Quest Magazine

Originally printed in the Spring 2009 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Executive Editor - Spring 2009." Quest 97. 2 (Spring 2009): 44.

Did you realize that the earth as we know it did not exist a million years ago? This may sound incredible, but I can prove it to you simply and irrefutably.

I'm not saying that the world did not physically exist a million years ago. But as you no doubt recognize, the world is an inscrutable combination of what is "out there" in some absolute sense and the way our minds are set up to process our experience of this world. To take an example, consider rainbows. The particles of light and water vapor that combine to form rainbows exist, shall we say, objectively. But the colors and shape of the rainbow are due to our own visual apparatus.

The same is true of colors as a whole. There is an enormous bandwidth of vibrations, only a small fraction of which we perceive as the color spectrum. Thanks to science, we have been able to push these boundaries a bit, to the extent of knowing that there are infrared and ultraviolet colors. We also know that other species, such as bees, can see different ranges of color than we can. But to perceive color as we do requires a human nervous system. (Here's a brain twister: try to visualize a color that you have never seen before.)

When we imagine the world as it was a million years ago, what we are really imagining is the world the way it would have been if there had been creatures like us to perceive it. But there were no such creatures—at least not according to science. There were no humans with minds like ours, to see the colors we see, or to organize their experience in the way we do. Therefore the earth as we know it did not exist. Something existed—but not the earth we know, not because there was no earth, but because there was no "we."

This argument, which I owe to Saving the Appearances, a book by the British philosopher Owen Barfield published in 1957, yields some striking insights. It may cast light on Theosophical concepts of earlier Rounds and Root Races. Scientists dismiss the notion of races of Lemurians and Atlanteans and so on because, they say, the fossil record indicates no such thing. (What the fossil record does indicate is more ambiguous than you might expect. If you're interested in this question, look into Forbidden Archeology: The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael L. Cremo and Richard L. Thompson).

But that still leaves us wondering what these ancient records refer to. H. P. Blavatsky says, for example, that the primordial First Root Race was "nonphysical"; it had no physical form and existed only amorphously on the astral plane. She described it as a race of "pudding bags" (Collected Writings, 12:701).

What if the esoteric accounts of such races—amorphous, androgynous, and so on—are recalling the subjective experience of life in these forms, when the boundaries between self and other were more permeable? These ancient accounts would then be referring, not to these creatures as they might look in a textbook of paleontology, but to the way it would feel to be one of them. While this suggestion does not dispose of differences between science and Theosophy in a single shot, I believe it is a fruitful avenue of approach.

In any event, the earth we know is a product of human consciousness. Today when we speak of "endangering the earth" or "saving the earth," we are really talking about saving the earth as a human construct (and as a human resource). The earth as a thing in itself is mysterious and perhaps ultimately unknowable. To all appearances it long preceded our race and will long outlast us. Thus the current urge to sentimentalize and "Save" it may be misguided.

In no way am I saying that environmental concerns are to be taken lightly. Clearly they need to be taken far more seriously than they have been. But I believe that when we view the earth as a personification, say, of a wounded mother, we are projecting our own wounds upon it. As Stephan A. Hoeller suggests in this issue, there is a tendency among many to elevate Gaia to the place vacated by the Judeo-Christian deity. No doubt the Judeo-Christian God, as conventionally imagined, is too small a vessel to accommodate the sublimity of the Absolute. But I think the hypostatized earth will prove just as inadequate.

The Bible often condemns the sin of idolatry: making images of wood and metal and bowing down to them as if they were gods. Today we are more sophisticated; we no longer mistake the physical representation of a thing for the thing itself. But we have not advanced quite as far in the realm of ideas. Whereas people in the past confused their gods with the works of their hands, we often confuse ours with the works of our minds.

This is a time when we are facing hard truths and seeing dear illusions shattered. It is true that we cannot defile our own nests without paying the penalty. At the same time we must avoid the trap of believing that we can only stir ourselves to action by setting up a new idol to replace the old ones. Do we really need to construct a myth of a wounded Gaia to persuade ourselves to clean up our own filth? I suspect not. To do so is to step back at a time when we most urgently need to move forward.

