Thomas a Kempis (1380-1471)
Presented on: Tuesday, August 30, 1983
Presented by: Roger Weir
The date is August the thirtieth, 1983. This is the last lecture in a series of lectures by Roger, where on the 14th century, tonight's lecture is entitled Thomas, a campus who lived 1380 to 1471. He was the author of the imitation of Christ.
This course, Thomas, our campus lives until 1471. And of course the Chino was born in 1433 and already had his school by the time Thomas out campus died. So the gap is more of one of background and context rather than of substance, because our chemists in our campus and for Chino actually do dovetail in certain regards as you'll see. But the next course is one that was implicit in the hermetic science course. And one that is now almost necessary in view of what we have uncovered in the development of this course. And it will be a parallel to the Italian Renaissance course. And the parallel instead of being called a Renaissance was called the enlightenment. So that the next series starting next week, we'll be on the enlightenment. And it will start exactly where we left off in the hermetic science course. It will start with live knits and the next week will be Newton.
And then we will take it through the 18th century to that monumental mythological consciousness that symbolically summed up the age and William Blake. So we'll, we'll go from liveliness to William Blake and we will see how the European minds drug line with an almost impossible conundrum, how to operate on a very sophisticated level, psychologically artistically literarily, but all this on a wobbly base that was highly polarized and charged and almost forbade them from having an integrated world view so that we will discover in the enlightenment that those individuals who freed themselves like Voltaire or Roussel, had to thumb their nose at their time and say, I am out of the frame of reference of this society. And we will see that the outcome of that view was in fact, not only the American revolution, but the French revolution where they turn the clock back to the year one.
And they said, all of this history is no longer relevant to what we plan to do as human beings. Therefore, we will begin again at the year one and they did just that Blake of course, being much more profound, took us back to the beginnings of consciousness and reformed and refashioned, the mythological Genesis of man's nature from scratch a much more revolutionary outlet. So the next course on the enlightenment will move from live nets and Newton to William Blake through the masterminds of the 18th century, we'll have Mozart and con a given and, uh, quite, uh, a series of people Hume so forth. So you can look for that. I'm sorry that the brochures are not out because the brochures are not out Stephan's lecture. This coming Friday is on the golden Dawn, the inner teachings of the golden Dawn. So if you're interested, the, uh, single sheet is available and that is a Friday.
This coming Friday, we'll have all of the other programs. Hopefully by that time I have just one more slight announcement. I recently bought psychology and Alkemy by Carl Young, um, volume 12 of the bull engine series. And then I was unpacking boxes today. My library has been in boxes for two and a half years, and I found that I have two copies, uh, with checks. It's about $35. If there's anyone that would like it for 20, that's what the Bodhi tree will give me. I'll be glad to sell it to our, our course ends tonight with one of the jewels of mystical insight. And it is fraught with peril to approach it naively Thomas, our campus, and his great classic on the imitation of Christ. The [inaudible] gives us a most poignant problem. It is a spiritual classic. It does bring together all of the elements of the 14th century, but the first three parts of the imitation of Christ give us the mystical individuality, which we have come to expect.
But the fourth part turns its back on the first three parts and gives us the authoritarians church structure, which converts the entire meaning of the first three parts and changes the whole perspective of the book for us. So we have in our hands a barbell, it is a great work of individual mystical counseling, but it is also a steel trap opening up the very, uh, cage that what have been not only negated, but dissolved by the counseling in the first three sections. So we have a problem on our hands and it's not so simple. We can ever be so, uh, comfortably naive as to think just because of books been in print for 570 years and sold by the tens of millions of copies that it is harmless. The difficulty in our time is that we've become blahzay about the classics, but the biggest sticks of dynamite in the arsenal of the mind are the classics.
Again and again, we have had to learn that lesson. There has been nothing in our time. So revolutionary as the discovery of the Asian and Oriental classics, they have produced a revolution in thinking in the 20th century, which uh, by now even overshadows the, uh, discovery of the Greek world in the Renaissance. So we have on our hands a real problem. I think the best way to begin is to take us to the encyclopedia Britannica, the 11th edition. And if you're looking up of a campus, you have to look up Thomas, our campus, it's not under campus. Campus is actually the Latin for camping and camping is a community still rather small in Germany, about a 40 kilometers to the Northwest of Dusseldorf, Dusseldorf and Essen are all in the rear. Uh, Ryan, uh, Valley area of Germany, highly industrialized. My maternal grandmother came from the Dusseldorf camping area and she recounts how even in her childhood, uh, a hundred years ago, uh, that area was extremely industrialized, was one of the first areas to, uh, have, uh, processing of iron Orrin so forth.
