The Last Days of Socrates

Lecture given by H.H. Suhotra Swami

on Bhagavad-gita 2.29,

recorded on 22^nd October 1992

in Heidelberg, Germany

äçcarya-vat paçyati kaçcid enam

äçcarya-vad vadati tathaiva cänyaù

äçcarya-vac cainam anyaù çåëoti

çrutväpy enaà veda na caiva kalcit

TRANSLATION

Some look on the soul as amazing, some describe him as amazing, and some hear of him as amazing, while others, even after hearing about him, cannot understand him at all.

PURPORT

Since Gétopaniñad is largely based on the principles of the Upaniñads, it is not surprising to also find this passage in the Kaöha Upaniñad (1.2.7):

çravaëayäpi bahubhir yo na labhyaù

çåëvanto 'pi bahavo yaà na vidyuù

äçcaryo vaktä kuçalo 'sya labdhä

äçcaryo 'sya jïätä kuçalänuçiñöaù

The fact that the atomic soul is within the body of a gigantic animal, in the body of a gigantic banyan tree, and also in the microbic germs, millions and billions of which occupy only an inch of space, is certainly very amazing. Men with a poor fund of knowledge and men who are not austere cannot understand the wonders of the individual atomic spark of spirit, even though it is explained by the greatest authority of knowledge, who imparted lessons even to Brahmä, the first living being in the universe. Owing to a gross material conception of things, most men in this age cannot imagine how such a small particle can become both so great and so small. So men look at the soul proper as wonderful either by constitution or by description. Illusioned by the material energy, people are so engrossed in subject matters for sense gratification that they have very little time to understand the question of self-understanding, even though it is a fact that without this self-understanding all activities result in ultimate defeat in the struggle for existence. Perhaps they have no idea that one must think of the soul, and thus make a solution to the material miseries.

Some people who are inclined to hear about the soul may be attending lectures, in good association, but sometimes, owing to ignorance, they are misguided by acceptance of the Supersoul and the atomic soul as one without distinction of magnitude. It is very difficult to find a man who perfectly understands the position of the Supersoul, the atomic soul, their respective functions and relationships and all other major and minor details. And it is still more difficult to find a man who has actually derived full benefit from knowledge of the soul, and who is able to describe the position of the soul in different aspects. But if, somehow or other, one is able to understand the subject matter of the soul, then one's life is successful.

The easiest process for understanding the subject matter of self, however, is to accept the statements of the Bhagavad-gétä spoken by the greatest authority, Lord Kåñëa, without being deviated by other theories. But it also requires a great deal of penance and sacrifice, either in this life or in the previous ones, before one is able to accept Kåñëa as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Kåñëa can, however, be known as such by the causeless mercy of the pure devotee and by no other way. 

LECTURE BY HH SUHOTRA SWAMI:

So this verse and purport reminds me of Srila Prabhupada’s appreciation for the Greek philosopher Socrates. Prabhupada said in the whole history of the western civilization there was only one philosopher. Socrates. Because he was a mukta purusha, he was a librated soul. So Socrates was much appreciated by Srila Prabhupada, because he was preaching atma jnana, he was preaching this very knowledge of the soul, which is presented here in the second chapter of the Bhagavad-gita, but he was preaching to an audience in the ancient Greece and Athens, that was very unappreciative of this knowledge. Socrates, he made nice comparison, he said he was being trailed, he was put on trial because of his preaching. Because the Greeks then and now are very interested in sense gratification. I know because I go there, to Athens and I have seen myself. So they could not appreciate. Socrates was a very clever orator. At his trial he was seeming to praise the Greeks. He was saying: “The city Athens, it is like a fine horse, but a dead horse. And that’s for me. I’m like a fly biting that horse.” But then he went on to point out that this was not actually very favorable comparison. To compare human being to horse, that is also done in the Bhagavatam, sa eva go kharah. Foolish people who think that this body made of mucus, bile and air is the self, they are said to be sa eva go kharah, they are like cow or ass or horse, you may say. And so the great soul like Socrates, who comes among such people and preaches the science of the real self is not much appreciated by those who remain attached to this body and the so called pleasures. So Socrates was put on trial although he made a very brilliant speech, not defensive for himself, but defensive for his teachings. He did not actually care for what they planned to do with his body, because he knew I am not the body.

So in spite of his brilliant explanations, he was sentenced to death and he was even asked at his trial. “So Socrates, you’ll have to die by drinking hemlock.” That was the means of execution in those days, hemlock is a poison. So one would be placed in prison and on an appointed day the cup of hemlock would be brought to him and he would have to drink it. So he was asked: “When you drink the hemlock and you die, how do you want to be buried? In what way shall we dispose of you?” And Socrates said: “You can dispose of me if you can catch me.” Prabhupada always appreciated that very much. He went to say that if you mean me, that means the soul. So you can dispose of me, bury me or burn me or whatever you want to do, if you can catch me. And as far as the body is concerned, who cares anyway? This was his attitude. So Socrates’ most famous disciple  was Plato. So Plato wrote down all the teachings of Socrates, that’s how we know them today. So one of his very famous works is called “The Last Days of Socrates” which describes his trial and it describes how Socrates met his end, the end of this body anyway, by drinking the hemlock. So at that last day Socrates was preaching about the soul. All his disciples, he, Socrates was married, so he had a wife, she was there too and she was crying. Some of the disciples were crying and some were trying to stop from crying and Socrates was saying: “Why are you crying? And he was explaining them very nicely about the soul and about how he was actually welcoming death as release. Socrates was not only situated in atma jnana, the knowledge of the soul, but he knew something about God too. At least we can say he was Supersoul realized because he used to say, that what I speak comes from within, from the Lord within me. He said throughout my whole life I have been guided from within, so that when I was faced with an opportunity to do right or wrong, if I would even think of doing something wrong, this voice, this presence within my heart would say: “No, Socrates, you cannot do this.” And I was, he said, the difference between myself and other men, is that I would always listen to that voice, I would always follow. So Socrates was telling them: “By the grace of God I will meet God after the end of this body. So why do you lament like this?”

