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Letter #1
This month's book.
Highly Recommended!
The
Marriage of Sense and Soul : Integrating Science and Religion
by Ken Wilber
This month's link.
Jan Cox
Industrial Strength
Mysticism
Last month's link.
Enlightenment.com
Telesterion Letter #1
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TELESTERION
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The "Study" of "Consciousness and Spirituality";
Why is it all such crap?
There are millions of pages devoted to
consciousness, spirituality, esotericism, enlightenment, and self-development listed
in the various search engines. Aside from pornography, it is arguably the most common,
definitely among the most common, type of content on the web.
Millions of pages. Most of it is true crap.
Some of it is merely sophomoric crap. A very small amount is sincere and well meant crap.
An even smaller percentage of that is quality crap.*
Why am I calling it crap? Because nobody's
saying anything new. What 'new' there is comes when scientific discoveries (gaia
hypothesis, quantum physics, 'hundredth monkey**') are integrated into the idioms of
popular spirituality; or thru the pseudo-new cycles of "rediscovery" of
angels, shamanism, crystals, magick and so forth.
Apparently, we have millions of people working
on this topic, but we are failing to discover much of anything new with our
"studies" of "spirituality and consciousness".
Now, go with me here. If we are not discovering
much of anything new with this "inner work", and are mostly rehashing old
material, why is that? Why is there so much crap?
Possible answers:
We're all full of crap, so crap is all we
produce.
We're all working with world-explanations
(all the stuff we've gotten from the books published these last hundred years) that are
fundamentally flawed, and therefore can produce no new discoveries.
Our methods of "study" are, as in 2
above, fundamentally flawed, and therefore can produce no new discoveries.
There is nothing new to discover, we're stuck
with the crap we've got.
Angels from the Pleiades will soon bring us
all the original new material we could possibly hope for...
(insert your own string of possible further
answers here).
Now, what answers do I, as a self-claimed
authority on such matters, think are most likely? Well, number 1, we're all full of crap,
has to be seriously considered. But, 2 and 3, the suggestion that our world-explanations
and our methods of study must be flawed, must contain mistakes, is the conclusion that I
have come reached with my 32 years of intensive study and practice.
For those of you who care, who also consider
yourselves to be self-taught, self-claimed experts on "consciousness and
spirituality", I invite you to work with me and try to produce some small amount of
truly original, more accurate and useful spiritual materials.
Or, if that fails, to at least produce a better
grade of crap.
Peace for all we beings,
Bill Eichman
telester@telesterion.com
* This site, telesterion, is mostly sophomoric crap in
it's earlier pages. I'm hoping to add more quality crap. As far as sincere and well
meaning-- well, mostly I'm just hoping to help a few people not be as big an idiot as I
was when I was a younger "student of consciousness and spirituality".
** Yes, I know, the so-called hundredth monkey effect
was the product of a popular writer, not science; I'm including it as an example of just
that type of credulity and 'scientific spirituality'.
Some quality crap by a fellow who also
will tell you that it's all crap.
http://www.jancox.com/mysticism.htm
Jan Cox, a Gurdjieff-line teacher, worth checking
out.
http://www.jancox.com/Index.htm
REAL ANCIENT MYSTERIES:
Paleolithic Painted Caves on the Net
Here's some stuff on the net that I think should be
of major interest to all "students of consciousness and spirituality"; the sites
devoted to the fantastic painted caves created by ancient "students of consciousness
and spirituality", the cro-magnon artist-geniuses who left there commentary on their
discoveries in the form of fragile painting in deep grotto "chapels".
This stuff amazes me. For tens of thousands of years
we humans have been struggling to understand our minds, our lives. These paintings are the
first scriptures, the first nouminous vision reports, the first narratives, the first
human stories ever recorded.
We are not the first. We will not be the last.
How will we be remembered by those who follow us?
The Cave at Lascaux
http://www.daap.uc.edu/CERHAS/benb/entry.htm
This takes you to a partial 'virtual reality' photo-tour of the cave at lascaux. The first
picture is the entry of the cave as it appears today, then you get a view entering the
first room, the rotunda with it's animal portraits high on the white calcite ceiling, a
procession of animals leading to the gleaming white tunnel of the passageway at the far
end of the room. It's pretty good-- gave me chills, but then, I really love the cave at
lascaux. Sadly, the "tour" ends in the passageway, and the page makers throw in
some relatively gratuitous earth, air, water, etc images.
http://www.daap.uc.edu/CERHAS/lascaux.htm
Here's a sample from that 'virtual reality'.
Beautiful! Check these out full size!
The magnificent shamanic mystery painting
from the pit of the wounded man at Lascaux.
http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/
This is France's 'official' site; and they've been clever with it,
starting it with a java splash page that puts a 'light' around your cursor, letting you
discover the main image as if exploring a cave, until the rest of the page finishes
loading and suddenly appears. Looks like it was designed with students in mind, but it's
well done. Take the virtual visit. Check out the excellent map!
This is CHAUVET, one of the newest
discoveries of cave art.
http://www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/gvpda-d.htm
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