Pandevotional Invocation

Daniel Clark © 1981 - 1994

 

Part One

  Earth, with her thousand voices, praises God.       -- S. T. Coleridge   Pandevotionalism

Nature Worships God. 1. Nature is the Being who comprises all the material atoms. 2. Nature always worships God.

Humans Are Part of Nature. 3. The human body is part of Nature -- and thus is always glorifying     God. (However, we don't usually see the religion of our actions.) 4. We are souls living in human bodies. We are not atoms. We are     not God. We are particles of God. (Souls inhabit all material life     forms.) 5. The technology of the human body allows a soul to be conscious     of itself as a soul and to be conscious of God as a Supersoul. (In     other species the self-concept and the God-concept are     species-centered.) 6. Because we sense the difference between the self and the body,     we often try to force our bodies to behave in opposition to Nature's     ways. We try to imitate God's control of Nature. (The intentions of     other species are in harmony with Nature and God.) 7. But our spiritual self-awareness also makes it possible for us to     freely choose our natural behavior: loving God. (Other species     don't have this freedom of choice.)

Let Us Worship God As Nature Does. 8. Our first teacher in worship is Mother Nature. 9. Let us join Nature in her worship -- let us glorify God her way.     1 TOA

2 God heals us through Nature. When we join Nature's worship of God, we are healed.

3 The last electric tentacles thrash behind me. A cool green mint breeze revitalizes my aura. My human form

with upraised arms a tuning fork undulates in love for God. In time the universities will turn into compost. Even styrofoam will submit to molecular breakdown. The Goddess will move upon the face of her waters. Volcanoes will signal the angelic generation's birth. Now my unprotected feet stumble along the ley lines as artless arms reach through clouds to make appeal to the One who sleeps and yet is ever watchful and has no reason to watch us except Love. This cannot be stored inside the brain. The heart's the bowl to hold the holy rain.

4 Love begets Goddess begets Nature begets Dream begets Action begets Therapy begets Communion begets God begets Love.

5 BREATH

6 Nudity not nullity.

7 Breathe in -- breathe out.

8 The farther we get from Nature, the farther we get from our own nature.

9 Each part of Mother Earth's body has a distinct function or character that influences the way of life or mode of thought of the humans who inhabit that region. When a region is your "place of power" its character harmonizes with your psycho-physical personality.

10 Sex must not be repressed from outside, but rather transformed from within. If it is repressed from outside it breaks out of its bonds as war and other forms of self destruction. If it is transformed from within it grows into a flower of love for God.

11 I must understand the past to be able to live in the present, and I must live in the present to be able to build the future.

12 vishnubokhtaojehovahahuramazdamanitou diosbutsuchaitanyaallahwakantankajesu

13 Like a flow of force that revolves around a magnetic stone in loops of energy, God's Glory radiates out from matter's spiritual heart (which is also the transcendental world) and returns back to that source carrying with it, if we desire, our own rapturous voices added to the cosmic chorus of "Glory to God! Glory to God!" -- the song of the atom, the planet, and the breathing universal mass.

14 First you exploit Nature -- and she punishes you. Then you reject Nature -- and she seduces you. Then you embrace Nature -- and she instructs you. Then you respect Nature -- and she takes you to God. Then you serve God according to the ways of Nature. Last, Nature and God welcome you back home.

15 I don't want to change matter to spirit. Matter is already spirit. It's already serving God. The universe vibrates

with the sound of the celestial choir, giving Glory to God. Why try to change that? What needs to be changed is not matter, but me: consciousness, awareness. Matter, the Mater, is in harmony with God, the Pater. The only disharmony is sin. Matter doesn't sin. I do. My attention and efforts are correctly directed toward myself. To change the person, not the atom. I now accept Nature as she is. I now merge my body into the flow of Glory that courses through the transparent atoms of the creation. I stop stamping an insignia of my own devising upon the ecstatic configurations of the Earth. I follow the route of Glory mapped upon the innocent face of a rock. My only work is to glorify God. Not to be an alchemist. I only sort, select, and indicate. Perhaps because of what I do others will merge with the Glory too. But that change is up to them. All I do is glorify.

16 Close to Nature, close to God.

17 Nature is spare and original, Hopkins said.

18 Nature is defined by its praise of God. Humans join Nature when they glorify God. But their worship must be in consonance with Nature's ways for it to be genuine. Humans, alone among creatures, can defy the ways of Nature, even while they're supposedly loving God. Minerals, plants, and non-human animals are sinless. They have no choice but to act as part of God's plan. So it's good for humans to study them and the way they praise -- for inspiration, not imitation. The purpose isn't to reincarnate as a whale, but to go to the world beyond reincarnation.

19 Religion is particular, not universal. "Universal religion" is a journey taken only within one's mind, leading to an idea of God, not God the person. One must submit to a particular path -- to its limitations, its absurdities. The apparently ridiculous and arbitrary details of a sect are the vital twists and turns of a path that leads to God. You can't speed through on a highway. You can't fly over in an airplane. You must patiently follow the trail a step at a time. The path has a personality -- just as God does -- and learning to love person-ness makes up the greatest part of the work of spiritual life.

20 Human apes, in contrast to other apes, have a choice. They can use their "new" brains either to imitate or to meditate. They can imitate other animals and imitate God, or they can meditate to gain awareness of themselves. The imitators mimic the other animals and change from fueling their life with spirit to fueling it with matter. (That is, they start eating.) They impersonate God and strive for world dominance. The meditators stay true to their divine physiology. They remain non-eaters and develop self- knowledge, spiritual philosophy, and religion. The meditators praise the power of God. The imitators want to possess it. One way is peace, the other is war.

21 The agent of the disease is also the agent of the cure. And that agent, no matter how cleverly disguised, is the self. The true function of doctor and medicine is to awaken the self's self- curative powers and thus initiate the self into the process of spiritual growth.

22 God is a person, souls are persons, and atoms are persons. The natural activity of souls and atoms is to glorify God.

23 Growth comes from attachment, as a tree grows when firmly rooted.

24 Why is Futurology so important to us? Because we're moving so fast. When you go fast, you have to pay attention to what's ahead of you, not what's where you are. You have no time to relax.

25 The Earth, of which my body is a part, meditates on God.

26 The Locality is the sacrament, the matter-that-is-spirit, with which my mind and body can merge so I can be liberated from my false consciousness into the world of reality. When matter harmonizes with matter, the soul returns to God.

27 Ideality. Nature glorifies God constantly and with her full energy. My ideal is to live in harmony with Nature so I can take part in that praise. I believe that to harmonize I must accept Nature on her own terms and as far as possible change nothing in my surroundings: no landscaping, no gardening, no use of tools or fire, no crafting of products, no building of houses, no purchasing or consuming, no possessions. In an ideal life, for shelter I intrude only minimally on the environment, using my hands to make temporary protection out of sticks, leaves, grass, and mud, or to dig a simple hole. For clothing during cold weather I might have to weave protective wrappings out of grasses. Otherwise I go naked. My locale is a tropical, subtropical, or mediterranean climate. My mind uses my body to culture my soul. I don't need a technology of tools, fire, and products for sale. My body is tool enough. My mind is fire enough. My soul is product enough, and it's free. It's me.

28 The line between the Two is a crack that opens to reveal the Third -- which is the One.

29 Food is poison. Eating, an addiction. The ideal is non-eating. To develop toward the ideal, the standard is motion, not fullness. Eat for process, not stasis. Keep it moving. Don't clog the system. The best foods are those that flow: fruit juices, and finally, air. Flow, not full. Body as pipe, not pouch.

30 Omnipersonalogy. There is no Void. Existence allows no exceptions to its rule. Existence is everything -- and everything is a person. God is a person, souls are persons, and atoms are persons. In the material world, space is a person (a replica of God) and is occupied by persons. Some of those persons are temporal atoms (replicas of the Goddess) who combine together as the substance of material bodies. And some of them are souls who are identifying with material bodies. When the souls regain awareness of their real identities, they are freed to return to the spiritual world.     The person-ness of the soul is identical to that of God in quality, but not in quantity. God is the whole, and the soul is a part.     Nature (the integration of spatial mind and atomic bodies) is in love with God. All natural entities are glorifying God -- each according to its own way. By joining this cosmic chorus, humans enter into the world of God. Life becomes itself at last.

31 Communion. The first stage of human society is the Edenic stage of Communion. Humans-in-Communion are busy with the culturing of consciousness, not material advancement. Except for the young they are largely independent materially. But spiritually they're so interdependent that they act almost as one person, so intense is their concern for one another's devotional life. These happy humans relate most strongly to those in close proximity and identify their small groups with the Locality they inhabit. However, since their subtle

powers are so well developed, they are in communion with other devotees around the universe. They live outdoors with little attention paid to food, shelter, clothing, fire, tools, production, consumption, or possessions.

32 Pre-Edenic Humanity. Before the first social stage of Communion, humans don't eat at all. Their bodies are vitalized by their thoughts and by natural energies in unchanged states. That is, their skin touches the ground, they bathe in clean water, they breathe deeply fresh outdoor air, sunlight pours onto their unclothed bodies, and in meditation they contact etheric essences. They live ecstatically with a total absence of food, shelter, clothing, fire, tools, production, consumption, and possessions. They each have a Private Religion. There is no social grouping. Solitude is the norm.

33 A lot of people are talking about "healing the Earth." That sounds good, but to tell you the truth I think we should allow the Earth to heal us. With us set right, the disease is over. Emerson said, "The happiest man is he who learns from Nature the lesson of worship." Nature heals us souls by teaching us how to love God. The mind, the body, the locality, the earth, the universe all teach the souls. In learning from them how to revere God we also revere them. We accept Nature's way of doing things. That way is one of devotion, part of which is devotion to Nature as a teacher, not exploitation of Nature as a slave. "Healing the Earth" might just be more meddling. Hands off! Then both the Earth and the souls are healed.

34 The most immediate "region" I "inhabit" (using Bioregionalist terms) is the mind. The material environment closest to the soul is the mind. Just as each ecosystem has a character all its own, so does each species' kind of mind. The uniqueness of the human mind is its potential for being conscious of being conscious. It can be self-realized and ultimately God-realized. This defines the human relationship with the total environment, which is to involve it through consciousness in a religious life.

35 Nature and God: Five Views. 1. Nature is God. Be it. (View from the head.) 2. Nature is the reflection of God. Change it from matter to spirit. (View from the throat.) 3. Nature worships God. Join it. (View from the heart.) 4. Nature is the enemy of God. Renounce it and seek your salvation. (View from the navel.) 5. Nature has nothing to do with God. Exploit it for your own pleasure. (View from the crotch.)

36 Nature study is the center of my religious life. Not the kind of study you find in science, that analyzes Nature. Or in sex, that enjoys Nature. Or in art, that re-creates Nature. It's a different kind of study -- Pandevotionalism -- that seeks to learn how to join Nature in its worship of God. Nature is the Glory of God, streaming out of God and yet rushing towards God. Emanating from God yet embracing God. By studying how Nature worships God I hope to learn the ways of Love and take part in that praise.

37 I need to feel that my mind and body are temperamentally the same as my immediate natural surroundings. When they are, then I easily join the locality's worship of God. To me this is a Pandevotional imperative.

38 Pandevotionalism: everything worships the Everything.

39 When my bare feet walk my local ground, the contact of skin and soil creates an ennergy flow like an electrical current. The current of my mind travels through dermis to dirt and out to the whole planet. Getting to know the Earth in my locality introduces me to the Earth as a planet. I can't know the whole all at once

abstractly or through a mental simulation. I can only know the whole by way of the part -- because my body is a part of the part. This is my understanding of the slogan, "Act locally and think globally."

40 One test for the suitability of an area as a place of residence is to ask what would the region be like if "deprived" of the agricultural - industrial - technological superstructure. Would I feel at home in such a place?

41 The soul must respect the material body and the rest of Nature as a principle higher than the soul, because Nature acts as an intermediary between the soul and the Godhead. The material body is a cooperation of two factors: a spatial form -- which comes from God -- and temporal atoms -- which come from the Goddess. The relation of form to atoms may also be expressed as wave to particles, singular to plural, male to female, space to time, or reason to intuition. The integration of God and Goddess on an imminent level is Nature and on a transcendent level is the Godhead. The material body is an expression of the inherent love within the Godhead. For the soul who wishes to glorify the Godhead eternally, the temorary material body is a source of wisdom. Nature is a pathway to the Beyond.

42 Paradoxically, the soul's dis-identification away from the mind and body is the key to the soul's greater attachment to them as part of a principle higher than the soul. The soul's proper attitude toward Nature is reverence.

43 Hands off Nature! Do not disturb. In Sanskrit this is called ahimasa, which is usually translated as "non-violence," but which literally means "non-interference." Don't interfere -- live in harmony with Nature's ways.

44 Each kind of animal, plant, and mineral body has a special way to worship God, based on the unique character of that body. The unique character of the human body is the feature of its nervous system that allows the soul to be aware of its awareness -- or to be aware of itself as awareness. Physiologically this has been called the "feedback loop" of the brain. No other kind of body has it. Only the human body. It gives us the ability to reflect on reflection itself, to develop self-knowledge, to understand that we are not material bodies but spiritual bodies (souls). A wolf has a self-concept, but a physical one: a wolf thinks of itself as a wolf. A human can think of itself as a soul. A soul in a human body can dis-identify itself away from the material body and find out what it really is.

45 Pandevotionalism encourages the soul to consider Nature as a bridge of worship over which the soul may cross to reach the ultimate eternal state. The soul is not to think of itself as Nature, or matter. Still, the soul takes part in Nature's praise of God -- as a training program, an introduction to an eternal life in love with God.

46 Picture yourself standing at the edge of a chasm cutting through a plateau. Next to you, spanning the chasm from your side to the other side is a bridge made of five sections proceeding in this order: Mind, Body, Locality, Planet, and Cosmos. This is the Bridge of Pandevotionalism. The atoms and patterns that make up the bridge always worship God. The Soul may use this bridge to go to God.

47 Love loves loving love and love is all there is.

48 Pandevotionalism presents matter as a path to spirit. Its relation to Theism is divided. The two are similar in

their emphasis on worshipping a transcendent and personal God, but dissimilar in their opinion of Nature. Theism offers a path to God which is made up of souls and their teachings (saints, gurus, scriptures). In Pandevotionalism though, the devotee approaches God by way of atoms, forms, and their teachings ("the music of the spheres"). Theists tend to reject Nature, often condemning it as Satanic. Pandevotionalists revere Nature and want to obey her. Theism is a suitable religious attitude for those who like to build religious institutions. Pandevotionailsm is always a Private Religion -- individualistic, poetic, and wild.

