J. S. Bach, Albert Schweitzer, The first volume.)

The Roots of Bach's' Art

Some artists are subjective, some objective. The art of the former has its source in their personality;
their work is almost independent of the epoch in which they live. A law unto themselves, they place
themselves in opposition to their epoch and originate new forms for the expression of their ideas. Of this
type was Richard Wagner.

 
Some men are wholly of their own time and work only with the forms and the ideas that their time proffers them.
They exercise no criticism upon the media of artistic expression that they find lying ready to their hand,
and feel no inner compulsion to open out new paths. Their art not coming soley from the stimulus of their
outer experience, we need not seek the roots of their work in the fortunes of its creator. In them the
artistic personality exists independently of the human, the latter remaining in the background as if it
were something almost accidental. Bach's works would have been the same even if this existence had run
quite another course. Did we know more of his life than is now the case and were we in possession of all
the letters he had ever written, we should still be not better informed as to the inward sources of his
works than we are now.

The art of the objective artist is not impersonal but super-personal. It is as if he felt only one
impulse--to express again what he already finds in existence but to express it definitively in unique
perfections. it is not he who lives, it is the spirit of the time that lives in him.  Note this very well: (IT IS NOT HE WHO
LIVES, IT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE TIME THAT LIVES IN HIM.) All the artistic endeavors, desires, creations,
aspirations and errors of his own and of previous generations are concentrated and worked out to their
conclusions in him. 

Note this very well; (ALL THE ARTISTIC ENDEAVORS, DESIRES, CREATIONS, ASPIRATIONS AND ERRORS OF HIS OWN
AND OF PREVIOUS GENERATIONS ARE CONCENTRATED AND WORKED OUT TO THEIR CONCLUSIONS IN HIM.)

In this respect the greatest German musician has his analogue only in the greatest of German philosophers.
Kant's work has the same impersonal character. He is merely the brain in which the philosophical ideas and
problems of his day come to fruition. NB: (HE IS MERELY THE BRAIN IN WHICH THE PHILOSOPHICAL IDEAS AND
PROBLEMS OF HIS DAY COME TO FRUITION.) Moreover he uses unconcernedly the scholastic forms and
terminology of the time, just as Bach took up the musical forms offered to him by his epoch without
examining them.

Bach indeed is clearly not a single but a universal  personality. He profited by the musical development of
three or four generations. When we pursue the history of this family, which occupies so unique a
position in the art life of Germany we must have the feeling that everything that is happening there must
culminate in something consummate. We feel it to be a matter of course that some day a Bach shall come in
whom all those other Bach's shall find a posthumous existence, one in whom the fragment of German Music
that has been embodied in this family shall find its' completion. Johann Sebastian Bach--to speak the
language of Kant, is a historical postulate.



The Future Of Man, Teilhard de Chardin

A Note on Progress

The conflict dates from the day when one man, flying in the face of appearance, perceived that the forces
of nature are no more unalterably fixed in their orbits than the stars themselves, but that their
serene arrangement around us depicts the flow if a tremendous tide--the day on which a first voice rang
out, crying to Mankind peacefully slumbering on the craft of Earth: "We are moving! We are going forward!"

It is a pleasant and dramatic spectacle that of Mankind divided to its very depths into two
irrevocably opposed camps--one looking towards the horizon and proclaiming with all its' new-found faith:
"We are moving", and the other without shifting its positions, obstinately maintaining, "Nothing Changes.
We are not Moving at all."

These latter, the "immobilists", though they lack passion, Immobility has never inspired anyone with
enthusiasm!, have commonsense on their side, habit of thought, inertia pessimism and also to some extent,
morality and religion. nothing, they argue appears to have changed since man began to hand down the memory
of the past, not the undulations of the earth, or the forms of life, or the genius of Man or even his
goodness. Thus far practical experimentation has failed to modify the fundamental characteristic of
even the most humble plant. Human suffering, vice and war, although they may momentarily abate, recur from
age to age with an increasing virulence. Even the striving after progress contributes to the
sum of evil: to effect change is to undermine the painfully established traditional order whereby the
distress of living creature reduced to a minimum. What innovator has not re-tapped the springs of blood and
tears? for the sake of human tranquility, in the name of Fact, and in the defense of the sacred Established
Order, the immobilists forbid the earth to  move. Nothing changes, they say or can change. The raft
must drift purposelessly on a shoreless sea.

