"I of my own knowledge…"

This article, Church and State should help Europe grow, is from The Times (London) of Saturday, July 21, 2007. Interesting thoughts from a Christian clergyman in Britain. Does he give us more credit than we deserve?

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“And I thought sitting up awake in the African night that I knew nothing about the soul at all. People were always talking about it and writing of it, but who knew about it? I did not know anyone who knew anything of it nor whether there was such a thing…. Once I had thought my own soul had been blown out of me when I was a boy and then that it had come back in again. But in those days I was very egotistical and I had heard so much talk about the soul and read so much about it that I assumed that I had one. Then I began to think if Miss Mary or G.C. or Ngui or Charo or I had been killed by the lion would our souls have flown off somewhere? I could not believe it and I thought that we would all just have been dead, deader than the lion perhaps, and no one was worrying about his soul….

“But what did this have to do with `In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock in the morning?’ Did Miss Mary and GC have souls? They had no religious beliefs as far as I knew. But if people had souls they must have them. Charo was a very devout Muhammadan so we must credit him with a soul. That left only Ngui and me and the lion.” (pp. 172-173)

This long quotation is from True at First Light, a posthumously published work of Ernest Hemingway that was extensively edited (put together, I gather, or rather, culled) by his son Patrick. And that’s what Papa thought, late in his life, about the soul: It couldn’t be proved, it probably didn’t exist, maybe it depended on whether one believed in it or not. (more…)

I went shopping and bought The Old Man and the Sea, and read it for the first time in many years, and had this conversation.

June 13, 2007

10:30 p.m. Mr. Hemingway — Mr. phenomenal writer Hemingway — talk to me about The Old Man and the Sea.

It is a love story, of course. The old man loved the world, and his life, and everything in his life, and he particularly loved the boy who loved him. He loved the fish he caught, and God who had put him there, and even certain things about the sharks.

He was a tough old man of great unconscious pride and no arrogance.

Yes, that is right. He would have seemed arrogant in his strength in his middle years but he had learned humility and not by being beaten down or humiliated by anyone or by anything or circumstances, but just in the way a man at night in the ocean would see his size and the size of all around him and know that he is not nothing, but he is not the be-all and end-all either. Only those who get close enough to the source of living get to understand that, though perhaps some people are born knowing. (more…)

For those who came in late — this is another in a series of conversations I have with people who have passed over to the other side. I have found that at least seemingly we can connect with anyone we have a reason to connect with. I call it the Cosmic Internet. The process has been described by some as Active Imagination, which is not the same thing as fantasy. I suggest that you not read this trying to decide whether it is Hemingway speaking, or my idea of Hemingway, or something else, perhaps something we couldn’t even guess. It makes more sense and may prove more useful to you to feel whether the material resonates, in and of itself. Truth is great, and will prevail, but you have to be open to the possibility before it can do so.

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Oh, papa, your For Whom the Bell Tolls! Does it not tell the truth! Such a relief from political lying, even by those on our side — so to speak. Upton Sinclair did not tell the truth as you did.

Upton Sinclair told the truth as Claude Bowers told it — as a form of weapon, as a club to beat the fascists and reactionaries with. But I was trying to do a deeper thing than that. (more…)

9:30 a.m. Sunday March 12, 2006

All right, friends, I am going to be working on the assumption that I am working on a book about guidance – sort of not realizing it – this past 15 years, not to say 40. As Henry sat at Walden accumulating the wisdom and experience that became Walden, he thought he was doing something entirely different, at first, which was writing A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, which wasn’t nearly so important. And perhaps I have been doing the same. So – comments, suggestions? Oh, and what was going on Friday night/ Saturday morning?

You understand me instinctively in the same way you understood Colin Wilson, and the result is that our consciousnesses and yours are linked in ways unsuspected by the outside world. Walden is a finished product, and could never be changed now because too many minds link to it, and share their being with it. But I live, and I am affected, as are we all by each other. (more…)

[Friday March 10, 2006]

Michael Ventura had said, as a joke,  if I started channeling Elvis to be careful – but that made me think about it and I had a vivid sense of how imprisoned his life became. Hell.

Elvis, if you’d like to me to pass a message to Michael I am willing.

 The imprisonment of fame

 Thank you very much. (That’s a joke.) We do hear when our name is called, or anyway it’s sort of that way. And what the connecting mind knows, we know. At least, I do, or that’s how it seems to me. So I know your conversations. It seems to me that communicating through email isn’t much different from talking between the worlds, as you say.

I do have this to say. You both made the right decision, avoiding fame. Prison describes it exactly. I used to look out at the room full of people, in Vegas, say, and they all liked me, they weren’t mean about it, but they envied me, and I thought how they were all going to go back to wherever it was they lived and they were going to do what they wanted and nobody would much care. And my world kept getting smaller. I had my little bunch of pals – but that wasn’t really healthy, for me or for them. Hangers-on aren’t really pals. And my wife and even my baby – how was I to have a normal family life when nothing in my life was normal? But there wasn’t any way to get back to normal, even by failure. And the funny thing is, I’d have been happy being just somebody normal who sang. I loved performing, and I’d have sung for myself if nobody had listened – but all that money, and everybody wanting a piece of me, and people looking at me with this craziness in their eyes, wanting something that God Himself couldn’t give them—

People criticize the uppers and downers and the booze, but they don‘t understand, that was what was real in my life after a while. That wasn’t the craziness, it was the escape from the craziness.

Yes, I was created to open up the doors and blow in some fresh air and I did that. But at the same time,  I had to live a life as a human being, and that proved to be too much to do. You two stop and think – you think of me as older than you because that’s how it started – but you’re much older now than I ever got. And you’re managing your lives.

