Alex: 1) The recommendation to experience the self at the deepest ontological level, in my view, could I suppose have a *function* (if I can put it like this) as some part of a larger and encompassing spiritual life. But as I mentioned to you in another place *the transports of the mystics* require, if you will, a control, and that control as I understand it today is theology. The sense here is that mystical experience, though attractive, encompassing, perhaps even fulfilling and meaningful in some or many ways, has to be measured in some way, and that requires a *measurer*. And that brings the issue back to the realm of reasoned consideration, a project that I associate not merely with *reason* (as it is used on this forum) but with intellectus, another level of mind and experience.
The rational mind is ever in search of measurement, and yet, the only kind it can find that is absolutely true are mathematical facts. 2 + 2 = 4 is always true, but 2 + 2 = 4 does not satisfy the feeling sense of man, and the feeling sense of man cannot be measured. Herein lies, to use one of your religious terms, its saving grace.
2) As I have mentioned in other places, it is my view that we need to critically examine your very basic recommendation before it is accepted as having validity.
You cannot critically validate the experience of silence/oneness, you can only experience it with your entire body or being. If one is to define the type of knowledge given in the experience, it is intuitive, not rational.
You want a rational explanation for something that is not rational.
I am also of the opinion that there is something in what you say and recommend that unites you with our forum founders and also with some general trends that came out into popular culture at some point, notably in the Sixties. I do not think I would have to prove that this is so. The psychedelic experience, the abandonment of *our own traditions* and an obsessed flocking over to the traditions and the traditionalism of other cultures, the establishment of universalist ideals based out of such ‘experiences’ as you speak about, and all of this in a mood of personal and cultural crisis and *loss of self*, have led to the conditions to which I attach the term ‘nihilism’. Therefor, it seems to me that, yes, I suppose there could be a positive engagement by someone, in some context, where the ontology of the self is explored, felt, ‘experienced’ as you say. But it could just as easily, and quickly, become a technique of avoiding not only the self but the self’s responsibilities. To define ‘the self’s responsibilities’ is to define theology in my view. And the term ‘theology’ means an interpretation through experience that leads to specific courses of action on life’s planes of activity. These things become defined through man’s work. It is in this sense that I use the term ‘tradition’.
Every example you gave above is an example of fear of the silence of thought and of filling it with 'something', be it drugs or religious flights of fancy. And although theology is not drug induced nor does it produce religious flights of fancy, it too denies the validity of Silence as the Experience of Being.
I am particularly concerned when our willed activities become over-empowered and over-emphasized,
We share common ground here.
and when our *desperation* in our particular circumstances cause us to choose what seem in a moment like viable and positive alternatives as a sort of *cure* to our dis-foundationed circumstances.
Your rational mind is not going to like what I am going to say here, but the experience of silence/oneness provides a critical piece of intuitive wisdom: we do not choose anything, as a matter of fact, it is our belief that we DO choose that causes our grief and sense of desperation. The mind that is caught up in the delusion of choice can never know if its choice is right, perfect, true, this is its hell. And for the religious-minded, not choosing the right, perfect and true thing potentially leads to fretting about eternal banishment to the experience of hellfire. It is traditional psychology and religion that promote the delusion of free will, free will is not how reality works.
This is how I interpret the project of DD&K if looked at from a number of paces back and from a position, shall we say, above. The self encounters itself in crisis surrounded by people and conditions spinning out of control and in this condition experiences *desperation*. It must attain something, some buffer, some surety, some confidence, and must do this as quickly as possible to alleviate the self’s dangerous condition. I place this in a category of *psychological crisis*. Unpopular though my perspective is, I see 95% of the discourse on this forum as arising within desperate individuals caught in webs of desperation. Therefor, confronting this, I have come to certain of my own realizations about this *general condition* shared by so many of us.
This crisis is very real, but it is not a crisis of making the right choice or of finding the perfect rational or emotional matrix upon which to form the self, this type of activity only promotes a deepening of the delusion of free will, thereby deepening the experience of human suffering.
3) To speak of European Traditions is to use a general word that is not satisfactory, yet I must use some term. I have the impression that when I use this term I am not at all understood. The reason, it seems to me (as I have said) is because of general ignorance. That is, the social and cultural conditions we have faced, the forces that have come to bear against us, have *knocked us off our foundation* and we suffer in that post-condition. One side-effect of that post-condition is schizm-of-self which is also schizm-from-context.
Although the experience of silence/oneness cannot be defined in the sense of the definition = the experience, there is never a void of context. My writing here is evidence of that. While one is 'in or of silence', context is absent, however, because man cannot live without context, context can be provided. There are countless concepts that can be used to allude to the experience of oneness, a few being 'unity', 'connectivity', 'allness', 'wholeness', 'infinite', 'eternal', etc. but to one who has not experienced the silence/oneness, it will indeed seem to this person that they are, to use your phrase below "psycho babble." Context is not an issue for the one who realizes that context is NOT the experience.
