Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Great Goal of the Tao

The full English translation of a lecture by R. Steiner spoken November 16, 1905 has still to my knowledge, not been done. This is unfortunate. The following excerpt below, is a fuller one of a smaller portion which has several times been posted on this blog. This longer quote is fundamental to understanding Steiner more fully as concerns a reading of the great Tao.

"The Tao gives expression to the highest to which a large part of humanity can look up and has revered for thousands of years. It is something which was considered as a distant goal of the world and of humanity, the highest element which man carried as a germ within him, which would one day develop into a fully opened blossom from the innermost depths of human nature.

Tao signifies both a deeply hidden basis of the soul and at the same time an exulted future. Not only the name Tao, but the very thought of Tao filled those who had insight into it with timid reverence. The Tao religion is based on the principle of development, and it proclaims That by which I am surrounded today is but a stage which has to be overcome. I must clearly see that this development in which I am involved has a Goal, that I am going to work towards an exulted Goal and that within me there lives a power which spurs me on to come to the Great Goal of Tao.

If I can feel this great force within me and if I can feel that all creatures are aiming towards this great goal, then this force becomes the guiding force rushing towards me in the wind, sounding out of the stones, flashing its light to me from the sun. In the plant it is revealed as the force of growth, in the animal as feeling and perception. It is the force which will continually create form after form for every exulted aim, through which I know myself to be at one with the whole of nature, which flows out from me and into me with every breath I take, the symbol for the highest evolving spirit which I experience as life itself. I feel this force as Tao."

So, I will now add a few thoughts to say that the Tao belongs to all of humanity not to the Chinese alone. This should seem obvious.  But why I say this now is that I have been speaking to some who believe that the Tao Te Ching, as written down by the Chinese Lao Tzu in the 6th century B.C. can never really be understood by those who are not Chinese.

However as humanity's consciousness as a whole evolves stage by stage towards a more spiritual existence (though seen externally from today's perspective this will appear difficult to understand in view of how far the world has ...and is continuing to fall from the grace of the Divine)...then we will be more and more open to the great teachers of humanity who are able to grasp the very essence of world masterpieces such as the Tao Te Ching, Buddha's words, the Bhagavad Gita, the Islamic Koran, the Jewish Tanakh, or the Christian New Testament Bible, and then also place these all in a greater context such as Steiner was able to do from his modern Initiate perspective.

All these great spiritual treasures belong to humanity as a whole though they have originated through a particular folk at a particular time in various civilizations evolutions. Naturally some of the texts concern the particular people of a time and place but their general core message is timeless and they are more greatly understandable by anyone who seek through the help of interpreters who have any depth of Intuition.

When one can begin to come to grips with the great mystery of each of our own individual new lives... through reincarnation and the laws of karma, then we get a more transparent understanding of why when we read these great works, each one of these great works speak of mysteries which can touch deep into the soul and lift the spirit. This is so because the spirit is universal for all in spite of time and space.

Before there were religions and separate languages there was One Spirit, a Unity...and beyond time and space there will be once more...One Spirit...all are merely rivers and streams which have parted for a time and will flow together once again into that Great Ocean uniting as a great Brotherhood. The Long Way is tough... blood, sweat and tears will flow along the way...but every individual sacrifice... great and small... will bear fruits of hard won Joyful Love.

Then that Great Ocean...a Unification of all individual sacrifices... meaning the heart-willed effort of selfless self-sacrifice...when Heaven and Earth become united as One through human love...this Great Tao becomes magnificently exulted...  js.

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Anti-Grail History: China & Hong Kong's Enslavement by Opium

Well, in viewing one of the several independent websites today, I came across this editorial. It is, like many of the accounts that these days get unraveled and unveiled for human conscience to recognize and grapple with...yet another bit of a whole disgusting past, or of at least significant missing details which are not accounted for in the official histories of nations. Well, here you have another account. Thank heaven that there are ways out of this dismal past towards a brighter future.

Even though this cannot ever be a history for anyone to be proud of in the founding of this great cosmopolitan city of Hong Kong... nor certainly not of the present day booming China, one can see it as an impetus for resurrection...meaning that out of the ashes of histories of horrors, new and powerful transforming forces can help little-by-little to rectify the shadowy karma of the past.

This is what Waldorf in China (and as well, the world-wide movement as a whole) attempts to do. It aims to educate the young children to retain their innate sense of wonder and to become sane and compassionate loving citizens. At the same time, since Waldorf is a whole community effort...which naturally includes, as well as the children and teachers,  parents and even grandparents if they are there, a healing may come for those who become involved amongst the generations living. For it is an educational path of humanity which is universal in application. This is what we here in Hong Kong will carry with full weight in our consciousness as we embark on a little initiative, with few children to begin with, to create Hong Kong's first primary school. We have formed strong circle of founders. This hopes to be a small and peaceful counter force to all of that in modern society today which has absolutely no usefulness in building a healthy future for humanity.

Hong Kong and the Land Built on Opium

By wmw_admin on January 20, 2012 obtained from the website http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/

Hong Kong and the Sassoon Opium Wars

When the 99-year British lease on Hong Kong’s New Territories expired, the Crown of the City of London’s Colony was ceded to China. Of hundreds of newspaper stories and TV reports that covered this event, not one revealed how England first gained control of Hong Kong! The truth lies buried in the family line of David Sassoon, “The Rothschilds of The Far East,” and their monopoly over the opium trade. Britain won Hong Kong by launching the opium Wars to give the Sassoons exclusive rights to drug an entire nation!



David Sassoon was born in Baghdad, Ottoman Iraq in 1792, son of Saleh Sassoon, a wealthy banker and treasurer to Ahmet Pasha, governor of Baghdad (making him the “court Jew”—a highly influential position). When Ahmet was overthrown for corruption in 1829, the Sassoons fled to Bombay, India, the strategic trade route to India and gateway to the Far East. Soon the British government granted Sassoon “monopoly rights” to the manufacture of cotton goods, silk, and most importantly, Opium—at that time the most addictive drug in the world!

The Jewish Encyclopedia of 1905, states that Sassoon expanded his opium trade into China and Japan. He placed his eight sons in charge of the major opium exchanges in China.

[well, certainly does remind one of the European Rothschild dynasty whose 18th century father Amschel 1743-1790) placed his five sons in line to create the largest banks of 19th century Europe. By the way if you have read, and/or seen the film "The DaVinci Code"...then this site: http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/2008/03/28/before-rockefeller-there-was-rothschild-by-deanna-spingola/ separates fact from fiction. It gives the reader a very clear description of the root causes of present day global financial woes...the founding of the U.S.Federal Reserve]

According to the 1944 Jewish Encyclopedia: “He employed only Jews in his business, and wherever he sent them he built synagogues and schools for them. He imported whole families of fellow Jews . . . and put them to work.”

Sassoon’s sons were busy pushing this mind-destroying drug in Canton, China. Between 1830 and 1831 they trafficked 18,956 chests of opium, earning millions of dollars. Part of the profits went to Queen Victoria and the British government. In the year 1836 the trade increased to over 30,000 chests and drug addiction became endemic in coastal cities.

In 1839, the Manchu Emperor ordered it stopped and named Commissioner of Canton, Lin Tse-hsu, to lead a campaign against opium. Lin seized 2,000 chests of Sassoon opium and threw it into the river. An outraged David Sassoon demanded that Great Britain retaliate. Thus, the Opium Wars began with the British Army fighting as mercenaries of the Sassoons. They attacked cities and blockaded ports. The Chinese Army, decimated by 10 years of rampant opium addiction, proved no match for the British Army. The war ended in 1839 with the signing of “The Treaty of Nanking.” This included provisions especially designed to guarantee the Sassoons the right to enslave an entire population with opium. The “peace treaty” included the following provisions:-

*Full legalization of the opium trade in China
*Compensation from the opium stockpiles confiscated by Lin of 2 million pounds
*Territorial sovereignty for the British Crown over two hundred offshore islands.

