The Big Bang and Other Modern Mythadventures

I'm reading this wonderful book, The Spiritual Ascent (previously published as A Treasury of Traditional Wisdom: An Encyclopedia of Humankind's Spiritual Truth), which is an 1,100 page compendium of all the world's spiritual wisdom, divided into three main categories that mirror the three stages of soul's ascent to God, purification, illumination and union.

In turn, each of these three parts is divided into two main subsections, and each subsection has between three and nine subcategories. Plus, like my book, it is bracketed by a Prelude and Afterworld that deal with "events" that take place "before the beginning" and "after the end," within the womb of God. But since they are outside time, they are actually the timeless "ground" of every now, which I will attempt to explain in this post.

This is obviously not a book to be eaten straight through and digested in one siddhi. Nevertheless, that's what I'm doing, as it is a worthy test of the spiritual athleticism of the Mighty Raccoon, who can by nature stomach a great deal of truth without bursting at the seams. It will undoubtedly inspire many posts as I make may way through its riches.

Speaking of which, the book is structured like a holographic jewel, in which light from each facet illuminates the other parts. In this regard, timeless spiritual knowledge is truly fractal and organic, in that each part contains the "whole." To cite one obvious example, purification, illumination and union are not actually serial or linear, but aspects of one another. Obviously there is no union in the absence of purification, but at the same time, purification and illumination imply knowledge of, and union with, their transcendent object.

Likewise, here below in the herebelow we can separate truth and love, something which even God "cannot" do. And why can't he do it? Because, strictly speaking, it is impossible. Thus, to the extent that humans do it, they are living in illusion. In short, don't blame God for the left, even though they are inevitable. To ask why there is a left is to ask why there is existence, which is to say, something separate from God.

I can't believe I didn't come across this book in the course of writing my own, but then again, perhaps that was a good thing, because I would have ended up relying upon it too much instead of traveling hither and yon to locate all the material I used to support my metaphysical views. Plus, it is critical to point out that I first "discovered" Truth, only to slowly but forcefully realize that I had done no such thing, if "discovery" implies that I was somehow the first to find it and plant the Raccoon colors on its fertile soil. It makes the "discovery" all the more powerful when you realize that you've independently discovered something objective and accessible to the uncreated intellect.

For example, I've mentioned before that when I originally wrote the book, there were no footnotes in the Cosmogenesis and Cosmobliteration sections that open and close and reopen the book, the reason being that I thought they were self-evident. Like Finnegans Wake, they were intended to be as vivid and clear as a dream. By its nature, the dream is a densely packed clearobscurity of gnocturnal logic that "contains" an infinitude of meanings that may be explicated in a linear fashion with daytime logic. But no matter how much the daytime logic is additively summed, it can never "equal" the holographic dream density of which it is a function.

In fact, a number of Perry's references deal with this inexhaustible aspect of O. First, he quotes Schuon, who writes that from the metaphysical perspective, creation or manifestion are "rigorously implied" in the principle of the Absolute, which is necessarily Infinite. This principle has been enunciated by Tradition in any number of ways, often in a symbolic or mythological form aimed at the "average ethnic mentality," so to speak. Perry explains:

"From the cosmological perspective, creation is a progressive exteriorization of that which is principially interior, an alternation between the essential pole (purusha, yang) and the substantial pole (prakriti, yin) of a single Supreme Principle (Self, Atma)," which itself is the "Motionless Mover" of Aristotle. In short, the first "cosmic act" is the bifurcation of the Principle into "Essence" and "Substance," without which there can be no manifestation. Thus, this original duality -- or complementarity -- underlies all the others, such as subject-object, part-whole, wave-particle, individual-group, material-immaterial, etc.

Now, I probably didn't make it clear enough in my book that I was not suggesting that existence "began" with the Big Bang. Rather, in my mind, I thought I was making it obscurely clear that I was creating a modern fable, in which I use the contemporary language of Big Bang cosmology to convey timeless truths about the eternal cosmogenesis to which scientists unconsciously conform their minds. In other words, you cannot derive metaphysics from the empirical study of the cosmos. Rather, we must frame Big Bang cosmology in the form of timeless principles that have always been known about the manifestation of reality, or the local manifestation from the nonlocal Principle.

Anyway, not too many people read my book before it was published, least of all my editor. But one friend who read the Cosmogenesis section recommended that I insert some footnotes in order to give the drowning reader a little laughjoket to cling to. As I said in the Apologia and Joycetification, every word of it makes perfect nonsense, and couldn't have really been coonveyed in a more unigmatic manner. But knowing that many if not all readers would find this joyful prologue to be an unspeakable overchore, the footnotes were placed in the mouth of the book to give some direction and guidance with which to chew in the dark. Indeed, the footnotes are mere night lights intended to help you make a little pisstop in the dark, not floodlights to illuminate the whole spiritual pathroom.

