Oeaohoo

Endless unfathomable states of consciousness sounds very much like the "ten thousand things" that Taoism warned students of getting lost in. Most would say that enlightenment is not a state of consciousness but consciousness itself, but you must already have heard that. Doesn't a state of consciousness imply a duality between consciousness and that state?

This sounds very similar to my own experience. What you are describing sounds like the process of surrendering to God; if your path ends up being like mine, you will probably find that Kundalini comes more active once this process is complete. This is why, for example, the alchemical process ends in red rather than white: once you have achieved the integration with God - the “coniunctio” and the white stone, as it was known - the final phase is known as the “Red Work”, in which this impassible divine presence is brought down through the lower centres of the spiritual body so as to neutralise any remaining karmic attachments.

Sorry if I was a little rude, I was underslept yesterday. I sort-of agree with you that most people just want to explore happiness on their own terms (with the exception that, for most people today, “their own terms” aren’t really their own terms but have been determined by the new forms of magic, advertising and mass media). This is part of the point here. The postmodern world forces very advanced truths on people who aren’t ready for them. The fact that nothing is really true and that all truth other than God is relative was always known, but it was obvious to the wise of the past that for most people this knowledge is very dangerous. The trouble is that nowadays everybody more or less knows that nothing is true and everything is permitted but they haven’t been through the process of inner purification that was provided by the context of initiation and asceticism, so their freedom in almost all cases is just licentiousness. There are a panoply of examples of this not being the case: tell that to the Tibetan monks who had their society destroyed by communist China, or all the monasteries and abbeys that were destroyed in my country by Protestant proto-progressives, or all of the Muslims who have been killed because they refuse to comply with “modern values”. This is the paradox of liberalism: the only way it can maintain safety and order is by destroying or consuming everything other than itself. Then it goes around talking about how “tolerant”, “inclusive” and “democratic” it is. What a joke! (Obviously, in criticising democracy and liberalism I’m not suggesting anybody join some anti-liberal anti-democratic movement. All of the ideologies and political programs - fascism and communism particularly - that claim to be against democracy really just exist in a dialectical relationship with it. They share more or less the same underlying values.) It doesn’t matter what I want or whether I get it. I am talking about what is true. Don’t you believe it is possible for people to transcend their limited human perspective and care about what is actually true? Isn’t that what “stage yellow” and “second tier” thinking is all about?

Just more progressive myths. "You can choose any kind of life you want, so long as it's compatible with the invasive and contaminating ideology of neoliberal Globohomo mass democracy! WOO HOO!"

Most of the modern approach to education comes from the Industrial Revolution. Most modern schools and universities were created during the Industrial period. Children were being thrown into factories, so it became necessary to create institutions to keep children and young adults out of them until they were older. This was motivated partly by a feeling that it was immoral to force children to work in factories, but also just because they could work for very cheap and so undercut adult labour. These institutions were called schools and universities. Their real purpose is not education but to delay the child in growing up. They are literally just the application of industrial principles - raw material in, product out - to human education. This is how it "turned out to be quite dehumanizing and how education made children into cogs in machines." Of course, exciting notions of an "education for everybody" and the utilitarian notion of the "greatest good for the greatest number" came into play here too. If you are going to educate everybody indiscriminately, the whole process will inevitably have to be reduced to the lowest common denominator in which the individual student is no longer important. In the past, education was more finely tuned to the needs and talents of the student. Most people just learnt trades, because that was all they needed for a fulfilling and happy life.

