Coming to a Planet Near You: The Invasion of the Anthropoid Puppets

I suppose it would be fair to say that most people are living and acting in pornographic films, if we understand pornography more generally as a production devoid of transcendence, irrespective of the subject matter.

For when a human loses contact with transcendence, he is no longer properly human. Or, you could say that a human is the animal that transcends itself. And if a human fails to transcend himself, he inevitably sinks beneath himself. Sorry. Way it is.

Transcendence is like a funnel that opens up from the now. Picture an upside-down triangle, with its point at the now (importantly, there is another triangle below, with its point at the now as well). To transcend is to move up the triangle, where the space is wider and a man can breathe free. It is also of necessity a structured, hierarchical space, but we needn't get into that here. (I kind of like the image at the right, because it implies that the now is actually a kind of hologram created by the ascending and descending tendencies. As one moves up into the transcendent triangle, one can see that the upward-pointing one narrows, which would be the result of the world in general and mind parasites in particular having less influence over oneself.)

When we are trapped in a bad film, it is again as if we are in the meaningless line (the Death Train) or the repetitive circle (Groundhog Day). According to Mouravieff, "esoteric evolution" (let's just say spiritual growth) "is impossible as long as the film can always be considered as turning in the same circle. People who perform in such a film are those we have called anthropoids, puppets, the dead who, in the words of Jesus, 'believe themselves to be alive.'"

But growth into the triangle -- or what a Raccoon calls the colonization of the subjective horizon -- "starts when a man, by his conscious efforts, proves to be capable of breaking the circle and transforming it into an ascending spiral."

Now, before proceeding further, I would like to highlight a most excellent comment made by Magnus Noorwegenkøønen in broad nightlight, which you daytrippers may have missed. Not only is it true, but it is the substance of Truth, and speaks to the ubiquitous availability of nonlocal operators to assist us in our cosmic ascent:

Another amazing effect in spiritual aperture science: When your present expands to give room for a bit of eternity, you begin to get in contact with those who lived in eternity, such as saints or enlightened ones who lived long ago.

When you only have the needle-point now [think of the upside-down triangle], the words of the eternals either make no sense or some pretty weird sense, but once you are in the same dimension as them, it is almost like they are talking to you face to face. It is just baffling. [No, not really, so long as one remembers that image of the expanding triangle.]

I believe this to be the meaning of Lao-Tzu's cryptic comment "When you are ready, the immortals will find you," and possibly the popular Buddhist saying "When the student is ready, the teacher will appear." I expect Catholicism to have a similar concept, since it enlists the Christian saints on a regular basis.

You bet it does. In particular, this book I'm reading about Eckhart provides a kind of Meister key for understanding where he's coming from (which is literally noWhere and noTime). I hope to get into it in more detail in a later post, but the author's central insight is that Eckhart cannot be understood -- and can only be misunderstood -- if we attempt to grasp what he is saying outside the transcendent space from where he is transmitting.

(The book is challenging and somewhat repetitive, -- nor have I finished it -- so I can't give it an unqualified raccoomendation, especially for those who are not already somewhat familiar with Eckhart's thought; probably better to begin with McGinn's chapter on Eckhart in his Harvest of Mysticism, and then proceed to his outstanding The Mystical Thought of Meister Eckhart: The Man from Whom God Hid Nothing; the latter is also challenging, but at least it will help you determine whether you are Qualified.)

Put it this way. There are two ways to try to comprehend God, one of which is from man-to-God (↑), the other God-to-man (↓). These modes are quite distinct (though not separate), but in our day, people have tended to lump them together, as if God's communication will not be radically different from ours.

According to (my understanding of) Kelley, Eckhart is always speaking in the (↓) mode, and if we try to understand it in the (↑), we will only miss the whole point (which some unfortunately boneheaded Church authorities did when they decided to investigate him, and which contemporary liberal theologians such as Matthew Fox do when they try to convert him to some sort of Buddhist environmentalist neo-Marxist).

Back to Mouravieff. He says that "The spiral [which is obviously a kind of triangle if looked at in two dimensions] represents an intermediate state between the position where the human Personality is found to be trapped in the film, which revolves mechanically in a way hardly separated from the eternal plane," and one's true individuality (which again must partake of transcendence).

True progression in time -- or "spiritual evolution" -- does not take place until we convert the circle into the spiral, a spiral which never ends, since it begins in time but ascends all the way to eternity, i.e., the timeless. And once one touches the timeless, it is useless to try to understand it in (merely) human terms.

Here again, this is where Eckhart comes in, at least according to Kelley. He makes the same point in many different ways, -- again, the book is repetitive; for example, he quotes John Tauler, one of Eckhart's disciples, who said that

"The wonderful Master spoke of that pure knowledge that knows no form or creaturely way.... He spoke in terms of eternity and you (regrettably) understood [him] in terms of time." (This is clearly the error people make in imagining that Eckhart is not fully orthodox, or that he's some kind of pantheistic liberal wacktivist.)

Think of Jesus, who is the quintessential instance of (↓). Therefore, in order to truly begin to understand him, we cannot do so from the standpoint of (↑). Rather, in order to "imitate him," -- or conform to his Truth -- we too must enter the "descending" mode of (↓). The meek shall inherit the earth, the wisdom of God is folly to the world, become as little children, seek ye first the Kingdom of Slack, shunyada yada yada.

Now, having said that, it is by no means easy to do this. Eckhart is clearly not for everyone. But if one has the calling for this particular path, then, as Kelley says, "it opens up truly unlimited possibilities of insight." One reason for this is that Eckhart does not arbitrarily stop at this or that particular knowledge -- as every lesser theology, philosophy, or ideology must do -- but at knowledge (or Truth) itself, which is unlimited by any human constraint, for it is the Truth of truth, the Experience of experience, the Subject of subjectivity, the Is of every it and the I of every am.

To be continued....