Maya Angelou said People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.The way Michael Jackson made us feel…was loved. He healed, filled and lifted the hearts of people all across this globe. Thank you Michael. ~Dr, Catherine Gross
Saturday, June 11, 2016
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/27-important-facts-everyone-should-know-about-the-black-panthers_us_56c4d853e4b08ffac1276462
http://www.socialistalternative.org/panther-black-rebellion/the-black-panther-party-for-self-defense/
http://www.socialistalternative.org/2016/05/25/socialists-bernie-sanders-campaign-fighting-independent-working-class-politics/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWNBV6ndmH4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euA6Q1XDTio
Sunday, June 5, 2016
The Reflective Lives of Michael Jackson and Mohammed Ali :Part 1-The Spiritual Evolution of MJ
The well loved Muhammad Ali made his transition,last week, and the tributes to him are endless. Much like it was, ans still is for MJ. As I watched the stories of Muhammad Ali's life, I kept thinking about Michael What I noticed is how much alike the paths of Michael and Muhammad were. They are reflective of each other in Identity, choice of worship, political outlook, humanitarian efforts...and I suspect much more. So, starting with Michael, let's have a look at how they approached spirituality. They each evolved, and did so fearlessly.
The matter of fear is important because often Christians are led to believe that if they do anything that does not agree with Christian fundamentalism they are in a cult and they will go to hell. There is really a lot of fear that can take place in changing faiths. Michael however, was actually raised in the spirit of change regarding how to worship, and may not have been subjected to such fears. Michael's mother, Katherine, at some point decided to "make that change" for reasons of her own. Possibly, it was the matter of fundamentalism, which is far to immense to be discussed here. Baptists, are often Christian fundamentalists however.
In the late 1950s, Katherine Jackson began working part-time as a store clerk in a local Sears in Gary. In 1963, Katherine, who was raised a Baptist, joined the Jehovah's Witness faith. After her conversion in 1965, all of her children followed her into the faith. While Joe, who was brought up in the Lutheran faith, also practiced the religion, it was often said he decided not to convert. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Jackson
"The most important aspect of Christianity for the enslaved was the promise of heaven — a promise made by plantation owners. This idea preached the notion that for all the suffering that is done in the physical world, your soul will be preserved and you will experience a hardship-free spiritual life, according to Slave Resistance, A Caribbean Study. What this did for enslaved Black people was give them hope for the future. Converted enslaved people’s belief in heaven allowed some to passively resist their plantation owners and focus on the afterlife. With that belief, all of the beatings and lashings meant nothing because in heaven the enslaved person would be rewarded and the master would be punished." http://atlantablackstar.com/2015/04/10/9-devastating-actions-white-slaves-masters-took-to-convert-black-people-to-christianity/
At some point, this was not applicable to Michael. He later in life, makes it unquestionably clear that we do not have to die to go to heaven, His beautiful writing "Heaven is Here" shows a decided change from fundamentalism.Fundamentalist's teach that we must die to see heaven. Of course, we all want to be in heaven, but none of us wants to die.
People change their spiritual paths for various reasons. Perhaps Michael's worship practice's changed because of how confining it was to be a Witness. Michael was loved and was the Beloved of the entire world. So it was needful for him to see God in a more universal way.Michael believed that we are one, the Witnesses did not agree. Heaven had limitations, and although Michael loved being a Witness, it conflicted with what he believed God had gifted him to be, That meaning, it was in direct contradiction to his calling from God. As with any religion, there is speculation what is believed and why. Its my personal thought that it has much to do with unity/divisiveness as well as how God is revealed in ones life. That is not something that has been written in stone, it's only my belief. Consider the question and answer below. And how it might have affected Michael.
Question:
"I was told by a Jehovah's Witness that only 144,000 people enter heaven and that the rest will either live forever on earth or be annihilated. He quoted Revelation 14:1–3 and Psalm 39:10 to prove his point."
Answer:
"There are actually three issues to address here. The first is the number of people in heaven. In Revelation 7 and 14, we are told about a group of 144,000 people that will always be with the Lamb. If we take these descriptions of this group literally they would be only Jewish male virgins. This would mean means that Peter (not a virgin), the Blessed Mother (not a male), and Jehovah’s Witnesses founder Charles Taze Russel (not a Jew) would not be in heaven."
It should be clear, Michael loved being a Witness. It was just that he ultimately transcended the religion. He held on to being a Witness for as long as his soul would allow. In his writing "My Childhood, My Sabbath, My Freedom. You can see his love of being a Witness, and also being spiritually lifted by having the freedom to develop the gift God gave him just to be thankful. This is perhaps the beginning of a conflict, and ultimately change.
"Sundays were my day for "Pioneering," the term used for the missionary work that Jehovah's Witnesses do. We would spend the day in the suburbs of Southern California, going door to door or making the rounds of a shopping mall, distributing our Watchtower magazine. I continued my pioneering work for years and years after my career had been launched.
'Sundays were sacred for two other reasons as I was growing up. They were both the day that I attended church and the day that I spent rehearsing my hardest. This may seem against the idea of "rest on the Sabbath," but it was the most sacred way I could spend my time: developing the talents that God gave me. The best way I can imagine to show my thanks is to make the very most of the gift that God gave me".
http://www.beliefnet.com/faiths/2000/12/my-childhood-my-sabbath-my-freedom.aspx#gOL7uRiOmdhtrCex.99
"Michael’s family was famously religious - they were Jehovah’s Witnesses and Michael occasionally disguised himself to join his fellow believers as they went from house to house, inviting people to think about God. As a grown man, he has moved beyond denominations of faith - his concern is not with religion but with spirituality. This gives him strength, but I think it is the joy he takes in life which keeps renewing his vitality - that, and a second factor which I shall describe in a moment."
