An epoch will come when people disclaim kinship with us as we disclaim
kinship with the monkeys.
-Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist
(1883-1931)
I find that very reassuring.
Yesterday, we talked a little about Kurt Vonnegut’s vision of the future from Sirens of Titan.
Today, let’s talk about Spider Robinson, Arjuna Ardagh, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams and others who weave their vision into their fiction and nonfiction writings, waking us all up a little bit at a time.
Yes, today I’m skipping obvious works on human illumination, such as A Course in Miracles, Starseed Transmissions, The Door to Everything, Celestine Prophecy, and Illusions.
Those books are obviously spiritual texts and people with spiritual inclinations read them. That’s fantastic. I’ve read all of them at least 5 to 10 times each. The experience of bliss and connection that comes with reading them is worth many repetitions.
And yes, if I start including epic fantasy & science fiction, especially films, there is a whole ‘nother list of works begging to be included, and rightly so. (Mental Note: be sure I have the reading & film lists on a Page here.)
The ones I’m writing about are almost mainstream. Most of them are fiction. And anyone might read them. That’s what I hope this blog is, and what the book written from it becomes.
WARNING: SPOILERS FOR NEARLY EVERY BOOK LISTED
But what do the following books have in common with the first list? And what is different?
The StarDancer trilogy, MindKiller, Time Pressure, DeathKiller, The Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series, Translucent Revolution, Jitterbug Perfume, Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.
All but Translucent Revoluition are fiction, right?
Well, yes, if you say so.
And Translucent Revolution is just kind of a documentary about enlightened companies and their work, right?
Sure, if you say so.
Look deeper.
Spider Robinson, Arjuna Ardagh, Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams, though I confess I’m stretching a little on including him, postulate not just a better world, but evoloved* humans. People taking some kind of evolutionary leap.
Well, then why am I not writing about the immortal Robert A. Heinlein today, also?
Honestly, because my mind boggles at the task.
Blogging about the evolutionary perspectives of the inestimable Robert Anson Heinlein deserves a few blogs devoted solely to him. Heinlein heavily influenced Spider Robinson.
Still, for me, somehow, Robinson is the one who took the evolution leap about things most clearly. Yes, Stranger in a Strange Land and others included some enlightened sexuality & telepathy. Grok would not even be a word if it weren’t for Heinlein, but Robinson does it a little differently. I somehow feel his worlds are a little more healed, a little clearer. And he often includes the story of a rape victim who benefits from a different perspective.
But let’s start with Douglas Adams.
Why?
Because Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy starts with the demolition of Earth.
For things to really change, something must die. We have to clear the clutter of the old before there is room for something new. Death and rebirth are twins.
Arthur Dent is understandably upset that there is a yellow bulldozer advancing down his garden path bent on destroying his home. The beauty of it is that at the same time, the Vogon constructor fleet is advancing across the solar system to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
As above, so below.
I recently learned that there is a home in England that the owner refused to surrender to make way for a bypass (highway). I have to wonder if this is part of the inspiration for the story, and whether Ian Anderson’s song about a farm on the freeway was similarly inspired.
Dent is in his bathrobe, bleary-eyed from a night at the pub railing against the lack of notice and injustice of the proposed demolition. I have to tell you that this is what I read when I am depressed.
My depression, like Cricket’s, is downright perky. Most people wouldn’t notice that I was depressed, usually. But when it happens, I can’t get past the part where:
“”Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he (Arthur Dent) was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.”
I giggle just inserting that here.
(There is a God. The whole thing seems to be on the net now. See http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Hitchhikers/00000012.htm)
I could write a book on H2G2. But my purpose is to point out that Adams writing points to human evolution. In fact, in the very next paragraph:
“Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.”
That’s about how much homo caelestis (Spider Robinson’s term) and homo illuminatus (Arjuna Ardagh’s term) are likely to relate to us. It’s pretty much a matter of perspective. Or, as Douglas Adams wrote:
“Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter a pair of dingo’s kidneys whether Arthur’s house got knocked down or not now. “
“What the caterpiller calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
– Richard Bach, Illusions
The reason I hesitated to include Adams, is that his version of what is next is more of the same world we know, but on a galactic scale. But then, that is one way to get started thinking about humanity’s Next Step.
Adams talks about evolution this way:
“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question “How can we eat?” the second by the question “Why do we eat?” and the third by the question “Where shall we have lunch?”
Hence, the third book is called The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Tom Robbins’ Jitterbug Perfume is about immortality.
Mmm hmm. Just that.
However, he still has us in these same bodies. They can just do more.
It is very clear that Robbins is a student of rebirthing breathwork, specifically the sort evoloved by Leonard Orr. Orr taught, still teaches, four element purification – earth, the body; air, the breath; fire, sex; and water, the emotions. Wiggs Dannyboy pontificates on each in the book. It’s pure Orr. I’ve studied him. Leonard Orr wrote Physical Immortality. Good topic for a Scorpio man.
Alobar and Kudra follow practices that are meant to clear the body, mind and spirit for rebirth.
The book begins with Alobar finding a grey hair in his beard. In his pre-Christian kingdom, as soon as the king shows signs of age, he is killed and a new, young king is chosen. At Beltane, by the way.
