Thomas Jefferson's Six Presidencies
Presented on: Thursday, February 28, 1985
Presented by: Roger Weir
Hermetic America: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau
Presentation 9 of 13
Jefferson's Six Presidencies
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, February 28, 1985
Transcript:
February 28, 1985, this is a ninth lecture in a series of lectures by Roger Weir, Hermetic America. Tonight's lecture is entitled Jefferson sixth presidency.
This is the most difficult of all the lectures. It's difficult to convey why this means so much. It's difficult because we have a blind spot exactly where the significance of this period of our experience occurs. It's a blind spot in terms of world history. And it's particularly dark in terms of American history. It's not visible, it's invisible. It's controlling shape which would make it intellectually apprehend able is open-ended and refuses to yield a discrete image. And for this reason it is esoteric. This aperture in history, which is actually what it is, occurs by design. And it is the first time in human history that there is such an aperture. And it was engineered and created through the efforts of ingenious individuals. I know the current talk about ascended masters seems to be startling to us. But the fact of live human beings 200 years ago producing such an occurrence through their diligence and excellence and hard work is almost taxing to our sensibility.
The times as we have noted, and if we just reflect for a moment, we're catastrophic. They were catastrophic for the reasons which we assumed that our times are catastrophic. But while we live in the world of appearances for them it was real.
The crowning of himself as emperor in 1799 November produced a precipitation of power. We know now because we have a vocabulary in the late 20th century. We can talk about the psychological dimensions of unconscious forces coming to bear. Constellating out of the collective psyche of man. So that the controlling energies are not in human control. but that humans are in its control. Being seized by the times. The experience was duplicated again and again after that event by others. It even reached Mexico by 1823. Peter Beattie crowned himself Augustin the first, emperor of all Mexico. Having first one month fought for the independence of Mexico. In the next month putting it under his own Aegis. It happened again and again all over the world. And is still happening to this day. Variations on the theme. this man is Emperor. This committee, this politiboro(?), this judiciary, this or that body control. And by controlling assume that they by having the power have the right to limit access to that power.
Jefferson almost alone carried on the Franklin tradition of creating an open mind to deal with whatever natural events were actually occurring. No one was more esoteric than Benjamin Franklin. In his time Franklin was the Grand Master, if you want to talk about esoteric traditions. He was the key Masonic figure in that whole age, if you wish to talk that way. But more important to him than those threads of transhistorical meaning were the actual experience of freeing the spirit of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of human beings to see what would come out. Creating the natural man. Jefferson in bringing this concern into a tactical technological phase was concerned with the precipitant forms that were coming out of history. Coming out of the mind of man. Coming out of the spirit of the ages. And his attention was to those occurrences. The phenomenal occurrences. The newspaper level occurrences were secondary to him at all times.
While certain factions, the Federalists especially, were attempting to found a nation Jefferson was attempting to keep open a universal experience. and that's the difference.
Limited groups who had a historical perspective. Had a personal perspective. We're trying to create a power structure. And he was involved in an ongoing experiment to see what happens when millions of human beings do not lean on power structures as a crutch. Will they not grow internally and come up to a par with the natural powers. What would a natural man be like? What would a so-called quote nation be like that does not have a national power structure for its ultimate design but has the experience of liberating man? Cosmically. Universally. Bringing the electricity down out of the clouds and putting it into the hand, the constructive hand, of an intelligent self-conscious natural being. What would that be like?
Jefferson towards the very end of his life transferred in several ways the symbols of the magical threshold of efficacy. In a way when man moves from nature into his ritual disposition, selecting from nature, a limited series of forms put into cycles. It gives him a self presencing mode which eventually creates language. Creates a mythic presence. Which in turn invites the interiorization of meaning and eventually creates symbolic vision. And the most difficult of all transformations is the transformation from symbolic vision into magical activity. Being able to manipulate the symbols and apply them to nature. This is where the alchemy comes in. And if that's handled right the art of living bursts out of that magical realm and leads through the aesthetics of experience to a deepening intensity where the ethics of realization are possible. And at that phase man is capable for the first time in his existence of the cosmology.
Jefferson's activities are constantly leading towards a cosmological potential for the new age. For the new people. Constantly directing his concerns. Almost like a classic administering angel making sure that all of the flows are open. That there is no preconceived plan. And yet there must be forms. there must be some plans. But they must grow out of the natural experience. The bridging between the person aw naturale and the conditions that actually obtain in the enlightened view of nature per se. This of course is precarious.
