Barfield and beyond: Part II
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| Tehran, Iran, 1977 |
"Judging by the letters that the Subject receives and occasional references in other people’s books and articles, and by some other indications, the concepts of ‘original participation’ and ‘final participation’ (or perhaps the choice of that particular terminology) have been of some considerable importance to quite a few people. I don’t think that he would ever have been able to evolve those concepts, or that terminology or however you call it, if the evolutionary relation between macrocosm and microcosm which is the marrow of Anthroposophy, had not become to him, during the pralaya, something more than an abstract idea, more like an actual experience, though no doubt a very rudimentary one; and I am convinced that that would never have come about except as the result of considerable meditation on the nature of eurhythmy and of a long, long love affair with the little book called the Calendar of the Soul."
After thirty-three years of reading and studying and discussing his work - including a sustained correspondence from 1988 to 1992 - I've come to find Owen Barfield's method of transcendence to be the most important aspect of his work. In the quote above, he tells us details about that method.
He gave lots of details about his method, directly with prose, indirectly with stories, and figuratively in The Silver Trumpet. He was always talking and writing about two things: how to do it, and what you find as a result.
Simon Blaxland-de Lange published a monumental biography of Owen Barfield in 2006, Owen Barfield: Romanticism Come of Age. When I read it, I was fundamentally shook up, on multiple counts: Simon captures so much of Barfield's personality, and character, that fills in so much empty space in my understanding of him, epecially his motives or ambitions, his intentions.
Another shake up: Barfield wrote that Rudolf Steiner seemingly had 'forgotten volumes more' than Barfield ever knew, and that his (Barfield's) own most daring conclusions about the nature and history of language and of human consciousness, Steiner started there, and from direct experience rather than as deduction or extrapolation.
I feel toward Mr. Blaxland-de Lange's revelatory biography as Barfield did toward Steiner: my most daring conclusions about Barfield having a method of participation, of conscious contact with spiritual reality and the history of humanity 'bathed in the light of the evolution of consciousness,' this biographer takes as fact, and grants the reader jewel after jewel of detail from Owen Barfield's life.
My copy of Romanticism Come of Age is half underlined and crammed with marginal notes and stars and exclamation points. I've taken much of this biography, but I think especially or more deeply, because I'd at least come to some of these conclusions, myself, too, and as tenuously held in my case as they were, they were nonetheless pricelessly important.
This is why I'm writing this: one's method, one's practice, is what makes the difference, and unless we learn from someone who already has some success in the matter, we'll stumble around a lot longer than necessary. Barfield qualifies, and in any case offers his own experience as a suggestion for how to experience spiritual reality - final participation, sense-free thinking.
Mr. Blaxland-de Lange says to his readers, including those who come to the book by their interest in anything connected with their own here, C. S. Lewis:
"Those whose interest in Barfield and patience with the present volume have been sustained solely by their enthusiasm for the works of his better-known friends…are now invited to forsake the well-charted territory…in order to make the acquaintance of one for whom crossings of thresholds, journeys into other worlds, encounters with spiritual beings and changing forms of consciousness were not part of the apparatus of an imagined world, in the ordinary sense, but something accessible to serious investigation."
That's where I've arrived, which is only the beginning of the story Blaxland-de Lange tells, and which absolutely needs telling.
So what IS the method?
There are several distinct practices Barfield describes; here are the main ones:
- Study of the history of languages, specifically word histories
- Reading and writing poetry
- Meditation
- Concrete meaning as a regulative principle
About the first practice: Read History in English Words, Poetic Diction, and/or Saving the Appearances and you are introduced, in very different ways, to an experience of human language - and its correlative, human consciousness - in a new, dynamic way.
Read Night Operation to understand just how serious Barfield was about this practice, and what he thought it looked like objectively.
His Unancestral Voice shows us intimate details about his inner life that are central to the long, lovely story he tells of the evolution of consciousness.
