Cataclysms such as those we are now witnessing and experiencing are not a new thing for the world. We have some knowledge of the precipitous changes in the history of Egypt when the Sun King, Akhnaten, was destroyed and his model of the universe returned to the shifting desert sands.

The Mayan civilization collapsed suddenly for reasons even now not well understood. In both these civilizations there were enormous quantities of knowledge given to the known world. Paradigms came tumbling down. One can only imagine how the people felt when their Gods or God collapsed; certainly panic, fear, anxiety, depression, hopelessness and paralysis.

I picked these two ancient civilizations to remind us that what we are beginning to live through is not new to mankind.

Is it not interesting that both of these civilizations looked to the stars and that Mayans developed astronomical information that amazes our scientists today? Both the Egyptian and Mayan people built pyramids and cities of great beauty. They looked to the heavens for guidance. I am sure that anyone of scholarly inclination could find any number of civilizations that just collapsed, possibly never to be known again. Therefore, our experience is not unusual.

The world is the world. It is man in his ignorance and emotional illness that has brought him (us) to a lost state of mind, to fear and panic. In this we are no different from those of ancient times.

Even though these people, the Mayans, Egyptians, etc, were in touch with God through their astronomy, they misunderstood the Deity when famine or illness struck. They mistakenly believed that it was their God's anger that had caused calamities to befall them and fell in great fear. It was the fear that impelled them to acts of great destruction, even human sacrifice like the Aztecs.

Their fear was proportional to the human lives they cruelly took - a kind of genocide. These ancient people did not have the knowledge necessary to think these phenomena through carefully and reasonably. After all the concept of mind is a relatively new idea. Genocide is not a new phenomenon in the history of mankind even unto this present day. I hardly have to write the names of the massacres in recent times. These are known to everyone, but what is not so well known is the reluctance of government to deal with those responsible. In every case governments procrastinated with the excuse it was not politically expedient. A few heroic figures who screamed, "This is bloody murder" finally brought the world's attention to the problems in every case forcing aid to the region. Again we find a terrible dichotomy in the mind of men. Political expediency always means a question of money and power in somebody's best interest, certainly not in the interest of those who are being tortured and slaughtered. There does not seem to be the morality at high levels of government to consider and take seriously the sacredness of the human being in the image of the Divine.

All cultures, all civilizations, looked to the heavens where it was felt their God or Gods dwelt. These people, the Mayans and Egyptian, as well as the Stonehenge people and the Anasazi in America, developed refined systems of astronomy which was their contact with Source and enabled them to know the movement of the stars, of the equinoxes and all the pursuant use of that knowledge. That knowledge was separate from their own personal lives, their own psyches.

One looked to the heavens to allay fears, to nourish hope, to be victorious in battle and to be anointed for eternity. However, they did not look inward into the unconscious mind - much like today.

However simple or elegant the words may be to other prayers, it will be to no avail. The inexorable law of cause and effect will sweep everything away that is falsely based. This is ominous.

How far away from these prayers are we today? Let us not forget that from this practice a whole class of people emerged, later to be called the priestly class, who took care of these functions for the king, the court, and the people.

Our scientists are finding that even in their fields old knowledge is giving way to new. Very reputable scientists are thinking about parallel universes and looking for wormholes so that mankind - when the earth perishes - will use that tunnel to get to another universe. There is little thought about whether we want to bring man in all his weary, pathetic state to a new universe and start it all over again - with no greater knowledge of why man has so badly lived up to his potential.

What is new today about genocide is the awareness of such terrible acts. There has been an evolution of consciousness. It is still rising and not sufficiently attended to. Evolution takes time and part of that cycle and development is in the process of reincarnation. This is also an old concept. The world is awash in problems of unparalleled width and depth. It will take years, probably hundreds of years, to put matters right. That can only be done when and if the unconscious is taken into account. If reincarnation did not exist, it would be necessary to invent it. One life can do very little. Reincarnation makes it possible for the purpose of evolution to continue to the desired goal.

