"I of my own knowledge…"

From an interview with the English journalist Frederick Sands in 1955, published in C.G. Jung Speaking.

“It seems to me we have reached the limit of our evolution — the point from which we can advance no further. Man started from an unconscious state and has ever striven for greater consciousness. The development of consciousness is the burden, the suffering, and the blessing of mankind. Each new discovery leads to greater consciousness, and the path along which we are going is merely an extension of it. This inevitably calls for greater responsibility and enforces a great change in ourselves. We must draw conclusions from what we know and discover, and not take everything for granted.

“Man has come to be man’s worst enemy. It is a clash between man and God, in which man’s Luciferan genius has produced in the H-bomb the power to destroy more effectively than any ancient god could. We must begin to learn about man until every Jekyll can see his Hyde.”

If I had the time and energy, and were scholar enough, I would write a history of the 20th century as the century of the great war about God. It has reached end-game status in our time, I think. Those who believe in God and those who believe in No-God stand and glare at each other, no more able to find common ground than those entangled in our toxic political culture, and for much the same reason. Those in the middle, seeing some valid points being made on each side, experience the usual fate of people who can see with more than one eye: They are ignored, or are attacked  by both sides.

This is one reason I wrote The Cosmic Internet, or rather, this may be one reason the material in the book was given me by the guys upstairs. Our time is desperately in need of an intellectually respectable vision of the afterlife.

In the absence of such a revisioning, it is damned hard to make progress, because people talk right past each other. For instance, Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, in an interview with English journalist Frederick Sands in 1955, said among other things the following:

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Saturday, August 14, 2010

4:30 AM. Finished making notes, and noting themes, through January 2006. Tremendous amount of work to do yet.

I have two alternate questions, but am open to suggestion.

The question from Jim and Carol is a good one to address.

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Friends,

About a decade ago, by way of an email from Colin Wilson, I got to know a remarkable Englishman, about my age, named Robert Clarke. Robert was a quiet man who had been led through the individuation process by the works of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and, remarkably, by some 30,000 dreams. These dreams, and that process, changed a relatively uneducated man into an independent scholar and mystic. Delving deeply into the realms of philosophy, religion, and psychology, he discovered unsuspected connections between the world of the unconscious and the world of our history, tradition, and scriptures, because the things that scripture and mythology describe, he had experienced as spontaneous productions from his own dream world. In other words, he had experienced just the process that Carl Jung’s work described.

Robert and I met only twice (when I visited England in 2003 and 2007 specifically to see him) but via email he and I became friends, or perhaps I should say we discovered that we were already friends and just hadn’t yet discoverer each other. Hampton Roads published his first two books, which sold modestly and not nearly as well as they deserved to do.

Then last spring he emailed me to say that he had only a few months to live, because the cancer that had been found was pretty far advanced. He was fine with dying – we owe God a death, and he who dies this year is quit for the next, after all, and Robert had long since lost any doubts he had ever had about immortality – but he had three unpublished manuscripts, and he hated to think that the work he had put into them might have been for nothing.

As he had no better prospects, I told him I would publish them. Robert died last fall, but not before he had a chance to review and approve my content-editing.

Today, nearly a year after his death, the books are produced and in house, ready for sale. I think they’re pretty important.

The Royal Line of Christ the Logos shows how the West lost its way when it began to regard the Christian mystery as an outdated superstition. This, in turn, happened because Christian orthodoxy ceased to realize that the Christ phenomenon was not a matter of someone’s biography but was a as a concrete, explicit expression of the psychological process of individuation. Gnostic Christians retained this understanding. (Robert explains that the Gnostics’ teachings sprang from direct experience, and that “these sects, largely Christian in esoteric ways, existed side-by-side with the orthodox Christians. Their teachings were based upon direct inner experience. Like Jung, the Gnostics had no need to merely believe, they knew.”) But the hierarchy did not, and the exoteric view they taught people ultimately failed, which is where we are now. In The Royal Line of Christ the Logos, Robert shows the path not taken.

Books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail assert that Jesus was the originator of an actual physical bloodline. In The Grail, the Stone and the Mystics, Robert shows why he believed that this is a materialist misunderstanding. The Grail legends refer to psychological processes — the marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene as the sacred marriage through the unconscious, and the child is the divine child in the inner processes, ultimately what the Greek mysteries called the Logos. Using insights from the work of Carrion and from his own individuation processes, he investigates the related subjects of the Grail, the philosopher’s stone, alchemy, and the visions of saints such as St. Teresa of Avila.

