Thoughts

It's not a search. It's a practice.

Perhaps the key insight of Jungian psychology is that mental illness is not a purely individual phenomenon, but that it is a manifestation of much larger imbalances within the culture and the psyche of mankind as a whole. In other words, schizophrenics are, in some sense, the scapegoats of a culture which clings tenaciously to it's own superficial certainties, refusing to confront the contradictions and questions bubbling up from it's own depths; they are the receptacles of all the psychical garbage which has been denied and has yet to be dealt with in the culture. It may even be that they are the aborted saints; the ones who, in their "dark night of the soul", received no shepherding, but were given up as madmen, when in fact they were the chosen of God.

In order to know one thing, we must be ignorant of many things, and in order to know God, we must be ignorant of all. In meditation, opposites dissolve; past and future have no place. There's no thought of incompleteness, or taking action for any purpose. This is the way to samadhi. But this is not a philosophy for living in the world. (In the world, good and evil do not cancel each other out.) Observe it in meditation, and for moments throughout the day when detachment is needed. The sages did not attempt to apply this teaching to all aspects of life.

A teacher wants a student,
no less than a student wants a teacher.

The greatest teaching is "how to be a student".

I need to see myself as more of an artist than a sage. I am not a sage. I may want to express pure truth, but I can only express the obscure visions of my process, my confusion, my questions, and the mysteries that yawn like so many wild abysses on all sides. I straddle a thousand thresholds, describing the visions I see within. And trying not to block the way.

The two faces of a stained-glass window reflect the two faces of virtue;
for they obscure the world outside, while revealing the kingdom within.

Compassion cannot arise in a heart that sees only good. The will is paralyzed. We cannot do good if we think God has it all in hand, and all suffering magically produces good by itself. We must have a genuine experience of horror, in order to respond with compassionate action. The Magician doesn't make way for the blind, circling will of many gods, but makes himself an instrument of the One.

By the will of God, the angels are revealed to the prophets. But magicians must exercise their own wills, through the practice of ritual concentration, to accomplish the same results. A prophet who is also a magician is rightly called a master, for to him is given not only the ability to perceive angels without effort, but to manifest them as well.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the soldier is the one who paves it; for he is the epitome of misdirected service; the one who murders his family, and believes he has defended his home. For all his courage, fortitude, and faith, he hasn't the sense to know when his very virtues have become weapons of the devil.

The saints are not above us, by any means. But our ceiling is their floor.

It's always been the case:
They can lock you up for being interesting.

Delusions of candor.

Gnosticism and The Split-Personality of Jesus Christ

"All the forces in the world are not so powerful
as an idea whose time has come"
~ Victor Hugo

Perhaps the greatest and most common error people make in attempting to interpret the Gospel of Jesus Christ, is the assumption that there is such a gospel to begin with; that Christ himself was entirely clear and consistent about his own beliefs.

On the contrary, provided we are not determined to reconcile them at the expense of reason, -- even the most intuitive and indulgent reason still worthy of the name "reason", -- we can see some glaring inconsistencies and contradictions with respect to his most fundamental conceptions of God; in particular, His Law and His Grace.

In one saying, Christ asserts that sin is sickness, for which men deserve healing, and not judgement. In another, he tells us God will only forgive us to the extent that we forgive others; and judge us to the extent that we judge them. He says God makes the sun to shine on the just and the unjust, without distinction; for He is perfect. Elsewhere, the sinner will in no wise see heaven. He warns us not to cast pearls of wisdom before swine, lest they turn and rend us. Then he tells us to take up the cross and be martyred for those very "swine". He says the least in the kingdom is greater than John the Baptist, then tells the thief on the cross that, for an instance worth of repentance, he shall be in heaven before the day's end.

Are there two Christs? Confounded as one? Was the man who went into a rage in the temple and whipped the merchants and money-changers, the same who said, "Turn the other cheek?" Or has the Church twisted the true teachings of Jesus? On purpose or through simple foolishness? What other explaination could there be, but that Christ himself was unsure of what he thought, -- and what he taught?

