Category: Spiritual Exercises

Realms of Experience Beyond the Natural

This from a reader:

I was reading your post on Religious Belief and What Inclines Me to It and was struck by a statement you made at the end regarding "mystical glimpses, religious vouchsafings, paranormal experiences."  By this you seem to confirm a developing series of thoughts I have had for a few years.  As a benefit of my modernist education my categories of thought roughly corresponded to natural and supernatural.  It seems to me that this type of thinking is wrong and there have been a lot of things crammed into the "supernatural" category by moderns just because they are not "natural."  It would be interesting to see how you break these things out and why they are different.  Specifically as someone who has the religious inclination.

The reader is right: a lot of rather different things have been lumped together under the rubric 'supernatural' just because they are beyond the natural.  But distinctions need to be made.  Now this is a huge topic, and I am not up to doing it justice. 

Corresponding to the phrase the reader quoted, "mystical glimpses, religious vouchsafings, paranormal experiences,"  I will say a little about mysticism, religion, and occultism.  Some of this is excerpted from a much longer post that discusses the relations among philosophy, mysticism, religion, and wisdom.

Mysticism 

Turning now to mysticism, we may define it as the activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need for direct contact with the Absolute, disgusted with verbiage and abstraction as well as with mere belief and empty rites and rituals, seeks to know the Absolute immediately, which is to say, neither philosophically through the mediation of concepts, judgments and arguments, nor religiously through the mediation of faith, trust, devotion, and adherence to tradition. The mystic does not want to know about the Absolute, that it exists, what its properties are, how it is related to the relative plane, etc.; nor does he want merely to believe or trust in it. He does not want knowledge by description, but knowledge by acquaintance. Nor is he willing, like the religionist, to postpone
his enjoyment of it. He wants it, he wants it whole, and he wants it now. He wants to verify its existence for himself here and now in the most direct way possible: by intuiting it. ‘Intuition’ is a terminus technicus: it refers to direct cognitive access to an object or state of affairs.  The intuition in question is of course not sensible but intellectual. Thus the mystical ‘faculty’ is that of intellectual intuition.

Religion

Religion (from L. religere, to bind) is not fundamentally a collection of rites, rituals, and dogmas, but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to live in the truth, as opposed to know it objectively in propositional guise, seeks to establish a personal bond with the Absolute. Whereas philosophy operates with concepts, judgments, arguments and theories, religion proceeds by way of faith, trust, devotion, and love. It is bhaktic rather than jnanic, devotional rather than discriminative.  The philosophical project, predicated on the autonomy of reason, is one of relentless and thus endless inquiry in which nothing is immune from examination before reason’s bench. But the engine of inquiry is doubt, which sets philosophy at odds with religion with its appeal to revealed truth.  If the occupational hazard of the philospher is a life-inhibiting scepticism, the corresponding hazard for the religionist is a dogmatic certainty that can easily turn murderous. For a relatively recent example, consider the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa against Salman Rushdie. (This is why such zealots of the New Atheism as Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, Grayling, et al. are not completely mistaken.)

The philosopher objects to the religionist: "You believe things for which you have no proof!" The religionist replies to the philosopher: "You sew without a knot in your thread!" I am not engaging in Zen mondo, but alluding to Kierkegaard’s point that to philosophize without dogma is like sewing without a knot in one’s thread. The philosopher will of course reply that to philosophize with dogma is not to philosophize at all. Here we glimpse one form of the conflict beween philosophy and religion as routes to the Absolute. If the philosopher fails to attain the Absolute because discursive reason dissolves in scepticism, the religionist often attains what can only be called a pseudo-Absolute, an
idol.

The Difference Between Mysticism and Religion

Roughly, mysticism is monistic while religion is dualistic, presupposing the ineliminability of  what Martin Buber calls the 'I-Thou relation.' Here is a passage from his I and Thou:


Nor does he [Buddha] lead the unified being further to that supreme You-saying that is open to it. His inmost decision seems to aim at the annulment of the ability to say You . . . . All doctrines of immersion are based on the gigantic delusion of human spirit bent back into itself — the delusion that spirit occurs in man. In truth it occurs from man – between man and what he is not. As the spirit bent back into itself renounces this sense, this sense of relation, he must draw into man that which is not man, he must psychologize world and God. This is the psychical delusion of the spirit.  ( pp.140-141 / part 3 : Tr.Kaufmann, Ed: T&T Clark Edinburgh 1970)

The context of the above quotations is a section of I and Thou that runs from pp. 131 to 143.  Here are some quickly composed thoughts on this stretch of text.

