Quest Magazine

How to Use Your Nous

by A. E. I. Falconar
Maughold, Isle of Man: Non-Aristolelian Publishing, 1987, 1997. Pp. ii+30.

Nous is a word borrowed from Greek, rare in American L1SC, but more common in British, where it is usually pronounced to rime with mouse, rather than with moose, as in American use. It means "intelligence" (though the British often use it to mean "gumption, common sense"), and H. P. Blavatsky used it specifically in the sense of "buddhi."

This booklet proposes and correlates several approaches to being "nousful," that is, having an intuitive, nonrational, but very practical insight into the nature of things. One of those is Krishnamurti's teachings on self-realization. Another is Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics, which offers a number of practical suggestions for coping with the world, such as remembering that the name of a thing is not the thing itself, so the word rose is not after all a rose. That may seem obvious, but every day we for, get that principle and respond to the labels we put on things rather than to the things themselves, a process called stereotyping. So we think that all Chinese are inscrutable, or all Italians are great singers, or all Indians are spiritual, or all Americans are materialistic. (Or, as H. L. Mencken remarked, an idealist is one who believes that because a rose smells better than a cabbage, it also makes better soup.)

Korzybski's techniques, called non-Aristotelian thinking, are properly supplemental rather than alternative ways of dealing with the world. Aristotle's logic (which holds that nothing is both A and nor-A, everything is either A or not-A, etc.) is not absolutely wrong; it is just not absolutely right. It: is right part of the time, for particular purposes, but it is not right all of the time for all purposes, as the Buddhist logicians knew, as well as Korzybski. Indeed, Falconar also cites Zen koans and Tibetan visual meditations as alternative ways o dealing with non-Aristotelian reality, along with poetry and mysticism.

This booklet usefully correlates a number of seemingly unrelated techniques to cope with the world, especially Korzybski's, whose approach is sometimes thought to be anti-mystical, but only when mysticism is misunderstood as opposed to empiricism or phenomenology. In fact, the mystic is radically empirical and phenomenological.

-].A.

July 1997

Henry A. Wallace: His Search for a New World Order

by Graham White and John Maze
Chapel Hill, NC.: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Hardcover, 347page.

Few modern American political figures are more intriguing than Henry A. Wallace, farm journalist, agrarian scientist, New Deal Secretary of Agriculture, Vice President of the United States (1941- 45), and finally quixotic candidate for President on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948. While Wallace stood in the superheated political pressure-cooker of Washington during the Franklin Roosevelt years of depression and World War II, and remained a prominent name in the Truman years of emerging cold war, in some ways he never seemed totally to belong under the capitol dome. Something in him always seemed to be elsewhere. The man from Iowa was also on a deeply personal and often unconventional spiritual quest. From it flowed both the inner alienation and the profound commitment to world order, and to "progress" as he understood it, that kept him in the messy world of politics. His simple, unpretentious way of life seemed to be part of that character. Needless to say, Wallace was loved for his genuine humanity and hopeful visions, and damned by those who saw him as hopelessly naive, with his "head in the clouds" above such things as communism and the real nature of world politics.

The full contours of Wallace's spiritual journey were not widely known during his life. He was in fact a member of the Theosophical Society in America from 1925 to 1935 and was active in the Liberal Catholic Church in Des Moines between 1925 and 1929. He corresponded with the Irish theosophical mystic, poet, and agrarian reformer George Russell (''AE'') and in 1931- 32 successfully took a Theosophical correspondence course from the Temple of the People in Halcyon, California.

In the early New Deal years the Iowan established a complex and controversial relationship with the Russian mystic and artist Nicholas Roerich. Letters Wallace wrote to Roerich often couched in effusive occult language, the so-called "guru letters," were later obtained by political enemies and used against him. Partly because of the political quicksand likely to engulf a public esotericist, about the same time he came to Washington in 1933 Wallace commenced attending a "high" Episcopal church, combining Anglo-Catholic worship with a liberal vision of Christianity and its social mission. All these diverse spiritual resources went into Wallace's role as custodian of the New Deal spirit in its most idealistic form, and his dream that the twentieth century could, in the title of his popular 1943 book, become the "century of the common man."

Henry A. Wallace, the work of two Australian scholars, attempts to interpret this vision and its spiritual sources. Unfortunately the product is a bit uneven. White and Maze appear not especially well informed about the actual culture of American Theosophy. The recent archival work of Mark Kleinman on Wallace's spirituality, published in articles in Peace and Change and The Annals of Iowa, seems not to have been available to them; this material from Wallace's papers would have fleshed out considerably the youthful idealist's relation to Theosophical correspondents and institutions. More surprisingly, White and Maze were also apparently unfamiliar with the subject's later participation in the Episcopal church and his liberal Christian writings like Statesmanship and Religion (1934).

