Mysticism

It is curious how there seems to be an apparatus, or means within us to follow this path, to seek this end. Or is it just the human mind which once developed found solace in such areas of contemplation. The ape that thought of God, condemning all who followed to a longing for more, for escape.

This is a passage from Hegel which I think is particularly relevant, quoted in the book I am reading, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Magee thinks Hegel uses mytho-poetic language to "encircle" or "circle around" his subjects with concrete images to gain speculative knowledge of them, rather than trying to think them in the determinate language of abstract conceptualization. So we get a picture, but no definitive propositional-type claims are made about the subject and there always remains mystery.

I hope this can be opened; I didn't have time to type it out; I'm pretty pressed at the moment.

I noticed that Hegel and hermetics book yesterday - there's synchronicity for you. I've been studying mysticism for decades - don't go along with the 'emotions and concepts' remark, but never mind. What I would like to contribute is a few names who I think had nothing mystical about them, nor any affinity with mysticism - namely, Darwin, Marx and Freud.

I much admire Schrodinger but that particular expression is only characteristic of certain strains of mysticism, to others (both Christian and Buddhist), not so much, although if the idea were expressed as 'divine union' Christians might assent.

Nevertheless a noble sentiment

Reply to John Quoting John

This is a passage from Hegel which I think is particularly relevant, quoted in the book I am reading, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition. Magee thinks Hegel uses mytho-poetic language to "encircle" or "circle around" his subjects with concrete images to gain speculative knowledge of them, rather than trying to think them in the determinate language of abstract conceptualization. So we get a picture, but no definitive propositional-type claims are made about the subject and there always remains mystery.

I opened the passage and thought it was great. I want to read that book. I read both Kojeve and Wittgenstein's TLP with something like a mystical or speculative feeling. "Mytho-poetic language" is exactly what I have in mind. "Symbols of transformation" also come to mind. The propositional content does not exhaust the symbolic statement. It has a resonant ambiguity. I was listening to this beautiful song last night and it occurred to me how supreme poetry set to music can be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ch6h278GEpA

It's odd how translations of Aristotle and Plato often refer to 'God', and this does the same: 'I have become a god' would be right too, wouldn't it? I was brought up an atheist so I can never grasp this reflex monotheism.

It's called 'apotheosis' by the ancient Greeks. In both ancient Greek and Indian culture, there were cults of those who were said to have become divinities through their heroic actions and sacrifices. After Christianity, the term was retained as 'theosis':

In Eastern Orthodoxy deification (theosis) is a transformative process whose goal is likeness to or union with God. As a process of transformation, theosis is brought about by the effects of katharsis (purification of mind and body) and theoria ('illumination' with the 'vision' of God). According to Eastern Orthodox teaching, theosis is very much the purpose of human life. It is considered achievable only through a synergy (or cooperation) between human activity and God's uncreated energies (or operations)

I don't see anything 'reflexive' about it, except for in the cultural sense - for those brought up in such a culture then it is natural to believe what you're taught.

I don't think Plato and Aristotle used the name God (although scholars would be able to confirm that.) I think that Plato would speak in terms of the One and the Good, which was then later assumed by the early Greek-speaking theologians to refer to God.

Damon Linker:Plato and Aristotle were the first natural theologians. The pre-Socratic philosophers that preceded them rejected fanciful stories about the gods that formed the basis of Athenian civil religion and substituted various forms of atheism. But Plato and Aristotle held more nuanced views. Both philosophers followed their predecessors in denying the gods of popular piety, but they also developed theological views of their own. These were not based on divine revelation. They were a product of rational reflection on what any divine being must be like.

This philosophical divinity was nothing like the Olympian gods — or the revealed God of the Bible. It (not he) was austere and impersonal, taking no interest in the fate of human beings. It neither heard nor answered prayers. It played no providential role in individual or collective human lives. It didn't reward the righteous or punish the wicked. Above all, it resembled a philosopher whose quest for wisdom was complete. This "prime mover," or ultimate cause of all things, was pure mind or intellect — "thought thinking itself," to use Aristotle's famous formulation.

Reply to Wayfarer Eastern Orthodox Christianity nice to see you quote about it! I'm an Orthodox Christian ;)

Reply to mcdoodle
I think it's about the harmonization or unity of a personality. It usually hurts to be of "two minds." We can, of course, divide the self into various drives, but ideally they all work together, just like our internal organs. But then I have nothing against gods plural. What religion means to me is miles above (or miles below) a resistance to polytheism. It's above/below anything and everything static and finite and solemn, but it's only "infinite" in the realm of feeling (love, humor, at-home-ness) and in the realm of concept, as the negation of every finite "idol." For me, true religion is not solemn or anxious or defensive or accusing. It's exactly the opposite. But to think that I'm trying to bring a law along the lines of "thou shalt not be solemn or anxious or defensive or accusing" is to absolutely miss the point. For me, that's the stone rolled back in front of the tomb. I don't care if artists put a crucifix in urine. Any god that fragile is bad technology. (I think "Christ" or "Lucifer" is "just" a piece of technology, like just about every damn thing in the world-- and not by any means the only technology that humans need. )

Reply to Agustino I admire David Bentley Hart, and have also read a bit from Semyon Frank and Vladimir Lossky. The Orthodox church stayed a lot nearer to Platonism.

Quoting Hoo

It makes no claims beyond emotions and concepts --or not even concepts exactly but potent symbols or myths that encourage and communicate what is "just" emotion as a "halo" around these concepts, symbols, myths.

In view of Wayfarers comment about a point I didn't pick up in the OP, I want to add that I think the idea of mysticism as "just" "emotions and concepts", being the polemic to the proposition that mysticism somehow shows us something determinate about the Real, is just the kind of abstract thinking that Hegel wants to get away from with his use of mytho-poetic language to reach a concretely rational, as opposed to a merely abstract, knowledge.

Reply to Wayfarer Yes that is true (regarding Platonism). It seems much more other-worldly focused than Catholicism for example. Not that I necessarily view that as a good thing, but it's the way things have been. I think this other-worldly focus has sidelined them a lot - one of the reasons that Eastern Orthodoxy isn't more widespread. Same as Buddhism - a relatively peaceful religion, focused solely on Nirvana - can't expand and grow that much, as it puts the emphasis on the spiritual to the detriment, if necessary, of the worldly. Personally I prefer a stronger balance, and therefore find myself being much more an Aristotelian than a Platonist - the spiritual merely uplifts, but does not negate the worldly - and worldly things are also goods.

Reply to John
I hear you. I don't want to bring some kind of law or truth on these profound matters. When I reflect on my own experience, I'm satisfied with the "just feelings and concepts" description. To be clear, these are the most beautiful concepts and feelings I know. In the image, they are embodied, of course. I see old paintings of Jesus making a sign with his hand, and I think "that painter has felt/thought the same kind of thing that I have felt/thought." It's a gleam in the eye, a foot in the ocean, the view from a mountain's peak. It informs one's daily life without obliterating it.

But don't forget the meaning of the word 'ecstacy' - it means 'ex-stasis', outside the normal state. So it is also outside the 'conceptual mind' and the kinds of emotions that they're associated with.

Below is an excerpt from a first-person account of a profound mystical epiphany experienced by an anonymous female subject in correspondence with Canadian psychiatrist Richard Bucke, from the late 19th Century.

[i]At dinner I remarked: "How strangely happy I am to-day!" If I had realized then, as I did afterwards, what a great thing was happening to me, I should doubtless have dropped my work and given myself up to the contemplation of it, but it seemed so simple and natural (with all the wonder of it) that I and my affairs went on as usual. The light and color glowed, the atmosphere seemed to quiver and vibrate around and within me. Perfect rest and peace and joy were everywhere, and, more strange than all, there came to me a sense as of some serene, magnetic presence grand and all pervading. The life and joy within me were becoming so intense that by evening I became restless and wandered about the rooms, scarcely knowing what to do with myself. Retiring early that I might be alone, soon all objective phenomena were shut out. I was seeing and comprehending the sublime meaning of things, the reasons for all that had before been hidden and dark. The great truth that life is a spiritual evolution, that this life is but a passing phase in the soul's progression, burst upon my astonished vision with overwhelming grandeur. Oh, I thought, if this is what it means, if this is the outcome, then pain is sublime! Welcome centuries, eons, of suffering if it brings us to this! And still the splendor increased. Presently what seemed to be a swift, oncoming tidal wave of splendor and glory ineffable came down upon me, and I felt myself being enveloped, swallowed up.

I felt myself going, losing myself. Then I was terrified, but with a sweet terror. I was losing my consciousness, my identity, but was powerless to hold myself. Now came a period of rapture, so intense that the universe stood still, as if amazed at the unutterable majesty of the spectacle! Only one in all the infinite universe! The All-loving, the Perfect One! The Perfect Wisdom, truth, love and purity! And with the rapture came the insight. In that same wonderful moment of what might be called supernal bliss, came illumination. I saw with intense inward vision the atoms or molecules, of which seemingly the universe is composed—I know not whether material or spiritual—rearranging themselves, as the cosmos (in its continuous, everlasting life) passes from order to order.* What joy when I saw there was no break in the chain—not a link left out—everything in its place and time. Worlds, systems, all blended in one harmonious whole. Universal life, synonymous with universal love!

How long that period of intense rapture lasted I do not know—it seemed an eternity—it might have been but a few moments. Then came relaxation, the happy tears, the murmured, rapturous expression. I was safe; I was on the great highway, the upward road which humanity had trod with bleeding feet, but with deathless hope in the heart and songs of love and trust on the lips. I understood, now, the old eternal truths, yet fresh and new and sweet as the dawn. How long the vision lasted I cannot tell. In the morning I awoke with a slight headache, but with the spiritual sense so strong that what we call the actual, material things surrounding me seemed shadowy and unreal. My point of view was entirely changed. Old things had passed away and all had become new. The ideal had become real, the old real had lost its former reality and had become shadowy. This shadowy unreality of external things did not last many days. Every longing of the heart was satisfied,* every question answered, the "pent-up, aching rivers" had reached the ocean—I loved infinitely and was infinitely loved! The universal tide flowed in upon me in waves of joy and gladness, pouring down over me as in torrents of fragrant balm.

This describes an actual sensation.[/i]

The correspondent's sister wrote to the author a few months later:

It was in December, three months after, that I saw my sister for the first time after the experience described, and her changed appearance made such a deep impression on me that I shall never forget it. Her looks and manner were so changed that she scarcely seemed the same person. There was a clear, bright, peaceful light in her eyes, lighting her whole face, and she was so happy and contented—so satisfied with things as they were. It seemed as though some heavy weight had been lifted and she was free. As she talked to me I felt that she was living in a new world of thought and feeling unknown to me.

Quoting Agustino

Personally I prefer a stronger balance, and therefore find myself being much more an Aristotelian than a Platonist -the spiritual merely uplifts, but does not negate the worldly - and worldly things are also goods.

Reply to Agustino
We very much agree here. Render unto Caesar and Newton what is theirs. Brush your teeth. Eat well. Learn a trade or a profession. But let "faith" or "Christ" light up and lighten the mundane.

Reply to Hoo indeed, well said! :D

Reply to Wayfarer
Beautiful quote. I relate to some of that. I've experienced some of that myself. But I don't think there's a difference in quality but only a difference in the intensity of the love experienced. For me, anyway, it was just like going from 40 watts of love to 400 watts of love. And the sense that this life (my life) and this world were "perfect" and "infinite" and "holy" was also there. My theory is that this stuff is "hard wired" in our guts. We can switch it on with the help of concepts and symbols. If a person tunes in to this elevated state, it's going to have a personal stain, like light through stained glass. But the center of it seems to be the love and the affirmation of the world that once looked so broken and sinful and ugly. This is why (for me) the accusation in the name of some exterior law is a betrayal or a forgetting of the experience or insight. It's merely politics or prudence, a necessary "evil" but not at all "deep" religion.

Quoting Wayfarer

But don't forget the meaning of the word 'ecstacy' - it means 'ex-stasis', outside the normal state. So it is also outside the 'conceptual mind' and the kinds of emotions that they're associated with.

See, here I think you are dropping into the other half of the abstract dichotomy. Mystical experience is dichotomously thought as either wholly contained within concepts and emotions or as standing completely outside them. To say it again. I think this is just the kind of thinking Hegel is attempting to replace with his myth-poetic language. As an interesting aside: I think it could be said that the late Heidegger tried, in a very different way from Hegel, to take up this project of arriving at a new/old concrete thinking'. I say new/old here, because Heidegger saw it as kind of return to the Presocratics, to a time before philosophy had "gone wrong"; whereas Hegel certainly did not see it this way at all; he rather saw it as the culmination and completion of the dialectic that is the whole history and the historicity of philosophical thought. There is the notion of anamnesis in Hegel, but it is the anamnesis of re-membering all the historical moments, and bringing them together in an apotheosis, to achieve Absolute Knowledge. However, his absolute knowledge is still only the realization of the whole process of the evolution of rational consciousness; and does not contain the clairvoyance of mystical consciousness itself, but rather makes way for it; as Owen Barfield suggests in this article here:
http://www.owenbarfield.org/rudolf-steiner-and-hegel/

Quoting John

Owen Barfield suggests in this article here:
http://www.owenbarfield.org/rudolf-steiner-and-hegel/

Seems like an interesting read, thanks for sharing that. His book Saving the Appearances influenced my thinking quite a bit!

Reply to Agustino

Yes, I've also read it, and I think it's an important book. You and I may not agree on the details; but I think we would agree that much (or even most) of modern philosophy is seriously one-sided and lacking real significance for human life. I'm coming more and more to think that Hegel has been misappropriated by the Post moderns and that much of their own more or less arbitrary fossicking in the tradition seems to, on the basis of nothing more than merely fashionable 'modern' prejudices ' throw the baby out with the bathwater'.
:)

Quoting Hoo

Any have anything to add?

The bit about lovers seems to me to parallel Martin Buber's concept of 'Ich und du' in which he sees close personal relationships as a window into, or a path towards, a relationship with God. I've never felt that I understood very well what Buber was getting at, yet it resonates strongly with me, which is for me part of what mysticism is about.

The quote from Schrodinger is an example of a phenomenon I've noticed which is that many of the really great scientists and mathematicians have a significant mystical dimension. Others one might mention are Newton, Heisenberg, Einstein, Godel and Darwin.
[Hah! I just typed Heidegger instead of Heisenberg without realising it, and then had to correct it. That's an interesting slip. Freudian?]
In general the promoters of anti-mystical 'Scientism' - people like Hawking, Krauss and Dawkins - seem to me to be less impressive as scientists.

John: I think this is just the kind of thinking Hegel is attempting to replace with his myth-poetic language. As an interesting aside: I think it could be said that the late Heidegger tried, in a very different way from Hegel, to take up this project of arriving at a new/old concrete thinking'. I say new/old here, because Heidegger saw it as kind of return to the Presocratics, to a time before philosophy had "gone wrong"; whereas Hegel certainly did not see it this way at all; he rather saw it as the culmination and completion of the dialectic that is the whole history and the historicity of philosophical thought.

I think the German philosophers generally are the last island of philosophical mysticism - well, save for the likes of Timothy Sprigge - but golly they're verbose. Ask a simple question, get an eight-hour answer.

I am reminded of a story about a professor who went to interview a Zen master.

Nan-in, a Japanese master, received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. He was a very learned man, erudite and curious, and spoke of the grand vision of Mahayaha Buddhism and much else besides.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. “It is overfull. No more will go in!”

'Like this cup', Nan-in said, 'you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you are empty?'

Reply to andrewk
Quoting andrewk

The bit about lovers seems to me to parallel Martin Buber's concept of 'Ich und du' in which he sees close personal relationships as a window into, or a path towards, a relationship with God. I've never felt that I understood very well what Buber was getting at, yet it resonates strongly with me, which is for me part of what mysticism is about.

I actually read I and Thou very young, probably too young -- but I always remembered that he capitalized "Cause." It stuck with me, this archetype of the sacred 'It.' It's also in Stirner, who writes from a place of savage but ultimately benevolent irony in a different context. We use these "sacred its" to exalt ourselves. (Or at least I see this general structure everywhere.)

But, yes, the lovers! "That which is done out of love is always beyond good and evil." I realize that law and the quest for superiority by criterion X is always going to dominate mundane life, but I'm grateful that we can sometimes (the more the better) love others "authentically" --as a privilege and not a duty --and attain a state of play, freedom, sinlessness, "infinite jest" that knows nothing sacred, for it is the sacred in its warm-hearted impiety. I thought of ES and his waves. I think of Freud and his "oceanic feeling." I very much relate to something like a "rational" mysticism. It's very nice to see such left brain power and discipline married to profound "mytho-poetic" insight or intelligence.

Quoting andrewk

In general the promoters of anti-mystical 'Scientism' - people like Hawking, Krauss and Dawkins - seem to me to be less impressive as scientists.

I can't speak to their science, but Scientism is nowhere I'd want to live. Krauss misunderstood (in my view) the "why is there something rather than nothing?" question profoundly. (He seems blind to his own metaphysical enframing of this question. )

a footnote to the my previous post - I don't want that to come across as being simply dismissive of Hegel - the writings of the Buddhist scholastic philosophers are voluminous and technical in a very similar manner to German idealism.

But at the center of the mystical vision there has to be a radical simplicity. It is essentially the same vision as 'the One' of Plotinus, whereby the individual and individuated mind is thoroughly (re)absorbed into the single source of all manifest things. Of course it is indescribable, but one of the (many) paradoxes surrounding it, is that for those who realise it, it is also utterly obvious and something that has been obvious all along (cf. 'all beings are already Buddha').

But I'm already digressing - what I set out to say was this: that at the center of every being is actually an unknown. We ourselves are that source, but that source within ourselves is something we can't know. I'm sure that is the motivation of the hostility of materialism to mysticism: it is the desire to avoid the fact of the mysteriousness of our own being.

The modem way to flee from God is to rush ahead and ahead, as quickly as the beams before sunrise, to conquer more and more space in every direction, in every humanly possible way, to be always active, to be always planning, and to be always preparing.

And never actually where you are.

Quoting Wayfarer

But at the center of the mystical vision there has to be a radical simplicity. It is essentially the same vision as 'the One' of Plotinus, whereby the individual and individuated mind is thoroughly (re)absorbed into the single source of all manifest things. Of course it is indescribable, but one of the (many) paradoxes surrounding it, is that for those who realise it, it is also utterly obvious and something that has been obvious all along (cf. 'all beings are already Buddha').

I like the radical simplicity, but must it be as Plotinus sees it? Maybe. For all I know, there are 777 varieties of profound or heightened experience. But I prefer "all beings are already Buddha" without the paradox. I can only read that line in terms of "creative play" or the selves that we are when we are "beyond good and evil" and lovingly absorbed in a person or a project. This is a good way to read Genesis, too. The tree of knowledge of good and evil obscures the tree of life. Of course we want extraordinary feeling, but here too I wouldn't rule out sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. (I guess I'll represent the 'devil-worshiping' branch of mysticism around here. )

If you want that kind of enjoyment there's no need to rationalize it. Mystics generally tend towards abstemiousness and it's a hard path, an inconvenient truth.

Reply to Wayfarer
Ah, Wayfarer, come on, man. I don't live so wild these days. I'm trying to get a PhD in math over here. I like my pleasures serene these days. But why must the spiritual path be so anti-flesh? anti-drugs? anti-music? Or, basically, anti-Dionysian? Can we talk of the depths of the self and insist that this involves something cold and pure like crystalline intellect? Do think there is nothing to be learned on the "irrational" side of the personality? No darkness to look at with open eyes and assimilate?
No doubt, I'm coming from a Norman O. Brown kind of perspective. Lifedeath on one side and immortality/undeath/unlife on the other. Incarnation, the word became flesh. Jesus and Socrates were put to death by the pious. They were perverts or atheists or blasphemers. As I see it, there's a strain of mysticism that's too radical to be institutionalized. This strain is essentially subversive. It runs like wind through the nets of hierarchy and standardize dogma. "From now on, this is the way that religion shall proceed. The man with the robe or the hat will tell you all that you need to know." An institution that wants to involve itself in world affairs has no choice but to ossify. It's a bone for the beating of stubborn unbelievers --and heretics like Jesus. Let's not miss the center of the myth. The word made flesh was publicly executed.

This might interest someone.
[quote=Stirner]
The time [in which Jesus lived] was politically so agitated that, as is said in the gospels, people thought they could not accuse the founder of Christianity more successfully than if they arraigned him for 'political intrigue', and yet the same gospels report that he was precisely the one who took the least part in these political doings. But why was he not a revolutionary, not a demagogue, as the Jews would gladly have seen him? [...] Because he expected no salvation from a change of conditions, and this whole business was indifferent to him. He was not a revolutionary, like Caesar, but an insurgent: not a state-overturner, but one who straightened himself up. [...] [Jesus] was not carrying on any liberal or political fight against the established authorities, but wanted to walk his own way, untroubled about, and undisturbed by, these authorities. [...] But, even though not a ringleader of popular mutiny, not a demagogue or revolutionary, he (and every one of the ancient Christians) was so much the more an insurgent who lifted himself above everything that seemed so sublime to the government and its opponents, and absolved himself from everything that they remained bound to [...]; precisely because he put from him the upsetting of the established, he was its deadly enemy and real annihilator...."
[/quote]

As I see it, mystics are generally non-worldly. But I know that whenever I voice that opinion on DharmaWheel it gets a lot of criticism there also - once I made a post about how attitudes had been changed by the sexual revolution, and the response was a picture of Adolf Hitler. (I hadn't actually said anything more that what I said here, by the way.)

But if you look at the ethics of traditional mysticism they're what anyone from today's culture would consider strict. Sure there are dionysian and 'left-hand-path' mystics , maybe some of them will come and post here. But I think the issue is, we nowadays regard sense-enjoyment as a human right - Western culture thinks that is what freedom consists of. Ask yourself whether what I'm saying is pushing buttons on that account.

I think I can quote this, too, because Nietzsche was absolutely something of a mystic. His superman is an updated Christ image. (Or that's my reading.) In retrospect, I realize how much The Antichrist enriched my notion of Christ. Nietzsche, like Blake, is a Christian heretic.
[quote=Nietzsche]
With a little freedom in the use of words, one might actually call Jesus a “free spirit.” He cares nothing for what is established: the word killeth, whatever is established killeth. The idea of “life” as an experience, as he alone conceives it, stands opposed to his mind to every sort of word, formula, law, belief and dogma. He speaks only of inner things: “life” or “truth” or “light” is his word for the innermost—in his sight everything else, the whole of reality, all nature, even language, has significance only as sign, as allegory.—Here it is of paramount importance to be led into no error by the temptations lying in Christian, or rather ecclesiastical prejudices: such a symbolism par excellence stands outside all religion, all notions of worship, all history, all natural science, all worldly experience, all knowledge, all politics, all psychology, all books, all art—his “wisdom” is precisely a pure ignorance of all such things.
If I understand anything at all about this great symbolist, it is this: that he regarded only subjective realities as realities, as “truths” —that he saw everything else, everything natural, temporal, spatial and historical, merely as signs, as materials for parables. The concept of “the Son of God” does not connote a concrete person in history, an isolated and definite individual, but an “eternal” fact, a psychological symbol set free from the concept of time. The same thing is true, and in the highest sense, of the God of this typical symbolist, of the “kingdom of God,” and of the “sonship of God.” Nothing could be more un-Christian than the crude ecclesiastical notions of God as a person, of a “kingdom of God” that is to come, of a “kingdom of heaven” beyond, and of a “son of God” as the second person of the Trinity. All this—if I may be forgiven the phrase—is like thrusting one’s fist into the eye (and what an eye!) of the Gospels: a disrespect for symbols amounting to world-historical cynicism.... But it is nevertheless obvious enough what is meant by the symbols “Father” and “Son”—not, of course, to every one—: the word “Son” expresses entrance into the feeling that there is a general transformation of all things (beatitude), and “Father” expresses that feeling itself—the sensation of eternity and of perfection.
The “kingdom of heaven” is a state of the heart—not something to come “beyond the world” or “after death.” The whole idea of natural death is absent from the Gospels: death is not a bridge, not a passing; it is absent because it belongs to a quite different, a merely apparent world, useful only as a symbol. The “hour of death” is not a Christian idea—“hours,” time, the physical life and its crises have no existence for the bearer of “glad tidings.”... The “kingdom of God” is not something that men wait for: it had no yesterday and no day after tomorrow, it is not going to come at a “millennium”—it is an experience of the heart, it is everywhere and it is nowhere....
Jesus himself had done away with the very concept of “guilt,” he denied that there was any gulf fixed between God and man; he lived this unity between God and man, and that was precisely his “glad tidings”...


The old God, wholly “spirit,” wholly the high-priest, wholly perfect, is promenading his garden: he is bored and trying to kill time. Against boredom even gods struggle in vain.
What does he do? He creates man—man is entertaining.... But then he notices that man is also bored. God’s pity for the only form of distress that invades all paradises knows no bounds: so he forthwith creates other animals. God’s first mistake: to man these other animals were not entertaining—he sought dominion over them; he did not want to be an “animal” himself.—So God created woman. In the act he brought boredom to an end—and also many
other things! Woman was the second mistake of God.—“Woman, at bottom, is a serpent, Heva”—every priest knows that; “from woman comes every evil in the world”—every priest knows that, too. Ergo, she is also to blame for science.... It was through woman that man learned to taste of the tree of knowledge.
...
That grand passion which is at once the foundation and the power of a sceptic’s existence, and is both more enlightened and more despotic than he is himself, drafts the whole of his intellect into its service; it makes him unscrupulous; it gives him courage to employ unholy means; under certain circumstances it does not begrudge him even convictions. Conviction as a means: one may achieve a good deal by means of a conviction. A grand passion makes use of and uses up convictions; it does not yield to them—it knows itself to be sovereign.—On the contrary, the need of faith, of something unconditioned by yea or nay, of Carlylism, if I may be allowed the word, is a need of weakness. The man of faith, the “believer” of any sort, is necessarily a dependent man—such a man cannot posit himself as a goal, nor can he find goals within himself. The “believer” does not belong to himself; he can only be a means to an end; he must be used up; he needs some one to use him up. His instinct gives the highest honours to an ethic of self-effacement; he is prompted to embrace it by everything: his prudence, his experience, his vanity. Every sort of faith is in itself an evidence of self-effacement, of self-estrangement....
[/quote]
That last sentence is ungenerous, but he's making the point that Stirner made about the connection of the external sacred and alienation. This gulf between man and some impossible object is precisely opposed to a feeling of at-home-ness in one's own flesh in one's own world. Here, now, this.

