“He describes Järna as a place full of people who want to create something bright, beautiful and beautiful. But when the result is something else, there is a risk that you do not want to see the dark, and put the lid on.”
Long report in SvD Kultur (27 June-21) about Järna and the anthroposophical movement. Nice and a little sad read.
It has probably been glimpsed, here o there in my writings, that I have been interested in the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (d. 1981) and his visions. Here is a post I posted elsewhere this spring for the centenary of what he himself said was the start of his work.
What makes me think of him right now? Well, this week came the ruling in a protracted dispute over copyright that has been going on for more then ten years. An dispute that has divided and chattered the Martinus movement. It’s not strange in itself, that happens in most spiritual environments.
This is not an opinion piece. No solicitation attempt either. A little world surveillance – a VDN label of me, maybe. And my idea of right and wrong in the dispute does not belong here. Let the dead bury their dead. Life goes on.
– – –
Behind this window a hundred years ago, something strange happened. The young dairyman Martinus Thomsen came home one evening, sat down in his wicker chair and soon had some kind of prophetic experience that sent him in an unexpected direction for the rest of his life.
It’s actually remarkable no matter how you look at it. Philosophically, for what he then shared, if you’re laid in that direction. Religious studies. A mystic in our neighborhood with a large production of texts, lectures and “symbol images” over half a century that – until now – has hardly received any attention at all from academia.
Or psychologically. I never met him myself. I became acquainted with Martinus Thomsen and his staggering “cosmology” only the year after he died. But I have met many people who have known him. And he seems to have behaved, no weirdness, no major scandals or extravagances. The picture you get is of a simple, friendly and fun-loving man. Of course, over time, he became a kind of cult leader, with a few thousand loyal followers. But there was never much money involved, no missionary, there was nothing you could become a member of even.
So psychologically, he’s not easy to understand, or explain away, either. To combine the person with his work. A psychotic, or at least disturbed, someone who was driven by a desire to impress and gain power over others, etc. In fact, he seems to have been a rather different new-age-spiritual foreground figure. I always say that this movement is like my spiritual hometown. Nowadays hardly more than that. But I always think of Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) with warmth.
(The chair is preserved at the Martinus Institute in Copenhagen. The house on Jagtvej 52 is still standing and looks much like then. He himself rests in a small mausoleum at Frederiksberg’s old cemetery.)
I would like to raise a thought, a conviction, I have. A little inspired by a Jung quote about psychology/therapy and “the numinous” that I saw the other day and which I do not know if I understood or am prepared to buy without reservations:
“The main interest of my work is not concerned with the treatment of neuroses but rather with the approach to the numinous. But the fact that the approach to the numinous is the real therapy, and inasmuch as you attain to the numinous experience you are released from the curse of pathology. Even the very disease takes on a numinous character.” — C. G. JUNG
But this is my reservation then. And speaking of the post I wrote the other day, about society taking responsibility for everything spiritual, which provoked strong reactions: What I am writing now is on a similar theme, but seriously meant. It’s a mind game, this too, but a serious one.
Assuming that the new worldview is true. That is, that we live more than one life, reborn, accumulate experiences through the effects of our actions, develop towards some kind of emotional and cognitive perfection, etc. Then I imagine there’s a threshold there along the way. What is this threshold about? A certain amount of genuine self-experience, one’s own anchoring in the spiritual. Not just 2-hand information.
It’s going to be a tipping point. (And I also imagine that this point will come later than one often imagines, or hopes for.) Once you have crossed the threshold, you may possibly have use of psychology/therapy that includes a detailed spiritual (like the above) perspective. Or at least it will be harmless. But on the threshold usually not.
Until then, it is above all the usual psychology/therapy that you may need. It is based on an understanding of the ordinary. Why? Until the threshold has passed, this nature constitutes such a dominant part in us that the spiritual ideas (however true they may be) are only too easily incorporated into the old ordinary defense system – it will not be good.
