by R.E. Slater
That in life or death we nurture that
which bore us, sustaining it as it sustains
ourselves, our mother, our parent, our home.
September 8, 2021
To Lachman's thoughts I would like to remind readers that the primary interest here at Relevancy22 is when elucidating non-process views we are attempting to birth a new language which is process-oriented. And in its philosophy and theology of process we listen to other perspectives of older world's constructionists to help supplement and undergird this newer reconstruction of the world within process terms of being-ness and becoming-ness. And for myself, in a much more rigorous, thoroughgoing Christianity built upon the foundation of process thought. - re slater
Gary Lachman discusses his book The Caretakers of the Cosmos: Living Responsibly in an Unfinished World, which brings together many strands of esoteric, spiritual and philosophical thought to form a counter-argument to the nihilism that permeates the twenty-first century.Why are we here? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Human beings have asked themselves these questions for millennia. Modern science usually argues that humanity is the chance product of a purposeless universe. All too often, however, its facts are found to be merely theories hanging on the next great new discovery which will give us all the answers, but which somehow always seems to be just around the next corner.The result is a nihilistic postmodern world of politics, pop stars and pornography where millions live out empty lives, consumed by consumerism and haunted by a fear of death. For misanthropic environmentalists who view mankind as a cancer or a virus, this can't come soon enough.But is this really all there is to our existence? Many ancient traditions believe that humanity has an essential role and responsibility in creation. Is it possible that we are a species with amnesia which has forgotten its place in the cosmos? And does the inexpressible longing and profound homesickness that so many of us feel point the way to our destiny?
About the AuthorGary Lachman was born in Bayonne, New Jersey, and has lived in London since 1996. He is a full-time writer with more than a dozen books to his name on topics ranging from the evolution of consciousness and the Western esoteric tradition to literature and suicide and the history of popular culture. Lachman writes frequently for journals in the US and UK and lectures on his work in the internationally. His work has been translated into several languages. Mr. Lachman’s books include Madame Blavatsky: The Mother of Modern Spirituality (2012); Rudolf Steiner: An Introduction to His Life and Work(2007); Jung the Mystic: The Esoteric Dimensions of Carl Jung’s Life and Teachings (2010); The Quest for Hermes Trismegistus (Floris, 2011); and A Secret History of Consciousness (Lindisfarne, 2003).
A Review of The Caretakers of the Cosmos
This review of The Caretakers of the Cosmos originally appeared on Nicholas Colloff’s excellent Golgonooza site and I thank him for allowing me to post it here.
Thursday, September 5, 2013
Caretaking the cosmos
In [Lachman's] most recent book, ‘The Caretakers of the Cosmos: Living Responsibly in an Unfinished World’, he explicitly sets out his own views of what it means to be human and why we are here? This being Lachman, his views are set out lucidly, engagingly, tentatively and accompanied by a cloud of illustrious witnesses from the Hermetic tradition and the the Kabbalah, to Blake and Goethe through to Berdyaev and Cassirer (amongst many others).
He begins with the Hermetic and Kabalistic notion that in creating the world God left it purposely unfinished and that humankind’s task was to complete the world through repairing it. In the Kabbalah such repairing is done through continuous acts of loving attention that allows the world to be seen, handled and disposed aright. The intention with which we handle the world, the intention of repairing, transfigures the world suffusing it with meaning. This intention and attention may be very simple – treating the person at the Sainsbury checkout counter as a person in themselves or more radically imaginative, the poets Blake and Milosz beholding ‘the spiritual sun’!
But in some important way, Lachman argues, the cosmos was made for man (and vice versa), our conscious beholding of it, the doors of our perception cleansed, brings it fully to life.
Such a viewpoint necessarily comes into conflict with both materialist reductionism and postmodern ennui and, I confess, the most entertaining parts of the book are when Lachman puts them to flight and he does so in the company not simply of airy poets and woefully neglected philosophers but in the company of hard core (Nobel adorned) physicists and neuroscientists. The gentle skewering of John Gray’s misanthropic posturing is especially enjoyable.
However, I think, his most serious point is to notice that it is only since we displaced ourselves as cosmic guardians and saw ourselves, in an increasingly fractured way, as simply ‘part of nature’, an animal amongst other animals, that our serious despoiling of that very ‘nature’ or ‘environment’ began in earnest, without self-correcting limit. He quotes Louis Claude de Saint Martin, the Unknown Philosopher, to the effect that we have clothed ourselves in a ‘false modesty’ rather than seeking to be fully human and accept the responsibility that entails in a cosmos completed by us, a co-creation with God, we have settled for being ‘only human’ amongst the other animals, which has often meant, that we become less than other animals, wrapped in seeking identity, satisfaction and consumption, restless activity rather than a composed crafting, a repairing of cosmos.
Like his books before, you are set out upon new avenues of thought and reading. I came away knowing that I must (re)read Berdyaev that remarkable Christian personalist philosopher who sees it incumbent on us to exercise our freedom and creativity to create a home where God can dwell in the world, beginning with recognising that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. That life Lachman maintains is contagious and lights up the meaning of the creation as well as our own souls.
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