12.21.12 -- If that Wasn't the Rapture, Then What Is?

The world, as we know it, hasn't ended. Aren't we all kinda... disappointed?

What is with all this obsession over the end of the world? It seems like a wonderful distraction from real problems, as the Onion ingeniously put it: Man Who Will Die In Great Eastern Seaboard Flood Of 2023 Preparing For Mayan Apocalypse. For some reason, it's easy to write end of the world obsessions off as meaningless precisely because they are so popular. But isn't that a great reason to think there's something hugely important to be seen in this phenomenon? One thing I've noticed is that we were much more obsessed with this particular apocalypse about two years ago. I blame John Cusack.

But the obsession is surely not over with. I think everyone has a thriving wish to be destroyed, a "death wish" if you will. But not a boring, literal death wish like Detective Riggs, but a death of identity. Ain't that more fun? A wish for a death to illusion. How does "Oedipus Rex" end? With his illusions being destroyed, of course! And a destruction of his eyes, that which misled him outwardly, preventing him from seeing inwardly.

The Man Who Saw Too Much (of his Mom).

And what's the real climax of "Pride and Prejudice"?

Rumble in the flower garden.

Lady Catherine de Bourgh is Mr. Darcy's aunt, and she's played nice with Lizzy until this point. But when it seems possible that she, poor little uncultured Elizabeth might marry the dashing Colin Fir... Mr. Darcy, she's unleashes the rage she's been suppressing the whole mini-ser... book. Look, I've only watched it on YouTube, okay?

"This match, to which you have the presumption
to aspire, can never take place!"

Lady Catherine is The Worst! Elizabeth thought they were friends in this "opposites attract" kinda way. But when Elizabeth steps out of the social boundaries and thinks maybe Darcy will propose to her, it seems like she's ruffling the very fabric of society. Elizabeth is trying to make Up into Down, Black into White, Marriage into Love, it's all kinds of fucked!

Professor Wiki explains Lady Catherine's character like this: "According to Janet Tood, Lady Catherine de Bourgh can be seen as a foil to the novel's protagonist Elizabeth Bennet as Elizabeth is seen as wild while Lady Catherine is seen as strict to the rules of society and Elizabeth seems to contradict in her actions many of the ideals that Lady Catherine presents." 

"But who was your mother? Who are you uncles and aunts?"

Lady Catherine is saying all the stuff Elizabeth has been saying to herself, and in doing so she is shattering her illusions. Elizabeth isn't noble enough to marry Darcy by the rules of society, who was she kidding? Pretending to be all aristocratic, but still getting her feet all muddy and shit. 

"The possibility of a martial compact between Mr. Darcy and myself is none of your bee's wax, bitch!"

 Elizabeth faces down the dragon of self-illusion and slays it. Not by denying the truth, but by accepting it and pushing away those who find the truth intolerable. This is a paradigm shift, a little one, it's just one marriage. But look how popular that book is! 

 

"I hate to watch her go..."

So Lady Catherine's all incensed and reports back to Darcy about the abominable creature and social pariah which is Elizabeth Bennet, revealing to Darcy that she still loves him. Instead of bending to the values of the day and avoiding her at all cost, Darcy's all like:

I think this is the idea with confession. First you're like:

"Mea Cupla, ya'll!"

And then supposedly Jesus is like:

"It's aight, dude!"

Mr. Darcy doesn't want Elizabeth in her inauthentic self. The Christian's would say Jesus wants the real you. The Hindus would say that peace comes when you live in total truth, ultimate reality, and then you're "At one with Brahman." Atonement means At-One-ment, by-the-by.

So what's this got to do with the Apocalypse? Well, here's my theory.

People dread "being known" more than death itself. There's that famous study that supposedly: "People are more afraid of public speaking than they are of death." 

Here is the most amazing Ted Talk I've ever seen: BRENE BROWN ON VULNERABILITY

It's about the science behind Vulnerability. Brene Brown was a researcher who did not see much value in that "emotional stuff" that people talk about. She began doing research on happiness and learned that vulnerability is the key to true happiness. She discovered this quantitatively, and it was against everything she wanted, and was trained, to believe. It led her to have a "break down," or "spiritual awakening" as her psychiatrist called it.

She talks about the extreme end of vulnerability, what people experience who are basically emotionally shut down. She calls it "Excrutiating Vulnerability." So, this is nothing more than word games, but the word "excruciate" means to "to torture" or "to crucify." So I think this whole fear of the apocalypse, fear of the rapture, even "fear of death" thing is really about being vulnerable. Is not Jesus the example of someone who allowed himself to be completely, uncompromisingly, and eternally vulnerable? If we really do fear public speaking, being seen, and being truly known, more than death itself, isn't literal death better than "Ego death"? 

"At least now I don't have to be anxious anymore about giving all those sermons."

I think this is why we have, for the most part, stopped believing in hell but keep believing in the Apocalypse, against out better judgement. It's a projection of that inner fear of being judged, more by chicks like Lady Catherine de Bourge than by omnipotent sky demons, but its all shades of the same anxiety. And here's the trick -- if you make the fear out there, then it can't happen in here.

And here's where the dividing line between organized, external religion and personal, inner spirituality shows up. C.S. Lewis said something that Christian Apologetics would like us to kindly fo'getabout.

Say what you like, the apocalyptic beliefs of the first Christians have been proved to be false. It is clear from the New Testament that they all expected the Second Coming in their own lifetime. And, worse still, they had a reason, and one which you will find very embarrassing. Their Master had told them so. He shared, and indeed created, their delusion. He said in so many words, ‘this generation shall not pass till all these things be done.’ And he was wrong. He clearly knew no more about the end of the world than anyone else.  