Uri Geller, magician
It came to be at some point, that Michael was actually traumatized by the decisions he had to make, Should he follow his calling or follow his religion?. He really loved them both, but had not yet come to understand that there is a distinct difference between religion and spirituality.There was an actual conflict that led to his change, or spiritual evolution. Schmuley interviewed him regarding the effects of his religion on his art,
The Interview:
Schmuley Boteach: Do you think a hatred of pride is still a relic of your religious upbringing?
Michael Jackson: It hurt me a lot and it helped me a lot.
SB: How did it hurt you?
MJ:r... (long silence) When I did certain things in the past that I didn´t realized were against the religion and I was deprimanded for it, it almost destroyed me. Certain things that I did as an artist in my music I didn´t realized I was crossing a line with them and when they chastised me, it really hurt me. It almost destroyed me. My mother saw it.
SB: Their disapproval, their rejection?
MJ: When I did the Moonwalk for the first time, Motown 25, they told me that I doing burlesque dancing and it was dirty and I went for months and they said, "You can never dance like that again." I said 90,9 percent of dancing is moving the waist. They said, "We don´t want you to do it." So I went around trying to dance for a long time without moving this part of my body. Then when I made Thriller with all the ghouls an ghosts, they said that it was demonic and part of the occult and that Brother Jackson can´t do it. I called my lawyer and was crying and I said: "Destroy the video, have it destroyed." And because he went against my wishes, people have "Thriller" today. They made me feel so bad about it that I ordered people to destroy it.
Thankfully, that did not happen! Nevertheless, Michael was hurt. He still lost the religion he tried so hard to keep, A religion can be like a living being. It is a lifeline to God as you understand God to be, a platform to communicate with those you love, who are also in the faith. If taken, it can be like a death...a certain cause for grief. Michael’s grief was at best nigh, but had not yet come full throttle.. Schumley shares what happened when it did.
“Michael was a little late arriving the next day. I was waiting in his trailer. He walked in so distraught. I didn’t understand, we were having so much fun the night before. He was silent as he sat in the makeup chair. I had to ask him please tell me. Please tell me what is wrong.
His eyes welled up with tears. “Mother called last night. The church called her, and told her that I held and fired a gun yesterday. They ordered that I have to make decision. I must leave the church, or leave the entertainment industry.” He was weeping as he uttered those words.
I was quite mortified. “What did your mother advise you to do?”
“She felt horrible. She told me it was up to me. She said she would stand by me with whatever I decided.”
“I see, you are here today”.
“Yes”
“Mother is supporting my choice”.”
The Watchtower Society is very clear on how a disfellowshipped person is to be treated. A disfellowshipped person is not to be associated with under any social circumstances; in fact the word "Hello" should not even be uttered to these ones, even in the kingdom hall. This treatment is far harsher than how a Witness would treat a person of the world. Yet,the Bible only said that it is the Antichrist that one should not say a greeting to. This type of treatment was not to extend to other wrongdoers such as fornicators. The Society is bundling all forms of wrongdoing as the same, and treatment is to be of the same harsh standard for all disfellowshipped people regardless of the wrongdoing that was done. Hence, a disfellowshipped Witness must not be greeted regardless of whether their "sin" was murder, changing beliefs or simply smoking cigarettes. http://www.jwfacts.com/watchtower/disfellowship-shunning.php#treatment
It is clear that Katherine did not shun Michael… Chiefly, because love is more important that “religion” . She did not support The Witnesses...she supported Michael. That in itself is the beginning of another change in her worship path. A worship path is personal, but a religion is not. Religion cannot belong to any one person. Michael had this to say;
“I avoid using the term 'religion', because many people say 'my religion' this and 'my religion' that. Why should it be 'my' religion? I just believe what’s in the Bible with regard to which religion is involved. I simply believe.... I believe in it and I get down on my knees every night and thank God and ask Him to lead the way."
I believe that after Michael’s separation from the Witnesses, he began to see God in many ways, face’s and even places. He developed a relationship with God, not a witness to God. He expanded, as it began to show in his work.
"It's strange that God doesn't mind expressing Himself/Herself in all the religions of the world, while people still cling to the notion that their way is the only right way. Whatever you try to say about God, someone will take offense, even if you say everyone's love of God is right for them.
'For me the form God takes is not the most important thing. What's most important is the essence. My songs and dances are outlines for Him to come in and fill. I hold out the form. She puts in the sweetness. I've looked up at the night sky and beheld the stars so intimately close, it was as if my grandmother had made them for me.
How rich, how sumptuous," I thought. In that moment I saw God in His creation. I could as easily have seen Her in the beauty of a rainbow, the grace of a deer bounding through a meadow, the truth of a father's kiss. But for me the sweetest contact with God has no form.
I close my eyes, look within, and enter a deep soft silence.
The infinity of God's creation embraces me. We are one.""
It is a spiritual evolution. It takes time. It is possible that as a Witness Michael had to learn how to deal with rejection very early. Uncountable doors being slammed in one's face can could toughen up anyone to be sure.. It becomes a little trickier when the problem is you being rejected by an entire religion. Separated from all you had come to believe.
Personally,I believe God spoke to Michael and healed him from the hurt he had endured in organised religion. Organised religion is not for everyone. I mean that in an absolute way..I believe we are hearing the voice of God, as God spoke to Michael through “ Heaven is Here” I am not speaking of some cloud floating by with eerie sounds in the wind. There are many who feel that the voice in this “scriptural” writing was Michael speaking …. I believe it is God speaking to Michael. I am saying it the absolute voice of God which was delivered by who I believe to be The Prophet Michael.