Beyond living our lives and fulfilling our challenges on a personal level, there is a mass level of consciousness so that every incarnation that advances individual consciousness, advances the consciousness of the mass. Evolution is slow but it seems to be the way it is to be.

Recently the Hobbit has been found in the Flores Island, a little man who has all the attributes of Homo Sapiens. It shocked that community of scientists. We thought Homo Sapiens had been inhabiting the world alone. It turns out the Hobbits have been with us a long time. This may be the missing link that scientists often invoked. That creature seems to have the mental and spiritual qualities we ascribe to Homo Sapiens so it is a good bet that it is the missing link.

In our current world, America has let the world know that capitalism was the best form of government for the people and waged an unending battle with other forms of monetary systems that other countries may have instituted. This is another paradigm that has fallen into disrepute. The government is saving corporations that would, if one followed the rules, under capitalism would be left to tumble and crumble away. It is a mockery to tout this monetary system as capitalism while at the same time spending billions to prop up these corporate structures. The joke going around is that it is socialism for capitalists. The "haves" seem unable to lose and, for some mysterious reason, there is never a shortage of money for them and never any money for the remuneration of the plight of the poor or impoverished, though we seem to have billions available for wars which only profit a few industries and relatively few people. Wars, economists say, do not profit anyone in the long run.

In view of these facts, one is inclined to remember that line in the Bible, "Unless it is built upon the Divine, they build in vain." As far as I know no civilization has truly been built on the Divine, or not for long, and that fact would seem to validate the quote above.

There seems to be afoot a feeling of optimism in America, possibly around the world. Could it be the people sense there is going to be a major paradigm shift? What I say about America and its financial collapse appears to be true in Europe and Asia. From everything we know and hear, Africa is already a disaster. In the face of this why is anyone fighting a war anywhere, destroying resources. What a terrible ignorance is running amok everywhere.

There is another paradigm that man has lived by for thousands of years. This belief that he can walk, run, jump on one leg. If this were the case why have we been given two legs, one of which has been entirely ignored by nearly all of mankind for thousands of years? I am using this as a metaphor for the conscious and unconscious. The leg that has been ignored is the unconscious, except for a glimmer of light a hundred years ago with the advent of psychoanalysis, which holds that there is an unconscious and the fact that it can be captured by the use of dreams. This idea has been given up on by many analysts who are not even taught how to do dream analysis. In any case, psychoanalysis seems to be a diminishing theory of knowledge and practice.

The only source of knowledge of this "second leg" will be forgotten and man will be compelled to walk as he has on one leg, that of the intellect, until that gives way.

Over and over we read history. We see in the results of our modern world that living by intellect alone does not work. Now we are in the valley of the intellectual breakdown. Since the people, as well as the leaders of the world, know little or nothing about it, that is the unconscious, everybody is in the same lost boat. Again, the intellect alone is going to be used to solve age-old problems. At best these solutions will be band-aids that might indeed work for a short time. Ultimately they will fall away.

I have written before about the unconscious whose dimensions are unknown but which contains all the answers for the questions that man will ask. The unconscious is also the pathway to the Divine because dreams - when properly understood - offer us the truth, the Divine truth, in bits, for no person can stand too much of the truth too quickly.

This essay contains themes all about some of the issues I have mentioned above. There is one more piece of knowledge that is a spiritual one. It is a question of reincarnation. I think that this is a concept or belief held by many, ridiculed by many and many are neutral about it. I am offering evidence that I think sustains this idea with the help of my patients who daily dream of world conditions as well as of their own. I thank them for enabling me to write these ideas down for greater visibility and consideration.

CLINICAL DATA AND COMMENTARY

Writer: For biographical material on the writer, look at the last essay "Reflections on the Global Financial Crisis."

DREAM #1

Someone puts a marker in the water, a lake, a river or maybe ocean so that we may know where we have to swim and emerge. I am already in the water and swimming.

