Proving Contraries
By Stephen Carter on Dec 29, 2006
OK, I admit it, despite what I wrote in my post Against Spiritual Inoculation, maybe I have been inoculated after all. But I wonder what kind of inoculation it was.
During my last year of undergraduate work I took a Mormon literature class from Eugene England. It was a pretty wild experience for everyone involved. For many of us it was the first time we’d encountered those strange places in Mormon history. (One person in the class told me later that she couldn’t read the Doctrine and Covenants for years afterward, so shaken was she by the new portrait of Joseph Smith as rendered by Virginia Sorensen’s A Little Lower Than the Angels.) I was also lucky enough to sit in on some small discussion groups Gene had organized with academics who studied Mormonism.
The interesting thing about these experiences was that throughout, Gene treated these amazing revelations not as damning evidence, but as launching pads. Instead of saying, “So as we can see Joseph Smith was a liar and philanderer,” he would say, “Amazing! Who was this man?”
In my mind it was as if Gene had strung a giant rubber band between the two poles of the Church’s history (the official version and the revisionist version) and, using the tension they created, launched us into possibilities beyond them.
In the December 2006 issue of Sunstone in his sidebar “Information Inoculation: Helpful or Harmful?” Michael Ash writes, “by not addressing sticky issues, the Church runs the greater risk of appearing deceitful […] as well as allowing critics the first opportunity to expose and set the tone for the challenging issue.”
I admit that Gene’s approach did set the tone for my explorations of Mormonism (and later, life in general). Instead of looking for the “truth” I consider the interplay of poles and the launching potential their tensions can create.
But one side effect of this approach is that currently I consider the Church to be true the same way I consider a flock of birds to be true (both very helpful to certain kinds of individuals). In other words, I no longer have a testimony in the conventional sense (or perhaps in any sense, though the spirituality I feel now feels deeper to me than the spirituality I had before). I have the feeling that this isn’t exactly what Ash has in mind. Above all other things, he seems to want testimonies of Mormonism kept intact.
Toward such an end he quotes Daniel Peterson summarizing Stanley Kimball, “The only cure for bad historiography is better historiography. The only remedy for bad anti-Mormon arguments is better counterarguments.”
This is fascinating to me. What Ash seems to be saying is that the main combatant in the war for souls (at least, when it comes to Church history) is rhetoric (this is not an accusation, I’m an irreclaimable rhetoric addict myself). He admits that apprehending historical truth is impossible (every historian writes with a set of values that dictates how he/she interprets the material). Therefore, the pole with the best rhetorician wins the prize, even though the rhetoric itself can’t actually be true (”I’d like to bear my testimony, I know the talks and lessons I’ve heard about Church history are rhetorically effective on me”).
There’s an essential difference I see here between the path Ash is proposing and the one Gene introduced me to. Gene’s path is open ended; it revels in the potential of contraries. Though he’s willing to acknowledge the contraries, Ash wants to neutralize one contrary in favor of the other and call it truth.
Ash’s story has one ending for everyone (one he can’t actually vouch for); Gene’s has a different ending (possibly more) for each person, one that grows from within him or herself.
Perhaps this is a difference between institutionally sponsored spirituality and personal spirituality?
You have asked the right question, Steven. One would have to look far and wide to find anyone with a stronger conviction of the importance and meaning of the “Mormon experience” than Gene England. He was so secure in his faith and in the reality of his personal spirituality that he welcomed any challenge, while at the same time honoring the experiences and convictions of others, whether they agreed with his or not. It was my exposure to his wonderfully secure confidence when we formed a small dialogue group at the U of U, before Gene went off to midwife Dialogue at Stanford that allowed me to test the strength of my own convictions and learn to value the Mormon experience in an all new way. I believe we have Gene to thank not only for Dialogue, but for Sunstone as well.
Comment # 1 by Eugene Kovalenko | Dec 30, 2006 | Reply
Sorry for misspelling your name, Stephen.
Comment # 2 by Eugene Kovalenko | Dec 30, 2006 | Reply
I think there is a big step from Gene England’s use (in a class on Mormon literature) of diverse sources to create tension between canonized LDS history and other formulations, to the notion that the LDS Church ought to use its curriculum or its publications to create that sort of tension in the general membership. No church is going to try and create that sort of tension for its own membership, whereas the students signed up for the class in order to get that sort of experience.
And if the Church did decide to do such a thing, it wouldn’t be very effective. Most people just aren’t that interested in history. And those who are can find good sources without any help from Church publications.
