The solution to the cultural collapse in which we subsist, today, is the systematic empirical philosophy that can be derived from the consistent patterns in the esoteric.

            Because I am gnostic, my viewpoint is gnostic. And gnosis is grounded in the epitome of prophecy. But since the actual change produced by this prophetic ‘moment’ in history is instantly independent of any name, it spreads throughout the known world.

            Peripatetic gnosis illuminates rather than ‘converting’ cultures.

            But ‘illuminated’ cultures produce thenceforth structural interpretations that reflect the core gnosis from the core religious and philosophical orientation which is the indigenous culture.

            I can list some of the core ‘moments’ in my gnostic journey – Einstein’s first paradox of light, the study of Upanishad and Sureshvara’s Pancikaranam, tantra as illuminated by hatha and other practices, and so on and so forth. These are important because they hold up the mirror of my individuality against the objective figure that emerges – the pure gnostic, shall we say.

            But what emerges finally is a structural and functional description of cosmos, of the empirical order. It consists in rules or principles that commonly revert to numbered sets.

            But, if we want to understand why numbered sets can correspond with correlated values, we need to go back to the place in which these relationships first evolved, namely the Greece and early Greek diaspora from the teachings of Thales and Pythagoras to the teachings of Aristotle.

            Aristotle, the father of linear inertia, ‘discovered’ the fifth element by observing that, unlike the sublunar world of the four given elements – the world of linear persistence – the indigenous movement of the heavens (‘aether’) is circular.

            From the spiritual perspective, Five is a pivotal number.

            The only pure gnosis can be found in the Gospel of Thomas. In the text, Jesus says, ‘You have five trees in paradise, and they are not moved in summer or winter.’

            As scripture, the first referent naturally has its literal value. The five senses are unchanging. But this is the unchanging of our keys to the manifest world. What needs to be observed carefully is the seasonal cycle in which the parable embeds them.

            In gnosis, the year is the cycle that transposes spirit or cyclical time into the figure for stasis, and hence the ground of history.

            Seven is the number for this historical / prophetic figure.

            In other words, we have a structural world for ‘religious’ and ‘spiritual’ practice, whether we choose to investigate the paradoxes of science – where the Einsteinian paradox and its consequences can be regarded as the native confrontation between Two and Three, and the subtending separative force, perhaps conceived as a ‘void’ Ace.

            Or we can study the peculiarities of the set of Five, whether in the early Greek philosophy or in such clearly derived traditions as Sureshvara’s Pancikaranam.

            Or we can turn to the figure of Seven as it expresses itself in the seven primary chakras of the traditional ‘kundalini’ model – which perhaps serves better as a descriptive than as a functional model, since the radical kundalini experience appears to be relatively rare, while, as description, the system allows for the paradigmatic investigation of one’s own body as the spiritual instrument.

            The differentiation of consciousness inevitably points toward five reflexive principles for consciousness. From the perspective of Five, the ‘external’ moment appears to concur. Here is the basis of Spirit.

            But, at the core of the moment, the value takes shape as a specific momentary figure for self, the uniqueness of the ‘I’, and this is the religious key to gnosis.

            My problem today is that my original vocation was and is the vocation of poet.

            But, even before I first attained my native voice, forty-seven years ago, it became clear that something was missing, culturally. The voice itself certified this, since it could only emerge within the narrowest range. When the range began to expand, as it naturally does, vocationally, I found myself at a total loss as to how to judge it – or the work it produced.

            In the last year, all of the research and the prose writing that I have done as a consequence has coalesced and finalized, a fact signified by the poetic impulse that has now reproduced these researches in two extended narrative essays under contemporary standards of versification and with legitimate poetic structure.

            Because of my commitment to the blog, I have tried, while engaged in the act of writing, to present my findings in verse here. But in the final editing of the texts, none of what I have presented here remains.

            I look back at my arbitrary and extraneous use of the rondeau structure for sound – one of the native elements necessary for the reconstruction of verse, but here compressed into unnecessary artifice – and I recognize the undue influence of the forces in the blog.

            One can only write for one’s self.

            At the same time, these constitute a legitimate introductory to the texts, although their journeywork prosody and unnecessary assertion belie the hack levels to which I can descend, usually only in early notebooks, but here in public performance.

            Eventually I intend to remove most of them. But, for the moment, I will let them stand.

 [Obviously, I have since removed the referenced posts. jtm 8/14/10.]