Imagine you're drinking from a plastic water bottle today. Once you finish drinking from it, it is sent off to float around in some ocean for millions of years. How is that any better? Zen monks used to build sand mandalas then immediately destroy them to remind themselves of the impermanence of all things down here; modern people surround themselves with long-lasting things which give them a false illusion of permanence, a false illusion which dulls their desire for the only real permanence which is transcendence. In the rest, you are just appealing to the historical aspect of the modern myth: a "history" in which all that has ever happened is slavery, oppression of women, the Holocaust and civil rights. This historical myth is one of the stilts that is used to prop up this false ideology of progress. Look at any non-material metric of life and you will see that our present, "advanced" and "evolved" civilisation is a farce and a sham. The involutional view of history doesn't even deny that life might get "better" in a very flimsy and shallow way, safer and more comfortable, but who cares about this? The real point of life is to transcend life. A society which puts safety, comfort and conformity as its highest values is a deeply sick society. As far as woman and slaves are concerned, let us recall Aristotle's prescient phrase: 'The evil practices of the worst and final form of democracy are all characteristic of tyranny. Dominance of women in the household in the hope that they may inform against their husbands, and license towards slaves in order that they may betray their masters. Slaves and women do not conspire against tyrants, and they are of course friendly both to tyrannies and also to democracies, since under them they have a good time. For the common people too would fain be a monarch.' Besides, I would much rather be a slave helping to build the Egyptian pyramids than a "free man" flipping burgers at McDonalds. Why do you want believe so badly that the moderns are such wise people? You prefer to side with French and American revolutionaries, Marx and Engels, Martin Luther King, and some mediocre American compiler of other people's thoughts who thinks he is a philosopher because he knows that "stereotypes are true but partial" (Ken Wilber) than the enlightened sages of antiquity (and even some of the present)? The former are the only people in history to preach "progress". Suit yourself.

Yes, this is one of the dangers of psychedelics. You have opened the door to God, now he's coming for you whether you like it or not! Obviously infinity is a threat to your normal identity, hence the anxiety and dread. Lively buzziness sounds a bit more like Kundalini though.

I'm suggesting that more or less everybody in the world prior to 500 years ago believed that history was a process of decay. I find the fact that this is so smugly and simply brushed away today by almost everybody very interesting. Why do you insist on psychologising everything? Who cares why I believe it or what the effect of believing it is? I can tell you why. Because the new myth is psychology. The new myth insists on explaining the higher in terms of the lower: man is merely a sophisticated ape, matter is superior to mind and all beliefs emerge from unresolved "subconscious complexes". The new myth is pragmatism: beliefs only matter because of the effect they have in the world. The new myth is empiricism: beliefs only matter if you can "prove" them "objectively". The new myth is science, data and "facts". The new myth is progress, evolution, and - in extreme cases - spiral dynamics and integral theory. Mankind has not moved beyond a mythic worldview, so what is the justification for writing off the myths of the past?

Kundalini is the physical manifestation of Shakti so it feels like the feminine aspect of transcendence. The experiences that I particularly associate with Kundalini are experiences of release and liberation. It is a very impractical, ungrounding and destabilising force if not balanced with masculine energy, which I don't feel I have quite succeeded in doing. There is a famous Hindu story of a woman who is so beautiful that everybody who sees her turns into a woman! It is a bit like that. I got into Kundalini Yoga because I heard it was particularly potent and wanted a direct ticket out of "clown world". It is very effective, to the point that it has made me a bit of a "girl-in-a-boy's body". I find it almost impossible to do anything I don't want to do anymore. Mundane tasks are much more difficult but I can absorb information intuitively - "grok", as they say - much more quickly than I ever could before. It's like you trade in your bodily life for a spiritual one. I think this is why it is known as being dangerous and is not recommended; if I had a family or serious responsibilities I think it would be very difficult to maintain them, if I would even still want to. It can have some peculiar bodily side effects: it has somewhat screwed up my digestive system (very gurgly) and sometimes I feel very tired. Immunity is very much weaker than it used to be. I feel an almost constant sense of cooking in my lower back and a subtle vibrating in what the Arab mystics called "the eye of the heart", the ajna-chakra as it is generally known. The bodily vibrations can be a bit annoying and in the early days it could be quite sickly-sweet and overwhelming. But all of this is pervaded by a sense of peace, blissfulness and freedom. Probably best to avoid it unless you know what you're doing or you don't care if it goes wrong!

