"I of my own knowledge…"

Some years ago I had to decline to publish Mark Kimmel’s fascinating first novel, Trillion, strictly for financial reasons. Since then I have remained on his newsletter, information for which I include at the end of this post. The following is his most recent.

The Cosmic Paradigm Newsletter
by Mark Kimmel
October 31, 2007

Fear

In recent days I have observed how many times fear creeps into my consciousness. This has caused me to look at my actions and see how many of them were driven by fear.

The dictionary defines fear as: 1 A feeling of agitation and anxiety caused by present or imminent danger 2 A feeling of disquiet or apprehension

I would suggest broader definitions: 1. Fear is the opposite of love. 2. Fear is a state of mind that focuses one singularly on oneself.

When one is acting out of fear he or she will put his or her own interests above any concern for the rights of others. If I am hungry, I will steal. If I am threatened I will kill. In the extreme, if I see the situation as totally hopeless, I will choose suicide.

But fear is usually much more subtle. Fears remains buried in our unconscious mind until they are triggered by a particular situation. Dealing with our fears is the grist of psychotherapy, beginning with Freud’s focus on sexuality and continuing to modern treatment methods.

Fear, buried in our unconscious, is triggered as our current lives unfold. Our parents taught each of us certain precautionary things: “Watch before you cross the street.” Religious teachings imprinted yet others: “If you do that, you will go to hell.” And our training in the workplace added still others: “Be on time, or be gone.” Fear is often translated into “should” and “must.”

SPEND A DAY EXAMINING HOW FEAR DRIVES YOUR ACTIONS. I did this and was amazed to see how fears subtly emerged. As I drove my vehicle I worried about the condition of its tires. I was conscious of obeying the traffic laws lest I get a ticket. I watched where I was going to avoid getting lost, or worse, having an accident. And, of course, I kept an eye on the gas gauge.

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For more than three dozen years, my life has been deeply influenced by the benign example of Henry David Thoreau. If someone ever puts together a calendar of American saints (not a bad idea) he will surely be among them.

If you have never read his journals, which were first published in 1917 for the centenary of his birth, I highly recommend them. Here is a journal entry from July 24, 1852, that is as alive and pertinent today as when it was written 155 years ago.

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Today I found a scrap of paper containing three definitions I made up. The paper is dated November 13, 1999, long enough that I had forgotten it. I found it interesting; perhaps you will as well:

A pun is a way to go from one logical chain to another logical chain without establishing a logical connector. It is a pseudo-logical connector.

A symbol is a knot, connecting different threads, different lines of logic, which can shed light on one another.

An attitude is an emotional frame of reference.

The first time I saw Max Ehrmann’s classic statement was on a birthday card from my father-in-law. I thought at the time that perhaps he was trying to make a point – give me a nudge – that he didn’t feel able to do orally.I have seen this piece derided, and of course it has been repeated so widely, for so long, that the impact of sudden recognition is gone. Nonetheless there’s a tremendous amount of wisdom packed into these few paragraphs. Each sentence could be expanded into an essay, but to do so would be to remove the power that is provided by compact expression.

“Desiderata,” BTW, for the Latin-impaired, means roughly “essential things that are to be desired.”

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant, they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. (more…)

A friend quotes Gandhi as saying “become the change you want to see.”

In this connection, I remember a line from a Dion Fortune novel (The Sea Priestess), in which the heroine, a woman working magic, says that in order to put a new pattern into the mind of the human race, it is necessary to put it into its unconscious mind, not its conscious mind, and that is done by living it. It is necessary not to say it or write it or believe it, but – to live it. (more…)

A friend sent me this, back in June 2000. I just came across it and found it as moving now as it was then. Author unknown, and her son’s name unknown. In fact I don’t know any more about it than what is here. (The friend who sent it to me is gone as well, having died suddenly a couple of years later.) She titled it Tears from Heaven.

