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An illustration from Catherine Harding’s book “Explorers of the Real World”
Satsang
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Nearly finished Hugh Milne’s book The God which Failed. It is horrifying that this can happen with any creative or seed process with inflation – including mine – the risk of conversion to fear, cruelty, massed wealth, megalomania and maggoty land destruction. The story of the ranch and all that led up to it, is a warning signal. Cult of the ego. Isolation. Reign of terror. A bewildered phoniness. Any human inflation or infatuation can lead to that. Falling in love with a leader is our vulnerability to takeover or coup; it is everywhere in politics. The 1980s Oregon theme park is – was – a chilling hotbed (greenhouse) for tendencies, STDs and addictions which proliferate in our society; it enhanced them. When a gifted and charismatic teacher charms thousands of souls to him, and turns rotten (addicted), he or she is RESPONSIBLE to those elements in a generation’s destiny, and meets judgment.
This is what is meant by biting the Apple of Knowledge. Mr Mohan Chandra had a deep treasury of wisdom for sure. It got hi-jacked by a power in his subconscious.
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Here is a sketch of Dion Fortune.
Thinking for instance, of the work Dion Fortune did quietly in the collective subconscious between the wars, on sexual awareness: the fruits it bore here and there, in an understanding between man, woman and child. Esoteric teachers are hidden homeopathically, and they sow the ground deeply. The result grows up after them.
sketch of Dion Fortune 2
(She was a powerful woman – of the astral police – and her organization had a few difficulties after she died. Gareth Knight wrote a biography of her, and of the School she founded – illuminatingly honest about the “hit or miss” contacts/conversation with the Inner School; a fascinating psychological study of the occult pipelines – mediators, the medium and the ground.)
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Today, with Hugh Milne’s The God which Failed, I revise and review (shock-and-awe) again and again the lessons in what a teacher is not, to embed them consciously – to not get carried away – the renaissance gift is just a tool to learn to handle, in the same way. It is all in the mind. In all our mind.
Even Krishnamurti (who had no great reverence for mythology) pronounced that Mr Mohan Chandra re-named his devotees out of disrespect for the Indian gods and archetypes. They had done nothing to deserve those flattering names. You see, those names are deeds, aeons and cosmic mantras. Those sounds are actions and movement. A new age utopia of adherents was formed. Then Harilal Poonja went on doing it, perhaps because the westerners wanted him to? which is not good enough. Ramesh used to ask his visitors “but what is the name you were born with? I see. Yes. Yes. Well then Nicholas, tell me why you came here. What do you see going on here?”
Mr Mohan Chandra rubbished his culture and became trapped. His disciples got legal-cunning, and no one could stop the crimes which developed, until the movement imploded. I have strong feelings about the spiritual crime and tragedy. However, Krishnamurti said it is not his job to criticize Oh-show in his talks … similarly, it is not my job to condemn, but to appraise the movement objectively, its survivors and suffering, its Achilles heel and its strengths in eventually living through such a lesson. That is life.
The judgement is visited by the cosmic wheels that grind. It is not now our business. The business was to be awake, and continues to be; and the disciples were not, for they were hypnotized by the same force which overcame their teacher.
Concerning my activity as an artist, and how I feel about it, and laying it alongside the Oh-Show: this is what I mean. There is a pulse inside, which continually urges to show, to reveal, to display and exhibit, beauty and what have you. It preens and peacocks, like the bird behind Skanda. To this can easily attach the personal ego, and by sneaky stages she swells up into a missionary and even a messiah, and gains followers who want one. I don’t go there, but I detect the pressures which potentially manifest it. The phenomenon operates at every level of society, and through the media and government. In my case I have an inexhaustible and irrepressible store of “Right Images”.
To this is linked the control of temptation: the temptation to attribute Vedic stature to my thoughts and synchronies, and to name them so. The temptation to convert everything in life into its meaning around myself, and to make myself indispensible.
This is a mercurial wood I found my way through, and as I am older now, and endured many thrashes of that dragons tail, the temptation is relatively weak. I see it in its context. I think the temptation is Power. What is Power? to be the driver of the Serpent. It is the primordial seduction – we all have it. If I truly love the power that knows the way, I have no need to be powerful. This is the case. Power is also requested if we love someone and want to make them well. Again: the power that knows the way, is true! for it has the account of all their lives. Any temporary usurpation creates a self-correcting backlash.
How copiously the secret of Self-surrender is misunderstood, perverted into adulation, and abused.
Reading this over, I am standing small at the end of the dragon’s tail, within the dragon’s active coil: I see also Moses holding the staff which turns into a snake and back into a staff: “I am that I am.” Power management is when it doesn’t manage you.
When we engage with power and think it is ours for a while, we are energized and never tired. Hence the seduction!
“No superficial, careless, lazy observer is ever gifted with true insight. One must look attentively AT appearances in order to develop ability to see INTO them.”
(Paul Foster Case)
This ability is a life training. Sometimes we have to live and be ploughed in and through an emotional furrow or upturned clod for years, decades … for the grain to release and sprout. It is thorough. Everything in nature is thorough. Gradually, the faculty takes in the appearance and sees it, at a glance.
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My adventure invites fellow travellers. I am a poet, an artist and a seer. I welcome conversation among the PHILO SOFIA, the lovers of wisdom.
This blog is a vehicle to promote my published work – The Sacred India Tarot (with Rohit Arya, Yogi Impressions Books) and The Dreamer in the Dream – a collection of short stories (0 Books) – along with many other creations in house.
I write, illustrate, design and print my books. Watch this space.
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