Article by John H. Drais
Illustrations by Dr. Eugene Ray
Dr. Eugene Ray: Architect as Artist
from
The Philosopher's Stone
Issue Number 4
Return to On-Line Literature
Return to Home Page
Over the past thirty years, the monks of The Paracelsian Order and the clergy of the Johannine Catholic Church have individually and jointly gathered a unique book collection of around 7,000 volumes. As a combined project of The Paracelsian Order and the Johannine Catholic Church, these books have been united in the Madre Grande Library. Donations and bequests of libraries from other people have been received as well, and are always welcome.
We currently have temporary housing in seven rooms of four different buildings, with major categories in Metaphysics, Technical and Practical, Hebraica, Religion and Philosophy, Theosophy and Comparative Culture, Health and Healing, Reference and Fiction. Those of us who have collected this library have done so with the intention and hope that it will be a foundation stone in the work of truth servers everywhere for many years to come.
As a theosophical monastic order, we see it as our historical responsibility to preserve and pass on knowledge. We do this in order to preserve and maintain the healthful spiritual, intellectual and physical evolutions of all beings, and to prevent the further disinheritance of humanity from its birthright. We know only too well that when knowledge is inhibited, freedom wanes. The Madre Grande Library project has three phases pursuant to these goals. First, there must be adequate housing for the library collection. Second, the collection must be protected against destruction. Third, there must be a plan to expand the accessibility of the library to include as great a number of people as possible. The reasons behind these goals and how we plan on achieving them is the subject of this article.
As stated above, evolution proceeds along three distinct lines: physical, intellectual and spiritual. One of our theosophical pursuits is to develop an all-embracing code of life. This code must provide for the healthful and natural evolutionary processes of each of these three. For proper physical evolution we believe you need fresh air, pure water, untainted food and a non-stressful agenda.
Proper spiritual evolution can be supported by providing a milieu in which monks (of both genders) can provide for their physical well-being with a minimum of spent time. This allows the rest of one's time to be spent in spiritual exercises. We believe this is best done in the practical world as karma yoga, selfless service, following the maxim "the more you give, the more you get."
"Flee from the Hall of Learning," Blavatsky startles us with in The Voice of the Silence. She explains "In it thy Soul will find the blossoms of life, but under every flower a serpent coiled." This is the angel who stands at the entrance to the Garden of Eden, with a two edged sword, preventing access to the unworthy. But this Hall of Learning must be traversed, the angel appeased, and the serpent uncoiled. This hall, playground for the intellectual evolutionary process, effects the natural and healthful interplay between the spiritual and the physical evolutionary process. Thus, mental and intellectual growth must be a part of our all-embracing code of life.
Mental development must be supported that is cooperative, rather than competitive. To insure the successful transit of the Hall of Learning, an understanding of the duality in our nature must be experienced. Our ratiocinative and communicative abilities must be tuned, as inscribed at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, to "Know Thyself." A free and uninhibited exchange of experiences and expressions between all humanity over long periods of time is essential to promote this, the first step of all spiritual paths. A library and research center is envisioned that will serve the intellectual evolutionary process by providing just such a forum. A master plan laying out the support facilities and community infrastructure has been developed by Dr. Eugene Ray and his architectural students at San Diego State University.
While the entire master plan has significance to the adequate housing of Madre Grande Library, the portion of greatest interest in this discussion is the Chapel and Library Structure. In the manner of all creative endeavors, an image is first envisioned according to some central theory or expression. Then the image "takes form and sinks into matter." From this representation, the actual physical structure can then arise. Dr. Ray's envisioning of Madre Grande Library proceeded something like this. He combined spheres, cylinders, cones, circles, and hexagons into what he termed "Madre Grande Cosmic Research Center." The compelling image is a glazed energy sphere (a resonator) suspended between concentric buttresses," he explains in his conceptual sketch of the Chapel and Library Structure.
He made these sketches shortly after being shown the proposed location for the library building. Adjacent to the main parking lot, it will be easily accessible by foot. Located on the knoll just above the parking lot, it provides a pleasant study environment and still maintains the Natural Preserve quality of the monastery grounds.