Lewis' is referencing Matthew 24, which is where Christian Apologetics cites most the the Doom and Gloom stuff, or at leas the red letter examples. Here's the site I got this from: http://preterismmatters.webs.com/ It says that this rebuttal of Jesus' "Final Countdown" speech makes Lewis into a heretic. Christians says Lewis was wrong, Lewis says Jesus was wrong, so who's right? Well, maybe they're all wrong.

In the esoteric writings of every belief system is a description of coming into full oneness with the universe, with the Unmanifest, with God and ground of all Being, or just plain being connected to the people around you. This is a personal Oneness, and your wife, your co-workers, they might have no idea that anything has changed in you. But everything has changed. I heard a description once of someone who said they "became Enlightened." He said "I looked at the mountains, and now, they didn't look like mountains anymore, they looked like me, and I looked like mountains." Wacky shit, right? Maybe he's telling the truth in some way, but you couldn't tell from the outsides. That's a kinda "know the tree by its fruits" kinda thing. Jesus, in Matthew 24, describes events that might be psychological indicators of someone who is advancing into that phase of life. He quotes the prophet Isiah:

The sun will be darkened,    and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.

 This might not be prophesy so much as psychology. The thing is that this is a personal psychology, not a social one, that is why it did not seem like Jesus "arrived" externally and saved the world in the times of the early Christians, because when he did arrive it was in a personal way for those persons who deserved him, as soon as they deserved. 

Let's say vulnerability is the key. Wouldn't a great way to avoid Excruciating Vulnerability be to say you've already "done that" because you're linked up with someone who stared into the abyss and did all that suffering for you. If Jesus or Socrates or Buddha went thru all that, then maybe by becoming a Buddhist you don't have to do it yourself. That seems to be the same as waiting for the external Apocalypse and avoiding the internal one.

I am obtuse and esoteric and I apologize for that. This is all that I mean to say:

"Helplessness Blues"

The Fleet Foxes

I was raised up believing I was somehow unique
Like a snowflake distinct among snowflakes, unique in each way you can see
And now after some thinking, I'd say I'd rather be
A functioning cog in some great machinery serving something beyond me

But I don't, I don't know what that will be
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see

What's my name, what's my station, oh, just tell me what I should do
I don't need to be kind to the armies of night that would do such injustice to you
Or bow down and be grateful and say "sure, take all that you see"
To the men who move only in dimly-lit halls and determine my future for me

And I don't, I don't know who to believe
I'll get back to you someday soon you will see 

What does rapture mean? It means "to be caught up." We all feel like we're falling, why would we not want to be caught by something greater, whatever that reveals itself to be? What could catch us? These days, when we are so discerning, a "personal God" won't do for most of us. What is strong enough, real enough, true enough? 

Perhaps the moment? And what do you have when you are fully caught by the moment? Eternity, perhaps? Some form of immortality, but not off in the distance, not after we die (whatever that means) but right here and right now. And what would be required for this? A certain set of beliefs? A transcendental knowledge? A mystical experience? Maybe we just need to kill illusion, and keep it real.

Here's an experiment:

Why am I writing this blog?

I'm writing this blog because I am scared. Because I feel alone.

When I was in High School I was very sad, very nervous, and very full of myself. One night I smoked weed, I took one hit off a massive Roor bong, and was higher than you can imagine. Too high, too high even for being so small and taking such a big hit. I walked down a hallway in my basement, I remember that, but suddenly (I'm told) I ran, fast and hard, into a wall -- I don't remember doing it. I had a lot of hallucinations, which I think about often to this day, but then my mom and my brother found me. 

I started convulsing, and I didn't stop. They took me to the hospital, where I remained in this state for about five hours, convulsing, seemingly unconscious, yet I was watching from within. I was in an imprisoned state inside my own mind, afraid I would be stuck there, watching reality just beyond me but unable to access it. I was afraid I would be trapped there forever, a slave to my insanity, my inwardness, and strangely I was deeply, deeply ashamed of this.

This repeating pattern of geometric images progressed past me in a loop, kind of like a mobius strip with three or four surfaces. It was all I could see, all my mind had to engage with, and I felt that this was the worst fate anyone could ever have. Slowly, I came to -- but that fear, that I was trapped in my mind, just became quieter, it didn't go away.

The doctors were there, the police were there, my parents were there -- they questioned me, tested my blood, and pleaded with me to tell the truth, "what else had I taken?" But they couldn't accept my verison of the truth. There was no way that this had happened to me just from smoking weed. I knew it hadn't, I knew there was something else, but it wasn't from any other material source. There was something else happening, something real, but in a different sense than laced marijuana seemed real to them.

So I left on a silent journey that I didn't share with them, that I haven't to this day. I've learned a couple things, made some amazing connections with people, and made a whole lot of mistakes. I am no where from feeling fully raptured, like I am definitely caught up in something bigger than myself. But I feel more in touch with... something. I thought it was about time I was honest about why I'm writing this.

Where I Reveal I'm an Addict, and What Plato's Republic Is Really About

I went to a week long group therapy retreat this summer because I'm CrAZy and I found out what my drug of choice is: Isolation. I'm an INFP according to the priests of Jungianism, the "I" meaning introvert. Yet I find being alone very painful. 

