|
I recognized recently,
and with no small astonishment, that my series of novels, The Lodging for the Rose, corresponds
precisely with the characteristics of the historic structure for scientific and
spiritual development that had its beginning two millennia ago as a metaphor for
a platform that appeared in conjunction with the recognition of the inevitable
end of all evils. This recognition closed the pages of the Scriptures and opened the pages of
'modern' history. The metaphor appeared historically in the form of a foursquare city, a
construct acknowledging the dawn of a scientific age.
In ancient texts of
revelation the city was 'seen' as descending from God to man, but it was lost
sight of in the intervening dark ages. It was picked up again in the late-1800s
by a New England woman, Mary Baker Eddy, who turned it into a scientific platform
for perceiving the spiritual dimension of our humanity and its import for the
healing of mankind. The woman became historically recognized as America's
greatest pioneer of the science of spiritual development, metaphysics, and
Mind-healing. In her numerous works, she describes a structure of four "cardinal points," or
four main points, that are so universal in their import that they apply right across the
'city.' They might be understood as representing four levels of thinking, or spiritual
perception, or levels of spiritual intensity in thinking.
These four levels may
also be likened to the four states that are known in the physical world, as the solid,
liquid, gaseous, and plasma state. All physical elements exist in one of these
states, according to the energy-intensity in the respective system. Water, for example, when the energy-intensity in its environment is
low, exists in a frozen state, in the form of ice. When the energy-intensity increases, the ice melts and the water
takes on a
liquid state. When
the energy-intensity increases further, the water turns into steam and takes on a gaseous state.
When a still greater energy-intensity prevails, the atomic particles of the water
molecules
become so energized that they 'snap out' off their atomic bond and become free flowing.
This state is called the plasma state. In this state all the complex elements are created.
We can recognize,
correspondingly, four states of civilization, or states of individual living,
respective of the humanist or spiritual energy-intensity that is found in the
mental environment. These four states are
as different in their characteristic, as the four physical states are different from
each other. In this context the bottom row of the foursquare structure reflects the frozen-solid state, the
imperial state where the humanist energy is kept artificially low for easy
domination of society, to
the point where the humanist energy is barely recognized, such as in the world of impotence,
sickness, fascism, war, poverty, and boundless lies. This is the state of the small-minded sphere of
thinking, in which mankind is tightly confined and frozen into a prescribed box.
When the
humanist energy-increases, the 'ice' melts, the box dissolves, and society enters
the moral state (the liquid state - the second-lowest state). The moral state is the state that can be
seen to represents our humanist awakening. Nevertheless, the moral state is a precarious state that is vulnerable to become
frozen again, even while it is the stepping stone to the gaseous state when the
humanist energy-intensity is increased through scientific and spiritual
development.
The next higher
state, the second from the top, is the equivalent of gaseous state. It is a state of great
power. This is the scientific state where amazing things become possible, such as
technology, industrialization, culture, beauty, education, discoveries, profound
healing,
peace, and so on. This state is often referred to as a renaissance state, a
scientific spiritual
state. The German poet Friedrich Schiller called it the "sublime"
state. But the Sublime itself has its stage at the top level, at the most
'intense' energy-level, the state of Spirit that determines reality, or
spiritual reality. Here we enter
the sphere of universal Principle, the sphere of the Intelligence of the
Universe or infinite
Mind that is reflected universally, and is inherent in mankind as an element of the
Universe, of God, reflecting universal Life and Love.
Since these four states
of human development in terms spiritual-intensity are immensely wide in their scope, too wide for practical
utilization, Mary Baker Eddy
divided this wide scene into four rivers, representing four distinct mental
streams, that are representing specific flows of scientific and spiritual
development, each with its own four stages. She
associated these 'rivers' with four directional orientations, pointing, northward, eastward,
southward, and westward, according to the daily cycles of the Sun across the
sky. She gave the four rivers symbolically the names of the four biblical rivers
that are referred
to in Genesis 2. However, she used the names only, and attached to the names her own definition,
with which she defines
specific types of 'science rivers' in human development.
She defined the first river,
named Pison,
as "The love of the good and beautiful,
and their immortality." She defines its orientation
"northward" to where the dawn begins on a midsummer day.
She defined the
second river, named Gihon, as "The rights of woman acknowledged
morally, civilly, and socially," and she defined its orientation "eastward" oriented towards the sunrise.
The third river in turn,
named Hiddekel,
is defined by her as "Divine Science understood and acknowledged," and
is defined as oriented "southward," where we meet the heat of the day.