"Then property alone will confer rank; material wealth will be the only source of devotion". The data can tell you whatever you want it to. Data is just part of the reign of quantity. The very idea that the quality of life can be measured by statistical metrics and data points is exactly what was spoken of in the prophecies of the Dark Age: all qualitative criteria are lost - "inner wealth and piety", "observance of caste, order and traditional institutions", "family descent" and "authority" - and all that is left is a bunch of socialised human animals happily consigned to their safe, secure and self-satisfied existence. Bravo to progress! Besides the coding part, this has always been possible. Even African-American slaves in America could earn their freedom if they showed enough initiative. The American democratic myth of the self-made man is largely a thing of the past anyway, capital in most industries today has already been consolidated and the markets are massively over-saturated. Of course a few will always show enough initiative to find a new way to climb the ladder but I am talking here about the general course of history, not a few happy exceptions. The vast majority of people in the situation you described will fall into corruption of one sort or another: terribly paid factory work, if not scamming and get-rich-quick schemes, if not prostitution and drug or sex trafficking. "Men will fix their desires upon riches, even though dishonestly acquired." Any of these are much worse than what their vocation would have been in a religious and traditional society. My life isn't miserable, nor was the life of the Rishis. Were the priests of every traditional society all miserable? No! All of this is in a way besides the point. It just baffles me that anyone who has deeply and "integrally" studied so many of the world's religions could fail to notice that all of them teach exactly the opposite of modern Americanised progressivism. It is as if someone was asked to integrate ten different types of tree, and they ended up with something which had no trunk!

All truth other than God is relative truth. The idea that a society based on relative truth alone is better than one rooted in absolute truth, from which relative truths are extrapolated to fit a given context (which was the traditional approach), is absurd. What is celebrated in these models as mankind racing towards relativism is actually just the gradual and eventually total loss of any guiding absolute principle. The distinction between relative and absolute truth is not even a modern one: Nagarjuna's Two Truths doctrine, Mahavira’s notion of Anekāntavāda, Protagoras who famously stated that “man is the measure of all things”. Even where this distinction is not made explicit it is noticeable, for example: ’For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ The distinction between the relative truth in which distinctions exist and the absolute truth in which they all dissolve is made very clear here. Ironically, it is these very models that fail to distinguish between relative and absolute truth. After all, it is obvious that most people need a set of relative truths to orient themselves in the world, which society and religion used to provide - now it doesn't, and most people are totally lost. A small minority might be able to leap through the void of relativism and go straight for the absolute truth, but they are few and far between.

It is clear from the texts that contain these accounts that they are not intended as mere fables or stories, and as I showed above they were originally not merely believed in but seen - the need for faith and belief came later, when people lost direct contact with the truth. Isn’t it a bit of a coincidence that the wisest people of every ancient society all had the same delusional vision of the future? I would also point out that the supposed disenchantment and relativisation of the collective worldview has actually just given birth to new forms of magic and new mythologies, which are much more insidious than the previous ones because they are no longer recognised as such. Not only that, but these new mythologies are often diabolical inversions of the truth. Isn’t the myth of ‘Progress’ just an inversion of everything I have shown above (not to deny that there might be local instances of progress)? People still think mythologically, the only difference is that now the mythology is ridiculous. Do you really think that people have a more adult worldview today: Disney+ for adults and grown men watching Captain Capeshit films? So many aspects of the modern (particularly American) mentality are totally infantile: the fascination with quantity and bigness, the endless pursuit of novelty and the love of speed, the solipsistic obsession with self and subjective identity; these are all traits proper to an infantile level of development.

