Eckhart Tolle

A colleague at work recommended Eckhart Tolle's latest book, A New Earth, and told me that it had been chosen for Oprah Winfrey's book club and that Oprah herself was an ardent fan of the guy. I was naturally suspicious but she was persistent so I did a little research. It turns out he knew my old guru Barry Long and had sought his advice after his own "transformation". His ideas, as presented in the Wikipedia article about him, seemed very much like Barry's and I wondered if he'd simply ripped off his advisor's ideas and refashioned them slightly.

However, after reading further, I was impressed by what he had to say and decided today to go out and buy his first book, The Power of Now, that he wrote in 1999 and which became an international best seller. I'm reading it at the moment. Tolle was born in Germany on February 16th, 1948 as Ulrich Tolle and changed his name to Eckhart probably in deference to the famous German mystic Meister Eckart. This struck me as a little pretentious (if true) but I'm prepared to read his book and reserve judgement for the time being.

Others have passed judgement however, and there is an amusing account of et as he is referred to in this article by Avery Wiseman. I'm quoting from the final part of the article:

so to sum up, et goes from....

• being a terminally depressed, emotionally wrecked, failed would-be academic, sitting in his darkened room with his head stuck in dusty volumes of mediaevel theological texts.

• career prospects: very grey indeed

• chances of getting laid: zero

• prognosis: pills or the noose

to......

• internationally most famous guru of all time. primetime talking head.

• record book sales. big venues. own limo.

• pretty asian girlfriend, twenty years younger than him, good figure, she likes swimming, keep fit and bodywork, agrees with everything he says, doesn't argue with him cos there's no one to argue with, and is even awakened herself (by him)!
  

so, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, i put it to you:
if that's not enlightenment, then what the fuck is?

This highly cynical and sarcastic article appears on a rather strange website called Sarlo's Guru Rating Service but Sarlo himself gives Tolle the top rating (in terms of credibility as a spiritual teacher) and his reference to an interview by John W. Parker caused me to start taking the guy seriously.

Angel Movies

The more you delve into the business of angels, the more confusing it gets. That's why the above book might be the place to start. The product description runs like this:

You're no idiot, of course. You've seen angels in movies since you were a kid, you made a great angel in the school play, and you've even heard of guardian angels. But when it comes to really knowing about angels, you feel like your wings have been clipped. Don't surrender that halo just yet! The Complete Idiot's Guide to Angels will enlighten you with fantastic angel stories from around the world, and it includes revelations about who they are and how they came to be.

While understanding angels is a daunting task, it hasn't discouraged Hollywood from making a lot of films about them. I've mentioned the soon-to-be released Daniel and my favourite angel film City of Angels about there are plenty more. On this website, I found an interesting question:

Question: What do Denzel Washington, Warren Beatty, Cary Grant, Nicholas Cage, and John Travolta have in common? Answer: Besides being movie stars, they have all played an angel in a movie.

In fact, there have so many films, books, songs and discussions about angels that it would seem that they are an intrinsic aspect of the human psyche and constitute perhaps an archetype, in the Jungian sense of the term, alongside the mother, father, puer aeternus, senex and other archetypes.

This site has the following to say on the matter:

Psychologist Carl Jung says that angels personify the coming into consciousness of something new arising from the deep unconscious. Jung opened the door to looking at angels as symbols of our recognition of our inner world.

This might be an interesting avenue to explore further.

Personal Elementals and Angels

One of the interesting ideas expressed in Iosos's article referred to in the previous blog is that of personal elementals and angels. He writes:

For each human soul that chose to take the evolutionary route of physical incarnations, there was one elemental being that "volunteered" to make that journey with them - to create and maintain a physical body for them - for as many lifetimes as it took - until they made their "ascension" and graduated from the physical-dimension school room!

This elemental thankfully gets to rest between incarnations. He goes to say this about personal angels:

There are of course, also personal angels, or guardian angels, focusing on the spiritual and emotional well-being of one particular human. Every human has at least one of them.

He makes the point that we should thank both of these "entities" for the largely thankless job that they've both been doing on our behalf. Having a good relationship between your personal elemental and angel is, not surprisingly, good for both physical and psychological well-being.

The whole grand scheme of things is difficult to grasp and it's probably not all that important that we do. After all, all these "entities" are part of the Creation and thus part of the grand illusion. They live in ignorance of their true nature as most of us do. It's interesting to read what Meher Baba had to say on the matter of angels. On page 1325 of Lord Meher, we read:

There is an Ocean of infinitude in God. In this Ocean there are waves which produce the creation of drops. The drops in the waves, which were created in the beginning with the whim in the infinite Ocean, do not pass through the seven stages of evolution as others do, but immediately assume the form of angels instead. These angels are in the same state for cycles and cycles – for eons and eons. They have subtle forms and are in the second heaven in the third subtle plane. They unconsciously thirst for a human form, even though they are in the highest state of happiness. But this bliss is of no use to them without full consciousness. 

It rarely happens, but after millions and millions of years one angel is born as a human being in order to realize its Real Self. Why? In order to gain consciousness which up to now it lacked, though it has passed numerous years in the subtle world as an angel. After an angel is born as a human being, it does not have to pass through human reincarnation, but becomes Realized in that very first human birth. These angels are not born on the gross plane together, but one at a time.

Therefore, from a spiritual point of view, man is far superior to angels because the angels, in spite of enjoying millions of years of bliss in heaven, have to take human form before attaining liberation.

On page 1189 he also makes similar comments:

The angels are free from the lower animal qualities and possess higher qualities of godliness, but they have no love, longing – real love for God – which makes one worthy of Union. Angels of course have love, but it is in their nature – essence. They have what can be called natural love, which makes angels higher than human beings. But being devoid of love for God, angels cannot realise God. For that, they must assume human form with these higher qualities developed. In human form alone can they create love for God, qualifying them for the attainment of God-Realisation. Realisation of God can never be attained without the human form; angels must assume one human birth to realise God.

