"I of my own knowledge…"

Several sessions with the guys upstairs on Monday, May 14, 2007 resulted in my talking to Gene Roddenberry, who provided some very interesting material about society and the individual and the process of inspiring society with new ways of seeing things. I had recently been watching Star Trek videos between re-reading Upton Sinclair’s Lanny Budd novels.

7:30 a.m. Star Trek and Lanny Budd. Strange combination.
All right, my friends, I am ready and willing.

There are several points to be considered together:
- quality in the external life of the individuals in the community
- individual interest as actually community interest seen out of context
- dissatisfaction – unnecessary dissatisfaction – in what is possible within community
- all this as a parallel to what we have been saying of your internal lives.

(more…)

In human terms, how are we to describe… our own Western civilization, or any other of the 10 or 20 civilizations which we can count up on our fingers? In human terms, I should say that each of these civilizations is, while in action, a distinctive attempt at a single great common human experience, or, when it is seen in retrospect, after the action is over, it is a distinctive instance of a single great common human experience. The enterprise or experience is an effort to perform an act of creation. In each of these civilizations, mankind, I think, is trying to rise above mere humanity — above primitive humanity, that is, — toward some higher kind of spiritual life. One cannot depict the goal because it has never been reached, — or, rather, I should say that it has never been reached by any human society. It has, perhaps, been reached by individual men and women. At least, I can think of certain saints and sages…. But if there have been a few transfigured men and women, there has never been such a thing as a civilized society. Civilization, as we know it, is a movement and not a condition, a voyage and not a harbor. No known civilization has ever reached the goal of civilization yet. There has never been a communion of saints on earth. In the least uncivilized society at its least uncivilized moment, the vast majority of its members have remained very near indeed to the primitive human level. And no society has ever been secure of holding such ground as it has managed to gain in its spiritual advance.

Arnold Toynbee, Civilization on Trial

In ancient Egypt (so says Joan Grant, in Winged Pharaoh), the priests used this formula in their teaching: “I of my own knowledge tell you that this is the truth.”

Not, “This is what I have been taught,” but, “I of my own knowledge…”

Where, today, would we find equivalent knowledge? Equivalent institutions?

Our universities and churches cannot produce such teachers. They teach what is said to be true, or might be true, or ought to be true, or what we wish were true. But knowledge cannot be transmitted by those who do not know.

Who has first-hand knowledge of the true nature of physical-matter reality? Of the worlds beyond physical life? Of what we as individuals and as groups can achieve?

In this, religion and science both have failed us.

Religion fails us in attempting to teach from faith rather than from personal knowledge. This leads naturally to a demand for faith and obedience as substitutes for study and knowledge.

Science fails us in refusing to investigate certain categories of experience or thought (such as what people call the supernatural, whether labeled as religion or parapsychology) because it believes, before investigation, that these categories of experience are nonsense.

In both cases, this failure is not necessarily the result of hierarchies scheming to obtain and retain power. Just as often, it is the result of people not realizing that first-hand knowledge is there to be obtained.

Obviously, there is no sense in denying that religion and science have worth, that they are at least partly based on truth, that at best they are based on a desire to find truth. But each is more valuable when it grounds its view of the nature of the universe less on inherited beliefs (no matter how widespread) and more on first-hand knowledge.

We are starving for that knowledge. In fact, we often kill others, and may kill ourselves, substituting arbitrary certainty for knowledge that we do not have. Uncertainty – and the fear that uncertainty brings – leads individuals and societies to do desperate things. If you don’t know, you must rely on faith. But faith implies doubt. Doubt – and the resulting repression of doubt – breed fanaticism and intolerance. Worse, they breed ignorance pretending to infallibility, which breeds charlatans and blind followers.

The good news is that first-hand knowledge is available.

From work at The Monroe Institute and elsewhere, I learned how to obtain first-hand knowledge of life beyond what our society considers normal. I learned how to extend my abilities in ways that our society considers to be impossible. My experience shed light on the reality that has been described (and repeatedly misunderstood) in scripture the world over.

I am not an Egyptian priest, and I cannot transfer my first-hand knowledge. But I can tell how you may obtain your own first-hand knowledge, and I can offer my own preliminary report of my own findings.

That’s what this site is all about. Among other things, I will share with you true stories that give a sense of what first-hand experience makes possible, hoping to describe my journey of self-discovery (self-creation?) in such a way as to encourage you on your own journey.

I of my own knowledge tell you what follows.

This blog is about you, or rather us.

I was well into middle age before I discovered what I knew all along had to exist somewhere. Even when I was very young, I knew that human life as we commonly experience it is not right, is strangely not the real thing.

When I was 24 I happened upon a science fiction novel by Colin Wilson called The Mind Parasites that expressed perfectly what I was feeling: the mental and spiritual powers commonly unsuspected in our benighted society were our birthright, but had been somehow lost. It took more than 20 years before I found the key to recapturing them, but I did find it — or rather, I found them, for there are different doors for different types of people, and we each can enter only the ones for which we are fitted. But the important thing — the thing worth shouting from the rooftops — is that the doors, and the keys, exist!

Your life has meaning, and with sincere effort you can find that meaning. When you do you will realize that it is the pearl of great price: You will gladly sell all that you own to obtain it.

If I can do for you what Colin’s book did for me — if I can encourage you and point you in the right direction — I will be well pleased.