HOW TO MEDITATE—IT'S SIMPLER THAN YOU THINK

'Meditation is not divorced from our daily living. In the very understanding of our daily living meditation is necessary. That is, to attend completely to what we are doing. When you talk to somebody, the way you walk, the way you think, what you think, to give your attention to that. That is part of meditation.'—J. Krishnamurti.

Here are the names of a couple of people of yesteryear. There will be more than a few readers who will have heard of them, but there will ever so many people who will not have heard of them at all, which is a great pity. The names of the two people are Annie Besant and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Both were incredible women.

Annie Besant

During her lifetime Annie Besant was many things—minister’s wife, atheist, secularist, reformer, Fabian socialist, advocate of women’s rights and socio-political change, author, Theosophist, Co-Mason, orientalist and leader of the movement for Indian home rule. Madame Blavatsky (‘HPB’) was quite a woman as well. She was a Russian occultist, spiritual philosopher and author who co-founded the Theosophical Society in 1875. Besant met HPB in or around 1890—HPB died the very next year—and in August 1890 HPB moved in to Besant’s house in St John’s Wood, London. Anyway, here’s a little anecdote Mrs Besant would tell. She once asked HPB, ‘How shall I meditate?’ HPB is said to have replied, ‘Stick your stamps on straight, my dear.’

Now, for the benefit of those who haven’t posted a letter—remember them?—in some time, or have never posted a letter, HPB is referring to licking (yes, licking) a postage stamp and then neatly but firmly affixing the stamp to the top right hand corner of an envelope. Hence, ‘Stick your stamps on straight.’ Of course, HPB is using an analogy. What she is saying is that, in order to meditate, you must take care to ensure that you perform your daily tasks, no matter how seemingly unimportant or trivial, with proper attention to detail and the effort to do it right.

H P Blavatsky

Note Mrs Besant’s question—‘How shall I meditate?’ She was asking for a method or technique. I hate the words ‘method’ and ‘technique’ as well as the 'how' word. I really do. My use of the word 'how' in the title to this post, implying the supposed need for a method or technique in order to achieve the sought-after end, is intentionally provocative, not to mention a bit mischievous. 

There’s a Zen story that goes like this. A disciple says to the master, ‘I have been four months with you, and you have still given me no method or technique.’ The master says, ‘A method? What on earth would you want a method for?’ The disciple says, ‘To attain inner freedom.’ The master roars with laughter, and then says, ‘You need great skill indeed to set yourself free by means of the trap called a method.’ Yes, I do have a real aversion to all so-called ‘methods’, ‘systems’ and ‘techniques.’ Don’t ask, ‘how’. Just do it! (I think that's not just a slogan but a trademark as well.) True meditation is a choiceless awareness applied it to one’s whole day, indeed one’s whole life. The philosopher and authority on Zen and all things magical and mystical, Alan Watts wrote that meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment’.

Annie Besant 'first day cover'.
Indian Posts & Telegraphs. October 1, 1963.

That, my friends, is what mindfulness is all about—living from moment to moment with awareness and being fully present during each immediate moment. True meditation occurs when there is a directness and an immediacy about your experience of life. All so-called methods, techniques and systems are an artificial construct—a barrier—to your moment-to-moment experience of life. Thousands of people spend a small fortune on courses, lessons and tuition on how to meditate. They recite mantras, affix their eyes upon an object, go into a trance-like state, and so on. The Indian spiritual teacher, international speaker and author Jiddu Krishnamurti was dismissive of all forms of meditation—except one. This is what he had to say about a commonly practised form of concentration meditation known as mantra meditation:

The other method [mantra meditation] gives you a certain word and tells you that if you go on repeating it you will have some extraordinary transcendental experience. This is sheer nonsense. It is a form of self-hypnosis. By repeating Amen or Om or Coca-Cola indefinitely you will obviously have-a certain experience because by repetition the mind becomes quiet. It is a well known phenomenon which has been practised for thousands of years in India---Mantra Yoga it is called. By repetition you can induce the mind to be gentle and soft but it is still a petty, shoddy, little mind. You might as well put a piece of stick you have picked up in the garden on the mantelpiece and give it a flower every day. In a month you will be worshipping it and not to put a flower in front of it will become a sin.

