I have a dream, and no idea what it means

At least since Joseph divined the meaning of Pharaoh's dream of seven fat cattle and seven thin cattle -- saying it presaged seen fat years and seven lean years -- people have been trying to figure out what both dreams in general and particular dreams mean.

Penelope in the Odyssey distinguished dreams entering via the Gate of Ivory and the Gate of Horn.

Stranger, dreams verily are baffling and unclear of meaning, and in no wise do they find fulfilment in all things for men. For two are the gates of shadowy dreams, and one is fashioned of horn and one of ivory. Those dreams that pass through the gate of sawn ivory deceive men, bringing words that find no fulfilment. But those that come forth through the gate of polished horn bring true issues to pass, when any mortal sees them. 

Even today, in our skeptical and supposedly rational times, simple-minded "1,000 Dreams Interpreted"–type books find an eager market.

Of course, more-sophisticated minds have theorized about what dreams signify. Most famous was Sigmund Freud. His theory of dreams, argued in thousands of his and his followers' pages, was that dreams represented an outlet for suppressed wishes, usually in disguise. Probably Freudian dream theory was essentially a derivative of his overall idea of the mind. His brand of psychoanalysis was based on the notion of an unconscious seething with censored drives.

Freud's wish-fulfillment dream theory seems prima facie ridiculous. How to explain nightmares? Do we have secret wishes to be lost, mute, threatened, humiliated? The Freudians had an answer: even in dreams, the censor was still at work -- sweets had to be disguised as slime. When I was in college I read an account of Freudian psychology by his disciple Ernest Jones. As I recall, he gave an example of a dream in which the dreamer plunged a knife into someone's chest. He explained that the dreamer didn't actually want to stab someone. The dream was a metaphor. The knife was a phallic symbol. Sticking it in the chest was another way of working around the censor: it was displaced.

Even then this struck me as making the phenomenology of dreams fit a preconceived theory. Apparently lots of people feel the same way. Outside of the Freudian psychoanalytic priesthood (there are still analysts who practice classical Freudian technique), few take most of his ideas seriously now -- although he is justly credited with discovering the power of the unconscious.  His wish-fulfillment dream hypothesis, in my view, is meaningless because unfalsifiable as long as anything can be interpreted in its terms.

One of the most interesting dream theories was Carl Jung's. At least in his case, it looks like his larger framework -- especially the idea of archetypes -- was derived partly from dreams, rather than his notion of dreams being an outgrowth of his psychoanalytic theory. If there is such a thing as archetypes, and he makes a good case, it's reasonable to believe that they show up in dreams.

But Jung, like Freud, turned reductionist. By his later years, he seemed to perceive everything as archetypal; even UFOs.

Psychical research has a rich history of dream study. (This is a tiny fraction of the literature.) Dreams apparently -- at times -- deliver precognitive (example) and clairvoyant (example) knowledge. Then there is lucid dreaming, in which people know they are dreaming and can write the "script" for the dream. Reportedly there are quite a few who dream lucidly sometimes.

Religious mystics have often cited dreams associated with their metaphysical experiences.

My suspicion is that most of these explanations of dream meaning account for a few dreams, but not many. From an epistemological standpoint, most dreams are no different from ordinary waking experience: occasionally significant, mostly just phenomena. Not that they're "junk," unless you consider everyday experience junk; but of no special or unique importance.

I can remember one dream in my entire life that seemed to me then, and still seems insofar as I can recapture the feeling, as possibly having a spiritual quality. I couldn't describe it to you, can hardly describe it to myself in words.

And then there is -- I have to borrow the expression from Rider Haggard's book title -- She. 

She visits me in dreams from time to time.

I don't know her name or who she is. She is Love and Beauty and an ideal. She looks different on different visits but I recognize her, usually during the dream itself, sometimes afterward. 

She has nothing to do with eroticism. Her meaning is greater. But I don't know what.

The bridge

There is a bridge between man and eternity
and this bridge is Atman, the Spirit of man.
Neither old age, death, sorrow, evil, nor sin
can cross this bridge
because the world of the Spirit is pure.
That is why, after crossing the bridge
the eyes of the blind man can see,
the wounds of the wounded heal
and the sick recover from all sickness.
To that one who crossed the bridge
night turns into day
because in the world of the Spirit
there is a Light that is eternal.

-- Chandogya Upanishad

I realize only too well that my last few postings have been downers. They have been meant as commentary on this world, not to create negativity. The world of appearances is valid on its own level -- as the man said, "Everything is real, as long as you don't take it for more than it is" -- and we must act in it according to our sense of what is right and true.

But there is a greater Reality that is never in danger.

The torch of the sun could burn to ashes, the night fall permanently on our cities and homes, the very globe degrade into countless grains of sand that blow and disperse through the universe, and it would be nothing to the serene Spirit at the heart of everything, manifest and unmanifest.

Strive, hope, seek, and even in our human circumstances, do not fear.

* * *

I'll be out of town for a few days and unlikely to post until after Sunday, August 3. If for some reason I should not return, this is as good an exit as I can manage. But let's try to meet back here next week.

Twit disguises himself as priest to fool congregation

Say what you like about the Daily Mail — or what you don't like — but it never fails to provide material for an amateur satirist such as your blogger.

Here's today's installment:

Priest disguises himself as a tramp to teach his own churchgoers a lesson

When Reverend Rigby wanted to teach his congregation a lesson about being kind to others he came up with a rather colourful way of demonstrating his point. As the 70 churchgoers turned up for their regular Sunday morning service at the Methodist church in Prestatyn, north Wales they found a scruffy tramp sitting in the church porch. Stinking of beer and dressed in filthy clothes, the disgusted churchgoers did their best to ignore him as they filed past. This task was made even harder when the unwanted guest joined them on the pews, surrounded with syringes and drinking from a can of lager.

‘It was interesting to see the reaction from people - I was totally ignored. It showed that we don’t recognise God at work and in each other.’

He said: "In other places I was given as much as £4.50, a packet of biscuits and a blanket - but in Prestatyn I got nothing. ‘I told the congregation they are a stingy lot. Everyone was amazed and later complimented me on my acting skill, though some said I had made them feel terrible.’

Let's examine the moral implications of this stunt.

Reverend Rigby believes that the churchgoers should not have reacted with distaste to a "scruffy tramp" sitting on the porch of their house of worship. They should have looked through his earthly form and seen the God within. But, being a "stingy lot," they failed to immediately shower him with love and money.

The priest is right to this extent: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. However far we stray — and certainly there are people who stray a lot farther than the "tramp" — we are all connected with God and perfection, no matter how much we fall into the delusion of believing we are no more than human, or perhaps no more than animals, or machines.

Many good people come to misfortune, are down and out through no fault of their own or even through faults that should not earn them rejection by human society. If the congregation of Prestatyn consists of ordinarily decent people, I'm sure they recognize this.

But that isn't the lesson Reverend Rigby wants to convey. If the article is an accurate account, there seems no other conclusion to draw than that he wants his flock to accept the "tramp's" behavior. Namely, sitting on the porch steps, probably blocking the way in. Smelling like a brewery. And then, sitting in a pew, tossing back the booze, "surrounded with syringes."

