The TAT Forum

The Voice of the Cathars (part 2), by Louis Khourey:

Most Perfects were homeless out of design, traveling about the country to preach and console the dying. They always traveled in pairs and were obliged to remain always with their socius or socia, who was one of the same sex, until the threat of arrest caused them to travel in mixed pairs to allay suspicion. Their characteristic attire was black, with a distinctive girdle around the waist. They always carried a copy of scripture in a pouch, usually St. John's Gospel, which they esteemed above the synoptics.

As was the term Cathar, the name Perfect was originally applied in derision by their detractors. Their own Believers called them bons hommes, "good men," although many women were also among their number. So esteemed were they by their flock that a distinct ceremony known as the Melioramentum or veneration was invariably performed upon meeting one; it was, in fact, the only affirmative religious duty of the Believer. He would bow three times to the Perfect and say: "Pray God to make a good Christian of me, and bring me to a good end." The Perfect would reply: "May God make a good Christian of you, and bring you to a good end." The "good end" would, of course, imply receipt of the Consolamentum.

Another ceremony, although not essential, was the Convenensa by which a Believer promised to honor the Perfects and placed himself at their disposal, in exchange for the promise that he would receive the Consolamentum on his deathbed, even should he be then unable to speak.

The Cathars thus differentiated significantly from the Catholics in their lack of liturgical duties. In fact, they had no churches at all, believing that they were wholly unnecessary; the Perfects preached and taught in the streets and in the homes of the Believers.

But what set the Cathars farthest beyond the pale of orthodoxy was their teaching about Christ who was, to them, neither God nor man but an angel or envoy. He only appeared to assume a human body, and came not to atone for men's sins by his death but to teach a way of salvation that would rescue the captive souls from the chains of matter. To the Cathars, the Catholic doctrine of Christ's suffering and death was an abomination, and the cross a symbol of the victory of evil in the world.

Despite the Catholic Church's own monastic tradition which placed a high value on ascetic practices, the opponents of the Cathars often attacked the Perfects because of their great austerities. One canard commonly raised was that they encouraged suicide by starvation. In fact, Cathars were known on occasion to refuse nourishment until death, a practice known as the endura. But this was employed only when the person was already dying or was in prison facing torture or execution. While the Cathars certainly looked forward to release from their human bondage, they also honored all life, as evidenced by their pacifism and vegetarianism.

THEIR HISTORY:

The story of the Cathars was played out over a relatively short period, from about 1150 when they first became evident in large numbers, until 1330 when the last burning of Cathars in France took place. During that time they rose to a position of equality in size, power and organization to the Roman Church, suffered massacres of their followers during the Crusades, and finally went into hiding, futilely seeking to avoid the Inquisition.

Languedoc, in southwestern France, was in the 12th and 13th centuries entirely independent of Paris and the northern French. Its language, Occitan, was similar to Provençal and Catalan, and its great lord was the Count of Toulouse. It was a cultured land, with a direct exposure to the Islamic civilization of the Mediterranean, then in full flower. Its nobility and burghers were proud of their country and disdainful of what they saw as the semi-barbarians of the north, and of the Church which they viewed as corrupt and rapacious.

Within this social framework, Catharism was widely supported and its ideas were permitted to spread. In 1167, a council of Cathar bishops and ministers was held at St. Felix de Caraman near Toulouse, attended by the Bulgarian Bishop Nicetas who confirmed the Church of Languedoc in the true Bogomil tradition. For the next forty years, the only battles that the Cathars had to fight were verbal ones. The Cathar Perfects were renowned as great preachers and were often joined in debate by their Catholic counterparts. Lay juries of thirteen Catholics and thirteen Cathars were often the judges. Into this fray of ideas came the Spaniard, Dominic de Guzman, who preached and debated with the Cathars from 1205 until 1209 and who sought to live more ascetically than his opponents. For all of Dominic's skill and dedication the Catholics were losing the fight for men's minds and hearts, and it would not be long before the order that Dominic founded would abandon rational debate in favor of forcible interrogation.

In 1208 a papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, who was seeking to convince Raymond VI, the Count of Toulouse, to employ harsher methods to control the heretics, was murdered while on his mission. This random act of violence served as a pretext for the release of forces that would ravage the entire Languedoc, destroy its independence, and finally eliminate Catharism. On March 10, 1208 Pope Innocent III called for a Crusade against the heretics of southern France, an unprecedented action against a Christian land and one that remained in great part still Catholic. This call was answered enthusiastically by the nobles and bishops of the north, and it was not long before they were on the march.