God spoke to Michael, and let him know that he may have been separated from a religion, but he was not separated from Him. God told him to reclaim his bliss. Michael could lift his head he was not alone...God was with him, and told him not to be afraid to be who he had been called to be. Be joyful...reclaim his bliss. Michael made the change , but only because he could hear the voice of God so clearly. I see and hear God in Michael,
Michael made that change, but change is never easy. Michael evolved spiritually, and he shared that experience with us. .We can see how much is involved in just changing your faith. In Michael’s case it was generational.
Next: Part 2 - The Spiritual Evolution of Ali
Michael and Mohammed:Their Reflective Paths/ Part 1 - Michael's Spiritual Evolution
The well loved Muhammad Ali made his transition
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Prayer for Peace: ONE
Prayer for Peace: ONE: Exodus 33:18 And Moses said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. 19 And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. 20 but,thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. 21 And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: 22 and it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: 23 and I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.
The glory of God is too much for any of us to see, the brightness and magnificence of his glory is so great that to see it all would kill us.He must actually protects from seeing His glory. So, with precision, he places and scatters fragments of His glory wherever He will. Little by little the earth is permeated with the Glory of God;
His glory is like a snow cloud. If the entire cloud were to fall on you, it is likely that you would not survive it, Therefore it is given to us flake by flake by flake. I is astonishing indeed. It is His amazing grace.
My soul astonished
At the precision and placement
Of Your countless fragments
Scattered everywhere
Permeating everything
Seen and unseen
Thank you Siren for such a beautiful prayer,and even forcing me to see the unseen
The glory of God is too much for any of us to see, the brightness and magnificence of his glory is so great that to see it all would kill us.He must actually protects from seeing His glory. So, with precision, he places and scatters fragments of His glory wherever He will. Little by little the earth is permeated with the Glory of God;
His glory is like a snow cloud. If the entire cloud were to fall on you, it is likely that you would not survive it, Therefore it is given to us flake by flake by flake. I is astonishing indeed. It is His amazing grace.
My soul astonished
At the precision and placement
Of Your countless fragments
Scattered everywhere
Permeating everything
Seen and unseen
Thank you Siren for such a beautiful prayer,and even forcing me to see the unseen
Sunday, December 28, 2014
The Occult World of CG Jung:How a near-death experience transformed the psychologist's attitude to the world of mysticism and magic
Repost:
Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung's Life and Teachings
By
Gary Lachman
An Excerpt:
The Occult World of C. G. Jung*
11 February 1944, the 68-year-old Carl Gustav Jung – then the world’s most renowned living psychologist – slipped on some ice and broke his fibula. Ten days later, in hospital, he suffered a myocardial infarction caused by embolisms from his immobilised leg. Treated with oxygen and camphor, he lost consciousness and had what seems to have been a near-death and out-of-the-body experience – or, depending on your perspective, delirium. He found himself floating 1,000 miles above the Earth. Seas and continents shimmered in blue light and Jung could make out the Arabian desert and snow-tipped Himalayas. He felt he was about to leave orbit, but then, turning to the south, a huge black monolith came into view. It was a kind of temple, and at the entrance Jung saw a Hindu sitting in a lotus position. Within, innumerable candles flickered, and he felt that the “whole phantasmagoria of earthly existence” was being stripped away. It wasn’t pleasant, and what remained was an “essential Jung”, the core of his experiences.
He knew that inside the temple the mystery of his existence,
of his purpose in life, would be answered. He was about to cross the threshold
when he saw, rising up from Europe far below, the image of his doctor in the
archetypal form of the King of Kos, the island site of the temple of Asclepius,
Greek god of medicine. He told Jung that his departure was premature; many were
demanding his return and he, the King, was there to ferry him back. When Jung
heard this, he was immensely disappointed, and almost immediately the vision
ended. He experienced the reluctance to live that many who have been ‘brought
back’ encounter, but what troubled him most was seeing his doctor in his
archetypal form. He knew this meant that the physician had sacrificed his own
life to save Jung’s. On 4 April 1944 – a date numerologists can delight in –
Jung sat up in bed for the first time since his heart attack. On the same day,
his doctor came down with septicæmia and took to his bed. He never left it, and
died a few days later.
Jung was convinced that he hadn’t simply hallucinated, but
that he had been granted a vision of reality. He had passed outside time, and
the experience had had a palpable effect on him. For one thing, the depression
and pessimism that overcame him during WWII vanished. But there was something
more. For most of his long career, he had impressed upon his colleagues,
friends, and reading public that he was, above all else, a scientist. He was
not, he repeated almost like a mantra, a mystic, occultist, or visionary, terms
of abuse his critics, who rejected his claims to science, had used against him.
Now, having returned from the brink of death, he seemed content to let the
scientist in him take a back seat for the remaining 17 years of his life.
Although Jung had always believed in the reality of the
‘other’ world, he had taken care not to speak too openly about this belief.
Now, after his visions, he seemed less reticent. He’d had, it seems, a kind of
conversion experience, and the interests the world-famous psychologist had
hitherto kept to himself now became common knowledge. Flying saucers, astrology,
parapsychology, alchemy, even predictions of a coming “new Age of Aquarius”:
pronouncements on all of these dubious subjects – dubious at least from the
viewpoint of modern science – flowed from his pen. If he had spent his career
fending off charges of mysticism and occultism – initially triggered by his
break with Freud in 1912 – by the late 1940s he seems to have decided to stop
fighting. The “sage of Küsnacht” and “Hexenmeister of Zürich”, as Jung was
known in the last decade of his life, had arrived.