Such a person is expressing contempt for the congregation as well as whatever spiritual presence the church represents. He is quite brazenly spitting in the eye of society, declaring by his actions that he is not bound by even the ordinary conventions of good manners. He is completely indifferent to propriety.

Reverend Rigby expressing his real identity (above)
and posing as a spiritual leader (below)

I doubt that all, or even most, of the churchgoers Reverend Rigby ministers to are rich. Some of them probably make sacrifices to be able to put a few bob on the collection plate. They may be no better or worse than the run of us people, but they have enough respect for themselves and each other to know how to behave in church.

So tell me why they should accept a lout in their midst and, in effect, reward him. In fact, the priest tells us they ignored him, which shows considerable forbearance. In another day and time, a couple of beefy men in the congregation would have persuaded the man who was defiling the service to take himself away, with whatever degree of persuasion was necessary.

Yes, people who have lost their minds, who have destroyed themselves or cannot help themselves do not lose all claim to empathy. In a different setting, in another way, most of the congregation would probably help someone taking the initiative (or at least cooperating) in trying to turn his life around. That, I think, is compatible with what God wants of us.

But to imply that we must tolerate and enable anti-social behavior in the name of compassion is not Christian, is not spiritual, is not virtuous if a society wants its self-destructive citizens and its unfortunates to be something greater than dole collectors. But today's Britain has no higher aspirations for them.

Of turkeys and dragons

Mark Pritchard, a member of Parliament in Britain, has a way with words. Unfortunately, not a very good way. He managed to come up with this metaphor: "Taking Christ out of Christmas is like serving the Christmas turkey without the stuffing."

He also said that it is "time for the dragon of political correctness to be slain."

His remarks came in a debate about whether there is widespread "Christianophobia" in the U.K.

While I am in favor of re-stuffing the turkey, so to speak, and slaying the aforementioned dragon, Mr. Pritchard — as well as Community Cohesion Minister Parmjit Dhanda — are barking up the wrong Christmas tree. (My own strained metaphor.)

Mr. Dhanda's reported contribution to the debate includes, "I fully recognise the full historical and cultural significance [of Christianity] in our country. We should all be aware of that and celebrate that."

Talking about "Christianophobia" is a lame attempt to score points using the same tactics as people who decry Islamophobia and homophobia. That is, claiming persecution by others who disagree with, or find distasteful, one's own religion or sexual orientation. It is probably true that Britain is largely a post-Christian country, but that isn't the same as persecution.

He can't find greeting cards with references to Christ or Advent? That may be regrettable, but it is very unlikely to be caused by any Christophobia. It is because there isn't much of a market for them. If there were, someone would produce and sell them.

Mr. Pritchard also says — I'd like to think this was just his little joke about subservience to minorities, but I don't get the impression he is that subtle — that Christians should get "full minority rights."

The trouble with this kind of argument is that it issues from the mouth of that dragon he wants slain. You Muslims think you're victims of prejudice? We Christians will show you what being victimized is! What next, a hate crime law for speaking against Christianity?

As for Mr. Dhanda's remark, it may not be worth fussing too much over — just a feel-good formula you might expect from someone whose Stalinist title is Community Cohesion Minister.

But it grates a little, too. "Historical and cultural significance" is just too wet a description of the religion that produced English mystics like Richard Rolle, Walter Hilton, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe — not to mention numerous clergy, religious scholars, saints and martyrs. Christians believe their religion is a guide to the ultimate mysteries of human life and the spirit. Mr. Dhanda makes it sound like a tattered but comfortable pair of slippers. Or an old wheeze that should get a pat on the back because "the religion had had a 'significant impact' in securing people's rights and freedoms" — a dubious proposition and one that suggests Christianity's importance was political.

If Christianity is under attack in Britain, it's mainly from its own leaders, like the crack-brained Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who finds his sacred duty in criticizing American foreign policy and who is probably an atheist in all but name.

If Mr. Pritchard is serious about speaking up for Christianity, he might question whether a politicized A. of C. is living up to his responsibilities. But then, they're both politicians.

The darkness and the Light

Life and death are but a passing from dream to dream. They are only thoughts: you are dreaming you are alive, and you are dreaming you are dead. When you get into the great Christ Consciousness, you see that life and death are dreams of God.

— Swami Paramahansa Yogananda

It's hard, these days, not to feel that the darkness is closing in. Not personally — I don't think I've ever been more content — but for the future of my country and the civilization, going all the way back to classical Greece, from which it arose.

We are caught in what military strategists call a "pincer movement." Pushed on one side by a revived, militant, uncompromising Islam, on the other by a Third World invasion. We could stand up to either or both, except that our natural defenses have been weakened by what is now widely called cultural Marxism, as well as the economic globalization of the power elite. We have lost the will to stand up for ourselves, as if we don't deserve to survive as a free and prosperous society.

In the trauma following September 11, 2001, the American people seemed for a time to look up from their preoccupation with the stock market, celebrities, shark attacks, electronic gadgets, space shuttles, and all the rest of the culture of technological determinism and materialism. They seemed ready to put away childish things and become serious.

Six years on, we have reverted to type. We want everything to be normal again, "normal" meaning '60s radicalism for some, the '90s bull market for others.

All that is a statement of feeling, not of fact. One of the few things history clearly teaches us is that it does not move in a straight line. It reverses, shoots off in unexpected directions, curls back on itself. The future will not be like the present only more so. And however anxious or pessimistic we might be, we still have the freedom to act, and action has power.

Just the same, for some of us, it's important to remember every now and then that there is a realm that exists outside of time, beyond the concerns of this world.

In that realm, there are no victories or defeats, except in the growth of the individual soul toward being ready for a home in Spirit. Does that mean we should forget about the struggles for what we perceive to be right in the everyday world? No, far from it. How we act here is part of our soul building.

The relationship between the world of Spirit and ordinary life (even in extraordinary circumstances) has preoccupied some of the best minds of mankind at least as far back as Plato, and no doubt earlier philosophers and mystics whose names have vanished from the human record. It is very hard to grasp, and I've struggled with it for years. As best I can understand it from my present state of development, it comes down to the saying found in many spiritual traditions, to be "in the world but not of it."

To put it another way, the human world that seems to be darkening before our eyes is not the ultimate truth.

At the end of my blogroll, since I first started Reflecting Light, has been a quotation from Bernard Bosanquet: "Everything is real, so long as you do not take it for more than it is." I have not read Bosanquet; I picked up the quotation from the epigraph to a book by G.N.M. Tyrell, the famous psychical researcher.

What I take this to mean is that we must act as if this world is meaningful, which it is, but still understand it as a kind of dream, real but unreal. The world of matter and the world of Spirit are linked in mysterious ways, but we cannot affect one without affecting our essence in the other.

So we struggle against darkness in time and history, but if darkness is to come, it must come. It is not the end. We must not take it for more than it is. In Spirit, there is no defeat, no death, no exile from our eternal home.