The negative effects of Isolation are pretty self-evident, but here's an article on the physiological effects of it on the brain:

For decades now, researchers have tracked the effects of loneliness and isolation on our physical health. One study with mice subjects found that isolation could increase cancerous tumor growth [source: University of Chicago Medical Center]. Another study found that isolation is a risk factor for disease on par with smoking and obesity [source: Goleman]. Loneliness often leads to stress, which is a risk factor for many conditions in its own right.

Flower un-empowered.

So introversion may be a legitimate proclivity, but I think there's a distinction between going home to "re-charge" and going home to "freak the fuck out," the latter of which is my favorite pass time. When feeling stressed, which I feel VERY OFTEN, I don't tend to seek the company of other human beings to talk about it, process the emotions, or even just distract myself for a while. This might be because, as my personality visualization to the right shows, my purple "Emotional Stability Petal" is muy pequeno.

The relationship between my other petals and the purple one is something like the relationship between:

and:

Its really the big ones that make all the great times happen. They kinda have "a good thing going." The little purple one does get some laughs when he freaks out about stuff, but a lot of the humor just comes from him being so small. If I could have my way, I'd write the purple midget off the show entirely.

I met the guy who played the little person on Seinfeld, Danny Woodburn, this summer. I was an assistant on a movie he was in. I was called on to set (I was trying to spend the day alone at home isolating ironically enough), and the head P.A. asked if I'd be Danny's stand in. I'm 5'4'', a good 16 inches taller than Mr. Woodburn, but I guess I slouch a lot. I'll blame my purple petal for that. We shook hands and said hello only briefly, he had kinda sparkly eyes!

So why do I do things that stress me out? Well, an important thing I learned at the retreat I went to is that stress is a choice. It is a way of not actually processing what is happening around you or in you. Any sort of stimulant has the same effect. Some people snort cocaine, some down diet pills, while I, being the ingenious mind that I am, figured out how to get high without spending money -- just being by myself. 

"Who asked you to be in charge, Michael?"

Stress is clinically defined as an inherently negative element of consciousness, while "Eu-stress" (Good-stress) is the term for any positive and motivating forces. Stress, as we know it today, is thought to be the effect of misfirings of the primitive "Flight or fight" mechanism of the brain. Sixpak Chopra goes into that a bit here. What leads to this misfiring?

Sixpak explains:

Not everyone is equally vulnerable to stress. Genetics play a role in how a person's body reacts. Your past experiences can affect your response, too. If you lived through a lot of stressful situations growing up, you may be more sensitive to stress as an adult.

I think hard facts like this are a healthy addition to my blog/life. There is something very fun and empowering and mysterious about talking about "God-consciousness" and all that, but without a grounding in physiology, and one's personal history, and really in reality, all those "mystical" pursuits will be unstable and even dangerous. But even Cousin Vivi seemed stumped by the question: "If we are actually always in connection with God and the ground of Being, why do we ever feel separated? Why do we buy into the illusion of otherness?"

Though Cousin Vivi viewed most of traditional Hinduism's exoteric tenants as helpful myths, but not facts in themselves, he did seem to cling to reincarnation as an explanation for why people feel, to different degrees, isolated. Some people are totally selfish, unenlightened, and seek their own ends -- usually to their misery in later life. Others seem completely connected and selfless and help move the world upwards with childlike purity. Why some and not others? The story is that the "more enlightened" have just been born more times, they've been "doin' it for a while."

This is hard pill to swallow, and it does seem like its suppressing some deeper truth. And since this truth is deeper, it must be truer, more empowering, and more beautiful than any myth. I know Plato would disagree, but he was into musical censorship, so fuck that guy.

One of the most profound spiritual realizations in the past millennium may be this: the sense of isolation is caused by trauma, in this lifetime.

In the 3rd book Tolle is revealed
to be a werewolf.

Eckhart Tolle talks about "Pain Bodies" in his book A New Earth. In addition to our physical bodies, Tolle talks about conceptual "pain bodies" that follows us around in our lives, reacting negatively to stimuli in unwarranted situations. Actually Tolle considers this less "conceptual" than I do, in his presentation they are quite literally spiritual bodies, perhaps existing on a different "frequency" than observable material bodies.

The pain in our "pain bodies" is unprocessed trauma, suppressed somewhere and squirming its way out when we least want it. Whether you believe it is stored in your memories, in your physical body (i.e. in chronic sore muscles), or in a spiritual "pain body," a small amount of self-reflection reveals that unprocessed trauma does not leave us.

Tolle alludes to the idea that pain from before you were born can affect you now. I know people who interpret a lot of their pain as coming from "past lives," it's not just weirdos like Laura Dern in "The Master."

"This sounds wacky, but I feel like in a future life
I'm going to be chased by Dinosaurs..."

I don't actually have any direct problem with this hypothesis, besides the fact that I think its untrue. The indirect problem, that seems more troubling to me, is that believing in "past life trauma" might just a way to not fully process trauma. The pain emerges from your unconscious as a vivid image of something happening to you during the french revolution and you're like "woah, that explains my aversion to hairy men!" I'm skeptical of this because it's precisely the way that dreams hide truths, through metaphor. But this is some meta level griping I'm making and I'll get back to the point.

When we don't process traumas after they happen, there are physiological effects in our brain.

There was a demonstration at the retreat I went to this summer that went something like this:

So you're having a trauma.