Leo is probably just busy doing more important things. He still has a little bit of the moronic American Tony Robbins style preacher in him, but I’m sure that will fade in time - no way that can survive a psychedelic onslaught! Besides, forums - and particularly Internet forums - encourage stupidity. If you ever met an enlightened person, you might be surprised at how conventionally “rude” they can be. Politics and personal development are not separable. As Aristotle demonstrated, personal development leads naturally into politics: ‘Every state is as we see a sort of partnership, and every partnership is formed with a view to some good (since all the actions of all mankind are done with a view to what they think to be good). It is therefore evident that, while all partnerships aim at some good the partnership that is the most supreme of all and includes all the others does so most of all, and aims at the most supreme of all goods; and this is the partnership entitled the state, the political association.’ And: ‘To live alone, one must be either a beast or a God’! Actualized was originally about very low-level self-help advice. The level of content has advanced tremendously since the early days In many ways it is a very feminised world: materialism (from mater, the mother), egalitarianism (the Great Mother cults in antiquity were particularly popular amongst the lower classes, and she was celebrated for her tolerance and inclusion of all), the obsession with sex and the woman as lust object, the triumph of sentimentality over rationality, the fetishisation of the outsider and of the marginalised, and so on. But, I agree, in many other ways it is a brutal Hobbesian dog-eat-dog pit of false bravado and fake masculinity. It is nobody’s world. That is why women think it’s a man’s world and men think it’s a woman’s world.

What makes you think that mere logic could ever change someone’s religious convictions? Revelation will always trump logic: logic is just a little toy for children to play with; Revelation is the word of God made manifest. You have to remember the traditional distinction between the esoteric and the exoteric: the wise of the past knew that most people do not really care about ultimate Truth, and so their path can only be one of faithfulness to the law and devotion to God as conceived in their religion. Only a few go directly to the Truth. As Hesiod said, ‘He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser person. But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.’

Many religions knew of a different path towards God: the “left hand path” or vāmāchāra as it was known in Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. This path includes those things which would usually have been excluded from spiritual practice: sex, intoxicants (Leo’s psychedelic path would probably be included here), meats (priests were generally vegetarian) and in extreme cases even things like necromancy and the consumption of bodily fluids such as semen or menstrual fluid. Adepts of this path would often live in “spooky” places such as graveyards because such a location served as an effective reminder of the mortality and futility of all things that are conditioned by time and space. Obviously many of these things are tropes of the horror genre. As far as violence is concerned, it was often involved even in the standard warrior path for a man. This can be seen not only in the Abrahamic tradition of Holy War but in ancient Persian and Nordic traditions. For example, in Nordic religion, the Valkyries (war goddesses) selected those of the warrior caste who fought and died with the greatest valour, heroism and self-sacrifice to abide eternally in Valhalla. However, violence in modern entertainment tends (with admitted exceptions) to be very crass and gratuitous, thus more or less excluding any transcendent element. In any case, the “left hand path” was known as being particularly swift but also very dangerous, and so was generally frowned upon. It is very easily to delude oneself and think that in indulging one’s lower nature one is attaining to spiritual heights, if not to be overwhelmed and even destroyed by destructive and potentially infernal influences that have been naively aroused. However, given the state of dissolution in the present age of Kali (or Iron Age as the Greeks new it), the texts of Tantra state that the left-hand path is probably the one that is most effective today, so long as you have what it takes.

