Oeaohoo

That's because what it means to be an intellectual has become ever more degraded. The Ancient Greek word Nous, the Sanskrit word Buddhi, the Arabic word al-'āqīl are all words that refer to the intellect but they refer just as much to the faculty for spiritual discernment as that for profane knowledge. These were all associated with the Eye of the Heart or "Third Eye" which was beyond both the heart and the mind. Even in the medieval era, the intellect was understood primarily as an intuitive faculty. It is generally necessary to pass through the mind, take it to its absurd and self-annihilating conclusion and finally realise its futility, a 'self-overcoming of the intellect' as Nietzsche referred to it. For example, while you are right that OSHO read very widely, he was very critical of intellectuals. He liked to call philosophy "fool-osophy" and constantly contradicted himself so as throw off people who listened only with the mind. Here is a typical passage from him: The body, heart and intellect are part of a unity which transcends all of them but that doesn't mean they aren't different on a relative level. Can you stub your intellect on the door-frame?

There are certainly cases in which unusual forms of sexuality could represent a "love with no boundaries" but in many cases it is just the opposite: the narcissistic retreat to the same instead of the other. The sexual union between a man and a woman is a much better symbol of a love with no boundaries because in this case what occurs is a true coincidentia oppositorum and even a hieros gamos ("holy marriage")! P.S Go Hilma af Klint!

Wouldn't your models and fictions become increasingly less useful the more you zoom out? After all, the process of zooming out is essentially one of becoming further and further removed from the immediate situation, which is the only place in which any utility could be applied (unless we mean a sort of spiritual utility). Maybe this is what you mean by the "stage green" postmodern critique keeping "stage yellow" metamodernism within the pragmatic frame? From what you have said, however - and this is certainly how it seems to me - postmodernism is only deconstructive whilst metamodernism reintegrates "construction". This seems to imply that the latter is more pragmatic: after all, "man cannot live by deconstruction alone"! Your prior comment makes more sense now: Why isn't zooming out through levels of analysis a way towards true objectivity? On a practical level you can never zoom out far enough, and so like you said you will always be somewhat bound by "context&construct", but to me it seems that true objectivity could be formulated as something like: the Limit from X to Infinite of Zooming Out.

Because... You Are A HOMOPHOBIC BIGOT. Just kidding. It could be any of the things you mentioned, maybe all of them. I would add however, though some unfortunately might not like to hear it, that there are metaphysical reasons why male homosexuality particularly has traditionally been frowned upon. We have to remember that sexuality is not just a physical phenomenon. Generally speaking, a man's nature is Logos (truth, insight, discrimination) whereas a woman's nature is Eros (love, relationship, interconnectedness). Because woman's nature is essentially erotic (in a much broader sense than merely sexual, as I have just described), female homosexuality is not necessarily a violation of woman's nature. Man's nature, however, is not erotic but logocentric (incidentally, this is why feminism and postmodernism are happy bedfellows). Male homosexuality generally involves one or both men violating their real nature by taking on traits proper only to the opposite sex. This can happen in female homosexuality, too, when one woman "plays the man" and dominates the other. That being said, there are exceptions to every rule and, anyway, when we talk about sex (mostly a biological category, as opposed to gender which is more cultural) we are talking about the extreme ends of the spectrum: it is very possible that homosexual people are those of either sex who are closest to the middle point between the two extremes, or even people whose sex and gender are at odds with one another.