So, what, then, is true meditation? Krishnamurti went on to say:

Meditation demands an astonishingly alert mind; meditation is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentation has ceased. Meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled it breeds conflict in the mind, but when you understand the structure and origin of thought, which we have already been into, then thought will not interfere. That very understanding of the structure of thinking is its own discipline which is meditation.

Meditation, which Krishnamurti saw as a lifelong inquiry into what it means to be truly present and aware, occurs when you live in the action of the present moment, as opposed to the so-called present moment itself, for as soon as you say 'the present moment' you are in the past, you are involved in memory, and thus not living in the present moment. One more thing. You can only be said to be living in the present when your mind is free from all ideas of ‘self’. When you have the idea of ‘self’ (that is, of ‘I’ and ‘me’) you are living either in the past or in the future. 

‘Stick your stamps on right, my dear.’ Attend to the small, ordinary things of life with an ‘astonishingly alert mind’. Yes, meditation is in the direct and immediate living of your daily life, from one moment to the next.

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THE ONLY WAY IS FROM MOMENT TO MOMENT

‘Thou canst not travel on the Path before thou hast become

that Path itself.’ H P Blavatsky, The Voice of the Silence.

Most religions talk about a ‘path’ or a ‘way’. One religion even quotes its purported founder as allegedly saying, ‘I am the way …’ (Jn 14:6). Whether the man in question actually uttered those much-quoted words, and what the words actually mean—for they are certainly capable of more than one interpretation---is a matter of debate and conjecture.

I am here to tell you, as I’ve often done before, that there is no ‘path’ or ‘way’. So stop looking for one, or believing that you have found it in this person or that person, no matter how great that person may be.

‘Truth’---that is, reality or life---‘is a pathless land,’ said J. Krishnamurti [pictured right], ‘and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.’ Why is that? Well, each one of us is always in direct and immediate contact with reality, both internal and external. A ‘path’ presupposes a separation or distance between point A and point B. In truth, there is no such separation or distance.

There is no path, yet there still is one. What path, you may ask? Listen to what Joy Mills, an eminent Theosophist and friend of mine who died last year, had to say about the matter: 'There is no way until our feet have trod it.' What wise words!

The path or way is whatever presents itself as your reality, that is, as your consciousness and experience. Your path or way to truth (reality, life) will always be different from mine. Each of us 'makes' our own path through life, dependent upon the steps we take and the choices we make--and it all happens moment by moment. 

However, in a very profound sense your path and my path are one and the same, for each of them is life unfolding itself from one moment to the next. That, after all, is what life is---livingness, be-ing-ness, unfolding and manifesting itself from one moment to next, ever changing shape and form but forever remaining essentially one and the same in essence and truth.

Bodhidharma [pictured left] was a Buddhist monk who lived during the 5th or 6th century. He is traditionally credited as the transmitter of Chan Buddhism to China, and regarded as its first Chinese patriarch. In the 13th century, Chan Buddhism spread to Japan, where it became known as Zen. He was a very wise man, and I have derived much benefit from reading about his spiritual teachings and practices. 

Listen to these wonderful words from Bodhidharma:

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they're full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.
But sages don't consider the past,
And they don't worry about the future,
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.

There you have it. The truly wise person does not fret about or regret the past nor worry about the future. Why? Because they are so immersed in the present—the eternal now—that they simply have no time to engage in such fruitless and harmful activities. And even though they are immersed in the present, they do not cling to the present. They live in the eternal now, from one moment to the next. In other words, they live mindfully. And in so living they come to know a peace that passes all understanding, and they come to experience a power that makes all things new. They are one with all that is, and they come to know and experience that oneness as their true be-ing (‘I am-ness’).

The only path or way is life renewing itself from one moment to the next. You ‘follow’ that path by living mindfully, that is, with choiceless, non-judgmental awareness of whatever unfolds as your life experience moment by moment.

When you come to live that way, you too can truly say, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.'

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CORPUS CHRISTI: THE MICROCOSM IS THE MACROCOSM

Yes, the microcosm is the macrocosm. Let me explain.