So his explanations were very brilliant and convinced everyone there except two persons. One was named Simyas (?), who is a follower of system of philosophy called the pythagorean system. There is Pythagorean mathematics  known today. So Pythagoras was a mystic who lived long before Socrates, he is from Egypt, he is said to live in Alexandria or some place, I don’t know Egypt anyway. So he was very much into mathematics and harmonics and balance of equals and all the sorts of things. Like many people are today. So this Simyas was a pythagorean and then there was another person named Sebes. So both of them said to Socrates: “Although we find your words very persuasive and certainly we do agree with some of the points you are making, this point that you are making, this main point, that we should not lament for you because you will live on after death, that we can not accept.”

This is an example here, I just want to bring us back to this verse for a moment – srutvapy enam veda na caiva kascit. The soul is such, the subject of the soul is so amazing to people caught up in the material consciousness, that even after they hear about the soul from one who is realized in the soul, these people who are absorbed in the gross body they fail to understand. These two persons, Simyas and Sebes, they could not understand even after hearing Socrates explain so nicely. Socrates asked both of them: “You please explain to me what your judgement are to what I have said. What is your philosophical standpoint?” So they both put forward some arguments.

And it’s interesting that their arguments we can discuss in the light of some verses of the Bhagavad-gita. So for Simyas we can turn to chapter two text seventeen. Krishna says here: “That which pervades the entire body you should know to be indestructible. No one is able to destroy that imperishable soul.” Now what is interesting is that Simyas, he accepted part of this statement, the first part. Just like both Simyas and Sebes they said to Socrates: “Some of what you say we accept, but not the conclusion.” So Krishna here is saying that the soul pervades the entire body, but then the conclusion is you should know that to be indestructible. So Simyas accepted that there is a soul and that it pervades the entire body, but he could not accept that it’s indestructible because he was a follower of Pythagoras. In this Pythagorean idea of the soul the body is a composite of balances. There are so many different factors in the body and they all are balanced very, very finely. So the Pythagoreans take that very balance to be the soul and they make a comparison, like a musical instrument, violin for instance.  What is a violin, it’s an arrangement of wood and ivory and strings. And then, when the violin is properly tuned, then there’s that mysterious quality, that you can say, incorporeal quality. It is not a physical quality. We see the Pythagoreans accept that the soul is not physical. So when the instrument is finely tuned that quality of being tuned, when you plug the string, then a certain note is sounded. That is invisible incorporeal and it is also splendid and for those who like music they will say: “It is divine, very beautiful.” Yes, so they will agree with all these points, it is so nice, but when the instrument breaks, if the violin is broken, if the strings pop out of the frame then the tuning is finished forever. This was his argument that that which we call soul, yes it is there, it is invisible, it is incorporeal, it cannot be found in anything physical and yet in the same time it’s existence depends upon the fine tuning of the body. And when the body is finished, the soul is finished. So that was Simyas’s argument.

Then Sebes, he had an argument which pertains to the 22^nd verse of 2^nd chapter of Bhagavad-gita. This verse reads: “As a person puts on new garments giving up old ones the soul similarly accepts new material bodies giving up the old and useless ones.” So Sebes agreed with that. He said, just like Krishna says in the Bhagavad-gita, that kaumaram yauvnam jara. We are accepting youthful bodies or a child body, then youth body then old body. So Sebes said: “Yes, so similarly, the soul is accepting a succession of bodies in this life,” but then actually he was using this very same analogy, he said: “Just like a human being in his life, he is putting on clothes and the clothes are wearing out, or he is getting tired of them or whatever and than he is changing his clothes, he is putting on new clothes. And throughout his life he is changing his clothes. But at the end of his life he dies and than he doesn’t put on any more clothes.” Sebes said: “So just like that the soul is moving through a succession of bodies and the soul is indeed outliving because the soul is powerful, so the soul is outliving one body after another, but at some point in the life the soul itself dies and then you don’t see the soul taking on any more bodies.” Clever, huh?

Actually it was so clever that all the people in the room except for Socrates, they were amazed by these arguments and they said to Socrates: “Socrates, we were convinced by everything you were saying, but now that we heard these two, we’ve lost all of our faith.” This shows what kind of people he was teaching. So then this work “Last days of Socrates” is very humorous actually, Socrates engages in some joking, some patting of heads, “Oh, you are a good boy to come up with such nice arguments” and then he proceeded to smash them completely in just a few words. The way he took care of the first argument about the tuning of the instrument with violin comparison between finely tuned instrument and the balances within the body is that he asked Simyas: “So clearly from your example than that which you call the soul is totally subordinate to the body, isn’t it? Just like the tuning of an instrument depends on the instrument entirely. The way the physical set up of the instrument is done, that will depend on the tuning. There’s no independence of this which you call soul from the body.” And Simyas, he agreed. So then Socrates asked him: “Then how do you explain the soul’s exertion against the dictates of the body?” For instance, not even to discuss about those who are on the spiritual path endeavoring to control their senses for spiritual advancement, even among the sense enjoyers, even among the karmis, when they are hungry due to whatever reasons, even it may be he is just working at his job and his stomach is rumbling, but he controls it. He says: “No, I can’t eat now I have to wait till the lunch hour. Otherwise I may lose my job. I’m not supposed to eat.” And, in some other case, even among materialists he may be sleepy, but he forces himself to stay awake and someone may be lusty desiring sex, but he cannot do it because he is on the bus, all kinds of people standing there. So he has to wait till he gets home. And someone else for some reason the urge is there, the bodily response is there to defend oneself because he is just been slapped in the face but he controls himself – don’t do anything because the person who slapped him is twice as big as him. So even among materialists they control the tendencies of the body. So if the soul, if the consciousness is completely subordinate to the body than how is that possible? For instance we do not see an instrument tuning itself. If we have a nicely tuned violin, there is no way, that the violin did that itself. Obviously some conscious entity picked up the violin and turned the keys and plugged the strings and got it to a right tune. It is actually through consciousness that we appreciate that an instrument is tuned or not tuned. So consciousness is actually opposing the nature of the body, even among material, materialists. In order for this material society to go on, the consciousness of even the karmis, you’ll see if you examine what’s going on for the most part the karmis are opposing their bodily urges. For the most part. They have to, otherwise how will life go on?