The floor plan for the entire structure arcs around the knoll topographically, which helps keep the buildings in low profile. There will be only minimal earth moving, just for footings for the load-bearing posts. The chapel faces East; the observatory, South; and great emphasis is made on the outdoor utility of the Central Courtyard. From these earthly layouts spring the artistic renderings of the proposed building elevations. The buildings are indeed architecturally expressive of the unifying mission of the Johannine Catholic Church and The Paracelsian Order. They seem to draw energy into us from the cosmos, and guide us to equanimity.
This structure is ideally suited to our fiscal realities. It can be built in modules, which allow for many years of expansion. This housing will be more than adequate long before it is fully manifested at the end of Phase One.
The building location and the fact that its walls are planned of compacted earth afford protection from destruction, the objective of Phase Two. Destruction can arise from several sources, for example, flood, fire, censorship, alteration, and fanaticism. No matter what the cause, any destruction must result in limitations on available knowledge. Any limitation on knowledge must result in diminished liberty. It is the converse of the saying of Jesus "Ye shall know the truth, and it shall make you free." Here are the causes of library loss and its effect on the social system.
At a time of fiscal crisis, all too often the first services to be cancelled are in the educational categories. San Diego County recently made a move to "save money" by closing seven libraries. Fortunately the public outcry was so great, the idea was quickly abandoned. The shortsightedness of our elected officials is surprising. Our economy can only be helped by expanding the number of participants in it, not by curtailing the availability of knowledge. Such shortsightedness can, perhaps, be forgiven, since we the people indeed do have a voice. But the price for our continued freedom is constant vigilance. Three cheers for Freedom of Speech. Madre Grande Library is not subject to fiscal pressures or the whims of elected officials. The operations are only by volunteer workers and no debt financing is allowed, so there is a very low cost of operations.
There is a greater danger than limiting our access to knowledge, and that is limiting the knowledge to which we have access. Censorship and book banning has plagued mankind's freedom for hundreds of years. Throughout its history, the Roman Catholic Church has forbidden its faithful from reading books disapproved by its own agents. Nihil obstat, "nothing objectionable," is stamped to notify you that this material has been approved. Only the "party line" is allowed, "To prevent the truth from being distorted," or "To keep our ignorant and helpless masses from temptations it would be better they know nothing about," it is claimed. Of course, I do not mean to single out the Roman Catholic Church as the sole, or even the primary, offender. There are many groups out to try to save you from yourself, trying to decide for you what is "right" and "wrong", according to their own dogmas. Some are religious groups pushing their own moral dogmas, others are political. Some are anti-religious, pushing their dogmas as well. None of these groups is defending your basic freedom: Freedom of Religion. The San Diego Public Library, on the other hand, recently celebrated "Banned Book Week". All books which have been banned or are wanted to be banned by some self-seeking person or organization were displayed and the public was encouraged to read them. Call the library and thank them for protecting your basic rights. Three cheers for Freedom of Religion. The Paracelsian Order is strictly eclectic and non-dogmatic. In fact the parent church, The Johannine Catholic Church also has no dogmas. All versions are allowed equal rights of expression, so there are no axes to grind, so to speak.
There is a third way knowledge is effectively limited and censored. This way entails simply editing and reissuing. When a study is made of the New Testament era literature, many documents are seen to be taken from dissenting opinions. Dissenting literature was merely collected and altered, and acceptable copies reissued. All New Testament books passed through such a process. Even the Jewish Talmud, an encyclopedia discussion on the Oral Law, was collected and copies reissued by Rome. The ancient Talmud had discussions in it from the time of Jesus, and discussed who he was, who his teacher was, where he got his training, and where he went astray (according to Jewish opinion). This material had been deleted. Most modern copies are now restored.
