theidiotdeity

Category: Harvard Classics Reviews

  • Richard Henry Dana; Two Years Before the Mast.

    Many years ago there was a man named Richard Henry Dana. Descended from a family of scholars and overachievers he was accepted into the esteemed halls of Harvard. A case of the measles ruined his eyesight and ended his academic pursuits after three years. Medical experts were of no help.

    Young Richard decided upon a rash course of action. In 1934 he signed on to a brig named the Pilgrim, as a sailor for two years. The ship was set to sail from Boston to California. The Panama Canal was not in existence at that time and the journey on a sailing ship with no mechanized power would require the dreaded east to west rounding of Cape Horn.

    Cape Horn, in those days, was synonymous with death and destruction. It is the largest ship graveyard in the world where more than 800 ships and 10,000 sailors lie in the depths below the icy gales of the southern seas. Richard, if he had wanted an adventure, was going to get one.

    Any moment above deck might be your last if a rogue crest swiped your feet from under you or an unanticipated roll of the ship flung you like a doll into the freezing water of the Antarctic. Death was inevitable should you be lost overboard. There was no turning back to retrieve a man. There was no Coast Guard, there were no life jackets, clothing was minimal. The men remaining aboard would simply continue their battle with the ocean and pray for their own salvation. To cease their work would mean their own deaths.

    Rounding the Horn took the ship nine days to accomplish. Nine days of snow, sleet, hail, rain, bitter cold in wet clothing that they could not dry, sleeping in water logged racks while the wind howled and the ship tossed and the frigid sea constantly broke across the decks and washed into every crevice of the ship. Richard, in a spur of the moment action to retrieve the jib in a sudden squall, was nearly washed off the bowsprit, dunked twice to his chin when the ship dove into heavy seas. Upon completion of their task Richard and a second sailor scrambled back to the deck and found all hands below decks to weather the storm apparently not concerned about the two sailors’ fates.

    Life was different then. Safety was a foreign concept to the minds of the men who dared these journeys for the simple act of commerce, bringing shoes to California, or leather to Boston. Death was ever present. Providence, prayer, and ones’ own wits were the only defenses against the grave.

    And with all of the safety measures, drills, helmets, goggles, protective clothing, and warnings we have today death still takes its due.

    Fear is real but safety is an illusion. Either get busy livin’… or get busy dyin’. Your choice.

    But what do I know. I’m just a dummygod.

  • Ralph Waldo Emerson – The Over-Soul; Emerson’s amazing insight into the “source” of wisdom and intellect.

    In 1841 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote an essay that is, at once, oddly insightful and wonderfully honest regarding a topic which has become very nearly anathema, the light and wisdom that is contained within all men and the inability of the frail human mind to create its own wisdom in the absence of this light. He reasons, through the lens of history, that the great thoughts and deeds of human endeavor have come from a source beyond mere intellect and are, rather, discovered through humility and obedience to, what he termed, the Over-Soul by seekers of truth. The poignance of his essay is revelatory of Emerson’s own connection with the Over-Soul and his words ring with truth that is too seldom available to readers in this century of intellectual over-stimulation. We have available every conceivable turn of a phrase or possibility of gods to worship in the multitudes of media literally at our fingertips and yet all of the truth contained in so many words had already been distilled hundreds of years ago for all men to read, words distilled by those men who were allowed insight into their own souls by virtue of their honesty and humility of purpose.

    Those men, who endeavored to find not their own rationality but the reality of those things beyond the corporeal veil, those things which are ineffable yet more real than any object which may be grasped and tooled, are the lamps which reveal the blueprints of the foundation of the infinite realm made flesh which was laid before the creation of the universe. Those men speak true wisdom that resonates within those whose minds and bodies are attuned to the delicate symphony of life celebrating its Maker and all of it is within us waiting to be set free if we would only let go of our own vainglorious prejudice towards the matter we have named reality and instead seek to find the driving force that animates and distills the physical world into an ultimate perfection that is the beneficiary of evolution. Evolution drives everything to the fulfillment of its nature, the nature that is irrevocable, irresistible, and inevitable in the end. Evolution is the hand of God at work within the frivolity of the quantum, leaving the choice of the observer to create its own destiny yet already knowing the final composition that the march of time will produce.