Just like yesterday we were riding from Italy, from Milano, and actually yeah, we came from the temple in Bergamo. We went first to Milano to give a class and than to come to Germany. So we left the temple very early before 6:30. And the autostrada was full of cars. It wasn’t even light. I was driving with the devotee named Harideva, we were talking about this, how these karmis and you know probably half of these people on the road right now they were up until one, two in the morning last night drinking and dancing and who knows what they were doing. But because they have to go to work, they force themselves to get up, the body certainly doesn’t want to. They force themselves to get up and they get in the car and they drive in the autostrada. So then what to speak of someone on the spiritual path who is controlling the urges of the body completely. Just like in Krishna consciousness – no meat eating under any circumstances, no illicit sex, no gambling, no intoxication ever. So this is done by the soul, by the consciousness.

Therefore Simyas, he had to agree that the soul has to be more than just the balances of the body. Because if it would be only something under the control of the body, then whatever the body desired, whatever urges appear within the body must be carried out immediately. Then for the next argument by Sebes, Socrates had a really interesting dialectic. So he asked Sebes: “Is fire hot?” Sebes said . “Yes.” “Is snow cold?” “Yes, snow is cold” “And are fire and snow opposites in quality?” That means to say: “If you bring fire and snow together, if you build the fire, make a fire place out in a snowy field and light the fire, will the snow become hot? Will you see hot snow? Or will you see cold fire? He said: “No.” “So they are absolutely opposite, they cannot coexist. The qualities of fire and the quality of snow can never coexist, is it not?” So Sebes said: “I do agree.” Then Socrates asked Sebes: “So now what of this body, are the elements of this body - we are just talking about the constituent elements of this body - are they dead?” And he had to admit: “Yes, they’re dead.” And then he asked: “What brings life to the body?” And, because Sebes he did accept the soul, but under his own terms, that the soul can die, he said: “The soul brings life to the body.” And then Socrates asked: “So, but still the body remains, the elements of the body remain dead, is it not?” He said. “Yes.” So the soul and the body are always distinct, they are always opposite, is it not?” “Yes.” So then Socrates asked: “So the body and soul are opposite and you‘ve said that the elements of the body are always dead. And you’ve said that the soul brings life to the body. So we must conclude that therefore the soul must also be always alive if they are opposite in every way.” And Sebes had to say: “Yes. Logically you are right, Socrates.” “So when the soul leaves the body, the body is a lump of dead matter, is it not? Which rots away and transforms into other material forms, earth and so on.” “Yes.” “So what of the soul? Wouldn’t you agree that soul must continue to exist?” “Yes, Socrates, I have to agree.”

So in this way Socrates actually simply by common sense he established that the soul being alive must always be alive. Just as the body being dead is always dead. This is common sense. But the problem is, the difficulty people have in understanding this is that because of lust they want the body to be the living self, because they want to enjoy. Who are they? They are the soul, they are the life force, they are the consciousness. But they want to enjoy matter which is dead. So, in order to do this they have to think of themselves as dead matter. But because they are alive, they can’t think of themselves as dead, so they think that matter is alive. The body is actually the life itself. Now as soon as you entertain the dead material elements are actually alive, then, if you have also in your philosophy, your strange hodge-podge philosophy some idea of soul, as soon as you can think that the body is actually alive, then you can also entertain that the soul may die, isn’t it? Because you’ve created one illogical equation by your lusty desire, so that automatically creates another, that the soul, the consciousness, may die. So this is due to lust.

And Prabhupada here also in the purport says that people who identify with the body, they cannot understand how the soul can be great and small. Prabhupada gave examples of how the atomic soul is within the body of gigantic animal, the body of gigantic banyan tree and also in the microbic germs, millions and billions of which occupy only an inch of space. So they find this amazing, this makes them disbelieve in the soul or makes the soul something that is just beyond their comprehension. And the fact is that the soul is beyond that comprehension that they are using, because in Bhagavad-gita 2.18, also in this chapter, Krishna uses a term for the soul – aprameya. Aprameya means immeasurable. A soul cannot be measured. Antavanta ime deha – the material body, deha, antavanta – that has an end. Now in this verse it means an end in time. These bodies will perish. But also anta can refer to end in space. So the bodies have their existence measurable in time but also measurable in space. So we see as Prabhupada mentions here – some very great bodies – elephant body, banyan tree, and very small bodies. So this is all prameya, this is all measurement. Measurement pertains as Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Maharaja said in a magazine interview in India, that maya, he gave this definition for the word maya, maya means measurable. So anything that can be measured with instruments, measured with any type of measure that means it’s maya. It means it’s material. And as far as the soul, it’s aprameya, it’s immeasurable. It’s immeasurable in the sense that it’s eternal, cannot be measured by units of time as this body can be, and is also immeasurable in terms of size.