I hope you don’t think I’m complaining about getting to be Elvis Presley! But part of that involved living in a box that just got smaller and smaller the longer I went on. It was good to squeeze out of it.

Thank you for listening to me – and Frank, if you’ll think on why your father liked me, it will tell you something about him.

Yes I get it already. Thank you.

[Thursday March 9, 2006]

Woodrow Wilson on the creation of the Federal Reserve System

(9:40 p.m.) A first, a “by request” attempt to reach a specific historical individual. In this case it is Woodrow Wilson, at my brother Paul’s suggestion.

“Here is the quote. If you reach Mr. Wilson, before you ask him about the late amendment ask first if he ever actually said this:

“`I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men.’ -Woodrow Wilson”

Mr. Wilson, my brother makes the excellent suggestion that I try to contact you to see if we can get the truth about the creation of the Federal Reserve System. We see that this will be valuable for two reasons if successful. First, because I don’t know the answer and so will know that this information (not just opinion) did not come from me, and second because we would like to know the facts. Many a conspiracy theory has been spun around the Federal Reserve system and it would be valuable to get to someone whose knowledge and word we trust.

You know perhaps that I have admired your work for years, though not without reservation. And we were told years ago that there is a direct connection between the author of any book and anyone who ever reads it. So let us see if that is so. I read your Division and Reunion at least twice – very interesting book, by the way.

Did you say it, or write it, and if so, where and when, and if not did you say anything like it? (more…)

Thursday March 9, 2006

Books as weapons

(6:30 p.m.) I don’t mean to quarrel, Mr. Bowers, but the final taste your book leaves in my mouth is one of partisanship. All the nobility on one side, rascality the only motive on the other side. It is overdone, and ultimately doesn’t wash. This book looks to have been written at least in part for partisan purposes, not as a testimonial. It is somewhere between history, journalism, and propaganda.

Say that is so, it will not find itself alone on the shelf! As I said, books are written to be tools or weapons, not as monuments.

Well, I think it might have had a longer life had it been balanced.

And with the Republicans still in charge of the national government – which in context meant the manufacturing and financial interests of whom the Republican Party was the wholly owned subsidiary – where was the corresponding fairness that would have balanced the picture? Does it occur to you, sometimes excess balances excess, and moderation does not.

Evidently my place is not in politics.

Nor in warfare, and this is no slight upon you. The world has a crying need for gentle souls who shrink from landing blows for fear of the damage and pain they would thereby inflict. What do you think it was that was killing Lincoln right along, before the assassination plot succeeded? He would not hurt a fly, and yet he was placed so that by his inaction he would cause more hurt than his action, yet his entire being revolted against the necessity.

Surely it is less hurtful to shade a picture than to starve a nation of workmen, and women, and children.

I understand what you are saying. It amounts to “this is war.” But I agree with Eric Sevareid, I think it was, who said “the chief cause of problems is solutions.” So the chief cause of outrages is revenge. Yet I can see your point too.

The ability to see many sides of an issue is valuable and can be of great use to a people. But it is not a characteristic of political leadership.

Joseph’s reaction

Okay, enough of this. I am glad to have read your book, and I suppose it is a corrective to Joseph’s views, somewhat. Joseph? (more…)

[I sent this post out to my friends feeling particularly vulnerable, for reasons that will appear.]

Not being particularly fond of the idea of being laughed at, I still don’t see any choice but to send this out, as either one tells the truth about one’s experiences, or one does not. But this process sure leaves me feeling naked.

Thursday March 9, 2006

9 a.m. All right, Mr. Bowers. I was thinking about your point of view – being now within a couple of chapters of the end – and I still don’t entirely agree with you. For instance, I think some form of compensation was owed slaves and slave-owner alike, though I can see why Unionists would ask bitterly why they should give any of their tax money to pay the families who had caused the rebellion and the war. You know Emerson’s response to a proposal that the slave owners should be compensated. He agreed:

But who is the owner?

The slave is owner

And ever was. Pay him.

It seems to me appropriate to take the lands of the slaveholders and divide them among their slaves – not just their slaves, but taking the total pool, dividing it among the total pool of ex-slave families. It would have been a horrible mess to untangle, but worse than what resulted? And the shareowners need not have been left with nothing. In fact, perhaps some form or compensated emancipation could have compulsorily bought the land – thus giving the slave owners something for the capital in slaves they were losing – and giving homesteads to the black families out of that land. If we could give homesteads to white immigrants, why not to black ex-slaves some of whose ancestors had been there two hundred years? I think that your denying any such adjustment is merely taking one side of an argument and ignoring the other. (more…)

[Wednesday March 8, 2006]

Revolutions

(11:40) I was thinking about what at first seemed obvious – politics follows your interest – and realize it isn’t as simple as it first appeared. I am sort of residually a Democrat. I don’t like them much but I detest so much of the Republican rhetoric and adventurism. But if I were to decide which party to belong to (assuming I had to choose either one!) and wanted to decide it on my economic interests, I don’t know where I should be! I believe the Republicans are ruining the economy, so I can’t see any advantage to me of being with the party that is presiding over ruin – but I don’t see that the Democrats have actually done anything different even when they had power, so where are we? We need a new party but I find it hard to believe that will solve anything.

You are learning. Look at what you just derived simply from asking yourself which party lay closer to your economic interests. Your time has been overshadowed by its own version of the bloody flag – social issues. Abortion, the flag controversies, all the social controversies that have polarized you into units not primarily rooted in your economic interests. Civil Rights among them, I would remind you. This serves certain background groups very well, as they would be seriously outnumbered if people were voting their economic interests. (more…)