Today, Thursday 19 June, many Christian churches around the world are celebrating the Feast of Corpus Christi (otherwise called the Thanksgiving for the Holy Communion, the Feast of the Body of Christ, and Corpus Domini). This important feast, originally a local feast before becoming one of the Universal Church, is traditionally kept on the Thursday next after Trinity Sunday, and celebrates the belief of Christ's ongoing and real presence (‘Real Presence’) in the form of the Eucharist. The latter is said to have been instituted by Jesus at the Last Supper on the first Maundy Thursday. In contrast to the sombre atmosphere of Holy Week, Corpus Christi is a joyful celebration of the sacrament of Communion.

Now, I cannot accept any literal interpretation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation—the idea that the bread and the wine used in the sacrament of the Eucharist become, not merely as by a symbol, sign or figure, but also in reality the body and blood of Christ. Yes, that is too much for me to believe. However, the idea of Transubstantiation does mean something very real and wonderful to me. You see, the whole mystery---and that is what it is, a mystery drama. Never forget this---the Christian Church, the 'prolonged Personality' and 'posthumous Self' of Jesus throughout the centuries (albeit all too often a very fallible, errant and sinful version of the Man from Galilee), is first and foremost a mystical church, despite the efforts of many who strive to have it otherwise, and as a mystical church the 'mysteries of Jesus' have not been completed but are still being lived week by week and day by day by those spiritual seekers who participate meaningfully in the liturgy, ritual, ceremonies, and 'myths' of the Church.

To the extent that Jesus can be said to embody the fulness of the Divine---my view is that Jesus reveals to us 'as much God' as we are humanly capable of comprehending---so the wafer of bread in the Eucharist fully embodies the divine life present in matter (yes, matter). However, there is much more to the ceremony than just that. The mystery drama of the Eucharist, under the veil of earthly things such as bread, wine and water, illustrates and dramatizes the essential oneness, wholeness, unity, indivisibility and ultimate indestructibility of all life. Yes, the essential oneness of all life is symbolically represented by, and fully but microcosmically concentrated in, the Sacred Host, Itself a living symbol of the All-ness of Life in the very real sense that all of life and all of time and space can be said to be present, as a special intensification and concentration of Life, within the confines of this otherwise very little wafer of bread. Yes, the sacred Host, this 'heavenly bread,' is a miniature of the ‘Eternal Now.’ In that regard, I am reminded of those wonderful, oft-quoted words of William Blake (from his poem ‘Auguries of Innocence’):

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

The circular shape of the wafer is itself illuminating. In the ancient occult tradition metaphysics was often spoken of as sacred geometry or simply geometry. 'God geometrizes,' it was, and still is, said. Each geometrical shape had a certain metaphysical and esoteric ('inner’) meaning or significance. You could teach the whole of metaphysics by simply teaching geometry. Now, the circle, a most ancient and universal symbol, represents, among other things, life that has no beginning and no end (cf the Gnostic concept of a ‘world serpent’, in the form of a circle, eating its own tail), eternity, infinity, heaven, the universe, the cosmos, perfection, purity, God, Spirit (or 'Life Force'), ultimate oneness, the cycle of existence (human and otherwise), and associated notions of karma and reincarnation. More relevantly, especially in the context of the Holy Eucharist (cf the circular shape of the Sacred Host), the circle, being unbroken in nature, also represents a ‘sacred place.’

