Fall 2018 Journal of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother Vol. 43, No. 2

Creating Isabella by Noel Parent • Some voices of the American yoga by John Robert Cornell • Responses to “Some voices...” by Wolfgang Aurose and Karen Mitchell • The soul that played itself: ‘Blind’ Willie Johnson by Rick Lipschutz and Amanda Emerson • Current affairs • AV almanac • Source material • Poetry room • Apropos

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 1 About the art on the front and back cover Table of contents Front cover: “Antelope Canyon” by hikersbay. Collaboration, Vol. 43, No. 2, Fall 2018 com. A visit to the canyon, located near Page, Arizona on Navajo Nation land, begins as the traveler enters through a slit in the cliff wall and climbs down into the canyon’s cool, dark depths where stream waters have sculpted the sandstone interior. From the sky above, bright From the office of Collaboration light finds its way through cracks and openings to illumine the patterns taking shape in the dark. Notes on this issue...... 3 Back cover: “Sandstone—The Wave” by Norman Bosworth shows sculpted sandstone Current affairs characteristic of the Antelope Canyon area. Passing of Zackaria Moursi...... Dakshina 4 The authors and poets Briefs ...... 5 Wolfgang Aurose ([email protected]) is an au- thor. His newest upcoming book is The Power of Co- Creativity: How your Inner work can Transform AV almanac your Country. See:: www.sunwolfcreations.com Peter Cooke ([email protected]) is a A determined pilgrim’s impressions of Auroville ... Fiona Fraser Jehu 6 British devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother who has been writing poetry for many years. He is currently also engaged in writing a biography of P. B. Shelley. Salon John Robert Cornell ([email protected]) is a writer and workshop leader living in California. He Creating Isabella...... Noel Parent 8 is secretary of the Sri Aurobindo Associatiion, and is associated with the Sri Aurobindo Sadhana Peetham. Essays Dakshina ([email protected]) is a founder/director of the Sri Aurobindo Sadhana Some voices of the American yoga...... John Robert Cornell 9 Peetham, an ashram in Lodi, CA. Responses to “Some voices of the American yoga” Amanda Emerson, distant cousin of RW Emer- son, descendant of farmers, Micmac and Penobscot na- The yogic discovery of a true American voice..Wolfgang Aurose 22 tives, self-described Spoiled Child Of God, doer of odd Nothing is “outside”...... Karen Mitchell 23 jobs, poet-dreamer, now edits Rick Lipschutz’s book. The soul that played itself: ‘Blind’ Willie Johnson...... Fiona Fraser Jehu (fionafraserjehu@hotmail...... Rick Lipschutz and Amanda Emerson 24 com) is a Scottish devotee whose work and passion is in the field of Environmental Medicine, that is, how our environment is affecting our biology and also how Source material we can consciously influence our own biology. Rick Lipschutz ([email protected]), a sad- Realization of the psychic being...... Sri Aurobindo 40 hak, lives in western Massachusetts where he is writing Finding the psychic being...... The Mother 41 The Soul That Makes Us Matter and participating in a pilot project in Open Dialogue Therapy. Karen Mitchell (karenmitchell404@gmail. The poetry room com) worked as a clinical social worker and is now enjoying a “retirement of contemplation, conversa- The lost boat...... Sri Aurobindo 42 tion, writing, and traveling.” Since 2008, she has The eagle above us...... Anonymous Native American 42 been participating in events at SASP in Lodi, CA Shootingway ceremony prayer...... Anonymous Native American 42 Ravi Narayanan ([email protected]) is a Song of the Son...... Jean Toomer 43 long time devotee of Mother and Sri Aurobindo and a frequent participant at the monthly retreats at Sri The Sun of Truth...... Peter Cooke 43 Aurobindo Sadhana Peetham. In Her cradle of love (for Mitra Lamb) ...... Ravi Narayanan 43 Noel Parent ([email protected]) is an American sadhak living in Auroville who writes ...... 44 poetry and children’s stories. His children’s book, Apropos Yaroslava’s flowers, and book of poetry, Transcend- ent Sky, along with other writings and audio re- cordings, are available at: storyyoga.wordpress.com. Jean Toomer (born Nathan Pinchback Toom- er, 1894–1967) was an African American poet and novelist.

2 • Collaboration Fall 2018 From the office ofCollaboration The artists The images for the front and back covers were free downloads from pixabay.com, a n this issue, we start with Current Affairs and an article by Dakshina on the photography website. The photographer for passing of a beloved devotee of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Zackaria the front cover was identified as hikersbay. Moursi, whose essays have appeared in Collaboration, and whose transla- com from Poland. The photographer for the back cover was identified as Norman Bos- Itions of Sri Aurobindo’s and the Mother’s writings into Arabic have helped bring worth from Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. their teachings to Muslims throughout the world. In Briefs, we have news from various centers and study groups in North America. AV almanac follows with Publisher: Collaboration (ISSN 0164-1522) an essay by a British visitor to Auroville about her positive and negative percep- is published by the Sri Aurobindo Association tions of the community which she now plans to join. In the Salon, we have an (SAA), a California nonprofit religious corpora- tion, 2715 W. Kettleman Lane, suite 203-174, Lodi inspiring children’s story by Aurovilian Noel Parent. CA 95242 USA; e-mail: [email protected]. Our first featured essay is by John Robert Cornell presenting several dis- Editor: Larry Seidlitz, 42 Pappammal Koil St., tinctively American expressions of spirituality for the twenty-first century. He Anandam Apts. Ground Fl., Apt. 1A, Kuruchikup- pam, Puducherry 605012; email: lseidlitz@gmail. begins with scientifically-oriented analyses of the growth and extinction of spe- com. The opinions expressed in Collaboration are cies, with a focus on the parallels and prospects for Homo sapiens. John Robert not necessarily those of the editor or the SAA. then turns to Native American views of the relationship between humans and Artistic Editor: Karen Cornell; email: [email protected]. the environment which turn the dominant perspectives on their head. In this Copyrights: Copyright © SAA, 2018. Photos view, instead of searching for what we can take from nature, we seek for the gifts of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, passages from that we can bring to nature, and one of the most important gifts human beings their works, and excerpts from the books published can bring is gratitude. But in reorienting our association with nature it is first by the Sri Auro­bindo Ashram Trust are © Sri Au- robindo Ashram Trust unless otherwise noted, and necessary that we recover the stories of our ancestors who had this perspective. are used here with the kind permission of the Ashram. The second featured essay is by Rick Lipschutz and Amanda Emerson and Subscriptions: A one-year subscription (three concerns the expression of the soul in the music of ‘Blind’ Willie Johnson, a gos- issues) is $25 ($35 for airmail outside the USA; $50 or more for a one-year patron subscription). pel blues musician of the early 20th century, and thus also concerns the Ameri- Pay online by credit card at www.collaboration.org/ can soul. The authors describe the life and music of Johnson, with an emphasis journal/subscribe.html; or make a check out to Sri on their ramifications for the nature and finding and expression of the soul, or Aurobindo Association and mail to: Sri Aurobindo Association, 2715 W. Kettleman Ln, Ste 203-174, psychic being in Sri Aurobindo’s parlance. I found that the essay became more Lodi, CA 95242 USA. India residents, send Rs.200 alive and meaningful by listening to some of Johnson’s music, which is available in the name of Larry Seidlitz to: Larry Seidlitz, 42 on YouTube, and reading the lyrics at: http://www.metrolyrics.com/blind-willie- Pappammal Koil St., Anandam Apts. Ground Fl., johnson-lyrics.html. Apt. 1A, Kuruchikuppam, Puducherry 605012. Submissions: Collaboration welcomes writ- We further develop the theme of the soul in Source Material, which features ing, photos, and artwork relevant to the Integral selections from Sri Aurobindo and the Mother about the realization and finding Yoga and spirituality. Submit material by email to: of the psychic being, as well as in the Poetry room, which includes poems re- [email protected]; or by post to Collabo- ration, 2715 W. Kettleman Lane, Suite 203-174, flecting on Native American spirituality and the legacy of slavery in the Ameri- Lodi, CA 95242 USA. Collaboration cannot be can experience. We conclude with Apropos quotations on the soul. held responsible for loss or damage of unsolic- We welcome Karen Cornell as Collaboration’s new artistic editor. For this ited material. Letters and articles may be edited for style and space considerations. issue she has selected the photographs for the front and back covers, and has About SAA: The Sri Aurobindo Asso- drawn the illustrations for John Robert Cornell’s article. ciation distributes information about Sri Auro- bindo, the Mother, and Auroville, and supports Invitation to submit a short essay projects related to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Au- roville, and Integral Yoga activities in America. With the intention to make Collaboration more interactive and participa- Current members: Lynda Lester, president; Mateo Needham, vice president; John Robert Cornell, sec- tory, we invite you to submit a short essay of about 300-800 words for the next retary; Margaret Phanes, communications officer; issue on any topic related to Integral Yoga for the Salon section. We hope that the Mira Patel, director; Ananda Bhishma, associate relatively short length of these articles may inspire more writers who may be re- and treasurer. luctant to write the longer essays which have become the norm in Collaboration. Contributions: Donations for the work of the SAA, Auroville, and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram may For the next issue, please email your essay by November 1, 2018 to the editor at: be sent to SAA. Donations are tax exempt under [email protected]. section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 3 became acquainted with Sri Aurobindo’s Yoga through a Current affairs German compilation, Der Integrale Yoga, and felt these inspired words filling a void that all his intellectual pursuits Passing of Zackaria Moursi had not been able to. A profound turning point came when halfway through his doctoral program he fell into a severely debilitating de- by Dakshina pression where life had no more purpose. At a crucial mo- ment of despair he remembered the Integral Yoga book and On 14 May 2018, our spiritual brother and companion gazed at Sri Aurobindo’s photo which shifted something on the road to the “Life Divine,” Zackaria Moursi, left his deep within, leading slowly but surely out of the depression body and this earthly realm. He was 75 years of age. and into the beginnings of his spiritual life. In Germany he As many of you know, he had gone through open heart met and married his wife, a fellow scholarship holder, but surgery last August, from which he gradually recovered, but soon found an insurmountable conflict growing between then suffered a debilitating stroke in mid-November that his outer married life and inner spiritual life. Though his left him gravely impaired. In some ways over time, his con- wife was sympathetic and they continued the marriage for dition slowly and sporadically improved, and a team of dear 30 years, moving from Germany to Cairo, to the U.S., in the friends and ashram residents were witness to his struggle end they parted as dear and respected friends and Zack was and journey as we took turns being with him at the nursing free to pursue his sadhana unencumbered. This led him to facility for some time each day. But, in other ways, his body Auroville, back to the U.S., to Switzerland, back to Cairo, was just unable to overcome the severe incapacity of his changing life paths, careers, and relationships, still finding condition. In the last month, friends pitched in together to the challenge of the outer circumstances at odds with the hire a caregiver to come and be with him for an extra two inner ideal. hours a day to help with physical therapy, read to him, play Finally at the end of a short visit to Auroville 10 years music, and wheel him out into his beloved sunshine. This ago, he received the Adesh, the inner command (and in dear young woman became in Zack’s words, his “angel” and this case also the outer command) of what he ultimately “breath of Spring” in his life. understood to be a kind of fulfillment of his life’s purpose: During the long months of his ordeal, Zack was often to translate Sri Aurobindo and Mother’s works into Arabic. straddling two worlds: one very much in the physical and In 2008, Zack returned to the Lodi Ashram and devoted all its frustrating challenges and limitations, the other con- half his time to Ashram work and half to his translation nected deeply to his inner life of sadhana and an inner real- work and to the development of his website which served ity that he often confused with the outer, where he was back as a vehicle of outreach into the Arab and Islamic world, to at the Ashram, able to traverse stairs, visit the meditation allow some Light of Sri Aurobindo’s teachings to penetrate hall, or walk the corridors of the nursing facility and among into the chaos and barbarism of fundamentalism that is other things make an appointment to meet Sri Aurobindo. raging there. The translation work continued to expand He sometimes believed much more in this inner reality with the publication of three books and numerous essays than in his confinement to bed or wheelchair. and articles. He continued to grapple with ways to reach Zack was born in Egypt and had a materially privi- the Islamic psyche in a non-threatening way, inviting Mus- leged, though lonely, upbringing at a time when Islam was lim readers to perceive the possibility of a spirituality that more tolerant, open-minded, and progressive. At a young grows naturally out of the Islamic faith into a wider Light. age he discovered the joy of reading all kinds of literature In Zack’s words, “The reason I have left Egypt to spend in his father’s marvelous library and the world of books be- my remaining years in an ashram dedicated to Sri Auro- came his refuge and later his life’s calling pursued through bindo and the Mother is that I find this ashram to be, for academic studies. me, the most suitable place to deepen, in and around my- During the tumultuous times following the revolution self, that solid peace...the peace on which, in the long run, in Egypt in the 1950s, after his family lost most of their pos- a divine life can be established on earth.” sessions and his father died, Zack put all of his efforts into his academic studies hoping to win a scholarship to study Note: Zack’s translations, books, articles, as well as abroad. At the age of 20 he realized this dream and found other material, are available at his website: http://sriauro- himself doing post-graduate work in Germany. There he bindo-inarabic.com which will continue to be maintained.

4 • Collaboration Fall 2018 Briefs The Institute for Wholistic Education in collabora- tion with Lotus Press www.lotuspress.com is continuing its development and publishing of study guides for Sri Auro- Matagiri. Outstanding Indian classical vocalist, Pandit bindo’s major writings, as well as development of e-books Shantanu Bhattacharyya will be joined by his wife, Durba, for a variety of platforms. Links to the various online e-book on harmonium and Pandit Ashish Sengupta on tabla. They sellers are available at www.lotuspress.com. We have also ex- will play an afternoon concert on Sunday November 11th panded our social media activities with a facebook presence at Matagiri a part of a celebration of Matagiri’s 50th and at www.facebook.com/SriAurobindosWritings. Systematic the completion of Auroville House. Suggested donation is posts of the Readings series are put up daily at this Facebook $20 per person. Please call 845-679-8322 to confirm your location as well as other social media platforms. attendance or write to [email protected]. Matagiri Sri Au- Daily blog posts advancing the readings in Sri Auro- robindo Center, 1218 Wittenburg Rd. Mt. Tremper, NY. bindo’s major works continue at http://sriaurobindostud- ies.wordpress.com. All prior posts remain archived and Cultural Integration Fellowship, founded in 1951 by accessible for those who want to study them. Dr. Haridas Chaudhuri and Mrs. Bina Chaudhuri, contin- The Institute also sponsors regular classes on reiki, lev- ues to offer a rich array of lectures, Sunday morning servic- els 1, 2 and 3, conducted by Karuna Krinsky. The schedule is es, and cultural events. CIF offers Sunday morning services regularly updated and can be found at www.reikiteacher.org at its ashram located at 2650 Fulton Street, San Francisco. In Institute for Wholistic Education, 3425 Patzke Lane, Ra- commemoration of the birth anniversary of Sri Aurobindo, cine, WI 53405; 262-619-1798; www.wholisticinstitute.org. we feature Integral Yoga topics in the month of August. On August 5 this year, Lopa Mukherjee presented her The Foundation for World Education invites grant documentary film on Sri Aurobindo’s life. Debashish Ba- applications from individuals, programs and groups who nerji spoke on Sri Aurobindo’s teachings on August 12. Ste- share the vision of a transformed world espoused by Sri phen Julich spoke on Mirra, the Mother of the Sri Aurob- Aurobindo and the Mother. All proposals must be present- indo Ashram, on August 19, and Kundan Singh concluded ed to the FWE through the auspices of a nonprofit organi- the series on August 26 with a talk on Integral Yoga and Dr. zation and are subject to review by members of the board Haridas Chaudhuri. before a decision is taken. Next due date for main granting We invite you to join us for our Sunday morning pro- session is January 7th. Proposals should be emailed to the grams. Seeking a new synthesis of past wisdom and future secretary: [email protected]. aspirations, CIF’s highest goal is a world in peace and har- mony. Please come to our programs and become an active The Yoga Center Amherst now offers Matrimandir member! Your participation is much appreciated. Please Meditations every Tuesday and Thursday morning led by visit our ashram and our website: www. culturalintegration- Julie of Light Omega, who invokes the light of the Matri- fellowship.org for more information. mandir and invites those present to be nourished. We also continue to offer retreats in Ramgarh (at Madhuban) in California Institute of Integral Studies is presenting a October and Auroville in February. For more information: conference September 29–30 titled “1968 Revisited: (What- www.yogacenteramherst.com. ever happened to) Revolution, Counterculture, Pedagogy, Utopia?” This three-day conference explores the ideas and East Bay Integral Yoga group meets on the first Sun- forces surrounding the founding of CIIS in 1968—a world- day of the month at 10:15. We are currently, and perhaps wide discontent with the conditions of human living and for ever, reading Savitri. See https://www.meetup.com/ the dream of creative utopia. It seeks for common threads The-East-Bay-Integral-Yoga-Group for more information. uniting a new pedagogy, a greater psychology and an ex- perimental philosophy with the student riots in Paris and A study group led by Roger Calverly in Lindsay, On- Berkeley, the San Francisco counterculture and the found- tario has a regular meditation on Monday evenings from ing of Auroville, a spiritual community in India. The con- 7 to 8 pm, with a reading from the Mother’s works at the ference will be held at Namaste Hall, CIIS, 1453 Mission St., end, and then a short talk on the topic of the reading, with San Francisco, CA, and is sponsored by the CIIS East-West questions and answers. Address: 72 Bond St. W., Lindsay Psychology Program. See: www.ciis.edu. Ontario, Canada K9V 3R4

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 5 AV almanac

A determined pilgrim’s impressions of Auroville

by Fiona Fraser Jehu

Reprinted from the June-July 2018 issue of Auroville Today

knew that Auroville was my place the moment I read about it, now almost twenty years ago. The teachings of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother resonated with me deeply, II loved the Auroville Charter and, even though I had grown up in the West, it was India that always felt like home. As a very young child I remember looking around at the world from my pushchair and wondering whether I had come to the right planet. It was clear that the human society in which I found myself was severely lacking in a Fiona. few fundamentals: joy, wisdom and brotherly understand- ing for example, as well as a complete lack of what I would from Auroville it served only to fuel my determination to call natural law. come to live here. The resolution of this discrepancy between how the The next surprise I was met with was the number of world is and the beautiful loving home that it could be, motorcycles on the roads. “Shouldn’t everyone be riding was too great for me to ignore, and so, like many of us at bicycles?” I naively asked myself. I imagined there’d be bi- this point in time my raison d’etre, my mission in this life, cycle rickshaws on every corner for those who weren’t able has been to ‘be the change’ I so dearly wish to see in the to cycle themselves. This way we’d be creating employment, world—to the best of my ability. That change which, as Sri staying green, and using a transport solution that’s amena- Aurobindo and Mother reminded us, is inevitable—as it is ble to shared journeys. I guess it’s simply not a very efficient a Law of the Universe, is it not, that all and everything tends method of getting around compared with just hopping on a towards harmony, even though it may meander and diverge moped and moving at speed directly from A to B. After all, somewhat en route. everybody is so busy: with places to go, people to see, work When I first visited Auroville in 2001, the ecologically to do! It’s also just as cheap, and sometimes even slightly ideal, ultra-conscious utopia I had envisioned in my rose- cheaper, to hire a moped than it is to hire a bicycle, and it tinted imagination was not exactly what I found here. My can be very hot cycling in summer. I remember one after- first impressions were of the—dare I say it—junk food be- noon in June, having cycled from Kottakarai to Nilatangam ing sold in the Pour Tous Purchasing Service (PTPS) to- in the blazing sunshine, with two heavy bags balanced on gether with the toxic chemical laden cleaning products and the handle bars and my clothes stuck to me with sweat, personal care items filling the shelves. Having been an or- contemplating whether it may be prudent for me to place ganic obsessed eco-warrior for most of my life, I struggled ‘saving the planet’ on hold whilst I hired myself a moped! with the reply I received from the sweet lady in the Pour Another interesting observation I made was that there Tous office to my question as to why these items were -be seemed to be a distinct lack of road signs here. Was this de- ing sold in a ‘conscious community’. She replied: “because liberate perhaps? Although regularly getting lost in the forest people want to buy them”. “Couldn’t they go to Pondy?” I was a little frustrating I couldn’t help thinking that if a lack politely responded—to which she faintly smiled and raised of road signs serves to deter the casual tourist from visiting her eyebrows. Auroville then it may be a good thing—by serving as a filter I felt a little disheartened, but rather than distancing me such that only the determined pilgrim will persevere and stay.

