OLD LANDMARKS AND IDENTITY
Many years ago, believing I had left the hallowed
halls of theology forever to explore the loftier
towers of metaphysics, I wrote a long paper on
Identity. It was a hundred pages of theological and
metaphysical discussion that few, if any-including
myself-fully understood. Then, years later, nineteen
years ago, after many Glimpses of new light, many
Gordian Knots untied, retied, and untied again, I
wrote of my most "absolute" discoveries and of the
subjective views they permitted. That book had but a
single chapter on Identity.
Today, having found that one does not leave old
landmarks but takes their wisdom with him to
continually resurvey a single Scene from ever higher
perspectives, I write once more of Identity--what it
is, where it is, what it does, how I found it and
what I learned to do with it when it was truly
found.
Now I speak of Identity in a single
word--Child. What I did to find Myself can be written in
a simple, old/new equation. While it isn't certain how
many will find the word or understand the equation, it
is important that these things be written, clearly and
simply, so they will be meaningful to those who are
searching.
QUANTUM MAN TODAY AND THE RIVER OF
LIFE
Present civilization and its
organizations (religious, philosophical, educational,
scientific, financial) are like the great bend in the
river of life just before the shallows ahead-just before
the unsuspected turbulence of subjectivism when life
roars through the narrow passages. Historic
education-religious education in particular-has paid
little attention to its prophets. It has deemed
subjectivism too unsettling and difficult to teach. Our
temptation is to hang on to the old ways where few
demands are made and the familiar pacifies us. But the
River of Life is moving relentlessly in growing, ongoing
information, and the River of Life includes
the rapids of metaphysical subjectivism whether
churchdom and science want to examine it and tell of it
or not. As content as we might be in our religious
views-or in avoiding spiritual matters altogether as so
many do-the end of the quiet time looms for everyone. We
are approaching a New View of things. The world is
already caught in the swift flow of quantum information
leading to new knowledge and strange, startling vistas.
For the new perspectives being thrust
upon us, neither the objective studies of
religion nor the subjective studies of metaphysics,
as they are presented today, will be adequate. The
tumult we are already facing insists that mankind, if he
is to survive, begin to think in a new way.
Humanity, with its physical sciences leading, is soon to
confirm the insubstantial nature of matter and time.
PROUD SCIENTISTS AND METAPHYSICIANS
Even beyond the turbulence of
subjectivism, there are sticking places where physical
scientists and metaphysicians are loitering along the
banks, wading in the shallows of arrogance and
self-superiority. In this world of appearances,
metaphysicians wax, wane and suffer no less than anyone
else and, in the end, they find their brands of
subjectivism inadequately meeting their own needs, much
less the needs of the world. Caught in the sterile void
of "absoluteness," the suffering subjectivist faces an
awful anguish and wonders why his metaphysics does not
work as it did in the beginning, why his organizations
languish and why there are no more answers now than a
hundred years ago. This book is for the metaphysician,
the physicist and astronomer who want more Light- and
the answers to those questions.
Once I wrote of the chemical insanity
that would smash the world-and it did. Now I speak of a
new madness in the name of pseudo-metaphysics to shake
the world, wherein much of mankind will find its faith
in everything shattered, unable to find God's
good in anything, anywhere, outside himself.
Completely unaware of it, the bastions of legitimate
subjectivism face an attack from every quarter by an
insecure and threatened "religion," in the NAME of
religion which isn't working either. The only ones who
won't be conquered in the melee already begun,
objectivist and subjectivist alike, will be those who
have moved onward in their studies to FIND the Light of
the Child within themselves and follow Its leadings
rather than the world's.
THE TREE OF LIFE IS SOON TO BLOOM
In the days ahead, when the flowering
begins, those who run with the Child will be part of
the flower and the seed.
As time goes, physical science will soon
understand what time and space are actually about. In a
very literal sense, we are approaching the end of human
ignorance. If the prophets are right-and they have been
remarkably right to date-our reach to the limits of
light, human understanding, corresponds to a period of
tumult in personal and world affairs. Therefore, we have
only a short rime remaining to turn from our
self-limiting views, slough off the old sense of
ignorance with its cherished notions, and awaken to the
Child of Identity and Its birthright.
But that isn't the end of things either.
Humanity is soon to make a spiritual and metaphysical
breakout into a new day, a new time and space. Those who
find the Child within, and listen to Its Covenant, are
to DO what they have been intended to do from the
beginning of linear history. Another "dimension" is
to be added! This book is about that.
The reader has a role to play in these
events. This volume would not have come into your hands
unless you were to be a part of the story soon to
unfold.
HOW TO READ THIS BOOK
Dear Reader,
Truth, however it is expressed-whether
it is the physics of the world or the jargon of the
mystic-contains layer upon layer of meaning, addressing
every human condition and state of comprehension.
Consider David's Twenty-Third Psalm. His words "I shall
not want" mean something to the trusting child, to the
fearful heart of the soldier, to the anguished lover,
the worried business man, the invalid, the mother and
father. It is a meaningful statement to the aging heart
of one grown weary of the world or to any human
condition one might imagine. Isn't that true? If those
four words can mean so much to so many, is it any wonder
that some meanings may elude us for the moment?
Reader, do not struggle with this book.
Read gently. If something seems vague, do not puzzle
overmuch, but read on. Things that aren't clear
immediately will become clear later, and when you have
an opportunity to reread small sections, you will be
delighted to find that the book has become new again.
Repetition is not necessarily repetition. With each
Glimpse the entire book is new-and so is our
world-because it is yet to be surveyed in the light just
discovered. There is more to read on each topic in the
RELATED PAPERS section of the book.
SPECIAL NOTE One of the grandest gifts I
could give the reader is to introduce two small volumes:
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS and LaoTse's TAO TE
CHING. You may be familiar with them already. If not,
you will enjoy them mightily.
The Thomas "sayings of Jesus" came into
my studies around 1958 when they were first published in
English. They came ringing a Hallelujah Chorus of bells
within me, confirming my own insights and intuitions of
many years, just as the TAO TE CHING had done earlier.
Now, these years later, the authenticity and antiquity
of "Thomas" is an established fact recognized by
scholars the world around, and I am not the only one to
deduce that both men are making essentially the same
subjective statement-and addressing the innocent,
guiltless Child within us all.
These two books require a reading from a
"subjective" point of view wherein they make a
consistent metaphysics. Neither book can be comprehended
by the Western set of mind that views "things" as
separate objects "out there" in the world.
If the reader should find unfamiliar
quotations from Jesus as he reads this book, he can find
them in THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS.
It might be well to note that LaoTse
preceded Jesus in history by about five centuries. The
scholar can follow the Gnostic Idea from East to West to
its birth as a doctrine of Love in the first century
A.D.-only to have all but traces of its original
subjectivism removed from worldly view within the first
500 years of its history. Interestingly, this is what
both Jesus and LaoTse said would happen-and the prophets
before them. However, both men say, in nearly identical
terms, that in the final days of linear time "There is
nothing hidden that shall not be revealed, and there is
nothing covered that shall remain without being
uncovered."