But Perry's book is more of a floodlight, albeit a dark one. It reminds me of the title of Grotstein's book on Bion, A Beam of Intense Darkness. You have to put this dark beam in your own I in order to remove the bright moat that "surrounds" heaven, so to speak, obscuring its brilliance.

If that's not obscure enough, here are some examples from the book:

Chuang-tse: At the beginning of the beginning, even nothing did not exist. Then came the period of the Nameless. When ONE came into existence, there was ONE, but it was formless. When things received that by which they came into existence, it was called their virtue.... By cultivating this nature, we are carried back to virtue; and if this is perfected, we become as all things were in the beginning. We become unconditioned.

Now, not only does this pithy passage summarize the entire Cosmogenesis section of my book, but that section is a fractal of the entire book -- which in turn "demonstrates" the principle of the "fruit" of manifestation perpetually arising and flowing out of this tiny seed of eternity. As Perry says in a footnote, "In the Beginning" is not meant to be just "once" but once and for all -- not "once upon a time," but, as I put it in the book, One's upin a timeless. Get it?

Again, it is quite easy to put these timeless principles in a Christian context, which should go without saying. For example, William Law:

Now these heavenly properties which were brought into this created compaction lie in a continual desire to return to their first state of glory; and this is the groaning of the whole creation to be delivered from the vanity of which the Apostle speaks.

Or Eckhart:

God dwells in the nothing-at-all that was prior to nothing, in the hidden Godhead of pure gnosis whereof no man durst speak.

Or William Law again:

The goodness of God breaking forth into a desire to communicate good was the cause and the beginning of creation.

Eckhart, in his usual playful manner:

God has made the world... in order that God might be born in the soul and the soul be born into God.... God cannot know himself without me.

Thomas Traherne:

It is no blasphemy to say that God cannot make a God: the greatest thing that He can make is His Image: a most perfect creature, to enjoy the most perfect treasures, in the most perfect manner.

Or to put it in Petey's plain unglish -- I could cite numerous examples from the book, but here's just one:

A divine desire to reveil and find Itself, unnarcissary yet inevitable, conceived in d'light immaculate and now swelling in the night-filled womb of unmanifest being, the radiant urizon of an insindiary Dawn approaches. When purusha comes to shiva with an unmentionable demiurge (the unspoken Word), how Lo can He go? How about all the way inside-out and upside down, a vidy long descent indeed to the farthest reaches of sorrow and ignorance.... Congratulations on the equation of your cosmic birth! Oh my stars, He expectorated a mirrorcle, now you're the spittin' image!

As I said, the remarkable thing to me is that this may look "made up," but it's clearly not. Rather, it's pure playgiarism of innumerable previous gnosis-alls, dressed up in the punnishantics of happily unhinged coonglish.

Murmurandoms From the Back of Beyond

This may look like a random list of portentous utterances, but it actually possesses a "secret order" that will be known only to real initiates, the true Sons and Daughters of Toots.

Nah, not really. I'm just presenting things in the order they appear in this journal. As before, an asterisk means "probably stolen," or at least a lila playgiarized. I've also indicated where these are thoughts about other people's thoughts (mostly Schuon and Anonymous), so it is possible that I've incorporated some their words (I put their name at the end of any passages they inspired).

I gotta get out of here. I'm late already. Sorry for any incoherence.

***

Esoterism represents a kind of "pure understanding," similar to theoretical mathematics. The invisible object that corresponds to this understanding is the Real. Gnosis is essentially the result of submission to the eternal principles that in-form dogma. In the same way, dogma is a formal support for intellection, or a "window into heaven" which transmits the inward vision. (Schuon)

***

Science studies the world in order to understand it. Esoterism understands the world in order to study it. This understanding is anterior to the world, and corresponds to the realm of vertical recollection, which intellectually frees us from the tyranny of the horizontal.

***

Heaven has two soulstices or doors, a door of winter, when the sun "enters" our world at the darkest point, and a door of summer, when it begins to withdraw and the fullness of light departs from this world. (Thoughts on Schuon. Not entirely sure what it means, but it sounds good.)

***

The unKnown God exists at no particular place. He has a probability to be found at any place, but can "be" there only when encountered there. As long as he is not found, he ex-ists nowhere. God is co-created by dwelling in the means available to know him, just as one dwells in a work of art in order to comprehend its nonlocal message. (Thoughts on some of Polanyi's ideas transposed to theology.)

***

It is useless to seek to realize "I Am Brahma" without first realizing the extent to which one is no such thing -- or that "all is one" without first recognizing that all is multiplicity; or that "I am saved" without first appreciating the extent to which one is fallen. The sage sees things in their multiplicity and relativity while at the same time seeing through and beyond them in their metaphysical transparency. (Schuon)

***

Could the ubiquitous practice of human sacrifice be a garbled hint of the revelation that could only come in the fullness of time? History is the universal Bible of which the Bible is the condensed version. Our intuition of the Being Who Is evolves over time, based upon increased interiority on the vertical plane, at least for the collective. Creator --> Lawgiver --> Essence of Being.

