Sunday, October 24, 2021
9 p.m. Rather than wait for an arbitrary time past midnight, let’s have a session now. Maximum clarity, focus, presence, receptivity. Gentlemen, Orphic Saying 91?
[XCI. GENTLENESS. I love to regard all souls as babes, yet in their prime and innocency of being, nor would I upbraid rudely a fellow creature, but treat him as tenderly as an infant. I would be gentle alway. Gentleness is the divinest of graces, and all men joy in it. Yet seldom does it appear on earth. Not in the face of man, nor yet often in that of woman (O apostacy), but in the countenance of childhood it sometimes lingers, even amidst the violence, the dispathy that beset it; there, for a little while, fed by divine fires, the serene flame glows, but soon flickers and dies away, choked by the passions and lusts of sense—its embers smouldering alone in the bosoms of men.]
Clear enough, surely, with the possible exception of words such as dispathy. And in context surely the meaning will not be mistaken.
I thought it clear, but thought maybe you’d want to add something.
No, it expresses well the choking effect of 3D partiality and isolation. You are all much better than you sometimes appear. You are like soldiers in the field during a hard campaign, or, say, health workers during an epidemic. Your innate being – what you truly are – is much better than you give yourselves credit for. So, take encouragement from that.
[XCII. INDIVIDUALS. Individuals are sacred: creeds, usages, institutions, as they cherish and reverence the individual. The world, the state, the church, the school, all are felons whensoever they violate the sanctity of the private heart. God, with his saints and martyrs, holds thrones, polities, hierarchies, amenable to the same, and time pours her vial of just retribution on their heads. A man is divine; mightier, holier, than rulers or powers ordained of time.]
You know what this means, and most of your readers will, too. However, you might briefly restate it in clearer language.
Alcott says here that “creeds, usages, institutions” are sacred just as far as they “cherish and reverence” the individual, and no farther. It is what you have said many times in a slightly different way. You usually say individuals are real, the rest are less real. His other point is, Woe be to the person or institution that oppresses the individual.
Yes, good enough.
[XCIII. MESSIAS. The people look always for a political, not spiritual Messias. They desire a ruler from the world, not from heaven—a monarch who shall conform both church and state to their maxims and usages. So church and state become functions of the world, and mammon, with his court of priests and legislators, usurps the throne of conscience in the soul, to rule saints and prophets for a time.]
Alcott will find an unfamiliar form of a word! He couldn’t just say Messiah. But anyway, your take on this one?
The operative point here may easily be overlooked: “a monarch who shall conform both church and state to their maxims and usages.” In other words, you might say it is the people’s own fault that they get what they get, because they are always following the wrong model, steering by the wrong star.
The ancient Jews weren’t content to be rules by judges. They wanted a king like everybody else, and of course they got one.
You are naturally going to expect something conforming to your ideals and preconceptions. If you set your heart on kings, kings you get. If you trust the 3D world and its values and perceptions, you aren’t going to be ruled by the non-3D’s representatives, internal or external. Notice the mention of “the throne of conscience in the soul.” You can’t subcontract that out. You are your conscience, more truly than to say you have a conscience. How can anything be truer to you than part of your very being? But, as he says, this happens “for a time.” That time may be all a person’s 3D life, or may be brief or even intermittent, but for as long as it lasts, it is not a good situation for the individual concerned.
[XCIV. CHRISTENDOM. Christendom is infidel. It violates the sanctity of man’s conscience. It speaks not from the lively oracles of the soul, but reads instead from the traditions of men. It quotes history, not life. It denounces as heresy and impiety the intuitions of the individual, denies the inspiration of souls, and intrudes human dogmas and usages between conscience and God. It excludes the saints from its bosom, and with these, excommunicates, as the archheretic, Jesus of Nazareth also.]
This one reminds me of Emerson, saying you can’t have a serious discussion with a puritan, because at every point he will interpose “his silly book” (the Bible) rather than consider that, as Emerson put it, God who spoke to the men who wrote that book is speaking to us all right now.
Yes, their contemporaries regarded Alcott and Emerson – the Transcendentalists in general – as terribly immoral and reckless. And one would go some way to find as sweeping and accurate a criticism as Alcott here made in a few barbed words.
[XCV. CHRISTIANS. Christians lean on Jesus, not on the soul. Such was not the doctrine of this noble reformer. He taught man’s independence of all men, and a faith and trust in the soul herself. Christianity is the doctrine of self-support. It teaches man to be upright, not supine. Jesus gives his arm to none save those who stand erect, independent of church, state, or the world, in the integrity of self-insight and valor. Cast aside thy crutch, O Christendom, and by faith in the soul, arise and walk. Thy faith alone shall make thee whole.]
What needs to be added?
Nothing I can think of.
[XCVI. PENTECOST. The Pentecost of the soul draws near. Inspiration, silent long, is unsealing the lips of prophets and bards, and soon shall the vain babblings of men die away, and their ears be given to the words of the Holy Ghost; their tongues cloven with celestial eloquence.]
Here we might argue that Alcott was either
- Too optimistic, thinking the great change was upon them in the 1840s, or
- Accurate in a longer time-scale, in which “draws near” refers to a couple of centuries (or indeed a couple of millennia) rather than a couple of months or years. But
- There is a third possibility.
Yes, I heard it. Like Jesus on the cross saying to the good thief that “this day you will be with me in paradise.” In other words, Alcott may have been speaking of personal, not social, transformation. We ourselves may become transformed regardless what society is experiencing, and for us it will be the Pentecost he references.
But this is enough. We can finish next time.
Thank you as always. I’m beginning to think we may have done something remarkable, taking what seemed meaningless – or anyway impenetrable – babble, and extracting the sense of it. Number 97, Immortality, next.