The House of Illusion

There is a common misunderstanding about the function of the Solar Plexus amongst the bunny slope "spiritual" students. In fact, it is the largest and most connected and powerful of all the chakras, and while it is in the "South Half," it's function is to protect and defend your body, your house, your vehicle through which the Divine Spark operates to gain experience. This Master House or Center is called SOLAR for a reason, it is the Center and Light of the Temple or Church. This is the Abbot in his Cathedral.

So within the Natural Order it is like a good guard dog, protecting your space and integrity, and right to live as granted Beingness by the One Light, and owing to no man or Club or phoney violating "school" who gives lip service to "freedom" but can't pass the Test when called on to live by that Prime Directive. **

Yet, such a good protector in its territorial functioning, can become reactive and irrational,  due to accumulated trauma, insecurity, or limited understanding. For the Divine Spark is that of Nous, "knowing that you know." But when immature and in the South Half, it lives in assumed Identities, smug in belief in its "Team" Group consciousness.

The Solar Plexus is the seat of the kama rupa, the desire body, it is the seat of lower manas, the mind faculty identified with this body as self and thus the false "I" or "ego." But it is nonetheless a function of homeostasis, of preserving continuity and self-preservation. This is a decent function unless it gets out of hand.

Still, it is an essential function of "ego" in that it juggles the facts to make one look "right." It defends the status quo in your own self-image. It is the fantasy practice of the ego that if it keeps Affirming that it is "beautiful & full of Grace" that this will bring such about. It tries to make you look good, despite all the mounting evidence that your life is fantasy series of fabricated "wins" and that you are"on top of your game." Successful.  A winner. When in fact, IT IS ALL coming apart.

Thus it is also called, as my teacher (under Vitvan) explained: The House of Illusion. That is, it juggles images to paint a pretty picture of how things are going. This is that aspect of the astral world of which it is said, "Under Every Flower Hides a Serpent."

You know that astral version of spirituality. You can see it in all those New Age illustrations like Celestial Seasonings calendars, where lush landscapes sit under a floridly colored sky, a Maxfield Parish illustration. It is all Good Times. And the Beautiful One is YOU!   A "teacher," a "leader," with the Big House on the Hill!

 

Vitvan called this the "Flower Newhouse" version of the Teachings. It is full of Hopium, and Vanity, and the presentation to the world that you are "in the know," a "navigator" in the Wisdom.

If you see such a presentation of the "Teaching" all full of jewel like imagery, and faint confession of the struggle to rise out of your own Darkness of the South Half fantasy world, then you know this is Reflected and Sanitized "wisdom" within the HOUSE OF ILLUSION.

You may know of such a person, who in private will cry out that they are alone in their marriage, not understood and struggling in misery; yet, they keep  putting up a front of images of smiley-faced propaganda of connubial bliss, and a constant flow of Hallmark Card pretty people imagery.

Somehow they have not yet come to the honesty, and relief, of publicly confessing just how Hard It Is, and how they are Lost. They still cling to "looking good" to gather the admiration of "friends." They have no sense of humor about the ridiculousness of their situation, and will get indignant about being made fun of or if their pretentiousness is pointed out! Because they take their "identity" so-o-o-o seriously!

 "I laugh at those who cannot laugh at themselves." ---Vitvan

Sharing the Path of Hard Knocks on the Wilderness trail of the First Crossing is not a Junior High school popularity contest. If anything, you are now an outcast.

Whereas one who is truly awakening, must take a hard look and say, "I'm tired of this shit. Of what value is the approbation of other sleepers? Aren't I better off just being true to where I am, even if this means alone until I find my compass? Do I have integrity or not? Must I keep pretending "all is well" and I am "on top of it all," when in fact, I am very ambivalent about going forward with this Purificatory Process as it will Unwind the False Idols of my Persona I have clung to."

For the Unwinding is a letting go of images, the Freedom to be Nothing. The relief to confess "I am truly Unhappy but in the NOW of that. This too shall pass, and I will trust the Process to Work through me, even as I suffer."

And so friend and fellow wayfarer,  should you travel the Pilgrim Path, take your rest from time to time in those brightly lit Jolly Waystations full of colorful lights and the charade of happy faces, but don't linger. Keep movin' on. 

For Gnosis is not a Temple YOU build, market and promote. It is an Oasis you stumble into when exhausted and lost in the Night, and comes not of your Doing, but of your UN-doing...and surrender to being the Cosmic Fool. 