One example of a form which Jefferson used to great extent was the dome. The architectural dome. There have been many studies on the dome. The best one available is The Dome: The Study In The History of Ideas by E Baldwin Smith. Published by Princeton number of years ago. A sequel to his book on Imperial Architecture in Rome. The dome room, the sky room, was the central apex of Monticello. Just as Monticello was the apex of the natural Mountain, the sky room was the apex of the house. So it was the thrice greatest. It was the epitome of the epitome. It was the play within the play. That dome experience, he called it a sky room, it was largely left empty when Jefferson was in control of the situation. He always had to put up relatives. And occasionally he had to put up his daughters grandchildren in the sky room. But usually he left it vacant and bare, empty. Bare wood floors with the experience of the dome and its light coming in from all sources. This was a room without walls. This was architecture of the circle. Architecture of Liberty.
And it was this dome that Jefferson placed central and his design for the University of Virginia. In the buildings of the University of Virginia, which I have sketched up here on the wall. There were two colonies of buildings with a quad in between them. And they were linked at the top with the great rotunda. I have a interior picture.
This rotunda was restored and reinstated in 1976 for the Bicentennial. The reason why it was put back exactly as Jefferson had designed it was by that time the significance of it had been realized. This is why Monticellos sky room is being reinstated. And why the rotunda of the University of Virginia has been reinstated. And this was why during the Civil War Abraham Lincoln reinstated the Dome of the Capitol. because the central building in American history is the Capitol. It is the symbol of the Union. Its dome over its rotunda is a symbol of the open-mindedness of these citizens who collect here to control their own destiny. Not with the plan but with a matrix of possibilities. And with this matrix of possibilities and the natural tone of vision that they had, they are ready to meet the unknown.
One thing that a social plan does not meet is the unknown. There is no design in any of the isms for the unknown. About the only ism there is, Gilbert Renard called it Americanism, in his book Thomas Jefferson The Apostle of Americanism. It's an ism without an ism. One has one's toolbox of potential. One has one's artistic instruments of possibility. One has one scientific outlook to be able to see exactly what nature is presenting. And one then has the Liberty to experiment with these tools. With, with these artistic instruments. With these experiments. and you can see that science, real science, is all bound up with the open-mindedness that Franklin and Jefferson gave to us.
It's interesting to look at the floorplan of the University of Virginia. Built about 1825. Notice as one enlarges the dome and puts it on its side. And puts these two rows of buildings on its side. It looks very much like the Starship Enterprise. Whose mission is to explore the universe. To find the unknown. this is just a simple example of the way in which archetypal images occur. Not is no notic forms but as integrating patterns. and it's only by living in reality, a flow process, long enough, direct enough for that cycle to manifest itself that it becomes visible at all. And it becomes visible not in things but in the qualities of human beings. In the character of human beings.
Between 1790 and 1825 the American character was forged. It was formed and needed in that time period, a time in childhood. Not so much in the cradle but in the backyard. It needed time to play. To get acclimated. We needed, what Moses said the exiles needed, we need a little time in the wilderness to come to. To wake up from the all the habitual images that are left over from bondage. From ideas of slavery. From past phoniness. From delusions that were our only heritage. We needed time to come to in the wilderness. And this is what Jefferson was the architect of. Of the protection of the American spirit long enough for it to get acclimated to the wilderness.
You know he built a second house called Poplar Forest. About 93 miles from Monticello. He had one of the first odometers in the new world. He put on this carriage wheels to measure it. And he would go there with his granddaughter's. He had a bunch of granddaughters. He liked, he liked this spriness of them.
And in 1817 he took a couple of his granddaughter's to visit Natural Bridge. The natural rock bridge over this gorge, this Canyon. And while they were there a bunch of backwoodsmen came up and paid their respects to Mr. Jefferson. And his granddaughters were appalled by the rough and readiness of the American frontiers men. They were extremely direct. They took it as being a threat to them until Jefferson assured them that this is how backwoodsman are. They don't mince words. If they see a pretty gal they'll come up and tell her. There's none of the courtly manners.
And what Jefferson was enjoying in this was the tremendous elan that the Americans were claiming for themselves beyond the Appalachians. And Jefferson himself loved the idea that the backwoodsman were going to take over. That the idea men we're going to not only hand it over to them but quietly get it out of the way so that they feel when they come into power that they've taken it. It's going to be a revolution of little people who come and take over the government because they say the government is ours to take. It's our turn to use it. To develop it. To take care of it until that next generation comes and learns that they have the prerogative of taking it in their time.
It was for this event, for this massive glacial happening, that Jefferson Council do not get involved in European affairs. Do not get involved with England. Do not get involved with France. because they are living out nightmares of history.
In his old age Jefferson loved to read Tacitus and Thucydides more than any other authors. Homer always. But Tacitus and Thucydides because they describe in their works the quality of human character that it takes to survive inundations of day dreams and delusions of power that occur in eventful junctures of history when time is changing.
One of the symbols that Jefferson used was the dome in architecture. He was the one that hired not the architect, the original designer of the Capitol dome was a doctor from the West Indies. He not only had no architectural experience he had to have somebody hired to do the drafting for him. this was in 1792. Because it was Jefferson behind the scenes. He was under attack publicly by the federal listen he didn't want them to know that he was doing some designing. When the Capitol building was burnt in the war of 1812. Actually burnt in 1814. It was rebuilt. and not only rebuilt by Jefferson, Madison was president, but Jefferson was still behind the scenes.