Reflecting on it, I would put you at stage orange. Yes, “not JUST to integrate them into society”. Of course myths function at multiple levels, my point is that people like Campbell and Neumann ignored the highest levels of the meaning of myth because they were unable to understand them. I am not saying that psychoanalysis has no value, but Jung openly confessed to be ignorant of metaphysics and he was by far the most profound of the psychoanalysts It has nothing to do with “primitive peoples”, this is another problem with psychoanalysis. The most materially and technologically advanced civilisations of the ancient world all had an intricate mythology which was woven into everything they did. So-called “primitives” are mainly valuable as a surviving example of the same type of thinking, but we should not rely too heavily on them because they are much more distantly separated from the origins which they themselves claim to be so important (almost every “primitive” mythology includes an original being who established the laws and customs of the tribe). What is the difference between a god and the beings you describe? Maybe this is just a problem of language. Yes, drone strikes and carpet bombings commanded and even executed by people with no skin in the game are far superior to medieval knights inspired by St. Bernard’s mystical prose to use material warfare as the ultimate test of their spiritual virility. How silly of me! Yes, this is what you did last time we spoke. You just say everything I said is silly because you say so. Must be your “stage red” warlord coming out! The only thing to do is fight fire with fire and I can’t be bothered to do that. I don’t know what to say to this, particularly when it is a direct reply to a criticism of postmodernism as the total denial of truth. Here is a nice passage from the Rig Veda describing how even the gods did not exist in the beginning and thus are in fact unreal (in the deepest sense of that term):

@Carl-Richard Interesting response. Some questions: By metamodernity do you mean that which has/will come after postmodernity? Where do you think that zooming out through levels of analysis gets you? Is there a way towards true objectivity? Is there no way out of contexts and constructs?

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. It's not so much exaggeration and projection. The alchemists often talk about how the Great Work will bestow bodily immortality but if you read between the lines it is clear they really mean a spiritual liberation from death. As far as godly powers, these sound just like the Siddhis that many different paths can awaken. Where are you talking about? I would say that in the West for at least the last century the Left-Hand Path has been dominant, particularly in spiritual circles. For example, in the striking year 1888 three foundational events of the New Age movement took place: Helena Blavatsky (a woman, like many other theosophists and new-age spiritualists) published her book The Secret Doctrine, which heavily emphasised an epistemology of direct experience and "channelling" as opposed to stifling scripture; the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was established, which held very "progressive" views about gender and facilitated the rise of famous adepts of the Left-Hand like Aleister Crowley; and Nietzsche published his final books The Twilight of the Idols and The Antichrist (in a Christian context, how much more "left-handed" can you get?). In a way, what I have just described is like the Victorian sexophobia that you go on to describe collapsing in on itself and giving birth to a peculiarly one-sided and thus profane fascination with sex that is very noticeable today. Yes, but there are many reports from very varied sources of levitation, walking on water and other such things really taking place. After all, the Awakened One has conquered the dream of life, it is only natural that they will have a certain power over it!

Maybe you just left a sour taste in their mouth!

Did you want a feel good answer? I can say it all again while clapping and occasionally shrieking “Hallelujah, praise be to the Lord!” if you would prefer! Yes that sounds like an accurate enough summary. BlueOak seems to believe in the possibility of progressives instigating change but sees it as largely inhibited by people deferring their authority and agency to figureheads, recent developments in media manipulation and things like that. For my part, I would add finally that if progressivists really want to change the system they should stop whoring themselves out to it. For example, during the last BLM protest the following marginalised groups came out in full support of them: the Queen of England, the President of Canada (in a recent speech Trudeau called people waving the Canadian flag “racist” while giving a nod of approval to the BLM riots), Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Disney, and all of the other multinationals. Talk about the downtrodden and “speaking truth to power”! Must be difficult having such little recognition and support from the system… It’s hard to “change the system” when it is bankrolling you: that’s why BLM has recently become “Buying Large Mansions”… The trouble is that the real power today is not in the hands of politicians but in the hands of financial interests. Most news media is being bankrolled by one financial interest or another. Protest is generally an appeal to the political class to change things, but for the most part change is no longer in the hands of the political class! One often notices in recent protests that they don’t even know what they are protesting for, what change they really want, why they are even there. To me, all of these protest movements are little more than the final hysterical paroxysms of a dying body.

Yes, it emphasises the masculine aspect of God: God as unity, Logos, truth, the One. Other paths, which were also popular in the Ancient Greek world, emphasise the feminine aspect of God: God as infinity, Eros, love, the All. Only as the self-termination of the false constructs that had been established at the onset of modern “philosophy”. A real concept is not just an arbitrary social construct, it is a potent symbol with abundant layers of significance. I’d like to see Derrida deconstruct the Sri Yantra!