On the other hand, these authors present a full and useful account of the Roerich affair, although here too one suspects there is still more to be known. Whatever the limitations of their information on Theosophy and other forms of unconventional spirituality with which Wallace was involved, they are generally sympathetic in their handling of it.

A complete account of the spiritual life and vision of this extraordinary statesman remains to be written, if indeed the task is possible. For as prominent and recent a figure as he, the subject of several more political than spiritual biographies, extant information and interpretations remain remarkably varied, full of puzzling inconsistencies, and leave a sense of something, perhaps a master key, still missing. If only as a reminder of how much remains to be done by biographers, this book, attempting to balance the picture with serious attention to his spiritual life, is a serviceable starting-point for those seeking fresh perspectives on the man's life and ideas. For those involved in Theosophy and other forms of alternative spirituality, the book is also a salutary reminder that such ideas and ideals can and sometimes do have consequences at the highest levels.

-ROBERT S. ELLWOOD

June 1997

The Philosophy of Classical Yoga

by Georg Feuerstein
Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions. 1996. Paperback, 140 pages.

I wish that I had known of Georg Feuerstein's Philosophy of Classical Yoga when I was first learning yoga and reading the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. In my passion to understand I would layout fourteen translations of the yoga sutras on the floor and compare the various interpretations, sutra by sutra. In addition, I would examine passages from the Bhagavad Gita, the various Upanishads, and other relevant texts for assistance in gleaning the "hidden" meanings behind such terms as purusha, prakriti, ishvara, citra, abhyasa, vairagya, samprajnata, and asamprajnata samadhi. I labored over the differences and similarities between Patanjali's approach and that of the Samkhya Karika. I now find, in Feuerstein's book, a companion guide that echoes my earlier exploits. But, and here is the grace, he saves us the effort by laying the groundwork through his own prodigious labors.

In this scholarly and in-depth treatise, as in his previous books, Feuerstein once again shows us his passion and insight for interpreting ancient textual meanings. In his quest for understanding, he examines the different philosophical, psychological, and practical concepts that form the foundation of yoga. As he takes us through this journey, he carves out a clear trail of references for the reader to follow. What emerges is a picture at once both clear and comprehensible of the entire sphere of classical yoga.

Feuerstein remains faithful to his view of yoga as both a philosophical and practical tool for the transformation of consciousness rather than as a mere compendium of techniques. He also reaffirms that the trail carved out by the Yoga Sutras, the Bhagavad Gita, and other Indian texts are, in essence, maps for meditative introspection that are, in the end, best utilized and integrated into daily living, rather than kept on the shelf collecting dust.

-RICHARD C. MILLER

June 1997

The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus

by Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas
London: Century, 1996. Hardcover, xiii + 384 pages.

Folklorists tell us that many human societies invent an ancestor myth to explain their origins and to define their values. From Australian aborigines to contemporary philosophers, the invention of ancestral lines connecting the present with days of yore is both a pastime and an act of filial piety. In such myths the paternity of the modern offspring is often imaginary rather than historical, but that is irrelevant to the value of the myth.

No human group seems to have been more fruitful in the creation of ancestor myths than Freemasons. The Hiram Key brings together several older myths, adds some new ones, and seasons the mixture with the authors' prejudices for democracy and against the Roman Catholic Church. The ancestry of Freemasonry proposed in this volume is briefly as follows.

In ancient Egypt, a new king's right to rule was established by a secret ceremony based on the myth of the death of Osiris and the birth of Horus, with whom the old and new kings were identified respectively. During the period when Egypt was occupied by foreign invaders called Hyksos (who included the Hebrews), one of the Hyksos leaders unsuccessfully tried to extract the secrets of the king-making ceremony from a king of Thebes, Seqenenre Tao II, who in the process was killed by three blows to the head. The secret ceremony having been lost with the death of Seqenenre (on whom the figure of Hiram Abif was later to be based), his successor adopted a new secret ceremony based on Seqenenre's death (which became the basis of the later third-degree ritual).

Moses was a member of the Egyptian royal family who, knowing the new ceremony, made himself leader of the Hebrews in their exodus out of Egypt to establish a new state. The leaders of the new nation continued to use the Egyptian secrets, which came to mark the line of King David. During the Babylonian Captivity, however, the Prophet Ezekiel sought to purge Jewish ceremonies of foreign elements, so at that time the Egyptian myth of death and resurrection was rewritten with a Solomonic setting but continued as a secret ritual.

