Some more rambling notes on Joseph Smith and how he's influenced me

autobiographical notes that might be of interest to no one but me

Due to recent events and conversations, some described here, I found myself thinking about how exactly mormonism and Joseph Smith influenced my life. Because there was another surge of interest in the article I wrote about it two years ago (which is still my most widely read, and most commented piece on this whole blog, which is funny to me), I read it again after a long, long time, and while I still agree with myself from back then, it was also about midway through my active interest and engagement with the topic. By this I mean, reading, thinking, praying on it all. I was still learning, and everything was still settling (I think the enthusiasm of novelty can be felt in the article). Thus, naturally, and in many ways, the article is hopelessly outdated, and it makes me cringe a little.

For one, I framed it as an open letter to christian esoterists. I guess I remember why, but it just seems a little stupid and ridiculous now. I didn’t immediately know why it seemed stupid and ridiculous and why it made me cringe, but I reasoned back, and I know now. It’s because Joseph Smith was the one who freed me from perennialism and esoterism. After mormon ideas had settled in my mind and heart, I no longer needed any of that esoteric stuff, not as a ‘doctrine’ at least. I could incorporate everything that I thought true from it, as from everything that came before, but I didn’t need it as an umbrella anymore, or as a label, or consider myself part of it (whatever it is, which is awfully hard to define anyway). I suppose some people might say some of my interests (or even the way I live) have some things that might be called ‘esoteric’ or ‘occult’ (though that other, latter stuff was of very small interest to me throughout, I never wanted to do ceremonial magic or any thing of the sort). I mean stuff like having a magical worldview, living and behaving with the knowledge that all things are alive, and purposeful. I suppose that’s true. But ‘esoterism’ as a doctrine or group or ideology, really has not much to do with it at all. Whereas Joseph Smith very much does. Encountering him was fundamental in filling my life with magic, it made it real, instead of only a thing of the mind, which in many ways it was with perennialism and all those related ideas, as well as with church doctrine. To put it in a rather quaint way, I really didn’t know Jesus or Mary or the Father until I encountered Joseph Smith and engaged with him. In many ways, even while fully engaged in churches and everything else, gods and saints and spirits were less than real, not more than, which they are now in my heart and mind and flesh. It didn’t really shape the way I lived, except by the following of rules, but this is an artificial thing, and I always felt it as artificial. And now it’s natural, and becoming more so.

This is not a ‘I never loved you’ kind of thing. I was indeed in love with perennialism and esoterism, for a time (I tend to fall in love easily anyway, and often repeatedly, and with the same things). And I still have great fondness (even love) for some of those people. I will always love Guenon for many reasons, and I use love here in the fullest sense possible, and I even pray both to him and for him, actually. Schuon too, for different reasons, though I wouldn’t pray to him. But the truth is that, while I found a lot in them, truth and beauty and everything else, all these aspects were peripheral. At the center of it was still a metaphysics of absurdity, that if pursued outward to those other aspects, outward to real life here and now, and what came before and what will come after, would end up in nothing, because it begins in nothing. Guenon’s understanding of symbols, or Schuon’s love of nature, to give two examples that I still value, have zero to do with the supposed metaphysics, there’s no connection at all. And I’m a type of person who needs things to be coherent. Not in an abstract, analytical sense, but really in a practical sense. If Schuon talks about prayer, and I believe him, I need to know why one should pray, how it connects to everything else. And when I followed him back to the metaphysics he supposedly held as true, it made zero sense. Why pray if at the center of it all is a black hole of absoluteness with no investment in anything at all. Anyway, I’ve written about this before too, and there’s no point in saying it all again. (also in this essay, I no longer quite connect to it - as with most essays I wrote before switching to fiction, not so much because I disagree with the ideas, but because I just find the tone ridiculous and pedantic and unnecessary, and now I’d much rather write stories where the ideas play out with people, as they do in real life).

