It is appropriate in this moment of divisions of mankind - like the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Hezbollah situation - to think about the way we find ourselves in groups. Other current divisivenesses of note are are Christians-Muslims, Conservatives-Liberals, neocons-vs-the rest of the world, and Red states-Blue states.
In that context, what comes to mind is an unpublished book from the first half of the 20th century, by a man who made his living far from the conficts of today.
I'd never really put any thought into WHY we were in groups, or what restrictions groups impale upon us. Gaelic changed all that for me. That is why it is proper for this to be discussed right at the beginning of this blog. Groups are one of the biggest obstacles to growth of the individual. It is the imperative to grow individually, to find one's own way in life, that is behind the parent-adolescent conflict so common in our western world.
...Stewart Edward White made his living as an author of fiction and non-fiction books, between about 1900 and the 1940s. He was an adventurer by today's standards, a man who crossed many horizons as if they weren't there. He was considered a solid member of the school of writing that brought us Jack London. He worked as a lumberjack, as a gold prospector, and as a surveyor. He roughed it in Alaska and all the way to the Serengeti. He was a pretty close friend to Teddy Roosevelt and wrote for movies for three decades, and had one of his novels turned into a Cecil B. deMille movie. In between all that, he had the time to get an M.A. from Columbia University.
His greatest horizon crossing, however, was done in the quiet of his own living room. You see, he adventured, with his wife Betty, "across the unknown", into the land beyond the horizon of material life. Actually, Stewart didn't do the traveling, except in his attentive presence. The real travelers were, first a friend Joan, and then later, Betty. They traveled into the land of the discarnate and Stewart noted down what they said, as well as being a "conceiving station" for the information that came through Joan and Betty from entities known to them as the "Invisibles" (later one called Gaelic). From his notes, Stewart wrote legendary books in the field of the mystical -
Our Unseen Guest (1920),
The Betty Book (1937),
Across the Unknown,
The Unobstructed Universe (1939), and
The Stars Are Still There (1946). Betty died before The Unobstructed Universe and, in fact, came back specifically to contribute the substance of that book.
Although it is 30+ years since I read The Unobstructed Universe, I have not once run across anything that refutes a word of it. It is considered an "undisputed classic of the psychic exploration genre." I could not put it better. No book of its school has impressed me more or taught me more. I use it as a standard against which I measure anything New Age - and very, very little passes muster with me, I can tell you. Those 30 years were spent searching for stuff worth looking into. The vast majority of the time I was disappointed in what passes for depth and solidity. I am open minded about it all. But open minded is not the same as gullible. There are 3 levels - gullible, open minded and closed minded. The first and last have no balance and either accept everything or accept nothing. I don't know how any rational person could be either - but wow are there a lot out there of both.
Back to the Whites - Many, many, many pages of Stewart's notes never made it into those books, and after he died in 1946, some of them were compiled into a still un-published book,
The Gaelic Manuscripts, which does happen to be available at two places, free of charge - the
Isle Of Avalon Archives (unedited) and the
Freedom Digital Library at Harmon House (edited in small part by myself).
It part of a chapter from Gaelic that I would share here. It is about groups, and about the place they play in the development of the individual entity we commonly call a soul. I first read White's books in this area in the early 1970s, but had not heard that others existed. Then about 2001, I ran across Gaelic and learned a bit more about ourselves.
When White wrote his books in this area, he still wrote them in an accessible and understandable way, even though much of it was in very difficult syntax. Gaelic, however, was compiled pretty nearly "as is", making it a tougher read, so be warned of that. If you are able, do make the effort to slog through the more difficult sentences. It is worth it, because there are some mind-blowing realizations in there. (When I was editing Gaelic, I used Wordperfect, which had a tool for assessing the school level complexity of the text. Most writings are in the 5th and 6th grade level - or below. The tool rated Gaelic above 10th grade.) This chapter isn't as difficult as some others, but there are some doozies anyway.
There are some dated phrasings. This was all done in the late 1930s, so that is to be somewhat expected.
Chapter III
THE PROCESS OF CREATION
1. (NO TITLE)...We had been given glimpses, in the course of other discussions, of man's interdependence with the rest of creation. He is one cell of the body of Cosmic Consciousness: one of its mechanisms by which it becomes self-aware. But his affiliations, it seems, are even more sharply defined. He cannot stand or work alone. However solitary his desire, he is in spite of himself a member of a Group. He belongs to this group because of affinity. Toward it he has certain definite, inescapable responsibilities. This is true whether he is actively conscious of the fact or not.
Of what nature is this group? What is the affinity that joins him to it? How long and for what purpose is he held to it? What is the kind of connection he has with it? What are those responsibilities, and what are the penalties for their avoidance?
2. THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT
...But hold on! Take the Family. That's an external condition. Some families are a blight on those who belong to them. Do they just bust up? Or do they stick it out? It is simple to say bust it up; but we reached out and recited a lot of specific instances where it was not so easy to decide. Life is not so naive.
3. THE REASON FOR THE GROUP "The points of view, as to how much manifested character is determined by the physical vehicle, and how much the physical vehicle is molded by the character, are not antipathetic but are segments of one circle," stated Gaelic as to our first discussion. So both factions were right.
"What a man is capable of," he explained, "is indeed conditioned by the shape of his skull, the proportionate activity of his glands. On the other hand, his skull is so shaped and his glands are so activated because his characteristics clothe themselves accurately. The physical characteristics are mechanically and physically hereditary in family and race - they depend upon mechanical transmission through the germ plasm. A human soul to whose attributes these characteristics are more or less accurately fitting, is attracted to and embodied in one race or one family rather than another for that reason.
"Now any group of people, no matter how large or how small, are a group because of a certain impetus in the world for the working out of which to its finish of dynamics the contribution of effort of a single individual is not sufficient. The impetus is at once a product of, and a responsibility of, a certain group type of entity. When that impetus is worked out, whether it be of constructive or deterrent or destructive nature, that group, whether it be of a single family, a nation, or a race, dissolves and comes to an end."
In that statement is the whole reason for, and the ultimate termination of every type of human gathering whatever. It will therefore bear re-reading.
"This blending in final harmony with larger cosmic currents may be hastened or delayed according as the members of the group accept, and work out those group tendencies or characteristics - which at first view seems sometimes unjust, sometimes unaccountable, and always outside any dependencies, so far as we can see, on anything the individual is or desires or has done.
"This breaking into a vast diversity through individual initiative, generally blundering, and the leading back to original simplicity through faithful working out, generally blundering, is only another example of that breaking to complexity and reuniting in simplicity which obtains in all other cosmic processes.
"If a human being finds himself hampered and confined by accident of body, by bounds of temperament, limited by an overwhelming group tradition which has imposed itself in the plastically receptive period of life, all of which is outside of his own origination of impetus, he must reflect that this is the condition of his group problem - it is the field of his group activity; it is his opportunity of group contribution, quite aside from his intimate, entirely personal job. He must reflect that he is allied to this group and imposed upon by these conditions because, in a way too complicated to sketch here, his own problem, his own degree in development, fits him to it - just as his other characteristics drew him magnetically to clothe himself in those confining physical characteristics which we call heredity. And he must reflect, for his encouragement, that each hampering or confining group-characteristic which he succeeds in lifting from its lower turmoil through his personal development to conscious higher harmony, is that much done and finished with and put behind of the whole group problem.
4. THE RESOLVING OF GROUP PROBLEMS
"A family will start with a tremendous black burden of narrowness, bigotry, intolerance, whatever you will, which being subscribed to fully and lived out consistently by all members of the family in succeeding generations, will grow in power and volume of influence until an inharmony is created in cosmos of tremendous consequence. And it will persist as a deterrent thing to which human entities will be magnetically drawn, until bit by bit and little by little through hard won illumination those individuals have lived out and through to harmony, and little by little and bit by bit have dissolved it.
"The interrelation to the personal development is too complicated a subject to undertake here. Suffice it to say that this is not a horrible thought but one of great encouragement, for degree of development is not measured by space passed but by pressure overcome, and those hindrances imposed, as we say, by no fault of one's own but by the group condition, afford opportunity for exerting pressure which would not otherwise be afforded. The measure of one's life, from this point of view only, must be not only the measure of one's own personal progress but also to what degree or extent one has emerged constructively from the undiluted group attitude, which must be his in youth, to an individual solution.
"Now it must not be misunderstood in this very brief exposition that all group agglomerations are unconstructive. There is also a class of impetus which makes for construction. I give you the other side today because it applies more to the present problem.
"You must not forget," said he, "the element of group loyalty. That is the basis of race patriotism: it is the basis of family cohesion: it is the basis of finishing the job. The army is engaged upon the building of the bridge, the tunneling of the mountain - 'We will all work it out together.'
"Yes, Uncle Peter is a hard, dour man. He oppresses the poor and steals from the rich. He will probably be hung at last. But he is in the family. Let us get together and work it out, so that there will not be another embodiment of Uncle Peter! For just as long as his problem remains unsolved it must continue to seek embodiment in the family. Perhaps it is your particular job to rid the family of Uncle Peterishness. If you succumb and carry on the Uncle Peter tradition, so to speak, then you impose a burden on another who is to come. And you do not release yourself from any part of the job; you must still, here or elsewhere, bend your back to that labor.
