Birding and Mysticism Volume 2: Enlightenment Through Bird-Watching-Volume #2

By George E. Lowe

In volume 2 of Birding and Mysticism: Enlightenment Through Bird Watching, there is no traditional table of contents; rather, there are the five main parts and their sections and subsections, which contain the substantive ideas and memes of volume 2, followed by six appendices. The main thrust of volume 2 concerns the many aspects, faces, and forms of mysticism: religious, spiritual, rational, scientific, personal, and practical.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 29, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462820757

George E. Lowe

GEORGE E. LOWE was born in Scranton, PA (1928) and educated in the public schools of New York/New Jersey/PA. He graduated from Grove City College (BA-1950) and U. of Chicago (MA-1953) and taught at all levels of American education (1950-93). Served over 30 years in the Federal Government (1953-88), including US Naval Air Intelligence Officer (Japan, Hawaii & the Pentagon), Foreign Service Officer (African Affairs & Paris Embassy), and Civil Servant (OE/ED). Author of The Age of Deterrence , Little, Brown (1964), It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America, Xlibris, (2000), two Vols. and many articles on military policy, nuclear weapons, education, and the environment. Speechwriter in Navy Dept. (1961,65)/ Department of Education (1981-88). Married in 1954, with two daughters and three Jack Russell Terriers. Hobbies are cooking/baking, book collecting, traveling, and bird watching. Splits the year in Stuart, Florida and Port Medway, Nova Scotia.

Book preview

Birding and Mysticism

ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH BIRD WATCHING

VOLUME #2

George E. Lowe

Copyright © 2009 by George E. Lowe.

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Contents

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION TO BIRDING

AND MYSTICISM—(VOL. 2)

THE INSIGHTS AND SYNCHRONICITIES THAT INSPIRED BIRDING AND MYSTICISM: ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH BIRD WATCHING

PART 1

THE ANCIENT ARGUMENT BETWEEN

RELIGION AND SCIENCE

SECTION A

Introduction

SECTION B

Carl Sagan on the Boundary between Science and Religion

SECTION C

The Sullivan-Harris Debate On Religion and Science

SECTION D

Capra and His Bridge Between Western Science and Eastern Religions

SECTION E

My Epiphanies, Insights, and Synchronicities on Encountering Capra’s The Tao of Physics

PART 2

THE MANY FACES/ASPECTS AND FORMS OF MYSTICISM (RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL/RATIONAL/PERSONAL/PRACTICAL)

SECTION A

General Introduction to Mysticism

SECTION B

The Classic Introduction and Nature of Mysticism (Evelyn Underhill)

SECTION C

MYSTICISM: A UNIVERSAL EXPERIENCE and OVERVIEW OF RELIGIOUS/SPIRITUAL/RATIONAL/PERSONAL/PRACTICAL

SECTION D

Rational Mysticism

SECTION E

PERSONAL MYSTICISM

SECTION F

PRACTICAL MYSTICISM

PART 3

THE WAY OF BIRDING (INTRO/MYSTERIES/IBW/BSPT) MEETS THE MANY WAYS/FORMS OF EASTERN RELIGIONS [MYSTICISM])

SECTION A

THE WAY OF BIRDING/MYSTICISM/SYNCHRONICITIES/MYSTERIES

SECTION B

The Way of Tao/Nature and The Way of Birding

SECTION C

(ZEN/HAIKU/IBW OPERATING IN TAO/NATURE)

SECTION D

(ZEN IN A NUTSHELL

AND IBW/BSPT [THE WAY

OF BIRDING] COMMENTARY)

SECTION E

TIBETAN BUDDHISM AND BIRDING: SHORTCUTS TO ENLIGHTENMENT

PART 4

SOME ASPECTS OF JEWISH MYSTICISM and THEIR CONTRIBUTION TO THE HEALING OF OUR MOTHERS and FATHER—NATURE/EARTH and GOD’S CREATION—DURING THE FOURTH GREAT GREEN ENV-ECO AWAKENING OF THE KABBALAH’s

THIRD GYRE.[2000-4000 ACE]

SECTION A

An Introduction to Jewish Mysticism

SECTION B

AN OVERVIEW OF JEWISH MYSTICISM

SECTION C-1

THE GREENING OF JUDAISM/HISTORIC/RELIGIOUS ROOTS (INCLUDING PRACTICAL/PERSONAL MYSTICISM)

SECTION C-2

THE GREENING OF JUDAISM

SECTION D

THE VITAL IMPORTANCE OF THE TRADITION OF TIKKUN OLAM [Care for/Restoring/Repairing the Earth/Nature/CREATION]

SECTION E

Synchronicity/the Kabbalah and the New Green Solar Age

PART 5

Conclusions (4) and Post Scripts (2)

CONCLUSION A

A LIST OF THE KEY IDEAS/MEMES/THEMES OF BIRDS AND MYSTICISM VOLS. 1 and 2

CONCLUSION B

SO HOW MIGHT IBWS/BSPTS HELP RECONCILE SCIENCE/RELIGION and MYSTICISM?-[Horgan and Rational Mysticism]

CONCLUSION C

TOWARD A CONCLUSION (C)

OF MINE: A TRUCE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION?

(THE IDEA OF THE HOLY and BIRDING)

CONCLUSION D

MY REAL CONCLUSIONS To—THE WAY OF BIRDING

CONCLUSION E

FINAL PERSONAL CONCLUSION E: ON PERSONAL MYSTICISM—WHEREIN, JOSEPH CAMPBELL GIVES GEORGE E. LOWE A LESSON IN LIVING and LOWE OF LOON LANDING and STUART RESPONDS

CONCLUSION F

CAMPBELL’s INSPIRATION and MY REACTION PLUS A SUMMARY and A POST SCRIPT (1)

CONCLUSION G

CONTINUE YOUR SEEKING AFTER THE MYSTERY OF MYSTERIES and A LITTLE BIRD WILL HELP YOU . . .

Post Script (2)

PART 6

APPENDICES—1-6

APPENDIX 1

How I lived in History during the summer of 2006

APPENDIX 2

THE BULBUL & THE ANTI-CHRISTS (1952-2012) [A WORK IN PROGRESS (2007-2009 . . . .)]