Sassoon’s use the British Army to Drug an entire Nation

British Prime Minister Palmerston wrote Crown Commissiner Captain Charles Elliot that the treaty didn’t go far enough. He said it should have been rejected out of hand because: “After all, our naval power is so strong that we can tell the Emperor what we mean to hold rather than what he would cede. We must demand the admission of opium into interior China as an article of lawful commerce and increase the indemnity payments and British access to several additional Chinese ports.” Thus, China not only had to reimburse Sassoon the value of his dumped opium but to pay England the sum of 21 million pounds for the cost of the war!

This gave the Sassoon’s monopoly rights to distribute opium in port cities. However, even that did not satisfy him and Sassoon demanded the right to sell opium throughout the nation. The Manchus resisted and the British Army again attacked in the “Second Opium War” fought 1858 – 1860. Palmerston declared that all of interior China must be open for uninterrupted opium traffic. The British suffered a defeat at the Taku Forts in June 1859, when sailors, ordered to seize the forts, were run aground in the mud-choked harbor and several hundred killed or captured. An enraged Palmerston said: “We shall teach such a lesson to these perfidious hordes that the name of Europe will hereeafter be a passport of fear.”

In October, the British besieged Peking. When the city fell, British commander Lord Elgin, ordered the temples in the city sacked and burned to the ground as a show of contempt. In the new “Peace Treaty” of October 25, 1860, the British were assigned rights to a vastly expanded opium trade covering seven- eights of China, which brought in over 20 million pounds in 1864 alone. In that year, the Sassoons imported 58,681 chests of opium and by 1880 it skyrocketed to 105,508 chests, making the Sassoons the richest Jews in the world. England was given the Hong Kong peninsula as a colony and large sections of Amoy, Canton, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai. The Sassoons were now licensing opium dens in each British occupied area with large fees being collected by their Jewish agents. Sassoon would not allow any other race to engage in “the Jews’ business”.

However, the British government would not allow any opium to be imported into Europe!

Sassoon’s Monopoly wrecked England’s Textile Industry, and made the Roosevelt’s Wealthy

Sir Albert Sassoon, the eldest of David Sassoon’s sons took over the family empire, constructing huge textile mills in Bombay where he paid slave labor wages. This expansion continued after World War One, putting England’s mills in Lancashire out of business. Thousands lost their jobs. This did not deter Queen Victoria from knighting Albert Sassoon in 1872.

Solomon Sassoon moved to Hong Kong and ran the family business there until his death in 1894. Later, the entire family moved to England because with modern communications they could operate their financial empire from their luxurious estates in London and socialize with royalty. Edward Albert. Sassoon married Aline Caroline de Rothschild in 1887, linking their fortunes. The Queen also knighted Edward. All of David Sassoon’s fourteen grandsons were made officers during World War One, thus most were able to avoid combat.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s fortune was inherited from his maternal grandfather Warren Delano. In 1830 he was a senior partner of Russell & Company whose merchant fleet carried Sassoon’s opium to China and returned with tea. Warren Delano moved to Newburgh, N.Y. In 1851 his daughter Sara married well-born neighbor, James Roosevelt—the father of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although he knew the origin of the family fortune, he refused to discuss it.

The Sassoon opium trade brought death and destruction to millions and still plagues Asia to this day. Their company was totally operated by Jews only. The corrupt Khazar British monarchy honored them and although history describes them as the “great developers” of India, the source of their vast wealth is never mentioned.

end of article

Friday, January 20, 2012

The Grail: Its Spirit Creates a Bond

"The Grail-stream takes this form: whoever would visit the temple of the Grail must travel impenetrable paths, sixty leagues long; the temple lies completely hidden; one learns nothing there unless one asks. In short, the prevailing spirit of the Grail creates a bond between what is most intimate in the human soul (where the consciousness soul awakes) and the spiritual worlds".....Rudolf Steiner, November 3, 1918

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Restoring the Balance of Tao through Art

Christmas Day 2011... Reflections from Hong Kong by js

This is an article I have written on request from several US newsletters and as writer of this article take the liberty to post it on this blog

"The Tao expresses – for the greater part of humanity as it has already expressed for millennia – the highest to which humanity could aspire, and of which humanity thought that the world, the whole of humanity, will one day aspire. It is the highest that the human being carries as a seed, which one day will blossom fully out of innermost human nature. Tao signifies both a deep, hidden fundament of the soul and an exalted future." (Rudolf Steiner, November 16, 1905; whole lecture as yet untranslated)

Based now in Hong Kong for a little over three years, one has had countless new and deep experiences teaching and commission-creating in many larger cities on China mainland. There have been eager requests for numerous lazure painting workshops and for murals both interior and exterior. There have also been well received intensive two- or three-day weekend introductions to Rudolf Steiner's Goetheanum impulse (Anthroposophy and art) coming from the north to the south... in Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, including many very receptive groups of parents and teachers in the various Waldorf communities springing up across China in the past seven years. At most recent count (if anyone is counting) there are nearly 200 kindergarten initiatives in all and nearly 20 primary school initiatives with more each year in both areas.

So one must note that, despite what anyone would have dreamed of just ten years ago regarding Waldorf schooling or its "mother ground," Anthroposophy, small but ongoing changes are occurring as, little-by-little, new and very appreciated Waldorf teachers and mentors cross through the many border crossings into China to contribute their unique gifts and experience from Steiner education. This shows, in my view, that it is an education for each and every child, making contributions toward a New World Culture.

Earlier today here at HeartSource, our home, we enjoyed a time of good company shared with children and their parents in the sun-filled garden and commencing with good food around the kindergarten table. Yes, much to be grateful for, while in the world that all of us have known, as Steiner puts it in the opening words of the Michael Imagination lecture of 1923, “many old forms of civilization to which people mistakenly cling, will sink into the abyss and there will be an insistent demand that mankind must find its way to something new.” So what were those things that he himself had been offering humanity? Gifts that many of us have come to know: Anthroposophy as a practical spiritual worldview ripe for our time, biodynamic agriculture, Waldorf and also curative education, and a human-based medicine – actually all of these and more as healing-balancing measures for a world so way out of balance. A painful heart struggles daily at grappling with the fact that around the world there is unprecedented oppression, enslavement, and insane extermination of countless people. Perhaps the second most immediate concern for me is the thought that a great majority of the seven billion of us don't have access to food let alone healthy food and enough, or even any drinkable water. These are basic human physical needs!

But the third concern for me is an acute sense of soul needs that everyone is entitled to have met but only few have access to. This is also a basic requirement on the way to personal and fraternal fulfillment. This is art and the creative process. Friedrich Schiller had it precisely right in exclaiming that, holding the balance between excessive urge to form (meaning brain-bound and even materialistic thinking) and excessive urge to sensuality (meaning all our natural urges, even, I believe, the excesses of materialistic acquisitions), we may become freely creative beings. This is the graceful potential – God-given – to become playfully free, transforming the duality of excess by striving by inner force of heart for balance.