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** (after Matthew 23)

Then the Master said to the crowds and to his disciples,  “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses' (Vitvan’s) seat,  so practise and observe whatever they tell you—but not what they do. For they preach, but do not practise.

"But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut the kingdom of heaven in people's faces. For you neither enter yourselves nor allow those who would enter to go in. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel across sea and land [e.g. to Africa] to make a single proselyte, and when he becomes a proselyte, you make him twice as much a child of hell as yourselves.

“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness.  So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
 

The Broken Crysalis

ISNO was born as a Shield to protect a germinating seed within the dying corpse of SNO.  It was a symbol to catch the attention of any waking ones, that in contradistinction to the elementary school Level 1 consciousness of the Board, Ralph worship, Pollyanna PC mindset, and Cult stuckness in old forms; that fresh and extensional material and insights could still emerge from individuating students.

Once separated from SNO, it no longer served a purpose. SNO will not be rejuvenated by grafting on an ISNO, which the Cult leaders don’t understand and find odious.

ISNO was meant to stand only for a while, as a hand pointing at the moon, a reminder to not confabulate the Reification of the Wisdom as found at SNO, with another Reification called ISNO.

All lines mooring or connecting to SNO as it is now, will only act as a retarding influence to one’s development.  Any adventurous Gulliver must separate from that group lest the Lilliputians drag him back with the binding lines of their small world.

Let the babies sleep.

Thus ISNO Shaman was a flower that fruited and fell, a moment in the sun glinting on a butterfly's wing as it  escaped the tomb.

Apprenticeship

The Art of Patience
[dedicated to KiWi]

There was a time when students in a discipline had to stand for examination and demonstrate their comprehension of the materials, and competence in performance. This came after years of development.

One did not graduate simply because they felt like it. The Craft spoke through the mentor and recognized the student who had fulfilled the integrations needed for the level. Being "willful" or an "independent navigator"  prematurely was an act of hubris. An act of separation driven by ego-need, rather than achieved growth.

Classically, in the arts for instance, a newbie would enter the studio of a master, someone who had studied and applied the practices for decades. At first, the apprentice heard lectures and outlines sitting in the mentor’s studio, then imitated the works of the teacher, copying and refining, often for  years. The Canon had to be learned, absorbed slowly into the bones. The apprentice was nurtured, pushed, challenged, directed, and examined for evidence of growth and ability to grok the invisible structures of the School. An apprentice’s output was referred to the teacher for helpful critique of the fledgling’s expression, much as a PhD candidate will have a thesis supervisor. They asked to be trained, they welcomed critique.

Finally, when the master, mentor, teacher, or guide, was satisfied that the apprentice could articulate what was heretofore unconscious to him/her, the apprentice’s status was upgraded to Journeyman, and they left the classroom to start their own work.

An apprentice who would not submit to examination, or who was in a hurry to appropriate the hard won status and title of the teacher, shortcutting years of internal work, whose interest seemed to be more in the area of marketing a product, and getting self-attention, who gauged ‘success’ by numbers; such a student washes out of the real School, and cuts themselves off.

In the American Soccer Mom consumer culture, excitement, stimulation, and feel-good praising are valued over persistence and mastery.

For example: parents taking Little Johnny to Martial Art’s practice expect that their money will buy them automatic promotions, so that their little darling doesn’t have his self-esteem suffer. Such a permissive and feel-good approach disrespects the tradition, and eventually, Little Johnny will suffer more if he fails to gain the competence, and his teacher does not protect him from assuming prematurely a state he has not earned.

It is a phenomenon peculiar to people who have some money and make donations: they confuse their ability to buy front row seats with being at the head of the class. And all too often those who run schools let them think they have an elevated status to keep the funds flowing.

[A case in point was that the founder of SNO of Colorado needed funds he could not get from SNO of Nevada, so he groomed some brothers with praise, and these two have gone on harboring the secret belief of their “leadership” and “superiority” over other students. Whereas, this delusional status is a matter of private laughter behind their backs]

To the student dedicated to learning and betterment, they want to be tested and polished, they welcome being examined and flaws brought out, they submit PATIENTLY to the Work, rather than rushing to hang out their “teacher” shingle, open shop, and promote themselves as representatives of the Work. When they find out how CONFIDENT they feel when thoroughly tested, they embrace that methodology, and disdain “teachers” who pass too easily as diluters of the Work.