So it's is a highly industrialized area, but camping is still a little village place. So that Thomas a campus was born there roughly in 1380, I would rather think 1379. You wish to be precise as is closer. He has listed as having died in his 92nd year. And that was 1471. He had been in the yeah, religious communities for 63 years. So yeah, showed a, quite, quite a lifetime under Thomas uh, campus. Uh, it has given that he has real name was Thomas hammer, kin H a M M E R K E N hammerskin and his father was an ordinary farmer, an aggregator cultural worker. Okay. His mother on the other hand ran a school and he was educated as a youngster to the age of about 14 in that school.
Now we have our first clue, although not recognizable to the uninformed, mind of the background and context of our campuses life usually yes, unintelligent woman who would be running a school would not be married to a farm worker, an agricultural person. Somehow we get the sense that this was an unusual family and that they must have had a belief structure that was unusual. And in fact, we discover that the next facts that are given to us is that at the age of 14, our campus was sent to a city, a small town named Devanter in Holland where his older brother, I was already involved in the community. Now, when we go to the volume of the Britannica, the 11th edition, and we look up de Ventura, we come across the fence that this is a ancient city has been there quite some time. And the pride of DV center is it's monastic and not so monastic communities that is early as seven 50 a D. There was a church founded by st. Lieberman. And uh, about 500 years later, there was a church founded called grub to Kirk. Now that grotesque is, um, from our friend who was a disciple of Yon Roy's Brook, so that we begin to see that the basic context of our campuses, family, his mother and his father were that they were members of the religious community known as the friends or, and more technical social, uh, parlance. They were members of the brethren of the common life.
And we have to take ourselves back a little bit in our memory. Now, the friends of God, the coach's friend were a sect, which was centered around Yohanas toddler, who we covered here. Whereas the brethren of the common life were centered around Jaan Roy's Brook and the brethren of the common life had their prototype set up by Meister Eckhart. So that all of the major figures that we have covered in this course begin to come together and focus upon the life of Thomas at campus. He comes to personally focus the aspirations and designs, the purposes they experiences of every person that we have taken in this course at de Venter, this church, which was founded, uh, by our dear friend, we have to look in here under brethren of the common life. And there's quite a long article in the 11th, pretend ACA a religious community, formally existing in the Catholic church, towards the end of his career.
Gerhard Grote retired to his native town of de Venter in the province of oversell. This is a river named the sale there and, uh, gathered around him a number of those who had been quote converted by his preaching or wished to place themselves under his spiritual guidance on campus later on would write a life of Gearhart Grote, which is remarkably difficult to find. I have searched around Los Angeles. It has been translated into English, but very difficult to locate. He also wrote a life of, he has a mentor who was the, a disciple and follower of grata and then named red to win Florentina S Rodwin who resigned for the purpose. A canonry at UQ Trek was able to join growth and they carried out the long cherished idea of establishing a house where in devout men might live in community without the monastic vows.
So we found an extraordinary situation that we have not run across. Since the days of Alexandria, we are finding religious communities of individuals voluntarily coming together to live on a Sonic communal life without being the members of any religious order. This was a direct challenge, not only to the Catholic church, which was the Christian Church at the time, but it was a pointed challenge to the orders like the Dominicans and even the Franciscans who had come into being, especially to promote the new learning that had come out in the 12th, 11th, and 12th century Renaissance. And to weave that new learning perspective back into the church, if you recall, uh, the central issue at that time was incorporating Aristotle into the Christian Church, stealing Aristotle from the Moslems and making of him a Christian philosopher. And the final move in that saga was Thomas Aquinas, writing the Summa Theologica and making a Aristotelian thought.
They ladder the categorical pigeonholing upon which the Christian theology was comfortably draped so that all of the arguments holding up the church structure and the rooted poignancy of its authority. So Thomas a campus comes into the picture from a tradition, which had challenged all of that, but not in the way in which we usually think of challenge. We are unfortunately stereotyped in our, in the 20th century. We think of a challenge in terms of an opposition, a conflict of polarity. Whereas actually the most powerful challenges are not those polarities, but those tangents, which take off from the same base, but go in a different direction. And those tangents, which are most powerful are those which have an almost inseparable beginning. They may differ by one degree and it's only later in history and development that it becomes apparent that one is going on a different course and that one has already built up steam.