Now, you may say, but the soul is described as atomic in size. Yes, smaller than the smallest, immeasurably small. This example of taking the tip of a hair and dividing it into a hundred parts and then dividing each one of those parts into a hundred, Prabhupada explains, that it’s to illustrate that the soul is immeasurably small. Just like Krishna is immeasurably great, but the point is both are immeasurable. Immeasurable means that it cannot be understood in terms of these immeasurable bodies. So the soul, the consciousness of the soul, can pervade as great or as small body you would like to give it. The body of Brahma, it is said that the whole universe is the width of I think something like seven hands of Lord Brahma. That information is given in Srimad Bhagavatam. So that’s how big Brahma is. And then there are  of course microbic germs. So jiva’s consciousness can pervade any body you like within creation. Why?  Because it is fundamentally immeasurable. But this jiva is called anu – immeasurably small, whereas the Lord, Krishna is called vibhu, He is immeasurably great. So from the pores of the body of Lord Mahavisnu are streaming countless universes. Anyone universe is beyond our power of comprehension.

Today scientists with all of their telescopes and instruments have failed to find the limit of this universe. So anyone of these universes is beyond our comprehension, what to speak of trying to understand how there are limitless number of universes. And they’re all coming out of the pores of Mahavisnu. So this is inconceivable. This is another point here, Srila Prabhupada says that there are those who hear about the soul, they attain lectures in good association but sometimes due to ignorance they’re misguided by acceptance of the Supersoul and the atomic soul as one without distinction of magnitude. Now this is another point here that such persons had become a little acquainted with the soul, but now they are amazed about the Supersoul. In other words understanding the soul is one thing, but then understanding where everything comes from, where this existence, this vast material existence, what the origin is, how it is maintained, that is amazing. So they become amazed and bewildered by that and in their bewilderment they may wrongly assume that somehow the soul, the individual soul, is responsible for the origin, the maintenance and the destruction of the entire cosmic manifestation. But the point is this amazement, this bewilderment, this in itself is the evidence of the distinction between the soul and the Supersoul.

Because as far as Krishna is concerned, Bhagavatam says, He is avismita, avismitam tam. He is avismitam tam pari purna kamam svena labhyena, so He is, first of all avismita means He is never amazed by anything because Krishna is perfectly situated in complete knowledge of everything, so there is nothing to surprise Krishna. Pari purna kamam, all of His desires, kama means desires, they fulfill themselves. Krishna has a name satya sankalpa, it means as soon as He has a desire it is fulfilled. In other words, wherever Krishna’s desires are, that is what we call reality. There is not even a microscopic difference between Krishna’s desires and that what is. So He is pari purna kamam. All of His desires they’re fulfilled in themselves. Svenaiva  labhena samam. So He is completely satisfied in His own transcendental glories, He is samam, He is always equipoised and prasanta means He is supremely peaceful, supremely satisfied. Why? Simply because He is Krishna. This is Krishna. This is why the jiva is not Krishna and that’s a fact. As far as the jiva is concerned, there is only one way for the jiva to become santi, to become peaceful, to become satisfied and that is to become Krishna bhakta. Krishna bhakta niskama ataeva santa, because the Krishna bhakta, because he is a devotee of Krishna, he has taken shelter of Krishna, therefore he has surrendered all his desires to Krishna – this is the meaning of taking shelter of Krishna.

Prabhupada explained it once very nicely – he said just like when a son has surrendered to the father, the son may have desires, but he makes no endeavor to fulfill them outside of his dependence upon the father. So the son may go to the father, Prabhupada gave a nice example, he said the son may have a desire, small son may have a desire to see a certain film, Arnold Schwarzenegger film, which is playing in town. The son would like to see this film. He goes to the father and he says: “My dear father, there is a new Schwarzenegger film in town, may we go see it?” And the father says: “Yes, we can go.” Then the son is very happy to go and he goes under the protection of the father and he is actually taken care of completely by the father. The father brings in the son and says: “Would you like some popcorn?” “Oh, yes.” Then let us take popcorn. So the father provides everything. And they enjoy the film together. And actually for the son the film becomes much more enjoyable. He enjoys to see that father is enjoying this film. “It was my suggestion,” the son is thinking. “It was by my suggestion that we came into this movie house and I am so happy to see that father likes the film.” So the son is enjoying, but he is enjoying doubly, because the father is also enjoying. So his satisfaction is so much greater. So this is a good son.  

Of course a bad son, than he may not ask the father at all or the father says no, than he breaks into the city bank, steals the money, goes to the theatre anyway, comes back and gets caught. That happened to me once when I was about seven years old, I wanted to see one cowboy film, my parents did not want me to see it. So somehow I got some money and I went to see it anyway and when I came back, because some friend of mine had also been at the showing of that film, so when I came back, I came back with the friend, we were talking about the film and I forgot, I mean I was so absorbed in talking about the film and I walked into my house with the friend, we were talking about the film and my mother was there and she was listening to us and she said: “So, you saw this film anyway, did you?” And then I was in trouble. So that’s what happens. When the living entity separates his desires from Krishna, then he is in trouble. So surrendering to Krishna means to surrender the desires and therefore one becomes niskama. Krishna bhakta niskama. Then he has no desires of his own. His own desires are…

                        

Around the Acropolis

by pandava bandhava das

On a busy shopping street in downtown Athens, people are enjoying the warm spring sunshine. They are walking, talking, laughing, drinking coffee and having fun. In Athens there are many beggars as well. It is Saturday and they are all on the street because they know that they will collect more money than they would during the week.

The flower sellers are also here on the street.  Although there are a few Bengalis selling flowers, this business is monopolized by the gypsies. The strategy the gypsies use is to first put the flower in the hand of the person while telling him that it is for free.  However, once the person has taken the flower they ask for money. But the people are not so stupid. They understand that there must be a catch there. They know that there is no such thing as a free lunch in the modern world.  (Except maybe if you visit your local Hare Krishna temple – they usually give a free meal once a week).  So on these grounds, most people refuse to take the flower and just move on. Fair enough.

