The Editor
Art Life
Objection to the Misrepresentation of the Content of my Book (Theolosophy According to Edward C. Links)
I wish to object to [A] the misrepresentation of almost every aspect of what I have written. Here is the list, with quotes from the review, and some of my own to back up my position:
[a] “With Theolosophy… the prime tenet is tolerance… IDIC”: Nothing of the sort. p.94: ‘You cannot probe with joy in another human being more than a few inches, and only briefly. Yet the fiction of love continues unabated.You are irrevocably individual.’ p.43: ‘The only land a man dies in is his body.
When you die in your figure, there is no witness. In parity and their culpability in the law are people kindred. Your wife is your neighbour, because you both come from a unitary earth.’ p.43: ‘No human being can really share, because of his limited capacity. Neither can he relax his grip on his material possessions, lest he be left indigent one hour from now.’ The “tolerance” is the reviewer’s misrepresentation of the stated belief that a thousand years of Parity lies ahead in which the tenor of the millennium will change to bring relief in terms of material well-being [note the sub-title: Announcing the Spirit of a Thousand Years].
[b] “[the book]… gives an account of contemporary Christian theology”: No, no, it does not! The cosmological conception of God as Creator of the universe is what I subscribe to. Nowhere is Christian doctrine touched on. It is stated repeatedly that man [not Christians] is deluded by world spirit; that he does not know where to find God: p.80: ‘God is spirit; you steeped in matter.Prayer is muttered from an incompatible plane.’ Not only Christians pray! And Christ is nowhere named – only God. This does not make God a Christian.
© “We are not a religion…” “…using Bailey’s own terminology: This is not the rock upon which my religion is built.” Another misinterpretation: Nowhere is religion in the Christian sense mentioned or promoted. The treatise is in the general terms and envisages a world-wide culture of understanding of the importance of the earth [and therefore] man’s body as the first and foremost reality of Creation. It is straightforward life as viewed from the perspective of Creationism: If God made the earth, etc., then everything is in God and God is everything. p.20: “His things are everywhere and everything is His. Prison, too is God. The realm took the words that God is everything and distorted their meaning for you – that is why you do not know about your delusion. It appropriated philosophy. Who made the assassin? He, too, is in developing [providence].” 06 “He does gallop (thoughtlessly and without explaining what, for instance, M3 means)…” Response: Nowhere in the book [except very late when I thought the terms established already] did I use either M1, M2 or M3 without somewhere along the line hinting that it refers to either the first, second or third millennium: p.42: “As much as gospel was predominant in the first millennium and the politics of superpower in the second, so parity is the spirit of the third.” [Five lines further]: “The parity decreed for M3…” p.64: “The spiritual dip of the second millennium… The ordained condition of M2 was Loosed.” Other examples exist. Child’s play. [B] THE TONE OF THE REVIEW: “He does gallop (thoughtlessly…)” This is not appropriate register to use, depicting this writer as running helter-skelter over established literary traditions with a warped philosophy. Whatever the man’s views on the quality of what is before him, he is constrained by the ethics of his calling and of his workplace to express himself less crassly and in keeping with the linguistic traditions set for him in centuries of practical criticism. [C] “THEOLOSOPHY DOES NOT EXPLAIN… EXCEPT IN ESOTERIC AND OCCULT FASHION…” I resent this inference of the occult, as that is another misrepresentation: The spiritual basis of everything and all things is what we argue. Whatever is stated in the book, however complex the arguments may become, the essential tenet is that because God is spirit and thus conceived the universe as spirit first before its constitution in material. This does not give anyone the right to label as “occult” what is not clearly understood. [D] UNWILLINGNESS TO ACKNOWLEDGE INNOVATION: The reviewer states at the beginning that he has searched high and low for the meaning of my ‘Theolosophy’ of the title. He sounds irked by it all [This is only my impression]. Well, it IS a new word, invented by us. Just like two others inside the book, which he may have missed. Plus the novel use of some regular English terms. I am proud to have contributed towards the language. [E] BELITTLING THE CONTENT: “Most of the logical arguments given are to me invalid and/or obsolete, and could probably be picked apart by anyone who took first-year philosophy.” Response: I challenge any philosopher to “pick apart” any of my arguments. I place as addendum quotes from the book, right from p.1, of some of the tenets [and there are many] that form the backbone of the theolosophy for ‘picking apart’. [The reviewer is invited].[F] DAMAGE TO MY REPUTATION: All of the above has hurt my reputation, whatever you may think of it. I have a standing in my community and to be belittled in this groundless fashion is unacceptable.
Damage has also been done to my prospects of selling the book [I try to do it from my home as I have given up years ago on getting funds in this country to publish literary work.
HENRY BAILEY