The Sacred Journey is in two parts. Part one presents a remarkable treatise on Jung and his discoveries and what they mean to the world—particularly the West. Part two is divided among several elements: Mme. Blavatsky, Frederick Nietzsche, Marian visions, UFOs, and aliens. What holds the book together is that all of these elements in their own way further develop the theme of the interconnection of history (culture, civilization, etc.) and the processes and manifestations of the unconscious as experienced by individuals. The result is a stimulating re-visioning of what has been going on around us for the past hundred years—and an equally stimulating suggestion as to what lies ahead.

Thanks to the behind-the-scenes wizardry of my friend Rich Spees, webmaster extraordinaire, all three books are now available on my website, www.hologrambooks.com, and can be ordered separately or at a combined price that will save you a few dollars.

Trust me, this is important work, worthy of your time.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

After 6 AM. As I consider this project in some dismay, I am starting to realize that your goal is as much to get me to move into analytical mode as it is to get out any particular information. Am I right?

Why ask, when you have realized? Of course it is always good to have multiple complementary objectives to be pursued by any line of thought or action. We like efficiency.

Your words about balance being the ability to move certainly struck home with at least one reader, who is herself a dancer, and who explained why it is so.

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Thursday, July 22, 2010

5:30 AM. Yesterday, as I was very aware, was Hemingway’s birthday. Who would have thought he would come to be so much to me? Finished Reynolds’ volume 1, and started re-reading [Jeffrey] Meyers, slowly, which is more interesting this time than the first time. Have not moved in Baker, waiting to get my questions [to Hemingway] in.

As I have talked to people about what I am doing, the question about certainty has presented itself, or rather, my old knowledge that certainty isn’t possible, only resonance. It’s still conceivable that I’m making all this up, regardless how convincing the contacts feel. And just as I could never prove it to anyone else, neither could I prove it to myself. I am left with Jesus’ test — by their fruits you will know them. So far the fruits are joy as I come to each day’s task, enthusiasm and joy, and insight. Or so it seems. But of course I am aware of the danger of leading myself and others astray.

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Monday, July 19, 2010

5:15 AM. Was going to skip this until later, saving my energy, but I guess we’re going ahead. So — what’s today’s theme?

Look to your on-going list.

All right, let’s talk about your relationship to your father. This isn’t quite on my list, but it’s in my mental list, and in fact is in my mind since reading in Reynolds last night. So — your father.

My father. From my perspective now, the subject looks a lot different.

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Tuesday, July 13, 2010

12:30 AM. Papa, let’s talk about your wounding, the out-of-body (or near-death) experience, the aftermath including light, letters, and Agnes, and fear.

All good topics. [Hemingway biographer Carlos] Baker has his uses.

All right. Your first unasked question is — how much of the story as understood is accurate. You’ve read that I carried a man to safety, and you’ve read that it would have been impossible, and you’ve read that I started to, then was hit again and fell and was carried in. You have become wary of anything I said anytime, because of my tendency to spin yarns about my life and exploits. In fact it was this very tendency and your dismay about it that helped hook us up a few years ago. So I’ll try to stick to the trail of the truth.

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Thursday, July 1, 2010

6 AM. All right, I’m ready if you’re ready — or if you- all are ready. Papa, being that tomorrow is the anniversary of yourself-decided transition — and next year makes 50 years since then! — how about if you start?

There will be a time when 50 years as a space of time doesn’t impress you as it does now. Consider how your reaction is different now from even 20 years ago, and then try to see yourself over here for 50 years.

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Tuesday, June 29, 2010

5:30 AM. “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child” running through my head.

A dream in which I and many others had gone — and paid — to hear — Carl Jung? Colin Wilson? — speak. I had spoken of it to dad and he was there — several of my family were there, I think. Jung, not Colin. He spoke briefly and then disappeared and the audience waited and realized he wasn’t coming back. I went after him, climbing up into the bleachers to try to see where he had gone. Went around back somewhere. Was told he had gone, and felt quite bitter about it — it wasn’t fair that he should arrive, speak a few sentences and leave. I said, I think, it was just what Colin did, or was Colin’s fault (meaning, for letting himself be over-scheduled).

Went out to find my car covered in snow needing to be dug out (like all the other cars, of course).

What was that all about, pray?

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