APPENDIX 3

UFOS—REVEALED/REVISITED and REDUX

APPENDIX 4

A NEW Tu B’Shavt SEDER (TREES and BIRDS)

APPENDIX 5

A and B—TWO SOUTH FLORIDA CHRISTMAS BIRD COUNTS [CBC]—MODEL IBWS GUIDED BY A BSPT

APPENDIX 6

BIRDS/BIRDS and MORE BIRDS (Plus E. T. Roosevelt’s 1908 Bird List at End of Appendix 6)

CONCLUSION TO APPENDICES/VOL. 2

To all the birders, bird-watchers, and twitchers I have known and loved (1940-2009). And also for the millions of other birders who—by their dedication, enthusiasm, foresight, and love—have fought to protect the habitat’s of the Bird Nation, its many tribes, and the ten thousand species from extinction in the first three conservation/environmental/ecological awakenings (1900-1980). And we will most assuredly supply the green shock troopers for The Fourth Great Green Environmental/Ecological Awakening (2000-2025). Our Mothers—Nature, Earth (Gaia), and all of God’s Creation—are counting on us to heal, restore, and sustain our blue-green oasis of life in the cold, dark, and hostile vastness of the universe[s].

PREFACE

In volume 2 of Birding and Mysticism: Enlightenment Through Bird Watching, there is no traditional table of contents; rather, there are the five main parts and their sections and subsections, which contain the substantive ideas and memes of volume 2, followed by six appendices. Even though volume 1 contains twenty-six chapters of bird narratives, each one has a part B reflecting the religious, spiritual, and mystical implications of the various birding adventures—many of the themes/ideas/memes are expanded in volume 2. However, the main thrust of volume 2 concerns the many aspects, faces, and forms of mysticism: religious, spiritual, rational, scientific, personal, and practical, which invariably reference many of the similar ideas and themes contained in part B of the bird narratives of volume 1, for such is the nature of a book dealing in ideas/memes.

The first long section Insights and Synchronicities has twenty-four examples dealing with the appearance of the key insights and the many synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) that influenced the very heart of volume 2. Indeed it is not too far-fetched to state that without the many synchronicities that I encountered and experienced from March 2005 to the summer of 2008, these two books could never be written. The ideas and memes therein (I&S) are also reflected in part B of volume 1, Birding and Mysticism, chapters of the bird narratives and throughout the parts/sections of volume 2. The purpose of these insights and synchronicities is to highlight the major sources of the key controlling framework of ideas that are responsible for these two volumes on the religious, spiritual, and mystical implications of birding.

The reader will note that there are long passages of quoted material and a running commentary related to the Bird Nation. That interaction of ideas is the process by which I attempt to make my case for the key role birders and bird-watchers can play in helping develop a mystical component for the new living cosmology, required if The Fourth Great Green Environmental/Ecological Awakening is to be successful in restoring and healing our Mothers—Earth/Nature.

You will also find many references to my Daimon and synchronicities, or simply meaningful coincidences, if that will help you understand and accept these dynamic factors in shaping my argument. Occasionally, a bracketed passage will appear—dealing with contemporary political, military, strategic, and environmental policies of the Bush-Cheney administration. Rather than move or delete them, I have chosen to leave them where they first appeared to me. Why? Because they give the reader an insight into the inner workings of the author’s mind-set—beyond the fact that he is a progressive liberal traditionalist/revisionist historian and a yellow-dog Democrat—from Scranton, educated at the Presbyterian Grove City College and the University of Chicago (1946-1950s). Moreover, the controversial political material is bracketed; it can easily be skipped or ignored.

My Daimon’s role in helping me write these bird books is of course a matter of faith. I have taken James Hillman’s useful and inspiring idea of the Daimon from his ground-breaking The Soul’s Code (1996). Hillman makes a shrewd observation that the Greek concept of Daimon migrated to Rome where it was called genius. After the fourth century, the Christian church appropriated it, and the guardian angel was reborn and lives in the hearts and minds of millions of Christians and resides on Beliefnet.

Now my mother was part Irish and had second sight, and in her memory, St. Bridget’s Cross hangs above my front door here at Loon Landing, Port Medway, Nova Scotia, on the easternmost edge of the North American continent. And to cover all my bases, two evil eyes swing from my desk light, as does a small wooden St. Juan de Porres cross, while an Allah clock from Turkey on the book cases reminds me when to shut down the evening’s work while a Quecha shaman’s necklace from the Napo River graces my car’s mirror.

I have speculated that the key books of B&M, which magically and mysteriously appeared at Frenchy’s Used Clothing stores on Nova Scotia’s South Shore (2005-2008) and found at random among my thousands of books in Stuart and Port Medway were placed there perhaps by my Daimon for me to find. And find them I did—maybe with a nudge or two from my Daimon or my familiar, little Baby Chidda.

INTRODUCTION TO BIRDING

AND MYSTICISM—(VOL. 2)

Birding and Mysticism [B&M] consists of two volumes. Volume 1 contains a series of Bird Narratives that generally follow the great cycle of the seasons beginning with the first signs of the returning sun, the lengthening daylight and brighter light. With that advent follows the Spring Migration—centering first on the Brown Sparrows, Blackbirds, Robins and then on the early shining stars of Nature’s annual, Miracle drama/Mystery play/Mystical acts—the temporary arrival and their all too brief stay/sojourn for us Northerners at least—of the Neotropicals. They delight the fortunate birding fraternity with their great beauty/song and glory—the Warblers/Vireos/Flycatchers/Thrushes/Thrashers/Tanagers/Orioles/Buntings/Grosbeaks/Hummingbirds, of the Bird Nation and of course the drabber Hawk, Shorebirds and Duck Tribes as well. The breeding songs, antics of courtship, nest building, eggs, chicks, feeding and fledging occupies the summer’s season of the Bird Nation. Once the next generation has flown the nest The Great Southward Migrations begins to the winter haunts of coot and hern. While in July the windbirds of the high-Arctic appear in our local marshes/beaches.

The stars of The Fall Migration are The Raptors—Eagles/Hawks followed by the Vultures (Turkey and Black), beginning in early September with the Broad-winged Hawks and ending with the Golden Eagles of late October at Waggoner’s Gap—outside of Carlisle, PA. And finally the Ducks, Geese/Swans arrive. At the end of the year occurs the greatest Citizen-Science project in history—The Audubon Society’s Annual [begun in Christmas 1900] Christmas Bird Count [CBC]. (nearly 60,000 birders in 2007] [See Vol. 1 Narrative, and Vol. 2, Appendix 5 for both the Traditional Bird Walk and the Intensive Bird Walk (IBW), guided by a Bird Spirit Person Teacher (BSPT).]

This truly Sacred Event usually ends the dedicated birders Yearly List or if the CBC is undertaken in the New Year our enthusiastic Hard Core Birder[HCB] has a leg up on his/her Listing Competitors—real or imagined. In Year 2008 my Martin County CBC is on 5 January 2008, so James/Dorothy/David of South Shore Nova Scotia, Canada and Dennis/Mort/Mels and Bob had better get with the program—if they are seriously planning to challenge the Old Master (BSPT) in 2008/2009.