For example, I would say that what I take away from you and your discourse is not unity-of-self nor unity-of-self-within-cultural-and-social contexts, but someone who has become confortable living in and speaking from a very limited sliver of experience and ‘defined responsibility’. This is not to make a statement against you in a personal sense. As I said your entire program has to be seen in terms of a general paideia. And if you and other readers here do not understand what is meant by paideia it is because . . . you have been knocked off of your proper foundations. You cannot even define foundation for self and when you do it is in enormous abstractions that seem to have almost a neurotic origin.
Au contraire! Being of the silence/oneness opens one up to being responsible to every moment that oneness is not being reflected in speech or behaviour. I assume you realize that most of the word operates from the ego of division, promoting hate, lust and fear? Believe me, there is no shortage of work of the Oneness Realized!
What happens when a self loses its connections with itself and, as I say, its ‘traditions’, is that the structure-of-self begins to dissolve. This I refer to as *acid* and these acids are all around us dissolving great things that have been achieved through tremendous work within this plane of manifestation. But you — you especially — often refer to these things as ‘secondary’ and by placing them in rungs below your *cherished experience*, your *cherished discourse*, you obviously indicate that you do not understand them.
Acid cannot burn away silence or oneness realization - the only substantial foundation man has.
And you are not alone. To be truthful, examining the discourse of many who write and have written, here and seen certainly from a certain angle, one sees the sputterings of intelligent imbeciles. Thousands of man-hours devoted to inanities! This is, I suggest, what the forces acting against the self cause to occur within individual who have lost their essential foundations. It is an endless spinning of the wheels, an endless treading of water, that arrives at nothing at all!
When trying to express the experience of silence/oneness to someone who is 'stuck' in rational consciousness, most certainly it sounds like the spinning of wheels and and endless treading of water. Because it is not THE EXPERIENCE. I cannot express enough how critical is the necessity to experience the fullness and depth of Silence before they can honestly 'be against it.' Tel me - what can the rational mind offer us that is not endless spinning and treading of water?
The purpose of the Self in this plane of manifestation is to quickly gain a footing within substantial solidities and to act with them and through higher consciousness. If the self has lost its footing it finds itself in a dangerous place and struggles — without guidance shall I say — it leads to greater difficulty and greater danger. Many things rush in to fill the void, to quell the sense of desperation and confusion.
'Higher consciousness?' Talk about an abstract concept!
What you have written in the above paragraph, I am sad to say, amounts to psycho-babble. I do not discount your personal experience in your own realm. But you are not understanding — not at all understanding — the dangerous situation in which we-personally and we-collectively find ourselves. I refer to European Regeneration and to the responsibility-of-self to regain a footing and to act from this footing. To describe what this means is not simple. To communicate with those *blinded* as Gloucester was blinded when he saw is not easy. As I have quoted before and more than once ‘obstinacy makes one deaf for all that one has ears’.
Oh but I do understand and I do care deeply. And every sentiment you have expressed to me above, I express to you. As you believe me to be blind, I believe you to be blind. I believe you to be the desperate one, not I. Hmmm...:-)
To understand *obstinacy* as I use the word means to understand the ungrounded self yet puffed up with tremendous forward-driving willfulness. The best emblem I can produce here, in my critical discourse, is just to present David or Dan and to a certain extent Kevin as examples. And my own *critical project* is founded, if you will, in having taken a critical position against *them*. But this has little to do with individual persons and far more to do with larger, encompassing social and cultural phenomena.
Alex, please be honest here. If I am puffed up with will, so are you.
The self is not ungrounded in Silence/Oneness, Silence/Oneness IS the ground of self. There I go again, willfully pushing my obstinacy! So be it, just doing 'the work'.
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I present some excerpts from talks by Jonathan Bowden that speak directly to concerns that developed in my own process as a result of my encounter with our Beloved Forum Founders. Not the only influence but I have been associated with this forum now for many years as many of us have.
(The imagery is cheesy at points but represents a noble effort to to use a communications medium to relay important ideas).
What amazes me, to no end really, is how especially D&D rendered themselves totally irrelevant! And dropped the ball that they attempted to carry! I assume Dan drowns himself in beer-suds and David, even now, is teeing off!
What this means to me is that they became possessed by *desperate will* but unguided will. They burned brightly and then ... flared out.
But I suggest that what they began had real and important meaning. It must be recovered and must be continued.
So let's continue what they began with or without the forum founders. You believe you have the way to save the lost self, I believe I have the way...swords up, hearts open, context-at-ready...