[Dialogue] Other World Roots & Quotes

[Ken Fisher]

Friends,

Just to make sure that it was clear, this posting yesterday was written by Gene Marshall.

Ken




Dear Colleagues doing Other World/ Spirit Essence inquiry,

I am quite passionate about the recovery and further statement of what Mathews was after with his Other World Charts.

I have loved these charts from the very beginning and have put many hours into this topic in recent years.

> What is a 'state of being'?    Question by Steve Harrington.

> This is the basic question, and all else depends upon it.  Here is a fresh way to look at it.  We all live within a set of habits which we have built with our own FREEDOM since infancy.  We may not have always been aware of that FREEDOM, but is was always there.  This set of habits is commonly called our "personality."  We have only a partial consciousness of the intricacies of our personality.  But we live from it most of the time.  Such living is much like a piece of computer software carrying out its program.  We programed ourselves for our survival, and now the program runs.  We usually think that this program is the "true me," but it is a substitute for the true me built by the true me.  Part of the "true me" is the FREEDOM that built this personality, this set of habits.   When this essential FREEDOM breaks through the cocoon of personality and intends something beyond this set of habits we are experiencing a state of being.  Insofar as this state of being is a state of FREEDOM, it is probably described somewhere on the chart of sixteen states of being that Mathews called "The River of Consciousness."  


> There are many other states of being that break through our personality cocoon.  The Land of Mystery chart lays out another 16 of them.  The Mountain of Care is another sixteen.   And the Sea of Tranquility is another sixteen.  It is important to understand that all 64 of these states are aspects of the true me.  We do not create them.  We only need to stop escaping from them. You may remember the phrases in the Tillich "You Are Accepted" paper about "not doing anything, later you may do much."  This points to a state of being I like to call "Effortlessly Letting Be."   Mostly, instead of "letting be" we escape into our personality.  We feel safe there. This self-created self seems familiar to us.  We typically find all 64 of these states of being a bit scarey.  Indeed. dread is the first indication that we are experiencing one of these Spirit states.  Fascination follows dread.  We dread living beyond the personality, but we may also be fascinated to find a much more expansive me to be.  Both dread and fascination are intense experiences, so intense that a third factor we call "courage" is needed to embrace these intense dread and fascination moments.  The courage to be our dreadful/fascinating authenticity is a state of being.  We can also call this a state of Awe.  Rudolf Otto calls it an experience of the Holy.

> This whole chart of 64 states is just a rational model invented by Mathews with a little help from his friends.  It was just a simple 4 X 4 outline stimulated by these four Chinese Place Symbols.  It could have been a three by three instead. In fact. 3 X 3 mathematics characterized Mathew's earlier New Religious Mode charts:  Mediation-Contemplation-Prayer  Poverty-Chastity-Obedience  Transparent Knowing-Transparent Being-Transparent Doing.  All these human models, being human creations, are simply pointers beyond themselves to a vastness of "being me" that cannot be contained in any set of charts: 4 X 4 or  3 X 3 or 5 X 5 or whatever.  In my recent work I am preferring the 3 X 3 ordering of states of being, This patterning relates more easily to other Trinitarian thought.  My three main maps of states of being (or Holy Spirit) can be named Trust, Love, and Freedom. When these are broken down to 9 and 27 aspects of the One Holy Spirit, most of these states can be found somewhere on the other world charts.  Those states on the OW chart that not included in my Holy Spirit breakdown show up on another 3 X 3 chart I call the aspects of Encounter:  The Void, The Fullness, and the Total Demand. These can be understood as states of meeting God the Almighty.   Whatever math is used, we are using finite concepts to share our direct experiences of the Infinite.  It is awesome that the human mind can do this; however, we must not confuse our math with DIVINITY.  For more on this I have just published a course on our website entitled  The Mathematics of Divinity. (http://www.RealisticLiving.org See Training)  Even more on this can be found in my book Jacob's Dream.


> Does anyone have Other World Roots, Quotes or insights about of the Other World research to share for example
> -experience your experience

This phrase  "experience your experience" was first used in discussing art.  We experience reality all the time, but our awareness of Spirit entails experiencing our experience.  Søren Kierkegaard describes Spirit as the capacity to relate to the basic relation between out temporal biology and the Eternal.

> -other world in this world

Our first experiences of Spirit (states of being,  states of Awe), feel like an invasion from some other world, because "this world" means living within the cocoon of our personality.   The world of our personalty is not entirely wrong, but it is limited.  The other world of Spirit is simply the Whole Real World that our personality is resisting.  We need to avoid the temptation to use "the other world" metaphor as an excuse to return to a two-story universe.

> -transparency

Spirit states shine through our ordinary perceptions of reality.  Rather than think of Spirit as something transcendent, in the New Religious Mode we characterize a Spirit state as an aspect of THE ONE REALITY that can shine through the more limited sense of reality that our practical psyche uses and our set of  personality habits subscribes to.

> -64 states of being

I have spoken to this above.

> -analogical thinking as: like standing naked on 5th Avenue

Using this-worldly modes of experience as clues to the experiences of the other world is a very old technique. All Jesus's parable are examples of this.  For example, in the prodigal son story Jesus pictures Reality as like a father who enthusiastically welcomes his wayward son home no matter how far away the son has strayed.

> -the logic of the other world charts?

I have begun speaking to this, but a detailed answer to this can be much more complex.  The main point to start with is that our human logic is not the Logic of Reality.  The mind's work is always analogical for the finally indescribable Wonder of Reality.

> -what the relationship is between the new social vehicle and the new religious mode might be?

The New Religious Mode is an analysis of our essential humanity.  When we turn to the topic of social ethics and attempt to envision the cultural, political and economic forms of the world toward which we want to move, we use our New Religious Mode experiences as our basic-line understanding of the human authenticity we want to see expressed in our social processes.  Such formations of the ever present basic social processes are workable formations created by humans that reflect the inner being of all humans.  Reading about Christopher Alexander's work as an architect is very instructive in this regard.  He designs houses and cities to match interior truth.

> -64 different states or 64 "flavors" of human experiece?

"Flavors" is a colorful way to put it.  "Aspects" of the ONE SPIRIT of authentic humanness might be a more complete description.

> -what is a trek?

If Spirit is a "journey" each of the 64 aspects of Spirit can be dubbed a "trek."

> -why 4 cagegories: land, river, mountain sea
> -individualized private experience only or groups, teams, families...?

Mathews was seeking spacial metaphors to augment his earlier use of temporal metaphors.  We first thought of Spirit in terms of events of encounter and response.  Mathews intuited that we also needed to notice that Spirit is a "place" that we can go and visit.  This "place" is actually the Real World containing the Real Me. This place is always present, It is I who am away through my confusion of my human creations with God's CREATION, that is, with THE WAY IT IS.    Dealing with this same topic, A. H. Almaas suggests that our states of being can become stations of being.  That is, we can as our Spirit Journey proceeds begin to LIVE THERE rather than simply VISIT THERE from time to time.  I have explained LIVING THERE this way:  In our Spirit journey we can move beyond experiencing ourselves as being a personality to whom Spirit happens to being a Spirit Being who has a personality.

Gene Marshall


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