The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty nine: 21^st October 2012

The Way

When a lost traveller asks someone with local knowledge to show him the way , he might then expect some indication of the correct path to be taken. By way of contrast , when asking some spiritual wakey-wakey man which direction to follow in search of enlightenment , our hapless acolyte can anticipate mumbo-jumbo in reply. People use the word guru because the word charlatan is too long. In Taoism , any explicit way cannot possibly be either the Way , the Truth or the Light. The ascetic turn of mind is the corollary of a pessimistic attitude towards life. The abstemious sage tells us that if we would only stop breeding and struggling , rid ourselves of everything that binds us to our earthly pursuits , then the Way would become clear. But the average human being wants earthly pursuits to continue , and not just because he is ‘weak’ and anxious for a ‘good time’. He knows that on balance , life involves more than its fair share of suffering , and occasional fun and games are not to be sniffed at. That is as near to enlightenment as most of us will get.

I once got a job teaching in a Rudolf Steiner school and was encouraged to familiarise myself with his ideas before taking up the post. It seemed that his Knowledge of Higher Worlds had derived from an access to the Akashic Record , a sort of adept’s internet preserved in the Astral light. Conditions were revealed that prefigured the birth of the solar system as we now know it. There was Old Sun , Old Saturn , the lower and upper Devachans. Before incarnating into physical bodies , human beings had existed in a purely spiritual form. First came the Lemurians , who had no memory at all and so , like absent-minded children , promptly forgot everything they were told. The succeeding Atlanteans , by contrast so much more incarnate , possessed extraordinary memories , thought in pictures and used the energy latent in plants to drive a kind of hovercraft. As the Talmud says , anyone wanting to tell tall tales will speak of things that happen far away.Joseph Goebbels ⁽¹⁾ wrote that it is almost immaterial what we believe in so long as we believe in something. There were no references to any sort of deity in Steiner’s far- fetched “Spiritual Science.” Like the jewish mystics of old he appeared to be proposing a deus absconditus.

Ideological monocultures have always been with us. The One True God , Dialectical Materialism , A Global Free Market ... each comes and goes with the same baneful failure to promote the welfare of their various constituencies. A dominating ideology can sometimes preside in the realms of culture too. The ‘International Movement’ of earlier twentieth century Architecture was in thrall to raising rectilinear constructions in concrete , steel and glass and as its influence spread , cities across the globe were subjected to this dogma. Hence the corporate monoliths dominating urban centres , the freeways and underpasses surrounding them and the dismal clusters of high-rise apartment towers in the suburbs. Apart from the modernist architects who designed them , who actually wanted these things ? There is a crucial distinction between those who accept a chaotic world and those who ache to impose order upon it. Their order. Aware that something always seems to be missing from their various prescriptions for Utopia , the one-true way wallahs are determined that others shall miss it too. It will be for their own good in the long run.

Whether they come robed in a kaftan or in Saville Row suiting , issuing from the skies above Mount Sinai , the vaults of the Bank of England or the book-launch of a life- style consultant , every voice of authority is best ignored. Including the plummy voices of cultural arbiters - the literature critic in his Tuscan villa , the New York psychologist , the Rock Music avatar from California , the slow-thinking ‘philosopher’ or the fast-thinking ‘economist’. Geographical margins provide a shrinking habitat for hard-pressed species. They are places of sanctuary and potential renewal. Out of the cultural margins , the disregarded voices of truth have issued from poets , artists and sceptics. Those who speak from the shadows ask the question that just won’t disappear. Where is the way to some sort of society with enlightened leadership and a more communitarian spirit ? W.H. Auden replied in verse , “Clear , unscaleable , ahead / Rise the Mountains of Instead / From whose cold cascading streams / None may drink except in dreams.”


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Goebbels (1897 - 1945) was Hitler’s minister for propaganda. After the Nazis had seized power in 1933 , he orchestrated a vitriolic denunciation of Steiner’s work and ideas.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014