ALL IN THE FAMILY
Yet Jung’s involvement with the occult was with him from the
start – literally, it was in his DNA. His maternal grandfather, Rev. Samuel
Preiswerk, who learned Hebrew because he believed it was spoken in heaven,
accepted the reality of spirits, and kept a chair in his study for the ghost of
his deceased first wife, who often came to visit him. Jung’s mother Emilie was
employed by Samuel to shoo away the dead who distracted him while he was
working on his sermons.
She herself developed mediumistic powers in her late teens.
At the age of 20, she fell into a coma for 36 hours; when her forehead was
touched with a red-hot poker she awoke, speaking in tongues and prophesying.
Emilie continued to enter trance states throughout her life, in which she would
communicate with the dead. She also seems to have been a ‘split personality’.
Jung occasionally heard her speaking to herself in a voice he soon recognised
was not her own, making profound remarks expressed with an uncharacteristic authority.
This ‘other’ voice had inklings of a world far stranger than the one the young
Carl knew.
This ‘split’ that Jung had seen in his mother would later
appear in himself. At around the age of 12, he literally became two people.
There was his ordinary boyhood self, and someone else. The ‘Other,’ as Carl
called him, was a figure from the 18th century, a masterful character who wore
a white wig and buckled shoes, drove an impressive carriage, and held the young
boy in contempt. It’s difficult to escape the impression that in some ways Jung
felt he had been this character in a past life. Seeing an ancient green
carriage, Jung felt that it came from his time. his later notion of the
collective unconscious, that psychic reservoir of symbols and images that he
believed we inherit at birth, is in a sense a form of reincarnation, and Jung
himself believed in some form of an afterlife. Soon after the death of his
father, in 1896 when Jung was 21, he had two dreams in which his father
appeared so vividly that he considered the possibility of life after death. In
another, later dream, Jung’s father asked him for marital advice, as he wanted
to prepare for his wife’s arrival. Jung took this as a premonition, and his
mother died soon after. And years later, when his sister Gertrude died – a
decade before his own near-death experience – Jung wrote that “What happens
after death is so unspeakably glorious that our imagination and feelings do not
suffice to form even an approximate conception of it.” [1]
TABLES AND KNIVES
Jung’s mother was involved in at least two well-known
paranormal experiences that are recounted in practically every book about him.
Sitting in his room studying, Carl suddenly heard a loud bang coming from the
dining room. He rushed in and found his mother startled. The round walnut table
had cracked from the edge past the centre. The split didn’t follow any joint,
but had passed through solid wood. Drying wood couldn’t account for it; the
table was 70 years old and it was a humid day. Jung thought: “There certainly
are curious accidents.” As if she was reading his mind Emilie replied in her
‘other’ voice: “Yes, yes, that means something.” Two weeks later came a second
incident. Returning home in the evening, Jung found an excited household. An
hour earlier there had been another loud crack, this time coming from a large
sideboard. No one had any idea what had produced it. Jung inspected the
sideboard. Inside, where they kept the bread, he found a loaf and the bread
knife. The knife had shattered into several pieces, all neatly arranged in the
breadbasket. The knife had been used earlier for tea, but no one had touched it
nor opened the cupboard since. When he took the knife to a cutler, he was told
that there was no fault in the steel and that someone must have broken it on
purpose. He kept the shattered knife for the rest of his life, and years later
sent a photograph of it to psychical researcher JB Rhine.
SPIRITS AFOOT
By this time Jung, like many others, was interested in
spiritualism, and was reading through the literature – books by Zöllner,
Crooks, Carl du Prel, Swedenborg, and Justinus Kerner’s classic The Seeress of
Prevorst. At the Zofingia debating society at the University of Basel, he gave
lectures on “The Value of Speculative Research” and “On the Limits of Exact
Science”, in which he questioned the dominant materialist paradigm that reigned
then, as today. Jung led fellow students in various occult experiments, yet
when he spoke to them about his ideas, or lectured about the need to take them
seriously, he met with resistance. Apparently he had greater luck with his
dachshund, whom he felt understood him better and could feel supernatural
presences himself. [2]
Another who seemed to feel supernatural presences was his
cousin, from his mother’s side of the family, Helene Preiswerk. In a letter to
JB Rhine about the shattered bread knife, Jung refers to Helly – as she was
known – as a “young woman with marked mediumistic faculties” whom he had met
around the time of the incident, and in his “so-called’ autobiography Memories,
Dreams, Reflections he remarks that he became involved in a series of séances
with his relatives after the incidents of the bread knife and table. Yet the
séances had been going on for some time before the two events, and at their
centre was Helly, whom Jung already knew well and who, by all accounts, was in
love with him. This is an early sign of his somewhat ambiguous relationship
with the occult.
Helly would enter a trance and fall to the floor, breathing
deeply, and speaking in old Samuel Preiswerk’s voice – although she had never
heard him. She told the others that they should pray for her elder sister
Bertha, who, she said, had just given birth to a black child. Bertha, who was
living in Brazil, had already had one child with her mixed-race husband, and
gave birth to another on the same day as the séance. [3] Further séances proved
equally startling. At one point, Samuel Preiswerk and Carl Jung Sr – Jung’s
paternal grandfather – who had disliked each other while alive, reached a new
accord. A warning came for another sister who was also expecting a child that
she would lose it; in August the baby was born premature and dead. [4]
Helly produced further voices, but the most interesting was
a spirit named Ivenes, who called herself the real Helene Preiswerk. This
character was much more mature, confident, and intelligent than Helly, who Jung
described as absent-minded, and not particularly bright, talented, or educated.