49 In Chapter Three of the Bhagavad-gita, Arjuna asks why we often do evil acts against our better judgment. It's as if we're being forced into it, he says. Arjuna is puzzled. How can such an apparently alien and self-defeating influence live within me?     Krishna responds. He says that the evil agent is lust -- an enemy we must conquer.     (At the onset of a war, Krishna uses a military term to good advantage.)     I accept the truth of Krishna's answer. He places responsibility for actions squarely on the shoulders of the doer of the deeds. But there's something about the classic Vedic psychology supporting the reply that doesn't satisfy me.     I believe that Arjuna wants an explanation for the peculiar impression that when I do something I know is bad, I become split into two people. Two distinct people -- a good one and a bad one. Neither of these personae is willing to claim responsibility for what's going on. The good one blames the bad one, and the bad one blames any number of external influences.     That's what I feel Arjuna means when he says he's being "forced into it." Which of these personae is the real me? Am I the devilish me, or the angelic me?     Krishna recognizes the split in the personality of the malefactor. In his answer to Arjuna, he calls the two aspects the "lower self" and the "higher self." Using this Vedic terminology, Krishna settles Arjuna's confusion by putting the blame on the lower self.     To paraphrase the argument, the lusty lower self is a monster who must be vanquished by the higher self, who is the real person, the real doer, the real Arjuna.     But I'm left without a clarification of why the double-self feeling occurs. The Vedic argument only reinforces the impression of two people, not one. If the real Arjuna is the higher self, then who is the lower self? Where does lust issue from, and how does it come to press its demands on the "real" Arjuna? How can such a powerful urge be divorced so neatly from Arjuna by the mere application of the "lower" and "higher" categories?     Furthermore, in stark contrast to the thrust of Krishna's reply (that the self is to be held accountable for its own situation), the Vedic terminology being used seems to imply that the "real" self is not responsible for its evil acts. Because, if a person's true identity is a self that is "higher" -- and unchangeably so -- then the real self cannot do evil on its own. It must be forced into evil, against its better judgment, by an outside element. The guilty party, then, is the devilish enemy outside the angelic self: the lusty lower self.     Krishna exhorts Arjuna to rise above the mud and reach for the stars. That's good battlefield homelitics. But the battle's over and here I am, five thousand years later, feeling that a large part of Arjuna's question was left unanswered at Kurukshetra.     For me to be satisfied, I want to hear, as Krishna states, that the self is responsible for its deeds. But I also want to hear that there's only one self involved. And that the self's impression of being split into two is a psychological trick the self plays in order to avoid responsibility.     To explain my point of view, I'll compare two people. By "people" I mean people in the conventional sense. In my own technical language, I would say that each of them is a soul, a soul inhabiting a human mind-and-body. The difference between them is that one soul identifies itself with matter, the other with spirit.     A soul that identifies with matter thinks, "I am a material mind-body." To make the mind-body into the "I", the soul must cut the mind-body away from the rest of Nature, Nature being indeed something other than the "I." The mind-body is severed from its context and as a result has a tendency to behave strangely. This kind of behavior is potentially unnatural, or perverse, or evil.     But a soul that identifies with spirit ("I am a spiritual soul") can allow the mind-body to remain something different from the self. It can let the mind-body remain as part of Nature. The mind-body is attached to its context and has a tendency to behave normally -- assuming that the soul doesn't strive to dominate Nature

(including the mind-body it inhabits) for the soul's own selfish purposes.     So, what Vedic psychology calls "conquering," I find more helpful to call "identification with spirit." Likewise, for me "lust" means "identification with matter." These terms are more helpful to me because by using them I can better understand the "forcing" syndrome.     The apparent "forcing" occurs because, even though we know we are spirit, still we want to possess and enjoy matter. We identify with the mind-body in order to control the mind-body and its involvement with the total material world. You might say, we do it in order to control the universe. In brief, this is what is known as materialism. It sits squarely at the center of the problem Arjuna is describing.     As Krishna states in the Gita, the lower self is the material mind-body. However, the lower self is blameless in any criminal acts it performs. The guilty party is the soul, who hides behind the mind-body, shouting, "He did it!"     The mind-body didn't do it. The soul did it. The soul and its desires -- whether material or spiritual -- are behind all the mind-body's actions.     The soul may admit its guilt but claim it had no choice. "The Devil made me do it!" But the soul always has a choice. No Devil can force a soul into trouble.     The soul made the mind-body do it. The soul forced the mind- body to sin. The soul set itself up by identifying with the mind- body: a portentious decision.     That's the only forcing going on when I go against what I know is right. I force the mind-body into an unnatural position.     The higher self is forcing the lower self. It's not the other way around.     Arjuna asks his question as if he's a material mind-body being shoved around helplessly. The Vedic response is that Arjuna is a soul being shoved around. A soul that must turn the tables and shove the mind-body around.     What makes sense to me is to stop shoving, stop blaming, identify with spirit, learn from Nature's devotion how to glorify God, and be happy.

50 People who practice religion usually say that of the two, the soul and the body, the soul is greater. But I say that the body is greater than the soul. The body is part of Nature. But, they say, the soul is better than Nature. No, I say, Nature is better than the soul. Why? Because Nature worships God without interruption, whereas the soul's worship turns on and off. The body loves God more than the soul does. Let us -- we souls -- learn from our bodies.

51 Many events that would have to be called "natural" certainly don't appear at first to be anything like worshipping God. For instance, as I was typing out the thoughts in entry 50, a carniverous wasp landed on my notes, prey in mouth, right on the word "interruption." I took this as a lesson from Nature, an interruption for my edification and a teaching about how Nature worships God without interruption. The wasp chewed busily on its mangled meal. Just as busily, my mind chewed on this living example a few inches in front of me. What could it mean? Look at the violence, the pain! How is that soul in a wasp body praising God? And its dinner, what is that victim serving except the hungry insect-machine that cares only to digest it? Here before me is the suffering of the world, the indifference of the universe, and I gloss over it with idealistic notions. Dog eat dog, "red in tooth and claw," that is Nature --just as Hobbes, Darwin, and Dreiser presented it. At least that was my first impression. Then my view shifted. I saw the wasp, the meal (whatever it was), my notes, the entire planet and cosmos of substances and structures, everything that happens, as presented by God. The whole thing is a show and a lesson. Its purpose is to teach us what's true and what's false -- to teach us that ultimately the truest activity is to get ourselves out of this suffering and enjoy an eternal life of loving the Godhead. The wasp continued to gnaw on its victim, severing off a small portion, which fell to the paper. Shortly the wasp flew away, to continue eating elsewhere I suppose, leaving the fallen gore between the "p" and the "t" of "interruption." P-T: Pity: pity them, pity us, if we don't wake up to the truth. Even this carnage is religious. As worship, it is no doubt indirect. I can't empathize with it as I do with a butterfly in the sunlight, a tree's branches raised to the sky, the thunderous roar and pervasive sprays of a waterfall. These events I can feel directly as worship, without having to interrupt the experience to analyse it. But life is often "just one interruption after another." So be it. Even the pain points to divinity.

52 How We Live is the essence of ecology for us. How we set our own "house" (mind-body) in order. If the soul allows the mind and the body to go "back to Nature," then Nature becomes a bridge over which the soul can journey to the divine destination.

53 On the third day of Spring my head disappeared and the Sun took its place. My body didn't walk but flew -- I wasn't on the Earth but on the surface of the Universe, and the sky above me was the smiling face of God.

54 The History of Eden. In the spiritual world, an eternal seed rests within the soul: the seed of envy. When the soul wants to activate the seed, God exiles the soul to the material world. The soul gets covered by material layers -- a mind, a body, a locality, a planet, a universe. Each time the soul changes its desires, it gets a different set of coverings.     This change of dwelling from spiritual world to material world marks the great division in our individual and collective histories. The "fall" is not the much later exile from Eden or the very recent transition from agricultural to industrial culture. All cultures in the material sphere, no matter how apparently idyllic, are infected by one's choice of an envious way of life. Envy is at the core of all suffering.     After moving to the realm of matter, the soul first lives a Pre-Edenic, pre-social, solitary life. Meditation is the keynote and there is no eating or sex. (Compared to the extravagant ecstasies of the spiritual world, this is an extreme deprivation. But it represents the "highest" life the material world has to offer -- the holiest, healthiest, and by all odds the happiest. Still, it can hardly satisfy a soul that has decided it wants to be God: to rule the creation.) In Sanskrit terms, life is Siddhic, perfect, and the soul's body is Sattvic, good.     A sattvic body is "in the mode of goodness," but it's still material. Thus it provides fuel for the seed of envy. As the seed germinates and sprouts, the soul impels itself to want food and sex. Then God exiles the soul to Eden.     "You may eat," God tells Eve and Adam. But only fruits and nuts.     Eve and Adam: the solitude is over, and human society begins. Life gets complicated. God allows sex for the purpose of procreation. (Before, offspring were born out of the mind alone.) Life is Devic, godly, and the soul's body is Rajasic, passionate.     Fed by the rajasic body, the seedling grows into a tree. This is the famous "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." God forbids the humans to eat from it -- that is, to break the dietary law. But envy (which in the Biblical narrative is Satan, who later takes the form of a snake) has grown stronger. The soul impels itself to eat the forbidden food.     This crime introduces a whole new range of thought and behavior. Eating food other than fruit and nuts brings in guilt, time, fear, blaming, irreponsibility, animal killing, and recreational sex. Humanity is now on the edge of Eden, having "progressed" from a food-gathering economy to a food hunting-and- gathering economy. The dominant social arrangement evolves from communion to band to family to clan to tribe. The soul's body is Tamasic, ignorant.     The tamasic body fuels the tree of envy to grow to full size and influence. The soul's desire has changed from a simple yearning to eat to a complex urge to eat forbidden food -- and now it comes to the next stage, the desire to forget God.     In response, God exiles the soul from the edge of Eden out to Civilization. Humanity's daily schedule of travail and misery begins in earnest. Agriculture, the monster that destroys both people and planet, oversees the prisoners' punishments. We become city-dwellers and are condemned to eat bread.     The history of Eden is over. But the history of Envy has far to go.

55 The 1234321 Years: A Myth of History.. Over the course of 1234321 years, human history proceeds from good to bad. It does so in a sequence of four Era-Cycles, each of which comprises four Eras. The first Era-Cycle lasts 1,111,000 years. The second lasts 111,000 -- the third 11,110 -- the fourth 1,111.

    The first Era-Cycle's Eras last in turn 1,000,000 years, 100,000 years, 10,000 years, and 1,000 years. The initial, million year Era is the Edenic time of Communion and food-gathering. In the second Era the male hunting Band becomes predominant and introduces fire. Next, women enforce their rights and create the matrilineal Family, along with the hoarding of possessions. Fourth, men assert their role in procreation, build the multi- family patrilineal Clan, and introduce prevalent feuding.     With each change, each human society gets larger and more complex. The role of power in interpersonal affairs grows. (The will to powerfully dominate others springs from the basic material psychology of envy.) Paradoxically, as power creates an imbalance in society, it is only through greater power that the situation is corrected. But that greater power is soon corrupted and creates a new imbalance -- giving rise to an even more dominating power. And history continues, from good to bad.     In the second Era-Cycle, the initial Era lasts 100,000 years, much longer than the previous Clan phase. The second is 10,000 years, the third 1,000, and the fourth 100. The first epoch is the time of the Paleolithic hunting-and-gathering Tribe. Its lengthy duration is assured by the spiritual force of Shamanism. Next, the nobility overcomes the priesthood, and Urban-Agricultural life gains ascendancy, lasting from the Neolithic age to around 1000 AD. At about that latter time the bourgeoisie begins having success instituting a thousand years of dominance by the Nation-State. And around 2000 AD, for a hundred years or so, a socialist Planet-State is formed to ward off the menace of national industrial-military might.     The Planet-State proves to be no more a "solution" than the Clan-State was in its time, though. Its global military force, based on planet-orbiting particle-beam weaponry, is an even worse threat than the old industrial thermonuclear bombs. Hundreds of civil wars break out across the planet. In a short while, the computer technology breaks down beyond repair and human culture is in deep distress.     Just as the Shamans had stepped in to save humanity from the feuds of the Clans, now another spiritual force intervenes and introduces the third Era-Cycle. Its four Eras have durations of ten thousand, one thousand, one hundred, and ten years, respectively. The first is a "Golden Age" of sorts, characterized by a stability similar to that of the Edenic and Shamanic Eras. In scale it extends to Earth and Moon. Next, humanity spreads its power over the Solar System -- in the third Era, over the Galaxy -- and in the fourth, over the known Universe.     The final Era-Cycle's stages last a thousand years, a hundred years, ten years, and one year. Human development increases the role of power to levels unimagineable by us. The four Eras are on the scales of Cosmos, Space, Time, and God. When humanity reaches its concluding year, it supposes it has gained control over God. Thus it achieves utter delusion, and God wipes the slate clean so the Cycles may begin again with a healthy million-year Edenic period of love and service.     One of the purposes of human life is to get released from all this History and return to Eternity, where we come from in the first place.

56 The Current Era-Cycle. Each of the four cultural types is always with us. None of them is ever extinct. But, one at a time, each has its hour of ascendance.                                             1                     2                     3                     4

_______________________________________________________________

Years Duration               100,000           10,000             1,000               100

Geo-Political Unit             Village             City               Nation             Planet

Politics                         Theocracy         Monarchy       Plutocracy     Democracy

Socio-Economics           Barter           Feudalism       Capitalism       Socialism

Dominant Class               Priests           Nobles           Merchants         Workers

Social Unit                       Tribe             Dynasty             Family             Couple

Technics                       Gathering       Agriculture       Industry           Electronics

Social Model               Wilderness           Farm           Workshop           Computer

Communication               Gesture           Sound           Image             Number

Social Value               Reverence           Heroism           Success         Equality

Personal Advancement   Service         Conquest     Employment       Self-Help

Sex Relations               Mystery           Romance           Marriage       Co-habiting

Locus of God                 Nature             Church             Family               Self

Time Emphasis           Distant Past     Recent Past       Present             Future

Aesthetics                   Divinity             Beauty               Art                   Skill

Wealth                           Land               Metal             Machine         Information

Tool                               Awl                 Plow               Engine           Television

Weaponry                     Spear             Sword           Gun, Bomb           Beam

Tool-Weapon Function   Pierce           Slice             Explode           Disintegrate

Heat Source                   Sun               Wood               Fossils               Atom

Transportation               Foot             Animal           Machine           Telephone

Mineral                       Stone         Bronze, Iron         Iron, Steel       Aluminum, Glass

Wood Product               Poles           Hewn Wood           Paper           Plastic

(Jeremy Rifkin)             Instinct           Intuition           Reason           Mathematics

57 AUW

58 Back to Nature, back to Godhead.

59 Deep Skin. "The ego is the perception of the bodily self, and what one feels and knows of the body is the skin."     -- P. Lacombe, in Ashley Montagu, Touching Several anthropologists have noted that humans are the only life forms that display specialized behavior centered on spirituality. I suggest that what makes spirituality possible for us is the human skin.     Another defining characteristic of the human species is the individual's ability to think about thinking, be aware of its own awareness, and ultimately to be conscious of itself as consciousness. I call this the Spiritual Ability. It is, I have decided, a consequence of the uniquencess of the human skin.     Since the prevailing technology of the Spiritual Ability is mental (thinking about thinking), my first inquiries are directed toward the mind. What is "the human mind" as distinguished from the minds of other creatures?     Rather than relying on empirical science for answers to questions like this, I like to search for help in pre-historical traditions. For instance, the Bhagavata teachings of ancient India (the tradition I've studied longest) propose that as the soul transmigrates from one body to the next, it carries the mind along with it "as the wind carries an aroma from one place to the next." While the soul transmigrates from one material body to the next, the mind stays with the soul as an expression of the soul's stage of development.     The body conforms to the features of the mind.     Empirical scientists usually consider the opposite to be true: that the mind conforms to the features of the body. Because of this, we tend to speak of "the human mind" as if the mind were part of the body. But it isn't. The human mind is the soul's mind, at the human-body stage.     This "mind over matter" (and soul over mind) viewpoint puts the mind in the position necessary for it to choose and decide responsibly.     It also places the weight of human-ness on the psychological, not the physiological, side of the balance. That is, we (souls) have chosen to live as humans. It isn't just that we have human bodies. More important, we think in a human way.     The single kind of thinking that stands apart from all our other mental activity as being distinctively human is the reflective capacity, the Spiritual Ability. We can do it and bees can't do it because we want to do it and bees don't want to do it.     Looking at the subject this way, the primary definition of humanity is a psychological one. However, just as the soul expresses its desire through the medium of the mind, the mind then expresses that same desire through the medium of the body.

