avant-garde

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga

Initial Stages of the Organization of the Hierarchy on Earth

I have earlier told you that the five Masters concerned with the initial stages of the organization of the Hierarchy on earth are the Master K.H., the Master Morya, the Master R., the Master Who started the labor movement in the modern world, and myself, the so-called Master D.K.

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The division of labor is here of great interest. In my June message for 1948, I referred to the five specialized energies which were at that time released to carry forward their impersonal task. Each of these energies is concerned with the desired organization, for it must ever be remembered that though the organization which we are considering is concerned with the interior or subjective work of the Hierarchy, the repercussions and the resultant effects will take place on earth, with physical plane effects, because the old occult truism “as above, so below” will be rapidly and objectively demonstrated. This result and the effects produced will constitute one of the modes whereby the Hierarchy will prove its factual presence on earth.

The Ashram of the Master K.H. is already assuming an increased stimulating potency, but it will nevertheless be one of the last to manifest objectively on the physical plane. The mission of that Ashram is to produce the energy which will make possible and definite the reappearance of the Christ. That reappearance is the major preoccupation of the Master K.H. and His group of initiates and disciples. The first step taken by the Ashram was embodied – as far as all of you are concerned – in the pamphlet entitled The Reappearance of the Christ (Wesak Message, May 1947). To this must be added the vitalization and the stimulation of the two-thousand-year-old thought-forms which men, down the centuries, have created in anticipation of His coming or advent. The movement toward expectancy and preparation is now rapidly gaining momentum. This was the first concrete result of the combined desire of this second ray Ashram. However, the work being done in this Ashram is more definitely concerned with three lines of activity. These are:

The preparation of the many combined Ashrams, leading to externalization.
The formulation of the techniques and disciplines which will be of service to the initiate or disciple who is making the primary effort to function objectively, to work before the screen of life and not behind the scenes, as hitherto, and to develop that “resistant capacity” which is needed to withstand the violent impacts of physical plane living.
The mental and spiritual registration of the plans of the Christ, and the consequent development of that skill in action which will permit these plans to materialize correctly.

Within the second ray Ashram of the Master K.H. and His affiliated groups (such as the Ashram for which I am responsible) it is the energy of wisdom which is being effectively used. It might be said that this dual energy, hitherto a fused and blended energy, is today working as a true duality. The energy of wisdom is active within all the Ashrams (on all rays and under all the Masters); the energy of love is directed primarily towards the third great planetary center, Humanity, stimulating the aura of that mass of living units so that their “magnetic appeal will be the outstanding quality of their divine approach.” The directing Agents for this dual activity are the Master K.H. and a chosen group of His senior initiates and disciples, of whom I am not one, because I have another task committed to me.

The Master K.H. is therefore constantly in close association with the Christ, the Head of the Hierarchy. Christ is today, with the aid of the Lord of the World and the Buddha, preparing Himself for the most difficult task with which He has ever been confronted. It is not a matter of the Christ issuing forth from the High Place where He is today to be found, and suddenly appearing among men; it is not a case of His taking infant form and growing into His work with advancing years; it is not a case of His being instantly recognized and acclaimed by millions of miserable human beings awaiting liberation. None of these ideas or hopes forms any part of His plan, nor are they possible. No Member of the Hierarchy, and certainly not its Supreme Head, attempts to bring about results which are doomed to failure; presented thus, they would be bound to fail, because the point of sensitivity of humanity makes failure inevitable – if success is expected along these most ordinary lines.

Skill in action, wise and understanding judgment, the adaptation of present affairs to the desired future, the coordination of the work to be done, and the clear enunciation of the platform upon which the new teaching must be founded, plus the survey (if I may so express it) of the foundations upon which the new structure of the coming civilization must be founded – it is with these things that the Christ is at this time concerned. You can realize, therefore, the tremendous and cooperative activity with which the Master K.H. and His Ashram are concerned. The stimulation of that activity comes from two directions: necessarily from Shamballa, from the Buddha and from the Avatar of Synthesis, and increasingly from the world of men, as expectancy, hope and demand combine to make their united appeal.

