The Mystic Dean Moriarty from the Gospel According to Kerouac

Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong.

"Now this is the first time we've been alone and in a position to talk for years," said Dean. And he talked all night. As in a dream, we were zooming back through sleeping Washington and back in the Virginia wilds, crossing the Appomattox River at daybreak, pulling up at my brother's door at eight A.M. And all this time Dean was tremendously excited about everything he saw, everything he talked about, every detail of every moment that passed. He was out of his mind with real belief. "And of course now no one can tell us that there is no God. We've passed through all forms. You remember, Sal, when I first came to New York and I wanted Chad King to teach me about Nietzsche. You see how long ago? Everything is fine, God exists, we know time. Everything since the Greeks has been predicated wrong. You can't make it with geometry and geometrical systems of thinking. It's all this!" He wrapped his finger in his fist; the car hugged the line straight and true. "And not only that but we both understand that I couldn't have time to explain why I know and you know God exists." At one point I moaned about life's troubles-how poor my family was, how much I wanted to help Lucille, who was also poor and had a daughter. "Troubles, you see, is the generalization-word for what God exists in. The thing is not to get hung-up. My head rings!" he cried, clasping his head. He rushed out of the car like Groucho Marx to get cigarettes- that furious, ground-hugging walk with the coattails flying, except that he had no coattails. "Since Denver, Sal, a lot of things- Oh, the things-I've thought and thought. I used to be in reform school all the time, I was a young punk, asserting myself-stealing cars a psychological expression of my position, hincty to show. All my jail-problems are pretty straight now. As far as I know I shall never be in jail again. The rest is not my fault." We passed a little kid who was throwing stones at the cars in the road. "Think of it," said Dean. "One day he'll put a stone through a man's windshield and the man will crash and die-all on account of that little kid. You see what I mean? God exists without qualms. As we roll along this way 1 am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us-that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel" (I hated to drive and drove carefully)-"the thing will go along of itself and you won't go off the road and I can sleep. Furthermore we know America, we're at home; I can go anywhere in America and get what I want because it's the same in every corner, I know the people, I know what they do. We give and take and go in the incredibly complicated sweetness zigzagging every side." There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear. He used the word "pure" a great deal. I had never dreamed Dean would become a mystic. These were the first days of his mysticism, which would lead to the strange, ragged W. C. Fields saintliness of his later days.

~Jack Kerouac "On the Road"

Jacob Needleman on the Sacred Cosmosand the Sacred Self

But step outside one starry night. Go to a place where the “light pollution” of man-made cities is lessened. Go to a place out there and in here where our inventions of concepts and explanations no longer obscure the subtle intimations of higher truths within oneself. And look up at all those shining worlds.
     What do you feel?
     No. That is not the only question to ask oneself.
     The question is: what do you know?
     It is the same question.
     Then observe your inner state. Could you hate? Could you be overwhelmed by envy or resentment? Could you dishonor any man or any woman? Is it not true that your wish to know more and more about the great world around you is now joined to the deep yearning to serve one’s neighbor and whatever it is that is, for you and for me, God? Is it not true that no man or woman has ever committed a crime in the state of wonder? Is it not true that there is such a thing as sacred knowing? And can there be any real knowing, worthy of the name, that is not embedded in a sense of the sacred out there and in oneself?

~Jacob Needleman, from the Introduction to The Sense of Cosmos

Meditations on the Tarot: Pope of the Pentagramthe operation of a limited number of magical formulae and signs

The senses —given that they are sound and functioning normally—are wounds through which the objective world, without regard to our will, imposes itself on us. But the senses are organs of perception, not of action.

It is still necessary to specify the five wounds corresponding to the five dark currents of the will — the desire for personal greatness, to take, to keep, to advance and to hold on to at the expense of others —which correspond, in their turn, to the five limbs (including the head as a limb).

How does one acquire the five wounds?

Every esotericist, every mystic, every idealist, every spiritual-seeker and, lastly, every man of good will makes use of it, in Europe as in Asia, today as twenty centuries ago. This universal method of all ages and all cultures is nothing other than the practice of the three traditional vows, namely obedience, poverty and chastity.

Now, it is a matter in the magic of the sacred pentagram of five wounds of accomplishing the living presence of the good alongside the consciousness of the subject of the operation. For good does not fight evil; it does not struggle against it. The good is only present, or it is not. Its victory consists in that it results in being present, its defeat in that it is forced to be absent.

The history of mankind —seen from its "nocturnal" side— is at root the operation of a limited number of magical formulae and signs.

The cross, the pentagram and the hexagram are signs and formulae which operate in the history of mankind. The cross is the vow and virtue of obedience, i.e. the sign and formula of faith, as horizontal human respiration and vertical divine respiration united together. The pentagram is initiative; it is effort and work, i.e. the vow and virtue of poverty—or the sign and formula of hope as the effect of the presence of divine light here below. The hexagram is the vow and virtue of chastity, i.e. the sign and formula of love.