In the Civil War period Lincoln rebuilt the dome in iron. All during the Civil War. Quietly making the point that the unity of this country is not in superiority on a battlefield. It's not in the economic capacity and power. It's in the vision of the people. That they belong together as an organic form. And all during the Civil War Lincoln rebuilt the Capitol dome. Had the old one torn down had the new one made as broad as a football field. 287 feet and constructed during the whole war out of cast iron. It was his way of saying this is why this union is here. That this sky room upon the universe belongs to us. Because we have earned it. We have gone through our wilderness and we have come home to this open-ended quality. Where the horizon is home for us. We are not intimidated by the unknown. It's simply an invitation to grow to experience.
And this manifest destiny, this westward whole-tone, came into the American psyche at this time in this period. And Jefferson more than anyone else was the guardian. Almost one could say the gardener who made sure that this happened. When he left the White House Madison, who had been his secretary of state, was his chosen successor. There was some talk that Monroe or Governor Clinton of New York or Madison might be chosen. They were all Democratic Republicans with Jefferson. Jefferson chose Madison and told Monroe that his term would come later. And Clinton stayed in New York. And Jefferson made sure that he had a project that would satisfy his visionary capacity.
It was under governor Clinton that the Erie Canal was dug. 363 miles. You know Lake Michigan and Lake Heron are about 580 feet above sea level. And Lake Saint Clair is about 575 where Detroit is. And Lake Erie is about 572. But Lake Ontario is 330 feet below. That's what Niagara Falls is. You can't use the Great Lakes because of Niagara Falls. So the American vision said but we can go up the Hudson as far as Albany. And we'll just dig a trench all the way to Lake Erie. It was unheard of. It was crazy. This was 1817. Everyone in the state of New York said we're going to have to go unto debt forever to pay for it. It costs more money than anyone could conceive of. It paid for itself in nine years. It was finished in 1825 and by 1834 it was turning profit. So much of a profit that they doubled the depth and doubled the width. You know they still use the Erie Canal today 1985. That's the kind of construction that was being done at this time. This is the kind of opening up of creating capacities.
The most dangerous element in Jefferson's view was the infection that Europe was suffering from. They were suffering from the inflated delusions of power seeking. And Napoleon was the perfect madman. The perfect monster. Why is Europe Napoleon's, because I want it and because I can have it. And his favorite kicking dogs were the ideologues. Those who think too much. He said they're vermin on my clothes. They're always thinking.
The ideologues were all friends of Jeffersons. One of them in fact a man named Destutt de Tracy, who did a commentary on Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws. Which Jefferson helped do the translation into English. He writes in 1811 from Monticello to de Tracy, "One of its doctrines indeed the preference of a plural over a single singular executive will probably not be assented to here. When our present government was first established we had many doubts on this question. And many leanings toward a supreme executive council." Instead of one man. There should be a council perhaps. They had mooted this. "It happened that at that time the experiment of such a one was commenced in France. While the single executive was under trial here."
Notice the tone. This is 1811. He's talking about events that were going back now thirty years. These are all scientific experiments. These are not power plays to put a group into power. They are done with a scientific view in mind. Let's conduct this experiment. The laboratory is nature. The subjects are ourselves. "We watched the motions and effects of these two rival plans with an interest and anxiety proportionate to the importance of a choice between them. The experiment in France failed after a short course. And not from any circumstance peculiar to the times or nation." And they looked at that very closely. Was it because they were French? Was it because they didn't have the background which we have had? Why was it? It took very clear minds. It took rationally enlightened individuals to discern and distinguish why it had failed. Not from any circumstance peculiar to the times or nation. But from those internal jealousies and detentions in the directory which will ever rise among men equal in power without a principle to decide and control their differences. He says, "We tried a similar experiment in 1784 by establishing a committee of the states composed of a member from every state." So there were 13 executives. And he goes on to say that it ended in a limbo and that committee finally dissolved itself until there could be a new meeting the following year.
The failure of the French directory and the failure of our attempt is ascribed to the nature of man. that in our nature there are qualities which will always and ever come to the fore given those exact conditions. It's a scientific principle what they had discovered. That we're not blank inside. We have a psyche. We have a spirit. We have a collection of images eternal. and these **(inaudible)** come up bidden or unbidden whenever circumstances occur. That eat them out. call them out. Evoke them.
And so Jefferson extremely apt at legal structures. knowing the history of Western law exceedingly well. He read Greek perfectly. He even criticized the pronunciation of Greek in American school saying that it was it was not right because you couldn't recite Homer out loud given that meter. Or that the translations of Thucydides were wrong because they put too many extra words in. And that the power of Thucydides and Tacitus is because they transgressed the rules of grammar intentionally in order to telescope words to create nuances and meanings that are not exoteric but esoteric. That they verge upon a philosophic kind of apology. And that the cadences of poetic language structures are not founded upon quantities in measure but upon the accent of meaning. these are tremendous insights in terms of literary criticism.