Or maybe you’re just arguing that the presentation of LDS history in the curriculum should include more detailed discussion of some of the “sticky issues.” That’s a less controversial point that many would agree with, although the question of which issues to include and how to address them is its own sticky issue.
Comment # 3 by Dave | Dec 31, 2006 | Reply
Dave,
I have to disagree with your statement that, “No church is going to try and create that sort of tension for its own membership, whereas the students signed up for the class in order to get that sort of experience.”
I was raised in the United Methodist Church, and that rthe Adult Sunday school manuels that the denomination uses, and the adult Bible study groups that individual congreations sponsor consistently create the sort of tension decsribed here. In fact, it was in a Wednesday evening Bible study group that my own minister taught back in 1983, that I was first introduced to higher Biblical criticism; the minister taught us that the books of the Bible were the literary creations of varoius ancienrt cultures, that the book contradict each other in many essential aspects, and that the Bible was not to be taken literally.
A few years later when I joined the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) the curriculum that my Meeting (congregation) used, also took this same approach.
For those raised LDS, with the LDS emphasis on Church infallibility and theological correctness, this sorf of approacj to religious eduaction within a church may seem suicidal. Ditto for any fundamentalist Christian denomination.
But in the much larger word of mainstream Christianity, this approach to religoous eduaction is old hat. Which is why I think many convertsfrom mainstream Christain denomination to the LDS Church usually have such a hard time dealing with the LDS Church’s mindset, and why so many end up going in active or leaving the Church altogether after a few years (or even months).
Comment # 4 by rob lauer | Jan 10, 2007 | Reply
Rob:
Interesting. Of course, one could argue that the Methodist movement can get away with more openness, because it doesn’t have as many skeletons in its closet. And because it doesn’t make the extraordinary, exclusive claims that Mormonism does, it may be easier for Methodists to get by with considering disproven historical claims only metaphorically true.
If you teach that the Bible is an imperfect human record of God’s revelation of his gospel to man, then occasional contradictions wouldn’t bother you. Evidence that the Bible is not inerrant doesn’t bother you; that’s exactly what you believe in the first place.
It might be possible for Mormonism to operate the same way, but (having tried, with diminishing degrees of success) it’s a lot harder, and probably wouldn’t work at all for many or most people. The Church’s demands are so strenous that complying with them might not be worthwhile, if the Church is actually not the extraordinary thing it claims to be — the literal one true Kingdom of God on earth; promising “the visions and blessings of old” and a spiritual assurance that no other religion can provide.
Even though many people have urged me to take a more “Methodist” approach to Mormonism — placing on the proverbial back burner the fact that I find Joseph Smith’s historical claims implausible and have not had any spiritual confirmation of their truth that might outweigh the rational evidence — I am still holding out hope that I’ll get such a confirmation someday. (I feel a little like Naaman on his fifty-seventh bath in the Jordan.) The reason is that, my financial circumstances being what they are, paying a full tithe means sacrificing the hope that my children will grow up in a home of their own rather than in a series of apartments. It’s not a matter of foregoing a vacation to Hawaii or a new car (I’m still driving my old college Saturn) or some grown-up toys; it’s about imposing on my children a sacrifice of something that I recall from my youth as being a real joy.
If the Church is really what it claims to be — the one true Kingdom of God — and if I can really know this, in a way that other religious people can’t know with a surety that their faith is not in vain — then the sacrifice would be worth it. On the other hand, if it’s all symbolic, then as Flannery O’Connor muttered when her sophisticated friends remarked on the “beautiful symbolism” of the Communion, the hell with it. Trading a real house for a merely “symbolic” faith I could find elsewhere doesn’t seem like good spiritual economics.
Of course, tithing or no tithing, my ability ever to afford a house in bubbly Southern California is contingent upon the fulfillment of my faith that economic rationality will someday return, so this may all be moot anyway.
Comment # 5 by Thomas | Jan 11, 2007 | Reply
Thomas,
I think I understand where you’re coming from, since your views on this seem much like theview I held when I was LDS.
I am now a Reform Mormon, so my approach to Mormon history is naturalistic. I’m think that I know the LDS Church is not the Kingdom of God with much more surety than I ever “knew” that it was during the decades I was an active LDS. Being willing to accept what seems to be the rational and obvious verdict of the evidence Mormon history presents does not undercut faith in God; not does it undermine my ethics or values. In fact, these have been stengthened by accepting what seems to be the obvious truths about the Mormon past.