6 • Collaboration Fall 2018 I was heartened to see the sign outside the PTPS which The forests look to be thriving and the Matrimandir is read: “Mobile phones are harmful to birds.” My ‘inner know- quite magnificent now, while the ongoing work on its sur- ing’ had always alerted me to the fact that high frequency rounding gardens will create a delightful natural comple- microwave radiation is damaging to human, animal and ment, just as Mother envisaged. plant biology, now well evidenced, so I was relieved that What has changed most though, in these past 17 years, Auroville shared this awareness, or so I thought at the time. is that I have changed. I am a little wiser and a little more My fondest memory of this growing township was the capable of seeing the magic behind the more easily visible magnificent forested areas which were heroically created exterior which hit me in the face all those years ago. That by those early settlers who transformed a desert wasteland magic is the multiple layers of Auroville, the enormity of the into a lush green haven for humans and animals alike. For great work which goes on in the background on myriad dif- this I feel enormous gratitude. The forests are teaming with fering projects, all inspired by the desire for a better world. life, with prana and so are very healing and nurturing, and I think my disappointment on first visiting Auroville extremely necessary to Auroville’s wellbeing. I often feel twenty years ago was due to my own naivety, as perhaps that what trees give us is underestimated. all of our disappointments in life are caused by our own I also remember the Matrimandir which in 2001 was naivety. Wherever there is a centre of Light it attracts pure only partially constructed, and feeling a sense of awe and souls who wish to grow in Love, Truth and Freedom, but it excitement that one day it would be completed in all its also inevitably attracts those whose role it is to thwart the splendour. Mother was clearly inspired in her understand- efforts of those who are well-intentioned. This is simply the ing of the importance of creating such a sacred space in nature of duality, and should not dissuade us in any way, the heart of Auroville, a place of sanctity where the earnest from our noble endeavours. resident or visitor can find solace and a peaceful vibration When I reflect upon Auroville as a whole there is one amidst our challenging worldly lives. thing I do know for sure, and that is that I love this place And so now, almost 17 years later I am back in this with all my heart and soul, and I care deeply about its fu- crazy, wonderful city in the making, this time to stay, to ture. And the most beautiful thing is that I meet others here form roots and make my home here. who feel the same, and it is this true spirit of human unity So what has changed? Well the healthy, Auroville-made and shared intent that will bring about the realization of range of delicacies has expanded. More motor cycles (in- Mother’s dream. The imperfections that may be apparent cluding my own TVS), and noticeably more cars too, plague to us can be the impetus for action on our part to transform the Auroville roads; and a few more road signs have ap- them into something great—and there is so much learning peared, just for major landmarks. to be had in the process! The sign warning about the dangers of mobile phones I will end with a quote from the well known German still stands in the same place, but surrounding it many peo- writer and statesman Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “There ple are absorbed in their smart phone conversations and is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills count- text messages—seemingly oblivious to the silent message less ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one defi- being broadcast beside them. As is the case in the world at nitely commits oneself, providence moves too. Whatever large, cell phone towers and wi-fi are gradually infiltrating you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has the whole of Auroville. In my humble opinion this prolif- genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” eration of microwave frequency radiation throughout our community is having—and will increasingly have—signifi- Auroville is contesting a National Highways Authority cant negative repercussions. of India (NHAI) approved plan to build a new four lane ‘On verra,’ as the French say. I guess pressure from so- National Highway through the Auroville Greenbelt and ciety as a whole makes it quite difficult to avoid ‘being con- across the Auroville Main Road near Kuilapalayam vil- nected’ 24/7, and I know that a large number of Aurovilians lage. Whereas the NHAI has agreed to relocate the high- welcome this, seeing it as progress whilst others feel it to be way 200 meters east and slightly outside the Master Plan a retrograde step. It is undoubtedly an extremely conten- area, it would still cross the Main Road and adversely tious and controversial issue but I’m sure all would agree affect several Auroville communities near Kuilapalayam. that it is prudent to fully educate ourselves on this matter Auroville has proposed alternative routes north of the before forming any concrete conclusions about its safety or city that would be less disruptive but these have not been otherwise. accepted. See the August issue of AV Today for details.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 7 Some of the people laughed, and some of the little ones Salon cried.....some of them ran and some of them swam...... and some of them did tricks while others just Creating Isabella watched...... And then there were others who began to create for them- by Noel Parent selves...... And Isabella was even more happy. Somewhere in our big universe there once was a little Soul But once again, after some time, Isabella felt something named Isabella. was still missing. Isabella had her own special world all to herself. This time Isabella decided to close her eyes and close her But in the beginning of Isabella's world, at first, there was ears to everything else in her world. nothing. She remained very quiet, and there in that silence, she No, there was nothing at all....only Isabella. began to listen and to feel. Then in one magical moment, Isabella wanted to create After a little while, Isabella began to feel a part of herself something. she had not felt before....she began to feel her very So she took a deep breath and, as she opened her eyes, her own Soul in her very special Heart. own world began to emerge. In that Soul, she saw a beautiful Light that was brighter Shapes and forms and colors of all kinds started to play all than anything else she had ever seen, and she felt around. something so beautiful that she had never felt before. But Isabella wanted more....Isabella wanted something "But how to create this wonderful feeling in my world?" beautiful. she wondered to herself. So she imagined a paintbrush and began to paint. "How to paint this beautiful feeling that is who and what Wandering rivers and skies of soaring blues, I am?" majestic mountains and trees of brown-hinted greens, And at that moment Isabella's eyes and Soul together golden-haired meadows sparked with rainbowed flowers. opened wide...... All that Isabella painted came alive and seemed to dance And with a gesture of her hands, magically she began to along with her. paint billowing waves of flowing rainbow lights that She climbed her mountains and strolled through her fields, were the living heartbeats of Isabella's Love. she smelled the flowers and breathed the sweet air. And with another gesture of her hand there appeared vast And Isabella was happy. glowing masses of sparkling Color that expressed the But after a while, she began to feel that something was Joy of Isabella's creation. missing. All that Isabella painted was Her, and she painted all that Isabella wanted some friends. she was. So upon a large stone boulder she began to paint again.... She painted herself in all her beauty and love. and after a few brushstrokes a white-headed bird took She painted her Peace with seas of silvery green..... shape and flew off into the sky. She painted her Joy with melodious streaks of white-hued So she painted more free-flying birds, some wild running pink...... horses, an enormous elephant and...... one lazy but She painted her Hope with soaring flares of yellow-lined curious cat. orange...... And Isabella was happy.... She painted her Strength with bold columns of golden red..... But still she felt that something was missing. And finally, she painted the Eternal Freedom that is her So again Isabella began to paint all around her....and there Smiling Soul with an endless glowing burst of golden appeared at once all kinds of different people in her white radiance. world. And in that Moment, Isabella discovered something.... People of all the different colors and types that one could Isabella discovered her very own Truth...but a Truth that imagine...... belonged to everyone as well...... People with long legs, people with short legs, people with Isabella discovered that she was her own Creation. big heads, people with little heads...... And even some people with large fancy wings! And so Isabella continued...... Creating Isabella.

8 • Collaboration Fall 2018 ordinarily makes its living in the hu- Essays man gut. The video showedP. vulgaris reproducing in a petri dish—a shal- low, transparent dish with a flat lid. Some voices of the When Margulis started the projector, American yoga the class saw a small bubble of bacteria wobbling in the dish. Soon the cells in by John Robert Cornell the video exploded into action, shiver- ing, boiling, multiplying exponentially until a quivering mass of cells filled the There is no them screen. There was an audible gasp in the room. In thirty-six hours, Margu- uppose we assume that there is lis told the class, this single cell organ- an American yoga, an authen- ism could cover the whole Earth a foot tic spirituality of the American deep in P. vulgaris slime! Ssoul, widely recognized or not. And work. When he succeeds in unblock- this yoga is the country’s contribution ing the stuck place in his own inner en- Mann and Margulis to the world’s rollercoaster ride from ergy, he can say or do something that matter to mind and to something be- enables the conflicting parties to move Charles Mann is a gifted story- yond, call it beyond-mind or super- past their stuckness towards reconcilia- teller and an award-winning Ameri- mind. Suppose that the United States tion. He has moved gradually in his life can journalist. He has tunneled deeply is not India, and is highly unlikely to from outside to inside, until he finally into the science, history, and arche- have the yoga of the Indian soul. Still came to the realization that there is no ology tumbling out of academic and the US, like all nations and peoples of us-and-them. There is only us. research institutions in the last sev- the world, has its own part to play. And There is only us… eral decades recording the state of the suppose that as it evolves, it brings its There is a beauty to this move- Western hemisphere before Columbus unique gifts and methods to the grand ment from below or outside, which arrived. His 2005 book, 1491, tells a party of the world’s peoples. starts on the surface of our awareness fresh story of the land and people of Now imagine a detective hunt, and our institutional knowledge, then the Americas before European con- looking today for clues to this Ameri- crawls and slogs across intermediary tact. 1491 refutes long-held narratives can soul and its yoga. Where could we understandings until it bursts into the of European superiority, mastery, and find threads or traces of that Ameri- wideness and epiphanies of the in- inevitability, with their consequences can yoga, and how would they relate to ner world. This movement seems to Integral Yoga according to Sri Auro- be a recognizable pattern in the play- bindo and Mother? ground of American yoga. Take Ken Cloke1 as an example. Let’s sample some instances of this Judge Cloke discovered that the win- movement from below and try to find lose structure of the court cases he an evolution going on but hidden in presided over often did not heal the the noise of our time. wounds of the conflicting parties. So he studied mediation and tried it when the parties were agreeable. Gradual- The state of our species ly he realized that he could not help anyone in mediation until he became Charles Mann is haunted by bac- awake to the stuckness within himself teria in a petri dish. that was aligned with the place where He once watched Lynn Margulis the conflicting parties were stuck. He show a time-lapse video to a college found that there is an energy stream biology class. The star of the show or flowinside himself that is key to his was Proteus vulgaris, a bacterium that

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 9 of ethnic cleansing and environmental overwhelm their environment follow- wondering if that fact hid a secret destruction that remain with us today. ing the petri dish curve, which ends about the evolutionary relationship Mann lived in the same town as when they destroy themselves, starv- between humans and their louse com- Lynn Margulis (1938-2011). She was ing and drowning in their own waste. panions. He reasoned that if he could a ground-breaking evolutionary bi- As the catalog of terrestrial de- show when the two subspecies of lice ologist who championed the power of struction caused by humanity grows split from their common ancestor, he cooperation or symbiosis in evolution and our population roars towards ten would have a good indicator of when instead of the exclusive emphasis on billion, Mann wondered if we will end humans began wearing clothing. The competition favored by the neo-Dar- up like petri dish bacteria, a wildly body louse subspecies could not have winists. She transformed our under- successful species that breaks out of its existed before then. standing of cellular biology by propos- natural limits, overcomes all competi- Using the new methods of ge- ing that the contents of the cell nucleus tion, and eventually devours its own netic science, Stoneking and several evolved from the symbiotic union of basis of life. So he began researching colleagues estimated that the separa- previously independent bacteria! Ge- our species, homo sapiens. What has tion between the head louse and the netic evidence later validated this the- made us so successful? he wanted to body louse subspecies occurred about sis. She helped expand our model of know. What are human beings any- 70,000 years ago. the tree of life, from two kingdoms to way? Where did we come from and six (plants and animals plus fungi, pro- where are we going? What is human The great shift tists, and two types of bacteria); and nature, if there is any such thing? she was the co-developer, along with People have wondered about That our ancestors began wearing James Lovelock, of the Gaia hypothesis. the great questions as far back as we clothing about 70,000 years ago would Margulis was enamored of Earth’s have record. These questions can lead not be a surprise to researchers in hu- microorganisms. She once told Mann one to study philosophy, religion, or man evolution. Many other new skills that they were far more creative and yoga. But Mann is a science and his- and behaviors developed around the effective than large forms of life. They tory journalist, so he plunged into the same period. Our species, homo sapi- make up 90% of living matter and have scientific literature to find answers. ens, first appeared in the archeologi- radically transformed Earth’s atmos- The result was an acclaimed 2012 es- cal record about 200,0003 years ago. It phere and soil. say called “The State of the Species,”2 remained remarkably the same for its in the prestigious American journal first 140,000 years, with no evidence What about us? Orion. of change during that time. We have had the same physical appearance and But what about us? Mann wanted Lousy companions structure for the whole 200,000 years, to know. but by 50,0004 years ago humans “sud- Margulis admitted that humanity Mann found one clue to his search denly”—in geological time—had de- is unusually successful, but added that in an odd place—the sleuthing of veloped language, art, complex tools, every successful species eventually an- Mark Stoneking on body lice. In 1999 clothing, burial ceremonies, and per- nihilates itself. Stoneking received a warning about haps religion. And we had exploded Bacteria in a petri dish are a good an outbreak of lice at his son’s school. out of a very narrow slice of Africa example. Their population follows An evolutionary biologist, Stoneking and spread across the whole planet. In a predictable curve of stages: slow began poking around in the literature other words, anatomically modern hu- growth—exponential growth—lev- on human body lice and found a pecu- mans of 200,000 years ago blossomed eling of growth—and collapse. liar genetic split in the most common into behaviorally modern humans A petri dish is, of course, an artifi- species of lice living on human bodies. about 50,000 years ago, after 150,000 cial environment. In P. vulgaris’ natu- One subspecies, called the head louse, years of being little more technically ral setting, the intestines, competition feeds and lives on the scalp. The sec- advanced than contemporary chim- plus lack of food and other resources ond subspecies, the body louse, feeds panzees. prevent this unconstrained growth cy- on skin but can survive for more than What happened? How did this cle. But a few species manage to escape a few hours only in human clothing! great shift take place? their natural limits—for a while. They That’s strange, but Stoneking began No one is sure, but Mann ac-

10 • Collaboration Fall 2018 cepts common scientific opinion that of a single species: us.” Mechanized despite being biologically hard-wired favorable genetic mutations around American corporate agriculture is the to focus on the immediate and the lo- the time of this change increased the culmination of this single-minded ex- cal. He admits that we need large scale brain’s ability to innovate and that ploitation of the land and the destruc- “transformations” to avoid collapse, but this increased capacity enabled these tion of anything that gets in the way of the transformations we need “would be human inventions. But what caused this exploitation. pushing against biological nature itself.” these successful mutations after mil- So successful has agriculture lennia of stagnation? What pressure been that the human population has Who are we really? of the environment made these muta- jumped from about 5 million to 7.5 tions more favorable for survival? billion since the invention of agricul- But even if humanity can find the Again, no one is sure, but Mann’s ture, a 1,500-fold increase. By 1996 a self restraint, what is the proper course essay explores some ingenious hy- team of Stanford biologists estimated to pursue? potheses that researchers have put that a single species—humanity— Competing ideas are everywhere, forward. Whatever answers they settle used or dominated 50% of the biologi- along with many who claim that the upon, it is clear that since homo sa- cally productive land base of the whole whole crisis is a hoax and resist any piens 2.0 appeared 50,000 or so years Earth! By the year 2000 humans were change to the status quo. It’s not just a ago, the human population has spread using fully half of the world’s acces- matter of inventing new, more benign out around the globe and increased sible fresh water. It becomes clear why technologies. Somehow we have to dig from perhaps a few hundred individu- some scientists are now calling the deep enough to find some unifying als in a small slice of Africa to 5 mil- current era the Anthropocene.5 key. And even then do we have time to lion by about 10,000 years ago. make the necessary changes? Indus- Unnaturally different trial agriculture, for example, may be Phase two deadening the natural productivity of Will humans continue the explo- the soil, polluting rivers, and creating Then we invented agriculture. sive growth and consumption, Mann huge dead zones in the oceans around If the increase of our numbers wondered, until, like the bacteria in the great river deltas of the world; but during the period from 50,000 to the petri dish, we use up all of Earth’s right now it feeds billions. No one 10,000 years ago was the slow growth resources, poison the environment knows how to feed the same billions first phase of the petri dish curve, the with CO2 and plastic, and then cata- with organic agriculture and perma- agricultural revolution started the strophically crash, carrying with us culture. New technologies need time exponential explosion of the second most mammals and many plants? to be tested and deployed properly lest phase. Mann traces the development The prose in “The State of the Spe- they cause more problems than they of agriculture, from the first known cies” is articulate and engaging, full of solve. use of wild (pre-agriculture) ancestors examples and potent metaphors. The The last big change to human- of today’s domestic cereals like bar- author lights candles in the caves of ity, 50,000 years ago, was the birth of ley and rice by early humans 105,000 the ancients. Dim details of the past mental humanity proper, we might years ago, through natural mutations pop into view everywhere. We gain say. In Mann’s assessment, it released that made these grains more suit- new insight. astounding creativity in the human able for farming, to deliberate genetic Under pressure of the destruc- brain and plasticity in our behavior. modifications and the transforma- tiveness of the Anthropocene, Charles He invokes those two qualities, crea- tion of natural “food deserts” like the Mann wants to know if humanity is dif- tivity and plasticity, to answer the American Midwest and the Ukraine ferent from the rest of life in some fun- great questions in a way that supports into the breadbaskets of today. Of ag- damental way. We had better be, he rea- his hope that humanity can do the im- riculture, he writes, “Instead of natural sons, because if we want to survive the possible and defy our twenty-first cen- ecosystems with their haphazard mix worldwide disruption and destruction tury rush to self destruction. of species (so many useless organisms we are creating, humans are going to Our species is amazingly adap- guzzling up resources!), farms are taut, have to do something so daunting and tive, homesteading from the frozen disciplined communities conceived unnatural that no other species has ever Arctic to the steamy Amazon jungle and dedicated to the maintenance done it—constrain our own success— to the fiery Kalahari Desert. And hu-

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 11 manity has shown remarkable ability By integrating discoveries from start from the ground, from matter, to change even the foundations of so- many disciplines, “The State of the from the measurable, long before we cial life in the course of a few decades. Species” does display a growing ho- look upward or within. Materialism Slavery, for example, which was inte- lism in Western science. And it begins may even prove to have its benefits gral to the fabric of human civiliza- to consider seriously who we are and for yoga, especially a Yoga that is not tion for millennia, nearly disappeared where we are going. Instead of rush- complete until the transformation of completely from the world during a ing forward with the current para- matter itself is accomplished. few short decades in the nineteenth digm of control and exploitation, or century. Mann credits creativity and hunkering down in a swamp of cyni- plasticity for this and other advances, cism and despair, Mann steps back The party’s over like the American civil rights move- and raises the great questions. And he ment and the ongoing changes in the gives us an example of the best think- Richard Heinberg narrows our fo- status of women. ing of the materialist worldview. He cus from 200,000 years to the last few But in the comments after the on- gathers the research and stories of the centuries. He sometimes compares line version of his essay, Mann con- observer of life looking on events and life today where he lives in Sonoma cedes that our chances for avoiding evidence outside himself—the view of County, north of San Francisco, with collapse do not look good. science—curious about the world, in- life of the Pomo Nation, an indigenous trigued by its mysteries, dreaming up people who inhabited the same area Dimensions of a national yoga explanations and then honing them several hundred years ago:6 against the testimony of the senses and It might be tempting to criticize the blade of logic. The Pomo “The State of the Species” for the nar- This method gives new meaning to rowness of its assumptions. Western the word precision. It conjures theories First close your eyes and clear science’s practical materialism usually from a few bones or a scattering of an- your mind. precludes any discussion of the mind cient pollen in a cave. It probes the mys- Now look with fresh eyes into the in favor of what is measurable—brain, teries of the minuscule and the humon- past: Before Europeans arrived, the behavior, and genetics. Spirit is a no gous, looking for coherence, for sur- Pomo were a peaceful people of about show for the same reason. Creativity prise, for delight. And it discovers mir- 15,000 living in many small villages in is a wedge here, but it does not lead acles out there. It widens and enriches the area. They wore no clothing except the author to investigate his own sub- our knowledge: galaxies that were born in winter, when men wore a cloak and jectivity or that of our species, despite near the birth of the universe itself, tiny women a skirt made of redwood bark. the huge part it played in the creation fragments of protein that carry invis- Each village was family—everyone of his essay and in the discoveries of ible qualities down the generations, was related—and each had a dance its subjects, individual and collective. bits of ash in the strata of a hillside that house and a sweat lodge for healing But in addition to noting limits remember volcanic explosions tens of and ceremonies. An elder settled dis- of Mann’s analysis, let’s see if we can thousands of years ago and thousands putes. Everyone knew intimately every view his work and the work of the of miles away, cave paintings that open stream and hill, every species of herb others in this essay as examples and the imagination to the beginnings of and bush and tree, frog and lizard, in- dimensions of an American yoga. If symbolic thought on the planet. sect and mammal in their surround- every nation has a soul, and that soul And since so much of America’s ings. They collected food easily from has something to offer to the evolving thoughts and actions are entwined with this abundance: nuts, seeds, berries, symphony of human unity, is it possi- materialism, this may be a good place roots, greens, fish, deer. From child- ble to see the American soul express- to start our investigation. The Ameri- hood everyone learned how to build a ing itself through the thick crust of na- can soul, at least the Euro-American dwelling, gather food, and treat com- tional ego? What is the American soul aspect of it, seems to have a predilec- mon illnesses with local plants. Infant trying to develop through its current tion for a bottom-up approach. We mortality was high, but elders often instruments? Can we glean anything have no highly-developed, integrated reached 80 years or more. Cancer and about the national yoga in this way? philosophy or spiritual heritage to heart disease were very rare. People Let’s make the attempt. inspire and inform this work. So we worked for their basic needs three or