In the realm of creativity most of us will have to lean on a good “brotherly or sisterly” teacher for encouragement, guidance, and skillful training. I certainly did. And there is very good virtue in this endeavor to eventually individually nurture our “child within.” There is also a future-oriented aim we consciously or unconsciously work toward. This is where I look to a great teacher of humanity, the Russian philosopher and writer Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) from his “What is Art'?” of 1898. For me, he speaks to us today... from the future:
"The task of art to accomplish is to make that feeling of brotherhood and love of one's neighbor (now attained only by the best members of society) by ordinary feeling and the instinct of all of humanity. By evoking under imaginary conditions the feeling of brotherhood and love, spiritual art will train humankind to experience those same feelings under similar circumstances in actual life; it will lay in the souls of fellow humans the rails along which the actions of those whom art thus educates will naturally pass. And universal art, by uniting the most differing people in one common feeling by destroying separation, will educate people to union and will show them, not by reason but by life itself, the joy of universal union beyond the bounds set by life. ...The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the realm of reason to the realm of feeling the truth that well-being for humanity consists in their being united together, and to set up, in place of the existing reign of force [by false experts and leaders in every domain of modern life] that kingdom of God – that is, of understanding love – which we all recognize to be the highest aim of human life."

If you are like me, you tremble, perhaps even with a few tears, in absorbing these words of inspiration. Steiner called Leo Tolstoy a representative of that future time, the Sixth Cultural Epoch. Steiner described that time as the Community of Philadelphia, or that world culture centrally founded in the Slavic peoples when brotherhood or fraternity will reign as a principal characteristic of civilization. As reincarnating individuals, we may be directly part of that geographical region or even elsewhere. For that will be a true world culture unbounded by region and united in the etheric. Freedom, Equality, and Brotherhood as expressions of the great ideals of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness will reign for a good portion of humanity, though not for all. Some will ward it off with stubborn egoity. There will be both grace-given joy and also deep compassion and conscience for the continuing suffering of humanity (for further reading I recommend this online article: http://www.adrianakoulias.com/ADRIANAKOULIAS/Lectures_files/Rosicrucianism%20and%20the%20Maitreya%20Buddha.pdf).

So art with it's intrinsic creative processes will help us along this Grail Path – or, if you will, the good way of the Tao – when, as the third principle of the Tao, the disciplined and at the same time creative human being finds and maintains balance. The yin and yang counterforces find equilibrium in the human being between heaven and earth. As we feel by grace a sense of unbounded freedom, we can and should feel, by ethical necessity, more of the responsibility we do have for one another and for the kingdoms of nature of Mother Earth in lifting both to higher moral stages of consciousness.

How do I as a striving artist enact some of the foregoing thoughts in practice during my China journeys? Well, for me the most immediate means is by introducing as instructor, Goethe's Color Teachings (just cannot bring myself to say “Theory”). In his color circle we have a most clear and powerful statement embracing all the principles of the Tao...of Oneness (or wholeness), Duality (or polarity of light-dark, warm-cool, complementaries, etc.), Trinity (or transitional enhancement = metamorphosis) moving between and utilizing the primary and secondary triads), and finally Myriad-ness (or limitless relational combinations), sensing always the grand unifying principle of wholeness.

At each step the human being, in this case the artist as painter, uses the sound scientific/artistic judgment gained in researching the color wisdom in Goethe's circle (being “as old as the world”) to make quiet or bolder steps at creating a unique image never before manifested by anyone, anywhere at anytime in the flow of time and space. Color exercises through both painting, which also explores Rudolf Steiner's twelve-fold color circle, together with eurythmy facilitate an intimacy with our medium. Eurythmy in inner color gesture and movement feels an innate kinship with the visual art of painting. These are my main areas of expertise: eurythmy-aided lazure painting on walls and watercolor painting on canvas or paper, taught in intensive art workshops or accomplished by commission.

There also has been work we were able to create back on the North American continent in Toronto this past autumn at Michaelmas. After being invited by master architect Bert Chase of Vancouver, I participated, together with other active art educators in the field of sculpture, in leading two lazure painting workshops in an art symposium at Hesperus Village. One of the workshops was a mural painting workshop for a few participants who continued on after the first art conference. A unique effort was made of using an all-natural glaze medium from Bioshield in Santa Fe, New Mexico www.bioshieldpaint.com combined with all-natural plant pigments obtained directly from Stockmar in Germany. Along the way, I took the opportunity to visit friends in Chicago and brother Patrick and wife Lynne in Harlemville.

On the home front here in Hong Kong we are about to embark on the physical restoration of a newly acquired school building, which will be transformed into Hong Kong's first primary school. Wife Sinmei, a native Hong Konger, has been teaching a small Waldorf home-schooling kindergarten as well as facilitating a two year part-time Waldorf kindergarten teacher training here in the city. As the designated “president” of the newly formed Rudolf Steiner Education Foundation Hong Kong, I will be called into service more and more to offer adult-level courses and lectures in basic Anthroposophy and, of course, art classes of various sorts. I'm gearing up, because this is what I have been preparing for my whole life. Now it's all or nothing...I prefer the former.

Tuesday, January 17, 2012

"...at the table of brotherhood"

"We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together like fools...Life is interrelated... "We are all caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality tied into a single garment of destiny." MLK Jr.

The Mainstream Media Lie about Martin Luther King
by A D Hemming
Global Research, January 16, 2012
With a recent Associated Press hatchet job story and character assassination of Martin Luther King Jr coming out in the US mainstream, echo chamber media with it's pigeonholing Dr King into a corner as only a "black leader" and freezing his life in that August 1963 speech in the US capital speech on civil rights when the struggle was primarily in the US South, we have a full fledged ghettoization of Dr King which we need to remedy by bringing out the real Dr King. The attack on Dr King has been one of talking about he "chain smoked," used alcohol, and used rough language. Can charges of him "chewing gum in class be far behind?" "Chasing women," J Edgar Hoover's favorite almost surely will be brought out of the shadows. But he was human, "Surprise!" Now "assassinate" the below US mainstream media.

Today on this planet as Martin Luther King Jr said in his Christmas sermon he delivered in his Atlanta church "Our world is sick with war; everywhere we turn we see its ominous possibilities," because as Dr King said "if we don't have good will toward men in this world, we will destroy ourselves by the misuse of our own instruments and our own power." "The Christmas hope of peace on earth and good will toward men" Dr King pointed out "can no longer be dismissed as a dream of some utopian."

As Dr King concluded "We must either learn to live together as brothers or we are all going to perish together like fools." "Life is interrelated" as he made so clear." "We are all caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality tied into a single garment of destiny."

Dr King made the point of the link between US militarism and racism and poverty which neither the US power elites nor the echo chamber press liked in the least.

When Dr King gave this sermon he talked about his visit to India and how that had depressed him, but he could have just as easily today been talking about Haiti. Just substitute Haiti for India in this sermon and it works great and substitute some Haitian city for some Indian city starting with Dr King saying "How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with one's own eyes evidences of millions (maybe a smaller number for Haiti) people going to bed hungry at night. How can one avoid being depressed when one sees with one's own eyes thousands of people sleeping on sidewalks at night."

He referred to those in the "million in Bombay" and "a half million in Calcutta." Though the numbers may be smaller in absolute terms they're still huge in Haitian cities. Dr King put it so well when he challenged "How can we in America stand by and not be concerned?"

Then Dr King's answer came: In the USA "we spend millions of dollars (currently the figure may be different but the point is the same) to store surplus food." He said he knew where we "could store that food free of charge-- in the wrinkled stomachs of the millions of God's children in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and even in our own nation, who go to bed hungry at night." Yes, hunger or the food insecurity as those who like to use euphemisms was and is alive today and well in the USA. We have surpluses for some and nothing for too many others and with regard to money so much surplus for so few and so little for 90 per cent or 95 per cent. What is true of money is true as well of that which money can buy-- housing, health care, clothing, and otherwise.