What “stage” do you reckon yourself? You don’t seem very understanding of alternative perspectives so I would say “stage blue” at best… Don’t facepalm so much or you might give yourself brain damage; if you haven’t got it already, that is! I never said the gods were real: the only real thing is God, the rest is just a dream. I only spoke of the “metaphysical nature of world mythology”, by which I mean that mythology was a means for people to understand existence metaphysically, not just to “integrate themselves into society” or “individuate their egos” as Jung and company would have it, to say nothing of it all as a projection of “libido” and “Eros/Thanatos”. Doesn’t mean there can’t be gods within the dream though. You’re willing to accept that there are other beings, but none of the Gods of the past could possibly have been one of them? Seems like a very biased perspective. Very similar to the argument St. Augustine made against paganism in The City of God; maybe it’s your blue side showing again! Do I really need to to do this? It seems so obvious. Fascism, communism, liberal democracy, and all their multifarious permutations, when it isn’t just a matter of brute power and finance. They are more incorrect because they lack a metaphysical component, except occasionally as a peculiar inverted parody of true metaphysics (like the Marxist historiography of “progress” or the Fascist exaltation of the State as a sort of god). I was simply pointing out that the distinction between actual fact and metaphor was not nearly as tightly defined in the past. For example, Roman history showed very little regard for what “actually happened” except as a means to interpret and motivate action in the present. Your mentioning of postmodernism highlights the confusion that I see as being rampant in these spaces. There is a similarity between the traditional (I don’t mean this in the merely conformist sense) view of the world and postmodernism but only because the latter is a radical negation of the former. God contains all distinctions and thus all distinctions dissolve in God; postmodernism denies all distinctions and thus are there no distinctions in postmodernism. They look similar but they are absolutely antithetical, in the same way that early morning is close to late evening on a clock face!

Campbell was quite a mediocre thinker but I don't find him to be pompous, he is actually quite down to earth and fatherly. If it was simply the style of writing you didn't like, many of his other books are transcripts of various talks that he gave and are thus less dense and easier to follow. As far as it being hard to decipher, most authors of the past spoke in a more complex language because they were speaking to a better educated audience. You could also try reading a book with a very similar theme and published in the same year called The Origins and History of Consciousness by Erich Neumann. Both suffer from the same problems, however. Like Jung and the other psychoanalysts they contaminate the metaphysical nature of world mythology with the "collective unconscious" and the inverted pantheon of "archetypes", pulling everything down to the human and even subhuman levels. Still, they could be useful in helping someone escape from the denatured and desecrated postmodern worldview. Millions of people today are killed over the most absurd -isms and schisms! I would much rather be sacrificed to Odin than to the false idols of modern ideology. Death and sacrifice must be integrated because they are intrinsic to existence. The real question is: how successfully does a society integrate them? Also, the distinction between metaphor and “actual fact” is a modern one. The idea of an "actual fact" implies the setting up of a supposedly neutral vantage point from which to inspect existence in a purely empirical and detached manner, which only emerged with the methods of modern "science". The people who said Vincit omnia Veritas certainly understood all of this!

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter, from whence derives the famous idea of the "strange loop". You might also like David Foster Wallace's book Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, tracing the work of mathematicians like Georg Cantor. It is claimed that Plato only ever gave one public lecture titled 'On The Good'. He spent the whole time talking about mathematics, leaving most of the attendees puzzled. Unfortunately, this lecture has not been passed down, but Pythagoras also used mathematics as the ideal vehicle for expressing metaphysics and philosophy. His surviving works have been compiled in the book Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie. You could also investigate practices such as Gematria and the use of numerology in the Kabbalah. Mathematics today has almost entirely lost its essential nature and is largely the whore of the physical sciences and man's lust for technological power. At best, it is the more or less idle luxury of an elite class of ivory-tower academics who no nothing of true spirituality. On this note, the best book that I can recommend to you is The Metaphysical Principles of the Infinitesimal Calculus by René Guénon.

