Warrior's Way: A 20th Century Odyssey (Consciousness Classics) - Softcover

De Ropp, Robert S. S.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0895560798 ISBN 13: 9780895560797

Publisher: Gateways Books & Tapes, 1992

Synopsis

The memoir of the first scientist to collect and publish information on mind altering drugs, longevity, meditation techniques, and ecological living.

About this title

About the Author

Robert de Ropp is the author of Drugs and the Mind.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Warrior's Way

By Robert S. de Ropp

Gateways Books and Tapes/IDHHB, Inc.

Copyright © 2002 Kathleen E. de Ropp Living Trust of 1995
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-89556-079-7

Contents

1. Warriors and Slaves, 
2. The Spire Aspiring, 
3. And One Clear Call for Me, 
4. Rats in the Ruins, 
5. Education of a Peasant, 
6. Dust, 
7. A Season in Hell, 
8. Gentle Warriors, 
9. The Banquet of Knowledge, 
10. Politics in Fog, 
11. The Smerdiakovs Will Triumph, 
12. The Shock of Recognition, 
13. Ouspensky Fourth Dimension, 
14. Harvest and Suffering, 
15. Lion into Rabbit, 
16. An Evening with the Baron, 
17. If Fault of Planets, 
18. The Sinking Ship, 
19. Keep Careful Notes, 
20. Mad Song, 
21. To the New World, 
22. Morbio Inferiore, 
23. Prayer of the Heart, 
24. Hungers in Conflict, 
25. Fair-Weather Sailor, 
26. King in Exile, 
27. Take Fate by the Throat, 
28. Drugs and the Mind, 
29. Sly Man and Superman, 
30. In Dubious Battle, 
31. I Have Been Here Before, 
32. The Great Psychedelic Freakway, 
33. Reluctant Guru, 
34. Warriors in the Tree House, 
35. Sarmoun and Psychotron, 
36. Seeker After Truth, 
37. The Trickster's Way, 
38. Leaving the Lab, 
39. The Watercourse Way, 
40. On the Beach, 

CHAPTER 1

WARRIORS AND SLAVES

Today is my birthday.

The face that looks back at me from the mirror is the face of a man of sixty-five. My hair is grey and my hairline is receding, my skin is wrinkled and the lenses of my eyes are hardening. My arteries are hardening too. It is part of the program. The body is programmed to last for only a certain time. It will hold together, if treated properly, for about a hundred years. I have treated it properly. As a result it remains healthy. I never have a day's illness and seem immune to practically everything. But I cannot alter the program. No matter what I do my body will age, weaken, and finally disintegrate. The organizer that formed it in the first place and now holds together the atoms of which it is made will lose its power. The elements of my body will scatter like the beads of a necklace when the string breaks.

I have made the voyage of life aboard a ship of fools with a motley crew, each member of which thought itself important. I have been a mystic and a scientist, an author, a house builder, a boat builder, a gardener, a fisherman, a father of four children, a Whole-earther getting his food from the soil he cultivated. These various characters made up the crew of my vessel, and their often conflicting aims determined the course the vessel took. They argued, fought, stole from each other. Each tried for a time to become master of the ship. But now there is harmony aboard, and the various fools have made peace with each other. Their aims do not conflict, because none of them considers himself important. It's the effect of aging.

One thing I learned fairly early in the course of the voyage. It is our privilege as human beings to live either as Warriors or slaves. A Warrior is the master of his fate. No matter what fate throws at him, fame or infamy, health or sickness, poverty or riches, he uses the situation for his own inner development. He takes his motto from Nietzsche: That which does not destroy me strengthens me.

The slave, on the other hand, is completely at the mercy of external events. If fortune smiles on him, he struts and boasts and attributes her favors to his own power and wisdom — which, as often as not, had nothing to do with it. If fortune frowns, he whines and weeps and grovels, putting the blame for his sufferings on everything and everybody except himself.