    Mental awareness becomes physical sensing.     After many transmigrations through various non-human bodies, when the soul wants to know itself, it changes its mind and thinks reflectively. In turn, that now-human mind "changes its body" to a human body, a body that senses reflectively.     The human body can sense itself as consciousness.     The human sensorium is built to be able to perceive its own matter as spirit.     What is the physical aspect of the human body that allows this phenomenon to take place? First, let me investigate the question's corollary: what is it about non-human bodies that suppresses self- awareness? Since the operative factor is perception, the answer must be found in the nervous system.     Non-human nervous systems have no "circuitry" that would allow the attention to be doubled back upon itself in order to perceive itself. The human nervous system does.     The relevant human circuitry has been called a "feedback loop," a term borrowed from computer technology. But no one, so far, has found physical evidence of the entire loop. I think we've been too restrictive in our search. We've assumed it's all in the brain. I suggest that only half the circuit is in the brain.     The significant area of the brain is most likely the cerebral cortex, or perhaps more specifically the so-called neo-cortex. This portion of the brain is more sophisticated in humans than in the other species. Its role as the major instrument in the human version of intelligence is well documented. However, the human cortex alone is only a more complicated development of the cognitive structure of other species' brains. It possesses insufficient qualitative distinction to account for Spiritual Ability in humans. To find the rest of the feedback loop we must look elsewhere.     I propose that human spiritual self-awareness is made possible by a cooperation between the neo-cortex and the skin.     The skin is the largest sense organ. Among the parts of the nervous system it is second only to the brain in weight. In utero all other sense organs develop out of the skin.     The skin actuates the sense of touch. Another word for touch is "feeling" -- a term that fills the gap between body and mind. Referring again to the Bhagavata teachings, I see that feeling, or emotion, stems from desire, and desire is the essence of the soul. Accordingly, the skin may be understood as an analog for the soul.     Just as important, the skin's morphology -- its shape as the shape of the physical self -- makes it the only portion of the nervous system that can be perceived as the whole self.     If the self is to be perceived as a gestalt by the body, the only available field of experience is the skin.     But what makes the human skin different from that of other species? Only the plain fact that the human skin is on the human body's outer surface. Almost the entire surface of the human form is a sensitive nerve.     (Granted, the very outer layer of skin is composed of dead cells. But they are transductive, allowing the temperature, appearance, and movement of the living skin just underneath to be perceived.)     Other life forms that have similar skins -- some amphibians, for instance -- don't have a neo-cortex. No non-humans have both a neo-cortex and a body with a sensitive skin on its surface. They have skin, when it exists at all, that is thickly covered with hair, hide, scales, and other relatively non-transductive material. The self-awareness of those beings is limited to a physical range. They have no Spiritual Ability. They are covered over. A wolf thinks of itself as a wolf and cannot think of itself as a soul. (Exactly what form that wolf-ness takes, for the wolf, is not for me to say.)     The human can go beyond the human. "Contemplating one's navel" is an expression that comes close to what I'm getting at. But really I'm saying that the navel contemplates itself! The skin, with the help of the highly discriminatory neo-cortical machinery, feels itself to be consciousness. The soul's desire to know itself is carried out on the somatic level. The soul realizes itself as spirit, the mind reflects on itself as spirit, and the body senses itself as spirit. Awareness comes full circle back around to itself by travelling this path: soul to mind to cortex to

skin to cortex to mind to soul.     Human spirituality determines human anatomy.     This theory can be a rich source of lessons. Here are four.     1. The comprehension of the self as numinous is the key to understanding God as numinous. For example, if a wolf has only a physical self-concept, then a wolf's "religion" would be directed toward a lupine God-concept. A wolf's God would be The Big Wolf. Similarly, for humans who haven't developed their Spiritual Ability, God is The Big Human. This anthropomorphic religion disappears on the discovery of the non-material self. Souls who know themselves as souls know God as The Big Soul, a being who might appear as a human -- or a wolf -- but isn't limited to any material form.     2. Nudity -- under certain conditions -- can be an aid to the development of Spiritual Ability. "The clothes make the man" materialistic. In spiritual Eden, Adam and Eve went naked. In material post-Eden they wore clothes.     3. Tactile stimulation -- again, under certain conditions -- can increase self-awareness. The cultivation of Spiritual Ability is facilitated by it. Massage is one way. Another is Conscious Breathing. As the lungs exhale and inhale, the skin all over the body expands and contracts. It's an envigorating self-massage. Skin, lungs, and heart work together. Bhagavata biology states that the soul is located in the heart and its consciousness-energy travels throughout the body in the red corpuscles of the blood, where it bonds the oxygen from the lungs to the blood's hemoglobin. This respiratory process is the basis of the body's life, and the skin is part of it. The practice of Conscious Breathing is simply being aware of this process as it takes place. It reinforces one's understanding that the substance of bodily life is spirit.     4. The life of the spirit is worship, and the essence of worship is movement. To praise, the soul first moves sympathetically with the impulse of God -- a dance that must carry itself through one's dermis to be fully alive. Skin is the kinetic sense organ. The primal motion produces sounds -- sacred Glorias -- as the soul expresses its love. Life completes itself in language. Nevertheless, the noumenal uses of language would be lost to humans were it not for our cortical-cutaneous connection. According to various traditional teachings, mind is a single moving wave (space and form) whereas body is many inert particles (time and content). Mind precedes body epistemologically. But still in ontogeny the skin is the initial manifestation of the mind's form- shaping. The skin is the shape, the edge, of the body. Inasmuch as mind is spatial form, the skin is the symbol of mind on the physical plane. Even more than the cortex, the skin mediates between physique and psyche.     The skin breathes, in its fashion. Could it also be that the skin thinks? If it does, it thinks deep thoughts.

60 The Ethic of Worship. In their relationship with God, souls always have a choice between reality and illusion. Choosing to worship God allows souls to perceive reality and be good. Choosing to envy God allows souls to perceive illusion and be evil. The two paths are mutually exclusive. Good souls cannot see illusion, and evil souls cannor see reality.     Worship involves admiring God and taking pleasure in God's control of everything. Envy involves being jealous of God and wanting to take pleasure in one's own control of everything. "Everything" includes God's attributes: power, beauty, ownership, knowledge, fame, and transcendence. Worshippers glorify those attributes as signs of God's greatness. Enviers want those attributes for themselves. Worshippers desire to praise God. Enviers desire to be God.     Whether souls are worshipping or envying, they are always choosing. The path they take is up to them. Freedom, and thus responsibility, is an essential feature of the soul. Freedom of choice is not harmful. Even envy itself, which must reside within the soul in order to be chosen, is not harmful in its potential state.     Choosing one path or the other has its consequences. Worship leads to God (one reality) and envy leads to Not-God (many illusions). Worship and the goal of God form the poles of an axis along which coalesce a number of attributes. They may be analyzed sequentially as: being a part

of God, having a strong sense of self, courage, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding, attachment, growth, and love of life. (See the diagram below.) Envy and the goal of Not-God engender a sequence of attitudes contrary to the above: being apart from God, having a weak sense of self, fearfulness, hate, rejection, ignorance, detachment, atrophy, and a yearning for death. __________________________________________________________________

The Ethic of Worship: Diagram

The foundation of ethics is the choice between worship and envy.

                                                                God

                                                                  |

Worship God < < < < < < < < < < < Soul (Freedom) > > > > > > > > > > > > Envy God

|                                                                                                                                 |

Part of God                                                                                         Apart from God

|                                                                                                                                 |

Strong Sense of Self                                                                     Weak Sense of Self

|                                                                                                                                 |

Courage                                                                                                               Fear

|                                                                                                                                 |

Forgiveness                                                                                 Blame, Hate, Anger

|                                                                                                                                 |

Acceptance                                                                                                 Rejection

|                                                                                                                                 |

Understanding                                                                                             Ignorance

|                                                                                                                                 |

Attachment                                                                                             Detachment

|                                                                                                                                 |

Growth                                                                                                           Atrophy

|                                                                                                                                 |

Life                                                                                                                   Death

|                                                                                                                                 |

God                                                                                                               "Not-God"

_________________________________________________________________

    Action based on worship gives rise to life and health. Action based on envy is cause for death and diseases. All physical and mental sickness comes from enviousness, which resides in the soul and is not derived from any external influence. The only medicine to cure any disease can be found within one's self, in the choice of worship of God. Choosing worship is the essential therapy for all diseases.     Worship, to be genuine, must be chosen at every moment. The soul must be aware of the eternal responsibility that derives from the eternal presence of both good and evil within the soul. Evil is a necessity. There has to be a Not-God for the soul to not- choose in order for its choice of God to be free. Souls are defined by their liberty. In the Sanskrit terminology of the Bhagavata philosophy they are categorized as tatastha-shakti, which means "the power that is on the dividing line between two greater powers." We are never liberated from our responsibility to choose liberation. True religion is always ethical.     False religion, which pretends to be worship of God but demands that its followers hand over their power of choice to human authorities, is always unethical and never accomplishes any therapy of soul, mind, or body. False religion seduces souls into believing that they are either all good or all evil. In either circumstance the souls are robbed of responsibility. Determinism, fatalism, and blind obedience take over. The good slaves of Jehovah battle against the evil slaves of Satan, neither army ever winning. When will the slaves learn that the meaniningful battle is between slavery and freedom? The officers of both Jehovah and Satan vigorously condemn free choice. Obedience is the military rule. Thus we are tricked into continuing the war, to the advantage of our captors.     The soul in a rare moment of metaphysical suspension can see itself as all potentiality: half

potential-brightness, half potential-shadow. Through action the soul makes the potential into the actual. The choice must be made, for the soul must act. In action the soul becomes either all actual-light or all actual- darkness. Or, to be more correct, I should say that with each act the soul is either good or evil, and most of us jump back and forth between the two. So in action, which is our natural life, we do not straddle the fence. We choose sides. But to go over to the sunny side and stay there, we have to be ever-mindful of the potentiality of the murky side. The cleverest of evil's tricks is the illusion that we have only one side. The conventional "minions of the Devil" consider themselves to be all-bad, and the false worshippers consider themselves to be all-good, which is even worse. As the speaker of the Isha Upanishad put it, "those who worship darkness go to hell, and those who worship light go to a worse hell." The soul is always on the dividing line, and we must never forget that.     An ethical worship brings the shadow-self to God. Not just the radiant-self. God loves the whole soul, not just half. Our daily worship is ethical only when it embraces our baser urges, for in that embrace those tendencies stop warring against our peaceful, forgiving nature. It is as if evil wants nothing more than to be accepted by goodness. When it is, it turns benign. Of course it takes a powerful goodness to be able to get so close to evil and not be taken in by it. Most goodness that apparently achieves such a strength of purpose is still bent on destroying evil. Only the most courageous soul can stand face to face with its own evil, not be seduced by the Great Deceiver, know how sinister that darkness is, and yet forgive it, accept it, understand it wholly, indeed even become attached to it, and reach in evil's night the source of the soul's own growth to an eternal daytime of glorifying God. A seed germinates in darkness before it flowers in the sun's light. And the roots stay buried as long as life goes on. The dirt remains dirt. It is not transformed, but rather provides the context within which the seed's transformation takes place. Likewise, the potential-evil within the liberated soul is never anything else but evil. It is not changed when the soul worships God -- it provides the context within which the soul can change by choosing to worship.     Worship and envy co-exist in the liberated soul. But most of us haven't liberated ourselves yet. For us, it is still important to clarify the difference in the psychologies of the two.     The simplest difference is that one way leads to happiness, the other to misery. The sequence of attitudes issuing from envy is an undesireable one. Fear, hatred, rejection, ignorance, and so on make for an unhappy life. They are problems. When I choose envy, I choose problems. I perceive my world from the viewpoint of envy and see all situations as problems. I don't see any solutions. But if I look at my life from the viewpoint of worship, all I see are solutions: courage, forgiveness, acceptance, understanding. When I choose worship, I choose joy. An envier has no joy. A worshipper has no problems. An envier tries to "solve problems," which only results in more problems. To see all situations, even painful ones, as joys, is the worshipper's choice. God is always a positive force and so is the worshipper. Situations help the worshipper grow. Situations are "material," but matter can be a pathway to spirit.     Finally I want to emphasize that The Ethic of Worship calls its adherents to respect the power of choice in people who have other inclinations. Particularly, in trying to share The Ethic of Worship with others, the worshippers are best advised to see themselves as presenters and not persuaders. I cannot teach someone how to choose properly. We all learn the art of choosing through our own experience. It doesn't do any good to force The Ethic of Worship down anyone's throat, especially since the ethic states that it depends on free acceptance for its effectiveness. It must be chosen freely or it has no benefit. The illness doesn't come from envy but from the choice of envy. Therefore the cure doesn't come from worship but from the choice of worship. What I can do then is to help make available a form of worship that people can choose when they want to.

61 As the soul's consciousness develops through its material education it passes through three stages -- from imitation to meditation to devotion.

62 I Concentrate on You. I've lost interest in art. Art happens when people treat vehicles of communication as ends in themselves. Although the person transmitting and the person receiving aren't entirely eliminated from the event, their involvement with each other is less direct when the vehicle of intercourse is an art object of some kind. The art object becomes the primary recipient of the communicator's thoughts and feelings, and the person addressed becomes, in effect, a part of the art. The most the addressee can hope to be is the "inspiration" for the artwork.     When I center my intentional actions on objects, my spiritual awareness is impaired. I use the word "object" in its conventional sense (even though I know everything is personal at its core) because when I make an artwork I treat the media as lifeless "stuff" to be manipulated by me. My intentions are directed toward "matter." That is material consciousness. It's impersonal. When I direct my intentions toward people in simple communication, that is spiritual, or personal.     Direct personal communication without objectified media does nonetheless happen by way of some kind of media -- sounds and gestures usually -- that is, by way of vehicles of communication. But they are not treated as points of interest. They are the unintentional by-products of the intentional relationship. Those unintentional phenomena derive their value from the intentional essence of the personal relationship, an essence which in its basic state is love. Words, tones, body movements and positions: these are part of love. But if the forming of sounds and gestures becomes primary, contrived, and intentional rather than secondary, spontaneous, and unintentional -- then the personal situation has become impersonal and objectified. Love has become art.     The original purpose of intentional human audio-visual media is communication. Art is an impersonalization of it -- an internalization of it -- a degradation of it. The focus of art is objects, not people. This clearly holds true for the plastic arts. It's also true of performance media. For instance, drama does allow the spectator to confront living humans, but its form is structured language and plot, thus abstracting the people into "actors." Even in dance the interest is in motion and composition as objectified entities.     In a state of love the vehicles of communication are instruments created by the relationship. The people are concentrating on each other. The instruments of intercourse, in the words of Swami Bhaktivedanta, are "not exactly artistic." Not artistic -- but beautiful, because they are part of the beauty of love. They have no separate life. The people are paramount.     All artifice must fade away. Words, tones, and movements must have raw, natural beauty and strength. They must be the living offspring of love between people. No more sculpture, soliloquies, or symphonies! Concentrate on people. Trust that beauty will follow and flourish.

63 Pandevotionalism and Bhagavata. For eleven years, from 1967 through 1977, I studied, taught, and administered a religion from India. It has many names. Here I'll use the term Bhagavata. My teacher in Bhagavata was Swami Bhaktivedanta.     Aside from the devotional life itself, my major interest in Bhagavata was its analysis of the material world. My previous awareness of God had largely come to me by way of Nature. The Bhagavata cosmology, it seemed to me, would provide a philosophical basis for my experiences. This hunch proved to be accurate. The confirmation came in this way.     Atomism -- the proposition that the cosmos in all its complexity is made of identical irreducible particles variously combined -- makes one of its earliest appearances in Bhagavata literature. The Bhagavata Purana states that the basic, indivisible particle is the paramanu (supreme small). This particle is further defined as "the minute form of eternal time," perhaps because the basic time unit in Bhagavata science is the duration of the sun's traversing the diameter of one paramanu. Yet the definition suggested more to me. It suggested that the atom is made of time. It is a minute form made of a substance we call "time."     Before I'd considered that, I'd had no trouble conceiving that as a particle, an atom is a form in space. But when I tried to understand how its substance -- what it is a form of -- is time, my

comprehension fell short. Is time a "thing?" Is time "stuff?"     Two other scriptural references helped me out of my bewilderment. First, Swami Bhaktivedanta elsewhere in his commentary of the Purana states flatly that in Bhagavata "everything is person." I took this at face value -- whatever we may conventionally think of as a "thing" is on its own terms a person. Bhaktivedanta often gives the name Personalism to his philosophical approach.     Equipped with this tool of thought, I was able to combine the two concepts and posit that Time is a person, that an atom is a minute form of the person Time, and that to get to rock-bottom all I'd have to do would be to identify the particular person whose name is Time.     In the Bhagavad-gita Krishna calls himself Time ("the destroyer of the worlds"). I didn't reject that personification. Still, Krishna is everything and everyone. So I had to go on and find the specific personal part of Krishna that is Time.     My search ended in 1973 when I found her. She is Kala ("Time" in Sanskrit), or more completely Kala-Shakti ("Time-Energy"), the consort of Garbhodakashayi Vishnu. This Vishnu -- there are many Vishnus -- floats on the surface of the cosmic ocean. Clinging to the stem of a lotus that grows from his navel are the galaxies of the universe. Ever beside him is Kala-Shakti. As far as I know, the Purana says nothing about her role in cosmic affairs. But there she is, the vast form of eternal time. One might call her Mother Nature, since her husband Vishnu is the father of the natural world. She replicates herself to become the stuff of the universe. The atom is a minute version of her form -- an infinitesmal Kala-Shakti.     Each atom is a feminine person. Each atom is a Goddess.     This concrete personalization of matter helped me to cut through much of the abstract philosophizing the topic of Nature is subjected to -- not only in current thought but also in the Bhagavata literature itself.     In the Gita especially the designation of matter as God's "inferior nature" (contrasted with the soul as "superior") gets a lot of emphasis. The psychology of the Gita stresses that the superior soul must conquer inferior matter. The higher self, the soul, must conquer the lower self, the body.     But if the atom is an aspect of a person who is the consort of God, a person who loves and serves God -- as Kala-Shakti does -- then how can matter, the body, Nature, be considered less worthy than the soul? Why should we be enjoined to conquer her? Isn't she more powerful, and more pure, than we souls are?     Granted, by her play of illusions the fallen soul is kept trapped in its own foolish dreams of dominance. But she is blameless. Bhaktivedanta, in his purports, calls her job a "thankless task." This points to devotion, not demonism.     Nature serves God and loves God eternally. How much better than we souls who usually manage at best a love-hate affair with the Deity. Rather than attempt to conquer her (a hopeless task) shouldn't we take steps to respect her? To learn from Nature, the unwavering servant of God, how to praise, glorify, worship the Lord?     The great fear of the proponents of renunciation is that by honoring matter in any way, people will fall deeper into illusion. But as long as we keep in mind the realization that we are souls, not atoms, and not God -- as long as we dis-identify the soul away from the body (a kind of "conquering," perhaps) -- there's no reason to fear. In fact dis-identification becomes an opportunity for a reverence toward Nature as a higher principle than the soul. The principle is constancy of devotion to God. Is that illusion? No. It is the only reality. The soul can enter into it by understanding that the atom is a person.     Bhagavata Personalism, put in this way, forms the basis of my philosophy of Nature. I've given my approach the name Pandevotionalism.