But for Jefferson what he is saying, we have tried all these experiments and we know what we're doing. We are conscious because we have gotten the science of man in hand. And we have to protect ourselves from the infectious delusions of power which Europe is in a nightmare quality.
In order to keep the United States out of the Napoleonic Wars Jefferson chose an unheard-of tack. He put a self-imposed bargo, embargo on American ships. no American ships could leave American ports for anywhere. He used the first large-scale Satya Grata in world history. Alright you can, you can fight and continue but American goods are not going to participate in this war. American people are not going to participate in this world. We are going to sit out until you come to. The difficulty was is that it would have had to be complete to have worked. And there were always the smugglers. There were always those individuals who felt that government have no right to tell them what to do.
When Jefferson left office and Madison came in, Madison's whole first term in office was consumed by this problem of the embargo. For four years Madison tried his diplomatic best. You know Madison was a very small man. He was five feet four and weighed a hundred pounds. He was even smaller because dolly his wife was very buxom and very outgoing. She wore turbans with jewels and feathers. This is a 1809. She loved to dance and throw beautiful parties. And Madison loved her dearly and let her. All of the visitors said you know what a fantastic gal is Dolly Madison. What a drab little old man is James, but good good hearted.
But he wouldn't let go of the tiller. He would not compromise on the embargo. And he took all of the thrust. And finally with Jefferson's design he decided to declare war. He decided that the way to use this energy instead of leaning so far one way that he would go completely the other. But the problem was who to declare war against. And right up to the last minute they thought they would declare war against France. But they didn't, they changed their mind about two weeks and declared war against England.
Napoleon was happily astonished. He sent a copy of an agreement he had signed a year before to Madison saying, good you're making the english pay for their their stubbornness in this world. And americans were extraordinarily happy that finally something had been done. And then as the months went on nothing happened. For 18 months Madison did nothing. He was so cajoled that they held a convention in Hartford Connecticut. All of the representatives from the New England states, they were going to pull out of the Union. they were going to succeed from the Union in 1814.
The Hartford Convention is covered best I think by Henry Adams. The Massachusetts legislature issued October 17th its invitation to the New England states for a conference. And on the same day the newspapers published the dispatches from Ghent containing British conditions of peace in Sinhala(?), it's a city. Which required among greater sacrifices a session of Massachusetts Territory. That means part of their territory was going to be given away at the conference at Ghent. The treaty conference. This was after Waterloo. Two counties of the state beyond the Penobscot were then in British military possession. And the third Nantucket was a British naval station They had taken him in the war of 1812. Yet even under these circumstances the British demands did not shock the Federalist leaders. Governor Strong after reading the Ghent documents October 17th wrote to Pickering at Washington. "If Great Britain had discovered a haughty or grasping spirit it might naturally have excited irritation. But I am persuaded that in the present case there is not a member of Congress who if he were a member of parliament would have thought that more moderate terms ought in the first instance to have been offered." But they were not willing to give up a part of anything. And so at the Hartford Convention they decided to withdraw from the Union. They were sending their messenger to Washington to tell Adams. And the peace terms of Ghent came in and there was no cause. Nothing was going to be given away.
But the country was on the edge. The British had come up the Potomac and had burned Washington DC. They burned the White House. they burned the Capitol. Madison and his people had to flee to the Georgetown Heights. Miraculously there was a heavy rainstorm or the whole city of Washington would have been burnt to the ground. The rainstorm put out the fire. A couple of days later a British force tried to come into Baltimore. And they were repulsed finally at the last moment just outside the city limits of Baltimore.
But Madison was a genius and he had a great guiding spirit behind him. And even after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed the British still were probing. And they sent a huge force against the Port of New Orleans. And by this time the American policy of drawing them in sprung the trap. And under Andrew Jackson the Tennessee and Kentucky sharpshooters obliterated the British forces. The Americans lost 8 killed and 17 wounded. The British lost 700 killed, 1,400 wounded and all the rest were taken prisoners. The entire British Army that had been sent against New Orleans which completely gobbled up in one afternoon.
It was a change in tone that the United States was not keeping out of the embroilment with European affairs through weakness but through the sacred trust of letting these generations grow up uninfected by the delusions that were grabbing European history. It was not a question of strength. It was a question of the priority being keeping Americans out of the European nightmare. Let them get tuned to nature. Let them find the qualities that are there in themselves that will respond to nature. Then all of the alchemy will work. all of the latent esoteric capacities in man will naturally come forth. You don't have to put them in man, they're there. You don't have to teach some of that. just create the conditions where they can be themselves in nature and they will come out. This was the concern with Jefferson.
