OTHER WORLD CONTEXT

THE NEW RELIGIOUS LIFE

We're doing something simple. In 19th Century in Protestantism everyone knew what it meant to live a Christian life. When that is clear, it is past. It remained clear in Sunday School days. We're saying afresh what everyday practical Christian life looks like. We grew up when it became solidified. We're recovering poetry so it has life. Great impetus was the Great Awakening. Oxford Movement and Curd Newman were part of it. We're drawing together a focus of New Religious Life. In the early church younger said Christians were outliving and out doing other Evangelists in reaching the masses. Go into a village, tell about their life, problems, belief. They asked what makes you different. Tell story about God, not gods. Loved the world so much he sent his son into the world to let the world know he loved them. Missionary leaves all that is dear to him. Tells them they are loved.

ON BEHALF OF

The visits are On Behalf Of the last 'fat lady'. The New Evangelism, and the concretizing and dramatizing of the NRM which undergirds and motivates the NSV.

GREAT REVIVAL

These (lectures, visits) would be the stuff of Popular Preaching. Recovery of

Catholic substance, human secular, this worldly spiritual. This is the stuff out

of which Revival will be formed, I think. Crucial to NRM, Order, Movement, Church,

NSV.

AFTER DEATH

I thought last night that when you are on the moon, if you look at earth, earth is

up there, just like the moon is if you stand on earth. If you were on the moon,

going to heaven would be on its head! Which made me think that I'm in heaven!

That's what we've discovered in our day: that the Other World is right here on earth.

So, I've went myself to heaven. Tried in a memorial to get a prayer out: "O Lord

of life and death, help me to grasp what it means that necessarily a resurrected

man can never die." Now how do you say that in the scientific poetry of our time?

It's obvious that a resurrected man cannot die. Another prayer I was going to pray

in House Church, if the liturgist had waited, was to make the promise to God that

within a year of Betty's death we'd have stated, for our time, what After Death is

through the looking glass. Homesickness for the mystery--now, this morning, some

one said in the lecture, that we've just begun to learn. That because God loves

you, you love God.

CHRIST WORD

Have the Christ Word in all the states. The ontological meaning of humanness.

"Meets here at the center. He holds us by the hand to the center and back. We're

interested in Jesus' states of being. Jesus said, I am the door...in and out through

me. We have theology that gives us foundation. Sea of Tranquility is rough, no

sentimentality. In trenches of ocean, over the abyss, no bottom. Man goes through

the DOOR, never gets mixed up. Dead Sea: no comfort. Calm sea was death. Waltz

on the sea. In Blue Danube we have huge waves. Japanese are communicates the

Other World. Master reprogramming of the mind.

OTHER WORLD CONTEXT

GREATEST DANGER

The Greatest Danger in the poetry of the Other World is that it be only spatial.

The most subtle temptation we face is to slip into another kind of absolutism,

static imagery. I've thought the time would come when we had to recover the spatial,

Catholic substance. But we have to avoid dichotomizing space and time.

GUIDELINES

There are certain guidelines we have to check: myself in relation to Mystery, Freedom, Unlimited Responsibility, Problemlessness, Peace. Illustration: I jolt myself constantly to the Mystery being present only in concretions. If it is in some abstract, NO. It is not another world in this sense. It is the Other World, but does not exist save this world exists, in the sweatiness of life as it is.

ONLY INDICATIVE

In the Other World there is no imperative, only the indicative. None of this has

anything to do with any other person. I am my accountability, or I am accountability. Intensification of the "I". The I only exists to be conscious about. Personhood is far more than a systematic organization of insights relative to the psvche of man. And vet I don't want to fall back into Kantianism.

WHAT IS A VISIT

TO SEE OR TO BEHOLD

I pay a visit with you. Let's Visit together in the Other World. It means to see:

to go and behold. Many connotations of the term. It describes the kind of visit.