12 • Collaboration Fall 2018 four hours a day. The rest of A once-only the time they spent in play, extravaganza conversation, story tell- ing, ceremony, crafts. Few Peak oil is not just an traveled beyond the natural abstract marker on the boundaries of their villages charts of Exxon’s critics. and hunting-gathering ar- The cheap, abundant, con- eas. It was a relatively hap- centrated sunlight called py, easy life, powered by petroleum and its kin, coal human, animal, and plant and natural gas, are expo- energy and nature’s cycles. nentially more powerful Close your eyes again and convenient than any and clear the screen. energy source humanity Now look again: Today ever had. This new energy nearly 500,000 people live gave birth to something in the same area. Almost breathtakingly different no one can build a house from anything that came or make their own cloth- before—industrial society, ing. Inhabitants commonly which is now worldwide. It know few if any of their powered the explosive eco- neighbors. There are many one parent Peak oil nomic growth and geographic con- families and many people living alone. quest of the last three hundred years, You can easily walk or drive around all Richard Heinberg is a violinist, a change in scope akin to the agricul- day in a Sonoma city without seeing a a gardener, and the Senior Fellow at tural revolution 10,000 years ago. This relative or even a familiar face. Daily the Post Carbon Institute, a nonprofit Industrial Revolution anchors itself on food typically comes shipped from think tank in California. He is a re- three pillars: endless economic growth strangers in distant, unknown places spected, published expert on energy and progress, consumerism to perpet- and produced in unnatural ways. Few systems, especially fossil fuels, in in- uate that growth, and capitalism for people know the source of the fresh dustrial societies. He made his name the private management of produc- water from their faucets, and children investigating the notion of peak oil tion and enrichment of its owners. The can identify far more commercial log- and studying its consequences. abundant fossil fuel energy of this age os than species of local plants. Settling Petroleum is a finite resource on has altered every aspect of life. Here disputes can be impossibly expensive a finite planet. Since today’s civiliza- are two examples among a multitude. and time consuming in the complex, tion is extracting and burning oil fast- • Agriculture was a supplier of multi-level judicial system. The work er than we are finding new accessible energy (as food) for pre-industrial day is typically eight hours—often sources, it must at some point become societies, but today agriculture is a more for the lower economic classes. too expensive and too destructive to net consumer of energy because of its Today’s inhabitants are unable to im- the environment to extract and refine. dependence on artificial fertilizers, agine the life cycle of most of the com- Peak oil refers to that point. Once the herbicides, and pesticides made from mon objects in their neighborhood or recognized economic and social cost fossil fuels, not to mention transpor- town. Most of the tables and chairs, of producing oil exceeds the price tation and packaging of produce plus TVs and air conditioners, hamburg- society is willing to pay, production the damage to the health of soil, water ers and cornflakes, cars and eighteen- from the mighty petroleum industry and life these additives cause. Hein- wheelers, tractors and phones of this will begin to decline, taking much of berg says that the US food system of society were produced far away and industrial civilization down with it, today consumes 12 calories of energy are powered by fossil fuels extracted Heinberg says. If we haven’t already for every food calorie delivered to the from distant lands at unimagined passed peak oil, we are rapidly ap- final consumer! costs to soil, life, and atmosphere of proaching it. • The number of people that lived our one home. in cities before the Industrial Revolu-

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 13 tion was fewer than 10 percent. The on the horizon—not solar, wind, nu- Meanwhile already 20,000 scien- mass urbanization of today, now more clear, hydrogen—alone or in combi- tists from 184 countries as of this writ- than 50 percent of global population, nation is remotely capable of keeping ing have signed the “World Scientists’ is recent and relentless, driven by the today’s industrial civilization running Warning to Humanity: A Second No- cheap fossil fuels of our time. before the whole thing collapses. In tice,” which was published in 2017.10 But this has been a one-time only other words, there is no technologi- Global finance is another reason energy extravaganza. Once burned, cal fix. No one can predict the future, for swift action. fossil fuels are gone forever. but the evidence9 Heinberg provides is Just a decade ago the gears of the detailed and compelling. immense financial system that lubri- The party’s over Consider machinery. It is ubiqui- cates industrial civilization for the tous in our lives today. Think of the whole world nearly froze solid, setting As the bonanza of cheap fossil fuels Pomo for contrast. Even the technical off the Great Recession and coming comes to an end, so does our era. We are saviors of today’s thinking, solar and within a hair’s breadth of triggering the seeing the resulting fractures in society’s wind energy, rely on petroleum-driven Great Depression 2.0. The fatal contra- institutions more clearly every year. machinery for mining, transporting dictions in global finances that gave I remember when gasoline was 19 and manufacturing the turbines and us both events came more clearly into cents a gallon. Long gone. Easy-to-get panels that deliver “clean” energy. In view this last round, but this time they petroleum was pumped and burned some places, old solar panels are them- were not corrected!11 Because of this years ago. Today tar sands or fracked selves becoming a waste problem! Per- failure12 another economic collapse is oil and seabed petroleum are keeping haps technical issues like these could probably just around the corner. And the business afloat, but they are hide- be worked out given enough time, says because of the extreme globalization ously expensive and dangerous to pro- Heinberg; but there are other technical of industry and finance today, it will duce. Burning coal is even more dan- as well as huge political and psycho- probably be far worse than the Great gerous to life and already more expen- logical problems to be solved before Depression of the 1930s. Most of us no sive than renewable energy today. The renewables can replace fossil fuels. longer live on farms to provide food banner across the climate-warming and shelter when the cargo ships from sky is getting clearer each year. Every Meanwhile, time… China and the trucks from Mexico and country in the world signed the Paris California grind to a halt and unem- Climate Agreement.8 Saudi Arabia, Meanwhile time is of the essence. ployment skyrockets. World leaders king of oil and sand, has announced Climate disruption from green- are unlikely to organize a renewable the unthinkable: its intention to in- house gases produced by fossil fuels is energy Marshall Plan during the chaos vest future oil dollars in solar energy becoming visible for everyone to see of such a global economic and social instead of more oil extraction! At the even in a wealthy country like the US. meltdown. Meanwhile global warm- recent One Planet Summit in Paris, In 2017 three major hurricanes devas- ing and the other plagues of industrial the president of the World Bank an- tated parts of the southern and eastern civilization—economic inequality and nounced, to protracted clapping and US. Hurricane Harvey squatted over political corruption, land and water cheers from the assembled dignitaries, Houston, TX for five days, unloading pollution, the sixth mass extinction, an end to its upstream investment in more water than any storm in US his- top soil loss, dead zones and plastic oil and gas beginning in 2019. tory. Hurricane Maria destroyed lives, islands in the oceans, destruction of Cheap fossil fuels have been a pre- buildings, electricity, clean water and the world’s forests…—march on. viously unimaginable energy windfall hope in Puerto Rico. Hurricane Irma, for humanity, but they are not renew- the most powerful storm ever docu- System overshoot able. The party is inevitably coming to mented in the Atlantic, became “only” an end. In fact, The Party’s Over is the the third most expensive hurricane in But here Richard Heinberg switch- title of Richard Heinberg’s 2003 book. American history as it ripped through es to a wider view. The real problem, he What peak oil really means, he says, Florida. The Tubbs Fire, one of 9,000 says, is not peak oil, global warming, is an end to economic growth and the California wildfires in 2017, destroyed or any of these other crises. They are all contraction and re-ruralization of so- more than 5600 homes and killed 22 symptoms of the real problem, which ciety. He argues that no energy source people in suburban California. he defines as system overshoot.13 Cur-

14 • Collaboration Fall 2018 rently humanity uses 1.7 times more re- for a soft landing: convincing policy Heinberg doesn’t write about these sources than Earth can produce14 each makers of a backup plan and develop- possibilities with the conviction that year. As India, China, Brazil, and other ing local resiliency. In either case he he gives to the technical and policy developing countries approach the ma- thinks a re-ruralization of society is changes humanity needs to make, but terial consumption of the US and West- inevitable. Fossil fuels and their ma- his writing leaves room for them. He ern Europe, that overreach can only chines enabled the exponential flight acknowledges that we are not embrac- grow. We have a problem, Houston, a of the world’s population to the cities ing these solutions fast enough to pre- problem of math and physics. over the last century. But with the com- vent collapse because we ourselves are Also biology. To Heinberg, indus- ing demise of this easy energy, there is the real problem. He wants to believe trial civilization is the boiling bub- no safe equivalent energy source in the that human agency, precisely because ble of bacteria in the world petri dish foreseeable future to maintain today’s it has helped to create the phalanx of approaching overreach and collapse. urban centers, much less the ten bil- crises invading the barricades of con- The question is not whether it will lion people predicted by 2050. temporary life, can exercise the same happen. Unending economic growth “We have to change everything, power to turn the whole thing around. on a finite planet is an impossibility. including our entire economic sys- Ultimately he identifies human moral Every civilization is born, grows, and tem—and fast,” he writes.16 values, flexibility, and creativity as our dies. The question instead is whether last hopes for survival. But here lies a we can intervene deliberately, quickly, A practical foreshadowing problem. The human agency that sup- and intelligently enough in this runa- ports the excesses of industrial civili- way tsunami to create a soft landing Richard Heinberg is the practical zation is in service to ego. instead of a violent collapse. American mind at work. He’s a careful Like Charles Mann, Richard thinker. He comes to these alarming Heinberg never seriously questions Toxic knowledge conclusions reluctantly. Over four dec- the primacy of the mind as the leader ades he has written 13 books and more of humanity’s efforts. This makes the For Heinberg, the situation that than 300 monthly essays (museletters) solutions he offers weak compared to our way of life faces today is dire. “We for a growing audience, trying to make the strength of his conviction about are approaching one of history’s great sense of our predicament. His analysis the difficulties. But in that context, the discontinuities,” he wrote in 2017. All is rich and detailed and intelligent. He pessimism that he has expressed about signs of his investigation into indus- engages systems thinking and ecology our chances to avoid a catastrophic trial, social, and political science and to bring together the siloed branches collapse is believable. history point to a near term collapse of scientific and social know-how for Does Heinberg’s lack of develop- of global industrial civilization. “Bas- more interconnected understandings ment of the inward aspects of radical ing our entire economy on the ever- and solutions. He outlines what is hap- change mean he has no relevance for increasing rate at which we burn a fi- pening in detail and what we need to the nation soul’s evolution and emer- nite fuel supply is the very definition do on a practical, material level. gence? For a beautiful, beyond-mind of stupid,” he wrote.15 He investigates the “happiness future? Heinberg calls the realization that movement” and argues for an “evo- A more sympathetic view might our civilization today is hanging by a lutionary leap” of inclusiveness and be that the Shakti of terrestrial evo- thread “toxic knowledge,” because it cooperation. A “soft landing” is still lution is using thought leaders like is difficult or impossible for most of possible for humanity as it leaves be- Heinberg and Mann to knead and us, living in our well-worn habits of hind the material bounty of the Indus- widen our thinking beyond the physi- morning coffee and evening TV, to trial Age, he says. A reboot of civili- cal mind and even beyond the rational imagine that our whole way of life may zation could even benefit humanity if mind and the speculative mind. In this be gone in a decade or two. we could organize a different way this view Heinberg is listening through the He is part of an ongoing conver- time. A simpler life without consum- crust of a materialist understanding sation among the relatively few who erism could shift to more indigenous from far below, and laying out in echo- acknowledge the deep nature of the values and behavior and also to more ing details the imminent fulfillment of current situation. This conversation, exploration and development of the the case that Sri Aurobindo made in he says, is focused on two strategies spiritual potential of humanity. The Life Divine a century ago.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 15 At present mankind is under- Notice here that Sri Aurobindo much as they do here on Earth, going an evolutionary crisis in identifies the breakup needed but im- raising their families, raising their which is concealed a choice of mediately proceeds to a gleaming vi- gardens, walking in the forest. its destiny… Man has created a sion of the world beyond the breakup. And in that forest grew the great system of civilization which has Some of Heinberg’s contemporaries Tree of Life, on which grew all become too big for his limited also flip the story from crisis and disas- kinds of fruits and berries and mental capacity and understand- ter to opportunity in a way that neither medicines on a single tree. One ing and his still more limited he nor Charles Mann manage. Here is day, a great windstorm blew spiritual and moral capacity to American visionary Paul Hawken on down the tree and opened at its utilize and manage, a too danger- the opportunity of climate change: base a huge hole in the ground ous servant of his blundering ego where its roots had pulled up. Be- and its appetites… The problem The way I look at it, climate ing curious like all of us, a beauti- is fundamental and in putting it change is an offering, a gift, feed- ful young woman whom we call evolutionary Nature in man is back from the atmosphere. All Gizhkokwe, or Skywoman, went confronting herself with a critical feedback is an instruction sheet over to have a look. She stood at choice which must one day be on how an organism or system the edge and looked down, but solved in the true sense if the race can change and transform… All could see nothing for it was en- is to arrive or even to survive…17 systems require negative feedback tirely dark below, so she stepped in order to survive, live, grow and a little farther and the edge of the Could Heinberg’s “We have to evolve. So negative feedback is hole began to crumble beneath change everything…and fast,” be a what we want here. It is the guide her feet. She reached out to stop faint foreshadowing of Sri Aurobindo’s to course correction… herself by grabbing on to the vastly more radical program? That’s what climate change fallen tree, but the branch broke is offering us—a new story off in her hand.22 What we propose in our Yoga about how human beings should is nothing less than to break up interact with each other in this In the watery darkness below, the whole formation of our past heavenly home called Earth.19 dark eyes noticed the bright hole in and present which makes up the the sky and a tiny mote growing larger ordinary material and mental until they could see that it was a young man and to create a new centre Braiding beauty woman, her long black hair trailing as of vision and a new universe of she fell. In alarm, geese lifted from the activities in ourselves which shall It’s one thing to summarize the surface to cushion her on their feath- constitute a divine humanity or a understanding of thinkers like Charles ery wings before she hit the water. The superhuman nature… Mind has Mann and Richard Heinberg, but how geese couldn’t hold her on their wings to cease to be mind and become do you summarize beauty? for long, so they called a council of all brilliant with something beyond Robin Wall Kimmerer braids the beings of that world to decide what it. Life has to change into a thing beauty out of many things: gratitude, to do. Instinctively they understood vast and calm and intense and graduate school, sweetgrass, science, that Skywoman needed dry land, but powerful that can no longer rec- and Skywoman. She sometimes starts where to find it? The divers among ognise its old blind eager narrow her writings and talks with the crea- them had heard that there was mud at self of petty impulse and desire. tion story that is already a love story, the bottom of the water, so they sent Even the body has to submit to told by both Haudenosaunee20 and their best swimmers down, one by one a mutation and be no longer the Anishinaabe21 people in their home- to bring some up. A great turtle float- clamorous animal or the imped- lands. ing in the middle of the council of- ing clod it now is, but become fered to let Skywoman rest on his back instead a conscious servant and Skywoman until the mud could be brought to the radiant instrument and living surface. Finally Muskrat was able to form of the spirit.18 In the beginning, there was the bring back a fist full of mud to the sur- Skyworld, where people lived face. At Turtle’s invitation, Skywoman

16 • Collaboration Fall 2018 spread the mud on his back and sang moment, a cascade of gifts that we and danced in gratitude for the gift of have neither earned nor paid for. A earth and the generosity of the beings world of unfathomable bounty. Truly of the water world. the Garden, even today—blueber- ries, hummingbirds, black soil that As she danced her thanks, the miraculously sprouts green life, the land grew and grew from the dab falling rain and chattering brook, the of mud on Turtle’s back. And bag of rice, the tree that became this so, the earth was made. Not by desk, a field of daisies, the laughter of one alone, but from the alchemy children. Trees that breathe out oxy- of the animals’ gifts and human gen for our lungs. gratitude. Together they created She doesn’t twist that start- what we know today as Turtle ing point into a demonstration of Island. her own greatness, her worthiness of gifts, or a chance to accumulate From the broken branch of the piles of stuff. Instead it lights in her Tree of Life Skywoman took seeds and a flame of gratitude and a call to re- planted them into the new soil. All the lationship with the giver of gifts. The plants and herbs of Turtle Island have relationship is a circle—receiving grown from those gifts she brought and returning the gift—not a oneway with her. street. And she is not the center of this circle. She is a player. She is at The wonder of giftedness play in reciprocity, in receiving and the mutual benefits of our relationship returning the gift. Dr. Kimmerer is Distinguished with nature? They must have been Teaching Professor of Environmental raised on a different creation story Ownership Biology at the SUNY College of En- than Skywoman.23 vironmental Science and Forestry in Robin Kimmerer wants to give Dr. Kimmerer contrasts the at- Syracuse, New York. She is also found- them and us a different way of relat- titude of giftedness with a different ing Director of the Center for Native ing to life. She is fluent and published wedge of awareness, embodied in the Peoples and the Environment at that in the abstractions of science but her language of her scientific colleagues, institution. A published scientist, she home is in loving interaction with the who speak of “natural resources” in- is a writer, a mother, and an enrolled beings and forces of Earth. Her words stead of gifts. Resources, “a stock or member of the Citizen Band Pota- ring with an almost unbearable sweet- supply of money, materials, staff, and watomi. ness. It’s easy to believe that she nearly other assets that can be drawn on by She once gave her third year stu- chose poetry for her college major in- a person or organization in order to dents in General Ecology a survey stead of botany. Hearing her words we function effectively.”24 Resources are that asked them to rate the positive savor the beauty of language, and we property, at the disposal of the own- and negative interactions between hu- begin to notice how much we have lost er, an integral part of the ownership mans and nature. To nearly all of the in the lunge into the rational world of society. students, humans and nature were “a the Enlightenment. She makes the contrast between bad mix.” When the survey asked for Kimmerer anchors her teaching gifts and owned property because examples of positive interactions be- in the wonder of giftedness, one wedge contrast is how we learn with the tween people and nature, “the median from the vast pie of awareness. Gifted- mind. She makes the contrast explic- response was none”! She was stunned: ness is her given, just as it was the ex- it: “Though we live in a world made How can we find a way toward eco- perience of Skywoman and the water of gifts, we find ourselves harnessed logical and cultural sustainability if creatures who received her when she to institutions and an economy that the young people who select ecology fell. Giftedness is the acknowledge- relentlessly asks, ‘What more can we for their career cannot even imagine ment that we receive every day, every take from the Earth?’ This worldview