Now, the post of Pope in the spiritual history of mankind is that of guardian of the sacred pentagram of the five wounds, i.e. he guards the one legitimate way of passing from the cross to the pentagram and from the pentagram to the hexagram. The mission of the post of Pope is to take care that spiritual obedience, poverty and chastity—free and holy —do not disappear from the world and that there are always people in the world who embrace them and represent them. For these three practical vows constitute the preliminary condition for living faith, luminous hope and ardent love, i.e. for the spiritual respiration of humanity.

excerpted and edited from chapter, The Pope

Meditations on the Tarot: Knowing the Emperorthe simultaneous vision of the temporal and the eternal

Authority is the magic of spiritual profundity filled with wisdom. Or, in other words, it is the result of magic based on gnosis due to mystical experience.

For this reason it is more correct to say that authority is the completely-manifested divine name. The completely-manifested divine name signifies at the same time a post, the post of the Emperor, or the state of consciousness of the complete synthesis of mysticism, gnosis and sacred magic.

And it is this state of consciousness of complete synthesis which is initiation. . initiation understood not in the sense of ritual nor in the sense of the possession of information held to be secret, but rather in the sense of the state of consciousness where eternity and the present moment are one. It is the simultaneous vision of the temporal and the eternal, of that which is below and that which is above.
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Hermetic philosophy does not teach what one ought to believe concerning God, man and Nature, but it teaches rather how to ask, seek and knock in order to arrive at mystical experience, gnostic illumination and the magical effect of that which one seeks to know about God, man and Nature.

And it is after having asked, sought and knocked —and after one has received, found and gained access — that one knows. This kind of knowing — the certainty of the synthetic comprehension of mystical experience, gnostic revelation and magical effect—is the Emperor, this is the practical teaching of the fourth Card of the Tarot.

from The Emperor

Eckhart Tolle's Awakened Doing 1or 'what am I going to do with the rest of my life when I grow up'

Awakened doing is the alignment of your outer purpose­ - what you do – with your inner purpose – awakening and staying awake.

Through awakened doing, you become one with the outgoing purpose of the universe. Consciousness flows through you into this world. It flows into your thoughts and inspires them. It flows into what you do and guides and empowers it.

Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.

A reversal of your priorities comes about when the main purpose for doing what you do becomes the doing itself, or rather, the current of consciousness that flows into what you do. That current of consciousness is what determines quality.

Another way of putting it: In any situation and in whatever you do, your state of consciousness is the primary factor; the situation and what you do is secondary.

“Future” success is dependent upon and inseparable from the consciousness out of which the actions emanate. That can be either the reactive force of the ego or the alert attention of awakened consciousness. All truly successful action comes out of that field of alert attention, rather than from ego and conditioned, unconscious thinking.

from A New Earth (formatting changed for emphasis)

from Meditations on the Tarot: Juggling Analogiessynthesizing with the unconscious; vision without effort

The practice of analogy on the intellectual plane of consciousness does not, in fact, demand any effort; either one perceives ("sees") analogous correspondences or one docs not perceive or "see" them. Just as the magician or juggler has had to train and work for a long time before attaining the ability of concentration without effort, similarly he who makes use of the method of analogy on the intellectual plane must have worked much —i.e. to have acquired long experience and to have accumulated the teachings which it requires — before attaining the faculty of immediate perception of analogous correspondences, before becoming a "magician" or "juggler" who makes use of the analogy of beings and of things without effort as in a game.

The Magician represents the man who has attained harmony and equilibrium between the spontaneity of the unconscious (in the sense given to it by C. G. Jung) and the deliberate action of the conscious (in the sense of "I" or ego consciousness). His state of consciousness is the synthesis of the conscious and the unconscious —of creative spontaneity and deliberately executed activity. It is the state of consciousness that the psychological school of C. G. Jung calls "individuation", or "synthesis of the conscious and unconscious elements in the personality", or "synthesis of the self." This synthesis renders possible concentration without effort and intellectual vision without effort, which are the practical and theoretical aspects of all fruitfulness in both practical and intellectual realms.

from The Magician

from Meditations on the Tarot: Out the Mystic Degenerating to the creative and into the aesthetic

Just as contemporary technological science is the direct continuation of ceremonial magic, contemporary profane art is merely a continuation of gnosis and magic which have lost sight of mysticism and become separated from it. Because art seeks to reveal and applies itself to do this in a magical manner.