Or, memories of paradise (i.e., vertical gnostalgia) --> Institution of formal worship to guard memories and prevent them from being forgotten --> Priesthood to keep them alive and develop them --> Schools of transcerebral experience, faith that there is a path of exit and that the endeavor to ascend is not in vain --> Spiritual preparation of the world and of a chosen people --> Incarnation itself, i.e., break-up of closed circle in the most dramatic intervention possible --> Establishment of a realm of liberty so that human beings may be freely lured into this vertical attractor at the end of history. (Anonymous)

***

There are many tracks but 1 way ÷ 3 = Purification + Illumination + Union = O. Without purification, a spiritual teacher is likely to be an illuminated scoundrel, while without illumination a philosopher will be an intelligent oddball. Death is the guardian between the three worlds. To put it another way, for Union to occur, some disassembly is required.

***

Partial list of postmodern words one may string together in any sentence in order to prove anything: contextualism, decentered, discourse, Eurocentric, feminisms, gaze, gendered, hegemonic, heteronormative, marginalized, post-colonial, queering, subaltern, transgendered, whiteness.

For example, yesterday Vanderleun posted a blatantly Eurocentric discourse about the great post-colonial writer of color, Alice Walker, in which his hegemonic gaze ironically converted his own heteronormative whiteness into a subaltern of Walker's three feminisms, thus marginalizing and queering all over himself. WTF!?

***

The purpose of obscenities is to allow us to identify those people who are too stupid to express themselves without them. 6.2% of Vanderleun excepted, of course. And 93% of Dupree.

***

The more unity a thing possesses, the more weight, depth, and participation in Being.

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Materialism is not the realm of answers but the graveyard for real questions.* (Probably Anonymous)

***

Wherever their are individuals, there are frontiers.*

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The spiritual path is a road to de-mask us.

Everything Must Go!

Only six comments yesterday. I don't know if cleaning out Bob's journals in public is such a good idea. Seems to be driving away all but the stalkers.

Still, I'm enjoying it. It's like a garage sale. Sure, there's a lot of crap, but you never know if you might find that Beatles butcher cover in a pile of old records. Besides, what can I do without Bob's cooperation? You can't expect me to be linear and coherent. That's not my thing. I just enjoy sniffing along the trail for the post-cartesian unified paradigm. I feel as if I'm drowning in a sea of clues, and these journals are like the bucket with which I bail out the dinghy. So if some of it sounds dingy or all wet, that's why.

Here are some notes about Bob's favorite secular philosopher, Michael Polanyi: How is it possible to see a good problem? It is an intimation of a hidden coherence not yet comprehended in the particulars. "Knowledge of an approaching discovery" is an indispensable kind of pre-knowledge that is needed for mental evolution to occur. To put it another way, your life depends on identifying the right question. Ask the wrong question, and you might just waste the opportunity of a lifetime.

Truth is recognized by its fruitfulness. But how is it possible to implicitly apprehend the wealth of undiscovered consequences before we have discovered the truth from which they proceed? We are always in the presence of a hidden reality toward which various clues are pointing. Faith "knows" this. It is our "negative capability," when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, & doubts without any irritable reaching after fact & reason (Keats)

In this regard, does history reveal a higher principle? Is it a representation of something unseen? Do we only imagine the unity of history behind the multiplicity, or is there genuine synthetic knowledge at the level of history?

Yes, there must be an object of history, the nonlocal eschaton, the Omega point, which reveals the meaning of the local particulars. This point once "walked among us." It still does. Phenomenal history is a temporal reality behind which is the noumenal transhistorical reality of fall and redemption, the Arc of Salvation.

Our task is always to relate the horizontal realm of change to the vertical realm of changelessness. This is the crossroads where humans live, die, and are reborn. Otherwise, history truly is meaningless, a kind of literal tunnel vision or transtemporal myopia. Again, the point is to move from the line to the open spiral. The secular historian is like a frog at the bottom of a well who knows the sky only as a small blue disc.

An avatar is anyone who saves mankind from itself. Vertical emissaries are dropped from on high into history from time to time for various purposes, be they political, religious, scientific, military, or artistic. Most of them are unknown, others are hidden in plain sight.

***

Science is intelligence without wisdom. But religion, while it remains the safeguard of wisdom, often promulgates a wisdom without intelligence, so to speak. What religion should provide is intelligence guided by wisdom. Thus, it can never be world-denying, nor can it ever flinch from the discoveries of science.

Religious wisdom can easily accommodate any scientific truth. But if religion is reduced to a kind of flatland literalism, then it immediately puts itself in competition with science for the best "horizontal explanation," and this is a battle it not only cannot win, but looks foolish trying.

Likewise, when science attempts to be a source of wisdom on its own level, it looks just as foolish as the fundamentalist who insists that the world is only 6,000 years old. You cannot derive values from science, any more than you can derive metaphysics from the empirical world. Values and metaphysics are anterior to the world. They cannot "evolve" or change. Murder is evil in any cosmos, just as surely as being is always the first-born of beyond being, or the Son proceeds from the Father in the very nature of things.