Gilbert shared beautifully states towards the end of his book on Jefferson, that for 30 years or more Jefferson had lived constantly under the scrutiny of the public. He was in the public's eye from 1791 on through until he retired from office. Constantly being looked at. His utterances had been often pounced upon by eager enemies in the cannibal press. Letters intended solely for friends had been printed several times in garbled forms. And during his presidency he had been unable to communicate freely with European friends for fear of having his letters intercepted. And now he was free. He was a citizen again. Citizen Jefferson. He liked to be called TJ. Not even Mr. Jefferson. He said this is too much inflation, Mr. Jefferson, TJ. But his mind was unimpaired. In the last 15 years of Jefferson's life he opened up. And in his correspondence, in his letters, we find again and again Jefferson having his say at long last.
And we'll see after the break and one of the most famous letters in American history to John Adams Jefferson will say, "It doesn't matter now whatever happens in the history of the world. Freedom is loose in the world. Liberty has her children. And they're there in the millions in the backwoods of this continent. And no matter what happens they will never give up until Liberty is a worldwide phenomena. It may take them a while but they will never give up. Because they have learned how to be themselves outside of history. They're at home in the unknown. They're free in the wilderness. They can live off the land and live off their own talents. "
Well we'll take a break and then we'll come and see some of these.
Mr. Weir's lectures continued on the other side. please turn your cassette now.
END OF SIDE 1
Just a little wine. (background chatter and noises)
I don't know how well you remember the the flow. I'll try and bring it back for you. The, the Treaty of Ghent in 1814 led directly to World War One. It took exactly a hundred years. And it produced a landslide effect. And the concerns that Jefferson and Madison and Monroe and their generation had in 1814 would all come back like a bad nightmare for Woodrow Wilson. And we'll see that because we're going to go on with this. And we'll eventually get to where we understand that.
Jefferson's correspondence with John Adams is the best source for some of his statements where he opens up. Then after the war of 1812. After the Treaty of Ghent. After the 1815 Fiasco in January of 1815 in New Orleans. After all had been over Jefferson wrote to Adams that summer. The summer of 1815. He said, "It's been a long time since we have exchanged a letter and yet what volumes might have been written on the occurrences even of the last three months. In the first place peace god bless it has returned to put us all again into a course of lawful and laudable pursuits. A new trial of the Bourbons has proved to the world their incompetence to the functions of the station they have occupied. And the recall of the usurper has clothed him with the semblance of a legitimate autocrat."
You see the end with they have recalled Napoleon from Elba briefly. And then it all collapsed again. And Louis xviii came back in again and set up the cycle that eventually would produce revolution after revolution in European politics 1848 1871 etc etc. But Jefferson is writing just before that would happened. Just a few months before that. And he's writing of Napoleon now. He never calls him Napoleon. never calls him Bonaparte. Always refers to him with such a poignant indirectness that everybody knows who he is talking about.
"If adversity should have taught him wisdom of which I have little confidence. He may yet render some service to mankind by teaching the ancient dynasties that they can be changed and charged for misrule. And by wearing down the maritime power of England to limitable and safe dimensions. But it is not possible he should love us. And of that our commerce had sufficient proofs during his power. Our military achievements indeed which he is capable of estimating, may in some degree moderate the effect of his aversions. And even perhaps fancy that we are to become the natural enemies of England. As England herself has so steadily endeavored to make us. And as some of our overzealous Patriots would be willing to proclaim. And in this view he may admit a cold toleration of some intercourse and commerce between the two nations. He has certainly had time to see the folly of turning the industry of France from the cultures which nature is so highly endowed her, towards war." And he goes on to talk in this way and enumerate.
But he says that he believes that the ravenous need for human blood has infected them too deeply. That they will not learn. that Europe will not be able to learn. And the beginning of his counsel then is to withdraw from participation. This will lead directly to the Monroe Doctrine in just eight years from that letter.
In between the end of the war of 1812-1815 and Jefferson's assessment that Europe is not going to be able to learn. They're not going to be able to step into the new world. Literally that can't make it. And in between the point of finally cutting them off. Saying the Americas are off-limits for European nightmares. In between them, Jefferson now his people have an extreme alarm. There was over an issue which is called in American history the Missouri Compromise. But the essential nature of it was to introduce human slavery into the wilderness. Into new lands, new states of the union. And for Jefferson this was the worst of all possible nightmares.
In a letter of 1820 to John Holmes, who was a congressman from Maine, he thanks him for the copy of all of the proceedings in Congress on the Missouri Compromise. Missouri was said to be entered as a slave state west of the Mississippi. Yet what did it show? It showed that the the infection, slavery was not just a degradation of the power system foisted upon human beings, but was a degradation of the human spirit. He says, "But this momentous question like a fire bell in the night awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the union. The death knell of the Union."