By the time of Jesus, the Qumran Essene community of Jews, who expected the imminent appearance of the Messiah to reestablish Jewish rule in Jerusalem, continued the practice of the resurrection ritual among their inner group. Their political and religious heads respectively were Jesus and John the Baptist. After the death of the latter, Jesus assumed both roles and scandalized some of his own followers by his radically democratic views and actions. After the execution of Jesus, leadership of the community passed to his brother James, later challenged by Paul, who Hellenized the teachings of the community and thereby invented Christianity. Anticipating the destruction of their community, the Qumran leaders hid their most precious scrolls in a vault under the foundations of the Temple at Jerusalem.

A millennium later, the Knights Templar, while searching under the ruins of the Jerusalem Temple for buried treasure, found the scrolls, which contained the resurrection ceremony and a true account of the events around Jesus. The Templars then began to use the resurrection ceremony for entrance into their highest group and developed other ceremonies to commemorate their finding of the scrolls (which were the basis of the later Holy Royal Arch ritual).

When in 1307 the Templars were put down by the Pope and the King of France, their head, Jacques de Molay, was tortured by the Inquisition, using a reenactment of Christ's crucifixion. Removed from the cross, he was wrapped in a winding sheet that the Templars had used in their rituals, on which his form and features were impressed, so that it became the Turin Shroud.

A large number of Templars escaped from the persecutions in two ships, one of which sailed to America, where the Templars arrived nearly two centuries before Columbus. The other ship sailed to Scotland, which was a Templar stronghold. There they took refuge especially around Rosslyn Castle, the estate of the St Clair (or Sinclair) family, who were Grand of the Scottish Templars.

During the following century, Rosslyn Chapel was built as a model of the Temple at Jerusalem, and the precious scrolls discovered by the Templars were deposited in an underground vault beneath the Chapel, where they still await discovery. To safeguard the secrets of the Chapel, William St. Clair invented the first degree ceremony and the Mark Mason degree (of which the second degree was a later development).

That's the skeleton of the tale told in The Hiram Key. Ancestor myths should not be judged as though they were history, even when, as in this case, they masquerade as history. This remarkable story ties together Egyptian, Judaic, Templar, and other links that have been proposed for Masonic history, with the addition of such lagniappes as the Turin Shroud. It is an interesting account, which the authors present as a sort of detective Story with one clue leading on to another and foreshadowings of revelations to come.

As historical fiction, it is a good read. As history, however, it is something else. The "evidence" offered for the baroquely complex thesis is a series of analogs, coincidences, and vague similarities connected by a thread of ah-hah's and exclamation points. By the rules of evidence here used, one improbability is a strong suggestion and two are proof positive.

The authors' learning is wide but correspondingly thin. For example, they say that Sumerian is "one of the few tongues completely unconnected with this root language" Proto-Indo-European (83). Indo-European is one of a large number of language families, all unrelated, as far as evidence goes. Most of humanity's tongues therefore share with Sumerian the distinction of being "completely unconnected" with Proto-Indo-European. This is a small matter, unrelated to the book's argument, but then the authors' whole exposition of Indo-European is unrelated to the thesis of the book. One of the rhetorical techniques of the volume is to toss in a bit of gratuitous information now and again, apparently to impress readers with the work's erudition.

An objection that is more serious, because it relates to the book's value as an ancestor myth, is that the authors do seem to believe they arc dealing with ordinary history. Under that belief, their history of Freemasonry becomes a succession of political acts of violence. If that were the actual case, one would of course accept the fact, but there is not the slightest real evidence for such a view.

The Hiram Key proposes an interpretation of Freemasonry that traces its chief symbols (however improbably) to historical personages and events. This sort of rationalizing of mythology (euhemerism) was rejected scornfully by H. P. Blavatsky, one of the most original and best informed of late nineteenth-century analysts of myths. It is seldom right and is always irrelevant. Myth is not history; it: is cosmology, psychology, poetry, and philosophy. What is important about Hiram Abif? Is it that he was King Solomon's chief builder, or that he was an Egyptian king slain by a rival, or that he was the literary invention of some Freemason in modern times? None of those questions are important Masonically.

What is important Masonically is that Hiram Abif embodies fidelity, beauty, and craftsmanship. He is the third member of a trinity representing Conscious Intention, Material Substance, and Intelligent Energy. The Hiram Key is a good read. But it is bad history, bad mythology, and bad Masonry.

-JOHN ALGEO

June 1997