@BlueOak Ah right, I see what you mean. I must confess that I am only interested in politics from a very idealist perspective, like Plato said in the Republic when people were criticising his vision as Utopian: I agree with you that ability and awareness might not be simultaneously present in a person. Looking through history, I think you can see that there has been a shift from the reign of awareness to the reign of ability. The leaders today have no awareness but they have tremendous ability. Fair point. Remember, though, I was not denying that social change can be initiated by "the people". I just think that for that change to have an impact on anything greater it must find a way to have itself established at the top. I know you won't like this so best to leave it! Yes, absolutely. That people have missed all the subtle reasons is bad though! Status over others doesn't have to be a negative thing. Parents have status over their children but if they are good parents the child will benefit from that relationship, probably much more than the parents will! One of the reasons I like to insist that power is a top-down phenomenon is that there is such an irrational hatred of this idea today. It's like people think the only options in this world are people sitting on the grass smoking weed in an egalitarian hippy-fest or Nazi Germany! A real hierarchy benefits everybody, not just the people at the top, and ideally, especially not the people at the top! The priestly caste was generally above the regal or warrior caste in ancient society but the priests generally led a much more austere and restrained life. All of your suggestions for how to break out of the present mass manipulation are good but I can't say I see any of them as being effective. Not that I have anything better. I go along with Zarathustra in that regard: "that which you cannot teach to fly, teach to fall faster!" I actually agree with this in various different senses. There are many obvious cases today where the ideal of the figurehead is totally inverted (any sort of one-man state, the extreme case being somewhere like North Korea). We shouldn't judge a thing based only on its crude and debased manifestations, however. People follow a great leader because through them they are able to follow themselves. Nietzsche saw that very clearly. Zarathustra speaks, Perhaps this is why he subtitled his book, "Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for Everyone and Noone"! Of course, all of the great spiritual leaders of history spoke in similar terms. I find it very significant that a modern philosopher could only express it within a fantasy; a "sign of the times", as the Christians would say... If you have fully realised the teaching of non-duality, who are you talking to right now? Of course I am not saying that I have, and my insistence on a relative dualism is a way to remind me of that!

Yes I agree. Just look at how willingly people follow whatever the latest political trend is: “I support the current thing“! This raises another question though: people are already being led. How do you (or any leader) make them want to follow you? I think that non-duality is often mis- and over-applied. Of course you are right that internal conflicts can manifest themselves externally, but my experience is that there is a relative duality between the body and the soul, material and spiritual, physical and metaphysical. I am aware that all distinctions vanish in God, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t distinctions from our current human perspective. I’m not sure where this came from. I never said anything about ability or awareness. The people who rule aren’t necessarily those with either of those qualities, it will depend on the regime. Yes, the village elders or the council were at the top of the pyramid! You would struggle to find a civilisation in history that has not had a hierarchical structure with few (nobility) at the top and many at the bottom. Of course, since the Renaissance and the collapse of the feudal world into mercantilism, this hierarchy is today largely determined by money. In the medieval world it was determined by heroism, courage and valour on the one hand (feudalism), and faithfulness, devotion and holiness on the other. Yes, I accept there doesn’t always have to be a leader! I agree with all of this except that I don’t think the people often initiate change all by themselves, particularly as you approach the modern day. Almost all of the successful revolutions of recent times have had top-down backing, whether internal or external. Your last point is very true: do you think there’s anything that can be done about this? Sorry, I only care about the big picture. Maybe that’s why I see everything as top-down! Yes, nowadays this is probably the best we can manage. Even in Aristotle’s day the age of great monarchs was over. It certainly is today!

@BlueOak If you’re interested, here is an extremely illuminating passage in which Aristotle describes how a tyrannical regime can survive without popular support: Written two-and-a-half thousand years ago, but there are many striking resemblances to our own time!