64 God heals us through Nature. When we join Nature's worship of God, we are healed.

65 Pandevotional Voices.

Nature is what we know -- Yet have no art to say -- So impotent Our Wisdom is To her Simplicity. (Emily Dickinson, #668)

All of creation is a song of praise to God. (Hildegard of Bingen)

And Hemlocks -- bow -- to God. (Emily Dickinson, #475)

The morning wind forever blows, the poem of creation is uninterrupted; but few are the ears that hear it. (H. D. Thoreau, Walden)

Each atom, each molecule, each organism is a prayer. (Donald St. John)

Creation is allowed, in intimate love, to speak to the Creator as if to a lover. (Hildegard of Bingen)

Let the floods clap their hands... (Psalm 98.8)

Creation not only exists, it also discharges truth. (Gerhard von Rad)

As the creator loves his creation, so creation loves the creator. (Hildegard of Bingen)

I invite you to join me in a month's worship with Nature in the high temples of the great Sierra Crown beyond our holy Yosemite. (John Muir, letter to R. W. Emerson)

Let the hills sing for joy together before the Lord. (Psalm 98:8-9)

The hills are alive with the sound of music, with songs they have sung for a thousand years. (Oscar Hammerstein II)

The simple News that Nature told -- With tender Majesty Her message is committed To Hands I cannot see -- (Emily Dickinson, #441)

I am convinced that all beings need to worship. (Erazim Kohak, The Embers and the Stars)

The blowing wind, the mild, moist air, the exquisite greening of trees and grasses -- in their beginning, in their ending, they give God their praise. (Hildegard of Bingen)

Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps, fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command! Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars! Beasts and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds! (Psalm 148:7-10)

Creation feels drawn to her creator as she responds to him in service. (Hildegard of Bingen) But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the air, and they will tell you; or the plants of the earth, and they will teach you; and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? (Job 12:7-9)

When I prayed in my heart, everything about me appeared to be pleasing and lovely. It was as though the trees, the grass, the birds, the earth, the air and the light were saying that everything prayed, and praised God. (The Candid Narrations of a Pilgrim to His Spiritual Father, 1884)

Let the field exult, and everything in it! (Psalm 96:12)

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it... (Psalm 98:7)

Heaven and earth, and all creation, laud and magnify his name. (Hymn of the Foundling Hospital, 1796)

Every creature is a word of God and is a book about God. (Meister Eckhart)

The aspect of Nature is devout. Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head, and hands folded upon the breast. The happiest man is he who learns from nature the lesson of worship. (R. W. Emerson, Nature)

In the name of the Bee -- And of the Butterfly -- And of the Breeze -- Amen! (Emily Dickinson, #18)

There seemed to rise a Tune From Miniature Creatures Accompanying the Sun -- Far Psalteries of Summer -- Enamoring the Ear They never yet did satisfy -- (Emily Dickinson, #606)

No wilderness in the world is so desolate as to be without divine ministers. God's love covers all the earth as the sky covers it, and also fills it in every pore. And this love has voices heard by all who have ears to hear. (John Muir, Journal, March 12, 1873)

Then shall all the trees of the wood sing for joy before the Lord. (Psalm 96:12-13)

O never harm the dreaming world, the world of green, the world of leaves, but let its million palms unfold the adoration of the trees... (Kathleen Raine)

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (Psalm 19:1-4)

Have you not seen how all in the Heavens and on the Earth utter the praise of God? The very birds as they spread their wings? Every creature know its prayer and its praise! And God knows what they do. (The Q'uran)

Praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! (Psalm 148:3-4)

What a psalm the storm was singing ... how sweet the still small voices of the storm! (John Muir, Stickeen)

Let heaven and earth praise him, the seas and everything that moves therein. (Psalm 69:34)

What praise songs pour forth from the white chambers of the falls! (John Muir, Journal, December 16, 1869)

Every tree seemed religious and conscious of the presence of God. (John Muir, Our National Parks)

All of creation resounds with song, bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever Stars in the heavens, waters below, bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever O wind and rain, fire and snow, bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever Spring and Summer, Winter and Fall, bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever

All of creation resounds with joy, praising the Lord, praise Him forever Praise Him who holds all life in His hands, praise Him, praise Him forever

Let all the Earth, resound with joy, bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever All ye green things, upon the Earth,

bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever Let all the creatures, raise up their songs bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever All ye children of Mother Earth, bless ye the Lord, praise Him forever (Susan Osborne and Paul Winter, adapted from the Book of Common Prayer)   66 God and Goddess are simultaneously one and different. The same is true of God and Souls, and of Goddess and Souls. Everything is singular yet plural. The whole is one independent entity but it is made up of parts which are also free entities. And while each part is a discrete unit, it also contains within itself the multiplicities. A part is a miniature whole. The whole is a magnitudinous part. Fusing it all together is the Love shared by God, Goddess, and Souls -- Love, which is the core of existence. Both oneness and difference derive their power, meaning, and life from Love. Love is all there is. It would be tempting to say that "Love is One," but Love is beyond analysis and beyond categories such as One or Many. Love is inscrutable, always mysterious. Love defeats the philosophers. Love finds its own way. Love conquers by secret strategies. Love conquers even God. Nobody knows what Love is but everybody wants it. There is no adequate definition for Love but every language has a word for it. Is Love a hoax? An illusion? Sometimes we feel that way when the world falls apart. But then Love puts it back together again -- Love is triumphant -- yet invisible -- and we start once again our search for Love. Even God worships Love. God, Goddess, and Souls are always in Love.

67 Mind is form -- Body is content. Mind needs something to think about -- Body needs something to occupy. Mind is one -- Body is many. Mind feels empty without Body -- Body feels scattered without Mind. Mind is wave -- Body is particles. Mind gives motion -- Body gives in. Mind is husband -- Body is wife. And the Soul is the priest who marries them.

68 Moving to the Head, fixed on the Mind, the Soul exalts itself as the destroyer of God. Moving to the Throat, grasping the Body, the Soul claims itself to be the enjoyer of God. Moving to the Heart, inhabiting the Locality, the Soul experiences itself and God in love. Moving to the Navel, circling the Planet, the Soul resigns itself to be enjoyed by God. Moving to the Crotch, dispersed across the Universe, the Soul despairs itself as destroyed by God. The Soul lives best in the Heart, where it loves God via the Locality.

69 Consciousness contemplates concepts' content contacting Locality. Consciousness is the Soul, which contemplates the concepts of the Mind, whose content is the Body, which makes contact with the Locality, which is a mirror -- reflecting back to the parts the whole of which they are parts -- so that the Body sees itself in Love with the Earth, the Mind sees itself in Love with the Cosmos, and the Soul sees itself in Love with God. Like the quiet surface of a tidal pool, the Locality is a mirror for the soul wherein it contemplates itself and God in Love.

70 Pure Nudity. When humans wear clothes they imitate the other animals. Non-human animal bodies have coverings over the skin. Human bodies don't. A little hair, but not much. When Adam and Eve obeyed God they were naked. When they violated the dietary law, God made them wear clothes of animal hides. If we eat only fruits and nuts we can do without clothing.

71 The individual mind is the localized form of the general cosmos. The general cosmos is the

extended form of the individual mind. The general cosmos manifests itself severally as the individual minds, so all individuals in the cosmos are of one general mind.

72 One's mind is a part of the universe, identical in substance to it. The universe is a replica of God as Form. Form is God, space, wave, mind, structure, cosmos. Occupying Form is Content. Content is Goddess, time, particles, body, atom, planet. The body is made of atoms -- the mind is made of form. The mind structures the atoms into a bodily shape. The form of the body is the mind. Conversely, the form of the planets is the cosmos. The cosmos structures the planets into a universal shape. The planets are made of atoms -- the cosmos is made of form. One's body is a part of the planet, identical in substance to it.

73 Nature is an integrated feminine-masculine phenomenon consisting of replicas of Goddess and God. Nature is not only Mother. It is also Father. The masculine aspect is a God-replica that worships the transcendent Godhead just as the Goddess-replica also does. The Godhead is the feminine-masculine source of Nature and of the Souls. The Souls can learn how to worship the Godhead by joining Nature's worship.

74 Goddess and God are simultaneously one and different, united and separate. They are equal, but generally God plays the part of the Supreme and the Goddess plays the part of the Servant. So worshipping the Godhead usually means worshipping God.

75 In their transcendant interplay, Goddess and God are called the Godhead and are conventionally referred to as masculine in gender: God, Lord, Father. In their immanent interplay, Goddess and God are called Nature are conventionally referred to as feminine in gender: the Goddess, Mother Nature, Mother Earth. Goddess and God are equal, and transcendent and immanent are equal. But the masculine usually takes the position of the Supreme and the feminine usually takes the position of the Servant. Goddess serves God, immanent serves transcendent, Nature serves the Godhead. As Souls (neither feminine Goddess nor masculine God, but neuter particles of their Love) we can live the devotional life by joining Nature in her praise of God.

76 When the Locality is in its wild state it is a mirror of God. Locality subdued by humans is a mirror of the grotesque.

77 Nice thoughts and noble ideals flow through my fingers to the page. But who can live a perfect life? Not me, not now. Anyway it's a good thing I can't be perfect. The impurities, bless them, humble the arrogant spiritualist. As my life snakes around, It must follow maps that contradict the design of my private utopia. Still, my beliefs stand firm. They're the destination, no matter how many detours I take. Somewhere, sometime, I will live that way. You can't take that away from me.     In present practice, this is how I mix the ideal and the real: by minimizing the harmful, maximizing the helpful, and making a lot of mistakes along the way. I do want my daily life, despite its clumsiness, to be the substance of my philosophy. I offer my idealistic words merely as supporting evidence -- testimony about the meaning of my life as a whole. Whatever theory or philosophy I advance here has no independent worth. The value resides in my actions.

78 I stand on my word. My locality is my locution. Locality is the nearby sphere of experience, and for us humans the character of the place we occupy is formed by what we conceive it to be and

how we communicate that concept -- that is, by language. Common language and common region go together in defining a group's cultural identity.     The soul also has its place of residence. Indeed, the soul inhabits five layers: a mind, a body, a locality, a planet, a universe. Of these, mind and universe pair off since they are of the same quality (wave, space, form). Body and planet also pair off (being particle, time, content). Locus stands alone midpoint among them as a focus, the fully existential ground of our being.     Mind and universe are structural. Body and planet are atomic. These are material entities, subtle and gross. Locality is the point where they intersect. From one viewpoint locality is a combining, an overlapping, of the subtle and gross material aspects. But it's also a third independent entity, a spiritual entity of the same substance as God and the soul, because it is the point where God and soul meet to act out their drama.     We live in a locality more than in a mind, body, planet, or universe. The mind and the body are too close to the soul to admit a wide enough range of acts. The planet and universe are too vast to permit familiarity. It's true that we humans have invented technologies -- tense and strenuous endeavors -- that allow us to briefly experience the very immediate and the very grand as pseudo- localities. Yoga makes mind and body an arena for our attentiveness. Astronautics catapults us out to a frontier of stars. But when asked, "Where do you live?" an astro-yogi would probably respond with the name of a locality. The local area is home because "home is where the heart is."     For us, locality is less a material entity than a spiritual experience. Through locality, which is the part of Nature we perceive through our five sense at any given time, the soul experiences God. Inasmuch as Nature is God's creation, locus is the Logos -- the word or expression of God as a communication to the soul.     In addition to being created by God, locality is also an idea in the human soul's mind, created by the soul's perceptions and consequent language-making. It is not only a material or external entity but also an internal concept. The trees, birds, hills, rivers, winds of a location are individual things, but what ties them together is a concept born of both Creator and creature. God and soul come together to live in locality. The locality, like the quiet surface of a lake, is a mirror in which the soul may see a reflection of itself and God in love.     Moreover, each human habitat has a word associated with it: a name. Perhaps more than anything else, a locality is a name. Not a name like New York City or Midway Island, but a mythic name that arises out of a personal vision. On the deepest level such a name is a call from soul to God and God to soul. Vocalizing the locale (saying or singing that name) satisfies the soul's religious urge.     Finally, like everything else, a locality is a person, the spirit or "genius" of the place. The locality's name is the spirit's name. The deity of a place mediates between soul and God as a saint or a guru does. Through her or his -- or their -- name the soul may worship the name of the Godhead.     That is the truth. I stand on my word.

79 Souls are always worshipping God in one way or another. As the soul transmigrates through different types of material coverings, its religious activity changes. Souls in pre-human material minds and bodies worship God intuitively, without rationalizing about it. They don't discriminate because for them everything is matter. Then in time they inhabit human forms. Souls in human material minds and bodies combine reason with worship because they want to analyze the difference between spirit and matter in order to free themselves from matter. For humans, philosophy and religion go side by side. In time they achieve liberation. Souls who are liberated from material minds and bodies live in the spiritual world where they worship God intuitively again, as they did when they were innocent creatures. But now they have no need for discrimination because for them everything is spirit. During transmigration, only in the human stage does logic play a role. Neither beasts nor angels have any use for it. But for us it's necessary.

80 The sun radiates sunshine. The soul radiates consciousness. Sunshine is light. Consciousness is sound. The soul is a person. It radiates conscious sound, that is, language. God is the Original Soul. God's consciousness is the Logos, the word that is the creative power of the universe. Sound and language precede the material manifestation of the cosmos. The spiritual world is alive with words. The original word is the name of God. The Holy Name is an attribute of God that contains God, just as the sunshine contains the sun. Since everything is personal, spiritual words are names. Everything both spiritual and material has a name. It is a person and it has a name. The soul is a person and its consciousness-energy is its name. God is a person and God's consciousness-energy is the Holy Name. The person itself is motion. Motion produces sound. The core of divine love is the shared movement, or dance, of God and soul. The spiritual world is based on mobility. The center of worship is action. In response to this, the soul expresses itself in sound -- by vocalizing God's names. Motion is primary. Sound is secondary. God as an active agent is present in the Holy Names. A soul is a particle of God, just as a forest fire is a particle of the sun. By sounding the Holy Names of God, the soul becomes conscious of itself as a portion of God. The soul sounds itself and God both. The soul's particular existence also has a particular name that indicates its particular relationship with God. The soul's name is both the same as and different from God's name. God's name is God, and the soul's name is Glory to God. For souls in the material world who aspire to love God, there are other souls who are intermediaries (teachers, guardian angels, gurus, saints, priests, gods) between the soul and God. The soul cannot approach God directly. It must always go by way of some medium. Nature is such a medium. Nature as a whole is a person, and each Locality is a person. Souls who dwell in minds, bodies, and planets within a material universe may approach God by way of the personal spirit of the Locality around them. The name of the soul of the Locality is a connection between the aspirant and the ultimate goal. Like the soul's real name, the Locality's real name means Glory to God. Knowledge of the Locality's spiritual name comes either through cultural tradition or individual vision. In sounding it, the soul worships the whole sun of which its own fire is a particle.