Could it be that Jesus was trying to reconcile the legalistic God of the Old Testament with the unconditionally loving Father in Heaven disclosed to his higher vision? Could it be that he was incapable of confessing the discrepency? Was the man, Jesus, only partially and occassionally possessed and inspired by the god, Christ?

And are not the Christians of our time equally confused by the notion of a God who would create both the Devil and the Christ; the problem and the solution?

Indeed, this dilemma is not unique to Christianity, but is found wherever men seek to proclaim the universe (which houses both good and evil) good. Wherever unconditional love is attributed to the creator, along with omnipotence and omniscience, so that he is both aware of suffering and perfectly capable of ending it, we find the infection. No religion, no spiritual vision, can be entirely healthy and pure which posits a God who simultaneously loves us and causes, or allows, us to suffer; not when He has the power to make us happy and righteous without recourse to the cruel and unusual.

How much more reasonable, and in harmony with itself, is the doctrine of the Gnostics, who attribute to the creator neither omnipotence nor omniscience, nor the virtue of an unconditionally loving nature; but, making a clear, dualistic distinction between the God The Creator and God The Father, -- between Matter and Spirit, -- conclude that Law and Grace are irreconcilable; that The God Who Creates is of a low and inferior type, while The God Who Loves dwells in a realm which utterly transcends the physical, and is anathema to it?

Here, we see a doctrine thoroughly rational, for it explains that men have access to God, and He to them, only to the extent that His Grace is present in their hearts; having withdrawn them from the trappings of the temporal realm (form and change), and aligned their attention with the formless, immutable, and eternal nature of their Father in Heaven. If He only could, He would deliver us from this prison. But His light is dim in this place, and we must seek for the source of it most carefully.

How much more faithfully does this vision correspond to the noblest impulses of the Christ; to the call for mercy, charity, healing and instruction? Compassion cannot arise in a heart that sees only good. The will is paralyzed. We cannot do good if we think God has it all in hand, and all suffering magically produces good by itself. We must have a genuine experience of horror, in order to respond with compassionate action. The Magician doesn't make way for the blind, circling will of many gods, but makes himself an instrument of the one God.

"Eternal Hell"

excerpted from:
"Meditations On The Tarot:
A Journey Into Christian Hermeticism"
by Valentin Tomberg
from: Chapter VIII JUSTICE (p.180-181)

[To] live without love -- this is hell. And to live without love in the region of eternity -- this is to live in eternal hell.

Hell is the state of the soul powerless to come out of itself,
absolute self-centredness, dark and evil isolation, i.e. final inability to love.
(Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny Of Man)

This subjective state of soul is neither long nor short -- it is as intense as eternity is. Similarly, the blessedness that a saint experiences in the vision of God is as intense as eternity -- although it could not so last, since someone present at the ecstasy of a saint would time it as a few minutes. The "region" of eternity is that of intensity, which surpasses the measures of quantity that we employ in time and space. "Eternity" is not a duration of infinite length; it is "intensity of quality" which, if compared with time and thus translated into the language of quantity, is comparable with an infinite duration. Concerning this, Nicolas A. Berdyaev says:

In our life on earth it is given to us to experience torments that appear to us to go on for ever, that are not for a moment, an hour or a day, but seem to last an infinity... Objectively this infinity may last a moment, an hour, or a day, but it receives the name of everlasting hell... When Origen said that Christ will remain on the cross so long as a single creature remains in hell, he expressed an eternal truth.
(Nicolas Berdyaev, The Destiny Of Man)

What can one add to this, if not "amen"? Eternal hell is the state of a soul imprisoned within itself, where the soul has no hope of coming out. "Eternal" means to say "without hope". All suicides committed through desperation bear witness to the reality of eternal hell as a state of soul. Before committing suicide, the person who commits it experiences a state of complete despair, i.e. eternal hell. This is why he prefers nothingness to the state of despair. Nothingness is therefore his last hope.

