Thursday, 24 December, 1998
Michael: Good evening, Bivalia. How's things?
Bivalia:[a] Very well, thank you, Michael. And how are things with you?
Michael: Oh, okay, I guess. I guess I'm a bit limited in time, because I
have to get up early in the morning (early for me, that is), because my
mother's going to telephone to wake me at 9.30, whether I've had enough sleep
or not. And that, of course, is because of the family get-together on
Christmas day.
Bivalia: Are you looking forward to that?
Michael: Oh, so-so. I guess I like company, as I am often lonely; but
the ritual of Christmas doesn't impress me, and in fact I think I feel more
and more uncomfortable with it each year. I find all the rush, the
gift-giving, and so on, artificial, and quite crazy.
Bivalia: You don't see it as an expression of love?
Michael: Well, it might be for some. But I find it difficult to see how
something like that, so surrounded by tradition and etiquette and unspoken
expectations, can be an unsullied expression of love.
Bivalia: Sullied it may be; but need that exclude genuine love, even if it
is mixed with other less desirable aspects?
Michael: No, it need not; but, in our culture, I think the less desirable
aspects, such as those I briefly mentioned, predominate. If I see something
that I know someone wants (at any time of the year), I am quite likely to buy
it for them, and when I give it to them, I won't ask for payment, so it is a
gift. And I try not to accept money for it, although sometimes they insist.
I like that. That's the sort of gift giving I enjoy; but I think it is a far
cry from institutionalized, ritualized gift-exchanging, where you are
effectively dictated by a list of people you just must buy something
for, at a particular time.
But I didn't start this session in order to make a diatribe against
Christmas.
Bivalia: No, I know you didn't.
Michael: People talk about some vague thing called the "Christmas
spirit"; but I'm afraid I have to admit that I have no idea about that; it's
just something I don't feel at all. I am sceptical about such things.
Bivalia: Well, there is a Christmas spirit, you know.
Michael: Yes, I realize that. You are probably meaning that in a
slightly different sense to what people colloquially mean by that phrase.
Bivalia: Yes, it is different in one sense; but perhaps not as much as you
imagine. We've talked before about spirit in many different contexts, including
particular spirits such as that of Indian summer, of the forests or mountains, of
sunsets, of red sunsets, and so on. You obviously have a keen sensitivity to
some of these spirits. We have generalized from these to saying that everything
without exception has spirit of some kind, of such a kind that it is the very
essence of that thing, so that what manifests (the physical things or phenomena
that you can touch or observe) is simply the inevitable physical reflection of
that spirit.
Michael: Yes. I guess that's about my view, to put it in a nutshell,
although a brief description such as that hardly does justice to the idea.
Bivalia: Quite. We both understand that in more detail, and have spent
many enjoyable pages discussing it, so there is no need to go over all that again
now. But I just want to suggest that, in exactly the same kind of way, Christmas
has a spirit, and (surprise, surprise), it is especially active in the month of
December each year, and reaches its climax of activity on the 25th of that
month. That spirit is simply the origin of all emotions, activities, phenomena,
or objects which are specifically connected with Christmas. It includes the
religious aspects, the secular ones, and even the frankly greedy, commercial
ones; it is a diverse spirit that simply includes all aspects of Christmas. Of
course, if you like some aspects better than others, you can concentrate on
those, and even consider them as a subset to constitute another,
smaller, spirit of Christmas, which you might call the "true" spirit of Christmas
(as against the parts you think false).
Michael: I have no trouble with the idea you're getting at. But, even if
I isolate some supposedly "true" spirit of Christmas, it's just something I
have no feel for. I certainly don't deny its existence, nor do I deny that it
might be a very nice thing for people whose hearts it is close to. I'm not
(at present) one of those people. Of course that could change one day;
nothing I say precludes that possibility.
Bivalia: Fair enough. I know it's not why you came now. But you don't
mind discussing other things along the way, do you?