  What's going to happen is your Amygdala, or "Hind-Brain" way down in the center of your grey stuffs,  is going to fire dopamine to produce a rapid action. They call this the Flight or Fight response, or more expansively, the four F's: Fight, Flight, Fuck and Freeze. These are the four primitive survival behaviors that all sentient beings seem to be hardwired for. They even call the Amygdala the "reptilian brain" cuz' its so basic.

The Amygdala is hardwired to the "Mid-Brain" which is the emotional processing center of the brain.

These are the worst drawings ever.

  
The Mid-Brain and the Amygdala are extremely well connected. Dopamine fires up emotions which stir you towards certain desires and actions, all before you even have a chance to think. And I mean that quite literally, the Fight or Flight mechanism is meant to bypass any critical thinking skills for the sake of survival. These more advanced cognitive processes don't even exist in things like reptiles, so questions like "why should I hide from the bear?" or "what is the form of bear" don't occur to animals in the wild, and for good reason.

The problem is when this Amygdala based Dopamine reaction occurs for too long, then the Mid-Brain stops communicating with those advanced cognitive processes, which take place in the "Fore-Brain." This is the effect of "prolonged trauma," which can be anything from physical child abuse, to living in perpetual poverty, being raised with only one parent and missing the other's affection, all kinds of stuff. The important thing to know is it is not necessarily physical trauma. Emotional trauma has the same neurological effect as being in war, though to a different degree of intensity. But if you go years in an emotionally hostile environment, the neurological difference between that home and a tour in Baghdad is nil. 

Research has show that if car accident victims are asked to tell the story of what just happened, they are less likely to suffer post traumatic stress disorder from the event in the future. This helps the brain fully integrate itself and allows you to process things in real time, and not slowly and accidentally over the years. This real time processing is, unfortunately, not the norm for some of us when it comes to dealing with traumatic events.

 

I chill with this dude way too often.

  So, you didn't "talk it out," and a disconnect occurs between your Mid-Brain and your Fore-Brain (or Prefrontal Cortex). You get one of two outcomes:

1) Your higher level cognitive functioning is starved and your critical thinking becomes near impossible.

An episode of This American Life and Paul Tough's book "How Children Succeed" feature interviews with a psychologist who realized the implications of this. Underprivledged children score worse on critical thinking tests because their brains have been wired for survival and not for calculus, or philosophy. She says of the experience: "it was like that scene in The Matrix when Neo suddenly understands everything about the world." I think she really may be on to something there.  

If adolescent Pre-Frontal Cortexes didn't shut
down like this we'd never have The Wire!

 All that kinda makes me feel like shit because I'm not an underprivileged child, but I do have tremendous emotional fluctuations, and I'm very good at critical thinking! What gives? Well, there's another way your brain can react to prolonged trauma:

2) Excessive intellectualizing and neuroticism. 

Think about it. Ideally your brain connects all three parts and they work as a team. The physiological designation of the Hind, Mid, and Fore-Brain have been linked with concepts like the Id, Ego, and Superego. They're best when they're all pulling their weight. But what does a malfunctioning brain look like?

I find that these physical parts of the brain are easily connected to Plato's three designations of the parts of the soul: Spiritedness, Desire, and Reason. Neurotic intellectualism can be understood neurologically as the Fore-Brain being fully detached from the Mid and Hind-Brain. Anyone who's been a sensitive soul inside the world of academia know that underneath the placid facade of "put-togetherness" there's a tremendous amount of emotional and existential angst on every campus.

You can view society as basically divided along the lines of the question: "in what way have you learned to suppress trauma?"

So Plato noticed that there was a conflict going on inside everyone's soul. People have referred to him and Socrates as the first Psychiatrists. What was Socrates' solution?

 Here's Socrates' image from the "Phaedrus", reason whips the Desires (Mid-Brain) and the Emotions (Hind-Brain) into shape. What does this mean in practice? In the Republic Socrates has lengthy passages where he hashes out how the leaders of the perfect city, known as "The Guardians," will order their souls. Since Socrates believes that disordered minds are the result of past trauma, he has the guardians process the painful events of their past, which are keeping them from perfect wisdom. He describes several exercises where one guardian pretends to be your mom, another your creepy uncle, and you finally get to say all those things you never got to. There's another activity one where you simply let thoughts and feelings arise and leave, not trying to disturb them or label them, just letting them integrate into your consciousness and then pass away. In this way harmony develops between the three formally warring parts of the brain. And since the Republic is a model for the perfect soul and the perfect city, this is how universal peace is possible!

Just kidding! That wasn't how what Socrates did. I was describing a mix of Buddhism and modern Experiential Psycho-Therapy. The Republic is a description of a very aggressive Prefrontal Cortex doing everything it can to control the other parts of the brain. Socrates identifies memebers of society who correspond to different aspects of the mind and says that they need to be controlled, lied to, oppressed or even ejected from the city for the sake of its survival. Even music that stirs up the wrong part of the soul must be banned! How fun this guy must have been! DYK The Preacher from "Footlose" was a Philosopher King? The end result is the tyranny of raw "reason" over the other aspects of consciousness, to the extent that the most common and unifying feelings of compassion and love seem to be absent from "the True Philosopher."    

Perhaps this is the ideal of a Western Philosopher and maybe this is what "Ego-death" is in the East. Maybe its a necessary phase we all must go through. But it is not the ideal state of being for men like The Wizard Tolle, however. When you realize that this "enlightenment" is merely the mismanagement of trauma, it becomes a lot less appealing. And it always reveals itself to be unstable.

"I haven't dealt with the fact that
someone fingered my puppet."

