The essays, pieces, and translations on this blogspot site up to this date are now available in printed book form from lulu.com and all the regular online retail booksellers. The full information: Eric Fallick, Platonist Contemplative Asceticism: Practice and Principle, ISBN 978-0-359-77301-5.
http://www.lulu.com/shop/eric-fallick/platonist-contemplative-asceticism-practice-and-principle/paperback/product-24173074.html
Showing posts with label Spiritual Experience. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spiritual Experience. Show all posts
Friday, July 26, 2019
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
Letter to a Modern Secular Materialist Positivist Skeptic
Letter to a Modern Secular Materialist Positivist Skeptic
by Eric S. Fallick
You are unwilling to adopt a definite spiritual understanding and contemplative ascetic life and practice because you think that you don't have direct empirical evidence or personal experience to know their truth. You don't realize that you are already full of undemonstrated beliefs, that it is impossible to operate without a belief structure, that you have to stand somewhere. Through lack of philosophical understanding, you have simply adopted without question or conscious awareness the most dubious and undemonstrable belief structure of the modern world and scientism that holds that only the things of the senses and individual subjective experience are actual and positively demonstrable, while actually it can be shown that these are the least reliable. This is most unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising since this is the attitude and environment all around you and is most insidious in presenting itself as self-evident rather than another most questionable belief structure and actually denies the validity of metaphysics while not realizing that it is, in fact, just based on another and unquestioned, but illogical, metaphysics—that of materialism, positivism, naturalism, sensationalism, etc. Ultimately, however, this is due to your own heavy karma and deep rooted delusion, which has resulted in both the circumstances of your present birth and, more particularly, your accepting the belief structure of the modern world around you and your inability to shift to a truer structure and your ongoing doubts and skepticism. Since, however, this is how you feel, let's see what your own personal, positivistically evident experience actually tells you.
Here is something you know directly for yourself from your own experience: You will die. Whether in five minutes or sixty years, you will die. You obviously know this to be the case since you don't know or have ever heard of anyone who hasn't or doesn't die. You also know directly from your own experience that nothing in the spatio-temporal sense world, no sense-perceptible thing, is permanent and lasts—everything perishes after a (relatively short!) time and disappears. You know this since you have never seen and can't think of any sense-perceptible or phenomenal thing that lasts forever. Thus, since you know that you will die and that everything in this world will pass away, you know that there is nothing you can pursue in this world that you can keep and have for more than a very short time and that you will have to leave everything behind at death. People, family, friends, wives, children, possessions, pleasures, worldly knowledge, etc., etc.—you can't keep anything. This you know yourself to be the case. Therefore, the only logical and reasonable thing to do under such a circumstance is to renounce and give up all these things that you can't keep and seek for something that is permanent and can give lasting satisfaction. What is there that you know from your own direct experience that is constant? Where can you look from your own experience for something permanent? In fact, it is the fact of experience itself, the soul or spirit or subject that experiences impermanence and all the passing phenomena, including the phenomena of body and mind. This must stand outside the space-time frame or it would not be possible to know of or experience the passing variety and series of spatio-temporal phenomena. Experience itself per se, the soul/spirit/subject must continue the same for any particular changing experiences to be possible at all. Thus, though you don't realize it, you really know directly for yourself from your own experience the fact of rebirth/reincarnation since otherwise it wouldn't be possible for you to know the experience of death. Since the soul/spirit/experience itself is the only thing that you have and have direct personal experience of that could possibly last beyond your death (which is coming very soon—a whole long lifetime of 100 years is only an instant compared to the whole of time), the only at all sane occupation of your life would be the purification and extrication of your soul from the impermanent, imperishable space-time world and objects. Thus, it seems to me, you actually already have the essential framework of the Indo-hellenistic spiritual systems and practice as a matter of your direct personal experience and the decision to become a renunciant/contemplative ascetic devoted to meditation, study, striving for liberation, etc. is already made for you as a matter of your direct personal experience.
Now, at this point, with your doubting mind, you might say, “OK, now I know from my own experience the facts of the immortality of the soul, the cycle of reincarnation and the logical desirability of release from this, but how do I know that there is actually something else besides this endless cycle of rebirth and that I can attain to it and attain release and thereby should exert the effort to do so?” From your own personal experience, you know that experience consists not only of your own self or soul, of the subject only, but also that there are objects of experience and that other souls are included in your own experience—that you experience the existence of other souls and of objects of experience, that you know yourself as bounded, with other selves and things beyond this boundary. This would not be possible if there were not another greater overarching mind that experiences the whole and with which you are connected and in which you are rooted, that goes beyond the boundaries and lets you experience beyond your own boundaries and, to a limited extent, the whole. Further, you know from your own experience that your knowledge is limited and imperfect and that you can err. You would not be able to recognize limited and imperfect knowledge and error unless there were a standard and fact of complete perfect knowledge and truth to compare it to greater than your own limited knowledge and unless you were in some way in contact with and rooted in it. Knowledge must exist in and for a mind. Thus, there must be a greater, all complete, all encompassing, true, unerring mind that you have contact with and that provides the standards by which you know that your own knowledge may be incomplete, imperfect or erroneous. Thus, you also know from your own personal experience that there is an Absolute, an Absolute Mind, greater than yourself outside of the limited time-space world of rebirth and finite experience and that you are already somehow and to some extent in contact with it. How do you know that you can attain union with this Absolute Mind and come yourself to be outside the finite world and cycle of rebirth? You know from your own personal experience that your own knowledge can become better and more complete and truer and you don't know and have never experienced a limit to this process. Since your own knowledge is by nature limited, your increase in truer and more complete knowledge and knowing that it is so can only come from gaining such knowledge from the complete true knowledge of the Absolute Mind, from greater contact with the Absolute Mind. The more complete and true your knowledge becomes, the more you have contact with the Absolute Mind, the more your knowledge resembles and is that of the Absolute Mind. When your knowledge would become coterminous with the complete knowledge of the Absolute Mind, there would be nothing left to distinguish you from the Absolute Mind, you would be the Absolute Mind. Thus, you know that it is possible to attain union with the Absolute Mind and come to be outside of birth and death.
Now, finally, you may doubt, “OK, I see that I have to logically grant all this, but how do I know for sure that contemplative asceticism is the way to this re-union and release? How do I know that meditation or contemplation is the method to accomplish this? Even if it is, how do I know that renunciation is necessary in order to do it?” You have already granted that the way to re-union and release is to merge your mind with the Absolute Mind, to make your mind coextensive with the Absolute Mind. How else is this to be accomplished but in formal contemplation or meditation, along with ancillary study? Contemplation is the very practice of consciously and continuously exerting your soul to come into contact with, be filled by, receive knowledge from and merge with the Absolute Mind. This obviously requires the formal sitting practice of contemplation in which you attempt to free your mind from other content and concerns to fill it from the Divine Mind. How else could your soul receive the impress of the Divine Mind if it is not trying, at least for the period of contemplation, to be free from the content and impresses of the limited sense world? Your mind or soul cannot be directed in two opposite ways and be filled with two mutually conflicting contents at the same time! Thus, it is clear that formal contemplation practice is the necessary way—though, of course, it needs to be informed by a proper understanding gained through study and reflection so that you know what you are doing. It is also obvious, upon even a little reflection, and logical that this requires full world renunciation and asceticism to such an extent as is possible. First of all, even a little beginning effort will show you empirically that this is a most, in fact, supremely difficult and lengthy task. It clearly requires all the time and energy you can give to it. How could you possibly devote such necessary effort to the spiritual path while still occupied with pursuing and indulging in worldly desires and pursuits—sex, relationships, family, career ambitions, entertainments, fancy food and drink for pleasure, hobbies, literature, activism, news, etc., etc.—all of which require much time and energy and thought and take all this away from contemplative practice and study, which, it should be obvious, requires all the time, energy and effort you can muster if it is to be at all successful. How in the world, again, also, can you fill your mind and soul with all these things outside of contemplation and then expect to suddenly empty yourself of them in contemplation to receive the impress of the Absolute Mind? It would be like trying to put out a fire while at the same time stoking it with fuel and gasoline, or trying to erase a chalkboard at one end while continuing to write on it at an even greater rate at the other end, or trying to record a disk with two completely different and discordant sound sources at the same time! All worldly pursuits and desires and indulgences, as you can easily verify in a short time from your own experience if you try to practice contemplation without renunciation and ceasing from these worldly things, turn the soul completely towards becoming, which is the state of the finite soul, as is clear from the discussion above, instead of to being, which is the state of the Divine Mind that you are trying to attain to. Can it be any more obvious and logical, even just from your own experience and reflection, that you can't turn in two opposite directions at the same time? Thus, it is clear without doubt that contemplation, meditation, renunciation and asceticism are the Path and the only way to accomplish the goal that has appeared as incontrovertibly logically necessary even just on the basis of the personal experience that each person indubitably has, if they would only reflect on it.