It was as if buried beneath the unremarkable teenager was a fuller, more
commanding personality, like Jung’s ‘Other’. This was an insight into the
psyche that would inform his later theory of “individuation”, the process of “becoming
who you are”. Helly did blossom later, becoming a successful dressmaker in
France, although she died young, at only 30.
In Jung’s dissertation on the séances, On the Psychology and
Pathology of So-called Occult Phenomena, he describes Helly unflatteringly as
“exhibiting slightly rachitic skull formation”, and “somewhat pale facial
colour”, and fails to mention that she is his cousin. He also omits his own
participation in the séances, and dates them from 1899 to 1900, whereas they
had started years before. Gerhard Wehr politely suggests that “[T]he doctoral
candidate was obviously at pains to conceal his own role, and especially his
close kinship relationship, thus forestalling from the start any further
critical inquiry that might have thrown the scientific validity of the entire
work into question.” [5]
In other words, Jung the scientist thought it a good career
move to obscure Jung the occultist’s personal involvement in the business.
THE POLTERGEIST IN FREUD'S BOOKCASE
In 1900, the 25-year-old Jung joined the prestigious
Burghölzli Mental Clinic in Zürich. Here, he did solid work in word-association
tests, developed his theory of ‘complexes’, and initiated a successful
‘patient-friendly’ approach to working with psychotics and schizophrenics. It
was during his tenure that he also became involved with Freud. From 1906, when
they started corresponding, to 1912, when the friendship ruptured, Jung was a
staunch supporter of Freud’s work and promoted it unstintingly. There were,
however, some rocky patches. One centred on the famous poltergeist in Freud’s
bookcase. Visiting Freud in Vienna in 1909, Jung asked him about his attitude
toward parapsychology. Freud was sceptical and dismissed the subject as
nonsense. Jung disagreed, and sitting across from the master, he began to feel
his diaphragm glow, as if it was becoming red-hot. Suddenly a loud bang came
from a bookcase. Both jumped up, and Jung said to Freud: “There, that is an
example of a so-called catalytic exteriorisation phenomenon!”, Jung’s long-winded
circumlocution for a poltergeist, or “noisy spirit”. When Freud said “Bosh!”,
Jung predicted that another bang would immediately happen. It did. Jung said
that, from that moment on, Freud grew mistrustful of him. From Freud’s letter
to Jung about the incident, one gets the feeling that he felt Jung himself was
responsible for it.
This isn’t surprising; Jung did manifest numerous paranormal
abilities. While in bed in a hotel room after giving a lecture, he experienced
the suicide of a patient who had a strong “transference” on him. The patient
had relapsed into depression, and shot himself in the head. Jung awoke in his
hotel, feeling an odd pain in his forehead. He later discovered that his
patient had shot himself precisely where Jung felt the pain, at the same time
Jung woke up. More to the point, a visitor to his home once remarked about
Jung’s “exteriorised libido”, how “when there was an important idea that was
not yet quite conscious, the furniture and woodwork all over the house creaked
and snapped.”
THE RED BOOK
It was Jung’s break with Freud that led to his own ‘descent
into the unconscious’, a disturbing trip down the psyche’s rabbit hole from
which he gathered the insights about the collective unconscious that would
inform his own school of ‘analytical psychology’. He had entered a ‘creative
illness’, unsure if he was going mad. In
October 1913, not long after the split, Jung had, depending on your
perspective, a vision or hallucination. While on a train, he suddenly saw a
flood covering Europe, between the North Sea and the Alps. When it reached
Switzerland, the mountains rose to protect his homeland, but in the waves he
saw floating debris and bodies. Then the water turned to blood. The vision
lasted an hour and seems to have been a dream that had invaded his waking
consciousness. Having spent more than a decade treating mental patients who
suffered from precisely such symptoms, Jung had reason to be concerned. He was
ironically rather relieved the next summer when WWI broke out and he deduced
that his vision had been a premonition of it.
Yet the psychic tension continued. Eventually there came a
point where Jung felt he could no longer fight off the sense of madness. He
decided to let go. When he did, he landed in an eerie, subterranean world where
he met strange intelligences that ‘lived’ in his mind. The experience was so
upsetting that for a time Jung slept with a loaded pistol by his bed, ready to
blow his brains out if the stress became too great.
In his Red Book – recently published in full – he kept an
account, in words and images, of the objective, independent entities he
encountered during his “creative illness” – entities that had nothing to do
with him personally, but who shared his interior world. There were Elijah and Salome,
two figures from the Bible who were accompanied by a snake. There was also a
figure whom Jung called Philemon, who became a kind of ‘inner guru’ and who he
painted as a bald, white-bearded old man with bull’s horns and the wings of a
kingfisher. One morning, after painting the figure, Jung was out taking a walk
when he came upon a dead kingfisher. The birds were rare in Zürich and he had
never before come upon a dead one. This was one of the many synchronicities –
“meaningful coincidences” – that happened at this time (for more on Jung and
synchronicity, see FT171:42–47). There were others. In 1916, still in the grip
of his crisis, Jung again felt that something within wanted to get out. An
eerie restlessness filled his home. He felt the presence of the dead – and so
did his children. One daughter saw a strange white figure; another had her
blankets snatched from her at night. His son drew a picture of a fisherman he
had seen in a dream: a flaming chimney rose from the fisherman’s head, and a
devil flew through the air, cursing the fisherman for stealing his fish. Jung
had yet to mention Philemon to anyone. Then, one afternoon, the doorbell rang
loudly, but no one was there. He asked: “What in the world is this?” The voices
of the dead answered: “We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not what
we sought,” words that form the beginning of Jung’s strange Seven Sermons to
the Dead, a work of “spiritual dictation”, or “channelling”, he attributed to
“Basilides in Alexandria, the City where the East toucheth the West”.