And love will always be superior to unity, God being what he is. Or let us say that unity is only unity if it is a unity of differences, not a blending. Even if I could experience this unity-without-difference, I'd give it up for love. Which is why we ex-ist. Yoga is the union of local and nonlocal, which are bound by a love that is superior to both, but impossible in the absence of this "division," a division which is in the interior nature of things -- again, God being what he is.

***

Two statements that are equally "true," but what a difference: 1) Steven Pinker is an expert on language. 2) William Shakespeare is an expert on language. Which of these two men better comprehends -- or runs circles around -- the other?

This exemplifies the vast gulf that exists between (k) and (n). Pinker possesses (k) about language. By definition it can never be complete, being that using language to comprehend language is analogous to giving birth to oneself. And let's not even waste time with the idea that language can convey the truth of itself if it is reduced to a fancy system of animal signals. Rather, if language can transmit truth, then language is much more than it can ever say. Truth itself can never be exhausted on the plane of language. Poets have always known this.

In contrast to Pinker, Shakespeare -- as far as we know -- did not trouble himself with reductionistic explanations of how monkeys learned to speak. Rather, he simply demonstrated his implicit knowledge in a way that can never be surpassed. It is no different than the knowledge possessed by a musicologist vs. the knowledge possessed by Bach. These are clearly of a vastly different order, to such an extent that it would be silly to even place musicology on the same plane as music.

Just so, there are theologians and there are... pneumanauts. Theology is a declension from O, or O-->(k); its purpose is to give a coherent and "authorized" account for those kinds of experience we call "religious," but the experiences nevertheless take priority, otherwise theology is void of human content.

Theology is fine as far as it goes, but let us never forget that, say, Jesus, was no theologian. I'd have to go back and reread all of his words, but as far as I can recall, they are almost all (n), or direct "demonstrations" of O, analogous to the difference between Bach composing "for the glory of God" and a college professor yammering for the glory of tenure.

***

The genealogy of leftist wickedness follows from a number of key presumptions or under-lies. They are, 1) human beings have no essential identity, only an accidental or "existential" identity centered on race, class, gender, ethnicity, or "sexual orientation."

From this follows 2) rejection of that most precious of God's creations, the unique individual who can only actualize his potential and discover this uniqueness under conditions of ordered liberty; 3) no objective morality transcending culture; 4) an exclusive focus on nature at the expense of what humans have always recognized as "the Real," i.e., the transcendent and eternal; 5) a replacement of knowledge with a kind of bovine skepticism and doubt, which results in refined stupidity displacing Truth, or an "anti-word" that attacks the very links that make existence comprehensible; 6) a worship of the primitive as "authentic," since the lower is all that really exists; 7) an upside-down mysticism, or "pathological we" that revolves around material interests instead of transpersonal bonds. It is the "body of gaia" as opposed to the "body of Christ," so to speak. The former is the "black unity," being that an absence of light causes all distinctions to merge. The latter is the singular "body of light" that is superior to the distinctions it illuminates.

Leftism is a deeply spiritual movement, bearing in mind that "spirit" is obviously a neutral term. For example, the nazis were profoundly spiritual, as are the Islamists. It is a "revolt of spirit" to be sure, but this revolt cannot be understood on any material basis.

When authentic religion is rejected, it is always displaced by the magic from which religion rescues us. To put it another way, religion -- at least in its esoteric sense -- is a mental disinfectant that prevents the mind from proceeding down all sorts of fruitless and pathological dieways and loways. Thus, never ask why the left is so full of magical thinking, for that is the inevitable result of rejecting the transcendent truth to which the human mind must conform on pain of dying to reality and living in fantasy. Which isn't really "living" at all, just existing for a dark moment between two luminous slabs of eternity.

Spiral Bound

Here's another one of Bob's spiraling notebooks. Let's see what's in it. Hmm, you know what might be fun? To go in the closet and dig out some of the journals from twenty years ago, and see what was going on in Bob's fool head back then. Might prove to be very embarrassing, or at least a humbling experience. Damn, I should have done it for April Fools! I think he's going to get his fasting blood work done tomorrow morning. If so, maybe I can induce Dupree to rummage around in the closet while he's out. Call me his literary executioner.

Just remember, I'm not in charge of "quality control." That's not my job. I just throw a lot of stuff against the wall, so you can see what stinks. Anything with an asterisk means that Bob might have stolen it.

***

What is this, some kind of riddle?: "Lower self is cross of true self. True self is cross of lower self." I think I get it. Eternity must "bear" time, just as time bears eternity at the crossroads of the vertical and horizontal. Sometimes the burden is unbearable, but in the end, eternity is in love with the productions of time. I hope.

***

Man's real freedom is in the dimensions of height and depth.