For the
fourth river, named Euphrates, she presents a large and
complex two-part definition:
1: Divine Science encompassing the
universe and man; the true idea of God; a type of the glory which is to come;
metaphysics taking the place of physics; the reign of righteousness.
2: The
atmosphere of human belief before it accepts sin, sickness, or death; a state of
mortal thought, the only error of which is limitation; finity; the opposite of
infinity."
This complex definition is justified in that the fourth river
pertains to the most difficult development issue, which is also in an arena in which the deepest
healing is required.
In order to make the
development process in each of the four steams more practical, she further subdivides the four development streams into three
horizontal zones and two functionally reflective halves.
She combines the
three lower levels and divides them into half, into two zones, with the
dividing line being the moral line. She labeled the third row the moral domain,
which she said is transitional in nature, furnishing a kind of open door to the lower domain
of insanity and depravity, and, depending on the orientation of ones thinking,
it also furnishes an open door to the upper domain of science, the sublime in
human thinking.
In this context
she labeled the fourth row that dominates the bottom zone, the zone of depravity
and unreality, while she labeled the second row that dominates the higher zone,
the spiritual domain, the domain of science and spiritual understanding.
Unfortunately, this also means that we can drop below the moral line into the sub-moral
domain, which may also be called the sewer of depravity, the ice house in terms
of humanist energies. The point here is that heaven is expensive in terms
energies put into scientific and spiritual development, though with a rich
payout in healing unfolding into freedom and harmony
Above all that,
standing almost by itself, the top
zone (the first row shown in pink) represents the divine by Mary Baker Eddy's
definition. This zone is no
longer vertical in orientation, but lateral. In the divine zone everything
stands laterally side by side on the level of universal Principle. This is the
zone we are
challenged to find our existence anchored in, because it really is anchored
there, so that a
recognition of it unfolds many form of healing and great freedoms. The 'top level' therefore
represents the absolute that scientific development takes us into.
All of this means
that we can
experience moral progression in the flow of scientific spiritual development,
towards a profound perception of reality in the
upper zone that brings us face to face with the divine, the universal, the
absolute, or the reality of our being, all represented in the top row, in the lateral,
zone.
Mary Baker Eddy also
divided the four development streams in to two functional halves. (link
to more details)
She described in
various ways that the left half is pertaining to developments individual living, in the 'Temple'
of life and its celebration. In contrast with that she described the right half, similarly, as pertaining to
the developments of civilization, but unfolding in the workshops of 'Church,'
that is, the scientific Church, the Church Universal, an advanced term for
dealing with the deep issues of universal Truth in universal society.
She utilized the resulting
foursquare platform, with all its different faces, as a foundation that she placed all of her
major works onto, and made them contributory to it. This includes her textbook on
Christian Science: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which
is intensely focused on the healing of disease by divinely mental means.
Since the foursquare
structure is made up of 16 elements, she created all of her contributory
elements in 16 parts or multiples thereof.
Note: Her textbook is
made up of 16
chapters; her Church Manual is made up of 16 segments; her illustrated poem,
Christ and Christmas, containing a large body of visual metaphor, is made up of 16 illustrated verses;
and in the same manner, her rendering of the
Lord's Prayer, is made up of 16 stanzas; and so on.
Since these
contributory structures are progressive in nature, they apply to the development
streams from the bottom up, extending through successive development streams,
leading from the dawn to the peace of the golden glow of the sunset. This method
is logically the sequence in which the textbook chapters apply. In each
development stream we go through all four four levels consecutively, with the lowest
level representing the sewer of depravity, the next higher level representing
morality, the level above that representing science, and the top level
representing Truth.
Where in the scheme
of things, we find ourselves on this scale, determines
the quality of our individual living and the direction we need to go to
experience healing. Respectively, where we stand also determines the quality of our civilization and the processes we
need to pursue.
With all this
considered the idea occurred
to me recently that I should apply my 12 novels (of the series The Lodging for the
Rose ) to this foursquare structure, as the series id focused onto the
development of the Principle of Universal Love, just to see how it would fit. It
needs to be said here that the series hadn't been written to achieve this
coincidence. But, since the series of novels was likely focused on scientific
and spiritual development, I was curious if there was a coincidence between the
two. And surprise, surprise, there is a strong coincidence apparent, more than I
had expected. If the series had been written to intentionally match the structure,
then the result would have been subjective and interpretive,
instead of being objective, dynamic, free, and being guided by the one Mind that
is expressed in all aspects of spiritual science. It wouldn't have unfolded out
of the logic of its own imperative. Doesn't this also reflect how scientific and
spiritual healing works in general? The individual steps for their unfolding can
never be stereotyped and formalized, and forged into dogmas. The principles set
the stage, and the rest unfolds by our own footwork.
