|
Home
Doors
Essays2007
Essays2008
Essays2009
Essays2010
Wisdom
Gallery
Links
Bios
Contact
|
..:: Harmony ::..
By
Alan Schneider
In many ways, harmony can
be considered to be the opposing condition to chaos, with the latter
assumed to be a completely discordant expression of manifestation, and
the former a profoundly coordinated and synchronized expression.
Harmony implies balance and blending in a composition of any kind, in a
thoughtful, designed structure that reveals grace of form and function.
The random does not play a role in the harmonious design, although it
can (and often does) play a role in chaos.
Now, this life often seems to
be filled with the unharmonious and grotesquely chaotic, but I
once heard a prominent local occultist claim that the whole of existence
has not one disordered – i.e. unharmonious – element within it.
How can this apparently outrageous statement possibly be true? As I
have commented in a recent essay, life is all a matter of
our perspective upon it, and nowhere is this more accurate as an
observation than in our perception of harmony. And social
harmony is by far the most sought after, and yet elusive, form of all,
as we do more or less continuous battle with each other for the sake of
survival and advantage, never realizing how fleeting and insubstantial
both are in the face of love and death, the two
most powerful and important forces at work in this existence.
From the perspective of the
physical senses, indicating to us the Physical Plane of Manifestation as
they do, the world seems much of the time to be a very disorderly
place, typified by every manner of abrupt disturbance and calamity, with
the orderly, harmonious intervals requiring extensive and vigilant
enforcement to maintain their presence. These, at least in the case of
most modern cultures, seem to be the necessary and inevitable
conditions for the maintenance of harmony, or even simple order, at the
first glance of our old nemesis, the ego. If, however, we should
trouble ourselves to look far back into prehistory, a very different
possibility appears, at least in the temperate climates of the time.
Here, hunter/gatherer economies were the rule, consisting of small bands
of proto-human scavengers. Recent evidence unearthed at Gobekli Tepe
(Knox, 2009), an extensive archeological site in eastern Turkey, now
thought by many archaeologists to represent the birthplace of Stone Age
culture, suggests that what might initially seem to have been a harsh
life from our contemporary viewpoint was, in fact, the site of a lush
paradise of mild climatic conditions, abundant game, fresh water
resources, and naturally occurring fruits and vegetables of many kinds.
Yes, this appears to have been the Paradise of Eden of Biblical legend,
at least in the opinion of the excavators of today. To date, dozens of
stone monoliths of various sizes have been unearthed at this site,
portraying the rituals of the hunt, animal totems, the seasons, and
fertility. I propose that much of what was different then and there was
related to an enormously reduced need for the ego and its ceaseless
machinations for power and social advantage, made possible by the
natural abundance and limited population present everywhere.
It is quite probable that the
eventual increase in population made the transition to animal husbandry
and agriculture inevitable, leading to the conceptualization of private
property in consciousness, and, with it, the expulsion from
Paradise, as the focus of awareness shifted from the collective to the
personal. Perhaps this is the source of the meaning of the Serpent in
the Old Testament – a well known phallic reference to a reproductive
process that was joyous initially (and probably for many millennia), but
became a nemesis when the formation of personal knowledge and
identity was introduced into consciousness – by then newly emergent
demographic pressures (Knox, 2009). From that point forth, we were
never really free again, and probably never will be. Then, and now, we
bred ourselves into a subtle misery that has been ever lasting
thereafter.
If the occultist observer was
correct, we might still be able to at least conceptually free
ourselves from this self-imposed bondage, through the abnegation of the
ego and its social patterning. At our current stage of evolution, this
has become extremely problematic, however, because our currently
enlarged brains now naturally support the ego as an inevitable
neurological manifestation, and tool development and usage as
augmentations to native self-perception. What may well have been a
curiosity to our hominid ancestors has certainly become the order of the
day now, in a world where the meaning of life has become a
battle, and leisure time for such magnificent creations as Gobekli Tepe
is the privilege of the few among us who can afford it. In those days,
there was apparently abundant free time for self-expression, at least as
evidenced by this dig, which covers many square miles (as revealed by
sonic profiles of the area), and was almost certainly the work of
successive generations of artisans. Today, only the very
determined and/or fortunate can muster the time for creative effort. I
myself am a case in point – if I had not inherited a large sum of money
from my deceased father’s estate, thus enabling my free time to explore
and write, I have no doubt that most or all of my spiritual projects
would never have come into expression at all, as I continued to slave
away for the almighty dollar for the rest of my life! No website, no essays, no exploratory workshops, no Doors In Disguise
manuscript, no spiritual growth groups, nothing. But, by the
Grace of the Divine, I have done all of these, and continue to forge
forward along the path of discovery that is my highest nature...
Possibly the most significant
implication of Gobekli Tepe, at least to my mind, is that the
individuals who created it were not members of an artisan
class per se, but were undifferentiated members of tribal clans, as
evidenced by the varied themes of the work, already mentioned here.
Characteristic of the collective mentality of such prehistoric groups,
there are no signatures or other personal identification on the work
pieces, although the carving style is frequently quite intricate. German
archaeologist Klaus Schmidt, the lead authority on the project,
estimates that decades of excavation remain to uncover the full site,
which thus far has revealed a rich saga of the life and lifestyle of
prehistoric proto-human consciousness associated with it. (Knox, 2009)
If these people did indeed
live in harmony with their world, all of those eons ago, their artwork
may be an indication of how we might regain some measure of this
condition today, even as the opportunities to deeply study ourselves and
our consciousness continue to wane. From the inception of the
agricultural lifestyle all of those thousands of years ago, we have, in
fact, been in a steady state of decline in terms of the real
value of life and freedom of awareness. Yes, it is true that we have
become the dominant species of this world, a condition that may well
have been in contest with the predators of Gobekli Tepe – but it is a
filthy, overpopulated, culturally fragmented, dying world, and
one that faces calamity and crisis daily in result. Oh, what an
achievement! And all of history’s Renaissances have come and gone amid
the frantic rush to keep up with our own voracious consumption
patterns. Has all of our technology compensated us for our inherent
fallibilities? Is what we have gained worth what we have lost?
Are we as free now as they were then? I think not...
We may possibly still turn
back within ourselves and resurrect the ancestral consciousness that
produced Gobekli Tepe, and has surfaced throughout history in the minds
and work of many great artists and artisans. But, this must be done by
turning away from the ego and the rational modern mind in a
search for the intuitive inspiration that exists on, and flows forth
from, a higher level of consciousness. These higher states of
feeling and being are the source of all harmony, and we can still attain
them if we earnestly try to do so. As you all know, my methodology in
this quest has involved meditation and many Eastern and Western esoteric
techniques, but these are by no means the only valid approaches to the
renewal of creativity in the human spirit. We each have our own
personal inner path back to Eden available right now, if we make the
choice to seek it out and follow fearlessly where it may lead. Inner
peace is the source of all peace, all harmony, and all creative action.
May you find this delightful sacred space and share it with the world
for eternity!
References
Website:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1157784/Knox/Gobekli
- With Love, Alan -
(Copyright 2009, by Alan Schneider)
Return to Top
|