, namely, “bringing up the content of the unconscious” are feared and shunned by so many?

The “sweetness and lighters” that Vitvan said should move on down the road to Flower Newhouse’s ashram, now sit in the high places at Home Farm. These are not people who will do any practice with enough enthusiasm or push themselves hard enough that they are in any danger of stepping outside of their perverse and stubborn little personalities.

And so, when we look to see who is interested in FINDING WHAT WORKS, being extensional, open to new (or ancient) knowledge about achieving gnosis, we find it is not those Fundamentalists who have turned Vitvan into an objectified saint and his writings into their dogma, who run a limping bookstore, and offer sub-code rentals in violation of the law.

In consulting the I Ching for advice on this nadir of decline at SNO, the oracle gave 55 Feng, Abundance: “Be not sad. Be like the sun at midday,” but through the moving lines warned that the Sun was undergoing eclipse at the moment, and that “even the most insignificant persons can push themselves into the foreground,” and “one is overshadowed by a party that has usurped powers.”

Such is the situation at Home Farm. The spirit of Vitvan has been hijacked by a coterie of tired old people who give lip-service to the Work, but willingly undergo none of its holy terrors. If it were just themselves they derailed who would care? But for turning Vitvan’s instructions and invitation to Freedom into a perversion that is now an obstacle to true Seekers (not phonies who call themselves such on their license plates), they have to be called out to account.

* Mani was a prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a gnostic religion that thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world. Manichaeism taught an elaborate cosmology describing the struggle between a good, spiritual world of light, and an evil, material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process which takes place in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of light from which it came.