ASSOCIATIONS:

Patient: I am completely at a loss for associations. I suppose there are markers that can be placed in water, like lakes, or even markers in the ocean. I have been in water where the Department of Safety or whoever has put a marker signifying the water is too deep or the current is too fast, but I know from our work that water really stands for the unconscious. Certainly these analyses and you, when you make interpretations, are really giving me markers by which I live or certainly choices I can make in order to live better. By the way, my friend Aaron’s wife called to remind me about my birthday party. God, it’s three weeks off. My friends know I never feel good at that time. Sometimes I feel so bad that I go to bed.

INTERPRETATION:

Dr. B: This is very good. This is another piece of information you are giving that the water is of the womb and that in the womb there is a marker allowing you to know where to emerge. This is the product of the unconscious remembering of life after life. You come down to the water and are in the water of the womb. And with the power of your spirit as a guide you must return again to earth. There is a marker that shows you how to return to the earth plain’s consciousness. This is so that you can dive again into life. This dream is about the question of reincarnation that is so much talked about, so much doubted in the mind of mankind, so believed by those who have the personal faith.

COMMENTARY:

Although my interpretation may sound far-fetched, I felt it was not. As the patient was talking I kept having an image come into my mind that of a baby being born. What the patient did not know was that my own birthday was just about to happen.

Analysts all have the experience at times, if they are tuned in to their patients, of knowing what the core meaning of the session will be, a pretty accurate interpretation. But one wants to have the session unfold because it is not the analyst that has to be convinced of the accuracy of the interpretation but the patient and that comes only with his substantive associations. Usually if the analyst is correct the patient will have a deep emotional response and usually says so. In working with patients and their spiritual selves (see other essays) it seemed clear to me that the patient was describing a pre-birth experience and expressing it in the pictorial way he did. We are limited to the way in which our existence is determined, the language we have to express esoteric knowledge. Other sciences at the fringe of their knowledge do exactly the same though with numbers or hypothesis which require imagination; as for example, imagine that we can stretch space so that linear time is altered. This is what Einstein requires us to do, use our imaginations.

DREAM #2

I had a dream and in my dream I am going to a little village to help Henry, my tailor. Two people are walking. They report from this place, the name, what was the name. I forget why. Also I recall we had to go up the steps and through a gatehouse. There were one or two guards, the officials. I suppose they help you. All this felt like something from a long time ago.

ASSOCIATIONS:

Henry is my tailor in the East who I have not contacted for at least a year. Generally he is a very reliable person. I don't know why he needs my help. He is quite expert at his work. The other part of the dream is like a movie, many movies I have seen, with the gatehouses, stairways going up, guards. I think for people who see movies this would not be a strange sight. In the dream it had a feeling of reminiscences of a long, long time ago. In the meantime I am writing and re-writing my book slowly and thinking about what is happening in our country and in the world. Everything seems to be getting worse. How do we ever get out of this? Maybe we need a new start, a new beginning. This makes me think of the last dream I told you about of the water. I feel that times will be one nightmare after the other.

Dr. B: Even worse than the dark ages? And I know since we did not live there it is hard to know. Yet in reading of those times or of the times of the plague, what did people think, those that were left? Certainly we have a plague upon the world but I think it is all man made.

Patient: If it's man made at least that is helpful. It suggests it can be fixed. That was more than in those times because they didn't even know what caused it.

Dr. B: Here it is important to note the spiritual meaning of what is in your dream. The masters are repudiated to live in the East so the village is where the masters live and Henry is the representative of one of the masters. You are helping Henry who creates the beautiful clothing. Metaphorically the body clothes the soul. Now you can say, people do forget where they come from, who they are, what is their spirit. You show they must ascend to their consciousness and come to the gate of their higher selves of which you say there are officials there, the angels that hold the matrix of the individual and the collective group.

Patient: I see. That makes sense. I have that feeling in my gut when something you say resonates. I don't know why I think of this. I was in a coffee shop on the Westside. The waitress, a blonde in her forties, is not really attractive yet in some compelling way very attractive in her waitress uniform. She could not hide the fulfilled sensuality that she had. I did not say anything to her nor she to me but we knew each other by a glance.