This gap is a "good way" to refuse to have "peace on earth and good will to all" by completely ignoring the "interrelated structure of reality" which Dr King spoke of. Dr King put it so well when he said "No individual can live alone; no nation can live alone, and as long as we try, the more we are going to have war in this world." We now have a world which as Franklin D Roosevelt would have said is "ill housed, ill fed, and ill clothed." To get to a solution as Dr King put it so aptly "Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe. our class, and our nation. . . we must develop a world perspective." "Our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional."

Each one of us "is somebody" and "a child of God" as Dr King told us. When we say "Thou shalt not kill" as he also said "we're really saying that human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world." "One day" we must see as Dr King told us that "The Russians are our brothers." And I'm sure today he would add that "the North Koreans and Iranians are our brothers." and despite "our ideological and political differences" with them "one day we're going to have to sit down together at the table of brotherhood."

And as King added "When we truly believe in the sacredness" of all humanity "we won't exploit people, we won't trample over them with the iron feet of oppression, we won't kill anybody."

Monday, January 16, 2012

FREEDOM EQUALITY BROTHERHOOD

As a Vietnam vet, who first-hand became informed of the colossal misdeeds of which Martin speaks to in the article below, and myself today a fellow activist for universal spiritual understanding and peace unbounded by birth nationality, I post this thought-provoking article along in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr's birthday. He would have been 83 this year.


Will we ever learn by doing? not only from words but in deeds ...by ever greater motivation than we have done? moved by a truly great leader's inspirational words who decades ago called not only for the rhetorical 'change we can believe in' [what exactly did you mean by 'change we can believe in' Mr. O?] and not only believe in but real change we can and must as by inner necessity, through free deeds participate in ...and go step-by-step further... not only from his also great inspirational "I have a dream" speech at the Lincoln memorial August 28, 1963... to...and we have a responsibility to change... ...and we can do it together... because ....this is the Way to the Royal Temple of Humanity.... to the Great Re-unification...a fulfillment of the Tao in it's supreme form... now through true freedom ...leading to genuine equality ...real-izing global brotherhood  which is after all the highest form of love in freedom.


first... from the '63 speech in D.C


"...And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"


Read the following article and though they may not be easy for some to bear, tell me that we cannot at least be moved to do some local and at least small constructive deed today...in this watershed year 2012....this is the year which will truly divide humanity for ages to come...which path will I choose today?


Martin Luther King: Praised in Words, Defamed in Deeds
an editorial by Tony Cartalucci


January 16, 2012 - What a spectacle, the "first black president" of the United States celebrating Martin Luther King Jr Day. How far we've come, or so it would seem.


And while King was primarily a civil rights activist seeking equality amongst men based on their humanity, not the countenance of their skin, and the fact that a black man can become president is indeed progress, King was also a champion for humanity in general. He was a peace activist as much as a civil rights activist.


In a speech given on April 4, 1967 in New York City titled, "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence," King gives what is perhaps the widest encapsulation of his philosophy and worldview, one that would undoubtedly criticize and clash with the disingenuous US president celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. Day this year. And the beauty of the equality King helped usher in is, the fact that Obama is black should not shield him from the criticism of the very man that helped pave the way for his accession to office.


One section of King's enlightening speech criticizing the Vietnam War states:


"It is with such activity in mind that the words of the late John F. Kennedy [assassinated 1963] come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.


A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.


America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism. War is not the answer. Communism will never be defeated by the use of atomic bombs or nuclear weapons. Let us not join those who shout war and, through their misguided passions, urge the United States to relinquish its participation in the United Nations. These are days which demand wise restraint and calm reasonableness. We must not engage in a negative anti-communism, but rather in a positive thrust for democracy, realizing that our greatest defense against communism is to take offensive action in behalf of justice. We must with positive action seek to remove those conditions of poverty, insecurity, and injustice, which are the fertile soil in which the seed of communism grows and develops."


It is safe to say that America has not mended its ways and only traveled further down the dark path King warned us of back in 1967. The man "leading" us, or at least the front-man for the corporate-financier interests that drive America's destiny, may honor King with carefully contrived words and well orchestrated ceremony, but in deeds and actions Obama and the corporate-financier elite that hold his leash, defame and dishonor King in every way imaginable.


If you want to honor King and his life's work, honor it by implementing the words he uttered while alive, not by playing along with a system that resisted him until his death, and has since dishonored him with disingenuous praise while maliciously carrying out an agenda contra to everything King ever stood for.


(You can read and listen to the whole April 4, 1967 speech, "Beyond Vietnam - A Time to Break Silence" on AmericanRhetoric.com.)

Sunday, January 15, 2012

Martin on Violence and Hate...Light and Love

"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to the night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that."
Martin Luther King Jr.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

LOGOS...the I AM... & THE TAO

This theme is one of the most interesting ones which I constantly think on. The more that I take interest in the Tao, the more I have wondered just how the Tao and the Logos or the I AM, which is the True Source of faith we call Christianity, have to do with one another. I was raised a Catholic in Detroit, and have to admit that there were certain practices of the church that just did not seem to connect with my deep feeling for the divine. For example how could I go to a priest to confess sins when the priest himself was a mere human being with sins and weaknesses like me? No, I needed to communicate directly with my maker. I feel a deep connection to a deeper Christianity and now while living in the east here in Hong Kong, the wisdom of Tao has given me a great deal of further inspiration. My initial interest in the Tao started for me in England, 1986 while studying Eurythmy in my final year.

And so... to my amazement I found when I today googling the 'relationship between the tao and Christianity'...I came across this remarkable blog entre which I include below. The blog's author delves deeply into this question of the relationship between the Logos and the Tao! I'm  taking the liberty to copy it here in full with, of course, full recognition of its source.

This is a fascinating read believe me! His reasoning is reasonable.

This is the blog humorous heading: "Bonovox ..By God's grace, a Christian; by my own actions, a sinner...." and more: "Who am I?  Well, I am just an Orthodox seminarian and priest, trying to work out my salvation with fear and trembling.  The blogger formerly known as “FDR.” I am married to a wonderful woman, and I have 5 Beautiful kids.  I am a retired Lt. from the Buffalo, NY Police dept.  Don’t know where we will be after seminary, but God knows.  I am sure it will be a land flowing with “milk and honey."
http://bonovox.squarespace.com/journal/2004/11/28/the-logos-and-the-tao.html
and it was posted little over 7 years ago on Sunday, November 28, 2004 at 10:40PM

The Logos and the Tao

In the year 635 AD, 24 Christian monks from Persia [wow!], march into the Chinese capital of Chang-An (Xian) and are welcomed by the Chinese emperor, Taizong. Within 50 years there was evidently a Christian monastery and/or parish church in every major city in China.

Why the welcome, and why the fast growth? This new information about this story has only been recently uncovered in the past century. Surely it would have been amazing to scholars over just 50 years ago, whose opinions of Chinese openness to the outside world (particularly to Christianity) would have been formed by events such as the Boxer rebellion (with it a large amount of Christian martyrs) and the Chinese government's xenophobic policies. So the information of the success of Christianity in China in the 7th century, does present a puzzle, no matter how short lived this success may have been.

The Christian scriptures, when translated into Chinese, use the word "Tao" to express the concept of "Word," or "Logos" in the Greek. Is this the answer? Is the Logos of St. John the Apostle and the Christians, the same as the "Tao" of the Lao Tzu and the Taoists? Did the Chinese Taoists see the Christian's "Jesus", as "the fulfillment" of their religion?

It is said, that the Chinese are to the East, what the Greek are to the West. The analogy works very well for our purposes here, as it is two concepts, the Tao of the Chinese and the Logos of the Greeks (most specifically the Christian Greeks), with which we wish to compare and contrast.