And whereas polarities usually call forth yelling and screaming within the minute, if not the year, those tangents, which are so close that they seem to be parallel are often the ones that SAP the energy, like a, uh, shoot of a plant with SAP, the energy and the sport growth, uh, literally, uh, takeover. This is why later on when the acquisition came back in the time of Galileo, that they were so picky and so anxious to kill anyone who disagreed in the small varieties, those who disagreed most openly could be argued against and proved wrong. But those heretics who were so close and so ingenious and subtle were the most dangerous because in the time that we're handling now, they almost took over the entire direction of Christianity from the church.
This first community founded by Gerhard grub and D Venter was so successful that within a decade, there were more than 80 other branches of it all through what today. We know as the Netherlands Belgium, Germany, and laid the foundation really for the reformation, which was to come later, also under the brethren of the common life, because it's important to get the view of this down on campus himself. And this is a translation from one of our campuses works that is not available in full English translation. He wrote describing their life. This was in 1399. They humbly imitated the manner of the apostolic life.
That is to say they went back to a form of Christian experience that predated the entire church structure. They did an end run around the entire church history. They went back to the apostolic day. In fact, they went back to a description which has given in the book of acts and the fourth chapter. Now in that chapter, uh, Peter and John are hauled in front of the Jewish priest. The high temple in Jerusalem, Jesus has been, uh, killed about four Peter and John. He has been resurrected and the high priests are asking them what they are doing. How are they living? Well, they are going around and they are converting people. It says in acts that they have been so successful, that more than above 5,000 people have joined this nascent Christian community in Jerusalem. That's quite a population at that time in Jerusalem, the high priests and questioning Peter and John are said in acts to discern that both Peter and John are unlettered they're illiterate and that they speak with such authority and such poignancy, but the high priest could find nothing wrong in terms of argumentation, with the way in which they were presenting themselves.
So they tried to intimidate them, but Peter and John were not capable of being intimidated, their minds and their experience level were not on the authoritarians wave form. They were in a whole other presentation of reality as are the priests. It says in acts realizing that they couldn't intimidate them, let them go with the final bureaucratic warning, watch your step. They always do that when they can't get to you, they say, well, you just watch yourself. They use the, exactly that kind of terminology. I've heard it myself, half a dozen times in this short life already. So then it says that Peter and John went back to doing what they were doing. And then it describes quite exactness what they were about. They were building a community on a very radical line.
And when they had prayed, the place was shaken where they were assembled together. And they were all filled with the Holy ghost and they speak the word of God with boldness and the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and one soul unanimity, one heart, and one soul. Neither said any of them, that odd of the things, which he possessed was his own, but they had all things in common. This is one of the chap roots of socialism. This is one of the taproots of the whole development of political theory in the 19th and 20th centuries. This concept of sharing in common, the possessions, which one has, because one can understand from a shared religious experience that they have one soul later on in the 19th century, Pruden would say the whole concept of property. He has a concept of theft to go on with acts and with great power, gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord.
Jesus and great grace was upon them all great grace upon them all, neither was there any among them that lacked for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles feet and distribution was made unto every man, according as he needed. And Josies who by the apostles were a surname Barnabas, which is being interpreted the son of consolation, a Levi and other country of Cyprus having land sold it and brought the money and laid it at the Apostle's feet. Now, as you know, the Bible in its interpretive hermaneutic qualities is never literal, but always have an allegorical or at least a symbolical, uh, elaboration. And so these few tourist words and phrases had been worked over many times. And by the brethren of the common life, they had been elucidated into a whole philosophy of existence, a whole religious perspective of community, and it permitted them by opera systolic, uh, authority, if you wish to turn their backs on the entire church structure, but not fully because they realized that what they were doing was a powerful, uh, carrying on of the experience, which had been by and large loss through the centuries in the millennia.
And so they allowed into these communities, not only lay people, but priests so that the lay people and the priests came together, live together voluntarily, not only live together voluntarily one could still go out and have secular jobs. They went out and worked because the Lastic ideal had included for itself begging as a way of living and had even raised it to the fine art. The perception that begging was an essential part of poverty, the vow of poverty, but the brethren of the common life, we're making a variation on that. They were saying that begging is in fact, a flaw, that one, what one should do what be to work and then to bring the fruits of that work back to the community to be divvied up and shared together so that it was only one step from the notion of working in the world to working to change the world.