Michael: Of course not. I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't want to,
because I realize you don't force an agenda on me. You may at times gently
suggest things to me, but basically you let me go the way I want to. I typed
out a couple of things I thought I might want to mention, and Christmas was
one of them.
But I didn't want to go into it in great depth, so I might move on.
I must admit I've thought recently that my channelling is slipping a bit,
and in fact I've been feeling a bit apart from Spirit. But perhaps over the
last couple of days I've been feeling it again, and I want to talk about it
with you.
Michael: Well, the thing that prompted this feeling was to do with the
twilight sky, and the fact that that has prompted me to write more haiku
verses: three of them in a row, on successive nights, on the same theme.
Bivalia: Would you like to quote them for me, please?
Michael: Yes. I'll give them now, as I typed them out.
Summer twilight:
droning cicadas, the new moon -
and Venus, too; it's been so long.
ca. 9.30 p.m.
Tuesday, 22 December, 1998.
Again - cicadas, the moon, Venus:
a little different now.
All things change - even truth, even Spirit.
ca. 9.30 p.m.
Wednesday, 23 December, 1998.
Again, the moon higher, Venus brighter;
the cycles of life go on,
but all will be fulfilled.
ca. 9.30 p.m.
Thursday, 24 December, 1998.
Bivalia: Well - there's quite a bit of feeling in those few words. And
look at the way you wrote them on three successive nights, at about the same
time, too. What's behind that?
Michael: Well, it reflects the fact that on those successive nights (the
most recent time just a few hours ago) I was in the same place at the same
time, and saw the same things, three times in a row.
Bivalia: Three times in a row. It has certain resonances for things to
happen in threes.
Michael: What I saw was the twilight sky; and it evoked something of that
sense of longing and wonder I've talked about before. This, more than
anything else, seems to suggest spirit to me.
Michael: And I noticed the spirit of the evening each time, and it was
basically the same kind of evening, but subtly different. The crescent moon
got a bit bigger each time (as of course it does when waxing), and Venus, the
evening star was a bit higher above the horizon each time, and a bit brighter,
although it was still just a pale dot in the yellow afterglow of sunset, not
the brilliant jewel-like thing it can be at other times. But I imagine we'll
get to that later on, because this was the first time I'd seen it as evening
star for quite a while (as the first verse says), and obviously it has
recently begun moving away from the sun (as seen from earth).
The evening star has certain memories for me, because I was quite
preoccupied with heavenly phenomena a while ago, especially in the 1970s, and,
although back then I hadn't formulated in any coherent way the view of spirit
I now have, I think even then I had a dim awareness of the suggestion of
spirit in the moon, planets, and so on. It also tied in with my interest in
science-fiction.
In the second verse, I seem to draw an analogy between the slight
difference between the two evenings, even though they were basically the same
kind, and the fact that truth, and spirit itself, are not static things that
can be completely described or defined in doctrines or rules, that maybe they
change and evolve, or at least that our perspective on them, our insights into
them, change.
Bivalia: Yes, spirit is evolving, just as humanity is; and humanity is
helping God's evolution just as much as he is helping humanity's.
Michael: And I think when the last verse came to me, I was thinking of
the fact that there seem to be two different kinds of world view amongst
religions or spiritual paths.
One is cyclic, and it has the wheel of karma, rounds of incarnation, and
so on, presumably going on practically forever. People who take this view
often see the ordinary cycles of life (the seasons, day and night, birth and
death) as somehow analogous to this, and they like to cite the maxim "As
above, so below". I guess I can relate to parts of this view, but other parts
of it disturb me or depress me a bit, making life seem a bit like an endless
treadmill. I dislike the assumption that often accompanies this view that
pain and darkness and hate are an inherent part of the cycles of life, and are
simply the balancing counterparts of pleasure and light and love.
Bivalia: Yes, I know you have trouble with this; there are reasons for it,
and you are in no sense being called upon to abandon your views on such matters.
Michael: I couldn't change them at present, anyway, even if I were being
called upon to do so. I've grappled with them for over 20 years, and my views
on that don't seem to change.