The Ashram or group center through which the Master Morya works is also exceedingly busy. It is obvious to you that as this is a first ray Ashram, the energy coming from the Avatar of Synthesis will make its primary impact upon this Ashram, which provides the line of least resistance. There, it is scientifically stepped down or broken down, prior to distribution to the Ashrams of the five Masters engaged in the work of preparation.

The highest aspect possible of assimilation by the Hierarchy is directed by the Masters towards the Christ and is used by Him in His individual and planned preparatory work. Though He demonstrated when here before that His mission or work had a group or brotherhood objective, it is well known in hierarchical circles that first ray synthesis is something higher still than unity, and that even the Christ has somewhat to grasp anent this new potency – coming both from Shamballa or from the Father (as the Christ used to call that emanating source), and also from extra-planetary sources. Above all, He has the difficult task of training or adapting His physical vehicle so that it can assimilate this extraordinary high potency and, at the same time, keep it in a condition in which He can move outward on the physical plane among men.

The Christian Church has laid so much emphasis on Christ’s unique position as the one and only Son of God that great error has crept in and has been fostered for centuries; Christ Himself foresaw the possibility of this error and tried to offset it by pointing out that we are all the “Sons of God” and that “greater things than I do shall you do” – a statement which no commentators have ever understood or adequately explained. The occult fact is that there is no being on Earth, from the very lowest form of life to the very highest, who is not moving onward towards a greater and finer expression of divinity, and Christ Himself is no exception to this universal evolutionary law. He is therefore, at this time and because He is preparing to raise the entire human family nearer to God, laying Himself open to certain powerful inflowing energies, absorbing into Himself streams of spiritual force, and undergoing a dynamic stimulation which is entirely new to Him; this constitutes His testing for the exalted initiation which now confronts Him; it constitutes also the sacrifice He is making in order to complete His work on Earth and bring a new salvation to humanity.

The Christ is working, therefore, in very close cooperation with the Master Morya, and also with the Manu (one of the three Heads of the Hierarchy), and these three – the Christ, the Manu and the Master Morya – create a triangle of energies into which (and through which) the energy of the Avatar of Synthesis can pour, finding right direction under Their combined efforts.

On the physical plane, the initiates and the disciples working in the Ashram of the Master Morya are primarily occupied with the expression of synthesis in the world of politics and of government, and with offsetting wrong approaches to synthesis, seeking to preserve freedom in unity. It is a subjective synthesis for which they work – a synthesis which will express itself in an outer differentiation. This synthesis will define the many aspects of the essential, basic unity which, working out under the stimulation of the energy of synthesis, will bring about eventual peace and understanding on earth – a peace which will preserve individual and national cultures, but which will subordinate them to the good of the whole of humanity.

We come now to the preparatory work being done by the Master Who started what is called by you “the labor movement.” This is regarded by the Hierarchy as one of the most successful attempts in all history to awaken the masses of men (in the brackets called middle class and lower class) to general betterment, and thus set up a momentum which would, occultly speaking, “swing them into light.”

Along with the development of the labor movement, mass education came into being, with the result that – from the angle of developed intelligence – the entire level of conscious awareness was universally raised. There is still much illiteracy, but the average citizen in all the western democracies and in the Soviet Union is as well educated as the intellectual man in the Middle Ages. You have, in this activity, an outstanding instance of how the Masters work, for (to the average onlooker) the labor movement arose from within the masses and the working classes; it was a spontaneous development, based upon the thinking and the teaching of a mere handful of men who were regarded primarily as agitators and trouble makers; they were in reality a group of disciples (many of them unconscious of their esoteric status) who were cooperating with the Law of Evolution and also with the hierarchical Plan. They were not particularly advanced disciples, but they were affiliated with some Ashram (according to their ray), and were therefore subject to impression. Had they been advanced disciples or initiates, their work would have been futile, for their presentation of the Plan would not have been adapted to the level of the intelligence of the then totally uneducated masses composing labor.