So, there you have it. Even just on the basis of everyone's common human experience, the understanding is clear and the only possible reasonable way to proceed is manifest. Slough off your deluded modern physicalist conditioning, my friend, and rouse yourself from your positivist slumbers. Awaken the innate understanding and aspiration of your soul and get going full speed ahead on the Path to freedom from rebirth and sensate existence and misery. You have nothing to lose but your bondage and suffering and ignorance!
©2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
by Eric S. Fallick
You are unwilling to adopt a definite spiritual understanding and contemplative ascetic life and practice because you think that you don't have direct empirical evidence or personal experience to know their truth. You don't realize that you are already full of undemonstrated beliefs, that it is impossible to operate without a belief structure, that you have to stand somewhere. Through lack of philosophical understanding, you have simply adopted without question or conscious awareness the most dubious and undemonstrable belief structure of the modern world and scientism that holds that only the things of the senses and individual subjective experience are actual and positively demonstrable, while actually it can be shown that these are the least reliable. This is most unfortunate, but perhaps not surprising since this is the attitude and environment all around you and is most insidious in presenting itself as self-evident rather than another most questionable belief structure and actually denies the validity of metaphysics while not realizing that it is, in fact, just based on another and unquestioned, but illogical, metaphysics—that of materialism, positivism, naturalism, sensationalism, etc. Ultimately, however, this is due to your own heavy karma and deep rooted delusion, which has resulted in both the circumstances of your present birth and, more particularly, your accepting the belief structure of the modern world around you and your inability to shift to a truer structure and your ongoing doubts and skepticism. Since, however, this is how you feel, let's see what your own personal, positivistically evident experience actually tells you.
Here is something you know directly for yourself from your own experience: You will die. Whether in five minutes or sixty years, you will die. You obviously know this to be the case since you don't know or have ever heard of anyone who hasn't or doesn't die. You also know directly from your own experience that nothing in the spatio-temporal sense world, no sense-perceptible thing, is permanent and lasts—everything perishes after a (relatively short!) time and disappears. You know this since you have never seen and can't think of any sense-perceptible or phenomenal thing that lasts forever. Thus, since you know that you will die and that everything in this world will pass away, you know that there is nothing you can pursue in this world that you can keep and have for more than a very short time and that you will have to leave everything behind at death. People, family, friends, wives, children, possessions, pleasures, worldly knowledge, etc., etc.—you can't keep anything. This you know yourself to be the case. Therefore, the only logical and reasonable thing to do under such a circumstance is to renounce and give up all these things that you can't keep and seek for something that is permanent and can give lasting satisfaction. What is there that you know from your own direct experience that is constant? Where can you look from your own experience for something permanent? In fact, it is the fact of experience itself, the soul or spirit or subject that experiences impermanence and all the passing phenomena, including the phenomena of body and mind. This must stand outside the space-time frame or it would not be possible to know of or experience the passing variety and series of spatio-temporal phenomena. Experience itself per se, the soul/spirit/subject must continue the same for any particular changing experiences to be possible at all. Thus, though you don't realize it, you really know directly for yourself from your own experience the fact of rebirth/reincarnation since otherwise it wouldn't be possible for you to know the experience of death. Since the soul/spirit/experience itself is the only thing that you have and have direct personal experience of that could possibly last beyond your death (which is coming very soon—a whole long lifetime of 100 years is only an instant compared to the whole of time), the only at all sane occupation of your life would be the purification and extrication of your soul from the impermanent, imperishable space-time world and objects. Thus, it seems to me, you actually already have the essential framework of the Indo-hellenistic spiritual systems and practice as a matter of your direct personal experience and the decision to become a renunciant/contemplative ascetic devoted to meditation, study, striving for liberation, etc. is already made for you as a matter of your direct personal experience.
Now, at this point, with your doubting mind, you might say, “OK, now I know from my own experience the facts of the immortality of the soul, the cycle of reincarnation and the logical desirability of release from this, but how do I know that there is actually something else besides this endless cycle of rebirth and that I can attain to it and attain release and thereby should exert the effort to do so?” From your own personal experience, you know that experience consists not only of your own self or soul, of the subject only, but also that there are objects of experience and that other souls are included in your own experience—that you experience the existence of other souls and of objects of experience, that you know yourself as bounded, with other selves and things beyond this boundary. This would not be possible if there were not another greater overarching mind that experiences the whole and with which you are connected and in which you are rooted, that goes beyond the boundaries and lets you experience beyond your own boundaries and, to a limited extent, the whole. Further, you know from your own experience that your knowledge is limited and imperfect and that you can err. You would not be able to recognize limited and imperfect knowledge and error unless there were a standard and fact of complete perfect knowledge and truth to compare it to greater than your own limited knowledge and unless you were in some way in contact with and rooted in it. Knowledge must exist in and for a mind. Thus, there must be a greater, all complete, all encompassing, true, unerring mind that you have contact with and that provides the standards by which you know that your own knowledge may be incomplete, imperfect or erroneous. Thus, you also know from your own personal experience that there is an Absolute, an Absolute Mind, greater than yourself outside of the limited time-space world of rebirth and finite experience and that you are already somehow and to some extent in contact with it. How do you know that you can attain union with this Absolute Mind and come yourself to be outside the finite world and cycle of rebirth? You know from your own personal experience that your own knowledge can become better and more complete and truer and you don't know and have never experienced a limit to this process. Since your own knowledge is by nature limited, your increase in truer and more complete knowledge and knowing that it is so can only come from gaining such knowledge from the complete true knowledge of the Absolute Mind, from greater contact with the Absolute Mind. The more complete and true your knowledge becomes, the more you have contact with the Absolute Mind, the more your knowledge resembles and is that of the Absolute Mind. When your knowledge would become coterminous with the complete knowledge of the Absolute Mind, there would be nothing left to distinguish you from the Absolute Mind, you would be the Absolute Mind. Thus, you know that it is possible to attain union with the Absolute Mind and come to be outside of birth and death.