The other kind of world view puts less emphasis on cycles, and deals with
one-off events, or singularities, as I think they are sometimes called.
Traditional Christianity is more inclined this way: you have the creation,
which took place once only, and you have one life on this world, and there is
the final judgement, and (in some versions) you go either up or down, and
that's final for the rest of eternity. There's the concept that the saved
finally unite with God, and never have to leave him again - and so on.
Well, perhaps I could accept parts of this view that puts more importance
on once-only events; but I would have trouble with parts of this, too. I
think there might be some sort of happy medium between the cyclic view of life
and spirit, and the once-only view, and I think this is another of those
things I've been pondering (on and off) over the years.
Bivalia: You're right about the happy medium; there is some degree of truth
in both views, much more than the opponents of either view imagine there to be;
but neither view by itself gives a complete picture of the reality of things.
And you are right that people generally seem to go very much for one view or the
other, and overlook the possibility of a compromise between the two.
Michael: I think this issue of cycles versus once-only events is roughly
what I had in mind in writing the third haiku tonight; somehow the
juxtaposition of the cycles of nature I was observing with my own view of
spirit prompted these thoughts. But I don't think my haiku really answers any
definite questions about this.
Bivalia: Haiku rarely do answer questions; rather, they raise possibilities
and prod the mind and emotions.
Perhaps your haiku says nothing definite about the matter, but it certainly
shows an awareness of the potential dichotomy between the two views.
On one side of the matter, yes, the cycles of life do exist (the earth
rotates, which explains why you could see the moon and Venus at the same time on
successive nights; but those bodies have their orbits too, which are cycles of
different duration, and so they look different on those successive nights). The
conflicting interactions between different cycles can lead to a curious mixture
of great changeability and stability, and it contributes to the subtlety and
complexity of life.
The verse seems to hint at an awareness of the cycles of life, and suggests
(without hitting you over the head about it) that there may be subtle connections
between this and the realm of spirit. But on the other side of the matter, it
also seems to suggest that the cycles are not everything, that maybe there are
matters that transcend them. As you said, "yet all will be fulfilled". That
seems to suggest an achievement that is not dependent on cycles.
In actual fact, the higher realms of spirit are interwoven in an incredibly
complex way with cycles and with things that happen once only. That addresses
the concerns of people who are sceptical of heaven because once eternal bliss is
achieved and there is nothing left unfulfilled, it will be incredibly boring. Of
course this is not in the least so. Anything you want to do will reach
fulfilment, and yet there will be always new things to start out on. There is a
degree of union with God that from your perspective seems final and ultimate; but
in reality union with God is a process, not an event: a journey, not a
destination. It is a journey that gets better and better all the way, so that at
any point along the way you have a sense of fulfilment, not of incompletion; yet
there is further to go, as far as you want to go.
Michael: I understand that, and the supposed boredom of heaven (if we
want to use that theologically loaded term) has never been a problem with me.
I think (although I hadn't thought about it to that level of detail until just
now) this was part of the thinking that prompted the verse I wrote tonight.
Bivalia: So, all in all, the twilight you saw three times recently has
given you quite an interesting spiritual lesson.
Michael: Maybe you could say that. I don't know if I'll be there to see
it a fourth time, because I'm not sure whether I'm going back to my mother's
after Christmas at my brother's.
Bivalia: Well, let happen what wants to. There's no reason why you should
make a special effort to experience it yet again. That lesson could quite well
be over now, because after all there's a saying that portentous things happen in
threes.
Michael: That's only fairy-tale stuff, isn't it?
Bivalia: Maybe - but don't knock it. Sometimes such ideas originate
because there's a grain of truth in them. I don't know if things really do
happen in threes or not; but I dare say that if someone believes they do (perhaps
because it symbolizes the Trinity) they might well set up the astral machinery to
make things happen in threes, and so confirm their belief.
Michael: It's rather curious that I have taken to writing haiku in the
last couple of years. I would never have expected it. I put all I had
written into the same file last night, and there are 17 now.