Sacred, indeed. If, like me, you accept the idea that all of life is sacred, holy, or divine, then you should have no difficulty at all in accepting the idea that the Host of the Eucharist is sacred, holy, and divine. ‘Spiritually and materially,’ wrote priest and author Geoffrey Hodson, ‘every Host is as a microcosm of the Macrocosm. Blessed indeed is every recipient.’ Microcosmically, each of us is a miniature copy of the universe, and the Eucharist is a sacred mystery drama and pictorial representation of the human soul, which comes forth from God, and which labours and struggles in time and space, in exile from its eternal home, in its pilgrimage and on its way to its ultimate re-union with the divine source from which it came. The Eucharist re-enacts the forever-ongoing 'descent,' so to speak, of Spirit into matter---a veritable Self-sacrifice of life itself (the cosmic 'Word-made-flesh,' and 'Lamb slaim from the foundation of the world' [cf Rev 13:8])---and its eventual 're-ascent' from matter into Spirit again, the idea being that we come from God (the ‘ground of all being’), we belong to God, we are part of God’s Self-Expression, and we are on our way back to God. God is---we are.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. (Richard Nixon used to say those words, heaven forbid.) The bread and the wine on the altar or Communion table are not mere symbols. There is no such thing as a ‘mere symbol.’ By its very nature a symbol can’t be ‘merely’ anything. A symbol---any symbol---if it be a symbol at all, is always a form or representation (’re-presentation’) of what H P Blavatsky referred to as ‘concretized truth.’ A symbol is a sensory, and ordinarily visual, way of discerning and describing some aspect of Truth (Life). More than that, a ‘true’ symbol is a way of helping to bring into the fullness of objective reality the truth of which it is a symbol. Yes, a symbol not only ‘symbolizes’, ‘represents’ or ‘stands for’ something else (the ‘inner reality’), it actually is instrumental in bringing about that reality and, in very truth, is that reality. In the case of spiritual truth, a symbol of God's presence and power also communicates that presence and power through our senses.

So, when it comes to the Sacrament of the Altar, which as I see it is the sublimest myth known to humanity, we have powerful archetypal symbols that not only commemorate in symbol the metaphysical and spiritual ideas to which I have made reference, they enable all who participate in the ceremony with sincerity, right intention, and purpose to actually take part, both interiorly and exteriorly, in that sacred mystery drama ('self-same sacrifice,' in the words of one Christian liturgy) that is going on all the time wherever there is life. Not only that, but we have a powerful ritual that (to borrow from one Christian liturgy) serves to 'perpetuate within the limitations of time and space ... the enduring sacrifice by which the world is nourished and sustained.'

I still have a lot of problems with many aspects of Christianity, or at least 'Churchianity.' Indeed, many conventional Christians would regard almost all that I’ve written in this post as clear and unambiguous evidence of that fact. So be it. I am a freethinker or I am nothing. I will, however, say this much: the Divine Presence I encounter mystically in the consecrated Host is not only the Jesus of both my childhood and my adulthood mediated by means of the creative power of the Spirit of Life, revealed knowledge as well as imaginative mystic reflection, but also the Cosmic Christ, that is, that aspect (for want of a better word) of God which created all things, upholds, sustains, and nourishes all created things, is in all things as all things, pervades and permeates all things yet is not consumed or constrained by all things, and whose very Real Presence in and to me is nearer to me than hands and feet, for it dwells in my very own heart. In other words, the Christ who ‘fills the universe in all its parts’ (Eph 1:23). 

You see, in the consecrated wafer is all of life---past, present and future---and that includes the man who once walked this earth known as Jesus of Nazareth, whose wonderful Personality and Power is mediated to us, as well as the indwelling Presence and ‘substance’ (or 'essence') of all persons and all created things. In and by means of the Eucharist, and under the veil of the simple earthly things used in the ritual, I feel an intuitive connectedness, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually, with all of life. To this wonderful, mysterious Self-revelation and experience of Life itself, I can only say, with deep humility and thankfulness, ‘My Lord and my God’ (Jn 20:28).

Here’s something else. The Eucharist is a powerful transformative ritual. You see, we are the bread and the wine. The bread (cf flesh) may be said to represent our terrestrial, mortal life, whilst the wine (cf blood) signifies our spiritual life. Conjointly, both represent or signify our lower and higher natures respectively. So, we should place upon the paten all our joys and sorrows along with all our hopes, fears, negativity, and disappointments---everything, in fact. We can also place upon the paten all those we love and for whom we care. And that drop of water added to the wine and cast into the chalice---that, too, represents us, indeed every moment of our lives as well as the lives and sufferings of others whom we love and for whom we care. Yes, we offer ourselves so that we can be consecrated, that is, transformed into new and better people. Of course, it is not magic. We need to die to our old, tired, false selves in order to be resurrected into our True Self, the latter being the very best person we can be. That requires, among other things, self-surrender … on a daily basis. Fulton J Sheen, in his inimitably beautiful manner of writing, has written:

We must not think of the offering of the bread and wine as independent of ourselves; rather the bread and wine are symbols of our presence on the altar ...