In a general rough fashion I have followed the calendar year for a NE/Mid-West serious birder in my Traditional[since 1953] Bird Narratives[part A], although I have often included in part B short aspects/discussions of the overall religious/spiritual/mystical/personal/practical mysticism implications of the Bird Narratives. However, the larger selected scientific/religious/spiritual/mystical issues/ideas/memes of Contemporary Birding are dealt in further depth in volume 2. (My general theme is regarding the IBW as "a way" and suggests its relation to Taoism/Tibetan Buddhism/Zen/Hinduism/Roman Catholic/Protestant Mysticism, Rational Mysticism and Jewish Mysticism [Tikkun Olam/Kabballah and Practical Mysticism.] There is also, in volume 2, a discussion of the classic conflict of Science vs. Religion; The convergence of Modern Science’s[Physics/Cosmology/Genetics] with Eastern Mysticism and various aspects of "consciousness", specifically the Cosmic Consciousness of Dr. Bucke and William James.

One of the most potentially useful, inspiring and practical aspects of volume 1—part B and the related religious, spiritual, rational, personal (mystical), and practical contributions is to follow, watch, and witness the evolutionary development of my two key intellectual contributions to modern birding and the Bird Nation: the intensive bird walks (IBW) guided by the bird spirit person teacher (BSPT) during a two-and-half-year period from March 2005 through September 15, 2008, as reflected in a series of IBWs undertaken with this book in mind.

However, it soon became apparent that the IBWs had to be terminated, the research had to stop and the book written. Why? The subject matter—the environment/birds/mysticism/God-Deity/gods—kept expanding like the universe according to Einstein, Hoyle, and Hubble, and I had the sinking feeling that I was quickly losing control of my subject matter.

My former University of Chicago professor, Walter Johnson, encouraged me to write an aide memoire about my time and experiences in the Pentagon, OP-O5D, when I was a Navy Lieutenant (AIO) part of a Top-Secret Cabal engaged in hunting and exposing military fascists, nuclear gladiators, pre-emptive warriors lusting to use thermonuclear weapons as an aggressive instrument of American military and foreign policy. However, Professor Johnson also encouraged me to stop the research and write, saying, "Your first book will not be your best book!" So that’s what I have done with Birding and Mysticism. I have split it into two volumes of about 600 pages each.

And yet I have barely touched the subject of the Bird Nation, Homo sapiens, and Deity—or as my daughter Mels expressed it, birds and God or birds and enlightenment/nirvana/illumination, modern science and Eastern religions, the Mysticism inherent in Western Nature writing, or more to the point, mysticism as mysticism. In a word, there is nothing definitive in parts B of volume 1 or in the parts/sections of volume 2. They are simply my impressions and reflections based on nearly seventy years of bird-watching near the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century at the beginning of the third millennium. If we are smart, inventive, perceptive, and lucky, this will not be the last secular historical millennium. I hope and pray to all the magical, mysterious, and mystical forces of the universe, including the possible truth that God is mystery that our species’ extinction is not inevitable.

Sadly, it’s an open question. Dr. Stuart Pimm, the Doris Duke professor of Conservation Ecology at Duke University, makes a positive suggestion on what can one person do to stop extinctions. One of the things I’ve done is start an NGO—a nongovernmental organization—called SavingSpecies.org. Dr. Pimm notes that he’s a believing Christian. God so loved the cosmos that he gave his only son. That’s an injunction from St. John. To me, this says that Christians have an obligation to look after the world—stewardship. We cannot pointlessly drive species to extinction and destroy forests and oceans. When we do that, we are destroying God’s creation (A conversation with Stuart L. Pimm, Claudia Dreifus, New York Times, November 4, 2008).

There is much more complementary religion, spiritualism, and mysticism background material to part B, in Vol. 2, as well as re-capping my entire argument there, scattered as it is throughout Vol. 1’s Part B.

My use of the word sacred is as deliberate as my use of the word ritual. And birding is the current and more fashionably acceptable term for my preferred activity—bird watching. And all three words create a modern phenomena—a flourishing and growing subculture which I have actively participated in for nearly seven decades.

Sacred: 1. consecrated to; esteemed especially dear or acceptable to a deity 2. Set apart for or dedicated to some religious purpose; made holy by association with a god or some other object of worship; consecrated, hallowed

Applied as a specific defining adj. To various animals and plants that are or have been considered sacred to certain deities.

Regarded with or entitled to respect or reverence similar to that which attaches to holy things. (Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1959), p. 1776)

Rituals: A prescribed order of performing religious or other devotional services; Ritual acts or observances; the performance of ritual acts; of the nature of, forming, a rite or rites. (p. 1743)

rites: A formal procedure or act in a religious or other solemn observance; A custom or a practice of a formal kind; The general or usual custom, habit or practice of a country, people, class of persons, etc; now spec in religion or worship. (p. 1743)

bird-watcher/birder: Bird-watcher is not in the Oxford Dictionary, but birder is: 1481, A fowler 1622 and in 1827 A breeder of birds (page 181).

And the Webster New Collegiate Dictionary defines birder as a catcher or hunter of birds esp. for market and bird as to observe or identify wild birds in their natural environment (p. 112).

Thus, it is obvious that these two volumes if not exactly about birds and God, they are deeply immersed, if not ensnared in things holy and sacred, relating to God-Deity/gods in sacred, consecrated, hallowed places and encompassing religious or other solemn observance, a formal custom or a practice of a formal kind. And then there is this happy definition that directly and most definitely applies to the ever-expanding subculture of birding/bird-watching: The rytes and sacraementes and the articles of our faith (1529). From late ME, we find this transferable definition to modern birding: The general or usual custom, habit or practice of a country, people, class of persons, etc; spec in religion or worship.

Therefore, in Birding and Mysticism, I intend to discuss the religious, spiritual, and mystical implications of modern birding/bird-watching, by this growing concern of a subculture called birding, by reflecting, describing, and explaining their general or usual custom, habit or practice and in the process advance and develop my theory of the mystical component of the intensive bird walk (IBW), guided by a bird spirit person teacher (BSPT), which in turn generates both the mystical moments, fragments, components, and sparks for the new living cosmology (NLC) as well as supplying the tens of thousands of new green shock troopers for The Fourth Great Green Environmental/Ecological Awakening in the Third Millennium. Yes, my fellow green crusaders, that is our challenge, and our motto ought to be simply this: And a little bird shall lead them. And our charge, derived from a little Holy Land sparrow, is simply this: one does what one can do—which I have modified given the temper of our times and the enormous environmental/ecological challenges facing us: "One must do what one can do."