Four categories: 1) ceremonial or personal relations -- like Queen Elizabeth, or

the Crown Prince; 2) comforting friendship -- to go to have a friendly time -- you

go to comfort. Curiosity; 3) dutiful affliction or punishment -- the Church has

made great use of this. In Timothy, person paid visit by Elders; 4) missional business -- visited by the Trade Commission. In the NRM Charts, going down and across

is a visit to the other world. Excursion: 9 major tours, 36 minor tours. Master

Excursions . No intellectual going-onness. You must come on. No way to train

people. The guru is on the visit with the crowd. Never go into the world when it

looks like it did before. You can wander from the crowd and get lost. Exercise in

being, not knowing. Sunday visit in Ada open parlor. Shut off in winter. Took

calling cards.

MEANDERING AROUND STATES OF BEING

The visit is related to meandering around a state of being. Clues: awe is objective. Actual experience--you are in the awe. Chagall, impressionist, taught us about objectivity. Purple horses are for those who see. There is more out there than we've been conditioned to see. When you deal with phenomenology you are in awe. The awe is external. You experience awe inside while it is outside, and you lose flesh between the two. At the same time you are experiencing awe, you experience yourself being a Lilliputian and yourself watching yourself walking around in the experience. You are in the experience you are walking around. Augustine and Thomas: this was the great struggle-- the transcendence and imminence

MEANDERING AROUND STATES OF BEING (cont.)

of God. Thomas came down on the pole of transcendence - outside. For Augustine, the struggle was inside - the immanence of God. In the description of the Other World we hold both together: the one with and forever not one. Oriental Mystics got into a state and closed one eye, he took one and made a whole out of it, warping reality. This has been part of the Trinitarian formula from the beginning: I and the Father are one, yet they are not one.

SMALL TALK

The visit: to chat or talk casually. To go or come to see a person as by way of

friendship or duty, to call on, to stay with as a guest, to go or come to in order to aid: to converse or chat. Middle English: visiten. Old French visitor. Latin: visitare, to go to see, from visare, to view, from visus, sight, vision. It is informal chattering. Quality of nonchalance. The awe will break lose. Awe itself is incidental. You are on the other side of white hotness. You are engaged in small talk, setting up relationships rather than getting an imaginal context.

METHODOLOGY

AWE OBJECTIVE

The awe is in you rather than you in awe. However, you are still in awe, but the

Lilliputians are being consumed in awe in the awe you are in. Maybe it is the

experience of awe in you. You can't distinguish yourself from the awe. You grasp yourself as sheer mystery.

DROWNING IN AWE

The man of spirit is floating in the awe and is concerned with return. Therefore

the last question is crucial. Schizophrenic is drowning in awe. It's a refusal to

appropriate the awe. Mythology keeps you from drowning in awe.

ETHICS

There is a clean feeling within the imperative that comes from dealing with the

indicative. The moral man is moral beyond all morality because he's been to the center and back. He deals with the imperative that comes Prom the indicative, the center of life. A moral act, like a work of art, is unique of unique; like angels, a species in itself.

DON'T WANT STATE

Let's talk about the conversation. I have insecurity. We're not interested in intellectual clarity. Don't want this state: Hate it! Yet fascinated. Like being afraid of flying, yet fascinated. There is terror in this state of being.

QUIET SELF ACCOUNTING

It won't feel like self-inspection, rather quiet self accounting. Won't come with pressure. It won't get you up-tight. This will either be raw indicative or we won't be doing visits. You stumble: "My God, I am the sheepfold!" In crossing the river for the first time you met sin. There is terror because this is the indicative realm.

MINIMAL PEDAGOGY

You don't know more than others. You are helping folk get their eyes in focus to

behold the world that is always here. I think you ought to feel free to dump in out

of your own stream of consciousness… Jesus talking over his shoulder: you don't

take seriously whether anyone takes it seriously. When you tell a child to look both

ways, crossing a street, you're training him to be attentive to life that is already there .

POETRY

Probably ought not use Biblical poetry. It is helpful to recite poetry that is not

familiar. Use something to break into a wide spectrum. I find myself centered too

much on the one poetry. There need not be a plethora of talking. The poetic images

should go quickly. The leader needs to get sharp images. It can be anything -- not

something you've heard. Poetry clarifies arenas like looking at your face in a mirror

clarifies it. One good poetic image: you would rather draw out poetry than feed it

back. Give the participants room and make distance. Develop your own poetry through

plays, poetry, movies, novels. Some you make up your own. Be careful of phrases in

books or novels that might lead to intellectualizing.

