Friday, March 16, 2018
All we are doing in this small series is coordinating two ways of seeing the world, so that they may illumine each other.
The large-scale view is “What is the structure of life as we know it; what is The Big Picture?”
The small-scale view – not in any way less important – is, “What is my part in the grand scheme of things?”
One says, What is the overall picture. The other says, How do I make sense of what I experience locally.
The point is, we want this to be intellectually satisfying (and challenging) and no less emotionally engaging. We are for building the castle in the air and putting the foundation under it, a la Thoreau. It has much less to do with any of you at this time than on what is to come.
You are providing us with a way to see that will clear the way for new perceptions, hence new experiences. This developmental process will broaden with time beyond what we here and now experience. And a part of that rejiggering is to call our attention to the living elements of the old mythos.
Well – that is one way of looking at it. Let’s put it this way. Seth’s major impact upon society will be the casual and effective undermining of the contemporary position of meaninglessness. His work – which, notice, has yet to reach its full effectiveness, being barely 50 years on the scene – came at a time when the decay of the old mythos was clear to some (not yet to most) but no way forward was indicated. Seth’s intent and effect was to help clear the ground by creating an intellectual path forward. You see?
I think you are saying that Seth’s work was for the people whose intuition led them to recognize the truth, but that most people will take much longer to appreciate what the early adopters got intuitively.
Like Carl Jung’s work, or the work of any true pioneer, it is mostly unintelligible at first, because people necessarily come to it while functioning from their precedent assumptions, which makes it difficult to apprehend or incorporate anything sufficiently different. Only with the passage of time does some of that new influence move into the culture, hence giving new people a vantage point closer to that of the pioneer like Jung, or like Picasso in art, say. The slow diffusion of the innovator’s influence makes it easier for later-comers to see what is there to be seen.
Necessarily, therefore, the innovator’s initial influence will be limited, in two senses.
- in the number of people who can apprehend it,
- in the amount of his innovation they can apprehend.
Initially, only a few will be able to follow, and those few will be unlikely to see the accomplishment in its full extent. There is nothing wrong with this; it is how innovation diffuses without unnecessary upheaval. Note we said without unnecessary upheaval. That is not that same as saying, without any upheaval at all.
But when someone comes in and accomplishes something, you may be sure of two things. It will not have been finished, and it will not be continued in exactly the same form as it was begun. So Jung said, “Thank God I am Jung and not a Jungian,” and Seth would have said something similar.
Understand this well. Imitation is the opposite of innovation. To imitate one who has brought something new is not flattery and is not contribution. To continue the work, it is necessary to continue in the spirt of the original, which was fearless exploring of the path which presented itself. Jung’s path, Seth’s, anybody’s, will not be yours. Your path will arise out of your own humdrum boring unsatisfying puzzling life, just as everybody else’s did.
I think we have the idea.
But it is easy to lose sight of the fact, because admiration for the innovator, combined with self-deprecation and undervaluation of the familiar, may tempt you to unknowingly leave the pathless path of the explorer, and wind up instead following what seems to be the path of the admired predecessor.
So, to return to the primary point. The old mythos, call it the Age of Pisces, centered around a way of seeing the world that no longer leads forward because imitation is not pioneering. You see?
I do. The content of the Age of Pisces was an advance as long as it was a pioneering. As soon as it became an imitation of itself it began to die.
That’s a little too broad, but it will serve as orientation. The Age of Aquarius will explore a different world because it will bring new eyes to old scenes. What it will not do is bring a return to the Garden of Eden. It will not bring the events of the Apocalypse, the last battle against evil and all that. It will pose old problems and opportunities in new guise, and will pose new problems and opportunities, arising from new ways of seeing.
And – here is the nub of it; here is why we went over the sins and virtues glancingly along the way – new ways of seeing do not come about by ruthlessly discarding everything that has been seen and experienced prior to date. They come about by seeing those same things with new eyes. Note that: New eyes, but not new facts.
So, to throw away the spiritual heritage of humanity – the scriptures, the philosophies, and the unallocated wisdom, call it, that doesn’t fit into any of these structures but nonetheless has captured truth – would be not so much pioneering as imitation-by-rejection.
The Age of Aquarius is going to be much more head-centered than the Age of Pisces. Knowledge, not just belief. Does that mean it would be wise to discard what the human heart learned, these two thousand years?
At the same time, the past 500 years began a transition. What is the scientific and materialist revolution of the past 250 years but a seeking for truth outside of religious structures and strictures? What was the Protestant revolution that enabled and preceded the scientific revolution by 250 years but a seeking for truth in individual conscience rather than institutional consensus?
The dominant characteristic and the rebellious counter-characteristics are all to be accounted for, subsumed, in what is to be created, only they may be unrecognizable, in that they will be seen in a different light.
So, you see? You can’t throw out science, or materialism, or piety, or religion, or art, or poetry, or human passion or anything, if you wish to understand life and your part in life. You don’t need to be able to see ahead of time what the new mythos will be – which is just as well, given that you wouldn’t be able to! – but you can live your truth, discovering it as you go, and this will serve you as 3D individual, and you as All-D individual, and you as collocation of strands from various epochs (who of course will change as you change) and you as part of a 3D first-tier civilization that will be the established “given” for future generations. That’s enough of a life-purpose, wouldn’t you say?