A more recent example of this proclivity toward unnoted alterations is seen in those amazing writings of HP Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, The Secret Doctrine, and The Voice of the Silence. These works have each appeared in as many as four versions in just one hundred years since their first printing. Each version was published by a Theosophical Society whose motto is "There is no religion higher than truth." Nevertheless, each version, except for the photographic reproduction of the original, has numerous undocumented "corrections". Predictably, each of these versions claims to be a faithful representation of the original work. How many more examples do you know of? If you send us the edition references showing any such alteration, we will be glad to publish it in a Department of Corrections. By preserving replicas of the originals and storing them on unmodifiable media, Madre Grande Library intends both to inhibit alteration of source materials and to notify interested parties of variant renditions.
Natural and unnatural disasters can have effects far beyond what might be expected. One of the world's greatest disasters, of this sort, was the accidental burning of the Library at Alexandria, Egypt, in the year 47 B.C.E. That library, built by Ptolemy I 250 years earlier, was the only remaining repository of the knowledge of the ancient world. Alexandria had become the center of "new age thought" at the beginnings of the new Age of Pisces, and it "was early prominent as a great factory and exchange of religious ideas." The Alexandrian Library was rebuilt and housed in the temple of Serapis and continued to function for several centuries. But as dogmatic strife turned into political power with the conversion of emperor Constantine, "The Christians were now able to effect even greater destruction of Greek culture. Greek books were burned by the thousands, since Christians were forbidden to contaminate themselves with Greek learning.
Kline wrote that in the year 392 C.E. when the emperor "Theodosius banned the pagan religions, the Christians destroyed the temple of Serapis, which still housed the only extensive collection of Greek works. It is estimated that 300,000 manuscripts were destroyed. Many other works written on parchment were expunged by the Christians so that they could use the parchment for their own writings. The final blow to Alexandria was the conquest of Egypt by the upsurging Moslems in A.D. 640. The remaining books were destroyed on the ground given by Omar, the Arab conqueror: 'Either the books contain what is in the Koran, in which case we do not have to read them, or they contain the opposite of what is in the Koran, in which case we must not read them.' And so for six months the baths of Alexandria were heated by burning rolls of parchment."
With this loss, the legacy of many thousands of years of civilization was lost, and the western world plunged into centuries of intellectual darkness and loss of freedom. Everything had to be rediscovered and we began to believe the ancients were only cave men, who crawled out into the sun a mere five to ten-thousand years ago. For instance, we are told the ancients thought the world was flat. I have read, however, in the Jerusalem Talmud, where Alexander the Great, while in Palestine, went up in a hot air balloon and "saw the ball of the Earth." That was circa 300 B.C.E. Just when did we discover the world was really flat? When the Roman Church declared it in dogma. Dogma is defined as a truth which must be believed in order to gain salvation. Although we sometimes feel proud of our advanced knowledge today, when we study the remnant of what the ancients once knew, we realize we are still toddlers in the realms of knowledge.
The plunge into the dark ages was actually enhanced and promoted by agents of "enlightenment". Through book burnings, confiscations, and dogmatic alteration they aimed toward the day when they could truly say, "There is nihil obstat here!" Now, at the interface between the ages of Pisces and Aquarius, we face much the same situation: a universal spirit of acceptance, an influx of information not previously available, and a counter tendency working to limit, censor, and destroy any knowledge not supportive of some particular article of faith. If only the Alexandrian Library had been archived in some safe spot, the final extant copies of so much information would not have been irretrievably lost. In those days, copies were hand written on parchment or linen scrolls and folios, and they were expensive and prone to copyist errors, making archiving impractical. But we now have the technical ability to preserve the versions of world thought as they exist today, to verify their accuracy, and to disseminate the material widely at little cost. Phase three of the Madre Grande library project aims at preserving its entire collection on optical data storage media. The public domain portion of this collection will then be put "on-line". Any person in the world will be able to connect into the bulletin board and download copies of the actual material. By making it generally available throughout the world, we make it more difficult for any self-serving group to confiscate, alter, or otherwise limit access to material just because it is contrary to its chosen dogma.
