Welcome back to the Book of Gleanings, being a part of The Kolbrin
Well, the last posting was a bit of a long ramble by the god of the so-called New Religion in which it (and we’ll stick with the neutral pronoun for now for the sake of convenience) vouchsafed certain ‘truths’ to certain holy (or stoned, take your pick) individuals. We learned that the deity regarded empty ritual and sacrifice as a complete waste of time, despised hypocrites, and saw humanity as basically flawed although it did hold out the consolation that if we can overcome the testing ground that is earthly existence and manage to kindle the ember of true umbrella love that resides in all of us into a roaring flame, then the possibility exists that we may transcend the corporeal form and achieve godhead ourselves. So, all-in-all a practical exposition from the god of The Kolbrin but not so very different from the credentials and deals offered by various other gods throughout history.
The next two chapters – entitled The Spirit of God and The Song of the Soul – the ones that I will be dealing with in this post – are the last in the Book of Gleanings. They are both pretty short so I’ll go through them quickly and then we can move onto the far more excitingly (if somewhat confusingly) named Book of Scrolls formerly called The Book of Books or The Lesser Book of the Sons of Fire being the Third Book of the Bronze Book. Oh my word!
Anyway, back to The Spirit of God and a stonkingly emphatic opening proclamation that the ‘spirit’ of the deity is the immortal spark that permeates all things. Reading between the grandiloquent phraseology employed to get the message across, it claims – if I may use quantum terminology to express the sentiment – to be the sum of the strong and weak Forces that hold everything together, the power responsible for the eternal dance of dissolution and recreation. The implication is that this is the power through which all things come into being and through which transcendence to immortality can be obtained – and it lies latent within everything – us humans included – just waiting to be tapped into and magnified. The deity, in short, says that it is everything, both material and abstract; everything from the heat of the sun and the radiance of the moon to the sound of laughter, the wistfulness in a smile and the sweetness of honey.
And yet this ‘spirit’ of the deity is not actually the deity itself. It is, it says – and, again, please excuse me for paraphrasing – the wave of potentiality that permeates the multiverse, emanating from the deity and within which is held the totality of all ‘forms’. I prefer to call those ‘forms’ blueprints which will probably get right up the noses of all the Aristotelian purists out there. In my opinion, what the deity is describing here as ‘forms’ are nothing more nor less than the variations on the end results that eventuate when the subatomic building blocks of existence are joined together in different ways. I like to think of it as a catalogue of potentialities (a nice glossy one with pictures if you like) a bit like looking in advance at every conceivable way that a box of Lego bricks can be stuck together. And yet it would be incomplete to think of these end results, these ‘forms’, in just the physical sense, because the sub-atomic building blocks of existence need something else – something extra – to either attract or repel one another.
My inclination, then, is to interpret this ‘Spirit of God’ as the entire process of everything that is or happens and everything involved in it. To give an example, in the process of procreation it is the love – or lust, or biological imperative – that attracts creatures together as well as the physical binding act and its fusion of material from each party. Even more, it is the smile that is generated by affection, the hot shamal that drives the sandstorm, the pleasure heard in the sound of music. It is both the struggle for victory and the victory itself, the goodness of the giver and the joy of the receiver, as well that which is given and received. In short, what the deity of The Kolbrin is describing as the ‘Spirit of God’ is the day-to-day expression of the interplay of the forces that bind and dissolve the Multiverse in a never-ending dance. Because, in my opinion, it is those forces and the way they interact that are the ultimate causes of all and everything – from the pleasure that a gardener feels at planting a seed, right through to the Christmas blossoming of the majestic Pohutukawa tree that grows from it (and everything in between).
And the deity doesn’t pass up the opportunity for a little self-advertising here either. The ’Spirit of God’, it says, is in the wisdom that underpins the truth in the Holy scriptures, as well as the words and the books themselves. It goes on to remind us mere mortals that words are not enough, that even our physical senses are not enough to discern the true nature of the deity itself. Only genuine wisdom can achieve that.
We now pass on to the last chapter of The Book of Gleanings which is known as The Song of the Soul. The chapter takes the form of a kind of disembodied soul addressing us with an account of what the essence of being a soul is all about. In my opinion, it is amongst the most beautiful chapters of all the books in The Kolbrin.
We start off by being told that a soul is an eternal thing; it is, in its own words ‘the indestructible essence of life . . . the treasure chest of man’s hopes and aspirations, the storehouse of lost loves and fulfilled dreams’ which I think is rather lovely.