Eternal bliss -- "heaven" -- is, in contrast, the state of soul which is filled with boundless hope. This is not a blissfulness which lasts for an infinite number of years; it is the intensity of hope which gives the quality "eternal". Similarly, it is the intensity of despair which imparts to the state of soul designated "hell" the quality of "eternal".

The anguish of Gethsemane which gave rise to perspiration of blood was eternal. This night, the night of Gethsemane, was not measured in hours. It was -- it is -- immeasurable, therefore eternal. It is due to its eternity that he sweated blood, and not because of the temporary, and therefore passing, trial. He knew eternal hell through experience, and as he came out of it, we have the "good news" that not only death is vanquished by the Resurrection, but also that hell is -- through Gethsemane. .... Origen himself knew with certain knowledge that there would be no "damned" at the end of the world and that the devil, also, would be saved.

Did Jesus Really Mean What He Said?

This is excerpted from the book "My Religion"
(also translated as "What I Believe") by Leo Tolstoy:


The least that can be required of those who judge another man’s teaching is that they should take the teacher’s words in the exact sense in which he uses them. Christ does not consider His teaching as some high ideal of what mankind should be but cannot attain to, nor does He consider it as a chimerical, poetical fancy, fit only to captivate the simple-minded inhabitants of Galilee; He considers His teaching as work – a work that is to save mankind...

It is incompatible with the nature of man, they say, to turn the other cheek when he has been struck; it is incompatible with the nature of man to give up his property to another – to work, not for himself, but for others. It is natural to man, they say, to protect himself, his own safety, that of his family, and his property – in other words, it is the nature of man to struggle for life...

We need only for one moment to cast aside the idea that the present organization of our lives, as established by man, is the best and most sacred, and then the argument that the teaching of Christ is incompatible with human nature immediately turns against the arguer. Who will deny that it is repugnant and harrowing to a man’s feelings to torture or kill, not only a man, but also even a dog, a hen, or a calf? I have known men, living by agricultural labor, who have ceased entirely to eat meat only because they had to kill their own cattle. And yet our lives are so organized that for one individual to obtain any advantage in life another must suffer, which is against human nature.

The whole organization of our lives, the complicated mechanism of our institutions, whose sole object is violence, are but proofs of the degree to which violence is repugnant to human nature. No judge will ever undertake to strangle with his own hands the man whom he has condemned to death. No magistrate will himself drag a peasant from his weeping family in order to shut him up in prison. Not a single general, not a single soldier, would kill hundreds of Turks or Germans, and devastate their villages – no, not one of them would consent to wound a single man, were it not in war, and in obedience to discipline and the oath of allegiance. Cruelty is only exercised (thanks to our complicated social machinery) when it can be so divided among a number that none shall bear the sole responsibility, or recognize how unnatural all cruelty is.

Some make laws, others apply them; others, again, drill their fellow-creatures into habits of discipline – i.e., of senseless passive obedience; and these same disciplined men, in their turn, do violence to others – killing without knowing why or wherefore. But let a man even for a moment shake off in thought the net of worldly institutions that so ensnares him, and he will see what is really incompatible with his nature.

If once we cease to affirm that the evil we are so used to, and profit by, is an immutable divine truth, we may see clearly which is the more natural to man – violence, or the law of Christ. Which is better – to know that the comfort and safety of my family and myself, all my joys and pleasures, are obtained at the price of the misery, depravity, and suffering of millions, by yearly executions, by hundreds of thousands of suffering prisoners, and by millions of soldiers, policemen and sergeants torn from their homes and half stupefied by military discipline, who protect my idle pleasures by keeping starving men at a distance with their loaded pistols; to know that every dainty morsel I put into my mouth, or give my children, is obtained at the price of all this suffering, which is inevitable, in order to obtain these dainties; or to know that my fare is my own, that nobody suffers for the want of it, and that nobody has suffered in procuring it for me?...