I learned that all life games can be played either in the spirit of the Warrior or in the spirit of the slave. My life games were determined by the predilections of the various members of my ship of fools. The author dreamed of writing books. The scientist dreamed of performing experiments. The mystic dreamed of penetrating new worlds of the mind and of consciousness. The Whole-earther dreamed of a little farm on which he would be self-sufficient. The fisherman dreamed of the ocean with its white surf and floating seaweeds and of the good fish dinners it provides when conditions were right.

So each of the crew members had his own game.

I realized, again rather early, that I was far more slave than Warrior, and that if I ever wished to master my own fate, I would have to train myself to stop behaving slavishly.

In the course of my voyage I met several other Warriors who, by the example of their own lives, encouraged me to try to live in a manner worthy of a free man. To become a free man is no easy matter.

I have set down here a log of my personal voyage. I do not consider that voyage particularly inspiring, but I happen to know more about it than I do about anyone else's. I have included brief accounts of the voyages of others who managed to live in a manner worthy of a Warrior, though they did not necessarily think of themselves in these terms. There are conscious and unconscious Warriors, those who know what they are fighting for and those who just fight.

The genetic endowment that was dealt me by fate was not bad as genetic endowments go. I resulted from the union of a Teutonic knight and an English lady. My father, the Teutonic knight, was a descendant of that band of German adventurers who cajoled and bullied their way along the coast of the Baltic and carved for themselves large estates in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. They were all barons, and called themselves von this and von that and lorded it over the hordes of peasants. My father, who chose to live in England, dropped the von and called himself simply de Ropp. His gene pool had been further enriched by his Cossack mother, Lydia Gurjef (a name that, with a somewhat different spelling, was to become very familiar to me later), a wild spirit who came from the Crimea. My mother, a proper English lady, belonged to the Fisher tribe, which had its quota of distinguished members — a historian, an admiral, a banker — good solid members of the bourgeoisie, whose influence tended to stabilize the more volatile elements I inherited from my father.

As for the society into which I was born, it appeared at the time of my birth to be prosperous and safe. I entered the world in 1913, the last year of the great Age of Optimism. Most judges of human affairs assumed that, with the help of science, conditions of life would get steadily better and better. The great powers of Europe had carved up the rest of the planet. Kings, Kaisers, and Czars strutted and postured. Their representatives ruled millions of "natives" in various far-flung empires, of which the British was far-flungest. It stretched from Africa to China and was colored pink on the map. The structure looked stable enough, but before I was two years old the Age of Optimism ended. The whole towering system collapsed in a mess of mud and blood as the great powers of Europe used all the resources of their famous science for the sole purpose of tearing each other to pieces.

The sound of that crash reverberated through my young life and caused me, at a very early age, to feel alienated from the world I had entered. I remember being bundled into a blanket by my obviously terrified mother and hastily carried down from our upstairs flat to one in the basement. We lived in London, in Chelsea, near the river. The Germans were making their ultimate contribution to civilization by sending over zeppelins to bomb the inhabitants of London. All the inhabitants — men, women, children, cats, and canaries.

Of course, this bombing of open cities became routine later on, and no one thought it unusual when whole cities were reduced to rubble; but in those days remnants of civilized attitudes survived, and the bombing of London was considered barbaric behavior.

My mother did not want me to know about the bombs. It was close to Christmas, so she told me a story. She said all the bangs and crashes we were hearing were due to Father Christmas. The jovial old boy was driving over the rooftops in his sled and dropping a package or two in the process.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear (CRASH!) But a miniature sled with eight tiny reindeer (BANG! CRASH!) On Donner and Blitzen!

Donner and Blitzen with a vengeance! Gott strafe England!

And noting that the Father Christmas ploy had done little to reassure me (for I could sense her fear, as children can), she began in a quavering voice to sing a carol:

Bringing tidings of comfort and joy Comfort and joy! (CRASH! BOOM!) Glad tidings of comfort and joy.