Bivalia: Well, I think your haiku are a wonderful channel through which to
receive the touches of spirit which can illuminate your life.
Michael: They're probably not genuine, or even nearly so; there are in
fact a lot of rules about writing haiku, which I don't even know.
Bivalia: If you want to enter haiku contests, you would do well to learn
and observe those rules; but if you want to express spirit as you see it, I
wouldn't get too hung up on that.
You've already shared some with me earlier this year. Would you like to
bring me up to date on what ones you've written since then?
Michael: Well, there are a few more which I haven't already told you
about. There's a group of three whose ideas came to me close in time, and
which I finally put in words on the same day, round about March and April of
this year. They simply capture moments of beauty I saw here and there, and
other than suggesting a spiritual sense of wonder, they don't seem to have any
deep message.
Pitch-black hillside;
sinking amongst the trees,
the moon's crescent, needle-sharp.
This was something I saw in my own driveway one night. It is
self-explanatory and needs no special comment.
Outside my window, a sunset world:
a hillside composed of orange-green light.
I go outside to belong to it.
The next one was a mountainside scene on Don Rd. as it winds upwards
towards Mt. Donna Buang.
Sudden look-out on the autumn mountain-side:
I tower over the misty valley
bathed in liquid gold.
They're just pleasant memories of little moments of beauty, nothing more.
Bivalia: Nothing more?! You live in a society which has little time for
beauty because of the rush of life, but you are fortunate enough to be able to
appreciate it - yet you seem to belittle it somewhat. Don't undersell yourself,
my friend, and don't underestimate the value of those little moments of beauty;
they are very precious.
Michael: Well, yes; I suppose that's why I wrote those verses. I
certainly don't think they all have to be imbued with half-meaning.
Michael: Yes, there's one more, which came to me just a month or two
ago. It's rather gloomy, actually, in spite of being prompted by an
incredibly beautiful scene. It's one of those very lonely ones, of which in a
previous session I quoted to you a couple of early examples. It goes like
this:
Weighed down by heaviness,
I long for the moonlit, pearly clouds overhead;
Spirit itself calls me in vain.
Bivalia: Oh dear, oh dear. What was going on that night?
Michael: I felt gloomy for no reason that I could identify. I was at my
mother's, and she had just gone to bed round about 10 o'clock. I went outside
(which I sometimes do for no special reason, just to see what there is to
see), and the sky was covered with these incredibly beautiful wispy sort of
clouds of that sort I love so much, and they were illuminated from behind by
the full moon, quite visible, although a bit misty because of the clouds in
front of it. The whole sky was suffused with this wonderful, deep yet
luminous blue, and I could imagine the whole sky alive with cloud spirits,
moon spirits, air spirits of all sorts, doing incomprehensible, wonderful
things. I felt I had gained contact with spirit in one sense, but I still
felt gloomy and unable to respond to it. That's pretty well what the verse
says.
Bivalia: Yes, spirit was reaching you; but you need not imagine that it was
as vain as you suggest. If it had been truly vain, you would not even have had
those feelings in the first place. But in fact you lingered outside for 10 or 15
minutes to drink in the atmosphere.
Michael: Yes, but it made no difference to me.
Bivalia: In the broader sense, this doesn't matter. These things nourish
you, and it is not necessary (from the spiritual point of view) to actually
change in the moment because of it.
Michael: Well, I felt as if spirit was there, but veiled from me, and
that's why I wrote the verse the way I did. I would have liked it if I could
have written a verse about that wonderful moonlit sky with a more uplifting
spiritual connection to it, but that isn't the way it came to me.
Bivalia: Never mind. Many things happen in life, you respond to things in
many different ways, and you should let your haiku reflect that.
Michael: I regretted that, because that sky was one of the most wonderful
I've ever seen, and I should have had wonderful thoughts about it.
Bivalia: There's no "should" about it.
Michael: Well, I think it's regrettable that I didn't; put it that way.