And that short step was the step that was taken in the time of truth MES because all of this development came to focus, not only in our campuses, imitation of Christ, as we will see, but it also came to focus in a document called the Theologica Germanic CTCA. And the first edition that we know of the Theologica Dramatica was about 1497 in Wurtzburg. And that's the place in the time that [inaudible] was operating. And the first printed version that was available was in 15, 16, just about the time that [inaudible] has died. And the man who published it first was Martin Luther.
And the Theologica Dramatica is the prime document behind the imitation of Christ, which gives us an insight into the context which our campus was writing from. That is to say the brethren of the common life. We're developing a powerful to our minds, revolutionary to their minds, a, uh, going back to the apostolic Verity, they were developing a way of living, which would make the church superfluous and revolutionaries. They basic life of the individual. He would be able to work in the world to live a communal life, to better himself as a spiritual religious person, age, along the lines of detaching himself from the world, coming into an experience of the inner acronym city of the possession list through the most beautiful way possible of living in the world, but not being of it.
And from this standpoint, the monastic orders were a travesty. The church structure with the papacy was a travesty, the church councils, which had made laws ever since Constantine's time were a travesty. Now, all of this, if it were shown to be in fact to Travis state pointing it out were punishable offenses, they would have been killed on the spot. This was not so far after the time of the cath RS and the Waldensians who were in fact, a mass murdered that bouncy gear, because these doctrines were extremely powerful and poignant in the Theologica Dramatica at the very beginning, there is a preface which for a long time was thought in fact, to have been written by Martin Luther. But in fact, the preface was most likely written by Yohanas taller. And the preface reads very briefly and it's called a preface this little book, half the almighty and eternal God spoken by the mouth of a wise understanding faithful righteous man, his friend who afore time was of the Teutonic order, a priest and a warden and the house of the Teutonic order in Frankfurt.
And it give us much precious insight into divine truth and especially teach us how and whereby we may discern the true and upright friends of God from those unrighteous and false free-thinkers who are most hurtful to the Holy church. Now there's an couple of innuendos here that need to be, uh, highlighted the whole mentioning of the two tonic order, throws everything back to the Knights Templar, and also throws it forward to the whole myth of Christian Rosen Crites, because the Rosa crucial ones were of a Teutonic nature. Prime marginally. The freethinkers of course, were the brethren of the free spirit, the renters, as they were called in England, the beg hearts as they were called derisively on the continent. Uh, one can almost use the colloquial English today, begging hard, gimme, gimme that sort of a connotation in this preface. We are given to understand that the theological Dramatica comes on close report from a friend who was a friend of God, a religion or religious and upright man. And at the very beginning of it, he tells us chapter one of that, which is perfect. And that which is in part and how that, which is in part is done away. When that, which is perfect is come, this is a tricky little phrase here.
So he goes back and he goes to st. Paul, and he gives a quotation to elucidate because there's a knack. Here is a trick here st. Paul's sayeth, when that, which is perfect is come then that, which is in part shall be done away. That's in Corinthians first Corinthians 13, 10. That, which is when that, which is perfect, is come then that, which is in part shall be done away. Now, Mark, that, which is perfect. And that which is in part, has a trick in here and hearing this and understanding this, and the best way I can elucidate it for you is to give the version that Frederick Nietzsche cave and a joyful wisdom. He said when the half gods are done away with then God will surely come.
That's what this means. And the implication is that when a real experience of the divine is had, it is of such a nature that it will dissolve all partial views of God. They will not, not only longer obtain, they will not exist. That the unknowable absolute when approached experientially is recognized, the knowable partitions that separate man from man, and sec from sec, no longer obtain no longer exists. Now this is a handful of dynamite in terms of social theory, in terms of religious structure, in terms of man's purposes for the individual growth process, the individuation process goes on that, which is perfect, is a being who have comprehended and included all things in himself and his own substance. And without whom and beside whom there is no true substance. And in whom all things have their substance for, he is the substance of all things and is in himself unchangeable and immovable and change and move with all things else. But that, which is in part or the imperfect, is that which half it's source in or spring with, from the perfect, just as a brightness or a visible appearance flow without from the sun or a candle and appear to be somewhat this or that. And it is called the creature and have all these things, which are in part, none is the perfect, this is a very powerful argument, a very powerful realization.