This Master works primarily with the intelligentsia, and He is therefore a third ray Master – upon the Ray of Active Intelligence. His Ashram is occupied with the problems of industry, and the goal of all the thinking, all the planning and all the work of impressing receptive minds is directed towards spiritualizing the concepts of the labor party in every country, and of industrialists, thus turning them towards the goal of right sharing, as a major step towards right human relations. This Master therefore cooperates with the Master R. – Who is the Head of the third ray Ashram, and Who is also one of the Triangle of Forces which controls the greater Ashram of the Hierarchy Itself. The Ashram of this Master (Who has always withheld His name from public knowledge) is a lesser Ashram within the major third ray Ashram, just as my Ashram lies within the ring-pass-not of the Ashram of the Master K.H. This Master is necessarily an Englishman, for the industrial revolution started nearly one hundred years ago in England, and the potency of the work done is related to its mass effect and to the results achieved in every land by labor and its methods. All the great labor organizations, national and international, are loosely knit together subjectively, because in each group this Master has His disciples who are working constantly to hold the movement in line with the divine Plan. It is well to bear in mind that all great movements on earth demonstrate both good and evil; the evil has to be subdued and dissipated, or relegated to its right proportional place, before that which is good and in line with hierarchical planning can find true expression. What is true of the individual is true also of groups. Before the soul can express itself through the medium of the personality, that personality has to be subdued, controlled, purified and dedicated to service. It is this controlling, subduing process which is going on now, and it is vociferously fought by the selfish and ambitious elements.

Nevertheless, the work of this Master is outstandingly successful in preparing the intellectual principle of the masses for eventual right recognition of the Christ. A right sense of values is being developed, and in the right direction of this potent labor group in every land lies the foundation of the new civilization.

The Ashram of this Master is therefore occupied with worldwide economic problems, and also with a direct attack upon the basic materialism to be found in the modern world. The problems of barter and exchange, the significance of money, the value of gold (a basic symbol of the third Ray of Active Intelligence), the production of right attitudes towards material living, and the entire process of right distribution are among the many problems dealt with in this Ashram; the work done is enormous and of great importance in preparing men’s mind for the return of the Christ and for the New Age which He will inaugurate. Capitalists and labor leaders, financial experts and thinking workers, and members of all the differing ideologies which are prevalent in the world today are to be found actively working within this Ashram. Many of them are what the orthodox religious man or the hide-bound occult student would regard as non-spiritual, yet all of them are in reality deeply spiritual in the correct sense, but they care not for labels, for schools of thought nor for academic, esoteric teaching. They exemplify within themselves a livingness which is the hallmark of discipleship.

The time has come when the first and major principle governing true esotericism must be grasped as conditioning all hierarchical workers: Right Motive.
The time has come when the quality of ashramic work is recognized, first of all, as being: Selfless Service.
The time has come when men everywhere must realize that entry into a Master’s Ashram is dependent upon Intelligence, plusright motive and service.

When these three factors are present in any human being, the Masters know that good material is presented to Them for training. Today the world is full of such men and women, and in them lies the dominant hope of the future.

One more point I would like to discuss. Through the work of this Master and His Ashram the “sealing of the door where evil dwells” will come about, because it is essentially this group which (if I dare so express it) is coping with raw materialism and the false values which it engenders. The door has to be sealed by a vast mass of coordinated human forces, and not by one or two enlightened men. This fact must be grasped by you. The energy of love-wisdom, the energy of the second ray, can and will bring in the Kingdom of God; the energy of the divine will can and will galvanize with its dynamic potency the entire human family to the point where a group transition will take place from the fourth into the fifth kingdom. It is nevertheless this third ray energy, as wielded in the Ashram of this English Master, under the direction of the Mahachohan, the Lord of Civilization, which will force a right attitude toward materialism, which will bring about a balance between the material values and the spiritual, and which will eventually thrust back into futility the Forces of Evil which have for so long distracted the world of men. I am choosing my words with care.