Now, finally, you may doubt, “OK, I see that I have to logically grant all this, but how do I know for sure that contemplative asceticism is the way to this re-union and release? How do I know that meditation or contemplation is the method to accomplish this? Even if it is, how do I know that renunciation is necessary in order to do it?” You have already granted that the way to re-union and release is to merge your mind with the Absolute Mind, to make your mind coextensive with the Absolute Mind. How else is this to be accomplished but in formal contemplation or meditation, along with ancillary study? Contemplation is the very practice of consciously and continuously exerting your soul to come into contact with, be filled by, receive knowledge from and merge with the Absolute Mind. This obviously requires the formal sitting practice of contemplation in which you attempt to free your mind from other content and concerns to fill it from the Divine Mind. How else could your soul receive the impress of the Divine Mind if it is not trying, at least for the period of contemplation, to be free from the content and impresses of the limited sense world? Your mind or soul cannot be directed in two opposite ways and be filled with two mutually conflicting contents at the same time! Thus, it is clear that formal contemplation practice is the necessary way—though, of course, it needs to be informed by a proper understanding gained through study and reflection so that you know what you are doing. It is also obvious, upon even a little reflection, and logical that this requires full world renunciation and asceticism to such an extent as is possible. First of all, even a little beginning effort will show you empirically that this is a most, in fact, supremely difficult and lengthy task. It clearly requires all the time and energy you can give to it. How could you possibly devote such necessary effort to the spiritual path while still occupied with pursuing and indulging in worldly desires and pursuits—sex, relationships, family, career ambitions, entertainments, fancy food and drink for pleasure, hobbies, literature, activism, news, etc., etc.—all of which require much time and energy and thought and take all this away from contemplative practice and study, which, it should be obvious, requires all the time, energy and effort you can muster if it is to be at all successful. How in the world, again, also, can you fill your mind and soul with all these things outside of contemplation and then expect to suddenly empty yourself of them in contemplation to receive the impress of the Absolute Mind? It would be like trying to put out a fire while at the same time stoking it with fuel and gasoline, or trying to erase a chalkboard at one end while continuing to write on it at an even greater rate at the other end, or trying to record a disk with two completely different and discordant sound sources at the same time! All worldly pursuits and desires and indulgences, as you can easily verify in a short time from your own experience if you try to practice contemplation without renunciation and ceasing from these worldly things, turn the soul completely towards becoming, which is the state of the finite soul, as is clear from the discussion above, instead of to being, which is the state of the Divine Mind that you are trying to attain to. Can it be any more obvious and logical, even just from your own experience and reflection, that you can't turn in two opposite directions at the same time? Thus, it is clear without doubt that contemplation, meditation, renunciation and asceticism are the Path and the only way to accomplish the goal that has appeared as incontrovertibly logically necessary even just on the basis of the personal experience that each person indubitably has, if they would only reflect on it.
So, there you have it. Even just on the basis of everyone's common human experience, the understanding is clear and the only possible reasonable way to proceed is manifest. Slough off your deluded modern physicalist conditioning, my friend, and rouse yourself from your positivist slumbers. Awaken the innate understanding and aspiration of your soul and get going full speed ahead on the Path to freedom from rebirth and sensate existence and misery. You have nothing to lose but your bondage and suffering and ignorance!
©2016 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Tuesday, March 6, 2018
Anxiety Disorders and Platonic Asceticism
Anxiety Disorders and Platonic Asceticism
by Eric S. Fallick
You inquire, my fellow celibate renunciant ascetic, about anxiety disorders and depression and how a Platonist renunciant and ascetic may be able to deal with them better than ordinary worldlings. You mention about how some Stoic ideas and ways of thinking and also so-called Buddhist mindfulness practices have been adopted in some contemporary psychotherapy and wonder if Platonist principles could be similarly applied. You say you would like me to touch on these topics. I have also heard a little about psychotherapists adopting some Stoic ideas and, indeed, that cognitive therapy may actually have derived from that source (though I'm not sure). In any case, while they may use some of the Stoic principles and ideas, being modern secular psychology, they discard the values and spirituality and morality and discipline and such degree of asceticism as it has of Stoicism, which, while very much below Platonism, is, of course, its most important part. The use of so-called mindfulness for secular psychotherapy has little to do with actual Buddhism (and, in fact, as I have indicated, most of what presently goes on under the name of Buddhism also has little to do with actual Buddhism!), and, as I have mentioned before, I don't think that the whole popular 'mindfulness' practices have any valid metaphysical and spiritual basis.
I don't think I can, or ever will be able, to touch on anxiety disorders and depression as they relate to the many, to worldlings, to the masses of ordinary people. They live in a different world than we do. They are altogether mad from beginning to end and little in touch with reality. I can't even understand very well the worldlings whom I have to deal with all the time in earning a living, etc., etc.--I can only just observe their delusion. Their values are the opposite of ours and the things that they fear and desire are the opposite of us. Even with contemplative ascetics, I don't think I can say much about depression since that is not a problem for me and I haven't looked into it and since I don't have it it is not something I can learn about from introspection and experience. I can, however, speak about anxiety disorders as they pertain to sincere renunciants and contemplative ascetics. I myself, in fact, as I have mentioned in passing before, have an anxiety disorder, OCD, which runs in my family, but which in my case is caused by the frightfulness of the isolated circumstances that I have been in for so many years and which, in fact, you share (and, as I have mentioned before, also has to do with my Mahayana Buddhist and institutionalized Buddhist monastic karma from the past). Actually, anxiety disorders in general and OCD in particular seem to be something of an occupational hazard of contemplative ascetics and mystics, judging from the available records. For example, it is commonly reported in the records and teachings of the Christian mystics, and probably easier to find there only because of the kind of records and writings they kept. It is also common in the people I have known who have been interested in one degree or another in this Path--for example, both one. some of whose correspondence I have forwarded to you, and the long-time worldling householder, but supportive and interested, friend, who used to maintain eumaiosllc.com, but has now withdrawn so that it has gone defunct, have OCD, a hermit who I once knew had anxiety disorders, etc.
So maybe, if you are interested to hear, I can say a little about my own experience, which may help to answer somewhat your question about unique Platonic insights into the matter. Anxiety disorders are caused by fear. Fear with which we are not in contact, so to speak, or aware of or dealing with directly builds up and comes out as the anxiety disorder and its symptoms. What I fear, though, is not even on the radar screen of ordinary worldly people and vice versa. I try to directly face and acknowledge and deal with my fears, but, despite continued efforts, I am not able to alter the fearful situation and isolation in which I have been for so many years and can't always be focused on the fear when dealing all the time with the world and worldlings if I am to function. (Social isolation is also well known to cause fear and anxiety--and that is, of course, the situation that we both find ourselves in, alone without fellow travelers who understand us and to whom we can talk as equals freely.) The only thing that I really fear is not attaining the telos, being separated from the One, continued reincarnation in individuated sensate existence in space-time. For many years and currently, I have only been surrounded by and always only in contact with and forced to deal with as equals (even though they are not) and dependent on for my physical survival and necessary human contact only ordinary deluded worldlings going the exact opposite way of me deeper and deeper and further and further into birth and death and away from the Good. I have felt and do feel like the only sane person in an insane asylum, and this, just as being a human being, generates much fear of being pulled from the Path or ruined by these foolish people. Actually, many people have told me that no one else (except you and maybe a few others!) could do what I have done and continue to do and that I am actually very brave. Various people from my Catholic priest turned semi-contemplative monastic friend to health professionals have told me that this circumstance is enough to make anyone have an anxiety disorder and have to take an SSRI. This, perhaps, can be understood by many, even ordinary, people, at least by analogy and the basic principles of human psychology. The other aspect of my fear can only, though, be understood by somewhat accomplished contemplative ascetics. When one touches, even a little, the Good or the One, and even only Nous, in contemplation, it is the most wonderful thing imaginable and sensate existence appears as in itself the most horrible thing imaginable. To briefly have this experience in contemplation and then have to return to the ordinary sense world--and many times worse, to the totally unsupportive and adverse environment in which we both live without anyone who understands--causes great 'separation anxiety' and is very frightful in itself. In all this, however, it is only the lower self, of course, that is experiencing all this fear and anxiety disorder as a result of karma. The higher self is still in touch at some level with the unchanging higher hypostases, and it is turning to this that I ultimately have to strive to deal with the fear. I have to try to remember that my understanding and direction and determination in the Path, which I have maintained and ever strengthened for many years despite being all alone with no support whatsoever of any kind, comes from the Absolute within me and isn't dependent on external things and won't be destroyed by the crazy people and world around me. I have to remember that everything actually works by karma and I am not actually so dependent for having circumstances in which to survive and pursue the Path on mad people who would love to pull me off the Way. I have to keep practicing until the vision of the Good is clear enough that I have the gut level, as well as conceptual level, understanding and confidence that I have progressed far enough that it is certain that I will eventually attain re-union with the One and can never be separated with it, in which case I can bear anything else that happens. I know all this in the higher self at the core of my being, despite all the travail that the lower self is continually going through in working through this karma and circumstances and fear, which is, I guess, why I am and have been able to do it while others can't or don't even know that they have to. I could go on and on, but this is already getting quite lengthy, and hopefully has shed at least a little light on your questions and shown a little that, yes, as you say, the spiritual are able to understand and manage these problems differently than the worldly and are superior in that regard.