The Crusade achieved quick successes, owing in great part to its extreme brutality. One of the first cities of the south to be attacked was Beziers, put under siege in July 1209. To the people of Languedoc, this was not so much a war of religion as one of the north against the south, and the Catholic burghers of Beziers refused to turn over to the Crusaders their heretic citizens. When the city finally fell, it was burnt to the ground and as many as 20,000 men, women and children massacred. From this holocaust has been preserved one of the most famous sentences in the annals of human cruelty, spoken by Arnald-Amalric, Abbot of Cîteaux and the pope's legate to the Crusade, when asked how to distinguish the Catholics from the heretics: "Kill them all; God will look after his own."

Similar episodes, though none quite so terrible, followed during the first few years of the Crusade and had the desired effect of discouraging local resistance. Under the military leadership of Simon de Montfort, a noble from Ile de France, the Crusaders not only consolidated their control over the major cities of Languedoc -- Carcasonne, Albi and finally Toulouse -- but began to persecute the Perfects in earnest. At Minerve in June 1210, one hundred forty Perfects were flung into a great fire at once, four hundred were burned at Lavaur in May 1211, and sixty at Cassès in June 1211.

The Crusaders were, essentially, an army of occupation and suffered all of the problems that an occupying force could expect to encounter from a hostile populace, including guerilla attacks led by dispossessed knights, known as faidits. It seemed that the tide was turning against them when Count Raymond VI and his son, Raymond VII, recaptured Toulouse in 1217 and when Simon de Montfort was killed outside its walls during the unsuccessful siege of 1218 by a rock that struck him in the head (which, as legend has it, was from a stone-gun fired by women). But the respite from warfare was to be short-lived for the people of Languedoc, for in 1226 a new Crusade was led by King Louis VIII, and by the summer of 1227 many cities had again capitulated and the Crusaders were ravaging the countryside around Toulouse.

 

Some definitions by Shawn Nevins: The heart is that which yearns for what is beyond the grasp of mortal arms. * Death: A big, terrible joke... I have relaxed and am at home. * Enlightenment: the stunning realization that you are eternal, and are no longer alive.

Things to Do, by Shawn Nevins:

1. Fall and rise a thousand times if need be.
2. Become a habitual seeker.
3. Give up, then try again.
4. Realize that you want to help others.
5. Be thankful.
6. Become a decent human animal.
7. Look for the source of thoughts.
8. Look in whatever way keeps your attention.
9. Will to do one thing -- one iron in the fire.
10. Find a teacher(s).
11. Always desire more, never be content.
12. Surround yourself with fellow seekers.
13. Spend time alone.
14. Know that the Hound of Heaven is real.

1. Fall and rise a thousand times if need be: I know some people who will set a goal to meditate every morning, do so for a week, then give up after they miss a morning. They despair over their temporary failure. The key is to keep at it, even if you miss every other day. Even if you never manage to meditate every single morning, to keep trying is what matters. If you approach the task in that manner, you will discover of what you are capable, and what you are -- likely different than your original conception.

2. Become a habitual seeker: The same idea as Richard Rose's vector. With enough time, you become someone who continually questions the world around and inside of them. You will want to know the truth of matters and be open to more than one possibility or the easy answer. Your eyes and ears will always be open to new sources of information.

3. Give up, then try again: You can't control this one, but it is useful to know that it will occur. There is some magic in the process of giving up, as it weakens our conception of what we are. Our conceptions of our self as a seeker are stripped away, leaving only Rose's "egoless vector" which searches simply because there is nothing else to do. This temporary giving up is also the rest period necessary for any exercise.

4. Realize that you want to help others: The ego prevents us from reaching out to others. With persistent self-analysis, you will come to have true consideration for your fellow man -- you will see your flaws in others and others' flaws in you. There is the thought that we should help others because it will help us in the long run, but this is not the same as truly wanting to help another. It is a milestone when we want to help simply because it is the natural reaction.

5. Be thankful: You are fortunate to be willing and able to ask questions of self-definition. You are fortunate for this day of possibilities stretching out in front of you. There is a bit of magic in giving thanks, as doing so recognizes that we are not the center of the Universe and relinquishes some of our imaginary control of life.

6. Become a decent human animal: Meaning that with honest introspection, you will become more compassionate and less defensive as you recognize your vanities. Also entails learning how to provide for yourself in the world. On a physical and social level, we become more at ease and better players of the game. You do not need to become a saint or an expert mechanic, however.