GHOSTS IN THE HOUSE
By 1919, WWI was over and Jung’s crisis had passed, although
he continued to practise what he called “active imagination”, a kind of waking
dreaming, the results of which he recorded in the Red Book. But spirits of a
more traditional kind were not lacking. He was invited to London to lecture on
“The Psychological Foundations of the Belief in Spirits” to the Society for
Psychical Research. He told the Society that ghosts and materialisations were
“unconscious projections”. “I have repeatedly observed,” he said, “the
telepathic effects of unconscious complexes, and also a number of parapsychic
phenomena, but in all this I see no proof whatever of the existence of real
spirits, and until such proof is forthcoming I must regard this whole territory
as an appendix of psychology.”
Scientific enough, no doubt, but a year later, again in
England, he encountered a somewhat more real ghost. He spent some weekends in a
cottage in Aylesbury rented by Maurice Nicoll (later a student of Gurdjieff and
Ouspensky) and while there was serenaded by eerie sounds, while an unpleasant
smell filled the bedroom. Locals said the place was haunted and, on one
particularly bad night, Jung discovered an old woman’s head on the pillow next
to his; half of her face was missing. He leapt out of bed and waited until
morning in an armchair. The house was later torn down. One would think that,
having already encountered the dead on their return from Jerusalem, Jung
wouldn’t be so shaken by a traditional English ghost, but the experience rattled
him; his account of it only appeared 30 years later, in 1949, in an obscure
anthology of ghost stories.
When his lecture for the SPR was reprinted in the Collected
Works in 1947, Jung added a footnote explaining that he no longer felt as
certain as he did in 1919 that apparitions were explicable through psychology,
and that he doubted “whether an exclusively psychological approach can do
justice to the phenomenon”. In a later postscript, he again admitted that his
earlier explanation was insufficient, but that he couldn’t agree on the reality
of spirits because he had no experience of them – conveniently forgetting the
haunting in Aylesbury. But in a letter of 1946 to Fritz Kunkel, a
psychotherapist, Jung admitted: “Metapsychic phenomena could be explained
better by the hypothesis of spirits than by the qualities and peculiarities of
the unconscious.”
A similar uncertainty surrounds his experience with the I
Ching, the ancient Chinese oracle, with which he began to experiment in the
early 1920s and which, like horoscopes, became part of his therapeutic
practice. Although he mentioned the I Ching here and there in his writing, it
wasn’t until 1949, again nearly 30 years later, in his introduction to the
classic Wilhelm/Baynes translation, that he admitted outright to using it
himself. And although he tried to explain the I Ching’s efficacy through what
would become his paranormal deus ex machina, synchronicity, Jung admits that
the source of the oracle’s insights are the “spiritual agencies” that form the
“living soul of the book”, a remark at odds with his quasi-scientific
explanation. Ironically, his major work on “meaningful coincidence”,
Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1952), written with the
physicist Wolfgang Pauli, provides only one unambiguous example of the
phenomenon, and readers who, like me, accept the reality of synchronicity, come
away slightly baffled by Jung’s attempt to account for it via archetypes,
quantum physics, statistical analysis, mathematics, JB Rhine’s experiments with
ESP, astrology, telepathy, precognition, and other paranormal abilities, all of
which read like a recrudescence of Jung’s “I am a scientist” reflex.
THE AGE OF AQUARIUS
In the 1920s, he plunged into a study of the Gnostics – whom
he had encountered as early as 1912 – and alchemy. It was Jung, more than
anyone else, who salvaged the ancient Hermetic pursuit from intellectual
oblivion. Another Hermetic practice he followed was astrology, which he began
to study seriously around the time of his break with Freud. Jung informed his
inner circle that casting horoscopes was part of his therapeutic practice, but
it was during the dark days of WWII that he recognised a wider application. In
1940, in a letter to HG Baynes, Jung speaks of a vision he had in 1918 in which
he saw “fire falling like rain from heaven and consuming the cities of
Germany”. He felt that 1940 was the crucial year, and he remarks that it’s
“when we approach the meridian of the first star in Aquarius”. It was, he said,
“the premonitory earthquake of the New Age”. He was familiar with the
precession of the equinoxes, the apparent backward movement of the Sun through
the signs of the zodiac. By acting as a backdrop to sunrise at the vernal
equinox, each sign gives its name to an ‘age’ – called a ‘Platonic month’ –
which lasts roughly 2,150 years. In his strange book Aion (1951), he argues
that the ‘individuation’ of Western civilisation as a whole follows the path of
the ‘Platonic months,’ and presents a kind of “precession of the archetypes”.
Fish symbolism surrounds Jesus because He was the central symbol of the Age of
Pisces, the astrological sign of the fish. Previous ages – of Taurus and Aries
– produced bull and ram symbolism. The coming age is that of Aquarius, the
Water Bearer. In conversation with Margaret Ostrowski-Sachs, a friend of
Hermann Hesse, Jung admitted that he had kept this “secret knowledge” to
himself for years, and only finally made it public in Aion. He wasn’t sure he
was “allowed” to, but during his illness he received “confirmation” that he
should.
