The childman weary, the manchild in the womb

Just got back from my first ever fireside---never been to one before, if you can believe that----it was intriguing, myself and four 'older' ladies who look like they could have just come back from the national bridge and crocheting marathon had a long and detailed Baha'i oriented discourse about the soul. It was beautiful in a way. Being a former very uptight Christian lad --(up 'til freshman year in Highschool I used to carry a 3x5 inch Gideon bible in my back pocket to quell my innate animalistic urges such as lust.....nuh-uh, no Junior Varsity cheerleaders for this sinner) I perceived things in polarities growing up. Most Christians do. There was judgement. There was Heaven and Hell. There was sinner and Saint. There was good and evil. There was nausea ridden guilt that made you feel spiritually sullied if you had a wet dream or heard the word 'shit' used in casual conversation. Most Christians don't believe in the perpetual continuity of the soul. They don't believe in praying for those who have sloughed their earthly garments and entered the spiritual realm. They don't believe that the soul can advance with our assistance and prayers in this realm. When the soul raises its hands and capitulates to the vagaries of the physical attire, either the soul enters the Golden gates of Heaven (or golden arches of McDonalds depending on your level of cholesterol) or the tarnished soul flickers in the fire of damnation. These two concepts are very valid and propel the success and promulgation of 'contemporary' Christianity today.

One of the first things Uncle Mike ever taught me about the Baha'i faith was that the worlds, the spiritual world and the physical world coalesce. They exist simultaneously. "Just like the embryo isn't aware that its forming limbs to be used in this world--neither are we aware that we are forming certain virtues to be exerted in the next."

Last week Uncle Mike told me that and I cut him off.

"But think about genetic engineering. We can now orchestrate and influence DNA henceforth altering the child in the womb."

"Yes," Mike said. "And what makes you think the next world isn't assisting us right here? What makes you think that they're not helping us right now?"

Even in these crazy blogs. Mathematically, the chances that any of us ' blogging buddies' ever would have met, are slim to nil. Yet, somehow, we're kicking and screaming, kicking it gangsta style inisde the utero of our corporeal existence....some of us are even dreaming and flying as well.

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Outside of Uncle Mike, Mara-Arya, Marjean, Cool Abir from Minnesota and a few others, the person almost solely responsible for introducing me to the Baha'i faith is Joseph Campbell. He's never to my knowledge said the word 'Baha'i' but arguably no scholar has done more to buckle the sociological gaps between religions in the last 100 years than Mr. Campbell has himself. (maybe a dispensation or two, but that's beside the point).

Joseph Campbell was once presenting a lecture to prep school children about Buddha and Christ-like conciousness that is inside all of us. He was trying to glean something the young men would understand. His vision momentarily hovered up into the ceiling for an analogy and he found one.

"Look up, boys." Joseph Campbell said, assenting his chin to the north. The curious faces of his students followed.

"If you look up you could say that the light, singular is on, or you could say that the LIGHTS plural are on and its two ways of saying the exact same thing.

"What is important." Campbell verbally accentuates. "Is not the vehicle (such as the fiber and the glass that constitute the bulb) but the light. And when the light break the superintendent of buildings and grounds doesn't lament and say that, 'That was my particular favorite bulb'...he takes it out, plugs another one back in."

The light is what's important. There are jesus bulbs and Buddha bulbs and Krishna bulbs, but what's important is not the particluar bulb that flickers and then gradually fizzes but the overall LIGHT.

In japan this is called (phonetically since the book is in storage) the chi-ho-ki (the individual realm) and the ri-ho-ki (the general realm) and then maxim goes gee-ree-mee-gay (Individual/general no obstruction)....likewise, using the categories of logic we can deduce; Baha'i/Christian Yin/Yang Black/White male/female (Beer/Wine..well, maybe not)... same thing...you get what I'm saying. Looks like the earth really is one country and mankind is its sole citzens after all. Coleman Barks (who is almost solely responsible for anthologizing the Western world with english translations of Rumi) notes that, "The fact that we are multiple is not so great as the fact that we are one." Campbell notes that this realization is the ultimate mystical experience that a human being can harbor here on this planet because the individual psyche has vaulted over the realm of polarities into the realm one plurality...into the realm of oneness with all things.