The psychical researcher as classicist

John William Waterhouse, Consulting the Oracle

What whisper from the soul impels a brilliant mind toward studying classical antiquity and psychical research? Did the two great interests of Frederic Myers's life have a common denominator in a metaphysical intuition?

Myers, educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, later taught classics there. He was also one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research, and his book Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death is still in print more than a century later.

His writings on classical culture are hard to come by today, but when I was in London I was able to buy an old copy of Myers's Essays — Classical. The book is dated 1883, and on the flyleaf is handwritten in ink, "L.H. Lucas. Percival Scholarship. Clifton. — July 1885."

The essays in the book are "Greek Oracles," "Virgil," and "Marcus Aurelius Antoninus." The piece on Greek oracles offers the most clues as to Myers's habits of mind and hints at how his interest in psychical phenomena occasionally crossed over with his studies of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations.

Myers reckons that oracles played a major role in the psychological life of the classical world from about 700 B.C. to A.D. 300. Generally, oracle means a location where it was believed that gods or spirits spoke to humans through an entranced person, dreams, or portents. (The term is also used for the person through whom the spirits communicated.) No one knows how many oracles existed in the Mediterranean and Aegean regions, but by some estimates there were hundreds. Only a few were recorded in literature of the times that survives, though. The most renowned were those on the Greek island of Delos and at Delphi, near Mount Parnassus.

Myers analyzes the evolution of the oracular phenomenon from primitive beginnings akin to shamanism, to a method for summoning the gods that inspired the Attic imagination, to a sophisticated form of mystery religion, to a decline paralleling the growth of skepticism epitomized by Lucretius toward the old religious practices, and finally … a late and suprising revival, nudged by neo-Platonic mysticism.

As a writer, Myers sometimes goes over the side, with "purple" patches of the sort that were popular in his day (e.g., "The Sibyls died in the temples, and the sun-god's island holds the sepulchre of the moon maidens of the northern sky"). But against the occasional excesses, we must count numerous phrases that turn the dried and cracked fragments of antiquity into sparkling monuments.

How can we resist

It was Apollo who warned the Greeks not to make superstition an excuse for cruelty; who testified, by his compassion for human infirmities, for the irresistible heaviness of sleep, for the thoughtlessness of childhood, for the bewilderment of the whirling brain. …

After the great crisis of the Persian war Apollo is at rest. In the tragedians we find him risen high above the attitude of a struggling tribal god. Worshippers surround him, as in the Ion, in the spirit of glad self-dedication and holy service; his priestess speaks as in the opening of the Eumenides, where the settled majesty of godhead breathes through the awful calm.

He describes Orpheus as "the centre of the most aspiring and deepest thoughts of Greece … who walks the earth with a heart that turns continually towards his treasure in a world unseen."

Myers himself was drawn to a world mostly beyond the reach of the sense organs, one which elusively and teasingly makes itself known or felt, then melts away. His interest in the inner meaning of oracles took off from that.

He writes of "the most celebrated class of oracles, — those in which the prophetess, or more rarely the prophet, gives vent in agitated trance to the words which she is inspired to utter. We encounter here the phenomena of possession, so familiar to us in the Bible, and of which theology still maintains the genuineness, while science would explain them by delirium, hysteria or epilepsy. It was this phenomenon, connected first, as Pausanias tells us, with the Apolline oracles, which gave a wholly new impressiveness to oracular replies. … These oracles of inspiration, — taken in connection with the oracles uttered by visible phantoms, which became prominent at a later era, — maybe considered as marking the highest point of development to which Greek oracles attained."

The ancient world's concept of the powers of the Pythia — the prophetess at the Delphic oracle — varied, Myers noted, from "mere clairaudience to the idea of an absolute possession, which for the time holds the individuality of the prophetess entirely in abeyance." His own views about the meaning of oracles were very probably influenced by his experiences with trance mediumship.

Frederic W.H. Myers

He draws on his wide acquaintance with the classical writers to point out that many of the great thinkers at the dawn of Western civilization recognized what we would now call the paranormal. Hesiod thought that there was "a hierarchy of spiritual beings who fill the unseen world, and can discern and influence our own." Thales defined demons as "spiritual existences, heroes, as the souls of men separated from the body. Pythagoras held much the same view, and … believed that in a certain sense these spirits were occasionally to be seen and felt. Heraclitus held 'that all things were full of souls and spirits,' and Empedocles has described in lines of startling power the wanderings through the universe of a lost and homeless soul."

Plato, Myers says, "brings these theories into direct connection with our subject by asserting that some of these spirits can read the minds of living men, and are still liable to be grieved by our wrong-doing, while many of them appear to us in sleep by visions, and are made known by voices and oracles, in our health or sickness, and are about us at our dying hour. Some are een visible occasionally in waking reality, and then again disappear, and cause perplexity by their obscure self-manifestation." Such perplexity has never been far from psychical researchers.

Under the Roman Empire, oracles continued to be consulted, but they seem often to have been corrupted and politicized. The Christian Church, once established as the state religion, was notably unenthusiastic about what it was bound to regard as a rival source of truth. But just as the oracular cult was withering, it gained new life with neo-Platonism and died in a spectacular sunset.

Myers traces "the gradual development of the creed known as Orphic, which seems to have begun with making itself master of the ancient mysteries, and only slowly spread through the profane world its doctrine that this life is a purgation, that this body is a sepulchre, and that the Divinity, who surrounds us like an ocean, is the home and hope of the soul."

Porphyry — who was struck by "that single-hearted and endless effort after the union of the soul with God which filled every moment of the life of Plotinus [the most renowned neo-Platonist]" — was the author of what Myers calls "by far the most careful inquiry into the nature of Greek oracles which has come down to us from an age when they existed still."

According to Porphyry, "the oracular or communicating demon or spirit, — we must adopt spirit as the word of wider meaning, — manifests himself in several ways. Sometimes he speaks through the mouth of the entranced 'recipient,' sometimes he shows himself in an immaterial, or even in a material form, apparently according to his own rank in the invisible world. The recipient falls into a state of trance, mixed sometimes with exhausting agitation or struggle, as in the case of the Pythia." If you substitute the word medium for recipient, here is a description of the classic 19th century séance.

Porphyry also noted that oracles could give dodgy information if the time and circumstances were wrong, and were capable of telling falsehoods. "Porphyry attributes this occasional falsity to some defect in the surrounding conditions," writes Myers, "which confuses the spirit, and prevents him from speaking truly. For on descending into our atmosphere the spirits become subject to the laws and influences which rule mankind, and are not therefore entirely free agents. When a confusion of this kind occurs, the prudent inquirer should defer his researches, — a rule with which inexperienced investigators fail to comply." Porphyry (or Myers) might be issuing a caveat to the overly credulous among modern spiritualists. Myers himself, though he obviously believes that oracles to some extent manifested the deeper dimensions of human consciousness, is hardly willing to accept the legends about them at face value.