Some thoughts to swallow: The first word of The Republic is "κατέβην" or "I went down." Socrates bans flute playing from the city. The poets in Plato's time had a euphemism for oral sex: "Playing the flute."  
 
But if the Platonic path is the path to peaceful, living on the island of the Blessed, and not a systematized process of denial, lets look at Plato's life and see how peaceful it was. Plato's Seventh Letter, the last thing he is known to have written, does not reveal a passionless, carefree soul. Heading towards his death, Plato is seen to be a crotchety, frequently kidnapped vagabond who wont rest for a moment until he can get someone in power to establish the perfect city (under his guidance). There's lines in it that could probably translated to quite literally say: "I'm too old for this shit!" And the worst part is he's trying to get everyone's attention, anyone who will listen, to how he has it all figured out if only they'd listen! "They, they, they." It's all about what's wrong with other people for the Pre-Frontal Cortex guys. Let's check in with Rev. G-Unit:

Rev. G-Unit repin' that Self-Evo Paradigm

Stress, in my neurotic Liberal Artsy way, is spending most of my time in my Pre-Frontal Cortex. Alone, I can let all my fears about the world and concerns about what everyone else is doing flow all over me. "If they'd stop being so fucked up, I'd be at peace!" I'm isolated from others, and isolated from my feelings by this strong psychic barrier -- but in the abject panic of "being alone in this world," just enough existential angst gets stirred up that I can get high, and ignore whatever is down there that actually needs to express itself.

How do I integrate, instead of dissociate? How do you just "Feel your feelings"? There's an Eva Brann book by the name: Feeling our Feelings: What Philosophers Think and People Know, but I don't think more books are the answer for me.

What the Hell is an Atheist?

 

I asked my friend, who is way older and smarter than me, why I get along with Atheists so well, since I like, you know, believe in God and shit. 

I'll quote my friend's emailed response at length: 

I've always tended to like atheism better than religion, because it strikes me as closer to the truth.  The atheist and the truly spiritual person are in deep agreement on at least one thing:  there is no such thing as "a God".  God is not "a being".   Then when one says God is Being, which is true, that is also perfectly consonant with atheism, because being is not a thing, it is nothing.   Both the true spiritual seeker and the atheist throw out all the false constructions and idols.

What's the opinion of my friend worth tho? So here I'll quote Cousin Vivi who has a similar view:

Vivekananda AKA Cousin Vivi

The vast majority of men are atheists. I am glad that, in modern times, another class of atheists has come into existence in the Western world — I mean the materialists. They are sincere atheists. They are better than the religious atheists, who are insincere, who fight and talk about religion, and yet do not want it, never try to realise it, never try to understand it. 

They both are of the opinion that there is "true religion," and then there is the much more common semblance of it. Cousin Vivi goes as far as saying that most men, and he's writing this around the beginning of the 20th century so its really saying something, are so far from true religion that they are in effect atheists. 

The next tricky thing my friend brings up is that "God is not a being." Here is where you're gonna lose most of your Christian friends. The idea with Christianity in practice today is that God was/is a dude, and therefore He is very much a being. If people are being nice to you, they'll say something like "Oh cool... you believe in like a Gaia thing... or something."

I met the Christian Philosopher Ken Boa last year. He said that the current conclusions of modern Quantum Physics will, in the near future, lead scientists to postulate something like a "Gaia consciousness" behind the universe. He clearly thought this was a cute, tho untrue, conclusion. Kind of: "silly scientists, trying to reinvent the wheel when obviously the answer is Jesus." He had philosophical reasons for thinking this Gaia thing was not as good an explanation of the universe as... a Jew with holes in him.

What's funny about guys like Ken Boa is that his faith didn't come from philosophizing, it came from experience. His story goes something like: "Back in the day I hated everything, especially religious people. So one a day me and a friend take a buncha acid with the plan to disprove God once and for all... didn't work. Totally talked to the guy."

I don't really know what a Gaia consciousness means, seems like some James Cameron shit. But stupid seeming or not, I'm not going to decide either way until I see it. Here's Kenny Superpowers on the "mystic experiences" of the Quantum Qrew:

Not many people realize that Erwin Schrödinger, the founder of quantum mechanics, had a deep satori experience. He found that the position that most matched his own was Vedantic Hinduism — that pure awareness is aware of all objects but cannot itself become an object. It’s the way into the door of realizing ultimate reality. Werner Heisenberg had similar experiences. And Sir Arthur Eddington was probably the most eloquent of the lot.

Swami Heisenberg

The experience they're describing isn't Gaia consciousness (which is realizing you can plug your hair into your sky-pony?), but Absolute-oneness, or God-consciousness. But the "God" in God-consciousness isn't a bearded white dude in a toga. It is Non-personal, it does not have personality, which Jesus, as a "Personal God" does. 

That question you hear thrown around: "Do you accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?" doesn't really understand itself. The asker usually assumes that people can only have a relationship with something transcending themselves in the form a personal relationship. They think they're asking: "Is it Buddha, Mohammed, your boyfriend, or JESUS???" 

People connect with what can be called "God" in various ways, it can either be in a personal relationship, or an abstract person-less relationship. This distinction is also called God-with-form, and God-without-form. Which one is right? It seems like that's not a genuine question.

The "Ramachillin"

The Ramakrishna Paramahamsa asked a student:

Do you believe in a God with form or in a formless God?"

"In the formless aspect," was the reply.

Then The Master asked: But how can you grasp the formless aspect all at once? When the archers are learning to shoot, they first aim at the plantain tree, then at a thin tree, then at a fruit, then at the leaves, and finally at a flying bird. First meditate on the aspect with form. This will enable you to see the formless later.