Although the arcane scholar Gerald Massey and the French
esotericist Paul Le Cour had earlier spoken of a coming Age of Aquarius, Jung
was certainly the most prestigious mainstream figure to do so, and it is
through him that the idea became a mainstay of the counterculture of the 1960s
and ’70s. This was mostly through his comments about it in his book Flying
Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (1958), in which he argued
that UFOs were basically mandalas from outer space. During his crisis, he had
come upon the image of the mandala, the Sanskrit ‘magic circle’, as a symbol of
psychic wholeness, and he suggested that ‘flying saucers’ were mass archetypal
projections, formed by the psychic tension produced by the Cold War that was
heating up between Russia and America. The Western world, he argued, was having
a nervous breakdown, and UFOs were a way of relieving the stress.
Jung wrote prophetically that “My conscience as a
psychiatrist bids me fulfil my duty and prepare those few who will hear me for
coming events which are in accord with the end of an era… As we know from
ancient Egyptian history, they are symptoms of psychic changes that always
appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another. They
are, it seems, changes in the constellation of the psychic dominants, of the
archetypes or ‘Gods’ as they used to be called, which bring about… long-lasting
transformations of the collective psyche. This transformation started… in the
transition of the Age of Taurus to that of Aries, and then from Aries to
Pisces, whose beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now
nearing that great change… when the spring-point enters Aquarius…” Ten years
later, The Fifth Dimension (whose very name, appropriated from the title song
of The Byrds’ third LP, suggests the cosmic character of the Mystic Sixties)
had a hit song from the hippie musical Hair echoing Jung’s ideas, and millions
of people all over the world believed they were witnessing “the dawning of the
Age of Aquarius”.
JUNG THE MYSTIC
Jung died in 1961, just on the cusp of the ‘occult revival’
of the 1960s, a renaissance of magical thinking that he did much to bring
about. He was also directly responsible for the “journey to the East” that many
took then, and continue to take today. Along with the I Ching, Jung gave his
imprimatur to such hitherto arcane items as The Tibetan Book of the Dead,
Taoism and Zen, and without his intervention it’s debatable if these Eastern
imports would have enjoyed their modern popularity. That he was in many ways a
founding father of the Love Generation is seen by his inclusion on the cover of
the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, although Jung himself
would have thought “flower power” sadly naïve. Although for all his efforts he
has never been accepted by mainstream intellectuals, his effect on popular
culture has been immense, and our contemporary grass roots, inner-directed
spirituality, unfortunately associated with the New Age, has his name written
all over it. Jung himself may have been equivocal about his relationship with
mysticism, magic, and the occult, but the millions of people today who pay
attention to their dreams, notice strange coincidences and consult the I Ching
have the Sage of Küsnacht to thank for it.
http://www.intuitive-connections.net/2011/book-jung_the_mystic.html
:
Thursday, December 25, 2014
WE ARE DUST FROM THE STARS : HEAVEN IS HERE
All videos and any poetry on this page are posted under Fair Rights Use. None of these videos have been created by me. They are being used for non-profit educational purposes. Fair use tempers copyright's exclusive rights to serve the purpose of copyright law, which the US Constitution defines as the promotion of "the Progress of Science and useful Arts"
I have always fathomed myself rising from my body, and going up into the heavens, but just as Michael said, heaven is here. We have all been told this, however, it has been hard to hear because many of us have been told that we must die in order to go to heaven. It was been written centuries ago. Michael merely presented it in a way that we all could hear.
Michael Jackson was
more amazing than many know. It is critical that we listen to him with depth,
he is not giving us shallow messages at all. Heaven really and truly is here, and
I hope to show that. So, let’s look first at a biblical point of view. As you
read, I implore you to consider what you have heard Michael say, and think of
what you have seen him do. Michael comes close to doing everything that Jesus
does.
Matthew10:6-9 And as ye go, preach, saying, the kingdom of
heaven is at hand. 8 Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast
out devils: freely ye have received, freely give. 9 Provide neither gold, nor
silver, nor brass in your purses,
None of us could ever say that Michael did not give freely. Has
he healed the sick? Yes. We have seen the evidence. . As for us, we have been
changed. Notwithstanding, many of us
have found that we have talent within us that had been buried for years by
negativism and fear. Everyone has talent. It is a gift from God…and it is one
of value. Michael never ceased to create and build on the talent that God gave
him. The following scripture tells the origin of talent and how it should be
used.
Matthew 25:14-18
(AKJV):14 for the kingdom of heaven is as a man travelling into a far country,
who called his own servants, and delivered unto them his goods. 15 And unto one
he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to every man
according to his several ability; and straightway took his journey. 16 Then he
that had received the five talents went and traded with the same, and made them
other five talents. 17 And likewise he that had received two, he also gained
other two. 18 But he that had received one went and digged in the earth, and
hid his lord’s money. (To find out what happened, I suggest that you read the
entire verse. Matt: 25:14-40 (pretty long!)
Moving on, what does ‘at hand’ mean? It means it is within
your reach. It is not some distant thing that we must first die to see. We are
already here, it is within our reach, not after we die, but now, Heaven is at hand,
heaven is here. Certainly the question could be asked, why we have been praying
“Thy kingdom come?” That follows with “on earth, as it is in heaven.”
Consider replacing
the word ‘as’ with ‘because’. It is not complicated as we do it all the time.(see
what I mean?) Here is an example; “She went shopping, as she had no food”. So
what that scripture really means is, ‘on earth because it is in heaven’. We must
at some point discuss Michael’s concern for the earth. Following, I quoted from Archbishop
Williams, as he clarifies the matter well. However, other clergy say the same.