Hieromonk Damascene believes so and illustrates in his book Christ the Eternal Tao, just exactly how this relationship came to be. His premise is, that among the ancient philosophers, mystics and sages, none come closer to understanding the nature of things, than Lao Tzu: Of all Ancient philosophers, Lao Tzu came the closest to assimilating the essence of reality and describing the Tao or Logos. His Tao Te Ching represents the epitome of what a human being can know through intuition, through the apprehension of the universal Principle and Pattern manifested in the created order.

Lao Tzu is the legendary founder of the philosophical system and religion known as Taoism. The book attributed to him is known to us as the Tao Te Ching; that is the "Sacred book of the Tao and the Te." Tao of course, the subject of this study, refers to "Way," and "Te" which is traditionally translated as "virtue," or "grace."

While most scholars agree that Lao Tzu was undoubtedly a historical figure, it is hard to distinguish fact from legend when it comes to understanding just who he was. It is said that he was a government official, and that he eventually got fed up with public life, and meant to escape to the West. He came to a pass, and the keeper vowed to not let him pass, unless he left him some of his wisdom. Lao Tzu complies, writes a book, departs and is never heard from again. The book of course is the "Tao Te Ching."

According to Fr. Damascene, this book contains knowledge that Lao Tzu was able to arrive at through contemplation of himself and nature. He arrives at an awareness of the absolute, or ordering principle of the universe. Lao Tzu at once calls this ordering principle "Tao", or "The Way," at the same time saying this thing (for lack of a better word), is "nameless" *

This mysterious Tao, the "mother of the 10,000 things," Lao Tzu intuited much about. The Tao is everywhere, or omnipotent (Tao Te Ching Chapters 34 & 71); ineffable (Chapters 1, 32) unchanging and eternal (16, 25); the source of all (21, 51). He was able to intuit these things, 500 years before Christ, whom Christians refer to as "the Logos."

What then is meant by the word "Logos?" Heraclitus of Ephesus was the first to utilize this term (which up to this point was a commonly used "word"). He was a Greek philosopher who lived in the late 6th century BC, a contemporary of Lao Tzu [!], although a continent away. The word Logos meant (and means) "word," but had a connotation of "order," or "pattern." He began to use the word to refer to "the underlying principle" or source of all things; "the primal order."

Aristotle in On the World says: "Things which are put together are both whole and not whole, brought together and taken apart, in harmony and out of harmony; one things arise from all things, and all things, arise from one thing."

Pseudo-Plutarch puts it this way :" As a single unified thing, there exists in us both life and death, waking and sleeping, youth and old age, because the former things have changed, are now the later, and when those latter things change, they become the former."

These ideas are so congruous and complementary to Lao Tzu. What is it that they were onto; these Greeks and Chinese? What possibly could have caused Lao Tzu, and those Greek philosophers, living so far apart, to write about a concept, such as the "underlying principle" of the universe, in such parallel ways?

According to Fr. Damascene, it is due to the common heritage of all people. He points to the monotheism of all ancient people to show that mankind was simpler and more innocent, closer to God and to nature. Therefore their knowledge of God was more pure than the polytheism that later arose in many cultures.

He describes, how according to the ancient Christian faith, God had created man in a state of "pristine simplicity," and "pure awareness;" using language that is undoubtedly Christian, but is also consistent with the teachings of Lao Tzu. He describes how man lived "simply" and in union with the Tao. But man began to harbor illusion of "self-sufficiency." This led to departure from the Tao, or what Christians refer to as, "the fall." Instead of naturally living according to "the Way," man now has to face at every turn, the decision, "should I follow the way?"
Fr. Damascene states, "Of all the primordial people, save the Hebrews, the Chinese-together with their racial cousins the native North Americans -- retained the purest understanding of the One God, the Supreme Being." Earlier generations of Chinese had called it Shang Ti or "Our Lord," T'ien "Heaven" But as time went on, the Chinese, as did all people, began to feel a distance from God. Thus arose the worship of personal, although limited pantheon of gods. This was part and parcel with a gradual shift from simplicity to complexity through out the world; monotheism to polytheism.

But because of the adherence to tradition in some cultures, the "memory of a culture," men in these societies retained some knowledge of the Tao. They to some degree remembered God, and desired union with Him.

Lao Tzu had access to a tradition that had a memory of the one God. According to John Ross in his The Original Religion of China:

It is therefore evident that the belief in the existence of the Supreme Ruler is among the earliest beliefs of the Chinese known to us. Of an earlier date, when no such belief in polytheism did exist, we find no trace. Nowhere is there a hint to confirm the materialist theory that the idea of God is a later evolutionary product of a precedent belief in ghosts or departed ancestors, or that the belief had arisen indirectly from any other similar source. .

Indeed, LaoTzu himself wrote:

Immeasurable indeed were the ancients...
Subtle, mysterious, fathomless and penetrating

By seizing on the way that was
You can ride on the things that are now.
For to know what once there was, in the beginning,
This is called the essence of the Way.

And what Lao Tzu was not taught, by this tradition of his ancestors, he intuited through contemplation of himself, and nature. Indeed Fr. Damascene gives him high praise for this. "The greatest achievement of this man who so valued non-achievement, was that he came closer than any person in human history to defining the indefinable Tao without the aid of special revelation."

The Greeks also had a "recollection" of the One God. This is evident for example in the writings of Plato, among others of the philosophers. The Apostle Paul took notice of an altar in the city of Athens, ascribed to the "unknown God." He took advantage of that to introduce to the philosophers gathered on Mars Hill, the Logos incarnate; Jesus the Christ.

St. Paul's people, the Hebrews, among all the peoples on the planet, had entered a special relationship with God. God had entered a covenant with them and had chosen them as His special people. He gave them the Law and the prophets, in order to prepare the world, through them, for an incredible event: the entrance of the Tao into creation. The uncircumscribable, took flesh and was circumscribed. The nameless one was given a name "above every name," Jesus. He that contained the whole world in his hand was contained in a virgin's womb.
Recorded first in the Prologue of the Gospel ascribed to the Apostle John, is the Christian Tradition equating the Logos, as described by the Philosophers, with the specific man, Jesus Christ. Jesus was a historical figure, occupying a certain time at a certain place. This of course, if true as the Christians believe, is an opportunity to know the Tao, the Way, the Logos by revelation. To understand more fully, that which was intuited by Lao Tzu in China and the Philosophers in Greece.

Let us look at John's Gospel for a moment and examine how the early Christians understood Jesus. Is the historical person of Jesus that he writes about, the Eternal Tao that Lao Tzu approached?

John 1

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 The same was in the beginning with God.
3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.
4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men.
5 And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
7.The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe.
8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light.
9 That was the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.
11 He came unto his own, and his own received him not.
12 But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name:
13 Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
15 John bare witness of him, and cried, saying, This was he of whom I spake, He that cometh after me is preferred before me: for he was before me.
16 And of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace.
17 For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.
18 No man hath seen God at any time, the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. (King James Version)

In this passage at the beginning of the Gospel ascribed to St. John the Apostle (popularly entitled the "Prologue"), the Gospel writer uses the word "Logos" (translated as "Word" in English) many times, as he attempts to communicate to his readers, just what they should understand about the man Jesus Christ. St. John is referred to by the Early Church as "The Theologian," because of this Gospel (and his epistles). Instead of merely relating the events as they took place in the life of Christ, He underscores the Spiritual importance of all that took place.