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 17 of unbridled exploitation is to my Coyote, of the rivers too, of mountains young women and men slowly calm mind the greatest threat to the life that and stones. Things in our eyes become down, settle into “the wild” as home, surrounds us. Even our definitions of family in hers. and send out new tendrils of connec- sustainability revolve around trying to tion and homecoming to the trees, the find the formula to ensure that we can Wilderness ethnobotany wind, the rain, the fertile muck of the keep on taking, far into the future.” lake bottom, and to one another. She wants to offer this other slice To turn words like these from of awareness—giftedness—to us, who teaching stories for children of old Gratitude live in the ownership wedge, as a new into lived experience and memory for way of being, as a way that we can step the young and old of today’s urban- If reciprocity is the way of the back from the precipice that Charles ized world, she publishes,25 speaks at world, what can her students give Mann and Richard Heinberg are star- conferences and commencements, back? What can we give back to Earth ing over. and takes her ecology students away for all of these gifts? Does the destruc- from the wired and familiar world of tion that we are causing make us nec- The way the world works city life for five weeksof ethnobotany essarily the cancer of the earth (Sir at Cranberry Lake Biological wilder- David Attenborough), exiled from the Bucking the tide of taking, ex- ness station in upstate New York. No giving circle of friends and relatives? tracting, consuming ever more, resist- Walmart, no Instagram, no mobile The organizing question of daily ing the industrial language of “natural phones, no air conditioning except the life for her students in class and at the resources” as if these gifts somehow lake breeze, no electricity! wilderness reserve begins to change inherently belong to us, and the scien- The students in this program are from “what can I get?” to “what can I tific language of “ecosystem services,” enthusiastic about the theory of ecol- give?” What gifts do we humans have? as if the gifts were somehow the inevi- ogy, but clueless about how to receive What can we offer to Earth? the stu- table outcome of a biological machine, nature’s gifts directly, how to experi- dents want to know. Kimmerer’s Pota- Robin Kimmerer says that reciprocity ence life as gift directly from nature’s watomi tradition teaches that answer- is the way the world works. hands. So the first day at camp Kim- ing this question was the unique job of She carries the story traditions of merer and her students brainstorm a a human person. her indigenous ancestors about the cov- list of basic human needs and set out When the world and its beings enant of reciprocity that many peoples to discover which of them the Adiron- are gift-giving relatives, the natural re- understood for millennia: For Earth to dack plants near the wilderness station sponse from humans, Robin Kimmerer maintain balance, every gift received might be able to give. Shelter is high says, our most potent gift, isgratitude . requires a gift offered in return. Every on the list, so they begin to build their Gratitude is more than a casual or creature has a gift and a responsibil- “classroom” from saplings of the for- formulaic thank you in indigenous tra- ity. Meadow Lark has the gift of music, est and cattail leaves of the lake. Kim- ditions. Gratitude is strong medicine, and her responsibility is to give voice merer guides them with a light touch, she insists. It acknowledges the gift to the song of the meadow. Salmon has listening to their voices change as day and the giver. It offers respect. Grati- the gift of travel. His responsibility is by day they slip ever so gradually into tude holds the gift giver in its heart. to bring back the riches of the ocean to ways of native life and find with their Thankfulness happily pays attention the beings waiting inland. own hands and eyes the gifts of the for- to the giver of the gift, not the taker. In the face of accusations of an- est and lake for food, for bedding, for Paying attention, Kimmerer says, is thropomorphism, Kimmerer defiantly antimicrobial sunburn salve, for water- the least we can do, and the most. celebrates the animacy of Earth and all proof roofing and insulation, for music Appreciation and attention carry of her creatures. Her ancestral Pota- and fire building. She, the teacher, has powerful and practical evolutionary watomi language does not divide the long since discovered that the land and advantages, she argues. Gratitude for world into human persons and things, plants themselves are the real teachers, the gifts surrounding us can lead to a into I and it. Instead the language both the gift givers and the gifts. sense of satisfaction, of “enoughness,” grammatically upholds the animacy— But she brings the human gift of and thereby a natural self restraint the personhood—of Maple and Oak, storytelling, and so we get to watch from taking more than we need. Ap- of Raven and Swallow, of Beaver and through her eyes and words these preciative attention opens our eyes

18 • Collaboration Fall 2018 to the multitude of our fellow travel- the cultural knowledge and traditions a sandy beach, to be a Saturday, ers—They are everywhere. We are not that had been taken from them. Kim- all are possible verbs in a world alone!—to their autonomous being merer’s grandfather was one of the vic- where everything is alive.27 and to our heart’s intimacy with them. tims of this program. Gratitude is antibiotic to consumerism. But she replied simply to the inter- Something missing viewer that plants talk to her. “What Animacy knowledge the people have forgotten Something was missing in the sci- is remembered by the land,” she says.26 entific reporting of Charles Mann. The Indigenous cultures do not regard We just need to listen. Asking who meaning of humanity that he was look- our non-human terrestrial compan- opens up a different world of commu- ing for seemed to be out there some- ions as things, objects without rights nication. where, outside of his own humanity. or awareness, oblivious to conscious Non-native plant lovers have Richard Heinberg’s response to the connection and gratitude. experienced communication with Great Unraveling is American practi- Science, Kimmerer says, can be plants, too; but English does not privi- cality: Let’s name and organize prac- a language of distance, of separation, lege this relationship. Potawatomi and tical steps we need to take to change objectifying what we see and feel many indigenous languages, however, our ways and mitigate the damage of around us. She notices that a scien- build the knowledge of animacy into industrial and population overreach. tific approach to the plants around us the grammar of the language. This is what we expect from the Eng- often begins and ends in the question lish heritage of the United States. You what. What tree is this? What are the Potawatomi does not divide want to have a practical mind and characteristic qualities of that flower? the world into masculine and hand around when trouble is brew- And the pronouns used are likely to be feminine. Nouns and verbs both ing. It calmly surveys the situation and neuter pronouns, like it. What are its are animate and inanimate. You breaks it down into manageable steps. characteristics? hear a person with a word that is It lays out all the pieces and puts them She wants to ask the question who: completely different from the one in order. But something is still missing. Who are you? with which you hear an airplane. Sri Aurobindo wrote brilliantly Who implies recognition that the about the English mind in The Fu- being you see is also aware and intel- Kimmerer gives the example of the ture Poetry: Preeminent in the prac- ligent and can communicate. It has the word “bay,” a noun, a thing, in English; tical business of life in commerce, in qualities of what we call a person. In but Potawatomi recognizes the bay’s politics, in colonization and exploita- fact, it may be a teacher. This is animacy. inherent animacy by making it a verb. tion of the riches of the world, in me- An interviewer once asked her chanical science, in domination and how she, a botanist, was able to be- A bay is a noun only if water exploitation of the world’s riches. “No gin recovering the traditional plant is dead. When bay is a noun, it spirituality, but a robust ethical turn; knowledge of her tribe. Most of that is defined by humans, trapped no innate power of the thought and knowledge had been destroyed by between its shores and con- the word, but a strong turn for action; forced relocations of her people and by tained by the word. But the verb no fine play of emotion or quickness the notorious “boarding school” trau- wiikegama—to be a bay—releases of sympathy, but an abundant energy ma suffered by her people and many the water from bondage and lets and force of will.”28 other indigenous peoples. Between it live. “To be a bay” holds the The English colonists to the 1860 and 1978, young Indian children wonder that, for this moment, the United States brought with them this were forcibly taken from their families living water has decided to shel- cultural mind, full of English deter- and imprisoned in institutions where ter itself between these shores, mination and force of will. They built they were punished for speaking their conversing with cedar roots up “new England” with fierce despera- native language or practicing the life and a flock of baby mergansers. tion. David Hackett Fischer, author of ways of their people. Generations of Because it could do otherwise– Albion’s Seed,29 tells how the material precious knowledge and practice were become a stream or an ocean or and family culture of each part of the lost. Survivors of these schools could a waterfall, and there are verbs early American colonies reflected so no longer pass down to their children for that, too. To be a hill, to be precisely and persistently the part of

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 19 England from which they came that a Indigenous prophecies have even The prophecy tells us that we careful observer could see the parallel predicted the situation that the world’s must make a choice between the customs on both sides of the Atlantic peoples find ourselves in today. Robin path of materialism and greed long after the immigration ceased. My Kimmerer has shared an Anishinaabe that will destroy the earth or the dad, for example, who was of English ancestral tradition, carried by their spiritual path of care and com- and Scottish ancestry, was a master knowledge keepers, called the Seventh passion, of bmaadiziwin, of the worker of things with his hands, a Fire Prophecy.31 good life. And we are told that builder and shaper of machines, boats, The first sixfires —here firesmeans before we can choose that soft and houses. My mother’s Irish rela- the places where this people has lived green path we can’t just walk for- tives loved to see him come for a visit and the events and teachings sur- ward. The people of the seventh precisely because he would diagnose rounding those places—describe the fire must instead walk backwards and put right the plumbing, electri- eras in the life of the people from its and pick up what was left for us cal, and mechanical breakdowns they earliest origin. During the Sixth Fire along the ancestors’ path: the saved for his visits. a young man came to the people stories, the teachings, the songs, Just as something was missing in with a message about a seventh fire each other, our more-than-hu- the English mind, namely the sub- that would come next, a time of great man relatives who were lost along merged but half-insistent Celtic spir- changes and choices. the way—and our language. Only it,30 so something has been missing in when we have found these once the American mind that looks back to After the long migration of our again and placed in our bundles Europe and its “special relationship” Anishinaabe people, after the the things that will heal us—the with England. The something that is arrival of the newcomers and things that we love—can we walk missing has actually been here much after all the losses—of land, of forward on that green path, all longer than the English, for thousands language, of sacred ways, of each the worlds’ people, together...34 of years before them. other—the prophecy and his- It is said that if the people But the newcomers haven’t been tory converge. It is said that the choose the green path, then all listening. people will find themselves in a races will go forward together to time where you can no longer light the eighth and final fire of The Seventh Fire fill a cup from the streams and peace and brotherhood, forging drink, when the air is too thick the great nation that was foretold Now this indigenous mind is re- to breathe and when the plants long ago.35 awakening all over North America. and animals will turn their faces The Zapatistas of Mexico, the Idle No away from us. It is said in that Similarities between the deep vi- More movement in Canada, the Stand- time, which we will know as the sion of Integral Yoga and indigenous ing Rock awakening of indigenous na- time of the seventh fire, that all teachings abound. Sri Aurobindo of- tions in the US, the Robin Kimmerers the worlds’ peoples will stand at a ten wrote about the recovery of the and many other native voices across fork in the road. One of the paths ancient knowledge of the peoples and Turtle Island are conferring among is soft and green and spangled civilizations he had studied. He wrote, themselves and have caught the atten- with dew. You could walk bare- “…[T]he sadhaka of the integral yoga tion of the nation and the world. foot there. And one of the paths will not be satisfied until he has in- After centuries of oppression and is black and burnt, made of cin- cluded all other names and forms of disrespect, this indigenous mind is re- ders that would cut your feet.32 deity in his own conception… weld- asserting itself. It has something to say. ed the truth in all teachings into the Now will the younger brother listen? The Eighth Fire harmony of the Eternal wisdom.”36 Have they yet developed listening ears? He has a mighty story, an epic about These voices are offering to the white Kimmerer says that her people’s a “Skywoman” who descended to the brother and sister a different direction: elders tell them that they (all of us) are world below bringing gifts, meeting Instead of continuing with what more living in the time of the seventh fire.33 her partner, and initiating a new age. we can take from the Earth, let us ask, For the integral yogi, the whole mani- what does the Earth ask of us? We know which path we want. festation is animate—alive with the

20 • Collaboration Fall 2018 spark of the One Reality everywhere is bought. They say that perhaps environment. in everything. The recognition of hu- my people had to die to nour- 6. He reviewed this comparison, man unity is both explicit in indig- ish this earth with their truth. written in his book A New Covenant enous traditions like the Eighth Fire Your people did not have ears to with Nature, at a talk for the Theo- and implicit in the widespread teach- hear. Perhaps we had to return to sophical Society in July, 2017: https:// ing summarized by the phrase “all my the earth, so that we could grow www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTohj_ relations.” In indigenous practice, the within your hearts. Perhaps we jberU&app=desktop. call to put the Divine always in front have come back and will fill the 7. He is the author of 11 books, in- sounds familiar. The respect and hu- hills and valleys with our song… cluding The Party’s Over, Powerdown, mility and gratitude for all the world’s There may be greater truths than The Oil Depletion Protocol, Peak Eve- gifts are common to both traditions. ours. The Creator hears and sees rything, Blackout and Snake Oil, and It seems to me that peoples living far over the horizon… Perhaps other writings and presentations. within the United States with gifts and there is a new truth, larger even 8. Including the United States, teachings like these are natural carri- than the Lakota’s, larger than all even though the current president has ers of the evolving soul of the nation the Indian peoples’, larger than repudiated the treaty. and of the planet. Not that they should the truths your people brought 9. Richard Heinberg, Afterburn: become yogis (we might honor some to this land, larger than all our Society Beyond Fossil Fuels (Gabriola of them with that term) nor that we truths combined, and that now we Island, BC: New Society Publishers, should try to become Hopi or Pota- are coming to find it together.37 2015). watomi; but they might help us learn 10. “World Sceintists’ Warning to to be truly native and alive to our I wonder if you are beginning to Humanity: A Second Notice,” https:// home here. hear the melody of an American yoga academic.oup.com/bioscience/arti- “By whatever means,” said The in these voices. There is more to come. cle/67/12/1026/4605229. Mother. This is the first of a series of articles 11. Oxfam Briefing Paper 178, In Kent Nerburn’s Neither Wolf highlighting American voices not “WORKING FOR THE FEW: Politi- nor Dog, Lakota elder “Dan” speaks found widely in mainstream media, cal capture and economic inequality,” to his white traveling companion near who are expressing, knowingly or not, https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www. the end of a journey of vivid memo- some aspects of the aspiration and ac- oxfam.org/files/bp-working-for-few- ries, grief, and vision. Dan zeroes in tion of the American soul. political-capture-economic-inequali- on the relations of these two peoples ty-200114-summ-en.pdf. in America. Notes and references 12. In fact, the current adminis- tration in the United States is aggra- I see the old ones and the chil- 1. Ken Cloke, “There Is No Them. vating and celebrating these flaws. dren every night when I lay There Is Just Us.” http://www.dai- 13. Richard Heinberg, Muselet- down… I see them at [the mas- lygood.org/story/1883/ken-cloke- ter 303, (2017) “Climate Change Isn’t sacre of] Sand Creek. I see them there-is-no-them-there-is-just-us- Our Biggest Environmental Problem,” in a hundred villages that are awakin-call-editors/ http://richardheinberg.com/muse- now forgotten… I want to know 2. Charles C. Mann, “The State letter-303-climate-change-isnt-our- why they had to die running… I of the Species,” http://www.orion- biggest-environmental-problem-and- want to know why our land was magazine.org/index.php/articles/arti- why-technology-wont-save-us. cut and scarred and we were not cle/7146 14. https://www.overshootday. allowed to stand against you to 3. There is now new evidence that org. ©2018 Earth Overshoot Day. protect the land and the children homo sapiens is at least 300,000 years old. 15. Richard Heinberg, Museletter and the old ones… 4. Stoneking’s 70,000 years ago is 303, (2017) “Climate Change Isn’t Our But now I am old. Different within the same rough time period, Biggest Environmental Problem.” voices speak to me. And here is the blink of an eye in geological time. 16. Ibid. what they say. 5. The period during which hu- 17. Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine They say that perhaps it is not man activity has become the domi- (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, by love, but by blood, that land nant influence on climate and the 2005), pp. 1052-1053.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 21 18. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis 32. Robin Wall Kimmerer, “When dressing a new audience. It is a genu- of Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Earth Becomes an It.” ine American voice. Ashram, 1999), pp. 72-73. 33. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braid- There is the prophecy of the Seven 19. Paul Hawken, “Paul Hawken: ing Sweetgrass, p. 368. Fires. Presently we live on the sixth Solutions Man,” http://www.dai- 34. Robin Wall Kimmerer, “When fire (camp), facing devastated rivers, lygood.org/story/1986/paul-hawken- Earth Becomes an It.” poisoned air, exploited land, and out- solutions-man-livia-albeck-ripka/ 35. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braid- of-balance climate cycles. But there is 20. The name that the people of the ing Sweetgrass, p. 371. a seventh fire to discover, which can Iroquois Confederacy call themselves. 36. Sri Aurobindo, The Synthesis heal these earthly wounds. However, 21. This is the name of a group of of Yoga, p. 66. and this is important, this fire will be culturally related Indigenous peoples 37. Kent Nerburn, Neither Wolf manifested not by a simple renaissance including the Ojibwe, Potawatomi, nor Dog (New World Library, 2002), of old shamanistic wisdom, but within Oji-Cree, Mississaugas, Chippewa, pp. 315-316. a new way. To find this new way, this and Algonquin peoples. new fire, all of us are invited. 22. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Responses to “Perhaps there is a new truth, “When Earth Becomes an It,” http:// larger even than the Lakota’s, larger darkmatterwomenwitnessing.com/is- “Some Voices of the than all the Indian peoples’, larger than sues/Apr2015/articles/When-Earth- American Yoga” the truths your people brought to this Becomes-an-It_Robin-W-Kimmerer. land, larger than all our truths com- html. bined, and that now we are coming to 23. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braid- The yogic discovery of a find it together.” This is what the voice ing Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, true American voice says. It is a vision that goes beyond the Scientific Knowledge, and the Teach- tragic and painful split of the indige- ings of Plants (Minneapolis, MN: by Wolfgang Aurose nous and the later coming peoples. All Milkweed Editions, 2013), p. 6. of them together are needed in order 24. New Oxford American Dic- n an integral view soul means to find a better and healing way into tionary app. being and becoming. Therefore the future. This task asks for all voices 25. Her writings include Gather- the evolving part of the soul has of the country, and the indigenous ing Moss (2003), Braiding Sweetgrass Iyounger and older layers. This is true voice is surely one of the wisest ones. (2013), and many scientific publica- for the soul of nations as well. The John Robert quotes Sri Auro- tions. members of these nations are invited bindo. “[T]he sadhaka of the integral 26. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braid- to play a co-evolutionary part in this yoga will not be satisfied until he has ing Sweetgrass, p. 369. dynamic. American Yoga, a term of included all other names and forms 27. Robin Wall Kimmerer, John Robert Cornell, means to foster of deity in his own conception… “Learning the Grammar of Anima- the evolution of the soul of the USA. welded the truth in all teachings into cy,” http://www.dailygood.org/more. This essence has an unique mission, the harmony of the Eternal wisdom.” php?n=6819. like all other national souls. The Indian master has written about 28. Sri Aurobindo, The Future John Robert depicts modern sci- the steps of the collective evolution of Poetry (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo entific research in ecology and biolo- consciousness. This finds some cor- Ashram, 1997), p. 52. gy. We hear about some sophisticated respondent in a modern theory called 29. Jane Smiley, “Jane’s Bingo! studies, undertaken with an ethical Spiral Dynamics, which is depicting Award for Most Informative Book of and open mindset. But something is even such an evolution. Like Sri Au- 2006,” https://www.huffingtonpost. missing. It is the missing link to the robindo this view resumes that we are com/jane-smiley/janes-bingo-award- pre-Columbian past of the country. standing on the brink of a radical new for-mos_b_37415.html. Today this past is awakening again consciousness, which will embrace the 30. Sri Aurobindo, The Future Po- as a rising voice, reminding to the world in a completely new and fuller etry, p. 53. “good life,” meaning the grateful and way. And like in Sri Aurobindo´s vi- 31. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braid- respectful indigenous way to live on sion Spiral Dynamics concludes that ing Sweetgrass, pp. 365-368. this earth. It´s a old voice, but it is ad- former worldviews, religions, spiritu-