So imagining and worshiping "God-with-form" is nothing more and nothing less than a path heading towards seeing God-without-form. Let's ask again: What is the Atheist?

The Atheist already knows that God cannot have form, 'cuz he doesn't believe in Him at all. So he has a major some advantage. But why should he give a shit about God? Well, forget about "God," maybe think about "completion." Perhaps all the Atheist has to do is search his feelings and ask: what do I really want to become? Descartes proof of God rested simply on the perception that he felt inferior to something, he was "lacking" in knowledge, and therefore he had a concept of something that did not lack knowledge. Start with something like that.

Cousin Vivi on "The Necessity of Religion":

None of us have yet seen an "Ideal Human Being", and yet we are told to believe in it... We are always struggling to raise ourselves up to that ideal. Every human being, whosoever and wheresoever he may be, has an ideal of infinite power. Every human beinghas an ideal of infinite pleasure.

 Simple enuf. The enduring presence of archetypes like the boring dude to the left is proof enough that people are obsessed with perfection, even if they have no "God" concepts. What motivates Dawkins to perfectly make the case against bogus concepts if not some sort of ideal for himself, for humanity, towards which he is striving?

Vivi continues:

Most of the works that we find around us, the activities displayed everywhere, are due to the struggle for this infinite power or this infinite pleasure. But a few quickly discover that although they are struggling for infinite power, it is not through the senses that it can be reached. They find out very soon that that infinite pleasure is not to be got through the senses, or, in other words, the senses are too limited, and thebody is too limited, to express the Infinite. To manifest the Infinite through the finite is impossible, and sooner or later, man learns to give up the attempt to express the Infinite through the finite. 

What in the world is he talking about? That's some mystical bullshit if I've ever seen it. But we can unpack it some. So do people desire "infinite power"?

 Well, that'd probably explain this dude.

But weirdly enough Vivi claims that it also explains this chick:

In another essay, "Bhakti or Devotion", Vivi states, without being metaphorical, that the motive force behind all motion is: "Love." What keeps this from being ridiculous is that he really does claim that it's the single agent behind all motion in the universe. He's not trying to turn motion into something prettier, he's saying Love is and always has been identical with motion and attraction. He holds no reservations that Love be reserved for discussing "pleasant things" or even "human things." By this usage, "Love" is essentially energy in its most abstract sense, a few decades later he might have associated it with "Quanta."

What manifests itself as attraction in the sentient and the insentient, in the particular and in the universal, is the love of God. It is the one motive power that is in the universe. Under the impetus of that love, Christ gives his life for humanity, Buddha even for an animal, the mother for the child, the husband for the wife. It is under the impetus of the same love that men are ready to give up their lives for their country, and strange to say, under the impetus of the same love, the thief steals, the murderer murders. Even in these cases, the spirit is the same, but the manifestation is different.

Seeing motion and God as "Love" in this highest sense requires progressing beyond seeing God exclusively as a personal God, or God-with-form. The Ramakrishna says we don't have to completely give up on God-with-form. "Worship God-with-form in the morning, worship God-without-form in the evening," was something he often said.

The difference is between this type of Devotee (that sees God as Love, manifested everywhere in everything, even in evil) and the Atheist is that the Atheist is a Materialist. The Devotee is a Spiritualist. Spirit, from this "God-without-form" perspective, is nothing other than energy and matter, appearing, evolving, transforming into infinite beings and returning back to Nothingness.

God-with-form cannot be eternal, for anything which can be felt with the senses will disappear. Clutch to your cross, to your image of Jesus, as hard as you can, but it will never penetrate to the true depth of your suffering.

The Atheist, as a Materialist, is the same as the God-with-form Theist. They forget to acknowledge the importance of Nothingness, and so the passing of all things into the mysterious realm of Nothingness is a tragedy to them, so horrible that it must be suppressed from consciousness at all costs. Death is a misery incapable of being comprehended to the Materialist and the conventional Theist. 

Nothingness is what the Spiritualist truly worships, for, as my friend said, true Being is Nothingness.  But since everything which we can feel with our senses is not this Nothingness, but only that which springs from it and returns back into it, we must worship Nothingness through those things -- until we don't have to.

But my friend had more to say about Atheists like Dawkins, who wrote "The God Delusion."

...A wonderful young theologian friend of mine ... read Dawkins and Hitchins and agreed with everything they said.  The only problem was, they left God and true religion completely untouched.   But useful books if they help get rid of the imposters that pass for religion and God in the world.   But all the rest has a place too:  human creatures are a varied lot, and have different needs.

Botching the Watchmen; or: Nobody's Perfect

Ken Wilber, A.K.A. Kenny Superpowers

In my last blog I quoted Uncle Leo on the topic of "Masonry." Masons are, according to Strauss, according to his role model Gotthold Lessing, the men in charge of shaping the world. They know things that ordinary people either cannot or shouldn't know. Drawing from Plato, Strauss explains that these men, being True Philosophers are morally superior to the hoi poloi.

Ideas like this are good fodder for Illuminati Watch Blogs, or for those who want to complain about the fate of the world but do nothing about it. But it really isn't that fascinating to anyone who approaches moral, cultural, or spiritual evolution with a reasonable and scientific head.

Ken Wilber, seen above in some dope Hydro-enlightenment frames, was headed for a career in Biochemistry, but turned to theories on consciousness and spirituality when science could not answer his questions. He has since become one of the most prolific contemporary philosophers in numerous fields, especially spirituality and the history of religion, mostly as an autodidact. He is respected very little by mainstream academia.