Reply to Wayfarer

It's deeper than that. We value people in the world, no matter their actions. Sin needs no forgiveness nor retribution (or as I would say, "Cannot be paid for or resolved" ). All beings are already their own Buddha. No-one needs transcendent rescue because they are infinitely meaningful in themselves.

In the modern West, to have a meaningful life is easy. One doesn't have to follow any particular tradition. One's sins do not need to be absolved or forgiven. To have meaning takes no effort. All anyone has to do is exist. Western society's conflict with mysticism and premodern metaphysics isn't strictly with sense-enjoyment, but what it takes to be meaningful. In being worldly, modern Western culture says God or the transcendent is not required to have a meaningful life.

Reply to Wayfarer
I hear you, and I respect that. But it's my understanding that Christianity largely shaped the notion of the individual as sacred and free. Protestantism completed this. We work out our own optionally-mediated salvation. True, this freedom is a rope we can hang ourselves with. But there will always be a tension between freedom and security. There is death in sex as well as life, but that may be the point. I think Plato is right, though. We learn to seek higher pleasures, without ever ceasing, however, to find particular bodies desirable. Would I want to lose this desire? Not unless it was really screwing up my life. It lights up the world, bodily beauty. But I at least was never satisfied with it, except of course in the moment. There is indeed an intellectual love. I would never deny that. That's why I'm here.

Who was it who said 'do what you will shall be the whole of the law', again?

The problem with Nietszche's depiction is that it doesn't take into account all of the admonishments and guidance that Jesus was forever telling his audiences. He had plenty of advice for anyone who listened. Seek this, do that, be like so and so. He was a tough master. Jesus himself spent 40 days in the wilderness in a severe ascetic trial, after which was tempted by Satan who said that with his powers, he could rule the world - same prophecy was made for the Buddha at birth - but instead said 'get thee behind me Satan'.

That understanding of the individual as a free being is certainly something that Protestantism engendered. I'm actually reading a deep historical study of that very point at the moment, The Unintended Revolution, by Brad Gregory, about how the so-called 'unmediated' attitude of Protestantism gave rise to hundreds or thousands of competing truth-claims.

Mysticism has a price, it isn't simply a matter of feeling, or even a concept, it is going beyond ego. I don't think Nietschze would have the slightest interest in, or knowledge of, that.

Actually the classical description of mysticism is 'unmediated access to reality'. Of course to most people that sounds entirely ludicrous, as for them 'the mystic' is some wizened sage chanting nonsense over an incense burner or some ancient manuscript. Indeed there is an entire genre of pop mysticism which fulfils that description. But the genuine article is a completely different type of person - one who is indeed fully and completely present and deeply aware. The classic texts of religious mysticism are about the Christian and Hindu mystics and they're generally very profound individuals. But their territory has to be negotiated, and one of the main facts about it is, leave your ego at the door.

Reply to Wayfarer
Quoting Wayfarer

Who was it who said 'do what you will shall be the whole of the law', again?

Exactly! Jesus is the Devil. That's why he had to be publicly executed. But of course I'm talking in symbols here. And you're right that there are all sorts of ways to build a Jesus from the texts. IMV, the pieces do not fit together. I don't know (or care much) if there was a historical Jesus. We know that there was a Socrates, but that too isn't central. If some mad genius dreamed up the whole thing, it might be no less valuable.

I have to disagree with you about the ego issue, or make a distinction so that we can agree. Surely you'll agree that there is (at least) the hopeless game of priding one's self on having transcended the ego. I really wrestled intensely with this non-ego ideal, along with altruism as a duty. But (in my view) this is just an endless hall of mirrors, this very self-consciously trying to get beyond self-consciousness and self-importance and selfishness. That's why I take the Hegelian notion, instead, of the evolution of narcissism into something magnanimous, precisely because it eventually feels free and authentic. So a healthy egoism that is willing to face its mortality is also able to love authentically or un-self-consciously. Or just more able, because we are always able to slip (at least occasionally) into genuine play, genuine affection,in which self dissolves. It's like the lovers in the opening quote. That's how I read "already in Buddha" or "ordinary mind." But on the "Hegelian" route, anyway, narcissism learns to laugh at itself without condemning itself, since we'd have to curse the entire world for this omnipresent "sin." It's just a matter of elevating narcissism as we elevate lust. Or that's how I see my own journey (which continues even here and now...

Death is central here. Personal immortality is the last refuge of the ego. To accept death is to be forced to find one's best self in one's universal guts, the "primordial images" of early Jung, elaborated intellectually. The player dies, but the play continues. Plato's Forms might come in here. We participate in the Forms so that death loses much of its sting. But the proper name is a toe tag that must to the fire of life which is also the rose.

Reply to mcdoodle In mysticism there is a process and realisation that one becomes God. What this means and refers to is a state of repose(on multiple levels) in the aspirant whereby one realises one's role in the world as a creative agent, one's alignment in terms goals or motivations with what one estimates is the will of God, and ones' independence, or freedom from the animal, or egotistical desires and conceit. This could also be described in terms of the person reaching a state of purification, in which one is prepared, or ready for a union with God, or a bride of God.

There are many differing schools, routes and interetations of this process, but essentially it is the same process with the same goal. Also I have greatly simplified(perhaps over simplified) it in my description.

There is also the approach in which God is taken out of the equation, again the goal is the same, but simply lacks the component of reverence. The goal is the same in that the constructive or benevolent role of humanity in the biosphere is equivalent in terms of one's actions in the physical world.

Hoo:Exactly! Jesus is the Devil

Actually, I remember now - Aleister Crowley. But he's only stating the obvious - that is what everyone believes nowadays, question it and woe betide unto you.

Hoo:I have to disagree with you about the ego issue, or make a distinction so that we can agree. Surely you'll agree that there is (at least) the hopeless game of priding one's self on having transcended the ego. I really wrestled intensely with this non-ego ideal, along with altruism as a duty. But (in my view) this is just an endless hall of mirrors, this very self-consciously trying to get beyond self-consciousness and self-importance and selfishness.

Not if you actually do learn to be less ego-centred as a consequence. Of course there's the obvious trap of 'trying to be less egotistical' (like when Trump said that some reporter had no idea how humble he was.) But there really is a way of learning to be less reflexively self-centered through meditation. My basic text book has been Zen Mind Beginner's Mind which is by the founder of the San Francisco Zen Centre, and that is one of the main ideas in it.

Reply to Hoo
Forgive my interjection here. I want to point out that there is an important process which is necessary to undertake before one can make significant progress in mysticism. It is at the forefront in all mystical schools in some form or other and there is an important reason for it and many casualties along the road of people who have not performed it successfully in their quest. It is the subjugation of the ego.

Now I agree it can theoretically be achieved in the heroic sense, but this is a high wire act while wearing a blindfold and I am not aware that it has been achieved by anyone. I have tread this wire on ocassion, but only in controlled circumstances. The romantic cannot go forth without taking their body with them and the body is a precisely developed instrument, unless the ego respects this the ego is working against the processes the body is engaged in.

Normally the aspirant goes through a period of purification and the exercising and development of humility in order to tame the ego. Once it is tamed and in a sense wearing the correct harness, it can again exercise its passions. Without the metaphorical harness, it is blindfolded, disfunctional, without sight and will injure itself, it's goal and its environment.

Reply to Wayfarer

Hoo:But he's only stating the obvious - that is what everyone believes nowadays, question it and woe betide unto you.

No, I don't think so. People love their political self-righteousness if not their religious self-righteousness.
Quoting Wayfarer

Not if you actually do learn to be less ego-centred as a consequence. Of course there's the obvious trap of 'trying to be less egotistical' (like when Trump said that some reporter had no idea how humble he was.) But there really is a way of learning to be less reflexively self-centered through meditation.

I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Yes, Trump is a perfect example...of all sorts of things..But his success demonstrates the limits of liberalism in the US. There really is a culture war, even if the progressives are slightly dominant. If you look into the dark side of the internet, you'll find incredible hate, incredible racism especially. But there are crazies on the left, too, dripping with resentment and revenge, equally conspiratorial in their worldview. To me this is all bad "concept religion." It narrows the heart. As a citizen, I may have to dirty my hands, come down to the business of life, cast a vote. But I still insist that any religion that isn't beyond politics is only more politics.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness Yes I agree.
Also the western society glibly rushes over the cliff of climate change and destruction of the ecosystem like lemmings.

Although this issue was always going to be faced somewhere down the line, it could have been tackled in a less reckless way.

Hoo and Punshhh love both of your thaughts

As well as agreeing with much of what you both say, there lies in my belief that both have some serious defaults in serious logic, and logic is what controls all of our thinking

Reply to kenhinds hi Kenhinds, thankyou and please do contribute, I am always interested in logical approaches in mysticism.

Reply to Punshhh
We probably have a different meaning in mind for the word "mysticism." There may indeed be heights that I never have and never will attain. But I write with a glowing image in my mind. It's an intellectually elaborated (dialectically evolved) "mask" on what I'd call a primordial image.
[quote=wiki]
Jung first used the term primordial images to refer to what he would later term "archetypes". Jung's idea of archetypes was based on Immanuel Kant's categories, Plato's Ideas, and Arthur Schopenhauer's prototypes.[3] For Jung, "the archetype is the introspectively recognizable form of a priori psychic orderedness".[4] "These images must be thought of as lacking in solid content, hence as unconscious. They only acquire solidity, influence, and eventual consciousness in the encounter with empirical facts."
[/quote]
I can't speak for anyone else on this thread, but the mysticism that matters to me currently is something I understand as "just" or "only" concepts and images along with, most crucially, a feeling about or toward them. Now maybe I can fit everything you've mentioned into the "dialectic" above, but I won't pretend a false humility and pretend to be more of a seeker than a finder. I write from what feels like the end of a process. Life continues, of course, and I continue to learn. But I've been riding this enjoyable "system" or "worldview" in its basic form for quite a while now. I'm 40. I may open new doors as I move into a new phase of life, but I doubt I'll change much while I'm still ambitious and carving out a place in the world.

What I can't be sure of is whether my experience is going to be valuable to others.

Reply to Punshhh
Hi Punshh how are you. Not sure if you are an admin or any form of such. Im fairly new to this whole topic, yet have had many idealogical thoughts. Also i must remind u that my grammar is terrible. i apologize in advance

Reply to kenhinds
Thank you, friend, and welcome to an exciting conversation.

I love the idea of welcomeness i guess if thats even a word
i do apologize in advance for my terrible grammar

Not sure if this is the pace that I am searching for but, it kinda looks as such at first glance

I was exposed to this theory about 20 years ago. Jung was a key figure for me, though I don't vouch for everything he said, of course. But this is the kind of thing I have in mind when I speak of "hero myths" at the foundations of philosophies.
[quote=Wiki]
Thus, while archetypes themselves may be conceived as a relative few innate nebulous forms, from these may arise innumerable images, symbols and patterns of behavior. While the emerging images and forms are apprehended consciously, the archetypes which inform them are elementary structures which are unconscious and impossible to apprehend.

Jung was fond of comparing the form of the archetype to the axial system of a crystal, which preforms the crystalline structure of the mother liquid, although it has no material existence of its own.
[/quote]
The "Self" archetype is relevant here.
[quote=Jung]
In Jung's words, "the Self...embraces ego-consciousness, shadow, anima, and collective unconscious in indeterminable extension. As a totality, the self is a coincidentia oppositorum; it is therefore bright and dark and yet neither".[15] Alternatively, he stated that "the Self is the total, timeless man...who stands for the mutual integration of conscious and unconscious".[16] Jung recognized many dream images as representing the self, including a stone, the world tree, an elephant, and the Christ.[17]
[/quote]

Reply to Hoo Yes we are probably using mysticism in different ways. I was going to make this distinction at the beginning of the thread, but have had a busy weekend. There are two kinds of mysticism to point out here, there are the folk who are creatively embracing mysticism as a concept like yourself. I am with you as creativity is one of my great passions. Also there is mysticism as a spiritual way of life. Which is a technical exercise like yoga or something.

This distinction should clear up the differing points presented.

As I say, I am with you in your approach, for me I have followed a Grail quest in the field of art and aesthetics(I have no formal training in philosophical aesthetics), creativity. Along with heroic efforts in the development of creative conceptual architecture.

Reply to Wayfarer

Ha ha, that's a nice story, but I think it just comes down to disposition; people who prefer not to think too much are attracted to Zen instead of Hua Yen, Tibetan Buddhism, Madhyamaka, Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Sri Aurobindo's, Osho's or Rudolf Steiner's teaching, and so on. Some Zen people are very philosophical, though. Dogen and D T Suzuki come to mind.

I think it's time for the handy Integral Philosophy graphic:

Reply to Punshhh Quoting Punshhh

There are two kinds of mysticism to point out here, there are the folk who are creatively embracing mysticism as a concept like yourself. I am with you as creativity is one of my great passions. Also there is mysticism as a spiritual way of life.

Thank you for elaborating, first.

The words aren't that important, but I view the spiritual in terms of concept and feeling. I don't think it has to be unworldly. I realize that 'spirituality' is often associated with deities, but even here I have my 'deity.' So really it's a "theological" issue, isn't it? But the labels are secondary...Quoting Punshhh

As I say, I am with you in your approach, for me I have followed a Grail quest in the field of art and aesthetics(I have no formal training in philosophical aesthetics), creativity. Along with heroic efforts in the development of creative conceptual architecture.

That sounds fascinating. If you want to share anything, ...

Reply to kenhinds
It's a good forum. I find great conversation here.

Hoo:The words aren't that important, but I view the spiritual in terms of concept and feeling

I really hate to pick nits, but it's not about 'feeling'. Mystical insight might be accompanied by feeling but it is first and foremost noetic.

//edit// having pasted that in, I googled the web definition of noetic, and it comes up with

"the noetic quality of a mystical experience refers to the sense of revelation".

Reply to Wayfarer
Please, pick nits, share as you see fit.

I'm not terribly attached to the term "mysticism" ("heresy" might work), but I mentioned "concept" also. I highlighted "feeling" in that context because Punshh seemed to understand what I was getting at to be merely conceptual. I know that you know that Hegel presents God's self-revelation. I understand this in conceptual terms, but desire drives the system. I really can't make sense of non-conceptual revelation.

I don't take this authoritative (imagine that!) but it's beautiful and it certainly influenced me.
[quote=Kojeve]
It is by following this “dialectical movement” of the Real that Knowledge is present at its own birth and contemplates its own evolution. And thus it finally attains its end, which is the adequate and complete understanding of itself — i.e., of the progressive revelation of the Real and of Being by Speech — of the Real and Being which engender, in and by their “dialectical movement,” the Speech that reveals them. And it is thus that a total revelation of real Being or an entirely revealed Totality (an “undivided Whole”) is finally constituted...
[/quote]

We also find the affirmation theme:
[quote=Kojeve]
When all is said and done, the “method” of the Hegelian Scientist consists in having no method or way of thinking peculiar to his Science. The naive man, the vulgar scientist, even the pre-Hegelian philosopher — each in his way opposes himself to the Real and deforms it by opposing his own means of action and methods of thought to it. The Wise Man, on the contrary, is fully and definitively reconciled with everything that is: he entrusts himself without reserve to Being and opens himself entirely to the Real without resisting it.
[/quote]

Once or twice before I've had a really clear realisation that all these religions and philosophies that hold a higher state of mind or consciousness as an ideal are all getting at the same experience, but described and attained in different ways. Living in perfect accordance with nature as a sage in stoicism, delimiting your sense of self, entering the kingdom of heaven and being with God again (undoing the fall that separated us from nature), Buddhist enlightenment, discovering that The Real You is the whole universe (Watts), ego death or death of the self (seen in rare types of brain damage), reversing nature's creation of an aspect of nature separate from itself (Cohle/Zappfe); they're all the same state of mind - I'm sure there's more examples from other systems of thought. The first time I realised this was when I was reading The Inner Citadel and Plotinus, or The Simplicity of Vision by Pierre Hadot. When this became crystal clear to me I had a pretty moving experience to say the least, and I laughed. Which is funny, because Alan Watts said once you realise this you'll laugh yourself silly. I think he was onto something. I mean, how could all these each translate differently from one another when experienced?

I imagine the end point of such mysticism as the mind being in perfect harmony with the whole universe, losing your sense of self and being 'at one' with it, for want of a better phrase (even the hippies got it).

No doubt there can be found some textual arguments or differences as to why these are not alike in theory, but there is a mysticism that cannot be conveyed with words, only experienced. I suspect a lot of these thinkers got the core right, but strayed ever further from that the more they tried to expand a system around that core (for example, Christians claiming this experience only comes in the next life).

This is great, too. Not an authority, but definitely an influence.
[quote=Kojeve]
Hence Christianity is first of all a particularistic, family, and
slavish reaction against the pagan universalism of the Citizen-Mas-
ters. But it is more than that. It also implies the idea of a synthesis
of the Particular and the Universal — that is, of Mastery and Slavery
too: the idea of Individuality — i.e., of that realization of universal
values and realities in and by the Particular and of that universal
recognition of the value of the Particular, which alone can give
Man Befriedigung, the supreme and definitive "Satisfaction."
...
The whole problem, now, is to realize the Christian idea of
Individuality. And the history of the Christian World is nothing
but the history of this realization.

Now, according to Hegel, one can realize the Christian an-
thropological ideal (which he accepts in full) only by "overcom-
ing" the Christian theology: Christian Man can really become what
he would like to be only by becoming a man without God — or,
if you will, a God-Man. He must realize in himself what at first
he thought was realized in his God. To be really Christian, he
himself must become Christ.

According to the Christian Religion, Individuality, the syn-
thesis of the Particular and the Universal, is effected only in and
by the Beyond, after man's death.

This conception is meaningful only if Man is presupposed to be
immortal. Now, according to Hegel, immortality is incompatible
with the very essence of human being and, consequently, with
Christian anthropology itself.

Therefore, the human ideal can be realized only if it is such that
it can be realized by a mortal Man who knows he is such. In other
words, the Christian synthesis must be effected not in the Beyond,
after death, but on earth, during man's life. And this means that
the transcendent Universal (God), who recognizes the Particular,
must be replaced by a Universal that is immanent in the World.
[/quote]

Reply to WhiskeyWhiskers
Thanks for jumping in. I like your mention of laughter. I'm guessing individual experiences vary, even if they are similar. I really can't know. I'm wondering (in my own case) whether there's much of a point in using the word. I have this conception/image of Christ that "shines" emotionally. I've also had a few "peak" experiences, but I can fit them under "concept/image" and emotion (love, joy, at-home-ness).

Hoo: I really can't make sense of non-conceptual revelation.

Non-conceptual is what 'the direct path' is about, and of course we can't 'make sense' of it, because to make sense of it, is to try and process it in the verbal-symbolic part of the mind. It takes doing.

Q. 'There is something you learn from zazen that you can't learn by any other means.

A. Oh yes? What's that.

Q. :s

WhiskyWhiskers:Once or twice before I've had a really clear realisation that all these religions and philosophies that hold a higher state of mind or consciousness as an ideal are all getting at the same experience, but described and attained in different ways...

There's a lot of truth in that, which is the insight behind the idea of the perennial philosophy.

Quoting Wayfarer

Non-conceptual is what 'the direct path' is about, and of course we can't 'make sense' of it, because to make sense of it, is to try and process it in the verbal-symbolic part of the mind. It takes doing.

What can I say? I'm skeptical. It sounds like someone saying that they saw a round square in their dreams. Feeling and sensation can be nonconceptual. I get that. But I could ask you what you could possibly be thinking of here beyond feeling and sensation and by definition you couldn't tell me. And couldn't, in fact, know (at least not conceptually.) It looks like an empty negation.

Reply to WhiskeyWhiskers Yes, I laughed too! Like a laughing Bhudda, indeed I laughed for years, but I had to restrain myself to avoid cramp, or lock jaw;)

Reply to Hoo Indeed, it's impossible to compare our experiences when these are (by the very definition of Wittgenstein's mysticism) beyond words. And in that way it's 'unfalsifiable', if you will. But I allow room for revelation in the way I think about knowledge, so I'm ok with that.

Reply to Wayfarer Thanks for the link, I will definitely read this!

Reply to WhiskeyWhiskers Old title but (like the title) a perennial.

Reply to Hoo There is experiential learning and knowing, in which the mind is a bystander looking on.
You know the laughing thing, well it's the same with art, suddenly everything is art and you have to restructure what art means from a position of knowledge, aware of the futile struggling you were doing before the revelation, veiled in ignorance.

The mystical revelation is like this, one sees what is revealed, it has meaning, alters and adds to your being. There are square circles by the way(chuckle).

Hoo: But I could ask you what you could possibly be thinking of here beyond feeling and sensation and by definition you couldn't tell me. And couldn't, in fact, know (at least not conceptually.) It looks like an empty negation.

That's a fair question so I'll stop being facetious and try and explain it.

The problem is going to be that to try and explain it, I will have to appeal to some kind of framework. And I'm afraid that isn't going to be philosophy, per se.

So, one system which does talk in terms of all of the components of experience, including, but not limited to, feeling and sensation is the Buddhist abhidhamma. That is a system of philosophical psychology that is part of the Buddhist corpus. It is a hard system to summarise, but the key point is that it analyses the various components of experience in terms of what is called 'skandhas' - heaps or aggregates:

Wikipedia:The Buddhist teachings in the Pali Canon describe the five aggregates as follows:

"form" or "matter"[a] (Skt., P?li ??? r?pa;): matter, body or "material form" of a being or any existence.[5][21] Buddhist texts state rupa of any person, sentient being and object to be composed of four basic elements or forces, that is earth (solidity), water (cohesion), fire (heat) and wind (motion).[3]

"sensation" or "feeling" (Skt., P?li ????? vedan?): sensory experience of an object.[21] It is either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.

"perception" (Skt. ?????? sa?jñ?, P?li ????? saññ?,): sensory and mental process that registers, recognizes and labels (for instance, the shape of a tree, color green, emotion of fear).[21]

"mental formations", "constructing activities",[21] "conditioned things", "volition", "karmic activities" (Skt. ??????? sa?sk?ra, P?li ?????? sa?kh?ra,): all types of mental imprints and conditioning triggered by an object.[22][23][d] This skandha includes any process that makes a person initiate action or act.[21]

"consciousness", "discrimination" or "discernment"[e] (Skt. ??????? vijñ?na, P?li ??????? viññ??a,): This includes, states Peter Harvey, awareness of an object and discrimination of its components and aspects, and is of six types.[21] The Buddhist literature discusses this skandha as,
In the Nikayas/?gamas: cognizance,[24][f] that which discerns[25][g]
In the Abhidhamma: a series of rapidly changing interconnected discrete acts of cognizance.[h]
In some Mahayana sources: the base that supports all experience.[i]

So in this system, feeling and sensation are classified under 'vedana'.

Now you might ask, is there anything beyond 'feeing and sensation'. The technical answer is: there is not anything 'beyond' it, but there is 'stopping'. 'Stopping' is the cessation of the activities of the skandhas so as to see their 'empty nature' (??nyat?) - hence why in Mahayana Buddhism, the aim of the practice is described as 'realising emptiness'.

So realising emptiness is not actually itself a matter of feeling or conceptualisation. It is more a matter of understanding how the processes, the 'five heaps', give rise to our sense of ourselves, how together they constitute the sense of 'this is me, this is mine'. So through meditative absorption, dhyana, one penetrates the 'chain of dependent origination' and in that sense 'goes beyond' or 'sees through' the illusion of separate existence.

So that is indeed 'negation' in one sense, in that ??nyat? can only be described in negative terms as being 'not the aggregates, nor anything else'. But that connotes the inneffable nature of realisation. But this realisation is, as I mentioned before, 'noetic' (in the Platonist idiom) although the corresponding Buddhist term is probably Prajñ?p?ramit?, meaning 'transcendent wisdom', signified in Mahayana iconography in similar form to the Gnostic 'Sophia', specifically, as a female deity, who is 'personification of wisdom':


Goddess Prajñ?p?ramit?, from Sumatra


Traditional depiction of Sophia, 'spirit of Wisdom'.

Reply to Wayfarer Note that the deity is sitting upon the thousand petal lotus representing the activated crown chakra.

Quoting WhiskeyWhiskers

The first time I realised this was when I was reading The Inner Citadel and Plotinus, or The Simplicity of Vision by Pierre Hadot.

Surprisingly, reading Hadot had the opposite effect on me. It seems to me that Hadot does note the similarities, but more importantly also the differences between different philosophies. And where he ended up quite approving of Stoicisim/Epicureanism - he was quite critical of the Plotinian flight from this world. It's been quite a bit since I last read him though...

Quoting Wayfarer

So realising emptiness is not actually itself a matter of feeling or conceptualisation. It is more a matter of understanding how the processes, the 'five heaps', give rise to our sense of ourselves, how together they constitute the sense of 'this is me, this is mine'. So through meditative absorption, dhyana, one penetrates the 'chain of dependent origination' and in that sense 'goes beyond' or 'sees through' the illusion of separate existence.

You mention "understanding," which I associate with the conceptual. There's a conceptual "seeing through" of separate existence in Hegel and an emotional or felt "seeing" through of human separateness in Schopenhauer and in Schrodinger above. "Realizing emptiness" is something I associate with "all is vanity / everything is empty" in Ecclesiastes, which I think can be interpreted as the bonfire of the vanities or idols or masks/identifications of the ego. I like all of these themes very much, but I don't see how you can explain a non-conceptual revelation that isn't feeling or sensation. You can (seems to me) only paste more words on an empty negation, but as soon as you get metaphorical, you're in the realm of myth and concept. Quoting Wayfarer

Now you might ask, is there anything beyond 'feeing and sensation'. The technical answer is: there is not anything 'beyond' it, but there is 'stopping'. 'Stopping' is the cessation of the activities of the skandhas so as to see their 'empty nature' (??nyat?) - hence why in Mahayana Buddhism, the aim of the practice is described as 'realising emptiness'.