All these references to actual personal practice, taken together, reveal just exactly what anchors, and elicits or mediates, the very experiences that are, in turn, the foundations of Barfield's evolution of consciousness. They are essential.
This focus on practice and method makes connections unlooked for, as well as some that are expected, and firms up a conviction that I'm onto something.
For instance, it makes much more sense of the facts about the intellectual relationship between Barfield's thought and JRR Tolkien's creations of middle earth, where the vast bulk of the literature on the topic strains to bring into focus the invisible workings of the two minds, to find a conscious, and deliberately sustained, adoption by Tolkien of concepts comprising Barfield's evolution of consciousness, and then allegorizing this as stories of the First Age of Middle Earth.
Instead, the 'influence' is their shared practices, which, as it turns out, does include the guiding principle of Barfield's concept of 'ancient semantic unity' or 'concrete meaning,' but which is adopted as a methodological technique. Tolkien and Barfield also shared the other three practices of etymology, poetry, and meditation.
Another connection brought about by attention to method is the practical, personal one: how can I see what Barfield saw? How can I, personally, engage in this practice, and thereby - and only thereby - fairly and accurately judge the value of Barfield's work?
Finally, for this post anyway, this attention to method brings us, I think, to the growth node of Barfieldian studies: How do I invoke or elicit, at will, the felt change of consciousness, what do I make of what is revealed, and how can I understand the experience epistemologically?
This is vague, so an example may help: With regard to the notion of concrete meaning, how can I more deeply understand just what is concrete meaning? One example Barfield gives in Saving the Appearances is the Greek word for wind or spirit, pneuma. The challenge now, for every serious reader, is to come up with your own examples of concrete meaning. No more reciting the pneuma story.
So, I have a running list of words and their histories for which I have special interest. One of them is Latin altus, which means both high and deep. Another is focus, which is Latin for 'hearth' and alludes to fire and home, but which Kepler used for the ideal points in space around which the planets orbited the sun, but then was used in a different way with the advent of photography, which is apparently the subsequent source of our contemporary 'focus' as in 'concentrate' or 'concentration'.
Another is rake. Not only is there the word history to study. With this word, I took a different approach: what am I doing when I 'rake' the yard? As I watch the raking itself, and think about my intentions as I wield the rake, I see that I am: separating; bringing together; directing; digging; aligning; moving; sifting; etc.. I'm not just thinking up synonyms; I'm watching myself as I literally use a rake in the yard, and watch the rake and my mind as I do so.
I took that turn and added a twist with 'focus' already mentioned: Can I get through one day without saying or thinking the word 'focus'? Can I use some other word/concept to think with, to get at my meaning in that moment?
It's when we start doing this, and further, we compare notes with others employing similar methods, we can make lots of progress - even if it's to say, 'no, that doesn't work'.
With regard to the other practices, work them in a similar way, take them as your own, as real tools.
Meditation is a single practice, but informs and nurtures all others. It's what binds them all. So then you find yourself meditating on mantras that you've created, like this one:
I am healthy, I am whole.
I am hale and happy.
Hale, healthy, whole and happy intertwine in their meaning and history, and meditating on this little verse begins to bring out the connections.
This kind of exercise easily - or maybe, intuitively - turns to writing poetry, especially when spoken out loud or mentally 'recited' to emphasize the breathing and breaks and pauses. But however begun, writing poetry uses that part of your brain (sic) that intuits - engages spirit.
You can see that just by discussing actual method and practices, brings up all kinds of difficulties, not in carrying out the method, but in getting a hearing for such a 'take' on Barfield's work. We're supposed to meditate, write poetry, subscribe to the OED Online, and read and study Poetic Diction to learn what concrete meaning is, and we'll see the spirit world?
Hence the tendency to avoid a serious discussion of methods of transcendence as actual personal, private practices. But I think this is the direction we should, and can, most profitably establish Barfield's legacy and make it available to humanity at large.
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