You will note, therefore, how the three divine aspects are united in one great movement to bring in the Kingdom of God, and that the first step towards this longed-for consummation is the appearance of the Masters upon the physical plane, and then, somewhat later, the reappearance of the Christ.

We now come to a consideration of the vast Ashram controlled by the Master R. He is the Lord of Civilization and His is the task of bringing in the new civilization for which all men wait. It is a third ray Ashram, and therefore enfolds within its ring-pass-not all the Ashrams to be found upon the third Ray of Active Intelligence, upon the fifth Ray of Concrete Science and upon the seventh Ray of Ceremonial Order. All these Ashrams are working under the general direction of the Master R. He works primarily through the Masters of these three types of ray energy. He Himself at this time is occupied with seventh ray energy, which is the order-producing energy upon our planet.

This is the Ray of Ceremonial Order, and through the activity of its energy, when correctly directed and used, a right rhythm is being imposed upon all aspects of human living. An effort is being constantly made to arrest the ugly chaos of the present and to produce the ordered beauty of the future. The major weapon now being used by the combined Forces of Evil is chaos, disruption, lack of established security, and consequent fear. The potency of these evil forces is exceedingly great because they belong to no one group of people and to all the ideologies. The chaos produced by indifference, the chaos produced by uncertainty, the chaos produced by fear, by starvation, by insecurity, by watching others suffer innocently, and the chaos produced by the warring and conflicting ambitious elements in every nation (without exception)- these are the factors with which the Master R. is attempting to deal; the task is one of supreme difficulty. The entire rhythm of international thinking has to be altered, and that constitutes a slow and arduous task; the evil personalities which, in every country, are responsible for the chaos and uncertainty, have eventually to be replaced by those who can work in cooperation with the rhythm of the seventh ray, and thus produce ordered beauty.

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Excerpted from “The Externalization of the Hierarchy – Section IV – Stages in the Externalization”

By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

ॐ, Esoteric, Esoteric Psychology, Quotations, Rāja yoga, Toltec Teachings

Mayavirupa

The Mayavirupa is literally the illusory form; it is the body of temporary manifestation which the Adept creates on occasion through the power of the will and in which He functions in order to make certain contacts on the physical plane and to engage in certain work for the [human] race. CF 761

Mayavi Rupa. Sanskrit, “Illusive Form.” It is the body of manifestation created by the adept by an act of will for use in the three worlds. It has no material connection with the physical body. It is spiritual and ethereal and passes everywhere without let or hindrance. It is built by the power of the lower mind, of the highest type of astral matter. IHS 221

…The stage wherein–after the fourth initiation–there is direct unbroken relation between the Monad, via the Triad, and the form which the Master is using to do His work among men. This form may be either His temporary personality, arrived at along the normal lines of incarnation, or the specially created form to which Theosophists give the technical but cumbersome word “mayavirupa.” It is the “true mask, hiding the radiant light and the dynamic energy of a revealed Son of God.” RI 50-51

He [the initiate] can work through a physical body (with its subtler sheaths) or not, as he sees fit. He realizes that he, as an individual, no longer needs a physical body or an astral consciousness, and that the mind is only a service instrument. The body in which he now functions is a body of light which has its own type of substance. The Master, however, can build a body through which He can approach His incoming disciples and those who have not taken the higher initiations; He will normally build this body in semblance of the human form, doing so instantaneously and by an act of the will, when required. The majority of the Masters who are definitely working with humanity either preserve the old body in which They took the fifth initiation or else They build the “mayavirupa” or body of maya, of physical substance. This body will appear in the original form in which They took initiation. This I personally did in reference to the first case; i.e., preserving the body in which I took initiation. This the Master K.H. did in creating a body which was made in the form in which He took the fifth initiation. RI 705