It sounds like you are talking about stopping thinking in order to understand ("see") something about thinking. For me, this does not compute. But I obviously think that thinking about thinking can lead to a perception of "nothingness" or the emptiness of masks. However, we are attached to these masks or illusions, so that's where (in my view) desire enters the picture. For me the illusions are impossible hopes, inconsistent conceptions.
[quote=stanford]
Love stories, however inadequate as theories of love, are nonetheless stories, logoi, items that admit of analysis. But because they are manifestations of our loves, not mere cool bits of theorizing, we—our deepest feelings—are invested in them. They are therefore tailor-made, in one way at least, to satisfy the Socratic sincerity condition, the demand that you say what you believe (Crito 49c11-d2, Protagoras 331c4-d1). Under the cool gaze of the elenctic eye, they are tested for consistency with other beliefs that lie just outside love’s controlling and often distorting ambit. Under such testing, a lover may be forced to say with Agathon, “I didn’t know what I was talking about in that story” (201b11–12). The love that expressed itself in his love story meets then another love: his rational desire for consistency and intelligibility; his desire to be able to tell and live a coherent story; his desire—to put it the other way around—not to be endlessly frustrated and conflicted, because he is repetitively trying to live out an incoherent love story.
[/quote]
I think Sophia is female for reason. The phallus can be interpreted symbolically as a dogmatic assertion, law, or tradition and therefore as an "alienated" crystallization of the self's virtue outside of and above the bodily self in the world. Sophia is beyond or before such alienation.

Quoting John

You and I may not agree on the details; but I think we would agree that much (or even most) of modern philosophy is seriously one-sided and lacking real significance for human life. I'm coming more and more to think that Hegel has been misappropriated by the Post moderns and that much of their own more or less arbitrary fossicking in the tradition seems to, on the basis of nothing more than merely fashionable 'modern' prejudices ' throw the baby out with the bathwater'.

I largely agree with that. For me I found Barfield's book as a convincing argument that (1) there are things in the world not amenable to being reduced to physics, (2) that consciousness changes and evolves - it governs the way we feel and perceive the world, (3) primitive people are not our inferiors, they just had a different consciousness, (4) our consciousness plays an active role in creating the world we experience. These insights were further refined for me by writers such as Mircea Eliade, or Eric Voegelin who unveil how much we have lost through this "modern" change in consciousness that has occurred.

Reply to Agustino

I haven't read much of Eliade; but I have read quite a bit of, and about, Voegelin several years ago now. I don't agree with his characterization of Hegel and the Gnostics, or the thinking that lies behind his catch-cry "don't immanentize the eschaton".

I don't see the modern change in consciousness as necessarily a loss; in fact it should be a gain. It would be a gain if it incorporated, instead of rejecting, the previous shapes of consciousness. This is Hegel's point, and the point that much of modern philosophy has neglected.

Hoo: It sounds like you are talking about stopping thinking in order to understand ("see") something about thinking. For me, this does not compute.

That's why it's called 'mystical'! X-)

Quoting John

I don't agree with his characterization of Hegel and the Gnostics

Ok can you unpack this? Along what lines don't you agree with his characterisation of Hegel and the Gnostics?

Quoting John

I don't see the modern change in consciousness as necessarily a loss; in fact it should be a gain. It would be a gain if it incorporated, instead of rejecting, the previous shapes of consciousness. This is Hegel's point, and the point that much of modern philosophy has neglected.

This only holds if Hegel is right and history has direction. But what if, as Voegelin outlines especially in his late Ecumenical Age, history has neither direction nor finality? Then we're back to Plato and what he thought - identifying patterns that emerge, appear, disappear, and re-emerge in human consciousness. Possibilities in consciousness which always exist.

Reply to Agustino

Voegelin, if I remember right, believes that the transcendent God cannot be known, which is contra the Gnostics and the whole Hermetic and Theosophical traditions, the whole tradition that I believe Hegel's philosophy reflects. Hegel believed in an evolution of spirit, and this is just what Voegelin rejects. He wants to adhere to the Orthodoxy of the religious institutions, which would keep God well away from the reach of man. I think this is absurd; God can either be experienced or else must be nothing to us.

I also believe there is a logical, reflecting a spiritual, trajectory to history. But, in any case, this is not the sort of thing that can be properly argued for or against; you either see it, and are thus convinced, or you don't. For me the same goes for God, and the spiritual dimension.

Quoting John

Voegelin, if I remember right, believes that the transcendent God cannot be known, which is contra the Gnostics and the whole Hermetic and Theosophical traditions

You have to be careful here. There is a tradition of mysticism in Christianity and this is different than Gnosticism. Voegelin is very sympathetic with this tradition - as he is with many of the Platonists, and their direct experience of spiritual realities. Even people like St. Thomas Aquinas were mystics in the end - St. Thomas Aquinas reputedly said towards the end of his life after having a religious experience that everything he has written is like straw - that's why he left his Summa unfinished. But yes - knowledge of the transcendent - Voegelin would be against that. He wouldn't be against experience of the transcendent. But man must not forget his creatureliness - he cannot KNOW the transcendent - surely he can experience it, but to claim knowledge (and hence mastery) of it is absurd. Because the transcendent is always transcendent - to know it, would mean to make it object. And that is just what is impossible, and the same mistake I believe Hegel makes via the absolute knowledge. This obviously leads to disorder - if I claim I know the transcendent, soon I will claim that whatever I want is right and truthful because I know and you don't - because you don't have the same experience I do. Voegelin was against this - he was against this sort of dangerous dogmatism which is immune from rational criticism and hides behind "secret knowledge" that only it has access to.

Quoting John

He wants to adhere to the Orthodoxy of the religious institutions, which would keep God well away from the reach of man.

The same Voegelin who frequently expressed the opinion that the Book of Revelation shouldn't be part of the Bible, and who thought that St. Paul may have been a gnostic? :P There is something different Voegelin wants. He wants to adhere to order - not to Orthodoxy or dogma. Order both in society and in the soul, and he rightfully notes that this requires adherence to certain structures and practices. Mysticism and experience of the transcendent is very good - but order is also necessary. The problem with the Gnostics is that their vision and their pursuit of it would tear society apart - the centre would not hold. It's not that they wanted to experience the spiritual directly - that wasn't the problem.

Voegelin transcends the label of conservative. Yes he would agree with conservative ideals by and large. But he is also critical of many conservative practices and dogmatisms. That's why he could never understand why Russell Kirk liked him so much.

Quoting John

But, in any case, this is not the sort of thing that can be properly argued for or against; you either see it, and are thus convinced, or you don't. For me the same goes for God, and the spiritual dimension.

See this I believe is what Voegelin attempts to criticise, because at this point I can't contradict you. We cannot engage in rational conversation to find out the truth at this point, because there is no ground for it left. I can say you're wrong, but it will be my opinion against yours. We can't be engaged in dialogue which would be conducive to resolving this and getting closer to truth because the ground of your opinion is something which is inaccessible to some people.

Reply to Wayfarer That's why it's called 'mystical'! X-)[/quote]
But that's also why we have words like "mystification."

Reply to Agustino

Can you name some of the mystics you are referring to here? If St Thomas cast aside the Summa on the basis of a mystical experience, then we may conclude that he would have come to a place where he would have disagreed with Voegelin.

And I haven't said anything about knowing or experiencing the transcendent, because both notions are incoherent. There is no transcendent apart from the immanent, and that is precisely Hegel's point.

Quoting John

Can you name some of the mystics you are referring to here? If St Thomas cast aside the Summa on the basis of a mystical experience, then we may conclude that he would have come to a place where he would have disagreed with Voegelin.

Why do you think he would have disagreed with Voegelin?

Quoting John

Can you name some of the mystics you are referring to here?

Bodin, Pseudo-Diyonisus (who by the way was the biggest influence on St. Thomas after [well, before chronologically speaking] Aristotle), Eckhart. These are some of the names that come to mind. Voegelin also expressed respect for Bergson if he counts.

Quoting John

And I haven't said anything about knowing or experiencing the transcendent, because both notions are incoherent. There is no transcendent apart from the immanent, and that is precisely Hegel's point.

Well it is precisely Voegelin's point that there is something which cannot be known - which will forever exceed the human grasp, even though it can be experienced and encountered, but it can never become object - the known.

Reply to Hoo Right. But in all seriousness, it is a discipline, and it does have roadmaps and routes, even though from the outside it seems like complete anarchy. I often refer to this Amazon reader comment on one of Huston Smith's books: 'Forgotten Truth: The Common Vision of the World's Religons', which summarizes it as follows:

Essentially it is this: there are "levels of being" such that the more real is also the more valuable; these levels appear in both the "external" and the "internal" worlds, "higher" levels of reality without corresponding to "deeper" levels of reality within. On the very lowest level is the material/physical world, which depends for its existence on the higher levels. On the very highest/deepest level is the Infinite or Absolute -- that is, God.

Basically this volume is an attempt to recover this view of reality from materialism, scientism, and "postmodernism." It does not attempt to adjudicate among religions (or philosophies), it does not spell out any of the important _differences_ between world faiths, and it is not intended to substitute a "new" religion for the specific faiths which already exist.

Nor should any such project be expected from a work that expressly focuses on what religions have in common. Far from showing that all religions are somehow "the same," Smith in fact shows that religions have a "common" core only at a sufficiently general level. What he shows, therefore, is not that there is really just one religion, but that the various religions of the world are actually agreeing _and_ disagreeing about something real, something about which there is an objective matter of fact, on the fundamentals of which most religions tend to concur while differing in numerous points of detail (including practice).

Of course any two religions therefore have much more in common than any single religion has with "materialism". In fact one way to state the "common core" of the world's religions is simply to say that they agree about the falsehood of "materialism."

So, look again at that chart I posted a few pages back. Even despite the many differences, there is one striking point; that it's a hierarchy. That was most clearly articulated, in Western philosophy, in neo-platonism, which is the source of the mystical tradition of Christianity. I think even Hegel retains many element of that, and also arguably Heidegger. But in general terms, it is precisely that hierarchical structure which has been discarded in modern thinking.

As regards what can and can't be known - an awful lot depends on what you mean by 'known'. Quite often mystical and gnostic understanding is grounded in trance or rapture - the suspension of discursive thought. So what can be 'known' in such states is nothing like we call 'empiricial truth'. That is why it resorts to symbolism to communicate those ideas. Deep and difficult questions of interpretation in all that, would take volumes to spell out.

Quoting Agustino

Why do you think he would have disagreed with Voegelin?

Maybe he would have come to see God as an absolute immanence, and thus to have come to think that his writings about the transcendence of God were "as straw". It's not really a point worth arguing about, in any case, since what he thought can only be speculated about.

Quoting Agustino

Eckhart

I am not familiar enough with the writings of the other two to comment; but Eckhart speaks extensively about becoming God, so he might be seen as a thinker of the immanence of God. He expressed a kind of panthentheistic vision of God, and was charged with heresy for that.

Quoting Agustino

Well it is precisely Voegelin's point that there is something which cannot be known - which will forever exceed the human grasp, even though it can be experienced and encountered, but it can never become object - the known.

For me this is an extremely facile point, There are many things which can be "experienced and encountered" for example, love, truth, beauty, hope, faith, etc., in that sense known, which cannot become objects. All this says is that not all of human experience is of determinate empirical objects. But this is trivially and self-evidently so.

There is nothing that will forever exceed the human grasp, nothing that is, that could ever be anything to us, nothing that it could be, therefore, coherent to talk about.

John:Eckhart speaks extensively about becoming God...

ahem, I think not. He got charged with heresy for saying much less. 'Divine union' is not the same as 'apotheosis'.

I can't see a difference that makes a difference between the idea of becoming God and becoming one with God. The idea of apotheosis may be aligned with this in its sense of being a highest point of development or a culmination, but has nothing at all to do with its alternate sense of being elevated to the status of being a divinity, as were some of the roman emperors, for example. Eckhart was arguably a panentheist and on this view God is immanent in everything. It is much like the Buddhist notion that everything is the Buddha. No one thing or being, can rightly be elevated to an exclusive divine status on this view.

So, it seems that what you have in mind as a disagreement cannot have been with anything I have been speaking about.

The difference is that in Christian thought, the idea of 'becoming God' would be a grave heresy. There is the idea of theosis, or divine union, but that is not understood as the aspirant 'becoming God'. It's really not that important in the our context but it would have been in the context in which such ideas originated.

Quoting Wayfarer

As regards what can and can't be known - an awful lot depends on what you mean by 'known'. Quite often mystical and gnostic understanding is grounded in trance or rapture - the suspension of discursive thought. So what can be 'known' in such states is nothing like we call 'empiricial truth'. That is why it resorts to symbolism to communicate those ideas. Deep and difficult questions of interpretation in all that, would take volumes to spell out.

I won't say that others don't have wordless raptures. I won't pretend to believe in "round squares," though. I've had some "peak" experiences that I associate with symbols elaborated conceptually, lit, in theory, by primordial images. They are treasures that make my life better ---without, however, obliterating the need to struggle in this world and eventually die a personal death. They just light the world up and make it easier to love life (which includes my death).

I don't know where Being came from. I don't think an answer could even make sense. All such answers seem to be necessarily mystifications. It's not so much that I idolize the rational but rather a matter of authenticity. If I don't have a clear and distinct idea, I don't want to pretend to myself otherwise. I'm not saying this about you, but it's reasonable to hypothesize that some of these "round squares" are themselves just abstract "irrational" myths, resonating as promises. Nothingness, for instance, is beautiful. I remember Sartre's Being and Nothingness on the shelf at a bookstore when I was a teen. What kind of book was this? What words were more beautiful? Negation, generality, transcendence of everything particular toward that which is most universal and eternal. Indeed, that's the genius in the total anarchy of the concept of Christ 'm attached to. All finite systems that want to dominate are set aside, at least for this divine man of the human imagination, elaborated conceptually in terms of iconoclasm's journey toward "at-home-ness."

Is this first-person report "mysticism"? It doesn't matter. I do like staying close to conversation and away from "mystification." If the symbols work (to some degree) irrationally, I call it emotion or feeling. Why not? Feeling is nakedly the source of value. Concepts are here in our dialogue.

If others report or expect something more, that's OK with me.

The trouble is, in this context, that Sartre and Nietzsche were avowed atheists. (I wrestled with Being and Nothingness as an undergraduate, I literally couldn't get past the first page, although I have since formed the view that I didn't miss anything. )

What I'm trying to convey is that 'mysticism' is neither a matter of concepts nor feelings. When you ask 'what could it be', you have to actually engage with it on its own terms to discover that - like, spending time at a zendo or on a retreat. What happens with the mystical path is that you see through or past the verbal and symbolic mind, you learn to perceive with a different part of the brain (and there is actually research on this i.e. James Austin Zen and the Brain).) But this discussion is really serving to illustrate the point - you're an extremely well-read and perceptive thinker, but you can't make head or tail of what mysticism is about. And it's because it is a different cognitive mode - hence terminology such as 'noesis', 'gnosis', and the other specialised lexicon that is associated with it. And that's about all there is to it.

Reply to Hoo

Mysticism is more or less an attempt to put Being in experience. Not the symbolic representation of some part of the world or logic (e.g. nothingness, happiness, a tree, my cricket team, Being etc.), but a presence of Being itself. As if my experience was living the Being of everything and/or anything, rather than merely a description of it. An experience of living rather than merely knowing or thinking. Understanding of that which is beyond knowing or describing.

I do love your epic use of nongrammar and also agree totally

Reply to Agustino

. Well it is precisely Voegelin's point that there is something which cannot be known - which will forever exceed the human grasp, even though it can be experienced and encountered, but it can never become object - the known.

It strikes me that this is speculation on Voegelin's part. How do we know that the human mind, or body is not designed to experience transcendence and how can we conclude that an experience cannot be known. Transcendent experiences which can be known and recollected cannot be understood, perhaps, but that is different from knowledge of them. I know this because I have had such experiences, such that cannot be understood, or easily conveyed and may perhaps only be known via experience. But I do know the experience I had and recollect it and attempt to creatively convey the experience.

Reply to Hoo I concur with Wayfarer on this point, that what mysticism(the practice) is concerned with is a different way of seeing, of thinking, experiencing, the side of ourselves which is on the other side of the coin(side A)if one considers that a normal person only lives on the one side(sideB). For the practicing mystic a whole world opens up as extensive as side B, but is both different and the same, from another perspective, even a kind of rebirth.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness
But surely you see that the "Being" of our lives is largely conception, emotion, sensation. If we are talking about states that are radically other than life as we know it, rather than a superior intensity of feeling and clarity of thought, then it sounds to me like the same old impossible object, the secret that yet is not a secret (since it's "unthinkable"), a fetishized empty negation.

Don't get me wrong. I see the allure of this "Being." I've stood before the That-Which-Is in shock and wonder. It is, and it is beneath all explanation. Sartre treated this well in Nausea. This is some of the "mysticism" I found in the TLP.

As far as symbols go, I mean numinous images and concepts. Most important by far, in my view, is the conceptually elaborated image of personified virtue. As I see it, this very conversation is driven on both sides by the energy of our differing images of the "ought to be" or the "ego-ideal." We feel pride or narcissistic pleasure as we identity ourselves with this image (live up to it) and shame or guilt as we perceive a gap between our actual and ideal selves. But the (passionate conceptual) images shape our lives that simultaneously shape the images. We tend to project our own notion of virtue as a universal value. "This is the way. This is the truth. This is the law. " But we can "intellectually" unveil this "nothingness" and the contingency and artificiality of all such law. The reason we don't, in my view, is because we want to "bring the Law" or "the Truth" or "the Method" and control or limit the spirits of others. We identify with these "alienations" or "finite/constrained" gods/myths. So the image of radical freedom is a threat to the ego whose escape from time and death is "tied up" in them. What he or she thinks is his or her best self is not taken seriously (as an absolute value) by the heretic who insists on a notion of the complete transcendence of everything pious, solemn, dutiful, sacred. This notion, "Christ" as the end of the law, is also the "Devil." This is just the end of the "ideal" law, not of laws in the world. Life goes on. Politics goes on (which is what every thing less than total freedom looks like ultimately). But to get stuck there, and to put the center of one's religion there, is, in my experience less satisfying.

Reply to Punshhh
But are you so sure that you understand what I've been saying? Do you perceive me as someone who lives in the "normal" way, even as I share a passionate image of total freedom, the nothingness of all "spiritual" law exterior to and alienated from the self as a joyful, creative, incarnate "nothingness" that recognizes itself as such? I eschew all this talk of the hidden and the difficult and some authoritative truth or essence or knowledge of mysticism, for instance, though I recognize that an attachment to the hidden and the difficult and the authoritative is in fact the primary difficultly. In symbols now: bound by our desire to bind we nail him up, the blasphemous pervert, along with the freest center of our selves. I mean this is just the vision, a slice of the heresy as I've made sense of it. I'm still just a guy with a life and a wife and a job. It's a beautiful story or clump of ideas. But it resonates in my guts and lights up my heart.

From the SEP entry on Sartre:

SEP: What does it mean “to be”? Sartre's existential phenomenology appeals to certain kinds of experience such as nausea and joy to articulate the “transphenomenal” character of being. Pace Kant, “being” does not denote a realm behind the phenomena that the descriptive method analyzes. Neither is it the object of an “eidetic” reduction (the phenomenological method that would grasp it as an essence). Rather, being accompanies all phenomena as their existential dimension. But this dimension is revealed by certain experiences such as that of the utter contingency which Roquentin felt. This is scarcely rationalism, but neither is it mysticism.

[quote=Sartre]
It took my breath away. Never, up until these last few days, had I suspected the meaning of "existence." I was like the others, like the ones walking along the seashore, wearing their spring clothes. I said, like them, "The sea is green; that white speck up there is a seagull," but I didn't feel that it existed or that the seagull was an "existing seagull"; usually existence conceals itself. It is there, around us, in us, it is us, you can't say two words without mentioning it, but you can never touch it. When I believed I was thinking about it, I was thinking nothing, my head was empty, or there was just one word in my head, the word "being." Or else I was thinking — how can I put it? I was thinking of properties. I was telling myself that the sea belonged to the class of green objects, or that green was one of the qualities of the sea. Even when I looked at things, I was miles from dreaming that they existed: they looked like scenery to me. I picked them up in my hands, they served me as tools, I foresaw their resistance. But that all happened on the surface. If anyone had asked me what existence was, I would have answered in good faith, that it was nothing, simply an empty form added to things from the outside, without changing any thing in their nature. And then all at once, there it was, clear as day: existence had suddenly unveiled itself. It had lost the harmless look of an abstract category: it was the dough out of which things were made, this root was kneaded into existence. Or rather the root, the park gates, the bench, the patches of grass, all that had vanished: the diversity of things, their indi viduality, were only an appearance, a veneer. This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness.
[/quote]
We can (among so many other options) envision God as the totality that is just radically there and Christ as a conceptually elaborated "primordial image" that allows us to feel at home in this otherwise alien God ('who' includes children with cancer, genocide,rape, our deaths, etc.).

We can't leave out this. I'd call it mystical, or mystical enough, but that's secondary. And this is why "sensation and emotion" are important to me. "Sensation" points at incarnation. "Emotion" makes any of this worth talking about or noticing in the first place.
[quote=Sartre]
But I wanted to fix the absolute character of this absurdity. A movement, an event in the tiny colored world of men is only relatively absurd — in relation to the accompanying circumstances. A madman's ravings, for example, are absurd in relation to the situation in which he is, but not in relation to his own delirium. But a little while ago I made an experiment with the absolute or the absurd. This root — there was nothing in relation to which it was absurd. How can I pin it down with words? Absurd: in relation to the stones, the tufts of yellow grass, the dry mud, the tree, the sky, the green benches. Absurd, irreducible; nothing — not even a profound, secret delirium of nature could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of the segment of a straight line around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, in contrast, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Knotty, inert, nameless, it fascinated me, filled my eyes, brought me back unceasingly to its own existence. In vain I repeated, "This is a root" — it didn't take hold any more. I saw clearly that you could not pass from its function as a root, as a suction pump, to that, to that hard and thick skin of a sea lion, to this oily, callous; stubborn look. The function explained nothing: it allowed you to understand in general what a root was, but not at all that one there. That root with its color, shape, its congealed movement, was beneath all explanation.
[/quote]
Perhaps because explanation deals with finite essences in a system, and this "existence" precedes or is other than essence. But this precedence of existence to essence is also understood in another way when it comes to the natureless nature of man, a "hole" in being. Bad faith touches closely upon idolatry. The self wants to fix its identity in a solid object, to flee from its nothingness and freedom. Beautiful stuff.

As I understand it, Sartre saw (the spirit of ) man as a futile passion to identity itself with something fixed and substantial, something unfree and therefore not responsible for itself. I relate this to the "seeing of a structure" (the game of the "Law" or the "Truth") that "Christ" was the "end" of. To see the nothingness is to annihilate one's chains with benevolent but impious laughter, at least in the retreat to one's spiritual imagination if not always in the thick of life. But this is just some guy's interpretation and synthesis of his favorite texts in the largely emotional and sensual context of his experience.

Reply to Hoo No I don't see you as someone who experiences side B. I was trying to explain the distinction between externally orientated being and internally orientated being. I know that I keep appealing to mystical practice as does Wayfarer, this appears to be because we approach this from an Eastern perspective.
Anyway, I will change my approach now that I have made the point about the route of mystical practice. Suffice it to say that I do consider the body (also the mental body) as an apparatus which one would seek to operate correctly.

I don't wish to negate your approach as I am of the opinion that there are people among any culture who experience mystical awakening of all kinds through the prism of the culture and knowledge they find themselves in and in each culture mystics or prophets emerge and leave a body of work in attempt to convey, or teach their experiences.

In the Satre quote he mentions along with yourself facing existence face to face. This is described by some as facing God face to face. This contemplation is a kind of meditation, communion which enables one to shed the shackles of cultural conditioning and the like, in the light and knowledge of this stance. I use this stance in contemplation of divine geometry such as squircles( giggle) transcendent states and techniques, along with a kind of personal subjective preening, or sorting and refining of conceptual architecture in the self. There is also a clear division, or membrane between side A and B, here, although the activity bridges this divide and there is also a process of conceptual refraction across the membrane enabling more subtle conceptual sculpting.

It looks as though you are up to similar things, but in a more "heretic" way.

Reply to Hoo

But this is just some guy's interpretation and synthesis of his favorite texts in the largely emotional and sensual context of his experience

Yes, we each take what we find around us in terms of concept, to weave into our "coat of many colours".

I would point out that along with the perspective of seeing the silence, the stillness, negating ones thoughts and feelings which is a sort of feminine, or negative technique. There is also a masculine or positive technique in which there is the presence of deities, gods, sensual stimulation, a transfiguration of thoughts and feelings and a sense of presence. This for me is embodied in Hinduism and the approach of silence and stillness is embodied in Buddhism.

Sartre: This veneer had melted, leaving soft, monstrous lumps, in disorder — naked, with a frightful and obscene nakedness.

Sartre has got zero to do with mysticism. If you wanted an anti-mystic, you'd be hard pressed to find a better example. Hell is other people, and all the rest. Same with Camus - heroic resolution in the face of a meaningless universe. Serious looking, depressed people, smoking Gualoise and arguing over strong coffee.

Reply to Wayfarer
But why bother defending this word? Is the word itself sacred? Is it the sort of thing that needs to be defended and kept pure? You're welcome to the word, but I don't think any of us get to control meaning like that in general. It's just a word. If the 'spiritual' is only a matter of the proper names, then the "spiritual" is just too small -- it becomes a politics that doesn't recognize itself as such. Learn the demons name and he will serve you, Rumpelstiltskin, etc.

As to resenting titles like "Hell is other people"...That's like blaming spiritual works for talking about sin and illusion. It's the same with the line you've quoted. The protagonist is not some simple "hero" of the book. It's like attributing "kill, kill, kill, kill" to Shakespeare himself and not to King Lear in a traumatic moment.

I'm not saying Sartre's perfect (I can find things to criticize) but he was a great theorist and poet of freedom, including the dark side of godlessness. He has some of the best one-liners around. Have you really read these "existentialists"? From here it looks like your coughing up the caricature. The Fall is a favorite. (Camus) There's the same kind of caricature of all the (more recently) imported religion with its exotic terminology: "It's all just a bunch of confused or plain superstitous hippies burning incense and sitting with their legs crossed." This kind of reductive/humiliating description is the symbolic warfare that we don't have to take seriously or get trapped in, but we tend to defensively "rewrite" and "make shallow" whatever threatens our contingent, "surface" attachments. (I'm not saying I never do this or that you are currently doing. I just study this sort of thing as various impositions of the Law I've been mentioning. )

Quoting Punshhh

I use this stance in contemplation of divine geometry such as squircles( giggle) transcendent states and techniques, along with a kind of personal subjective preening, or sorting and refining of conceptual architecture in the self. There is also a clear division, or membrane between side A and B, here, although the activity bridges this divide and there is also a process of conceptual refraction across the membrane enabling more subtle conceptual sculpting.