Have you never wondered at the relationship between liberty and library? The library is the corner stone on which liberty is erected. For there to be freedom, for there to be free people, access to knowledge must be free and without restraint. To the degree we seek limits, either in knowledge or access to it, to that degree we lose our freedom. Freedom movements around the world are supported and nurtured by the free flow of information and sharing of human experience. As the technology of communicating shrinks our world to a local neighborhood, liberty will reign everywhere. It is the duty of all organizations, which aim to ameliorate the burdens on the poor, to counter the tendency of censorship, dogma, alteration and destruction against our international heritage of human knowledge and experience. As the Madre Grande Library project advances, we hope to involve many libraries such as ours in our purpose. It is our fervent prayer and the intent of much of our work, to prevent the theosophical loss to religion that occurred in the previous age from recurring in this. We hope to provide through this effort a more fortunate rebirth for all beings.
END NOTES
1. Blavatsky, HP, The Voice of the Silence, Leather edition, 1978, p.7.
2. Blavatsky, HP, ibid., P.6.
3. Blavatsky, HP, "Theosophy and Education", Key to Theosophy, William Q. Judge, New York, 1889, p.265.
4. Ryan, CJ, H.P. Blavatsky and the Theosophical Movement, Pt. Loma Publications, Inc., Pt. Loma, 1975, p.361.
5. Drais, JH, "The Principles of Man", The Philosopher's Stone, Vol. I, No. #, 1991, p.22.
6. The Gospel of St. John, 8:32.
7. Jacobs, D., "People 'People Power' Keeps Libraries Open", Mt Empire Press, Alpine, CA, Dec., 1991, p.4.
8. Wells, HG, The Outline of History, The Macmillan Co., NY, 1921, p.349.
9. Kline, M., Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times, Vol. I, Oxford University Press, NY, 1972, p.180-1.
10. Ibid., p.181.
ADDITIONAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
(This listing of Blavatsky versions is not exhaustive.)
Blavatsky, HP, Isis Unveiled, J.W. Bouton, New York, 1877. (Twelve Editions).
Ibid., Theosophical Publishing Company, Pt. Loma edition, 1906, 1910, 1919.
Ibid., The Theosophy Company, Los Angeles, facsimile editions, 1931, 1945, and 1968.
Ibid., Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, facsimile edition ca. 1940, 1972.
Ibid., The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Boris de Zirkoff edition, 1971.
Blavatsky, HP, The Secret Doctrine, 1888.
Ibid., The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1895. (Later reprints by The Theosophical Publishing House through 1971.)
Ibid., The Aryan Theosophical Press, Pt. Loma, 1909, 1917, 1925.
Ibid., The Theosophical Publishing House, Wheaton, Boris de Zirkoff edition, 1979.
Blavatsky, HP, The Voice of the Silence, 1889.
Ibid., Aryan Theosophical Press, four editions from 1909 through 1920.
Ibid.,Theosophical Publishing House, London, Besant edition, no date.
Ibid., David McKay Company, Philadelphia, no date.
Ibid., The Chinese Buddhist Research Society, Peking, Cleather edition, 1927, 1974, 1978.
Ibid., Theosophical University Press, Pasadena, 1936, 1939, 1976.
The Jewish Encyclopedia, Funk and Wagnalis Co., New York, 1904.
Robinson, JM (General Editor), The Nag Hammadi Library, Third completely revised edition, Harper Collins Publisher, 1990.
Spong, JS, Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, Harper San Francisco, 1991.
Return to Madre Grande Library Contents
Return to On-Line Literature
Return to Home Page
This small, but multidisciplinary library located in the enchanted surroundings of Madre Grande Valley, is a dream suited to the artistic architectural creativity of Dr. Eugene Ray. Dr. Ray has been teaching architecture and environmental design at San Diego State University for more than 20 years. SDSU does not have an Architecture Department so these courses are offered by the Art Department. This is as it should be, since "architecture is the mother of the arts," claims Ray. "Buildings serve a higher inspirational purpose, besides solving functional problems. I've always felt art departments were the more creative places."
"Architecture is the formulation of energy because all materials are forms of energy," he said. This concept leads naturally to what he calls Biomorphic Architecture. Buildings designed in this manner seem like gigantic sea shells, or combinations of these with crystalline forms, just as if Mother Nature grew the structures herself. This Biomorphic design will create a building that is "softer, and more dynamic" and it will be in harmonious relationship with the earth. Of course, all this can be achieved by a conventional, engineering approach to a design, but a building must also address spiritual issues, and this is more easily done by art.