One of my favourite movies is "City of Angels" in which one angel decides to take human form for the love of a woman. Basically, the theme of the movie is an allegory of what Baba is saying.

Angels, Elementals and Humans

My previous post about angels reminded me of an interesting article that I read that helped me to understand a little more about where angels stand in the grand scheme of things. It's written by a guy called Iasos (pronounced Ya-sos) who was born in 1947 and as is reported in his biography:

In 1967, to his surprise, Iasos began spontaneously "hearing" a new type of music in his mind, which he then referred to as "paradise music". After graduating from Cornell in anthropology in 1968, Iasos decided to move to California and to dedicate his life to manifesting this "heavenly music" he was experiencing internally, since he was convinced it would have an uplifting, healing, spiritually-invigorating and harmonising effect on many potential listeners.

He has been involved in New Age music ever since and so maybe that qualifies him to talk about angels, elementals and humans. In his account, there are three kingdoms:

• the human kingdom comprising humans whom he describes as "step-down transformers for Divine thought forms"; they work with thought and feeling and energise these thought forms with their feelings
• the elemental kingdom comprising elementals who work primarily on the mental plane and are known as "builders of form"; they translate thought forms into physical forms and are divided into four different types: earth, air, fire and water
• the angelic kingdom comprising angels who administer to the spiritual needs of both the human and elemental kingdoms

This is just a very brief summary of some of what he says and you are directed to the website to explore the matter in more detail. His conception is interesting and I'm interested in exploring it further.

Guardian Angels

I was researching about Tielhard de Chardin when I stumbled upon this article by a guy called Tobin Hart who has written a book called The Secret Spiritual World of Children. He was describing what led him to write the book in the first place and he begins:

Children have a secret spiritual life. They have spiritual capacities and experiences - profound moments that shape their lives in enduring ways. These are sometimes stunning, often tender, and reveal a remarkable spiritual world that has been kept largely secret.

It's quite a touching little anecdote that involves his daughter's guardian angel. His daughter was seven years old at the time. It got me thinking on the subject of angels. The best known angel of all is the Archangel Gabriel, or Jibril as he's known in Islam, and while doing a little investigation I discovered that an Australian film had been made in 2007 with the title Gabriel that is a sort of science fiction tale about this angel. Here is the link to the Wikipedia article about the film. It's gotten mixed reviews but it's certainly one I'll try to watch.

Nursery Rhymes

Today I took my grand-daughter to the amusement centre at the local mall. There is an enclosed area that children can enter with an admission ticket and once inside, there is an assortment of play equipment to keep the little ones amused. She will play in there for more than an hour while I sit outside listening to a mind-numbing loop of children's nursery rhymes, sung in a grating sort of sing-song fashion by a group of children. One of the songs was "Ring a Ring o' Roses" which is supposedly a reference to the symptoms of the pneumonic form of the bubonic plagues of the middle ages. However, the Wikipedia article for the rhyme casts doubt on the theory that a rosy rash ... was a symptom of the plague, posies of herbs were carried as protection, sneezing was a final fatal symptom , and “all fall down” was exactly what happened. It is assigned the status of urban myth. However, The Phrase Finder is a little more accepting of the idea and, while urging caution, suggests it might be possible.

This site on the origin of English rhymes is totally supportive of the idea, although admitting that the idea has its skeptics:

The words to the Ring around the Rosy children's ring game have their origin in English history. The historical period dates back to the Great Plague of London in 1665 (bubonic plague) or even before when the first outbreak of the Plague hit England in the 1300's. The symptoms of the plague included a rosy red rash in the shape of a ring on the skin (Ring around the rosy). Pockets and pouches were filled with sweet smelling herbs (or posies) which were carried due to the belief that the disease was transmitted by bad smells. The term "Ashes Ashes" refers to the cremation of the dead bodies! The death rate was over 60% and the plague was only halted by the Great Fire of London in 1666 which killed the rats which carried the disease which was transmitting via water sources. The English version of "Ring around the rosy" replaces Ashes with (A-tishoo, A-tishoo) as violent sneezing was another symptom of the disease.

You can actually order of the 27" x 22" poster of the above print for $21.99 from here. If you double click on the image, you get a larger version but it has a very obvious water mark embedded in it to thwart those who might try to print it directly. My personal belief is that the rhyme does refer to the bubonic plague but the debunkers remain and Snopes.com, a site that investigates urban myths and a site to which the Wikipedia article alludes, contains a quite detailed analysis of the possibility and concludes that the claim is false. No matter, I believe!

The Bogus News

With the exception of public holidays, The Jakarta Post arrives every morning at 6am and every school day I read it from about 6:15am until 6:50am. On weekends, I rise much later of course and read it far more thoroughly. The local and international content is depressingly unchanging. The names and faces change but the underlying themes remain the same. This is the bogus news as Barry Long used to say, which is really no news at all. I think I'll stop commenting on it.

I just read a blog by somebody who had written down, in condensed form, his seventy most interesting dreams from the mid-1970s. He was familiar with Jungian psychological concepts and described several dreams involving Meher Baba, so the dreams struck a reponsive chord in me. Reading about this guy's inner world was far more stimulating than the vast majority of articles I've read on the pages of that tawdry rag that masquerades as the expat's daily newspaper here in Jakarta.

In view of the fact that this is my 100th post, I've decided to rename this blog Postings from Inner Space and to renounce its former name, The Jakarta Post. Prior to that it was called Ramshackle Ramblings and initially it was Ramshackle Ramifications. Let's see how long this name lasts but I hope the name change will help give this blog a renewed and more energetic focus.