And this applies to a very big game because one of those parts is the Christian Church itself because when you're dealing on the cosmic Ganek level is these individuals were, it's not only the individual viewpoints of mistaken individuals, but it's even the millennia long structures like the church, which you have to go. They have to go there in the way. So you can see that this was a very powerful movement. And it was centered in this little area of Holland de Venter, where Thomas that campus went at the age of 14 and spent most of his life there. He lived to be 92. So he was in that area for 78 years. What was he doing all that time? He was living as a brother of the common life and the imitation of Christ. This is a document which was written just about the time that our campus became a priest in 14, 13, and in 14, 14, the whole religious issue of whether the brethren of the common life were heretical or not was solved in their favor by counsel constant Switzerland.
And they were declared by the church not to be heretical. And part of the reason that they were declared not to be heretical was because the imitation of Christ had nailed down the authenticity of the experiences of the brethren of the common life as being an integral part of the church, because he had added to the first three parts, a fourth part, which made it such a juicy example for the Christian Church to hold up as a classic of the religious life, that they not only accepted the book, but they accepted the movement and kept alive a tradition, which would eventually erupt in the reformation. When Martin Luther published this at the same time, he was getting his 95 theses together.
So the problem is, is that the imitation of Christ is an unbelievable document. I don't like to use terms like a subverting document. It would be inappropriate. The term to use is that this as a desolving document, not the first three parts of followed of the imitation of Christ lead the individual into a condition where there is no longer any handle of authority upon him from any angle whatsoever. He is freed, but the fourth part does a double take back and puts the entire situation within a cage. That sounds like it was tailor made for some inquisitor to quote from against heretics. So we have a real problem on our hands, and we have to understand this.
So let's come back to the brethren of the common life and the article and the Britannica one more time and let's follow our campuses description. There's just a paragraph in here of the brethren of the common life. And he wrote this about 1399. They lived humbly imitated the manner of the opera life, having one heart and mind, and God brought every man, what was his own into the common stock and receiving simple food and clothing avoided taking thought for the Morrow avoided taking thought for the Morrow. So very pregnant phrase, there was no economic planning. There was no insurance. There was no expectation that you have to worry about tomorrow. It's a historical.
What is happening now is what is always happening completely. And if we realize it completely now in the present, we don't have to worry about what has happened or what will happen. We will have focused in a bow of understanding and the fullness of the present, whatever there is, wherever it is. Now, this is a very poignant phrase, one, which was given us many times and the words of Jesus, but not really understood because of the incredible poignancy wrapped up in it. But our campus simply uses the phrase. They took no thought for the Morrow.
If you're moving in a hermetic circle, then that's where you're moving and everything will just ring true. If you're not, then you've got to get lawyers and accountants and soldiers and all that kind of piss goes on of their own. Will they devoted themselves to God of their own will a voluntary community, a voluntary ascetic life. They were free to leave at any time. They were free to come back at any time. There were no rules, excommunicating anybody, but if you came back, you came back to participate in what was going on. And what was that that was creating a community that would focus all of the possibilities of man in the present. That's what they were doing. Our campus goes on. Please turn your cassette now. And we'll commence playing again on the other side, after a brief pause.
END OF SIDE 1
Goes on of their own. Well, they devoted themselves to God and all busied themselves in obeying their rector or his vicar. Now the rector was elected by whatever community was extant. At the time, there was nobody appointed from the outside. There was no political structure whatsoever, except for the fact that the rector was elected by whoever was there and served at their choice could be changed, could be kept on the population, could change this situation. It could change. Why was this permissible because of the poignancy of focusing the spiritual present and a bringing man to, to wherever he was, then they all labor carefully and copying books being incent, continually and sacred study and devout meditation in the morning. Heavens having said matins they went to the church for mass, some who were priests and learn it in the divine law, preached earnestly in the church, other houses of the brethren of common life, otherwise called.
And this is in parentheses, the modern devotion. That's the phrase they use the modern devotion. This was about 1400 we're in rapid succession, established the chief cities of the low countries and North and central Germany so that they were an all upwards of 40 houses of men. While those of women double that figure. The first having been founded by growing himself at de Venter, the ground idea was to reproduce the life of the first Christians as described in acts four. The members took no vows and were free to leave when they chose. But so long as they remained, they were bound to observe chastity, to practice personal poverty, putting all their money and earnings into the common fund to obey the rules of the house and the commands of the rector and to exercise themselves in self-denial humidity, humility in piety, the rector was chosen by the community and it was not necessarily a priest.
