A man of mystery

D.H. Lawrence was a most remarkable, uniquely gifted, man of mystery. I think that, over the years, my favorite reading has been biography and autobiography, especially of the most creative men and women in our long evolutionary journey.

D.H. Lawrence stands out of the crowd as one who, according to his friend, Aldous Huxley, “was always intensely aware of the Mystery of the world, and the Mystery was always for him divine.”

My memory takes me back to the time and place where this man first made entry into my consciousness – Taos, New Mexico in the 1970s. It was my custom to spend 3 or 4 weeks every summer in Taos, with my dear friends, Frank and Barbara Waters. Frank had just been nominated the second time for the Nobel prize in Literature and was in rare spirits. They told me I had to stop by the LaFonda Hotel on the square and see the erotic art of D.H. Lawrence.

I was well aware of his fame as the writer of Lady Chatterley’s Lover and so forth, and later realized that fame had tended to eclipse his paintings and artwork. He was a keen painter of life, and in his last years painting was his favored activity. With Frank and Barbara telling me much more about Lawrence it became obviously apparent that in Lawrence was a genuine and authentic Renaissance man.

In finding out more about Lawrence and his love of Taos I learned that he was adored by the Queen social bee, Mabel Dodge Luhan, who as a present of affection for him, gave him a ranch of thousands of acres outside Taos, that is still there today with many Lawrence memories and artifacts.

Lawrence created many beautiful and elegant love poems, as well as his erotic paintings. This has motivated some of the more moralistic thin-lipped in our culture to dismiss his talents, if you can imagine. Lawrence hated pornography. Sexual expression for him was a thing of beauty and life. I have never read a finer statement about Lawrence and sexuality than one by Aldous Huxley: “For Lawrence, the significance of sexual experience was this: that in it, the immediate, non-mental knowledge of a divine otherness is brought to a focus. Sex is something that makes for life… for divineness… and for UNION with the MYSTERY. Or as Kierkegaard put it: ‘There is a spiritual world beyond the ethical.’” Read more

The mysterious genius

If you do not know one of the most brilliant minds in the history of civilization, it is time you were introduced.  I am talking about HERACLITUS of Ephesus (500 b.c.e.) who 2,500 years before Einstein declared that energy is the essence of matter, that everything becomes energy in flux, in relativity.

“All things change to fire,
and fire exhausted
falls back into things.”

The writings of Heraclitus have been the inspiration for Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Socrates, Montaigne, Nietzsche, Heidegger, as well as Carl Jung.

The early Greek thinkers asked the most serious question of how the world was made from a void and how it was sustained. Heraclitus also asked questions about us, as human beings, as Homo sapiens, how to best survive and live in harmony with such an awesome creation.

Ahead of Emerson by 2,500 years, (who said the same thing later) he said “Nothing is secure. Nothing is stable. Everything is in flux. In paradox he said that declarations will always be self-contradictory, relative and subjective. Like Pascal’s “Truth on this side of the mountain is falsehood on the other side.” Like the Yin and Yang of Taoism with complimentary opposites, always fluid, flexible, never absolutes. Like “all values are relative to the mind that entertains them.”

Heraclitus was a genius in bringing our language into cosmological thinking. Of all his writings, one of my favorites is: “People dull their wits with gibberish, and cannot use their ears and eyes. They lack the skill to listen or to speak.”

There are no absolutes. Everything is in change. You cannot know the world by logic or mathematics. As Jung put it: “Logic and reason are the two great diseases of our time.” Or Pascal: “the heart has reasons that reason can never know.” And Heraclitus: “By cosmic rule, all things change… the sun is new again, all day… the river where you set your foot just now, is gone… those waters giving way to this, now this.”

There are so many brilliant and sparkling jewels in his thoughts, my frustration is in deciding which ones to quote to stimulate your hunger for more.

There is never any sloppy emotionalism in the thinking of Heraclitus. He goes straight to the problems in so much hogwash that passes as “thinking.”

“The poet is a fool who wants no war and no conflict. The mind needs strength.” He would not be a follower of the holistic healers of the New Age. He does not drift into fantasy or wishful thinking, spoon-fed to the masses by religion. Your fantasies will tell you nothing about what comes after death. The unknown is not revealed by something we call “faith.” Read more

To live with wonder

If we are fortunate, at some point before we die, we can discover WONDER. For we who have become so preoccupied with gaining and spending, with winning and losing, have lost sight of the miracles around us. Wonder is the capacity of sustained joy and awe. Wonder is a sense of freshness and spontaneity. Every day is a surprise party. Life is a cafeteria of delights, a new flower, a hummingbird hovering, a cucumber cucumbering.

To sense the ultimate in the common and in the rush of the passing, stillness in the eternal is to live with wonder, with “Ah.”

The purpose of religion for thousands of years has been to put human life into direct contact with the life of the cosmos, mountain life, desert life, cloud life, sun life, moon life, water life, rain life, snow life, plant life, animal life, storm life, rock life, and so receive energy, joy, and transformation. That is why the seasons of Solstice and Equinox are so important in the celebrations of so many traditions.

Today, physicists are telling us that their understanding of “reality,” the nature and activity of the universe is bringing us closer and closer to the perspective of the ancient Eastern religions, especially Hinduism and classical Taoism.

We are a part of the cosmic dance, and all is one. Physicists assure us now that rocks and flowers dance with the dance of life. Trees dance to the wind. Salmon and trout and porpoise dance and leap with a ballet of grace and rhythm. Planets dance to beautifully intricate laws, even as do atoms. There is no line between the sacred and the profane, the supernatural and natural, the divine and the human. ALL is natural, ALL is sacred. ALL is divine. It is asked of us even as the carpenter asked in Alice in Wonderland: “Will you, won’t you, will you, won’t you, will you join the dance?” A recently translated Dead Sea Scroll records a disciple asking Jesus, “Master, how can we get into the Kingdom of Heaven?” Jesus answers, “Follow the birds, the beasts, the fish, and they will lead you in.”

Classical Taoism has been saying that for 3000 and more years. The Old Master of Taoism, Lao Tzu, born about 600 B.C. was immaculately conceived by a shooting star, according to legend. He did not preach or organize any doctrine or theology. He spoke only of our at-oneness with the universe and the harmony that exists between all things. The Tao (pronounced “Dow”) does not refer to a supernatural “god” out there, somewhere.

Do you want to see the Living Tao? Look into a wood burning fire and see the sun’s energy dancing, as captured by photosynthesis. Watch a bird in flight, soaring on the current and never stopping to analyze or explain the wind. Listen to the sound of rain, which needs no translation. Watch a salmon leap up the next set of rapids. Watch a bee gathering pollen. The Tao is the way of ultimate reality. It says, “Get yourself in tune and harmony with the natural rhythms of nature and the universe, and then let yourself flow without strain, tension and anxiety. It is a perspective and view of life that can be used daily in the busiest office in downtown San Francisco or New York City. It changes the way you approach problems. Read more

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