ESTABLISHED HUNKS OF POETRY

Study hunks of poetry. In capturing an established hunk of poetry in terms of being

mission, you have two strikes on him. There must be steel in the figure: like good

and evil. Classical categories. That is why we say God instead of 'wancuss'. Good

and evil has a library of philosophy behind it. Burden: describing the state of

being behind the poetry. Yesterday we went too quickly to occasion. The consequences

are crucial. When my boys say I'm an old fogie! I say B.S.! I can relate to the

boys and not their subjectivity. I live beyond good and evil. If don't use those

categories, you fall into psychosis. Get into the practical activities of your

objective life. Trip to the other world puts us in actualities. Manifestation of

the state of being. This gives the detachment that enables the ability to deal with

the boys. The consequences are crucial because if you can't say the consequences of

the state of being, you lied about the state.

HUMOR

Humor is crucial. But the one in front must not laugh so much the conversation is

hindered. The difficult part is making the turns so they go smoothly and not turn

sharp corners.

CONVERSATION FLOW/TIMING

Here, watch out. If the leader goes over 15 minutes you yell 'stop'. If he goes

over 20, you pull the trigger! One answer to a question is plenty. For every image

anyone brings out, 1000 click. This induces mass participation.

INTERIOR STRUCTURE/QUESTIONS

1. Particular Image. 2.State of Being. 3. Objective Occasion. 4. Practical manifestation - personal, social. No reason to push on any questions. If something doesn't come, go on. Stand in one spot and turn around. Questions describe the state. Can't separate questions 1 and 2 or 3 from 4. People flow from the 2nd to the 3rd question. The method is "not to know what you're doing." If the group doesn't hit center, the guru has to wham. He has to be on top of alternatives. Every cup becomes celebration in its capacity to disclose God. Franticness to do something ...longing to be with and in the mystery. Empty, driven. Listen. Try to get anything to yield. You know it in every encounter. In this world you try to force this world to speak. You don't know what will happen. You're trying to answer. Rest of life stand on tiptoe. Attention. Not to miss a single minute. Saw had to say yes to every request. When say no you miss the mystery. When you hate, you're afraid. Found I could deal with hysterical fear. Yearning consumes you. You go head long. Look out of corner of eye to get crucial images.... Every question is the same question, state of being. The 3rd question is to enable everyone to see they've been in this world, but didn't have eyes. God is not a slave of the Church! God is not dependent on the Son. The Christ happening is a dynamic in the essence of God Himself.

INTRODUCTIONS

First story shapes the first response. Instinct to make it personal. Establish

trust in the group. Talk about where you've been. No direct bearing on the conversation. No matter what story you tell it has relevance. Role of Invitatory Phrase: kill in your language invitatory story. There is an invitatory piece of poetry:

"standing under a cloud 100 miles long". Try to avoid Biblical introductions. The

"I am's" cave in on you. Be aware of the eschatological dimension of your own being.

The introduction must be a tangential thing.

LEADER GUI DES ATTENTION

Beware that no one ends up with intellectual clarity. Although we do have clarity,

we're not out to have clarity. The figure of the blazing light. When you have looked

at the sun, you look away and see a black dot. You don't see trees, you see the

light. This job is never finished. We could do this 1,000 years and it would change

each day… When you pull in objectivity of things in the room it helps us keep focused.

Discipline of attention of the group will be important. It is important the leader

guide our attention. Challenges discipline. Watch when awe strikes, then relax. Smarty pants will emerge. It's one thing when a guy throws a hand grenade in RSI; you can't carve him up here. It would be disruptive. There will be one place where the whole group will be involved. It would have to be long enough or deep enough to involve all. It is 500 years since people have dealt with this awareness. It is the recovery of wonder -- don't let a minute go by. Spot it in another person. Wham all the time. Gift to individual. Positing you in the midst of the Word to appropriate the Word, to see that all life is good, received, open. The journey could be a healing tool. The Practical Manifestation is crucial. Reluctance to deal with mundanity. Feel as if you've had a bath. Experience fear and fascination in this conversation. Need to sustain ourselves. RSI will never be the same again.