7. Look for the source of thoughts: Or look for the source of feeling, or intuition. Whatever you believe yourself to be, look to find where it originates. This will lead you to the source of your self. This question is phrased in many ways and may change over time. I began wanting to know what my purpose was, and ended by wanting to know what (if anything) was unchanging within me. Richard Rose describes this as backing away from untruth, which is correct in that we should not postulate what we might find. However, there is an intuition of the eternal within us which is helpful to follow -- a garbled message from the Absolute.

8. Look in whatever way keeps your attention: You will get bored of looking within. Keep looking for teachers and methods, so that when you come to the end of your current way, you won't lose time wandering in search of another. Every person must find their own way -- a customized method of going within. You must craft your own key.

9. Will to do one thing -- keep one iron in the fire: Focus is the solution to any problem. If you are trying to play the stock market, get a promotion, find a spouse, and get a college degree, you will obviously have trouble finding time to meditate, read, and seek out spiritual teachers. Time spent looking within is rewarded with proportional results -- up to a point. Like any exercise, rest is part of the equation.

10. Find a teacher(s): A teacher is a friend with more experience on the spiritual path. It may be a series of teachers -- each giving you a tool to use in your inner exploration. A book or tape may be as important as a living person.

11. Always desire more, never be content: There are side benefits to a spiritual search. One may make fascinating friends, have travel opportunities, may even be regarded as a teacher in their own right, all before finding an answer to their deepest question. There arises the temptation to settle for a lesser prize. This is a powerful temptation whose only cure is to project out your life strand and ask if you are heading where you want to be. When you are old, what will you want to say about your life? When it is just you facing the unknown, where will you find certainty?

12. Surround yourself with fellow seekers: There is tremendous benefit to associating with like-minded people. Better yet, is sharing an apartment or house with a group of seekers. It is a resource of ideas and inspiration, as well as help with the everyday problems of life. You will learn from each other's successes and failures. When one member is in despair, his fellows can in a sense, carry him until he recovers. If the group is too small, less than four perhaps, then the odds are the number of depressed members will outweigh the number of inspired and drag down the whole lot.

Because each spiritual path is unique, it is difficult to work with a group. Groups tend to either homogenize or break apart. However, if the majority of members are sincerely seeking (looking within), this will enable diversity and understanding.

13. Spend time alone: From a few minutes a day to weeks-long isolations. This is a time to evaluate what you have accomplished and where you want to go. It is a time of intense concentration, intense looking within. When alone, it is easier to realize that we are the sole judge of our life and what matters is that we find the thing which settles our soul. A person may camp out, get a cheap motel room, go to a retreat center, or even hide out in their own room.

14. Know that the Hound of Heaven is real: Refers to the poem by Francis Thompson. There is something calling you -- God, Rose's Invisible Current, or the Voice of the Silence. Become aware of your intuition (heart), your hunger and yearning for certainty. You hide with endless diversions from your hunger and yearning. You fill the emptiness in you with material goods, or even love. Yet, you are truly, always alone. There is simply you and a haunting question that sooner or later you must confront.

Psychology, by Jim Burns (from notes compiled by M. Jaqua, for "At Home with the Inner Self"): People want to love more than they want to be loved. The more you pay attention to a person, the more you are siphoning off love. The worst frustration on this earth is not not being loved but not being allowed to love. People won't let you near them. You have to be sneaky.

The Will to Resist, by Art Ticknor:

What is will? I’ve watched myself engage in potentially harmful behavior at various times in my life, and sometimes I’ve been able to observe that there’s a decision-point after the inspiration for the behavior forms in my mind and before the action occurs. At that decision-point there has been an agreement to proceed -- not so much an active agreement, really, as an unwillingness of the inner executive to use its veto power to cancel the pending action.

An article appeared in the 3/5/89 Miami Herald which provides the best physiological explanation of this resistance-point that I’ve come across. It was written by Tom Siegfried of the Dallas Morning News and was titled "How free is free will? Science decides to see." Siegfried cited a paper by neuroscientist Benjamin Libet, in the March-April issue of The Sciences, describing what goes on in the brain as people decide to act. The key items were as follows:

• Brain signals jumped in voltage eight-tenths of a second before the action (hand movement) began. Why? It doesn’t take anywhere near that long for a message to get from the brain to the muscles.
  
• Brain signals began three-tenths of a second before the subjects even became aware of their intention to act. It appeared as if the brain had begun preparation for the movement before the individuals perceived themselves as deciding to do anything.
  
• Some subjects reported that they could change their minds after deciding to act. The neurons began to fire, the person prepared to move, and then -- fifteen-hundredths of a second before the motion should have occurred -- the person decided to stay motionless.