On Bronson Alcott's Orphic Sayings

Robert Peel, Harvard student of Perry Miller the 20th century premier anthologist and historian of Transcendentalism, said of Bronson Alcott: “In Hindu society he would undoubtedly have been accounted a mahatma, a saint, by the many; eager disciples would have flocked to such a teacher to drink at the limpid wells of his serene and unworldly wisdom. But in the United States of America, already at that time judging success largely in extrovert terms, Alcott was a practical failure, a ludicrous misfit, the reductio ad absurdum of the Transcendental ethos.”

Today’s Wikipedia says, “Amos Bronson Alcott (November 29, 1799 – March 4, 1888) was an American teacher, writer, philosopher, and reformer. As an educator, Alcott pioneered new ways of interacting with young students, focusing on a conversational style, and avoided traditional punishment. He hoped to perfect the human spirit and, to that end, advocated a vegan diet before the term was coined. He was also an abolitionist and an advocate for women's rights.”

It also says he was the father of “Louisa May, who fictionalized her experience with the family in her novel Little Women in 1868.” At least it didn’t lead with that sentence, which might be the extent of most people’s knowledge of the man today if there is any knowledge of him at all.

On a more personal level, Emerson said of Alcott: “He is an idealist, and we should say Platonist, if it were not doing injustice to give any name implying secondariness to the highly original habit of his salient and intuitive mind. He has singular gifts for awakening contemplation and aspiration in simple and in cultivated persons. Though not learned, he is a rare master of the English language; and, though no technical logician, he has a subtle and deep science of that which actually passes in thought, and thought is ever seen by him in its relations to life and morals. Those persons who are best prepared by their own habit of thought, set the highest value on his subtle perception and facile generalization.” High praise indeed.

Thoreau simply said he was “the sanest man I ever knew.” And Margaret Fuller called him "a philosopher of the balmy times of ancient Greece—a man whom the worldlings of Boston hold in as much horror as the worldlings of Athens held Socrates.”

Of his many writings, there is one in particular that was most ridiculed in his day: Orphic Sayings. They appeared in the transcendentalist journal Dial between 1840 and 1842. Although Octavius Brooks Frothingham, a prominent Unitarian preacher, wryly called them “an amazement to the unintiated and an amusement to the profane,” not surprisingly something named The Boston Daily Evening Mercantile Journal called them “the quintessence of folly and extravagance.”

Even Perry Miller in his 1950 anthology of Transcendentalist writings had this informative but sly editorial comment: “At the time Alcott wrote them, he was working in his garden in Concord and occasionally wondering how, if ever, he would pay his debts: he was reading Hesiod, More, Cudworth, Goethe, and Coleridge. The value of the “Orphic Sayings” for the American tradition is probably not anything that they say—assuming that they say something—”

Now you can read them and see for yourself.

click on pic for link to amazon

am 190728sn stop-action

Wise action is not right action but stop action. Morality is never wise but conditional as is automatic action always personal. Thus wise action is no action but non-doing. Naturally transformative.

To look both ways before you cross the street is pointless if you haven't stopped before you look. Call this stopping self-remembering, or instant meditation, or whatever vehicle gets you to the other side.

Scientific observation at best gets you half-way. This is Zeno's point behind the paradox. Einstein's theories would be nothing without intuition. That’s why it’s called dreaming by one awake.

This week I had to stop the car to let three wild turkeys cross the road. After every step, there’s a sudden stop. Necks appear to whiplash! The fourth one kindly stopped for me and I continued down the road.

aumdada manifesto 190726fr purple days

The body is like a lifesaver melting in my mouth. Before the body-mind, there is the seed of universal consciousness. During the body-mind, there is awareness reflected in this consciousness. After the body-mind is pure awareness. Call this tasty ouroboros, self-awareness.

Meanwhile, in the religion of scientific materialism, there is something called Frankenstein's Theory on the Spontaneous Generation of Consciousness from Dead Matter via Chemicals and Electricity. In this particular story, the lifesaver eats me.

So scientific materialism? Is it science or science-fiction? Are you experiential or conditional? The windows are open. It's late July and if memory serves me right, crickets are just around the corner. But tonight, there's not a single sound.

It's like a ryokan here and I'm writing in an ancient hut, all calligraphy and enlightening intent. The childlike games are over by this hour. Instead of air-conditioning, I'm listening to the white noise of a pedestal fan I just turned on.

Listen Alexa, turn off the fan. Consciousness is experiential like a witness. An appearance like a thought in consciousness is transformational like distant fireworks. Awareness reflected in consciousness is self-aware. Christ be careful what you ask for.

aumdada manifesto 190723tu purple consciousness

Consciousness believed to be a product of the body-mind identifies with the same of course, divided from the universal, although a serious materialist understands nothing in the universe is separate. The brain can't produce something which isn't chemically native to the universe. It’s always macro in, micro out.

Likewise, universal consciousness is in, I-am is out. Thus the mind is acting like a transistor, or the body like a fountain, where transformation plus resistance amplifies the source. When I-am sees I am that I-am by simply resting in the knowledge which is I-am, call this amplification Awareness Reflected in Consciousness.

Accordingly I saw three separate instances of a lone purple loosestrife today, each at least a mile from another. Purple blossoms first appear like the gentle flame on a single tall green candle. In a week or two, these wetlands will be a godly inferno of purple loosestrife, an invasive plant apparently, but nevertheless one of truth and beauty.

am 190720st apocalypse compassion

Without compassion, my projection appears to be the opposite of deconstruction. Instead of mirroring my own primordial division to be seeing through, I’ve divided my original duality into a world of painfully long divisions always ending in the same old war ad nauseum.