Alobar rebels against tradition and escapes with the help of his concubine, Kudra. I haven’t read this one in a while, though I’ve read it through many times. Somewhere along the line, he mates with Wren, as well. (Polyamory, yes.)
Eventually, Alobar and Kudra learn to dematerialize and show up somewhere else. Robbins describes how they kind of fade from one place and into another. Pan, the god of the rut, the goat god, the God that Christianity blasphemously turned into our modern day devil, has done the same, but for different reasons. No one believes in him any more. All the nature spirits are dying because we’ve ignored them.
No wonder we have sexual issues in our culture! But don’t get me started. Read Robbins. Read Heinlein. Read Robinson. That’s a whole ‘nother book. Read other blogs for more on this.
Immortality may not be the immortality of this particular body that we seem to currently be in. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But all of these authors point to some kind of trancendence, something beyond the body and a way of continuing our awareness and evolving – that death is not something to be feared. It’s just the Next Step. That’s one of the things I love about Steven’s IAM Meditation, Zooming in on Death.
This is not “I hate my body, so I’ll deny it” of some types of aceticism. This is more from love than fear. I love my life, how do I continue to enjoy it, increase my awareness of what is possible, connect more with others?
So, again, I won’t try to reproduce every enlightened thought in the book here. Read it for yourself.
Arjuna Ardagh uses the term homo illuminatus in his book Translucent Revolution to indicate human beings whose Light is shining brightly and clearly through them and into the world. You won’t believe some of the people on his list. Obviously, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie and the Dalai Lama fit that, but Sam Walton? George Zimmer? Hmm.
Enlightenment in business, education, relationships and several other areas of life are the organization of Ardagh’s book. Sidebars debunk various spiritual myths that many new agers still believe, like that if you’re enlightened you don’t have health problems anymore. Hmm, ask some of the world’s most famous enlightened beings about that sometime.
Ardagh has a new book out, too. I haven’t read it yet. But I imagine I’ll be letting you know what I thought, as soon as I do.
In Translucent Revolution we have real life, current day examples of what it would look like to live from love instead of fear. To treat others as we would be treated. To understand that “other people” are really just aspects of ourselves. That this is One World, One Heart, One Mind.
If you’re looking for a job, his list is a great place to start.
So Ardagh’s book is about how some of us are sharing enlightenment now in our work, our families, our educational systems, etc.
Spider Robinson, oh Spider Robinson!
You know, I have spent a lot of the last 6 or 7 years reading Spider Robinson, just amazed that I didn’t find some of them sooner. I check the copyrights and some of them have been out for 20 years. Ah well. Timing is everything and this must have been mine.
http://www.spiderrobinson.com/
I’m not going to include his latest greatest, Variable Star in this blog. I think that’s another one that will get a blog of its own someday. And I’ve only read it once – so far. It’s written from an outline found in the estate of Robert A. Heinlein.
God seems to speak to me through my computer battery these days. Oh, I’m plugged in to a wall outlet, but the battery is blinking and the connection is being weird and I was just thinking how I should go get some salad for lunch before it gets too late.
sigh
Spider Robinson’s Callahan books, as well as DeathKiller (a combination volume of MindKiller and Time Pressure – Time Pressure is the one that skeptics and those who are afraid that joining minds with others would be the worst thing that could ever happen will want to read.) LifeHouse, and most especially StarDancer (all 3 volumes Star Dancer, StarSeed and StarMind) all have some kind of story about human evolution that echoes ACIM’s injunciton that “A sense of separation from God is the only lack you need to correct.”
StarDance is kind of the science fiction version of the books I did not include here today (A Course in Miracles, Starseed Transmissions, The Door to Everything, Celestine Prophecy, and Illusions.) There is more moral and spiritual evolution to Robinson’s ideas.
“Forgiveness shows us that minds are joined.”
– A Course in Miracles
Yes.
Some of us can digest truth best when disguised as fiction. That’s why I am attempting to write my story as fiction, too. We’ll see how that goes. I’m more of a blog writer, an email writer, than a storyteller.
Minds really join in StarDance. In fact, they do so to save the planet, just like they did in the Callahan series. Robinson’s version of human evolution, and you’ll see that twice in this blog I have mistyped and written “evoloved.” When I read that, I decided to leave it. I think there’s something to the idea.
Robinson has the more “evoloved idea,” as I see it. Tomorrow, I will post the Prologue to LifeHouse. It is something like the best erotica I ever wrote for myself. StarDancer is most clearly about evolovution (hmm). In DeathKiller (MindKiller & Time Pressure) the evolution has happened and humans of our ficton encounter humans from the future.
Since my computer has decided that it is lunch time, I’ll leave you to read it yourself. I’ve also blogged more about the details elsewhere.
This blog is searchable. There’s a box over there on the right. Type “Spider Robinson” or anything else you are interested in, and you can find things more easily.
Peace and long life, Ann
“We are One in the Spirit. We are One in the Lord.
We are One in the Spirit. We are One in the Lord.
And we pray that all Unity may one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are human by our Love, by our Love.
Yes, they’ll know we are human by our Love.
-Learned in Chi Rho youth group in the 70’s.
Yes, they sang “Christian.” Same thing, said Pooh.
Ann's Tale 