Well, what I found when I put
the novels into this framework, was amazing beyond my expectation. It all matched,
point for point. Of course I shouldn't have been surprised, knowing that every product of
infinite Mind in its various dimensions is coming to light in a coinciding flow
of unfolding? And so it was in this case. The unfolding flow of the novels matched the
characteristics of the varies elements of the structure that Mary Baker Eddy has
outlined more than a hundred years ago. The novels matched every major aspect almost
exactly, sequenced across the top three rows..
The bottom row, which might also be labeled: night, hell, and
unreality, pertains to the great critical problems and challenges of mankind,
that must meet to assure mankind's survival. This is the arena where nothing short of
advanced spiritual Science can cause a healing. Nothing short of it will likely
be able to develop the needed intensity in humanist power to melt the ice in the
frozen imperial world and depravity in thinking, and perceived impotence. This
is evident by the glaring lack of progress we have had throughout history,
pursuing lesser means. Here society 'prays' to the god of impotence, greed,
property, and to the god of war,
and also to the god of poverty, and to the god of lies. It acknowledges its impotence in all aspects and surrenders its freedom to it.
Society also bows to the god of war,
seeking its security from it, but receives only terror, fear, and death.
Two on my earlier
novels apply well to this scene.
1 - The general sense
of impotence is focused on in the novel, Flight Without Limits.
2 - The insanity of nuclear war, the grosser form of a sense of impotence, is focused
on in the novel, Brighter than the Sun.
These two novels are
not a part of the series, The Lodging for the Rose, that is designed for
exploring the dimension of the Principle of Universal Love. This separation
appears natural, because the series, The Lodging for the Rose, is not designed to
specifically delve into the sewer.
In the
third column at the bottom level, none of my novels apply specifically, and in a
sense they all do. Mary Baker Eddy's specific focus for this element was an
"Stewardship of funds." She points to a unique concept of economics in
which it is society's task to be the steward of its economy, with the responsibly
to give its currencies value by means of its productive and creative actions and
enterprises. Unfortunately, society is far from this. It serves the god of poverty, hoping for illusive riches, while it
sacrifices up
its power to create its own riches, and lays itself down to die at the feet of
its would be masters. But worse than all of this despicable worshiping put together, society hails the god of lies to which it sacrifices its culture, its
humanity, its future, and its very existence. The story for the healing
that is required here has not yet been written. It would have to be a story
without monetarism, without looting, and without fascism. Maybe some day I will
write such a story.
In this sense, the coming
Ice Age is without doubt mankind's greatest and final challenge in the present
age, for which the greatest and deepest healing is required (represented by the
4th river), on a road that society has not even begun to consider. The subject
had been high on the agenda in the time leading up to 1974, as the scientific
community became concerned about the needed infrastructures that would have to
be created to feed more than six billion people in a rapidly cooling
environment, in which outdoor agriculture, that depends on the current warm interglacial
climate, becomes largely disabled. This concern was hijacked and overturned in
1974 with the cleverly conjured up mythology of manmade global warming for which
no evidence exists that stands the test of honest scientific scrutiny. Society
has fallen into the trap of a murderous fraud, and needs to be heal of it. The
fraud is designed to protect the existence of the reign of empire, if would
cease if the necessary scientific and technological renaissance would unfold
that would enable mankind to sustain itself with indoor agriculture
for the next 90,000-year glaciation cycle of the ever-recurring ice ages. The subject
of the recurring Ice Age, like that of economics, has been threaded through the
entire 12-part series of the novels, The Lodging for the Rose.
Also, in accord with this
global division, the two novels, Flight Without Limits, and, Brighter
than the Sun, can actually be applied twice. They can be applied once in
each half, because each of these novels is internally, logically divided into
two distinct parts. In each of these two novels a 'Temple'
dimension precedes a collective 'Church' dimension that develops out of it. In each of these two dimensions we also encounter
distinct types of love relationships.
In retrospect it
becomes apparent that the 16 chapters of Mary Baker Eddy's textbook, and the 16
segments of her Church Manual, are likewise divided into two halves
reflecting the 'Temple' (individual) and the 'Church' (civilization) dimensions,
and that the individual elements of the two halves are horizontally related (for
example, element 1 is thereby relating to element 9, see below).