Look, I am universal consciousness in which material projection is appearing even if it takes a world of worm or rabbit holes. If you think there's anyone other than yourself within this house of mirrors, think again.

Yes, every year about this time beginning late July, I start to think about the purple loosestrife—and like a miracle it appears within a week or two. Listen, in an ode to purple loosestrife, the world is divided because I am divided.

But as one of the highest features of universal consciousness is love, one of the earliest features of self-awareness is compassion. There's non-doing I can do within enlightening intent but discern my own projection. Thus compassion is apocalypse of self-inquiry.

am 190717wd transistor

To begin at the beginning and not that absolute parental source beyond beginning, there's both an energetic kundalini impulse and awareness reflected in consciousness.

Holy spirit of enlightening intent and the universal god child of projection. Shakti, Shiva. Words have many metaphors. There's only three words. Ground, knowledge, self-awareness.

The world is never all three words at once. Dualities are always missing one. But tonight I feel the trees as if photosynthesis itself is source of my intelligent energy.

I sense the body as transistor, amplifying and transforming this intelligent energy into self-awareness. As mid-July begins the season of the wild weeds, Queen Anne’s lace is just the beginning.

Goldenrod is blooming in the sunny spaces of the south-facing riverbank. Soon the purple loosestrife shall be invasive in the wetlands. All of this because divinity of memory. Divine imagination.

aumdada manifesto 190713st chicken

One cannot unthink the world but one can be dispassionate about it and compassionate while in it. So identify with that affectionate awareness while not of the world but love while in it.

Like Taoists love their hermits, as Buddhists love their saints as well as Christians, Hafez only loves. Listen and and dare to look from this absolute point of view.

Identify with deep sleep witnessing birth for what it is each morning. Call this self-remembering deep sleep-walking. Such a lucid dreaming is being self-aware despite conceptual occlusion.

Because there was a stop sign, I stopped for the chicken crossing the road. But the rooster wanted something like an invitation—cross already! Slowly it turns and suddenly I take a right.

 

aumdada manifesto 190710wd the lamb

Consciousness is not divisible and believing it as so doesn't make it so although every person thinks it does.

Given a person is the definition of divided and love cannot be defined, every person falls a second fall believing god is on their side.

War doesn't just break out. It takes some time to brainwash babies, and especially if.

It's the last thing one wants to do to the innocence of love. But people die miserably each day.

This is the world and you're welcome to it—I'm getting off at the end of this sentence—I’ll be sure to write.

Every year the lambs reappear in the neighbor’s field next door despite all death and rebirth.

In the morning, there's a little one that likes to lie behind a bleached-out log and watch the people passing by.
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~seven footnotes~

division is just a thought but mathematics is perfected thought.

ego is the first fall. super-ego is the second. third fall is unspeakable.

manifestation isn’t magic. it’s inspirational!

manifestation begins in imagination and ends in revelation.

manifestation itself is third power.

life is shakti. consciousness is shiva. division is their world gone wrong. nothing’s perfect.

"To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."

first divine imagination. next is sudden inspiration, manifestation makes three.

aumdada manifesto 190706st three phantoms

Each night as affectionate awareness returns to absolute, the living body left behind attempts to replicate its absent lover—as if it doesn't already know its midnight dreams are merely phantoms compared to this sun-drenched dream of consciousness itself.

And yet each day it has convinced itself again of something other (although shadows) in believing the material is not a phantom—but foundational. Despite the fact its scientific priesthood is unable to disprove the obvious. All appears in consciousness.

It's as if this phantom of an opera claims to be composer when it's just an operatic voice non-doing—there's a sandbar in the river where a glacial moraine is being destroyed by the current. By early July, a crowd of boats is playing there.

Footnotes
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The mind dreams. Consciousness conceives.

Like romantic love compared to the unconditional.

As if the shadow pretends to be the light. Like every comic villain or super-ego.

Science as a process is a basic form of deconstruction. Science as a socially-conditioned theory is old-time religion, boss.

Ego acts. Intuition directs. Intent produces.

Them—memories don’t survive the past as i too well know—don’t go living just to make them i remind myself each hour—as if every second of my world isn’t made out of them already.
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intuition uses signs. so does marketing. coincidence?

often romantic love leads to unconditional love. or family.

even i can’t fool self-awareness.

experiment deconstructs theory. but believing in scientific theory is a socially-acceptable religion. everything appears in consciousness.

if omnipresent awareness is intent on self-awareness, then following intuition is like instant karma for the ego. i am, i am that i am, i am that. 

changing the past is like imagining the future—it happens presently. call it manifestation. love. 

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aumdada manifesto 190703wd oh lily

The world is wrong—although there's nothing wrong with that—and all the worldly knowledge in the world is wrong as well. For the only knowledge is ‘I am.’

But because of one's conditioning this may appear to rise from that holy seat of body-mind—the brain—chimerical and chemical machine. But wrong!

The body-mind at best is this transistor—node of transformation and resistance—amplifying universal consciousness to its potentiality of self-awareness.

Look, as the power of three arises from essential nonduality, the body-mind is like a fountain in an ouroboric sea. Don't deny the function of the crown of all creation because identity has been mistaken in the process.

Just because you're not the tool doesn't mean you're not the hand behind the heart of absolute intent. Nihilists need not apply at nothing. The well-to-do are overcompensating for their ignorance.

Normality is locality of conditioning. Consider the lilies of early July—day lilies, trumpet lilies, a prophecy of lovely lilies! Get over the spring. Get over all aspects of identity and be nakedly unknown.