But here comes the surprise. The same people, just few meters down the street, decide to sit for a lunch in one of the numerous restaurants which have their tables right on the sidewalk. And there they order and eat meat… a lot of it. What’s the problem?

I believe that this is inconsistency. People are convinced, and rightly so, that they won’t be able to take the flower and get away with it without paying. But at the same time they believe, this time wrongly, that they can eat flesh of slaughtered animals without suffering a reaction. Yes, I believe that this is inconsistent…  and foolish too.

But they won’t understand this argument. Why? Because they don’t want to. Their behavior is driven not by an honest examination of reality, but rather by a strong desire to enjoy by eating meat. Therefore anything that opposes this, even if it makes sense, will be dismissed. This problem is described by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita:

Men of small knowledge are very much attached to the flowery words of the Vedas, which recommend various fruitive activities for elevation to heavenly planets, resultant good birth, power and so forth. Being desirous of sense gratification and opulent life, they say there is nothing more than this.

Lord Krishna summarizes the principle problem perfectly; for the needs of our small discussion here we can paraphrase the verse as follows:

“Ignorant persons, who are too attached to eat the corpses of innocent animals, say that this is all right because they like the taste of meet.”

People who are addicted to certain combination of the material modes of nature are rarely willing to hear a good advice. And the reason is not because they really thing that their deeds are right, but because they cannot act otherwise.  They are forced to “enjoy” in particular way. But part of this “enjoyment” is that one doesn’t want to feel bad about it, especially when his pleasure is build upon the pain of innocent creatures. Therefore one has to rationalize his action with some lame excuses like “animals have no soul”, or “animals are meant for our use dead or alive”, or “everybody is doing it so it can’t be wrong” or something like that. That means one is not really searching after the truth. Instead he simply looks for “arguments” which will make him feel OK although in reality he is an accomplice in a slaughter. He just tries to put his conscience to sleep.

The Day of the Iddhi

 by Chand Adekshna

Chapter 1

A Life in a Rearview Mirror

From Mirror after mirror

 No vanity’s displaced

I’m looking for the face I had

Before the world was made.

                                                                                                             —W.B. Yeats, “A Woman Young and Old”

            He reached for the door handle, giving the Koyomi Oerloeg mounted on the wall next to the doorframe a glance. It was nearly 9:00 on an old-calendar Wednesday morning in late October. On the ASAT calendar it was Year 3 on a Vagbhavavara morning of Fortnight Gebo. The temperature outside was 5 degrees Grad. Today’s Tip: “Gebo is the rune for gift; in this season, the Vata dosha tends to have more influence on the mind than Kapha or Pitta. The gentle wind from the west known as Zephyr (siva-vayu) interacts with that dosha either as Mitra (‘friend’), gifting one with joy, or Varuna (‘binder’), gifting one with a sense of emptiness.”

            Finding nothing interesting in the top news headlines, and nothing at all in his voice/text mail inbox, he ignored the Oeloeg’s flashing menu for Western, Babylonian, Vedic, Chinese, Aztec and Mayan astrological data, Aura reading, Ayurvedic pulse-taking, Elder Futhark rune and I-Ching hexagram casting, Enneagram counseling, Motoyama biofeedback analysis, a Q&A session with a Turing depth psychology therapist, and a half a dozen similar options. All just a finger’s touch away.

            With a snap of his fingers he remembered something. “Just a sec,” he spoke aloud, walking over to his library and work desk, index finger tapping his right temple as he approached his library, a wall covered top to bottom with shelves. Every shelf was booked to full capacity. Other volumes lay sideways atop the ones in rows, filling whatever space there might be from the topsides of a row and the underside of the next shelf up. He squatted in the far corner to pull the end book off of the bottom shelf. It took five to ten seconds to dislodge it; that’s how tightly he crammed these shelves. Still on his haunches he flipped open this hardbound edition of The Complete Works of Charles Fort. The middle 500 pages of the more than one thousand page book were hollowed out. All that remained of those pages were their blank margins, so that closed the book looked intact. He removed the item from the hollow, spent more time jamming the book back in  place than pulling it out had taken. He rose to his feet, dropping the item into a pocket of the insulated jacket he wore. As he walked back to the door he said to himself, “Since I can’t rid my thought life of the old guy, I might as well bring this along.”

            Charles stepped into the hall, locked the door behind him, and dropped to one knee to put his running shoes on. These were stored with several other pairs of shoes in a small black wooden cabinet on the floor to the left of the door to his four-room (plus bath and kitchenette) apartment in The Phanastery on Irmin Street.

            He laced up. He pondered Today’s Tip from the Koyami Oerloeg. “This Zephyr, the west wind,” he said aloud, “must be acting unfavorably upon me.” Burglaric thoughts had been troubling his mind; they sidled up out of nowhere to sidestep into his head, where they perched and chattered like magpies. The analogy was apt. In the lore of medieval Europe, the sound of magpies were said to represent the unseemly thoughts of those who did not pay attention in church.

             Wiederoy had practiced yoga since his university days. While in graduate school, he visited India in 1980 to complete some field work necessary for his Ph.D. He also learned a discipline of meditation of the shakti-tattva tradition. In 1987 for the first time in his life he visited Nepal. There he received mantra-diksha, initiation from an ascetic, into an ancient tradition of Vedanta-yoga. In the seven years that fell between his visit India and his visit to Nepal, he learned Sanskrit.

            Now his life was eighteen years into Century 21. The today was nothing like Wiederoy’s world of the past. The change was sudden and it was recent. Wiederoy became aware that strange forces were at work upon the planet only five years ago. Two years later, the march of history crossed an invisible border from which there would be no return. He is mind he could only compare it to a short story he liked as a teenager. Written by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, it told of a science fiction “fad” that drew people’s interest into the events of another planet, Tloen. But Tloen did not really exist. Nonetheless more and more volumes about the details of life on Tloen kept appearing. The people were told by scientists, “This is all rubbish.” They didn’t care. The hopes and dreams about Planet Tloen reached critical mass. One morning, the human race woke up to discover that Planet Earth and changed in one night to Planet Tloen.