    This final picture, the masterpiece of creation is revealed to itself gradually through the mechanism of time. Being outside of time allows our Creator the vantage point of omniscience and the miracle of revelation is simply the gradual unveiling of the Magnum Opus to the hearts and minds of all and especially to the men who endeavor to glimpse beyond the next fold. Being unable to contain their own enthusiasm, this enthusiasm, to the masses, appears as insanity in many cases. It becomes a fervor and zeal that blinds the witness to all encumbrances, driving them forth into the turmoil and fray created by the force of their vision of the next turning of life into spirit, the next evolution of mankind. Mankind must submit to its own evolution. It has no choice; although it will resist or challenge the torrential current that draws it to an inevitable conclusion out of ignorance or fear, the destination is set and the painting complete. The only task left to the world is to learn to distinguish the resistance from the revelation and Emerson has a few words of advice to allow that distinction to be made:

    “The great distinction between teachers sacred or literary; between poets like Herbert, and poets like Pope; between philosophers like Spinoza, Kant, and Coleridge, – and philosophers like Locke, Paley, Mackintosh and Stewart; between men of the world who are reckoned accomplished talkers, and here and there a fervent mystic, prophesying half-insane under the infinitude of his thought, is that one class speak from within, or from experience, as parties and possessors of the fact; and the other class from without, as spectators merely, or perhaps as acquainted with the fact on the evidence of third persons. It is of no use to preach to me from without. I can do that too easily myself. Jesus speaks always from within, and in a degree that transcends all others. In that is the miracle. That includes the miracle. My soul believes beforehand that it ought so to be. All men stand continually in the expectation of the appearance of such a teacher. But if a man do not speak from within the veil, where the word is one with that it tells of, let him lowly confess it.”

    Ralph Waldo Emerson

    It bears repeating, “…where the word is one with that it tells of…” 

    The word, truth, must be one with truth; otherwise words are the mere utterances of simpletons casting self-aggrandizing spells into the aether, in other words sin. And though lies can only lead those who have freely chosen to be separate from the truth further into the darkness the lie is still a blemish on the perfection that is the magnum opus and it must be stricken from perfection else it is not perfection; and those who have chosen to seek to be closer and closer to the light grow stronger in their vision and conviction with each step and speak into the world the honesty that unfolds perfection and light even to death because they have seen the opus magnum and its sheer beauty must not and cannot be soiled. 

    Read “The Over-Soul” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. It will be a step towards the light and divine nature of the universe that will lead you upon a journey of unfathomable rewards and if you find a splinter of the light it contains that you can hold then let it be so, for the light is not capable of being hidden and it will shine from you as a beacon to those who seek it.

    But what do I know? I’m just a dummygod.

  • James Russell Lowell – Abraham Lincoln; A testimony to his uncommon clarity of thought during confusing times.

    After the assassination of Abraham Lincoln on April 15th, 1865 James Russell Lowell, a political critic, poet, and scholar, reflected upon the man who led America out of the turmoil, division, and angst that had boiled over into the Civil War. His observations of the President and his lengthy prosaic descriptions of, not only the man but the circumstances of his presidency, are remarkable for their clarity of thought and notable for their honest nonpartisan assessment of the political environment of the time, an assessment that is eerily accurate even today.

    Not only did this man see the truth behind the disparate events of the time but he also somehow could discern the spiritual forces that had congealed and conspired for and against the great political experiment that was, and still is, the United States of America. 

    His essay on Abraham Lincoln is one of the most insightful and accurate analyses of the complex environment and delicate sentiments of the years leading up to the Civil War, and of the miraculous events which, no single man could plan or devise, culminated in the preservation of the union of states that we still know as America. Abraham Lincoln seemed to be the manifestation of the perfect blend of honor, humility, sagacity, and sheer will, into a single, personality that could bear the responsibility of a nation divided, heal its brokenness, and simultaneously preserve its greatest treasures, the Constitution, individual freedom, and liberty for all men devoted to the principles of a republic where individuals have meaning enough that an overarching entity which governs them does not enslave them.

    Lowell’s clarity even extends to the numinous, as exemplified by the following quote from his essay relating a seed to the miracle that it contains, showing that Lowell knows that the truly amazing lies outside of the physical representation of a thing but that its real beauty is in the potentials and forces that align to allow it to fulfill its destiny:

    “To contrast the size of the oak with that of the parent acorn, as if the poor seed had paid all costs from its slender strongbox, may serve for a child’s wonder; but the real miracle lies in that divine league which bound all the forces of nature to the service of the tiny germ in fulfilling its destiny.”

    James Russell Lowell

    And in my estimation all the forces of nature had been bound, during our country’s great crisis, to the service of the tiny idea of a republic for good and righteousness and Abraham Lincoln served as the conduit for those forces. The blood of our ancestors of all races and colors have paid the reparations for the freedom of all men in our republic. Let us not shame them by petty arguments and accusations regarding past injustices. Men are imperfect but ideals, when aligned with the ultimate will of the numinous, cannot help but surmount every obstacle and breach every impasse.

    James Russell Lowell… uncommon clarity.

    But what do I know? I’m just a dummygod.