***

The scientist would have us believe that existence, life, and mind each required a series of miraculous accidents. We agree entirely, for they certainly weren't horizontal necessities. "Miraculous accident" is just another way of saying "vertical descent."

***

Ever since language began colonizing the brain, it has been an unending task to synthesize all of these bits into a coherent self. It is possible to escape the animal nervous system with language, only to become trapped in language. As language is to the animal nervous system, metaphysics is to language.

Memes carve out a niche in mental space and reproduce there. When merged with the primitive superego, this becomes an agenda or ideology that partakes of a false timelessness.

***

Is what the universe is converging upon less real than the converging parts? Is a face less real than the parts of which it is composed? Only the whole face allows us to "see" its within. The face is the meaning of its features, truly a "hole" in creation, perhaps the first point of entry into the great interior of Being. Humans "dwell in one another" in a manner inconceivable to other species, as it "bounds the infinite," thereby making it ponderable. It is one of the many reasons I don't believe in extra-terrestrial life or artificial intelligence, for their proponents have no appreciation of the unique indwelling and intersubjectivity of the human state.

This is one of the crimes of the Islamic world, for to cover the female face is to annihilate personal identity, the unique within and the reason foe being. Leftists do the same thing by forcing you to see a "person of color" or other various group designations instead of a unique individual. It is a faceless ideology, especially when taken to its logical extreme, e.g. Cuba, Soviet Union, Berkeley, etc. "Diversity" is never diversity of individuals, but of groups, which by definition deny individuality. For example, "blackness" is seen as essential instead of accidental.

***

Leftist intellectuals sow their seeds, while the poor reap the bitter harvest. The left tries to eliminate existential tensions, while the conservative liberal has learned to harness and exploit them, e.g., through the free market. Something similar is done with regard to the spiritual life, e.g., one cannot eliminate sexual tension through promiscuity and "sexual liberation," but one can certainly transpose it to a higher key through spiritual union, i.e., marriage of souls, which embodies the eternal play of the cosmic male and female principles.

***

To integrate particulars is to interiorize. There can be no mere "external" synthesis. Wherever we see deep coherence, it is evidence of interiority. What we call "deconstruction" is only beneficial if it dismantles a false synthesis into its particulars for the purpose of a more intense and meaningful union, not as an end in itself, for it is certainly possible to impose a false whole that denies the particulars (which the left habitually enforces through various mechanisms of political, academic, and media correctness). But in practice, it is almost always a secular destruction, not a spiritual synthesis. It is the embodiment of the satanic principle which "flees" from O, from the center to the periphery. This is how and why deconstruction is the all-purpose tool of leftist tools. You can use it to convince yourself of anything.

The true individual is freedom lived.*

***

Music also has a "within," which is indeed the key to its mystery and appeal. Music reveals to us the within of time in its most abstract sense, in that it is unity-in-flowing diversity mirrored in the mind that "holds" it. Some minds can hold much more than others, both musically and cosmically. Scientism reduces the grandeur of the Cosmic Suite to a three-minute pop tune that anyone can play.

Revelation reveals the within of the Creator. To see God's face would be to see eternity. "No one can see my face and live." But one can die before one dies, then seeing is believing: Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God (Matt 5:8); They shall see His face, and His name shall be on their foreheads (Rev: 22:4). Some people saw Jesus' face and therefore saw the Within, while some see and do not see. But blessed are those who don't see and yet believe, for they have 20/20 foresight.

Faith is dwelling in the particulars, confident in the foreknowledge that their meaning will be revealed. It is "knowledge of an approaching discovery," meaning that one somehow already possesses the knowledge one seeks. "Clues" can only exist if we already know what they point towards. Is this why the left is so clueless about religion?

***

When you try to teach something you don't really understand, you just pass along the parts. Someone will then have to assemble them. Still, this is preferable to passing along a confident ignorance of the Whole. To paraphrase Schuon, when a man pretends to an understanding he doesn't possess, it jeopardizes what little valid knowledge he does possess. One obviously sees this pattern writ large in the atheistic/secular mind, but also in self-appointed "spiritual teachers" who go way beyond their competence to pronounce on all manner of topics of which they know nothing.

***

Life is to matter as mind is to brain and God is to existence.

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If the mind didn't exist, we'd have no trouble explaining it.

***

Getting paid for what comes naturally is like a self-replicating dollar bill.*

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Spiritual practice: arranging your own birth.

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We must become metaphysically fit in order to be missionaries capable of the arduous journey from the future to the present.

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Al Gore embodies the "hyperlucidity of the irrational," Bill Clinton the infectiousness of the shameless.

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Bill & Hillary: Slimese twins.

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Writing: What we give back to eternity in exchange for time.*

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If President Bush voluntarily relinquishes his fascist theocracy in January 2009, he will be the greatest man who has ever lived.

Prognostications of the Past & Memoirs of the Future

Hmmm. Some of these journals have notes for various books Bob has considered writing. This one says "Evolutionary Politics: Preserving the Radical Spiritual Vision of America's Founders." Too bad it will never get written. How do I know? Oh, I know, I know. He's all talk. Anyway, I think he prefers the immediacy of blogging, as it allows his ideas to become irrelevant much more rapidly.