It sounds like you've got something good going on. I can't help but interpret this "A" and "B" as names for different mental states. I don't believe in squircles, but I love the word. I do of course know some beautiful math. The real numbers are a black and seamless sea, and also an "uncountable" infinity. Unlike the rational numbers, we can't print them out one by one or line them up. It's beautiful to me that such psychedelic and "drippy" numbers get called the "reals." The rationals are shiny and crystalline. The reals are like wet, black smoke.

Here are few oneliners I hadn't seen before that seemed to fit with the theme.
[quote=Sartre]
Abjection is a methodological conversion, like Cartesian doubt and Husserlian epoche: it establishes the world as a closed system which consciousness regards from without, in the manner of divine understanding.

The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us.

In doing Good, I lose myself in Being, I abandon my particularity, I become a universal subject.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.
[/quote]

Reply to Hoo

It sounds like you've got something good going on. I can't help but interpret this "A" and "B" as names for different mental states. I don't believe in squircles, but I love the word. I do of course know some beautiful math. The real numbers are a black and seamless sea, and also an "uncountable" infinity. Unlike the rational numbers, we can't print them out one by one or line them up. It's beautiful to me that such psychedelic and "drippy" numbers get called the "reals." The rationals are shiny and crystalline. The reals are like wet, black smoke

Yes A and B are different brain states, there may be some difference other than the fact that one is internally directed and the other externally, but the science hasn't been developed into being yet and I expect it is some way off. But I fully expect to find that there is an organ in the brain which uncannily enables transcendence. You are free to sculpt yourself, to have two sides to your coin. Even to embrace spuircles(surely a romantic would do that?). You are free to develop the conceptual tooling to take you to where you want to be. Now there's a question.

The divine reals, I wonder if the rules of math can be bent squared, why would they be constrained, who in their right mind would do that, if they had the freedom to do otherwise?

Hoo:why bother defending this word? Is the word itself sacred?

Sartre was a highly educated man, heir to European philosophy, and he well understood subjects such as the nature of being, in a way that the facile 'new atheists' have no comprehension of. But he is not a mystic, saying that books like Nausea are mystical has no basis in fact. Was Sartre a romantic poet? He wasn't, and if you wrote a post saying 'here's an example of Sartre's prose as romantic poetry' then surely you would be picked up on it There is a difference between mystical philosophy, and Sartre's existentialism, which you're not seeing. I think if you wrote a term paper on the subject, that would be the comment.

Quoting John

Maybe he would have come to see God as an absolute immanence, and thus to have come to think that his writings about the transcendence of God were "as straw". It's not really a point worth arguing about, in any case, since what he thought can only be speculated about.

Highly unlikely. He did not dismiss the Summa as wrong - but as completely incapable of describing the extent of reality, being equivalent to a small corner of a large puzzle.

Quoting John

I am not familiar enough with the writings of the other two to comment; but Eckhart speaks extensively about becoming God, so he might be seen as a thinker of the immanence of God. He expressed a kind of panthentheistic vision of God, and was charged with heresy for that.

"In Him we move and have our being". Wayfarer is right, Eckhart never claimed one becomes God - rather that it is possible to achieve union with the divine - in Christian terms this would happen when one's will is entirely aligned with the Will of God. This is not immanence, because the divine always exceeds. One merely has their being in the divine - it isn't the whole of the divine.

Quoting John

For me this is an extremely facile point, There are many things which can be "experienced and encountered" for example, love, truth, beauty, hope, faith, etc., in that sense known, which cannot become objects.

They are objects in consciousness (for the most part - some of those experiences like love can and sometimes to point to the transcendent, and in-so-far as they do that, they too are transcendent). The experience of the transcendent is precisely that which you experience, but you never fully surround with your consciousness. There is always something missing in that experience. Rudolf Otto's The Idea of the Holy or Mircea Eliade's The Sacred and Profane are good reads on these themes.

Quoting John

I can't see a difference that makes a difference between the idea of becoming God and becoming one with God.

Becoming God = becoming Being itself. Becoming one with God = "in him we move and have our being". The two are radically different. Theosis - divine union - is also different. According to Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which has this view (and I know as I am an Eastern Orthodox), all of us achieve theosis after death - we are all united with God. Those who hate God perceive God's love as hell - those who love God perceive it as Heaven. Furthermore, it is possible for people like monks to achieve the experience in this life also. Theosis is when the sinful human being becomes divine - like God - BUT NOT IDENTICAL TO GOD. No being can achieve ontological oneness with God.

St. Maximus the Confessor:A sure warrant for looking forward with hope to deification of human nature is provided by the Incarnation of God, which makes man God to the same degree as God Himself became man ... Let us become the image of the one whole God, bearing nothing earthly in ourselves, so that we may consort with God and become gods, receiving from God our existence as gods. For it is clear that He Who became man without sin will divinize human nature without changing it into the Divine Nature, and will raise it up for His Own sake to the same degree as He lowered Himself for man's sake. This is what St. Paul teaches mystically when he says, "that in the ages to come he might display the overflowing richness of His grace"

Some Meister Eckhardt quotes: 'He is your being, but you are not his'
'The eye with which I see God, is the same eye as with which God sees me'.

And I haven't said anything about knowing or experiencing the transcendent, because both notions are incoherent. There is no transcendent apart from the immanent, and that is precisely Hegel's point

Reply to John

To know or experience the transcendent might be rationally incoherent. But this does not mean that both don't happen in the life of a mystic. In humanity's ignorance a bit of rational thought does not change, or dictate events or facts on the ground.

I would agree though that the transcendent is in the immanent. There may be processes in revelation in which a being is caught up in the transcendent and sees the unseeable.

The mystics of many centuries, independently, yet in perfect harmony with each other (somewhat like the particles in an ideal gas) have described, each of them, the unique experience of his or her life in terms that can be condensed in the phrase: DEUS FACTUS SUM (I have become God).
To Western ideology, the thought has remained a stranger... in spite of those true lovers who, as they look into each other's eyes, become aware that their thought and their joy are numerically one, not merely similar or identical...

Reminds me of St. Paul Galatians 2:20

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Paul did not become God, he made room for God, accepted the call of God, and became possessed by God, God's "chosen vessel".

The idea of making room, opening space within oneself to receive grace/inspiration/truth resonates with me, making it the core of all ones activities. This, I think, is an act of volition, not a noetic ascension, which is not to say that such ascension cannot be involved, but that the acceptance/rejection of insight depends on our willingness to accept, and the fortitude to live and act in a manner coincident with that acceptance.

Quoting Agustino

Highly unlikely. He did not dismiss the Summa as wrong - but as completely incapable of describing the extent of reality, being equivalent to a small corner of a large puzzle.

I think it is far more likely that he came to think that it was not an accurate description of the reality of God, as that was revealed to him by his mystical experience. "As straw". But, you are entitled to your alternative interpretation; as I already said it's not something that is susceptible to determination by argument..

Quoting Agustino

"In Him we move and have our being". Wayfarer is right, Eckhart never claimed one becomes God - rather that it is possible to achieve union with the divine - in Christian terms this would happen when one's will is entirely aligned with the Will of God. This is not immanence, because the divine always exceeds. One merely has their being in the divine - it isn't the whole of the divine.

I see this as being a conventionally simplistic interpretation. For one; there are only the usual dogmatic or doctrinal differences between 'becoming one with God" and "becoming God" that stand in the way of my alternative interpretation; and I have already made a point of not accepting the logical validity of those theological orthodoxies; so there doesn't seem to be much point to throwing them back at me again.

I have asked you to explain clearly what necessary logical or experiential differences there are between becoming God and becoming one with God. I mean presumably all mystics are speaking about basically one kind of experience, and yet they speak about it in very different and sometime ambiguous ways. What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally. And talk about radical transcendence is radically incoherent, in my view.

Consider this passage from Meister Eckhart's Sermon 52 :

[i]"So we say that a person should be so poor that he neither is nor has any place for God to work in. To preserve a place is to preserve a distinction. Therefore I pray to God to make me free of God, for my essential being is above God, taking God as the origin of creatures. For in that essence of God in which God is above being and distinction, there I was myself and knew myself so as to make this man. Therefore I am my own cause according to my essence. which is eternal, and not according to my becoming, which is temporal. Therefore I am unborn, and according to my unborn mode I can never die, According to my unborn mode I have eternally been, am now, and shall eternally remain, That which I am by virtue of birth must die and perish, for it is mortal, and so must perish with time. In my birth all things were born, and I was the cause of myself and all things and if I had so willed it, I would not have been, and all things would not have been. If I were not, God would not be either. I am the cause of God's being God. if I were not, then God would not be God. but you do not need to understand this.
A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this did I acknowledge myself as a creature. but in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. there I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all his divine works; for this breaking through guarantees to me that I and God are one. Then I am what I was, then I neither wax nor wane, for then I am an unmoved cause that moves all things. Here, God finds no place in man, for man by his poverty wins for himself what he has eternally been and shall eternally remain. Here, God is one with the spirit, and that is the strictest poverty one can find.
If anyone cannot understand this sermon, he need not worry. For so long as someone is not equal to this truth, he cannot understand my words, for this is the naked truth that has come direct from the heart of God, that we may so live as to experience it eternally, may God help us. Amen.[/i]

I disagree with the rest of what you say because it is nothing more than a determinately one-sided expression of orthodox theology; a kind of fundamentalism. But there is no point arguing about it, because fundamentalists are never convinced by arguments.

If you read the passage from Eckhart carefully you will see that he is no orthodox theologian, but one who speaks directly from his own experience of God.

Quoting Agustino

They are objects in consciousness (for the most part - some of those experiences like love can and sometimes to point to the transcendent, and in-so-far as they do that, they too are transcendent).

I don't agree with that at all; for me they are immanent shapes of consciousness that always concern immanent experience. You speak about maintaining order in the name of transcendence, but this is a vacuous notion since anything genuinely transcendent could not be known at all, and would be nothing to us. What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit.

From the quoted passage above:
'For so long as someone is not equal to this truth, he cannot understand my words'.

Reply to Wayfarer
Oh, I see that Sartre is anything but most folk's notion of a mystic. But this perception of existence beneath essence is profound. There are books that link Heidegger to Daoism, etc., and of course Sartre took off to some degree from Heidegger. Anyone walking knee-deep into ontology or phenomenology is at least getting close to that zone. And godlessness as god isn't so strange, is it? Nothingness, transcendence, freedom, Being.

Quoting Wayfarer

Some Meister Eckhardt quotes: 'He is your being, but you are not his'
'The eye with which I see God, is the same eye as with which God sees me'.

Great lines. I was exposed to some Eckhardt in Caputo's book on Heidegger and mysticism.

Reply to John
Quoting John

What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally.

Well said. Philosophy (if it's loyal to Socrates at all) is going to try to give a "reasonable" account, as reasonable as possible.

Quoting John

What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit.

This. Yes. Though I like Agustino, I think he's missing out on a notion of something that surpasses politics.

An unexpected juxtaposition:
[quote=E]
A great master says that his breaking-through is nobler than his flowing out, and this is true. When I flowed forth from God all creatures declared: "There is a God"; but this cannot make me blessed, for with this did I acknowledge myself as a creature. but in my breaking-through, where I stand free of my own will, of God's will, of all his works, and of God himself, then I am above all creatures and am neither God nor creature, but I am that which I was and shall remain for evermore. there I shall receive an imprint that will raise me above all the angels. By this imprint I shall gain such wealth that I shall not be content with God inasmuch as he is God, or with all his divine works; for this breaking through guarantees to me that I and God are one
[/quote]

[quote=Stirner]
Now, as this rose is a true rose to begin with, this nightingale always a true nightingale, so I am not for the first time a true man when I fulfil my calling, live up to my destiny, but I am a “true man” from the start. My first babble is the token of the life of a “true man,” the struggles of my life are the outpourings of his force, my last breath is the last exhalation of the force of the “man.”

The true man does not lie in the future, an object of longing, but lies, existent and real, in the present. Whatever and whoever I may be, joyous or suffering, a child or a graybeard, in confidence or doubt, in sleep or in waking, I am it, I am the true man.
Still far from myself, I separate myself into two halves, of which one, the one unattained and to be fulfilled, is the true one. The one, the untrue, must be brought as a sacrifice; to wit, the unspiritual one. The other, the true, is to be the whole man; to wit, the spirit. Then it is said, “The spirit is man’s proper essence,” or, “man exists as man only spiritually.” Now, there is a greedy rush to catch the spirit, as if one would then have bagged himself; and so, in chasing after himself, one loses sight of himself, whom he is.
...
It is different if you do not chase after an ideal as your “destiny,” but dissolve yourself as time dissolves everything. The dissolution is not your “destiny,” because it is present time.
[/quote]

Reply to Wayfarer

Right, so what do you want to say is the sgnificance of that?

Quoting John

I think it is far more likely that he came to think that it was not an accurate description of the reality of God, as that was revealed to him by his mystical experience. "As straw". But, you are entitled to your alternative interpretation; as I already said it's not something that is susceptible to determination by argument..

Well it certainly is much more likely as an explanation. Aquinas certainly did not renounce any of his writings as wrong. Only insignificant in relation to the full truth - like straw. Nor did he renounce the importance of the Catholic Church for that matter. So the presumptuous interpretation is clearly not mine. You are making a series of blatant assumptions about him, which are simply not warranted given his entire life. Not that they are impossible - they are certainly possible. Only that very unlikely.

Quoting John

For one; there are only the usual dogmatic or doctrinal differences between 'becoming one with God" and "becoming God" that stand in the way of my alternative interpretation; and I have already made a point of not accepting the logical validity of those theological orthodoxies; so there doesn't seem to be much point to throwing them back at me again.

No those "doctrinal" differences have practical significance. Becoming God can very easily be associated with anything being permitted for you. Like Osho Rajneesh having promiscuous sex with his disciples. Or poisoning a community. Or Krishnamurti having sex with one of his friend's wife behind his back, and having her have an abortion. These are very practical consequences of believing you become God. Furthermore it is also a practical consequence that some people will be deceived and think you are justified to break moral laws because "you are God". So how can I adopt a position which will put you beyond any possible criticism or restraint - because now you are God? That is nonsense. That clearly cannot be a principle of order. "You shall know them by their fruits"

Quoting John

I have asked you to explain clearly what necessary logical or experiential differences there are between becoming God and becoming one with God.

I just did. I may add that becoming one with God implies sharing in his holiness, and gives a different attitude. Furthermore, it allows verification and rational criticism. Others can look at you and determine objectively if you have become one with God by comparing you with Christ.

Quoting John

I mean presumably all mystics are speaking about basically one kind of experience

From where do you get this assumption? Experiences of the transcendent can be quite varying. That's why it's a personal relationship with the transcendent. No two people's experience will be the same, or even necessarily alike.

Quoting John

What philosophy is (or should be) about is finding the way to speak about these experiences which is most logical and in accordance with human experience generally.

Yes - and also to promote order, exactly as Plato said.

Regarding Eckhart's sermon. Yes I agree with it, the human soul, pneuma, literarily means breath - hence the breath of God. So certainly man is in his deepest nature divine. Furthermore Eckhart makes the necessary distinction between "the essence of God" which is above what he terms God. So in stating he is above God he merely claims that in him lies something that is of the essence of God - the pneuma. This is entirely orthodox, and has no Gnostic content. It is indeed a mystical experience and revelation. But there is a mystic tradition in Orthodoxy. Only Gnosticism is heretical - mysticism is not, regardless of some mystics who were falsely accused. So I have nothing but respect for such mystical tradition, but I understand that such a tradition can only flourish when order exists in society - when there is a religious authority.

Quoting John

I disagree with the rest of what you say because it is nothing more than a determinately one-sided expression of orthodox theology; a kind of fundamentalism. But there is no point arguing about it, because fundamentalists are never convinced by arguments.

Funny that the person who says some things cannot be argued is then the one to suggest that fundamentalists can never be convinced by arguments. Well neither can you! That's why you claim some things cannot be argued. I make no such claim. I think everything should be open to disagreement and rational exploration. But you refuse to explain or provide any justification for your claims that could be argued or debated. You play the line "not everyone has the experience - thus not everyone gets it" as a run-away tactic. There's nothing I or anyone can say to disprove you. We cannot deny your experience. You place yourself beyond rational criticism. I don't. I explain how my beliefs are necessary for order, and how order is necessary for the flourishing of society and the happiness of man, including the achievement of mysticism.

Quoting John

You speak about maintaining order in the name of transcendence, but this is a vacuous notion since anything genuinely transcendent could not be known at all, and would be nothing to us.

Unless a part of us, the part Eckhart is talking about, is also transcendent :)

Quoting John

What you are really valorizing is the enforcement of order by earthly authorities that arrogate to themselves the mandate of a divine authority. This idea is truly repugnant to any free spirit.

We are beings of flesh as well as spirit. Fulfilment of our nature requires divinization of the flesh, not its repudiation. You seem to ignore that we live in the world, and not in mystical flights of fancy - this is what typically happens when someone approaches mysticism on their own, not guided by the wisdom of tradition. So yes - order is necessary, without order there is no stability, and without stability nothing great can be achieved.

Reply to John That it is a discussion of exceedingly subtle matters. Personally I find it a bit unseemly.

Hoo: I see that Sartre is anything but most folk's notion of a mystic.

Sartres' dissertations on alienation and meaningless are diametrically opposite to those of Eckhardt. It's really like saying that Keith Richards was one of the great baroque composers.

I might as well say that in today's world it's so easy to be a mystic. In the past it took years of following rituals and traditions, and personal submission and exploration, countless hours of repetitive prayer and meditation until one even got near to mysticism. Now it's so easy - every Joe claims he is a mystic. This is a great absurdity.

Reply to Wayfarer
I quoted Stirner, not Sartre. As I see it, Sartre was still trapped, though right on the edge conceptually. He's a great writer on alienation, on contingency, on "being-for-others." But he took politics seriously, so he's really not my guy. Stirner, on the other hand, strikes me as truly liberated, on a level beyond Sartre. Marx hated Stirner. Sartre was deeply invested in Marxism. That gap between mere politics and "spirit" is crucial. Sartre was torn between two visions.

Second the above. I went to some of the Science and Nonduality (SAND) conferences in California - some of the speakers were genuine, but there was a lot of pseudo-mystical quantum woo being put about.

But as Rumi says, there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold.

Quoting Wayfarer

But as Rumi says, there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold.

I agree to that - as I said mysticism in Christianity is a reputable tradition, and is even the culmination of everything else. But some people apparently think that it is possible to have the peak of the mountain without its body! They want to do away with the Churches, away with the traditions, jump straight to the peak! This is nothing but modern arrogance and infatuation.

Reply to Agustino
But, Agustino, this debate about who is legitimate or not is hardly a footnote. It is exactly the sort of "Law bringing" narcissism (which I partake in like anyone) that some notions of the mystic attempt to transcend. You make mysticism sound like a gym membership. "God has to be earned!" "Look at all of these fakes!" " Real Christians/mystics/philosophers/men/whatever do it THIS way, MY way." As I see it, this game (my Law projected as the authentic, universal Law) is what "Christ" transcends.(We see that this game cuts both ways.) But of course my Christ is a symbolic Christ. Yours is a man of the Law. (I'd use some other name for mine if my childhood occurred in a different religious context. )

Quoting Hoo

You make mysticism sound like gym membership.

But on the contrary my friend, gym membership isn't earned, you can just buy it and walk right into the gym. Mysticism isn't like that.

Quoting Hoo

"God has to be earned!" "Look at all of these fakes!" Real Christians/mystics/philosophers/men/whatever do it THIS way, MY way.

I never claimed Christianity is the only way though. I personally believe Christianity is the highest religion, but I can see nothing wrong with other religions being ways which lead to just the same divinity. The idea of there having been a single revelation is foolish. Certainly transcendence has revealed itself in different parts of the globe and in different ways. But all these ways involve order, the virtues, and humility. They don't involve reckless arrogance about the power and capacities of the human soul.

Quoting Hoo

But of course my Christ is a symbolic Christ. Yours is a man of the Law.

Yes indeed. In my mind the Law is required to achieve the symbolic Christ you talk of. I agree the symbolic Christ goes beyond the law - it fulfils the law. But it's not a negation of it. If the Law is the seed, then Christ is the flower :) The flower and the seed have a necessary connection with each other, even though the flower transcends the seed.

Reply to Hoo Apologies, written in haste.

My first encounters with the literature of mysticism, were with the Indian 'advaitins'. Advaita is a philosophical school of Hinduism which became very popular in the mid 20th Century - Somerset Maugham's 'The Razor's Edge' was written after he had visited the noted Hindu sage, Ramana Maharishi.

Anyway, one point about the Advaitins is that they were quite 'anti-nomian' in their attitude to conventional religion. They were dismissive of religious conventions, the caste system, rites and rituals - which in a culture like India made them quite radical figures.

There are anecdotes about encounters between Advaita sages and the conventionally religious which ofen culminate with the latter being shown up as credulous or hide-bound.

There's a similar dynamic in Chinese philosophy between the Taoists, often depicted as vagabonds and vagrants, and the upright Confucian sage, who represents civic piety and virtue. Quite often they end with the Taoist having a laugh at the sages' expense.

The reason I mention that, is because those anti-nomian figures represent the rejection of religious dogma in a way similar to the modern existentialists and other non-conformist philosophers in the 20th century. They are often colorful characters, free spirits, even rascals and rogues.

But I would contend that they're not atheist in the way that only becomes possible in the 20th Century. Certainly many of them were not what we would identify as 'theistic', but the idea of living beings as 'accidents of biochemistry' that is the basic tenet of 20th century materialism, would never have occured to them; it wouldn't have been a cognitive possibility.

Quoting Wayfarer

That it is a discussion of exceedingly subtle matters. Personally I find it a bit unseemly.

I'm still not clear as to what it is you find unseemly.

Reply to Wayfarer
I enjoyed your post. I had a sense like that about Taoism, but I haven't heard much about the other antimonians of the East.
I don't know that atheism == materialism, but I see what you're getting at. On the other hand, there are atheists who lose interest in origins and even in science. For me these "accidents of biochemistry" are very abstract and distant from the world I live in of faces and voices. Only as technology does science interest me much these days. Math is another story! As Conway said, that's the stuff that we can understand. But we deeply live in language. I'd be there are lots of "literary" atheists out there, and maybe they aren't exactly atheists. I believe in deities in a roundabout way. I suppose it's about whether we expect the manifest image to change directly ( by divine intervention) or indirectly through world-shaping man's passionate imagination. (That I imply that deities [excepting Being itself?] are "just" imagination should be understood in the context of a great love for the "poetic genius" and "human form divine.")

Reply to Hoo these "accidents of biochemistry" are very abstract and distant from the world I live in...

Ask the proverbial man-in-the-street what is the basis of reality. I bet - haven't done the research - the answer will be 'atoms', and that we're a species that has evolved according to the 'laws of survival'. I think the majority assume something like that - it is the modern, scientific way to think. I don't think that is either abstract or distant, it's real and close up.

Reply to Wayfarer
In the U.S. there's not as much pure atheism/scientism to be had. I know people with degrees who will talk of ghosts. How do ghosts fit in with atoms? Also, "global warming is a hoax" and then there's just lots of traditional religion available, too, though the millennials seem to be avoiding the churches.

I agree, however, that, if you frame the question a certain way, they will repeat the expert knowledge as it was told them. Later they may say that aliens built the pyramids, though, or fire up the Tarot app on their smartphone. My old man had a strange, personalized reincarnation belief, but he mixed it with science-fiction notions of the creation of humanity. He got something from it, but he only talked about such things a few times, mostly absorbed in projects for the back yard. My point is that most people don't care enough to synthesize something cohesive, as long as they feel good. Passionate, closed-minded materialism and atheism are rare in my experience. As you know, it's a new pop-atheist twist on humanism--another "religion." Just like scientism.

Prominent progressives do lean toward science (and altruism) as the grand authority. Traditional religion is lumped in with sexism, homophobia, and even (post Trump) racism. I've noticed little rainbow stickers on churches that feel the need to distance themselves.

Quoting Punshhh

You know the laughing thing, well it's the same with art, suddenly everything is art and you have to restructure what art means from a position of knowledge, aware of the futile struggling you were doing before the revelation, veiled in ignorance.

I sort of neglected this before, but I've had a vision along the lines of everything being art. I used to want to write a book, etc., and crystallize something, but now I think of the living, flowing unstable persona as a sort of dynamic sculpture. Water on fire, looking for fuel.

Quoting Agustino

Well it certainly is much more likely as an explanation. Aquinas certainly did not renounce any of his writings as wrong.

I haven't said that he declared any of his writings to be wrong, but merely inaccurate, in the sense that there can be no accurate description of the experience of God. And without any experience of God all descriptions are merely playing with more or less logical possibilities; such as we can imagine them.

Quoting Agustino

No those "doctrinal" differences have practical significance. Becoming God can very easily be associated with anything being permitted for you. Like Osho Rajneesh having promiscuous sex with his disciples. Or poisoning a community. Or Krishnamurti having sex with one of his friend's wife behind his back, and having her have an abortion.

I'm going to be blunt here: I think you are transforming yourself into a self-righteous fool.
This is all just malicious unsubstantiated gossip, unless you can show clear evidence for those claims about Osho and Krishnamurti . And again, even if those claims were true; so what? No man is perfect.
As Christ is recorded as saying in Matthew:

[i]"Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"[/i]

Moral teachings and philosophies are certainly necessary to societies just as laws are; I haven't anywhere denied that, or spoken about individuals becoming God in the sense of being raised above the rest of us to be beyond morality or the law. If you think that is what I am arguing then your own hysterical reading of what I have written has gotten the better of you.Laws pertain to those acts which are clearly of a criminal nature. Transgressors of laws are prosecuted and punished, but it will not do to prosecute and punish people for transgressing what are merely moral injunctions; who would want to live in such a society?

Those matters must be left up to the individual; they are between the individual and their God, so to speak; and the individual must live with his or her choices; the moral approbation or disapprobation their acts occasion in their fellows, and feel in their own hearts whether they have done right or wrong.

Quoting Agustino

Only Gnosticism is heretical

Gnosticism is not one monolithic standpoint. In its simplest form it is merely the claim that God can be known. All mysticism is a form of gnosticism in this basic sense. It is essentially contra to the established dogma of the Church fathers. Remember the official church position did not always recognize the mystics; it is only with time, distance and the softening of dogma that they have become incorporated into the official canon of the churches.

This is a very complex issue that you are apparently wanting to promote a very simplistic understanding of.

Quoting Agustino

Funny that the person who says some things cannot be argued is then the one to suggest that fundamentalists can never be convinced by arguments

You're taking my words out of context and running two different things said on two different contexts together. I had said that what Aquinas thought cannot properly be argued about. If he made a clear statement about what he was thinking then there would be no argument; and if he didn't then it may only be not very fruitfully speculated about.