22 • Collaboration Fall 2018 alities and sciences have all had their tion to settle their disputes often get world. This movement seems to partial truths, which will be under- stuck. He comes up against the lim- be a recognizable pattern in the stood, honored and integrated in the its of a mentalized, “outer” approach. playground of American Yoga. new “Integral Consciousness.” Here is where many resign themselves American Yoga, and this view is to helping only a few. Others might When I ask myself is there any the great insight of John Robert´s es- decide to return to work within the advantage to starting so consistently say, will help to become aware of the older model or start looking towards at the surface of things, so extremely indigenous strata of the American a new career—or even retirement! outside as so many of us Americans soul field. This is like a hidden treas- All of these options seem reasonable. do, I realize that there is a huge one— ure which, once it is uncovered, will Instead what Judge Cloke does is be- one that justifies the risks, the “slogs allow the fulfillment of the true mis- come “awake in the stuckness within across intermediary understandings.” sion of the soul of this country. A mis- himself….He finds that there is an It is not only that if we can man- sion which is not only done for its own energy stream or flow inside himself,” age the risks and make the slog we will sake, but, like all national soul mis- that is key to his work. When that en- “burst into the wideness and epipha- sions, will serve as a contribution to ergy flows freely, when it is unblocked, nies of the inner world,” but that we the evolution of the whole planet. the conflicting parties he is working will also have a depth of appreciation, Only this will make America with are helped to move past their own a fullness of love for this Conscious great. At last and again. stuckness. Later he realizes, “there is Soul we would not have had otherwise. no us and them. There is only us.” And, when we are more established Here is a wonderful story about in the Conscious Soul, when we can Nothing is “outside” the journey from mental conscious- look back on our lives, we realize that ness to conscious soul. The narrative even when we were at the surface of by Karen Mitchell presents this in a truly remarkable outer awareness, Conscious Soul was way. Judge Cloke “becomes awake in present. Conscious Soul embraces and This is a lovely piece of writing by the stuckness.” The story does not say has always been engaged with even John Robert. He begins with a ques- he awakes to the fact that he is stuck, the “outermost,” with the extreme tion: Where can we find threads or or that he witnesses his “stuckness,” “frontiers,” with things like stuckness, traces of an American Yoga? That but that he awakens in it! The witness- helplessness, frustration, desire, and question gives the essay a general di- ing of his stuckness had probably al- depression… Nothing is “outside” rection. The actual experience of read- ready occurred. But like a courtroom Conscious-Creative-Connected Soul. ing the essay is like being on a mean- witness, that witness is involved in the So, in anything and through anything, dering river, where around each bend trial but is also removed. A further in- Soul can wake to itself. there is a new figure, a new voice, each volvement, a more complete partici- One day, perhaps, such a complete one propelling us forward while add- pation and presence is required. This inward turning as Judge Cloke’s will be ing something to the whole. There is involves an identification with stuck- recognized as a cause for celebration. no way I could do justice in such a ness. We cannot awake within some- I have a sense the angels and all earth brief review to everything this writ- thing, unless we are all in it. What a beings already celebrate it. We Ameri- ing opens up, so I am going to confine lesson for us! cans who typically steer clear of or try myself to the first page. John Robert adds a beautifully to rise above “negative” experiences At the first bend in the river, we worded comment after this narrative: such as stuckness or helplessness and encounter Judge Jake Ken Cloke. The resist them mightily, may be the very American legal system, of which Judge There is a beauty to this move- ones called to awake within them. Cloke is a member, represents the ment from below or outside, And so I invite the reader to slow institutionalized mental conscious- which starts on the surface of our down while reading John Robert’s es- ness. Within this system, Judge Cloke awareness and our institutional say and give a good listen to the voices moves from an adversarial model to knowledge then crawls and slogs heard around each bend to get a better a more conciliatory one. This seems across intermediary understand- feel for what an American Yoga might more ideal, but Judge Cloke observes ings until it bursts into the wide- be like and for what it has to offer that people who have chosen media- ness and epiphanies of the inner which awaits you.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 23 The soul that played into an obscu- rity where he itself: ‘Blind’ Willie died without Johnson a penny, sleep- ing on a bed of Chapter 1, section 1 in The wet rags in the Soul That Makes Us Matter moldy char of his own fire gut- by Rick Lipschutz and Amanda ted boarded up Emerson house, refused so much as a Editor’s note: The authors describe the hospital bed, life and music of ‘Blind’ Willie Johnson, abandoned by an early twentieth century American all but Ange- gospel blues musician, with an empha- line. sis on their ramifications for the nature, He slides finding, and expression of the soul. storefronts on the sidewalks where ’cross southern strings the blade of he stood and sang those songs. Did his knife to the clink of our pennies in “Oh deep water, this sightless genius of slide guitar get his plain tin cup. Stopping on this street Black, and cold like the night.” as far as Maine and the Mobile Bay? corner in still dark Marlin, we step the —“The Maker,” a spiritual by Who were the women that he mar- soft light years, up to The Soul That Daniel Lanois ried, or with whom he made a home? Played Itself: ‘Blind’ Willie Johnson. Did any bear his children? The pulpits “His stepmother blinded him at 7 by where he preached to the children of ******************************** throwing lye in his eyes after his father God have crumbled, gone, or changed. beat her for being with another man. There are things no traveler can tell. Alan Lomax, born in Austin, Tex- He died penniless, of pneumonia, after Where are the bones of Blind Willie as, the famous field recorder and mu- sleeping bundled in wet newspapers Johnson? What place is that spot lying sicologist, broke down and cried when in the ruins of his house that burned where his stone no longer stands? regretting that he didn’t know Blind down. But his music just left the solar Two roads meet at a gas station in Willie was right there in Beaumont in system.” the middle of nowhere. the later thirties and the forties, and he —Josh Lyman, White House It’s hard to know how to approach never had the chance to meet and re- chief of staff onThe West Wing tele- Blind Willie Johnson. cord him. It was the same Alan Lomax vision series, in an episode written All we can do is try. who, along with Cosmos astronomer by Peter Noah that aired February 1, He wasn’t born blind, he was Carl Sagan, insisted upon Willie’s in- 2004. burned blind. No one helped him, he clusion in vinyl grooves on the Voy- helped us all. We can tell so well a one- ager Golden Record: he has moved on, “I have found nobody could tell me sentence sad story of his life. He was from “race” records, to being a record- What is the soul of a man.” raised in the sands of zero that blow ing representative of the human race. —Blind Willie Johnson through the Capital of the ghetto of “Dark Was the Night” was also part the sun, where everybody looked the of the soundtrack on Cosmos: A Per- *** same because he couldn’t see any of sonal Voyage with Carl Sagan in 1980. them. Poor, motherless, blinded young, Willie Johnson was born in a town he night is a dark water and no he became an itinerant Texas gospel called Spiritual which lies somewhere one may ever know. None here blues sidewalk performer who recorded, in Texas and has never been and will who spoke seemed to know for Columbia Records, successful “race” never be stamped on the outside of Twhere Blind Willie Johnson was born, records with sales upwards of fifteen any envelope. And you’re never going each place that he entered and passed thousand but who, after the Great De- to be able to mail a letter with it even through in their sequence, and the pression killed his recording career, sank if the post office gets resurrected. His

24 • Collaboration Fall 2018 story redefines what it means to be a It’s dangerous work. It was the music. It started out as human being. Only can he hope his Sanctified wife the music and it was always the music. His music is mentor to many stands on by his side while Now that he is out there where no one more each month, his life now more he holds on her dear life. can stop him it will always be the mu- real than ever: steel strings go sliding, The soul that played itself sic. What music is, nobody knows but in step to the vision alive in some in- stands with a Galilean on a Galactic music alone is what brought us here. ner eye. Then shall a voice in the sul- street corner, Willie made the music alone though len wood enlighten the sighted blind. sliding from string to string of his one after the other his wives sang along The story changes the moment we stop Stella guitar with him whenever they could. Wil- being surface people. We start to see the broken-off neck of a bottle. lie made music alone because there’s him as he is. He is one of those eternal His “Dark Was the Night, nothing else that he wanted to do but songsters whose music travels every- Cold Was the Ground” preach. He died preaching from the where. He’s a current in the world, like still makes the hair bedside. He died way before he ought the wind and the rain, or the oceans of a star to have. that he played on so many sidewalks stand on end. Why Texas? More than anywhere, far between. Texas was the place where boundaries The subtler shades of his aware- ********************************* disappeared, dissolved, blurred. Blues ness still shape the forms of our music, married gospel, there were miracles building new road miles ahead of us, The world was unformed, nothing performed with accordions and un- still act inside us when we listen with but a void and man was made out of heard of alchemy with jazz and, later, our life. His surface, newspaper life the dust of it. God breathed into his even psychedelic music hatched, near is leaden echo to some more golden nostrils the breath of life and that man the state capital, in Austin. The races story. Which story is real? Why one became a living soul. First thing a soul didn’t mix much but the music did. or the other? Farther down the road, of a man must be is alive. A man being Blind Texas Marlin, Willie once was along comes an amalgam. Blind Willie human as we all are first must live. The billed. William Johnson didn’t leave Johnson is both, the lead and the gold. soul of a man is more than his life but Texas when he died. He didn’t put Tex- Willie found his own ways to stay it’s not less than alive. Nephesh: the as on the map. He took it to the stars. alive and no one knows what they soul of life, soul of a man alive, that were. His life let him know early in man became a living soul. There was ******************************** the morning how the Maker with His no man before that and no man will Own burning eyes expected Blind come after it is no more. His music There are no degrees of separation Willie to preserve it. You see. There doesn’t fit into form, life is too alive between us and Blind Willie Johnson. was no shame in him taking precau- for that. Sometimes being human is All of us have heard though we may tion. He had to stay alive on Earth long too much music for words. Dark Was not remember hearing “I Can’t Keep enough to leave the solar system. the Night, Cold Was the Ground has from Cryin’,” “You’re Gonna Need no words. But the voice makes sounds Somebody on Your Bond,” “If I Had The sightless visionary no speech can utter. Sounds are too My Way,” “It’s Nobody’s Fault But close to a man to have words some- Mine,” “Jesus Make Up My Dying Bed,” Blind Willie Johnson times. There are some things you can and “Motherless Children Have a Hard lost his sight only say with a razor blade. Samson Time,” at one time or another. We know and found his vision. had his head shaved clean as his hand. this man. We have seen somewhere, in He wrote silences he walked on, Willie had his sight taken away from a dream, but we may not remember, he worked the streets he played, him. But he had his way in this wicked this streetwise interstellar soul space- note to note he went sliding world with the way he slid that blade ship pioneer. The Voyager space probe from feeling to feeling out across the strings. No one else could sent pictures back to Earth, not only a sound track for the Crucifixion. play it the way Willie did, because. He the rings of Saturn but volcanoes on Willie still plays for Grace could feel the sound of human loneli- moons, circling outer planets, that may while being rocked to his beams ness because he was lonely as Christ harbor water filled with Life. The Voy- by a gamma ray burst. Almighty when he played it. ager shows us unsuspected wonders of

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 25 the solar system. The Voyager Golden There are too many times we treat Record carries musical wonders of the our own soul with the same kind of in- ******************************** Earth. We may have seen the pictures attention the world showed Blind Wil- but have we heard this music? The rest- lie Johnson. But (to paraphrase another Light: a halo around the head, an less wind and the rain falling down. Texan, Townes Van Zandt) we treated aura around the body, a nimbus, an au- Peruvian panpipes, Bulgarian bag- him like mud, and he ended up gold. reole. The uncreated light, a consum- pipes, Gregorian chants and Johnny He’s out there, or in here, looking at ing fire, light of the Transfiguration on B. Goode. The sound of Night chants us. There is no match for the power of Mt. Tabor, the Shekinah glory, the fire of the Navajo and of no chance on the simple dignity. It is our human dignity, that burns gold, and is the refiner and New York street. “The Rite of Spring” our true status, to have no status, and purifier of silver. In the Qur’an it is the by Stravinsky and dirges of Australian by integrating all to go where beast or little candle flame burning in a niche aborigines. A shakuhachi flute piece angel has never gone. Because of Willie in the wall of God’s temple. Our hum- and the fractal poignance of a beating Johnson, there is hope by grace, or by ble body in the form of a body of glory, heart. A Bach concerto, a Beethoven chase by our hounds, or Heaven’s, that that is the being the soul is becoming. cavatina, and just a groove before the we can find our own soul. He’s gazing “That little spark in the soul.” To get swan song of that deaf German genius, down on us with those burning eyes there, the wordless moaning of Dark the black dove’s cry of this blind Amer- of the Maker: find, find, find your soul Was the Night, pure surrender: it is ican genius who made, strung, slid and while you still alive. not wallowing in self-pity, it is surren- moaned “Dark Was the Night, Cold Spirituals, that birthed the blues, der, to take your stand alone at the end Was the Ground.” that gave us gospel and sailed round of everything. Now I live on the verge An eerie wavering, a melismatic that bend in the river named Jazz, take of tears. This is just the beginning. One weaving of sounds emanates from the us back to Pentecost, Exodus, and Af- day I will stand alone at the end of eve- drone, one sound merging into all rica. The end was near: the end of the rything. This leads to a wooden cross sound and sliding into soundlessness, world of slavery, the end of oppression. bursting into a rose of light. all adding depth like dimensions to And now death is always near, aster- the spare yet bountiful scraping of his oids graze the spheres on the skirts of This poem was written by a man bottleneck guitar. this pale blue dot whizzing by us all named Richard Power. There are the time, and there is always some- things, Power wrote, that “only a man WHAT IS THE SOUL OF A thing calling out to us. We all feel it. on fire” can know. Like Shiva. Like Je- MAN? Is always the question. It lives We’re supposed—we came here—to sus. The courage to jump into it. in every action that we take. When the find this little spark in the soul, this hidden splendor of the human being— nothing that’s a burning light, before Like snake handlers: they seem to the soul—takes the stage, what plays we die. And once we find it, not only feel if they swallow the poison in the out will be worth watching. The story to become fixed in what we’ve found, right way that they may be visited by each life tells will be a new one. Every not rigid but stabilized, but to throw special powers. performance will be the first one. Act everything we have, everything we are, one. Scene one. But it will not be from into it like paper in fire. Let that spark Like shamans, who do not cast the soul looking out, standing in the be itself tonight, and it will become spells, they break them. footlights, soaking in the warmth of ad- flame that will take old fossil ego’s miring witnesses. No. It will be from the place. Most definitely, angels can com- *** soul looking deeper in, into its own soul, fort us in some afterlife, and it’s true His voice. It was only an instru- the light of its own origin: in the shining that we can find rest for awhile some ment. It has a haunting familiarity. It will it find the secret of the shining, in place where souls find rest, but the grounds us and it carries us away with all that glows, the glory of the glowing. sweet honey is here, only here: in this its otherworldly grit. Willie’s was a It is the soul that makes US matter— rock. This life, this Earth. This lumpy broken voice, with overtones, from the not just itself, all of us—because it is body. West African griot, the Central Asian somewhere impossibly deep inside us shaman, throat singing. He may have all, and inconceivably far beyond all of These hundred pounds of clay. learned it from the Reverend “Blind” this—or it would not be the soul. Madkin Butler. Though it spoke for

26 • Collaboration Fall 2018 all, this voice was one person burning the soul. We may never meet up with through. It had no whispering synco- ourselves. We may never know who pation but percussion, polyrhythymi- we are not by idea, but by identity. cality, it slid through off-notes, while strings in tongues and tongues un- *** strung made sidewalk under foot slip What are the powers that lie be- away. yond us and that move us? Could this voice be from the soul? I hear you ask. Soul is pure, ethereal, Darkness pitted in darkness, we monotonously azure: not broken voice come out of that. but whole-singing would seem to be soul singing. And yes, he also pos- The little spark in the soul is plant- sessed a soft, sweet tender tenor voice ed there. in which one can feel the mother’s love that had been taken from him when he The soul is born where the gods re- was still a baby. But the griot sound, both the darkness and light of our fuse to dwell. as possessed Blind Willie, at once em- common origin. A whole voice in- bodied and ensouled, anointed by the cludes brokenness and is the bigger for Only lives there the Ardor of the Holy Ghost, was a wild orchestra of it, for it brings to bear all the rough- Flame. power. The sun in it mingles with the ness of reality. Earth. Can you praise God with the It was the voice that was needed We came out of the littlest spark devil’s own voice? to make “The Soul of a Man,” what it though its portion is always there No, you can’t but he did just that. needed to sound like, to sound like Above. And when done with the skill Blind it rose from the soles of the feet and Willie Johnson displayed, it deserves came from the belly, from the beat of And when the two rays rejoin to be judged as genius. In speaking of the heart and the inside of the throat then the being that they are together his voice, we are talking about timbre, of a human being. will grow stronger, more luminous, the power of one sound full of bark more powerful. from the tree hidden inside it, falling *** and shouting, rising again to a whis- Blind Willie Johnson in asking, The soul will burn like a pair of per. The whole human past lives in again and again, “What is the soul of zithers through this poor Zulu mask. that voice. a man?” and in traveling his world in search of an answer, comes upon The mind will be but a movement The melisma of Muslim prayer someone whom he hears “teachin’ the of that radiance, a structure of that chant, Sufi singing from scattered lawyers and the doctors” that “a man shining. pieces of the world, the davening or ain’t nothin’ but his mind.” And, if we back-and-forth rocking of white- were pressed, most of us might agree, Our emotional nature be effulgent haired children of Israel at a Saturday or argue, that it is our mind that makes with that burning essence far beyond morning service. The power of what us a human being. Without our mind, any reach of feeling. Federico Garcia Lorca called duende, we would not be human. So we think. defined by Goethe as “a mysterious Of course, we can’t be human without Our heart will be held and beat power that everyone feels and no phi- our mind, right? But, somehow, true only in that harmony, standing hap- losopher is able to explain.” loneliness seems closer to being hu- pier than heaven in that supramental There are harmonies designed to man than having a mind is! Standing surf and more human in its being the reconstruct the world in those disso- in that hard rain, Bob Dylan “heard the more it ceases to be in its muscle. nances, solace in those structures of sound of one person who cried he was disquiet. And real, living sacred ani- human.” It’s not like that loneliness is The energetic power station will mals that are an ancient unshakable the soul in itself, but until we have felt be a portion of the sun’s energy and bridge to the beyond. It carried in it such loneliness, we likely won’t find we will find a less grave way to breathe.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 27 This will we be, no longer narrow such conviction; it moved, it motivated into the space where he lived, the Space of breath and brain. him to develop his string work and his where now he lives on the Voyager There may be no ending to this sliding to such a significant degree. He Golden Record. But it is still the same process, but there is a time that has no danced his way through the genres of golden space of compassion that is the time for time. his generation. He integrated them in substance and gratitude that is the very a way that led not only to their further stuff of the soul of such a person. It is something like the hands of development, but to their joining each The soul gives courage to endure hyperspace holding us until we are its other. They become something greater any hardship. Willie learned to play, stuff and substance. than any genre can be in its separa- or he kept playing and learned to play tion, isolation, total segregation. He better, after he had been blinded, as the We are those hands and hold all boldly appropriated the beat of Satan story goes, by the lye that got thrown that they do and we have always that and then tore into it with divine aban- in his face by a stepmother who’d been hypersilence that is the presence in- don to bring more sinners to the Lord. caught cheating and beaten by his fa- side that Space. He was moved in the melodies that ther. Whatever it was, he endured. He wove through his songs the beauty of endured the treatment meted out in ******************************** the gospel and the sanctity of the Spirit the segregated society, the mere pit- that moved on the face of the waters. tance, dimes and pennies tossed into That is what Blind Willie Johnson What the soul is like. What its his tin cup, the end of his recorded born in Temple, Texas came to teach character is. How Willie Johnson did career by the cold hand of the Depres- us, not with words, but to preach pull- exemplify a soul life and the soulful, sion so that the members of his race, ing no strings but sliding across them for a living. now even poorer, simply could not af- with the neck of a bottle, a pocket knife, It brings joy without just cause, joy ford to buy the “race records.” But he or even a ring that he wore over a bone. for no reason. Willie had that and it endured, he rose above, he played. He even is present in the abandon and the moved to Beaumont in the last part Christ who taught the world the growl in his voice. It is not a sad gruff of his life and he played there, on the Temple, and Willie brought to the bleak thing that he brings forth. It is street, in the church, and perhaps at world in Temple, were married. the joy of one who has given up all and Baptist meetings in Houston. I didn’t been given all: the soul, the spirit that know Blind Willie, but I feel that I do. Willie wrote: has joy and needs no reason and no I feel that he endured these things and excuse to be exalted and to raise others took them on for the sake of Christ, “Since Jesus and me got married, into the radiance that he sees the bet- and to paraphrase another Southern- haven’t been a minute apart, ter for being blind. er, William Faulkner of Mississippi, receiver in my hand, It is love without thought of any- Willie will not merely endure, he will and religion in my heart.” thing being given in return. He sang his prevail. His songs influence so many, songs, from street corner to street cor- bluesmen and women, gospel greats, He will ring sweet and easy ner and felt happy only to share what even the shouts of heavy metal and When you lost you will find he had with everybody who passed by pure burning rock. Ry Cooder, Clap- People always so busy no matter who they were or what their ton, Jack White rave on Blind Willie’s Jesus always has time. situation. He didn’t need to know, he gospel slide genius. No bluesman or only needed that love to flow forth gospeller has ever written a piece like I wrote that. from his being out into the streets of Dark Was the Night, though it seems East Central Texas into the hearts of to have been based on a template of ******************************** those whom he wanted to kindle with wordless songs of the Crucifixion the burning light of the Lord whom found in some Baptist churches in his Blind Willie Johnson not only he served. East Texas. One is a poem of the night sang about the soul or asked where it The soul is gratitude and compas- before the Crucifixion. A song about is and what it is. He lived from the soul, sion and Blind Willie Johnson was grat- Gethesemane, the garden where the and he knew. itude and compassion in a body on the Lord still goes walking in anguish— Willie burned and shone with streets, burning only to bring others alone, no one can stay up with him