Two final notes. B&M is in no sense intended to be the definitive study and history of modern birding’s subculture, nor is it the last word on science and religion-mysticism or the merging of Western scientific thought with the mysticisms associated with Eastern religions. However, it does reflect my belief in synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, "bits/shards of mystical moments," inherent and deeply embedded in Nature. Furthermore, I am convinced they can be unlocked by the magical/mystical process of the IBW, just as surely as my epiphany of January 1985, while in exile at the Department of Education alerted me to the extreme dangers of all forms/types of religious Fundamentalism. In fact, it suggested a way to combat this great challenge to modern Western societies with their emphasis and fundamental foundations on secular, democratic, constitutional republics of secular, not religious law. (See It Can Happen Here: A Fascist Christian America, two vols.[Xlibris, 2000].)

Specifically please consider Revelation 5:1-5 (circa AD 96):

The sealed book

1 And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals.

2 And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?

3 And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon.

4 And I wept much, because no man was found worthy to open and to read the book, neither to look thereon

5 And one of the elders saith unto me, Weep not: behold, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof.

Judah = lion = Lowe (German)—assimilated German Jews? And perhaps to the Rabbi Lowe of Prague and his Golem?

Consequently I have chosen to leave in some small asides of a political/military/religious nature in B&M, if they are reflective of the Bush-Cheney administration’s war on modern science in general and the specific activities of Bush’s political appointees—modern environmental Huns and ecological Vandals—and the even more dangerous policies to our Mother Earth/Nature’s health and Gaia’s sustainability and assault on the very body of God-Deity, by their road to Armageddon-WW III/IV and the fulfillment by fire next time of Revelation’s blood-thirsty prophecies in chapters 16-19, and in 9:15-18.

[For a typical example of this current rabid end-times thinking, see the writings of Ronald Weinland, 2008—God’s Final Witness:

"From now until the latter part of 2008, many prophecies are going to be fulfilled, especially the Seven thunders of the Book of Revelation, which the Apostle John saw but was restricted from recording. Those thunders are revealed in this book, as well as detailed accounts of the final three and one-half years of man’s self rule on earth, which are recorded in the account of the Seventh Seal of Revelation . . . .

Some of these prophecies concern the demise of the United States over the next year, which will be followed by man’s final world war. (See especially President Bush’s WW III-mongering of October 17, 2007. This last war will be the result of clashing religions and the governments they sway. Billions will die this time and the consequences will far exceed even the very worst times in all human history.)

"As these events unfold, the world will increasingly become aware of the authenticity of the words in this book and realize that Ronald Weinland has been sent by God as his end-time prophet . . . .

This book is primarily directed to the people of the three major religions of the world (Islam, Judaism and Christianity representing but, one-third of the people of the earth]), whose roots are in the God of Abraham. Ronald Weinland has been sent to all three (http://www.the-end.com/GodsFinalWitness and www.theedgeam.com)].

Consequently, I have left in some so-called political-military-strategic-environmental sections in B&M, but have triple bracketed them so the reader can pass over or ignore any offending politics inserted by this yellow-dog Democrat, a liberal, progressive, Traditionalist attempting to expose the Antichrists and their false nuclear prophets, gladiators, and warmongers. They have been since Hiroshima and Nagasaki hell—and heaven-bent eager—with almost a sexual glee—lusting to throw the nuclear dice again in Western and Central Asia.

Theirs is a fanatic faith that Bush-Cheney and their Fundie and Conservative Evangelical and Pentecostal (New Apostolic Reformation) base share with their neo- and theo-con allies. They hope and pray that if they can hoodwink Bush and his God to trigger (overtly or covertly) WW III/IV and Armageddon, and thereby their God-Deity can then be blackmailed to insert His Son once again—for the last time in secular history. And then like the Assembly of God beliefs of former Secretary of Interior, James Watt, there will be no need to protect the Earth/Nature/Gaia. Why? And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away (Rev. 21:1).

However, this time, their Jesus will return for His Second Coming, as a glorious and victorious general, with power and great glory (Matt. 24:30) and General Jesus will win this last great battle of secular history. Then He will triumphantly establish his Millennial Kingdom in Jerusalem (or near Springfield, Missouri, and Salt Lake City, Utah) with the aid/assistance in any location of the Raptured church’s good old white guys armed with their AK-47/M-16 assault rifles.

These overtly political-military sections will also be bracketed and thus can easily be passed over as can any of my political and military asides.

And a final note on the controversial concept of synchronicities that are sprinkled throughout B&M. For an example of what I mean about these meaningful coincidences, please consider them for what they also are. Synchronicities are mystical moments—or in the insight of Dr. Lenora Leet who considers them as the fifth dimension, which an older and truer name for it is Providence (The Universal Kabbalah, p. 251). Why? There were the many insights into the very nature of synchronicities that occurred on Christmas Day on our patio around two thirty and three o’clock. It’s a very interesting and telling synchronicity as it involves Chagrin Falls, Ohio (Pam von Borcke, a true believer in synchronicities) as well as Stuart, Florida, containing many eye-rollers and non-believers.

My brother Bob began it all by telling another basketball fanatic, Lonna M—about a spectacular six-feet Sioux Indian gal Yellow Tail, (Mandan, North Dakota, Sacajawea) he watched play fantastic basketball in a Gillette Wyoming Energy Tournament—last year.

Lonna, a world-class authority on the Carlisle, Pennsylvania, Indian School, wondered if Chief Yellow Tail was related to that star female Indian basketball player.

She told us how enraged the chief, studying at Carlisle, was that his children were being converted to Christianity, as they lost their dress, culture, and religion. The result: Chief Yellow Tail almost wrecked the Carlisle Indian School. I cried out like Pam does: Synchronicity! Why? Because I was staring at the excellent Australian wine Yellow Tail, while the Bob rattled on, with his boring basketball blather. Lonna then challenged me as to why that exchange was a synchronicity? I didn’t convince her then, but Lord knows I’ve tried.

However, as we were having that discussion about Chief Yellow Tail (actually, Lonna told me later that she had misremembered the actual Chief’s rage that it was Chief Spotted Tail’s rampage). But that Christmas afternoon, it was all Yellow Tail—all the way up from Stuart to Chagrin Falls, Ohio, where the synchronicity-believing Pam, Bob and Shirley’s eldest daughter, was also drinking Yellow Tail! These three different, in time and space, references to Yellow Tail were enough to convince me, Pam,—and perhaps Mels, that a fifth dimension was in the ether that warm, sunny, winter afternoon on my lanai.

My advice to Mels—Gently inform Lonna about Pam’s drinking Yellow Tail wine at the same time as we were. Pam is a true believer in synchronicities, so I welcomed her support and her useful contribution to sealing the Yellow Tail evidence of the many synchronicities of that Christmas Day afternoon (2007) on my patio. Well, ain’t that something? Indeed, it was!