Dr. B: Yes, you knew her before. I believe that. The mind, the soul, says I recognize you and your energy. I recognize you in this way from some past life. A lot of people have that experience. What else can explain this unsettling stimulating recognition across time and space, race and color.

My view of how the universe works and how we have a dual existence; one lives on earth a limited linear existence and one is eternal in the eternal existence under God. All the manifestations about us; that is the galaxies, the earth with all its content, mankind, all the animals as well as all the world's which we know and all the worlds of which we know nothing at this time.

Let us use the symbol of the spiral for our world and let us remember the beauty of the grand universe that we ultimately call God, the Source of all matter and non-matter.

The beauty of the singular point of all existence in that which is called the symbolic spiral (the spiral seems to be a basic pattern of the universe; DNA is a fine example) owes itself to explore its individuated states. Let us say it comes through the power of Duality and Polarity ¹ (See footnote at end of essay). In that moment there is what we call the individual soul vibration, qualities of consciousness that we'll explore and through the evolutionary process the souls of consciousness explore it all. We have already lived in a human life that has found the condition of ageing the bodies and the ageing bodies do not sustain life for thousands of years, millions of years. And so in this state the psyche of the soul, that guidance point, continues to drive us to where we belong. That is what pulls us forward from life after life after life; the exploration of the whole.

Whether or not you see it in what you call eras of lifetimes there is our experience on what we call earth. We see a past as well as a present and we believe in our future. On earth we have linear experiences, a time frame. Ultimately there in a spiral continuum of a flow which means that the universe and everything we sense as previous incarnations are simply all the experiences you have all at once - at the Source - all the experiences occurring at once in the psyche; it is the experience defined life after life after life. Each reincarnation allows the experience of particular individuated qualities of the source. Each individual opportunity to recall helps to remember what you have been learning in the spiral of life.

DREAM #3

I dreamed I am in my office, not really mine. I open the front door. I see a few black people sitting on the floor waiting. I do not ask who they are. It is not my business. I shut the door and lock it since I am not expecting anyone at this time.

ASSOCIATIONS:

I suppose it is my stereotype of black people as being dangerous. I did feel a bit of anxiety when I saw them. I do not see them often in my office building where I rent a small office to do my business. When I see them it arouses all my feelings of anxiety from years of reading, newscasts, movies, all about places like Watts and the "Watts" in every city in the country. It is appalling.

Of course, now with the crisis in the country, or I guess the world, obviously there will be a lot of black people around for some time to come and, of course, there is always Africa.

Dr. B: In view of what has been on your mind for some time, the financial crisis, you again are saying, "There it is, humanity on the floor”, and you here, a "have", experience anxiety about the growing number of the "have nots".

Patient: I have another dream later on toward morning.

DREAM #4

I am with a dermatologist friend. We go to a meeting. I say, "I will follow you" but somehow I get sidetracked and find myself in a cul-de-sac. I have to back up and then continue. Suddenly a pregnant woman is with us and all of us are going to the meeting. I am thinking I will leave early for I know the way back.

ASSOCIATIONS:

I have no idea what this is about. I have not seen my friend for a long time. When I do we usually have lunch around here. We both like pasta. We talk. We catch up. The meeting is a mystery as is the pregnant woman, whom I do not know, and when I get into a cul-de-sac I feel frustrated. How did I get here? I back up and turn and get on the road again and it turns out OK.

Dr. B: It is so interesting, this couplet of dreams, for in the one you are identified with a mass unconscious, really open to it and feeling the loss, the poverty (the black people on the floor) and the fear that is pervading the world.

Survival is the driving thing, arousing a lot of fear and mass fear. That is not what the planet needs although it is what the planet is getting. It is this mass fear that says to the leaders of the world that the people do not believe them. "Your prayers, your beliefs, your incantations have not worked". In ancient times the people would have killed the priest or shaman or leader on the grounds that he was a fraud for not being able to avert the catastrophe.