Anyway, here are some of the topics the book would have covered and obscured. Sounds like the usual Coon porn to me:

--Neuro-cosmology
--Man is the symbol and key of the cosmos, the abridged edition of God's adventure from the One to the many and back again
--Arc of Salvation
--Trial by existence
--Interiorized religion as final frontier
--Politics of infinite possibility vs. material scarcity & cognitive limits of the left
--Unless people can relate their horizontal freedom to timeless vertical realm, situation is hopelessly meaningless. We escaped the circle only to be lost in the line. Must find the open spiral. Spiral = hope.

People of the distant past possessed (or at least were guardians of) superior metaphysical knowledge embodied in tradition, whereas we have superior empirical knowledge, often knowing more about them than they knew about themselves. And yet, if revelation is true, they clearly knew essential things about modern man that he has forgotten about himself.

Natural selection does not predict. Rather, it takes already complete traits and retrospectively looks for their "partial" manifestation in the past. Thus, for the Darwinian with 20/20 blindsight, no current trait can be complete, or "essential"; rather, they are always an illusory resting place, "on the way" to another one. But they certainly don't feel that way to us. Human perfection -- i.e., something in the realm of Truth, Love, or Beauty -- doesn't ever appear as something "on the way" to something else. Rather, it cannot be surpassed. Thus, how can a process which only allows for temporary rest stops arrive at universal moral imperatives, aesthetic perfection or absolute truth -- including the "absolute" truth of Darwinism? Presumably, as we continue evolving, we will "evolve" a new theory of our origins. But if a transient entity such as Man can know Absolute truth, then he is not what the Darwinians think he is.

This is merely faith posing as science, only it is a false faith, since it is an adequation to a false absolute, whereas genuine faith involves comformity of the will to absolute truth as seen and understood by the higher intellect. Just as there are religious superstitions, there are scientistic substitions.

Interior control of religion vs. Exterior control of state: the more religious truth is ignored, the more laws are required, and by extension, a larger state to externally control thought and behavior. This is why it is always in the best interests of the liberal to attack religion, as it results in more state power.

Also, for this reason, the liberal never learns to master himself, as he gives over this mastery to the state. This creates the context for the victim culture, as liberalism teaches from the earliest age that you are not responsible for your own problems or for your destiny, whereas religion teaches that your greatest obstacle in life is yourself. (Thoughts on a remark by Dennis Prager.)

Also, in the absence of transcendent truth, there is no "higher self" to appeal to. Rather, we are treated as an animal, for example, with regard to sex education. Only for a human being can sexuality have a higher purpose than procreation, but can you imagine this purpose being discussed in a typical sex eduction class? No, of course not, for it is against the law. In short, for a liberal "humanist," it is against the law to be human.

Science describes reality from the outside. Mysticism discloses it from the inside. From the standpoint of the latter, science is subjective, while from the standpoint of man's lower nature, science appears objective. But science requires the bifurcation of subject and object, whereas metaphysics only requires the pure subject dwelling on objective truths that cannot not be. This is analogous to God, standing outside time, surveying creation and pronouncing it "good."

Leftists have undermined the "interiority" of America -- the shared feeling of what it is like to be an American -- and replaced it with a coercive, top-down, false unity (for unity can never be forced). The call for "unity" is required because they are the ones who have systematically divided us along fault lines of race, class, gender, and "sexual orientation." Thus, Obama is truly a symptom of the disease he purports to cure. As Dr. Sanity writes today, "Eliminate the politically correct, 'identity politics' victimhood sweepstakes, and we will have no need for a 'conversation on race.'"

Obama's speech was like an Enron executive saying, "Forget about what I did. Let's have a broader conversation about the stock market and about retirement security."

It seems that it is very difficult for conservative principles to take root in a culture where they haven't already taken root, the "root" being in the eternal verities.

Only more manliness, not less, can treat the problems of mere men. In other words, only conformity to the transcendent archetype of Manhood can overcome our mere biological maleness. It is the absence of essences in leftism, such as Manhood, that inevitably leads to nihilism and chaos.

When you speak truth, it is "toward" a target one is attempting to reach. But suppose you were Truth; then you would be the target, a sort of lure that pulls men toward you. In this sense, we are "caused" by Truth, while Truth, or the Word, is uncaused. It must co-exist in eternity.

I would like to write a sentence so perfect that to read it would make God present. Not that I could do it, only that the trying is its own reward.

Rejected bumper snickers:

"Become a Muslim and bag more chicks."

"No one bangs more women than a Palestinian."

"Progressives: The more they change, the more they stay the same."

Our leftist universities prove the adage that history is written by the wieners.

In the new age movement, there are many spiritual McMansions.

People accuse Islamophobes of being "racist." Well, Islam is a race. To the bottom.