It is sufficient to understand the doctrine of Christ in all its high significance and with all the consequences it entails, to see that it is not inconsistent with human nature, but that, on the contrary, His whole doctrine throws aside what is inconsistent with human nature – the delusive human teaching of resistance of evil, which is the chief cause of all human misery...

When once we clearly understand the teaching of Christ, we see that it is not the world given by God to man for his happiness that is a dream, but the world such as men have made it for their own destruction that is a wild terrifying dream – the delirium of a madman – a dream from which it is enough to awake once, never to return to it...

God’s words are so simple and so clear. He says, ‘Do no evil to each other, and there will be no evil.’ Is it possible that the revelation of God is so simple? Can this be all? All this is so familiar to us... They are very simple, but they contain in themselves the sole and eternal law of God and man. This law is eternal, and if in history we find any progress made toward the annihilation of evil, it is due to those who truly understood the doctrine of Christ, who suffered evil without resisting by violence. The progression of mankind toward good is brought about by martyrdom, not by tyranny. Fire cannot extinguish fire, no more than evil can extirpate evil...

Men may turn aside from it or conceal it from others; nevertheless it is the only path that leads to true happiness. Each step that has brought us nearer to this great end was taken in the name of the doctrine of Christ: ‘Do not resist evil.'... And if the progress is made slowly, it is only because the clarity, simplicity, and rationality of the teaching of Christ and its inevitable absolute necessity are concealed from the eyes of men in the most crafty and dangerous manner; concealed under a spurious teaching, falsely called His.

Silence And Speech

"Words may be deeds." ~ Aesop


I was reading the Talmud, and one said he'd grown up among the wise and lived among the wise his whole life, and he believed there is nothing better than silence. He says "If silence is good for the wise, how much better is it for the foolish?" But I say silence is the wisdom of the foolish and folly of the wise.

These teachers who praise silence and deeds at the expense of words and teachings -- I don't agree with them. I cannot. Words are stones, to me, and I am a builder of cathedrals, hospitals, and statues; out of joy, and for the purpose of evoking the noblest states and aspirations. Words are grains, and I am baking spiritual bread with which to feed the people. Hypocrites; how can they speak to disrespect speech?

Censure of speech is speech, and praise of action is action. Even to censure speech is to admit its power. And if righteous words were not also righteous works, then neither would vain words be works of vanity.

Not all speech is vain, but there is vain speech, which seeks to impress with emptiness; to dazzle and bewilder us with the shallowest splash of shimmering surface-light.

Too many writers, and far too many readers, have taken hold of a strange notion: that good writing must be obscure to the point of meaninglessness; that sincerity and substance are small change to pay for an inexhaustible novelty of expression.

Yet no style has been so consistently elaborated, while edifying so little, than this method of writing which relies on parading before the mind's eye one scantily glimpsed, invariably askew, object after another, with no conceivable relation between them, -- rather, with only the self-indulgent caprice of the writer, in his efforts to eschew coherence and replace it with the purest randomness and confusion.

The result is a "stream of consciousness" colorfully polluted with every curious image at the writer's disposal. No object, no suggestion, no word, is too insignificant or lacking in relevance -- for, as we've seen, the absence of relevance is precisely what these writers appear to find most charming, even going so far as to regard it the cutting edge in the crowning jewel of literary exploration.

Needless to say, I refuse to consider this post-apocalyptic wasteland the frontier of modern prose.

Has it become such a bore, to have a point? Has everything been said, and said again? And if so, must we revel in saying nothing? I know I would rather be a broken-record, repeating the loftiest sentiments we have heard since time immemorial, than a tinkling symbol, delighting in the slightness of the slightest.

But to keep silent is a choice I could never make.

