The term seer was usually applied to prophets in the Bible and
perhaps could be applied to non self-realized sages and teachers
who instructed with a poetic visionary voice coming from the
higher planes of inner knowing. One could make the point that the
seer may be another term for bard or shaman though more closely
identified with an agrarian-town/city cultural way rather than
agrarian-hunter-gather-tribal-village or nomadic way of life.
The seer is the poet seeing and hearing words becoming the poem,
and hence the tie-in with the prophet who sings or chants the
seeing, that which is to come. The seer's poem comes forth from a
deep region of consciousness directly linked to intuition, awareness
other than those made of idea floating through the mind from other
minds or energies rising from the unconscious. Blake and Whitman
are considered seers.

The bard or shaman experience (hunter-gatherer or agrarian-
village) for an urban or rural born industrial age educated and
trained or self trained poet may not be a path that can be walked
except with heroic effort equal to the striving for self-realization.
American poetry holds within it today several non American Indian
poets initiated into various American Indian traditions. Whether
these poets have traveled as actual shamans to other realms as bear,
crow, or another animal energy consciousness except by
imagination remains to be seen as well as their healing impact on
individuals, groups or the larger culture. It has been suggested this
is but a further extension or the next wave of the American and
European romantic tradition.

Except for the mystic poet, the seer remains for the current moment
the span of reach for the Western field of the poet and her/his field
of consciousness: poet, bard, shaman, seer and mystic. The mystic
poet ‹ a deeper experiencing seer poet on the way to or in precincts
adjacent to union with the Divine, living Gnosis; Gnosis, direct
experience and identity with the Divine or the Unspeakable ‹ not to
be confused with the religious poet writing religious sentiment, is a
rarely talked about figure in Eurocentered poetry.

Mystical experiences are held by some as a facet of the visionary
poet. They would then make a short grouping of poets (poet and
visionary poet) lumping all non ordinary experience together. The
materialistic world-view automatically rejects or awaits further
proof of the possibilities surrounding other dimensions of
consciousness through the touchy-feelly scientific process become a
social dogma.

A major factor in the contemporary Western environment encircling
the mystic is the absence of a wide number of individuals living in
Gnosis who honorably, openly, joyfully, and ecstatically pass the
traditions from one experiential existential generation of
self-realized adepts to the next. Further, there is not a large number
of mystic poets in the Christian tradition nor one mystical poetic
lineage of a few generations in Europe, only isolated individuals.
The wideness of possibilities of evolution of consciousness and its
expansion remain uncharted territory in traditional (non mystic)
Western psychology and religious, particularly Protestant,
literature. Maps of this knowing field are found in mystic literature
now becoming easier to find: Gnostic, Patristic, Manichaean and
Cathare texts, Hildegard of Bingen, Saint Bernard, Saint Francis,
and Saint Clare of Assisi, Legend of the Grail by Chrétien
de Troyes, The Cloud of Knowing, Saint Teresa of Avila,
alchemical texts like those of Paracelsus, Jacob Bohme, George
Fox and John Woolman to name a portion of important sources.
Essentially this is this body of work by individuals who have
followed Jesus' answer to the Pharisees when asked when the
kingdom of God should come ‹"...not with observation....The
kingdom of God is within you"--Luke 17: 20-21). This translates,
does it not, that only the living can find this state of being. Further,
in the Sermon on the Mount the third eye for meditation is pointed
to (Matthew 6: 22).

The self-realized poet (sage, yogi, saint or transmitter, and
teacher/master) is widely accepted and known throughout Asia and
continues as a source and well spring of evolving wisdom,
consciousness and revelation, Gnosis. Here are a few: Sufis of
Islam: Bulleh Shah (India), Hafez, Nazir (India), Raba'i, Rumi,
Sadi, Sarmad (India), Sanai; India: Appar, Andal, Aurobindo,
Dariya Sahib, Dadu, Janadev, Kabir, Mirabai, Namdev, Nanak,
Nammalvar, Ramdas, Sambandhar, Sundarar, Thirumoolar,
Tukaram, Tulsi Sahib (among a large number yet to be counted);
Tibet: Milarepa; China: Big Shield, Cold Mountain, Pickup,
Stonehouse and its zen-taoist poets; and Japan: Ikkyu, Muso,
Ryokan, Saigyo, Santoka and other zen poets. What folds all these
poets together along with Christian God realized mystics are works
penetrating their audience to the deepest most core of being by a
voice resonating fully with an authority sourced from authentic
experience spoken, chanted or sung from the mountain top of
heroic accomplishment. These poets' works can be ranked among
some of the most accomplished poetic compositions in world
literature with an added dimension that the life and experience of
the poet and the poems are one and the same, that their lives were
also their message.

Religion is as much as an ennobling space that can open one's inner
mystic door leading to the highest human potential as it is full of the
darkest human energies powered by unconscious, uncontrolled ego.
Mystics and seekers know from direct experience and the
transmission teachings by master, guru or teacher that inner
expansion of consciousness is a paradox non seekers find difficult
to believe or come to grips with. By whatever individual practice
the deeper one's inward journey and the more one drops the body's
physical senses and mind, the more these servants are brought
under control, the wider one's field of consciousness becomes. The
effort is to push forward into a more perfect reflection of human
potential where the experience of duality, the sense-mind world, is
replaced by unity, non duality. Among mystics the saint is seen as
the normal human condition; anything less is wanting. 

