Label: My own journey

The theosophist who traveled around with flying saucers

The theosophist who traveled around with flying saucers

Håkan Blomqvist at SWEAT, i.e. "Archives For the Unexplained", in Norrköping, in its work to catalog the history of the Swedish UFO movement has reached this little nugget.

A report from when Borlänge was visited by the theosophist, ufologist, etc., Alve Holmqvist, in the early 80s. I want to remember it was my own "scoop" from when I was browsing the newspaper during junior high school, or shortly thereafter. You can read more about this Holmqvist here the blog post by Håkan Blomqvist. And here, in one Post from Clas Svahn's blog.

A reflection when I re-watch the old clip and google the lecturer is how certain interests seem to be able to coincide so well: Flying saucers, Pyramid mysticism, Healing, Occultism, Western esotericism, battle squares, etc.

The spiritual 80s

The spiritual 80s

A couple of program sheets from Cafe Pan, the "new age temple" that was located on Götgatan in Stockholm, during some intense years in the 80s.

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A lecture I myself gave there. That I was deemed eligible for this was because I had pushed up and given out a booklet with own texts some year before. The theme of the talk was something I gone and pondered a while, I remember.

After the lecture, I then held a study circle that was about... Well, what was it really about? Everything and most it seems. I was twenty one. I had made the poster myself!

Obsession

Obsession

"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying Statistical Mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study Statistical Mechanics.”

This may seem like navel gazing. But I feel like writing something about it. A tribute to myself and an old hobby actually. A meditation on inspirations, all-consuming interests, obsessions.

For fifteen years, languages ​​were my great passion. Not language in general then, but a particular angle on it. I worked towards it becoming a new kind of lexicon. A "sound dictionary" would probably be the easiest way to describe it. Still think I was something central, important on the tracks. It wasn't that crazy at all. But the work came to an abrupt end around the turn of the millennium, and I'll come back to why.

It had started in the spring of '89. (With a "discovery" so trivial that I'm not even going to tell you about it!) All my first attempts to get an education then started from this interest. Started studying Linguistics at the university -92. Eurythm teacher training with the anthroposophists in Järna 95-96. Went to Komvux to enter the Speech-Language Pathology course, where I then spent 03-04. I dropped out of all the courses early. (Which was very lucky because otherwise I wouldn't have had any study funds left.)

But then it stopped. Why?

Well, I found out about a kind of lexicon that was not only a "thesaurus", which is already a very special kind of dictionary, but another even more strange one. Which was even closer to my own vision of how language and the meaning of words could be categorized in a new, clarifying way.

Right now, I don't remember either the designer's name or the book's name. Not even what was so special about it? But the guy had sadly died at a young age, I was told. From a brain tumor. Now if this had anything to do with each other. But in any case made me lose the desire.

Will think about that when seeing this picture.

Beautiful temples and ruins

Beautiful temples and ruins

[T]he dynamic Café Pan. A gigantic new age temple in Götgatsbacken. The center grew to become a colorful forum for everything in the alternative world. There appeared the great domestic and international spiritual teachers of the time to preach their messages. Café Pan was the obvious church for the message of the new age. The lectures succeeded each other, sometimes three could last the same evening.

This is how one of the founders, Tomas Frankell, describes the place in one text.

The picture has been included before. I am the one standing there in front of the establishment. The year is maybe 1987? Towards the end (and it was probably when the picture was taken) I worked in the combined coffee, health and book shop which was just inside the red doors.

Had thought I wanted to collect some material for a post, about the place and the time.

The fact that they called the business a "café" was one thing understatement. It was housed, among other things, in a large, old cinema, so the salon itself did well as a lecture hall and music stage. The back part of what had been the cinema hall had been converted into a dining room. The projector room was the kitchen.

How long was PAN at the location? A year or two more after the picture was taken, as I remember it. A total of ten years perhaps? Or less? (The name then took an employee, Nina Harder, with her and started a smaller, purely lecture business in Hälsans hus on Fjällgatan, so the name lived on for a few more years.)

Some time ago I passed the crest on Götgatan and took the opportunity to take a picture of what used to be the entrance. For a while there had been an O'Leary's there, but they had missed again. Maybe it was a long time ago.

A couple of years earlier I had headed to an address in the gate next door. Took the elevator up to the 3rd floor, stepped through a door, and realized that I was back in the large, spacious apartment that had also been an important part of that "cafe business" thirty years earlier.

Many courses and lectures have taken place in the large meeting room directly inside the hall. (I myself held a study circle there, for a period, which had the title "What is essential?".)

One more thing I wanted to include in this post was an article in the magazine Free (no. 1 2012) which is about the newage scene at the time eh, but quite a lot about PAN as well.