With respect to the LDS Church–or any church–being the “one true church” and “the Kingdom of God on the earth,” another Reform Mormon friend of mine pointed out to me a few months ago that this all boils down to a question of power. A claim to divine power is the only thing that the LDS Church really offers the world.
When a church (any church) declares that it has sole ” authority from God” and that it’s institutional leaders serve as the “mouthpieces of God,” then that church is seeking one thing only: converts who will obey the dictates of that church and it’s officers.
I don’t mean to offend anyone, but having left the LDS Church five years go, I look back on my life as an LDS and see how spiritually shallow it all was for me. Not that I didn’t give it my all. I was active for decades, held offices and callings not only at the local level but also at a Church-wide level. I obeyed the commandments, was Temple worthy and attended the Temple often. I prayed, studied the scriptures daily and was a dedicated student of Mormon history and doctrine.
My break with the LDS institution came not from ignorance of Mormon history and theology, but because I DID understand and value these things, and could no longer support an institution (the LDS Church) that denied so much of Mormon history and progressively rejected the most distinct (and I thought beautiful) aspects of Mormon theology.
A word about symbolism: A symbol always represents a particular reality or fact. The LDS Church’s claim to being “the Kingdom of God’ and the “One True Church” is a symbol for only two things: power and authority. And these two concepts in a religious sense are usually linked with a belief in damnation versus salvation.
But what if this choice of saved and damned is all fictional. What if the real issue– religiously/spiritually speakin– is something else entirely: Progression.
Mormonism’s most unique (and I think admirable) contribution to religion was Joseph Smith’s doctrine of Eternal Progression–a belief in the human capacity for self-achieved Divinity. (”As man now is, God once was; as God now is, man may become.”)
When Eternal Progression (”learning to become Gods ourselves, the same as all Gods before us have”–to reference Joseph’s King Follet Discourse) becomes the paradigm against which one’s religion is set, then ALL the facts of Mormon history (the good and the bad) become equally beneficial. As Joseph Smith taught late in his life (and in contradiction to his teaching earlier in her prophetic career), “it is knowledge that saves a man.”
To study the life of Joseph and other early Mormons–to study without apologetics the good, the bad and the ugly of their lives–is to gain insights into the human nature that can further one’s progression toward becoming the kind of being God is; for our human nature IS our link to God; we share with God a common nature. That is the radical claim of 19th century Mormonism, and it is a claim that is unique to Mormonism.
Denying facts, compartmentalizing one’s thinking, twisting logic and torturing reason, playing semantical games—all the activities in which religious apologists engage –are usually for one purpose and end: to defend a belief system or a religoous institution which is threatned by the bare facts. (And the final defense of apologists usually seems to be that it is humanly impossible for anyone to really know any fact.)
But to put aside apologetics, to embrace the facts and follow them where they may lead, to accept scripture as a human creation and to see the value of the symbolic over the literal, can lead to happiness, peace of mind and–yes–even a sense of surety.The key is to have Eternal Progression as one’s theological paradigm.
Comment # 6 by Rob Lauer | Jan 11, 2007 | Reply
Yes, Rob. One might also compare Ken Wilber’s description of spiritual evolution in terms of its “gross” (physical), “subtle” (spiritual) and “causal” (eternal soul) bodies or aspects to Joseph Smith’s materialistic version of Eternal Progression. I like the way you think, but I don’t agree with your Reform Mormon focus on the King Follett discourse as fundamental truth.
Comment # 7 by Eugene Kovalenko | Jan 13, 2007 | Reply
Good point, Eugene.
To my mind the greatest breakthrough of the King Follett Discourse is that it presents the Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness in theological language. As far as I know all objective, scientific evidence supports the Primacy of Existence. It seems to me that most religious/spiritual traditions struggle with and against this fact. The strength of the King Follet theology is not what it proposes regarding the nature of God, but what it presents regarding the nature of existence itself. To my knowledge no other theology accepts the Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness.
Also the concept of Progression seems consistent with what we know of human history. Technologically and morally I think the human race is progressing–and has always been progressing. I know at first glance many will disagree with this. But consider the facts: humans live longer; a greater percentage of humans on earth live more comfortable lives that ever before; while there are still millions living in poverty, a greater percentage of humans than ever before have risen above poverty; the Enlightenment era principle of individual rights (which was unknown until just a few centuries ago) is increasingly accepted by more of the earth’s population–and this concept has inspired humanitarian efforts for the past few centuries. Yes, there is still suffering, misery and individual “sin” and evil, but overall it seems to me that the human race as a whole has continued to progress throughout recorded history.