The other point was about church dogma, and ultra-conservative fundamentalist interpretations thereof; which I think you are guilty of. My point there is that I don't want to waste time trying to make someone see reason; when their very position if it is any kind of self-righteous purism, is not at all based on reason. It is a waste of time because they will not likely be amenable to argument.

Quoting Agustino

Unless a part of us, the part Eckhart is talking about, is also transcendent :)

To say that would be to utter a contradiction. 'Transcendent" means something like "that which cannot be known or experienced'. If we can know or experience something then it is immanent to our knowledge and experience. What it 'might be' beyond that cannot be anything to us.

So, the following is inconsistent, contradictory and incoherent :

Quoting Agustino

Experiences of the transcendent can be quite varying. That's why it's a personal relationship with the transcendent. No two people's experience will be the same, or even necessarily alik

How could we have a relationship with something that is completely and utterly beyond us? That's a simple contradiction, and claiming that we could have such a relationship would be inconsistent with the meanings of the terms used to make the claim. How could we know, based on our experience of anything that it is transcendent, or even know at all what it could mean for it to be transcendent? It is because we cannot know what such claims mean that they are incoherent.

Quoting Agustino

We are beings of flesh as well as spirit. Fulfilment of our nature requires divinization of the flesh, not its repudiation. You seem to ignore that we live in the world, and not in mystical flights of fancy - this is what typically happens when someone approaches mysticism on their own, not guided by the wisdom of tradition. So yes - order is necessary, without order there is no stability, and without stability nothing great can be achieved.

What does "divinization of the flesh" even mean? The flesh is already divine, or not at all. I say it is already divine; it is only a matter of proper seeing. Your pronouncements are truly laughable, as if you know me! I have nowhere promoted dissolution of morals; on the contrary, I have said specifically elsewhere on these forums that it is the duty of each one of us to develop our own moral senses, instincts, imaginations and intuitions; and to be as mindful as possible of our own acts, not to worry about the acts of others, and sit in judgement of them, as you do. Of course, some order and stability is necessary for human life that is why we have laws, and why people need to be educated to develop their moral senses. But in the realm of ethics, because each one of us is a unique individual there will always be nuances in unique situations, such that it cannot be right to make blanket moral pronouncements such as "divorce is wrong", "adultery is wrong", "homosexuality is wrong" and other like ultra-conservative dictatorial claims such as the ones you make on these forums. You have, unfortunately it seems, become a wowser, as I see it, anyway.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lives_in_the_Shadow_with_J._Krishnamurti

I agree with the point about gnosticism not being a single school, or even a school.

Incidentally, it's worth recalling what Jesus said to the woman he protected from being stoned:

'Go, woman - and sin no more'. Something often overlooked.

Reply to Wayfarer

True, I think Jesus does call for repentance, but if the woman went and sinned again, he still would not judge, but patiently urge repentance again. Repentance is not some form of behavior simply taken on from without once it is shown to you, but something that must come genuinely from within, from the "still, small voice" of moral intuition.

Quoting Agustino

If the Law is the seed, then Christ is the flower :) The flower and the seed have a necessary connection with each other, even though the flower transcends the seed.

How does the flower transcend the seed? Isn't it more likely that the seed actually transcends the flower?

Reply to John I hear you but I think an awful lot gets written off nowadays against 'judge not....'

Reply to Wayfarer

Perhaps that's true; I don't know. I think it is probably more the 'slow insidious creep' of determinism which is undermining belief in free will and personal responsibility.

So, I am not saying that people should not censure others for acts that they understand to be morally wrong; I am saying that such censures should be made in light of one's own moral intuitions, not in light of some received and inflexible moral dogma. Also, the censuring of the behavior of others should be kept well separate from any desire to punish them, or any thought that they deserve punishment. For me, the idea that 'they know not what they do' should also be kept well in mind; as I think it applies in most cases where there is no malicious intent.

Second the above. I went to some of the Science and Nonduality (SAND) conferences in California - some of the speakers were genuine, but there was a lot of pseudo-mystical quantum woo being put about.Reply to Wayfarer

Yes and there are many false prophets these days. There was less of this in the past when the mystical traditions were cloistered.

I would point out here and in reference to the Eckhart quotes each being dwells in and expresses a reality in measure to their condition of evolutionary development*. So in a sense, it matters little what they say, provided they don't hinder others. So there may be two people in the same place talking the same words, of differing evolutionary positions, for whom their experience and meaning differs by orders of magnitude.

Also there may be people of high evolutionary development, true Mystics, living an ordinary life as an ignorant farmer or washer woman.

* by evolutionary development, I am referring to the development of the soul ( for want of a better word)

[quote]But as Rumi says, there would be no fool's gold if there were no gold

Nice quote.

Reply to Hoo Yes, the final work of art is one's self. Yes the realisation that all is art, or what someone says is art was a coming of age. Before this point I had struggled for years to get to the bottom of art, to understand the philosophy of art. Even to find the philosophy of art, if it was out there somewhere. All I found were historical, or sociocultural comment. Perhaps the most fruitful route was to look at the art itself, ignore the critics and see it's meaning, quite a pilgrimage.

Now I know and understand art, it is a joy, in all its guises* and history. I will be going to view the Abstract Expressionist exhibition at the Royal Academy in a few weeks, I can't wait. Some nice Pollock and Rothko to dwell on.

* unfortunately I do have a pet hate in the guise of degenerative Brit Art. But I see very little merit, I blame it on the ex hippy lecturers that frequented the art schools in the 80's.

Reply to Punshhh
Quoting Punshhh

Perhaps the most fruitful route was to look at the art itself, ignore the critics and see it's meaning, quite a pilgrimage.

It's a beautiful thing to just dare to see with one's own eyes. Lots of folks may nod at that concept in the abstract, but a little later they will appeal some grand authority. This art conversation really is related to the rest of the thread. The imagination I was trying to share is all about the liberation of one's genuine feeling and perception and even about one's own voice as a writer. I know people who write well when it's nothing they want to publish. But they switch into solemn mode and lose their unique voices. Incidentally, that's one of the reasons I embrace this medium. No, it's not like they did it in the old days. The internet has opened up something new. (I also love good TV and rap, but I can imagine a resistance to these forms because they aren't yesterday's Shakespeare but today's.)

"Unscrew the doors from their jambs." (I'll have to put some Whitman on this thread. He's a 'mystic' of the flesh that I tend to have in mind.)

Here's some great 'mystic' poetry, though perhaps too carnal for some tastes:

[quote=Whitman]
Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from
them,
No more modest than immodest.

Unscrew the locks from the doors!
Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!

Whoever degrades another degrades me,
And whatever is done or said returns at last to me.

Through me the afflatus surging and surging, through me the cur-
rent and index.

I speak the pass-word primeval, I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all cannot have their coun-
terpart of on the same terms.

Through me many long dumb voices,
Voices of the interminable generations of prisoners and slaves,
Voices of the diseas'd and despairing and of thieves and dwarfs,
Voices of cycles of preparation and accretion,
And of the threads that connect the stars, and of wombs and of
the father-stuff,
And of the rights of them the others are down upon,
Of the deform'd, trivial, flat, foolish, despised,
Fog in the air, beetles rolling balls of dung.

Through me forbidden voices,
Voices of sexes and lusts, voices veil'd and I remove the veil,
Voices indecent by me clarified and transfigur'd.

I do not press my fingers across my mouth,
I keep as delicate around the bowels as around the head and heart,
Copulation is no more rank to me than death is.

I believe in the flesh and the appetites,
Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me
is a miracle.

Divine am I inside and out, and I make holy whatever I touch or
am touch'd from,
The scent of these arm-pits aroma finer than prayer,
This head more than churches, bibles, and all the creeds.

If I worship one thing more than another it shall be the spread of
my own body, or any part of it,
Translucent mould of me it shall be you!
Shaded ledges and rests it shall be you!
Firm masculine colter it shall be you!
Whatever goes to the tilth of me it shall be you!
You my rich blood! your milky stream pale strippings of my life!
Breast that presses against other breasts it shall be you!
My brain it shall be your occult convolutions!
Root of wash'd sweet-flag! timorous pond-snipe! nest of guarded
duplicate eggs! it shall be you!
Mix'd tussled hay of head, beard, brawn, it shall be you!
Trickling sap of maple, fibre of manly wheat, it shall be you!
Sun so generous it shall be you!
Vapors lighting and shading my face it shall be you!
You sweaty brooks and dews it shall be you!
Winds whose soft-tickling genitals rub against me it shall be you!
Broad muscular fields, branches of live oak, loving lounger in my
winding paths, it shall be you!
Hands I have taken, face I have kiss'd, mortal I have ever
touch'd, it shall be you.
[/quote]

A little more, since, well, it's Whitman, America's new and improved Blake.
[quote=Whitman]
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.

Backward I see in my own days where I sweated through fog with
linguists and contenders,
I have no mockings or arguments, I witness and wait.
...


These are really the thoughts of all men in all ages and lands, they
are not original with me,
If they are not yours as much as mine they are nothing, or next
to nothing,
If they are not the riddle and the untying of the riddle they are
nothing,
If they are not just as close as they are distant they are nothing.

This is the grass that grows wherever the land is and the water is,
This the common air that bathes the globe.
...


My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really
am,
Encompass worlds, but never try to encompass me,
I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you.

Writing and talk do not prove me,
I carry the plenum of proof and every thing else in my face,
With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.
...


You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I love Whitman. For some reason when I read these poems now (which I have read previously several times too) I was reminded of a poem I wrote five or six years ago which was inspired somewhat more by Ginsberg's 'Howl' than by Whitman. But then Ginsberg was certainly inspired by Whitman. I don't know if it's appropriate, it has some mystical undertones I think. I'll post the poem here anyways. It's pretty long, but no one has to read if they don't want to it, after all.


The Rhetoric of Intoxication


Daunted by nakedness, neutralized superheroes rattling chains,
shuddering in illuminated backyards struggling inside with oily creatures of the deep,
pouring forth ambiguous narratives of dour lands of solitude and hidden angels,
ecstatic visions in the midnight winter country town darkness.

lounging at ease absorbed with tasks of self-investigation; words flowing like lava,
and raining ash over narcotic, trembling corporeal machinery; an indifferent wind
blowing over seraphim, seafarers and love enacted in public parks.
That which roars out of the tomb of angels cut down and beaten unto death
by the one eyed dollars that swim like sperm in the golden bowl of plenitude
and extrude the silver threads that weave industry on that juggernaut loom
engineering the insatiate fires sustaining the midnight candle;
generations of humanity passing out upholding the torch of consciousness.

that which snatches dreams away, undresses them and plunges them naked in the icy
lake of observation. secret anti-heroes, who abolish solipsism without
trying, locked up lonely in iron dreams, sharing apartments with beasts and leeches
and walking through forests with boots full of blood.

That which dreams of snow on the ocean,
Of ghostly shipping ports and disused drydocks in the desert,
Of rainforest riverbanks in the city under floodlights and eternal days of enlightened ecstasis.
That which dives in dream to the muddy bottoms of rivers searching for pushcarts and surfaces,
gasping, under bridges, and whiles away endless hours in
city lofts, meditating, and breathing softly in the darkness. That which was hypochondriac,
believing it under bacterial siege, and black boxes of anachronistic theology.
That which scribbled incantations in fluorescent ink; obscenities on the ceilings of bedrooms,

That which rises in the late morning and cooks rotten animals for breakfast,
dreaming of the pure kingdom and growing old with tin whiskers, watching insects caught alive
on the pest strip struggling in their innocent slow death,
That which suffocated holy love under meat, and called
for a universal ballot and smashed alarm clocks while all the loyal supporters fell to work.

That which hears the endless growling of the seasons and the rattle of the steel battalions
in the soup kitchens or the crying in the loneliest streets, amidst putrefying
rubbish, shattered glass and giant gusts of foundational steam.
That which roars down the highways, searching for the incarnation of solitude
Anticipating the magical; brooding, lonesome for heroes, entering hopeful cathedrals
praying for salvation and large breasts and fairy lights then and now
and minds falling in the gloom

The years have removed the criminal charm from reality,
in those shining heads of ebony and gold, heads
of overcoming and celebration, remains a desire to cultivate a habit.
That which rode shotgun on the fast dark train hurtling heedlessly
towards daisy chain or grave, demanding trials of sanity on the crumbling steps
waiting for an instant lobotomy to be insulated in the concrete void, racked
with amnesia, wearing a symbolic wig and drowning in catatonia, guilty blood flowing
symbolically from nose, mouth, eyes, ears and fingers, repenting,
surrendering to the curse of the grey warders who administer mildewed halls
crying out to the moon, tormented by the suffering of midnight spirits prostrate
and helpless upon the cold, granite bench of solitude- far from dream-realms of selfless love.
winter forcing the invocation of mothers, to finally elicit some repose.

Those of sensations learned out of the book and watching people from tenement windows,
waiting for that fantastic first telephone call; and thinking it would never come,
like a lone hanger in the closet, standing empty, waiting for the departed coat to return or
new one to turn up, and barely staying afloat in the primordial animal stew of time.

That which dwells in cold twilight alleys obsessed with gnosis, a dream
always before the eyes, and recovering these dark hallucinations
that have formed incarnate tears in the fabric of
personality, that which forms images that are juxtaposed with empty clothes;
That which bagged archangels, joined elemental spirits and made ready
for perilous reincarnations. That which dashed through tragic set pieces
That which recreates the syntax that calmly measures all tentative steps and stands
lame and speechless, having found intelligence and shaking with guilt.

That which confesses the inability to dance to the rhythm set by naked and fearless leaders,
That which was a half-hearted maniac with a hairy bum aspiring to wed a pure, insane angel;
dreaming of putting down roots that may grow only after death; that which believes it will
duly rise reincarnate after the spirit blows to the four winds

Whose tortured naked mind flies free with a cry that would surely saturate the airwaves
and shake the sleeping cities if it only could find voice .
That which lay stifled; it will be the mute requiem of a life
made and mutilated by language, by a two thousand year cultural feast; tin-plated hearts
will be beaten and electric thoughts escape from cloven skulls.
Holding onto a concrete sphincter, until it turns to cold ashes in the mouth,
the streets are overflowing with garbage, lonely dogs and rapidly disappearing currency,
muffled sounds of screaming children; a distant evocation;
confinements in dark frigid basements,

In hard tenements or under stairways destitute children are sobbing in armies, homeless
elderly silently weeping, dying lonely in public parks. The loveless want to hear the proper
judgements of humanity, to forsake this unintelligible confinement in the heartless
penitentiary, this parliament of misery where even the architecture is outraged,

crushed beneath a vast slab of conflict, administered by impotent stunned reptiles whose pure
minds and hearts are unimpeachable mechanisms of probity, whose life blood is the slimy
mucous at the bottom of the public purse, whose fingers explore a thousand avenues, whose
breath and voice and action are like stains decorating nationalistic murals on the crumbling
sarcophagus of history, whose blind eyes stare from windows at rows of skyscrapers lining the
streets, dotting the habitat of administration; forests of well-lit uninhabitable mansions.
Despite dark accusing voices the underground workers of industry still dawdle and murmur
and stumble through the tedious days and insomniac nights, releasing poisonous vapours,
endlessly delivering land fill and soothing dreams of possession to legions of the dispossessed.
Billowing chimneys and stark transceivers punctuate their assigned territories, a perfect love
built on endless toil, forcing oil and precious stones from the mother

That which is forced to give and not receive, whose wealth means nothing until it’s in the bank,
whose fate is to be fingered mercilessly, whose light is swallowed by the darkness of machine
tenements and mute suburbs, waiting on the captains of industry to mount the spectral
campaign that will save and liberate all peoples and nations, captains who flaunt their invincible
insanity, who fuck all possibility itself with their lifeless monomaniac cocks breaking the back of
the dumb earth, buried beneath endless concrete pavements, firing the forests in an orgy of
celebratory masturbation to elevate the stone city to Heaven, transfigured into the city of god

transcending the native river of life, forced from domiciles, that which makes its farewells
in the beginning and at the end greets its kindred in the dark,
under the pretext of ignorance;
wishing to eliminate solitude, that entered the electronic kaleidoscope streets, imitated the
ghosts of its forebears, committed murders without lifting a finger or ever holding a weapon.

That which feasted like a sea of maggots on the senses,
drank the many nectars of oblivion,
threw the helpless urchins onto the highways of the juggernaut,
That which pours from the empty into the void,
Attempts to force harmony from a string-less guitar,
that which locked the gods in an armed jailhouse,
lurched like an army of sleepwalkers across the darkness
mouthing accusations against the wise
that which illuminates the dream experience and dissolves the non-existent boundaries.

That which emerged savage and still dripping from the ocean and started down the highway;
tumbled out of junked and broken cars and fell idiotically all over the rainy street,
fell asleep exhausted, woke in a cold sweat, as sobriety returned and yearned for safe haven
in the mediocrity of the civilized night.

Reply to John Nice!

Reminds me of the work of Savador Dali.

Some Dali
free image uploading

free image uploading

free image uploading

Quoting John

self-righteous fool.

According to you one cannot uphold morality without being self-righteous? The two don't have a necessary connection together you know...

Quoting John

This is all just malicious unsubstantiated gossip, unless you can show clear evidence for those claims about Osho and Krishnamurti .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_Rajneeshee_bioterror_attack
Wayfarer has already provided evidence for Krishnamurti.

Quoting John

And again, even if those claims were true; so what?

The point is to show you possible effects of the statement "I am God" from people who have made the statement.

Quoting John

"Judge not, that ye be not judged.

For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Said as a way to counter-act self-righteousness, which is different from upholding the law, asking people not to sin, and explaining why sin is wrong and its consequences.

Quoting John

I haven't anywhere denied that, or spoken about individuals becoming God in the sense of being raised above the rest of us to be beyond morality or the law

I agree, I just outlined to you the consequences of your discourse, whether you intend them or not. History teaches us that these are consequences of it.

Quoting John

but it will not do to prosecute and punish people for transgressing what are merely moral injunctions

Of course. That's why social means and social pressure is used to combat those. Although maybe some immoral things ought to also be illegal - say adultery. But that is a different debate.

Quoting John

Those matters must be left up to the individual; they are between the individual and their God, so to speak

Not only. Also between the individual and everyone else who is affected. The individual isn't some atom that is irresponsible with regards to how other people are affected by their actions.

Quoting John

the moral approbation or disapprobation their acts occasion in their fellows, and feel in their own hearts whether they have done right or wrong.

Yes.

Quoting John

Remember the official church position did not always recognize the mystics; it is only with time, distance and the softening of dogma that they have become incorporated into the official canon of the churches.

This is just not true. Which Church first of all? The Catholic? That's not the only church out there. You're using a simplistic narrative just because you need it to prove a point.

Quoting John

You're taking my words out of context and running two different things said on two different contexts together. I had said that what Aquinas thought cannot properly be argued about. If he made a clear statement about what he was thinking then there would be no argument; and if he didn't then it may only be not very fruitfully speculated about.

That wasn't what I was referring.

Quoting John

Voegelin, if I remember right, believes that the transcendent God cannot be known, which is contra the Gnostics and the whole Hermetic and Theosophical traditions, the whole tradition that I believe Hegel's philosophy reflects. Hegel believed in an evolution of spirit, and this is just what Voegelin rejects. He wants to adhere to the Orthodoxy of the religious institutions, which would keep God well away from the reach of man. I think this is absurd; God can either be experienced or else must be nothing to us.

I also believe there is a logical, reflecting a spiritual, trajectory to history. But, in any case, this is not the sort of thing that can be properly argued for or against; you either see it, and are thus convinced, or you don't. For me the same goes for God, and the spiritual dimension.

Quoting John

The other point was about church dogma, and ultra-conservative fundamentalist interpretations thereof; which I think you are guilty of

LOL! It's laughable if you think my interpretation are ULTRA-conservative FUNDAMENTALIST. Really - I can't be bothered to answer such nonsense. First of all fundamentalism... have I claimed the Earth was created a few thousand years ago? Have I claimed Christianity is the only way? Have I claimed evolution is wrong? No. So please get your concepts straight. Just because you don't like conservatives doesn't mean you get to throw with pejorative statements. There is a long, and respectable tradition in all religions. That isn't ultra conservative. That's just the wisdom that was passed through the ages.

Quoting John

self-righteous purism

Yeah. Good that I agree with Voegelin then that Puritanism is a form of gnosticism ;) . I guess that makes me very self-righteous and puritanical. Look - just because you unquestioningly take over the dominant stream of thought - liberalism and progressivism - doesn't give you a right to panzer over those of us who have spent time to think through these matters and question the assumptions that were given to us by the world. The fact that for you upholding moral values is purism - that is indeed very sad.

Quoting John

'Transcendent" means something like "that which cannot be known or experienced'.

Well not to me. Transcendent simply means something that is in some form "beyond us".

Quoting John

completely and utterly beyond us

I have never said "completely and utterly". These are strawmen.

Quoting John

Your pronouncements are truly laughable, as if you know me!

"as if". Read it again.

Quoting John

and to be as mindful as possible of our own acts, not to worry about the acts of others, and sit in judgement of them, as you do

I think that is quite naive. Others affect us, and therefore our well-being depends not only on us, but on our whole society. That's why in turn we care about our society. Because we understand that the pain of my neighbour is my pain.

Quoting John

But in the realm of ethics, because each one of us is a unique individual there will always be nuances in unique situations, such that it cannot be right to make blanket moral pronouncements such as "divorce is wrong", "adultery is wrong", "homosexuality is wrong" and other like ultra-conservative dictatorial claims such as the ones you make on these forums.

... For you, Orthodoxy is ultra-conservative. That's false. It is historically false to say the least. Adultery is wrong means it is harmful. Always. That's not ultra conservative. Please go research what ultra conservative is. Or read the article I have read just yesterday http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/

Again, as I see things, you are just adopting liberal and progressive prejudicies without thinking about it. You are never even questioning them. You think saying adultery is wrong is ultra conservative. Hell - even saying sex before marriage is wrong isn't ultra conservative. Those are things that people have believed for most parts of history, and in most societies. Ultra-conservative are reactionary movements - such as Puritanism. There's a difference between the two. Apparently you don't think there is.

Quoting John

True, I think Jesus does call for repentance, but if the woman went and sinned again, he still would not judge, but patiently urge repentance again. Repentance is not some form of behavior simply taken on from without once it is shown to you, but something that must come genuinely from within, from the "still, small voice" of moral intuition.

Because you have divorced yourself from the culture of the time (and also from the Church which could have guided you), you have misinterpreted that part of the Bible, which people who had lived back then would have understood the way it was meant to be understood. First of all the law of the written Torah:

Leviticus 20:10:And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.

Second of all, the unwritten, oral Torah requires evidence regarding both the adulterer and the adulteress to be brought up before sentencing them to death. Now let us remind ourselves of the situation in the New Testament:

John 8:1-11:Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the Temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd.

“Teacher,” they said to Jesus, “this woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her. What do you say?”

They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and said, “All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!” Then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

When the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

“No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

Notice the progression. A woman (without the man with whom she committed adultery) is brought up by the Pharisees to Jesus and they ask him what shall be done with her, as she was caught in the act of adultery, which is against the law of Moses. Notice that if indeed she was caught in the act, then the man must have also been caught. Now they tried to put Jesus in a place where regardless what he answered, he would have answered wrongly. If he said "stone her" he would have broken the law because he would have preferentially punished just the woman. If he said "let her go" he would have also broken the law by not punishing adultery. Now Jesus outwits them and agrees with them "All right" (thus agreeing that adultery is wrong), and then adds "let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone" pointing to the fact that in bringing the woman alone, and not the man to be judged, the Pharisees themselves had broken the law of Moses, which demands that both be brought to judgement, especially if caught in the act as they said they were, and not preferentially, in this case just the woman. As no accusers are left, Jesus upholds the law and lets the REPENTANT woman go. Notice that she wasn't some feminazi claiming "I can do whatever the fuck I want with my body, these folks don't have any right over what I do with my body" yadda yadda yadda. She wasn't self-righteous like that. If she had been self-righteous we would have had quite a different story, as has been illustrated numerous times regarding self-righteousness in the Bible. There is nothing more despicable than self-righteousness associated with immorality. She was repentant, conscious, guilty and sorrowful of her sin, which is noticed from the way she addressed Jesus, by "Lord". The problem today is that people who commit adultery aren't most of the time that way - they are quite the opposite, self-righteous. Part of the problem brought on by rampant progressive liberalism. And again, it's a very big problem that people think they can just open the Bible and understand what is being said. That is very wrong. People need the guidance of an authority, which retains the customs and traditions in memory and can guide them. Religious texts aren't novels that can be read while being detached of the culture and environment in which they appeared, and the tradition through which they have passed.

Reply to Agustino

I'm sorry to say it Agustino, but I find most of what you say highly disagreeable, even repugnant.

I cannot see anything in it that persuades me you would be open in the slightest to any alternative reason on these matters, so I feel no inclination to engage with you further; it would it seems just be a complete waste of time. Good luck with your life, man...

Quoting John

I'm sorry to say it Agustino, but I find most of what you say highly disagreeable, even repugnant.

I cannot see anything in it that persuades me you would be open in the slightest to any alternative reason on these matters, so I feel no inclination to engage with you further; it would it seems just be a complete waste of time. Good luck with your life, man...

Well it's quite clear that your mind isn't open to consider alternatives from what you have been taught by mainstream liberalism - hence finding what I say "highly disagreeable, even repugnant". That's a symptom of it - called in psychology avoidance, and the associated emotional reactions.

I don't find what you say repugnant - I just think you're wrong, and that's that. This is a philosophy forum, not a counseling forum. Here we're supposed to question things, even if they are cherished beliefs. I don't mind questioning for example whether tradition is important or not. Certainly you never brought the question up. I don't mind discussing the importance of authority in religion or in society - but again you never brought that up. You take your liberal principles as a priori truth, and aren't even willing to discuss them, much less question them. You consider them holy truth, and disgusting to even dare to question them! In fact principles which are different are emotionally repugnant to you. But hey - each to their own!

Also it seems to me that you don't want to admit that there is a mystical tradition at the very heart of Orthodoxy, which isn't against Orthodoxy, but is Orthodox itself. I don't see why not. You just want to monopolise mysticism for some progressive-liberal politics, but if you look at history this isn't the case in many actual cases.