For Frederic Myers, the best attitude when thinking about oracles (and all other enigmas of the mind and spirit) was that of Socrates, "in his assertion of a personal and spiritual relation between man and the unseen world, an oracle not without us but within."

This posting originally appeared in longer form as my article in The Paranormal Review (July 2003), published by the Society for Psychical Research. I thank the Society for allowing me to adapt it.

Beyond belief

This poor world nowadays not only has to suffer from militant, narrow-minded religion, but militant, narrow-minded atheism. A bad choice, and a false one at that.

The Washington Post round-up on trendy atheism notes:

On both sides of the Atlantic, membership in once-quiet groups of nonbelievers is rising, and books attempting to debunk religion have been surprise bestsellers, including "The God Delusion," by Oxford University professor Richard Dawkins.

New groups of nonbelievers are sprouting on college campuses, anti-religious blogs are expanding across the Internet, and in general, more people are publicly saying they have no religious faith.

On and on it goes; both sides in this stupid debate confuse religion with spirituality. Spirituality is an experience of a higher order, which leads the experiencer to a new relationship with life and an improved character. Religion is a symbolic statement of the personal insights of those who have known God to some degree, combined with a lot of ritual, doctrines, moralism, faith, and missionary work of very mixed value, designed mainly to transmit the original spiritual experience. Because religion is most often associated with people who have not experienced the Light and for whom it's a loyalty, like supporting a football team, or intellectual conceptualizing, it tends to be dry at best and fanatical at worst.

I don't blame thinking people for being disgusted with all the superstitious garbage that has attached itself to what, for a few souls, has been an immediate intuitive knowledge or grace. Religion has inspired some to seek a personal, rather than institutional, connection with God; it has also led to some wonderful aesthetic experiences, like cathedrals and Fra Angelico paintings and Bach cantatas. Nevertheless, when the score is totted up, formal religion may well have caused as much trouble as benefit. It's understandable that the Salvationless Army wonders why God should have all the best tunes.

Militant atheism's record is hardly spotless. Exhibit A for the prosecution: the Soviet Union. Thousands of Orthodox priests were martyred and believers forced to hold onto their beliefs in secret.

There is in fact nothing new in the conflict between rationality and religion. It's been in play since the 18th century in the Western world, although mainly among the highly educated, and now the privilege of sneering at religion has become available to the masses. Also likely is that the conflict will now show up in parts of the world where until recently religious traditions were virtually unquestioned.

So it's all the more important to remember that this isn't really an argument about God. It's about various notions of God and man-made ideologies. God is still there and ever will be, for anyone who wants to rise above the folly caused by human ignorance of Spirit.

Maitreya

Maitreya
China, 6th C. AD

To Buddhists, Maitreya is the Buddha who is to come.

There should be no need of another Buddha. The previous Enlightened One, some 2,500 years ago, told us what we need to know and do. His teaching remains pure and shining, so much that even Akbar -- one of the best, or least bad, of the Mughal Emperors -- could express its message succinctly: "The world is a bridge; pass over it but build no house upon it."

Non-attachment, freedom from desire, kindness to all creatures, and all else that flows from the Buddha's Four Great Truths and Eightfold Path have only the most precarious hold in this world of transitory appearances. Rather are we drearily enfolded in loss, pain, and threat. The signs have never looked worse in my lifetime. A militant, at time violent drive toward a single worldwide Muslim Caliphate; the breakup of nations into squabbling tribes carried by mass migration; ecological near-bankruptcy; and a Western civilization most of whose people are drugged on consumerism.

Perhaps things have always looked this bad. Serious reading of history tells us that things were always falling apart, the best in decline. Sometimes it was worse than that, like when the European unities of the Middle Ages were undone and Europe was torn to shreds in the 16th century by religious wars and persecutions.

I can understand the situation no further than that each of us must do what we can for goodness, and remember that we see only through the eyes of matter, not of Spirit -- except in rare circumstances. The Eastern traditions that we know principally as the Vedanta and Buddhism tell us that when humanity has thoroughly lost the way, a new Enlightened Master appears to relight the million candles that have burned themselves out.

Lama Govinda was meditating in a monastery when he had a vision arising from a stone wall that he identified with Maitreya, and which he described in The Way of the White Clouds:

I only felt that there was something about the surface of this wall that held my attention, as if it were a fascinating landscape. But no, it was far from suggesting a landscape. These apparently accidental forms were related to each other in some way; they grew more and more plastic and coherent. Their outlines became clearly defined and raised from the flat background ...

Before I knew how it all happened, a majestic human figure took shape before my eyes. It was seated upon a throne, with both feet on the ground, the head crowned with a diadem, the hands raised in a gesture, as if explaining the points of an intricate problem: it was the figure of Buddha Maitreya, the Coming One, who already now is on his way to Buddhahood, and who, like the sun before it rises over the horizon, sends his rays of love into this world of darkness, through which he has been wandering in innumerable forms, through innumerable births and deaths.

Not yet a Buddha, Maitreya is in this world now, perhaps confused as we are, fearful as we are, human as we are. Still, perhaps, trying to build on that bridge that exists only to cross from matter to Spirit. Many lives have passed, many more await in the womb of time.

You might be acquainted with this Maitreya: someone you have been with all your life, whose mind you think you know but of which you are ignorant of all but the tiniest, surface part. Maitreya is learning the lessons of the school of the physical plane, and finding it to be a hard school, but slowly realizing the glory of the Light and how to transmit it once again when the time comes. It could be Maitreya bears your name while on the short thread between this birth, this death.

Carrying on the Spiritist tradition

Heads up: The United States Spiritist Council will present a symposium this fall in Washington, D.C. The date is November 18.

Spiritism -- not to be confused with Spiritualism, a religion -- is a guide to the inner life and soul growth based primarily on two 19th century books, The Spirits' Book and The Book on Mediums. Although both are nominally by the Frenchman who took the name Allan Kardec (originally named Hippolyte Léon Denizard Rivail), they consist largely of transcriptions of questions, put by Kardec to spirits that he discerned to be of a high moral and spiritual character, and their answers.

This preface to The Spirits' Book by its translator, Anna Blackwell, is a decent introduction to the genesis of Spiritism. She writes:

... Allan Kardec was not a "medium," and was consequently obliged to avail himself of the medianimity of others in obtaining the spirit-communications from which they were evolved. The theory of life and duty, so immediately connected with his name and labors that it is often erroneously supposed to have been the product of his single mind or of the spirits in immediate connection with him, is therefore far less the expression of a personal or individual opinion than are any other of the spiritualistic theories hitherto propounded; for the basis of religious philosophy laid down in his works was not, in any way, the production of his own intelligence, but was as new to him as to any of his readers, having been progressively educed by him from the concurrent statements of a legion of spirits, through many thousands of mediums, unknown to each other, belonging to different countries, and to every variety of social position.

I have been very impressed and inspired by the teachings of Spiritism, and recommend both books. Even though he was experimenting at a time when psychical research as a scientific discipline hardly existed, Kardec was very scientific in dealing with the phenomena of mediumship. By no means did he take the words of whatever spirits showed up at séances as gospel. He quickly rumbled what some Spiritualists like to ignore: that a lot of spirits are silly time wasters, who have fun playing with the gullibility of their audiences.