The artist enhances and shapes light with the dark. The poet writes
with the dark on white. In India's mystical symbology the dark
represents the unconscious aspects of consciousness while light
represents the conscious aspects of consciousness. As such, male
and female, associated with neither, are not unwittingly assigned to
either pole of the duality as in other systems making the feminine
dark, earth bound and hence lesser. The mystic removes the l from
gold, the color of a non dual Divine light found within each and
every human. The mystic knows that we are not only children of the
Divine, but that the purpose of life is first to become the Daughter
or Son of the Divine before merging with the Divine (S/he or it).
Among the mystics there is no We, only I because through direct
experience they know the many are but facets of the one.

This, then, is the focal point. Modern and post-modern poets and
artists attempting to change society through their poems and visual
compositions have been unable to alter fundamental behavior and
direction within themselves let alone society. Their lives as the real
message are not radically different from those they wish to change,
mistaking, in part, the image in the mirror as correct or nearly
correct while their own inner wounds are unconsciously projected
upon others and are seen as the problems of others needing to be
solved. They have not cleansed their own inner being so that the
outward life may shine forth as a beacon illuminating the poem.
Their work is of and in the moment of history not of the moment of
the eternal or the historical moment informed by the eternal.

With inner change comes altered vibration ‹consciousness ‹ that in
turn is heard/read at conscious and unconscious levels that possibly
moves or triggers a reader or audience towards basic inner change.
Change of this nature is individual by individual, not as yet mass
movement or inherited. After two essays on modern art and
literature, Carl Jung refused further analysis of modern art and
literature because the works were equivalent to those made by his
patients. The major figures' works and those like them simply
mirrored and continue to mirror the disease ravaging the industrial
age. Only the artistic accomplishment between the masters and the
patients differed; the waves the works rode were nearly identical.

The states of self-realized consciousness themselves are of varying
degrees ranging from single point of view to 1,000 eyed
simultaneous seeing. Our evolution remains incomplete. The
difference between us and the primates is on the other side the
distance between us and living in Gnosis. 

States of consciousness were once an experimental and exploration
arena of the Romantic Movement of the 19th Century. Out of that
exploration rose two poles: transcendentalism (Emerson was the
first to translate a sufi poet, Hafez, into English), and the dark out
pouring from the unconscious exhibited in the alcohol and drug
based poems and horror stories of Poe and others which continue
to fall into deeper unconsciousness pits. The exploration of
consciousness resurfaced with the surrealist after WW1. Fascism
was embraced by major American and European poets in the so-
called avant-garde. In this country after WW2, the Beats and the
so-called 60's Generation continued the experimentation. But again
these groups' writings were inspired by the full spectrum (little to
overdose) of the muses of alcohol and drugs. Experience and
history show that poets caught by and addicted to the moment of
inspiration become impatient with the "inhale-exhale" process of
creation (the dreaded so-called writer's block) have a tendency to
use alcohol, drugs or other addictions to lubricate or replicate the
inspirational moment out of which to compose. Eventually the
writing becomes sourced from the addiction, a consciousness
informed with a toxic substance much like industrial
farming's use of chemical fertilizers creating beautiful looking crops
full of hollow nutritional value. 

Poems can not be separated from the poet however much critics
and the poets try. The poet's life is the poet's message, the poem an
autobiographical artifact. The examples of self-realized poets of
Asia and the Christian mystics offer American poets territories of
consciousness exploration and opportunities to compose a poetry
based on a wisdom informed by Gnosis. Such knowledge and living
by example can then grow the poet back into her/his place of
cultural leadership by example and aid in the evolution of the
species.


DEFINITIONS

poet : s/he who writes, composes poems

bard: in the ancient Keltic tradition a master composer of runes,
capable of casting spells, closely allied with the arena of the
shaman; in English the highest honor used to praise a poet

shaman: essentially the healer but also one who can travel by word
trance into other realms

seer: s/he who sees and hears words that create what seen

mystic: a seer-poet whose works are totally informed by inner and
outer spiritual experience; one in the process of becoming but not
fully self realized 

self-realized: varying degrees of Gnosis; the voice that has moved
from calling oneself the daughter or son of the Divine(She, He, It)
to becoming one with the Divine, but still sees from a singular view

rishi: self realized seer who sees an inner truth and creates by
mantra the form or energy seen; poets who composed the Rig
Veda.

teacher/master (yogi, guru, saint or transmitter): self realized
teacher who in part or totally instructs through poetic voice

saint: self realized individual whose actions have risen to the level
of a living spiritual ideal in the eyes of the community in which
she/he serves and dwells and who in part or totally instructs
through poetic voice; among mystics the saint is considered the
normal human condition

Complete Gnosis: self realized individual with 1,000 eyed
simultaneous seeing