Tuesday, February 15, 2011

The Satanic Resurrection and Death Everlasting

In Canto IX, our friends make it through security to a rarely visited corner of hell, where they come face to face with the Dark Feminine. There they encounter three talon-nailed demons -- the shrieking furies who serve Medusa, the Queen of Never-Ending Lamentation who turns men to stone and men's stones to jello.

Yes my friends, you're watching The View!

Virgil has been on the program once before, and is not eager to repeat the experience. For if you should chance to behold the ghastly visage of that repulsive gorgon, Joy Behar, face-to-facelift, never again shall you return to your normal programming!

Life is a journey, a movement, an adventure. Where is the movement taking place? That depends upon the vertex. There is intellectual advance, moral progress, artistic development, spiritual attainment, etc. Ideally none should be separated from the others, but one of the baleful effects of postmodernity is to separate them, the result being that one ends up growing "nowhere."

It is analogous to, say, a man who is obsessed with building his biceps. Eventually his upper arms will balloon in size, until he resembles Popeye.

But this only results in an absence of harmony that renders the whole either monstrous or silly. I suppose when men do it it's just silly. But when women do it, it's monstrous -- you know, those female bodybuilders who have some kind of perverse, manmade aesthetic that is unrelated to the female archetype.

We should always feel as if our life is in movement. However, it is critical to bear in mind that the movement we are discussing is always supernatural; or, if you are one of those substitious types who denies the supernatural, just call it extra-natural.

It is extra-natural because it obviously exceeds nature. Even if you are a strict metaphysical Darwinist, you must concede that the genes only account for a ridiculously narrow range of behavior, i.e., physical survival and reproductive fitness. Everything outside this is extra-genetic: truth, beauty, virtue, music, literature, poetry, mystical experience, etc. Genes permit these things but in no way determine them. To pretend otherwise is to be a genuine imbecile.

Now, if one is not progressing, one is more than merely "stuck." Rather, one is in hell, precisely. If you have been there -- and we all have been -- then you know what it is like. Not only is there an absence of movement, but there is a loss of dimensionality. This is an important point, because a fully functioning human being possesses the capacity for integrated movement in hyperspace.

What I mean by this is that, just as length, width and depth combine to make three-dimensional space, intellect, aesthetics, and virtue -- the Good, True, and Beautiful -- combine to make the hyperdimensional space where human beings have their freedom of movement.

And just as we can abstract the concept of "width" from three-dimensional space, it is possible to, say, abstract mathematical quantity from hyperspace. But space is not the sum of three lower dimensions, any more than mind is a sum of physics and chemistry, for the whole is prior to the parts.

Danger only arises when we take the abstraction for reality -- which is precisely what the metaphysical Darwinian -- or any other scientistic believer -- does. Note that there is no way to logically reconcile the metaphysical Darwinian with the "metaphysical physicist," i.e., the physical reductionist.

This is because Life Itself is a higher dimensional reality from which any moron can abstract two seemingly irreconcilable principles, "biology" and "physics." We can never put these two back together from the bottom up, because they were never separate to begin with.

Again, it was just our abstraction that created the the duality. Add mind to the mix, and we're talking about a higher space that is far too rich to be modeled in any way analogous to physical space. But in the words of Don Colacho, The lower truths tend to eclipse the highest truths.

Now, just as being stuck is hell, Hell is being stuck, i.e., to "turn to stone." Upton writes that within these deeper circles of Hell "lies the center of despair, of the fear that no return [i.e., vertical movement] is possible."

One thing I always explain to depressed patients is that their depression has put them in a very different kind of space -- again, a space of fewer dimensions and of complete stasis.

Now, this stasis is also a kind of eternity, only the "bad eternity" of utter endlessness as opposed to timelessness. While movement is possible, all movement is arbitrary, since one has lost touch with the higher-dimensional archetypes and values that normally guide and attract us.

Sometimes it is difficult to appreciate the reality of these archetypes (and their graces) until one is depressed and no longer guided by them. Then one is like a ship at night on a flat and windless ocean.

Here our virtual adventurers encounter the heretics, those who have sinned against God and the Holy Spirit. Note that they are reunited with their bodies, in a perverse mockery of Resurrection. Rather than death and rebirth in a higher dimension, this is endless living on the lower dimension, which becomes a kind of endless death. They cannot die, death being the ultimate movement or transition. For all birth is a death, and vice versa. Life is a series of birthquakes and deathwakes.

Another important point is that love does not avail in a hell this deep. Rather, as Upton explains, one must again rely upon righteous anger as a kind of protection. One is reminded of the rabbinical axiom that those who are kind to the cruel will be cruel to the kind.