Richard Smoley
Executive Editor

By Betty Bland

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bland, Betty. "Viewpoint: The Story to Tell." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 84.

I love a good story. As the images of exotic scenery, exciting adventure, tender love, and inspirational insight parade before my inner imagination, I am carried along with them. I thrill or despair, thirst or feel fulfilled as the story unfolds. The trials of the hero become my trials, and the insights become my insights. The alternative reality imprints on my mind as if the event had taken place in the world of my own daily life.

This function of mind was brought home to me during the news releases of the quick thinking and heroism of Captain Chesley B. "Sully" Sullenberger, the pilot of US Airways flight 1549, which in a near disaster collided with a flock of geese during a routine takeoff from LaGuardia Airport in New York City on January 15, 2009. With both engines completely blocked, the descending airplane threatened both the lives of the passengers and the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods, which were heavily populated. More people could have lost their lives than in the World Trade Center disaster. Yet by the time it was made public, all passengers were safely accounted for and the aircraft was floating down the Hudson River, having done no serious injury to people or property.

News stories generally inundate our minds with violence, corruption, greed, and disaster so that we can become supersaturated with negativity. Cynicism and pessimism seem to be signs of being well-informed and sophisticated. For some reason, the public in general thrives on the sensational, the scandalous. And we get caught up in that mentality, swept along on a wave of fear and outrage.

This story had the opposite effect. As the story unfolded of the miraculous landing and rescue of 150 passengers and five crew members, I was filled with tears of joy and gratitude. Immediately after the crash landing, ferries and other boats redirected their courses to the site in order to bring all safely to shore. The serendipitous choices, quick thinking, and heroic efforts of all involved created a drama of what seemed to be a cooperation of divine and human forces in order to bring about a miracle. It was as if I had been there and I had been saved, and I was filled with gratitude.

Each of us has this capacity of imagination, which is a manifestation of the universal creative principle that imbues us with self-consciousness and self-reflection. This is the quality of humanness that places us above the animal stage, although a little lower than the angels. We are an embodiment of the creative principle. The way we process our experiences, memories, and reactions creates a unique environment for each of us. Each sees the world differently through a particular mind-set. This mind-set creates our world of challenges for this lifetime. Kama-manas, or the mental-emotional functions, are the very trap of maya, the illusions whereby we develop patterns of seeing and become ensnared in our own mental constructs.

Our emotional entanglements make us see what we expect to see and suffer what we anticipate. This is not to say that everything is in our minds or that we necessarily choose our suffering. We cannot dismiss the power of suffering by the flippant attitude that "they have brought it upon themselves and just have to deal with it." Things happen that have complex causes and complex solutions. We have to deal with the paradigm in which we are presently caught. It is true that emotional attachment to the vicissitudes of life is the root cause of our suffering, just as the Buddha observed. Yet we have to figure out how to deal with the here and now. Now that we are in this mess, how can we begin to grow and work through it?

We are the prisoners of the accumulation of our thoughts, but we are also the masters of our fate. We can decide what we want to tell ourselves over and over again and thus create beneficial, or at least harmless, scenes that reverberate through our minds. As we read in The Voice of the Silence, "If thou wouldst not be slain by them, then must thou harmless make thy own creations, the children of thy thoughts, unseen, impalpable, that swarm round humankind, the progeny and heirs to man and his terrestrial spoils."

Our minds work in strange and mysterious ways, catching and holding on to whatever we feed them. As writer and actor Benjamin Busch said in an interview on National Public Radio, "Who knows how the folds of the mind work, but things get caught in there." Consciousness is sticky; things get caught in there, usually in unintended ways. Our minds believe and hold on to what they are fed on a daily basis. And the longer we chew on an idea, the tighter it sticks.

It is not easy but we do have the ability to determine the character of our steady diet. The Bhagavad Gita says, "For the mind is verily, restless, O Krishna; it is impetuous, strong and difficult to bend. I deem it as hard to curb as the wind."

Whenever we encounter a story that brings tears of joy to the heart, let us dwell on the miracle of heroic service to others. Just as the airplane rescue sent waves of happy gratitude around our nation, so we can magnify the little unsung deeds of generosity to be found in our ordinary encounters. Whether large or small, the light of consciousness enables these deeds to become more powerful in transforming ourselves and our world.