And if you think I'm a proselytiser or fundamentalist, please then report me to the moderators. See what they think, as they have a rule against such people :) You can just drop them a line, they are decent and friendly people, and I'm sure they'll let you know, and also let me know if I am doing something wrong!
http://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/480/site-guidelines#Item_1

The reason I find much of what you say repugnant is because it seems to be hopelessly mired in politics. The result is that you come across to me as being more of a politician than a philosopher. I am not a liberal as you seem to think; in fact I have no interest in politics; I think the desire to leave one's mark on the world is the problem, not the solution.

But, hey, I don't wish you ill, or anything like that; I just don't have any inclination to engage further in the kinds of slanging matches that our 'conversations' always seem to degenerate into.

Good luck.

Reply to Punshhh

Dali; now there's a connection I never would have thought of!

Reply to John A surrealist way ahead of his time.

Quoting Agustino

I don't mind questioning for example whether tradition is important or not. Certainly you never brought the question up. I don't mind discussing the importance of authority in religion or in society - but again you never brought that up. You take your liberal principles as a priori truth, and aren't even willing to discuss them, much less question them. You consider them holy truth, and disgusting to even dare to question them! In fact principles which are different are emotionally repugnant to you. But hey - each to their own!

OK, having said that I don't want to indulge in slanging matches; I'll try to address what you write here, without doing that. It's true that I have characterized some of what you have written as "prozelytization" and "self-righteousness", and that's because that's just what I perceive when someone speaks about "making adultery illegal" and such like. If someone produces self-righteous prozelytizing statements then they are, by virtue of that and to that degree at least, self-righteous prozelytizers. Beyond that I have not indulged, as far as I can remember, in ad hominen characterizations of your personality, as the part I underlined above certainly shows you to be doing in regard to what you purport to be my personality.

You don't merely declare that I am a "liberal", which in itself is not correct, since it is you and not I, (I who am not much concerned with politics at all), who have repeatedly tried to bring politics into the discussion, and you who have declared that I am an unquestioning liberal, to boot, as if you could know, merely on the grounds that I disagree with you, apparently, that I have not questioned my political beliefs (and assuming that I actually had any)! This appears to show me that you cannot imagine, or at least accept, that your interlocutor does not share your concerns with political trajectories and aims in philosophical discussion, such as determining by dictation (as opposed to merely influencing by example and education) the moral direction and future structure of society. Just to anticipate an objection, I do acknowledge that politics is inherent in all philosophy, but from that it does not follow that I must be explicitly concerned with political questions, For example, for someone to be concerned with being as good a person as possible, is certainly in an sense a political concern, insofar as her actions and discourse will undoubtedly impact upon and influence others, but the person need not be directly concerned with the politics of influencing others, and much less would she need to be concerned with the politics of determining exactly what others are to think and do in regards to particular issues.

Quoting Agustino

Also it seems to me that you don't want to admit that there is a mystical tradition at the very heart of Orthodoxy, which isn't against Orthodoxy, but is Orthodox itself. I don't see why not. You just want to monopolise mysticism for some progressive-liberal politics, but if you look at history this isn't the case in many actual cases.

I have never denied that there has always been an esoteric tradition that existed and exists alongside the exoteric traditions of the different churches (traditions that, by the way have always to greater or lesser degrees disagreed with and condemned one another as being heretical). Among those traditions, at least the tradition of Roman Catholicism has been particularly punitive, up until the last couple hundred years or so, against anything that even smelled of heresy. (I am not familiar enough with the histories of other traditions to make a similar claim about them). This has meant that mystics that adhered (at least outwardly) to the Roman Catholic tradition, had to be very careful about what they said. This has obviously also been the case with men of science and Giordano Bruno (who was both a hermetic mystic and a man of science) is a striking case in point.

So, my point was never that those in the mystic tradition were against orthodoxy (although considering the constraints on what they could say publicly, they may well have been), but that orthodoxy was, or at least would have been, against what mystics wrote or said if the orthodoxy were both aware of the writings or sayings, and if there was even a sniff of heresy about them.

Also, I want to add that I do not say that tradition has no value. Without tradition there would be no preservation of culture. But traditions are there to be creatively used by individuals for self-education, development and inspiration; individuals are not there for traditions to use or dictate to, in the name, and for the interests, of authorities or powers, or to repress and subjugate under the aegis of orthodox totalitarian ideologies.

And again, underlined here is another example of a presumptuous and unwarranted characterization of my philosophical stance and personal aims; which it seems is based on the fact, that given your own preoccupation with politics, you seem to automatically assume that others must be (or at least should be?) motivated in like manner.

Quoting John

But traditions are there to be creatively used by individuals for self-education, development and inspiration; individuals are not there for traditions to use or dictate to, in the name, and for the interests, of authorities or powers, or to repress and subjugate under the aegis of orthodox totalitarian ideologies.

Yes, indeed. This is almost everything, really. The past exists for us, not us for the past. The desire to freeze time is the desire for "undeath" or "unlife."

Reply to Hoo

Yes, the fossilization of the arch-conservatives! 8-)

Reply to John
That's the genius of the Incarnation, it seems. That great, distant authority (whom it was death to look upon) became a living, particular man in time. Incidentally, I picked up The Concept of Time (Heidegger). Apparently it was written a little before B&T (sort of a sketch of it), but it's significantly more readable and condensed. Also did research on Kojeve. Well, it's clear that "man is time" is mostly from Heidegger, and that was one of the most profound things in Kojeve. (Geist ist Zeit).
Then we can throw in Sartre and describe idolatry as that futile passion that man is to become "spatial" or "present."

Quoting Hoo

That great, distant authority (whom it was death to look upon) became a living, particular man in time.

Yes, via the incarnation He was transformed from a great distant authority, or a broker of covenants, into the loving father who manifested the spiritual companionship of the unconditionally loving brother.

I read The Concept of Time ( I think, or was it History of the Concept of Time) quite a few years ago now; and my memory of it is that it is indeed easier reading than Being and Time. I never really got into Sartre, but I agree that Heidegger worked against the privileging of the present (the present which can be understood as bare immediate spatial actuality) over the phenomenological historicity and being-towards which are the past and future respectively.

Reply to John

Agustino understands that to be the liberal dogma of the modern West. For him tradition is meant to instructive and dictatorial. It's meant to be the becon of imagine which defines what we aspire to. The "liberal dogma" isn't any particular action or behaviour per se. It's the degradation and rejection of tradtion as an understanding of human identity. We are no longer understand ourselves to be destined for anything. Marriage is no longer forever. Family is understood to be breakable (to pick one of Agustino's favourites). The vision of the necessarily perfect life has been lost. It's no longer there to define the lives of some and act as the fiction which hides when we are less than perfect.

Sinners are no longer damned. Sin might be wrong, but it gives no destiny. A sinner has just as much of a right to exist and be loved as the perfectly virtuous. There is no threat or retribution within the shame of sin. It's only guilt for what has been done. Sin has no future consequence for the integrity of one's worth. No longer can it be used as an excuse to scapegoat, take revenge or destroy the imperfect.

Liberalism amounts to accepting or even celebrating living imperfections. Their lives becone just as important as anyone with perfect virtue. Sin might be preferable to avoid, but it doesn't render anyone unworthy of life (or to use Christian terms, God). In liberalism, the ability to call for the destruction of those who sin is lost. It's this which Agustino despises most. Philosophy is unable to form a culture which veiws sin and worth as mutually exclusive.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness

Well then I cannot be a liberal, because I do not say that the evil person's life is worth the same as the good person's. I also do not say, tout court, that traditional values must be discarded.

I am only concerned that values and beliefs not be imposed upon people beyond some bare minimum that may be considered to be necessary or inevitable.

As to such things as the breakdown of the family: I am not sure the nuclear family is necessarily the best model; but I do think that it is natural that people form close bonds with those with whom they share affinities, and that they will naturally favour those who are close over those who are more distant.

Generally, people are only capable of actively, in the sense of viscerally, caring for and about a certain number of others. If one viscerally cared about everyone on the planet, one would probably go insane. I think there is room for variation as to how people are to live with their intimates so I'm not supportive of ideas that contribute to any rigid crystallization of social structures.

Sin can never annihilate worth altogether, but it can certainly diminish it.

This, form Valentin Tomberg, is an intersting summation of the difference between mystical and scientific, as well as theological, knowledge:

"For those who experience it, this form of knowledge (the mystical)* counts as the highest because it is experienced ... as the result of the most profound contemplation and the greatest concentration, in comparison with which that of intellectual consideration and the practical knowledge gained by way of observation appears superficial. However, it does not count in the slightest way as knowledge (let alone as the highest form of knowledge) for the scientific disciplines—which, as such, lay claim to being of general validity. For the scientific approach is not to strive simply for the truth, but rather to strive for that brand of truth which is of general validity, i.e. that which can be comprehended fundamentally by everyone bestowed with healthy understanding and faculties of perception, and which should thus be concurred with. A scientific discipline—whether a spiritual-scientific or a natural-scientific discipline—does not want to, and is not able to, address itself only to those people who are capable of the concentration and inner deepening necessary for intuition. Were it to do so, it would then not be scientific, i.e. generally comprehensible and provable. Rather, it would be “esoteric”, i.e. a matter for an elite group of special people. In this sense theology is also “science” since, assuming the authority of Scripture and the Church are acknowledged, it can be comprehended and tested by all believers".

* Brackets mine

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

A sinner has just as much of a right to exist and be loved as the perfectly virtuous.

Not that this is directed at me, but I think "right" is functioning here in the realm of politics or the Law. We are all endlessly guilty before the infinite law. "Finite" personality is just endless accusation and guilt. To accuse finite personality for this is just--- more finite personality, more word grinding. That too. That especially. By "infinite" personality, I just mean the negation of this game as the ideal mode. We "fall" into liberalism or conservatism or some other righteous role. Even here, I clash with you, enter the game of essences in order to point at it. Life is funny.

Reply to John
Very nice!

Quoting John

Sin can never annihilate worth altogether, but it can certainly diminish it.

Indeed, it's really the only kind of "sin" I can make sense of. My Jesus strides on an ocean of blood. Empathy and generosity are beautiful, but altruism as a duty is (to me) more or less an abomination, a weapon in the hands of those who think they are pacifists.

Reply to Hoo
Always, in the sense that anyone arguing a postion as wisdom or ethics is concerned with politics. They want to make the world into something, even if they are only concerned with speaking their own voice

The negation of the game, however, is not defined by the absence of concern for the finite. Ethics are ultimately the significance of a present, not merely a politcal postion enforced on the world. Good and evil are significance of action, not a mere assertion of how the world must be. One may say "X was wrong" without asserting any particular obligation for the world to be otherwise.

In themselves, rights are an infinite.They ought to be, but the world is never obligated to recognise them. "Liberalism" and "Conservativism" are about a little more than politics. Taken on their own terms, they are various expression of meaning of a functioning society. The finite is expressing an infinte.

Here you do not merely enter a game of politcal essences. You also assert something about the meaning of the world which manifests regardless of our politcal machinations. If we are liberals in the sense I talked about, we reject the idea people need to saved by an eternal tradition. We are not simply making a political point against traditions we don't like. We are also describing our meaning (an infinte).

Our differences pivot around this point. You view the "transcendent" as our meaningful escape from the squabbling politics of the world. Whether the transcendent Christian, mystical, atheistic or someonewith else, you view them all equal which saves from the ignomy of conflict, duty and demands of others. Everyone is saved by their ability to the meaning of the world and any conflict it might contain.

For me this is an unnecessary. Since I hold meaning to be an expression of the finite, no-one needs saving, no matter their politics or conflicts.

Even the those burdened with a conflict mutal genocide still have meaning. The world is not obligated to be otherwise, even if it ought to be. Any "saving" will only be done in the world-- the end of the conflict which saves lives of millions on both sides. A rescue of the world rather than one of an immortal soul which has nothing to do with what occurs in the world.

The pragmatisist is found to be ignoring the world in favour of the fiction which produces a lesser degree of conflict or hides its presence. You often see pragmatism expressed as the phrase "we only need what works." How exactly is anything going to work though? For that to function, the world must have significance in-itself, else there would be no measure of what was working. Conflict and significance must be expressed by the world. It cannot be just a question of politics.

Reply to TheWillowOfDarkness

As I see it, no one is ever saved by transcendence per se, that would be incoherent, but we might say they are saved by transcending their present mode of experience and/or degree of knowledge; but this would be a 'transcendence' which just consists in gaining a new degree of knowledge and a new mode of experience, and so this kind of 'transcendence" must always be immanent to knowledge and experience; however enlarged they may become; and all the more so on account of that very enlargement.

I don't see the relevance of politics in mysticism other than in its absence, apart from ecological concerns. Surely any mystic would be a member of the Green Party, as I am. If ever I am political it is always over the concerns of climate change, biodiversity, protection of habitat and the avoidance of pollution. Each one just as important as the big political issues we repeatedly see splashed across the headlines.

Is it not the desired aim, or the destiny of humanity in the mind of a mystic, to become a custodian of the biosphere of the planet. Along with seeking sociopolitical strategies which will aid in bringing this about and making it work.

I don't see us any way near this trajectory at the moment, but at least there are a minority of people concerned with this, so that potentially we have the intellectual knowledge and technology to follow this course. There are serious issues and problems pressing on humanity at the moment*, the most of which is blindly ignored or dismissed by our leaders and the majority. It's looking as though it will require some catastrophic crises of some sort, resulting in a dramatic culling of population, which is going to be very painful before we even find ourselves in a position to follow this course. The balance of probability though is a fall of civilisation and a return to a dark age, something which has happened many times before and is the default state of humanity, between cultural flowerings.


*The problems we face are manifold, but near the top of the list would be population, some kind of stable global politics, some means of successfully educating the populous to, ln a phrase, "love thy neighbour and the planet"and sociocultural structures which add stability and longevity to such projects.

Big ambitions indeed, and who is raising them, seeking to implement them?

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

Always, in the sense that anyone arguing a postion as wisdom or ethics is concerned with politics. They want to make the world into something, even if they are only concerned with speaking their own voice

As we enter the game of discourse, yes, we are impinging on the world. In a minimal sense, you can call this politics. But in that sense Keats was a politician. Even Lewis Carroll was therefore a politician --in that minimal sense. But this isn't about "politics is bad" or "politics is good" but a pointing toward that which transcends political assertions or political focus. It's about being able to laugh from one perspective at our earnest investment from another perspective. Are we good people? Good liberals? Good conservatives? Good whatever? Is that the whole story? Or is that a crust on the top of our consciousness? A construction of "oughts" and "truths"?

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

You view the "transcendent" as our meaningful escape from the squabbling politics of the world. Whether the transcendent Christian, mystical, atheistic or someonewith else, you view them all equal which saves from the ignomy of conflict, duty and demands of others. Everyone is saved by their ability to the meaning of the world and any conflict it might contain.

This is partially true, except that I still think you are understanding in political terms, as if I am "politically" asserting an anti-politics. Thou shalt not take politics seriously! But that is just more (generalized) politics and law bringing. I'm not trying to say that X is bad. Nor do I assert that my ideas are even compatible with just anyone's personality. We can use the "escape" metaphor, but it's misleading, for it already frames such an "escape" in terms of some violated duty. Thou shalt advance the cause of humanism/progressivism! You're right that the attitude I'm hinting at reframes all of this duty and perceives the narcissism/escapism within this "duty." It's hard to meet someone who doesn't think that his duty is also your duty. His abstract "gods" or causes are also yours, if you ask him. But look around: there is no consensus. There are positions that depend on thier anti-positions for an inferior or "fallen" out-group. Be it condescending pity or outright hatred, the group identification is something to melt in to. Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

The pragmatisist is found to be ignoring the world in favour of the fiction which produces a lesser degree of conflict or hides its presence. You often see pragmatism expressed as the phrase "we only need what works." How exactly is anything going to work though? For that to function, the world must have significance in-itself, else there would be no measure of what was working. Conflict and significance must be expressed by the world. It cannot be just a question of politics.

That's an odd perspective on pragmatism, of all movements, which is just sophisticated anti-intellectualism with a dash of anarchy. This talk of "fiction" is pre-pragmatic. Inquiry is driven by doubt, malfunction, pain when not by curiosity. A "hidden" conflict is the absence of a conflict. Conflict is disclosed by pain. It is pain. Indeed, we do only need what works. That what "works" means. And of course the world has significance "in itself." We are embodied, fragile, social. We are always already invested, threatened, promised. The question is adaptation, adjustment --largely by means of strings of marks and noises. Much of our life is work, politics. There's no escape from that on the practical level. It's about (in my view) learning to love this practical level. The "mystic" hints or post-law iconoclasm I've been singing is not by any means some replacement for work or politics. That's the point. It doesn't deny or replace them. It enlarges the space around them. Call it a string of marks and noises that polishes or lubricates the machine of everyday life. It's far more poetic than that, but there's no piety involved. But neither is there guilt or duty at the (possible) "apex" of a personality.

But I was "wired" this way. I've always loved fire.

Quoting John

someone produces self-righteous prozelytizing

Why is thinking that adultery should be legally punished in some form "self-righteous prozelytizing" and something like thinking that a husband beating his wife should be punished legally is NOT "self-righteous prozelytizing"? Do you have some special love for adultery, or what is it, when it comes to sexual harm, that you treat it so differently from other forms of harm? Really... people are rightfully outraged if say a husband beats his wife. All good in that. But if the same husband were to commit adultery on his wife - suddenly no one is outraged - people even find it funny and interesting to hear, and if someone were to be outraged then he is an ultra-conservative fundamentalist. What is it about sexual sins that makes them different from other sins which harm other people - if not for the selfish liberal propaganda that you can do whatever you want with your body? Look this is all propaganda - this has nothing to do with ethics or morality - it's in fact the contrary of ethics and morality - the care of self and of other.

Quoting John

but the person need not be directly concerned with the politics of influencing others, and much less would she need to be concerned with the politics of determining exactly what others are to think and do in regards to particular issues.

Man is a social animal. Being a social animal entails that one's happiness depends, at least in part, on other people. It would be foolish not to be interested or concerned with what others do - given that your own well-being also depends on it - because you are not an atom. This is exactly the point that Plato and Aristotle made so long ago - which is why they devoted their lives to teaching other people, and encouraging them towards virtue, because they realised that virtue is the requirement that leads to both individual and social fulfilment. If social harmony doesn't exist, then the individual will be frustrated in his aims, and neither will be happy. Our duties to one another are more important than our rights from one another - and this is the conservative point. That's why obedience is, as per Roger Scruton, the prime political virtue. Other people matter - you're not the only one who matters. It's not all about your desires and what you want - it's first of all about not hurting others.

Quoting John

This has meant that mystics that adhered (at least outwardly) to the Roman Catholic tradition, had to be very careful about what they said. This has obviously also been the case with men of science and Giordano Bruno (who was both a hermetic mystic and a man of science) is a striking case in point.

This is only partly true - not all mystics were condemned as heretical. Pseudo-Dionysius is one of the most important mystics - he was the first author St. Thomas Aquinas studied as a monk - how do you think this was possible? Clearly because the Church appreciated the mystical teaching. Furthermore, the Eastern Orthodox tradition has accepted mystics from the very beginning - starting from the Desert Fathers.

Quoting John

But traditions are there to be creatively used by individuals for self-education, development and inspiration; individuals are not there for traditions to use or dictate to, in the name, and for the interests, of authorities or powers, or to repress and subjugate under the aegis of orthodox totalitarian ideologies.

Individuals don't exist. No one is born an individual. You get your individuality from a tradition. Tradition forms and shapes you into who you are. The sense of self is emergent, and it depends on your community, by which it is created and sustained. Individuals are not atoms flying all alone, who live in society just for ensuring their survival. We are social animals - we depend on society.

Quoting John

orthodox totalitarian ideologies.

Orthodoxism isn't totalitarian. ISIS is totalitarian. There's a big difference between what ISIS does, and what the Catholic Church does.

Quoting John

And again, underlined here is another example of a presumptuous and unwarranted characterization of my philosophical stance and personal aims; which it seems is based on the fact, that given your own preoccupation with politics, you seem to automatically assume that others must be (or at least should be?) motivated in like manner.

My apologies, but it does seem to me, even now, that there is some liberal bias in your thinking, which you have picked up from society. I may be wrong, but that's the impression I get. But indeed, you are not a liberal in the traditional sense of the term, so my apologies for that.

Quoting Hoo

The past exists for us, not us for the past. The desire to freeze time is the desire for "undeath" or "unlife."

The idea that we don't have a duty to the past is wrong I think. If it wasn't for the past, we wouldn't exist as we exist. Therefore we owe it to the past, which entails that we have a duty towards it. The past is not there for us to use however we see fit. Society is a contract between the past, the present and the future, as per Burke. There is no dictatorship of the present.

Quoting John

arch-conservatives

You can remove "arch" because it is simply conservative. No arch needed.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

For him tradition is meant to instructive and dictatorial

Cut out dictatorial. There's a difference between it being instructive and respected, and it being dictatorial. You don't seem to be able to see that.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

It's meant to be the becon of imagine which defines what we aspire to

This is true.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

We are no longer understand ourselves to be destined for anything. Marriage is no longer forever. Family is understood to be breakable (to pick one of Agustino's favourites). The vision of the necessarily perfect life has been lost. It's no longer there to define the lives of some and act as the fiction which hides when we are less than perfect.

Let me re-edit this. "We no longer understand the perennial aspects of reality and of ourselves. Marriage is no longer forever. Family is understood to br breakable. The vision of the perfect life has been lost. It's no longer there to help define our lives and guide them when they are less than perfect". Now I agree :D

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

Sin has no future consequence for the integrity of one's worth.

Yes it does.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

Liberalism amounts to accepting or even celebrating living imperfections

Moral laxity is no different from immorality.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

In liberalism, the ability to call for the destruction of those who sin is lost. It's this which Agustino despises most. Philosophy is unable to form a culture which veiws sin and worth as mutually exclusive.

This is false. It's not about calling for their destruction, as for calling for the destruction of such behaviour and the reform of people who commit it. That's what moral education is.

Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness

In themselves, rights are an infinite

Given by who?? Rights don't exist out there flying in the sky!

A paragraph from Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition which captures many important ideas in mysticism:

Enlightenment, for the authors of the Hermetica and for Hegel, is not just an intellectual event; it is expected to change the life of the enlightened one. Philosophy, for Hegel, is about living. In brief, the man who achieves Selbstbewusstsein [literally 'self-confidence' but more like 'self-realisaton'] is the man who becomes selbstbewusst: confident, self-actualized, no longer an ordinary human being (cf Abraham Maslow, 'hierarchy of needs' and the self-actualized human.)

Klaus Vondung writes that “The Hermeticist does not need to escape from the world in order to save himself, he wants to gain knowledge of the world in order to expand his own self, and utilize this knowledge to penetrate into the self of God. Hermeticism is a positive Gnosis, as it were, devoted to the world. To know everything is to in some sense have control over everything. This is what I term the ideal of man as magus, and it is unique to the Hermetica. See, for example, Corpus Hermeticum 4: “All those who heeded the proclamation and immersed themselves in mind [nous] participated in knowledge and became perfect [or “complete,” teleioi] people because they received mind [an expression also characteristic of Chinese Buddhism].

But those who missed the point of the proclamation are people of reason [or “speech,” logikon] because they did not receive [the gift of] mind as well and do not know the purpose or the agents of their coming to nous [i.e. trapped by mere discursiveness]. In other words, the men of complete self-understanding who know even the “purpose or the agents of their coming to be” are perfect human beings. If Hegel did not believe that man could literally become God, he certainly believed that the wise man is daimonic: a more-than-merely-human participant in the divine life.

(Y)

Bolds and come comments added.

source

Reply to Wayfarer Nice post, pointing out the primary goal of what I would label "Western mysticism". This self actualised being is I expect the mystic who "becomes one with God", or who "becomes God". What could be described as the science of mysticism( within faith schools, or channelled through mediums), or esoteric teachings, layout systems of treading this path.

From my perspective the aspirant will at some point find their own level in treading this path. A level dictated by the evolutionary state of their being and only a very few would reach the stage of becoming one with God at any one time in the development of humanity(although I would expect it to be an organic progression through the development of the species). While the majority of aspirants would fall short in some way and would reconcile themselves with playing a constructive part in the whole and performing service of some kind( or at least to be a constructive person).

Esoterically one could view this process as a loose network of individuals following the will of God and collectively forming metaphorically the hand of God in the world.

It is an approach that would be quite compatible with today's 'integral spirituality'.

Yes, I am not familiar with "intergral spirituality" are you using it to describe spirituality in general?

Anyway I agree with the emphasis on the transfiguration of the person of the seeker as the primary goal, while living an ordinary life. The transformation being internal with a consequent expression externally, which would take the form of a kind and constructive member of the community. One could be living next door and you wouldn't know.

Quoting Agustino

Why is thinking that adultery should be legally punished in some form "self-righteous prozelytizing" and something like thinking that a husband beating his wife should be punished legally is NOT "self-righteous prozelytizing"?

Beating someone up is an act of aggression pure and simple, it is in no way analogous to adultery, as you are suggesting it is. The committing of adultery could be as a result of a whole range of diversely variant circumstances. Perhaps the relationship is not good, they are not really attracted to one another physically, perhaps the one who commits adultery (does that consist in 'being an adult', by the way? ;) ) has difficulty controlling sexual desires, perhaps s/he has fallen in love with the person s/he commits it with, perhaps husband and wife share an agreement to live in an 'open' relationship. Will you punish people in all these very different circumstances? The way you frame the whole question is very male-centric, by the way. It wouldn't surprise me if you believe that men are naturally superior to women and that they should, in line with your beloved traditional values, rule the household.

Quoting Agustino

Individuals don't exist. No one is born an individual. You get your individuality from a tradition. Tradition forms and shapes you into who you are. The sense of self is emergent, and it depends on your community, by which it is created and sustained. Individuals are not atoms flying all alone, who live in society just for ensuring their survival. We are social animals - we depend on society.

Of course individuals exist; and each individual is responsible for their acts, both morally and before the law. If there were no individuality or individual freedom then logically there could be no personal responsibility, either. It's true that traditions that you are brought up within to a certain degree "form and shape...who you are" but they certainly do not totally determine it; again, to say that is to abolish the notion of personal moral responsibility. To the degree that we are merely shaped by our traditions, then what we become is not the result of reason and the kind of personal growth that results from real conscious spiritual work.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that a traditional religious upbringing (was it Eastern Orthodoxy?) is, more or less, determinative of your rejection of an earlier phase of somewhat rebellious radical philosophical thinking to return to the conservative orthodoxy you are now valorizing. Don't get me wrong; I think you are fully entitled to do that; I respect the absolute right of all individuals to determine their own moral and religious beliefs, or even to refuse to think for themselves and allow their beliefs to be fully determined by their upbringing, if that is all they can do, or that is all they want to do.. And of course they probably will, and should be, held to account for any acts, which sufficiently transgress the law or what is morally acceptable in their own culture, that their moral ,religious or philosophical beliefs may lead them to commit.