28 • Collaboration Fall 2018 even for an hour. He stops in his ago- narrow thread of ridge, on a little spur Babylon and Mongolia. What were ny to pray. The sweat down his face is over the Golden Gate—that mile wide we? Who are we? We come from a blood. Drops of it still running, like a strait of icy water between the Pacific place deeper than mantra or Kabba- river on that ground. Ocean and San Francisco Bay. I made lah, older than Central Asia and the There is a beauty in his soul formed it finally ’cross that ridge so narrow spirituality that preexisted what we of the nature of nobility and the sub- death was staring me in the face. I felt know as past. stance of integrity greater even than a joy that has never left me, sharing in We are all Africa. The sun. Noth- Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the the life of the planet. I don’t accept any ing but a burning light. Dignity of Man: it is sweet, it never of these “Here Be Dragons” and this cloys, one never tires of it. It comes is the place I step beyond the warn- Like the uncanny keen of Dark through in the songs and the way he ing sign. If it weren’t for the ice plant Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground, sings them, and the subtle interplay the cliff would slide off. Now I’m close there is something about these five between his guitar and his voice like enough to see the little droplets of stuff words, Nothing but a burning light, a church and its congregation. There that make them sparkle like ice. I only that is old as the world. Older than is nothing more beautiful than to feel want to share with you a few words to that. He un-earths an ancient com- this through his songs. continue this conversation the world mon spiritual language, that basis that And in some of his songs, again, is having about Blind Willie Johnson belongs to us because we were born there is that sweetness, that connection in the space where we live. from a human womb. The soundings with all of human life and unknown in the song “Soul of a Man,” its gentle others: we feel it again in Dark Was All this is there in five words that honest insistence, the guttural gravel the Night and it is felt now moving live in some speech beyond words, that and its softer accompaniment, work through space and it is reaching that the whole world which he has left bil- together to take away our history, our Oneness that is real because it is ver- lions of miles behind, is talking about: education, our social and financial sta- satile and it is ringing everywhere and Nothing but a burning light. tus, like so much drapery that covers it will never stop. up something that is beyond invention The light of our origin. The same Like the West African griots, and artifice. light that is in us all. It wants to come whose voicing and modalities and Burning light—we become a sun, forward, it wants to burn, because it is soundings influenced him so deeply, not a wandering rock, a sun, fusion a burning light. It wants nothing but Blind Willie was itinerant and his furnace, couple that with wisdom and to burn and for the world to be whole, fortunes and celebrity could fall con- what do we have? Power to raise the for the whole world to be nothing but a siderably and rise again, between one dead. Soul full fledged has scope to fly, burning light. But, because it is a light of street and another street between two where wings that light those dead shall love and not impetuous, it wants to burn oceans, along the rivers and the track rise. Think on that. When there’s noth- it down without setting the place on fire. of his restless travels through time. In ing but a burning light. griots reposed the history of a region. This starts with almost a speck of Like Tipitina’s on a good night. Yet the deepest part of his soul nothing in a ravening sea of darkness was always at rest. Could power equal wrapped in darkness. It is not only a ******************************** repose times the square of the speed light, an essence that never changes, of the light of lights? In Blind Willie always the same, a radiance but also a My life story is the story of Dead Johnson, reposed the history of the developing fire. Man’s Point. The point is I can’t find region of the whole human past. His On the one hand we see “a shaft of my poem right now so here was the song reaches back, way back. For here light cut into the darkness.” The pro- story. The Coast Guard put up this the sightless visionary looks into the test in his voice disrobes us. Like Bes- faded warning sign: Dead Mans Point. nature of the powers that lie beyond sie Smith, like Son House had a voice, Please keep back. People have fallen to us, and move us. We can feel them Blind Willie Johnson had a voice. The their death here. It was April, I wanted move us through the primal force presence we may feel, the power that to touch the ice plant, the blooming of his song. He sings us back home, emanates to form us—that light burns ice plant. Green spears and succulent somewhere in the human past. the residue away to reveal what is in pinks and yellow suns, out past this Before Palestine and India, before us irreducible. We do not concede to

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 29 dead men their point. We feel stripped a burning light. And life will be more in- sort of sacred populism was fearless down to the divine spark. teresting than ever. One of those million to share the most personal experience Anything in the Bible that speaks year old mantras. It means more than possible to the human being: inti- of the divine spark? Gen. 2:7 “The what Blind Willie Johnson consciously macy with the indwelling Holy Spirit, LORD God formed the man from the put into it because it came into him embracing and kissed by the soul in dust of the ground and breathed into from somewhere else. It was speaking tongues of fire. And way before their his nostrils the breath of life, and the in tongues, words that spoke more than time, Sanctified women held power in man became a living being.” This is very words can speak. We’ve all got the Holy the congregation. Although the sacred much blowing into us a divine spark: Ghost fire whether we like it or not. It’s feminine was not notable in the lyr- we are formed of dust of the ground, up to us to take what comes to hand ics, it comes through in the singing stardust of the universe, such a unique and spark it up. and the playing. You can hear, not only synthesis of elements of explod- what sounds like the ferocity in Blind ing stars, and into these elements is It’s an outpouring of the Holy Spir- Willie Johnson’s voice, but the minis- breathed something divine, the breath it that cuts through language. On radi- trations, of a tender mother. It suffers of life, the divine spark: a parable for ant tongues of flame, the Spirit pours with you in the darkness, it heals and the way the soul enters into a human into us—or pours out from its own solaces you, and it can draw you out body at birth. This is not an undivine dwelling in the deepest place within of your most difficult time. Yet he can or animal soul, it is the divine soul us—and touches the soul, the only also be confrontational: it’s as if your clothed in human form. part of us that is like itself, and kindles own intimate soul has come forward it so the spark starts to glow into a fire. from the shadows, it knows you by His voice is a form of protest disrob- We come to a permanent start and we identity—“I was a gambler, just like ing, it strips us down to the divine spark. will never again be merely that glim- you”— it insists that you change. It mer that we were. “Nothing but a burn- puts a pressure on you, drops of a radi- But we don’t ever seem to find it, ing light” though it will always remain ance that you can’t rightly resist, to be not until all the rest is gone. mysterious does somehow utter what peaceful, and bright, strong, and joy- can not be given speech, and hearkens ful, just as it is, surrendered to the light There is no black soul, no Jew- to the reality of the Pentecost within us of its own origin which is the same as ish soul, no European soul, no South and in that actual (living) room, after yours. You don’t have a soul, you are Asian soul. Only sacred human es- the death and resurrection of Christ, soul, and your body, your mind, your sence. We are all stripped down to the when the disciples, women and men, money and your life are instruments divine spark. No owner’s manual to gathered and became new in tongue that it is able to orchestrate by some the soul because it is our own soul that and torches of the Spirit’s flame (Acts of miracle of jazz so the whole composi- owns us and we are its hands. Going the Apostles: 2:16-21). tion moves like a wave but every sin- deeper, what is the soul? Isn’t it just a burning lamp and a gle part of a note’s given just the right It is what is but it grows, that guide to our perplexity? It’s a lamp that touch. We’ve all been there, we’ve all hazy speck becomes a heaven spark, can become a greater light, a candle felt harmony, but the soul when it a gleam, a growing flame, a spreading that can become a sun. It may be a long takes that baton for good, knows how fire, it climbs through all the burning process to be that plenitude. It starts to make the band a band, and synco- grades of light till at last, there really out small so it can have, and give to the pates new arrangements that we can is nothing but a burning light, light, other parts of us, its whirling spiral joyful play fully keeping it harmonious for endless light, with no darkness at all. progression, of growth that may be eter- this whole human hour. But when the While it is growing, and it has so nal: fire, after all, only burns upward. So soul steps out front and center, there much growing to do, we inhabit it, it is both intense questioning and an an- is an urgency, and you hear some of slowly settle into the light, we have a swer that is not final but reveals—if it’s that in Willie’s voice. His name wasn’t light to go by, finally, a guide, and that an honest answer—a further question. “Willie” for nothing: it’s “will you” or is enough to show us the next step we Not a blind truth but truth that blazes, “won’t you,” with him. have to take. to blaze a pioneer path. The Holiness and Pentecostal The devil doesn’t own the music The whole earth will be nothing but people were populist. Their forceful spirit, it’s supposed to be the other guy

30 • Collaboration Fall 2018 that does that. Their path was never back when he was five years old and Blinded at 7 or so, he already knew easy: resistance from the mainstream still could see. It was a street world in how to play, and all over sidewalks the church took the form of torching tents those days. So a tin can was wired to American South stopped to appreci- where revivals were held. Sister Roset- an old guitar and the little boy started ate, penny by penny, the many black ta Tharpe once shouted, There’s some- busking out on street corners. Back blues songsters who bore the name thing about the gospel blues that’s so then, a century ago in the 1910s, Mar- of Blind. He played the Texas winter deep the world can’t stand it. The shiver lin, a railroad junction in east-central wind that might get wild, cold and in the rock had a queer godmother. Texas, bustled with churches, brick hard, young fingers turning stiff. He The Church of God in Christ support- works, cotton gins, the steam laundry, made slide sound fitter than a fiddle. ed Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Sister the cotton compress, the mill to plane He could syncopate and make a sin- Arizona Dranes, and it channeled the lumber, the plant to vulcanize rubber, gle note vibrate and live forever in the fire within the young blind man from and maybe a dozen more churches. space between spaces. In Texas a man Marlin and provided him with a forum There were mineral wells and big can string himself out over a lot of and a foundation and he sang with his hotels. Roads had gravel and when space, and he learned how to do that tongue on fire. Sister Arizona Dranes it didn’t rain too hard they drained. in a way no one else ever has. He didn’t was “a blind lady” who sometimes Still Marlin had less than five thou- play or sing like anybody. “let the spirit overtake her…jumped sand souls. The street musicians were Some songs he took, some he made up from the piano bench when it hit conventional gospel choirs. Where himself, but wherever he got them, her.” But she he defined was classically You can hear, not only what sounds like the ferocity in them: those trained, both who came af- in voice and Blind Willie Johnson’s voice, but the ministrations, of a tender ter tended to piano, at The mother. It suffers with you in the darkness, it heals and sol- base their ren- Institute for aces you, and it can draw you out of your most difficult time. ditions on his Deaf, Dumb, template. Later and Blind Colored Youths in Austin, did this blind man come from with in the nineteen twenties he played on the capital of Texas, for 14 years, un- his bottleneck slide that no one today the sidewalks of nearby Hearne, an- til she was 23 (1896-1910): she could can replicate, when Texas guitarists other east Texas cotton town, with sing a Verdi aria and play a Beethoven didn’t play the slide? Did he teach it nine brickyards, 36 miles from Marlin. sonata. She became Pentecostal later to himself, or learn rudiments from a Blind Willie Johnson had his corner in life and Arizona did for the gospel traveling bluesman when some train and Blind Lemon Jefferson had an- beat piano what Willie Johnson did moaned through from Mississippi, other, just down the street. Jefferson’s for gospel bottleneck slide guitar (Mi- and then improvise the rest on his own attempts at slide guitar were no match chael Corcoran, “He Is My Story: The to a place no apprenticeship could for Willie’s, but then nobody has ever Sanctified Soul of Arizona Dranes”). take him to, because he set a higher played a six-string like Blind Lemon She pounded the mystery out of a pi- standard for himself? It seems that in Jefferson and no man with seeing eyes ano like a true barrelhouse missionary. the Church of God in Christ on Com- has been so downright an observer of merce Street, they encouraged music human nature. Verse 4 of Psalm 150 tells us: of praise that electrified the air with But Blind Willie didn’t let the devil “Praise Him with stringed instru- an energy that had peace at its center. steal the beat from him like so many ments.” Blind Willie Johnson took that Five-year-old Willie said, “I want bluesmen did; no, he played for God. to heart. to be a beecher.” His first guitar was He went to a church named after God. a homemade construction, out of the God, who doesn’t ever change. God, ********************************* body of that cigar box. It may have who moves on the waters, and speaks been a one-string affair, like an African from a whirlwind. EARLY YEARS: He was blind and diddly-bow; playing it, the preacher- Adam Booker was a blind pastor black so he could choose a path from to-be may have practiced the possibili- in Hearne. He remembered that in two careers, to beg or to sing. He al- ties in a single note, in all its nuance 1925 Willie still lived in Marlin, but ready made himself a cigar box guitar and the bent places in between. his father lived in Hearne where he

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 31 worked in a brickyard. Almost every air could give you byssinosis, which His physical presence. The soul of Saturday, Willie would visit his father is abysmal as it gets—it’s a bad busi- the Earth is ground inside his voice, and in the afternoon, play his songs on ness, Brown Lung Disease. Eating and rough as the trees and brush of Central the sidewalk. Cotton farmers would living and breathing and losing your Texas. Then a soft tenor will steal in, toss money into the tin cup Willie hearing from your job. like the cotton clothing sewn from the had wired to the neck of his guitar. Especially in the carding rooms crop in that lonely dust-rich country. They were there to do Saturday shop- the air was thick with cotton fluff. Never have gravel and silk conversed ping and to socialize. Pastor Booker So dusty unless you were close up with such eloquence. He is tall and remembers that sometimes Blind you couldn’t see each other. The stuff dark and intense. Perhaps he draws in- Lemon Jefferson would sing “See That would clog up your eyes and get into tensity from the seven devils that nev- My Grave Is Kept Clean.” The rasping your throat. Air so humid you had er stop burning in both his eyes. He ferocity in Willie’s voice would make to wear your lightest cotton overalls. wears a short haircut and a smart grey sure the cotton farmers and their fam- You’d close your eyes and might see suit. He keeps his mustache neat and ilies could hear him above the com- those Southern ladies, or you might pencil thin. In his only known photo, petition and the street noise. Many of see your own wife and children, your he sits at a piano, holding his guitar, the people who remembered Willie old grandpa, in the field picking the which is a Stella—they made them in in Beaumont, Texas—the place where cotton, bent over, with a sack—tearing Jersey City, New Jersey—with a tin he lived out his last decade and died up their hands. Better open your eyes cup wired to its headstock. He wears after the fire that burned his house quick. Inside there moving with the that suit and a tie. He always carries down—were blind, also. When asked machine they call the mule you better himself with dignity. The same grace if they still remembered the blind gos- see sharp. You better work barefoot, that separates him from the world of pel singer, they would ask, “Which then you don’t have shoe laces flapping the blues and the cotton mills also one?” In those years and that place, and getting tangled—you can feel with holds it in his slight powerful arms. the streets were full of them. your feet, without the false protection This African lion can coax notes out He could draw four distinct of shoe leather. But if you slipped over of strings like the strings that vibrate sounds just by striking a single string. the top of the mule in you went and our universe can’t make, and feelings Some claim to hear five. On further maybe part of you didn’t come out. out of you and me that should never penetration it appears that starting The monster cotton mules went crash- be given speech. with just one string he could educe an ing back and forth and could crush even dozen discrete sounds. your lucky old ten-fingered existence. ******************************** To survive the naked light, the ********************************* spinning traps, those cunningly flam- Why The Big Easy Put Willie mable cotton fibers, friction of the per- Johnson in the Stir Midnight one of his songs slips petually in motion machinery whose into your room he can make your metal teeth can tear you apart easy as The New Orleans police nearly floorboards fret. a cotton sheet—to do The Man’s work, arrested him in 1929. No, they don’t Southern ladies wearing summer quicker than a chicken, harder than a nearly do anything in New Orleans, cotton dresses wafting through the martyr, and bigger than Texas, you’d they do it. So they probably did arrest wisteria, and looming the other side of need a head on your shoulders and fire him. They were fully justified to do so owners in fine fettle, it was your future in your feet. for the simple reason that there can before it was their past. It was your for- If he’d been through those mills, be no false arrest in New Orleans. The est, the magnificent lungs of the Earth, been fiber of that fiber and metal of law down there is ancient: Napoleonic before it was their cotton. If you were that flesh, the dirty specks of cotton lint code. It is perfectly legal to arrest any- indigenous, your day was over: your would have dusted his lungs, too—If body for anything in New Orleans. tears on the trail to elimination from he hadn’t been blinded and spirited to Therefore, you can be thrown in jail the population would help keep the the streets, cafes, sidewalks, churches, for walking with intent to stumble, for cotton available and cheap. Fingers would the miracle of his music now impersonating a human being, and fell timber when the timber fell down. been spinning through space? for molesting a cheeseburger. And The specks of dirty cotton lint in the Blind Willie was guilty of all three!