Long story short, this lack of connection between heaven and earth in perennialism was the same problem I had found before, in classical theology and church doctrine, and what I wanted to escape from, or find a solution to. It’s a little strange to think now that altogether my perennialist or esoterist phase lasted only two and half years. Because it was really intense. Yet now, looking back, after having read all those guys, from the major authors to the minor ones, not much is left. Even more peripheral authors like Tomberg really left only small impressions, though I really loved his books at the time. But now I mostly don’t think about these people, or their ideas, at all. Not even the parts I still like and agree with.

But I do think about Joseph Smith, and his ideas, and his example, a lot. Pretty much every day. He is as much a part of my daily life as God the Father, or Jesus, or Mary, or Abraham, or Noah, or Solomon (or Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu, they need to be here mentioned too). And this has been the case more or less for two years and counting. And so it’s very strange when I see someone talk about my earlier article and describe me as a ‘christian esotericist’. I see it and it makes me chuckle. (A small aside, I see no reason to add extra letters to the word, esoterist is more than enough, and more correct, linguistically speaking. And credit where it’s due, Schuon was where I learned this from, albeit indirectly, because I don’t think he ever mentioned it specifically, he just used the shorter version as a matter of fact, and good for him).

Another aside, speaking of examples, and out of justice, Guenon, in his personal life, was also a good example. By which I mean, he was sincere, he walked the walk, quite unlike Schuon, whose personal example no one really should follow. But while it’s true Guenon was most likely even a saint, much like most saints of most religions I am not cut out for it, personally. That path is not for me. Not that I am modelling myself after Joseph Smith either, it’s just that his example is less specific, because his true inspiration was… following inspiration, wherever it led, and keeping it always personal, and this is something that resonates with me very deeply, and probably the only other example I can think of, and one that carried over from my orthodoxy days, throughout my perennialist days, and until now, is Masanobu Fukuoka, another prophet, as far as I’m concerned.

There are many aspects of mormonism, and the ideas of Joseph Smith, that resonate deeply with me and that when I encountered them just felt like encountering a treasure I was seeking for a long time. Starting from the scriptures he produced (the Book of Mormon and the Book of Moses, especially), also his King Follet Discourse, which always floors me. The expansiveness of Joseph’s cosmic vision is astounding, and always motivates me in a way that nothing else did before or since. Continuing to the emphasis on the Flesh, and how our bodies are a blessing, and Man and Woman, and how fundamental sexual distinction, and marriage, really is, at a cosmic level and for eternity in both directions, and up to God (or rather, Gods, Father and Mother, and Son and Daughter). And on and on with many other things.

But if I had to sum up what I took from Joseph Smith, or what he did for me, and what keeps coming back to me, and informing my life and pursuits, above all, I would have to refer to one of the articles of faith, though the very existence of this list is a bit contradictory with the person of Joseph Smith, and even the article itself, number nine:

We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

In other words, that each of us, taking everything that has been given by God (which include scriptures, all of them, but also every other story, and all the arts, and everything else, creation itself) have to figure things out for ourselves, and go directly to the source, and that this work is never finished, because life keeps going, things change, every being is alive and purposeful and changes the course of history, and we also keep growing and changing and doing things, and all of this needs to be taken into account.

There is, admittedly, a great level of relativity involved. Yet the alternative, to disregard just how personal our understanding really is and must be, even when we pretend that we’re just following orders, err, I mean, following tradition, is not just a lie, and hence a sin, but very dangerous. It probably always was, but even more so now. We are not medievals, or bronze age people, or any other. We live here and now. And the world also is not the same, I mean all the other beings in creation have changed too. And this means God too is still learning, and adapting to how beings out of their free will act and grow, and trying to help us in new ways, adapted to our times, and at all times. Without taking this into account, I think it’s impossible to understand anything at all, not ourselves, not the world, and not God.

And this one insight about change, at every level and all the time, and that God will not abandon us in ignorance due to ‘respect for tradition’ or pride in going back on his word or changing his mind from time to time, this is the insight that has changed my life, and why some things I wrote even two years ago seem a bit alien.