In this section Buber offers a critique of Buddhism, Hinduism and other forms of mysticism (including
Christian forms such as the one we find in Meister Eckhart) which relativize the I-Thou relation between man and God by re-ducing it (leading it back) to a primordial unity logically and ontologically prior to the terms of the relation.  According to these traditions, this  primordial unity  can be experienced directly in Versenkung, which Kaufmann translates, not incorrectly, as 'immersion,' but which I think is better rendered as 'meditation.'  As the German word suggests, one sinks down into the depths of the self and comes to the realization that, at bottom, there is no self or ego (Buddhism with its doctrine of anatta or anatman) or else that there is a Self, but that it is the eternal Atman ( = Brahman) of Hinduism, "the One that thinks and is." (131)

Either way duality is overcome and seen to be not ultimately real.  Buber rejects this because the I-Thou relation presupposes the ultimate ineliminability of duality, not only the man-God duality but also the duality of world and God.  Mysticism "annuls relationship" (132) psychologizing both world and God. (141).  Verseelen is the word Kaufmann translates as 'psychologize.'  A more suggestive translation might be 'soulifies.'  Mysticism drags both God and the world into the soul where they are supposedly to be found in their ultimate reality by meditation.   But spirit is not in man, Buber thinks, but between man and what is not man.  Spirit is thus actualized in the relation of man to man, man to world, man to God.

At this point I would put a question to Buber.  If spirit subsists only in relation, ought we conclude
that God needs man to be a spiritual being in the same way that finite persons need each other to be spiritual beings?  Is God dependent on man to be who he is?  If yes, then the aseity of God is compromised.  A Christian could say that the divine personhood subsists in intradivine relations, relations among and between the persons of the Trinity.  But as far as I know Trinitarian thought is foreign to Judaism.  Anyway, that is a question that occurs to me.

The "primal actuality of dialogue" (133) requires Two irreducible one to the other.  It is not a relation
internal to the self. 

Buber is not opposed to Versenkung as a preliminary  and indeed a prerequisite for encounter with the transcendent Other.  Meditative Versenkung leads to inner concentration, interior unification, recollectedness.  But this samadhi (which I think is etymologically related to the German sammeln) is not to be enjoyed for its own sake, but is properly preparatory for the encounter with the transcendent Other.  "Concentrated into a unity, a human being can proceed to his encounter — wholly successful only now — with mystery and perfection.  But he can also savor the bliss of his unity and, without incurring the supreme duty, return into distraction." (134)

Buber's point is that the mystic who, treading the inward path, arrives at the unitary ground of his soul and experiences sat-chit-ananda (being-consciousness-bliss) shirks his supreme duty if he merely enjoys this state and then returns to the world of multiplicity and diremption.  The soulic unity must be used for the sake of the encounter with God.

Buber seems to be maintaining that Buddhist and other mysticism is an escape into illusion, an escape into a mere annihilation of dual awareness for the sake of an illusory nondual awareness:  "insofar as this doctrine contains directions for immersion in true being, it does not lead into lived actuality but into 'annihilation' in which there is no consciousness, from which no memory survives — and the man
who has emerged from it may profess the experience by using the limit-word of non-duality, but without any right to proclaim this as unity." (136) 

Buber continues, "We, however, are resolved to tend with holy care the holy treasure of our actuality
that has been given us for this life and perhaps for no other life that might be closer to the truth." (136-7, emphasis added)

This prompts me to put a second question to Buber.  If there is no other life, no higher life, whether
accessible in this life via Versenkung or after the  death of the body, and we are stuck with this miserable crapstorm of a life, then what good is God?  What work does he do if he doesn't secure our redemption and our continuance beyond death?  This is what puzzles me about Judaism.  It is a
worldly religion, a religion for this life — which is almost a contradiction in terms.  It offers no final solution as do the admittedly life-denying religions of Buddhism and Christianity.  Some will praise it for that very reason: it is not life-denying but life -affirming.  Jews love life, this life here and now,
and they don't seem too concerned about any afterlife.  But then they don't have the sort of soteriological interest that is definitive of religion.  "On whose definition?" you will object.  And you will have a point.

Occultism

Stay away from this stuff!  Everything reputable that I have read warns against it. The occult region is a sort of borderland between the natural and the properly supernatural which is the sphere of religion and mysticism.  One who meditates deeply and long enough will probably encounter 'items' from this region such as photisms and unearthly voices.  Certain paranormal powers may be released, the siddhis of the Hindus, such as pre-cognition. Don't get hung up on this and maintain a skeptical attitude. What's real will be able to withstand skepsis & scrutiny.  If you are trying to plumb the depths of the self, these are just more objects of consciousness, not consciousness itself in its innermost essence.  Hearing a sound, or seeing a light, inquire: who hears this sound, who sees this light?  Who is the subject for whom these strange appearances are objects?  That being said, photisms and such are signs that you are attaining meditative depth.  There may also be, for all you know, Horatio, angels and demons and disembodied souls hanging around  in this border region, and some of these 'entities' you don't want to mess with.  Some of them are stronger than you are.  So you might begin your session on the black mat by asking for the assistance of any guardians you think there might be. 

In any case, meditation is not a hunt for weird experiences or for paranormal powers.  The pursuit of the latter is a corruption of meditation just as crass petitionary prayer is a corruption of genuine prayer.  Grades of Prayer fills this out a bit. 