In his use of the word "Logos," the Hebrew reader would recognize in this as an assertion of the intimacy of this Christ, with YWHW. The Greek listeners would see that what was implied was the "Rational Mind" of Heraclitus, that "rules the universe." In the first verse St. John states that this Word was "In the beginning" (Gr. "en arche"). It implies that when the beginning, began, the Word was already there. He restates this in verse two for emphasis. The Word was pre-existent, distinct and fully deity.

In verse three, John declares that the Logos is Co-creator with "God" (or Father). He is more then just a "tool" or instrument of creation. His will, operation and power are one with the Father. Apart from the Eternal Word, existence is impossible.

The Logos is the "source of life" according to verse four, and "this life was the light of men." Life is embodied in the Word, and God's purpose and power are made available to them who partake in the life of the Logos.

There is this interesting comparison of "light and darkness" ("yin and yang"?) in verse five. Darkness will oppose the Light, but the Darkness cannot defeat it. Traditionally, darkness here is representative of evil, and ignorance. St. John the Apostle then goes on to talk about St. John the Baptist, the "witness to the Light." He "was not the Light," but bore witness to the "True Light."

"And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us." Certainly this is the crux of John's gospel. This Logos, not only exists eternally, creates and gives light (despite men's unwillingness to see), He also took "flesh" and men "beheld his glory." St. John asserts that he was one of these men. If the Logos is indeed the Tao, then what was approached by Lao Tzu (and the Philosophers and all other ancient "sages"), was now accessible by ordinary men, in ordinary ways; through the senses.

Finally St. John asserts what was to him as a Jew, an absolute truth; no one has ever seen deity. This was true as well of the concept of the Logos to the Greek philosophers. Physical eyes are simply incapable of viewing that which is beyond nature. But, "The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." Because the Logos was "with God and was God," He reveals the Father: when we see the person Jesus, we see the eternal God. This is the foundation of the 2,000-year-old Christian religion.

So to return to Lao Tzu, is this then his "Tao?" Let's examine some of the things he wrote in the Tao Te Ching:

Before heaven and earth existed
There was something nebulous:
Silent, isolated
Standing alone, not changing
Eternally revolving without fail
Worthy to be the mother of all things.

I do not know its name.
I adore it as Tao.
If forced to give it a name,
I shall call it "breath."

Does this not sound like the God of the Hebrews, whose name was so Holy, that it was "unpronounceable?" This God refers to Himself as "I AM," asserting that His very existence, is name enough. And it was this God, that according to St. John, that the Logos was with from the beginning, and whose will He did on earth.

Lao Tzu again, in chapter 51 of the Tao Te Ching:

Tao gives them birth
Te fosters them.
Therefore all things of the universe
Worship Tao and exalt Te
Tao is worshipped and Te exalted.
Without anyone's order but of its
Own accord.

Although the scope of this paper is limited to a comparison of Logos with Tao, it must be mentioned that Lao Tzu's description of the relationship of Tao and Te, closely parallels the Christian understanding of the relationship of Son and Holy Spirit. The Son, the Logos creates, as we've seen. The Spirit is seen as "sustaining."

The Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote many years before the birth of Jesus. In a famous passage he speaks of the messiah who would come, who would be a "man of sorrows." Like wise Lao Tzu says:

He who takes upon himself the slander of the world
Is the presence of the state.
He who takes upon himself the sins of the world
Is the King of the World.

Of course there are objections to this outlook. First of all some may argue, that although the Tao and the Logos appear very similar at first look, they are really quite different. The argument is that the Christian Logos is personal; while the Tao of Lao Tzu is impersonal. This point has merit; for indeed, Lao Tzu truly avoids any language that appears to be anthropomorphic.

But as it earlier has been stressed, Lao Tzu could not fully realize the Tao, as he himself underlined the "unknowability" of the way. No sage, seer, prophet, philosopher or wise man could come to a full understanding of the ineffable absolute, unless the Tao itself (Himself) engaged in Revelation.

But even without the benefit of revelation, Lao Tzu still approaches "personhood." He certainly ascribes benevolence to the Tao, and it is inconceivable that benevolence is possible without personhood. Lo Tzu says:

All things rise from the Tao.
By the power of the Tao (Te) they are nourished, Developed, cared for,
Sheltered, comforted,
Grown, and protected.

The Tao of Heaven is to benefit, not to harm.
The Tao of Heaven makes no distinction of persons
It always helps the virtuous.

From the above quotes, as well as the feel that comes out of the whole Tao Te Ching, it could be argued that Lao Tzu had a "relationship" with the Tao.

Later Taoist writers lost the sense of benevolence of the Tao. For the authors of Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu for example, the Tao, of necessity becomes a neutral force. They could not reconcile that the Tao could be One and Selfless, and still be benevolent. Certainly the neutrality and non-personhood of the Tao was in contrast to the personal, yet egoist and despotic "God" of the monotheistic Jews and Muslims.
Fr., Damascene says:
If we take the Oneness and Personhood of God together, we end up with a God dwelling in metaphysical solitude, making way for a distorted view of Him as a stern demanding judge, a petulant egoist, and a sever Lord of Vengeance.

He goes on to say:
To the Hebrews was given the revelation of the One Personal Absolute; to Lao Tzu was given the realization of the One Selfless Absolute.

If both of these are true, they obliterate and cancel each other out. But the Apostles John and the Christians would say there is a piece of the puzzle missing. Thus the Way reveals of Himself information, that can help us avoid either distortion; that is the mystery of the Holy Trinity.

According to the Christians, God was One yet contained three persons. These persons (Father, Son and Holy Spirit) share the Divine Essence, as human beings share the human nature. The persons of the Godhead dwell in perfect love for each other. "God is love." 1 John 4:8

Fr. Dumitru Staniloe of Romania writes:
Love must exist in God prior to all those acts of his which are directly outside Himself. Love must be bound up with His eternal existence. Love is the ‘being of God.'

Thus now it could be seen that the Tao/Logos is at the same time, One, Personal and Selfless. Lao Tzu for all his greatness, could not have seen that, without the knowledge of the Trinity. And this was only revealed in the "Logos made flesh" who appeared in Palestine hundreds of years later.

Indeed, Lao Tzu mysteriously opined that, "The three produced all things." Chinese philosopher and Taoist, Gi-ming Shien comments on this saying, that the "three" represent "the reconciliation of opposites," and that the "three is the principle of order. So Lao Tzu, while not fully knowing the meaning of the Triad, never the less realized it to be a creative principle.

So, perhaps these teachings are what led to an easy embrace of Christianity, by the Chinese of the Tang dynasty. When Aleben, and his monks came marching in, they were welcomed and expected. There are some texts that have only recently been discovered, and collectively they are called the "Jesus Sutras." These texts were produced by Aleben and his monks, based on the Syriac writings they had brought with them. But they did not merely translate their existing Christian texts. They wrote new texts, and drew heavily from the Tao Te Ching and other Taoists texts, in their attempt to "spread the Gospel" to the land of China.

A recovery of the attitudes of these ancients is in order. For the ancient people in all world cultures, saw that there was an unfolding of wisdom through out the ages. St. Seraphim of Sarov, a Saint of the Russian Orthodox Church put it this way:

Though not with the same power of God as in the Hebrews, nevertheless the presence of the Spirit of God also acted in the pagans who did not know the true God, because even among them God found for Himself chosen people. . . . Though the pagan philosophers also wandered in the darkness of the ignorance of God, yet they sought the Truth, which is beloved by God; and on account of this God-pleasing seeking, they could partake of the Spirit of God, for it is said that the nations who do not know God practice by nature the demands of the law, and of what is pleasing to God. [Rom. 2:14]

St. Justin Martyr, an early Christian apologist, was one among the early Christians who was not afraid to call upon the pre-Christian philosophers and poets, such as Lao Tzu. St. Justin:
Those who lived in accordance with the Logos are Christians, even though they were called godless, such as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus and others like them . . .