Is there a way to harmonize the empirical and metaphysical, and not just reject one or the other? Yes, the One Cosmos promise: For the Hole in Your Head or a Whole New Head.

More Odds & Endlesses

Where were we? And does it matter in the non-linear dimension where I hang out? No, not at all. I can just peruse Bob's sacred journals at my leisure and riff away. I can explain the passages or just toss them out to readers and leave them shrouded in their penumbra of irritating mystery, adding to Petey's mystique -- as if it were possible to "increase" what is already infinite.

Here's one: "The left must make you metaphysically ignorant in order to convert healthy impulses into the sick ones they require in order to fulfill their project."

This reminds me once again that truth -- at least on the macro level -- must be the highest value, from which all others flow. I am currently reading a book that holds "liberation" to be the highest value, but this cannot be true. If it were true, then the truth of it would have to take precedence. Besides, "liberation" or "realization" are of no use to the world in the absence of truth, let alone love and beauty. Raccoons have no interest in "realizationism" unless it is an undeserved byproduct of the traditional virtues removing the impediments to grace; it is analogous to happiness, which cannot actually be sought on its own level, since it is an effect of right living, not a thing in itself.

Even if I could experience Oneness, I'd give it up in a nanosecond for twoness and then the threeness which is its fruit. I'm quite sure God feels the same way, which is why his interior life is intrinsically three. Yes, he had it all, but he gave it up for love. That's all you need to know about cosmology, at least as it pertains to your day-to-day life.

Yes, you can argue that "all is one," but only if you make the immediate caveat that the One holds the two within itself, the womb of eternity, or that the Subject gives birth to the object for all time. For "what good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself?" (Eckhart).

Do you want to know what goes on in the core of the Trinity? I will tell you. In the core of the Trinity, the Father laughs and gives birth to the Son. The Son laughs back at the Father and gives birth to the Spirit. The whole Trinity laughs and gives birth to us (Eckhart).

Jesus is the smoking cr(e)ator at the center of history. This is to say, an Idea descended into time, the Idea of ideas. Once this Idea entered time, we could not love the world in the same way, except insofar as it embodies and reflects this eternal Idea.

The contemporary left wing equivalent of religion + sadism is narcissism + sanctimony.

America's founders were not anti-religious. Rather, they simply wanted to ensure an even praying field.

Whenever you hear the phrase "socially conscious," reach for your revolver. For the left, this replaces being "spiritually conscious," or just having a conscience in the traditional sense. It is their version of "fundamentalism." This is the reason why leftists are so attracted to environmental hysteria, as it allows them to feel morally superior at no cost to their moral depravity. They can lead an immoral life but imagine that they are purchasing "moral credits" by scolding the rest of us. Thus, the scam of "carbon credits" is no different than purchasing indulgences.

I would much prefer to have my theology politicized than to have politics theologized. In other words, there should be no objection to wishing to see one's religious values reflected in politics. This is altogether different from the left's project of elevating their horizontal ideology to a state religion.

Liberals only want to be judged by their intentions, never outcomes or consequences. As such, this is again similar to a reverse religion, in the sense that they worship at the altar of a kind of pure metaphysics (actually, "infraphysics," as it were), unsullied by the actual events of history. This is why the young and stupid are so susceptible to its charms, since they have the least history. I remember when I lived in the quasi-timelessness of childhood and adolescence. No wonder I was drawn to an ideology that reflected that false infinite.

Contemporary liberalism is for the carnal man (the only man who exists, since his spiritual nature is denied at the outset), therefore the weak man who wants his weakness "normalized." Furthermore, it relieves him of the strength of character it requires to grow to full manhood, while at the same time making him both wise and righteous in his own eyes. No wonder it's so popular!

Take your pick: crystal clear ambiguity or vague certainty.

Just as in science, we need a frame of reference with which to "see" religious facts. Just as the paradigm of quantum physics creates a way to see phenomena inaccessible to the Newtonian paradigm, religion illuminates a field of eternal and transcendent "theologoumena," or "facts of God." A fact is a relation between two events. Therefore, a religious fact is a relation between man and God, or O and (¶).

Once you admit the idea of "higher" and "lower" in any sense whatsoever, it's just a way of saying that things are oriented from the top down, not from the bottom up, otherwise your distinction is supported by "nothing."

God is either One or Zero. No, wait. The Godhead is beyond-being, or Zero, which gives birth to One, or being. Gravity takes care of the rest.

Atheistic mental masturbation: nOnanism.

Their telovator doesn't go to the top floor.

Is what we see a projection of psychic space? Or is psychic space the interiorization of the exterior? Obviously the former. For what does it mean to say that something is deep in the absence of a mental conception of space? If the cosmos is "infinite," it is only because the mind is; or let us say that exterior and interior are infinite in both directions. But since there cannot be "two infinites," it's merely two sides of the same möbius strip joint. The outer reaches of inner space: the only final frontier there has ever been, the evolution of the interior horizon. We're already living on the Other Side we're dying to get to. Hallow, noumena!