We are, therefore, present at each and every Mass under the appearance of bread and wine; we are not passive spectators, as we might be in watching a spectacle in a theatre …

We who are assisting in the Mass, together with all creation, offer ourselves as bruised grain and crushed grapes that we may die to that which is lower to become one with the tremendous Lover. ...

Death---and resurrection into newness of life. Such is the Power of this tremendous divine Power, and we can be channels, inlets, and outlets of this great Power. Now, what is God? What is the Divine? Well, for me the Divine is both a Presence and a Power--in fact, the only Presence and Power---that which animates, sustains, and nourishes all things, and in which we live, and move, and have our being. This Divine Presence and Power---the so-called 'bread from heaven'---must for the most part be experienced by means, and under the veil, of earthly things, the latter including our minds and their workings. In the words of Thomas Aquinas, from the Tantum ergo,  'Faith, our outward sense befriending, / Makes the inward vision clear.' As Presence, the Divine is the indwelling life of all the peoples of the earth. As Power, the Divine is an indwelling force for good, that is capable of transforming broken human lifes. 

In all respects, the Divine is the creative, dynamic, and transformative principle of life and love---in particular, suffering love---that forever gives of itself to itself so as to enable life to continue and grow. It is the power that brings peace, works for unity and wholeness, forgives, cleanses, heals, revitalizes, refreshes, renews, and recreates. It is the principle of oneness, wholeness, and holiness. It is 'the peace that passeth understanding' (cf Phil 4:7). There is nothing in the world quite like it, and the great mystery drama of the Eucharist is a living symbol and regular re-presentation of this Divine Power and Presence. Indeed, it's all of life.

Yes, the microcosm is the macrocosm. The One, which forever becomes the many, and the many are one. And so it is.

MEDITATION AND THE INFINITE

‘Meditation’ wrote H P Blavatsky, ‘is the inexpressible longing of the inner man for the Infinite.’

What is ‘the Infinite’? Is it Life? Eternity? Heaven? Paradise? Bliss? I don’t think it’s any of those things, at least not as those words are ordinarily used and understood. (I will, however, come back to the meaning of the word ‘Eternity’ very shortly.)

I think so-called ‘time’ and ‘space’ – which are really one – are no more than mediums in which all things exist. Life is movement---ceaseless movement--and life itself---pure Be-ing---is timeless and spaceless, with everything being contained within what we call ‘the Now.’ And when I say ‘everything’ I mean every thing … including space and time itself. All duration---that is, time---is total and complete in the Now. Further, there is an ‘eternal’ quality about the Now. It is forever new. The so-called present moment, such a brief and ephemeral ‘thing,’ has its unfolding in the Now.

So, there is one Presence and Power that surpasses even the all-consuming power of time itself--- the Eternal ... the Infinite. Now, Eternity, or the Infinite, is not something we enter when we die. No, Eternity is ‘something’ we are ‘in’---right now!

Each one of us---indeed every ‘thing’—is part of life’s Self-expression (‘Be-ing,’ or the ‘Self’), and life cannot die. Our bodies will die, and, I think, also our minds, but the life in us---well, that’s an entirely different matter.

Why meditate? The answer I give is this---it is the most natural thing we can do. You see, we come from Be-ing, we live, move and have our be-ing in Be-ing, and we will forever be part of Be-ing. We can’t escape ‘it’ … because we are ‘it.’ What? Pure Be-ing, which is forever complete and whole, and which embraces all in One-ness. Meditation---especially the practice of mindfulness---enables us to stop identifying with our body and our mind. They are not the real person each one of us is. Meditation also enables us to stop identifying with time, for the less we think about time, and the less we concern ourselves with time, the freer we will be.

Each one of us---even the most materialistic of persons---has an ‘inexpressible longing’ for the Infinite. The longing is ‘inexpressible’ because it is essentially ‘unspeakable.’ More than that, it is ‘hidden,’ because it is not something that is objective to consciousness itself. Indeed, this longing is of the very nature of Be-ing---that is, pure consciousness---Itself.