Another Church Father, Lactantius says:
The Greeks speak of God as the Logos. . . for Logos signifies both speech and reason, inasmuch as he is both the voice and the reason of God. And of this Divine speech, not even the Philosophers were ignorant, since Zeno represents the Logos as the arranger of the established order of things, and the framer of the Universe.

Both Justin and Lactantius highly honored Socrates, because he respectfully refused to proffer opinions on things that he did not have a direct experience with. Socrates said, "It is neither easy to find the Father and maker of all, nor having found Him, is it possible to declare Him to all." This sounds like it is right out of the Tao Te Ching.

Certainly, if the early Christians had known of Lao Tzu, they would have honored him, as they honored the Greeks, (as well as the Hebrews it goes without saying) and recognized Christ as the Eternal Tao, as they recognized Him as the Divine Logos. As the Monument Sutras record Emperor Taizong, "These teachings will save all creatures and benefit all mankind, and it is only proper that they be practiced throughout the world."

end

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

What is Infinite? Why is It Eternal?

The Tao is infinite, eternal.
Why is it eternal?
It was never born; thus it can never die.

Why is it infinite?
It has no desires for itself; thus it is present for all beings.

The Master stays behind; that is why she is ahead.
She is detached from all things; that is why she is one with them.
Because she has let go of herself, she is perfectly fulfilled.

—Chapter 7 of the Tao Te Ching through Lao Tzu

Monday, January 2, 2012

2012: The Year of Conscious Awakening

January 3, 2012 article from http://www.naturalnews.com/
by Mike Adams, editor for one of the most ethical and trustworthy independent websites for world news. Mike tells it like it is, continually urging mankind to waken to the wrongs of life in our time and to do something positive to make things right.

"In Chinese culture, every year has an animal mascot. It's the "year of the monkey," for example, or the year of the rooster. For NaturalNews, 2012 is the year of consciousness (or conscious awakening, in a sense).

Does this mean we're going to abandon the mundane daily news of planet earth and float off into la-la land where we start chanting mantras and worshipping self-proclaimed enlightened gurus? Hardly. In fact, in 2012 I want to talk with you about what I call grounded consciousness. Or "holistic consciousness."

And why? Because it is the lack of consciousness that's behind every corporate crime, government conspiracy, political corruption, Big Pharma scheme and environmental crime that takes place on our planet. Those who lack consciousness engage in "you versus me" crimes of selfishness -- stealing, exploiting, destroying, deceiving -- yet such behaviors come from a place of ignorance about consciousness and the universe around us.

Let me make this really practical and easy to understand by invoking characters from popular culture:

Yoda taught Luke Skywalker that all things are connected. "The Force," as he explained it, flowed through all living things and bound them together in a kind of mystical universal energy. George Lucas was right on the mark when creating this fictional character, because "The Force" really does exist, and it's made of consciousness.

It is a sense of not just self awareness but of connectedness with other living things. The truly conscious person is not merely "awakened" about their own existence, but is fully aware and even spiritually attuned to the reality that we are not really separate from other living things around us.
Sure, we have our own individual ideas, egos, memories and actions. So we are still individuated (which is a good thing), otherwise we wouldn't even be able to talk using the word "I" (which some gurus say is an illusion anyway). But technically, when we talk about "I" we should really be talking about "we" because everything that one person does is reflected throughout the other conscious creatures and beings on our planet, so that even seemingly personal, individuated actions inevitably become "we" results.

This isn't some fleety, high-minded blabbery. It's real. It's practical. Allow me to give you an example:

Suppose a selfish, low-consciousness corporate CEO says, "I'm going to dump this toxic waste into the river because that saves ME money, and it makes ME more profits." So he dumps the waste into the river.

Downstream, a billion living creatures start to become damaged by the toxic waste: The fish, frogs, turtles, trees, plants and perhaps even cities full of people who use the river as their water supply. This, in turn, creates "a disturbance in the Force," as Obiwan described it in Star Wars. The disturbance spreads sickness, disease and dysfunction. That dysfunction inevitably makes its way back to that same corporate CEO -- perhaps the mutated offspring of some woman who drank the polluted water grows up and becomes a violent criminal who car-jacks the CEOs granddaughter and murders her in the process. While the CEO will decry "how terribly violent our world has become," he will disavow the truth that he poisoned the world and made it more destructive.

The violence that happened to his daughter was the inevitable result of his own acts of violence unleashed upon the world through toxic chemicals.

Even individuated, "we" still share a common thread

From the point of view of universal consciousness, there is no "I" -- there is only "we." And WE are affected by everything that each one of us does. If you take pharmaceuticals, you are contributing to the destruction of the planet because those chemical medications pass through your body and get flushed down the toilet where they chemically pollute the planet. Someone who says, "I need these antidepressants so I take them" is really saying "screw the planet, I am willing to poison the world in order to try to mask my own symptoms of depression with a toxic chemical."
So, you see, the corporate CEO who pollutes the planet is not much different from the 40-year-old housewife who feels depressed and pops pharmaceuticals throughout the day. Both are operating out of an illusory sense of what I call spiritual isolationism -- the false belief that we are disconnected from our world (and from each other) and that we can do whatever we wish as long as it helps us in the short term, regardless of what it does to other living, conscious beings in the long term.

This is the stunted point of view from which all deception is based -- all wars, GMO contamination, government conspiracies and corporate poisoning of the people is conducted from this place of spiritual isolationism.

Spiritual integration, in contrast, is what you might call the process by which a person comes to a sense of self awareness about the relationships between all living things. "Awakening" is integration. It's also the path of the Jedi, to use the Star Wars metaphor again, because it relies on using the Force as an ally in the protection of life.
The spiritual (Jedi) farmer

A woman who grows a garden is a spiritual farmer in that she gives new life to seeds. When a plant creates a seed, at first that seed is just a biological machine held in stasis, awaiting the right moment to sprout. When a seed sprouts, consciousness enters the plant in the same way that a soul enters the developing fetus right after the moment of fertilization.

Both a human fetus and a garden seedling are conscious beings with a sense of awareness, a (limited) sense of self, a functioning nervous system and increasingly complex awareness of its immediate environment.

The idea that plants have consciousness has been taught throughout many early human civilizations, of course. The American Indians believed this, as did the Inca. Indians believed the desert Saguaro cacti were sacred beings, watchers over the land. And when you're in the presence of these amazing beings, you can't help but agree with them.
Trees have nervous systems. Weeds in your back yard engage in social networking through the chemical transmission of messages about external threats. A blade of grass may not have the physical brain of a human being, but it has what I call "a sliver of consciousness." That doesn't mean I feel guilty mowing the lawn, but it does mean I carefully consider my actions when altering any natural landscape, removing trees, planting trees, and tending the garden.

As humans, we are especially gifted with mobility that allows us to be caretakers for other forms of conscious life, including both plants and animals. We have the arms and legs that trees don't (except in Lord of the Rings, I suppose). So we can move around, meaning we can create life (plant seeds), or we can destroy life (GMOs).

My point in all this is that the destruction of life always comes from a place of spiritual ignorance. A person who could callously and mindlessly destroy life (or poison the planet with GMOs, for example) is a person operating from a total lack of understanding about the consciousness that ties us all together. When Israelis say they want to kill Palestinians (or vice-versa), this is done from a place of giving in to the "dark side" of the Force -- the seductive, destructive side, which seems powerful at first but is actually a sign of spiritual weakness.