Spirits -- disembodied beings, including people who have died and passed on to the next realm, and inhabit other planes of existence, but can make themselves known in various ways in the physical world -- are of varying degrees of development, just as embodied humans are. (Probably the spirits most likely to "come through" mediums are the least evolved, being closest to the earth plane, and are correspondingly least likely to offer timeless wisdom.)

Nevertheless, during countless sittings with many different mediums, he encountered some whose sayings, as transmitted by mediums, had the ring of truth; very profound truth. Like Boswell recording as many as possible of Samuel Johnson's bons mots, Kardec set down the "best of" his questions and the spirits' answers, so to speak.

Allan Kardec

Spiritism had a large following in France in the 19th century; when Kardec passed from the physical world, he was buried in Père-Lachaise Cemetary, the resting place of the remains of many of the country's famous and celebrated. The influence of Spiritism faded in France and Europe, though notables such as Camille Flammarion (who was both a distinguished astronomer and a psychical researcher) and Dr. Eugène Osty continued in something of the same spirit (pun intended).

But Spiritism acquired a new lease on life in South America, particularly in Brazil. (That's why the program for the November gathering includes several Brazilian-based speakers.) It continues to thrive there, although there are a few study groups in the United States and elsewhere. But I believe it is unusual to find a symposium like the one in Washington (celebrating the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Spirits' Book) in this country. I'm planning to be there, and looking forward to it.

Zanoni

“In ages far remote — of a civilisation far different from that which now merges the individual in the state, there existed men of ardent minds, and an intense desire of knowledge. In the mighty and solemn kingdoms in which they dwelt, there were no turbulent and earthly channels to work off the fever of their minds. Set in the antique mould of castes through which no intellect could pierce, no valour could force its way, the thirst for wisdom, alone, reigned in the hearts of those who received its study as a heritage from sire to son. Hence, even in your imperfect records of the progress of human knowledge, you find that, in the earliest ages, Philosophy descended not to the business and homes of men. It dwelt amidst the wonders of the loftier creation; it sought to analyse the formation of matter — the essentials of the prevailing soul; to read the mysteries of the starry orbs; to dive into those depths of Nature in which Zoroaster is said, by the schoolmen, first to have discovered the arts which your ignorance classes under the name of magic.

“In such an age, then, arose some men, who, amidst the vanities and delusions of their class, imagined that they detected gleams of a brighter and steadier lore. They fancied an affinity existing among all the works of Nature, and that in the lowliest lay the secret attraction that might conduct them upwards to the loftiest.”

— Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale

I would not be astonished if many of my readers have already reached for the keyboard to take them to some less eccentric site. But you're still here. Good enough.

Bulwer-Lytton’s Zanoni (published in 1842) and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities (1859) both conclude with scenes in the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror with one of the main characters going to the guillotine in place of another. I don’t know enough about Dickens’s life to say if he might have gotten the idea from Bulwer-Lytton, or if he had ever read the latter. Something for Dickens scholars to consider, maybe.

In every other respect, the books could hardly be more different. A Tale of Two Cities is still read, possibly even assigned to students in high school English classes that have not been dumbed down to sub-basement level. Zanoni, like its author, is obscure. Bulwer-Lytton’s literary reputation, what remains of it, is limited to The Last Days of Pompeii.

One reason: the Dickens novel is an adventure story, dramatic and based on a well-known historical epoch. Bulwer-Lytton’s is set mostly in 18th century Naples, of which few readers can have much of a mental picture or any strong interest; it is also fantastical and metaphysically driven.

My paperbacked copy of Zanoni, in which pages have come loose from the cheap binding, was reprinted in 1971 by Spiritual Fiction Publications, an offshoot of a Rudolf Steiner organization. “Spiritual fiction” is not a very large category; in fact, I’m hard pressed to think of any other novel that belongs in it other than H. Rider Haggard’s Cleopatra, which is more about the religion of ancient Egypt than the celebrated Queen.

Zanoni is unapologetically set in two worlds: the ordinary, everyday physical one that we know, and a transcendent realm known only to initiates. Those two dimensions are interwoven throughout the story.

There are three principal characters. Zanoni passed the initiatory mystery rites discovered long ago and so attained, among many powers, immortality. He is thousands of years old yet in appearance forever young and strikingly attractive. Mejnour, another immortal, has (as part of the price for attaining immortality and knowledge of higher truths) renounced all human feeling; scientific curiosity is his only motive. Zanoni, as becomes evident, has not, despite his transformation, completely closed off worldly emotions and attachments. He becomes involved with a beautiful, musical young woman of Naples, Viola — first out of a disinterested desire to do good and protect her from plots against her virtue, and then in love. (A fourth character, a young Englishman called Glyndon, is more of a catalyst than an active participant in the plot.)

Bulwer-Lytton, who was among the most popular novelists of his period, is widely derided today for prose that is considered “purple,” over the top. If any of his detractors read Zanoni, they will find support for their criticism, and I agree with some of it. Although the plot is coherent and the interactions among the characters over time add interest, there are too many trivial incidents. The book is overlong, although that is common enough among authors who wrote when educated people had a lot more time on their hands and far fewer distractions. The dialogue includes some archaisms for effect (the Romantic poets were sometimes guilty of the same offense) which are tiresome to the modern reader.

But the main stumbling block for current tastes is Zanoni’s constant references to the teachings and practices of ancient mystery schools of wisdom, and its taking as reality higher states of consciousness that the modern scientific outlook sees as fantasy, if not outright lunacy. Even at the time of its first publication, I suspect that England’s bourgeois merchants and shopkeepers couldn’t make head nor tail of much of it.

I don’t know much about Rosicrucian teachings (and Rosicrucianism, as a specific doctrine or organization, actually doesn’t play an overt role in the story). But Bulwer-Lytton was both metaphysically inclined and very learned in the history of mystery religions and philosophy. He quotes, for instance, Iamblichus, the neo-Platonist of the third and fourth centuries, and evidently knows his way around Middle Eastern and perhaps Vedic religions. That may not sound so impressive today, when you can walk into any Barnes & Noble or decent public library and find a handful of books on such subjects; but occult wisdom was in Bulwer-Lytton’s time really occult. You had to go out of your way to study it.

So what about Zanoni as literature? Notwithsanding the problems I mentioned above, it is still a fine achievement, a remarkable view of human events from a more spiritually advanced perspective, that does not slight the glories and loves of this world. It’s well plotted on both levels, and despite some dull patches a good read, especially its concluding chapters when Viola, Zanoni’s and Viola’s infant son, and Glyndon are in the hands of Robespierre’s Jacobin guillotineurs.

As for that “purple” style — obviously, a matter of taste. It’s the language of another era, in which prose could aspire to flamboyant poetry without embarrassment. For me, sometimes Bulwer-Lytton’s style is of a muchness, but more often, his images stir the imagination and capture the heart.