To the needy emotional student, the teacher may seem “cold” when being asked to demonstrate performance, and they sulk away claiming “abuse.”   When such “breakaway” students have their feet held to the fire, and they find the teacher will not automatically give them the approval they crave, they project their own emotional insecurities onto this mentor who is “obstructing” their happiness, and accuse the mentor of being “hateful and angry!”

---

{many years ago in the 1970's I was living at the Theosophical Society in Adyar, India, next door to the old man who had raised Krishnamurti. My other neighbor was a young yogi from America whose teacher had studied intimately with some guy  named "Vitvan." ... and thus the contact was made.

It was then one day sitting in our garden wreathed in the visionary fumes from my hookah, that I suddenly began an intense download, which took 2 years to finish writing all of it down. At first it looked like a long story which eventually took the form of a movie script. When I came to Home Farm in 1972, Anita allowed me to spend each morning working on it until it was completed. After 30 years away, I began to realize that my "future" Self had woven a tale of the stages i would pass through. It only became clear looking back.

In brief it was a tale of moving through the South Half and finally emerging into the clearer Light of the vistas of the North Half, a phase only now being completed after coming out of the South Half ersatz Disneyland version of the Inner Home Farm, the incubator at SNO.

And in the final pages, there is a meeting with a favorite character, one Farrington Dabble, who represented the Solar Plexus in all its wonders, the psychic fun shop full of emotion, sturm und drang. At the end, our anti-hero "Julian" must also leave this one behind, despite the pleasures that come from his collection of learned pretty things, possessions, and all the artful stuff money can buy.

For Farrington is a Dabbler, one who collects and puts on an air of sagacity, but in fact, is a wannabe. Now I realized today who also was such a Dabbler, thus further fulfilling the story predicted. There are those who are true Apprentices, Trainees who will stay the course, proud to be examined. But then there are others, who excitedly come to lectures, join your cause and ride along, but in time, it is found out they don't do their homework, drift away, take a few weekend sessions with some shaman, and before you know it, are playing at a status they have not yet achieved. To one who finally understands more of what the Craft means, this is dishonoring the Work. And yet, even this one who was sleeping when I found her, is awakening, and if she must assume a mantle she has not yet earned, may it help her grow, my one time dabbler apprentice}

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A post-mortem analysis of SNO and its decline has to traced to the lack of performance standards left behind by Ralph. He confessed that he was too soft-hearted, and even told the tale confessionally of how Korzybski banged his head against the wall, and told him just that.

On one tape he tells of how he intended to bring in a Japanese trained teacher who would run advanced classes in Ralph’s school, for students who had the moxie to submit to discipline and push themselves hard. He was going to get the Arhats he had long desired! The Two-Percent. But this came to naught also. Ralph had surrounded himself with too many groupies and those needing a Pappy. 

In his final days he wished for the reward of a comfortable end; and why not? The man had done heroic sacrifice for decades of devoted service. But even as he promoted the value of community support, in the end, those who could not perform took over, and use the idea of  “community” as Cult control.

For the essence of Vitvan’s Work was to find those who COULD come out of group identity and Individuate. Once the Teacher of the Higher Power has been found within the Heart of the student, they could leave the incubator. The goal was not to stay in the Group, but to leave the nest. 

Of a few who did graduate, it was after years of personal one-on-one work with the mentor.

As he got into General Semantics, he wanted to set forth tough new guidelines, and weed out the “Delphic” emotional touchy-feely types, but this led to internal upsets in the his school. After all, he had for years encouraged these groupies. Then he made up exam lists of questions the “new style” student he hoped for would be able to answer. Very mental.  In the end, this faded also.

And now, in the remnants of his guttering school, there is no one who dares ask any other for competent discussion or understanding of terms used, concepts built up. “With all your getting, get UNDERSTANDING” he said. How few have that. How few have the maturity and appreciation to get that being tested to demonstrate and articulate understanding is what a real teacher does, out of Devotion and Respect for the Inner standards of the True School.

W(h)ither ISNO

Every once in a while, a few are born with “shamanic” nervous systems, meaning they can “tip over” and enter other subtle levels of consciousness and receive instruction from intelligences hidden to the average person’s eye. In our little world of SNOB, SNOC, ISNO, Home Pharm, it was Ralph, back in 1883.

After training from his “thesis” supervisor, Mozumdar, the Blessed Ones in Light’s Regions, collectively named “Vitvan” agreed to work with the vessel, conduit, channel, named Ralph. Again and again Ralph stated the Work came through him, not from him.