I was talking about the ones that were or will be successful. I know you didn’t, that’s the point! I didn’t say every revolution had a leader, but for a revolution to be successful it must almost always have organised support from above. Like I said, in very rare cases the mass can organise itself (though it is more likely to be an “organised disorder” which is in itself only destructive), but for this to have any lasting effect a new elite will then have to be established. Yes, and you are doing that work with your soul and your spirit! The body is just a vehicle. I like the word for the body in the phrase “chit-jada-granthi” (the knot between consciousness and the body): jada, it means “one who is dull, inert”. In this analogy, the rulers are the consciousness and the people are the inert and inanimate mass who need to be given direction. They will generally only kick up a fuss for banal material reasons. This is generally true, though some regimes can survive for a time without popular support. It is besides the point though: it is difficult for the soul to violate the needs and wants of the body but the soul still commands it. “This just in”! I agree with you here and I have already said this. You cannot just rouse the rabble today to overturn the global world order. Like you have pointed out, feudal lords and barons had to keep on relatively good terms with their serfs because they could prove a real threat. But! What will happen if they manage to overthrow the old baron? A new baron will be nominated who will hopefully treat them better! The people are only useful for the destructive part of change; the constructive part is always top-down. However, even revolutions like the French Revolution had support from elite groups like the Philosophes. They were not just “grass-roots revolutions”. Yes, absolutely. The worst tyrants of ancient times couldn’t have dreamed of such manipulative power as is readily available today.

Absolutely. This is only half of the problem though: what if the majority of people don’t want to be lead, but would rather serve themselves? Maybe history is just a cherry blossom! This is not exactly the point. Let me be clearer: Of course there have been revolutions but the idea that they are just mass movements is absurd. There is almost always guidance from a rival set of elites or a leader of some sort. In the extreme case in which there isn’t (like the Revolution in Haiti), a new elite will immediately be created to establish the order of the new regime. The “common people” are able to change the trajectory of the regime but only because their demonstrations can influence the motives and actions of the powerful. In certain extreme cases, a leader (generally a corrupt and exploitative demagogue playing them for his own ends) will use the people to clear out the old regime so that they can take all the power for themselves. Effective change is always top-down. To think otherwise is like thinking that the body could effectively change the soul or even the spirit.

Since no one picked up on this I’ll share my thoughts. In context, earlier in this book Nietzsche has called into question the very possibility of simply caring about the truth for the truth’s sake. Nietzsche is thus forced to consider the “objective man” because he could be used as an example of this pure pursuit of truth (when in fact he is exactly the opposite). There is a funny way in which modern science represents a sort of inverted ascesis. Plato and Pythagoras, for example, showed how mathematics could be used as a discipline to overcome attachment to the animal body and the ego. Today, however, it is not an ascesis towards transcendence but towards nothingness, mere abstraction and “depersonalisation”. You do also notice how often miserable people say they are just “facing the cold hard facts” of reality. Yes, he is a passive creature fit only to serve those with real vision. Of course, society needs such people, but today we have a mass infestation of them (and they have eaten their way up the walls!) Here and for most of the rest of the passage you have quoted, Nietzsche just seems to be poking fun at the aridity and mediocrity of modern academic types. I agree with him but so what? They are just doing what they can. I doubt Leo would want to waste his time wading through this rather contrived and occasionally petty passage. I’m not sure what this has to do with the conflict between awakening and being a philosopher. After all, philosophy is the “love of wisdom” and God is ultimate wisdom. There is only a conflict because modern philosophy is rootless and profane. The duality that has been set up today between the “objectivity” fit for cosmopolitan insects that Nietzsche describes above and the new cult of subjective identity (and individual self-expression) is a completely false one which you will of course have to transcend if you want to awaken.