32 • Collaboration Fall 2018 He had just wolfed down a temporary it was hungry for justice. It was 1929 be in rotation when the services of the appeasement of his human being be- for God’s sake! So Willie was walking houses of the rising sun are no long- cause the holy blues makes you very, with his fingers and his strings with er required because the sun is up for very hungry. He was as usual imper- intent to stumble and to slide into good. Further research by The Grains sonating himself: a blind itinerant gos- some higher form of music, to fight of Rice has come to reveal that Blind pel sidewalk musician who also hap- that ancient oppression, in any way Willie Johnson was arrested after all. pened to be black. (We all know, by he could. “If I Had My Way I’d Tear For being too arresting a presence so now, that he was the soul that played This Building Down” acts out the Bible that people stopped on the street and itself.) And he was walking with in- drama of Samson and Delilah. When realized how depressing their situation tent, stumbling away from the hotel Willie sang it, he was blind Samson: a was in this wicked world, where the where he had just recorded two songs force came out of him that might cast Philistines sat eating the best damned during his third recording session for stone pillars down. To New Orleans’ lunch anywhere in Antoine’s and the Columbia Records. It was the second finest, it just could have sounded a Court of the Two Sisters and they, week in December and the sessions mite uncomfortable. This wasn’t one the people, like that Customs House were December 10th and 11th at Wer- of those Hebrews in the Bible. History building, were only there to hold up lein’s, a music store in the Quarter. was now! Willie was pounding gospel the weight of the world. He may have been walking with truth where customs and those New Elder Dave Ross, who accompanied Orleans rising-sun houses would pre- Rock and roll stole the soul of Pen- him to New Orleans. He stopped on fer a few damned lies instead. Perhaps tecost from a Sanctified church in East the cold sidewalk, Texas. How come to capture a few The soul of the Earth is ground inside his voice, rough there’s no Texas tips from pas- as the trees and brush of Central Texas. Then a soft historical marker sersby in the tin for that? It’s fine cup that was al- tenor will steal in, like the cotton clothing sewn from white kids gyrate ways wired to the the crop in that lonely dust-rich country. Never have to Elvis and rock headboard of his it with poor Janis Silvertone guitar gravel and silk conversed with such eloquence. and the rolling from Sears, or a Stella if he were lucky, not having properly contextualized the millionaires, but when folks move with and started to strum with even more content of the lyrical material, the of- the Holy Ghost in a church named after than his usual abandon and shout- ficer was about to handcuff Blind Wil- God we heartily ridicule those people as sing a composition of his own, right lie. The charge: attempting to incite to holy rollers. there in front of the New Orleans Cus- riot. Willie came a hair’s breadth away toms House. Voice a lion’s roar, Lion from what befell Samson—having “his The three dark days between the of Judah, his hands made music that’s head shaved, clean as his hand.” He Crucifixion and Resurrection: all the propulsive, so percussive, you were stayed just shy of jailhouse scalp. soul can do is wait. Something uncan- sure he had a drummer with him but Miraculously, he retained his ton- ny in the wordless moan, the Ah, well, he didn’t. He was making a racket fit sure, the Customs House was not torn something unearthly that is unearthed to rival any rock and roll band from down by an angry mob (no utter fan- in this suffering, that God is suffering thirty years in the future! No metal tasy if you factor in the U.S. economic with us, in the dark night on the cold sound is heavy enough to match him crash), and liberty was not lost. For ground, deeper in His way than we for intensity. No remedy for the raving “God Moves on the Waters”—or He do in ours. It is stronger for being un- rattler. You’d need a new kind of su- did that day. And because grace stayed stated. So the two pieces are related, pernova to make metal heavy enough the hand of the arresting Philistine, the darkness after the Crucifixion is a so it could strike an equal match. Wil- Willie was free to show up for the next kind of womb. It’s austere as any Ae- lie was burning on his feet, blazing in day’s session, and so we have a few schylus play, blindness the soul of the his tent, to stumble on the side of the more precious minutes—as we have, plot, voices of steel to vibrate with the Grace that even breaks the Sabbath in all, only an hour and a half, nothing voice of every lonely being, it suffers of God to feed a human hunger. New more—of his immortal recorded mu- with you in an eternal present: in a Orleans was poor, dispossessed, and sic. “God Don’t Never Change” will still Sanctified church, this is the sound the

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 33 Sisters in the Amen corner make, to And he saw it in the face of an In- all the suffering gives them emotion- spirit some silence inside every pray- dian woman in a tent on the beach at al wisdom. What they’ve seen comes ing word. Or, in other language, it is night. Not in America. He was walk- out in their singing. It touches things the space of the immaculate concep- ing the Beach Road in Pondicherry, an that only come from being there. They tion. Without this experience, perhaps ancient city on the southeastern coast mostly don’t have to be taught, like we Jesus could not raise a body from the of India, where he and his traveling do, to go deep within: some of them grave. It seems safe to say—He told me companion for this life were recharg- are there already. I think the strength this on a Greyhound bus—he had gone ing on a spiritual pilgrimage. Some- of this country is from the blacks.” He through every experience a human be- time between 7 and 8 in the evening, walked back to the guest house on the ing can have. Was the Prodigal Son he slowed his pace as he walked past Beach Road where his wife was wait- parable His Own experience? Can I get that tent along the Bay of Bengal. It ing for him. Nolini Kanta Gupta had a witness? This song is witness, not to was large and all lit up inside by some given her the name “Surama,” which, our compassion for Christ crucified to kind of portable lamps that seemed to he said, means “a most pleasing per- a tree, but the compassion of Christ for be swinging back and forth. He cus- son.” Surama (Jacqueline) Bloomquist us when our hands are nailed and our tomarily walked along the Coromandel was maybe reading Richard the Third, feet are tied and we enter a different Coast coming back by the same route or a long Russian novel. The day after rhythm, we can’t even move. Absent most every evening. His wife took the my wife died, very much alone, I found the darkness, three days of darkness walk with him, he said, but not tonight; a letter in our mailbox for Lucie, a long we cannot find the light. Three days of she had stayed at the hotel after din- note Jackie had sent from Sparks, Ne- darkness precede a crescent moon. ner, because she wanted to read. “I saw vada, full of the cheer of her spunky Wayne E. Bloomquist of Sparks, it on the way, and it was still going on life, in curling letters longhand. Nevada, writes: “In mid-December, when I got back. So I walked in. It had The hands of the crucified body I suddenly came down with a fever... to be some kind of Christian revival: all touch the depths of all loneliness, the I perspired profusely for three days... South Indians; I was the only white per- arms of the glorified body reach to- My bedroom was…a sweat lodge.... son in there. I walked to the front and ward the heights of all longing. The The third day…in the middle of the sat down. Most everybody else was also soul is fire, the soul is a burning light, afternoon…an intense light sud- sitting. But there was a woman stand- the soul is also bliss. Delight. In near denly filled my being….I had the ing up, over to the side a little, with her death experiences, people who pass sensation…I had become the light….I palms outstretched, in a reverie. She through a tunnel of light, or cross a heard the words in my head, ‘Mother, was in ecstasy, her eyes just rolled back. bridge of light into light, feel a deep I never knew I loved you so much.’ Was the crowd looking at her? No, I peace and also a warm and intense I…started to sob…the sweetest tears was: just me. It wasn’t a performance, it bliss. They feel wrapped inside an in- imaginable….I felt fine now…no fe- was not a cameo, and she wasn’t in the credible embrace. They report feeling ver or weakness….With that experi- aisle—she was just one of the worship- a love so powerful they don’t want to ence, my life took a 180-degree turn.” pers. I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I’ve leave it and come back through the Wayne told me he entered a kind of never seen that look on a person’s face protected passages to their lives in this hyperspace: he is still in it, he has nev- before. See, I grew up in the Midwest, world. We don’t have to die to experi- er come out of it. “Why would I ever white Protestants, and church meant ence that extreme bliss! It is the bliss want to?” Sparks, Nevada, is burning scripture, a long sermon, long faces, of the soul right behind the heart, or with a fire that neither consumes nor and the businesslike singing of hymns. inside the heart of the head, and the mars the flesh. This Light is not some But this woman! She was feeling it. deeper we go into that burning light— subtle and tenuous substance, it is The look on her face was beautiful. She or into the sound that cannot be struck solid luminous & powerful. You can’t wasn’t just into it: she was inside it, and on any instrument—the stronger and ball the jack into it because it’s more it was in her. I’ve got that same feel- more intense this bliss becomes. It solid than matter in a very different ing, back in the States, from African brings with it such solace. And it must way. With unimposing conviction, no Americans. I don’t think they’re less in- be some very great ecstasy indeed that particular emphasis, Wayne tells me telligent than we are, or as intelligent; could make all the suffering of all that this burning light has become the bed- I think they’re more intelligent. And lives worthwhile. Not just dark pleas- rock of his life. the spiritual connection possibly from ures without some deeper purpose,

34 • Collaboration Fall 2018 it’s joy alone that justifies the agony of And to do this, radiate that burn- yoga. We lack the understanding to this journey. Some unendurable bliss ing light in this world, we need a bulb. photosynthesize, that blind dark long- that we will blissfully endure. A joy The effulgent core of embodied being ing trust. Not perceptive enough for that permeates every part, every cell. concentrates, becomes concentrat- the light to plant itself in us, we follow Deeper than life, stronger than death ed especially in that bulb. A bulb to the law of our being by opposing it. is Ananda. The singing world that rolls house—that is, a body to hold—that off every human tongue. light. Not a brain as we know it—but The goal is, or would seem to be, that The soul when its light is made fully a light source not to tell, but show us not our essence alone, but our expression manifest has the power, force, and ener- that we have a soul. And to put our also be nothing but a burning light. gy to resurrect the dead. “When Christ body in touch with it. The ethers have stepped in at the Temple, the people to mingle with the earth and matter. Our soul, which burns to shine all stood amazed. He was teaching the Is there a parallel between what a away the darkness, is stunted without lawyers and the doctors how to raise a light bulb does—radiate that burning a body. So, to be no thing but a burn- man from the grave.” That’s what can light to this world—and a plant bulb? ing light, you need: a) the faculty, “un- be done by the soul that makes us mat- Possibly, because the energy of both spun but spinning all that is whirled.” ter. That’s what he’s saying. The soul comes from the same place: the sun. Sun, or soliterraneous, consciousness. when its light is made fully manifest, The plant bulb has stored energy of b) a bulb. A human body, current or has, hell it IS the better or more power, force, and The hands of the crucified body touch the depths of all minimalistic energy to raise the model, perhaps dead. That burn- loneliness, the arms of the glorified body reach toward the where organs are ing light can burn heights of all longing. The soul is fire, the soul is a burning simplified en- through every- light, the soul is also bliss. Delight. ergy centers with thing, can burn a simpler but down death itself still very present and bring us back to life in a body that the light that leaves have photosynthe- physicality, still Earth. can never be destroyed. From another sized from previous years. The bulb is A divine minimalism. The soul is Texas country singer named Lyle: “I not only the dormant stage of a plant, specially designed to function through will rise up though I be as a dead man.” the storage organ for its starches and a human body. Energy body, mental Religious language distorts more sugars, its minerals and moisture—it body, do not constitute this bulb. Not than it reports. It conceals more than is the life that surrounds the living at all. it reveals. So I’ll try to put it in simple, shoot of the plant. As the plant comes human terms. God must be in us in out of dry dark dormancy, it sprouts, “Salvation is physical.” order to win us. There has to be some- sends out shoots, it leafs out and flow- thing in us, however rudimentary, ers—puts forth all that we recognize He was a Levite, a priest of God. that’s already divine, if we are to be at- as plant—up out of the Earth, to pho- You don’t have to be blind to be a Lev- tracted and respond: like meeting like, tosynthesize, blossom, be fertilized, go ite, but it helps. Marlin, Texas, was a soul come home to soul. And if we are to seed and repeat the process again bustling place in those days and the to be nothing but a burning light, we and again and again. “…It must be crowds he drew were like chickens need two things, a faculty for one and constantly renovated by fresh streams staring at a mongoose; he mesmerized for seconds, a bulb. of the spirit revivifying the dead or dy- them. Why were they staring at him? We need a faculty. For instance, ing vehicle and changing it, if it is to He wasn’t a pole dancer. It’s just that, thinking is a faculty housed in our acquire a new life. To be perpetually when he (Blind Willie) sang, he would brain. So if someone tells us to “think reborn is the condition of a material strip down to the divine spark. about” something, we know how to immortality.” So, on the sunrise page do it. We need to find or develop the of one of his books, wrote Sri Auro- ******************************** faculty to put us in direct contact with bindo. So it is with plants, and when our soul, and to express the direct we learn to photosynthesize, so it can I saw it with my own eyes. The power of the soul in matter. be with us. Photosynthesis is plant sun is pulsing. I could see it clearly,

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 35 in the sky, over the Pacific. Those pul- endless expanse of lamentation, what holy spirit music and wild psalms of sations of love, nothing else, are all makes us matter? What makes any- syncopation came into being only in that carry us on. Good morning, San thing matter? It is from these depths America. Black and Indian red are Francisco. The city was in flames, the that in his best remembered song, our own indigenous music. The Mardi city was burning. The fire neither con- Blind Willie asks the question, What Gras is our unmasking. The spiritual sumed nor marred the flesh. I read in a is the soul of a man? And he tendered is our folk song and blues the music of newspaper, just the other day, that as- a reply. our country. Jazz is, and is begetting, trophysicists now have photographic Son House sang: “The blues ain’t our own American beauty. God of the proof the sun actually pulses. The soul nothing but a lowdown shaking chill/ white people is the same as the God that played itself is one of those pulses If you ain’t had’em boys, I hope you of black—only difference being that and so am I and so are you. never will.” Blind Willie Johnson’s mu- black people have fought the ridges What is it to be a human being? sic was redemption from the blues, to of belief—and still believe. From their Just what kind of sound could that absorb our suffering so that we could sorrow they have dreamed alive a state make? The first manmade object to feel our soul and receive into it the where we the people would be judged leave this solar system, the Voyager Holy Spirit. Just as surely as any medi- by our souls alone. They remembered One spacecraft, carries to our fellow eval chemist with an alembic, he was a time and a place where this was so. aliens in the universe a copper-plated doing alchemy, in the laboratory of There was a Garden on this Earth— gold disk recording the sound of hu- the spirit. His music was alchemy per- its inhabitants wore black skin. They man loneliness. 1977, the hundredth formed in the street. The ladder up is were not the poorer because they did anniversary of the phonograph. His all covered with water, the poor mostly not share in the fat riches of our es- music always was propulsive and stay poor or they just get poorer. trangement or our heavenly blindness now exploding back to the stars that or our prevailing pallor. These things exploded us. A song switchblade for The devil couldn’t invent more bar- black people think they only dream his slide now skipping past the nebu- barous slavery than our own American but deep inside that place all hold lae. Just try to describe the scrapings people have been forced to endure. common, they remember. on the bottleneck guitar, that no one can fully reproduce, that mingle in a For the soul called the Holy Spirit ********************************* strangely perfect way with the word- down with rhythm and in song as a less chanting of a blind Texas street Presence in the people. Those songs So please don’t ever think this blind singer. It’s been called “the most soul- born of sorrow founded their spirit to pilgrim didn’t know the score. He was ful, transcendent piece of music ever survive death by slavery beneath our no apologist for anything. Blind Willie made in America” (Ry Cooder, Reed hoods of servitude. To steal away to was way too sharp to have any doubt College ‘71, among the best we still one’s home in the Lord when one has about what kitchen utensil he would have adventuring out into deep blues). been stolen from one’s home by smil- be when he grew up. He wasn’t here to It so affected Carl Sagan, who had it ing white lords. Would you rather be apologize for the way Jim Crow justice playing in his Cosmos of “billions and kept on a string or strung up on a tree? hung black people on the spot. But he billions of stars.” That spaceship car- The cotton-picking machines that didn’t keep that rusty old knife in his ried what was deepest in the human powered the industrial revolution had pocket to hurt people: he put it under heart and highest in the human mind hands that moved almost as mightily his index finger to help make the finest to our kindred souls in the cosmos. as their heads, and if they were liberat- slide guitar sound that you or I could Carl Sagan chose, or he with a few oth- ed, warned the revolutionary Thomas ever hope to hear, so however much ers lobbied to include, the music of a Jefferson, they would come forth with we hurt, we can start to heal. Willie blind gospel street singer who lived “ten thousand recollections” of the in- Johnson was to gospel-slide guitar out his days in Beaumont, Texas, the sufferable crimes of subjection so long what Sister Arizona Dranes was to the beginning of bayou country. The night visited upon them. A powerful unity gospelbeat piano. And George Wash- is a dark water and sorrow with no end grows inside a people made to suffer ington (Big Wash) Philips was this comes pouring out of that pit. Dark is so. Within suffering comes that power Texas trinity’s founding father, true the night, cold is the ground. So the to make this finite people infinitely gospel-blues pioneer, sweetest singer day goes and all the days go. In this one. The deep blue songs with their of the three: an innovative string rev-

36 • Collaboration Fall 2018 elator who plucked sheer invention on older than those Vedic forefathers with which he lived in the question, a fretless zither that he made himself. who shattered the mountain rock with for the God-blessed child has got his We love to immortalize the soul in their cry, older than time itself. own soul in his own sight. For Blind our minds and our imagination, and Willie Johnson, the Bible was his life; we do live on after we die, but how We are all this blind pilgrim. We not an open-and-shut book on its much of us lives on? The same reason wander everywhere, looking for we dusty case. It answered a sincere ques- wegot to integrate as people, we got to don’t know what. We see more images tion with the blade of a deeper mark. integrate our soul, because we’re all in- in a single day than our ancestors saw He walked the dusty streets of complete unless we do that. An uncivil in their whole lives. We see everything Texas and he found people the Bible war goes on in every soul, and it’s bar- but who we are. stories tell about, and they walked baric how we leave ourselves on the through his imagination, back into the battlefield. All we take with us is our A blind man told us we are noth- small rooms in which he lived. It is full soul; and why is that? The rest of us ing but a burning light and we let him of multitudes of contradiction. This breaks apart because we don’t integrate freeze to death. So that says we are is what Christ taught in the temple, the black and white of us into a yellow hopeless, right? I don’t think so. Be- at least in the last verse of Blind Wil- silk twined rainbow orange rose and cause we are listening to him now, in lie Johnson’s song. The little soul of a golden soul. How big is the fire that a world music conversation, and his man, the blind pilgrim, will consume the soul is, how much have we thrown music is starting to get through to us. the nature, or perhaps make our na- into it, to make it grow, from the way The human situation as Sagan put ture once and for all human, this puny and what we’ve lived? It’s nothing but a it: nightfall with no place to sleep. “The speck of nothing be a pulsing spark of burning light. The soul is immortal but greatest example of slide guitar ever everything, the body will be as much what is a soul without a body? recorded” (Jack White) and “the most soul as the soul is, body equal with Willie’s answer was sharper than intense and startling blues record ever soul, heaven and earth in us be equal all the very knowledgeable people made” (John Clarke, New York Times). and one. It takes a blind man to see who answered Oprah Winfrey’s ques- “We do not know what we ought to what we cannot. tion on SuperSoul Sunday in October pray for, but the Spirit himself inter- The sightless visionary saw and— 2012: What is the soul? It’s hard to find cedes for us with groans that words if anybody can—surely can tell us if in this world one person with sight cannot express.” Romans 8:26. Both this is what the soul is. If there’s an who wields the sword of truth. This Willie and the listener are listening to owner’s manual for a human being, it sightless visionary, blinded by lye, saw, the Spirit itself praying for us in our is in the soul’s possession. Am I right? with eyes no world can take from him, anguish. I don’t rightly know. straight inside the soul of a human be- The best contribution we can If anybody can, Willie Johnson ing. He saw what’s there when all the make to our community is to find, surely could tell me (us) if this is what rest is taken away. He has somewhere unite with, and express somehow in the soul is. If anybody can, it would be on file “the fingerprints of God.” He this surface world this mystic flame Blind Willie. But the blind pilgrim has knows “the lure of the becoming.” He hidden somewhere deep inside us. “left the solar system.” We must go our also knew what the becoming was do- own space probe, voyaging into the na- ing and what fingers can play. Why are The best-kept secret in the world! ture of the powers that lie beyond us, we here? What are we building? We and move us. Move us into the field of are building our soul into a Body. Why the burning, what justifies the mysterious forces that produced our all the burning away? It must be a kind. A blind man saw this! And said it. “It’s nothing but a burning light.” most extreme unimaginable ecstasy We can no longer say that we can’t. Don’t believe me, and I wouldn’t, you that would justify the suffering of our The human soul on fire is stronger can hear him sing it in his own voice. Sophoclean soul and the greater meas- than the Universe: it can dream itself He answered the question better than ure of suffering untold. Einstein once alive. Deepak Chopra did. Chopra knows rode into that ecstasy on a beam of but he doesn’t have the mantric power light, and called it an experiment. So we have to feel it out for our- to express what this blind man pulled Has Blind Willie got there? Pos- selves. We’ve got to find it out and out of some Temple older than Egypt, sibly, if we can judge by the intensity we’ve got to be lost to do that.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 37 Then shall a voice in the sullen wood and when released, and played life felt like itself. When your whole Enlighten the sighted blind; permitted him that love world goes dark, like it was for Charley Then shall the winter twilight know, would voyage through his hands. Patton and “Mississippi” Max Haymes, And so shall all mankind. A shower of mercy in motion the way it is for me, you need to feel the (Amanda Emerson) with the slide of his broken bottle. breathing of someone who’s listening. Some vast light of grace lit up Coming from out there, over the Whatever they mean, these five or in the beginning edge-of-reach of the solar wind, past six words (It’s) nothing but a burning of his very first words. the cloud of comets, way past cool into light carry some kind of uncanny pow- In his voice the mother’s love frozen, I feel this presence. I know it’s er, some insight only a blind pilgrim taken from him as a baby. from the Voyager. Something is not sees as long as we won’t open our eyes. We are each in our Shakespearian only present. Someone is there. “will a hunter in the trails of light.” As it was when astronaut Mitch- *** The 21st century is ell, out past the massed mind of those a tiny space in time when we who will, grey grey thoughts from the good A Solar Poem may find our soul. old thinkers on Earth, sitting in his The only gravity out there spaceship in that silence, could feel— His life’s more than a black dove’s tale is love, love and only love. in that vacuum, vacant of the usual of mayhem and misfortune, The only thing we thoughts—a palpable presence. It was blindness and burning, take with us so solid at times he could almost touch ostracism and obscurity. as we travel it. It spun around everything, like the No more auctioned off, many thou- blind like Willie to all real “Golden Record.” Weightless in sands those gravelly lights out there his cabin, Captain Edgar fell awake. gone, no more. is our soul. He’d been stuffed too full of business, The tarry whip, back on Earth, to feel it before. each lash on our face, that sound ******************************** Well, I can feel that now. Weight- No more! less and empty in this old New Eng- Scraps of lost Aeschylean tragedy. This is severely personal. Why? land farmhouse. I can feel the music No! Each of us children Because my wife died. Friend, she was of Blind Willie Johnson, that “inter- from whatever time we are, the only friend I ever had. I left her planetary musician” (in words of Ry is a sun— ten minutes and found her lying cold Cooder) carrying some power of that a sol with our system, and blue in our bed. Little did I know, presence, carrying it a long way. And whirling round us as we go by six that evening, she’d be playing the wordless voice of his strings wed- turning on and on a golden harp. Only someone truly ded with that humming wire-strung round our own comfortable with their own spiritual- voice are, almost, strong enough to supermassive black core galactic. ity can bring true spiritual comfort to rescue the love. Willie stands out on the corner of a others. Despair-burdened people like From where now? Her body was street without walls. me all over this pale blue dot carry on blue and cold when I found her here Through his sound, and our fury because this penniless blind preacher in our bed. I’d been away, upstairs, ten of surrounding clamor he listens. has given us comfort. But no one on minutes. Come back. Out cold. Gone. All claims we lay earth can take her place. The pain gets to be too much, for for the little we own our lover’s, for a savior’s, body, to bear, but enlighten him they refer I listened to Blind Willie Johnson’s and the soul must break absolutely to the same living body music. free of it all, of all that is, nothing but in its standard length. stuff, called and going back, outside Every day he prayed for a new life Thirty songs. All of him that ever starry space, to where nothing burns and of these lives each is a miracle. got put to wax. but that light. He showed us what the soul of a man could look like. With my whole body fallen quiet I Every soul is divine, every soul His first guitar was one string, heard “Dark Was the Night.” For once, exalted. Somehow in this wilderness