Yes, this progression could at any time become regression based on the agency (Free Will) of individuals, but even a slide backwards would still affirm the truthfulness of one of basic tenants in the King Follet Discourse: a radical and (according to traditional monotheism) heretical doctrine of human freedom.
It seems to be me that one needn’t even be a theist in order to accept the majority of the basic “doctrines” of the King Follet Discourse because those “doctrines” have as much (if not more) to do with the nature existence and humans as they do with the nature of God or Gods. For this reason, it is possible to be an atheist AND a Reform Mormon (just as it’s possible to be an atheist and a Jew.)
My previous post sprang from this idea: a religion and a church are two very distinct things. A church is an organization or a community. A religion is a set of principles, convictions or values. An organization or community evolves based upon the choices of its members. Those members put themselves and their religion at a disadvantage when they embrace a fundamentalist mindset regarding their church/organization/community; when they present their church as infalliable, as never changing and as the only channel through which divinity is revealed and godliness is fostered. To justify such outrageous claims, a great many facts must be ignored, hidden or explained away. In short, the church/organization/community becomes one with God–however, God is envisioned.
What a taxing, never-ending exercise it is to preserve this illusion.
But a religion is something quite different because it is a set of principles, ideas, values; it is an approach to life that an individual can embrace apart from any organization. Thus one could be a Christian, Muslim, Buddhist or Hindu (to name but a few religions) while belonging to no sect, church, denomination or community. To my mind, THIS fact is the great strength that these religions have over the LDS or the Roman Catholics. Those two faiths make a religion of belonging to, obeying and defending an organization/church/community. As a story in the currernt issue of “The New Republic” put it, to be a lapsed LDS,is to NOT be LDS at all; to disobey the LDS Authroities is to seperate one’s self from the Church which those Authorities governs, and thus to seperate one’s self from the religion that is LDS Mormonism.
An individual can believe the LDS doctrines regarding God, humanity and nature, but unless he/sje is “active” and has “a testimony” of the organization’s divine authority and the General Authorities’ claims to be authorized by God Himself, then that individual is NOT LDS at all.
I struggled with this fact for decades, tried to avoid the impications of it–even denied it. But in the end, even the LDS Church itself declared it to be true: if I had no “testimony” of the corporate church and her officers, then I was not, in fact, a Latter-day Saint.
So be it. I’d rather be a Mormon than be LDS.
Comment # 8 by Rob Lauer | Jan 13, 2007 | Reply
Rob, I, too, see myself as Mormon rather than “LDS”, which is not unlike a Jew being a Jew. It’s in the genes, albeit for us it is pretentious to identify with Israel. Perhaps it is more like referring to oneself as a “DNA Mormon”? I feel my “Mormoness” as a birthright which bespeaks a culture rather than the outer society. In this we are brothers, are we not?
You put a sharper focus to our apparent disagreement with your notion of the “Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness”, which seems to me to be another way of describing Wilber’s notion of “Flatland”. For you, as an artist, to make this distinction surprises and puzzles me. Flatlanders generally see only exterior reality–that which can be experienced by the senses. They seem to ignore or deny interior reality.
I don’t want to misunderstand you, but is not what you say about “Existence” essentially the same as the existential attitude? This brings to mind a long ago letter from the late Howard Salisbury, a Mormon mentor who put it this way:
“…There is an existential attitude, and it is as old as mankind. To talk about it philosophically is to miss it. To talk about it experientially is to hit close to the mark. To attain to the existential attitude is the only way…. Unless [our] experiences took us to the bottom we can only mouth brilliancies about the existential encounter, the encounter with the lone being, the stripped self. The best models are in the scriptures, and then the Greek tragedies, the most impressive modern one I know anything about is Jean-Paul Sartre and I want to quote what I have tried to reconstruct to you on a few occasions:
“We were never more free than during the German occupation. We had lost all our rights, beginning with the right to talk. Every day we were insulted to our faces and had to take it in silence. Under one protest or another, as workers, Jews and political prisoners, we were deported in mass. Everywhere, on billboards, in the newspapers, on the screen, we encountered the revolting and insipid picture of ourselves that our suppressors wanted us to accept. And because of all this, we were free. Because the Nazi venom seeped into our thoughts, every accurate thought was a conquest. Because an all-powerful police tried to force us to hold our tongues, every word took on the value of a declaration of principles. Because we were hunted down, every one of our gestures had the weight of a solemn commitment. The circumstances, atrocious as they often were, finally made it possible for us to live in the hectic and impossible existence that is known as the lot of man. The basic question of liberty was posed, and we were brought to the verge of the deepest knowledge that man can have of himself. For the secret of man is not his Oedipus complex or his inferiority complex; it is the limit of his own freedom, his capacity for resisting torture and death. Total responsibility in total solitude—is not this the very definition of freedom?”