Hitchens: No Understanding of Religion

Reading Christopher Hitchens' Mortality I was struck once again by how people like him have no understanding of religion at all.   Lacking as they do any religious sense, they can only (mis)understand it from the outside as if it were just a set of strange doctrines. They don't seem to understand that the doctrines are "necessary makeshifts," to borrow a fine phrase from F. H. Bradley,  whereby we undertake to understand the Transcendent.  Failing to appreciate the provisional character of doctrines and dogmatic formulations, people like Hitchens seize upon them as if they were the reality represented and then look for contradictions and absurdities. And of course they find them.  For example, Hitchens sees an absurdity in prayer:

The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.  Half-buried in the contradiction is the distressing idea that nobody is in charge, or nobody with any moral authority. The call to prayer is self-cancelling. (Mortality, pp. 21-22)

The context makes this this little 'chemo-brain' outburst even less clear, if that is possible.  Prayer, we are told, is the attempt to instruct God on how to set right what he has has got "all wrong."  Now that has nothing to do with what anyone who actually prays means by 'prayer.' Take Plotinus (205-270):

The only way truly to pray is to approach alone the One who is Alone [All-One]. To contemplate that One, we must withdraw into the inner soul, as into a temple, and be still. (Enneads)

Did chatterbox Hitchens ever withdraw into his inner soul and be still?  No?  Then what right does he have to speak of these matters?  This from the Talmud:

He who rises from prayer a  better man, his prayer is answered.

The point here, I take it, is that we don't pray to change God so much as to change and improve ourselves. If we succeed in this, if we succeed in stilling our thoughts, mastering our desires, strengthening our resolutions, and re-directing our aspirations from the base to the noble, then we have succeeded in improving ourselves and our prayer has been answered.  Here, in a similar vein, is Ralph Waldo Emerson from his great essay "Self-Reliance":

Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.

Hitchens has no understanding of religion or of prayer.  The two are closely linked as William James observed:

Prayer is religion in act; that is, prayer is real religion. (Varieties of Religious Experience, 464)

In his profound incomprehension, Hitchens takes prayer in its crassest petitionary sense, oblivious of the iceberg submerged beneath that paltry tip.

Lacking as he does the religious sensibility, Hitchens is devoid of all sympathy for it, and can't see anything good in it.  His understanding of it is the misundertanding of the outsider.  To understand religion from the outside is  like trying to understand music from the outside as a peculiar sort of acoustic disturbance.  But religion, like music, chess, love, poetry, mathematics, running, science . . . can only be understood from the inside by those who engage in these activities and have the inner predisposition and talent to engage in them.

Escapism



Escapism_by_raun

Escapism is a form of reality-denial.   One seeks to escape from the only reality there is into a haven of illusion.  One who flees a burning building we do not call an escapist.  Why not?   Because his escape from the fire is not an escape into unreality, but into a different reality.  The prisoner in Plato's Cave who ascended to the outer world escaped, but was not an escapist. He was not escaping from, but to, reality.

Is religion escapist?  It is an escape from the 'reality' of time and change, sin and death.  But that does not suffice to make it escapist.  It is escapist only if this life of time and change, sin and death, is all there is.  And that is precisely the question, one not to be begged.

You tell me what reality is, and I'll tell you whether religion is an escape from it.

There is a nuance I ought to mention.  In both Platonism and Buddhism, one who has made "the ascent to what is" (Republic 521 b) and sees aright, is enjoined to  return so as to help those who remain below.  This is the return to the Cave mentioned at Republic 519 d.  In Buddhism, the boddhisattva ideal enjoins a return of the enlightened individual to the samsaric realm to assist in the enlightenment of the sentient beings remaining there.

To return to the image of the burning building.  He who flees a burning building is no escapist: he flees an unsatisfactory predicament (one dripping with dukkha as it were) to a more satisfactory condition.  Once there, he reconnoitres the situation, dons fire-protective gear, and returns to save his cats.  A little cute, a little crude, but it makes the point.

Both the Cave and the samsaric realm are not wholly unreal, else there would be no point to a return to them.  But they are, shall we say, ontologically and axiologically deficient.

Image credit. 

Gratitude

Every day find something to be grateful for. 

It might be the regularity of nature.  Without it, how would you make coffee?  And then there is coffee itself and its wonderful taste.  What a marvellous, yet harmless, drug!  And then there are the  thoughts that percolate up under its agency.  There are so many of them swarming and demanding attention.   Some are even worth writing down. Your notebooks lay ready: they weren't destroyed during the night.  And the pens too.  Your fingers are supple and free of arthritis.  And there is your library of  books, thousands of them, to supply you with thought- and blog-fodder . . . .

But if you want to be miserable you should be able to find something to kvetch about.