From a slightly different angle, Upton quotes Nietzsche, who wrote that If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you. Indeed, "One of the greatest dangers of the lower psychic forces to a spiritual traveler is that under their influence he may become fascinated and transfixed by the Outer Darkness, the power that leads one always further into the externals of things, where the soul must die" (Upton).

The satanic resurrection, AKA tenure in the Monoversity of Hell:

21 comments:

Rick said...

"If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."

I don't know if this qualifies but perhaps the most depressing thing about my depression was the depression. In lesser worlds, it was a downward spiral where I would look around and see today that I was worse than yesterday. Then off again we goes..down..

James said...

It is the sense of constriction and lack of options that tell me I'm depressed as opposed to just feeling bad. You are in a different world when you are depressed. Addiction also has a way of narrowing your options until there is nothing left but the addiction.

Van Harvey said...

"What I mean by this is that, just as length, width and depth combine to make three-dimensional space, intellect, aesthetics, and virtue -- the Good, True, and Beautiful -- combine to make the hyperdimensional space where human beings have their freedom of movement."

That's an illuminating way of putting it... the coordinates of spiritual space? I wonder if the size of your inner Elysian Fields might be being surveyed and mapped by them, enabling you to navigate and colonize the landscape... would it deflate if you allowed the integrity of one dimension or another to be punctured?

"If you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you." I could easily imagine the flattening view working like a pin upon your inner sphere,

"One of the greatest dangers of the lower psychic forces to a spiritual traveler is that under their influence he may become fascinated and transfixed by the Outer Darkness, the power that leads one always further into the externals of things, where the soul must die"

You can almost hear the air being spirited out of it... "...sssssssssssssssss..."

Stephen Macdonald said...

Of interest to me are the people who manage to be lifted out of their own private I'd-a-Hell. Note I don't say "lifted themselves" as I know from personal experience this is wholly impossible. Personally my experience was an early hamster wheel of Maherian debauchery which eventually gave way to a craving for wealth -- all of which represented strategies to stave off underlying depression. I was stuck running in circles -- express train to Nowheresville on a circular track.

Release from addiction took many years because I rejected Grace at every turn. Money was even stranger: the year I finally realized my then goal of a seven figure net worth resulted not in the earthly paradise of my imagination, but rather in even more depression. Money made NO difference at all after the initial rush.

Gradually though I began to stop resisting Grace and allow the gentle uplift and cleansing to proceed naturally. Life today is hardly perfect, but radically different than it "should" have been had I followed my own materialistic non-plan to the letter. I feel now I'm on a spiritual ascent, however turbulent the ride gets from time to time. These days anything that feels like depression I treat as a flag that I'm somehow not in sync with O. The "cure" is to find that grOove again.

robinstarfish said...

We should always feel as if our life is in movement.

My son gave me a book, Born to Run, about ultramarathoners. It's part biology, part physics, and an occasional puff of don Juan. Fascinating stuff all around not only in the descriptions of physical prowess but in the 'supernatural integrated movement through hyperspace' state of mind they adopt to do it. In the book there's a phrase that recurs from time to time: You don't stop running because you get old; you get old because you stop running.

That advice applies to a lot of targets - depression being a big one.

There's no standing still here at OC. I have to run consistently just to keep the back of the pack in sight.

julie said...

Another important point is that love does not avail in a hell this deep.

I was thinking last week that once a person gets to the circles of anger and below, there's a common thread in that one necessarily stops seeing other people as individuals with just as much value as oneself. There can be no love, because first one would have to acknowledge the reality and intrinsic lovability of one's fellow man and of God.

julie said...

But this only results in an absence of harmony that renders the whole either monstrous or silly. I suppose when men do it it's just silly. But when women do it, it's monstrous

And of course, this pertains not only to the rarefied field of female bodybuilders, but unfortunately in much of the common culture where not only can womyn do everything men can do, they believe they ought to.

NoMo said...

"Life is a journey, a movement, an adventure...intellectual advance, moral progress, artistic development, spiritual attainment, etc. Ideally none should be separated from the others, but one of the baleful effects of postmodernity is to separate them, the result being that one ends up growing "nowhere."

Finally, a concise explanation of our PoMo POTUS, Nowhere Man.

JP said...

Bob says:

"In Canto IX, our friends make it through security to a rarely visited corner of hell, where they come face to face with the Dark Feminine. There they encounter three talon-nailed demons -- the shrieking furies who serve Medusa, the Queen of Never-Ending Lamentation who turns men to stone and men's stones to jello."

I kind of think of the Dark Mother (or Other Mother if you liked Coraline) as an algamation of all possible feminime mind parasites lumped into one form. Kind of like a glob of mind parasites fixated within the right brain, incapable of logical, rational, analytical thought.