The ancient mysteries were only sacred art — being in the background conscious of mysticism and gnosis. But after forgetting this background or, so to say, after this background receded too far into the background, there remained a gnosis (or a "revelationism") deprived at root of mystical discipline and experience. In this way "creative art" originated, and the mysteries became theatre, revelationary mantras became verses, hymns became songs, and revelationary pantomimic movements became dances, whilst cosmic myths gave way to belles lettres.

Art, being separated from the living organism of the unity of the Tetragrammaton, is necessarily removed from gnosis as well as from sacred magic —from which it springs and to which it owes its substance and the sap of its life. The pure revelation of gnosis has become more and more a game of the imagination and the power of magic has degenerated more and more into aesthetics.

from The Empress

from Meditations on the Tarot (Valentin Tomberg)The Four Esoteric Senses (& The Four Stages of Gnosis)

Each mode of experience and knowledge when pushed to its limit becomes a sense or engenders a special sense. He who dares to aspire to the experience of the unique essence of Being will develop the mystical sense or spiritual touch. If he wants not only to live but also to learn to understand what he lives through, he will develop the gnostic sense. And if he wants to put into practice what he has understood from mystical experience, he will develop the magical sense. If, lastly, he wants all that he has experienced, understood and practiced to be not limited to himself and his time, but to become communicable to others and to be transmitted to future generations, he must develop the Hermetic-philosophical sense, and in practicing it he will "write his book".

The essence of pure mysticism is creative activity. One becomes a mystic when one dares to elevate oneself—i.e. "to stand upright", then even more upright, and ever more upright - beyond all created being as far as the essence of Being, the divine, creative fire. "Concentration without effort" is burning without smoke or crackling fire.

The essence of pure gnosis is reflected mysticism. Gnosis signifies that that which takes place in mysticism has become higher knowledge. That is, gnosis is mysticism which has become conscious of itself. It is mystical experience transformed into higher knowledge.

Now, this transformation of mystical experience into knowledge takes place in stages. The first is the pure reflection or a kind of imaginative repetition of the experience. The second stage is its entrance into memory. The third stage is its assimilation in thought and feeling, in a manner where it becomes a "message" or inner word. The fourth stage, lastly, is reached when it becomes a communicable symbol or "writing", or "book"—i.e. when it is formulated.

from The High Priestess

Krishnamurti on Fear 3: Attentionthe ending of the thing that you are watching

So thought and time are the central factors of fear. Thought is not separate from time. They are one, they are not divorced, they are not separate. So these are the facts. This is the causation of fear. . . .

So a man then asks: how do I stop time and thought? Because his intention, his desire, his longing, is to be free from fear. And so he is caught in his own desire to be free but he is not watching very carefully the causation. When you are watching very carefully without any movement watching implies a state of the brain in which there is no movement...and that which you watch very carefully reveals not only the causation but the ending of the thing that you are watching.

So this watching is really most extraordinarily important, not how to end thought, or can I be free from fear, or what do you mean by time, and all the complications of it, which is complex, But when we are watching fear without any abstraction, which is the actual now, and in that quality of the now, because the now contains all time. . . .

All this requires an extraordinary quality of attention, because in attention there is no activity of the self. The self-interest in our life is the cause of fear.


from Brockwood Park Conversation with Mary Zimbalist

Krishnamurti on Fear 2: Learning the Fact of FearLearning about fear is in the present, is something fresh.

So, it is not that one must be free from or resist fear but that one must understand the whole nature and structure of fear…. We are to learn about fear, not how to escape from it, not how to resist it through courage and so on. . . . Learning is always in the active present, it is not the result of having accumulated knowledge; learning is a process, an action. . . . Knowledge is always in the past and when you act, the past is determining that acting. . . . [L]earning is in the very action itself. . . .

And that is our difficulty, because we always approach fear with all the associations, memories, incidents and experiences, all of which prevent us from looking at it afresh and learning about it anew.

There are many fears . . . . Are not these many fears the expression of one central fear? We want to understand the nature of fear, not how fear expresses itself in a particular direction. If we can deal with the central fact of fear, then we shall be able to resolve, or do something about, a particular fear. . . .

Because when there is fear there is darkness and the mind becomes dull . . . . Such a mind . . . is incapable of clarity . . . —it may know pleasure but it certainly does not know what it means to love. Fear destroys and makes the mind ugly.


from 'Flight of the Eagle

Krishnamurti on Fear 1: Resistance Doesn't End ItBeing free from something is not freedom.

It is not that you must be free from fear. The moment you try to free yourself from fear, you create a resistance against fear. Resistance, in any form, does not end fear - it will always be there, though you may try to escape from it, resist it, control it, run away from it and so on, it will always be there. The running away, the controlling, the suppressing, all are forms of resistance; and the fear continues even though you develop greater strength to resist. So we are not talking about being free from fear. Being free from something is not freedom.

...what is important it that one should totally, right through one's being, psychologically, end fear.


from 'Flight of the Eagle