Two weeks later…
I put down the book The Temple of Man after a few hours of reading this morning, and sat for minutes … sort of staring in to the yeah, ..Yes, …thank you -space.
I feel at this moment as a soul sister to Franny, sharing the moment upon hanging up the phone with Zooey. We revisit Franny at the end of this. - ie Franny & Zooey -JD Salinger
I have only just begun the large volume of of dense matter. But here is a discussion of just this far in.
On this page I am typing, words are not the way, not my words anyway. Here, I will let Schwaller speak and then add comment.
“The form-idea cannot be described; It must be felt and lived” - Schwaller de Lubicz
This quote is pulled from the closing paragraphs of his introduction to his years of work. He is relaying intelligence on and of Symbol, but he has first recognized the deception in symbol. Writing this as he was, in the mid 20th century, over 60 years ago, he says “let us put aside the deceptive symbol”.
Today we are inundated with this deception. The words, images, familiar logos, and the gestures and performances by people who are at some level embodying the deception that Schwaller says, is merely a substitute for something else. How much, in our 21st century material world, our 21st century platforms of posting, how much is merely deception, merely a substitute…for what we don't Know.
In the opening paragraph he tells us the purpose of this book is,
“first to show the means of expression used by the Ancients to transmit knowledge, … and second to present an outline of the doctrine of the Anthropocosmos, the guide to the way of thinking of the sages.”
He communicates a warning on the potential dangers transmitting some of what he has learned, and then puts the responsibility of receiving on the reader, letting us know it is on us to be responsible for, and with, the knowledge we take in, - a’ la Adam & Eve …
” for the preparedness of each individual, which opens or seals his or her eyes, must be the sole judge.”
He also lets us know that if we are the casual reader who wants to get all the learning without effort on our part, we will find that is not possible in this Field. If we are looking for a cozy read giving us a picture of what we already know, look elsewhere.
One “who cannot find within one’s self the link that ties together the various parts… will see this work in the same light as the uninformed public…”
Establishing his work as esoteric he qualifies for us the difference between “esotericism”and “occultism”. Esoteric being the immanent meaning that can be implied, but can not be not expressed in words. Immanent. Inner meaning is the etymological understanding of esoteric.
What is being conveyed is that this is not an intellectual work for cerebral understanding. This transmission is to the consciousness, the state of consciousness prepared to receive .
For me this calls to mind the lyrics of a song from Over The Rhine
“there’s nothing harder, than learning how to receive…”
The Anthropocosmos, the human being in the cosmos, holds truths as old as the world, preserved and expressed by the Ancients, but in a language we no longer speak, no longer comprehend.
In the sixty plus years since Schwaller put his learnings on paper we have come closer to grasping a perception of the unity of the original substance of matter, -the egg before the chicken. Closer than we have been, but not closer than the Ancients were.
In these introductory pages Schwaller has not mentioned David Bohm, but quantum physics was in the Field as Schwaller wrote, and Bohm was unveiling the concept, the idea, of living plasma in the field of we humans and the cosmos. Plasma.
What Schwaller did write,
“ this is as yet only an intuition, because the mechanistic mentality still prevails, and there is nothing to fill the gap between material form and energetic cause, between body and spirit. Our only hope lies in the discovery, slow but sure, of the existence of another aspect of intelligence, which our mathematical “uneasiness” is now making evident to us.”
He further clarifies
“ This synthesizing intelligence cannot be the result of facts cerebrally defined in time and space, but itself must preside over any analysis of situation, and therefore must be an innate consciousness, …”
Ahh, -
When our human intellect works on taking in the unknown and inconceivable, the perceiving and comprehending of information from the senses, it operates from a dualistic sense, a right brain - left brain operating system. The importance of both logic-reasoning and feeling-intuition are expressed as necessary by Schwaller, and he tells us …”wisdom is knowing how to use them both simultaneously”. Using our eyes as comparison he beautifully lays out that though we actually see two differing images from each eye we also have a synthesizing intelligence to create a unity of the two views. Have we this? Or Have we lost our synthesizing intelligence in these six decades since he wrote of this?
The Ancients were builders of temples and the construction of these were to withstand time, so stone, long lasting stone was used. “Life’s transient home was built of unbaked bricks, including the king’s palace, which was “rebuilt” so a new king could live in his own house”. It is the impression made on Schwaller that this civilization was
“ a small island of serenity and peace for people of goodwill. We no longer know where this center of peace can be found, and it is likely that the majority would no longer know how to bear this serenity”.
This remember, was written in the mid 1950’s, not today. Today we would have to examine the modern idea of goodwill less as a way of the people, and more as an industry of recycled stuff which five years ago, in 2018 apparently generated $6.1 billion. If we go in modern search of goodwill - this retail 'industry' is our top hit of representation. What does this symbolize? Back to the symbol.
The Temple of Luxor was built as a presentation of the human, and in this architecture is the language of the Ancients.
“After the actual closing of the temples, the guardians of a very ancient science founded on knowledge, ( a few echos of which were caught by the Greeks), the individual research known as gnosticism began”. …” In Egypt, as in Attica, the Temple was its domain. Now it is no longer forbidden to seek the keys. The quest for gnosis is a duty for those who love wisdom”.
According to Schwaller, and others, as time passed and Christianity emerged gnosticism became a type of doctrine that was opposed to the Church. This of course brings in discussion of Templars, and Cathars, and crusades, which are not the topic here, but maybe will be in other writings.
Skipping through these beginning pages of the book now and leaving untold to you so many profound insights, I come back to the closing paragraphs, and the subject of Symbol. We have put aside the deceptive symbol, and arrive back in the ancient world, where we look at each thing in its natural name. The name, Schwaller tells us, is written, but not uttered. This is the Symbol, and it speaks for itself.
“By definition, the Symbol is magic; it evokes the form bound in the spell of matter. To evoke is not to imagine, it is to live; it is to live the form”.
The Symbol, however, remains two dimensional.
AMAZING. Amazing.
I wish I could convey all that is -here in these few pages of just the intro to the major writing. But it’s not possible. It is esoteric, immanent. And as we read Schwaller's words at the beginning, they remain even more potent;
“The form-idea cannot be described; It must be felt and lived” - Schwaller de Lubicz
But I will convey just a bit more.
YES. I say YES.
All quotes in the writing above are from The Temple of Man ~R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz
And below-
JD Salinger- in 1957, writing in the voice of Zooey speaking to Franny, wrote -
“Seymour told me to shine my shoes just as I was going out the door with Walker. I was furious. The studio audience were all morons, the announcer was a moron, the sponsors were morons, and I just damn well wasn’t going to shine my shoes for them, I told Seymour. I said they couldn’t see them anyway. He said to shine them for the Fat Lady. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, but he had a very Seymour look on his face, and so I did it. He never did tell me who the Fat Lady was, but I shined my shoes every time I went on the air again- all those years you and I went on the program together, if you remember.” …. “Franny was standing. She had taken the hand away from her face to hold the phone with two hands. “ He told me too,“ she said. “He told me to be funny for the Fat Lady, …”.
Read more- Which JD Salinger Character are you. -
Song Lyrics- All I Need Is Everthing - Over The Rhine
J.D Salinger American author (1919–2010)
R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz French egyptologist (1887–1961)