“30 years in the service of spirituality! And so it began!” A real one nostalgia reportage with an abundance of names, facts & photos. About the "new age temple" Café PAN it says, among other things, to read:

“Tomas Frankell [went] on and started Café Pan in Stockholm, with some newfound friends: Tiiu Serenander, Björn Hultin and Mats Samuelsson. Their joint vision was to start a large new age temple in central Stockholm. After a long time of searching, the team finally found the new premises at Götgatan 11 in Stockholm. […]

For almost ten years, Stockholm was offered numerous lectures and courses about everything that the new spirituality could produce. Many of the big names of the time visited Café Pan. Among these were the authors Caroline Myss, Gerald Jampolsky, Yogi Bhajan, Peter Russel, Eva Moberg, Per Ragnar, Bibbi Andersson, Tony Buzan and Doris Ankarberg and others."

(Note: If you are reading on a mobile phone, it is easier to enlarge the pages in the usual way, with your fingers, than to click on "Fullscreen".)

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A small town mystic

A small town mystic

Sture Emby (1921-2011)

"In 1948 - when J. was 27 years old - something happened that continues to shine as a beacon and a promise. /'Alltfort' – means 23 Nov 1987/. And which far outshines all other experiences.”

This is how the author, meditation teacher, etc., Sture Emby, begins a text in which he describes a strong experience he had in his youth. (The text has been posted on the website for a long time Vivotopia, together with many similar "enlightenment" experiences, but take the opportunity to copy it while there is time, you never know how long such things will be available.)

Sture who worked almost his entire adult life in Borlänge, Dalarna. With certain assignments to lecture in other locations. Held courses in Western esotericism (especially Martin's cosmology), meditation, yoga and graphology. Besides being a therapist/soul saver for many who sought his contact.

I got to know Sture Emby when I was in my freshman year of high school. It was a time of searching for me, and meeting him was very significant. We had contact for many years. Eventually I needed to distance myself. The reason for this was no conflict or anything, I just stopped having contact. There is certainly something to think about about this. But it was quite a natural process, I feel. A need for release. Certainly a kind of recoil on long-term idealization as well.

There is much more to tell about Sture Emby. Once he showed a binder he had prepared, a kind of biography, with typewritten sheets and the occasional photo. (Including one where he stood next to a small propeller plane. Surely that was what he did his military service as, a meteorologist, who sometimes had to go up in the air? That's how I remember it anyway.) A skilled pianist, with the ambition to become a concert pianist, but hearing loss in one ear meant that he had to abandon that dream. He began a career in banking, something he soon gave up.

Sture Emby was a loner. There were probably several reasons for this. Personal disposition was one, his natural reticence. All his adult life (after that experience he had) he was ideologically faithful to the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen, which he always referred to, but never particularly employed or involved in the movement around him. In his "study letters" that he sent out at regular intervals to subscribers, 7-8 typewritten and stenciled pages, the first pages were always Martinus texts that Sture himself painstakingly translated from the Danish. Only then came some sheets with his own reflections or poems. He was actually one of the first to take an interest in and teach about Martinus' cosmology in Sweden, so long there was not much else available in the Swedish language.

At the time, that's how I understood it, there were a couple of things that other followers could find disturbing about Sture, mistrust him for, or maybe even harbor envy because of: Firstly, that he held courses in meditation and yoga, partly that he did not hide the fact that he had his own "enlightenment experience" which to some extent gave him his own authority. When I last had an insight into the Martinus movement, this was not directly disqualifying, but in the 1950s and 60s it probably was.

Yes, one more thing! Sture sometimes took the liberty of making his own "symbols", based on Martinus Thomsen's symbolic language. Which at least at the time was controversial, even considered dangerous. (There was an anecdote that was passed around, about how Martinus would once have warned a mother, whose son dabbled in such things.) But they were rather inoffensive pencil drawings, one might think. Or things he drew with chalks when he was teaching. But I have heard that it was not looked upon kindly by some other people interested in Martinus and contributed to him being perceived as suspicious.

Here is the continuation of Sture's story (and at the end of the post there are links to contributions from others, which may be of interest):

“J. had left the shack a few hours ago for an errand in the building, a phone message to my dear host and client in Gustafs. However, the mission was not carried out, he could not be found.

Somewhat dejected, J. began the mile-long and uphill journey home. /Bicycle - and it was if I remember correctly in the month of June/. So was a little tired when j. sought out a place to rest. Preferring not to be confronted with people on this occasion, I headed to 'Agne's Great House', where there were many spaces and resting places. /Colony members as well as visitors on this day, a Sunday I think, stayed in the 'main building'/.