81 UWA-HEYOAHA

82 Humans! Seek out your biological niche! Eco-ethics begins with this demand. Wolves have a niche. So do daffodils. Humans aren't any different. There's a place for us among the Earth's creatures. Sometimes we forget that. We tend to think of ourselves as the managers of others' niches. But management is God's work. We humans don't know how to do it. We're no different from wolves or asphodels in that regard. We're not caretakers. We can be anthropocentric. It's allowed. Wolves are lupicentric -- daffodils are narcissistic. They attend to their own concerns while God manages the overall structure so that each species has its niche.     Nearby I see some birds sitting in a tree. The crows use the top branches because they need a long-distance lookout point. The bluejays use the middle branches because that's the best place for them to launch their attacks on berries and bugs. The robins sit on the bottom branches because they eat worms and other ground- level food. Each has its niche. The administration is done by God. The crows see the world as their world. The bluejays and robins are also uninterested in any view of things other than what their own self-interest allows them to see.     Let's drop the Biblical notion that humans have dominion over other species. We need an antidote to the attitude -- now prevalent among those concerned with planetary ecology -- that humans can heal the Earth. No doubt, the globe's surface is defaced. Something must be done, fast. We humans are the slashers of the biosphere and those of us who take our crime seriously do feel bad about it and do want to repair the damage our species has done. But to cast ourselves in the role of physician to Terra is a grave mistake. The whole mess has happened in the first place because we've become blind to a hierarchy: humans on the bottom, Earth in the middle, and God on top. God speaks to humans via the Earth. Humans worship God via the Earth. The Earth is holy -- not on her own, but by way of her receiving the grace of God. Hail

Earth, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb, the Locality.     When we humans broke, in our minds, the bond between God and Gaia we transformed the planet into a ball of exploitable materials. Now without restoring our awareness of the divine bond we think we can patch things up. But how is our medical meddling going to be any better for the planet than our greed-grab has been? I have a feeling we're setting ourselves up for a cosmic malpractice suit. If, as deep-ecologists often say, the biosphere is more complex than we know and than we can ever know, then who are we to assume we can supervise its recovery from our wounds?     Human business is to care for human concerns. Do lions advocate antelope rights? No. Lions eat antelopes. That's how lions act when they're in their niche as provided by God. Ecologists would have humans step out of their niche and meddle in God's business -- of course with good intentions abounding. Even the most progressive ecologists -- the deep-ecologists who want to reclaim wilderness from the grip of civilization -- even they want to interfere. They would protect, nurture, cultivate, breed. As such they affirm the active intervention of humans as controllers. A hands-on approach, all for a good purpose.     Or is it good? What is their stated goal? This: larger wilderness areas. But still, wliderness with boundaries. Wilderness has no bounds! Wilderness is managed by the Unbounded Infinite, not by finite ecologists. They remain scientists with manipulating tendencies. Altruistic manipulators, yes. Thoreau wrote that if someone were to seek him out with the intention of doing him good, "I should run for my life." No doubt the Earth feels the same way about ecologists. Nothing could be worse for Nature (for ourselves too since we are -- let's not forget it -- part of Nature) than humans trying to improve Nature. The Earth is a Goddess! Who are we? Pretenders attempting to "heal the Earth."     When the Earth is sick she goes to God for help. Not to us. We're not the doctor. We're the disease. God will heal the Earth, and heal us through the Earth.     Our petty plans are too limited to work. Take, for instance, the concept of big wilderness preserves. Such bounded "wilderness" exists as an island within a cultivated ocean. Here logic dominates intuition. But that's perverse. Logic is healthy only within the larger context of intuition. For example, in classical syllogistic structure, a priori intuitive premises precede logical inferences. (Otherwise, there's nothing to rationalize about.) Likewise, the Earth must be wild all over its surface. The bounded areas are the niches for each species.     Humans can live in wliderness. We can make our nests in the wild, as we used to do up until a few thousand years ago. That's not devolution. That's getting back on the right track of progressive evolution, which is a spiritual development. If we submit to the altruistic plans of ecologists we'll end up with fish-bowl "wildernesses" that exclude (by law!) human habitation. Leafy theme parks for gawking backpackers who return to their high- priced "solar" houses.     Humans belong in wilderness. But what sort of humans? Not rapist stripminers or castrator lumberjacks or even kindly shepherds. That is, not post-Edenic humans. When hunting arrived we lost sight of our niche in wilderness. We lost sight of its purpose, which is to give us the chance to become conscious of ourselves as consciousness. To become self-actualized. Not to try our hand at being God. But to listen to what God's telling us about ourselves.     What are the features of our niche? First, start with the human body as a natural creation. What is its sympathetic habitat? Since the outer surface of the human body is a relatively sensitive skin -- little hair, no feathers or scales -- our bodily warmth isn't held in by insulation. Warmth must be provided by the air that touches the skin. Thus the habitat-niche for humans is tropical, subtropical, or mediterranean. Next, look at our place in the food chain. Humans are primates. Our closest relatives are chimps, baboons, orangutans, and gorillas. Those apes are mostly fruit-eaters. The human ape-body is suited for the same kind of diet. In fact, as primate physiology appraches human-ness, frugivorous diet increases. Humans do best when living on raw fruit alone. There's no need for agriculture or hunting. Or fire, or tools. Fruit-foraging will do. This leaves plenty of time for spiritual entertainments. Also, fruitarians have less sex: natural population control. Third, the human niche doesn't demand any elaborate sheltering (clothing or housing) -- somewhat more than other primates because we're the "naked apes," but in a warm

or hot climate not much more. Also, production and consumption are minimal, since spiritual pursuits can satisfy the mind and body.     Those are the main features of the human niche concerning habitat, diet, shelter, economy, and culture. "It is life near the bone where it is sweetest." (Thoreau) When we work to achieve this way of life we are fulfilling all our eco-ethical obligations.     Beware the rampage of the righteous. Greed's core is pride, and pride is also the core of eco-altruism.     God save the Earth from ecologists! Only God can save the Earth from plagues both impious and pure. Healing will take place concurrent with human recognition of the position of God as the possessor of the cure, God as the doctor who knows the complex pathways of the Earth's ecosystems.     Hands off! Step out of the way and let God's work work. What is our work? Toss out the cultural trash we've accumulated since Eden. Move closer to the Equator. Have less sex. Join Nature's worship of God.     God heals the Earth, and the Earth heals us. The Earth's disfigurement is nothing compared to our own. Humans heal Earth? Impossible. Earth heal humans? Necessary. Father God and Mother Earth will care for us and for all species.     One fruitarian is worth a thousand lobbyists.     Seek first the niche and all else will be given to you.

83 The soul is motion, direction, purpose, urge, desire, life. The soul undulates. Undulating motion gives rise to sound. Sound is consciousness. Movement is primary -- sound is secondary. As the sun radiates heat, so does the soul radiate sound. The sun is a person: so is the soul. A person is freedom, choice, movement. Moving gesture precedes speech as language. Dance precedes music. Moving bodies make the wave-sounds of breath. Undulation is life and lives at the source of religion. Glory-waves flow out from God and return, pulsing, vibrating, ecstatically praising God. Our worship is primal in organic undulation.

84 From primal religion to universal religion to local religion. From life to light to love. From sat to chit to ananda.

85 The soul's light (sound) exists visibly (audibly) everywhere all at once. But the soul's center is the dark (the silence) of mysterious motion. Both light and dark are needed. They're always found together. The light is eternal energy. The dark is substantial form. When light and dark co-exist, the soul worships God. When they clash, the soul envies God.     God, the Supersoul, has a dark center too. God's light and the soul's light are the same light. The dark defines the difference. It makes worship possible.     For the soul to go to God, the soul's light (consciousness) must dive into the soul's dark (the self) and face (God) the monster within the dark. The monster will give the light a gift: The Instrument of Worship.     Why, in our dreams, do we find God in the shape of a monster? Because we cloak God with our envy, which is horrible to us. When we take it off God, and hang it in our own dark closet -- when we accept our innate sinfulness -- worship begins.     The dark self is the ground of our being, the private Locality where our consciousness confronts God.

86 My number is nine. Using the common numerological scheme, the letters of most of the significant words and phrases in this essay add up to nine. I've found this to be a helpful discipline. It limits my linguistic possibilities to usage in consonance with my individual patterning. I call this rule The Law of 9.

87 Sometimes the text builds up into dogma and sometimes it breaks down into idiosyncracies. Between the two poles, on the equator, lives a person.

88 In my interpretation, the philosophy of Pandevotionalism places great emphasis on the Locality as the ground where the soul meets God. The Locality is a complex ecosystem. Nevertheless, for us humans, the most inspiring aspect of any Locality is other humans. Like "birds of a feather," we "flock together." What about trees, clouds, and rivers? Yes, they're sources of inspiration too. The Locality must always be taken as a whole. Humans can be understood as a part of Nature only after the rest of Nature conveys its divinity to us. But as a human my final success or failure will be measured in terms of my relationships with others of my species. No matter how much I want to save the topsoil, whether I get saved or not depends on how I treat my fellow humans. No matter how deeply I feel that the surf and the mountains are worshipping God, my feelings are shallow if I don't see every human hand in the act of giving a gift to God, every human eye looking for God, every upraised arm reaching for God.     Being human, how can I escape being anthropocentric in some sense of the word? I observe the world through anthropo-eyes, love it with an anthropo-heart. To me, the world as a whole is a human being. That perception may be a limitation. But I am limited. Notwithstanding how much I know that the world is God, or a part or an aspect of God, still for me -- a human -- the world is a human. Indeed even God is most compelling to me in human form. If Nature is my church, humanity is my altar.     John Muir himself, mystic lover of Yosemite, had to climb down from the snowy peaks to the warm valley and get married. Apparently he never put the two realms together in his mind. Earlier he'd written that if war broke out between the humans and the animals he'd side with the furbearers. And in his later years he sought spiritual sustenance on lonely Alaskan glaciers. But he also believed that while God had made the wilderness, only humans could preserve it. Thus he entered into the very human sphere of politics.     Like Muir, we too cannot escape our specieshood. True, humans are no better than the hippopotami. The world is not made for the pleasure of homo sapiens separately. However, we are humans, and we naturally seek our channel to divinity through others of our kind. I assume hippos, and rocks, do the same.     Pandevotionalism asserts that Nature always glorifies God. If that is so, then all natural forms and activities are always glorifying God -- all animal, vegetable, and mineral bodies, and all their actions. Therefore every human body and every human activity always glorifies God. Needless to say, we're not always conscious of this "hidden meaning" of our Human Nature. Our best life's work is to gain such an understanding, and to act accordingly. That is the human face of Pandevotionalism.

89 Fascinating, isn't it, how humans praise God. That is, how the Earth praises God by way of her humans. In the store they pick and choose which feature of God they like best. They walk briskly down the courthouse steps to keep an appointment with God. Standing in a group near the tennis court they animatedly discuss the complex divine plan. Alone, one of them peers at the setting sun with a vague sense of tragedy. Another kneels on a workshop floor to find a lost mystery. Smiles open faces to God's love. Stern looks defend holiness against evildoers. Peaceful sleepers look to God within. Those with canes, crutches, and wheelchairs humble themselves before God. Political leaders trumpet God's glory. All singers sing hymns. Babies wail because they never get enough God. The whole human race glorifies the Supreme. Yet this is only a small part of Mother Nature's devotion.

90 Sand and Surf teach me to worship God. So do Moon and Sun. Most of all, Woman and Man

teach me.     I'm not referring to the souls associated with female and male human bodies. They might have desires totally at odds with any religious impulse. Nevertheless, Mother Nature sees to it that their bodies (their forms and activities) are always glorifying God. Human bodies are part of Nature's devotion to the Supreme. My intention, as always, is to join Nature in her praise. When I use the words "Woman" and "Man" in the present context, I'm referring to the material forms and actions of human beings.     Woman and Man teach me more rigorously than any other natural entities. To keep my mind on my human tutors, I can repeat their names: Woman and Man.     Those names belong to humans. But they also indicate the feminine-masculine pairing found on every level of existence. All animal, plant, and mineral beings have their Woman and Man. The deities of any Locality are a Woman and a Man. On the cosmic level, Yin is Woman and Yang is Man. Ultimately, at the very center of the original spiritual source, live the Transcendental Divine Couple: Woman and Man.     Woman-Man are both everywoman-everyman and archetypal Feminine-Masculine.     As in Sanskrit usage, when invoking these persons I usually give their names without a conjunction between. Some holy names in Sanskrit are Lakshmi Narayan, Sita Ram, Radha Krishna: Female Male. Likewise in English I like to say Woman Man.     The repetition of these names might be called Woman Man Invocation. It is a possible way to worship God.     To start, I use OH WOMAN MAN as the basic invocation.

91 Oh Woman Man

92 Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man

93 the Woman and the Man and the Woman and the Man and the Woman and the Man and the Woman and the Man and

94 Woman Man Woman and Man Woman Man Woman and Man Woman Man Woman and Man Woman Man Woman and Man

95 Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman and Man Oh Woman Man

96 Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man

97 Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man God Woman Man Loves World Woman Man World Woman Man Loves God Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Surf Woman Man Loves Sand Woman Man Sand Woman Man Loves Surf Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Big Woman Man Loves Small Woman Man Small Woman Man Loves Big Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Earth Woman Man Loves Sky Woman Man Sky Woman Man Loves Earth Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Moon Woman Man Loves Sun Woman Man Sun Woman Man Loves Moon Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Your Woman Man Loves Our Woman Man Our Woman Man Loves Your Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Rock Woman Man Loves Cloud Woman Man Cloud Woman Man Loves Rock Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man East Woman Man Loves West Woman Man West Woman Man Loves East Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man North Woman Man Loves South Woman Man South Woman Man Loves North Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Day Woman Man Loves Night Woman Man Night Woman Man Loves Day Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man One Woman Man Loves Two Woman Man Two Woman Man Loves One Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Fire Woman Man Loves Ice Woman Man Ice Woman Man Loves Fire Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man High Woman Man Loves Low Woman Man Low Woman Man Loves High Woman Man

Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Whale Woman Man Loves Sea Woman Man Sea Woman Man Loves Whale Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Heart Woman Man Loves Mind Woman Man Mind Woman Man Loves Heart Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Red Woman Man Loves Green Woman Man Green Woman Man Loves Red Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Yin Woman Man Loves Yang Woman Man Yang Woman Man Loves Yin Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Spark Woman Man Loves Flame Woman Man Flame Woman Man Loves Spark Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Spring Woman Man Loves Fall Woman Man Fall Woman Man Loves Spring Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Summer Woman Man Loves Winter Woman Man Winter Woman Man Loves Summer Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Matter Woman Man Loves Spirit Woman Man Spirit Woman Man Loves Matter Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Tree Woman Man Loves Forest Woman Man Forest Woman Man Loves Tree Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Sparrow Woman Man Loves Swallow Woman Man Swallow Woman Man Loves Sparrow Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Talking Woman Man Loves Hearing Woman Man Hearing Woman Man Loves Talking Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Arm Woman Man Loves Leg Woman Man Leg Woman Man Loves Arm Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Time Woman Man Loves Space Woman Man Space Woman Man Loves Time Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man

Allah Woman Man Loves Buddha Woman Man Buddha Woman Man Loves Allah Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Good Woman Man Loves Evil Woman Man Evil Woman Man Loves Good Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Point Woman Man Loves Line Woman Man Line Woman Man Loves Point Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Woman Woman Man Loves Man Woman Man Man Woman Man Loves Woman Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Twig Woman Man Loves Branch Woman Man Branch Woman Man Loves Twig Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Hand Woman Man Loves Foot Woman Man Foot Woman Man Loves Hand Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Sperm Woman Man Loves Egg Woman Man Egg Woman Man Loves Sperm Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Flea Woman Man Loves Dung Woman Man Dung Woman Man Loves Flea Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Bee Woman Man Loves Honey Woman Man Honey Woman Man Loves Bee Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Flower Woman Man Loves Fruit Woman Man Fruit Woman Man Loves Flower Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Rain Woman Man Loves River Woman Man River Woman Man Loves Rain Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Bone Woman Man Loves Blood Woman Man Blood Woman Man Loves Bone Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Skin Woman Man Loves Hair Woman Man Hair Woman Man Loves Skin Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Tongue Woman Man Loves Tooth Woman Man Tooth Woman Man Loves Tongue Woman Man

Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Apple Woman Man Loves Orange Woman Man Orange Woman Man Loves Apple Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Throw Woman Man Loves Catch Woman Man Catch Woman Man Loves Throw Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Air Woman Man Loves Wind Woman Man Wind Woman Man Loves Air Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Self Woman Man Loves Soul Woman Man Soul Woman Man Loves Self Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Total Woman Man Loves All Woman Man All Woman Man Loves Total Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man Love Woman Man Loves Love Woman Man Love Woman Man Loves Love Woman Man Oh Woman Man Oh Woman Man Woman Man Loves Woman Man

98 Worship gushes, erupts, radiates, ejaculates. Inside becomes outside continually. Worship is the secret central force that drives all creativity. Worship that is pure is always creative -- never mere repetition. Worship rushes out from the unknown to the known and so is always new and freely invented. Rituals grow and change. God is always expanding and worship of God always expands too. God creates worshippers and worshippers create worship of God. It's not art. Art makes objects. Worship has no object except God. This essay isn't true praise because I'm paying attention to objectified structures. Frozen forms clog the natural flow. Full glorification begins only after I step outside the essay's concrete walls.

99 Skin talks -- it says -- Praise God -- Praise God. Skin is the moving edge between two spiritual beings. As the tideterrace is shared by land and sea -- as Love is shared by The Female and The Male -- so the skin is both ours and God's. Skin is where we end and God begins. OUR SKIN LOVES GOD'S.