This is actually not true: there was a Japanese practice throughout the Middle Ages known as harakiri where a noble would commit suicide if they had sufficiently tarnished their reputation and standing in society. In many ancient societies, a woman was even expected to commit suicide if her husband died before her (see, for example, the Hindu practice of sati). Buddhism and Stoicism both allowed for suicide but only in very special certain circumstances. For example Cicero is quoted as saying: “To leave the place that one is assigned in life is not permitted without an order from the leader, who is God.” And Seneca even says this: “Wherever you do not want to fight, it is always possible to retreat. You have been given nothing easier than death.” In a certain way, you could even say that the Christian martyrs committed suicide; there is a very famous story in the Old Testament in which Samson kills himself along with all the Philistines by pulling down their temple. HOWEVER, a suicide that was motivated by personal and passionate concerns of any kind was totally condemned, not only because it was understood as being a violence committed against one’s own nature and even against society, but also because it was known to be simply ineffective. After all, if you are still identified with your karma, the mere fact that your body is dead will not sever this attachment, and severe punishments will likely be incurred for having inflicted such a violence upon life. Therefore - in almost all cases, unless one is absolutely sure that there is nothing left to be fulfilled in this life - suicide is a great mistake and should definitely not be done. None of the above is intended in any way as an advocation of suicide - don’t kill yourself! If you know someone who has unfortunately committed suicide, you can at least know that they might not be rotting in hell for all eternity. Finally, a koan-style joke from the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran: it’s not worth it to kill yourself because you always do it too late!

“In the beginning was the fap”! Evolution is just an alibi for people who have regressed to the level of apes. I didn’t mean masturbation specifically but the idea that the physical is superior to the mental. After all, don’t you teach that everything is mind?

And there we have it! Modern degeneracy masquerading as smug enlightenment.

That’s definitely true in some cases, but we have to remember that the proper hierarchy is: pre-rational - rational - trans-rational. I see an example of the pre-trans fallacy here: that which is really pre-rational (sex, the body, and even relationships in most cases, to say nothing of trashy fun and partying) proclaims itself to be trans-rational simply because it is not rational. Anyway, I’m not suggesting anyone waste their life pouring over every word of Nietzsche’s anti-gospel. I just know from personal experience that it can be useful to some people, and that to say that “Nietzsche did not understand spirituality or Christianity” is quite a dumbed down oversimplification of the reality.

People are on here talking about picking up girls at clubs and absolutely petty political bickering, studying philosophy is surely less of a “trap” and a “waste of time” than this (in most cases). Obviously dwelling on anything is a trap, but in most cases the ego has to be gradually unfolded and studying ideas can be helpful for this. In any case, there is an obvious way in which Nietzsche is at least imprecise here: in master morality, the Good comes first, and to be bad is to fall short of that goodness; whereas in slave morality, evil comes first, and to be good is to not be evil like those nasty masters. But by this definition, Christian morality is generally somewhere in between master and slave morality: according to the Augustinian doctrine in which God is good and God is all, all “evil” can only be a privatio boni (a privation of good), as in a master morality; but we are talking about “evil” here, and not simply about badness, which implies a slave morality. Nietzsche’s analysis is particularly aimed at Protestantism (this was particularly popular in Germany since Luther and the Reformation, but America too is very Protestant) and it is also to a certain degree a projection of a more modern phenomenon onto the past. One sees slave morality operating everywhere today, but that doesn’t mean that all of Christianity can be reduced to it (although Christianity might have helped pave the way to it in some respects). Here are some examples of some typical modern confessions of a slave morality: I’m good because I don’t keep guns like those nasty republicans, I’m good because I don’t have gay sex, I’m good because I’m not a fascist, I’m good because I didn’t get a vaccine, I’m good because I’m not like the insane anti-vaxxers, I’m good because I’m not fat and lazy, I’m good because I don’t judge people for being fat and lazy - and finally, I’m good because I don’t judge people for judging people for being fat and lazy! In fact, the whole “democratic” apparatus today has devolved into one huge slave morality, in the sense that both sides define themselves simply in terms of not being like the other. Generally speaking, neither the “left” nor the “right” have any real positive vision for our countries, they just try to show that they’re less “evil” than the other, and this is exactly what Nietzsche means by slave morality. All of the judgements above are those of slave morality because they are essentially passive (interestingly, the word passive comes from the root pati which means “to suffer”! Remember the “Passion” of Christ..?) and hence do not spring from one’s own being. In a certain way, Nietzsche is actually saying what Leo said above: all external identities are a trap to distract you from your Self. The Self is obviously a master - not in the sense of being a Machiavellian despot and tyrannising over weaklings, which is not really Nietzsche’s point anyway - but in the sense of being rooted in itself and not needing anything exterior to define itself. Obviously, Christ was showing one way to attaining this absolute mastery over all forms of passivity to oneself; this is precisely what it means to be able to “walk on the waters”, water being the traditional symbol of all that is yin, feminine and passive (for more on this, see the the excellent work of René Guénon, Symbols of Sacred Science). For what it is worth, it is clear from his writings that Nietzsche did understand Christ quite well, along with the value of traditional forms of asceticism (whether of a contemplative or action-oriented form). As a modern “philosopher”, his writings are of course full of digressions and confusions, and you would probably do better to study traditional wisdom, but - given that we have all been affected to one extent or another by the modern world - he can be useful in deconstructing your inherited moral prejudices. Hope this answers your question!