As I said, I am not in a position to speak about depression, but I suspect that depression stands in the same relation and dynamics to anger as anxiety disorders do to fear. I would not want to see Platonism profaned by trying to use it for or as a psychotherapy or a basis for such. Nor do I think such a thing is even possible. Philosophia, Platonism, is most transcendent and, like it or not, beyond the reach of, not suitable for or for, the many (including or especially psychologists and psychiatrists!) and cannot be approached or even really understood by them. Platonism cannot be turned to mundane, worldly ends including helping ordinary people be healthy, wealthy and wise and pursue their worldly desires more effectively and comfortably through psychotherapy. It cannot be divorced from values that are not acceptable to secular psychology and psychotherapy and it doesn't have the kind of principles that can be isolated from their context and applied to profane ends. Iamblichus and Proclus and their followers did their best to destroy Platonism by making it a thing of this world, and an attempted Platonist psychotherapy would be some notches further below this. The Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Sufi and Jewish contemplative systems have already been destroyed in the modern world by trying to make them popular and for worldlings all and sundry, and some are already trying to do this with Platonism as well.
©2016 Eric S. Fallick
by Eric S. Fallick
You inquire, my fellow celibate renunciant ascetic, about anxiety disorders and depression and how a Platonist renunciant and ascetic may be able to deal with them better than ordinary worldlings. You mention about how some Stoic ideas and ways of thinking and also so-called Buddhist mindfulness practices have been adopted in some contemporary psychotherapy and wonder if Platonist principles could be similarly applied. You say you would like me to touch on these topics. I have also heard a little about psychotherapists adopting some Stoic ideas and, indeed, that cognitive therapy may actually have derived from that source (though I'm not sure). In any case, while they may use some of the Stoic principles and ideas, being modern secular psychology, they discard the values and spirituality and morality and discipline and such degree of asceticism as it has of Stoicism, which, while very much below Platonism, is, of course, its most important part. The use of so-called mindfulness for secular psychotherapy has little to do with actual Buddhism (and, in fact, as I have indicated, most of what presently goes on under the name of Buddhism also has little to do with actual Buddhism!), and, as I have mentioned before, I don't think that the whole popular 'mindfulness' practices have any valid metaphysical and spiritual basis.
I don't think I can, or ever will be able, to touch on anxiety disorders and depression as they relate to the many, to worldlings, to the masses of ordinary people. They live in a different world than we do. They are altogether mad from beginning to end and little in touch with reality. I can't even understand very well the worldlings whom I have to deal with all the time in earning a living, etc., etc.--I can only just observe their delusion. Their values are the opposite of ours and the things that they fear and desire are the opposite of us. Even with contemplative ascetics, I don't think I can say much about depression since that is not a problem for me and I haven't looked into it and since I don't have it it is not something I can learn about from introspection and experience. I can, however, speak about anxiety disorders as they pertain to sincere renunciants and contemplative ascetics. I myself, in fact, as I have mentioned in passing before, have an anxiety disorder, OCD, which runs in my family, but which in my case is caused by the frightfulness of the isolated circumstances that I have been in for so many years and which, in fact, you share (and, as I have mentioned before, also has to do with my Mahayana Buddhist and institutionalized Buddhist monastic karma from the past). Actually, anxiety disorders in general and OCD in particular seem to be something of an occupational hazard of contemplative ascetics and mystics, judging from the available records. For example, it is commonly reported in the records and teachings of the Christian mystics, and probably easier to find there only because of the kind of records and writings they kept. It is also common in the people I have known who have been interested in one degree or another in this Path--for example, both one. some of whose correspondence I have forwarded to you, and the long-time worldling householder, but supportive and interested, friend, who used to maintain eumaiosllc.com, but has now withdrawn so that it has gone defunct, have OCD, a hermit who I once knew had anxiety disorders, etc.
So maybe, if you are interested to hear, I can say a little about my own experience, which may help to answer somewhat your question about unique Platonic insights into the matter. Anxiety disorders are caused by fear. Fear with which we are not in contact, so to speak, or aware of or dealing with directly builds up and comes out as the anxiety disorder and its symptoms. What I fear, though, is not even on the radar screen of ordinary worldly people and vice versa. I try to directly face and acknowledge and deal with my fears, but, despite continued efforts, I am not able to alter the fearful situation and isolation in which I have been for so many years and can't always be focused on the fear when dealing all the time with the world and worldlings if I am to function. (Social isolation is also well known to cause fear and anxiety--and that is, of course, the situation that we both find ourselves in, alone without fellow travelers who understand us and to whom we can talk as equals freely.) The only thing that I really fear is not attaining the telos, being separated from the One, continued reincarnation in individuated sensate existence in space-time. For many years and currently, I have only been surrounded by and always only in contact with and forced to deal with as equals (even though they are not) and dependent on for my physical survival and necessary human contact only ordinary deluded worldlings going the exact opposite way of me deeper and deeper and further and further into birth and death and away from the Good. I have felt and do feel like the only sane person in an insane asylum, and this, just as being a human being, generates much fear of being pulled from the Path or ruined by these foolish people. Actually, many people have told me that no one else (except you and maybe a few others!) could do what I have done and continue to do and that I am actually very brave. Various people from my Catholic priest turned semi-contemplative monastic friend to health professionals have told me that this circumstance is enough to make anyone have an anxiety disorder and have to take an SSRI. This, perhaps, can be understood by many, even ordinary, people, at least by analogy and the basic principles of human psychology. The other aspect of my fear can only, though, be understood by somewhat accomplished contemplative ascetics. When one touches, even a little, the Good or the One, and even only Nous, in contemplation, it is the most wonderful thing imaginable and sensate existence appears as in itself the most horrible thing imaginable. To briefly have this experience in contemplation and then have to return to the ordinary sense world--and many times worse, to the totally unsupportive and adverse environment in which we both live without anyone who understands--causes great 'separation anxiety' and is very frightful in itself. In all this, however, it is only the lower self, of course, that is experiencing all this fear and anxiety disorder as a result of karma. The higher self is still in touch at some level with the unchanging higher hypostases, and it is turning to this that I ultimately have to strive to deal with the fear. I have to try to remember that my understanding and direction and determination in the Path, which I have maintained and ever strengthened for many years despite being all alone with no support whatsoever of any kind, comes from the Absolute within me and isn't dependent on external things and won't be destroyed by the crazy people and world around me. I have to remember that everything actually works by karma and I am not actually so dependent for having circumstances in which to survive and pursue the Path on mad people who would love to pull me off the Way. I have to keep practicing until the vision of the Good is clear enough that I have the gut level, as well as conceptual level, understanding and confidence that I have progressed far enough that it is certain that I will eventually attain re-union with the One and can never be separated with it, in which case I can bear anything else that happens. I know all this in the higher self at the core of my being, despite all the travail that the lower self is continually going through in working through this karma and circumstances and fear, which is, I guess, why I am and have been able to do it while others can't or don't even know that they have to. I could go on and on, but this is already getting quite lengthy, and hopefully has shed at least a little light on your questions and shown a little that, yes, as you say, the spiritual are able to understand and manage these problems differently than the worldly and are superior in that regard.