That sky was the sort of thing that would usually make me think that maybe
there's a purpose to life, that maybe spirit is real, that maybe there is a
grand future hope. A scene such as that seems to contain an essence that is
just so wonderful. I just wish I could fathom out why it fascinates me so
much, what is so wonderful about it; but I can't. It makes me think there is
something great and wonderful I am somehow missing.
Bivalia: It will always be there; it will wait for you. There is no
hurry. I cannot give any simple answer to your wondering. You will see what it
is you long for one day. These things have to take their own time, and you will
see that indeed spirit is connected with it, and that is why you get that feeling
of spirit being involved. Spirit (God, if you prefer, which at times you seem
to) is what all of us long for; every time we long for something, it is really
spirit (God) that we long for. It manifests in your world in various ways, and
sometimes the medium of manifestation can be confused with the real thing
itself. No matter; these things will become clear in their own time.
Are there any more haiku?
Michael: No. Well, there's one that started to come into existence, but
it didn't get beyond that. I typed out the following notes for a possible
haiku, which simply describe a confluence of circumstances I happened to see
together one evening:
poss haiku 24 Oct 1998
Silent, cicadas burst into song
light on distant hill
trees black against blue and yellow sky
lone bird circling overhead
new crescent moon
summer begins early
bird after cicada
cloud of insects gathers overhead
There's too much there for a haiku, which by nature is brief and
condensed, suggesting as much as it states, and I couldn't select which items
most conveyed the spirit of that evening, because all of them seemed equally
to belong - so I did nothing more about it.
Bivalia: Perhaps you could have written a verse of more than 3 lines; there
would be no problem, because you wouldn't need to even pretend it was a haiku.
Michael: Well, maybe; but it would probably still give the impression of
feeling like a haiku, but not being right because it's too long. Anyway,
although I have those notes, I've probably lost the essence of the evening, so
maybe it's too late to capture it, even though I still remember it fairly
well. Maybe I can't capture its essence in words now any more than those
notes already do. [b]
Last night I heard this program about the poet Judith Wright. I wasn't
paying all that much attention to it, and it was just on. But Sister Veronica
Brady, a well-known academic and nun, who is apparently an expert on Judith
Wright, spoke, and said something which I questioned, even though I've heard
her before and she seems quite open-minded. She said that poetry is not about
self-expression at all (and I began thinking she was being a bit puritan here
in that Catholic kind of way), that there was nothing twee about it (which I
found a puzzling remark), and that it was something to do with spell-myth
incantation, and was sacrificial (I understood that even less, and the
quotation is probably only approximate anyway).
Bivalia: Well, not having the context before us, I'm not quite sure what
she meant either, but she does seem to be suggesting a spiritual connection with
poetry, which I imagine neither you nor I would quibble with.
Michael: Well, yes; but it seems to me that poetry is
self-expression, as much as anything is. I really don't understand what she
meant by that, unless it is puritanism. She seems to think that the spiritual
side and self-expression are mutually exclusive.
Bivalia: You and I know that that is not so; or, at least, it is so only if
one believes it, and thus makes that limitation operative for oneself.
Michael: She doesn't, in general, seem puritan, so I have to just say I
don't know what she meant. But, on the face of it, her statement seems to be
one I would have to disagree with. She might have been commenting about
Judith Wright's outlook rather than her own. Earlier on, she did in fact say
that to Judith Wright poetry was not about self-expression.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. I suppose it stuck in my mind because I had
just been writing a little poetry myself.
I also heard Phillip Adams talking with a man called Michael Screech, who
had written a book about the history of laughter in religion, and about how
laughter had influenced the growth of Christianity. I think he was a
clergyman also.
It could be an interesting book, and it seems unusual to write a book
about laughter in religion, something I would think religion is sorely in need
of, and peculiarly devoid of. But apparently the laughter is not always
nice. The book was called Laughter at the Foot of the Cross,
apparently because it seemed likely that people had laughed at Jesus on the
cross, and it was not nice laughter, a bit the way people used to laugh at
people locked in the stocks, or like when they would visit the lunatics in an
asylum and laugh at them, just for a Sunday afternoon's entertainment. He
also said there are parts of the Bible which almost have a laugh a minute, if
you know where to look; but it was not usually nice laughter at all.