But the other half of mankind, startled by the look-outs cry has left the huddle where the rest of
the crew sit with their heads together telling time honored tales. Gazing out over the dark sea, they study
for themselves the lapping of waters long the hull of the craft that bears them, breath the scents born to
them on the breeze, gaze at the shadows cast from pole to pole by a changeless eternity. And for these all
things, while remaining separately the same--the ripple of water, the scent of the air, the lights in
the sky--become linked together and acquire a new sense: the fixed and random Universe is seen to move.

No one who has seen this vision can be restrained from guarding and proclaiming it. To testify to my Faith in
it, and to show reasons, is my purpose here.

 From The Book of the Soul: The Bible,
Rev. Goldsack, 1911
"So that we may conclude that history in its widest sense would be employed as the vehicle of Revelation.'
Terms, words, things already known to prophet or scribe would be wisely, deliberately selected by God
and put by God into the preachers' mouth and onto the paper through the scribes' pen and thus a Divine
parable would be produced. The outward form and language drawn from the human mind: the inward thought
and meaning from the  mind of God. I say even so do we teach and educate our children and each other. From
the known to the unknown: by the concrete to the abstract: through the natural to the spiritual. And
therefore in  making a Revelation to man, God would use and could use only the language already available.
But God would use it, not to tell us about any historical person or event or subject; but to inform
us concerning  Himself, His nature, the human soul and concerning the connection and the relationship between
Himself and humanity--the prime and constant fact of our existence."

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I hope these two abstractions will begin to operate so that a  similar understanding of the 'common

denominators' of the two books becomes available. It was an idea that was so new to me, that anyone

reading these two pages will not realize how the information on them affected me. I could not read any further

in J. S. Bach, somehow the words would not go anywhere. I just put the book aside until a few years later. I've read almost everything

de Chardin wrote. What I was trying to explain was how a kind of 'mental highlighter' in my own mind lifted these two pages out and

made them significant, especially and this was a purely mental activity. The 'literal sense' as I refer to it is quite different than you understand it,

 I don't know if I could explain it except that it may not be operative in you at this time, it seems to me to be on a continuum and

 it changes at long periods of time, about 9 years duration, with big 'cycles' as long as 27 years. Then again it may be what causes you

to experience 'highlighted moments, events, etc' but you don't really notice them yet. In my opinion the parable of the good seed

in the bible is about this 'individuation process', that C. G. Jung identified. Although P. D. Ouspensky's  books, and his name for the process,

Fourth Way which operates in the every day the life of the ordinary man   were the primary sources of words and ideas that helped me

begin to understand what was behind the 'strangeness' in my every day life. Ouspensky has no rival in my opinion because of his clarity, his refusal to

create words, and for other reasons I write about later. I had fortunately  read Robert Monroe's books, Journey's Out of Body, then Far Journeys, before

reading anything by  Emanuel Swedenborg.  And I'd had many experiences in every day life that 'taught' me some concepts about projection,

as a function of mind before I knew the word existed!  That is where the 'literal sense' began to really become evident as an inner mechanism

that operates in the process of 'regeneration'. If I'd not read Monroe's books before reading anything Swedenborg wrote, I don't believe

the 'literal sense' would have been an effect that I noticed when I began to read Heaven and Hell. I'd owned it for several months and not felt

 like reading it, but when I did I noticed a subtle inner response to what I read, that somehow created a relationship to what I was reading,

to certain situations I'd experienced  in square dancing. I'd noticed a kind of 'literalness' in  jokes for instance.

 This 'effect' overlaid whatever was important, significant to me in regard to the content of the 1984 package of information ,

but it only caused me to 'feel funny' at times, or to feel a real shock at other times and I didn't know what

was affecting me. This 'self referential attribute' was sporadic at first but then it became continual for quite a period of years but that is a very simplistic way

to describe the change from continual to something different, yet the same. 

 P. D. Ouspensky went further, linking his Fourth Way ideas to an intelligence beyond Time to the pattern/process and

 it was primarily his books, as well as authors like Rodney Collin who was his student that were the ones that helped me to begin to

understand and explain my own life's contents.


The Eastern way of speaking of 'feminine principles' and 'masculine principles' was not literally about
males and females, but about attributes, qualities, aspects, etc, I believe. At a point in Time, a
chrystalization apparently rendered them into categories of 'weak/strong' and 'me/not me'. I did not
know anything about Oriental philosophies (except what I'd read in Men Who Walked With God) just before  I
chanced to read The Spirit of the Valley by Suki Colegrave. The history of the world manifests certain
points of very great changes, indirectly visible but Chardin knew the greatest change was beginning in his
time, when so many great authors wrote about what they were experiencing.