After a few minutes of pleasant relaxation in one of these bunks or boarded-up, richly decorated rest rooms, a wonderful thing happened to me. Without previous 'warning' or hint - j. was suddenly placed in a new dimension of life for me. I was in some way 'electrified' or illuminated, at the same time that j. himself came to shine through, experience and be penetrated by new and higher worlds according to what j. perceived. My interior as well as the entire surroundings began to vibrate, also lit up by some spotlight-like light, not uniformly but with and in different variations and angles. The experiencer was mesmerized and still dazed, but at the same time fully aware of, for example, the exteriors in the room and outside the windows. If someone had come in to me - which fortunately didn't happen anyway - j. supposes that the vision or the experience - even if somewhat distracted - remained. /This happened later in the day, when j. gradually came to meet my friends/.

I came to perceive how existence had no beginning, no end. That the individuals - I was clearly in focus here - had always existed and would always remain so. There was absolutely nothing to fear. We were all in the enclosure of Providence, and to an equal degree. I saw past scenes of human development, I saw barbarism and complete chaos of the senses, but also how this was fully explained through the later chapters of the life scenes, yes how all this and everything else, were necessary fragments for the construction of perfected and loving psyches, for the construction of highly creative and rich personalities, who were all our inheritance. In this process - for me wonderful, because I had not experienced anything like this before - some were more advanced than others, but therefore not favored but on the basis of their wider measure of suffering as well as life experiences etc.

The currents of infinity worked in and out and through me. They were accompanied by cascades of light and heat. Wherever I directed my inner – and even to a certain extent outer – gaze, I was met with divine embraces. I, the quiet, withdrawn, ignorant Sture Emby.

On this basis it was not so strange that in no phase of this vision did I experience any fear or that I wanted to withdraw. On the contrary: It was as if I could not get enough of these heavenly glories, which at the same time meant vital nourishment for my sensitive being as well as for my intellectual, for thought and variations of thought. /C: 2 years later, j. had a similar but weaker experience/.

That time was out of my control here was probably quite natural. As I gradually got up from my camp and headed out – still without meeting anyone – away from the settlement and onto familiar paths in the woods and moors. Still in the atmosphere of 'natural' intoxication vibrating within me, as ONE with all living things, ONE with eternity and bliss.

It was completely clear to me how the Top Management in all phases of life took care of and followed each one with the absolute greatest care - and without the feeling of freedom and independence being violated. This certainly not only applies to humans but without exception all creatures in the small as well as in the large. And that also the great plan and the great mystery would be revealed to each one. I with my present illumination and experience was certainly not an exception or something unique. - I also learned that I would receive further instructions and management. - When I finally returned to mine on the seat, the vision - albeit somewhat weakened - remained. Even for about ten days afterwards. Then it happened that I - as if with an inner x-ray vision - could from time to time experience the history of human development through several earthly lives, not in detail but in general."

Here are a couple of links with material from people for whom Sture Emby had great personal significance.

A video interview with Sture Emby made by Hans Oldhage and Stefan Frankel:

An interview, etc., by Gunnar Martin Aronsson. (The blog post also includes the obituary, by Per-Anders Hedlund, which was published in a valley newspaper.):

Interview with STURE EMBY
Nothing new under the sun (not much anyway)

Nothing new under the sun (not much anyway)

Something I saw on Facebook, advertising for a mobile app. What does it have to do with our times, "spirituality" and such? Well, at first one could think this is so typical of the stressed modern man, fragmented knowledge, etc. But it's actually an old concept.

I'm reminded of something author and small-town mystic Sture Emby once told me from when he was young. 40s, maybe? He then lived in an alternative collective in the forests outside Rättvik, which was led by the health pioneer Agne Windmark. It was certainly a spartan, quiet existence.

They lived cheaply, picked berries, worked on their personal development. And - that's where I wanted to get to! - had some income from writing for that thing called (called?) Reader's Digest, i.e. booklets that people could subscribe to that briefly reproduced the main points from various books.

Ralph Lundsten (1936-2023)

Ralph Lundsten (1936-2023)

I never came to his house. Never met him. Barely listening to his music, I was writing. But that's not true, because if you were only slightly alternative in the eighties, you would probably have heard a lot.

But Ralph Lundsten and his home was one of the stops I thought of when I went out hitchhiking after the first year of high school. And then did not come back. So in that way he has been important to me.

Ralph Lundsten (1936-2023)

https://www.svt.se/kultur/kompositoren-ralph-lundsten-ar-dod

Neo-New age?

Neo-New age?

Those born from 1988 onwards want to learn everything I can. They have dusted off a huge amount of 80s knowledge which feels a bit surprising to me. They are rediscovering things like reiki healing, lots of yoni talk and various forms of therapy that the rest of us have passed over.

[...]
- You [the journalist was certainly born in the eighties] have missed the entire first wave, it was in the 1980s. So now that the 80s have grown up, they want to be like me, haha!”