Now in the second dream I find a note of hopefulness. Look at the dermatologist. That is the skin. On the surface everything seems and is pretty bad and for many it is desperate. Then you find yourself in the cul-de-sac, a place you feel mankind to be in and that it is important for people to know that where we are now is the cul-de-sac. It is not hopeless. We have to reassess and get on the correct road, which you do. Then you are with this pregnant woman which means that there is a new birth to come. A new birth means new hope and it is a way of saying that the future will be all right. The pregnant woman symbolically stands for the beautiful, feminine in the unconscious with whom you are working.

It is as if you are the observer standing far off looking at the process and can see that if we do not panic and if the fear is addressed and not denied, there will be a way out. I agree with that.

Patient: I recall that I could and would leave the meeting early and I hear someone say it is to be done with civility.

Dr. B: Yes, you can go early to say you know the road and can show the way and as you say everything is to be done with civility which means no rebelling, no mob, no hitting, no hurting. Civility. With that I agree.

Patient: I had this dream of being in Argentina.

DREAM #5

I had lunch with an attractive woman. After we took a walk near a beach. We met some old men. She introduced me and then we had to leave. She said, "I will have to say good-bye to the high officials." I follow her to a throng of people. When they parted to let us in, I see an old woman on a gurney. She is shrunken and twisted of body. Her face is contorted and ugly. However I do shake hands with her and thank her and say good-bye.

ASSOCIATION:

Patient: I was in Argentina to do a travel article for a magazine about ten years ago. There was a woman I met. Both of us had a good time. She was my guide. She took me around to all the places I needed to write about and did get me introductions to people I needed to interview but there was no one like the old woman in the gurney.

INTERPRETATION:

Dr. B: If we think of the chakras system in the human being, Argentina might be considered the base chakras of the planet. You find yourself in the Southern Hemisphere metaphorically trying to describe the psyche of humanity. When you were saying good-bye to this official, you were saying good-bye to an era. This era has entertained a great sickness within the people. Yes, you might say good- bye to that sickness. Humanity must say good-bye to the sickness of the unconscious that is keeping them from the power of Source. Isn't it remarkable how consistent your dreams have been along this thread of your preoccupation.

The next two dreams are from the patient that I spoke about in other essays. He is a writer and a commercial producer and director. Check other essays.

DREAM #6

I am outside moving across a large parking area. I am not aware of any cars or anything. The parking lot seems empty. I move to a shed-like structure, about five foot tall and three feet deep. I am not aware of how long it is but I am aware of two cardboard boxes inside. the kind that one hangs clothes in when preparing to move. There is some refuse in them, paper and small sections of cardboard. I hear a voice saying, "We become storage holders". The voice then again says, "We become storage holders. We are not new". A moment later the voice says, "We are temporary". A little later I think about the colors in Greek temples. Weren't they painted brightly? I want to know what these colors were. I am frightened and agitated most of the night.

I await the patient's associations.

ASSOCIATIONS:

Patient: I am thinking of something that is absolutely foreign to me. You know I was raised in a certain faith in a small town but what I am thinking is utterly against what I have been taught and lived with all my life, though I have given up that faith.

Dr. B: What did you think?

Patient: I think this is a dream about living previous lives. This is a paradigm that is hard for me to accept but the dream has such power for me it is hard for me to deny. I sensed that the two boxes were my girlfriend and myself. Everything the dream said points to previous lives. We are storage holders in this life and like the boxes temporary. And in the great sweep of time, it is like we are ready to move, always ready to move, thus we are temporary like the cardboard boxes and we are not new. That was the clincher in the dream and it felt so true, as the voice said, the desire to know about the colors of the Greek temple, things of old, of the past, and the strong ache to understand what they looked like.