And, seating himself by her side, he [Zanoni] began to reveal to her some of the holier secrets of his lofty being. He spoke of the sublime and intense faith from which alone the diviner knowledge can arise — the faith which, seeing the immortal everywhere, purifies and exalts the mortal that beholds — the glorious ambition that dwells not in the cabals and crimes of earth, but amidst those solemn wonders that speak not of men, but of God …

Bulwer-Lytton’s vision could not be more different than that prevailing in our materialistic world today. On the one side, a tradition going back at least to the Upanishads and, in the Western world, the Gnostics and neo-Platonists, which sees this life as only the minor visible part of a vast spiritual universe whose progressive knowledge comes at the price of faith in the unseen, of self-discipline and of virtue. On the other side, a world view in which there is no God, only man and the State, in which the goals are pleasure, acquisition, and power, and the end is dust and ashes.

One of these approaches to life, surely, is right.

Holland days sauce

I'm back from a trip to Amsterdam and The Hague. That is, very near the heart of transnational progressive Europe.

Not to worry, this won't be a typical travel post. It's about me only incidentally, but rather what I observed. And while some of what I saw was disturbing, it's not a Europe-bashing post.

I left admiring the Dutch. They are some of the most pleasant and helpful people I've met. Generous with help and advice, and even under pressure calm and self-contained. True, most of those I encountered were on business or in trade, so they had some motivation to behave well, but as we all know that hardly guarantees courtesy in many places. The concept of "attitude" seems unknown in Holland, and there was none of that brusque behavior that's all too common in New York and London. I had no call to keep a lid on my temper, unlike at New York's Newark Airport where I spent three and a half hours (partly because of the now-standard delay in connecting flights). People with any sensitivity to manners should avoid New York in general and its airports in particular.

The other thing that knocked me out about the old central parts of Amsterdam and The Hague was the architecture. This was my first visit to either place, and I'd assumed that there would be a few streets in the rich areas along the canals with picture-book buildings, and the rest of the city glass, steel, and concrete ugliness. Wrong. For miles and miles in the district dating from the harbor to the 19th century developments, the grace and charm of most building is a constant source of delight, on the side streets as well as on the old canal-side merchants' houses (now, needless to say, occupied mainly by lawyers' offices, foundations, and I presume the very rich). Most are in the traditional gabled style, and even the relatively new 19th century construction harmonizes with tradition. In addition you get neo-Gothic, neoclassical, straight Victorian-era, and quite a few art nouveau and art deco houses and commercial buildings. A great city for walking and perhaps bike riding, unless you are Theo van Gogh and you have offended the delicate sensibilities of the Muslim jihadists.

The area just described, though large, is only the old part of Amsterdam (and it looks like the same story in The Hague from what I saw on a day trip). Outside the historic area, you see modern suburbs of commercial and bureaucratic blight. Spectacular eyesores of housing developments in the style American urban planners went through in the '50s, boxy highrises planted in empty, windswept plazas. Office and commercial buildings of unrelieved sterility.

You may be wondering about the Muslim situation. Well, the ritzy and touristy parts of the city don't seem to have changed much sociologically due to the Muslim influx, and it's understandable that many of the business suits, government workers, and heads of institutions don't comprehend what all the fuss is about. They don't go where the immigrants gather, in the dreary suburbs that you see a little of from the train and on the way from Schiphol airport, and I have no doubt there are much worse. It seems to be the emerging pattern in European cities: a traditional core for business, government, and tourism, and seedy or dangerous suburbs where the migrants, legal or not, congregate -- just far enough out of view that you can ignore them, until the day comes when there are so many of Muhammed's civilian and jihadist army that they must be appeased and ultimately surrendered to.

A possibly even more significant surrender has already taken place. The Dutch no longer believe in or care about God. In Amsterdam, the churches -- several dating back to the middle ages, and others of great architectural appeal -- have been transformed into spaces relevant to contemporary European interests. They are now museums; art galleries; music venues for classical, jazz, rock, and hip-hop; conference spaces; and, in once case (the Grote Kirk in The Hague), commercial meeting sites. The Grote Kirk (dating from Holland's Golden Age, the 17th century, with an amazing carved wooden pulpit) has a sign that says, "Open for special occasions only."

There was a special occasion the day I was there, an Irish tourism festival timed to coincide with St. Patrick's Day. Irishmen and -women in separate booths pitching north, south, east, west, northwest, southwest, southeast Ireland (not to mention Irish fishing, golfing, castles, Aer Lingus, etc.) , the inevitable crafts, the inevitable inevitables. The capitals of the columns in the nave, hundreds of years old, had been spray painted Day-Glo green. Removable, you hope.

Otherwise, the fine old Protestant churches are locked, when not hosting an event or milking tourists of a few Euros to get in.

The areas of Holland I saw, perhaps not entirely typical of the rest of the country, are every "progressive's" dream. Completely rational and planned (not entirely a bad thing, as the architectural preservation attests). Commercialism as pervasive and crass as anything in the U.S. An overwhelming youth culture: kids from all over the world, in the requisite rebellious dress code of blue jeans and black jackets, queueing up for an hour to get in Madame Tussaud's wax museum. The backpackers shuffle along the streets, vacant eyed (stoned on dope from the coffee shops, I guess), wondering where the next thrill will come from now they've checked off their 14th Hard Rock Cafe and got the T-shirt, and gone window shopping in the Red Light District (very few, I suspect, have the dough to actually partake of what's on offer).

To get back to the progressive's dream: here it is -- bicycle lanes in the middle of the sidewalk (and you'd better learn to watch out), commercial galleries full of "transgressive art," but most of all, the brains saturated with money and the pleasures of the senses, obsessed with global warming, placidly obedient to the EU oligarchs. (The slick, colorful tourist guides in the hotel rooms have ads for prostitutes, very tasteful, but there's no doubt what is being touted.) Spirit? "The God Delusion."

I wonder how they think those radiant tulips, red and yellow and purple and red-veined white, occurred. Just an accident, no doubt.

Meet homo economicus, for whom only money and politics are real. Amsterdam and The Hague retain enough old world charm and graciousness that being locked in time and space, with spiritual transformation sandblasted out of sight, may be the new post-theistic Western Europe at its most seductive.

Because it's not only Holland, of course. I read in an English newspaper that one of their currency notes, the 20-pound bill I think, will no longer have a picture of Sir Edward Elgar, England's greatest composer. He is being turfed out to be replaced by Adam Smith. I have nothing against Adam Smith, but the change is symbolic: Britain is now a nation of money spinning go-getters, most of whom have no trace of Elgar in their cultural bloodstream, and the currency of "cool" Britannia needs to reflect that, at least until the design is changed again to feature a mosque. Of course, the old French franc notes with engravings of Berlioz, writers and other artists has been replaced by the bland and forgettable Euro bills.

Holland is an admirable country in many ways, but I think I'll stay an unreconstructed Yank.

Two trains running

Two trains running
One train runs at midnight
The other runs at the break of day

— With apologies to McKinley Morganfield, the blues singer known as Muddy Waters

Two trains run for all of us. Most of us are riding that midnight train.