May Koestler, Kammerer, Jung, and Pauli be pleased with my current outbreak of synchronicities? (See September 27, 2007 and February 9-10, 2008, for similar breakthroughs into the fifth dimension.) It is my hope that you do not skip those sections on synchronicities because they were so instrumental in the writing of B&M and in the discovery and plummeting of the deeper mystical aspects of IBWs and especially the important role played by the bird spirit person teacher (BSPT).

And then this morning’s New York Times (December 26, 2007) in a story about Philip Cook saying, We are fortunate to be living in a time when there is a lot of good wine from around the world. Mr Cook’s favourite everyday wine is an Australian cabernet sauvignon made by Yellow Tail, the winemaker whose ads you see all over the place. It costs just $7, which he considers a terrific bargain (David Leonhardt, C1). For my illustrative purposes here, it doesn’t matter if Lonna remembered the wrong Indian chiefs, the troublemakers—Spotted Tail and Yellow Bank. At the Christmastime event, she thought it was Chief Yellow Tail. Why? Because Pam and I were drinking Yellow Tail at the same time as I was starring again at the Yellow Tail label. Why again? Because my eyes glaze over and my mind shuts down when anyone talks basketball or football!

And the New York Times’ David Leonhardt did actually quote Philip Cook on the virtues of Australian Yellow Tail at $7 a regular bottle. Thus, there were only five actual references to Yellow Tail and a sixth reference from Lonna who misremembered Chief Spotted Tail as old Chief Yellow Tail—close enough for government work!

However, I think you will grant my case and my beliefs that there were a series of Christmas Day afternoon meaningful coincidences, centered on/swirling around the words Yellow Tail, which I have chosen to call synchronicities—so be it! Please reserve your judgment on synchronicities (meaningful coincidences) and hold that eye-rolling until you have read how essential they were for my conceptualization of the theory and thrust of Birding and Mysticism—and whether you suddenly experience synchronicities in your daily life and work.

* * *

THE INSIGHTS AND SYNCHRONICITIES THAT INSPIRED BIRDING AND MYSTICISM: ENLIGHTENMENT THROUGH BIRD WATCHING

I have been trying to write Birding and Mysticism (B&M) for at least fifty-five years. In the spring of 1953 at the University of Chicago, my thoughts turned once again back to bird-watching. I had passed my French reading exam and my MA written exam in American history at the high level, thereby qualifying me for admittance into the PhD history program. My free time was limited by the fact that I was going to the Naval Training Station, Newport, Rhode Island, Officer Candidate School (class 12) on May 11, 1953. My girlfriend, Betty S also had exciting claims on my night time hours and activities.

However, it was Professor Charles Hartshorne, world-class philosopher, theologian, and ornithologist—Betty and I baby sat for his daughter Emily—who gave me an idea for a bird book. Besides telling Dr. Hartshorne where to find two of Fox Lake, Illinois’ finest singers (Western meadowlark and yellow-headed blackbird), which he had not yet recorded, Hartshorne encouraged me to begin research on a young person’s beginner’s field guide to bird-watching. He based his suggestion on his own synchronistic introduction to bird-watching when he saw in a store window Reed’s Guide to Eastern Songbirds during a Christmas vacation, before WW I when Hartshorne was returning home from a private school, Yeates, to Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Thirty years later in Scranton, also in Northeast Pennsylvania, I too would buy the same Chester A. Reed’s Bird Guide: Land Birds East of the Rockies (1906, 1909) with its fake red leather cover and poor illustrations to supplement my ten-cent red, blue, yellow, and green Birds of America [MCMXXXI], National Geographic clippings, and Arm and Hammer bird cards and then teach myself about the wood birds (mostly Neotropicals) of the Poconos-Appalachians. Please consider the following synchronicity that just occurred at 2:35 p.m. on February 25, 2008, when I went into the back bedroom to see if I could find my copy of Reed’s bird book and correct this section.

And what did I see on the floor, but a small pile of books—including the very Reed bird book I went there to find. Charlotte said she was straightening up my research books and was going to give me Reed’s book, not ten minutes before I found it on the floor! In reading the editor’s 1951 introduction (p 22), I was then surprised and very pleased to find a favorite passage—which I often misquote—from Charlotte’s reading Edward Lear to Melissa and Melanie forty years ago:

"Two Owls and a Hen

Four Larks and a Wren

Have all built their nests in my beard."

—Chester A. Reed, Bird Guide: Land Birds East of the Rockies,

(Doubleday & Co., 1906, 1909, 1951), p. 22).

Well, ain’t that something? Yes, it was! The occurrence of three synchronicities in ten minutes—just as I was preparing this section on insights and synchronicities that have made B&M possible—which was no simple coincidence! In fact I had just sent two e-mails to Gian Duterte, my Xlibris man in the Philippines, informing him that I was editing this section and would send it to him and Sherwood Soi this very evening! (I had to delay that e-mail to late September 2008 because my MS had miraculously expanded to a seven-hundred-page book.)

Professor Hartshorne made his suggestion because he also taught himself wood warblers—colourful, confusing migrants—like I did beginning in May 1940 at that East Orange, New Jersey, lot when I first encountered and eventually identified a black-throated blue warbler and distinguished a wood thrush from a brown thrasher.

So I went to the imposing card catalogues at the University of Chicago Library and began my search for likely books, old copies of Bird Lore/Nature Magazine that might contain the secret of why teen age boys—mostly—are drawn to bird-watching as Professor Hartshorne and I were. I never discovered that secret then in spring 1953 as I had a rendezvous with the United States Navy. It was only about fifty years later when I glimpsed a possible reason: a mystical generating process caused by the interface of two different species—Homo sapiens and the Bird Nation, happening and occurring within Nature.

This section of B&M—which applies to both volumes—follows the many synchronistic events and happenings, which helped inspire me. I can honestly say, This book wrote itself! Often when I was stumped as to what path to take in my research, a book, a reference, or a comment would mysteriously, magically, and mystically appear. Was my Daimon guiding me? Was Jung’s collective unconsciousness in play here? There sure were one heck of a lot of synchronicities (or Jung’s meaningful coincidences, if you will) involved in these bird books. Or perhaps it was Rabbi Lowe of Prague’s spirit? Or maybe the ghosts and spirits that move in the small hours of the night, when little Baby Chidda hunts mice like Bangur-Ban, the ninth-century Irish monk’s cat, as she and I try to make light out of the Darkness of Ignorance[The Tibetan Book of The Dead, W.Y. Evans-Wentz p. xvi (1960)] that surrounds us—and our civilization.