Archbishop Rowan Williams:
“The idea of the kingdom coming was very near the center of Jesus'teaching. And the kingdom is not a place or a
system – it’s just a state of
affairs when God really is acknowledged to be directing and giving
meaning to everything. It’s the kingship of
God, if you like.
‘So we pray ‘Thy Kingdom come’, meaning
let God’s will and purpose
and God’s nature show through in
every state of affairs, because that’s what it is for God to be king. It’s not
asking for God to be ordering everyone and everything around but for God in his
glory to be visible everywhere.
‘Thy kingdom come is saying let the world open out to the
depth of God’s love…which is really at the root of it all. Jesus himself
tells us that
the kingdom comes
in unexpected ways,
it doesn't just come with an unexpected clap of thunder at the
end of time, it grows in our midst secretly…It
comes through in
quirky little moments
when people do
extraordinary things, take extraordinary
risks and you
think, ‘Yes, that’s
a life in which God is showing. Jesus’
parables tell us
about people who
give up everything
because they catch
a glimpse of the kingdom, they
catch a glimpse of God’s beauty. So that’s what we’re praying for; let the
world show God, let God come through." (http://goo.gl/zt2ZJd)
heaven IS HERE
You and I were never separate
It's just an illusion
Wrought by the magical lens of
Perception
There is only one Wholeness
Only one Mind
We are like ripples
In the vast Ocean of Consciousness
Come, let us dance
The Dance of Creation
Let us celebrate
The Joy of Life
The birds, the bees
The infinite galaxies
Rivers, Mountains
Clouds and Valleys
Are all a pulsating pattern
Living, breathing
Alive with cosmic energy
Full of Life, of Joy
This Universe of Mine
Don't be afraid
To know who you are
You are much more
Than you ever imagined
You are the Sun
You are the Moon
You are the wildflower in bloom
You are the Life-throb
That pulsates, dances
From a speck of dust
To the most distant star
And you and I
Were never separate
It's just an illusion
Wrought by the magical lens of
Perception
Let us celebrate
The Joy of Life
Let us dance
The Dance of Creation
Curving back within ourselves
We create
Again and again
Endless cycles come and go
We rejoice
In the infinitude of Time
There never was a time
When I was not
Or you were not
There never will be a time
When we will cease to be
Infinite — Unbounded
In the Ocean of Consciousness
We are like ripples
In the Sea of Bliss
You and I were never separate
It's just an illusion
Wrought by the magical lens of
Perception
Heaven is Here
Right now is the moment
of Eternity
Don't fool yourself
Reclaim your Bliss
Once you were lost
But now you're home
In a nonlocal Universe
There is nowhere to go
From Here to Here
Is the Unbounded
Ocean of Consciousness
We are like ripples
In the Sea of Bliss
Come, let us dance
The Dance of Creation
Let us celebrate
The Joy of Life
And
You and I were never separate
It's just an illusion
Wrought by the magical lens of
Perception
Heaven is Here
Right now, this moment of Eternity
Don't fool yourself
Reclaim your Bliss
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
I believe they are saying the very same thing. They are both saying heaven is here, and they are saying 'we are one'.
The only difference is Dr. Tyson does not acknowledge it spiritually. Michael says we are the sun, the moon and the wild flowers in bloom. Dr Tyson says we are stardust. Although he claims not to believe in God, he speaks of the universe as though it is God. He actually testifies that he was called by the universe to be an astrophysicist He actually is speaking of being enlightened, and confesses that the universe fills his spirit just as concept of God fills the spirit of those who believe in God.
I believe they are saying the very same thing. They are both saying heaven is here, and they are saying 'we are one'.
Dr. Tyson has claimed himself to be an atheist, and then an
agnostic. Despite all his brilliance he has to confess that the most acclaimed scientists
to ever exist, concluded that God was the creator of the universe. He is very
keen on ‘The big bang theory’. What no one has acknowledged is that the big
bang theory is all through the bible as well. It could actually be that the
world started with a big bang. However, the same big bang that the bible says
ends the world, is perhaps the same explosion that begins the world. Thus he
may not be completely wrong. The scientific view of creation is not much
different than the biblical one.
Here is another look at the scientific view; “The knowledge
that the atoms that comprise life on earth - the atoms that make up the human
body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy
elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars-
the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they
collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy-
guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of
life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense,
collapse, form the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting
planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that
when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this
universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of
those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look
up- many people feel small, because their small and the universe is big. But I
feel big because my atoms came from those stars.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson
“What does the Bible say about the end of the world? The
event usually referred to as “the end of the world” is described in 2 Peter
3:10: “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed
by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” This is the
culmination of a series of events called “the day of the Lord,” the time when
God will intervene in human history for the purpose of judgment. At that time,
all that God has created, “the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1), He will
destroy.”
“First, it will be cataclysmic in scope. The “heavens”
refers to the physical universe – the stars, planets, and galaxies—which will
be consumed by some kind of tremendous explosion, possibly a nuclear or atomic
reaction that will consume and obliterate all matter as we know it. All the
elements that make up the universe will be melted in the “fervent heat” (2
Peter 3:12). This will also be a noisy event, described in different Bible
versions as a “roar” (NIV), a “great noise” (KJV), a “loud noise” (CEV), and a
“thunderous crash” (AMP). There will be no doubt as to what is happening.
Everyone will see and hear it because we are also told that “the earth and everything
in it will be laid bare.” http://www.gotquestions.org/end-of-the-world.html”
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