The Clatter of Jackdaws

Does the chatter of jackdaws in the ruins mean there are no owls in the tree?

All that glitters ---- has a value

Jan Cox mentioned, and this is a rare instance where I believe he was not the first to say this, but he said, that gold creates the market for the counterfeit.  Without there being such a thing as real gold, there would be no demand, for fake, or inflated, currency.  His point was, probably, that the existence of so many many so-called spiritual groups which are really just hero-worship, or herd mechanics,  their existence proved that the "spiritual quest" was capable of real answers, real accomplishment.  The existence of most religions then, their bizarre idea that creeds and crowd activity constitute a worthy path,  serve to  prove the reality of that quest which insists on originality -- that the teacher can only set up a situation where he helps students by pointing towards something real, something they must see for themselves, they cannot be spoon fed it, or read about it.  And so it is that the secret cannot really be spoken of, without damaging the hearer. They have to see it for themselves.  And struggle to  keep on remembering a certain reality.  But that the secret exists, the glittering proof is everywhere.

Not that you asked (revised slightly)

Someone remarked about Natasha Richardson that she had come to look so like her mother, Vanessa Redgrave. This was especially apparent the older she got, and others have noticed this fact in general, that family resemblances seem to emerge at a certain time. But this does not have to do with a loss of individuality as one ages. The fact is there never was a real individuality in appearance. All beautiful women look alike: their beauty reflects not any individuality, but rather the puppy chub of fresh hormones.

The Redneck Who Ruled the World

The redneck of course is Jan Cox. What world did he rule? I am using the phrase rule the world to point to what is called the awakened man. The world Jan ruled was the only world a man can rule, the only kingdom that is not fantasy and dreams, the only power that can be exerted with awareness of what one is doing, where the awareness is the power. He used the phrase revolutionary to describe his teaching, and was always careful to point out that external political activity was not the revolutionary activity that could engage an real man.
The revolution he pointed to was the revolution of each minute being fresh, overthrown, not mechanical. And Jan Cox was, along with Gurdjieff, the greatest figure of the last century, in that he brought mysticism out of the shadows of religion and into the marketplace of empiricism.
And to the end he pronounced the word "often" offTen.

Hard Facts

Quoth Harold Bloom: If you are aa hard rock empiricist, you must reject religion." Of course any sense of religion as some set of beliefs, some assertion about god (rather than man) can be jettisoned, but that is probably not what he meant.  He has accepted the unempirical stance that there is something  called objective knowledge versus subjective, that man can go  along with the views of a group rather than empirically  rethinking  any important questions for oneself.

Actually  there is no question of subjective knowledge, there is merely man's standard dreamy state, the cog like mental stance men must allow if they are to function as the efficient cogs that is the useful lot of most men.

That, and the individually won momentary  possibility of objectivity.  Individually won and individually realized, but that is not subjectivity -- for ALL who pursue  recklessly and relentlessly a  certain internal mental stance will glimpse, maybe revisit, maybe become accustomed  to, a certain scenery.  It is the same scene for all who stand on the same perch. This scene is the origin of all ideas of objectivity.

Of course these words are misleading.  But they are closer than most.

THAT Twentieth Century

How interesting that it was the century of pastiche, of patchwork classics, like Eliot's quoting Chaucer, and Copeland, folk tunes, how marvelous that it was the century of a paltry positivism (that "low dishonest decade"), of a recalcitrance to self reflection, how intriguing that it was the century when capitalism gave birth to communism, and is now finding it cannot live without it's opposite to define itself,  how enthralling that it was that twentieth century -- when thinkers pulled mysticism from the ashes of religion and turned an empirical ear to a universal harmony.
Note I do not call this scenario ironic. It was one of the philosophers in the last phrase, Jan Cox, who pointed out there was no such thing as irony.  Irony, he said, was a sign you did not know what was going on.  Not that acknowledging this means I do.

Mis---what?

The current news coverage of missing millions, in bonuses to executives, has the earmarks of classic misdirection.  As someone else said, it is missing trillions that should worry us.  But all that is a setup. Misdirection is a mainstay of the magician's craft. Decades ago, Jan Cox showed us magic tricks one evening--some of us never did figure out how he made coins appear out of nowhere.
At that time, decades ago, I had no idea of the extent to which life itself loves misdirection. To use current events again, the attention paid to a certain Ponzi schemster, has sucked up so much air time.  And this functions to distract us from the uncomfortable sight of real economists, guys who made it out of grade, oh I mean grad, school, talking about how they did not anticipate the current fiscal crisis.  Uncomfortable making because it is close to the ignorance we all want to avoid acknowledging on a personal level.  How long can we stamp our feet at those expert economists without wondering how far this ignorance extends... could it extend to my awareness of my ....
And yet, another level, if you keep pushing, could words themselves be a kind of misdirection?
What if everything we KNOW is a setup.