Learning to Float & Drown in the Ocean of Being (5.17.10)

I'm wondering: who is in for the bigger surprise, the jocular man who eventually discovers that life is a deadly serious matter, or the serious man who finds out too late that life is a big joke?

The problem with materialists is that they don't leave nothing to the imagination.

You need rudimentary intelligence to understand a simple truth and average intelligence to deny it, but superior intelligence to replace it with an elaborate falsehood.

Anyway. Enough stand-up cosmedy.

I'm still making my way up The Spiritual Ascent, and savoring the experience -- in particular, the joy of discovering so many closet Raccoons from throughout history -- men and women who knew the secret doctrine and were members of the Vertical Church of Perpetual Slack, back when it could be dangerous to openly discuss such matters. No wonder they had to speak in code, similar to black jazz musicians who developed their own argot to keep their secrets safe from the Man.

Once I finish the book, I'm going to go back and blog on many of the individual topics, in order to better assimilate and digest the material. Yesterday I was reading the section Spiritual Drowning, and was taken aback at how directly it spoke to some of the topics we've been discussing recently.

In this regard, it reminds me very much of psychoanalytic therapy, in which you might have a dream about the material that came out in therapy that day, then discuss the dream in the next session, which then provokes another dream that night, and so on, in a never-ending spiral of psychiatrist bills.

As it pertains to spirituality, one of the ways you can confirm its truth is that -- as all senior Coons know -- the menbrain between the so-called "inner" and "outer" worlds begins to weaken, so that your life begins to reveal a dense network of synchronistic connections, both in time and space. It is as if you turn over the rug of your life, and can see the warp and weft underneath the outward pattern. Only then can you truly understand how this transdimensional area rug secretly "pulls your room together," dude.

I can't tell you how many times I blog about a subject, only to see the subject thrown back in my face later that day, often in a geometrically transformed manner within the Riemann space of consciousness. It's almost as if I "anticipated" the future, or as if the future cast its shadow back into the past. Of course, it does both and neither, as the hyperdense connectedness of bi-logical consciousness cannot be reduced to any crude linear conception.

Long-time readers of this blog know full well that they were drawn here by their own future self. I mean the ones who benefit from it, not the trolls; they are also drawn to their future, but in their case, they reject the message -- or bizarrely try shoot the transdimensional messenger. But (obviously) the bullets pass right through Petey. You might say that the troll's future beckons -- which is why they cannot stay away. It reminds me of a co-dependent woman who marries her abuser, because she cannot tolerate being far from her own persecutory mind parasites. You know the old saying: "Keep your friends close, and your mind parasites closer." Never ask for whom the trolls yell, for it is always theirSelves.

The deeper you penetrate into consciousness, the closer you come to the organizing singularity, as well as the archetypal "stars" that also lure the self inward and upward. If you live your life on the surface of consciousness, then you won't notice the Nonlocal Network, or else you'll simply dismiss evidence of it because of your absecular brainwashing.

The existence of the Network has always been acknowledged by Raccoons down through the ages, but you have to know how to decode the language. Let's go back to the section I was reading yesterday on Spiritual Drowning, with an introductory passage by Perry:

"If the spiritual work has hitherto shown itself predominantly as an effort to transcend the 'lower waters' and attain an equilibrium on the 'surface of the waters,' it now becomes through inverse analogy a journey or 'immersion' into the 'higher waters' of formless possibilities -- supraindividual states which no longer concern the human condition as such (hence the idea of 'drowning' or 'extinction'), but to which the human being has access, at least potentially, through the centrality that is the primordial birthright of his state, and which by definition are fully realized in the plenitude of the Universal Man."

In other words, this represents a sort of fulcrum in our spiritual development, in that we must first learn to "float" on the lower waters of consciousness before plunging into the upper waters.

What does it mean to "learn to float?" To a large extent, this is the domain of psychotherapy, of becoming familiar with your own deep sea monsters -- i.e., mind parasites -- that dwell in the depths of your being, and constantly threaten to pull you down and even swallow you up. Clearly, in some form or fashion, you must become a Master of your own Domain, or, like our trolls, risk becoming a chronic masticator who grinds away with the lower mind, which can never be truly fertile. We all know that this habit leads to spiritual blindness, or what we call nOnanistic myOpia.

Conversely, many people -- the new age crowd comes to mind -- try to plunge into the upper waters before mastering the lower, so they merely end up "polluting" the pure waters with their psychic impurities. One wonders if this is why they all seem to believe in the climate change hysteria. Probably so. This would represent a fine example of a psychic transformation being externalized without any insight whatsoever. This is one of the considerable dangers of go-it-alone spirituality. I'm sure the same people have transformed a shallow, gaffe-prone cipher who is capable only of mouthing recycled leftist slogans he learned in college, into a person of stature in their own minds. (Note that Al Gore and the Clintons are also fans of "integral spirituality," which should be sufficient to indict it.) Talk about going off the shallow end.