First I'm gonna praise Wilber and quote him at length from a Salon.com interview from 2005. Then I'm going to quote some criticism of him from a former adherent and close friend who became very concerned over the cultishness and elitism that began to surround Kenny Superpowers' "Integral Institute," and its cousin Spiral Dynamics.

Sixpak Chopra

I rip on Uncle Leo a lot, and have held up Wilber as some sort of icon of philosophical and spiritual egalitarianism. I want to make it clear though that I do not think Strauss is categorically wrong, and in fact he is tapping into something very powerful and crucial (which happens to be the exact same thing everyone taps into), and certainly his exposure to Heideggerian Existentialism and Aristotelian Metaphysics aided this. Yet people like Wilber, who is considered by many of his fans (some of them are big names like Bill Clinton and Deepak Chopra) a living "Great-author," do make such concerted efforts to think clearly about these things and are IMO healthier sources of answers to these questions. They see that some people, to an extraordinary degree, have intuitive comprehension of large scale systems. Wilber does not, however, give into "magical" concepts like Divine Right or Nobility that give these people the "Right to Rule." As William James put it:

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Thinking is assuredly universal, though some think more clearly than others. The illusion of Nobility or exclusive "blessedness" are either necessary illusions, or merely the product of priveledge trying to perpetuate itself. But my praise for Wilber's straightforwardness, where Strauss is self-empoweringly obscure, does not give Wilber a total pass as an all around great guy. I'll start by quoting him from the Salon article to expand on this:

Interviewer (Steve Paulson):
There’s an assumption that master contemplatives, people who can reach exalted states of enlightenment, are wonderful human beings, that goodness radiates from them. Do you think that’s true?

Wilber:
Nothing’s ever quite that simple. There are different kinds of intelligence, and they develop at different rates. If your moral development reaches up into the trans-personal levels, then you tend to be St. Teresa. But some, like Picasso, have their cognitive development very high but their moral development is in the bloody basement. We think someone is enlightened in every aspect of their lives, but that’s rarely the case.

Never enuf.

Wilber makes it clear that in his opinion there is no categorical state of "Full Enlightenment," though following his own methods of viewing growth down various lines through different quadrants, one sees that each of these lines does have seemingly discrete stages. Here is his analysis of these stages of development in reference to the progression of religious institutions. The question arises when he is asked about the disrespect that convention scientific rationalism has for his "trans-personal" worldview.

Paulson:
Why has the scientific worldview dismissed this trans-personal dimension? For most intellectuals around the world, the secular scientific paradigm has triumphed.

What color is "The Republic"?

Wilber:
It’s understandable. Historically, if you look at these broad stages, the magical era tended to be 50,000 years ago, the mythic era emerged around 5,000 B.C., and the rational era — secular humanism — emerged in the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was an attempt to liberate myth and base truth claims on evidence, not just dogma. But when science threw out the church, they threw out the baby with the bath water.

Kenny Super-powers' Integral Theory obviously seems to owe a lot to Hegel's Phenomenology which promotes the awareness of stages of spiritual progression, talking at once about individual psychic development and cultural development. Integral Theory attempts to be much more grounded in empiricism than Hegel ever sought to be. I.T. also has its roots more genuinely it seems in Indian Nondualistic Vedantism which has, according to Swami Vivekananda, always integrated every belief system and saw them as mutually compatible when understood to fit into a non-judgmental hierarchy.

A page from Wilber's colorful "Integral Vision"

There indeed seems to be support of Strauss' claim that there is a difference between the morality of the "beginner" and the "Philosopher." In Wilber's "Integral Vision" he cites Kohlberg's "Stages of Moral Development" as his empirical evidence of moral evolution in a single human consciousness. What is different from Strauss is that Kohlberg considers there not to be not two, but three or possibly even four stages of moral progress, each stage divided into two sub-categories. Kolhberg's evolving moralities are also not in conflict with each other, the "higher morality" engulfs the lower and does not contradict it.  Strauss also diverges when he claims that only with exposure to the works of Plato is anyone capable of this attaining this enlightenment, of perhaps "Master Morality" as Nietzsche would put it:

The difference between the beginner and the philosopher (for the perfectly trained student of Plato is no one else but the genuine philosopher) is a difference not of degree but of kind. From Exoteric Teaching

Kolhberg's stages occur naturally, abstract of any formal belief system, under a non tabla rasa understanding of human psychological development. After the publishing of Ed Wilson's "On Human Nature", the seminal work on Sociobiology, any tabla rasa theory on human nature should be labelled as completely retarded, yet it is always a temporarily profitable idea to those who would think they can control the minds of others. Heidegger seems to be headed down this path in his Introduction To Metaphysics when he tells us that the Philosopher makes the thinking of certain things into possibilities. Wilber has a different vision on how the more spiritually progressed interact with those who "haven't lived as many lives" as the Samsara formulation puts it non-judgementally.