He seemed a nice sort of guy, quite open-minded, and he didn't believe in
hell or damnation. He admitted that might be a heresy.
Bivalia: Well, he's a man after our own heart, isn't he?
Michael: Yes, it seems so. He thought it would be terrible for anyone to
be damned for eternity so we up in heaven could look down on them and watch
them suffering. I think there's even a bit in the Bible about how the smoke
of their torment rises up before God for all eternity. I think there are some
terrible things in the Bible.
Bivalia: Of course, they reflect human nature, not God or his love.
Michael: Well, there would be those who would disagree; but let's not go
into that. Michael Screech didn't think there was anyone at all he would want
to be punished eternally, not even Hitler.
Bivalia: Yes; and there's that passage in Conversations with God,
where God says something that is too shocking for most people: "Hitler went to
heaven".
Michael: Well, I suppose it is a bit confronting; you get to think he
should be brought to account in some fashion, perhaps not eternally, but he
should have a hard time for a good long while.
But I see the point behind the statement. Maybe Hitler would have to
face a few facts about himself and what he had done, and that might be
painful. He would have to change quite a few of his ways. But in essence
he's no different to the rest of us, even if the degree is different.
Michael: In general, Michael Screech thought God was a much kinder being
than we have usually given him credit for. I wish we could hear more people
say it.
Bivalia: So do I; so do I.
Michael: But Michael Screech did say one thing that I thought was neat.
The idea wasn't new to me, but I don't think I'd heard it put so neatly. He
addressed the problem of what it means to be just, or to be good. He said
that either justice is merely defined as what God does, or else it is
something so great that God himself conforms to it. Similarly, he thought
that either good was simply whatever God's standards are, or else it is
something greater than that, which God himself fits in with, because he is
good. (And I'm probably giving the quote only approximately.) On these
questions, Michael Screech was inclined to the latter view (not merely
defining them as what God does, but considering them as inherent things God
conforms to). On the face of it, I would agree with him on this.
Bivalia: On the face of it, so would I; but there are assumptions built
into this question, whichever side you take. If qualities like justice or good
or love are simply defined as "whatever God does", they would seem to be
arbitrary, and might be almost anything. God might as well be unjust or hateful,
yet with this approach we would have to define these attributes as justice or
love, if God claimed these qualities for himself. But it seems a highly
unsatisfactory and arbitrary definition. If this is what we believe, we might as
well abandon such names as "good" or "justice" or "love", which seem to have
meanings that go beyond this, and simply refer to the way God is, perhaps
inventing some phrase or term for it.
But, on the other hand, if we reject this approach, then we have to
acknowledge that these qualities exist outside of God, and God can either conform
to them or not. But if they don't originate with God, where do they come from?
We usually think of God as the source of everything (although this itself has
assumptions built into it).
Michael: A neat little theological conundrum, isn't it? Although it
seems a paradox when put into words like that, somehow the question doesn't
seem to bother me all that much.
Bivalia: Yes, I think it is to some extent merely playing with words. But
let's follow it a little on those terms and see where it leads. I think the
fallacy lies in having too much of a person-like image of God, and limiting that
with various human attributes (whether they be what we think of as good or bad).
Michael: Well, should we think of God as impersonal, then?
Bivalia: It's one model that may suit some people. But I would think a
super-personal God is a better image to use.
Michael: Some Christian writers have said that when non-Christian
believers talk about a super-personal God they really mean an impersonal one.
(There's usually a faintly derogatory or critical feel to such remarks.)
Bivalia: They're free to think what they like; and people are free to
believe in an impersonal God but call him super-personal. But it doesn't mean we
have to do that.