He's not speaking this year, he's saying that inevitably if there is slavery that the Union will be lost. Because the conception of the open-ended humanity which is being taught and inculcated does not allow for the experience of human slavery.
"I considered it at once as the knell of the union. It is hushed indeed for the moment but this is a reprieve only not a final sentence. A geographical line coinciding with a marked principle, moral and political. Once conceived and held up to the angry passions of men will never be obliterated. And every new irritation will mark it deeper and deeper." That is to say this is an occurrence which is marking and scouring and scarring the open experience of man. And that any irritation pro or con will just make it go deeper and deeper. That there is this quality in human experience, that Europe is suffering from, that they cannot obliterate the connection of geographical lines with certain principles and historical backing up of this identification. It has made it almost impossible for them. So he says, writes, "I can with conscious truth say that there is not a man on earth who would sacrificed more than I would to relieve us from this heavy reproach in any practicable way. The cessation of that kind of property."
Remember last time we talked about property. We talked about that the code of empire is founded upon power being based on property. Property is a geographical phenomena. I have power because I own this. You do not own therefore you do not have power. We control the ownership possibilities therefore we have more power than those who own. And so the hierarchy builds. so the way of empire builds. And might becomes the structural connection for this whole delusion. It's a power game.
But Jeffersonian democracy was based upon right. But the only thing that men can really share is rights. we share the rights through a spiritual rapport. And whatever we manifest out of that comes into being from the ethical structures of transcendental experience. But in order for there to be ethical structures and transcendental experience, there have to be natural experiences first. That there are no transcendental structures coming out of nothingness. They have to come out of natural man. That's why the key is to return men to being at home in the wilderness. He has to be returned to zero as it were in terms of his daydreams in order for him to wake up. It's like there's a magical key and that magical key can only turn when he stops dreaming these dreams. And before he starts dreaming the polarities of those dreams. And some equanimity of mind he is able to pass through this threshold and be real. As a mass of Yoga. As the yoga civilization. Bhagavad-Gita says equanimity of mind is yoga, it is only that. And he who steps through that, that is real.
So he's saying here, people are trying to bind up principles of power hierarchy based on property. And the Missouri Compromise is the epitome of this. It's right in the center of the continent. It's the first state on the other side of the Mississippi. The whole dream of Western energy that we've been encouraging for two generations now is going to go down this drain. This is going to sour the whole thing because this energy is for real. It's coming along. So he writes, "But as it is we have the wolf by the ears and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is on one scale and self-preservation on the other. Of one thing I am certain that as the passage of slaves from one state to another would not make a slave of a single human being who would not be so without it. So their diffusion over a greater surface would make them individually happier. And proportionately facilitate the accomplishment of the emancipation by dividing the burden on a greater number of co-agitators(?) an abstinence from this act of power would remove the jealousy excited by the undertaking of Congress to regulate the condition of the different descriptions of men composing a state. This certainly is the exclusive right of every state. Which nothing in the Constitution has taken from them and given to the central government. Could Congress for example say that the non freemen of Connecticut shall be free men? Or that they shall not emigrate into any other state I regret that I am now to die in the belief that the useless sacrifice of themselves but a generation of 1776 to acquire self-government and happiness to their country is to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons. And that my only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it."
And so the issue became a paramount issue. and for Jefferson the source of the problem as usual was traced back, that American power groups were envious to emulate the European models. But that was the, that was the whole source behind this development. That when you sift through the material, the evidence. When you go over the experiments and you check your data. and you look at your results and your tally sheets. and you consult this experience rationally, intelligently, it's being fed from the outside.
It became a paramount issue because after the administration's of Madison, with the embargo in the war of 1812, with the peace
unprecedented leap. The 1820s were called the era of good feeling. The two administration's of Monroe were so efficient. People were doing so well, that in the second election of Monroe his opposition received one electoral vote. It was almost unanimous.
The country, this country in the 1820s exploded into prosperity. There was a tremendous job between 1819 and 1830 the United States simply outstripped most of the European competition. By 1830 the United States was one of the major powers already. It doesn't seem like it would be possible and yet it was. and in the 1840s it spread until everyone felt like this proverbial citizen in the Renaissance of Florence, saying well if I have time I would do just what Michaelangelo was doing but I just don't have time to do it. This kind of pride of purpose that one could carve out any kind of life one wished. The era of good feelings led directly to this explosion of prosperity. And it was all tied up with the Western movement. And in this Western movement the development of this vast continent seemed paramount.
In the midst of that Jefferson received a letter from Monroe. And Monroe asked him specifically what he should do in the case of Spain. That it was possible now to purchase the Florida's. This would give the United States a complete sweep of the Gulf. The northern tier of the Gulf. the Erie Canal made it possible to sweep up through the Great Lakes. And so Ohio in Michigan and Illinois and Wisconsin we're all being developed. In 1819 they were still territories and wilderness and by the 1820s they were developing so fast that it was just a matter of one generation. And they would be farmland. It went from wilderness to farmland in one generation.
