I Need an Editor


Roland Stahl
October, 2021


     I wish I had the energy to re-write all of my scattered writings.  Over the years I have written up brief articles on one or other of the two main themes that have occupied most of my attention.  I had the idea that, taken altogether, they comprise a considerable treatment of those two topics.  I thought that if someone were to read over the entire assemblage they would see how all the parts fit together into a whole and lucid presentation of those two topics.

     On the one hand, there was the abstract metaphysics and theology that held my attention since my very earliest years, and, on the other hand, there has been a collection of ideas relating to the sorry state of the Earth and what to do about making essential changes so that life my not only survive on this planet, but that it might even flourish and grow.  Both of these themes were interwoven somewhat randomly as I set them down, with no order or sequence about them.  When I prepared two books for publication, with a third in preparation (The Laughter of God, 2009: ISBN: 978-0-945303-24-4, More Laughter, 2018: ISBN: 978-0-945303-25-1, and Still Laughing, in preparation), I simply strung together those essays like beads on a string, assuming that the attentive reader might make sense of them all.  I followed a sense of urgency that I must, at the very least, express all the ideas in writing so that some future editors might go over it all and prepare a more orderly presentation of the ideas such that they might express the essential ideas with greater clarity than my own writing has yet managed to do.  

     What really needs to be done is to take the entire body of work and re-write the whole thing into two entirely new presentations in which the ideas might follow a logical progression, making points systematically, leading to a clear vision of what I have been trying to say.  Two such books would be required, one for each of the topics of my interest.  At least I have finally managed to separate the essays into two collections, which I make available on the website as free e-books (Selected Articles: Metaphysics and Theology, 1989-2019 and One Planet Makeover, 2020).  These collections offer some improvement over the random assemblage of the original writing, but there is still much work to be done.  I understand that preparing a serious book is a major undertaking, not to be tossed off cavalierly as I have done, leaving it up to the dedicated reader to make sense of it all.  

     I don’t know which of my two topics is in more urgent need of revision, but both projects represent an enormous piece of work, and I just do not have the energy to devote the attention which such an effort would require.  I feel like the philosopher Wittgenstein, who wrote his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, which no one could understand, leaving it to future editors to explain the import of his writings.  

     In my Tetragrammaton, 2009, I have put together what I have called the Keys to the Arcana, comprising mostly a serious of pictures, but I need a systematic explication of the ideas behind those Keys.  This is a tall order, as the ideas are famously hard to pin down in words.  I have tried to take up Lao Tzu’s challenge: He who speaks does not know; he who knows does not speak.  In many places, and only partially, I have tried lifting the veil with some feeling of success, but I cannot yet say that the whole Theory of Everything is entirely tied up with a ribbon and a bow.  The final (or Original) Mystery I cannot manage to reduce to words, even though I have tried very hard, and I must finally admit, with Lao Tzu, that it is, indeed, ineffable.  The hand pointing to the moon is not the moon.  

     So I need an editor.  Preferably I would like to find a collaborator within my own lifetime, so that I might perhaps assist with the effort.  Sometimes I feel that I could really do it all myself, if only I were forty years younger and had a ten year’s paid sabbatical in which to accomplish the work.  Otherwise I must leave it to some nebulous or hypothetical future editor who might be able to piece together the whole vision from what I have left behind, or not.  

     But the project is so urgent – here we are on the brink of cataclysmic calamity as the earth slides into chaos, darkness, and death, and yet the airheads in positions of power just fiddle while Rome burns.  It takes an aware and visionary child like Greta Thunberg to realize the overwhelming importance of what is happening to our world, and why, and the scale and urgency of the necessary response.  Blah, blah, blah just won’t cut it anymore.  The fundamental problem, as I am sure I have explained in my recent writings, is that absolutely everything that happens in the world happens in accordance with someone’s profit motive.  We must re-align this world on some basis other than the Profit Motive, the Law of the Jungle, and King of the Mountain.  That is an enormous task !  It means nothing less than a total world-wide revolution.  I believe that it may be possible to manage this revolution amicably, if only the various players would understand what is at stake.  

     It is a very sad fact that visionaries who recognize urgent problems are faced with intransigent stumbling blocks whose idiocy threatens the very basis of life itself (I don’t need to mention any names, here . . . ).  The whole idea of “Conservative” is entirely inappropriate for the current state of the world.  Trying to hold on to a past which is rapidly fading into distant memory as our planet descends into chaos is such a drag on any hope of progress.  Somehow, persons in power must realize that, willy-nilly, we must embark upon a whole new basis of civilization, world-wide, or die.  Of course this is very frightening to most people who simply want to live their lives the way they are used to.  Somehow, all these people who are obstructing the way forward must be made to understand that some very radical changes must be happening in the very near future, and, as Dylan says, Your old road is rapidly agin’.  Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand, for the times they are a-changin’.  

     And the metaphysics and theology are just as important as the plans for re-organizing the planet.  Education is the key !  If only everyone could learn everything I have been trying to teach about Hermetic philosophy and the Colors of the Aura, then perhaps there could be a rapid acceleration of consciousness expansion world-wide, followed by serious concerted action, while there is still time (assuming that we might have any time left at all to reverse this slide into chaos before we hit irreversible tipping points).  

     And, speaking of Consciousness Expansion, I have suggested before that a great place to begin would be to make substantial doses of LSD (perhaps 250 mcg) freely available to everyone on the planet – men, women, and especially children.  It could greatly accelerate the process, and bring the laggards up to speed quickly.  It is not too much to say that the expansion of consciousness is the sine qua non before anything further of any substance can happen.  

     I do not even shrink from the emphasis on Theology.  If anyone doesn’t yet understand the importance, nature, and meaning of God, such revelation would greatly contribute to the more rapid assimilation of the program.  God is not Deus ex Machina – God works through His people – the people of the planet – those who are on His side and understand that their participation is required.  Those who love God, the planet, its plants, animals, and people, must understand what is required and do their part to bring about the clarity of consciousness without which nothing of any consequence can happen fast enough to be of much good to those of us who are still alive on this dying planet, to say nothing of generations yet unborn.  




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