Now leaping ahead, about 300 years, the very same religious structure and community structure was used in early Pennsylvania by the first Rosa Crucian groups that came to the United States in the 1690s, late 1690s. And what is now Fairmont park and Philadelphia, the first Rosa Crucian community under your hottest Kelpie us with 40 young men in, uh, the community was set up on the banks of the Wissahickon river and they had exactly the same structure. And this structure also goes back to the Essene community is along the banks of the Jordan on the shores of the dead sea. It also goes back to those communities along the Nile, from those individuals who fled Alexandria and the time of Theodosius before the monastic ideal took hold, there were religious communities of this nature they had. In fact, then by the year 1380, brought back into operation, the primordial religious community of free individuals.
A campus goes on, this is his own writing friends. The members took no vows and were free to leave when they chose the rector was chosen by the community and was not necessarily a priest though, in each house, there were a few priests and clerics, the majority, however, were laymen of all kinds and degrees, Nobles, artisans, scholars, students, laboring men. There were no social classes. In other words, there were persons from every conceivable walk of life who came to live together for a journey through life together. Where have we seen that structure before? Well, we saw it in the Canterbury tales. Didn't we?
And it sure looks like Geoffrey Chaucer was giving us a prototype for a new social religious questing. What's the literary critics are absolutely blind to bless their hearts. Our campus goes on the clerics preached and instructed the people working chiefly among the poor. They also devoted themselves to copying manuscripts in order, thereby to earn something for the common fund. And some of them taught in the schools and he goes on with this. The rule was they had to earn their livelihood and not to beg. They had to work, not to work, to get ahead, not to work, to save up a surplus, but to work because it was a religious ideal of participation.
So the whole notion of community and individuality, which is usually a polarity and political theories was a Chris cross much like that infinity sign of the hermetic tradition so that all of the activities, both individual and community wise blended together. And at that point of focus where one would have the X one had the most poignant symbol to them of all that, of the cross, because the cross stood for an experience of Jesus become Christ. So that the title of our campuses book is the imitation of Christ. So he is talking here masterfully, he's not naive at all and not harmless, little monastic figure writing a goody goody classic is a profound religious mind filled with this most revolutionary radical of religious background, playing with dynamite, handling it. So masterfully that it was endorsed by councils. And inquisitors those very people that very structure, which would become unraveled totally and dissolved irreparably where this to be understood in all of its dimensions, that's really doing.
He says there are four books. As I said, in the imitation of Christ. And in the very first book, one is counsels on the spiritual life councils on the spiritual life. And it gives us a quotation from John and here, he says, he who follows me, shall not walk in. Darkness, says our Lord. So we're taking our cue. We've got the pitch of the sound that we're going to follow a primordial cosmic experience of Jesus when he became the Christ. And if we can understand that experience, we're never going to be in darkness. Again, we're going to in fact, have the complementation of the darkness, which is the darkness dispelled, which is light. And we're not only going to have light, but we're going to have it's phenomenal manifestation, which is life in the beginning was the word, but the word was light. And the light was the life of men says John. And in that statement, powerful logical development, not of a syllogism stick, linear variety, brick by brick, but of a convoluted parentheses within parentheses, within parentheses, which is an expo potential matrix of a multidimensional logic, which is so profound that as one opens each expression, it feeds into X, X potential context three times and produces an insight which can only be called mystical.
The word understood and its fullness and its cosmic explication becomes light and light experienced in its fullness becomes life eternal so that our campus right away, the great Canon shot at the beginning, it gives this quotation. And then he says, in these words, Christ counsels us to follow his life in a way, if we desire true enlightenment and freedom from all blindness of heart, let the life of Jesus Christ. Then be our first consideration. The teaching of Jesus far transcends all the teachings of the saints. Well, he comes right out on the doorstep and shouts it. This particular teaching if understood far transcends all of the saints. Well, who were the saints? The saints are those organized and approved by the church structure.
And whoever has his spirit will discover concealed in it, heavenly manna. So there's a concealing here. There's an unfolding and an undeveloped thing here such as we have run a cross again and again, think of the ladder of perfection. Think of the cloud of unknowing. Think of the revelations of divine love. All of this course becomes scintillating, really poignant. When one begins to consider its apex and Thomas on campuses, imitation of Christ writ large, he is working with a magnificent structure here, whoever desires to understand and take delight in the words of Christ must strive to conform his whole life to him. So he's saying here we have a geometric pattern and we need to tune ourselves to this geometric pattern so that there is a congruence between our experience and the experience of Jesus become Christ. And in order to do this all the time we have before us, the opportunity of eternity, present it to us again and again, and again only we don't recognize it.