Sitting on Facebook, waiting out the midsummer rain. Offer support and help in life, with an openness to the spiritual, to others. And after reading a piece in Stiernstedt’s book. It really is a big unrraged landscape!
Above are some impact, a visit, on another edge of that landscape. What’s it all about? A kind of positive, religious “new age” ecstasy you build up and want to share?
You like to feel empowered by different things. That’s how it has to be. I usually think of hollow-foot inserts, these are individually designed, to relieve and relieve, so you can have a good life. You can’t complain about someone else’s post, say it’s wrong or weird, if it works as it should for that person? That’s my most positive angle on this, and most of it.
I started reading this book this morning. A writer who knows what he writes about and seems to have his heart in the right place, as it is called.
So dense that the opening chapters on the state of psychiatry, and society, feel like a descent into a very dark place. It's not that bad in my life, even if nothing is untrue.
Johan Stiernstedt is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, with extensive experience in both roles. The book came in 2020, can be purchased e.g. at Adlibris
“Martinus’ friends usually don’t trumpet themselves or Martinus. However, one usually does not fail to notice those who are very much into Martinus’ teachings when discussing a deeper aspect of life in some context. Then they can suddenly begin to speak as if they had the answers to all the mysteries of life. They often talk as if they really knew what was going on. If you’ve read Martinus, you know.”
READ THE ARTICLE (PDF):
Martinus-i-praktiken-NEXUS-4-1982This article has been remembered and sometimes chafed, sometimes inspired, since I read it almost forty years ago. A while ago, I found the paper in a box. And today I took the opportunity to scan it.
I do not think the opinions in the article only, or even extra much?, concern the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen (1890-1981) and his supporters. You can read it more generally. As an angle to this with doubt o wonder, e.g.
All issues of the old Swedish alternative magazine Sökaren (The Journal Of The Seeker) (1964-2008) are now available to read online. They are located on the website of AFU – Archives For the Unexplained.
Spiritual and personal development. How to protect applicants from harm? Get in the clutches of predatory, manipulative types in the alternative industry? What can society do to regulate and comply? Some think that a little more control or “tougher action” against the species would help. But it’s not easy to see how something like that would be possible to fix. Couldn’t we legislate that only people who have id from the National Board of Health and Welfare could do this? I.e. doctors, psychologists, nurses, etc. These alone were allowed to provide tools and guidance for people’s spiritual education and well-being. (It’s like today’s liquor can only be sold on the system.)
The CBTs have long since been doing Buddhist mindfulness, etc. Those who work in Freud & Co’s followings were able to offer a solid schooling path towards spiritual integration and satisfaction. You would of course lose some skills that exist today in the alternative world, but in return could the area be reserved for people who, in the face of the threat of withdrawal of the id and professional ban, at least stayed in the skin?
(I’m not going to pretend I’ve read the book above, because I haven’t, but it sounds 
interesting.)
When a foster-placed teenage rebel suspects that her father is not dead but kidnapped by UFOs, she enlists the help of a UFO association to find out the truth.
"Crazy Pictures' first feature film The Flower Time Is Coming was a huge success in Sweden as well as the rest of the world when it premiered three years ago. Now the filming of the film collective's new major venture, the adventure film UFO Sweden,is expected to have its cinema premiere christmas 2022."
Read more on Clas Svahn's blog: http://csblogg.ufo.se/csblogg3/?p=65705
"Moral panics have a structure that is easy to recognize. A problem is identified. The problem is presented over time in increasingly black and white terms: there are victims and there are perpetrators. A passionate and polemical appeal to action is heard. The struggle to protect victims from the evils of the perpetrators is perceived as so important that fact-checking and nuance can disappear."
Debate in the newspaper Skolvärlden (7 June 2021), by Karen Swartz, PhD student
Olav Hammer, religious historian and author.
https://skolvarlden.se/artiklar/waldorfdebatten-gransar-till-moralpanik