It's all very fine and well to think of God as embodying the best of all
those qualities we think of as personal, which we value; and, the way I see it, I
would fully go along with that in general, even if my way of doing it might be a
bit different in some ways. But there is another side to God as well. I won't
go into the contentious question now of whether God is the origin or source of
things which are bad (destructive, unloving, separating, however you like to
define "bad"), or whether he creates only good, but some things then go bad, or
even whether there might be a devil who is bad.
Michael: Yes, that's a whole topic of its own; I don't remember if we've
discussed it before, but I'm sure we've touched on it, and implied some sort
of view on that.
Bivalia: But perhaps we could agree that God is the source of all that is
good. Not merely that he created it like a potter creating a pot, but that he is
in some deep sense the source of it, the essence of it. Perhaps one way of
putting it is that he is the spirit of all that is good.
Michael: I think that might be a circular definition.
Bivalia: I know, but I think you see what I'm getting at.
Bivalia: In this sort of discussion, words tend to trip us up, to get in
the way as much as help us.
If we can avoid being limited by an exclusively personal view of God,
perhaps we can see that both the views expressed by Michael Screech are in a
sense true. God is good, so of course he follows those principles which are
good; yet he is in a sense the spirit of good himself, the source of it, so it is
within him, too. I can't really put it in words better than that, although I
know it sounds a bit contradictory. I think it's one of those things you either
feel into, and wonder what the fuss is all about, or else you don't, in which
case no argument will help.
Michael: Yes, I see what you mean. As I said above, I've never really
felt it to be an issue. Not because it's unimportant, but because I feel I
have an understanding of it that I can accept for the time being.
Bivalia: Both views of this are true, like most of those old spiritual
conundrums that polarize people. We talked about the Trinity in an earlier
session, and used an off-the-cuff parable to illustrate the way I see it.
There's the question of whether God is immanent or transcendent, which has been
the subject of theological debate; and you won't be surprised to learn that of
course he's both, depending on the perspective you view it from.
Michael: Yes, I accept that also. I don't habitually use those terms,
but I understand "immanent" to mean that God is part of the universe, bound up
with its essence somehow, and "transcendent" to mean that God stands outside
the universe, which is merely his creation.
Bivalia: I'm not well up on theological jargon, but that's approximately
how I meant the terms. I think it is at least approximately what theologians
mean by those terms.
When there are opposing spiritual views about any of the deep questions,
usually there is some truth in both sides. In fact, the more contentious the
question, the more it divides people into opposing camps, the more it is so that
both sides have truth in them. The view a person takes on one of these great
debates tells us a lot more about that person than it does about God.
Michael: Well, Bivalia, I think I've brought up the main things I wanted
to: that is, about those evenings whose spirit I seemed to tune into, which
suggested those haiku. I really must go now, and I'm already not going to get
enough sleep. I'm willing to take the risk of missing sleep for the sake of
doing a good channelling though. And I suppose it's been -
Bivalia: Uh-uh! Don't judge whether it's a good channelling or not; it's
just what it is. What we talked about was what you needed to talk about at this
time. Another time it will be something else, or you might pursue the same
themes further. But don't judge it as good or bad, or better or worse than
another session.
Michael: Okay. I can't help having such feelings about the quality of a
session, but I see your point.
Bivalia: Well, Michael, it's been nice to see you again, after three months
or so.
Michael: Yes, the last time was that series of short daily sessions (with
a couple of gaps) you suggested I do. That was only a moderately successful
experiment.
Bivalia: Don't judge it. The point of it was not to pass a test of any
kind, or to get enough marks. You did it, for a few days at least, then decided
not to continue in that fashion for the time being. But it is always open for
you to do that daily kind of session again in the future if you want to.
Michael: I think I found it a little less effective than I thought it
would be, and felt I couldn't sustain it.
Bivalia: Fair enough; it was a useful experiment, and you know you can do
it again if you feel you need to.
Michael: Thanks for being with me, but I think I must finish up now; and
I think I've run out of things to say anyway.
Bivalia: Thank you for being with me, too. Good night.
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