And only a few days later my suspicion that, carols and Santa Claus notwithstanding, something frightful was happening, was fully confirmed. My father, who spoke four languages fluently and was therefore in the British Intelligence Service, came home on leave with a package wrapped in dirty newspaper. Opening this he revealed fragments of a zeppelin that had been shot down over London. Included in the wreckage was a torn, scorched piece of uniform from one of the crew members. And I could not avoid a sense of astonishment over the satisfaction in my father's voice as he told us that the crew of the zeppelin was roasted alive in a flaming mass of gas; that zeppelins were death traps, sitting ducks for antiaircraft guns; and that their use proved again that the Germans were fundamentally a very stupid people. In fact I was so distressed by the thought of that roasted crew member that I shed tears — not realizing, in my innocence, that he was one of "the enemy" and so deserved all he got.

Some days later my tears flowed again, this time so copiously and for so long a time that my father and mother were worried. This time the cause of my grief was a music-hall song sung by the nursemaid then looking after me. I can remember only a fragment, but that fragment is significant.

When you're all dressed up and nowhere to go Life is weary, weary and slow, And tumpty-tum, tum, tum, and something, tumpty, tum, When you're all dressed up and nowhere to go.

This produced in my childish mind a sense of such total desolation that — although all concerned tried to reassure me, telling me it was just a song and a silly one at that — I could not be consoled but wept and wept. For I knew, without being able to formulate my ideas, that I had joined the wrong species, on the wrong planet in the wrong solar system, that we were all of us dressed up with nowhere to go, that our proudest gestures were rooted in futility, like those huge, idiotic zeppelins sent over to kill and terrorize and to provide a fiery death for themselves and their crews.

CHAPTER 2

THE SPIRE ASPIRING

The Great Plague of the twentieth century killed almost as many people as World War I and completely changed my line of fate. The influenza pandemic of the winter of 1918-1919 destroyed 20 million men, women, and children.

It killed my mother, who had just given birth to my sister.

It nearly killed me.

I was hustled out of plague-ridden London to my grandmother's house in the country, where I quietly began to die. A step, another step, and yet another. Further and further into the Unknown Region. I was barely seven years old, but quite willing to go. I could scarcely breathe. In the night Death came near me, hovering among the shadows cast by the night-light.

You want me, Death? Ready when you are.

But Death passed me by.

My lungs healed. My health was slowly restored. I was motherless. My whole line of fate had been changed by a minute virus one hundred millimicrons across.

One result of my motherless state was that I was placed in a boarding school at a very early age. Another was that I never had a home, was shuffled from relative to relative for the holidays. I stayed at my aunt's house in Leicestershire. She was married to a purple-faced colonel who kept a stable of hunters and rode to hounds. I stayed at my grandmother's house near the village of Pottern. I stayed in my great aunt's house in the town of Salisbury.

My holidays in Salisbury helped to shape my personal myth, the intricate web of symbols and ideas that formed the substrate of my inner world. The myth crystallized around two enormous memorials and a fish. The enormous memorials were Stonehenge, which stood on Salisbury Plain not far from the town, and the Gothic cathedral that towered above the river Avon. This river ran at the bottom of the garden, and in the river was the fish, a huge trout of great age and wisdom that no one could catch, the third component of my myth.

Sweet Avon, flow softly ...

The river was an enchanted place. It emerged from the shadow of an old stone bridge; it was shaded with great trees. Rippling water weeds, like the tresses of Undine, waved in the current. My great aunt, an imaginative old lady with no children of her own, was very fond of fairy tales. She would tell me about Undine, the water spirit, who haunted streams and whose voice could be heard in the babblings of the river. There were all kinds of fairies in the garden, fairies in the hollyhocks and scarlet poppies, fairies in the delphiniums, the gladioli, the foxgloves, the peonies, the fragile forget-me-nots and love-in-the-mist. The place swarmed with spirits of one sort or another.

As for the fish, it was a symbol of power and of mystery. Again and again I tried to catch it, on worms, on maggots, on lumps of bread, on flies. It mocked my efforts. It had eluded anglers far more skilled than I. Now and then I caught sight of its shadowy form, swift and powerful, pursuing something or other. My great aunt said it was a magical fish. No one could catch it. If they did they would never be able to lift it from the water. The fish was the companion of Undine, the water sprite. Perhaps, if caught, it would change into Undine herself.