As I said, I am not in a position to speak about depression, but I suspect that depression stands in the same relation and dynamics to anger as anxiety disorders do to fear. I would not want to see Platonism profaned by trying to use it for or as a psychotherapy or a basis for such. Nor do I think such a thing is even possible. Philosophia, Platonism, is most transcendent and, like it or not, beyond the reach of, not suitable for or for, the many (including or especially psychologists and psychiatrists!) and cannot be approached or even really understood by them. Platonism cannot be turned to mundane, worldly ends including helping ordinary people be healthy, wealthy and wise and pursue their worldly desires more effectively and comfortably through psychotherapy. It cannot be divorced from values that are not acceptable to secular psychology and psychotherapy and it doesn't have the kind of principles that can be isolated from their context and applied to profane ends. Iamblichus and Proclus and their followers did their best to destroy Platonism by making it a thing of this world, and an attempted Platonist psychotherapy would be some notches further below this. The Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Sufi and Jewish contemplative systems have already been destroyed in the modern world by trying to make them popular and for worldlings all and sundry, and some are already trying to do this with Platonism as well.
©2016 Eric S. Fallick
Monday, March 5, 2018
An Individual 'Benedict Option'
(This little piece was written for and submitted to a prestigious national magazine for online publication, but rejected. It was tailored specifically to their conservative Abrahamic and political orientation and interests and proclivities, though obviously not enough.)
An Individual 'Benedict Option'
by Eric S. Fallick
To all appearances, the modern world is becoming more secularized and deluded practically day by day. Traditional and absolute moral values and any sense of the transcendent are disappearing. Scientism, positivism, materialism and the like are the dominant 'religion', brooking no dissent, and a 'new totalitarianism' is spreading—one that is all the more insidious for the fact that it is based unconsciously on the most dubious and undemonstrable of metaphysical propositions, but thinks that it doesn't have a metaphysics and, in fact, denies the possibility of metaphysics at all. We live in a world that is the most inimical to any sort of genuine spirituality of probably any in at least the last 25 or 30 centuries. We are in the depths of the 'Kali Yuga', as it were, and there doesn't seem to be much likelihood of any reversal in the foreseeable future. Given this situation, I have seen that some traditional Christians have concluded that the battle for the soul of the modern world has been lost, at least for the time being, and that the only remaining alternative is a withdrawal into separate enclaves, this being referred to as the 'Benedict Option'.
Reading about this 'Benedict Option' was an opportunity for reflection on my own experience and situation. For more than three decades, I have lived and practiced alone as a single and solitary contemplative ascetic and renunciant incognito right in the middle of the most contemporary urban environments virtually without any kind of support at all of any kind—moral, spiritual, emotional, cognitive, financial, material or logistical. I have been celibate in the midst of sex-obsessed permissive, promiscuous and pornographic society; vegetarian and non-harming among flesh-eaters; teetotaling among drinkers and users of intoxicants; without a television or a car; unconcerned about the pleasures of food, drink and entertainment among those who know nothing else; concerned only about realizing union with the Divine Absolute and transcending this world among people who acknowledge only the realm of the senses and matter. Often, even basic physical survival has been tenuous in a Procrustean world that no longer has a place for renunciants and contemplatives outside of society. Great difficulties have presented themselves in such things as trying to rent housing without a credit history or much income, finding enough part-time employment to get by while not fitting the norms of society, and many other such things. Emotionally, I have had to endure crushing loneliness and the frightfulness of feeling like the only sane person in an insane asylum and being alone without fellow travelers or peers. I much sympathize with the loneliness and anxiety now felt by traditional Abrahamists, but the degree of support and company that they have seems, in comparison, downright luxurious.
In the end, what makes a person eudaimon or not is only the closeness or distance of the individual soul from the One, the Good, the Absolute, God. This doesn't mean just doctrinal acquiescence, but rather actual approach to God in contemplation with striving for holiness, asceticism, renunciation, purity and wholehearted devotion in all one's life. This is certainly much easier, more pleasant and less frightening to pursue in a traditional, pre-modern, and supportive environment with the aid of fellow travelers. Its necessity, however, is not at all negated by the adverse conditions of the present day. The individual soul needs to turn from the things of the senses and this world to the transcendent Divine, to God, wholeheartedly and follow the Ancient Path of the communion of saints, however more difficult and unsupported this Way may be in this brave new secular materialist modern world. This is an individual 'Benedict Option' that each soul can implement right now, if only Providence lights the Way.
© 2015 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
An Individual 'Benedict Option'
by Eric S. Fallick
To all appearances, the modern world is becoming more secularized and deluded practically day by day. Traditional and absolute moral values and any sense of the transcendent are disappearing. Scientism, positivism, materialism and the like are the dominant 'religion', brooking no dissent, and a 'new totalitarianism' is spreading—one that is all the more insidious for the fact that it is based unconsciously on the most dubious and undemonstrable of metaphysical propositions, but thinks that it doesn't have a metaphysics and, in fact, denies the possibility of metaphysics at all. We live in a world that is the most inimical to any sort of genuine spirituality of probably any in at least the last 25 or 30 centuries. We are in the depths of the 'Kali Yuga', as it were, and there doesn't seem to be much likelihood of any reversal in the foreseeable future. Given this situation, I have seen that some traditional Christians have concluded that the battle for the soul of the modern world has been lost, at least for the time being, and that the only remaining alternative is a withdrawal into separate enclaves, this being referred to as the 'Benedict Option'.
Reading about this 'Benedict Option' was an opportunity for reflection on my own experience and situation. For more than three decades, I have lived and practiced alone as a single and solitary contemplative ascetic and renunciant incognito right in the middle of the most contemporary urban environments virtually without any kind of support at all of any kind—moral, spiritual, emotional, cognitive, financial, material or logistical. I have been celibate in the midst of sex-obsessed permissive, promiscuous and pornographic society; vegetarian and non-harming among flesh-eaters; teetotaling among drinkers and users of intoxicants; without a television or a car; unconcerned about the pleasures of food, drink and entertainment among those who know nothing else; concerned only about realizing union with the Divine Absolute and transcending this world among people who acknowledge only the realm of the senses and matter. Often, even basic physical survival has been tenuous in a Procrustean world that no longer has a place for renunciants and contemplatives outside of society. Great difficulties have presented themselves in such things as trying to rent housing without a credit history or much income, finding enough part-time employment to get by while not fitting the norms of society, and many other such things. Emotionally, I have had to endure crushing loneliness and the frightfulness of feeling like the only sane person in an insane asylum and being alone without fellow travelers or peers. I much sympathize with the loneliness and anxiety now felt by traditional Abrahamists, but the degree of support and company that they have seems, in comparison, downright luxurious.