I gave a lecture here one time a couple of years ago on the sacred traditions of Dave Kudas, the last shaman seer of the Fox Indians from Wisconsin. And the this book was written in the 1840s. and the information was delivered to American surveyor named Walter Pidgeon in the 1830s. And almost all of the landmass of Ohio and Indiana, southern Illinois, Eastern Missouri Wisconsin, Iowa and up into the kotas, almost the entire land mass was tattooed with Indian mounds. There were mounds everywhere. Every couple of miles there were tens of thousands of Indian mounds. Most of them in ceremonial shapes. Animal shapes. geometric shapes and so forth. And Dave Kudas at 85 or 90 was still able to tell Pidgin the meanings of all these. And the ancient histories, the thousands of years that Indians had occupied this land. The tens of thousands of years it took to build all these. In one generation they were effaced from the land and made into farms. The Midwest literally grew up in the 1820s. And effaced the wilderness and the Indians.
The important trigger in all of this was the security that they were not going to be stopped by European involvement. And the key to the whole thing was the Monroe Doctrine.
In 1823 Jefferson wrote to the President of the United States from Monticello October 24th, "Dear sir. The question presented by the letters you have sent me is the most momentous which has ever been offered to my contemplation since that of Independence that made us a nation. This sets our compass and points the course which we are to steer through the ocean of time opening on us." This is how Jefferson talked when he was not having be circumspect. "We're gonna have to navigate through an ocean of time. We're gonna have to reach new qualities of navigation. Human beings have never done this before. It looks on the outside as if we're making another Empire. The experience on the inside is that we are manifesting some new quality of the spirit that never has been able to be brought in before. And never could we embark on it under circumstances more auspicious. Our first and fundamental maxim should be never to engage and entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to inter metal with transatlantic affairs. America North and South has a set of interest distinct from those of Europe. And peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavor should surely be how to make our hemisphere that of freedom."
This was the key in the whole document here. The whole move. If we can convince the American people that they are free from interference. And show them that all the doors are open and we're not going to interfere. They will make whatever new world they will. and whatever it is it'll be all right. Again and again Jefferson showed, after he was through with his presidency, the willingness to turn the whole nation and everything over to others. To the new generation. you have to be willing to turn it over to the sun. all of it. Not with your death but while you are still viable. That that's the essential act in a free cycle. Is that one can give the reins away. This is the test. you know how hard it was to work for it. How difficult to protect it and maintain it. Given that value and that significance are you ready to turn it over to others? And that was the quality that Jefferson looked for in terms of the transition in the presidencies.
You know he lived to see John Quincy Adams become president.
And he wrote to Quincy, its pronounced Quincy Adams. He wrote to Quincy's father John Adams and he said, I know that you've been upset because of the recent political turmoils. That your son came into power with a very strange circumstance. The election was split four ways. Andrew Jackson I think got 99 electoral votes. John Quincy Adams got 80 something. Governor Clinton and Webster each got 40 something. And, and Henry Clay was and Clay threw his electoral votes to John Quincy Adams. And Jackson was livid because he had gotten far more popular votes than anybody and yet he lost the election. And John Adams wondered whether this was going to be a source of new bickering. And Jefferson assured that by now, by 1825, that the qualities of freedom were so deep in the American psyche that they would just be assumed that we'll have our turn next time. We'll go along with it because we're all pulling together. And though we're not in the driver's seat we're all in the same wagon. And it was this quality that Jefferson had managed to precipitate out of a circumstance that can only be called transhistorical.
Europe's fatal mistake, in Jefferson's eyes, was that they still danced to the same old tunes. They still were in this historical flow. and that the Americans had withdrawn themselves. Had leaped outside of the normal flow of circumstance. And in this discontinuous mode had taken a new tack on reality. They were no longer condemned to wear these forms and connections and threads of meaning which Europe was unable to break. These were the chains that bound. It was not the laws. It wasn't the soldiers. it wasn't the military. It was the tyranny of historical mental habits that could not be seen. And this is why they were so tyrannical because they were invisible to the naive eye. And the Americans had been taken out of that. They had found some aperture some discontinuity in the energy flow of time they had gone in a different way, in a different mode.
So he writes to Adams Monticello, February 15th 1825, "The people of Europe still seemed to think that America is a mere garden plot. And that whatever is sent to one place is at home as every other. I sincerely congratulate you on the high gratification in which the issue of the late election must have afforded you. It must excite ineffable feelings in the breast of a father to have lived to see a son whose education and happiness his life have been devoted so eminently distinguished by the voice of this country. Nor do I see any reason to suppose the next administration will be in so difficult a jam as your letter of January 22nd you seem to expect. So deeply are the principles of order and of obedience to law impressed in the minds of our citizens generally. That I am persuaded that there will be an immediate acquiescence in the will of the majority if Mr. Adams has been the choice. Just as if he had been the choice of every man. The scribblers and newspapers may for a while express their disappointment in angry quips. But these will evaporate without influencing the public functionaries. Nor will they prevent their harmonizing with their associates in the transaction of public affairs. Nights of rest to you and days of tranquility are wishes I tender you with affectionate respects. TJ."