If there was any central goal of his methodology and instructions, it was that others might  make the Contact for themselves also, after they got off their tape-listening asses in classroom, and got up the gumption to break into and cultivate the First Crossing.

With the enthusiasm of  a Journeyman setting out, Ralph was sure he would lead hundreds into the experience of the higher levels of consciousness he could visit.

How has that worked out? Hard knocks revealed that people are mired in a “basic state,” and you cannot push them out of it. Ralph scaled back his expectations. In the end, after 50 years of sannyasin work, founding schools, and volumes of writings, he had to say that maybe he had found 5. Eventually, one of them, Anita Hayden, succeeded him when he passed over.

Let’s look at two other men on Vitvan’s short list whom he considered capable to carrying on his Outline: Fred Hess and Dr. John Gozzi. Fred was the ex-husband of Marj Coffman, a man she could not speak of without a sneer and put-down. Perhaps that will tell you something of her nature. Dr. John eventually moved off and started a sister group in Colorado, which fell apart upon his passing, and is now making a feeble attempt to return to more tape-listening.

In 1973 I had lived for a year at Home Farm, and was disappointed in my apparent lack of ability to feel the whooshing energies other students claimed they were having in meditation with Anita. Let’s be clear: Anita had spent decades with Vitvan, in his darshan, and she had the Mojo.

But both Fred and John, of a more intellectual nature, had not broken through, despite years of practice using Ralph’s methods and his attempts to reverse-engineer why he could contact certain states but others could not follow him. Here are two men, on Vitvan’s short list of successor, after years of dedication, and still, the “Vitvan System” had not produced the result.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Ralph said that most of his followers should stick to the sweetness ‘n light if they couldn’t handle the forces encountered when doing battle with “Evil.” He said that only 2% would tough it out with his methodology; the rest should stick to the antiseptic lessor practice of  “raising your forces” (running away from confronting your own South Half); or even, go down the road to that other ashram run by Flower Newhouse, where sincere and smiley-faced pabulum was served. Vitvan proclaimed that his school served “red meat,” the real stuff.

So? How has that worked out?

Here’s what Dr. John told me. Both he and Fred Hess needed stronger medicine than the so-called “red meat” Vitvan served up. Both of them went off and underwent Reichean body work to break through their “character armoring.” This did the trick for them, and that is what he recommended for me; and that is what I did.

There is a flame inside the seeker, that may burst up into a larger Fire if they are at the right basic state, and ready. But it’s covered over by what Ralph called the “adamantine veil” that most (including his followers) cannot, or will not break through. But if and when this flame gets fanned, then there is no turning back to the former life of tape-sitting and repeating the liturgy of someone else’s words. Fred called this “the Urge.” Some have it, some don’t.
( see Fress Hess Returns )

Looking back, we have come to the conclusion that Ralph was like a traveler and scholar who wrote wonderful descriptions of the far away and foreign places he had visited; but no amount of reading his books or hearing his talks would ever succeed in transporting the student-follower there.

His methodology sucked. At least for Joe Average. After all, if it was so great, why then did Jim Dalton, Dean of the School, Anita’s successor, go on into Buddhist practices? How can you explain why Marj, Bill, Susan, Jane, Pat, Lynne, on and on, why virtuallynothing has happened in their inner life, and they even call themselves the “normals?’

Who on the Path, if they have found the Urge, would ever call themselves “normal?”

---

This now brings me to wrap up with my story:

Why ISNO?

What Did and Does It Mean that I proclaimed the INNER School of the Natural Order, or ISNO?  I am nowhere near to Ralph’s stature, nor ever claimed to be. But once the Flame was ignited, it had to be nurtured, and protected against the negativity at SNO Home Farm, and it served as a Declaration that SNO had lost its way, and as a validation of what was still there, dormant, sleeping. They talk of it, but can’t serve it up, can’t show you if you ask. Even Lynne now recognizes that she'll have no one left to boss around and is begging for new ideas.

But, they got nothin'  

I left HF in 1973 looking for “red meat.” I knew I needed help cracking my stubborn case open, and I would travel and investigate and do whatever was needed to make Contact. For 30 years I went to classes and practiced (not just read about) inner world techniques in multiple disciplines to open the doors, and travel the realms.