Each day, let us look for these moments of joy or self-forgetfulness, forgiveness, loving-kindness, or any quality that lifts the human spirit. Let us look for opportunities to immerse ourselves in books, videos, music, and works of visual art that inspire those qualities. These positive aspects will stick in the folds of our minds and begin the healing process. In this way we begin to become the peace that we all long for. This is the story of the ages that all long to hear. This is the story to tell with our whole being.

By Robert W. Bonnell

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Bonnell, Robert W. "Illness As Spiritual Experience." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 108-109, 112.

All kingdoms of life ascend by virtue of the divine principle within them. This motivation, spiritual in essence, strives to elevate all life to higher planes of expression. As part of our being is universal, we share in the trials and tribulations of the working out of this cosmic plan. Such a relationship demands continual changes in our concepts. Change is necessary both for progress and for inner unification.

In the human kingdom, the spiritual or higher mind is the recipient of the divine pulsation, and it in turn transmits the impulse to the lower or outer spheres. As the creative impulse manifests in the physical mind and body, reactions of various magnitudes occur, arousing a variety of emotions depending upon the receptivity of the lower mind. The inability of the physical mind to grasp this impulse for what it truly is causes disharmony, resulting in physical and mental illness. (The terms physical mind or brain-mind do not imply that the mind is contained within the physical brain. After-death periods of torment, reflection, and bliss are conscious experiences that indicate the existence of some degree of analytical awareness apart from the brain. The function of the brain, which in itself is nothing but a mass of nerve tissue, is to instigate and maintain physiological nerve impulses.)

To understand human problems, including illness, we must employ a broad, intuitive view. As a book cannot be read through a pinhole, the Book of Life cannot be fully read through the pinhole view of the brain-mind or under the shadow of the personality. The larger openings of the philosophic or impersonal must be sought. Any investigation of life must include the abstract, spiritual view and will reveal that the physical plane is merely one of effects and reactions. Original cause or action is not conceived here. In the drama of life, the spiritual mind is the dramatist, the physical mind is the actor, and the body or physical plane is the stage whose settings must continually change to meet the moods of the play.

All evolutionary processes first contact the individuality through the spiritual mind, so that all physical reaction is due, in some respect, to a spiritual impulse. At our present degree of awareness, we harbor the emotions of both sides of the mental plane, sharing the bliss of spiritual nature and the passions of earthly desires at the same time. The lower, conscious mind is where disharmony arises. Sickness is perhaps the most common reaction. The body is not the cause of sickness; what is commonly known as disease is actually the body's effort to protect itself against this vibratory intrusion. Reactions such as pain, fever, congestion, inflammation, chills, tumors, mucus, coughing, and diarrhea, are not destructive but constructive. They can be compared with the coiling of a snake when it senses danger: the coiling is not the danger but a reaction to danger. Coiling is not the snake's normal position, but under certain conditions it is quite normal. Likewise, fever, chills, tumors, heart enlargements, and so forth, are not normal states, but under certain conditions they are not only normal but necessary to the life of the body.

Scientific research is looking intently for the cause of man's physical woes, but the search is for the most part confined to the physical realm, which can at best reveal nothing but effects. That new discoveries differ from the old does not necessarily indicate that anything truly causative has been found. Much research is like a merry-go-round, moving but going nowhere. The original cause of anything, including disease, cannot be found in the material sphere of life, which by itself cannot create; it simply does not have the mechanism for it. It is not the plane of the manifester but of the manifested. Illness and the cause of illness inhabit different planes, one being the reaction to the other. Future research must recognize man as a product of divinity, containing the properties of both spirit and matter, and must acknowledge that disharmony merely results from the working out of the conflict of spirit versus matter. Christian symbology hints at this truth in the martyrdom of the Crucifixion and subsequent triumph of the Resurrection: the inner Christ versus the outer flesh, the higher versus the lower.

Today, then, the greatest dilemma comes from mistaking effect for cause. There may be effects causing effects within the physical plane, but the initial cause can be never found within the physical realm. Therefore all physical process, including illness, is reaction to nonphysical stimuli. These ideas lead to two conclusions:

1. Physical illness rarely has a physical cause.
2. Any outside physical influence affecting the body cannot be a primary cause.