INTERPRETATION:

Dr. B: We have been at this work for a long time especially working intensively. Look back to where you were when you began your analysis and consider where you are today. It seems to me that there have been revolutions of change and what has changed is the way your mind appreciates the reality of the facts of your life and the fact of the unconscious as manifested by your dreams. Your mind appreciates the people in your life and the new places you are currently going to in a way that you could not have done when you first began. I think these changes embody both a revolution and an evolution. I don't wonder that you were agitated and frightened. New places in the mind kick that anxiety into being.

Patient: I feel I am approaching an entirely new way of looking at my life and the universe. This is an awesome thing for me to face.

Dr. B: I think the empty parking lot is representative of the universe, the shed the world we live in and the cardboard boxes a moment of time in life, death and then again.

DREAM #7

The next night I had the following dream. I am driving around the corner into a town or small city. There is a wide roundabout before us. "Is this right?", I asked my high school classmates who were in the car with me. One of them who later in real life became a minister in the church I grew up in and pretty much ruined his life, responds with something like, "Yes, it is." Then we moved to the subject of the car I am driving. We were driving in a van. I was making calculations and when I finished I said, "It costs me $11". My friends laughed because it is a rusty, old bug. They say, "You should have gotten 12 of them for $11."

ASSOCIATIONS:

I think this dream is on the same theme. It would be hard to explain my feeling on hearing what you said, especially when it runs counter to what I have believed all my life, but the moment you said what you did I knew it was true and not from an intellectual place but an emotional one. Like being in Paris and going up the Eiffel Tower. Rather than just hearing about going up the tower, it is having the experience of being in the tower, experiencing the height of the tower and the awesome sight of Paris from the tower. Nothing can take that away from me as the dream was interpreted.

Dr. B: What about the rusty old van?

Patient: I had seen a VW Bug while in a taxi a few days ago. For some reason the early VW model that I saw moved me deeply, its beauty even though rusted and old. The front of it was held together with some wire. Something about the line of the car and the sound of the engine struck me. I sensed mechanically it was in great shape. We stopped at a light. I craned my neck to see inside. It was dark. I think it was a black man who was the driver, low in the seat. The light changed. The taxi took off quickly but the VW was faster, disappearing down the wide road that was almost a highway.

INTERPRETATION:

Dr. B: I think you perceived the old van as myself, old and almost 88, not having quite the energy of my youth but still mentally fast and capable.

Patient: (laughing) I think you are right. That seems to hit me absolutely right.

COMMENTARY:

I believe it would be all right for anyone to say this is transference love. I would probably agree but there is more to say about this issue. A psychoanalyst has to examine these proclamations carefully and test if they are an idealization, which would not be healthy for either person. If it were established that these were genuine feelings being expressed, it is easy to accept respect (we respect our teachers because we learn from them). The issue of love is very important because our patients come to us not being able to love or be loved. It is one of the primary tasks of analysis to be able to illicit this feeling, to see it born and flourish.

The infant learns about love from the mother who takes care of its needs, but more important the mother that understands his/her physical and emotional needs. To be understood in this early time is the foundation of the capacity to love and be loved.

We know that pretty much everything is already a completion of an existing precedent. Here I would say, considering my views based on my discoveries, that if the Divine is involved in our lives, though unseen and unheard, then each human being is "kissed" by God. In the birthing there is a memory trace of that experience in the organism and it would be fair to say the Divine understands us completely and that understanding brings us joy. That is exactly what the infant feels in being understood by the mother. So in fact the human experience of love is reminiscent of Divine love and serves ultimately as a bulwark to overcoming the imprint aided by the understanding of the analyst.

It was astonishing for me to hear these dreams and to hear the patient come immediately to the conclusion that the roundabout was a symbol for incarnation.

CONTINUED SESSION:

Dr. B: So what do you think?

Patient: I am still in shock about my comment that the dream we talked about has to do with reincarnation and your confirmation of it. I know from past work that eleven is a good number and means completion of a level of consciousness. When my friends mocked me with, "I should have gotten twelve for eleven dollars" and they laughed, I laughed too. But I laughed because I knew that twelve was a symbol of peace and tranquility, the Hanged Man in the Tarot.