            Less than four years ago, he entered his last year of employment as a professor of archaeology at the Baillie-Steinhorst Atlantic Union of Anthropic Sciences. He sat at his desk in his Department of Archaeology office. On the desk was a ring-bound notepad. He had just written up list of changes in his life that he’d have to have in place before his upcoming birthday. His concentration was broken by the sound of silver chimes over the all-campus speaker system. The chimes meant everyone ought to pay attention to the upcoming announcement.

            A woman’s voice began speaking. She introduced herself as Damkina Ninlil. He looked up at the speaker, a little startled. He held a Ph.D. degree in archaeology. Those named—Damkina and Ninlil—he knew well. They were names goddesses of the ancient Middle East. Ms. Ninlil explained that she spoke to us as the head of the Dalang Hieratic News Service. Wiederay had never of Dalang HNS. Ms. Ninlil helpfully explained that her news service would take over total responsibility for all news coverage from this day forward. The venerable CNN, BBC, Fox Network News and so on were history. As are all the previous radio news services, and news in print. Finis. Internet news coverage also would be handled by Dalang—nothing else but. Last but not least, the news reported on the tremendously popular SBY synthetic reality broadcast system fell completely under Dalang HNS. Dalang, she went on to say, was an “organon.” She helpfully pointed out that an organon is an organic part of a greater whole. An organon functions like an organ in a living body. Its duty is to serve the best interests of that body. After today we would come to know about the many organons assuming responsibilities in the public’s interest.

            Ms. Ninlil was just warming up to her subject. Previously, the companies and government agencies that we, the people, depended on for public health, education, wealth, welfare, law enforcement, military defense, and the overall progress of society to higher levels of fulfillment, were not organons. They were consumers, not providers. Their first concern was to make money. Their second concern was, as much as possible, to be a law under their own. Such values negate any real sense of service. An organon serves; an organon provides. Exactly as our heart, lungs and stomach serve us and provide for us. In the previous state of affairs, our collective health, education and welfare, and in all the other ways we had to depend on arrangements not in our control, we were being steadily weakened by parasites. Parasites aren’t interested serving you and providing for you. They serve themselves by taking from you.

            Those days are over. Great changes have been made. Great changes are being made. Great changes will continue to be made. My duty as head of Dalang HNS is to help each of your understand what these changes are, and how they are improving human existence.

            Today I wish to tell you a story. It is a story most of you don’t know. But you should know it, because it is the story of the new—how shall I say it in a way we will all understand? Yes—the new government. The new authority. The new system. But we shall not be using those words. One of our guiding principles is, “Without linguistic engineering, there can be no social reality.” This is another of my personal responsibilities: I will day by day inform you of the great new things happening in our world; as I inform you, I will also be teaching you a new language.

            Previously I said that I am head of an organon. The name of that organon is the Dalang Hieratic News Service. I said this oraganon serves a greater whole. What is that greater whole?

            It is the Dainanaten Policentrist Hierarchy. Dainanaten is a Japanese word. It means “the seventh heaven.” People should understand that real leadership is not born from the minds of men. It is sent down from the highest level of consciousness. That is why we are not ashamed of the word Hierarchy. It is a great word. Hieros and arche come to us from the ancient Greeks. Hieros means holy, arche means order. In a true hierarchy the human purpose has a very clearly defined spiritual dimension. Our life has to be lived in accordance with the Divine Plan. This is how a hierarchy serves society, and provides for it.  There is one more word to explain—polycentrism. It is the opposite of a dictatorship, where all the power is in one man’s hands, or one party’s hands. Policentrism means that, in this new world we are entering, there are many centers of power. They shall work selflessly to raise our fallen state up, up, up—to the Dainanten!

Let me give a little example of how Polycentrism works. In case you don’t remember, my name is Damkina Ninlil. I am the head of the Daland Hieratic News Service. But another organon has responsibility for broadcasting my report to you. That organon is called TET. I and Dalang HNS work in tandem with TET to satisfy the Dainanten; TET works with  Dalang HNS to satisfy Dainanaten..

            Wiederoy remembered he’d seen the word Dalang years ago. He tracked it down on his computer. It was from the Bahasa Indonesia language. Dalang means “puppet master.”

            While on the topic of broadcasting, Ms. Ninlil wanted to say a few words about SBY and its origins. SBY is a giant step forward in information delivery. A hundred years age, the great new technology of information was the movie. People thought, oh, movies, they are the greatest. But there was new twist in 1927. A few movies added a sound track. These were called talkies. By 1930—just three years later—silent movies were no longer being made. SBY is the new talkie, television is the old silent film. That’s why its only taken three years for SBY scanner unit sales to surpass TV sales. SBY is a synthetic reality system. Years ago people were waiting for a virtual reality system to be developed. It never happened because virtual reality with an idea that is opposite to synthetic reality. Scientists working to develop virtual reality were trying to put the picture all around you. You’d have to wear something like an astronauts’ suit to get the information delivered like that. Too complicated, too cumbersome, too many things to go wrong. Synthetic reality, on the other hand, puts you in the picture. Your brain is the receiver. SBY tech is based on a technology known by the acronym SIGIL. This stands for Synaesthesia Inducement Guided by Intersubjective Logistics. Sigil is also the name of a rune from pre-Christian Germanic countries. It means a magic sign. Sigil puts that magic sign in the form of neurosemiotic code into your brain right through the optic nerve. The neurosemiotic code stimulates a brain function called synaesthesia. Inside the brain a magic picture is generated. It has the same impact on your consciousness as seeing what’s pictured in real life. You are there, inside the picture, hearing sounds, smelling fragrances, touching objects, and tasting food. That’s synthetic reality. The experience of it is exactly the same as our experience of the world. I use the word magic because we don’t know exactly how the brain is getting this real life experience from a beam of light at a certain wavelength, a light that pulses on and off this or that many times per second. All we know is this has the power to transform consciousness. How? By magic! In essence, a sigil is any sense impression that has the power to induce a physically unexplainable change of reality.