100 Meister Eckhart said, "Nature's intent is neither food, nor drink, nor clothing, nor comfort, nor anything else from which God is left out. Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found."

101 This essay is a journal of six years of living in the mountains and visiting the seashore. Although it may not seem so, it's about my eyes, my car, my wife planting peas in the spring. The ideas

expressed here can't be separated from the particulars of my life. What I say here is true for me and not intended to be true for anyone else. The best social work my words could do would be to drop a few hints on how to construct your own personal religion in your spare time.

102 Breechwise he was born but baptised anyway 1941. Then World War Two started. Trauma at twenty months at sister's advent but they later played on the tideterraces of Cape Cod. He listened to the radio about the Atom Bomb. A dream recurred: he and thousands of men identical to him floated in penuche space naked, motion slowed to near-stopping, as a golden bullet crawled imperceptibly to his heart -- he was heavy as lead, inside a gum rubber eraser being squeezed, yet his was the hand squeezing it -- on waking he reported that "there were thousands of them but there was only one." He camped up in New Hampshire with Dad. Starting school -- eating sugar cookies -- playing in the woods like the Indians. And television came with Howdy Doody. He was a Cub Scout and studied astronomy. While looking out his window at the side lawn he became a Solipsist. Then the Korean War began -- he drew rockets and F86 Sabre Jets. And in 1951 Captain Marvel. I like Ike -- Boy Scouts -- masturbation -- deja vu's. He was afraid of girls and afraid of Russia. Next came rock 'n' roll and two-tone cars with wrap-around windshields and weird haircuts and generalized paranoia, and myopia. The glasses were installed upon the pimply face. Release in a naked midnight excursion through the back fields. Now Pantheism sustained him. Paperback science fiction. He edited-in- chief the yearbook. At Rowe the lecturer revealed the Cosmic God. Amherst College greeted him -- a psychology major -- a ban-the- bomber -- a nudism advocate -- an art major -- a New Wave Cinema addict -- a malcontent who left for a year. Then the Vietnam War started. In Boston he tried the Museum School and saw Faja Lobbi, Dutch docu-poem film on Suriname that inspired his visit to Puerto Rico summer 1961. On to NYC, the New School, Columbia University, devised a Time-Energy System, and returned to Amherst. Devised the Flesh-Mystic. Became a film maker. Hitch-hiked around the USA during vacations. Had his Truro Dune Experience: as he drove by on Route 6 he saw himself naked on a big dune slope -- a persistent lietmotif. He made Rebirth, his first. He graduated. Summered with a goat on a movie lot. Columbia film school -- SDS -- anti-war demonstrations -- pot -- Buddhism -- Voidism -- underground cinema. He finished Urge, his second. Nudist flick The Naked People encouraged utopian notions. He married Michele. There was poetry, there were visions, there was hashish. He joined WRL and became a CO and got his MFA. He exhibited himself on the beach. Blood was his third. A study, Brakhage, published. Times Square civil disobedience and arrest. With friends he formed Clear Central Exchange for multi-media shows. He finished Rot. His fourth. Then, his metaphysical confusion. His reading the Gita. His chanting the Hare Krishna Mantra. His introduction to Personalism. His initiation as Damodaradas. His failing marriage. His Abbott Hill Experience wherein he saw that he, the Earth, and God really existed and were not illusions. He managed the Boston Krishna center briefly then left Iskcon -- briefly -- to teach at Millenium, have a one-man Cinematheque show, work with the Performance Group, the Bread and Puppet Theater, the Apparition Theater. Back to Iskcon as Back to Godhead Art Director. His father died. He opened a center in DC. Sex was a problem. Divorce with Michele, marriage with Michelle, the birth of Rose 1971. He sold Hindu books. He had a Parking Lot Experience of God the Overarching. He gave two thousand lectures. Quietly desperate, he tended the flock. On a hunch he studied and wrote about biochemistry and particle physics which, combined with his Delmarva Beach Experience that convinced him not to try to see himself but to see God seeing him, supported a six-month period of celibacy. He devised Theistic Personalism. He ran for Congress for two months. A trip to India wasn't enough to turn his growing frustration with Iskcon and revived interest in aesthetics and film criticism. Along with Nixon, he resigned his Presidency. Started on "Ernst, Minnelli, and Resnais." Gave a few classes at the Orb and moved to Los Angeles. Associate Editor Back to Godhead. Composed manifestos and theological bursts. Started "High Climbers and Hard Falls" (Hitchcock). His faith fell. Self-actualization and positive thinking rebuilt him. In his Kratka Ridge Experience he looked at the Earth and it looked like him and he thought the Earth's thoughts but he couldn't understand them so he knew he had to live in the country. But it took five years. That year he saw 175 movies. He

screamed most primally. The magazine fired him. Friends gave him work writing Sanskrit-to-English projects with translators. World mythology -- the Conch Club of "Excons" -- astrology business -- songwriting with Michael. His guru died. He edited the paper for the New Age Caucus. His second marriage failed. Reciting Planet Mantras on the nude beach he wrote Godsong a translation of the Gita, and finished George Lucas: Mythmaker. Guided fantasy -- prayer -- Rebirthing -- hugging -- precognition. Caucus money running out, he took to the free lance and collaged with the woman in the shared apartment. Divorce. Dreamwork. Editor and Production Coordinator at GIA. On Malibu's sand he drew the Oowee image. And in 1981 married Ellie. And moved to Hendersonville. And bought land. And made Roxx. Entrepreneurial schemes: Your Life Story, Southern Mountain Trading Comapny, Decor Graphics. He identified with abos as he cleared the land and sang his Ovahnyaal, his Liflighlo. Two weeks he spent at Artpark growing Shining Rock Mountain. At home on the land, his Huckleberry Mountain Experience nourished his soul. "Don't you hear me callin' to ya, Daniel," she sang. "I am the Glory of God," she invited him to sing along. "And the Glory of God glorifies God." He had understood the Earth's thoughts. Whereupon he found his place of power down toward the tropics and did Organic Undulation at Wabasso Beach. And while working for the Fresh Market at 2300 feet kept his mind at sea level. Fruitarianism. Pandevotionalism.     Who were his teachers? Guides familiar and unfamiliar. 1940s   The Priests. Rodney Upham Clark. Helen Cooper Clark. Holly Clark. Clark Relatives. Cooper relatives. Friends of the family. Miss Kimball. The Gang. Stars. Bufffalo Bob Smith. Captain Marvel Comics. 1950s   Douglas MacArthur. Clouds. Lee DeForest et al. John Nagy. Jerry Lewis. Don Herbert. Estes Kefauver. Dave Garroway. Birds. Jack Kent. Bunky Wood. Kenneth Grahame et al. Greek and Norse Gods. The Moonglows et al. Pinin Farina. Hugh Hefner. Richard Matheson. Jack Kerouac. Ray Bradbury. A. Merritt et al. Dave Brubeck. Charlie Parker. Miles Davis. Vance Packard. Anna DiVittorio. Judy Hentz. Carol Campanele. Rowe Camp Lecturer. Dom Manfredi. Beats. Nudists. Bertrand Russell. Stanley Kramer. Fred Cook. 1960s   Jackson Pollack et al. Jack Kennedy. Francois Truffaut. Alain Resnais. Jean-Luc Godard. Michelangelo Antonioni. Ingmar Bergman. Stan Brakhage et al. Stefan Sharf. Constance Fera. Thomas Wolfe. D. H. Lawrence. Henry Miller. Nikos Kazantzakis. Mark Rothko. Peter Serenyi. Bob Ross. Bela Bartok. Ron Rice. Ornette Coleman. Alan Watts. Paolo Soleri. Dov Lederberg. D. T. Suzuki. Carl Oglesby. Michele Clark. Dave McReynolds. Hashish. John Cage. Will Gamble. Victor Alonzo. Alan Siegel. LaMonte Young. Timothy Leary. Allen Ginsberg. Swami Bhaktivedanta. Abbott Hill. Peter Schumann. Ken Jacobs. Raymond Marais. 1970s   Michelle Clark. Rose Clark. Bob Corens. Albert Einstein et al. The Sun. B. P. Bowne et al. Vincente Minnelli. Ed Senesi. Alfred Hitchcock. Thomas Gordon. Arthur Janov. Kratka Ridge. Abraham Maslow. Betty Friedan. Dan Maziarz. The Conch Club. Celtic Gods and Heros. C. S. Lewis. J. R. R. Tolkein. Leo Tolstoy. Emily Dickinson. John Lennon. Paul Schrader. Ralph Borsodi. Fritz Perls. Planetary Gods. Mark Satin. Michael Cassidy. Surf. Jack Canfield. Sondra Ray. Michael Sprague. Deborah Bronner. Shirley Ann Williams. Roberto Assogioli. Leonard Orr. Rolling Thunder. Brian Eno et al. 1980s   Sun Bear et al. Rocks. Gerald Jampolsky. Eleanor Singer Clark. Rebecca Jeanne Clark. Evelyn Haynes. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Huckleberry Mountain. Dunes. Steve Mansour. Oaks. The Light Center. Andrew Schmookler. Puma Darnell. W. H. Bates. Katuah Editors. Viktorous Kulvinskas. Eugene Gendlin. The Tasaday. Breathing. Richard Grossinger. Hilton Hotema. Alexander Lowen. Henry David Thoreau. Ann Wigmore. Earth First! Editors. Mikhail Aivanhov. Wabasso Beach. Martha Graham. George Sutherland. Tim Aldrich. Crickets. Raindrops. John Muir. Uwa-Heyoaha. Woman-Man. Skin. Walking.

104 Food plays a small part in nourishing the body. In fact, food is not necessary for physical sustenance. What's necessary for sustaining the body is sunlight, fresh air, exercise, contact with the Earth and its waters, and appropriate thoughts. Those sources provide all the chemicals and energies the cells need.     Remember, when we talk of keeping the body healthy, we mean keeping the cells working. Cells operate like electric batteries. The acid nucleus is the positive pole and the alkiline

cytoplasm is the negative pole. Those basic electrolytic ingredients are already present within the cells. Non-food energy sources are sufficient to keep the batteries charged. Cells need electrical boosts. The Earth is the generator that provides the voltage.     What food does, mainly, is to block the circuit and stifle health. "Junk food" interferes a lot. "Health food" interferes less. But there's no food that lets the cells function at their peak level.     Really, taste is the best reason to eat food, because a pleasing taste makes the eater happy. Happiness is the most important element of physical well-being. So in that way, food can promote health.

105 Forgive me for saying this, but in the end religion is impolite. God is not all radiance. "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God," Yahweh says in Exodus 20.5. The Pilgrim Study Bible comments,     God is the only one who can be rightfully jealous, for there     is no other who is higher or more wonderful than He in any     way. His is "the power and the glory for ever" and He must     demand the honor that belongs to Him. God's jealousy corresponds to the soul's jealousy, the soul's darkness. We crave the dark. The only way we can rid ourselves of addiction to our dark jealousy is to submit ourselves to the jealousy, the darkness, of God. God is dark at the center. Here we have forbidden subject matter: God's tyranny, arbitrariness, and eroticism. Yet from this springs the will and law of God. This black enigma, this Dionysian madness, which is the true body of God, is the heart of the charisma and personality of God. It is an ultimate selfishness. It scares us. Spinoza wrote that "the intellectual love of the mind towards God is part of the infinite love wherewith God loves himself." Simone Weil said, "in so far as I become nothing, God loves himself through me." The saints and mystics willingly give up their will to the will of God. They lose themselves to find themselves. Through obedience they gain liberation. It makes no sense, of course. It's all contradictions. God is "good." Is God "evil" too? Perhaps. But still, God is Love. Love is deepest. On that deepest level, the Godhead is a female person and a male person. Some say the male is the source of the female. That is a logical view. Others say the female is the source -- an intuitive view. Both argue for One at the center. But there are yet others who say the female and the male make up a double center who transcend themselves in Love. Love comes from them but Love controls them. This Trinity appeals to me most. Its mystery confounds logic. Its structure defeats intuition. Love is the overarching spectrum of colors produced by the dance of female and male as they each play black and white. The dark center (the form of the Godhead) is sometimes female and sometimes male. So with the bright outer energy. The Woman and The Man take turns being liberal and being jealous -- always in Love. Love is the song they sing and Love is the music they dance to. For us to dance along we must accept the night as much as the day. God demands it.

106 Offering words to God is good but I come to the center of my religious life when I worship by everyday total-body movement. For me the best such activity is walking. When I worship by walking I fulfill the terms of Entry 4. __________________________________________________________ Category         Acronym             Offering                           Song __________________________________________________________ Goddess             OU         Organic Undulation                 (Breath) Nature               AUW       All Universe Worship                 Auw Dream               TTW       Tide Terrace Worship           Uwa-Heyoaha Action               WMI       Woman Man Invocation       Oh Woman Man Therapy             SLW         Skin Loves Worship       Our Skin Loves God's Communion       TBW         The Beach Walk     WE'RE WALKING TO GOD God                   OU         Organic Undulation                 (Dance) __________________________________________________________

107 The private Locality is the dark at the center of the soul. There God gives you your Self. The mediate Locality is the area within a day's walk. There God gives you God. The ultimate Locality is the dark at the center of God. There God gives you Love. Nature is the dark at the center of the Godhead. God heals us through Nature. When we join Nature's worship of God, we are healed.

DANCE

Towtu Owmbuwswi Awltu

Hendersonville and Clear Creek, North Carolina Sebastian and Wabasso Beach, Florida 1981 to 1987

108 TOA __________________________________________________________ Toa Toa is a religion -- a personal religion -- not secret, but let's say an individual's approach -- here shared, as the Lenni-Lenapes used to share their dreams. You might read this as you would read a writer's outline for a table of contents.

1     TOA     Towtu Owmbuwswi Awltu     The Beginning. Love.     Hymn: TOA. Indicates the religion as a whole.

2     OU     Organic Undulation     The Prelude. Goddess.     Hymn: (BREATH). Primal movement -- in-out duality.

3     AUW     All Universe Worship     The Entrance. Nature.     Hymn: AUW. Sounds like OM -- conceptual unity.

4     TTW     Tide Terrace Worship     Going Inward. Dream.     Hymn: UWA-HEYOAHA. The tutelary spirits of Wabasso Beach.

5     WMI     Woman Man Invocation     Arrival. Action.     HYMN: OH WOMAN MAN. Inspired by the Hare Krishna mantra.

6     SLW

    Skin Loves Worship     Going Outward. Therapy.     Hymn: OUR SKIN LOVES GOD'S. The skin-cortex loop reflects.

7     TBW     The Beach Walk     The Exit. Communion.     Hymn: WE'RE WALKING TO GOD. Walking is the ground of Toa.

8     OU     Organic Undulation     The Postlude. God.     Hymn: (DANCE). Eternal motion -- Trinity -- final form.

9     TOA     Towtu Owmbuwswi Awltu     The End. Love.     Hymn: TOA. Indicates the religion as a whole.

Outwardly my religious life consists of walking along the tide terrace with other people. Inwardly I chant. Combining the two: I talk as I walk, and share my dreams -- the best talk being talking about walking. __________________________________________________________   It may indeed be phantasy, when I     Essay to draw from all created things     Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings; And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie Lessons of love and earnest piety.     So let it be, and if the wise world rings     In mock of this belief, it brings Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity. So will I build my altar in the fields,     And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild flower yields     Shall be the incense I will yield to Thee, Thee only God! and thou shalt not despise Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.         -- S. T. Coleridge

 

Part Two

  OOWEE

oo-auw-o-ah-she-he-she-he  

Flowers

The least important things are the most important things.  

RBWB The Ritual of the Bodies of Wabasso Beach

1     IOTA   Intonation of the Atom     (Silent Meditation)     I am the Glory of God

2     OU   Organic Undulation I     (Wave Breathing)

3     AUW   All Universe Worship     Auw

4     TTW   Tide Terrace Worship     Uwa Heyoaha

5     WMI   Woman Man Invocation     Oh Woman Man

6     SLW   Skin Loves Worship     Our Skin Loves God's

7     TBW   The Beach Walk     We're Walking to God

8     OU   Organic Undulation II     (Awe Dancing)

9     TGTG   The Glory to God     (Hearty Exaltation)     O Glory to God   Clothes

The material body is prison enough. Why add clothing to the terms of captivity?  

Support

Desire is the support of the world, not money or products or machines.  

Inside

I am inside Nature, and Nature is inside God. This never changes, even in the spiritual world, because Nature is Service.  

Earth Day

Earth says I love you God That's what Earth says I love you God  

Decorations

I don't want to change anybody.