True Detachment

True detachment requires a certain indifference to, and thus a certain detachment from, one's success or failure at achieving detachment.  There is a  paradox here inasmuch as one cannot be detached entirely from the project of attaining detachment.  Otherwise there would be no difference between the seeker of wisdom and the worldling who is quite satisfied with his current moral condition and does not seek to better himself.   The trick is to pursue detachment detachedly.  I try to succeed, but if I fail it's no big deal and if I succeed it's also no big deal and certainly nothing to crow about or feed my ego on. One has to be aware of one's various moral failings and work to overcome them, all the while not worrying too much about the outcome.  One has to avoid the mistake of thinking that one can rely entirely upon oneself while also avoiding the equal but opposite mistake of just letting oneself go.

Mass Media and Spiritual Deterioration

Sardonicus here explains why he left Facebook.  Briefly, he left it because it had become for him an impediment to spiritual growth.  I concur and generalize:  inordinate consumption of any and all mass communications media militates against spiritual health for all of us.  Mass media content is a bit like whisky: a little, from time to time, will not hurt you, and my even do some good; but more is not better!

But why, exactly?  Here is one answer.  The attainment of mental quiet is a very high and choice-worthy goal of human striving.  Anything that scatters or dis-tracts (literally: pulls apart) the mind makes it impossible to attain mental quiet as well as such lower attainments as ordinary concentration.  Now the mass media have the tendency to scatter and distract.  Therefore, if you value the attainment of mental quiet and such cognate states as tranquillitas animi, ataraxia, peace of mind, samadhi, concentration, 'personal presence,' etc., then you are well-advised to limit consumption of media dreck and cultivate the disciplines that lead to these states.

Of course, the quick answer I just gave presupposes a metaphysics, a philosophical anthopology and a soteriology that cannot be laid out briefly.    So here are some links to related posts that fill in some of the details.

Meditation: What and Why

Modern Media and the Deterioration of Spiritual Life

Contra Adorno: A Preliminary Plea for Omphaloscopy

Meditation: Three Baby Steps

Soul Food

How to Avoid God

William James on Self-Denial

How Not to Begin the Day

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread: What Sort of Petition?

One question that arises in connection with an attempt to distinguish superstition from genuine religion is the question whether petitionary prayer is superstitious.  The answer will depend not only on what we take superstition to be but also on the type of petitionary prayer.

In an earlier installment I suggested that there are three grades of prayer:

Grade I: The lowest grade is that of petitionary prayer for material benefits. One asks for mundane benefits whether for oneself, or, as in the case of intercessory prayer, for another. In its crassest forms it borders on idolatry and superstition. A skier who prays for snow, for example, makes of God a supplier of mundane benefits, as does the nimrod who prays to win the lottery.  Worse still is the one who prays for the death of a business rival.  Such prayer involves both  idolatry, the worshipping of a false god, and superstition.  A god reduced to the status of a cosmic sugardaddy is an idol.  It is the sort of god that atheists say does not exist.  I am pleased to agree with them.

Grade II: The next grade up is petitionary prayer for spiritual benefits. At this level one is not asking for one's daily physical bread, but for acceptance, equanimity, patience, courage, and the like  in the face of the fact that one lacks bread or has cancer. "Thy Will be done." One asks for forgiveness and for the ability to forgive  others. One prays for a lively sense of one's own manifold  shortcomings, for self-knowledge and freedom from self-deception. One prays, not to be cured of the cancer, but to bear it with courage. One prays for the ability to see one's tribulations under the aspect of eternity or with the sort of detachment with which one contemplates the sufferings of others.

Grade III: Higher still, I should think, is prayer that is wholly non-petitionary. At this level one asks neither for material nor for  spiritual benefits. One form of this wholly non-petitionary  prayer is sheer gratitude for  what one has. Prayer as thanskgiving. Beyond this there is prayer as  pure aspiration, as a straining of the soul upwards. A pure spiritual  seeking, ascending, soaring. One seeks to elevate oneself above one's  perceived infirmity and wretchedness. One seeks to rise above the paltriness, crudity, baseness of one's usual thoughts and emotions.   Not a petitioning, but a self-elevating and a leaving of oneself   behind. Prayer as aspiration may then lead on to forms of meditation proper and perhaps infused contemplation. At the stage of meditation the soul enters mental silence and rests there having abandoned all  petitioning and aspiring. A"Waiting for God" to borrow a Simone Weil title.One is no longer working but resting in mental silence, listening. Within this silence one perhaps receives mystical grace which comes from without the mind.

Grade I, I would argue, has nothing to do with religion properly understood. But if I were to make this argument, I would run smack into the "Our Father," which, in the fourth of its six petitions, appears precisely to endorse Grade I, petitionary prayer for material  benefits. The other five petitions are either clearly or arguably Grade II. The fourth petition, "Give us this day our daily bread," translates the Biblia Vulgata's Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie which occurs at Luke 11:3.

At Matthew 6:11, however, we find Panem nostrum supersubstantialem da nobis hodie, "Give us this day our supersubstantial bread." 'Supersubstantial' suggests a bread that is supernatural. To ask for   this bread is to ask for a 'food' that will keeps us spiritually alive. For Simone Weil, "Christ is our bread." We can have physical bread without eating it; we cannot have spiritual bread without  'eating' it: the having is the 'eating' and being nourished by it. This nourishing is the "union of Christ with the eternal part of the  soul." (Waiting for God, p. 146) The fourth petition of the Pater Noster, then, is the request for the union of Christ with the eternal part of the soul. It has nothing to do with a crass and infantile demand to be supplied with physical food via a supernatural means.