In this duality the
novel, Flight Without Limits, deals in its second part with the
civilization-related element of economics, while the novel, Brighter than the
Sun, deals in its second part with the fundamentals of civilization on the
larger scale that is indirectly reflected in the Ice Age challenge that
wasn't on the radar screen at the time the novel was written. The horizontal duality that is built into these two novels reflects one of the five
types of dual definitions that Mary Baker Eddy has incorporated into her
glossary of the textbook. It reflects the nature of the 'horizontal dual
definition.' (see: dual
definitions in overview )
By placing the major
challenges at the bottom row, the healing development above it, in each column
or river of development, opens up a respective scientific focus onto the spiritual development
that can be carried on and intensified to heal the crisis ridden world. This is
what the 12 novels are focused on that sequentially cover the upper three rows.
Their purpose is to aid a specific type of healing that in modern times has
become a challenge with catastrophic consequences if the challenge is not met,
but which also reflects itself in individual healing.
The modern challenge is largely of a type that didn't really exist, or existed but faintly, in
the late 1800s when Mary Baker Eddy outlined her structure for scientific and
spiritual development that she made all of her major works subjective to. Most
of her focus is on the healing of disease in the physical world by means of
scientific Mind-healing. Her textbook on Christian Science is almost entirely
devoted to that, which launched a renaissance of healing in her time that met a
critical need as volumes of testimonies indicate that have been piled up over
more than a century. She added a few samples of the to last hundred pages to her textbook,
samples of individual healing attributed to no other
means than the reading of her textbook (see: Fruitage).
Today, with a century
having passed from the time this flood of healing begun, the flood has
dramatically subsided, as one would
expected when the dynamic development stops and becomes to a significant degree,
suppressed.
Since 1910 the focus in the field
of Christian Science has been on preservation, rather than on advancing
scientific development. The result that followed this backward focus shows clearly that when the
scientific-humanist energy-intensity subsides, then the renaissance environment can no
longer be maintained. The decay has been so dramatic that the spiritual
development platform that Mary Baker Eddy has made everyone of her major works
subjective to, is not even acknowledged to exist. For example, the relationship
of the textbook chapters to the spiritual development platform that she had
extensively outlined (shown below) is lost sight of in the unfolding world of
authoritarian struggles. The entire world has fallen into this trap of
authoritarian
struggles. What was call civilization has thereby become a vast theatre of ethnic, religious, cultural,
economic, financial, and political supremacy games, to mention just a few of the
aspects. All of these could be addressed with the Principe of Universal Love. Of
course the root of these games is the cultivated sense of impotence and poverty
that engenders the self-denial of society as human beings, and society's
corresponding denial of
the Intelligence that is reflected in the amazing complexity of the Universe and
all life, as constructs of universal principles. Even nuclear physics
tells us that without Love the Universe would not exist. Ironically, society is
determined to prove that it can exist without love, with corresponding
catastrophic experiences that should have inspired a more intelligent course.
A hundred years ago Mary Baker Eddy set out to prove the opposite.
And she did so with the corresponding
'renaissance' experiences that has brought healing to many people. Maybe what
has been lost with the lost 'renaissance' and its healing, can be restored again
when the scientific and spiritual energy-intensity is brought to the scene once
more, that enables the utilization of the infrastructures that Mary Baker Eddy has
provided that small-minded perception currently denies to exist as it recognizes
no value in them.
What I find amazing,
is that the sequence of the progression in my 12-part series of novels, The Lodging
for the Rose, shown above, which is focused on the larger problem of healing
civilization, coincides so closely with the progression that Mary Baker Eddy
outlined as her infrastructure for scientific and spiritual development that she
had utilized herself and placed her textbook into, as shown below, that has
brought healing to a great many people who stories were testified to in public
meetings each Wednesday in churches of Christ Scientist in many parts of the
world.
Mary Baker Eddy
created a total of ten major structures that she made all subjective, and thereby
contributory to her fundamental foursquare platform for scientific and spiritual
development. Of these her textbook itself is but an element, as is indicated
below. (see: Christian Science)
In writing the
series, The Lodging for the Rose, I had no intention to create a 12 part
series, much less a work that fits in this framework. I had thought a single
novel would be sufficient to explore the dimension of the Principle of Universal
Love that I had intended to explore against the background of the ever-growing
nuclear-war threats in the mid 1980s. As the work on this project progressed, it
soon became evident that the scope of the subject is far too wide to be covered
in a single novel. It became expanded into two, then three, then eight, and so
on. The work expanded with the sxpanding scope of the subject.