The mathematical concept of zero is the big illusion that allows us our little illusion of control.

To be humble, be close to the humus.

We think the spiritual world lies ahead of us and if we take a big leap we will be in the midst of it. The leap is "salvation," "liberation," "sudden realization." But consider this. Our true relationship with the spiritual world is incomprehensible. It can be described in the following paradox. Reality, the spirit, is always ahead of us, yet we're always in the midst of it. Nowhere to go. And nothing to do! Nowhere to go because we're already there -- and because we can never get there. Nothing to do because we've already accomplished all there is to do -- and because we can never achieve anything. Because there is no space or time. Because God is everything but we are not God. We can't understand this. We can do better. We can love it. In loving, we find many places to go. And much to do. Our love of God, or reality, pushes us forward to catch the spirit even though it's already caught us. Logic be damned -- logic is damnation and love is salvation even though there's no such thing as hell or heaven. There's only God. And us. All is one and all is two. The vibration caused by the meeting of these contradictory principles produces all the further features of reality, the decorations.

The Earth is an animal, a living beast. I feel it breathe while I lie on its pine straw fur, on its strong, warm body. The household cat lies on my stomach and snoozes while I breathe and we're born away on the heaving bedrock as the global animal stirs, rearranging its position.

The function of orgasm: a momentary release from the pain of lust.

To be worth anything you must be in a place on the brink of the unknown, on the edge of outer space.

Ecstasy has to be. Ecstasy has to be an abandonment. Ecstasy has to be physical. Ecstasy has to be a boiling of the blood. Ecstasy has to be an eruption of life force through the nervous system.  

The Pledge of Allegiance

I pledge allegiance to the Sun of the united galaxies of the universe, and to the Deity for whom it stands, one God everywhere, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.  

A Small Portion

What sort of state am I in -- thinking I'm Yang or I'm Yin, when I'm neither. I'm something more modest: a portion of God and the Goddess. A part of their love is the soul that I am. My natural role is to worship the Yin and the Yang -- and get out of the man-woman game.  

An OK Guy

I'm so very busy living the wrong way, I don't have any time to live the right way. Yes, I'm killing myself, so that others may be able to kill themselves.  

Master and Slaves

The nigra is a humble beast, just made to serve the white. Among us he is worth the least, as dull as we are bright. So if you come upon a black who won't accept his lot,

exterminate the little gnat. Yes. Kill him on the spot! The woman is a humble beast, just made to serve the man. Among us she is worth the least, as low as we are grand. So if you come upon a skirt who won't accept her lot, wash off the little piece of dirt. Yes. Kill her on the spot! The rest, you too are humble beasts, just made for serving me. Among us you are worth the least. All slaves. But I am free. So if I come upon you souls who won't accept your lot, your heads will decorate my poles. Yes. I'll kill you on the spot!  

Confession

They're all laughing at me. They all know I want to be a fool. I want to be a failure. I want to defeat myself. They see me do things backwards. They hear my contradictory speech. They know I'm a pathetic clown who wants to commit suicide for laughs. I know I'm a fool, too. My father told me so. That's the way I was even in the womb. I pretended to be confused. But I came out backwards because that's the way I wanted it. I wanted to make my life into a mockery. To hurt myself. To punish myself. I had committed the worst crime of all. I had murdered a baby. I buried the baby in a secret place. They never found it. I was never caught. I was a sneak, a coward. I hid in the shadows. I didn't take my punishment like a man. So I must punish myself forever. That's why people who get to know me well are revolted by me. They can see through the glass I hide behind to the hell of my disgusting soul. They've found out I'm a murderer, I'm a sneak, I can't be trusted. It's been going on for lifetimes. Out of envy of God. I destroy my soul because it belongs to God. I hate God so much that I will destroy everything.

My self. Everything. My God. Nobody can be God if I can't be God. Everything must go. Laugh at me, you shits! I'll show you! As you go down into nothingness with me and God and with everything that ever was -- as oblivion, death, pain, and defeat rise up and swallow us all -- then I will laugh, knowing that in the end, evil has justified my every stinking move. Call the police. I have confessed.  

The Word For This

To rejoice in others' misfortune, to take pleasure in others' pain: the word for this is envy. No one is free from its stain. To grieve at others' misfortune, to help them start a new life: the word for this is mercy. Nothing else frees us from strife. It's our envy of God that destroys us, in our battle to be number one. But the mercy of God can revive us, by the power of Earth, Moon, and Sun. To rejoice in the power and the glory, to take pleasure in God's holy name: the word for this is worship. Make worship your life's only aim.  

Evils

Acceptable evils: anger without violence, eating without meat- eating, sex without orgasm. Evil can take on subtle forms -- such as when I use my weakness as a weapon to hurt others (by making them feel responsible for my weakness). But my weakness results from my fear of oblivion, a vision of nothingness that in turn results from a my lack of an essential vision of God. What is the source of evil? The heart of the damned. The horror of evil concentrates at that moment when the soul commits a capital sin and in doing so sells itself to the devil. The devil doesn't hesitate. He grabs the soul at that moment and takes it to hell. The body and mind continue operating only by a kind of remote control. That's why the mind of the damned wants to go to hell -- to connect up with the soul again. You can tell who these pitiful people are because the self is absent. You can sense a whirlpool- like implosion of energy swirling into them. They fearfully suck in the world like vampires. They're dark, bottomless pits. They have no self-energy to radiate out. They feed off other selves and pull others into themselves, canvassing for recruits for the devil. They're dependent on others for a sense of identity, always imitating, begging, demanding, blaming, attacking. With no center to work from, they display erratic, self-contradictory behavior. Although they are dangerous and destructive individuals, they are moral weaklings and their intelligence lacks depth. It's best not to confront these unfortunate people, and not to fight them. They will try to draw you into their own way of deceit and violence. At the extreme, they will try to enrage you so much that you will kill them, which reunites their mind and soul in hell, and which makes you the next one in line, the next to sell yourself to the devil. If it's

necessary for you to get around the damned (you can never defeat them), do it by cleverness, subterfuge, white lies. Steer a narrow course between indifference, which will destroy you, and anger, which can destroy the world. Remember: evil people want to be evil. If you try to appeal to their better natures, you will fail. The devil has paid them in the currency of power and domination. They drink that intoxicant and get addicted to it. They're blind to the beauties of reason or love. How, then, can they get their souls back? By reuniting mind and soul in a lower life form, and then gradually transmigrating to the human form again. Or, by tricking the devil. The success of either way depends on a change of desire by the self, and on the grace of God. In the spiritual world, a soul may become jealous of God. That soul wants to be God, to possess God's attributes. It loses its taste for worshipping God and itself wants to be the one worshipped. So it goes to the place where that can happen: the material world. It first goes there as an exalted being and is adored and honored. But slowly by the weight of its pride it sinks into ignorance and feels pain. Thus it becomes angry at God and wants to destroy God. All thoughts of being God disappear. Now it wants a world without any God, and psychologically it lives in such a world. Jealousy has turned to envy. In destroying God, the soul destroys itself. The concept of spirit, the concept of life, is now an enemy. The materialistic soul suffers greatly and often seeks relief in its former state of jealousy (that is, trying to be God). But the two psychologies are merely complimentary, feeding each other while starving the soul. Only when the soul regains its taste for praising God can it find satisfaction. The desire changes from within, by the urge of the soul and by the kindness of God. And the soul resumes its life in the spiritual world. Having left and returned, the soul never leaves again.  

SHR   She He Ritual

Walking naked at the water's edge, raise your arms and make a pledge to God. Call out "She He!" and thus fulfill the prophecy that you will start the Golden Age and everyone will turn the page to God. It's all in time. It's in the name, the rhyme, one in two and two in one: She He. Stretch in the sun to God. Form and gesture, skin and soul in equal measure. Perfect shell and perfect stone on perfect sand will take us home to God. And ocean waves will make us all God's willing slaves.  

Systems

The problem is not with ecosystems but with ego systems.  

Standard Circular Walking

"Flop 'n' Flex 'n' Flow"

1. Walk around in circles. 2. Keep your feet pointing straight ahead. 3. Flop. Relax your toe, ankle, and knee joints. Let the blood circulate through. 4. Visualize your legs moving in forward-turning circles. 5. Flex. Use your iliacus and psoas muscles to power your walking. 6. Visualize your backbone resting on the circle of your pelvis. 7. Flow. Relax your trunk, shoulder, and neck muscles. Do circular breathing. 8. Keep a smile on your face. 9. On Walking as Worship.     All walking is a Walk To God.     First, by walking, we get closer to a destination. The essence of all destinations is God. Walkers praise God by reducing their distance from God. (Or, by following God.)     Second, by swinging their limbs, what walkers show God is a dance of glorification for God's pleasure. The walking itself is doing the worshipping. That is, Mother Nature is doing it. It's her Gloria. When we join her by comprehending that We're Walking To God, we live our eternal life of divine loving.     Third, in a Walk To God the destination is spiritual, not material. Standard Circular Walkers have a place to go to. But we never get there. God is always one step ahead of us. Walkers get closer -- always closer -- and the closer we get, the better we feel. There's no frustration about never arriving, because our walking itself is the destination. Praising God and being with God are the same. We travel along a path of developing consciousness. At every step, God smiles at us. With every step, we smile more. God fills our steps with happiness.     Walking is a religious ceremony. Consider the movement of your body as a dance for God's pleasure. Meditate on the sound of your footsteps, hearing them as Nature praising God. Offer the image of your footsteps to God by saying or thinking a name of God with each step. Love other people's walking as part of the great Pandevotional pastime of the universe. Allow God's love to flow in a circle: from God through the locality to you, and from you through the locality to God.  

Mantralogy

Prelude Whenever Billy Batson, famous boy newscaster, says the word "SHAZAM," he is miraculously changed into powerful Captain Marvel, the world's mightiest mortal, who combines in his magnificent physique the powers of six of the mightiest heros of all time! Solomon...wisdom   Hercules...strength   Atlas...stamina   Zeus...power   Achilles...courage   Mercury...speed         c 1949 Fawcett Publications, Inc.

1946 There were thousands of them but there was only one.

1955 oowa wokka lokka chimba

1966 I have no idea.

1978 Sun shine down on me. Please burn up my misery.

1979 Waves come rolling up along the shore. Waves go sliding down along the sand. They don't stop -- they're coming back for more -- guided by an invisible hand.

1979 Just keep on loving Just keep on loving Don't get off the track If they don't love you back Just keep on loving

1982 vishnubokhtaojehovahahuramazdamanitou diosbutsuchaitanyaallahwakantankajesu

1983 All is life and light and love, and love loves loving love.

1984 I am the glory of God, and God's glory glorifies God.

1984 Auw

1985 Uwa-Heyoaha

1986 Oh Woman Man

1987 Skin talks. It says: Praise God, Praise God.

1987 Toa

1987 Our skin loves God's.

1987 We're walking to God, we're walking to God, We're walking to God today. We're walking to God, we're walking to God, We're walking to God to stay.

1988 O glory to God

1989 Ylloh Uwa Heyoaha

1989 Yuh

1989 Dear God

1990 I worship the Moon and bow to the Sun. I worship you too, and everyone.

1990 Lucky Blacky Lucky Blacky Blacky Blacky Lucky Lucky Lucky Whitey Lucky Whitey Whitey Whitey Lucky Lucky Mercy Lover Mercy Lover Lover Lover Mercy Mercy Mercy Pleasure Mercy Pleasure Pleasure Pleasure Mercy Mercy Mommy Daddy Mommy Daddy Daddy Daddy Mommy Mommy Mommy Pappy Mommy Pappy Pappy Pappy Mommy Mommy

1990 Put your hands up, put your feet down, put your heart in God.

1990 She He

1990 Sh

1991 Mahaprabhu Yugavatar Gaura Hari Gaurasundar Nimai Pandit Vishwambara Sachinandan Radha Krishna

1991 She He love me

1991 Lost in contemplation on the body of God, offer your desire to be God to God.

1992 OOOA OAAA

1992 OOOA OAAAH

1992 Oh, have nothing of yourself. Oh, just observe. And trust and serve.

1992 Glory in the glory of God.

1993 oo-auw-o-ah-she-he-she-he  

Support Group

Arthur Janov, The New Primal Scream *The number one killer in the world today is not cancer or heart disease. It is repression. Unconsciousness is the real danger, and neurosis the real killer. *One doesn't have to be educated to respect nature, it is inherent in the respect for one's own nature. *The only way to rise to a higher consciousness is by descending to lower levels. *To be conscious of feeling is our goal, no more and no less. *Feelings come first. Values are inherent in them. *We have found the unconscious to be a friendly place.

Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked *There is an intrinsic link between the theme of man's loss of immortality and the obtaining of fire for cooking purposes.

Walter Truett Anderson, Reality Isn't What It Used To Be *All our systems of thought are stories we tell ourselves about something that remains essentially unknowable.

Rosalind Williams, Notes on the Underground *What is unique about the natural environment, what can never be replaced by the technological one, is its independence of the social order. *The very existence of nature, its sheer being, challenges the life-denying, past-denying values of a machine-oriented collectivity. Because nature itself escapes from social determinism, it offers a reference point so human beings too can escape from social determinism. *Natural despoilation is not just a result of economic pressures; it is also a political action aimed at removing a source of subversion. *The established political order recognizes physical nature as a source of subversion and ruins it for ideological as well as practical reasons.  

Pandevotionalism

This is my Father's world And to my listening ears

All nature sings and round me rings The music of the spheres       -- children's hymn

Then the two animals, crouching to the earth, bowed their heads and did worship.       -- Kenneth Grahame,       The Wind in the Willows

In God's creation, even among inanimate things, their very shadows turn around right and left, prostrating themselves to God in the humblest manner. And all that is in heaven and on earth, whether moving creatures or angels, gives obeisance to God, for none are arrogant before their lord. They all revere their lord, high above them, and they do all that they are commanded.       -- Qur'an 16.48-50

The seven heavens and the earth, and all beings therein, declare his glory. There is not a thing but celebrates his praise.       -- Qur'an 17.44

Don't you see that the birds with their outspread wings, and all beings in heaven and on earth, celebrate the praise of God? Each one knows its own mode of prayer and praise. And God knows well that they do.       -- Qur'an 24.41

What I know of the divine sciences and holy scriptures, I learned in the woods and the fields. I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks. Listen to a man of experience: you will learn more in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you more than you can acquire from the mouth of a magister.       -- St. Bernard of Clairvaux

The book of scripture is the interpreter of the book of nature.       -- Jonathan Edwards  

Balance and Levitation

As you desire the good, so will you get it. And you will get the bad in the same measure. As you desire life, so will you get it. And you will get death to the same degree. As you want nothing, so will you get it. And to the same extent you will get everything. As you want God, so will you get God. And even more than that, God will get you!  

Conflicting Desires

    God is the only existence.     All is God.     Or, it might be said that Existence is the only god, and All is Existence. But, since I consider God a person, the former way of speaking is more satisfying to me.     Within the singular existence of God there are three categories of being, and no more: She, He, and Love. Each of these is both one and many.     As one, She is Radha. She also has many other forms, including the atoms of material nature.     He is one when He is Krishna. Among his many features is the space the atoms occupy.     When Love is one, it is Mystery. When Love is many, it exists as the souls.     I am one of the souls. I'm part of the Love that She and He feel for each other. I am necessary. I am eternal. But my being is not separate from She and He. Nor is their being separate from me. The souls make arrangements for the love affair between She and He. We get them together and get them apart.     That's who I am -- I'm made of spiritual desire. I'm a portion of the pleasure of She and He.     But I want to have the freedom they have. I want my pleasure to be my own, independent of their whims. I want to be responsible for myself and answer to no one else. What I do must proceed from me alone, and must not be imposed on me. I have my rights. No one can take them away from me.     Yes, I'm jealous of She and He. And when I despair of getting what they have, I pity myself and envy them and want to destroy them. The best way to destroy them, I've found, is simply to declare that they don't exist.     I'm made of spiritual desire, but I have material desires too, conflicting desires. They are wrong, they are stupid, they don't bring me deep happiness. And if there's anything that I'm going to learn from them, it's only that I'm better off without them. I know that. But apparently I don't realize it. So I go on with my experiment.     It takes time. It takes suffering. It takes death, to be born.     The final death is the death of my idea that I'm separate from God. The final birth follows immediately.  

The Mind of the Universe

I just want to love the mind of the universe like a star whirling in its fire. I just want to serve the mind of the universe like a body serving its desire. I just want to hear the mind of the universe -- sacred words -- they tell me what to do. Every leaf -- the mind of the universe -- every wave -- they sing to me and you. Every step -- the mind of the universe -- every breath -- they glorify God's name. Every birth -- the mind of the universe --

every death -- they worship all the same. I just want to join the mind of the universe in the world made of reality. I just want to praise the mind of the universe and to give whatever's left of me.  