KEEPING TRAIN ON TRACK

Silence in the room. When with comfortable people, silences don't bother you. Silences have meaning. There is no such thing as failure in these. Timing is crucial. Visit goes on a train track. The track keys guide it, or maybe we shout INDIANS and get back on the train. In accountability, it's not to anything. Not moral. Deal with indicative. To become aware of claim or imperative is an indicative. That's what life is about. That's the given. To get train back on track requires powerful images...You have to follow somebody into the Other World. Can be done with gestures as well as words. I have to go into the OW. You can't ask me to bleed. Necessary to go with another. We are creating a state of being and moving through it. There can be no preparation for a visit. Your preparation is your own life. Visits are all the same thing. Struggle to stay on center...Great revival can't take place without what we're doing now. This is the closest we've come to an evangelistic tool. Awe makes you clean. High resolve always has the quality of valueness. When young you did something naughty. You resolve to God from this moment on. Resolve dribbles into the concrete. Keep at it for 20 years. Kaz: Freedom is what I want... To stop hating. Move into the awe. Experience irritability. Psychological hatred related to spiritual hatred. If the spirit is not washed away, any release is a temporal release. Psychological release is burial under feelings, or lobotomy in relation to hatred. But it grows. The word forgiveness becomes actuality. There is the effect of sins being washed away, as well as knowing God has forgiven me. Rebuild authentic life flowing out of others lives. Forgiveness is forever. Totally complete forever. Doesn't mean tomorrow you may not hate. But it is forever.

RELATIONSHIP TO TREK

The relationship between the states within a trek are more important than the states themselves.

RELATIONSHIP TO INTELLECT

We are translating from intellect to state of being. It is like translating from

Chinese into French, from human to Martian language. We'll never be the same again. Like taking a bath, washing the inside of the hull.

PREPARATION

Don't spend too much time. You'll trap yourself into becoming a pedagogue. But

brood over the arena and collect your wits. Poetry: you can't walk in blank. Write it down, or you'll lose it

DANGERS

Fear: l)Slipping into yogi, 2) Go to the other world and drown, 3) 'You were wrong', intellectual; 4) Lying to yourself, 5)Slipping Into piety, 6) Psychosis,

7) Psychologism.

RELATION TO PSALMS

CONVERSATIONS

SELF TO CENTER

Use the methodology of Psalms. Get yourself at the center. I is water. I is the

water. Could only say that at the center. What happened the night before that

occasioned an external explosion that caused internal implosion that called for the

state of being articulated in "I" is the water of life. All my life I've been looking for the bread of life. MY GOD! I is the bread of life!

CREATE PSALM

At the cross captures special imagery. Here we have a visit with Yahweh. A visit

is a special visit. The Psalm is a visit. Way you come at the states of being.

Throw- out images, they throw out images. The Psalmist has a visit and we have a

visit through him. Both are visits with Mystery. Spacial imagery we used in S'70

was the NRM chart: being at the center. The Other World gives a sense of unabstractness. Visit with the Mystery is most crucial kind of demand. The more lucid we are

the more able we are to shut off the Mystery. It is the offense every time you've

cut off the mystery. Offense: I have to see inside my own criteria for life. Limits and possibilities. Visit with Mystery is an offense. How do you love the Mystery? Not love that is agape. It is affective love, delighting in affection for being offended.

Visit with Psalmist or classical images, any attempts to intellectualize or moralize is putting our priorities in before it move in on you. Category of event: you call to people's mind events in which Mystery moved in on people. Event is a time category. We use spacial imagery. In order to break through even of life. Luther used image of Jewish synagogue: courtyard, eternalities; Holy Place, true virtue; Holy of Holy, stand before Christ. Only those who have embraced Christ event and call it ^Christ event can make sense out of the Christ place, being at the Center, relating the Word to every particular of your life you become the place in which being shows good and real is Christ place.

To start: Know the state of being. Then create poetry. Say this is not what we want to talk about, we want to talk about poetry of... Last question: How was your life different? What was your return? What was the consequence? With Psalm, create it out of nothing. We're out for a state of being. We're out for articulation. Visit: You create the Psalm. Difficulty is getting the state of being established. I return to classical poetry, then move to state of being. We're released to see state is released for your life. We have a way to shove it into the mundane. This one we pick up our whole life; you already are into it when you give an image. You recollect it. Allow next question. Elicit one to talk about.