Sure - but not if that's the reason you're doing it!

Great question! I have had many a concussion from banging my head against this stone wall... But - beyond the wall... You're putting far too much emphasis on the masculine pole of spirituality: meaninglessness/emptiness/nothingness. This is half of the truth, which is itself only a portion of the Truth... To most people I would say: "Life is meaningless. Everything is relative and all of your frenzied clambering is in vain; you are trying to win the un-winnable game." But to you I would say: "Everything is profoundly, infinitely meaningful!" ...and I would never be lying!

Absolutely! Most of what passes of as "creativity" nowadays is just new combinations of preexisting idioms, because hardly anybody is willing to make the necessary sacrifices for true - what I would call third-order - creativity. However, I don't think it's quite true to say that Of course, the creators of new values have always lived away from glory and the marketplace, but how is Globalism any more or less incompatible with that than, say, nationalism? If anything, nationalist environments are far more intolerant of creativity. The empty, nihilistic, laede-neminem morality of our culture is actually quite a blessing for creators, because we are free to do what we want without anyone sticking their nose in it. Compare that to Shostakovich leaving cryptic messages in his pieces in Soviet Russia, and a placid globalism doesn't seem so bad, no? One must also keep in mind that globalism and multiculturalism are still quite recent phenomena - what in this world is immediately perfect? I have definitely noticed that we can tend to sacrifice diversity in one sense in the name of diversity in another - but perhaps once we achieve diversity in that sense, then our focus will shift back to cultural diversity? I also hear from you this (now quite common) complaint that we seem to value all cultures except our own, being uniquely and unequivocally aware and ashamed of our own faults, prejudices and historical failings. One will feel however one feels about this based on their political leanings - perhaps we should be, perhaps we shouldn't be... perhaps - both? Anyway, I like your post, but I don't like the way you mix in this talk of nationalism and cultural purity with a longing for an unbounded creative spirit - they are not equivalent and do not go hand in hand, if anything quite the contrary! PS: I watched this long interview with David Foster Wallace (wonderful author!) yesterday that you might like. Toward the end he said: PSS: Maybe your diagnosis is correct, but your prescription is wrong? Perhaps the real reason for the current dirth of creativity is, for instance, as follows? (Whispered into the ears of Clare Graves... ) One must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star!

I can't know if this would have any relation to why you feel resentful towards beautiful women, but I notice there are a couple things that slightly irk me about some of the people I've known in that category. I think for one, beautiful people in general have much less of an incentive to be or do anything interesting - people will want to associate with them simply because they are beautiful. As such, I've found there can be a bit of an association with beauty and unconsciousness, which can also tie in with a certain sense of entitlement and an unjustified lack of self-doubt. But, it's quite clear to me that these things only bother me (in so far as they do) because I envy them. I have noticed that resentment and envy are basically the same thing, and the French term ressentiment is an interesting conflation of the two. There are obviously many other reasons why you might feel such a way, most of which will ultimately come down to your own psychology.