The Master Jesus on the Cross could not respond to any saving process (even had He desired to do so) because the soul body–as is always the case at the fourth initiation–was destroyed; there was nothing to respond to the evocative power of an outside person, interested or loving. As an adept and as one in whom monadic consciousness was firmly established, the powers then available to Jesus could not be used in the saving of His physical body. At the same time, it must be remembered that He would have no desire to save it, because He now possessed the power (demonstrated later in the Gospel story) to create a body at will in order to meet His needs. EH 654

Some of the Masters will create what is called in the language of the East the “mayavirupa”–a vehicle of expression which is built of atomic physical and astral substance and of concrete mental substance. This They can create at will, use at will and cause to vanish at will; Their problem is not, therefore, so acute in the matter of appearing and of reappearing as is that of the initiate who cannot thus create to suit his purpose and his service. EX 697

Applicants for initiation and initiates up to the third initiation use both the sutratma and the antahkarana, employing them as a unit. The power of the Triad begins to pour through, thus energizing all human activities upon the physical plane, and vitalizing in ever increasing degree the man’s thought forms. The key to the formation of the Mayavirupa is found in the right comprehension of the process. CF 959-960 [See also: ENA 31]

The three aspects of the will, as focused in the Spiritual Triad, are now in full expression; the initiate is animated by Purpose, but faces still greater evolutionary developments; of these I do not need to speak, as they concern divine aspects as yet unknown and unregistered by man. The reason for this complete ignorance is that the vehicles of any man below the third initiation contain too much “impure matter” to record the impact of these divine qualities. Only the “created body” (the mayavirupa) of an initiate of the fourth initiation can begin to register these divine impacts; it is therefore a waste of our time to consider even the possibility of their existence. RI 317

The soul then prepares itself for the coming fourth initiation. This is basically a monadic experience and results–as you know–in the disappearance or destruction of the soul vehicle or causal body, and the establishment, therefore, of a direct relation between the monad on its own plane and the newly created personality, via the antahkarana. EH 518

The causal body is itself eventually done away with when the pupil takes the fourth initiation and can freely create his own body of manifestation. LOM 275

In the mode whereby the liberated disciple can now create a body for physical plane contact and for service in the three worlds–this time not under the Law of Necessity but under the Law of Service, as understood by the initiate. EH 505

The fourth initiation marks the complete realization of this relation by the initiate. It enables him to say: “I and my Father are one.” It is for this reason that the crucifixion, or the Great Renunciation, takes place. Forget not that it is the soul that is crucified. It is Christ Who “dies.” It is not the man; it is not Jesus. The causal body disappears. The man is monadically conscious. The soul-body no longer serves any useful purpose; it is no more needed. Nothing is left but the sutratma, qualified by consciousness–a consciousness which still preserves identity whilst merged in the whole. Another qualification is creativity; thus consciousness can be focussed at will on the physical plane in an outer body or form. This body is will-created by the Master. RI 455

When the antahkarana is built, and the mental unit is superseded by the manasic permanent atom, and the causal body disappears, then the adept knows that the lower mind, the mental body, is also an illusion and is, for him, non-existent. There are then–as far as his individual consciousness is concerned–only three focal points or anchorages (both of these expressions are inadequate to express the full meaning):

1. Humanity, in which he can focus himself at will through the medium of what is called technically the “mayavirupa”–a bodily form which he creates for the fulfillment of monadic purpose. RI 481

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At the fourth initiation, the initiate is brought into the Presence of that aspect of Himself which is called “His Father in Heaven.” He is brought face to face with his own Monad, that pure spiritual essence on the highest plane but one, which is to his Ego or higher self what that Ego is to the personality or lower self….For the remainder of his appearances in the three worlds he is governed only by will and purpose, self-initiated, and creates his body of manifestation, and thus controls (within karmic limits) his own times and seasons. The karma here referred to is planetary karma, and not personal. IHS 117