The Greek word translated as quotidianum in the Luke passage and as supersubstantialem in the Matthew passage is epiousios. I am not competent to discuss the philology of this Greek word, which may be a hapax legomenon. (Nor am I competent to assess the correctness of the two Wikipedia entries to which I have just linked; so Caveat lector!) But if any philologist or Biblical exegete were to tell me that epiousios cannot be understood in terms of 'supersubstantial,' (with the latter implying 'supernatural'), then I would say that that person is either wrong, or the text is corrupt, or the original sources do not record what Jesus actually said.

Philosophically, the fourth petition, if it is to fit with the others, and is not to represent a crass and infantile and quite absurd demand, must be interpreted spiritually, not physically. Otherwise, you play into the hands of the 'Dawkins Gang.' If it is physical bread you want, go to the store and buy some, or learn the art of the baker.

Moksha: Soteriological Riddles

Over lunch Friday the topic of moksha (release or liberation from samsara; enlightenment) came up in the context of Advaita Vedanta.  Moksha is attained when the identity of Atman and Brahman is realized.  My interlocutor wanted to know how such realization is possible.  If I realize my identity with the Absolute, then I cease to exist as something separate from the Absolute.  In that case, however, there is nothing left to realize anything.  How could the state of enlightenment be anything for me if there is no 'me' left after enlightenment?  How is moksha different from deep dreamless sleep or from utter nonexistence?  A form of salvation that amounts to personal annihilation seems not to be a salvation worth wanting. 

Any soteriology worth its salt must answer three questions:  Salvation of what? To what?  From what?  Brahman does not need salvation.  It is this indigent samsaric entity that I take myself to be that needs salvation.  But if what is saved is destroyed in being saved, by being merged into Brahman, then it is at best paradoxical to call this salvation.

Ramanuja is supposed to have said to Shankara, "I don't want to be sugar; I want to taste sugar."

If I were taking Shankara's side of the argument, I might say something like the following to Ramanuja and my friend:

If I am right and you really are sugar/Brahman in your innermost essence, and you merely taste it, then you are removed from it and haven't yet attained the goal.  It is just one more object over against you as subject. Your inquiry into the self, into who or what you really are, has not yet come to an end. The goal is to realize or become aware of your true self.  To do that you must ruthlessly disengage from everything  that is not-self.  If Brahman is your true self, and you realize your identity with it, then you haven't lost your self, but found your self.  You cannot be said to dissolve into the ocean of Brahman if Brahman is the true you.  To think that you you lose your self when you merge with Brahman presupposes a false identification of the self with something finite.  The self you lose is merely an object that you have wrongly identified as your true self; the self you gain is your true self.

This response is not quite satisfactory.  Consider the following aporetic triad:

1. Brahman does not need salvation.
2. I am Brahman.
3. My need for salvation is a real (not merely a samsaric, illusory) need.

The first two limbs are parts of the doctrine (Advaita Vedanta) that is the context of our soteriological discussion.  So they are nonnegotiable unless we shift out of this context.  But (3) also seems true.  The three propositions cannot, however, all be true: the conjunction of the first two limbs entails the negation of the third.

So it looks as if the advaitin has to bite the bullet and reject (3).  He has to say something like:  the very need for release from this hell of an existence itself belongs to maya, the realm of illusion.  So both the need for moksha and the one who seeks it  are illusory.   But this seems to conflict with the starting point of this whole soteriological scheme, namely, that the suffering and unsatisfactoriness of this life are  real. 

Here is another puzzle.

Using the method of Neti, Neti (not this, not this),  we end up with the result that the subject who is seeking is no object, no thing, nothing. Pursuing the question: Who or what am I? I come to the insight that I cannot be identical to any object, whether my car, my house, my clothes, my curriculum vitae, my body, any part of my body, my memories, thoughts, feelings, etc.  Any and all objects — inner, outer, concrete, abstract —  are to be disengaged from the subject for whom they are objects. The upshot seems to be that any self or subject so disengaged from every object is nothing at all.

On the other hand, I cannot be nothing at all since I am pursuing this investigation. Coming to realize that I am not this, that, or the other thing, I must be something, not nothing. So we bang into a logical contradiction: I am nothing and I am not nothing.

As long as we remain on the discursive/dualistic plane we will get tangled up like this. So one could take these insolubilia as pointing us beyond the discursive intellect.  This is what I suggested to my friend.  I want him to take up meditation so as to explore the non-dual source of duality.  But meditation is insanely hard, and the fruits are few and far between.  It can seem like an utter waste of time.  Pointless navel-gazing!  (But see my plea for omphaloscopy .)

