Sanātana Dharma Bums & Heavenly Hobos

Yes. That's what we are. Sanātana Dharma Bums, eternal hobos wandering the earth or huddled around a fire in the slackheap of the present.

Things I learned in a hobo jungle
Were things they never taught me in a classroom --Merle Haggard

The hobo used to be be an American archetype. There was a time, before the age of political correctness, when they weren't necessarily patronized as "homeless." Rather, one of the great privileges of America was that one was free to be homeless, to wander, to stay in motion, to not put down roots, to follow that dream wherever that dream may lead. The homesteader and drifter form the warp and weft of the American fabric, like container and contained, male and female, infinite and absolute.

I guess I grew up a loner,
I don't remember ever havin' any folks around.

I don't remember much from my film school education, but I do know that this is an archetype that appears in American cinema, often in westerns, in which the drifter, or outsider, who is "above good and evil," is needed to save the established order. Or, you might say that the establishment is threatened by the uncivilized from below, but rescued by the "post-civilized" from above. John Wayne often played this kind of character. Today he would be arrested by liberal thought police and placed in sensitivity training. Note that George Bush's evocation of this male archetype was completely unacceptable to a thoroughly castrated and feminized left.

I never travel in a hurry,
'Cause I got nobody waitin' for me anywhere.

In Old Europe, the person without place was always considered dangerous, a threat to the established order, but America was founded by wanderers, half of whom put down roots, the other half of whom kept on wandering, first westward, into the frontier, and then, when the physical frontier closed in the late 19th century, inward and upward. (In fact, now that I think about it, my father, who emigrated here from England in 1948, was pretty much of a hobo, working and traveling from town to town until arriving on the west coast and marrying my mother in 1954. In so doing, he was living his childhood vision of America, and having an adventure he never could have had in the Old World.)

Home is anywhere I'm livin',
If it's sleepin' on some vacant bench in City Square,
Or if I'm workin' on some road gang,
Or just livin' off the fat of our great land.

But drifters do not only wander upward. Again, exactly analogous to the dangerous outsiders of the old west, some ventured downward, which was essentially what the whole counter-culture movement was about, beginning in the 1950s and '60s -- Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, Alan Watts, and all the rest.

But in order to break out of the established order, something must first be broken, so it's not surprising that a lot of would-be celestial drifters were initially attracted to false teachers before getting on the right pathless path. Fortunately, God protects the sincere individual who has purity of intent from being fundamentally damaged by these corrupted teachings and teachers.

Culturally and politically speaking, the "downward movement" of the counter-culture became the new establishment of the subsequent generation, now casting conservatives in the role of outsiders and rebels. As Flynn writes in A Conservative History of the American Left, when all of the dust from the 1960s settled, the insurrectionists became the guardians of a new dreary establishment and life-denying conformity, expertly marketing it from childhood on up, from MTV to Rolling Stone, from CNN to the New York Times, from preschool to postgrad, in movies, music, literature, and every other medium.

This is what is so ironic about the Obama campaign, since it has nothing whatsoever to do with real change (as opposed to agitation) or revolution (as opposed to rebellion), certainly not from "above." Rather, it is simply the embodiment of the "acquired truths" and "stale pieties" (Flynn) of the past, now enforced by the mechanism of political correctness and the heavy-handed propaganda arm of the MSM. It is utterly conformist to the core, which is what makes it so simultaneously flimsy and frightening.

I heard Obama's much-praised speech on Tuesday, and -- please, I'm not invoking Godwin's law -- the first thing I thought of was Hitler, not Martin Luther King. When masses of people get swept up in this kind of irrational and hysterical vacuity, it should give pause to any sufficiently sober and detached person. This is not good. Until now, the left was a contemptuous vanguard that had to lead the reluctant masses by the nose. But now, it seems that the boobs are leading the vanguard, which is precisely what knocked Hillary for a loop. "How can these ungrateful little people be thinking for themselves? Even the negroes! How dare they!"

(Obama "sees the necessity of reeling in those of faith, and making them part of the class struggle, while avoiding the harsher approach of demanding that the people give up their faith as a consequence of their commitment to revolutionary change. Americans have proven much more stubborn in the religious realm than the Europeans, who fell hook, line and sinker for Marx, Lenin and Stalin. America might seem more amenable to the kind of Third Way socialism that Hitler brought to Germany, while cunningly using Christian jargon to wile his way into Aryan minds and hearts.")

We're getting sidetracked, aren't we? What can I say? I'm a heavenly hobo and one of Hermes' hermits.

Where I've been or where I'm goin'
Didn't take alot of knowin'

One of my favorite chapters in Meditations on the Tarot is Letter IX, The Hermit. In fact, that's him, on the cover of the book, with a walking staff in his left hand and a lantern in his right. Although I'm not sure, something or someone tells me that this will segue nicely with the material under discussion.

"For it is the venerable and mysterious Hermit who was master of the most intimate and most cherished dreams of my youth, as moreover he is the master of dreams for all youth in every country, who are enamoured by the call to seek the narrow gate and the hard way to the Divine." For surely, we are on a journey, except that it is an inward journey. This is not our home!

No, we are on the move, staff in one hand, fleshlight in the other. The Hermit "possesses the gift of letting light shine in the darkness -- this is his 'lamp'; he has the faculty of separating himself from the collective moods, prejudices and desires of race, nation, class and family -- the faculty of reducing to silence the cacophony of collectivism vociferating around him, in order to listen to and understand the hierarchical harmony of the spheres..."

Thus, he could never be part of the Obama hysteria, for he represents the very opposite of this luciferian movement, which doesn't walk upright unaided, and certainly carries no light! Rather, they all stand in the dark with mutual assistance, otherwise known as a mob. To put it another way, gravity is not a "movement." Rather, it is merely stasis in action. I don't want to be there when it hits bottom, or when the bottom dwellers hit us.

The Hermit moves, but always with both feet firmly planted on the ground, one step at a time, assimilating what he has learned and weaving it into his own substance before moving on: "he possesses a sense of realism which is so developed that he stands in the domain of reality not on two feet, but rather on three, i.e., he advances only after having touched the ground through immediate experience and at first-hand contact without intermediaries -- this is his "staff.'"

With this staff -- which is also the staff of the Sanātana Dharma, or what is always true for all time -- "he creates light, he creates silence and he creates certainty," which is none other than Coon Central, or the supramental clarity of "harmony with the totality of revealed truths and of that which is the object of immediate experience."

As such, this Hermit is "a wise and good father who is a reflection of the Father in heaven." Is it any wonder that Obama -- who knew only a deadbeat father and wooly-headed counter-cultural mother -- was attracted to a sick and twisted father (Rev. Wright) and now wishes to be that mother-father to the rest of us?

But what if you are a Son of the Real who doesn't need Big Government to be your mommy and daddy and shape you into its beastly image?

Then get out of the way, bum! You're blocking the Unity!

... and Unity's just another word for no freedom left to lose...

Keep thyself as a stranger and pilgrim upon the earth, who hath nothing to do with the affairs of this world. --The Imitation of Christ

Rise above time and space
Pass by the world, and be to yourself your own world. --Shabistari

To be the heavenly Father's Son, one has to be a stranger to the world... --Meister Eckhart

But I keep thumbin' through the phone books,
And lookin' for my daddy's name in every town. --Merle Haggard, I Take A Lot of Pride In What I AM