“For one to comprehend this experience he must have had its equivalent, and the equivalent doesn’t require submission to an invading and occupying army or any other kind of physical submission. The equivalent may be found in being cast out, in being isolated, from the structure or institution through which the self has found easy, ritual, predictable, communal expression.
“To be totally thrown back on the self so utterly that even his faithful and confident and loyal friends cannot restore his losses is to achieve that condition through which every value is tested for its compatibility to the self as separate entity. Everything must fail. Whatever then emerges is known by the self to belong to the self, intimately, indivisibly. All that is known is known only for its earned, realized, actualized meaning. The only meaning there is has been experienced. I think of Oedipus, Job, Lear.
“You generously asked me to relate experiences with dreams under therapy…. Dreams, under conditions of “freedom”, serve up the crises of the past and recreate them as the self experiences them in the present. In this presentation, they are uncolored and undistorted by the rationalizations which the institution helps the mind to render acceptable, socially, religiously, intellectually. There is no face-saving, no exhibitionism, no hypocrisy, no affectation. The self is shown its own reality. It sees its truth.”
Rob, let me know what you think about these statements by Sartre and Salisbury.
Comment # 9 by Eugene Kovalenko | Jan 16, 2007 | Reply
Eugene,
I find much in the above statements with which I do agree.
Could you elaborate a bit more on something you wrote:
“You put a sharper focus to our apparent disagreement with your notion of the “Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness”, which seems to me to be another way of describing Wilber’s notion of “Flatland”. For you, as an artist, to make this distinction surprises and puzzles me. Flatlanders generally see only exterior reality–that which can be experienced by the senses. They seem to ignore or deny interior reality.”
I’m not familiar with the notion of “Flatland.” I am a naturalist, rejecting completely any concept of the supernatural. The reaosn I am a Mormon is because 19th century Mormon theological speculation seemed to have as its objective giving a rational explanation for concepts of God and such which had traditionally been viewed a supernatural. (Thus Gods are not creators in the traditional sense, but are merely humans —composed from eternal, self-existing mattter–who through their own efforts learned to become divine.)
The Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness is a theory of metaphysics (meaning, the nature of reality. To be conscious to be conscious of SOMETHING outside of one’s self.
I’m don’t quite understand why my being an artist and embracing a philosophically Objectivist view of metaphysics should surprise or puzzle you. Those things which you refer to as “exterior reality” and “interior reality” are not two mutually exclusives or contradictory things: both are part of ONE reality–which is Existence as a whole. One’s “interior reality”is not something distinct from exterior reality: it is one’s responce to outer reality. How the individual formulates that interior reality is, for me, the most fascinating, profound and meaningful aspect of being human. That is what I focus on in my art.
Perhaps I’m not comprehending the point you made in your post, so forgive me if what I’ve written here doesn’t address the points you made.
Just a side note—I thoroughly enjoyed the poems and essay you emailed me in December. Thanks!
Comment # 10 by Rob Lauer | Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
Eugene,
I find much in the above statements with which I do agree.
Could you elaborate a bit more on something you wrote:
“You put a sharper focus to our apparent disagreement with your notion of the “Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness”, which seems to me to be another way of describing Wilber’s notion of “Flatland”. For you, as an artist, to make this distinction surprises and puzzles me. Flatlanders generally see only exterior reality–that which can be experienced by the senses. They seem to ignore or deny interior reality.”
I’m not familiar with the notion of “Flatland.” I am a naturalist, rejecting completely any concept of the supernatural. The reaosn I am a Mormon is because 19th century Mormon theological speculation seemed to have as its objective giving a rational explanation for concepts of God and such which had traditionally been viewed a supernatural. (Thus Gods are not creators in the traditional sense, but are merely humans —composed from eternal, self-existing mattter–who through their own efforts learned to become divine.)
The Primacy of Existence over the Primacy of Consciousness is a theory of metaphysics (meaning, the nature of reality. To be conscious to be conscious of SOMETHING outside of one’s self.