This is how the astrologer Margareta Hedin is quoted in a readable text by Björn Barr (SvD 2022-12-31).
https://www.svd.se/a/8JG2nG/horoskop-2023-astrologen-om-stora-forandringen

Before that, I get attached to something the author of the article claims already at the beginning of the text: "As new spirituality gains ground"... I have read that opinion expressed in another newspaper recently, I don't remember where. Is it true? I hardly thought of the idea myself, although I am interested in the phenomenon and the worlds of thought.

"New age" as a kind of freer, less structured spirituality than the church, not many people want to know it anymore. In my own generation at least. Reminds me of an interview study I did a little over ten years ago, with a dozen people who included typically "new age" performances. None of them wanted to be associated with that term.

Abstract

But maybe she has a point, the astrologer, that things have now sort of come full circle?

[T]he dynamic Café Pan. A gigantic new age temple in Götgatsbacken. The center grew to become a colorful forum for everything in the alternative world. There appeared the great domestic and international spiritual teachers of the time to preach their messages. Café Pan was the obvious church for the message of the new age. The lectures succeeded each other, sometimes three could last the same evening.

It is Tomas Frankell, one of the founders (and my employer, one of them, for some important years) who describes the place like this, in a text that could be googled. And that is no exaggeration. PAN was a wonderfully dynamic place.
http://www.devanews.com/hem/devas_30_arsjubileum.php

If she is right, Hedin, then you were then part of a first wave, which is now being followed by a second. Just like with fashion, TV series, etc. That it can be viable, feel fresh again.

(At the same time, it is hard to imagine that such a gathering place as PAN – the picture! – could be resurrected and draw people. Why? If the interest now is so great for roughly the same things as then?)

Honor those who should be honored

Honor those who should be honored

“Ojai”… Seeing an ad from the Krishnamurti Center on the American West Coast. I have probably mentioned that my two main inspirations - not only for what they actually said and wrote, but as individuals, almost as "archetypes" for different kinds of spirituality - have been the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen & the Theosophical apostate Jiddu Krishnamurti.

And I've had the Universe on my side, it seems 🙂

The first time I was going to visit the Martinus Center on Zealand, in the early summer of '84, I started hitchhiking in Stockholm in the morning. And managed to get to that center out on the bonnavischan already that evening. A combination of strange circumstances, like a wave of helpfulness.

In the spring of '90, I was sitting on a Greyhound bus along the coast of California, squinting out the window. Suddenly saw a sign for an exit that had such a familiar name: “Ojai.” I knew Krishnamurti stayed at a place called that. But I thought it was in India? But, I guess I took a turning bus to check it out. And so I ended up at that center, too.

In both cases, however, I arrived three or four years too late to meet the founders themselves.

It's like every type of spirituality has its possible varieties. Esotericism, like Martinus, then one becomes far too fond of the answers, the "system", that one has seen and been initiated into this. Such systems that there are several similar, but that one has found what is superior to the others, etc... And that other type of spirituality then, of which Krishnamurti is a representative? The downside there is that you can become too aggressive, cross-confident in that way, I feel. Followers of Krishnamurti can sometimes appear as the spiritual equivalent of "Science and Public Education" or "The Humanists".

Still don't know how to get their respective teachings together properly. When I was into it more, I fantasized about how the two could perhaps be seen as a kind of "epoxy" solution. As a two-component glue, then. They each had an angle. Which could hardly be expressed by one and the same individual. Together, they were a guarantor that one would not become too cocky, one-sided, fundamentalist.

Am I a follower of any of these gentlemen? It is a question of definition. Krishnamurti for example? If someone were to scan my brain - if it were possible - and see which individuals made a big impression, whose words and quotes sort of built up my inner world, then it would say "Jiddu Krishnamurti" on quite a lot... (Others may have the same nourishment of other philosophers, then their names are certainly on the mind.)

So then I gladly honor him by calling me a follower. (Since I hardly read a line of his since I was twenty-five, I think it matters less.) Honor to whom honor is due.

Then I don't know if maybe Krishnamurti got a little grumpy towards the end, "VoFfig", he too? A long life and having to answer a lot of questions that didn't reflect what really interested him, together with age, maybe made him tired... That he was a bit routine.

But still his story about the devil and a friend of his who was out for a walk, which he included in the speech when he dissolved the Star in the East, is a clear shining light. As a psychospiritual equation, a spell:

"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket . The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of Truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to let him organize it.'"

Be yourself?

Be yourself?

Reminded of how much I wrestled with that call to "be yourself", like in my late teens-early adulthood (for quite a while, I think). Just couldn't understand what was meant! That it was something worth striving for, that was talked about, encouraged, that much I understood, but I was clueless.

Is it normal right there in adolescence at least, the search for identity, trying out who you should be? But, my dilemma probably went a little deeper. Had to do with the fact that I ended up so early among older people in idealized environments, I think