This marks the fourth Initiation; after that Initiation, the Adept makes for Himself a body of manifestation, a free creation–there is nothing in Him to call into objectivity a body for use in the three worlds and evolved under the Law of Causes. LOM 11

The intuition (or buddhi) being the unifying principle and thus welding all, at the fourth initiation the lower vehicles go, and the adept stands in his intuitional body, and creates from thence his body of manifestation. LOM 339

Since buddhi is the unifying principle (or the welder of all), at the fifth initiation the adept lets the lower vehicles go, and stands in his buddhic sheath. He creates thence his body of manifestation. IHS 16-17

It must be remembered that a Master has no personality at all. His divine nature is all that He has. The form through which He works (if he is working through and living in a physical vehicle) is a created image, the product of a focussed will and the creative imagination; it is not the product of desire, as in the case of a human being. This is an important distinction and one which warrants careful thinking. The lesser lives (which are governed by the Moon) have been dispersed. They no longer respond to the ancient call of the reincarnating soul, which again and again has gathered to itself the lives which it has touched and colored by its quality in the past. The soul and the causal body no longer exist by the time the fourth initiation is undergone. What is left is the Monad and the thread, the antahkarana which it has spun out of its own life and consciousness down the ages and which it can focus at will upon the physical plane, where it can create a body of pure substance and radiant light for all that the Master may require. This will be a perfect body, utterly adapted to the need, the plan and the purpose of the Master. None of the lesser lives (as we understand the term) form part of it, for they can only be summoned by desire. In the Master there is no desire left, and this is the thought held before the disciple as he begins to master the significance of the fourth Rule. RI 101

If the deva, or solar Angel, is no longer attracted by matter, then there is no identification, and objective life is no longer the law of his existence. He identifies himself then with quality, or energy, and becomes an expression of the divine attributes. Objectivity may then ensue as a voluntary offering to the good of the group or planetary existence, but identification with the separated form is no longer the case. The human vehicle then created is as much a thought form in this case as any other particularized idea, and the greatest act of conscious magic is to be seen. All other magical creations are subsidiary to this. Through manipulation of negative and positive energy, thus bringing them to the point of equilibrium before informing them, the perfected body of the Adept is formed. CF 1013-1014

In the case of all avatars it is the will aspect which is brought into play, and which produces appearance–either the will of the perfected adept, such as the Buddha Himself, or (as in the case of the true Avatar, Who is, and Who has not achieved) the will of the planetary Logos or of the solar Logos, taking form for a specific purpose. It involves a higher display of the creative faculty than that displayed by the Adept in the creation of His body of manifestation, the Mayavirupa. CF 760-761

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Dreams, Musings

One or More Unpaired Electrons

It has been my experience over the years that academia can be extremely conservative and anything which might even slightly damage reputation is not touched, not even with a near infinitely long barge pole.

The unorthodox and the radical can treated like bearers of plague. I have joked about my own leper’s bell.

When I did a start-up company it was seen as dirty and commercial, not good for research rating. Now unless you have some commercial output….

I tried to help with the transferable skills agenda, not good for your career…

There was a psychologist wanting to use fMRI to investigate brain patterns of people who meditate. I got in touch but because my type of meditation lay outside the strict remit of the thesis / grant proposal, they were not interested even though I said that I can calm an EEG. They would not be able to reference academic literature on Vipassana. I could even explain to them the signal to noise ratio in their EEG machines.

I applied for several different philosophy positions, post doc and studentships for branching space time. I was told that I was not a trained philosopher, and I could not get a grant because I already had a Ph.D. The job was to look at applying the philosophy of Belnap to science…

The problem with being in any way avant-garde is lack of provenance and precedent. Academia likes to compare with the past and prior thought forms. If there are none the whole academic process cannot be done. You could say that it is stuck in and to the past. The language it uses even constrains it. The basis of academia is comparison mind. It is caught in the paradigm of comparison.

Having to compare with all that has gone before is burdensome.