I tried anything that could demonstrate it could deliver a result beyond having a good talk. Five years in Reichean with Israel Regardie; five years among the disciplined Scientologists learning the workable processes they have; five years doing Taoist work in Mantak Chia’s Healing Tao system; five years with an “out-of-body” inner world travel master; five more years with advanced and liberated Scientologist auditors who had the mojo and could deliver the product free from the Church’s fanatic unsanity. Step by step, each study and practice synthesized into a set of skills that could be used to methodically dismantled hidden defenses and blindnesses within the subconscious.  Until one day making Contact with the Jewel within the Lotus.

Then the Field directed me back to the pressure cooker/incubator at Home Farm. I returned in 2001 with the unexamined expectation that while I had been away doing my extensional studies, they too had progressed. Instead I found squatters living there for cheap rent, putting on a half-hearted show of being “students.”  They were not interested in hearing anything new (extensional) that rocked their safe little good ship Lollypop. SNO was scraping the bottom and heading for the rocky shoals under the non-leadership and non-vision of the Board.

After some years of repression and effort against the psychic inertia of the “normals,” the steam built up to such an extent that I had a meltdown, & had to leave for a year to recover; once recovered I vowed not to run like so many before, & returned to do battle and Serve what I had found. During the time I struggled there for years, I used the medicines in conjunction with twice daily Holosync, digging deeper and deeper, until Contact was made.

I literally fought to push their forces away from drowning out the Flame I had found and was protecting in an Inner Temple I was consciously building.

Eventually I contacted the true Vitvan within the Field, the Lakshmi of the Lake, which was an actual download that grew within into a Citadel. Bit by bit the INNER School was being revealed and brought into consciousness, beyond being the background warmth in the incubator.

[Near the end, while the normals sat SNOozing in class knitting, or picking at their toes, I came with a notebook and came away with pages of new understandings, having heard an Inner Lecture within what was said on the tape. I knew now for a fact that there was an Inner esoteric teaching woven into the exoteric words; it was a matter of tuning in. Some looked askance: what was he doing with all those diagrams and writing? Then, as the tape ended, they turned to more gossip and garden talk. Discussing the lecture, much less any ideas and insights exotic to the “standard liturgy” was frowned on. Go Broncos.]

Eventually an Inner World Home Farm became a place I visited in my dreams, as waking and dreaming consciousness began to blend. (I have to say for the record that I ran into the same people there and we all seemed to get along fine; quite unlike the drama that runs through Home Farm on this 3D level. Souls seem bigger there; but down here on this level, when states and their respective fields collide, they first try to marginalize you, shut you up, and finally they evict and ban you)

Once I came to trust that I, the slow goat climbing the mountain, had actually found and entered this INNER School, I knew I could finally go beyond verbal teaching, and actually guide some, the few, into and upon their First Crossing,

By dint of YEARS of synthesizing inner world techniques, and working with them, I knew, with the mindset of a contractor who Knows his tools and how to use them, based on years of experience with them, that I could NOW, and not before, say that I could navigate some of the Deep Waters of the Inner Worlds.

As the Citadel formed within my consciousness, the name INNER School of the Natural Order was revealed, and it stood for what happened when IT made CONTACT with me. We do not choose this; IT chooses us when we are ready.

ISNO has a definite and sacred referent to me. It CANNOT be promoted and marketed by words or imagery. It is found ONLY after years of hard work seeking within. It is not some franchise whose name you can put on your letterhead or Facebook page, and truly represent just because you want to join the Club. SNO is a Club. I have no interest in making another Level I Club.


For newbies who are just dipping their toes into the waters, with limited practices in place, and limited use of the medicines, for these I apply the term or title Explorer. After YEARS of exploring steadily, and not as a dilettante, they MIGHT finally come to the level of the title I only recently acknowledged in myself: Navigator.  We are still coming out of the the Probationary level as found in When the Sun Moves Northward, finally glimpsing the clear air above the South Half.

I had a hard time disentangling from the Negative Glamor Field that prevails at Home Farm, but by confronting “them” I was using “Evil” in its proper way as Ralph prescribed: to bring to the surface your own buttons and reactivities. I acknowledge with gratitude those who gave me help and support during this “coming out and being separated” period.

Nonetheless, anyone who tries to market, promote, run up the flag of some kind of structure, organization, product, that they call ISNO, has missed the point entirely. I have to disassociate myself from this Reification and anyone prematurely claiming the title of Navigator. 

For IT chooses you when you are ready; you do not choose IT, join a Club, or get a Members Only jacket because you made a monthly donation.