Jefferson died the next year. He and Adams both died on the 4th of July as you must know. Monroe died on the 4th of July. John James Madison died on the 28th of June. He was a week short.
It's difficult to trace the connection between the Hermetic tradition in Europe and Benjamin Franklin. But we've done that. It's very difficult to show how Franklin passed on this enormous openness of approach of mind, of scientific endeavor to discover nature and its rationality. But we have done that. The most difficult remaining task is to show how after Jefferson that the batton of this new kind of civilization was in fact passed on. But not to those in power.
When you look at the presidents after Jackson, it's an incredible array of average people. The only time anyone extraordinary comes along is when the events call out for someone extraordinary. From Jackson to Woodrow Wilson the only really outstanding president was Lincoln. Because he was called forth by the events. It looks in retrospect as an energy reserve. a spiritual guardian in reserve. That when you need that guardian he will be there. But he is there only to ensure the safety not to run the show. That the average man is going to have to learn how to run the show. And this was the most difficult and bitter lesson of the 19th century. It was a lesson that drove most thinking Europeans up the wall. How can they do so well when they don't have any philosophy? They don't have any political doctrine. They don't have any outstanding leaders. Yet they continued to prosper beyond all hope and expectation. How can this happen? The millennial dreams seem to be coming true for the Americans like magic.
The basis of that whole regard was that the common man, every man, was free to be natural on the land. This was the key. This was the central realization. The family farm was the burner that went on with the pilot light of Jeffersonian democracy. It's horrifying in 1985 to see the demise of the family farm. To see government officials in Washington saying well there might be 7 to 10% of the American family farms that go out this year. That's 70,000 families in one year. The key to it was that the family farm occurred as a transformation of the wilderness. That the American person was at home in the wilderness. And he was at home in the wilderness transformed into the family farm. he was ambidextrously at home. He could be either way. And the core of this was an esoteric passing on of this capacity.
And in searching for someone to exemplify this, I originally
years ago when I first mooted this course thought I would use Emerson. Ralph Waldo Emerson. But using this technique which I've...I'm teaching on Saturdays I was able to discern that Thoreau is by far the better choice. Because in Thoreau we have someone who harkens to the land rather than the European tradition. You know Emerson's library like most of the libraries of these great individuals have all been cataloged. The largest proportion of books and Emerson's library were German. German idealist romantic philosophy. He had a hundred and thirty volumes of Goethe, translations and commentaries in his library. Thoreau had a couple of basic books a dictionary, a Bible, some Shakespeare. And somebody rather esoteric family the Chumandalas(?) sent in 50 volumes of the Upanishads and the Vedas. And that's what Thoreau read.
That's the difference between Thoreau and Emerson. Thoreau was able to take a quality of living experience and put it into play in the universe. And he is the one that we have to look to to see where Jefferson, that magician of civilization, slipped the mickey. And it's in Thoreau in his journals especially as we'll see that he occurs. Much has been made in literary criticism that Walt Whitman is Leaves of Grass. But as Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass occurs as an integrated work of a certain scope and quality. Thoreau journals tail off into the ineffable in every sentence, on every page. And it's almost an optical illusion after a while. as we will see, reading Thoreau's journals. To see whether it's a man in nature or whether its nature of taking the mask of a man.
So ambidextrous, so ambivalent becomes the American spirit with Thoreau that it is almost impossible for people not in that tradition to discern it. And for a very long time Thoreau was thought I was just an adjunct to Emerson. He actually was seen by the Gandhian freedom fighters in India as the sage of North America. And many books were dedicated to him.
And we'll see in Thoreau how this tremendous elam that was, and we have to call it elam rather than an idea, was passed from Franklin to Jefferson. And Jefferson threw it into the air rather like the quality of electricity the Tesla envisioned. there's no plug. You just put the machine in the field and it turns on. Jefferson's America was like that. It was an energy of comprehension that was in the air. and somebody like Thoreau, When he became coherent to himself, shone with all the significance.
And so the last four lectures of this particular series we'll take up Thoreau. and it'll be interesting for you to see how close Thoreau comes from time to time to being just like one of the old Chinese Daoists. And on the other hand very much like the old gentleman with his natural hair in the French courts Franklin. And other times he seems to be a contemporary of ours ahead of us in time beckoning us on saying the wilderness is over here. It's not there at all in these conceptions it's over here in this experience. And that this experience when natural of its own alchemy becomes transcendental. Emerson talked about transcendentalism. Thoreau was transcendental, as such.
Well I hope some of you can make it.
END OF RECORDING