The midnight train runs on time. In fact, it runs in time.

It's brightly lit inside, full of people on the move, charging ahead. They know where the journey will end and approximately how long it will take to get there, but they try not to think about it much. Meanwhile, they amuse themselves as best they can. They talk, eat, listen to their iPods, play computer games, swig a Coke or a Budweiser.

The landmarks and the stations slip by. Faster and faster, it seems, as the time passes. And eventually, the terminal is in sight.

There's the other train. It's dark inside. Inside, where we're not used to looking, and not very comfortable when we do. Time doesn't matter here. We aren't traveling in time or space.

We're not too sure where we're going. Others have left descriptions for us, but they're hard to understand. Some accounts of the destination seem like fairy tales. Too good to be true. And so paradoxical. A supreme Light that is also supreme Darkness. An infinite knowledge hidden in a Cloud of Unknowing. Enlightenment but also "nothing special."

We're not even sure we've caught the right train to take us there. We just feel that, somewhere on down the line, our true goal and end is waiting.

Two trains running
I said, I said, I said
Two trains running
Well, well, well
One train runs at midnight
I said, I said, I said
One train runs at midnight
The other runs …
Well, well, well
The other runs …
I said, I said, I said
The other runs at the break of day.

Roma: 3

I know, I really am going on sixteen to the dozen with these ricordi of Rome. But I prom— uh, I plan to make this the last such posting.

Santa Prassede

Right around the corner from Santa Maria Maggiore, set back from a busy commercial street, is another of Rome's ancient churches, Santa Prassede (St. Praxedes). It was built in the ninth century, although much modified and restored since.

The apse mosaic is a fine example of Byzantine-influenced art, but the real jewel in this place is the tiny Chapel of San Zeno off the right aisle. All its walls and its ceiling are covered with ninth century mosaics, including one of Christ as the Lamb of God, an image I always find moving. As far as I know, nothing much has changed in this room since it was made so long ago; it offers not only esthetic, and perhaps spiritual rewards if you are so minded, but it's like a trip back into a world of the late Empire or early Middle Ages whose values were as different from those of today as can be imagined; the Romans of the classical period, skeptical, political, and engineering-minded, were much more like us than were the people who built Santa Prassede.

It was my third visit to the church — I would be happy to return any number of times — but this time I noticed something that had escaped me before. On a pier near the side entrance to the right of the altar is a stone tablet recording the 2,300 martyrs whose remains were ordered moved here from catacombs by Pope Paschal I (817–824).

Contrary to popular belief, during most of the first three centuries A.D., Christians were not persecuted in Rome (although they were probably considered crackpots). Few Romans, especially of the Senatorial class, were very religious and they were no more bothered about Christianity than about the followers of other exotic cults like those dedicated to Isis, Mithras, Cybele, etc. During the reigns of a few emporers, though, particularly Nero, Domitian, and Diocletian, the persecution (more for political than religious reasons) was savage.

I'm dubious about the value of martyrdom. God wants many difficult things from us, including improving our character, spiritual discipline, overcoming self-centeredness and learning to care for others; I'm not convinced being tortured and killed for proclaiming an unpopular faith is a ticket to Heaven. Still, you have to sympathize with the early Christian martyrs and respect those who chose their fate voluntarily.

Those whose relics were moved to Santa Prassede are listed on the tablet (a Renaissance restoration of one from Paschal I's time). I wrote down some of the names:

Marius. Felix. Melix. Diogenes (a Greek, presumably; there were many in ancient Rome). Faustus. Zoe. Juliana. "7 Germani (fratelli)" — seven German brothers. "Martyrs and Virgins" — Paulina. Marina. Daria.

Who were they? What were their lives like? We cannot say. Their names are all we have.

And then there are the others whose names are not even recorded, probably because the inscriptions in the catacombs identifying them, if any, had been effaced by the time their bones were transferred. "62 martyrs." "1124 martyrs."

I was reminded of the description on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier: "Known but to God." In that one respect, at least, we are like the Christian martyrs of Santa Prassede. Only God truly knows who we are. We do not know ourselves.

Roma: 2

More musings from my recent visit to Rome.

One of Rome's pleasures is that civilized dining is still widely available. I am not a gourmet or "foodie"; I don't as a rule particularly like eating in restaurants, but I did in Rome. The city still has an abundance of the kind of restaurant that has all but vanished in New York, London, and most big cities I know: small (often with only a dozen or so tables), waiters who've been there forever and take pride in their work rather than consider it demeaning, no background music, no "theme," no exaggerated emphasis on decor.

In such places, your food may not be wildly complex but it is prepared and served with care, and it's delicious. Romans take restaurant dining seriously without making a holy ritual out of like Parisians do, and they get on with it. You don't have to sit at the table till you're growing roots before you're done — it's possible to eat a very satisfying meal and be on your way in an hour. It's a splendid interregnum between bouts of sightseeing.

On most menus, the items on offer are translated into English, more or less. Sometimes less is more for entertainment value. My favorite: "Vitella di Lombarda" translated as "Grilled Lumbar Day Veal."

* * *

Fashion notes: Romans (or at least those identifiable as Italians by their language) dress surprisingly conservatively if they're over the age of 40 or so. The women (this season, anyway) seem to go in for muted colors and expensive but not showy fabrics. Men may still try to cut a bella figura, but it's more well-tailored, English country style than flashy. The teenagers and twentysomethings are mostly slobs. The Slut Look is popular with the girls, somewhat softened by the current popularity of long, hippie-ish hair styles. The young guys are right losers and look like they just came from the soup kitchen line. Black is very in with both sexes, making for a drab humanscape in a colorful and vibrant city.

* * *

For all that it can make you feel exuberant and revitalized, Rome doesn't let you go for long without reminding you of death.

The churches that you visit for the art and architecture are, of course, full of tombs. The very floor you walk on is marked by medieval slabs carved with images of churchmen and nobles whose final resting place is below. The main walls and side chapel walls contain more monuments to those who passed on centuries ago, and in the Baroque age — when war and plague could strike people down at any time, and the Church believed a memento mori was bracing for your soul — sculptors weren't shy about depicting mortality in the memorials they designed, which were frequently adorned with carved, hideously grinning skulls or skeletons.

The bodies of saints, or fractions thereof, used to be on display for veneration; nowadays they're mostly decently attired, with masks over what's left of their faces. But for the sepulchers of its honored ones, the Church went to immense expense and hired great artisans to represent with palpable realism the physical forms of cardinals and Popes whose calling was to lead the faithful to the nonmaterial fields of Eternity.

* * *

At last, I was able to visit the church of St. Agnese Fuori le Mura and the adjacent Mausoleum of Constantia (daughter of the Emperor Constantine, who legalized Christianity in the Empire and went on to make it the official religion). I say "at last" because it has been several years since I read a fascinating book about the church and mausoleum, The Geometry of Love. (The book is further discussed in my collected reviews linked to at the sidebar.)