Perhaps a little brown bird (LBB) may lead us toward the light—or some enlightenment regarding the impending peril facing our Mothers, Nature and Earth,—before it is too late for the phalarope—or even the cockroach? (2012-2025)

THE INSIGHTS AND SYNCHRONICITIES THAT HAVE INSPIRED ME (2004-2008)

o— I had been initiated into the mysteries of the Bird Nation in May 1940 at East Orange, New Jersey—nearly a half century before—when I made my first contact with the Aves’ humble messengers, the black-throated blue warbler (Dendroica caerulescens), wood thrush (Hylocichla mustelina), and brown thrasher (Toxostoma rufum).

o— However, the ancient [Nature]-religious mysteries that I had been initiated into were those mysteries of the shaman’s that existed before organized religion, priests, cities, and civilization and were the province, sphere, and function of Mother Nature—or if you will, pagan times—One of a nation or community which does not worship the true God; a heathen; In earlier use practically = non-Christian.

o— These mysteries were traditionally connected with the "occult, esoteric, secret, concealed, hidden meaning or nature; enigmatical; inspiring an awed sense of mystery (1842), directly related to the mysteries of Nature, or as the Bird Nation—influenced Charles Darwin expressed it over 170 years ago, mystery of mysteries."

o— At eighty and counting, I agree with Campbell (SOED, p. 1306), ’Tis the sunset of life gives me mystical love, and coming events cast their shadows before.

o— And being a mystic obviously involves a heavy dose of mysticism: belief in the possibility of union with the Divine nature by means of ecstatic contemplation; reliance on spiritual intuition as the means of acquiring knowledge of mysteries inaccessible to the understanding and Sometimes applied to philosophical or scientific theories which assume occult [hidden/concealed] qualities or mysterious agencies of which no rational account can be given (SOED, p. 1306). Note my discovery of the meme (Jung, Pauli, and Koestler) of synchronicities or meaningful coincidences creating, sparking, generating mystical moments and how they influenced the evolution of the mystical moments inherent in intensive bird walks (IBW), guided by bird spirit person teachers (BSPT) of which the above many happenstances no rational account can be given.

However, I have for the most part developed a first cut on the ongoing conflict of science and religion, Western and Eastern mysticism, rational mysticism, and the macro mysteries at the end of the universe compared to the micro at the beginning (the Big Bang to the Green Dragon); mysteries (song/migration/behaviour/color) revealed by IBWs, guided by the bird spirit person teacher (BSPT) placed in loving service to the new living cosmology, created to save our Mothers, Nature/Earth, and restore to health Gaia and God’s-Deity’s Creation/Body during this Fourth Great Green Environmental/Ecological Awakening of the third gyre of the Kabbalah (2000-4000 ACE)—tikkun olam (restoration to health). The religiously inclined may look forward to the Coming of the Cosmic Christ, the omega point. Whereas the secular or pagan inclined may look forward to and contribute to the Advent of Cosmic Wisdom/Comic Consciousness.

We are the first generation to live with an empirical view of the origin of the universe. We are the first humans to look into the night sky and see the birth of galaxies, the birth of the cosmos as a whole. Our future as a species will be forged within this new story of the world (Brian Swimme, The Universe Is a Green Dragon: A Cosmic Creation Story [1984], pp. 28-29); If we want to learn anything, we must start with the cosmos, the Earth, and life forms (p. 43)—One can always begin with a humble bird walk and learn about the mysteries of the Bird Nation, its tribes, and some of its ten thousand species—including an Australian parrot whose female is a brilliant crimson and whose male is lime green. Why, this reversal of Nature’s usual laws?

After I finished Truth Seeking (mid-March 2006), I increased my researching for Sacred Birding Rituals, the religious/spiritual/mystical implications—working title then was SBR: A Short-cut to Enlightenment? And now its Birding and Mysticism: Enlightenment Through Bird Watching (Thanks to Melanie Lowe, Nitsa Kann, Russell Farnen, and my Daimon)

o— Edwin W. Teale in his classic North with the Spring (1951) maintains that the American spring begins in the Florida Everglades/Keys and moves northward toward the great Canadian Boreal Forests at fifteen miles a day or about one hundred miles a week. Consider Teale’s description of the Everglades just before the beginning of spring [1947]:

"But there were other signs [other than the Florida winter everglades’ fires]. A dozen miles or so east of Ochopee, one afternoon, we came upon clouds of tree swallows swirling over the saw grass, thousands and thousands of the white-breasted birds skimming low, darting high, endlessly turning, feeding upon insects as they moved into the north. A black buzzard [vulture] with short tail and silver spots under its wing-tips, sailed by, its shadow crisscrossing the highway as it banked and circled. Speeding hundreds of feet above it, so high they were hardly larger than houseflies to the naked eye, were the topmost tree swallows. Through our glasses we could see, to the right and left over the everglades, other swallow clouds, immense flocks, loosely knit, rising, descending, turning, expanding, contracting, always in motion.

The day before, perhaps, many of these birds had been over the sea, coming from Cuba, or among the keys off the Florida mainland. Now the air around us was filled with their liquid calling. A little father on, where the roadside ditch opened into a clear sketch of water free from the massed water hyacinths, thousands of the swallows were drinking on the wing. The birds pelted down like wind-blown raindrops to skim or strike the surface of the ditch and scoop up mouthfuls of water. Their snow-white under plumage caught the sun each time they rose and turned to dive again. thus as long as we watched them the swallows climbed and swooped, rose and fell, revolving in a great wheel in the sky" (Teale, North with the Spring, pp. 5-6).

Nobody knows exactly where spring begins. The season has no starting point like a sprinter on a track. Somewhere south of Lake Okeechobee, in the watery wilderness of the Everglades, it comes into being, swells, and gains momentum. Its arrival becomes more abrupt, more striking, its line of demarcation more evident as it progresses north (p. 9).

"These things—a green haze creeping over the cypress trees, swallows milling in clouds over the saw grass, pillars of smoke around the horizon, crimson bracts lifting above the massed air plants of cypress swamps—these were the earliest indications of spring we saw on the edge of the Everglades . . . .

To the green midst of the cypresses and the moving clouds of the swallows we could add the movement of the stars as a sign of the sure approach of the spring. With all its galaxies and planets and stars, the solar system was setting the stage. Daily the sun rode higher. Nightly the astronomy of spring drew closer. Far-off events were playing their part in the birth of a season (p. 10).

Under those stars we felt a similar emotion of closeness to the world of outer space. We felt what we so rarely feel, a sense of comradeship for the distant suns and planets of the heavens. Usually the starry universe—that vastness of precision machines, that ultimate in the cold logic of physical forces—leaves us with imagination overawed. But here the movement of the stars took on an intense and personal interest. They were important actors in the drama of spring. For seasons begin in the sky. Orion rising earlier in the east, the clouds of tree swallows and the lengthening rays of the sun are sure springtime signs (p. 11).