This second point may seem difficult to understand if the illness is, for instance, the result of an automobile accident, but the law applies here also. What, after all, is the true nature of an accident? Is it coincidence or bad luck? Such an interpretation can never provide true understanding, because it discounts the metaphysical. All life follows a plan; hence nothing of any significance happens without cause or reason. Either the accident was necessary for the experience or the lower mind was not receptive to higher direction. In either case, the accident would have constructive compensations. This attitude may appear fatalistic, but it is merely saying that spiritual forces are acting in the unpleasant as well as in the pleasant moments of life. We cannot deny that both are beneficial any more than we can praise the right hand and criticize the left merely because we are right-handed. Both are equally necessary, and both serve a need.

The body exhibits reactions or effects (called symptoms, disease, or illness) because that is all it is capable of expressing. It cannot perpetuate the cause of anything, being a part of the physical world. All it can do is receive and react in accordance with its quality of reception. Illness, then, is the precipitation of the emotional level into the physical due to temporary antagonism between the higher mind (what we should be doing) and the lower mind (what we are doing). We will outgrow such struggles in times to come, when a complete unification of the lower and higher aspects of the mind takes place.

Illness does not, however, indicate a false or misguided life or a total failure in our efforts toward a well-balanced life. It does indicate an imperfection, which is natural at this stage of spiritual growth. Illness can also lead to a more profound view of life. The lower mind becomes tempered and searching as a result of bodily disturbance. Its confidence and security are so shaken that it turns elsewhere for consolation. This is most often true with chronic afflictions, but all types of ill health can lead to a more serious and contemplative thought pattern.

Are illness and other forms of suffering necessary for spiritual growth? Certainly some impetus is necessary for moving man forward by breaking up crystallized ways of living and thinking. In most instances, this impetus takes the form of disease or other difficulties. Furthermore, it is not the true Self that suffers. In fact, the true Self is spiritually strengthened by the synthesis resulting from the antagonism of the conflict that takes place within the lower mind.

For eons, the lower mind has concerned itself consciously with the plane of the physical. Now, because of our evolutionary position, we are slowly rising into greater vistas of spiritual comprehension. The lower mind, through experience of life, is continually expanding and absorbing the characteristics of its higher counterpart, but, from its point of view, the great power arising from its higher contacts is foreign and repellent at first. The blending of the two aspects of our nature is not always cordial. The lower mind and body must continually reorient themselves in order to complement this higher expansion. It is much like retooling an automobile factory when a new car model is going into production. Readjustment means problems, and in some cases problems result in illness.

To the body, or more specifically, the cell, the reactions resulting from illness are creative as well as protective. What is a cell? It is more than protoplasm; it is an individual life, compounded of divinity, soul, and form. Though its limited soul-perception can express itself only in a cellular form, it is basically the same in cause and purpose as all other forms of life. All lives are but diverse aspects of the One, yet are united through common origin and purpose.

Through the process of illness and the protective effort it produces, the cell undergoes transition. Transition through experience leads to progress, and progress is spiritual advancement. Our body is an aggregate of lives (cells), which gives it a bipolarity—a blending of opposites both as an extension of divinity into matter and as a vehicle by which the cell's lower degrees of consciousness may share in the higher organization of the human structure. Therefore, even on the physical plane, illness serves a useful purpose.

All life moves toward fulfillment of a spiritual idea. The sooner we realize this, the sooner will our lives have inner purpose and direction. We must understand that all human problems have spiritual colorings despite their physical expressions. This awareness will not necessarily make one immune to disease but will give it some degree of virtue and purpose over and above its unpleasant side.

Philosophically, we cannot separate blissful and painful experiences, for both in varying degrees serve the same cause; they will last their duration and then disintegrate as naturally as they appeared. This does not mean we should seek illness as a spiritual stimulant, but when we are confronted with it, we should not lose sight of its essential nature. To seek aid for such discomforts is understandable and sometimes necessary, but with the seeking should go an awareness of the deeper vision: that the very energies that manifest disharmony are those which also give and sustain life.