The magic fish, the river, the garden with its flower-fairies — all these, like the threads in a tapestry, formed part of a design. They formed part of the Magician, that shadowy archetype who, with the Scientist, danced a duet through my life.

Stonehenge added other components to the Magician. Stonehenge, whose megaliths lay like fallen giants on the empty plain, was not much visited then. It was possible on Salisbury Plain to feel all sorts of presences, for the whole plain was dotted with remnants of lost cultures, from the great mound of Old Sarum, to the traces of Saxon fortifications and Roman roads that had been built in the age of the Antonines. The presence that haunted Stonehenge was huge and terrifying. Not during the day. By day larks sang above the plain and fragile harebells bloomed, and the huge memorial had a calm benign aspect. But in the evening, when elongating shadows picked out the old monuments, the megaliths became very threatening. Like the great fish they were symbols of power and of mystery.

The cathedral made a different impression. It did not threaten. It sang. Seen from the water meadows across the river Avon, floating against the sky above its own reflection, the great building had an ethereal lightness, as if it were about to leave the earth. The impression of lightness, of soaring, was due, of course, to the tremendous spire — that spire which distinguishes Salisbury from all other Gothic cathedrals, that gives it its grace, its balance, its quality of transcendence.

I learned a lot about the cathedral. My father, anxious that I should not forget all the knowledge painfully forced into my brain at the very expensive preparatory school I attended, insisted that I visit a tutor during the long summer holidays. So I would dawdle along the banks of the river Avon and arrive at the home of my tutor. I forget his name. He was a white-haired scholar, probably a reverend. Salisbury swarmed with parsons.

The worthy old gentleman had two passions, the cathedral and Greek poetry. He was supposed to teach me Latin but kept lapsing into Greek. I would sit in a kind of daze as he rolled off sonorous passages from Homer or Aeschylus. I could not understand a word of it but knew that it was great poetry. Listening to the old scholar I realized the meaning of the word enchantment — for the melodious Greek had a truly spellbinding quality. It was hypnotic.

His love of the cathedral formed the real bond between us. Shyly, with a conspiratorial air, as if he were about to initiate me into a mystery, he led me to a shed behind his house. There, on a large table, were spread out thousands of fragments of colored glass. The old scholar contemplated the glass long and sadly.

"A labor of love," he said, "a labor of love. And, I fear, useless. Quite useless. And yet I continue. Ten years of work to repair a crime committed by a fool in a few minutes."

Later he told me the nature of the crime he was trying to repair. Apparently, at the end of the eighteenth century the bishop and dean of the cathedral appointed a certain James Wyatt to the position of cathedral architect.

"The wicked wanton Wyatt," said my old tutor, shaking his white locks, a look of wonder on his gentle face. How could God in his wisdom create such monsters?

Anyway, this Wyatt, in addition to destroying the great campanile and leaving the cathedral voiceless, tore out of the windows vast amounts of stained glass, much of which was thrown into the city ditch, then in the process of being filled. It was this glass that my tutor had rescued, digging it up piece by piece. It lay on the table like a huge jigsaw puzzle that he was trying to assemble into some meaningful design. The task was hopeless, as my tutor sadly admitted, for the glass had been broken and much was missing. Yet he struggled to fit it together.

"If we could only recreate one window — what a triumph!"

The second secret my tutor revealed was more disturbing. One afternoon we took a walk to the cathedral and he led me inside. Around us the soaring Gothic arches of the nave and choir sprang effortlessly up to the vaulted roof. My tutor led me to a slender column near the choir.

"Put your head against it," he said, "and look up at the roof."

I did so. Suddenly the frightening truth dawned on me. The column was bent! It was slowly being crushed under the enormous weight of the spire. That spire, so airy and delicate seen from a distance, contained a terrifying weight of stone.

"Can't they take the columns out and straighten them?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Warrior's Way by Robert S. de Ropp. Copyright © 2002 Kathleen E. de Ropp Living Trust of 1995. Excerpted by permission of Gateways Books and Tapes/IDHHB, Inc..
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: Gateways Books & Tapes
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0895560798
• ISBN 13: 9780895560797
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 372