Reply to Punshhh 'Integral spirituality' is Ken Wilber's terminology. Not that I'm a Wilber acolyte, but it's an indicator of a genre.

Quoting John

Beating someone up is an act of aggression pure and simple, it is in no way analogous to adultery, as you are suggesting it is

It's an act which harms someone. Same with adultery, the only difference is that one is physical harm and the other emotional/spiritual. You seem to ignore that very important commonality.

Quoting John

Perhaps the relationship is not good, they are not really attracted to one another physically, perhaps the one who commits adultery (does that consist in 'being an adult', by the way? ;) ) has difficulty controlling sexual desires, perhaps s/he has fallen in love with the person s/he commits it with, perhaps husband and wife share an agreement to live in an 'open' relationship.

Leaving aside the open marriage situation, these reasons you provide - are they justifications for harming someone? If those reasons are the case there exists divorce. Certainly not adultery.

Quoting John

The way you frame the whole question is very male-centric, by the way. It wouldn't surprise me if you believe that men are naturally superior to women and that they should, in line with your beloved traditional values, rule the household.

Funny - statistically men cheat more often than women. Also statistically women are harmed by infidelity more frequently than men. This is exactly the liberal bias you have that Im talking about. You think sexual morality is a male invented tool to control women. That's exactly the liberal progressive propaganda. While the facts are quite possibly the other way around, as statistics widely illustrate.

Quoting John

Of course individuals exist; and each individual is responsible for their acts, both morally and before the law. If there were no individuality or individual freedom then logically there could be no personal responsibility, either. It's true that traditions that you are brought up within to a certain degree "form and shape...who you are" but they certainly do not totally determine it; again, to say that is to abolish the notion of personal moral responsibility. To the degree that we are merely shaped by our traditions, then what we become is not the result of reason and the kind of personal growth that results from real conscious spiritual work.

I only meant that individuality is not primary - community is. Out of community arises individuality.

Quoting John

And of course they probably will, and should be, held to account for any acts, which sufficiently transgress the law or what is morally acceptable in their own culture, that their moral ,religious or philosophical beliefs may lead them to commit.

Please clarify what you're implying here.

Quoting Agustino

Same with adultery, the only difference is that one is physical harm and the other emotional/spiritual.

There are other significant differences, For instance one does not need to know anything about a relationship to know that one party physically attacking the other causes them suffering. However, one needs to know quite a lot about a relationship to know that adultery causes suffering to the other party.

Another difference is that generally adultery only causes harm if the cuckolded party knows of it.

However, despite being one of those dreaded Progressives, I agree with you that adultery is often, possibly even usually, a harm, and that there is no logical flaw in somebody arguing for it having legal sanctions. After all, if nothing else, it is a breach of contract.

Personally, I am opposed to the criminalisation of adultery, but that's just a personal position.

Quoting Agustino

It's an act which harms someone. Same with adultery, the only difference is that one is physical harm and the other emotional/spiritual. You seem to ignore that very important commonality.

One is intentional harm and the other is not; or at least may not be. There is a big difference between intentional and non-intentional harm, morally (and of course, legally) speaking.

Quoting Agustino

Leaving aside the open marriage situation, these reasons you provide - are they justifications for harming someone? If those reasons are the case there exists divorce. Certainly not adultery.

So, it's OK with you if people choose to live in open marriages? I haven't said anything about different circumstances being "justifications for harming someone"; where did you get that idea? (It appears you're OK with divorce then?) Sometimes people transgress the agreements between them, even vows that they might have made (vows. no doubt, often made without proper intent, and perhaps just for superficial reasons of following what have become empty traditions); but in any case it is a private matter for the people concerned. Are you advocating for the total abolition of private life?

The law has no business interfering in people's personal lives and punishing individuals for transgressions against others in virtue of agreements they may have made, unless there is substantial resultant loss or injury to one party. If you would truly advocate this kind of thing then you would be in an extreme minority, along with Muslims who advocate sharya law and honour killings and the like. I am confident in claiming that very few people would choose to live in the kind of society you seem to be advocating. If you promote a law that very few people would want to live under as being good for society in some way, good for "stability" or whatever, then you are promoting a contradiction; if very few people would want to live under some condition then that condition could never rightly be said to be good for society. This is not a liberal;/ conservative divide at all; this is far more egregious; it is a matter of democracy versus fascism.

Quoting Agustino

I only meant that individuality is not primary - community is. Out of community arises individuality.

Yes, but it always comes down to what is good for the individuals that form a community. The more individuals in any community feel that they are living a good life in their community, then the better it is for the community. Sure you might argue that some ultra-fascist community might be incredibly stable and last for millenia by total subjugation of the wills of its citizens; but that is highly unlikely because people will not tolerate severe oppression for too long, And even if it were possible; it would be a matter of the welfare of the community, seen just in itself apart from its members, and who would say that it is desirable? What good could an ultra-stable community that did not benefit its members be? It can equally be said that out of individuality arises community. It is a symbiosis. But the important thing is that is the welfare of all the individuals that make up any community that matters most,

Quoting Agustino

Please clarify what you're implying here.

Nothing more than that those who break the law and are caught will, and should, be held to account; and that those who sufficiently transgress the moral values of their community will likely suffer on account of the natural disapprobation of their fellows, and rightly so.

AndrewK:However, one needs to know quite a lot about a relationship to know that adultery causes suffering to the other party.

This is in line with the 'culture of consent' i.e. the only criterion for ethical worth in sexual relationships is consent and mutual enjoyment, the only constraint being not to compel. There are no duties towards marriage, as such, beyond individual consent. I do observe that nowadays, the ethics of sexuality are understood almost entirely in such terms, and to question that is to be characterised as being 'reactionary' or 'oppressive'. COMPLETELY different topic, however, and strongly suggest to mods and participants opening a separate thread.

Quoting andrewk

After all, if nothing else, it is a breach of contract.

Yes, and it is grounds for divorce, if that is what the 'victim' in a relationship that has been 'adulterated' wants. Many people choose to live in de facto relationships, though, where no formal agreement has been made, or maybe not even any explicit informal agreement. Surely you would not agree that there could be any reasonable argument for legal sanctions in regard to adultery occurring within the context of de facto relations?

Reply to Wayfarer

Do it, man. I think it's a worthy, albeit incredibly complex, issue. (Y)

Quoting John

Surely you would not agree that there could be any reasonable argument for legal sanctions in regard to adultery occurring within the context of de facto relations?

It all turns on that word 'reasonable'. What seems reasonable to you and me may not seem reasonable to Agustino and Wayfarer and vice versa.

I observe that some harms to others are punishable by law, whereas others are not. Examples that are not are insults, ridicule, social exclusion and, within the fairly weak limits imposed by libel laws, spreading nasty rumours. There are no doubt historical and practical reasons why these are not punished by law, but we can't claim that the law is consistent in its treatment of harms.

Somebody can be punished by law for stealing 50c bag of sweets but not for insulting and ridiculing someone enough to make their life a living hell.

In that context, I could not mount an argument based on fundamental principles as to why adultery should not be illegal while a woman slapping her partner in the face when she learns of his adultery should be.

I could, and would, mount an argument that it should be like that (and by 'should' I mean that I want the laws to be that way, and I am trying to persuade others to adopt that view), but that argument would be complex, multi-faceted and contain a large dose of rhetoric.

I reject the view that religious conservatives are trying to foist their morals on Progressives while the reverse is not the case. I believe that we Progressives are trying to foist our morals on religious conservatives just as much as they are on us. I hope we prevail, but I don't believe that there is any fundamental principle according to which we are right and they are wrong.

Reply to andrewk

For sure, I agree that there can be no perfect logic determining the law; but I believe there can better or worse, more workable or less workable, logics. And I would certainly say that a logic that promotes punishment for adultery must be be considered a worse, less workable logic than that which we currently work under. I do think though that insults, social exclusion and ridicule where they can be shown to amount to intentional and systematic bullying or persecution, should be punishable. But much of this kind of thing occurs among children in any case, who are not conisdred to be fully morally and legally responsible for their actions.

Thus the argument that I would mount for why adultery should not be punishable is simply based on the fact that it is too diverse and unquantifiable a phenomenon to be justly and workably punished.

I don't agree with you about the mutual imposition of values either, because the laws that we actually do have represent (at least in principle) the will of the majority; they embody (or ideally should, at least) the kind of society that most people would like to live in. How many people do you think, if asked whether they would choose to live in a society wherein adultery was punishable, would say they would? Also, are we considering punishing 'cheating' in de facto relationships here, or just in marriage?

Many conservatives are Christian, and don't you think that even most of those would think that the punishment of God suffices in cases which are merely moral, as opposed to criminal, transgressions. Society as such is not critically threatened by even widespread moral transgressions (as it would be by widespread criminal transgressions); it is only a certain very particular (and I would say extremely conservative) conception of how society should be that could rightly think itself to be threatened.

AndrewK: I hope we prevail, but I don't believe that there is any fundamental principle according to which we are right and they are wrong.

That's as good a statement of cultural relativism as we're likely to see! To bastardise Voltaire, 'though I may disagree with what you say, I see no reason to believe my view is any better.'

I think the bottom line in secular culture is this: there are no boundaries around sexual morality except for non-consensual acts, and acts involving juveniles.

Quoting John

Thus the argument that I would mount for why adultery should not be punishable is simply based on the fact that it is too diverse and unquantifiable a phenomenon to be justly and workably punished.

That's a pragmatic argument and, to me, a compelling one. It is a mainstay of my 'multi-faceted' argument against criminalizing adultery.
Quoting John

I don't agree with you about the mutual imposition of values either, because the laws that we actually do have represent (at least in principle) the will of the majority; they embody (or ideally should, at least) the kind of society that most people would like to live in.

Indeed. That's why democracy is sometimes called the 'tyranny of the majority'. They impose their worldview on the minority. Fortunately for me, where I live the majority is in favour of laws mostly based on secular, utilitarian values, so to that extent my viewpoint is imposed on religious conservatives that would for instance like abortion to be illegal.

It is not uniform though. Currently our laws do not enable gay marriage or voluntary assisted dying - not because a majority of the public does not support it (it does) but because a majority of parliamentarians either oppose it or are afraid of the incurring the wrath of the socially conservative Christian lobby if they publicly vote for it.

But the disproportionate - and hence unrepresentative - number of committed Christians in our parliament is a separate topic. I have no ideas about how to solve that one.

Reply to Wayfarer

If the kind of morality you indicate here is representative of the kinds of legally embodied moral principles the vast majority would wish to live under (which I think it is fair to say it is), then what would be the alternative? Totalitarian imposition via law of more restrictive moral principles would seem to be the only alternative. Would you choose that?

Reply to John I don't know! I don't have any particularly ideas here, it's just an observation. I do notice that at Dharmawheel, where I also post, there is essentially what I would describe as a 'libertarian mindset', i.e. if one advocates a socially-conservative point of view, you cop a lot of heat for it (so, I don't). But I have been PM'd a couple of times by monastics who contribute there, when I've expressed such views, supporting what I've posted (I've also notice that they have generally stopped posting, too.)

We're never going to come to any consensus but I think it's worth reflecting on why it's such a hot-button issue - why views are held so strongly, why it so easily leads to disagreement. I think it's because we're very much products of the culture we're in, and that culture is basically individualistic. But it's a deep issue.

Quoting andrewk

But the disproportionate - and hence unrepresentative - number of committed Christians in our parliament is a separate topic

It seems that you have recognized me as being a fellow Australian. :)

Yes, what you indicate here is manifesting in what is, for me (and apparently also the majority of other citizens) the fiscally irresponsible, not to mention absurd, idea of holding a plebiscite to decide whether or not to recognize gay marriage. :-}. :s. :-x. :-d.

I'm not complaining here, but I would like to point out how hard it seems to be to keep even talk of mysticism from becoming political. Personality is a throbbing 8=====> that wants to jam itself in to the center and become law. To condemn this would be hypocrisy. To "zoom out" and contemplate this structure is something else, which is not to say innocent or pure but perhaps the opposite: a desire for incarnation.

I know that I'm probably magic, and at least defy logic, as I am both simultaneously hot, and cool. :D

I had a mystic experience once, it was really awesome and I wanted to have another one right away, but I couldn't afford to until like a week later :(

Reply to Wosret

Yeah, damn expensive those chemicals!

I look at magic people like I do spontaneous generation and determinism. Sure, I haven't observed every single animals birth, or anything, but I am fairly certain they all had parents, precursors, and not a single one of them popped into existence all from nothing like. Similarly with people, I assume that all of them are full of shit know nothings just like me, and none of them are magic. It's axiomatic, deductive.

No men are magic
Socrates was a man
Socrates wasn't magic.

This looks interesting. Thanks, John.
[quote=Meditations on the Tarot]
An arcanum is a "ferment" or an "enzyme" whose presence stimulates the spiritual and the psychic life of man. And it is symbols that are the bearers of these "ferments" or "enzymes" and which communicate them -- if the mentality and morality of the recipient is ready...

Among Christian Hermeticists nobody assumes for himself the title and the function of "initiator" or "master."

The changing of work, which is duty, into play is effected as a consequence of the presence of the "zone of perpetual silence," where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play
[/quote]
https://books.google.com/books?id=DR_IAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Reply to Hoo Not for nothing that Timothy Leary call his book 'The Politics of Esctacy'.

Reply to Wayfarer Quite that's what I thought you meant.

I tend to refer to the Theosophical or Hindu tradition as a framework to work from. As I am not well versed in the Hindu cannon, the Theosophical will do.

The idea is basically that each entity progresses or evolves from the atom to a god through a long period of "incarnations". Humanity is at a key stage in this progression, that of individuation*.

Mysticism is the manifestation of folk(souls) who are of the disposition, or chose, to play an active role in the progression of the group. This does on ocassion result in a mystic reaching a prominent position in the progression of the group of humanity, or any of the other kingdoms of nature( such as the Christ or the Buddha).

I am interested in your view of where in this scheme the "direct route" of Buddhism would fit, if atall, or if this scheme is not applicable?

*By the use of individuation I am referring to a development of mind as well and all the consequent issues, which we know all to well. Or to put simply, metaphorically,- To climb up into the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and eat of its fruits.

Reply to Wayfarer Aha! I was once under the influence of something very strong in a quiet valley in the Himalayas. I was told shortly afterwards that that is where Timothy Leary used to go to drop acid. A place called cranks ridge, a magical place indeed.


I would point out that I was meditating a few hours a day and only indulged at weekends. It wasn't all decadence and debauchery.

Well when I took it, it was still legal! (Now I'm showing my age.)

Reply to Wayfarer I turns out that Leary arrived in Kasa Devi (cranks ridge) a few months before my conception. Does that make me a spring chicken I wonder.

Reply to Punshhh Well, put it this way, at a young age I had vivid recollections that seemed to originate from an earlier life. I couldn't recall any of the specific details, but had the distinct memory of having known something of great importance which I had to recall. That is one of the things that lead me to start reading various spiritual books. When I went to University, I entered as a mature-age student, as I had made a total cock-up of my leaving exam. As it happens, this entry exam mainly comprised a long passage of Bertrand Russell's Mysticism And Logic, with a series of questions on it. When I got in to university, that more or less defined my curriculum. And I've been at it ever since.

During that time the Adyar Bookshop was still in existence so I got to know about theosophy. I got to know a Uni tutor who had quite a lot of archival documentation on Krishnamurti.

So I am very sympathetic to that kind of 'evolutionary enlightenment' view, but on the other hand, I'm mindful of it being wishful thinking.

Reply to Wayfarer I also had memories of a previous life, well more feelings of emotional atmospheres and certain Victorian furnishings and effects would have a strong and mysterious impact on me.
For me I was always from a young age fascinated by these ideas even before I had words for them. As I grew up, I would avidly seek out any literature on the topic read them and look for something more meaningful just like a pig sniffing out truffles. I ended up at the Theosophical society in London which felt like finding my way back home.

I am aware of the way in which it might be wishful thinking, it was only a stepping stone for me anyway. The ideas take their place along with all the others I have found and developed myself in a kind of virtual library in my head.

Quoting Wayfarer

So I am very sympathetic to that kind of 'evolutionary enlightenment' view, but on the other hand, I'm mindful of it being wishful thinking.

I find it a little surprising that you would say that, because it seems obvious that consciousness has evolved, both from an evolutionary perspective and also, culturally and quite radically, as Hegel has shown, as the Western philosophical tradition. That consciousness has not evolved (in the sense of 'produced many radically different and yet dialectically related paradigms) to the same degree in the East does perhaps seem a little odd; maybe it has to do with the Western development of science, or maybe the Western development of science was possible because of the evolution of consciousness in the west; who knows? I guess complex geographical and multi-cultural factors fed into the turbulent process we call 'the History of the west'.

Even in the more stable East the notion of enlightenment did certainly evolve from the early Vedic teachings through Brahmanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and so on, and there has been quite an evolution of thought even within Buddhism itself.

Badly worded on my part. I generally do agree with the idea of the 'evolution of consciousness'. and, as I said, I have had recollections from a previous life, which I regard as apodictic. All I'm saying is, be careful of projecting. In early Buddhist texts, one of the basie of 'wrong view' is 'eternalism', the idea that there is a self that migrates from life to life. Yet, at the same time, the Buddha is said to 'perceive the fate of beings in the next world'. These are deep and difficult questions. Here is a blog post I wrote on the subject.

Quoting andrewk

know quite a lot about a relationship to know that adultery causes suffering

Quoting andrewk

I agree with you that adultery is often, possibly even usually, a harm

These two don't work very well together. I think "quite a lot" is an exaggeration. I would agree one needs to know at least something about the relationship, but not "quite a lot".

Quoting andrewk

Another difference is that generally adultery only causes harm if the cuckolded party knows of it.

That's like saying HIV causes harm only if you know about it or have symptoms. This is false. The virus can live in your body causing harm for 10 years until you have any symptoms. That doesn't mean that after 5 years of having it you're not harmed. Only that you're not aware of what? Of the harm. The virus is slowly attacking your T-cells, whether you are aware of this or not. Or it's like someone has stolen my wallet but I'm not aware of it as I haven't checked my pocket. If you ask me later, when have I been harmed, I will not say "when I checked my pocket" - I will say "when I was robbed". Same in adultery. So it's not an excuse to say "Oh they don't know, therefore no one is harmed" - people are harmed, it's just that they don't know about it.

Quoting andrewk

despite being one of those dreaded Progressives

Quoting andrewk

Personally, I am opposed to the criminalisation of adultery

I can see that :D

Quoting John

One is intentional harm and the other is not

Any action performed knowing that it would harm someone is intentional harm, regardless of the presence of other motivational factors.

Quoting John

So, it's OK with you if people choose to live in open marriages?

Morally no - they're harming each other. Legally I can't do anything about it - if they want to harm each other, and agree to this mutually, there's nothing the law can do about it, just like one can't prevent another from committing suicide if they really want to.

Quoting John

I haven't said anything about different circumstances being "justifications for harming someone"

Evidently that's what they end up being.

Quoting John

It appears you're OK with divorce then?

Morally no - they're harming each other (or if they're not, then they've acted foolishly - like for example by carelessly choosing the wrong partner). But because of the hardness of their hearts, as Jesus said, and in order to avoid adultery and any other such foolishness, it is better that they divorce.

Jesus Christ:And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire

Quoting John

Sometimes people transgress the agreements between them, even vows that they might have made (vows. no doubt, often made without proper intent, and perhaps just for superficial reasons of following what have become empty traditions)

They shouldn't get married. Very simple.

Quoting John

Are you advocating for the total abolition of private life?

Wow - outlawing adultery is the total abolition of private life. I never knew that committing adultery is all that people do in their private lives - or even what they want to do... If that's what private life is for, then it should rightly be abolished.

Quoting John

The law has no business interfering in people's personal lives and punishing individuals for transgressions against others in virtue of agreements they may have made, unless there is substantial resultant loss or injury to one party.

That's why if I visit your house and take 5 dollars it's a big deal and the police intervenes right? But if you cheat on your wife and ruin her marriage - no big deal, no substantial loss there. Just check the number on violence, crime, or self-harm that's resulting out of adultery please, before stating that there is no substantial loss. There is a very substantial loss - someone is cheated out of a very important, life-long agreement, not to mention the impact on third parties like children and families.

Quoting John

If you would truly advocate this kind of thing then you would be in an extreme minority, along with Muslims who advocate sharya law and honour killings and the like.

This is again liberal propaganda. Most people don't know how bad the cheating statistics are. Most people are not aware that this is a problem. Most people don't know that it's quite likely that this will happen to them. That's why by the time they age, most people will agree with me. So you're wrong - it's not an extreme minority. And if you look through history, you will be surprised to see that most people who have ever lived in fact agree with me. All religions - without exception, be they Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Taoism - all of them have rules against adultery. Do you think all those people were idiots, and you're the only smart person?

Quoting John

this is far more egregious; it is a matter of democracy versus fascism.

No, not at all. There's nothing undemocratic about outlawing adultery and protecting people who are unlawfully and cruelly harmed, in ways that they cannot undo or remedy. There is in fact something very fascist about gleefully enjoying the state of people being harmed and having their lives ruined.

Quoting John

Yes, but it always comes down to what is good for the individuals that form a community. The more individuals in any community feel that they are living a good life in their community, then the better it is for the community. Sure you might argue that some ultra-fascist community might be incredibly stable and last for millenia by total subjugation of the wills of its citizens; but that is highly unlikely because people will not tolerate severe oppression for too long, And even if it were possible; it would be a matter of the welfare of the community, seen just in itself apart from its members, and who would say that it is desirable? What good could an ultra-stable community that did not benefit its members be? It can equally be said that out of individuality arises community. It is a symbiosis. But the important thing is that is the welfare of all the individuals that make up any community that matters most,

This misses the point. I'm not ISIS, nor is conservatism fascism. So please read up on your terms, and don't strawman. You repeatedly and pejoratively throw around labels - this is inadmissible in an intellectual circle. You should know the difference between conservatism and fascism - if you don't, please read up on it before you comment. Adultery being illegal is NOT an extreme position - in fact it's a position that has been very commonly adopted through human history as a moral position. Given mankind's history, adultery NOT being illegal is a much more radical and extremist position. But unlike you I don't get involved in such silly squabble. Ideas are to be discussed on their own merits. And it seems that you're refusing to acknowledge that adultery is a serious problem that can seriously hurt people in long-lasting and irredeemable ways. Much more it seems that you have a problem with decent people who are outraged by this harm - and just like the slave owners 100 years ago, you think it just that people ought to continue to be abused and accept it, without the possibility of defending themselves.

And if you think most people would disagree living in a state which punishes them for hurting each other - by God - there is something absurd in that. If you're an honest and decent man okay, and you want to get married. Why would you be concerned about if there is a punishment for adultery or if there isn't? Do you plan on cheating? If you do, then yes, you should be very afraid. But if you don't, why would you be afraid? Why would you be bothered by such a regulation? Clearly - the only case in which you (or anyone else) would be bothered is if you want to cheat - pure and simple. Everything else is just smoke and mirrors. The only question is "do you want to cheat?". If the answer is yes, then it is terrible for adultery to be illegal. If you don't want to cheat, at worst, it is indifferent to you if adultery is illegal or not. There's nothing more and nothing less to be said on this - a man who is so bothered by making adultery illegal clearly feels something of value is taken away from him. What could this be except the freedom to commit adultery, which is exactly what is under the question?

it seems obvious that consciousness has evolved, both from an evolutionary perspective and also, culturally and quite radically, as Hegel has shown, as the Western philosophical tradition

Reply to John

Yes and considering a spiritual cosmogony is quite reasonable, provided one remembers that it is not known to be the case other than through the personal experience of some people and even there it might come across as an idiosyncratic interpretation and that any spiritual school is likely to be the same.

Anyway I have come to consider this approach on my own through personal experience and contemplation. All we know is that we find ourselves here, how we got here and what is going on is unknown to us, so a considered interpretation of the nature of the world we find ourselves in may provide an understanding of what is going on behind this veil of ignorance. Surely this pursuit is one path followed by the mystic.

Quoting Wayfarer

This is in line with the 'culture of consent' i.e. the only criterion for ethical worth in sexual relationships is consent and mutual enjoyment, the only constraint being not to compel. There are no duties towards marriage, as such, beyond individual consent

The thing is, that this matter doesn't even have to do with this. Individual consent IS broken during adultery. The problem is that some are so attached to a sin, they don't even want to admit the significant harm it causes. At least @andrewk was honest and recognised it is very often harmful.

Quoting John

Many conservatives are Christian, and don't you think that even most of those would think that the punishment of God suffices in cases which are merely moral, as opposed to criminal, transgressions. Society as such is not critically threatened by even widespread moral transgressions (as it would be by widespread criminal transgressions); it is only a certain very particular (and I would say extremely conservative) conception of how society should be that could rightly think itself to be threatened.

This is not true. Every Christian (really, here one should write RELIGIOUS - because all religions are against adultery) man and woman deserve to have their marriage vows protected by law against unlawful transgressions such as adultery. The possibility of divorce is there precisely to enable people to leave marriage without committing adultery.

Reply to Agustino It deserves a different thread, none of this has much to do with the OP.

Reply to Wayfarer Very well then, John or anyone else interested to reply from now on can open a new thread - I finished my reply above already.

Reply to Wayfarer Yes it is a complex subject and the truth of it is currently veiled from us. For me what is of interest is seeking a broader wisdom of the nature of existence rather than the detail, which we will only know when the veil is lifted. Also I am not interested in the specifics of my own development, or what will happen to me, I passed the point of affirming "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" many years ago. So in a very real sense, my development is out of my hands, but this does not prevent me from fully developing my interests, such as the pursuit of wisdom and creativity.

I want to elaborate (via a quote) on an earlier point:
Quoting Hoo

Personality is a throbbing 8=====> that wants to jam itself in to the center and become law. To condemn this would be hypocrisy. To "zoom out" and contemplate this structure is something else, which is not to say innocent or pure but perhaps the opposite: a desire for incarnation.