“In recent years there has been a lot of debate about X etc…”

In his series of books, the Tibetan talks about an externalisation of the hierarchy into exoteric living. Some out of this putative grouping will get to go first and be avant-garde. I guess that their thinking will not be like that of “normal” people. If they are fully Soul infused, they will not carry the burden of pettiness, of selfishness and need the same criteria of proof as your common or garden homo sapiens. I guess they will have a tough time from the status quo and those in power.

As you may have guessed from this blog I have more than a passing interest in dreams and dreaming. The methods I use do not stem from Germanic psychology and I will wager that should I try to open a conversation about dreams with an academic psychologist interested therein I would not get very far. This is particularly so because I am not institutionalized at .ac.uk or .edu.

Because I have no lineage provenance nor have I had any “dream teacher” so I cannot cut the mustard so to speak, in the New Age fringes.

The problem with dreaming as I understand it is one of handing the steering wheel of the vehicle over to the Soul. The ego of the personality imagines it is in control, knows best and is largely unwilling to surrender. It does not like guidance.

On the advice of a dream I pulled myself out of a prestigious 8k euro a month job, I had secured.

There are few who would do this.

Pharaoh allegedly listened to Joseph…

Genesis 41

When two full years had passed, Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile,

when out of the river there came up seven cows, sleek and fat, and they grazed among the reeds.

After them, seven other cows, ugly and gaunt, came up out of the Nile and stood beside those on the riverbank.

And the cows that were ugly and gaunt ate up the seven sleek, fat cows. Then Pharaoh woke up.

He fell asleep again and had a second dream: Seven heads of grain, healthy and good, were growing on a single stalk.

After them, seven other heads of grain sprouted–thin and scorched by the east wind.

The thin heads of grain swallowed up the seven healthy, full heads. Then Pharaoh woke up; it had been a dream.

In the morning his mind was troubled, so he sent for all the magicians and wise men of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but no one could interpret them for him.

—–{Seven is the dreaming symbol for guidance or need for guidance. East is the direction of sobriety or clarity, perhaps need for. Pharaoh heard Joseph could do dreams and sent for him.}—-

Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh, but without your word no one will lift hand or foot in all Egypt.”

Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-Paneah and gave him Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest of On, to be his wife. And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt.

Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. And Joseph went out from Pharaoh’s presence and travelled throughout Egypt.

During the seven years of abundance the land produced plentifully.

Joseph collected all the food produced in those seven years of abundance in Egypt and stored it in the cities. In each city he put the food grown in the fields surrounding it.

Joseph stored up huge quantities of grain, like the sand of the sea; it was so much that he stopped keeping records because it was beyond measure.

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And all the countries came to Egypt to buy grain from Joseph, because the famine was severe in all the world.

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Today the famine theme, given the weather of late and the war, seems germane.

I have been writing down my dreams for over two decades. Amongst them have been some right corkers. You can judge for yourself if the ones I have published here are in anyway significant…

You can judge for yourself if I have one or more unpaired electrons.

Quotations

Le terme avant-garde désigne, depuis le XIXe siècle, des personnes qui entreprennent des actions nouvelles ou expérimentales, en particulier dans les arts et la culture.

Cette pratique s’inspire des idées de la Révolution française et comme elle, n’exclut pas que s’en réclament des personnages installés au cœur du pouvoir politique et hostiles à la société civile. Peter Sloterdijk définit l’avant-gardisme comme « la compétence permettant de forcer tous les membres d’une société à adopter une décision sur une proposition qui n’émane pas d’elle-même ».

Dire d’un artiste qu’il représente l’avant-garde, c’est dire qu’il crée l’art académique du futur.

En art, quelques artistes avant-gardistes refusent toute affiliation avec leurs prédécesseurs et se placent donc en porte à faux en refusant tout art antérieur. Le terme est souvent utilisé en art à propos d’artistes qui « seraient » en avance sur leur époque.

