Blogging Under the Influence

As I said yesterday, I'll eventually get back to the ID thread. It's just that I wanted to complete the SA (Spiritual Ascent) thread before moving on. Or back around. Last things first, as the Wise Ones telos all the time.

For when you think about it -- and I'm thinking about it for the first time -- this would mirror the circular structure of the Coonifesto, which is to say, up and out of manifestion, only to circle down and back in again. This is the moment-to-moment ontological, or vertical, structure of reality. (There are many references to this circular structure sprinkled throughout The Spiritual Ascent, another weird coonfirmation that I was correct in following that nonlocal pattern; I'd love to go back and assemble all of them in one place.)

You see, one of the points of that bercircular structure was that it was supposed to convey the idea that one looks upon reality with "new eyes" once one reaches the highest state: first there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. The book ascends the mountain, only to reach the peak, where one discovers that there was never any mountain to begin with. (Helpful visual here.)

But then -- like any good bodhisaltva the earth -- we come back down and in to help others make amends meet in the muddle of their mount. "Once veiled by ignorance and later revealed, Reality looks as if newly realized. But it is not new" (Sri Ramana Maharshi). Same old same old, same shunyata-yada-yada.

I hope this isn't too dreadfully solipsistic! It's just that no one else will ever review the book at this depth, so it's left for its author to do so.

Anyway, when we return to our familiar locution at base camp, we see that it is the same mountain. But it now looks entirely different. So that would be the purpose of revisiting some of the material alluded to in last weekend's posts. As I said, I am way beyond using ID arguments to try to arrive at God. Rather, once you have confirmed for yourself that God exists -- and no mere logical argument could accomplish this -- then you understand that "intelligent design" is reducible to "intelligence" which is in turn reducible to "God." Of course the Divine intelligence radiates through manifested things.

How could it not? Foolish one, do you really pretend that random mutations are responsible for the transcendent beauty of the butterfly? Then too bad for you, buddy. You're still on the outside looking in, with your nous pressed against the glass dorkily. No, my friends, Beauty is like the sun: it acts without detours.... its ways are free, direct, incalculable; like love, to which it is closely connected, it can heal, unloose, appease, unite, or deliver through it's simple radiance (Schuon).

Ho! Let it be so, mischievous ones!

Another way of saying it is that from the lower, profane, perspective, everything is necessarily "inside out" -- which is why the things of time exist to begin with (ex-ist meaning to "stand out"). What I mean is that things that ex-ist for us only do so at God's in-sistence, comprende?

Likewise, to achieve Christ-consciousness would be to dwell fully within oneSelf, or to know the luminous interior Self of Being, or Light of light. But because modern men, as Schuon points out "live almost entirely for things of the senses," for that very reason they remain ignorant of the radiant interior. And that is where all the inaction is, baby! O the grievous vanity of the sub-Raccoon masses, who toil by day for no nocturnal reward! 'Scuse me, but they shall never kiss the sky!

"Reality" is "that by virtue of which we exist" (Schuon). In turn, renouncing the illusion -- or let us say, derivative nature -- of existence returns us to the Real. Or you could just say, "cleave to God and let the dead bury the tenured." Here, in Upper Tonga, we draw all of the contradictions and complementarities of the world into our compassionate bosom and "transmute them into radiant silence" (Schuon). Listen to the silence that surrounds my words, O nocturnal varmints! For Mystery is the penumbra of the Truth I unSay!

Alternatively, you could just say that the sage has transcended "fragmentary experience" (Schuon) in order to know things from the perspective of the Whole, which is to say, the Great Within. To achieve this is to become a Son of God or Cousin of Toots through adoption (or enough beer, in the case of the latter). And if you want to say I'm not a blogger but an "interior decorator," that would suit me fine. Either way, we are always attempting to transmit a passion for wholeness, or the view from eternity. So do not come after me with temporal arguments, trolls! For you are attempting to sever the ocean with your little sword of reason! So we have heard from the wise, the merciful, the unpredictable, Petey!

The point is, I haven't looked at Errol Harris's books in over a decade, even though they were instrumental at the time in helping push me up the mountain. They were an important wu wei station. So it would be kind of fun to take a fresh look at them from a new perspective and see how they hold up. In so doing, one thing I would now attempt to do is to place them in a traditionalist context, since I now recognize that as the higher, or more general, truth to which lower truths must conform.

But as I said, we still have a mountain before us, so we'll wait until we get to the top before we come back down and look at things with the scales removed from our I's and our I's from our skulls.

At the moment, we're attempting to realize what we know and integrate what we've experienced of the Divine. I see a helpful footnote on page 872: "Reality is not complete unless all of its three poles -- Being, Knowledge [or consciousness], Bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda) -- are present." This roughly corresponds to Father-Son-Holy Spirit, or alternatively, to Light, Love and Power, or Mind, Heart and Life, or Father-Mother-Baby.

Ah, read the fine words of Swami Sivananda: "You can distinctly feel the shift of mind as it leaves its seat in the brain, attempting to return to its original seat; you realize that it has left its former channels to enter into new ones.... Its psychology is transformed. You now have a wholly new brain, a new heart, and noble sensations."

Think back, little Raccoon, to when you first stumbled upon this blog, and how far you've come! At first you did not know whether Bob was a fool, a freak, a knave, noodge, a kook, a crock, a crap-slinger, a schlemiel, a schmendrick! But now you know him to be all these things, and less! First there is a mountebank, then there is no mountebank, then who knows?! Ho!

Let us whisper across cyberspace "Coon to Coon." Sri Ramakrishna relates the story of the man who appeared completely intoxicated first thing in the morning after just one adult beverage. "But another man said, 'Why, he has been drinking all night!'"

For waking on firewater wasn't built in a day!

Well, I'd better sober up. Time for work.