St. Agnes, from the apse mosaic,
St. Agnese Fuori le Mura

The mausoleum was built in the fourth century and still has orginal mosaics (restored in the 19th century, accurately one hopes). As in the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, it's amazing to see artwork so old in situ exactly where it's been for 1,600 years. The mosaic in the apse of the church is of a vintage only a few hundred years later, showing St. Agnes and two early Popes, in stately Byzantine poses ("O sages standing in God's holy fire" — Yeats).

I joined a tour group of only four or five others — the site is in what looks like a high-class, mostly residential district some distance from Rome's historic center, so it gets few tourists — to visit the catacombs beneath the church and the adjacent area. The narration was in Italian, although I could get the gist of most of it, but the location needed no explanation for its impact. It was unlike anything I'd exprienced before. A huge network of narrow tunnels is lined on both sides with horizontal niches where Christians buried their dead in the early days. The niches are empty now, thanks to grave robbers of the middle ages, but you can still see signs in ancient Latin to identify who had been interred there. We were also shown a larger, cave-like area where a well-off family had their own "plot."

The relics of millennia in Rome make you ponder time. Many of them, like the catacombs, also make you think about time ending for each of us.

* * *

Yet there is something appealing in the way Rome is connected to the past while also very much of the present, unlike museumized cities such as Venice, Florence, or Tombstone, Arizona. Not all that is contemporary in Rome is appealing, not the graffiti-sprayed metro trains or the in-your-face commercialism or many other things, but it's hardly necessary to point out that the city's earlier eras included far worse horrors. In a time when militant Islam wants to replace Western civilization, it's comforting to know that this center to which all roads once led, which was almost literally left for dead after the barbarian conquests and the empire's departure for Constantinople, was regenerated in the Renaissance and has been going strong ever since. In the midst of dramatic, constant changes, Rome as a place of the heart and spirit has endured the passing of ages.

So, arrivederci, Roma: you who have seen everything there is to see of piety, triumph, folly, glory, cruelty, artistry, and all else that makes up the human condition. When I see you again, you will no longer be the same, just as always.

Roma

Rome is a dream. Incongruous elements from different times, eras, styles exist side by side, like the images in your mind while you sleep of people and places illogically co-existing, scenes instantly shifting. I'm not going to try to write a coherent posting about the visit I just returned from, just offer a few impressions.

* * *

Rome means churches. Even people who don't profess any religion or are committed agnostics visit St. Peter's, Santa Maria Maggiore, the Gesu, and many others if they want to understand the essence of this city. "For the art," they say, as if to absolve themselves from any connection with a spiritual world that their scientific skepticism insists they reject. And indeed, the churches contain so much splendor, artistry, and craftsmanship as to be a wonder in themselves. The richness of the materials is stupefying: the colored glass of the mosaics, its reflective brilliance intended to simulate the miraculous light of the Glory too great for people's eyes; the marbles of green, rose, gray, pure white and mixed hues; alabaster; lapis lazuli; gold; silver; and much more. Sculptures, paintings, frescoes, patterned floors. There is hardly a space in some of the churches that hasn't been decorated.

The Catholic church, especially in the Baroque period, saw no contradiction between overwhelming the viewer with the visual world and urging him to faith. It saw art and architecture as a bridge between daily life and Spirit.

Today we use art and good materials in public spaces, if at all, only for impressive company headquarters and shopping malls. The notion of hiring talented artists, designers, and builders to create grandiose buildings to celebrate God -- to the average contemporary mind, either a superstition or a Supreme Niceness -- rather than for commerce or marketing would be almost the ultimate absurdity. But the profit motive has yet to achieve anything like the grandeur to be seen in dozens of Roman houses of worship.

Yes, the extravagance can be cloying. True, although geniuses such as Bernini and extraordinary painters like Caravaggio and Pinturicchio contributed to the decor, much of the art is derivative and second rate. The relics in their own temples under altars or in side chapels may not be "authentic" in the historical sense. But in almost every case, the whole -- often built and added to and revised over centuries -- is more than the sum of its parts.

I was told a story about a priest in Mexico who had all the statues of Jesus and the Virgin and saints removed from his church because he felt the country people in the congregation were worshiping them or concentrating on them so much as to be distracted from God. I can symphathize with his motives, but believe he was mistaken. He did not understand that embodied souls are at different stages of development, some starting on the long spiritual climb through many lifetimes of experience, others having developed more wisdom and a longing to know God in spirit as a result of growth in earlier incarnations. (Reincarnation is heretical in Catholicism, although there is much dispute about whether some of the early Church fathers, such as Origen, taught it.) The priest who stripped the adornment and statues from his church was asking his flock to put away childish things while they were still children. To them, the visible images of the saints and the beauties that surrounded them in church spoke to their intuitive sense of another world greater than this and helped them to connect emotionally with a transcendent reality they could not yet reach through spiritual discipline. To take all that away from them was to remove the lower rungs of the ladder they had to climb if they were to see God in pure spirit.

* * *

Special exhibitions everywhere, announced by posters and banners. Not only does practically every museum have its blockbuster must-see show, but many churches as well. It seems to work, if getting bodies through the door is the goal. The church of Santa Maria del Popolo was having a special Caravaggio exhibit; I never did figure out exactly what it was about, although the two famous paintings (St. Paul's conversion and the crucifixion of St. Peter) were considerably brighter and cleaner than I remembered them, so maybe their restoration was the drawing card.

And boy, does Caravaggio pull 'em in these days. I hadn't realized how trendy he is, although I guess it shouldn't be surprising, since he is now well known to have been homosexual and his work is "edgy." The lines of people waiting to see the Caravaggios in Santa Maria sometimes stretched out the door and down the steps. (As I was staying near the Piazza del Popolo, I frequently went by the church, and was finally able to get in without waiting. My policy is to wait in line no more than 15 minutes for anything.)

Caravaggio: Rest on the Flight into Egypt

Why are tourists such herd animals? There are Caravaggio paintings all over Rome you don't have to wait in line to see -- for instance, at the fantastically ornate Palazzo Doria-Pamphilij, which was practically deserted. (Maybe tourists are afraid to ask how to find it because they don't know how to pronounce it.) The Doria-Pamphilij's two Caravaggios, Rest on the Flight into Egypt and the Penitent Magdalene, are both early works and I prefer them to the ones in Santa Maria, the Museo Borghese, etc. The painter seems not to have yet developed the shadowy, somewhat sinister style he is now famous for: the Holy Family and the Magdalene are both sincere and touching, but without sentimentality. You have to look very closely to notice the ghostly tear on Magdalene's cheek. In the Holy Family painting, Joseph holds up a musical score (for an actual composition that has been identified from the painting) in front of an angel playing a violin, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, like a neighbor dropping in, no conventional Baroque attitudes of religiosity. A donkey overlooks the scene from behind Joseph; he, more than any of the human characters, seems to understand the part they are playing in a divine manifestation.

* * *

Blimey, this is getting long already. That's the way it is when you've been to Rome -- you are so full of experiences and anecdotes that you're hard to shut off. I think I'll take my leave now; more soon, for those who are interested.