I've quoted this same different paper in three posts. That's how rich I find this content. In short, I'm presenting idolatry in terms of "god's dick."
[quote = http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html]
Lacan ties the theory of sexual difference to the four discourses named above through his “formulae of sexuation.” ... Master and university are masculine; hysteric and analyst are feminine...
[/quote]
The cult leader is sometimes the master. He is the truth. But most debate, as I see it, is "university" discourse. We've been doing that here. No one claims to be the thing itself, but all make indirect claims on this center via a knowledge of it from the outside. There is a right way to get what we are looking for, we might say, even if we won't quite claim that we have got there. Why not claim mastery or possession outright? First, this may just feel like a lie. Second, we don't expect recognition that way, for we ourselves refuse to recognize outright claims that are beyond the control of our own method-as-substitute-for-object. (That's my hypothesis.)

[quote = http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html]
The basic concept of sexual difference is that the sexual relation can only be experienced in symbolic terms. Two people form a relationship and have sex because they both agree to a similar set of signifiers that define the story of their conjunction. Lacan likes to say that there is no sexual relationship. By this he means that there is no such thing as sexual harmony, no perfect balance of sexual partners. He uses a special term to name the female side, “not-all” or “pas tout.” Not all can also mean not whole. The woman is the not all to the man. This means that she represents the fact that she can never be totalized, summed up, or contained. There is no one perfect woman; nor can the man resist that fact by having or containing all the women. The series of women is infinite, each single woman representing the fact that she is “not all,” like the series of numbers in mathematics --they are infinite, always one after another.

There is a logical sense to the relation between the masculine and feminine positions. If one, the masculine, insists on specifying the attributes of the perfect woman, then there must be a position, the feminine one, which denies that such specification is possible. Nevertheless, the woman cannot claim thereby that she occupies a place of true enjoyment. Such a claim would return us to the master’s discourse of full self presence, but a self presence couched in even more abstract terms, as if that were possible. Still, the main advantage of the feminine position --and Lacan definitely favors the feminine over the masculine at least in this logical sense --is that the concept of not-all resonates with the idea of the void at the center of the signifier, the split in the subject, the inherent impossibility of self-mastery and fixed definition.

Another way of summarizing sexual difference is to say that the masculine side seeks to totalize from the perspective of a single exception, the master. The position of the exceptional male implies that all other subjects must work in order to be part of the totality or universal order, which is ruled by the master who, unlike the rest, is exempted from having to work for his inclusion in the totality. He is the exception because he is what he is by nature and special privilege, because it is so. The feminine side, however, comprises the infinity of subjects with no exceptions. That is, there are no exceptional people who alone enjoy special privilege. There is no one who is not a split subject. There is no neutral zero point from which to conceive of or rule over the whole.

Man’s relation to woman is like the subject’s relation to the body. There is a real body, but we are only in it as linguistic subjects, that is, we experience it only through language. Its realness is something we experience as external and impenetrable.
[/quote]

"Life is a woman." Perhaps the Christ symbol points beneath the linguistic subject. But that part of us that builds and worships idols is forced to deny the real in its "translinguistic" fullness. To let go of such idol-making and idol-polishing (perhaps only occasionally possible) is perhaps to find a new ecstasy in a joyful, incarnate freedom that is the negation altogether of the magic word as such.

Reply to Punshhh I think we're kindred spirits.

I don't get all that modern Euro philosophy, it's basically psychologistic, but without any actual spirituality about it. It's either Freudian, or marxist, but in either case, materialist. So again there's an entire dimension absent, but one which can't be articulated to those who don't see it. Of course it doesn't do any good saying it, but there it is.

Reply to Wayfarer
But why must we have this gap you insist upon between psychology and "actual spirituality"? What of "know thyself"?
[quote=wiki]
Buddhism includes an analysis of human psychology, emotion, cognition, behavior and motivation along with therapeutic practices. A unique feature of Buddhist psychology is that it is embedded within the greater Buddhist ethical and philosophical system, and its psychological terminology is colored by ethical overtones.[1] Buddhist psychology has two therapeutic goals: the healthy and virtuous life of a householder (samacariya, "harmonious living") and the ultimate goal of nirvana, the total cessation of dissatisfaction and suffering (dukkha).[2]

Buddhism and the modern discipline of Psychology have multiple parallels and points of overlap. This includes a descriptive phenomenology of mental states, emotions and behaviors, as well as theories of perception and unconscious mental factors. Psychotherapists such as Erich Fromm have found in Buddhist enlightenment experiences (e.g. kensho) the potential for transformation, healing and finding existential meaning. Some contemporary mental-health practitioners such as Jon Kabat-Zinn increasingly find ancient Buddhist practices (such as the development of mindfulness) of empirically proven therapeutic value,[3] while Buddhist teachers such as Jack Kornfield see Western Psychology as providing complementary practices for Buddhists.
[/quote]

[quote=Wiki]
The usual process of sense cognition is entangled with what the Buddha terms "papañca" (conceptual proliferation), a distortion and elaboration in the cognitive process of the raw sensation or feeling (vedana).[9] This process of confabulation feeds back into the perceptual process itself. Therefore, perception for the Buddhists is not just based on the senses, but also on our desires, interests and concepts and hence it is in a way unrealistic and misleading.[10] The goal of Buddhist practice is then to remove these distractions and gain knowledge of things as they are (yatha-bhuta nadassanam).

This psycho-physical process is further linked with psychological craving, manas (conceit) and ditthi (dogmas, views). One of the most problematic views according to the Buddha, is the notion of a permanent and solid Self or 'pure ego'. This is because in early Buddhist psychology, there is no fixed self (atta; Sanskrit atman) but the delusion of self and clinging to a self concept affects all one's behaviors and leads to suffering.[9] For the Buddha, there is nothing uniform or substantial about a person, only a constantly changing stream of events or processes categorized under five categories called skandhas (heaps, aggregates), which includes the stream of consciousness (Vijñ?na-sotam). False belief and attachment to an abiding ego-entity is at the root of most negative emotions.
[/quote]

[quote=Fromm]
Zen is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being; it is a way from bondage to freedom; it liberates our natural energies; ... and it impels us to express our faculty for happiness and love.[44] [...] [W]hat can be said with more certainty is that the knowledge of Zen, and a concern with it, can have a most fertile and clarifying influence on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. Zen, different as it is in its method from psychoanalysis, can sharpen the focus, throw new light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualizations which are the necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split"[45]
[/quote]

Quoting Wayfarer

So again there's an entire dimension absent, but one which can't be articulated to those who don't see it.

Perhaps, but how can that dimension be linguistic? Which is to say meaningful beyond feeling? I thought you'd like the notion of the barred or split subject. It seems Buddhist to me. Are you sure your not just biased against the West?
[quote = http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html]
Subject connotes the idea of being subjected to something external, in particular, the rules of the social-symbolic order. Subject contrasts with individual, which implies self-determination and uniqueness. The subject is inherently split between the range of conscious knowledge and the unconscious. Symbolic order is the term for designating the social world in which the subject lives and functions. I will define this further below, but for now will say that the symbolic order consists of language and its rules of sound and grammar, laws, and social structures having to do with the family, schools, religion, and government institutions. In general it consists of all the rules that govern social and subjective existence. The subject has no choice but to be born into the symbolic order. We occupy the subjective roles that are made available to us by the social order in which we live. Hence the idea of the subject-self being subjected to that order.

The subject is a speaker of language. Language is the key link between all subjects; it is the core network of social existence. The subject is only a subject in language. Reality only exists through language. We can never escape the process of expression through language and what can be called subjectivization through language. No pure self-consciousness exists outside of language, even if the subject is simply sitting still and not speaking. Consciousness is only possible through the mediation of other consciousnesses. This is the central meaning of Lacan’s statement that the unconscious is structured like a language.

The subject in this sense of a speaker of language is fundamentally split. This is simply a way of referring to the impossibility of full and present self-consciousness or self-understanding. There will always be a gap between what one thinks one knows of oneself and what is hidden from view. The split or divided subject “is operative in all of the various ways in which we fail to identify ourselves, grasp ourselves, or coincide with ourselves” (Bracher, 113). This is also understood in terms of the split between the “I” who speaks and the contents of the statement
3
that is spoken. In Lacanian terminology, the distinction is between the subject of enunciation -the I who speaks --and the subject of the enunciated, that is, the statement. There is the empty I that is the subject and there is the self that is part of concrete reality. Descartes said “I think therefore I am,” where “I think” supposedly designates a pure transcendental point of self-consciousness removed from the real world. But Kant (and also Lacan/ Žižek) would say that there is no way to say “I think” without attachment to the whole of reality. The “I” is “an empty, nonsubstantial logical variable” (Žižek, TN, 14) which is inherently inaccessible, is only purely possible, not concretely real. The I is a pure void, an empty void or frame only knowable through the predicates that make up the contents of what I think. I cannot acquire consciousness of myself except through the endless series of predicates and statements that fill out what the I thinks.

This may be one of the hardest notions to accept by anyone first studying Lacanian theory, but it is important in terms of undermining the sense of the human being possessing ultimate self-knowledge or possessing an essence which bestows innate authority over self or others. In short, all master figures are emperor’s without clothes.
[/quote]

Reply to Hoo I was responding to 'God's dick' and your subsequent foray into psychoanalytic analysis. I mentioned Freud and Marx, and said those kinds of analyses assume a materialist philosophy, which they do. Freudian analysis could not envisage anything beyond eros and thanatos - that was the reason Jung broke with Freud.

I have read, and have a lot of respect for, Eric Fromm. I often mention Eric Fromm and Victor Frankl as exemplary modern existentialists. Fromm spent time with D T Suzuki when he lectured in the US and indeed found some common ground with Zen. There is a kind of Buddhist-psychotherapist genre nowadays, people like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mark Epstein, and others, that grew out of that way of thinking. Generally a pretty good school of thought in my view.

Hoo:Are you sure your not just biased against the West?

I am of the view that the western secular intelligentsia are generally 'assumptively materialist' that is, they assume a scientific (or 'scientistic') attitude. Sometimes it is 'methodologically naturalist', but in many other cases is ideologically materialistic. So a lot of psychoanalytic theory assumes that, although there might be individuals that dissent from it.

Buddhism falls outside much of the debate because it evolved in a separate cultural domain until very recently in historical terms. So the debates about mind and body, spirit and matter, God and the world, and so on, which gave rise to the 'modern worldview', were generally absent from the Buddhist tradition. They had debates of their own, principally against Hindus, Jains,and so on, but it was a different culture altogether.

The 'I' is a pure void, an empty void or frame only knowable through the predicates that make up the contents of what I think. I cannot acquire consciousness of myself except through the endless series of predicates and statements that fill out what the I thinks

Modern philosophers are verbally adroit when it comes to conceptual analysis, and the 'I' as an 'empty void' might sound at first blush somewhat Buddhistic.But the actual 'transcendence of self' which is at the heart of Buddhism, is a complete re-orientation of the personality, a totally different mode of existence, not simply a form of therapy, except for perhaps by analogy. That's why at the end of the day Buddhism is a religion, although what it conceives as religion is fundamentally different in important respects to the Semitic (i.e. biblical) religions. But the Nirv??a of which it speaks is not simply a mater of adjustment to the world.

Here's an excerpt from a recent Theravadin (i.e. 'conservative') Buddhist scholar about Buddhism and atheism (from Buddhism and the God Idea):

Buddhism has sometimes been called an atheistic teaching, either in an approving sense by freethinkers and rationalists, or in a derogatory sense by people of theistic persuasion. Only in one way can Buddhism be described as atheistic, namely, in so far as it denies the existence of an eternal, omnipotent God or godhead who is the creator and ordainer of the world. The word "atheism," however, like the word "godless," frequently carries a number of disparaging overtones or implications, which in no way apply to the Buddha's teaching.

Those who use the word "atheism" often associate it with a materialistic doctrine that knows nothing higher than this world of the senses and the slight happiness it can bestow. Buddhism is nothing of that sort. In this respect it agrees with the teachings of other religions, that true lasting happiness cannot be found in this world; nor, the Buddha adds, can it be found on any higher plane of existence, conceived as a heavenly or divine world, since all planes of existence are impermanent and thus incapable of giving lasting bliss. The spiritual values advocated by Buddhism are directed, not towards a new life in some higher world, but towards a state utterly transcending the world, namely, Nibbana.

I think modern western thinking has on the whole been innoculated against the transcendent by it's collective reaction against religion. Accordingly you have people trying to appropriate Buddhism into secular western culture by purging it of what they regard as 'supernatural elements', but what they can't acknowledge is that the Buddha has always been 'lokuttara', meaning, 'world-transcending'.

So I am not 'biased against' the West; I am wanting to get away from characteristically Western ways of being altogether.

Quoting Hoo

Perhaps, but how can that dimension be linguistic? Which is to say meaningful beyond feeling?

I hope you don't mind me interjecting here. Whatever we say is by definition, linguistic, but it does not follow from that, that the things we talk about; whether those things be empirical objects, feelings or spiritual experiences are themselves merely linguistic. So, I don't think that the linguistic nature of everything we say provides a good argument for collapsing the spiritual or the mystical into 'mere feeling'. I too have thought that the mystical is collapsible into mere feeling at various times during my life, but never for too long; I always seem to find fresh reasons to think that view is greatly mistaken.

I'll answer you guys in just a moment. But I think this belongs here, because it's just about exactly what I've been getting at in my own, weird way.
[quote= The Laughter of the Gods]
What of this race that speaks of the Kingdom and doing the Fathers work, and uses all the language of the Truth, and at the same time sows seeds of fear and hellish inventions? What is this race that is always seeking evil to destroy, like a weasel seeks out a rat? What is the hopelessness they preach that on one hand, you are the sons of God, and on the other, that you must fight against evil of every sort and nature? Ah, yes, but, if, and maybe they roll these stumbling-blocks under their tongues with a wise twinkle in their eyes, as much as to say, "Yes it is all true, but it comes only with hard labor and long study, and it is not for such as you, sinner and worm of the dust that you are, until you have purified yourself in the fount of my wisdom and paid me personal homage."

It is then that the Magdalene hears the Laughter of God and is clean and free; and in an instant too; and it is when the cripple hears the Laughter of God that he leaps to his feet and runs away praising the living God. It is when you, no matter where you are or what you are, no matter what you have done or left undone, hear the Laughter of the God within and the God without, that you will crash through the gates of hell and find heaven, no matter what these gates may be—person, place, or thing.

One moments recognition that you are the son of the Living God, and you have attuned your ear for the Laughter of God which will put to flight all the stupid ideas, of my and yours, free you into an expression that you have not dreamed of. How can you restrain the joy that fills you when you hear this laughter which, when it is heard, causes the winter of your discontent to break into full fruition, which causes you to see literally see that " before they call, I will answer," is not a bit of euphonious language, but a positive living, glowing fact.

"I was afraid," and therefore you were driven out of the Garden of Life. You have been afraid that God will punish you, that it is too good to be true, that you are not ready, that it comes by great learning; and so you are still without the portals of your own kingdom, trying every way but the only way to re-enter. Many there be who try the way of violence, and many who expect to ride in on the skirts of another. There are some so foolish as to invite this.

Why do you not stop trying to get things, trying to learn how to get power place? Why do you not come away from the man whose breath is in his nostrils? You who read this page, and go within and hear the Laughter of God, and know that " it does not matter"- that the things which gave you great concern are all swept away into the dump heap? The sooner you learn this the sooner you will see they have no value. Finally, one time, when you take away their value, they are possible of attainment to you. You profess to be a follower of the Master. If you in any way believe this, you will begin to listen for the Laughter of God through your whole being, and you will know that the Laughter of God sets you free from the snarling discontent of the tower of Babel in which you have been living.

Presently, as you listen for this Laughter, you will hear it, and gradually you will begin laughing—billows of laughter, silently-audible laughter that will shatter one limitation after another; laughter filled with the divine indifference which knows that the Universe is filled with God and only God, and to recognize this will cause this laughter to flow into expression and shatter the belief in sin, sickness, and death. When this belief is shattered in you, the pictures of this on your universe are dissipated and are no more, and even the place thereof is no more. You will know how there can be naught but laughter in the Kingdom of Heaven. What good of words or arguments? What in humans’ sense is a lecture worth on the subject of Laughter, as compared to one glorious sudden peal of joy released by a God soul and picked up be all those in hearing distance?

Gradually, as you learn the Laughter of God and join in with the glory of the Sons of the Living God, then you will laugh at yourself. You will perhaps go back and laugh all the mistakes and faults and limitations out of existence You will stand with your glorious feet on the mountain-tops of Self-Revelation, laughing at your universe and with your universe, and laughing in words: "It is wonderful, it is wonderful, it is wonderful."

"Let the filthy be filthy still." Some may read into the Laughter of God a belief in carelessness and indifference, and some consecrated souls may rail and tear their hair and say that it is encouraging license and making nothing of sin, in order that one may indulge in sin, and so on; and for them this message is not.
[/quote]

Reply to Wayfarer
To my the best psychoanalysis looks into the radiance of myth, the transformative power of symbol. I know of the Freud and Jung fallout. I took more from Jung in the end, but I personally valued burning down my childhood concept of God entirely to the ground.

As to God's Dick, I think the maleness of God and of most philosophers is significant. The myth goes that Jesus was a man. He had a dick. He had wet dreams. Probably certain gnostics really wanted to insist that he had a spiritual pseudo-body. As a young Catholic, I was told that "Jesus never got sick." Ah, so he is executed like a rapist or a murderer but never got sick? Jesus took sh*ts, no? I'm sure this sounds impious, but I'd say instead that the Incarnation myth is something that has been snowed over. We've fallen asleep to this notion of God as flesh. And I think we instead project an unworldly "dick" or center of transmission. As I see it, the Incarnation myth points down not up. God came down and died like the rest of us. God died. We are the resurrection, not him. We can no more offend God than we can hurt our own feelings--which we do in self-terror and alienation quite enough already. Or to one another as bearers of the Christ image or Christ potential. But that's just my take! I state it bluntly in the name of clarity and exuberance.

As to bringing in the psychology, I treat no one, no text, as authoritative. I don't care what context these texts were created within unless I'm contemplating the genesis rather than the possible recontextualization of the text. For me, there's got to be something beyond mere books, mere authorities. Perhaps you see me as scientistic or something, simply because I am skeptical about afterlife and resurrection from the dead. But this doesn't require scientism. They are miracles precisely because they violate commonsense experience (if also the ideology of certain Western intellectuals.) But I'm trying to "zoom out" from the idea of religion as knowledge and science, so I don't think I fall into your objection towards the West. I think I'm a counter-example (and not the only one).

This is a great conversation. I really don't want to offend, just participate sincerely. Else we'd be wasting this format...

Reply to John
Quoting John

I hope you don't mind me interjecting here. Whatever we say is by definition, linguistic, but it does not follow from that, that the things we talk about; whether those things be empirical objects, feelings or spiritual experiences are themselves merely linguistic. So, I don't think that the linguistic nature of everything we say provides a good argument for collapsing the spiritual or the mystical into 'mere feeling'. I too have thought that the mystical is collapsible into mere feeling at various times during my life, but never for too long; I always seem to find fresh reasons to think that view is greatly mistaken.

I respect what you have to say. Still, I currently can't make sense of that which is neither linguistic nor sensual nor emotional (or viewed through such means). These categories do of course strip what is a whole into parts. The lovers in the OP aren't experiencing one another as concept-sensation-emotion but perhaps through concept-sensation-emotion. Maybe somewhere along those lines is a place we can agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1BqwONm4TE

To me that's sacred music. We just live in an era of negative theology. The millennials (the best of them) get it.

Reply to Hoo

Thinking about hallucinatory or entheogenic experiences you may have had; how would you class those? They obviously have content, well, at least according to my own experience, in fact often, contra what Hume says about thought, dreams and memories as compared to sensory experience, they have content of a vividness that so-called empirical experiences cannot nearly match, so they are not merely affective. The content is not empirical, so it can't be sensual.

The popular word 'entheogenic' refers properly to organisms, plants or substances that give rise, when they are ingested, to spiritual or mystical experiences, experiences with vivid, even profound, content, experiences that are not merely emotional experiences. It is also well acknowledged that consciousness can be altered in similar ways by means of spiritual disciplines, prayer, meditation,sensory deprivation, fasting, and so on. So, what are we to make of. what are we to believe about, the real origin of such experiences?

Reply to Hoo

I don't know, I guess it's a matter of taste. For me if you want a music replete with sexualized sacred or mystical undertones you can't go past this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqem6ek4CI

Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg1jyL3cr60

[deleted]

Reply to John
Quoting John

Thinking about hallucinatory or entheogenic experiences you may have had; how would you class those? They obviously have content, well, at least according to my own experience, in fact often, contra what Hume says about thought, dreams and memories as compared to sensory experience, they have content of a vividness that so-called empirical experiences cannot nearly match, so they are not merely affective. The content is not empirical, so it can't be sensual.

When I was younger (starting at 10), I would occasionally get the type of experience mentioned by Sartre (sober ) with a positive feeling, wonder. I was shocked and delighted that all this existed. The PSR broke down. There was no sufficient reason for it all. I didn't have those words then. I scribbled things like "all existence is a miracle." I typed up a manifesto once (at 14). I don't have it now, but it was basically "space is miracle, time is a miracle, color is a miracle, shape is a miracle." I couldn't stay in that state for long. Did thought open this up? But the world was usually beautiful at the time, too.

A much different experience involved an hallucinogenic substance (among others). It started with the most intense death terror. It was like the floor was a piece of paper over the abyss, nothingness, erasure. But I reasoned with myself and was able to let go, affirm my death. Then suddenly I felt a river of love rushing through my chest. I felt "like Christ." Those Catholic pictures with hearts on fire and all of that, but there was nothing the least bit alien or sacred about it. It was great warmth and homecoming. I understood "praise God" as gratitude toward being itself or love.

As to their origin, I really don't know. Truly, existence remains a "miracle" to me. As a whole it's in some strange sense a violation of expectation.

And what really is the unconscious? I've been fascinating with the "id" and the "primal" for a long time, so perhaps I organized my peak experiences in those terms. It just felt right to chalk it up to the ancient "magic" symbols of the "million-year-old man." Where he came from I cannot say. I can certainly respect others who have their own reasons/experience to interpret things another way.

Reply to John
I love Portishead. I'm a huge music guy, a damned hipster. Those "red nights" featured Dummy quite often. These days FKA Twigs sometimes touches that sort of thing, but even more sexual and less eerie/sacred.

Reply to Hoo

Thanks for your explanation, Hoo. So it seems you are saying that when you experience such things you have no accompanying sense of coming into touch with an immanent order of truth, love, goodness, beauty, in touch with what feels like the primordial essence and origin of all things? Something more than anything merely empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual although the empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual may be suffused with it? Something that is so much more than any mere interpretation, emotion, thought, or object could ever be?

Reply to Hoo Hey! Portishead Dummy is one of my favourite albums. Get some good speakers and turn up the volume and you're away. An ocean of emotion.

Reply to John
Quoting John

So it seems you are saying that when you experience such things you have no accompanying sense of coming into touch with an immanent order of truth, love, goodness, beauty, in touch with what feels like the primordial essence and origin of all things? Something more than anything merely empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual although the empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual may be suffused with it? Something that is so much more than any mere interpretation, emotion, thought, or object could ever be?

The love, goodness, and beauty were intense, to put it mildly. I didn't get a sense of a temporal origin, though I'm tempted to speak of eternity or timelessness. You might say it was Christ without God. The world was new and beautiful, but it was lit by a love that radiated outward. Yet this same love was reflected in the eyes of my friends. It was very human, very "incarnate." As I walk around in my usual happy state, there's lots of benevolent but not dutiful pride and confidence--but certainly not innocence. As a matter of principle, I try to hide from no "evil" thought, no "base" motive. I put them in quotes because they are part of the whole. They are "fate." They are (one version of) God. I study the "monster baby" in self and others. "Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove." But I'm not a pacifist or a "good" man. I'm a "popular" guy, I suppose. I mention this to provide a "halo" or context around the peak experiences, so you can see how they've influenced my life and deduce further.

I suspect that I haven't had the sort of experience you hint at with your words.

Reply to Punshhh
Oh, man, there was nothing like that at the end of the night. I've seen some wild parties, nasty and glorious and yet sacred. The sublimated lust in Dummy is great. That eerie voice in the presence of the numinous...This one was maybe my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDpzYfyT-kQ

I ride the bus and blare all of the best music I've found in 25 years of taking music seriously. I suppose my religion is "Dionysion." Those great poems set to music ---that is human expression at its peak for me, I guess. I think of Nietzsche's first book as an analysis of "rock and roll" (which is a broad and almost mystic term for me.) The chorus of this song really just nails it for me:
https://youtu.be/CfPGqXxdrfk?t=1m30s

Reply to Hoo Thanks for the links, I'll listen to them later today. And thanks for giving some idea of what you're about, it's interesting. I know a guy like you, I spent a lot of time (24/7 at times) with him in the 90's we went questing in the Himalayas too, some wild times. As I see it you folks are at a certain stage in your "spiritual"* awakening where the intensity of experience is greatly heightened. There is a sense of breaking out, hitting out at walls, recoiling into the shadows etc...

It is a great experience provided you are able to avoid getting into trouble. However you will I expect, and certainly in the case of my friend, not find it easy to get into disciplines like meditation and quiet contemplative periods. If this is the case (I can't tell without meeting you in person), then that is ok, just enjoy the ride. You shouldn't struggle to achieve what your body is not in the right phase of activity to engage with. I return to what I said earlier, our bodies are finely tuned machines(spiritually as well as materially) you have to learn to work with your body, rather than struggling against it. Many folk have to struggle against it to get some impetus, but in your case the intensity comes naturally. For me the stillness and contemplative phase comes naturally at the moment and I did have to struggle to gain intensity when I was younger.

* by spiritual, I am using to word loosely to refer to a deeper part of yourself than the material, but not in any sense tying it to any precise spiritual school or belief system.

Reply to Punshhh
Interesting how people vary. Yes, I've always felt "yang" and intensity, so maybe my spiritual view (not far from Blake's) is founded on that. These days it's mostly just my mind that is wild. After all, I'm a mathematician these days...But philosophy calls to me like a vice. I still love the poetry..

I just want to say a word for the people of Aleppo who are literally experiencing hell right now. There are news reports that as of this morning there are 2 million people in a desert without water, being attacked with barrel bombs.

Please join me and say a prayer and think of them.

Here's one of my favourite Portishead tracks, Roads. A suitable prayer for those suffering in Syria right now.

http://youtu.be/Vg1jyL3cr60

Oops! I didn't intend to put the cybosh on the thread. I will discuss the war in the thread on the Third World War in the politics section.

Reply to Punshhh It deserved to be put out of its misery.