Teal was of course expressing one of the key themes of B&M: the juxtaposition of the macro mysteries at the end/edge of the universe with the micro mysteries of the here and now activities of the Bird Nation’s swirling thousands of tree swallows feeding ever northward from Cuba, or among the Keys off the Florida mainland—toward the Amherst Marshes of the Bay of Fundy where we would encounter them again in mid-June 2007 (Teale, p. 6; see also B&M, vol. 1).

Here, in this land of spring’s beginning, the changing position of the Earth, reflected in the parade of the constellations over the Everglades, was ushering in the new season. The movement of that vast celestial clock that had ticked away, without haste, without pause, during so many aeons, was bringing spring to the sky, to the land, to the sea around us (Teale, p. 16).

And that, dear readers is why B&M begins in mid-March, 2005 on a fast catamaran ride to Fort Jefferson in the Dry Tortugas, with Wendy Lowe, Mels and Lonna, and yours truly—their BSPT in search of sooty terns and brown boobies and anything rare or interesting. Lonna was in her early stage of becoming a bird spirit person photographer (BSPP) and she captured the spirit of Fort Jefferson with her evocative photo of the terns and boobies in their intermingled nesting hyperactivities, watched over by a large white predator—the glaucous gull (Larus hyperboreus) which Melville ought to have included in his indictment/wonder of whiteness in his chapter The Whiteness of the Whale, chapter 42 [Melville was correct and oh so sadly modern in his assertion that the pre-eminence (of white) applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe (Melville, p. 179). I remember the first albatross I ever saw (Melville, p. 180) And so do I at Midway Island on June 6, 1954, en route to NAS Atsugi, Japan, where I saw my first gooney birds. Melville described how this "regal feathery thing of unspotted whiteness, and with a hooked Roman bill sublime. At intervals, it arched forth its vast archangel wings, as if to embrace some holy ark. Wondrous fluttering and throbbing shook it. Though bodily unharmed, it uttered cries, as some king’s ghost in supernatural distress (my emphasis). Through its inexpressible, strange eyes, methought I peeped to secrets which took hold of God. As Abraham before the angels, I bowed myself; the white thing was so white, its wings so wide, and in those forever exiled waters [Melville’s memories perhaps of the wave albatross at their only nesting grounds of Hood (Espanola) Island, Galapagos, in his sketches, The Encantadas: I had lost the miserable warping memories of traditions and towns. Long I gazed at that prodigy of plumage. I cannot tell, can only hint, the things that darted through me then. But at last I awoke; and turning asked a sailor what bird this was. A gooney, he replied. Gooney! I never had heard the name before.

And you know what? One of President Bush’s torture-enablers, Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II, who helped the White House court lawyers—Addington, Yoo, Bybee, and Gonzalez—draw up Bush’s torture NSC Action Memo on enhanced interrogation (Gestapo’s term) for the Inquisition’s waterboarding, ought to wish he had never heard the name before. Why? Because although Haynes’s not aware of it, he has had a special green curse placed on him by the Bird Nation (I’m their agent for all curses) for wanting to kill most of the Midway Island’s gooney birds for DOD’s demonic purposes. By killing 90 percent of Midway Island’s albatrosses, the birds would become rare and thus more bird-watchers would go to Midway Island for their life lists—thus increasing tourism—ecotourism! Why, such a dastardly deed? Yeah, and Bush’s official February 7, 2002, NSC memo authorization of waterboarding wasn’t torture either!

And now In the midst of all February 25 synchronicities, Josh Marshall’s TPM alerted me that my curse of the Bird Nation about William J. Haynes II had come to pass. Those thousands of Midway albatrosses around his neck were too much even for Cheney to kill off. Bush has formally withdrawn Haynes’s name for a Federal Appeals Court Judgeship. Now, for the Antichrists themselves! I must quiz my full moon—singing mockingbirds if they have picked up any Bird Nation rumours about Nemesis’s hunt for the Bush-Cheney, the Hubris-Twins, from the migrating robins.

As if the curse of the Bird Nation of 2001 (Ireland, Truth Seeking, p. 222-224) wasn’t enough, my new gooney bird curse and Coleridge’s too—will most certainly forever blight and haunt these modern environmental Huns and ecological Vandals and would—be Antichrists of President George W. Bush’s doomed, damned, and defiled administration! Nemesis, please take note in 2008 and finally get your hubris-driven men ASAP. It’s now only twelve minutes into this hopeful New Year. I beseech you to get and neutralize those evil Antichrists, as do tens of thousands of innocents and endangered species throughout our beleaguered and besieged Mothers—Nature/Earth—cry out for help, for even under the Orwellian regime of the House of Bush II—"Extinction is forever!"

However, given the givens we also must give thanks, at the very least that it’s Bush’s last year of reigning, Reiching, and wrecking our beloved pre-January 20, 2001—America.

"So here’s a toast [thanks to Medea Benjamin] to a green future, diplomacy and surviving the last [death] throes of the Bush regime—without the Antichrists pre-emptively triggering Armageddon-WW III-leading in 2008 to a Genghis Kahn-like, Slayer of millions by the likes of B-2 pilots, Genghis Price and Nuke Tibbets!—How’s that for synchronicities? (Robert D. Kaplan, The Plane That Would Bomb Iran, the Atlantic.com [September 2007]/Andrew Sullivan, Daily Dish, February 25, 2008).

But 2008 is just twelve hours young here in South Florida, and I had this dream, really a nightmare after I banged the pots, in honour of my saintly mother’s Irish (Callahan)/German (Langendorfer)/English (Weeks) ancestors[And the DNA, East Asian Bridge Travelers]—to get rid of any demons in my home here in Stuart and symbolically in my America, before the Anti Christs—Bush/Cheney—also steal the election of 2008.

Nightmare no. 1 was waking up on January 1, 2009, and looking back on what the voters, the Christian and Corporate Fascists hath wrought! Coleridge’s prophetic words from The Ancient Mariner’s verse 6, stanza 10, surged—yes surged into my head as I looked back on 2008!

Like one that on a lonesome road

Doth walk in fear and dread,

And having once turned round walks on,

And turns no more his head;

Because he knows a frightful fiend

Doth close behind him tread.

Indeed, will the traditional center hold? Or will those men (white)/women (blonds) of passionate intensity ride that rough Fascist beast—born again in Bethlehem and help him set up their General Lord Jesus Christ’s Great White Throne in Jerusalem or Salt Lake City. (Recall and note Melville’s prophetic voice again in his dissertation on Whiteness: though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool [Melville, Moby-Dick, p. 179]. To be revisited for answers in 364 days on January 1, 2009). My take as of early 2009: future historians or patriotic leakers will reveal how very, very close the Bush administration came to supporting/allowing/encouraging Israel to launch a pre-emptive attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the summer of 2006 and the fall of 2008. Thank you, Bird Nation for your last minute intervention—overruling the war hawks of Israel and the Anti-Christ Cheney’s "chicken hawks".