This work has turned my life upside down 180 degrees but I have never felt this kind of tranquility before. It is in contrast to my minister friend, Tom, whose life is in ruins. He has lost all his money in the stock market and lost his wife after he hit her. I think my friends are being involved with dead churches and dead ideas. My whole life has changed. It is now clear to me that what once seemed right side up is now upside down and sadly wrong.

Dr. B: What can I say after your associations and your own interpretation? I could not have said it better, but what of the roundabout?

Patient: My girlfriend teaches at a school in the East and one has to use a roundabout to get to her town. Roundabouts are neat, getting off or getting on, it's a wheel.

Dr. B: Yes, it is a wheel and one gets on and gets off. It is like reincarnation. We get on and in time we get off and then later, I have no time or measurement, it happens again. Really another version of your cardboard box dream. We are all temporary.

CONCLUSION:

If the central eddy in the stream is the eddy of evolving consciousness, one can see civilizations dying as a necessary event for new ones to be born. In the dying of the old, there seems to have been the pattern of cataclysms natural and human, of murders and a forgiveness of them, attempts by mankind to come to some kind of order, all part of that ongoing struggle. It is one way of explaining what is happening and what has happened.

The Divine does not condone war or killing. Man does for money or for power. So far we do not hold friendly feelings toward strangers, indeed even with our own American society and in all modern ones there is the chance to emphasize the differences between groups and to dislike or hate the other.

So far we are not close to recognizing the sacredness of that one God in everyone. It seems it will take time and it will take a change of paradigm worldwide. People will have to examine the theory I put forward in my book that the single source of hatred on the earth is the family and the maternal imprint. The hatred incurred by that process has to be shunted out to the Other, whoever the Other might be. A necessary part of this new paradigm would have to be the recognition and the acceptance of the unconscious in everyone's life.

"In the end is my beginning", wrote T.S. Eliot, the father of modern poetry, in his poem "East Coker". In addition I quote from other poems:

From "Little Gidding"

"We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time
through the unknown, unremembered gate."

From "The Wasteland"

There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: ‘Stetson!
‘You who were with me in the ships at Mylae
‘That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
‘Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?
‘Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed?
‘O keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men,
‘Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!
‘You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frere!’

From "The Lovesong of J.Alfred Prufrock"

"We have lingered in the chambers of the Sea
By seagirls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us and we drown."

For those interested "East Coker" and "Little Gidding" are two poems in the "The Four Quartets". The other two are "Burnt Norton" and "Dried Salvages". These themes are explored in "The Four Quartets" and "The Hollow Men" as well as "The Wasteland" and "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock" all by T.S. Eliot.

_____________________________________________

Footnote:

(1) By Duality I mean our earthly linear existence and at the same time being part of the speck on the spiral where we are eternal. By Polarity I mean opposites; that is light and dark, good and bad, man and woman. These qualities are part of our earthly existence.

I use the symbol of the spiral because it unfolds and contains the inner most core of oneself. When you spiral outward you are still contained in your core base of security. Yet as you spiral out you are allowing yourself a greater expression of union with a Source consciousness.

Source is a spiraling energy moving in and out of materialization. We are modeled after Source and let us remember that DNA is spiral. If man is a pinpoint on a spiral, all the other things that the creator has manifested such as animals, plants, minerals, natural forms of earth as well as the galaxy we live in and the greater dimensions of the universe, the multi galaxies of the universe and the parallel universes, all exist on that spiral.

Whether or not you see it in what you call eras of lifetimes, there is our experience on what we call earth. We see a past as well as a present and we believe in our future. On earth we have linear experiences, a time frame. Ultimately there in a spiral continuum of a flow which means that the universe and everything we sense as previous incarnations are simply all the experiences you have all at once - at the Source - all the experiences occurring at once in the psyche; it is the experience defined life after life after life. Each reincarnation allows the experience of particular individuated qualities of the source. Each individual opportunity to recall helps to remember what you have been learning in the spiral of life.

December 2008