It was one of the hottest days of the dry season. We had not seen rain in  almost a month. The crops were dying. Cows had stopped giving milk. The  creeks and streams were long gone back into the earth. It was a dry season  that would bankrupt seven farmers before it was through. Every day, my  husband and his brothers would go about the arduous process of trying to  get water to the fields. Lately this process had involved taking a truck to  the local water rendering plant and filling it up with water. But severe  rationing had cut everyone off. If we didn’t see some rain soon… we  would lose everything. It was on this day that I learned the true lesson of  sharing and witnessed the only miracle I have seen with my own eyes. (more…)

This article by the Dalai Lama appeared in The New York Times April 26, 2003 at a time when some people thought that invading Iraq was going to lead to peace. But maybe the way to peace doesn’t lead through war but through self-mastery.

The Monk in the Lab

By TENZIN GYATSO

DHARAMSALA, India

These are times when destructive emotions like anger, fear and hatred are giving rise to devastating problems throughout the world. While the daily news offers grim reminders of the destructive power of such emotions, the question we must ask is this: What can we do, person by person, to overcome them?

Of course such disturbing emotions have always been part of the human condition. Some – those who tend to believe nothing will “cure” our impulses to hate or oppress one another – might say that this is simply the price of being human. But this view can create apathy in the face of destructive emotions, leading us to conclude that destructiveness is beyond our control.

I believe that there are practical ways for us as individuals to curb our dangerous impulses – impulses that collectively can lead to war and mass violence. As evidence I have not only my spiritual practice and the understanding of human existence based on Buddhist teachings, but now also the work of scientists. (more…)

This is a review of Colin Wilson’s The Books in My Life, published by Hampton Roads Publishing Company in 1998 and — to my surprise and delight — dedicated to me. I had met Colin three years earlier, on the memorable 17th of March, 1995.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

311 pages, $15.95 USD

It is impossible to classify Colin Wilson as a writer. He has published something like one hundred books in his lifetime – on philosophy, literature, psychology, criminology, and the occult, primarily. Oh, yes, and there are a couple of dozen novels.

The one thing I can say about him with definite certainty is that, paradoxically to his output, hardly anyone reads him. I’ve met a few people who have heard of his first book, The Outsider, which catapulted him to a brief period of fame in 1956 at the age of 24. Until the critics took a dislike to this youthful upstart, that is. A few have heard of him as a writer on crime or mysticism. Fewer have actually read him.

Wilson has persevered, however, because he is one of those rare writers who writes out of a sheer enthusiasm for ideas. And despite the enormous range of topics he has written about, his entire body of work is unified by a group of themes, all pertaining to the present and future of consciousness and its role in society. This latest book is no exception. (more…)

This appreciation of Colin Wilson by Colin Amery first appeared in 2001. I have written about the debt of gratitudeI owe him. This story is typical of such debts, I think.

 Colin Wilson’s The Outsider

by Colin Amery

 In l956 Wilson’s Outsider was an overnight success, and later went into twelve impressions, the youthful looking 26 year-old was hailed by the critics as a new Lord Byron. With his large horn rims and high-neck woollen sweater, author Kenneth Allsop dubbed him one of the ‘angry young men’ of that period. I had just started attending that left wing hot bed the London School of Economics to study law. Mick Jagger was there at the same time but not yet a rock star. To prepare him for his future career he was studying economics. I heard rumours that Colin Wilson was pulling expressos in a Chelsea coffee bar off the King’s Road. I never got to that particular haunt, but in 1958 I frequented the Royal Court Theatre nearby where John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger was playing to packed houses. These highly original thinkers helped shape the future direction of my life. For the first time I felt the possibility of a framework within which to be truly myself and evolve a philosophy by which I could live. (more…)

This clipping goes back to July 2007, but I don’t think it has lost any relevance in the past few months. The guys have convinced me that our views on reincarnation are simplistic at best, downright distorted at worst, but regardless of what we think is “really” happening here I think you will agree that this is fascinating, on a level with the little boy who “remembered” being a flier who was killed in World War II. As this came via a friend, I don’t know what the source was.

KHURJA (Uttar Pradesh): A four-year-old girl who claims her name is Kalpana Chawla and that she died up in the skies four years ago is drawing huge crowds in a village here in Uttar Pradesh. (more…)