In short the Dark Feminine Cannot Think. (As opposed to the Dark Masculine who cannot Feel).

I never thought of it as the "Dark Feminine" before today, though. I like that phrase.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

"In Canto IX, our friends make it through security to a rarely visited corner of hell, where they come face to face with the Dark Feminine. There they encounter three talon-nailed demons -- the shrieking furies who serve Medusa, the Queen of Never-Ending Lamentation who turns men to stone and men's stones to jello.

Yes my friends, you're watching The View!"

AKA A tomb with a view. A consequence of practicing viewdoo.


Fascinating post, Bob!
And illuminating. Couldn't be more timely for yours truly. Thank you. :^)

JP said...

Julie says:

"I was thinking last week that once a person gets to the circles of anger and below, there's a common thread in that one necessarily stops seeing other people as individuals with just as much value as oneself. There can be no love, because first one would have to acknowledge the reality and intrinsic lovability of one's fellow man and of God."

This is one of the problems I have with grades and competition.

For example, throughout high school, I viewed by fellow students as competitve threats to my success. Because of the zero sum nature of school grades, the only way that I could win would be if they lost.

Essentially, I felt I only had value to the extent that I was better than other people.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

JP-

I don't follow. How are grades zero sum in nature? Just because someone else might get an A doesn't prevent anyone else from getting one.

Whereas in basketball (for example) only one player can be the top scorer.

mushroom said...

This is an important point, because a fully functioning human being possesses the capacity for integrated movement in hyperspace.

You'd think that would be enough to convince anybody of the truth.

USS Ben USN (Ret) said...

JP-

IOW's, potentially, everyone can get good grades in school, so I fail to see the zero sum part.

OTOH, even if you were the only student in a class you could still fail, so it's not the other students that were a threat to your self success.

JWM said...

I'm gearing up for another round with disappointment, anger, and resentment. I've been on this weary track a time or two before. You do your footwork, say your prayers, and try to leave the results up to God. At least I've done enough laps to know that eventually you find your way out and off. The prayer part is easy, the footwork, is often tedious, and the the results are seldom what you think you wanted, but rather what God had in mind. One day I'll fully grasp that God's results are focused on needs, rather than wants.
Nonetheless, I want my wants.

JWM

JWM

will said...

>> . . . if one is not progressing, one is more than merely "stuck." Rather, one is in hell<<

Obviously, this can happen while on the spiritual path., ie., the Dark Night comes to roost. In some ways, I think, this particular Dark Night is even more hard-edged than that of the hell that the mundane soul experiences. This is due to the fact, I think, that the spiritual quest-er is self-aware, aware of the shadows that are closing in. In such cases, the Dark Night becomes an hallucinatory wilderness, replete with howling dybbuks.

The sensation can be one of complete deadness, complete stasis. However, the saints report that, upon finally emerging from the Dark Night, there comes the realization that, yes, the sense of stasis was itself an illusion, that the soul was indeed being transfigured during the Dark Night. And the saints report that in hindsight, God was always close during the Night, in spite of the sensation of having been utterly abandoned by the divine hand.

JP said...

First, there can only be one valedictorian. This was my goal beginning in 9th grade, thanks to my parents. Then you get your "Free College pass" and can move on to the next round of competition, college. I ultimately won only by double scheduling AP classes to boost my weighted GPA, pulling out a victory by beating the saluditorian by 0.14%.

In law school, everything is on a forced curve where you have to do better than everyone else to win, so your class rank directly controls your employment prospects. You only get the most prestigious jobs if you are at the top of the (forced curve) pile.

Of course, by that time, I was so burnt out and sick of life and no longer really cared.

JP said...

Will says:

"Obviously, this can happen while on the spiritual path., ie., the Dark Night comes to roost. In some ways, I think, this particular Dark Night is even more hard-edged than that of the hell that the mundane soul experiences. This is due to the fact, I think, that the spiritual quest-er is self-aware, aware of the shadows that are closing in. In such cases, the Dark Night becomes an hallucinatory wilderness, replete with howling dybbuks."

Bob's not talking about the zero gravity point between terresterial and celestial gravitation.

Phil said...

But space is not the sum of three lower dimensions

Mathematically, it is the "product".

Cool, huh? I mean, that that word applies so well in both realms.

Anyway, from whence do these woodcut type illustrations come? They're cool.

Phil said...

Rick, I've been there.

Think of the abyss as "that which is", and then crank up "Spiral Staircase" by Spiral Staircase.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuqHlv1YPe0

Spiral back up!

Phil said...

Ok, I always thought the name of the song was also "Spiral Staircase".

Frankly, if it's not, it should be. But it might actually be called "More Today Than Yesterday"

Theme Song

Theme Song