I’m don’t quite understand why my being an artist and embracing a philosophically Objectivist view of metaphysics should surprise or puzzle you. Those things which you refer to as “exterior reality” and “interior reality” are not two mutually exclusives or contradictory things: both are part of ONE reality–which is Existence as a whole. One’s “interior reality”is not something distinct from exterior reality: it is one’s responce to outer reality. How the individual formulates that interior reality is, for me, the most fascinating, profound and meaningful aspect of being human. That is what I focus on in my art.
Perhaps I’m not comprehending the point you made in your post, so forgive me if what I’ve written here doesn’t address the points you made.
Just a side note—I thoroughly enjoyed the poems and essay you emailed me in December. Thanks!
Comment # 11 by Rob Lauer | Jan 18, 2007 | Reply
Rob, I think our disagreement may be diminishing.
When I first read your comment #10, I wondered about one of Joseph Smith’s most interesting ideas: “The glory of God is intelligence.” My understanding of this is that the notion of “intelligence” precedes manifestation of any kind, whether of Love, Light and/or Consciousness. In your view does “Existence” precede “Manifestation”? Or could it be the same as “Experience”? Our problem may be one of semantics rather than disagreement.
When I read your comment again, this time to my wife Birgitta, I understood your question better and saw connections that I’d missed on my first read.
You ask me to amplify the term “flatland”, which is a term I’ve recently learned from Ken Wilber’s classic book “A Brief History of Everything.” Do pick this book up. I can’t imagine you won’t resonate to it. From your question, I’m no longer confident in my earlier opinion.
My favorite Wilber quote is: “No one is smart enough to be wrong about everything.” Everybody has something to say.
You speak of now being a “naturalist, rejecting completely any concept of the supernatural.” Allow me to press you on this. I’m assuming that by “the supernatural” you actually mean “magic” or “superstition”. If so, these are developmental levels described in Wilber’s “Brief History” which everyone must experience, include and then transcend on the way to higher levels of awareness. “Reason” is at a higher level, but not higher than “integral” or “Kosmic” levels. That is, we need not stay at the rational level in our evolutionary climb, unless we choose to be stuck there. I hope that’s not where you are. Surely you don’t mean to say that unless something can be understood rationally or rationalized, it isn’t real or meaningful.
As I’ve mentioned previously, my professional training was in the physical sciences. I learned the value of theory and experiment and how to communicate research findings in rational terms. But I have learned since in surprisingly traumatic ways not to discount the importance of intuition as an essential means for finding truth. I do not regard intuition as supernatural. Do you? As Jung would put it, it is a natural non-sensory perception function. We all have it.
Let me give you two examples. The first occurred in the fall of 1960, during my first month of graduate school at the University of Utah. This is when I fell in love with scientific research. I had an experience of sudden insight into my research subject that took me three years to explain rationally. During those three years I had to build new equipment to make precise enough measurements and learn the mathematics required to describe my intuitive theory. My intuition turned out to be exactly correct, but I could not defend it to others until I made the measurements and then compared them to the mathematical model.
My second example is from the summer of 1965. This was during a critical existential period for me; my mother and I both saw, while driving together in broad daylight, a fleet of flying saucers. For me that sighting instantly revolutionized my understanding of physical or natural reality, whereas my devoutly Mormon mother asked no questions whatsoever. She apparently refused to consider the implications of such an experience because it challenged her religious view of how the universe works. Nevertheless, she never denied having seen what we both saw until her dying day almost 40 years later. The fact that we both saw what we saw that day removed the temptation from others to accuse either of us of hallucinating.
Returning to the more common fundamental Mormon ground of “eternal intelligence”, perhaps we need to go way back to basics, starting with what is and is not manifest. That is, before the manifestation of anything–physical, spiritual, whatever. I like the term ISNESS for ultimate manifest reality and the term ISNOTNESS for the potential reality out of which manifestation comes. I have a hard time with the terms “supernatural” and even “natural” these days because they mean different things to different people; again, semantics.
Although my training was in the physical sciences, I discovered by traumatic experience—a post doctoral suicidal depression— that my natural inclinations were more poetic or mystic. I learned almost too late that I’d made a career decision contrary to my soul’s purpose.
I’m glad the poems I sent some weeks ago pleased you. I’m sending you another, written in late October 1965, only days after I had “dropped out” of my familiar world. It is called “As if time existed—a credo”, which was originally written as a letter to a hippie couple at their request. We had just met in a small forest community as fellow drop-outs and they wanted something to read and think about. The letter-poem explains in non jargon terms some of what they and I had discussed. I’d welcome your comments on it.
Comment # 12 by Eugene Kovalenko | Jan 21, 2007 | Reply