Month: August 2016

Some years ago, I contributed to a monthly on-line magazine called The Meta Arts. It occurred to me, it may be worthwhile to share the columns that appear particularly relevant to our time today.

Robert Clarke on dreams and symbolism

My friend Robert Clarke died in late October [2009] in his hometown in England, a merciful transition from life with a cancer-ridden body. Though he and I only met twice he was a valued friend, in the long-distance way so many of us have friendships these days. I firmly believe that he in  his life, like Carl Jung before him, found a valuable key for the rest of us. Though he lived in obscurity, he had a rich inner life that included, by his estimate, 30,000 dreams that led him through the individuation process.

Continue reading Robert Clarke on dreams and symbolism

I am currently reviewing the columns I wrote for The Meta Arts, an online magazine that flourished for a few years until one of the two principals got sick. I hope to put them together as a book, perhaps to be called “I, of my own knowledge.” Meanwhile, I keep finding pieces that seem very much to the point. As this one, in this dismal and disturbing political year.

Guidance, our society, and the gods

One of the most interesting talks I have had from the beings that I call The Guys Upstairs came in two long sessions on Thursday January 5, 2006. Here it is, slightly edited so that you can look over my shoulder, so to speak.

(8:30 a.m.) All right friends, I’m ready and willing. Who do I have the honor of speaking to today? Or, if you have no one special, I’ll choose.

You may find it easier to continue your long practice of addressing us as a group unless you wish any one of us, and receiving our communications the same way. We appeared this way for a reason. And perhaps this is as good a time as any to go into it a bit. The question of guidance from what you call “the other side” is not so much a complicated question as it is a tangled one. But we didn’t tangle it from over here! It got tangled because of the various competing or overlapping or antagonistic strands of culture on your end.

In the simplest situation, an isolated culture knows of no other ways of perceiving the world and has no competing ways within its own area and has no discordant tradition cutting against the prevailing ways. In such a society, all is consistency. All think alike, believe alike, perceive alike – and therefore it is not difficult for all to act alike. The next level up is a society in which any one of those elements is missing. The next up from that, a society with two missing.

Continue reading Guidance, our society, and the gods

Some years ago, I contributed to a monthly on-line magazine called The Meta Arts. It occurred to me, it may be worthwhile to share the columns that appear particularly relevant to our time today.

Upton Sinclair on how (and why) he worked with spiritualists

This business of talking to people on the other side has its perplexities, and some of those perplexities go back a long time! Most people today know of Upton Sinclair as the author of the muck-raking book The Jungle, but besides being a prolific author of fiction and non-fiction both, he was a long-time investigator into psychic matters. His Mental Radio, an examination of telepathy, remains a classic in the field. This session started because I was wondering why in the 1920s people seemed to think they needed to have an intermediary spirit to act as “control.”

May 16, 2007

7:40 AM. All right, Mr. Sinclair, shall we talk about Spiritualism and where we (our society, and the human race in fact) go from here?

Continue reading Upton Sinclair on how (and why) he worked with spiritualists