Selon l’avant-garde, la valeur d’une œuvre se confond avec son caractère inouï, en avance sur son temps. Il n’y a pas un modèle éternel du Beau, l’artiste se doit de concentrer dans sa production l’essence de la modernité, encore en gestation, de rompre avec les conceptions artisanales de l’art, avec le culte de la nature et le réalisme de l’art figuratif. Sous une forme moins directement liée à l’idée d’une mission historique de l’artiste, l’avant-gardisme renvoie à une conception individualiste de la création. Tout peut devenir art, si l’artiste le décide, l’artiste étant libéré de tout stéréotype social ou esthétique. « S’il faut en finir avec l’art figuratif, s’il faut cesser d’imiter la nature, c’est pour être enfin pleinement en mesure d’exprimer la subjectivité », écrit Luc Ferry à propos de Vassily Kandinsky. L’avant-garde oscille entre une conception, fonctionnelle ou ludique, de l’art comme partie prenante du monde industriel ou post-moderne, et une radicalité provocante, choquante, et pas seulement à l’égard du passé. Cette ambiguïté est très sensible chez Andy Warhol, ou plutôt les divergences des interprètes. Alain Jouffroy dit du Pop art qu’il « est signifiant : il fige le banal quotidien qui fuit autour de nous ; usant d’une technique banale, il tend un miroir glacé dans lequel se reflète une civilisation de consommation ».

L ‘avant-garde comme expérimentation

Selon Daniel Bell, l’avant-garde ne serait que l’expression de la société libérale contemporaine, qui a su renoncer à l’éthique ascétique du premier capitalisme, et privilégie désormais les valeurs de spontanéité. Cependant, il y a encore dans l’art avant-gardiste une dimension, non pas spontanée, mais bien théorique et même expérimentale, de l’ordre de la déconstruction plutôt que de la provocation gratuite. Paul Valéry soulignait cette affinité de l’art nouveau et de la recherche expérimentale. Si « l’époque fait du neuf machinalement », « cherche à s’imposer par l’étonnement », « la recherche du fait a passé des sciences dans les arts ». L’avant-garde s’est efforcée de rendre explicite les a priori de la conception classique de l’œuvre ou de l’artiste, afin d’explorer de nouvelles propositions, symétriques de celles de l’esthétique constituée, ou de pousser à leurs limites, jusqu’à l’absurde, les propositions classiques. La sérialité met en question l’idée de l’unicité de l’œuvre, la musique atonale conteste la mélodie. La production mécanique conteste l’idée de création. On mettra encore à la torture l’idée d’une différence essentielle entre l’art et la trivialité, comme Duchamp et son célèbre urinoir Fontaine. On crut avoir atteint un point extrême en 1961 lorsque Piero Manzoni produisit « merda d’artista », une boîte fermée censée contenir de ses propres excréments. Mais on a pu par la suite admirer, dans le même ordre d’idées, une machine à produire artificiellement des excréments : Cloaca (Wim Delvoye).

Malgré ces tentatives originales, Harold Rosenberg parle de « tradition du nouveau », à savoir une sorte de véritable académisme de la rupture, qui laisserait le public généralement assez indifférent.

Avant-garde et question de l’Être

Luc Ferry souligne qu’il est bien question de l’Être dans l’avant-garde, ou du moins chez ses pionniers, et pas seulement de crispation moderniste ou narcissique sans profondeur ni enracinement, de l’ordre de la mode. La mise en cause de la représentation classique s’explique par la recherche de représentations moins faciles mais plus vraies de l’Être, que Luc Ferry rapproche des recherches des mathématiciens sur l’hyperespace.

La tache n’est pas l’apparence d’une tache, elle est seulement une tache. Au nom de la présence du réel, c’est bien l’art lui-même, comme interprétation, qui est contesté. Certains craignent pourtant que la plupart de ces tentatives vaillent davantage par la démarche intellectuelle qu’elles illustrent que par la présence sensible des productions. Selon Jean Clair, critique des avant-gardes, « plus l’œuvre se fera mince, plus savante son exégèse ».

Excerpted from Wikipédia