"That is one reason, merely by way of light aside, one reason why so many on this side are working so hard and so yearningly over those on that side; it is merely a matter of a group job."
5. A MAN'S RSPONSIBILITY TOWARD HIS GROUP
This seemed good, as far as it went, and quite cleared up a number of people with 'Uncle Peters' of one sort or another in their immediate families. But Gaelic was not through with the subject. At the next opportunity he continued with it.
"The individual man is a member of, not one narrow group only, such as the family, but also of a succession of ever more inclusive groups until he is to be considered finally, as far as your earth life is concerned, a member of that which comprises the sum-total of earthly incarnations. Each of these groups has its own type of problems, good and evil, to be worked out, all of which have the same characteristics of being beyond the power and scope of individual solution, but which may eventually be worked out by individual contribution toward solution.
"They have also the characteristic in common that they are individual problem and responsibility.
"The exact form in which, and the exact manner in which, they are proposed are dependent upon the individual circumstance. The human being is born upon your planet and conditioned by its limitations because his state of being fits those limitations. He is born Chinese or Arabian or African or Caucasian, and conditioned by the peculiar limitations which inhere racially, because his state of being fits more or less accurately those limitations. He is born into a family and is conditioned by the heredity of physical makeup, because his state of being finds a comfortable fit within those limitations. He is born with certain physical qualities of body which limit him in his possibilities, because his state of being does not, at that state of development, press beyond the bounds thus set for him.
"So, while one may say that an incarnate is by the fact of incarnation unable to reach the same powers of perception as the discarnate; while we may say that a man born, bred and educated in the criminal slums cannot by that fact be responsibly aware of higher ethics; while we say that a man born with certain glandular secretions cannot attain a normal balance, we must not therefore conclude that fatal circumstance is to bear the entire burden as an explanation. The state of being has not actually formed the outside envelope, as some schools of your thought would have you believe; but it has come by a sort of magnetic attraction of appropriateness to that circumstance which most nearly clothes it.
"Now the hope and the release come through the vital and intelligent working out by the individual according to his capacity and the opportunity of his own progress, toward harmony and enlightenment. Just as each embryo passes in review the whole biological history before it arrives at that point where it is to function as an independent human being; so, as a member of the group, will the human entity live through the spiritual history of that group before arriving at the point where it can function as an independent worker on its destiny. As the embryo wholly and completely lives its life as cell, reptile, fish, tailed animal, and so on; so the child lives wholly committed to the outlooks, the points of view, the beliefs, prejudices, temperamental vices of its own group, the family. It has the family attitude; it has the family loves and hates, tastes and religion, politics, sympathy, hardness, courtesy, rudeness, which is the atmosphere of its little group.
"So the youth in his larger group is provincial, ignorantly arrogant toward what he lumps together as 'foreigners,' ineptly patriotic without thought that patriotism means aught but self-assertion, and blandly indifferent to the peoples beyond his border.
"Only a little broader is the Caucasian within his race, is the Arabian, proud and self-centered beneath his desert stars, is the African, convinced that whatever powers of magic the white man possesses - he alone is the great man of earth. And so the Chinese, secure within the age-old serenity, looks with contempt upon the 'foreign devil.' And so the human race in its youth bends its eyes downward towards its speck of earth and cries out against the few who raise their eyes.
"But as the child grows to manhood, just as when the embryo grows to human form, it begins to appraise and utilize what has been unthinkingly a part of itself. It is knowledged in the family temper or the family pride, the family point of view toward human kind, the family religion and the family politics, the family traits of all kinds that make a group. He does one of two things: he controls and utilizes them by the alchemy of his personality: or he continues, unresisting, their tradition.
"If he does the former, there is either that much more or that much less of this particular impetus, which had originated far back in that particular group. If he does the latter, responsibility in his case has been passed on and must be worked out by others who follow. Furthermore, he has, by his indifference, so accentuated these certain qualities in himself that his magnetic attraction toward this type of limitation in the future is greatly intensified.
"On the other hand, if he has, by even ever so little, worked out a portion or a phase of this group impetus, he has not only removed just so much limitation from the world, but he has also lightened the human burden for his successors on this particular job and, naturally, qualified for a wider field himself.
"This can only be done according to his knowledge and his capacity. The child is not responsible for storming at the servants. It is the family habit, and he thinks it is the only way. The man who has literally never realized cannot be responsible for what he does not know. But intellect and the perceptions come into contacts outside the group, and they cannot fail to bring the seeds of enlightenment through comparison."
I am intentionally not including my own input here. I will instead do it in a comment (to follow).
. . . . TD