Robert W. Bonnell, a Life Member of the Theosophical Society, has been a lecturer and writer on esoteric themes for over fifty years. His book, Reflections Along the Path, was published in 2006. A health practitioner for over forty years, Robert now competes in the Senior Olympics, where he has earned numerous gold medals for weight lifting. A version of this article appeared in Sunrise magazine, August-September 1990 (copyright © 1990 Theosophical University Press).

By Richard Smoley

Originally printed in the Summer 2009 issue of Quest magazine. 
Citation: Smoley, Richard. "From the Executive Editor - Summer 2009." Quest  97. 3 (Summer 2009): 82.

From time to time in my reading, I turn to some classic work of fiction that I've never gotten around to before. Recently I read Saul Bellow's novel Herzog, about a middle-aged professor whose wife runs off with his best friend.

Herzog is furious. At one point he gets an old horse pistol that had belonged to his father and goes to his ex-wife's house, intending to shoot her and her lover. But as he sees them through the window, he realizes that he will do no such thing. He goes off and eventually makes peace with his sorrow.

Herzog was published in 1964. I wonder whether a novelist writing today would be able to avoid the temptation to have Herzog use the gun. Anton Chekhov once said that you can't have a pistol onstage without having it go off. American art over the last few decades seems dedicated to the principle that pistols must be found everywhere and used at all times. This is true not only in mass culture but increasingly in the "serious" arts as well. Just today I read a New York Times review of a production of the Oresteia that features a great deal of red fluid spurting about.

Conflict is the key to drama: if you take a basic course in scriptwriting, that's the first thing you will learn. But if you watch the typical current movie or (increasingly) read the typical current novel, you'll get the impression that conflict is a spice that is dumped willy-nilly into every dish. Certain movies—Spike Lee's come to mind—have everyone shouting at one another at every possible juncture regardless of whether it's necessary to the plot or relevant to what the characters are experiencing. Other films have characters firing weapons at one another at every possible juncture.

It's easy to see why. If you're a mediocre filmmaker with little sense of plot or dialogue, you can always fill in the holes with gunfire. By now viewers have come to expect this practice as a matter of course, and a film that is lacking in bloodshed is often dismissed as slow or boring or, still worse, "foreign."

Since films remain one of our nation's chief exports even in a time of chronic trade deficits, our filmmakers are shipping this idea of America abroad. Possibly some or most of the anti-Americanism that we are seeing worldwide is the result of this image. If America is a country riddled with pimps, drug dealers, gang lords, and craven politicians beholden to them, and if we are a people who have to keep pistols in our nightstands so that we can sleep in peace, who would want to be like us? Who would not want to keep American influence at bay?

Nor is it just a matter of how we look to the world at large. One adage says that you become what you behold, so violence has become a central element in our self-definition as Americans. We still imagine ourselves as a nation of pioneers who must keep rifles over our hearths to fight off the savages—or, if you prefer, wary vigilantes holed up against the gangsters and psychopaths beating down our doors.

The usual punch line to this sort of reflection is that images of violence propagate real violence and that we must do something about this explosion of criminality on our viewing screens. Impose stricter rating standards, perhaps? Ban violence from TV? Unfortunately, such editorializing has gone on for decades with no result whatsoever.

I would like to suggest something different. We need to see that violence has become an artistic cliche. Like all cliches, it has simply become uninteresting. If you've seen one car chase through a crowded city, you've seen them all. If you've heard one movie gangster threaten a hero tied to a chair, you've heard them all. They are all the same, and all are incredibly tiresome: the clever heists, the drug deals gone bad, the sadistic hoodlums, the misfit cops who throw out the rules and do it their own way. The changes have all been rung on bloodshed, American style.

What's the point of this discussion? It's quite simple. People are, like it or not, herd animals, and by and large they (or rather we) follow the crowd. In the America of 2009, where attention spans are shrinking to nanolevels, there is nothing worse than being "so last year." It's time to move the crowd in another direction by bestowing upon violence the most poisonous of all stigmas: that of being passé. Brutality in our cultural imagination will not end with a bang or for that matter with a whimper, but we may be able to end it with a yawn.

Richard Smoley
Executive Editor