In the end, what makes a person eudaimon or not is only the closeness or distance of the individual soul from the One, the Good, the Absolute, God. This doesn't mean just doctrinal acquiescence, but rather actual approach to God in contemplation with striving for holiness, asceticism, renunciation, purity and wholehearted devotion in all one's life. This is certainly much easier, more pleasant and less frightening to pursue in a traditional, pre-modern, and supportive environment with the aid of fellow travelers. Its necessity, however, is not at all negated by the adverse conditions of the present day. The individual soul needs to turn from the things of the senses and this world to the transcendent Divine, to God, wholeheartedly and follow the Ancient Path of the communion of saints, however more difficult and unsupported this Way may be in this brave new secular materialist modern world. This is an individual 'Benedict Option' that each soul can implement right now, if only Providence lights the Way.
© 2015 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (with) (Gee) mail (period) com
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Of Gurus and Godmen
Of Gurus and Godmen
by Eric S. Fallick
“Although no real teacher exists, for one who knows is at once emancipated,
yet no contradiction finds place here, because knowledge can arise through
an imagined teacher.”
The Vedanta Siddhantamuktavali of Prakasananda, tr. by
Arthur Venis, p. 142
Many spiritual and contemplative systems include the institution and idea of the guru, lama, Chan/Zen master, sheik, tzaddik and the like. This idea comprehends the notion of a spiritual teacher who is supposed to be fully accomplished, realized, “enlightened”, knowing everything about how things are and guiding students and to whom students or disciples are supposed to submit, follow, obey, serve, idolize, imitate and even worship. They are supposed to regard the guru (this term will henceforth be used as an umbrella term for all the different names and variations on the theme) as a god, God incarnate, a Buddha, having special direct access to God, etc. In these systems, it is considered that the student can't proceed or accomplish the goal of the system without the guru and is dependent on the guru for spiritual progress, and the guru often performs rituals of initiation, ordination, etc., and is even supposed to supply necessary blessings, protection and so forth, along with detailed instructions (often secret and revealed only to the sufficiently submissive and obedient initiate). This institution continues as present in many, if not most, of the meditation/mystical oriented spiritual systems extant in the modern world, including the modern West, however attenuated, diluted, degenerated, confused, ersatz and vestigial the extant traditions may be. Even in those systems that don't actually include the guru idea and institution, the masses of starry-eyed silly people regularly exalt spiritual teachers and clergy to this status, with or without the encouragement of the objects of their glorification, and altogether regardless of their actual spiritual development, of the whole notion of which the people are generally without a clue. Of course, the founders and early figures of the various systems are usually deified. This whole idea and institution is, I think, highly problematic, to say the least, and erroneous, both pragmatically and on fundamental spiritual and metaphysical principles and facts. Here, I would like to briefly consider some of these problems and errors.
First of all, the whole guru business is, to use Abrahamic terminology, a form of idolatry. The whole purpose and goal of contemplative spiritual practice is to attain realization of and re-union with the Absolute, the One, the Good, the Unconditioned, or, if you like, God. This is our Source and our End, the only thing that is truly real and perfect, the very Ground of our and all Being, the only thing worth pursuing, loving and being concerned with. This Alone requires, demands, and deserves our attention, allegiance, love, esteem and devotion. This Alone should be our only concern and the only thing we have in view, are concerned with and consider important and worth striving for and exerting ourselves about. To raise any teacher or person, living or dead, to the status of guru and, effectively or overtly, spiritual intercessor is to give to a sensory phenomenon in space-time the consideration, attention, devotion, etc. that is due only to the One. It is a crime against Reality and the nature of things, a dangerous distraction and diversion from the Path. Of course, one will be told in such systems that the guru is necessary for attaining the Absolute, but this is not true, as will be discussed further below. Though it is outside the scope of this essay, it may be mentioned in passing that the same charge of idolatry applies to religious institutions and churches in general, ordinations, credentials,
robes, costumes, rituals, ceremonies, etc. It is also another reminder that, contrary to the trend of the modern world and contemporary allegedly spiritual movements, renunciation, celibate asceticism, and whole-hearted world-denyingness are absolutely essential to and part and parcel of any real contemplative practice and higher spiritual life.
For many of the masses of people, the guru institution may serve as a convenient excuse for not actually doing the hard work of the Path oneself. They seem to think that devotion to the guru can substitute for actual spiritual practice and that the guru's alleged spiritual accomplishment will somehow rub off on them and they can become sort of parasitic on the guru's supposed condition. Of course, at any given time, very few people will ever actually tread the Path, which is so difficult, and even fewer attain, especially now when almost no one is willing to renounce the world or even understands the necessity of doing so, but there is no use in pretending that things are other than they are or looking for shortcuts. It is most important to understand what the Path actually is and entails, and if one is not doing it, to frankly acknowledge it and assess what one can and should do.
One of the important spiritual facts that the institution of gurus ignores is that it is not possible to mechanically reproduce great spiritual attainment (and, as will be discussed below, the finished person is no longer actually around to serve as a guru) generation after generation on a routine basis. (In fact, nothing in the spiritual Path can really ever be routinely produced mechanically guaranteed within a certain time frame by the simple application of spiritual technology.) True realization and the attaining of liberation is a rare and difficult thing not often met with and not always publicly announced, and it strains credulity to suppose so many lineages so readily and successfully replicating themselves over centuries. (There seems, however, to be a great overabundance of credulity at present when there are so many gurus continually arising and replicating themselves with great ease—much easier, in fact, than ever in the past even in their own traditions, when gurus are readily accepted as such even when their conduct and understanding indicates their falsity even to any even moderately informed spiritual understanding, and when certification as a spiritual teacher doesn't seem to require much more than sending in the requisite number of boxtops.)
The guru institution forms part of the authority obsession that characterizes the institutionalized religions and even their contemplative systems and traditions. The guru embodies the idea that one cannot find Truth oneself, that the Absolute is the possession of certain phenomenal, institutional, economic structures in the world complete with lineages, regalia, rituals, costumes, certifications, procedures, etc. who act as gatekeepers controlling access to the very Absolute within one's own soul as only available on their terms, that every understanding must conform to a body of lore and statements in the world, and that holiness itself is subject to approval by phenomenal institutions.
This is indicative of an even more fundamental spiritual and metaphysical error. It is absurd to maintain that realization of the transcendent Absolute is dependent upon certain institutionalized sensory phenomena in space-time, including a guru in a specific historical lineage, and that such realization can and must be certified and approved by specific sensory phenomena, i.e., the guru and tradition. (It is most important, however, to understand that realization of the Absolute does require, absolutely and without exception, full and true renunciation, asceticism, otherworldliness and complete purity of conduct and character. These are not phenomenal sensory institutes like those mentioned above, but the very fact and process of turning to the Good from the world. To realize the Good one must become like the Good. Contemplative asceticism and renunciation is the very manifestation and reflection of the Absolute in this world.)
There is yet a further fundamental metaphysical/spiritual flaw in the whole guru idea, which is based on more misunderstanding of the nature of Reality and the spiritual Path and on an erroneous realist metaphysic. When someone attains full realization of and union with the Absolute, when someone is finished, the world (including themselves) entirely ceases to exist for that person. Only the Absolute remains, and That is all that is known and experienced. No actual phenomenal interaction is possible between “a fully enlightened person” (to the extent that that phrase has actual meaning) as such and deluded souls remaining here in the lowest and least real level of Reality of individuated sensory existence in space-time. Thus, the very idea of an “enlightened” guru, Chan master, avatar, godman, Buddha, siddha, etc., etc. appearing and teaching in the world is an inherent contradiction and impossibility.