It tells of its journey from the world of spirit to be encased in mortal flesh, the inference being that this happens again and again. And throughout each of these incarnations in which it considers itself ‘wedded’ to the body it occupies, it waits to be recognised and yearns for the ‘awakening kiss’. This passage is achingly beautiful so I am going to quote it in full as, to me, it epitomises and captures that terrible inner emptiness that we humans occasionally experience when, despite all the material comfort around us, we feel somehow incomplete:
I am the eternal bride of mortal men, ever awaiting the awakening kiss, the whisper of recognition. O being of flesh, deny me not; let me not dwell in forgotten solitude, left alone, unwanted and unheeded. Hold me to you as a lover holds the beloved, reach out beyond earthly things and kiss the lips that are yours eternally. Look out beyond the sphere of earthly opposites; out beyond the petty gains and possessions. Grasp and possess me, your own everlasting and responsive soul.
We are advised to seek union with our souls in a place of inner quiet because only there can the awakening kiss be accepted and returned. But there is also a terrible and heart-breaking warning. If we do neglect the soul that has been sent to wed us, its plaintive lament is that it must be returned to a place where it can be purified and cleansed of the corruption of our touch and its best hope is that it will be bestowed upon another, while we who spurned it will plunge down to the ‘demon-haunted region of darkness and terror’. Blimey!
The soul describes itself as our ‘potential’, what we can become if we unite and fuse with it. ‘Take me,’ it cries out, ‘Awaken me, acknowledge me, cherish me, and I will carry you to realms of glory unimaginable on Earth’.
The Love that it speaks of deserves a capital L because it is a pure, umbrella Love, one that transcends the ebb and flow of mortal life, because our soul is smitten with a Love of the very Universe itself. It says it is drawn by ‘the law of spiritual gravitation towards union with the Universal Soul’ which, I suppose, ties in with the sentiment in the Voice of God chapter that humanity’s inbuilt inclination to religious matters is, in essence, a kind of tool, a homing device if you like, that actively encourages us to seek unification with the Divine, thereby somehow enriching it, whatever or whoever it is.
The soul then does some heavy advertising, giving the low down on the wonderful transcendental über-consciousness we will experience should we make the effort to unite with it and again, we get that very mystical inference that, if sufficient effort has been made, then the being that arises from the fusion of the spirit and everything that has been sensed and remembered during its encasement in flesh, can transcend death and be freed from earthly bonds.
To my mind, the passage, at this point, does not really explain what is going on. Who is this ‘you’ that the soul is addressing? A being of flesh, obviously, but is it referring to something that is an empty vessel? Is the soul simply the ‘spark’ of life in a machine – like electricity in a motor – which, once started, begins to accrue experiences in the form of sensual input and physical experience? Which would imply that the real ‘you’ is actually the soul and the ‘you’ that comes out the end of the whole episode is simply the original soul with the memory of a human life in it. Is it the soul itself that has to somehow evolve in a temporary parcel of flesh? Or is The Kolbrin suggesting that there are two types of entity, one spiritual and immortal and the other corporeal and mortal and only by fusing the two to a satisfactory standard can the combined being evolve to the next level (a kind of variation on the ancient Egyptian twin-souled concept)?
It’s all a bit confusing and not very well explained, so I’m going to suggest that what we have here is yet another depiction of the concept that as the Cosmic wave of potentiality collapses into life forms, each individual has the potential to ‘improve’ the quality of the energy born into it, the implication being that the ’reward’ for making that effort is to pass to the next level of existence. Bit like a colossal game of Dungeons and Dragons, really, but with the difference that as each player achieves the next level, the whole game somehow benefits.
Anyway, back to the text, and the Soul again entreats the flesh not to neglect it. Although saying that it is invisible and untouchable it nevertheless attempts to describe itself with words like ‘awareness’ and terms like ‘living consciousness’ and ‘inner being’. Actually, the last couple of passages become a bit garbled and self-contradictory (given what has gone before) with the Soul claiming to be in command of everything the body does, and the whole ‘Song’ ends with the soul giving the body a choice of rotting mortality or glorious transcendence.
Well, well, well, what have we here then? These are the last chapters of The Book of Gleanings and the book ends on a suitably enigmatic tone complete with some very moving passages. So what self-help snippets can we take from this rather metaphysical ending?
Well, for me, this whole post is all about getting in touch with your inner self. I’m not talking in any kind of religious sense here (although feel free to take it that way if you wish) but in that sense where we don’t allow our passions and emotions to overrule our common sense. That inner person can look at things and analyse them neutrally and sensibly if you’ll let it. People, including ourselves, do stupid things at times. And accidents can and do happen. Listen to that little voice inside. It often works in concert with what your senses are telling it. When something dodgy is going on that your outer self (for want of a better term) doesn’t pick up on, your inner self often does, and it will sound the alarm bells. Listen out for them. So, the message, as it always is from me, is to look before you leap, to think before you act. When in a difficult or escalating situation, stop, breathe, and let your Reason (as always with a capital R) have a look at what’s going on. It will give you options you don’t get when you fly off the handle.
OK, that’s it from The Book of Gleanings. I’ll be starting a whole new section in The Kolbrin area of the website to contain the next set of posts which start to get very shazbot nanu nanu; so please keep an eye out for it and I hope to see you there.