Well, why meditate if this longing for the Infinite is ‘inexpressible’ or unspeakable’? The answer is simple. People meditate because they want to live fully and mindfully in the abundance of the Eternal Now. They want to know the ‘Self as … One. They want to feel fully and truly alive … and one with all there is.

So, I say to each of you … meditate.

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BACK TO BASICS

The photos were taken by the author
on a recent trip to Tasmania

YOU CAN KNOW THE WHOLE WORLD---WITHOUT GOING OUT THE DOOR

In the Tao Te Ching Lao Tzu is reported as having said:

Without going out of door

One can know the whole world;

Without peeping out of the window

One can see the Tao [Way] of heaven.

The further one travels

The less one knows.

Therefore the Sage knows everything without travelling;

He names everything without seeing it;

He accomplishes everything without doing it.

In the Mass the priest holds up the Sacred Host for all to see. Now, I do not accept a Catholic creed---nor any creed for that matter---and I certainly do not believe in transubstantiation, but I can understand this much. In that little piece of bread we have all of life---symbolically represented by, and fully but microcosmically concentrated in, the Sacred Host. It is a wonderful, mysterious self-revelation and experience of life itself---a veritable microcosm of the macrocosm which is life itself. It is a living symbol of the all-ness of life, in the very real sense that all of life can be said to be present within the confines of this otherwise very little wafer of bread, itself a miniature of the eternal now. In the consecrated wafer is all of life---past, present and future---and that includes the man who, it is written, once walked this earth known as Jesus of Nazareth as well as the indwelling presence and substance of all persons and things.

Life is full of living symbols. What, you may ask, is a living symbol? How can a symbol be ‘living’? We are referring to something which H P Blavatsky referred to as ‘concretized truth,’ namely some thing that not only symbolizes, represents and stands for something else (the so-called ‘inner reality’), it actually is instrumental in helping to bring about that reality (in particular, an inner transformation in us) and, in very truth, is that reality. Through living symbols we are able to feel an intuitive connectedness---intellectually, emotionally and spiritually---with the all-ness of life.

I say again. Life is full of living symbols. Through them we can know the whole world---without going out the door. Life is all ‘about’ us, and in us—and is us. Why seek the sacred or the holy elsewhere? There is only one way of being, and one order or level of reality---and that is more than sufficient.

CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL: MINDS MADDENED BY PROTESTANTISM

It was H P Blavatsky, cofounder of the Theosophical Society (TS), who wrote of ‘the maddening effect of Protestantism [especially Calvinism].’ Theosophy, at least in its more 'modern' form, emerged in the late 1800s as an alternative spirituality---and as an antidote to the maddening effect of Protestantism.

Such a totally negative word---'Protestantism.' It doesn't even make it clear just what they were 'protesting' about or against, although history tells us that---and much of the story is not a happy one. Devoid of ritual and colour, devoid of intellectual depth, devoid of emotion (except emotion of the more hysterical and almost pathologically clinical kind), and inherently separatist, divisive, and backward-looking for the most part, and totally obsessed with sin and the fear and wrath of God, Protestantism---especially in its more evangelical forms---was found lacking and monumentally uninspiring to many intellectuals of the day. It remains the same today---at least for me as well as for many others.

For many years now, I have been a proud member of the TS. I am in full agreement with its three objects [see above], even though I reject many of the so-called ‘teachings’ of Theosophy (with a capital ‘T’). That doesn’t matter. Beliefs don’t matter. What you do with your life matters. (In addition to being a member of the TS, I have also had a long association with the Liberal Catholic Church (LCC)---a church very much open to theosophical ideas---and was even in holy orders in that church for a brief period. In the end, I decided to remain solely a Unitarian minister, but I continue to have great respect for the LCC. For those who may be interested, here is a published article of mine entitled 'Progressive Christianity from Liberal Catholic and Unitarian Perspectives.')

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, in the 1920s and 30s, was known in Theosophical circles as ‘The Occult Centre for the Southern Hemisphere’---a veritable hothouse of spiritual and intellectual inquiry, exploration and productivity. Indeed it was, with much of the attention focused on the writings, pronouncements and activities of leading Theosophist and Liberal Catholic bishop Charles Webster Leadbeater [pictured below left, and also above left with the then international president of the TS, Dr Annie Besant] who was resident in Sydney from 1914 to 1929 and who otherwise retained a significance ‘presence’ there until his death in Perth in 1934. (From 1922 onwards Leadbeater, when in Sydney, resided at 'The Manor' in Mosman, which was said by Theosophists to be a great ‘occult forcing-house.’)