Which is an important point. We talk about people "going off the deep end," and with good reason. In fact, never trust a spiritual teacher who has not, at some point in his life, genuinely gone off the deep end, for only he will truly know about the lower waters and how to dog-paddle -- and God-paddle -- in them. Read any serious spiritual autobiography, and you will read of the depth of the struggle to master these lower waters. Not only that, but you will obtain objective information about the currents, the undertows, the doldrums, the winds, the fixed stars, etc., for your own night sea journey.

Only once you've learned to float your boat will it be worthy of sailing into the upper waters, as you graduate from the "lesser mysteries" to the "greater mysteries." What makes it so difficult is that you must simultaneously build this ark while learning to swim. But once it is seaworthy, then you will have a kind of calm center that can withstand the storms that lie ahead. The nature of this vessel will determine whether you can avoid drowning, walk on water, part the sea, swim upstream, survive underwater for lengthy periods, make it to the other shore, etc.

Now, I found this particular passage fascinating: "The voyage may be accomplished, either by going upstream to the source of the waters, or by crossing these to the other bank, or else by finally descending the current to the sea" (Guenon). In short, there are three possible deustinations: the Source of the waters; the infinite Ocean into which all waters eventually drain; or the bank on the other side. In turn, these would correspond to the ways of gnosis ("knowledge of the source"), of non-dual mysticism (diving into the ocean of being), and of bhakti, or loving devotion to God.

As Perry explains, "going upstream" is identified with the "World Axis," or the "celestial river" that "descends to earth." Alert readers will have gnoticed that Petey makes reference to this in the Cosmobliteration section of One Cosmos:

Floating upstream alongside the ancient celestial trail, out from under the toilsome tablets of time.... Off to sea the River Man, starry-eyed and laughing, cloud-hidden, who-, what-, why- & whereabouts unknown, bathed in the white radiance of ecstasy central. In the garden misty wet with rain, eight miles high, far from the twisted reach of yestermorrow. Insinuate! Now put down the apple and back away slowly, and nobody dies! Here, prior to thought, by the headwaters of the eternal, the fountain of innocence... .

Petey also makes reference to the way of the nondual Ocean, or what he calls "being drowned in the Lao Tsunami":

Returning to the Oneself, borne again to the mysterious mamamatrix of our birthdeath, our winding binding river of light empties to the sea. Cured of plurality, highdegger zen die velt, Ancient of Dasein: same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was.

And then there is the way of gnosis, or solid metaphysics:

Reverse worldward descent and cross the bridge of darkness to the father shore; on your left is the dazzling abode of immortality, on your right is the shimmering gate of infinity. Return your soul to its upright position and extinguish all (me)mories, we're in for a promised landing. Touching down in shantitown, reset your chronescapes and preprayer for arrisall.

Petey realized when he trancelighted these passages that very few readers would ever obtain any benefit from them. But what can I say? They help me, so you'll just have to be borne with me. When Petey was helping me write them -- in an analogy I used yesterday -- I was shooting at blanks, only with extreme intensity, as if I were trying to penetrate this watery realm, and in turn, be penetrated by it. What is so surprising to me is that so much of it conforms to what these previous sailors have said and written. Here are just a few brief examples:

The wise man can through earnestness, virtue, and purity, maketh himself an island which no flood can submerge. --Udana

I [the Buddha] can walk on water as if it were solid earth. --Samutta-nikaya

I [the Buddha] crossed the flood only when I did not support myself or make any effort. --ibid.

If drifting in the vast ocean a man is about to be swallowed up by the Nagas, fishes, or evil beings, let his thought dwell on the power of the [Bodhisattva], and the waves will not drown him. --Kwannon Sutra

The name Moses means, taken from the water, and so we shall be taken out of instability, rescued from the storm of the world-flow. --Meister Eckhart

But while it is the case that if thou lettest not go of thine own self altogether to drown in the bottomless sea of the Godhead, verily one cannot know this divine death. --Meister Eckhart

God is the Lake of Nectar, the Ocean of Immortality. He is called the "Immortal" in the Vedas. Sinking into It, one does not die, but transcends death. --Sri Ramakrishna

I shall throw myself into the uncreate sea of the naked Godhead. --Angelus Silesus

The desirous soul no longer thirsts for God but into God, the pull of its desire draws it into the Infinite Sea. --Richard of Saint-Victor

...To flow in God and sink down in Him -- like a vessel full of water which when emptied nothing remains in it, so will I wholly empty and sink myself quite into God. --Johannes Kelpius