Besides, one can take the insolubilia — if insolubilia they are — as referring us, not into the transdiscursive, but back into Plato's Cave, in particular, into that especially dark corner wherein the Wittgensteinian therapists ply their trade. 

Gratitude: A Thanksgiving Homily

We need spiritual exercises just as we need physical, mental, and moral exercises. A good spiritual exercise, and easy to boot, is daily recollection of just how good one has it, just how rich and full one's life is, just how much is going right despite annoyances and setbacks which for the most part are so petty as not to merit consideration.

Start with the physical side of your life. You slept well, and a beautiful new day is dawning. Your breath comes easy, your intestines are in order. Your mind is clear, and so are your eyes. Move every moving part of your body and note how wonderfully it works, without any pain to speak of.

Brew up some java and enjoy its rich taste, all the while rejoicing over the regularity of nature that allows the water to boil one more time, at the same temperature, and the caffeine to be absorbed once more by those greedy intercranial receptors that activate the adrenalin that makes you eager to grab a notebook and jot down all the new ideas that are beginning to percolate up from who knows where.

Finished with your body, move to your mind and its wonderful workings. Then to the house and its appliances including your trusty old computer that reliably, day after day, connects you to the sphere of Nous, the noosphere, to hijack a term of Teilhard de Chardin. And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.

A quotidian enactment of something like the foregoing meditation should do wonders for you.

Monasticism and the Monks of Mount Athos

Mt Athos Back in April, 60 Minutes had a segment on the monks of Mt. Athos.  It was surprisingly sympathetic for such a left-leaning program. What one expects and usually gets from libs and lefties and the lamestream media is religion-bashing — unless of course the religion is Islam, the religion of peace – but the segment in question was refreshingly objective.  It was actually too sympathetic for my taste and not critical enough.  It didn't raise the underlying questions.  Which is why you need my blog.

 

We know that this world is no dream and is to that extent real.  For all we know it may be as real as it gets, though  philosophers and sages over the centuries, East and West, have assembled plenty of considerations that speak against its plenary reality.  We don't know that there is any world other than this one.  We also don't know that there isn't.  Now here is an existential question for you:  Will you sacrifice life in this world, with its manifold pleasures and satisfactions, for the chance of transcendent happiness in a merely believed-in hinterworld?  The Here is clear; the Hereafter is not.  It is not clear that is is, or that it isn't, or what it is if it is.  When I say that the world beyond is merely believed-in, I mean that it is merely believed-in from the point of view of the here and now where knowledge is impossible; I am not saying that there is no world beyond. 

Let us be clear what the existential option is.  It is not between being a dissolute hedonist or an ascetic, a Bukowski or a Simon of Sylites.  It is between being one who lives in an upright and productive way but in such a way as to assign plenary reality and importance to this world, this life, VERSUS one who sees this world as a vanishing quantity that cannot be taken with full seriousness but who takes it as preparatory for what comes after death.  (Of course, most adherents of a religion live like ordinary worldlings for the most part but hedge their bets by tacking on some religious observances on the weekend.  I am not concerned with these wishy-washy types here.)

The monks of Mount Athos spend their lives preparing for death, writing their ticket to the Beyond, engaging in unseen warfare against Satan and his legions.  They pray the Jesus Prayer ceaselessly; they do not surf the Web or engage in competitive eating contests or consort with females – there are no distaff elements on the Holy Mountain.

Is theirs the highest life possible for a human being?  Or is the quest to determine what is the highest life the highest life?  The monks think they have the truth, the final truth, the essential and saving truth.  Thinking they possess it, their task is not to seek it but to implement it in their lives, to 'existentially appropriate it' as Kierkegaard might say, to knit it into the fabric of their Existenz.  There is a definite logic to their position.  If you have the truth, then there is no point in wasting time seeking it, or talking about it, or debating scoffers and doubters.  The point is to do what is necessary to achieve the transcendent Good the existence of which one does not question. 

This logic is of course common to other 'true believers.'  Karl Marx in the 11th of his Theses on Feuerbach wrote that "The philosophers have variously interpreted the world, but the point is to change it."  Marx and the Commies he spawned thought they had the truth, and so the only thing left was to implement it at whatever cost, the glorious end justifying the bloody means.   Buddha was famously opposed to speculation.  If you have been shot with a poisoned arrow, there is no point in speculating as to the trajectory of the arrow, the social class of the archer, or the chemical composition of the poison; the one thing necessary is to extract the arrow.  The logic is the same, though the point is different.  The point for Buddha was not theosis (deification) as in Eastern Orthodoxy, or the classless society as in Marxism, but Nirvana, extinguishment of the ego-illusion and final release from the wheel of Samsara. 

If you have the ultimate truth about the ultimate matters, then  by all means live in accordance with it.  Put it into practice.  But do you in fact have the truth?  For the philosopher this is the question that comes first and cannot be evaded.  If the monks of Mt Athos are right about God and the soul and that the ultimate human goal is theosis, then they are absolutely right to renounce this world of shadows and seemings and ignorance and evil for the sake of true reality and true happiness.