But how then are we to proceed? What about the wonderful spiritual texts that we use and rely on in our practice and that guide and awaken us? What about the other souls that we do learn from and interact with so valuably on the Path? Here it is important to remember the Platonic teaching that learning is really recollection. As we proceed on the Path and our karma lightens to a certain degree, the Absolute dimly manifests to us and certain texts and teachings appear in our experiential field according to our karma that remind us, to whatever extent, of how things really are and who we really are. For practical purposes it is necessary to consider these as having a certain supposedly historical origin, but in ultimate reality this is not the case. Each soul really has its own experiential field, but our experiential fields are modified by those of others and by that of the world soul according to our mutual karmas, and so beneficial interaction can occur and people and texts and teachings can appear as our karma requires it for advancing on the Path.
Leaving gurus and godmen to themselves and their foolish devotees, let us renounce the world entirely as best as we can and continuously earnestly strive forward for union with the Absolute and release from the cycle of birth and death with our whole hearts, minds and souls!
© 2014 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee) mail (dot) com
by Eric S. Fallick
“Although no real teacher exists, for one who knows is at once emancipated,
yet no contradiction finds place here, because knowledge can arise through
an imagined teacher.”
The Vedanta Siddhantamuktavali of Prakasananda, tr. by
Arthur Venis, p. 142
Many spiritual and contemplative systems include the institution and idea of the guru, lama, Chan/Zen master, sheik, tzaddik and the like. This idea comprehends the notion of a spiritual teacher who is supposed to be fully accomplished, realized, “enlightened”, knowing everything about how things are and guiding students and to whom students or disciples are supposed to submit, follow, obey, serve, idolize, imitate and even worship. They are supposed to regard the guru (this term will henceforth be used as an umbrella term for all the different names and variations on the theme) as a god, God incarnate, a Buddha, having special direct access to God, etc. In these systems, it is considered that the student can't proceed or accomplish the goal of the system without the guru and is dependent on the guru for spiritual progress, and the guru often performs rituals of initiation, ordination, etc., and is even supposed to supply necessary blessings, protection and so forth, along with detailed instructions (often secret and revealed only to the sufficiently submissive and obedient initiate). This institution continues as present in many, if not most, of the meditation/mystical oriented spiritual systems extant in the modern world, including the modern West, however attenuated, diluted, degenerated, confused, ersatz and vestigial the extant traditions may be. Even in those systems that don't actually include the guru idea and institution, the masses of starry-eyed silly people regularly exalt spiritual teachers and clergy to this status, with or without the encouragement of the objects of their glorification, and altogether regardless of their actual spiritual development, of the whole notion of which the people are generally without a clue. Of course, the founders and early figures of the various systems are usually deified. This whole idea and institution is, I think, highly problematic, to say the least, and erroneous, both pragmatically and on fundamental spiritual and metaphysical principles and facts. Here, I would like to briefly consider some of these problems and errors.
First of all, the whole guru business is, to use Abrahamic terminology, a form of idolatry. The whole purpose and goal of contemplative spiritual practice is to attain realization of and re-union with the Absolute, the One, the Good, the Unconditioned, or, if you like, God. This is our Source and our End, the only thing that is truly real and perfect, the very Ground of our and all Being, the only thing worth pursuing, loving and being concerned with. This Alone requires, demands, and deserves our attention, allegiance, love, esteem and devotion. This Alone should be our only concern and the only thing we have in view, are concerned with and consider important and worth striving for and exerting ourselves about. To raise any teacher or person, living or dead, to the status of guru and, effectively or overtly, spiritual intercessor is to give to a sensory phenomenon in space-time the consideration, attention, devotion, etc. that is due only to the One. It is a crime against Reality and the nature of things, a dangerous distraction and diversion from the Path. Of course, one will be told in such systems that the guru is necessary for attaining the Absolute, but this is not true, as will be discussed further below. Though it is outside the scope of this essay, it may be mentioned in passing that the same charge of idolatry applies to religious institutions and churches in general, ordinations, credentials,
robes, costumes, rituals, ceremonies, etc. It is also another reminder that, contrary to the trend of the modern world and contemporary allegedly spiritual movements, renunciation, celibate asceticism, and whole-hearted world-denyingness are absolutely essential to and part and parcel of any real contemplative practice and higher spiritual life.
For many of the masses of people, the guru institution may serve as a convenient excuse for not actually doing the hard work of the Path oneself. They seem to think that devotion to the guru can substitute for actual spiritual practice and that the guru's alleged spiritual accomplishment will somehow rub off on them and they can become sort of parasitic on the guru's supposed condition. Of course, at any given time, very few people will ever actually tread the Path, which is so difficult, and even fewer attain, especially now when almost no one is willing to renounce the world or even understands the necessity of doing so, but there is no use in pretending that things are other than they are or looking for shortcuts. It is most important to understand what the Path actually is and entails, and if one is not doing it, to frankly acknowledge it and assess what one can and should do.
One of the important spiritual facts that the institution of gurus ignores is that it is not possible to mechanically reproduce great spiritual attainment (and, as will be discussed below, the finished person is no longer actually around to serve as a guru) generation after generation on a routine basis. (In fact, nothing in the spiritual Path can really ever be routinely produced mechanically guaranteed within a certain time frame by the simple application of spiritual technology.) True realization and the attaining of liberation is a rare and difficult thing not often met with and not always publicly announced, and it strains credulity to suppose so many lineages so readily and successfully replicating themselves over centuries. (There seems, however, to be a great overabundance of credulity at present when there are so many gurus continually arising and replicating themselves with great ease—much easier, in fact, than ever in the past even in their own traditions, when gurus are readily accepted as such even when their conduct and understanding indicates their falsity even to any even moderately informed spiritual understanding, and when certification as a spiritual teacher doesn't seem to require much more than sending in the requisite number of boxtops.)
The guru institution forms part of the authority obsession that characterizes the institutionalized religions and even their contemplative systems and traditions. The guru embodies the idea that one cannot find Truth oneself, that the Absolute is the possession of certain phenomenal, institutional, economic structures in the world complete with lineages, regalia, rituals, costumes, certifications, procedures, etc. who act as gatekeepers controlling access to the very Absolute within one's own soul as only available on their terms, that every understanding must conform to a body of lore and statements in the world, and that holiness itself is subject to approval by phenomenal institutions.
This is indicative of an even more fundamental spiritual and metaphysical error. It is absurd to maintain that realization of the transcendent Absolute is dependent upon certain institutionalized sensory phenomena in space-time, including a guru in a specific historical lineage, and that such realization can and must be certified and approved by specific sensory phenomena, i.e., the guru and tradition. (It is most important, however, to understand that realization of the Absolute does require, absolutely and without exception, full and true renunciation, asceticism, otherworldliness and complete purity of conduct and character. These are not phenomenal sensory institutes like those mentioned above, but the very fact and process of turning to the Good from the world. To realize the Good one must become like the Good. Contemplative asceticism and renunciation is the very manifestation and reflection of the Absolute in this world.)
There is yet a further fundamental metaphysical/spiritual flaw in the whole guru idea, which is based on more misunderstanding of the nature of Reality and the spiritual Path and on an erroneous realist metaphysic. When someone attains full realization of and union with the Absolute, when someone is finished, the world (including themselves) entirely ceases to exist for that person. Only the Absolute remains, and That is all that is known and experienced. No actual phenomenal interaction is possible between “a fully enlightened person” (to the extent that that phrase has actual meaning) as such and deluded souls remaining here in the lowest and least real level of Reality of individuated sensory existence in space-time. Thus, the very idea of an “enlightened” guru, Chan master, avatar, godman, Buddha, siddha, etc., etc. appearing and teaching in the world is an inherent contradiction and impossibility.