            Wiederoy’s mind flew out of his old professor’s office and away from Ms. Ninlil, the puppet-master. He was in the hall outside his apartment in the Phanastery. He look down. His shoes were tied, he was still crouched down on the floor. He closed his eyes and rubbed both temples with his fingertips. His mind was really racing today. He rose from his crouch with a sigh and made for the stairs. Doubts had started to haunt him last spring after an old friend died. “Have you lived your life to the fullest?” they demanded to know. “Did you live a good life? Was it productive?”

            After 40 years of daily yoga meditation, he’d come to believe his mind was a sterilized laboratory, no place for the obsessive, objurgatory jabbering of an uncontrolled mind. He remembered an obscure word, “egrigor.” Defined as a thought-form that takes on a life of its own, yes…surely, some kind of egrigor has set up camp in his subconscious. From there it launched an assault upon his consciousness.

            Earlier this morning, he sat down to go through the first of three daily routines (sadhanas) of meditation. At his age, with his experience, he normally had little trouble clearing his mind of ambient noise. Yet like a reverse sun, a disk of night instead of day, this egrigor of shankaa (doubt) arose from the depths of his lower chakras into the inner sky of his heart. It shook his concentration with the force of a bulldog shaking a rat. He was unable to concentrate on mantra-dhyana—the most important sadhana of his day.

           

            This past summer he started talking to himself a lot. He was just trying to reason with this egrigor or whatever it was. “My whole life has been centered on the search for capital-T Truth. The path I’ve accepted demands I attain that goal. Indeed, the path leads to that goal. The path is the goal. Western civilization has reached a point where the promotion of spiritual values in society is given serious attention. Everybody admits that unless this is done successfully, there will soon be nothing left in the West that resembles civilization.  Spiritual values I put into practice in my life decades ago. For the last twenty, twenty-five years, the people I’ve told about the tradition I follow are amazed. ‘I want to come to that level too,’ they tell me.”

            But as he was soon to discover, giving attention to the egrigor by giving arguments why the egrigor shouldn’t be bothering him only provoked it. And what followed… He could only understand it this way: the egrigor divided into ten, and each of those ten divided into ten. Like a hundred archers advancing in formation, they unleashed volley after volley of arrows. Each shower of steel tips pierced successively deeper into his field of mind. “What is a full life? How do you know what you’ve done with your life is good? What is good?” As the months passed, the egrigor steadily increased its assault. His quietude was deteriorating. Yogis called this visheshashankhaa, the growth of doubt into many troubling particularities. As these doubts overwhelm the mind, one starts looking outside himself for a solution. When dhyana (meditation), then dhyana (concentration), are broken, the mind shifts into reverse gear. 

            The egrigor mocked him. “Even if you think you lived a full life, what about the life you’re living now, holed up in your cell on the second floor of this home for New Age retirees? What about the future? Look at you. You talk about the world around you adopting your values, but you’re more a stranger to this world than you ever have been. You’ve isolated yourself just like Bjoern did. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re better adjusted than him because you live in a city and raised a family. But you can’t relate to the way the world has changed any better than he could.”

            As summer passed into fall, he fell back upon the deepest resources of his heart, seeking armor and a sword to end once and for all the egrigor’s taunts. But all he came up with was an excuse, not a defense and certainly not a counter-attack. “At my age there’s just not that much to look forward to.” When this thought took wing in his mind, he condemned himself. “What irony has befallen me? Bjoern Ingvaldssen, for the last fifteen years of his life, routinely tossed off just that sort of reply whenever I tried to talk to him about the ultimate purpose of human existence. And now look at me.”

            The weight of his body pressed his right foot into the first stair-step down. As if it were extracted from every misery he’d ever experienced, melancholia seeped into his nervous system through the spongy tissue of his sole. Each step that followed took him deeper into self-loathing. As his brain sank from sight into the black pool, a few lines of poetry floated to the surface like the debris of a shipwreck.

The old men ask for more time,

while the young waste it. And the philosopher smiles,

knowing there is none there.

            He paused on the last step before the ground floor. “I memorized those lines for Bjoern’s funeral at sea,” he said aloud. “Who wrote them?” He stepped down onto the Marblix surface of the foyer’s floor. He found himself glided it toward the heavy chromium-steel and Fortiplex blastproof  security door. He heard the words “I can’t remember,” knowing they were only in his head. They were in his head…but he wasn’t. The past pulled him back to that day in the office. Damkina Ninlil…it must be a made up name! What if I was a German professor in Berlin in the 1930, and a voice on the radio says, “Ich heisst Adolf Hitler…” But his name was really Adolf Schickelgrueber. Stalin (“Man of Steel”) wasn’t Stalin. Damkina? Her voice was very near now. Ninlil? Your real is probably Bertha Skeezix. Who’s going to stand for Bertha Skeezix telling them, “We just took over your world.”

            “The mission of the Dainanaten Policentrist Hierarchy is very different from any political system that ruled anywhere in the world at any time for centuries. That mission is to turn human consciousness away from the alienation we’ve just powerlessly resigned ourselves to. Postmodernism—what’s that? What does it mean? It means the willful acceptance that life is meaningless. Goodbye to all that. Today is Day One, Year One of ASAT—the Age of Sigil-Actuated Transcognition.”