So in order to help us recognize it, we have developed, he says a pattern, which we present again and again in a little drama. And the presentation of this drama is under the Aegis of the church structure. But once you ever experienced that drama in its fullness, you will far transcend all the teachings of the saints, all the partitions, which you thought were real. And this is the incredible genius of our campus, because he has saying, in order to have this drama, we need to have a church structure. The drama is the blessing sacrament of the mass.
So we say mass, he says, every day we give ourselves a chance every day to get out of this kind of out of this supposedly phenomenal universe where the illusions Chapas up and make us support belief, structures, and authorities, which have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with us. And yet paradoxically, they have everything to do with us because it is the only way by which we funnel ourselves into an intolerable anxiety where we break through and realize that none of that counts so that we have a church structure, ultimately only to give us the experience of the mass and the profound experience of the mass is to transcend the entire church structure. So it becomes irrelevant, very unbelievably powerful. And our campus like a genius, minces, no words. He knows his best protection against those who would hound him, accused him of being a heretic is to speak the absolute truth incessantly all the time that what ever difficulties there are in understanding him, they will be difficulties that are real, but he gives absolutely no fodder to the backbiters. And so the imitation of Christ is one of the great documents of all time of absolute 100% honesty on every single page. The problem is, is that he is so honest and so truthful that it takes almost a lifetime of a spiritual experience to be able to plumb to the profundity of what he is just simply saying on every single conceivable page.
I am reminded of the decorations and one of the great mosques in Persia and all the different million convolutions and someone asks, well, what does it all say? And he was told, that says, one thing, there was no Victor, but Allah, it says it over and over again. And every form that you would wish, but it says there is no Victor, but Allah and that's all that it means. And it means all of that. So I kept this in the imitation of Christ is exactly in this light, but in order to cover his tracks in book two on the counsels of the inner life book, one, uh, was called the councils of the spiritual life. One is seeking to live a spiritual life. What is that spiritual life? You have to follow Christ.
Well, by now, that's not just doing good and having some idea of it. There is all of this profundity involved in there. One is working. Ultimately our campus says with light and life, and that's all in the counsels on the inner life book too. He starts off with the exact phrase that he should, he says, the kingdom of God is within you. And he goes on to develop that over and over again. But the poignancy of the whole second bucket is that it isn't out there anywhere in any form, in any structure. The whole exterior scaffolding is just your bring you to a quality of presence. And if you don't get there, then you're not following all the million signs that we have put up through the ages. Cause all those areas keep pointing back around. Don't go there. That's one way. Don't go there, come here and wake up. Cause it's here. It's right here. So at the third book of the imitation of Christ is entitled on inward consolation. He see how he masterfully brings you to the present and he begins with another poignant phrase or quotation from the Psalms. I will hear what the Lord, God speaks within me. That's what I'll hear. How does he speak? Does he speak with a language?
What language I campus was always characterized as being a quiet man. Well, now somebody who's quiet for 92 years, that's profound. That's called silence with a capital S that's called communing in a massive way. The fourth book bringing all of this finally to that funnel, which our campus would like us to get to is called on the blessed sacrament. The blessed sacrament, communion, any headlines it by four quotations, one from Matthew, one from John one from Luke and one from, um, uh, Corinthians. So he's got them all lined up together one right after another. It's a technique which I saw in the 1960s, which was called texts without comment. That is to say by implication of the juxtaposition of the quotations, you have a structure of meaning. And the only way that you can get to it is to Intuit the design that the quotations must be in a sequence of unfoldment that in this case, there are four. So the first is the fulcrum. The second is they circle around it. The fourth is the square around that. And the third is the infinity in which at all transpires. So here they are one, two, three, four, and our campus honest as usual, accurate unerringly, accurate like a mathematician labels it, the voice of Christ. That's all the voice of Christ. And here it is in capitals, all capitals come unto me all who labor and who are heavy Laden. And I will refresh. You says the Lord, come on to me.
The second one, the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. The bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. Third one take and eat. This is my body, which shall be offered for you. Do this in commemoration of me and the fourth. Whosoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood dwells in me and I in him. These things that I have told you are spirit and life. Now, if you take this, literally you're talking about cannibalism and vampire isn't. So you can't go that way.