Zeitgeist: Why This Is IMPORTANT

"Simply put, what The Venus Project represents and what The Zeitgeist Movement hence condones, could be summarized as: ‘The application of The Scientific Method for social concern.’" ~ http://www.thezeitgeistmovement.com/

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." ~ Edmund Burke

It's easy to imagine that what matters in life is the small circle of family, friends, and colleagues surrounding us, and to narrow our focus so as not to detract from the attention we wish to give them. It's harder to imagine how this inner circle is ultimately affected by much wider issues and concerns about the culture as a whole. When we do attend to larger issues, they are entirely, or almost entirely, confined to the political arena as it exists within our present culture. Perspectives which transcend the culture altogether, and propose sweeping, foundational changes to the culture, tend to be summarily dismissed as irrelevant and unconnected with "the real world". In fact, the opposite is true. While we try to keep our careers and personal lives afloat, and lend our support to political movements (or simply empty promises) which involve making various adjustments to the current system, we lose sight of the bigger picture. The fact is that our system is not "broken" -- rather, it is flawed by design. There's nothing we can do to reestablish equilibrium in the economy, because it never existed to begin with. It is not a question of rooting out threats to our economy; our economy IS the problem.

The following films are not merely informative. They are game-changing, world-changing films. Your understanding of human nature, and how environmental conditioning affects the "free will" of individuals, will be utterly transformed and updated. Your belief in what is possible will likewise be radically revised. In light of what you know now (or imagine you know), it must be impossible to suppose that our civilization now has everything needed (in terms of technological advancement) to establish a world in which the material abundance you enjoy may be maintained at approximately 3% of the labor now exerted. Also, that this may be done is such a way as to eliminate, not only labor, but also famine, war, poverty, waste, and environmental collapse. In light of what you know now (or imagine you know), such a concept must seem like an absurd utopian dream, which may at best be attained in some thousand years or so. Well, that's because you haven't seen these films. Instead, you've been listening to the people who are trying to preserve our outmoded system, and the traditional values you've assumed are those which aim to support this system. It's time to open your mind to the possibility of a very different way of seeing the world. All that is necessary is the flexibility to allow your most rigid and deeply ingrained beliefs to be challenged, not by another opinion, but by science.

It is science which will ultimately convince you (if you will only take the time and make the slightest effort to listen objectively) that within a monetary system, which relies on the profit motive, true advances in civilization are not only inhibited, but are actively resisted because they reduce profits. Presently, the well-being of a nation, and its progress, is measured by a country's GDP (Gross Domestic Product), or how much money is being made -- particularly by the richest 1% of the population. But once you understand that money is made by manufacturing needs and desires, and not by satisfying them, you will see how backwards this model is. The healthcare industry makes money, not by curing disease, but by treating it; hence, the more sick people there are, the higher the profits. And this principle may be seen to exist at every level of our economy; not merely in the healthcare industry. In other words, this is not an aberration in the system -- THIS IS THE SYSTEM. And the sickness, suffering, poverty, servitude, oppression, war, and death engendered by this system, and required to maintain this system (which is ultimately doomed to devour itself anyway, because it depends upon an infinite supply of resources; and no such supply exists) are not merely the "facts of life" -- they are not necessary evils with which we must contend. Rather, they are the inevitable by-products of the present system. Moreover, they make the Holocaust look like a wet dream, and Hitler look like a hot date.

You are hereby cordially invited to discover the real real world:

Zeitgeist 2: Addendum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EewGMBOB4Gg

Zeitgeist 3: Moving Forward
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

Future By Design
(Jacque Fresco, modern-day Leonardo Da Vinci)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxe7tlr-2I4

The Venus Project
http://www.thevenusproject.com/


Thank you,

Valus

The Busy Philosopher

What is left for a philosopher to do, when a society is preparing for war?

When Philip threatened to lay siege to the city of Corinth and all its inhabitants hastily bestirred themselves in defense, some polishing weapons, some gathering stones, some repairing the walls, Diogenes seeing all this hurriedly folded his mantle about him and began to roll his tub zealously back and forth through the streets.

When he was asked why he did this he replied that he wished to be busy like all the rest, and rolled his tub lest he should be the only idler among so many industrious citizens.


-- Kierkegaard


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Having conquered the world, Alexander The Great, an admirer of Diogenes The Cynic,
asks the latter to name a gift with which the emperor might honor the philosopher.

Diogenes replies, "Get out of my sun."