Reflecting God

I am ancient. Worn smooth by the years. By the waters. A smooth body on a beach. By the ocean. By the river. Not fighting against time. Letting nature run over me. And through me. She takes me where she wants. She buffs me to a warm glow. Time does not destroy me. It polishes me. By the centuries. By the ages. Now my skin is my soul. A smooth stone. Full of the hot sunlight. Reflecting God.  

To Be a Body

To be a body and nothing else is pure happiness. The only real concerns are bodily concerns. Nothing else exists except the forms of living bodies. Everything is alive. Everything is physical.

The soul is a physique, a spiritual body which is incorruptible. It is a person. God is a person. The body of God is the heart of life and the whole of life. Souls are bodies made of God's body. So are atoms, but I am not an atom or an atomic structure. I am a soul. To be a soul and nothing else is pure happiness.  

Simplify

Eat leaves, flowers, and fruits -- no seeds, no stems, no roots.  

Cosmic Lord Prayer

please appear before me my cosmic lord and master let me see you (a translation from the Sanskrit       jagannatha svami       nayana patha gami       bhava tu me)  

Shoon

    Shoon, the old woman who told stories, smiled at the children.     "Night is the time to be close to Osari," she whispered.     The shadows of the leaves moved away from her face. The children could see her black eyes shining in the moon's light. It was their first time with her. Their first night away from the familiar trees that had sheltered them since birth.     "Osari, from whom we all come," she continued.     Even those children, in their fourth year, had heard a lot about Osari. That name was the sound repeated by the midwife as they'd left their mother's womb. It was the principle word of the songs intoned by the chorus in the wide-branching tree in the center of the communion. Osari, the hero. Osari, the lover. Osari, the god. But also two people: a woman and a man. In that case it was Osa the queen and Ri the king. And again a change: Osari was nothingness. Or at least nothing that any human being could ever know.     At four years, the contradictions didn't matter. They gladly accepted that Osari was all those things. But of course, questions would come. And doubts. They knew that. They'd heard some bigger children talking. Saying bad things about Osari.     Shoon understood their need for strong conviction. Every year at this time she became the

most important member of the communion.     During the days of the year when the sunrise was approaching its earliest hour, she'd been receiving a succession of mothers and fathers at her tree for talks about the four year olds. She and the parents had made an arrangement. Shoon would take care of the children from the next full moon to the one after. Each night there would be a different story.     Tonight was the first story.     "In the time of the Old Ones," she began, "the communion was usually silent. Nobody talked. They made some sounds. Like singing. But no words. Can you imagine that? Some say each person knew what the others were thinking. So they had no need to talk. Or some say none of them cared about the others. Because they all stayed apart from one another. And would sit alone for years thinking about Osari.     "But we say that they did care about each other. They did tell each other things. Not with words, but by moving themselves around. Mostly their hands. They also moved their legs and eyes and their whole bodies. It was dancing. You've seen the chorus dance. Well, that was how the Old Ones talked.     "What did they talk about? Of course, it was long ago. We don't know much about them. But the dances we have, the dances the chorus does, are all stories. Maybe the Old Ones danced stories and apart from that didn't pay attention to one another. Maybe. We only know a few things about them.     "One thing we do know is, they didn't eat. Most of them, anyway. After they nursed from their mothers, they had no interest in food.     "Eating is what one of the dances is about. Here's the story.     "Once there were two sets of twins born from the same mother, a year apart. A girl and boy, and another girl and boy.     "The first twins were like all the rest of the people in the trees. Even when they were little infants -- like you were, not long ago -- they hardly ever cried. They felt the earth praising Osari. Nobody had to tell them it was happening. And with their little arms and legs they moved in the dance of the earth as best they could. To them, the humming sounds of the humans in the trees were the same as the whistles of the birds and the roars of the big, sleek cats and the boom-boom of the footfalls of the dragons. It was all one song for Osari.     "The second twins were different. Oh, they were smart. Very smart. Their eyes darted quickly, noticing everything. They tilted their heads to the side with little jerks, full of questions.     "Animals were most interesting to them. The second twins spent hours watching the big animals and following the little animals. They looked carefully. And what they saw, they imitated. After a while they could hang on a branch like a sloth. Or swing on a vine like a monkey. Or spring up with their legs like a cricket. Animal calls, too, they learned to imitate.     "As they grew older and stopped nursing, the second twins did something odd. When the buffalo grazed, the twins also bit at the blades of grass and chewed them. Tasting the juice, they became curious.     "No matter how many times the people in their communion would take grass and berries and seeds out of their mouths, the twins would do it again. There was no stopping them.     "To the first twins, that was upsetting. They were meditators, not imitators. To them the earth was a dancer to follow, not something to chew and swallow. Yes, other animals ate. That was part of the dance. But what humans did was to praise and worship and glorify it all. That was their part.     "The older twins moved their hands to their sister and brother. If they'd been using words they would have been saying:     "'We are the children of Osa and Ri. The earth is part of our family. Our pleasure is to feel devotion and awe. We dance with nature. That is our law.'     "The younger twins answered them:     "'We are all Osas, we are all Ris. The earth is ours to eat as we please. Grasses and seeds we grind up with our jaws. We dance with our food held tight in our paws.'     "The second twins were told they had to leave the communion. They wanted to leave anyway. And they found others like them fairly close by. So, the food eaters started a new kind of group

among themselves.     "But without any law, they fought over their food. In their anger, they all went away and wandered back to their old communions.     "Their mothers and fathers took pity on them and let them stay. Nobody liked having them around. But the people accepted it as their fate.     "You children know that now we all eat. The law has changed. Osari lets us eat fruits. But nothing else. I tell you that your descendents will eat other things. Osari will make new laws for them. Osari is merciful.     "Be thankful that our communion is the way it is. Even though we have our troubles, we are happier and more peaceful than people are going to be.     "Go to sleep, children. And dream about Osari."     Shoon helped them nestle into the leaves. It is good, she thought.     Tomorrow night she would tell them how talking started.  

Reality

    (Among the world's faiths, Bengali Vaishnavism has had the biggest influence on me. I've adopted its theological premises as my own. But I'm not a Bengali. I'm an American. I'm not a Vaishnava. I'm a Unitarian.     I base my religion on what I know. What I'm familiar with. What I perceive directly. The here and now. The events of my life. The place where I stand.     What I know is Pandevotionalism. I feel the spirit of the Earth rushing through me to glorify God. I want to join Nature in its praise.     From that devotional impulse, with the help of Vaishnavism, has grown my Reality, briefly expressed in the following 81 entries.)

1 The material universe exists in a state of balance. Any predominance of one side over the other is only temporary or local. The dualities cancel out each other so that neutrality prevails overall through time and space. Any excess of material evil, misery, or failure must be accompanied by an equal excess of goodness, happiness, or success. Night follows day and day follows night. Every material action has an equal and opposite reaction. Those who die go on to be be born. Those who are born go on to die. For every hell there is a heaven, and vice versa. Everything created is destroyed, just as out of destruction another creation takes place. In the short run, over the course of two lifetimes, positive deeds are rewarded and negative deeds are punished. Souls who live ethically earn a better material situation in their next birth and sinners go on to perdition. But over the long haul, material promotion contaminates the innocent and chastisement purifies the guilty. The wheel of birth and death revolves around and around. The only answer to this riddle is to gain liberation from the prison of dualities by fixing my consciousness on the one solid spiritual existence beyond the many vaporous illusions of the material world. That is the meaning, purpose, and hope of life.

2 Meditate on God and worship God.

3 Devotion to the Central Person of God is the highest and deepest and broadest form of consciousness.

4 Reality is personal.

5 The most practical way for me to devote myself to God is by sounding names of God.

6 Service is the essence of religion.

7 The self is eternally individual.

8 A soul has the same quality as God, but a smaller quantity of it.

9 God never changes. God's energies change.

10 Everything exists eternally simultaneously.

11 The absolute embraces contradictions.

12 God takes birth in the material world to stimulate our devotion.

13 The self is a spiritual body, not a body made of atoms.

14 The material world is a place where there are miseries such as birth, disease, old age, and death.

15 The spiritual world is a place where everyone is eternally omniscient and blissful.

16 God wants us to be happy.

17 All matter and all material forms always glorify God.

18 Cultivate forgiveness, humility, tolerance, kindness, generosity, honesty.

19 A soul is a part of the whole. God is the whole.

20 The spiritual world has variety.

21 God's body is not material. God's body is God.

22 The spirit is like the good. But it is a goodness that has no opposite because it is a function of God's activity, not a soul's activity.

23 God is the most powerful, wealthy, famous, beautiful, intelligent, and renounced person.

24 Demigods (angels) administrate cosmic affairs.

25 Jealousy of God and envy of God are the basic material psychologies.

26 People are what they want to be.

27 The Central Person of God is the source of the light of truth.

28 Devotion is greater than work or knowledge or visions.

29 God's name is not material. God's name is God.

30 God is everything, is inside everything, and is outside everything.

31 Human life is meant for self-realization.

32 The soul is indestructible.

33 Offer your actions and their results to God.

34 Pleasure consists in pleasing God's senses, of which my senses are part.

35 Nudity, not nullity.

36 Offer your food to God.

37 Materialistic souls don't act. Nature acts for them.

38 Act according to your own physical-psychological makeup. Don't imitate others.

39 God controls everyone. Yet we all have freedom of choice.

40 Serve a spiritual teacher.

41 Happiness comes from within.

42 Attachment to God is the best detachment from materialism.

43 Live frugally.

44 No drugs, no sex, no gambling, no eating.

45 All beings are equal because God is within all of them.

46 God is the essence of everything: the strength of the strong, the heat of fire.

47 The determination with which we achieve our goals comes from God.

48 Those who see only matter can't see God.

49 The universe is a form of God.

50 God is the biggest and the smallest.

51 The soul who attains devotion never returns to illusion.

52 The material world comes and goes. The spiritual world is constant.

53 God is active in the world, but is never conditioned by it.

54 Worshipping the Central Person of God is better than worshipping the all-pervading energy, the multifold supersoul, or the cosmic form.

55 All worshipping of anything other than God is indirect worship of God, but direct worship is better.

56 God has special consideration for those who love God directly.

57 Devotion is not dependent on social status or any material qualification.

58 Devotees enjoy conversing about God.

59 God gives the devotees full understanding of how to get to God.

60 Material splendor is only a small fraction of spiritual splendor.

61 Nothing is easier to see than the Central Person of God, but nothing is more difficult to perceive.

62 Consciousness is the energy of the soul. It pervades the soul's material body, and shapes it.

63 Negative thoughts and emotions bind a soul to matter.

64 Give up all ethical, metaphysical, and religious systems. Just surrender to God.

65 Nothing belongs to me. Everything belongs to God.

66 The center of spiritual life is the glorification of the activities and other attributes of the Central Person of God.

67 God's attributes and energies are simultaneously one with God and different from God.

68 Devotees are friendly with everyone.

69 Be a fruitarian and in all aspects of life follow the cosmic laws for humanity.

70 Early to bed, early to rise.

71 Cosmic history goes from good to bad to good and back again, over and over in regular cycles endlessly.

72 Seek the company of devotees.

73 God has limitless forms, names, and activities.

74 Don't give up action. Employ your skills in serving God. That which contaminates you can also purify you, when you engage it in serving God. Matter joined to service of God becomes spirit.

75 Even those who are liberated from matter take pleasure in serving God.

76 You can attain devotion to God only by the mercy of God.

77 God's central personality has a specific form.

78 Spirit is the substance. Matter is a category of the substance.

79 Souls enter into the material world, or the material consciousness, in order to imitate God. But the larger purpose of material existence is the rehabilitation of the deluded souls back to the natural state of loving the central position of God.

80 God is one: the Central Person. But God is also two: She and He. And God is three: She, He, and their Love for each other. Each of the three is singular and many. When She is singular, She is a specific feminine individual. Among her many forms are the atoms of the material world. When He is singular, He is a specific masculine individual. Among His many forms are the regions of universal space. When Love is singular, it is a mystery. Among Love's many forms are the souls whose nature it is to worship She and He.

81 Serving the devotees of God is the same as serving God.  

After Earth

dont be evil dont be good tarnished metal varnished wood you are life you delight in the Deity

serve the crazy serve the world love the pain and love the pearl all is blessed thats the best in Morality to kiss or maim is all the same illusions game dont heal or kill for deepest thrills be self fulfilled youre made of love of Goddess love oh dance her love and everyone will join the fun with moon and sun laugh at devils angels too hell or heaven not for you

after earth you take birth in Eternity  

She Loves

I'm bad when I put myself before others. I'm good when I put myself after others. I'm myself when I put myself with others. We harm when we forget the Goddess. We heal when we remember the Goddess. We commune when we know we're part of the Goddess. She isn't bad. She isn't good. She isn't before. She isn't after. She doesn't harm. She doesn't heal. She doesn't forget. She doesn't remember. She loves.  

SH   Swashing for Humankind

(Swashing for Humankind was a ritual I performed at the seashore. I walked in and around the swash -- the place where the sand and the waves meet -- using the exaggerated gait appropriate for striding in the surf, holding my arms above my head. As I did that, I repeated the words "She He." The purpose of the ritual was to glorify God and to spiritualize humankind. Here's an outline of the ideas expressed by SH.)

Swash Holiness SSSHHH   The sound of "ssshhh" is a song of worship to God sung by the sand, water, and bubbles of the swash. They sing it without ever stopping. SWASHIANISM   The swash is the foamy place of wave-sand gyration at the very edge of the ocean and the land. The verb "to swash" means to strut and swagger, as humans do when they walk in the swash. PANDEVOTIONALISM   All material atoms and material forms are always glorifying God. Let us join Nature in this constant worship.

Skindancing Humanity DEHA   ("Divine Devotion is the Essense of Every Human Action") The skin, the kinetic sense organ, acts with the brain's cortex to allow human self realization. "Deha" is Sanskrit for "body." DIDAMBUI   ("Divine Devotional Ambulation") The movement of the human body while walking is a beautiful dance for God. Move your legs in big circles. Lift your arms up high. ILIOPSOALITY   In the human body, the iliacus and psoas muscles are the prime movers of the act of walking.

She He TWO PRONOUN RITUAL   "She He" is a mantra. SHE - HE - LOVE - ME   God is One (Love), but God is also Two (She He). Each of us (Me) is a portion of the Love of She and He. In a circular design, She is in the east, He is in the west, Love is in the north, Me is in the south, the center is Reality, and Swashing for Humankind goes around the perimeter. REALITY   The truth is one, but reality is everything.  

Close to the Bone

Plain living increases the probability of high thinking.  

OOOA OAAA

OOOA is the Yin. OAAA is the Yang. OOO is the Yin thinking about herself. A is the Yin addressing the Yang. O is the Yang adressing the Yin. AAA is the Yang thinking about himself.  

OOWEE

oo-auw-o-ah-she-he-she-he  

She

The soul yearns for the One. The One is She. She is the source of He. She is the source of the Souls. Siddhanta Saraswati, the guru of Bhaktivedanta, states in Shri Chaitanya's Teachings: "The individual human souls are dissociable particles of the predominated moiety ... Shri Radhika is the source of all individual souls ... The individual souls serve Shri Krishna as constituents of Shri Radhika ... The absolute nature of the personality of Shri Radhika is fully on a level with the absolute personality of Shri Krishna. Shri Krishna is the consort of Shri Radhika. The absolute is pair and singular person ... Shri Radhika is at once identical with and distinct from Shri Krishna." Since Siddhanta Saraswati leaves it ambiguous whether She or He is the source of the other, why do I go ahead and claim She is the One? Because Radha is the embodiment of love and service. Service is everything. Worship is everything. But service requires someone to serve. So Radha manifests Krishna to be the dominant person. She is the servant, but She is the source. Her desire to worship is the engine that powers reality. Yin is the source of Yang. The feminine is the "default" mode of existence. She creates the masculine to get things going. She is the power, the shakti, behind the throne. He is the Lord, the ruler, the controller. She gives up those aspects of herself to him. That is love. Love is everything. "I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord." She wants us to worship him, too. She's set it up that way. Bhaktivedanta said that "Hare Krishna" means "Mother Hara, please help me achieve the grace of the supreme father, Hari." The

masculine is God. And it is natural for us to worship his greatness. But even greater is worship herself -- the Goddess. The Goddess is the mother of God and the source of everything.    

Part Three

  SINGDANGO Sing and Dance with God SINGDANGO  

 

The End