While at Tulane University graduate school in New Orleans, "I started to learn," says Ray, "that if you could control light in an environment, you could control the environment in a spiritual sense." Through this artistic and Biomorphic way of accessing architecture, he makes it relate to ecology. Not only does he consider the effects of materials that might be toxic, but he takes into account how the form effects people. He believes curves are more soothing than angles. "Cones and spheres make the most pleasing environment for humans," he says, "partly because they minimize the impact of electromagnetic radiation." Although his designs are not conventional, "his concern for humanistic values over materialistic ones seems more timely than ever."
To have such a resource as Eugene Ray at the local State University is an exceptional stroke of good fortune for united organizations and purposes of Madre Grande.
Many variables must be considered in order to build a small community that are simply taken for granted by homo urbanus. Even more must be taken into account in order to make the entire project biomorphic. We were indeed grateful when Dr. Ray decided to present Madre Grande as a class project to one of his classes. This was both an opportunity for our community and for the students. The students praised our library as the best source for their overall research. We received a wealth of ideas and a project report that is indeed a work of art. Beside a guided tour of all the existing facilities, the students were given one sheet of paper with an outline of the areas to be considered.
Return to Madre Grande Library Contents
Return to On-Line Literature
Return to Home Page
Our Guidelines are simple. All concepts must be practical both economically and functionally. They must have minimal impact on the ecosystem and naturalness of the environment.
1. Rain water system
a. Collection
b. Storage
c. Distribution
2. Waste processing and disposal systems
a. Trash recycling
b. Garbage composting
c. Waste processing
i. Swedish composting
ii. Worms
iii.Anaerobic
3. Power generation and storage system
4. Agricultural design
a. Natural herbage
b. Orchards
c. Gardens
d. Greenhouses
5. Retreat facility design
6. Monastic complex for resident caretakers of Madre Grande. Allow for approximately 50 people including children and adults.
Fifteen students worked for half a semester, and four others worked for the entire semester on a master plan for Madre Grande Monastery complex. These four students presented a final report of 45 pages, each measuring 11" by 17": Randy Reinbold, Robert Verhees, Bill Starling, and Ellen Zebrowski. Each page of the original report is a collage, and the report is presented in folio. Madre Grande Library has a full size, color replica and a black and white 8 1/2" by 11" copy for your viewing. We have also reproduced the entire work on photographic slides. It is organized into five, color coded sections, representing nearly all aspects of community planning. The art work in this article comes mostly from this folio.
ENDNOTES
1. Higgins, Adele. "His Home Is A Silver Ship", San Diego Daily Transcript, December 5, 1984.
2. Sutro, Dirk. "Inspirational Ray at Design's Cutting Edge", The Los Angeles Times, May 3, 1990.
3. Higgins, A., Op. Cit.
4. Olsten, Carol. "Heir to Buckminister Fuller Brings Ideas to Buildings", San Diego Daily Transcript, December 5, 1984.
5. Sutro, D., Op. Cit.
6. Ray, Eugene and Randy Reinbold, Robert Verhees, Bill Starling, and Ellen Zebrowski, Madre Grande: a Prototype Alternative Community, a report submitted to Environmental Design course at San Diego State University, CA, 1989.
I. Introduction; Site Plan and Program for a Prototype Alternative Community.
II. Alternative Technology:
Water
Energy
Construction
Waste
Industry
Agriculture.
III. Madre Grande
Monastic Community:
Residences
Offices
Kitchen & Dining
Industrial
School and Daycare
Circulation
Chapel/Library
IV. Madre Grande
Retreat Facility
Reception and Access
Camping Facilities
Latrine and Showers
Kitchen & Restaurant
Healing Center
Outdoor Theater
V. Appendices:
Bibliography
Sources & Resources
Reference
Return to Madre Grande Library Contents
Return to On-Line Literature
Return to Home Page