           

            Damkina Ninlil, of Dalang HNS, promised to tell us a story.  “Let me take you back in time,” she said, “to the second half of the 1800s. Something new was in the air. The general name for it, that new spirit that gave birth to a great number of spiritual doctrines and societies…it was The New Thought Movement. The New Thought Movement never really died, you know. At some point, in the 1960s, I suppose, it just popped up again with a slightly different name, The New Age Movement.   

            “In the 1800s, especially after the American Civil War, a New Thought appeared. It appeared in the minds of many people around the world, at the same time. You could say it was a second thought. People began to think, ‘Is science really helping us to answer the Big Questions? The churches, the priests—do they really get us closer to God? What is this world? It seems so mad.Why am I in it? WHO AM I?’

            “A great number of specific organizations came up then. They competed with one another to get the attention of all these people who pondering the New Thought. Come here to us, we have the answer. Join us. No, join us. Different paths. There was H.P. Blavatsky’s Theosophical Society. Rudolf Steiner’s Anthroposophy. The Gurdjieff movement. These three were very influential, but there were other big organization, and many, many small and obscure ones.

            “There was one called MAM—Mental Alchemy Movement. It wasn’t a society with centers, getting people to join, getting rich. It was a loose affiliation. They had one particular interest: transformation. That’s what alchemy is. But MAM was about transformation of the self. How? By using the mind as a laboratory. But that was just theory. Nobody really had a set of instructions how to practice alchemy in the mind. The idea was interesting.

            “By the turn of the century MAM had begun holding ‘gatherings’ twice yearly on pre-established dates. The people gathering were mostly well-educated intelligentsia—scientists, linguists, psychologists, historians, investigators of psychic phenomena, authors and even government officials.

            Mental alchemy was building both positive and negative energies. The usefulness of the potential positive side caught the attention of a ancient race of sarpavyaghras, Serpentine Tigers. They live to this present day in a well-hidden refuge on the North American continent. It is a remotely located, impenetrable fortress. Few human have seen it; moreover, what these few humans saw looked to be a perfectly natural geological formation. Scientists call it “The Magnetic Mountain.” The Serpentine Tigers call it Alektoria, an archaic word drawn from magical lore that suggests invisibility.

            The sarpavyaghra race came into being in China. from among some followers and disciples of the Yellow Emperor, Huang Ti, a great mystic and healer. He was born from the womb of his mother after she was impregnated by a golden ray that beamed from the Shaptarishi constellation, each of its seven stars an abode of one of the seven great sages of the universe (Ursa Major). Huang Ti is the father of Chinese Medicine. just as in India Sage Dhanvantari is the revealer of Ayurvedic Medicine. 

            The Yellow Emperor is often praised as the father of Taoism. If Taoism was already present in China before his descent from the starry abodes of the shaptarishis, then it is correct to say he brought up from the level of village shamanism and re-established in the Imperial City as a philosophy and mystic disciple that, philosophically, parallels Sankhya, and as a mystic discipline, parallels ashtanga-yoga. So, whether or not he introduced the Tao to China loses importance as a question if we understand that Huang Ti brought it up to the pre-eminent position over all other systems of religion and metaphysics.

            A rapidly transformative but dangerous path of yoga is Tantric siddha-yoga, which has a Chinese parallel in Taoism: the Way of Dual Cultivation. Yoga and Taoism look at the cosmos as a manifestation of a fundamental duality: purusa (the male principle) and prakrti (the female principle) in yoga; Yang (male principle) and Yin (female principle) in Taoism. Huang Ti revealed the esoteric method of bringing the male-female principles out of the theoretical realm of intellectualization into the realm of mystic application.

            Dual Cultivation, from the standpoint of Taoism, is the “how to” of uniting Yin and Yang.  The lung (Chinese for dragon; Skt. naga) is Yang. Opposite the dragon is the tiger (Skt. bhagini. One who applies himself fully in yoga to be linking up in yoga with Transcendence must take care not to fall into the clutches of the tiger of nescience.) In China the tiger is the symbol of Yin. Every type of personality under the modes of material nature exhibits of some measure of Yin, some measure of Yang. The perfection sought in Dual Cultivation is expressed thusly: “to bring forth the power of Dragon’s fire”. Once again, we see a parallel. Tantric yoga-siddhi is achieved by raising the fiery serpent of mystic power from the lowest to the highest chakra.

            The brotherhood of eleven Gong-Gongs humbly approached the Yellow Emperor. They requested that he teach them to purify themselves of their inherent dangerous and unpredictable nature as descendents of the first Gong-Gong.

            Why they feared their inherited nature is explained in this Chinese legend. While the creation was still very new, the celestial emperor Yeo took up the scepter to rule it from heaven. The first Gong-Gong became so envious of Yeo that it went into a frenzy and nearly wrecked the cosmos. This Gong-Gong was coal-black and of vast dimensions. It had a great horn that grew out of its forehead area, between and a little above its two eyes.   

            The patriarch of all Gong-Gongs was not merely a fearsome thing to see. It was endowed with the siddhis of mystic yoga. Out of envy of the cosmic hierarchy, it made its way to the mountain Buzhou, which in Chinese cosmology a comic mountain similar to the Vedic Mount Meru. Gong-Gong attacked Buzhou with its colossal horn.

            The personified spirit of the mountain cried out as that great horn pierced his subtle deva-form at the same time it pierced the physical Mount Buzhou. With a flip of its neck and head the Gong-Gong tore the mountain away from the earth. This uncovered the heaving waves of the world-ocean. High seas spilled over the rim of the crater that for so long served as Buzhou Mountain’s resting place. Earth was drowning.

            Next the Gong-Gong turned his trans-dimensional horn against the sky. It ripped through the weave of material energies. The Gong-Gong’s mighty horn unzipped the bond that holds the material elements one to another. Things fell apart. The sun and moon went dark. A dreadful night covered the universe. The Gong-gong was to this all- devouring night as that night was to the Gong-gong. The legend ends happily, because a goddess appears and restores creation.