Direct from a trip on the Napo River, Napo Wildlife Center, Ecuador (May 16-19, 2007), I was re-reading James to help me develop the mystical components of IBWs and searching for Wallace’s book, Travels on the Amazon and Rio Negro, on his collecting trip to the Amazon/Negro, to see if the co-discoverer of Evolution had visited the Napo. There in Beebe’s The Book of Naturalists (1944) was the reference (p. 106) to Wallace’s book on the Amazon/Negro (1844)—which the kind Liverpool librarians found me a copy. Alas, Wallace did not collect on the Napo, but he found many of our spectacular Blue Morphos on the Negro. Moreover, during my research, I discovered, on June 20, 2006, that In 1865 he [William James] joined an expedition [of his Harvard professor and friend, the famous biologist Louis Agassiz] to the Amazon. Before long, he wrote: If there is anything I hate is collecting. (Synchronicity perhaps?; from the Modern Library note on the author of The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James [1842-1910].)

Moreover, upon rereading those lectures on mysticism for volume 2 (pp. 370-420) and checking on them again for these insights, I was immediately stuck and was so very pleasantly surprised at the excellent summary of James’s lectures XVI/XVII on mysticism that I must include it here in its entirety:

MYSTICISM

"Mysticism defined—four marks of mystic states—they form a distinct region of consciousness—examples of their lower grades—Mysticism and alcohol—‘The anaesthetic revelation’—Religious mysticism—Aspects of Nature—Consciousness of God-‘Cosmic consciousness’ [See Section Five on Richard M. Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness (1901) and William James’s pregnant FN/p. 390, Cosmic Consciousness: a study in the evolution of the human mind, Philadelphia, 1901,]—Yoga—Buddhist mysticism—Sufism—Christian mystics—Their sense of revelation—Tonic effects of mystic states—they describe by negatives—Sense of union with the Absolute—Mysticism and music—Three conclusions—(1) mystical states carry authority for him who has them—(2) but for no one else—(3) Nevertheless, they break down the exclusive authority of rationalistic states—They strengthen monistic and optimistic hypotheses [James, p. xi]. And they suggest to me and others [Professor Davies] another way of knowledge" into our and the universe[s]’ existence/rationale/mysteries thereof/therein.

James proposes four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures:

1. Ineffability: its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others; and mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect.

2. Noetic quality: "mystical states seem . . . to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insights into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance . . . and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for aftertime."

3. Transiency: mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day; From one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.

4. Passivity: the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped by a superior power; Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the life of the subject between the times of their recurrence (James, pp. 371-372).

These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness [mystical] peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group (James, p. 372). Thus, James inspired me to consider mystical consciousness, mystical experiences, mystical feelings, mystical occasions, mystical moments, mystical moods in Nature: mountains, forests, oceans, seashore, oceanic feelings (immersed in the infinite ocean of God [James quoting J. Trevor, p. 389]—and in meaningful coincidences—synchronicities—with their own mystical component!)

And it as only a matter of time that I assimilated these mystical ideas of James and applied them to first traditional bird walks and eventually to intensive bird walks (IBW), by another of James’s insights (see point 15 below) for an expansion of IBWs—my discovery/formulation for encountering another specie and by this crossing—generating mystical moments, impacting positively on the individual and the planet, via the phenomena of a butterfly flapping its wings over the Great Wall of China influencing the sunrise at Loon Landing. Or those green actions of individual citizens (practical mysticism) which actually do trouble a star. (See a list of ordinary green actions [really practical mysticism] for new activists of The Fourth Great Green Environmental/Ecological Awakening in Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.)

James in his The Varieties of Religious Experience favourably and openly discusses Bucke’s great discovery from pages 389-391. However, that was not enough for me and the kind Liverpool librarians found me Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness and his bio by a fellow Canadian doctor.

Even the least mystical of you, James writes as his introduction to Bucke’s Cosmic Consciousness, "must by this time be convinced of the existence of mystical moments [see my IBWs for their ability to actually create these mystical moments and this magic phenomena lies at the very heart of my future hopes for a vital contribution of mysticism via IBWs for Matthew Fox’s new living cosmology to save our Mothers: Nature/Earth as states of consciousness are created of an entirely specific quality, and of the deep [lasting] impression which they make on those who have them.] (James, p. 389). And James continues explaining Bucke’s mystical insights.

A Canadian psychiatrist Dr. R. M. Bucke gives to the more distinctly characterized of these phenomena the name of cosmic consciousness. Cosmic consciousness in its more striking instances is not, Dr. Bucke says, "simply an expansion or extension of the self-consciousness mind with which we are all familiar, but with the superaddition of a function as distinct from any possessed by the average man as self-consciousness is distinct from any function possessed by one of the higher animals."

According to Dr. Bucke, "The prime characteristic of cosmic consciousness is a consciousness of the cosmos, that is, of the life and order of the universe.[This essentially secular view of Bucke is completely compatible with Pope John Paul II’s discourse on October 3, 1981, at the solemn audience granted to the Plenary Session and Participants in the Study Week dedicated to Cosmology and Fundamental Physics.]

Pope John Paul II seems to clear the way for either/both of The Coming of the Cosmic Christ (religious) or the Advent of Cosmic Wisdom (secular). Brian Swimme, in a cosmic tour de force nearly a quarter of a century ago, anticipated the needs of our Mothers, Earth/Nature, for a Cosmic Wisdom to assert itself, led by men and women understanding the hidden truth by a burst of illumination—glimpsed by Richard Bucke in his cosmic consciousness of the immensely/infinitely larger cosmic creation story, set forth his The Universe Is a Green Dragon (1984).

Borrowing from Swimme’s collaborator, Matthew Fox (Manifesto for a Global Civilization, 1980), I have stressed the future central role Fox visualizes in his revolutionary The Coming of the Cosmic Christ in order to save our Mothers—Earth/Nature from premature death, destruction, and extinction. Fox believes, and I agree, that in order to save the Earth/its oceans and its species a new Grand (Green) Paradigm is needed, with a related, operative new living cosmology for the twenty-first century. (I have called this phenomenon of the twenty-first century a "Green Paradigm.")

I develop this new living cosmology (NLC) rooted both in Christianity—the Cosmic Christ and/or the secular Cosmic Wisdom (see Swimme’s entire The Universe Is a Green Dragon and in Part no 2, Sections C-1/C-3. This new living cosmology of The Fourth Great Green Environmental/Ecological Awakening