To harm another human being, as the Buddhists say, is to harm yourself. Why is that true? Because underneath the individuation and the ego, there flows a current of connected consciousness. It flows like a river through all living systems. To destroy life is to disrupt the flow of that river -- an act that inevitably darkens your own reality as well. There is no act of violence that is undertaken in isolation. All acts of both violence and compassion are reflected (and even magnified) throughout the fabric of reality. This idea is echoed across all world religions, including Christianity.

Police state fear is only possible from a place of low consciousness

An important point to understand in all this is that no society has yet achieved the recognition of consciousness that exists throughout all living systems. Our human societies remain in their infantile stage, operating from a place of individuated ego, and lacking the deeper understanding of connectedness that becomes obvious when the true nature of consciousness is firmly grasped.

War is the ultimate expression of disconnectedness. When one nation decides to murder the people of another nation, this is an act of extreme ignorance tempered by anger and wrapped in illusion.

Police states -- like the one into which the USA is now descending -- are the day-to-day expression of disconnectedness and ego. Think about the whole message of the terror-driven police state: YOU might be a terrorist. So I, the TSA agent or the federal law enforcement agent, must destroy you before you can destroy me. This is the philosophical foundation of Darth Vader.

So rather than working on ways to stop creating enemies -- or ways to nurture peace, liberty and prosperity -- the police state government is intent on isolating and separating people, creating division and fear that drives people apart. Whereas peace is achieved through the integration of cultures (i.e. western white people going to visit the mosques of Islam, to understand their culture better), terrorism is achieved through the spreading of suspicion and paranoia that drives people away from each other in fear while concentrating power into the hands of the "Dark Lords" (evil tyrants like Janet Napolitano, who only lacks a black cape and a loud respirator).

This is the whole point of the "If you see something, say something" campaign that depict white people, black people, and brown people as possible terror suspects to be treated with total paranoia. The government, you see, is in the business of lowering consciousness and creating division instead of peace. Peace pulls power away from governments and puts it into the hands of the People. War and fear, on the other hand, keeps power concentrate in the hands of government.

Love and compassion, on the other hand, are the vibes of raising consciousness and creating mutual respect. Governments do not teach love and compassion because such concepts are self destructive to governments.

The way out of terrorism, war and government tyranny

All this makes the pathway out of terrorism, war and fear rather obvious. You cannot "fight" tyranny and win with force. Tyranny thrives on the death, the destruction and the fear that goes with that application of force. Tyranny can truly only be conquered by awakening people to the greater truths about who they are, how they are connected, and how they all experience holographic fragments of the same stream of consciousness that flows through all living things.
The way to stop war, in other words, is to teach those who commit war so that they realize they have been operating under the illusion of false individuation. A cat might initially be scared by its own shadow on the wall -- and it might attack that shadow -- but once it realizes the shadow is simply an expression of itself, it recognizes the foolishness of fighting its own shadow, and it calmly walks away.

On our planet today, when one nation commits murder (war) against another nation, it is fighting its own shadow, and the solution to such shadow fighting is not to "build bigger bombs," but to raise awareness of the situation so that those involved both realize the silliness of it all and decide to walk away, embarrassed of how childish their actions now seem.

The end of government deception, corporate conspiracies, never-ending war, mass murder, Big Pharma's poisoning of the world, and even day-to-day muggings is found not simply in physical security, but in conscious awakening.

Does this mean you should stop thinking about self defense preparedness and start meditating away all your problems? Absolutely not: Until all the other people are also spiritually awakened, you must take prudent, practical measures to protect yourself and your family in the physical world. But as you do so, strive to teach and exemplify an "awakened" course of action that avoids violence and encourages people to connect with the deeper, higher truths of who they really are (and how they're connected to everything else).

Carry a stick, in other words, but use it to support your neighbor rather than strike them down."

end of article

Ancient Tao-Consciousness...Future Tao-Consciousness

This except is taken from R. Steiner's 11th lecture "The Post-Atlantean Cultural Epochs" in the cycle of lectures: 'At the Gates of Spiritual Science'.

"The Atlantean did not raise himself to his God through concepts and ideas. He discerned something holy in nature as a keynote of the Divine; it was as though he breathed in and breathed out his God. If he wished to express what he heard in this way, he would embody it in a sound similar to the Chinese T-A-O. For the Atlantean this was the sound which pervaded the whole of nature. When he touched a leaf, or saw a flash of lightning, he was aware that part of the Godhead was displayed before him; it was as if he were touching the garment of the Divine. Just as we make contact with some element in a man's soul when we shake hands with him, so the Atlantean, when he took hold of a form in nature, felt that he was touching the body of the Godhead. He lived in a religious feeling quite different from our own. The Atlantean, too, was still clairvoyant and was thus in direct communication with the world of spirits.

But then the type of thinking associated with logic and mathematical calculation began to develop, and the more it did so, the more did clairvoyance fade away. People began to concern themselves more with what the senses could perceive externally, and so nature was increasingly divested of divinity. People acquired a new gift at the cost of an old one. In proportion as they achieved the gift of exact sense-observation, they ceased to understand nature as the body of the Godhead. Gradually they came to see before them only the body of the world, and not its soul. But as the result of this a yearning for the Divine arose once more in man. In his heart it was written: Behind nature there must be God. And he came to realise that he must seek for God with his spirit. That is in fact the meaning of the word ‘religion’: to try to re-establish a connection with the Godhead; religere means to re-unite."

commentary....Steiner's exacting research was grounded in what today is called Anthroposophical Spiritual Science. This form of research, a dawning capability of the consciousness is directed to the intuitive dimensions of the human spirit which is itself only beginning to evolve in humanity and will further develop in the future. Steiner's fully developed conscious and direct reading of the Akasha (Sanskrit for World or Cosmic Memory), a possibility well known and practiced in the ancient Mysteries, is now new since the beginning of the 20th century, with Steiner's pioneering work. The difference, now from all ancient practices which were more or less mystically induced, creates a distinct possibility of penetrating into the spiritual world through ever higher stages of cognition, forever dismissing any and every limitation of the boundaries of human knowledge. Spiritual Science is a free-will, intensely evolved state of one's higher faculty of clear and active thinking. In this view, gradually possible little-by-little, and for more of humanity of the future, human thought (and through it a new ethical will-practice of life) becomes filled with warm and deeper power of conscience; will be able to fully discern the great spiritual laws of reincarnation and karma; will have an ever greater power to lovingly co-create in community.
The accompanying state of clear clairvoyance will reveal itself most effectively through cultivating what can be called a 'Grail Mood' which always begins with reverence for all existence and for Truth and Knowledge. and will become a spiritual possession of the humanity achieved through each individuals strength of heart-will.

In it's fullest expression then, the highest stage of human evolution will have helped to build the...
Royal Temple of Love gained through True Freedom...The human self which began as an invividually endowed 'dew drop of the spirit' will have fulfilled the mission of  conscious and full re-unification with the Spirit of the Cosmos.....the Tao will have become fulfilled..

it seems appropriate to here again post this quote:

"The TAO expresses -- for the greater part of humanity as it has already expressed for millennia-- the highest to which humanity could aspire, and of which humanity thought that the world, the whole of humanity, will one day aspire. It is the highest that the human being carries as a seed, which one day will blossom fully out of innermost human nature. TAO signifies both a deep, hidden fundament of the soul and an exalted future."

Rudolf Steiner, November 16, 1905 (whole lecture as yet untranslated)

The Gateway to All Understanding

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source.
This source is called darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
 
Lao Tzu   from "Tao Te Ching" first chapter

The Tao of Reality

There is a thing, formless yet complete.
Before heaven and earth it existed.
We do not know its name, but we call it Tao.
It is the Mystery of Mysteries.
 
Lao Tzu