But do they have the truth or does one throw one's life away when one flees to a monastery? Does one toss aside the only reality there is for a bunch of illusions?  There is of course a secular analog.  I would say that all the earnest and idealistic and highly talented individuals who served the cause of Communism in the 20th century sacrificed their lives on the altar of illusions.  They threw their lives away pursuing the impossible.  Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, for example.  Such true believers wasted their lives and ended up  enablers of  great evil.  In the end they were played for fools by an evil ideology.

So isn't the philosopher's life the highest possible life for a human being?  For only the philosopher pursues the ultimate questions without dogmatism, without blind belief, in freedom, critically, autonomously.  I am not saying that the ultimate good for a human being is endless inquiry.  The highest goal cannot be endless inquiry into truth, but a resting in it.   But that can't come this side of the Great Divide.  Here and now is not the place or time to dogmatize.  We can rest in dogma on the far side.

My Athenian thesis — that the life of thephilosopher is the highest life possible for a human being — won't play very well in Jerusalem. And I myself have doubts about it.  But all such doubts are themselves part and parcel of the philosophical enterprise.  For if nothing is immune from being hauled before the bench of Reason, there to be rudely interrogated, then fair Philosophia herself must also answer to that tribunal.

 

On Corporate Prayer and Institutionalized Religion

Paul Brunton, The Notebooks of P. B., vol. 12, part 2, p. 34, #68:

A public place is an unnatural environment in which to place oneself mentally or physically in the attitude of true prayer.  It is far too intimate, emotional, and personal to be satisfactorily tried anywhere except in solitude.  What passes for prayer in temples, churches, and synagogues is therefore a compromise dictated by the physical necessity of an institution.  It may be quite good but too often alas! it is only the dressed-up double of true prayer.

Where would we be without institutions?  We need them, but only up to a point.  We are what we are because of the institutions in which we grew up, and natural piety dictates that we be appropriately grateful.  But their negative aspects cannot be ignored and all further personal development requires those who can, to go it alone.

We need society and its institutions to socialize us, to raise us from the level of the animal to that of the human.  But this human is all-too-human, and to take the next step we must tread the solitary path.  Better to be a social animal than a mere animal, but better than both is to become an individual, as I am sure Kierkegaard would agree.  To achieve true individuality  is one of the main tasks of human life.  In pursuit of this task institutions are more hindrance than help.

For some, churches and related institutions will always be necessary to provide guidance, discipline, and community.  But for others they will prove stifling and second-best, a transitional phase in their development.

For any church to claim that outside it there is no salvation — extra ecclesiam salus non est — is intolerable dogmatism, and indeed a form of idolatry in which something finite, a human institution contingent both in its existence and configuration, is elevated to the status of the Absolute.

For my take on idolatry see the Idolatry category.

Suggestions on How to Meditate

Some time ago I wrote a post entitled Meditation: What and Why? I was meaning to write a follow-up on the how of meditation, but didn't  get around to it. But recently a friend asked for some practical  suggestions. So here goes. I recommend first reading the What and Why entry. There I explain what meditation is and list some of its uses.

Time. The best time to meditate is early in the morning, before sunrise. Any monk will tell you that. One can meditate at other times, but it is easiest in the morning for obvious reasons: it is dark, cool, and quiet, and one's mind, refreshed by sleep, has not yet been sullied by the day's doings.

Burmese-150 Posture. There is only one really good meditation posture and that is seated on the ground or floor on a comfortable mat and cushion.  Shankara reputedly could meditate while sitting in snow, but you and I are not Shankara. I use a regulation Zen black meditation mat and cushion. The mat should be thick and large enough so that no part of the legs or buttocks touches the floor. The cushion, which should be very thick and almost spherical in shape, is placed between the buttocks and the mat. The idea is to elevate the buttocks in such a way that one comfortably achieves a posture in which the back is straight. I do not recommend sitting crosslegged in the full- or half-lotus positions, as this can be hard on the knees. I recommend the Burmese posture as illustrated on the left. The knees and shins are flat against the mat, making for comfort and stability, in a posture that can be maintained easily for an hour or more without moving.

Stretching. I like to do a little stretching before beginning the meditation. While seated in the Burmese position, I bend forward and slowly bring my forehead down to the mat. This is more easily achieved if the hands are clasped behind the back and elevated. Breath deeply and proceed slowly. After a few repetitions, stretch the hands toward the ceiling and extend upwards as far as possible. If you are the bhaktic (devotional) type, this gesture can be one of supplication.  I then twist my trunk and neck to the right (left) after placing my  left (right) hand on my right (left) knee. Be careful, no jerking. Finally, I do a series of neck rotations. Placing my chin on my chest, I slowly rotate the neck around, keeping the head as close to the body as possible, Do this a few times in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions.