The Sydney of today, in which I live, is a lot more multicultural than it was in the 1920s and 30s---which is a good thing---but the life of the city is nowhere near as bohemian, cosmopolitan and 'colourful' as it once was. We may have people here from every part of the globe but the ‘international’ flavor has in many ways gone---as well as much of the intellectual and spiritual life that once flourished. For the most part, Sydney is just like most large cities in North America---architecturally uninteresting (not so the Sydney Opera House and a few other prominent buildings),  and entirely mercantile and even mean. That reminds me of the occasion when Charlie (later Sir Charles) Chaplin returned briefly to Los Angeles in 1972 after some 20 years in exile outside the United States. Chaplin was looking around for the places he used to know in the city. A dismayed Chaplin remarked, ‘It's all banks, banks, banks!’ I digress, but hopefully you get the point.

Now, Dr Jenny McFarlane, who is a freelance curator and writer based in Canberra, has recently put together a wonderful book---which I heartily recommend---entitled Concerning the Spiritual: The influence of the Theosophical Society on Australian Artists 1890-1934, which has been published by Australian Scholarly Publishing. The book contains a series of fascinating case studies of some fairly well-known artists, including Jane Price, Clarice Beckett, Ethel Carrick Fox and Grace Cossington Smith, who had a special relationship with the TS and its ‘radical visuality.’ McFarlane beautifully documents an era, not that long ago, in which there was (in her words) an 'embedded and productive relationship between the Theosophical Society and Australian art.'

The book challenges assumptions about early Australian Modernism and offers a convincing, if controversial, basis for reinterpretation. McFarlane writes, ‘The Australian experience itself is reconceptualised as an integral part of a larger, distributed conversation with like-minded artists, intellectuals and activities across the globe. Australian Modernism is recast as an informed primary player in a movement which challenged Western reason and looked to the ‘East’ to revitalize its focus.’ Fascinating. No longer is Australian Modernism seen as entirely derivative and secondary to what was otherwise happening in Europe and North America. No, Australia was a leading player in its own right---with a distinctively unique contribution to the world of art. Further, the Modernism which emerges from McFarlane's fascinating account is (in her words) 'essentially feminist, spiritual and cross-cultural.' It is an account which has been waiting a long time to be told. Sadly, most Australian art historians have chosen---yes, chosen---to ignore this important part of Australian cultural, artistic and spiritual history.

Back to the book. There have been a couple of good books written on Theosophy in Australia but this is the very first book on the influence of the TS on Australian art. As such, the book fills a void and is a most important contribution to Australian cultural, artistic and spiritual history. McFarlane writes very well. She is a brilliant wordsmith and her writing has colour and flair. She also knows her subject-matter---very, very well. For those interested in Australian art, the book is a must. Ditto those interested in Theosophy, the Ancient Wisdom, esoteric Christianity and alternative spirituality.

I found one particular chapter especially interesting---'Science versus Spirit,' which deals with colour-music theories pertaining to the scientific and spiritual dimensions of colour. It seems that Sydney was at the forefront of research, discovery and discussion in this field of knowledge and speculative inquiry during the first quarter of the 20th century. Here's another nice thing about the book---McFarlane refers to a number of eminent Australian writers, such as Kylie Tennant, who made reference---sometimes oblique, other times not so oblique---to Theosophy, the Liberal Catholic Church and persons such as Bishop Leadbeater in their novels and other writings. (I hope that someday someone will write a book on the influence of Theosophy and the TS on Australian writers. Maybe I will.)

The book contains about 30 beautifully reproduced colour photographs (mainly of works of art) as well as many black-and-white and sepia photographs as well---a truly priceless and unique collection which alone is worth the price of the book. It's a gem!

Concerning the Spiritual: The influence of the Theosophical
Society on Australian artists 1890–1934, by Jenny McFarlane
 Imprint: Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd   ISBN: 9781921875151
Format: PB   Release date: February 2012   RRP A$49.95

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