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The Wise Guide
"Two people have been living in you all your life," writes Sogyal Rinpoche, Buddhist master and author of the modern classic The Tibetan Book Of Living And Dying:
One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to… The more often you listen to this wise guide, the more easily you will be able to change your negative moods yourself, see through them, and even laugh at them for the absurd dramas and ridiculous illusions that they are.
This same still voice is what we seek in divination. It enters the oracular procedure by way of intermediaries--cards, sticks, dice, coins, leaves, charts, and so forth. In divination, the intermediaries provide only the means by which The Wise Guide speaks. They are secondary, like air transportation to Honolulu, yet indispensable for getting to your real destination. That for divination is no other than The Wise Guide's illumination--particularly in matters of large consequence-- where higher intelligence is wanting. "How shall I adjust?" "Where should I take refuge?" "What am I not seeing?"
When cutting to the chase, all diviners, as humble servants of forecast and prediction, want only to hear The Wise Guide's voice, feel his energy, and taste his distinct flavor in their intermediaries. They want "Elvis" to enter the arena, so to speak, they want to feel the man in the long black coat. Short of this, all their assorted card stocks of Renaissance tarots, all their cryptic nature poetry of moving lines and Pre-Confucian hexagrams, all their fadic reductions of streaming Pythagorean numerologies will remain flat-lined in The Wise Guide's absence. Elvis has left the building. Or perhaps he never arrived. The whole thing was a sham.
This explains, perhaps, why computer-generated readings are typically so uncompelling and why readings from afar-via phone lines or radio waves-will necessitate careful preliminaries to be effective. Forecast suffers from lack of immediate divine presence, and by the same token, is set correct when the "great intangible" envelopes (no matter its invisibility to the eyes) the shared space of reader and questioner.
My friend Dr. Hall, an eminent Jungian analyst and author, once commented in a letter: "Science without parapsychology is one dimensional; parapsychology without synchronicity misses psyche." This point is well-stated less we become lab-coated parapsychologists surveying the Nowhere Land that extends between science and mysticism. We need to know that the human psyche must be squeezed for Elvis to enter. We need to know that, oddly enough, it is our own personalities that are the true engines of magical intervention.
Without our direct participation, without our hearts and souls (and their attendant neuroses) dripping off the table, tarot cards and the like might stimulate some interest, but they alone won't squeeze the psyche. For that, the far greater catalyst is what co-arises between reader and questioner-the human element-that is sincerely engaged in the oracular task. It is why I use the capital T for "Tarot" to include not simply the deck of 78 tarot cards, but also the lived divinatory process and human energy field that surrounds it.
The Artist
Much as diviners want "The Wise Guide" to be swimming down the stream of their forecasts, the artists, poets, and creative others want to absorb, engrave, mimic, sing, or inscribe "His" sensibility into their own productions. For the artist in general, wherever "His" sphere of influence resonates, it is likely there that the opus becomes instantly engaged, or perhaps "enchanted" is the better word. Ordinary attention instinctively draws to such enchantment-the place of fresh interest and subtle intrigue, the place of anomaly and idiosyncrasy, the place where a mysterious "something" touches us "between the eyes" no matter that it resides center stage or hides in the eaves. Something is intuitively alive there. True beauty, I believe, rests also in this sphere.
Instinctively, unconsciously, and probably for good cause, the psyche is attracted to these rare parts, these "signature-sightings" of The Wise Guide. Like the disconcerting gaze in Mona Lisa's eyes, such signature-sightings defy reduction into something other. They point to a critically overlooked emanation of the whole; they are like secret cameras installed on the far side of the moon. Artworks that are lacking in some iota of this presence, some semblance of the atypical, some scribble of The Wise Guide's signature, are ultimately cheap reproductions of the known and as such are no more than "signage." No matter their technical acuity or imaginative reach, works missing the subtle signature of TheWise Guide are ultimately unremarkable and unworthy of a compelling second glance.
Imagination, as we all know, is our sole surviving remnant of the forbidden world. It is the crucial factor that separates us from the lower forms, and simultaneously, offers us the one necessary portal for joining with the higher forms. As Coleridge wrote: "The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception." From this perspective, likewise, the single greatest danger facing modern civilization is the covert suppression, curtailment, and threatened eradication of the imagination, evidenced currently in the sweeping specters of fundamentalism, rampant materialism, cutthroat politics, and scientific fanaticism that permeate our globe. There seems less and less value accorded the imaginative arts in this sad age we now occupy. One need remember as The High Priestess of Tarot reminds us-- that only through the cultivation of imagination, and its primary language-intuition-- can The Wise Guide enter our world.
A Stranger Among Us
Who is this Wise Guide anyway? Why all the commotion? The answer is obvious, though curiously it addresses a fundamental flaw of human nature itself: "He" is not one of "Us." In fact, "He" is a stranger to human beings, and will likely remain a stranger. His voice resonates from regions forbidden to normal eyes and ears. A voice that is neither tied to accumulated knowledge or hard-working intellect. His wisdom is not a by-product of personal experience or cultural heritage. Its natural intelligence is rooted in the biology of mind (not brain). The Wise Guide's spirituality stands apart from the canons of organized religion; "morality," as "He" sees it, is always in the service of individuation or self-realization. His compassion is not a charitable conclusion to the goodness of our hearts. It is rather the compassion of the lamp, mantle, and staff:
To Become One
Of Clarity And Light (The Lamp)
Within The Fabric Of Universal Spirit (The Mantle)
As revealed in Immediate Experience (The Staff)
That is his motto, but "He" is a stranger to even our best and brightest. "He" stems rather from something far less conditional, far less worldly. And so it happens, paradoxically, that this Wise Fellow seems eminently trustworthy when he enters our ballroom. Precisely, that is, because "He" is not one of "Us." We expect more from him than we would ourselves, that's why we like him, though in ordinary times, in fairness, "He" is not particularly embraced like the family schnauzer, nor would we invite him over for Christmas dinner.
The Wise Guide, in truth, is an alien being-- though oddly not extraterrestrial. Unlike us, however, "He" is neither "garrulous, demanding, hysterical, or calculating"-but rather taciturn and non-verbal. "He" makes no demands of us, and appears wholly un-invested in what we do or fail to do. The Wise Guide, in fact, is ill-suited for politics, team sports, or festive occasions for that reason. "He" is like the wind in our face.
We know when The Wise Guide is present mostly by the impression he leaves in our hearts: a disquieting certitude of long completed truths. Ultimately, "He" is an agent of timeless wisdom. An archetype of our own possibility. However, ironically, our attraction to 'Him" speaks more to our fundamental distrust of ourselves. After all, the collective track record of our kind has been unimpressive. We suffer a certain "love/hate" thing with higher knowledge it seems. We call on it only when we are miserable or lost. Yet despite pretenses to the contrary, we are only too aware of our own innate limitations.
In a true divinatory culture, The Wise Guide is a comfortable house guest. Here though, we seek for disquieting certitude mainly when the regular system fails. The feeling that, in this hot moment, Elvis has entered the room. Perhaps now, in this broken time, we may all turn to the stranger among us.
Art Rosengarten
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