Breath. Now that you are properly seated, concentrate on your breathing. The main thing is to 'belly breath.' Push the diaphragm out and draw the breath slowly and deeply into the lungs. Then exhale fully without holding your breath at any time. Imagine on the out-breath that you are exhaling not only air but all manner of mental detritus: negative thoughts, useless memories, worries, etc. Attend carefully to the breathing process. This attending is already a form of meditation, a form of entering into the Inner Citadel. Imagine that you are trying to draw your center of gravity lower and lower toward the mat and farther and farther away from the discursive mind.

Relaxation. The next step is to relax every part of your body while keeping the spine straight. Starting from the top of the head with the scalp, forehead, facial muscles, release any tension encountered, proceeding to the neck and shoulders, and all the way down. 'Exhale' all physical tensions along with stale air and useless thoughts.  If nothing else, this feels good and will lower blood pressure.

Theme. So much for preliminaries. One now needs a theme upon which to focus one's attention. There is no end to the number of themes; one must choose one that is appealing to oneself. One might start discursively, by running through a mantram, but the idea is to achieve a nondiscursive one-pointedness of attention. Some  suggestions.

1. A Christian of a bhaktic disposition might start with the Jesus Prayer which is used by the mystics of Eastern Orthodoxy: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." One tethers one's mind to the mantram to the exclusion of all other thoughts, repeating it (in thought) over and over. One then gradually whittles it down to one  word, say, 'Lord' by progressively dropping 'a sinner,' 'on me a sinner,' 'have mercy on me a sinner,' and so on. One then repeats 'Lord,' 'Lord, 'Lord,' . . . in an attempt to sink into mental quiet.  I describe mental quiet in the above-linked post.

If one feels oneself slipping into mental quiet, then one must let go of the mantram and simply abide passively in the state of quietude, without reflecting on it, analyzing it, or recalling how one got to
it. The approach to mental quiet is a phase of active working; this is difficult enough. Even more difficult is the phase in which one lets  go of this work and simply rests in it. There will be a very strong temptation to analyze it. If at all possible, resist this temptation.

2. A more metaphysically inclined Christian who is fond of St. Augustine might experiment with the phrase, 'Lord, eternal Truth, unchanging Light,' reducing it to one word, whether 'Lord' or 'Truth'
or 'Light.'

3. I have had good results with a line from Plotinus' Enneads, "It is by the One that all beings are beings." This is a very rich saying that can be mulled over from several directions. Everything that is, IS. What is it for a thing TO BE? And what is the source of the being of that-which-is? It is by the One that all beings are. What does 'by'  mean? And what is the One? Although one starts discursively, the idea is to penetrate this ONE, to become at-one with it. As Plotinus would say, it is a flight of the alone to the all-One. Of course, it cannot  be grasped: any grasping is discursive. One is digging for the &#0
160; nondiscursive root of the discursive mind, a root that is itself rooted in the ONE which is the source of all phenomenal entities and unities.

4. A classical theme of meditation is the Self, or, if you insist, the absence of a Self. Here is one of the ways I approach this theme. I start by closely attending to my breath. I think of it objectively as air entering though my nostrils and travelling to my lungs. And then I think about my body and its parts. Here on this mat is this animated body; but am I this animated body? How could I be identical to this   animated body? I have properties it doesn't have, and vice versa.  Am I this breath, these lungs, this cardiovascular system, this animated body? Or am I the awareness of all of this? How could I be any object? Am I not rather the subject for whom all  objects are objects? Am I not other than every object? But what is this subject if it is not itself an object? How could there be a subject that was not an object or a potential object? Is it nothing at all? But there is awareness, and awareness is not any object. There is patently a difference between the awareness of O and O, for any O. To be for a human being is to be in this transcendental difference. Is this difference nothing? If it is not nothing, what differs in this difference? 

One can pursue this meditation in two ways. One can reduce it to a koan: I am awareness and I am not nothing, but I am not something either. Not nothing and not something. How? I am something, I am nothing, I can't be both, I can't be neither. What then is this I that is nothing and something and not nothing and something? One can take this as a koan, an intellectual knot that has no discursive solution but is not a mere nugatory puzzle of linguistic origin, to be relieved by some Wittgensteinian pseudo-therapy, but a pointer to a dimension  beyong the discursive mind. The active phase of the meditation then  consists in energetically trying to penetrate this riddle.

Note that one needn't dogmatically assume or affirm that there is a dimension beyond the discursive mind.  This is open inquiry, exploration without anticipation of result.

Or, instead of bashing one's head against this brick wall of a koan, one can just repeat 'I,' 'I', 'I' in an attempt at peacefully bringing the discursive intellect to subsidence.

More later. Further topics: duration; pre-meditation; post-meditation; strange phenomena regularity of practice; ethical prerequisites.

Thought Check

More important than a 'gut check' might be a thought check carried out at regular intervals.  Say to yourself: what is the quality of my present thoughts?  Positive or negative? Ennobling or degrading?  Useless or useful?  Where are they drifting? What is their likely issue?  Conducive to happiness or to ever more negativity and misery for myself and others?

Why might this be useful?  Because thought is the seed of word and deed.