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.