But how then are we to proceed? What about the wonderful spiritual texts that we use and rely on in our practice and that guide and awaken us? What about the other souls that we do learn from and interact with so valuably on the Path? Here it is important to remember the Platonic teaching that learning is really recollection. As we proceed on the Path and our karma lightens to a certain degree, the Absolute dimly manifests to us and certain texts and teachings appear in our experiential field according to our karma that remind us, to whatever extent, of how things really are and who we really are. For practical purposes it is necessary to consider these as having a certain supposedly historical origin, but in ultimate reality this is not the case. Each soul really has its own experiential field, but our experiential fields are modified by those of others and by that of the world soul according to our mutual karmas, and so beneficial interaction can occur and people and texts and teachings can appear as our karma requires it for advancing on the Path.
Leaving gurus and godmen to themselves and their foolish devotees, let us renounce the world entirely as best as we can and continuously earnestly strive forward for union with the Absolute and release from the cycle of birth and death with our whole hearts, minds and souls!
© 2014 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee) mail (dot) com
Thursday, February 22, 2018
On Genuine Spiritual Experience
On Genuine Spiritual Experience
by Eric S. Fallick
We live in a time of the most immense and profound spiritual and philosophical confusion. Despite the self-infatuated notion of the age that it represents the pinnacle of historical “progress” (“progress” being, incidentally, a notion entirely of its own creation), the modern world is the darkest and most lacking in wisdom in at least the last 2500 years. Materialism, positivism, subjectivism, anti-intellectualism, in the more profound sense of the term, and worldliness are prevalent everywhere and in all institutions. The notions of conforming oneself to an objective divine reality or structure, and that it is the objective divine reality that is important, and otherworldliness, more available in the pre-modern world, have been almost entirely forgotten or dismissed as antiquated, and this-worldliness, concern only for this phenomenal world, and concern only with individual subjective experiences and desires as being valid and important has more or less entirely pervaded even things that are designated as “spiritual”--a natural consequence of the belief that only the things of the senses and matter are real, which has, consciously or unconsciously, been steamrolling further and further since the inception of the modern world. Yet, otherworldliness, concern with and adapting to an objective divine reality, renunciation, and ascent through divine intellect are what any real spiritual practice and spirituality are about, whether this goes with the prejudices, thoughts, and tendencies of the present day or not. Since the opposite attitude seems to be found in virtually all writings, publications, teachers, organizations, practices, etc. currently advertised as spiritual, the result is that there is very little real spiritual stuff going on anywhere, and the spiritual seeker is unlikely to ever encounter any real spiritual teaching unless he turns directly to the writings of the ancients and has the ability to understand them directly and correctly on his own without help. One greatly important area where this mess manifests itself is in the understanding, or lack thereof, of what constitutes genuine spiritual experience and the methods and nature of its attainment, despite, or because, of the present exclusive concern with subjective or phenomenal experience and gain. It is pretentious for a poor slob to try to descant on such a subject, but given the enormous confusion prevalent, perhaps it is worth daring to try to say a few words on the matter based on the teachings of Homer, Plato, and Plotinus.
The comments made thus far already give us some pointers in the direction of determining authentic spiritual experience. It doesn't come cheap—indeed, the whole world must be sacrificed for it. World-denying renunciation and otherworldliness are necessary, though not alone sufficient, conditions for any genuine spiritual experience, and such experience results always all the more in renunciation, unconcern for this world, and otherworldliness. It is not attained quickly, easily, or by many. The people of the present day must think that all the great sages and practitioners of the past, even of their own systems, were spiritually retarded, since they think that everybody and their brother now attains spiritual accomplishment and teaching credentials quickly and easily without giving up anything, no fuss, no mess, while the ancients struggled and exerted the greatest efforts for many years and lifetimes with only a few attaining in a given birth. Real spiritual experience comes only as the result of prolonged, sustained, intense, concentrated, exclusive, properly directed effort, not just in contemplation/meditation alone, but accompanied by true renunciation and asceticism, strictest moral discipline, and correct philosophical understanding and study. It certainly does not arise spontaneously from such things as immersion in the beauties of nature, uplifting music or art or literature, emotional experiences or relationships, physiological practices, just listening to and hanging out with a groovy guru, etc., etc. It can never arise accompanied by or be followed, after any amount of time, by indulgence of any worldly or sensual desires, moral misconduct of any kind, use of intoxicants, flesh-eating, political, social, organizational, or self-aggrandizing activities, etc. True spiritual experience is supra-rational, not infra-rational. It is not at all attained by abandoning rational thinking and immersing oneself in pre-critical sense feeling, but by shifting 'thought' into the transcedental realm of the Divine Mind-Thought and the Platonic Forms/Ideas, which is intermediate between this sense-world of birth, decay, and death and the One itself. (Experience of this Nous is also legitimately to be considered authentic, if intermediate and limited, spiritual experience, but is not the ultimate genuine spiritual experience that is the concern of this essay. Even to reach this intermediate stage, however, is a most difficult, remarkable, substantial, and rare achievement.) One of the greatest and most pervasive of errors these days seems to be the idea that somehow spiritual and meditation practice involves abandoning thinking clearly and rationally and just focusing on and plunging oneself down to the level of exclusive attention to bodily sensations, feelings, and emotions, perhaps a reflection of the delusive modern idea that physical things and 'nature' are more real than ideal things and values, which is really just the opposite of actual spiritual practice and certainly has never commended itself to the authentic sages of the past of whatever system.
What then is the genuine spiritual experience we have been considering? It is only the direct experience of, and ultimately re-union with or in, the Absolute Itself, the One, the Good. This experience is completely, totally, and qualitatively different from any phenomenal experience, just as the Absolute Itself is totally and completely different from (though, of course, containing and 'immanent' in) any and every thing. It is completely transcendent and not another experience in or of this world at all. It is not really a “personal” experience at all. In truth, it is not really an experience of the little individual phenomenal self, but is really the Absolute re-manifesting Itself to the final and blessed elimination of the experience of the individual phenomenal self. This does not happen all at once to the complete degree, and there may be a very, very long time of continued effort and pain from an initial glimpse and authentic experience to the complete re-manifestation of the Absolute, but when the end is finally reached, all there is left is the Absolute Itself and Its own singular absolute unchanging experience, with no concern at all or, in our sense, awareness of this world. Of course, throughout the long journey of the Path through many rebirths through the long dark night of time, there will be many experiences, insights, changes, and understandings that we may, if we like, designate as in some sense “spiritual”, but they are only so, only of value, to the extent to which they move us along the Path to the one ultimate transcendent type of absolute experience that we have been designating genuine spiritual experience, which is the only portal to and, in the end, state of freedom from birth and death.
By this point any of my more hip, groovy, and modern readers (if I have any readers at all) may have already left me, and I am afraid that perhaps some readers who are still with me may feel that the Absolute and the genuine spiritual experience of it have appeared as so utterly transcendent and wonderful that they may be discouraged and despondent and impatient of their attainment, which has appeared as by no means the quick and easy matter that many nowadays imagine. But be encouraged and take heart! There is nothing else at all to any degree worth aiming at and striving for, nothing even faintly as wonderful, nothing in this world worth even the slightest in comparison, than this genuine spiritual experience and the Supreme Good Itself. Even if it takes a thousand rebirths of strenuous effort and hardship and struggle, that is as nothing compared to the Good to be attained and, indeed, there simply is no other way to go and the thought of not fully exerting oneself on and dedicating oneself fully to this Path is not even to be entertained. Press on!
©2012 Eric S. Fallick platonicascetic (at) (gee) mail (dot) com
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