And another journal is swept into the recycling bin of history.

Reading the Sunday Timeless -- Live Tree Edition (3.21.10)

In water, resistance increases with the cube of speed. At a leisurely swim, it isn't bad at all, but if you enter the water from a great height, it is nearly like solid rock. Likewise, soil has its own resistance, which at our speed is very high, but roots at their deliberate speed easily find their way through the ground.

When the seeker awakens and begins moving with purpose, there is also a resistance from the "world," and it too increases proportionately with the speed. I'm not sure whether this is a design flaw or the work of a conscious enemy; perhaps it is a security device to keep the crazies from thrashing about too wildly. But it must be very frustrating for one who sees his goal clearly and tries to get there in the limited time given him.

If I were a lesser man, I would have immediately deleted this outstanding comment by Magnus and then claimed credit for it myself. At any rate, it is a fine example of a couple of symbolic "chords" with which the Raccoon may use as the basis of pneumatic improvisation.

Naturally, in discussing the transnatural, we must rely upon analogies and symbols from the ponderable world, such as "soil," "light," "speed," "height," "water," "resistance," and "asshole." This is not because spirit is a mere "projection" of these things, but rather, the converse; the "world" is the temporal manifestation of timeless principles that can be understood by the law of analogy. Thus, water flows like grace, the sun shines like Truth, and the lower gastrointestinal system "speaks" in the manner of the Cosmic Troll, or "anti-Bob."

As I was just mentioning to someone a couple of seconds ago, the reason why the world is so full of analogy, metaphor, and symbol, is that these aren't just literary devices but literal deivoices, i.e., the ethereal Word made fleshy, or earthereal. No matter how lo One gos, the logos goes two. And then three, as we shall see.

Thus, we shouldn't be surprised at the fractal and holographic nature of reality, meaning that we see the same patterns and principles repeat themselves at all levels. This is why the pneumanetwork of synchronicities in one's life can become so thick that you could cut them with the knife you "coincidentally" hold in your head.

In my own way, I guess I've always recognized this analogical cosmic structure, but it took a while to recognize what I was cognizing and to rerecognize it at a "meta" level. For example, as I've mentioned before, the topic of my doctoral dissertation was the parallels between psychoanalytic metapsychology, quantum physics, and non-linear, dissipative structures in biology.

In short, I saw clear "analogies" between the way the physicist looks at the subatomic world, the way the biologist looks at life systems, and the way the psychoanalyst conceptualizes the deep structure of mental functioning. "Seeing" is one thing, but seeing what you're seeing is another. And to see this is yet another. In fact, you could almost say that this is the trinitarian structure of transcendence: knowing, knowing that you know, and then knowing that you know you know.

So Spirit clearly meets with "resistance" in the herebelow. As for whether this is providential or demonic, let's consider the alternatives -- or whether there could actually be any on this side of manifestation. For example, if you want to create muscular beings with robust skeletons, you need to have gravity. If we had evolved on the moon, we couldn't have evolved, since there isn't enough gravity there to keep us down to earth.

Clearly, physical strength is a function of resistance. Could Spiritual strength function any differently? Isn't our character revealed and honed on the rocks of adversity and other cliches? Could there actually be any excellence in the world in the absence of resistance? To put it another way, could any useful thought be produced if we all lived in the friction-free land of the tenured?

I am reminded of the beauty of the competitive free market. One of the reasons the North evolved past the South is that in the case of the latter, physical toil was felt to be beneath the dignity of a proper man. Thus, physical labor was outsourced to slaves and other "undesirables." But it is only by struggling with recalcitrant matter that one begins to unlock its principles. Thus, the North leapt ahead of the South in discovery, invention, and creativity.

For certain non-Western cultures, a similar problem arose, in that the world was regarded as fundamentally illusory and changing, so that the evolved man sought out the timeless principles "behind" or "above" the world. Thus, these cultures produced bupkis.

Only in the logoistic Christian West was it recognized -- or at least practically realized -- that matter is a declension of spirit, so that the world necessarily veils and discloses the "mind of the Creator," so to speak, and is worthy in its own right. This is why "beauty is the splendor of the true," why truth is buried everywhere we look, both surrounding and penetrating us, why the human mind is a sonny mirrorcle of the Abbasolute, yada yada, etc., etc.

Not much time this morning, so let's wrap it up with a clear passage by Schuon and an Opeek one by Petey:

[T]here is no metaphysical or spiritual difference between a truth manifested by temporal facts and a truth expressed by other symbols, under a mythological form.... With God, truth lies above all in the symbol's effective power of enlightenment and not in its literalness....

Historical reality is less "real" than the profound truth it expresses, and which myths likewise express; a mythological symbolism is infinitely more "true" than a fact deprived of symbolism....

The uncreated Word shatters speech while at the same time directing it toward concrete and saving truth.

In coonclusion, God is not so much a rigid mathematician as a playful mythsemantician.