Well, now, if you're talking about spirit and life, you're talking about a quality of intuitive effervescence understanding what's going on. And you're talking about the motions of life dynamically, that permit, that spiritual, intuitive effervescence to obtain. What's the name of this group, the brethren of the common life, not the body of Christ is the world. And the spirit of Christ is our doing together. That community manifestation that needs to be done. Where is the new Jerusalem? It's the planet? So Thomas a campus 500 and some years ago is giving us very, very heady stuck. So he says here, after these four texts, without comment on the deep reverence with which Christ should be received, I mean, he's using heavily weighted words.
The disciple says, Oh, Christ eternal truth. These are your own words. Although not spoken all at one time or in one place. And since they are your words and are true, I must accept them with gratitude and trust. They are your words and you have spoken them. They are also mine since you have given them to me for my salvation gladly, do I receive them from your lips that they may be the more deeply imprinted in my heart. Your words so tender. So full of sweetness in love. Give me courage. And as he goes on in the section of the bless check, the sacrament, give you some quotations in order to help you see the fanning out of this, this concept, this idea, this notion, this experience, he says many make pilgrimages to various places to visit the relics of the saints, wondering at the story of their lives and the splendor of their shrines. Well, now we're thinking of all of these pilgrimages they view and venerate their bones covered with silks and gold.
So all these talismans, these relics, these things of the phenomenal world, not campus then says, but here on the alter, are you yourself? My God. And one thing says Salvador Dali is the last supper with the transcendent body of Christ. Going out of the structure of the building itself, fading off into the cosmos. Our campuses alter is you yourself, my God, in the most poignant moment, when you are at that crossroads between phenomenal manifestation and noumenal transcendence, the crucifixion that we get an interplay, poignant Christian imagery between the communion and the crucifixion. And if we're thinking of the community and in terms of food, we're missing it. So our campus in order to help us focus correctly, does a surrealistic Monday Taj of image basis. He brings the crucifixion and the last supper, the communion in together into play one on top of each other.
So expertly and poignantly that we can't have the one without the other. And so if our understanding of the one without the other, what occurred to us, we would go astray. If we try to envision the message of Christ as a embodied in the crucifixion alone, we very quickly reduce it to an error. If we went the other way and tried to reduce it to the communion alone, we would make the same mistake. So he puts the two together so that we can't fall back onto the phenomenal literal or allegorical realm whatsoever. We're caught in a juxtaposition of image basis. That forever for a bit, us, for being satisfied with one way or the other, we have to take them both together. And when we do, we get a transparency of vision that comes with having both eyes open and we get a depth focus that our campus is telling us that Christ is not someone serving up bread and wine symbolically as his body and blood. And he is not someone who is giving up his life on the cross. That there's something else. There is an other event happening here. And that in order for us to receive this event fully, we have to bring ourselves into congruence with that. And that is the whole purpose of transforming the world because at the time in which we are successful in transforming the world and the way in which the brethren of the common life we're doing, we will have come to that event and that there is no other event meant other than that.
So we have a time dated message in here, our campus, and I'm running out of time. So I have to truncate, I was going to go through this minute late for you. And I have all these markers in here. I'll come back to just this in, on, on, in the third section, on inward constellation, he comes to a point statement of where he has holistic perspective comes full blown. He says, and he's speaking to Christ. He's speaking, writing to anyone who will read this speaking to Christ. He says, I need, I need your grace in fullest measure to subdue that nature, which always inclines to evil from my youth up. What does that nature? What does that evil it inclines to reducing, to objective reality, that experience, which can't be reduced to it so that the flaws that we tend to try and pin it down, we try to objectify it. We tried to make it a thing can never be. So he says, I'm always tending toward that because of my nature. So I need your fullest measure of grace. And then he says for it fell through Adam, the first of men and was changed by sin. The penalty of that fault, descending upon all mankind, that original sin was objectifying the world, portioning it out, naming it, that the mistake, the flaw,
The original sin he says was believing that the separations of phenomenal reality were real. And the only way to get over that flaw is progressively through the spiritual life of coming to the inner light. And then the inner life having the constellation of Intervision, the kingdom of God is within you. And then to see that the church structure, in fact, any church structure, any religious structure is not an evil meant to keep you from that, but as the only workable way by which you can escape from it. So he says, don't fight it, but use it wisely for the exact purpose it was intended. And that truth will make you free. Well, that's all we have room for. [inaudible].
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