AWE INCIDENTAL

Informal chattering. Quality of nonchalance. The awe will break loose. Awe itself

is incidental. You are on the other side of white hotness. Tangents. Looking out

of the side of your eye. Snake eyes. If you look head on, it might be gone.

Intentionality builds up.

NO IMPERATIVE

Theology: nothing to do with imperative, anyplace, anytime. Imperative mood does

not exist in the Other world. Not even a flicker that they ought to be different or

something. He have dealt always in extremely dangerous areas. You can turn someone

into a life-long zombie. If you dare touch anything moral in this conversation,

you've destroyed them. Indicative. Indicative. What you have here is spelling out

in detail the resurrectional principle. The last question is really, what does it

mean to be a resurrected man. This is the key to the new morality. All the questions

are only dealing with that state of consciousness.

RELATION TO SPIRIT CONVERSATIONS

MORE DETACHMENT

In a visit there is more detachment-- in a spirit conversation you get swirled into

yourself. Spirit conversations are in time and space. These are momentless. Everything is swirling. Incarnation is not justification. Other World is sheer paradox. Has nothing to do with this world. Other World is in this world. There is not a compromising or spirit meaning of these. In spirit conversation there are Elizabeth

Blacks. In visit the Elizabeth Blacks in Other World are brought together.

Far more detachment from yourself in a visit than a spirit conversation. The experience of awe will be different. Yet this is not true. It is detachment on the other side of engagement. Detachment: cast yourself into the awe, this is the one place where you have objectivity clearly relative to your own being. It's like looking down the hall. You experience yourself as huge and then see yourself as a Lilliputian. You're in the midst of awe watching the little one. Consumed. All of this is more happening than imaging. It's like having a straight pin stuck into my side. The awareness you have is a happening! There's pain. Sartre: the great thing about being stuck is you know you're alive. No images or intellectual constructs. You're not aware of the pain, you're aware of being alive, though there is pain there. In a spirit conversation I'm flooded with images of water .. Concentrate on difference between these and spirit conversations. Yet everything we're doing is the same thing. "This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." In the visit you write that poetry, reality, indicative. Incidental/informal related to tangents. Quality of looking out of the side or your eye -- like snake eyes. If you look at it head on it might not be there. This means that whatever is happening is happening. The intro. has nothing to do with the conversation. Small talk. It sets up the relationship. It puts you bodily with each other. In Peace Talks go through ceremonies.

PRETENTIOUS NONCHALANCE

Encounter is more difficult because the illustrations sound like I'm the hero. I don't want to tell story in which I'm the hero. The rest of our life we have to get over that neurosis. Most pretentious: I am God's child! Nonchalance is delicate. Often people give short hand answers. Rarely necessary to ask them to talk more. You're never ministering.

CONTRAST T0 CONVERSATION

1. Visit is more detached.

2. It is more a happening than image.

3. Informal chatting; incidental interchange.

4. Self-inspection.

Guru has to spin, but not as much as spirit conversation.

NAMING THE STATE

There's a bit of conspiring, opening up Pandora's box. Like voodoo: you name the

state of being and everything flutters out.

MORE DANGEROUS

These paralyze you more and are more dangerous than the spirit conversations.

PARTICIPANTS

Make sure when you turn that you're on target. Never quarrel with what is said, rarely ask for a person to talk more. Not after clarity. All participate in the visit as much as those who talked. Person ought to feel free to jump in from stream of consciousness. Jesus walking through the crowds, toss from afar. Doesn't take it seriously, doesn't care if others take it seriously.

TIME AND SPACE

On this side of the river is time and space. Across the river timelessness and spacelessness. Spirit Conversations are time and space. You see yourself in these visits,

whereas in Spirit Conversations You get swirled into Yourself.

OFF STAGE

Getting offstage is no problem, particularly with the guru. The whole group gets

offstage.

POETRY AND GROUNDING

If the guru finds one good poetic image, he is home free. There is no pedagogy in it.

The guru must have grounding up his sleeve, but does not drop it as he would a pearl

in a spirit conversation.

OTHER WORLD

In a conversation you take people by the nose and lead them into the other world. A

Visit is us and them sitting down for a second in the Other World and visiting.