I don’t believe in progress. America is the Frankenstein’s monster (and a true “modern Prometheus” at that!) of decadent Europe. It will die and so will Europe - my crystal ball says so! But yes, if there was any hope it would be something like this, without the emphasis on the common folk. This whole myth of the common people rising up and sticking truth to power is just romantic make-believe. Serious organised action by serious people with a vision and a plan of action is the only thing that can have any lasting effect. Anything less is just chimps flinging shit at the wall. Naturally, I’m not talking about anything like a Trump-style insurrection: that is just replacing one form of corruption with an even worse one. When I spoke of the regime being rotten I was talking about the French ancien regime. Like I said, the present situation is different, society was much smaller then. I was just pointing out that protests haven’t always been effective.

Society has always been a pyramid. The present system is a globalised pyramid with largely unaccountable multi-national corporations at the top of it. You can’t exactly rouse all the peasants to charge at that with pitchforks, can you? Even if you could, what would be the point? They don’t have to give up but like you said yourself their protests will have little to no effect. They might even have a negative one. Like Aristotle showed above, the only way to preserve the present kind of situation is by dividing the population among themselves, and protest movements are actually very useful for this purpose. Besides, most protests today lack any higher animating principle. It is pointless to fight hyperreality with more hyperreality: you have to fight it with reality. If you want to fight it at all, that is.

I don’t have a crystal ball I’m afraid. I must confess that to me the US (along with my country, the UK) seem irremediably doomed. The last American election was between the multi-year candidate for stupidest man on Earth and a senile old fart with signs of early-stage Alzheimer’s… Not that our country is any better. If it will be ready for change it will be when the people who control it decide that it is, or when a new group of people take control, or when something external forces them to change their trajectory. You can protest all you like but if you don’t have top-down backing it is all just a lot of hot air, particularly nowadays. The current ruling class seem more or less happy to continue along the current trajectory whilst doing everything they can to prevent the onslaught of a populist uprising. After all, Aristotle saw very clearly that democracy is basically just a slow path to the establishment of a demagogic tyranny, which is essentially what such a populist uprising will produce. Here is a relevant passage: Isn’t that more or less the present predicament? The “last and worst form of democracy” desperately hanging on to control? Not that I think the alternative is any better. Like I said, it is doomed.

You have completely missed the point of Pythagoras’ teaching. When he says that God is a number he does not mean a number in the same sense that we moderns do. Mathematics itself has changed over the centuries. The ancient Greeks didn’t even have a zero! Pythagoras teaches that there is an original Monad which contains All. It is the One and it is also God. This Monad then splits into a Dyad. This is Two or duality. This then splits further and so is God made manifest. The Tetractys was used as a symbol by the Pythagoreans for the full manifestation of God as the world. It has Ten numbers like the Tree of Life of the Kabbalah has ten Sephiroth. Mathematics in those days was not just a profane science. It was a path back to the One, God. Hahaha. A lot of philosophers tend to be completely out of whack, except the ones who deny that there is even any “wisdom” to “love”! Postmodernism is just nihilism. It looks like the Truth but that is only because it is a total inversion of it.

That’s all I really meant by transcribe. Whatever works for you. Haha, 0:48 of the the song you sent is very over the top. It reminds me of the other option, which would be to record something slowly and then speed it up. I used to do this sometimes with guitar things, it can sound quite interesting!

I don’t see why you would have to go through infinite hell but you will have to go through the hell of self-annihilation and of burning up your remaining karma. You can console yourself that you are in good company, as the journey into hell is a common theme in many initiatory texts and rites: Dante’s descent into Inferno followed by the ascension through purgatory to Paradise, Christ’s descent into hell followed by his resurrection, Muhammad’s nocturnal journey to the infernal regions (isrâ) followed by the ascension to the paradises or celestial spheres (mirâj), Ulysses’ journey to the Cimmerians, Orpheus’ descent into the underworld, and so on. Infinite madness (in the sense of chaos and formlessness, and thus infinite potential to be formed) is just the feminine, passive and substantial aspect of the fundamental polarity of existence. It only seems like madness from our limited frame of reference. You will have to go through it but of course there is also infinite sanity and order. Like Zarathustra said: “Where then is the lightning to like you with its tongue? Where then is the madness with which you must be cleansed? Behold, I teach to you the Overman: it is this lightning, it is this madness!”