Wilber:
You can’t prove a higher stage to someone who’s not at it. If you go to somebody at the mythic stage and try to prove to them something from the rational, scientific stage, it won’t work. You go to a fundamentalist who doesn’t believe in evolution, who believes the earth was created in six days, and you say, “What about the fossil record”? “Oh yes, the fossil record; God created that on the fifth day.” You can’t use any of the evidence from a higher stage and prove it to a lower stage. So someone who’s at the rational stage has a very hard time seeing these trans-rational, trans-personal stages. The rational scientist looks at all the pre-rational stuff as nonsense — fairies and ghosts and goblins — and lumps it together with the trans-rational stuff and says, “That’s nonrational. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Wilber's formulation puts it that Philosophers have merely been men who are further advanced down the grid than others, in certain respects at least. Remembering his qualification that there are different lines that one can progress down, there is no reason to assume this person has a "complete" understanding from which to decide "The Good" for a people group. Refer to the diagram I made a few blogs back:

The kids I work with may be Crips, but at least they ain't
emotional cripples.

My small development in the Emotional Stability field clearly shows that my moral decision making is bound to be skewed, despite the fact that I've read "The Republic," "The Nicomachean Ethics," and... I dunno, "Fight Club."

The whole thing I'm trying to demonstrate here is what I'll call a

"Yes, but... qualification."

Is America ready for true spiritual integration?

Plato, Aristotle, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Strauss are presenting a broad horizon of human potential. Their works have perhaps accelerated human consciousness by leaps and bounds. They were minds far, far ahead of their times. I haven't read this piece by Strauss on Lucretius but I'm fairly sure it is going to reveal the presence of a modern rationalist mind in a time when he had no business being such. I'm assuming that between the lines in Strauss we can infer that this necessitates one of two things:

1) An omniscient abstract consciousness that humans can "tap into" with proper "culturing"; or

2) The ability of men to completely dissociate from the culture and political morality in which they were raised, and from this "empty space" they can objectively philosophize.

Wilber and other's attempts to "integrate" all philosophies is perhaps saying: "YES, they are doing one of those two things, or perhaps both, BUT they are not exclusive in this ability." What is different about Heidegger and Strauss from someone like Wilber is that the first two men link this ability to access "Nothingness" with an education directly linked to Greek metaphysics, or at least by being "cultured" by privileged to the exclusion of others. Wilber, on the other hand, comes from a perspective which has actually investigated the possible methods of experiencing this "Nothingness," and they seem to be infinite. So infinite that his book "Integral Vision" recommends a complete trust in ones intuitive ability to understand these things. This simple comment completely nullifies the idea of Masonry.

Now for healthy ragging on Wilber. If you remember my first post on him, I showed you this picture:

And said "I think he might be the worst." Well it doesn't seem like he is the worst but he does appear to be human. This guy's critique of Wilber does smack a bit of spurned lovery, and part of his complaint is Wilber's impoliteness in emails. But Wilber's general narcissism has been mentioned in other places, including to him in the Salon.com article.

Paulson:

You have many admirers. You also have critics. One objection is that you are too full of yourself. The science writer John Horgan, in his book “Rational Mysticism,” said the vibe he got from you was, “I’m enlightened. You’re not.” How do you respond to this charge of arrogance, the sense that you’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe and no one else has?

Wilber:

A lot of people see me as much more humble. I continue to change because I’m open to new ideas and I’m very open to criticism. Basically, I’ve taken the answers that have been given by the great sages, saints and philosophers and have worked them into this integral framework. If that vibe comes across as arrogant, then John would get that feeling. Of course, he was trying to do the same thing, so I would have brushed up against his own egoistic projections. But some people do agree with him and feel that my support for this integral framework comes across as arrogant.

Michael Bauwens, setting the record straight
on Kenny Superpowers.

The critique of Wilber by Michael Bauwens, editor of the New Age magazine "Wave," speaks of his increasing esotericism and cultishness when money became involved in his activities:

The specter of money, before it would go up in smoke due to the internet crash, attracted a lot of people to the Wilber camp, people who, in my own personal experience, had been deriding him, and vice versa (I received emails from both camps). The free flow of information, hitherto a characteristic of the movement, started to become very restricted. I believe the reason is that he started attracting a lot of for-profit consultants, who have proprietary views about knowledge.

And what strikes the real death-blow, in my opinion, for thinking Wilber is the new Buddha is his endorsement of Neoconservativism! I know that's not exactly an argument, but come on people!

For Wilber, who for me in this respect has not overcome a really provincial aspect of his thinking, an integral political synthesis goes no further than American liberalism (already on the right of the political spectrum to European eyes) and conservatism (akin to our extreme right in Europe), and he announced that Tony Blair was the most integral leader around, this of course at the time of the wise decision of invading Iraq.  

Oh ironies of ironies! Uncle Leo and Kenny Superpowers come full circle once money and political aspirations get involved. This makes it seem that it is not breadth of spiritual investigation that gives one clarity of purpose. I guess that me saying that Neoconservatism is inherently lacking in clarity of purpose, and I am saying that -- it is bullshit. I try to hold up Integral Theory as proof of that, but the creator of Integral Theory aligned with it... so that makes things messy. Is he behaving hypocritically in this political alignment? We should stare this abyss in the face and ask it ourselves, do we have the right to impose our values on other people because we are "more enlightened?" This seems wrong if for no other reason that it violates the Prime Directive from Star Trek

Logic and Passion properly partnered.

"As the right of each sentient species to live in accordance with its normal cultural evolution is considered sacred, no Star Fleet personnel may interfere with the normal and healthy development of alien life and culture. Such interference includes introducing superior knowledge, strength, or technology to a world whose society is incapable of handling such advantages wisely. Star Fleet personnel may not violate this Prime Directive, even to save their lives and/or their ship, unless they are acting to right an earlier violation or an accidental contamination of said culture. This directive takes precedence over any and all other considerations, and carries with it the highest moral obligation."