38 • Collaboration Fall 2018 I feel God speaking to my heart. Her only talk so all of us hear whatever we body is gone but the wordless voice say, while we’re all here, in starry space ********************************* of his strings has the strength to res- altogether. cue my love. I sure hope He spoke to There are some nights when I her when her body turned blue and So we reflect and talk, we reflect wander outside after not being able cold. I was away from her ten minutes, talk, and then we keep on talking to sleep. Every now and again I will up the New England stairs pounding about it. see Willie, sitting under an awning the keyboard of this Steve Jobs ma- on some street corner between two chine, eyes moving screen to screen on *** stars, chuckling. Sometimes a sparse an insanely great monitor, searching It was Shane Ford who said, crowd will begin to gather and at other out side effects of her pharmaceutical “There is a monument to Blind Willie times it’s just me. And he begins play- treatment regimen. Johnson. You hear it every time one ing, throwing it all back at us while he I want to live in a world where of his disks starts playing.” It was also growls, griot that he is, and his sawed- nobody has to die like that. Call it by Shane Ford, a young Texan independ- off bottle neck slides, going, Catch. It’s any name you want. Call it termina- ent filmmaker, and Anna Obek, who not something our minds can see, not tion shock syndrome: the only friend were instrumental in obtaining for something our many lives can easily I ever had is dead, and I only have you Blind Willie Johnson his Texas Histori- act upon. to talk to. Are you listening? And it cal Marker. Its dedication took place in So, what are we going to do about it? wasn’t her alone, it was my family as I a ceremony held December 15, 2010, knew it which died that cold hearted in Beaumont near Pilgrim’s Rest Bap- It was on one of these lonesome Massachusetts summer day blown tist Church. Shane told me by phone nights that I found an old woman had away on the 67th anniversary of Hiro- on February 25, 2013, that he believes taken Johnson’s place under the awning. shima and the birth anniversary of my Blind Willie Johnson was born in or She looked pretty much the way I was sister my stranger. very, very close to Temple, Texas. feeling. I was trying to slide my way through the gospel truth that Blind Now, it feels like anything can “When Christ stepped in at the Temple Willie died two years to the day be- happen, and I’d prefer that it didn’t. The people all stood amazed. fore the sparkler of my life was born. He was teaching the lawyers and the Can the intensity they seem to share ******************************** doctors come from anywhere else but Texas or How to raise a man from the grave.” Louisiana—or the soul? I was think- In this big open-ended dialogue ing about my wife Lucie and how she in this room with enough room for *** wasn’t there; she was so bright she us all—by the beautiful Tornio River Yes, this most spectral of songsters burned to these very ashes in this and an unseen reindeer herding Sami took his responsibility very seriously. very beautiful cobalt blue box. The running with Aurora Borealis—in the He asked the question and answered old woman called to me and began Finnish Arctic Circle where there are it. Perfectly. What is the soul, That’s to softly speak. She told me that she no one way mirrors. No special lists, the Whole Shebang. The human be- had come a long way and that she was no separation. Not even from “the ing’s that very creature who’s defined looking for her son. She said she heard ever-living whom we name as dead.” by our mind. Yet this sightless vision- he played the guitar. I knew immedi- ary saw us clear enough to say it: we ately who she was talking about. And Who or what is the we, when we are only human when we don’t let our then she had a question, a question I are each one all of us? Frozen dialogue: mind define us. have been unable to answer. So I hope open sesame. Two people sometimes He asks the questions both our you don’t mind that I’m throwing it reflectively talk: they speak while look- mind and life are asking. His answer’s back at you. ing only at each other, while sitting on the perfect answer Why because it chairs somewhere in one big room, in is pure vision: NOTHING BUT A When Blind Willie Johnson looks you front of all the others sitting on un- BURNING LIGHT so clear our sight- in the bridge between your eyes, which folding chairs, so everything that they less minds protest: Hey, that’s no an- one’s gonna twinkle? Which one will say, all we other people can hear. We swer at all. incandesce?

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 39 Source material

Realization of the psychic being by Sri Aurobindo

As the crust of the outer nature cracks, as the walls of inner separation break down, the inner light gets through, the inner fire burns in the heart, the substance of the nature and the stuff of consciousness refine to a greater subtlety and purity, and the deeper psychic experiences, those which are not solely of an inner mental or inner vital character, become possible in this subtler, purer, finer substance; the forces and with the occult movements of universal Nature, soul begins to unveil itself, the psychic personality reaches a psychic sympathy and unity and inner communication its full stature. The soul, the psychic entity, then manifests and interchanges of all kinds with other beings and with itself as the central being which upholds mind and life and Nature, illuminations of the mind by knowledge, illumi- body and supports all the other powers and functions of the nations of the heart by love and devotion and spiritual Spirit; it takes up its greater function as the guide and ruler joy and ecstasy, illuminations of the sense and the body of the nature. A guidance, a governance begins from within by higher experience, illuminations of dynamic action in which exposes every movement to the light of Truth, repels the truth and largeness of a purified mind and heart and what is false, obscure, opposed to the divine realisation: soul, the certitudes of the divine light and guidance, the every region of the being, every nook and corner of it, every joy and power of the divine force working in the will and movement, formation, direction, inclination of thought, the conduct. These experiences are the result of an opening will, emotion, sensation, action, reaction, motive, disposi- outward of the inner and inmost being and nature; for then tion, propensity, desire, habit of the conscious or subcon- there comes into play the soul’s power of unerring inher- scious physical, even the most concealed, camouflaged, ent consciousness, its vision, its touch on things which is mute, recondite, is lighted up with the unerring psychic superior to any mental cognition; there is there, native to light, their confusions dissipated, their tangles disentan- the psychic consciousness in its pure working, an immedi- gled, their obscurities, deceptions, self-deceptions precisely ate sense of the world and its beings, a direct inner contact indicated and removed; all is purified, set right, the whole with them and a direct contact with the Self and with the nature harmonised, modulated in the psychic key, put in Divine,—a direct knowledge, a direct sight of Truth and of spiritual order. This process may be rapid or tardy accord- all truths, a direct penetrating spiritual emotion and feel- ing to the amount of obscurity and resistance still left in the ing, a direct intuition of right will and right action, a power nature, but it goes on unfalteringly so long as it is not com- to rule and to create an order of the being not by the grop- plete. As a final result the whole conscious being is made ings of the superficial self, but from within, from the inner perfectly apt for spiritual experience of every kind, turned truth of self and things and the occult realities of Nature. towards spiritual truth of thought, feeling, sense, action, (The Life Divine, pp. 941-942) tuned to the right responses, delivered from the darkness and stubbornness of the tamasic inertia, the turbidities and * * * turbulences and impurities of the rajasic passion and rest- less unharmonised kinetism, the enlightened rigidities and The present nature is ignorant and full of wrong ac- sattwic limitations or poised balancements of constructed tions and reactions. But there is a being within you, the equilibrium which are the character of the Ignorance. psychic, which answers to the Truth and not to the Igno- This is the first result, but the second is a free inflow rance. If one turns to the Divine and becomes open, then of all kinds of spiritual experience, experience of the Self, this psychic being shows itself and gives to the nature the experience of the Ishwara and the Divine Shakti, experi- true thoughts, feelings, will, action. This is the first change ence of cosmic consciousness, a direct touch with cosmic to be made. (Letters on Yoga III, p. 347)

40 • Collaboration Fall 2018 Finding the psychic being

by the Mother

n order to find the soul you must go in this way (gesture of going deep within), like this, draw back from the surface, withdraw deep within and enter, enter, enter, go Idown, down, down into a very deep hole, silent, immobile, and there, there’s a kind of... something warm, quiet, rich in substance and very still, and very full, like a sweetness—that is the soul. And if one is insistent and is conscious oneself, then there comes a kind of plenitude which gives the feeling of tion, the realisation—that something is floating. But you something complete that contains unfathomable depths in have to observe much to see that. which, should one enter, one feels that many secrets would And then you must observe much more still to see be revealed... like the reflection in very peaceful waters of that this, the second thing that is there, this kind of active something that is eternal. And one no longer feels limited conscious will, is set in motion by “something else” which by time. watches, judges, decides and tries to found its decisions on One has the feeling of having always been and of being knowledge—that happens even much later. And so, when for eternity. you begin to see this “something else”, you begin to see that That is when one has touched the core of the soul. it has the power to set in motion the second thing, which is And if the contact has been conscious and complete an active will; and not only that, but that it has a very direct enough, it liberates you from the bondage of outer form; and very important action on the reactions, the feelings, you no longer feel that you live only because you have a the sensations, and that finally it can have control over body. That is usually the ordinary sensation of the being, all the movements of the being—this part which watches, to be so tied to this outer form that when one thinks of observes, judges and decides. “myself” one thinks of the body. That is the usual thing. That is the beginning of control. The personal reality is the body’s reality. It is only when When one becomes conscious of that, one has seized one has made an effort for inner development and tried the thread, and when one speaks of control, one can know, to find something that is a little more stable in one’s being, “Ah! Yes, this is what has the power of control.” that one can begin to feel that this “something” which is This is how one learns to look at oneself. (Questions permanently conscious throughout all ages and all change, and Answers 1957-1958, pp. 310-311) this something must be “myself”. But that already requires a study that is rather deep. Otherwise if you think “I am go- One has a big responsibility, it is to fulfil a special mis- ing to do this”, “I need that”, it is always your body, a small sion that one is born upon earth [...] The more conscious and kind of will which is a mixture of sensations, of more or less individualised one becomes, the more should one have the confused sentimental reactions, and still more confused sense of responsibility. But this is what happens at a given thoughts which form a mixture and are animated by an moment; one begins to think that one is here not without impulse, an attraction, a desire, some sort of a will; and all reason, without purpose. One realises suddenly that one is that momentarily becomes “myself”—but not directly, for here because there is something to be done and this some- one does not conceive this “myself” as independent of the thing is not anything egoistic. This seems to me the most head, the trunk, the arms and legs and all that moves—it is logical way of entering upon the path—all of a sudden to re- very closely linked. alise, “Since I am here, it means that I have a mission to fulfil. It is only after having thought much, seen much, stud- Since I have been endowed with a consciousness, it is that I ied much, observed much that you begin to realise that the have something to do with that consciousness—what is it?” one is more or less independent of the other and that the Generally, it seems to me that this is the first question will behind can make it either act or not act, and you begin one should put to oneself: “Why am I here?” (Questions not to be completely identified with the movement, the ac- and Answers 1950-1951, p. 246)

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 41 Shining, he looks down on his world. The poetry room He looks far into the west. Shining, he looks upon the water of life. The lost boat1 His countenance is full of terrible disaster. His eye is glorious. At the way’s end when the shore raised up its dim line and remote His feet are already dark-red. lights from the port glimmered, Then a cloud darkened the sky’s brink and the wind’s scream was There he is, far above us in the middle of the the shrill laugh of a loosed demon sky. And the huge passion of storm leaped with its bright stabs and the There he remembers those who live here on long crashing of death’s thunder; earth. As if haled by an unseen hand fled the boat lost on the wide He spreads his wings over them. homeless forlorn ocean. Under his spread wings the gods, rain, under Is it Chance smites? is it Fate’s irony? dead workings or blind them the dew falls. purpose of brute Nature? Beautiful dew of life appears here on earth. Or man’s own deeds that return back on his doomed head with a stark justice, a fixed vengeance? Here he speaks above us. Or a dread Will from behind Life that regards pain and salutes Here below men hear it, beautiful are the words death with a hard laughter? that are heard here below. Is it God’s might or a Force rules in this dense jungle of events, They are heard below, where Mother Tetewan deeds and our thought’s strivings? dwells far in the underworld. Yet perhaps sank not the bright lives and their glad venturings There the Mother hears him. foiled, drowned in the grey ocean, She too speaks: Tetewan’s words are heard here But with long wandering they reached an unknown shore and a above. strange sun and a new azure, Here they meet the words of the eagle, here they Amid bright splendour of beast glories and birds’ music and deep both come together. hues, an enriched Nature We hear them already mingled together. And a new life that could draw near to divine meanings and touched The eagle’s words fade away over the far water close the concealed purpose. of life. In a chance happening, fate’s whims and the blind workings or dead There they die away in the middle of the sky. drive of a brute Nature, There very far off they die away. In her dire Titan caprice, strength that to death drifts and to doom, hidden a Will labours. —Anonymous Native American Not with one moment of sharp close or the slow fall of a dim curtain the play ceases: Shootingway ceremony prayer2 Yet is there Time to be crossed, lives to be lived out, the unplayed acts of the soul’s drama. Dark young pine, at the center of the earth originating, —Sri Aurobindo I have made your sacrifice. Whiteshell, turquoise, abalone beautiful, The eagle above us2 Jet beautiful, fool’s gold beautiful, blue pollen In the sky the eagle, there is his place, there far above us. beautiful, Now he appears there. Reed pollen, pollen beautiful, your sacrifices I He holds his world fast in his talons. have made. The world has put on a gray dress, a beautiful living, This day your child I have become, I say. watery dress of clouds. There he is, far above us in the middle of the sky. Watch over me. There he waits for the words of Tetewan Hold your hand before me in protection.

42 • Collaboration Fall 2018 Stand guard for me, speak in defense of me. The Sun of Truth As I speak for you, speak for me. As you speak for me, so will I speak for you. The Sun of Truth lies lost, immersed in Night, Who weaves her spell-shrouds over darkened day. May it be beautiful before me, Our thoughts, our fond frail hopes are birds in flight May it be beautiful behind me, Bearing on swift dark wings our life away. May it be beautiful below me, We gaze in vain at things beyond our sight May it be beautiful above me, And yearn vainly for restless joy to stay. May it be beautiful all around me. We find frailty, at last, in all our might; Beauty and love contain their own decay. I am restored in beauty. And yet, whilst love and joy and life are brief, I am restored in beauty. And changing self perhaps no more than name, I am restored in beauty. And Sorrow sings her ancient songs of grief, I am restored in beauty. In the heart’s hidden temple burns a Flame. The dark is doomed at last to die of Light —Anonymous Native American And life, divine, shall blossom in Delight.

Song of the Son3 —Peter Cooke

Pour O pour that parting soul in song, In Her cradle of love (for Mitra Lamb) O pour it in the sawdust glow of night, Into the velvet pine-smoke air to-night. I was swinging in the cradle of love, And let the valley carry it along, Of my beloved Mother, And let the valley carry it along. Who from whence originated I know not; But surely I know now, O land and soil, red soil and sweet-gum tree, She came to resolve the knots in my heart, So scant of grass, so profligate of pines, And set me free to fly in her supernal skies. Now just before an epoch’s sun declines Thy son, in time, I have returned to thee, Sweet lullabies she sang to me, Thy son, I have in time returned to thee. And put my mind to sleep. Awakening from there within my dead spirits, In time, for though the sun is setting on She immersed me in the deep and fathomless A song-lit race of slaves, it has not set; Oasis of her serene love and boundless passion. Though late, O soil, it is not too late yet To catch thy plaintive soul, leaving, soon gone. As each day falls and new day begins, I pray her it be a better morrow and today; O Negro slaves, dark purple ripened plums, And I shall live in the shadow of her love Squeezed, and bursting in the pine-wood air, Where the death and misery of the world dare not touch. Passing, before they stripped the old tree bare One plum was saved for me, one seed becomes —Ravi Narayanan

An everlasting song, a singing tree, 1 Collected Poems, by Sri Aurobindo. Pondicherry: Sri Caroling softly souls of slavery, Aurobindo Ashram, 2009. What they were, and what they are to me, 2 World Poetry: An anthology of verse from antiquity to Caroling softly souls of slavery. our time, Katherine Washburn and John S. Major, Editors; Clifton Fadiman, General Editor. New York: Norton, 1998. —Jean Toomer 3 Black Poets of the United States, by Jean Wagner, Translated by Kenneth Douglas. Urbana: University of Il- linois Press, 1973.

Fall 2018 Collaboration • 43 The first peace, which is the most -im The love of God, unutterable and per- Apropos portant, is that which comes within fect flows into a pure Soul the way that the Souls of people when they realize light rushes into a transparent object. Nowhere can man find a quieter or their relationship, their oneness with The more love that it finds, the more more untroubled retreat than in his the Universe and all its powers, and it gives itself, so that, as we grow more own soul. —Marcus Aurelius when they realize at the center of the clear and open, the more complete the Universe dwells the Great Spirit, and joy of loving is. And the more the Souls, Your Soul—that inner quiet space—is that its center is really everywhere, it is who resonate together, the greater the yours to consult. It will always guide you within each of us. —Black Elk intensity of their love for, mirror-like, in the right direction. —Wayne Dyer each Soul reflects the others. —Dante Love is the beauty of the Soul. —St. A Soul without a high aim is like a ship Augustine We are all connected, each and eve- without a rudder. —Eileen Caddy ryone of us has a Soul, and all of our The Soul becomes dyed with the col- Souls are one, they are all a part of Do not feel lonely, the entire Universe our of its thoughts. —Marcus Aurelius God. —Lorna Byrne is inside you. —Rumi To live happily is an inward power of You will find when you open your Tears are summer showers to the Soul. the Soul. —Marcus Aurelius heart and can fill it with loving, beauti- —Alfred Austin ful thoughts, that you will want to love The authentic self is the Soul made vis- all those Souls you come into contact You are a beautiful soul hidden by the ible. —Sarah Ban Breathnach with, no matter who they are. —Eileen trench coat of the ego. —Mike Dolan Caddy

The Soul is healed by being with chil- We should seize every opportunity to dren. —Fyodor Dosteovsky Stop acting so small. You are the Uni- give encouragement. Encouragement verse in ecstatic motion. —Rumi is oxygen to the Soul. —George Adams Important encounters are planned by the Souls, long before the bodies see Put your ear down close to your soul I think immortality is the passing of each other. —Paulo Coelho and listen hard. —Anne Sexton a Soul through many lives or experi- ences, and such as are truly lived, used and learned, help on to the next, each growing richer, happier and higher, carrying with it only the real memo- ries of what has gone before. —Louisa May Alcott

The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vi- sion of the Soul, a waking Angel stirs. —James Allen

Happiness is a quality of the Soul, not a function of one’s material circum- stances. —Aristotle

Accustom yourself continually to make many acts of love, for they en- kindle and melt the Soul. —Saint Teresa of Avila

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