In January 2009 I
discovered a way of creating audio-book versions of the novels that enable a
quicker perusal of them. In the wake of this step I discovered that the novels
are amazingly closely related to Mary Baker Eddy's infrastructure. Subsequently
I created an audio-book version of her textbook as well, for the same reason
(see: The Christian Science
Textbook). I have also created an additional
website that focuses more deeply onto the coincidence
of the novels with the foursquare structure for scientific and spiritual
development that Mary Baker Eddy has outlined, especially its metaphor in her
illustrated poem Christ and Christmas and the 16 elements of her Church
Manual.
What the ultimate
result of the work will be, or what result it already might have had, cannot be
determined. But it is known that Mary Baker Eddy's work in this arena (primarily
from 1866 to 1910) coincides historically with a profound era of peace in the
world that with all factors considered appears to have been the only major
period of relative peace and humanity in the world in the last 600 years going
back to the Golden Renaissance. Whether her work was causative of this profound
modern era of peace, or subsequent to it, will likely never be determined.
Ultimately, this determination isn't important. The important thing for society
is to move forward with the platforms and principles
that are known to have one stood actively and powerfully in the foreground in a
period that became a period of peace, and to move forward with the recognition
of the universal principles
that stood tall in those days, which can be applied again by their very nature as
principle, and for the same results, at any time one chooses. Obviously, the
validity of universal principles, by their very nature, is timeless. At least
this has been my personal experience. On this basis, in a moment of profound recognition,
a chronic backache was healed that I had struggled with for years, and it was
healed in the space of a single moment. (see: personal
experience)
*1 As the cardinal
points or levels of perception, Mary Baker Eddy presented 4 such cardinal points for
the 'city foursquare' (The city of our God) and writes: "This spiritual,
holy habitation has no boundary nor limit, but its four cardinal points
are:
first, the
Word of Life, Truth, and Love;
second, the Christ, the spiritual idea of
God;
third, Christianity, which is the outcome of the
divine Principle of the Christ-idea in Christian history;
fourth, Christian Science, which to-day and forever
interprets this great example and the great Exemplar.
Note: The placed
Christian Science at the bottom level where the fundamental problems of mankind
are defined, which nothing can resolve but an increased energy-intensity in
mankind's scientific and spiritual intention where the 'flame' is fast going out
in the modern world, with the scene becoming colder and darker.
Mary Baker Eddy also
listed two sets of four terms that also relate to her four levels of perception,
respectively:
Heaven - Day
Kingdom of Heaven - Morning
Earth - Evening
Hell - Night
She also describes
four levels in her definition for the term, Good, in her glossary of
definitions, which in their characteristic correspond to the four levels of the
cardinal points. The four terms for Good are:
omnipotence
omniscience
omnipresence
omni-action
*2 The characteristic
of the development streams has been described by Mary Baker Eddy in a similar manner as
her four main points.
She used the names of the four rivers in Genesis 2 and defined them, not in
their biblical context, but in the context of four flows of scientific and
spiritual development. Also, since these rivers are out-flowing so as to metaphorically'
water the world,' Mary Baker Eddy has also defined the sides and gates of the city through which
they are flowing. The four rivers are (in their biblical sequence):
Pison
(river). The love of the good and beautiful,
and their immortality.
Gihon (river). The rights of woman acknowledged
morally, civilly, and socially.
Hiddekel (river). Divine Science understood and
acknowledged.
Euphrates (river). Divine Science encompassing the
universe and man; the true idea of God; a type of the glory which is to come;
metaphysics taking the place of physics; the reign of righteousness. The
atmosphere of human belief before it accepts sin, sickness, or death; a state of
mortal thought, the only error of which is limitation; finity; the opposite of
infinity.
She describes the
sides to which the rivers pertain saying: "The four sides of our city are the
Word, Christ, Christianity, and
divine Science." She adds, "This city is wholly spiritual,
as its four sides indicate." And she adds further, "It is indeed a
city of the Spirit, fair, royal, and square.
Northward,
its gates open to the North Star, the Word, the polar magnet of
Revelation;
eastward, to the star seen by the Wisemen of the
Orient, who followed it to the manger of Jesus;
southward, to the genial tropics, with the Southern
Cross in the skies, - the Cross of Calvary, which binds human society into
solemn union;
westward, to the grand realization of the Golden
Shore of Love and the Peaceful Sea of Harmony.
Note: The north,
east, south, west sequence that she presents here reflects the progression of
the sun across the sky, from the early dawn to the sunset.
She as describes God
with four special qualities that can be applied to the four columns respectively
as an aid to focus our attention in these four development streams. She writes,
God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite.
Main
Home Page
(For more details on Christian Science,
see:
Christian
Science )
offsite links
Christian
Science Textbook
Empire
of Mind home page
|
