You're Nowhere Until You're Wondering in the Bewilderness

If you've been following the argument -- or preferably unwrapping its presence -- you will recall that -- to put it in extremes -- self-love (i.e., narciss-ism) redounds to metacosmic obliteration, which is to say, "forgotten by God." Conversely, self-giving, or -abandonment, or -forgetfulness results in what we are calling "re-membered by God."

This doesn't yet amount to an explanation, but it creates a useful schematic or dialectic to understand human action and its real consequences. And, being that it is true, it should be true across all domains, not just vis-a-vis God. Thus, a normal person -- or a person raised by normal parents -- is taught from the youngest age to be caring, compassionate, generous, each of these being an example of "self-giving."

And "taught" isn't quite the right word, since these are things no one could teach if they weren't already in us, so to speak, just waiting to be actualized. One cannot teach a reptile to be compassionate. (Insert Al Sharpton or Harry Reid joke here __________ ).

Thus, if we should choose "the way of self-love," then we pursue "an illusion, since the assertion of 'my solitary subjectivity' involves me in the contradictions of solipsism, 'my subjectivity' having meaning only in relation to centers of consciousness other than my own" (Davie).

As such, we have a useful way to understand various orthoparadoxical remarks by Jesus to the effect that "Whoever tries to keep their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life will preserve it."

Or in his sermon on nature of the spiritual mount, he suggests that “You are the light of the world" and that "A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven."

Now, what is light but the first and last word in "self-giving"? In other words, light cannot not radiate, because radiation is not what it "does" but what it is.

Which is why light is the most adequate analogy to spiritual energies, which, by their nature, radiate. Likewise, consider the sun, which gives and gives and gives, to the just and unjust alike. But who receives it, and who just takes it?

As alluded to above, an individual subjectivity makes no sense whatsoever, as it always implies an other. I've mentioned before that this "discovery" was a major breakthrough in psychoanalysis, when it transitioned from a one-person psychology to a two-person psychology.

This is captured in Winnicott's remark that there is "no such thing as an infant." Rather, there is the infant-mother dyad -- or even prior to that, the mouth-breast relation. That last one might sound a little odd, but it conceals a profound truth, that even human instinct is related to another subject (which is what makes us human).

In a more sophisticated culture this would go to the intrinsic absurdity of homosexual "marriage," since man's sexual instinct is related to its complementary opposite. This also explains why such a union could never be sacramental, because it is deprived of spiritual efficacy at the very root.

A homosexual relationship can be many things -- including things a heterosexual relationship cannot be -- but it obviously cannot be a marriage. Unless you are just oblivious to anything more psychically subtle than a flying mallet. Or just say leftist.

Speaking of which, too bad it's so expensive, but this massive book of Voegelin's letters is la bamba. Lucky for me, I was able to defray the expense by using the modest monthly amazon gift certificate that accrues from you folks clicking through and making purchases. But consistent with the above, helping me is about to help you, because now I'm going to talk about the book the coonosphere gave me, and for which few if any of you would shell out 64 bucks. Even Steven! What goes around comes around, yada yada.

I'm going to need to occasionally take a little time to blog about the book, because there's no way I'll be able to tackle it from the other end of its 941 pages. But through the medium of Coon Magic, whatever I'm reading in one book is always relevant to the other. And if not, we can always use Coon Muscle to force the issue.

I'm trying to read one year of letters per day, which means it will take about a month to get through. Although some letters are relatively banal, others are quite insultaining. Recalling what was said above about spiritually insensate leftists, Voegelin says of the tenured that

"once they have gone through the process of college and graduate school, they are sufficiently brainwashed and morally debased to hold their positions with sincerity, and for the rest of their lives never have a critical doubt."

You all know the type, because the problem is so much worse today than it was in 1954. Indeed, it has become institutionalized, and not just in academia, but anywhere the left has extended its tentacles.

He adds that such individuals "will never achieve the full unfolding of their talents, because too much of their energy is lost overcoming the handicap of their environment." This very much reminds me of Obama, who is an oblivious and completely un-self-critical creature of this dysfunctional environment.

Thus, the crisis is infinitely worse today than it was in the early 1950s, because now the disease doesn't just affect academia, but has spread to the very height of state power. The "leader of the free world" is now the leader of the project to roll back freedom. It would be chilling if it weren't so mortifying.

As we speak, there is a shamful show trial going on because someone had the effrontery to defend himself from one of Obama's depraved spawn -- his self-described image and likeness -- and you can indeed draw a straight line from Obama to Trayvon, from sociopathy in the highest of places to sociopathy in lowest of lives. Not the fruit of his loins, but worse, the rotten fruit of his ideology. (And in any event, only the race-obsessed left believes blood trumps values.)

Voegelin even suggests that it is short-sighted for people to focus only on communist infiltration, because communism is not the only ideology that can be deployed for the destruction of the West. Rather, "Our home-grown varieties of progressivism, pragmatism, instrumentalism, positivism, operationalism, behaviorism, and so forth, do the job quite well."

Indeed. That was in 1954, so we can see how prescient he was.

We've spoken before about the time it takes to undo the spiritual and intellectual damage of an extensive public edu-doctrination. Of this struggle, Voegelin writes that "I would not complain too much about the time lost. We all lose time, for we have to disengage ourselves from the creeds of a dying world."

He adds that he "lost more years than I care to remember with Neo-Kantianism and Phenomenology, before I dropped the nonsense." But we should be consoled by the fact that struggling in this way to shed illusion and find truth makes the path more certain than "if somebody had placed you on it right from the beginning."

So true. The one thing I can always say to any liberal at any time on any subject is, Yeah, I used to believe that. But

"life begins with the Exodus from the civilizational realm of the dead, and the beginning begins with the discovery of the world as the Desert" (ibid.).

Yup. You're precisely nowhere until you're wondering in the desert bewilderness, in an open relationship with the O-asis that transcends you, both above and ahead.

Out of this World: Ideology Eclipses I-AMology

Davie quotes an obscure line by Emily Dickinson: Eternity obtains in time Reversed divinity.

Now, what could this possibly mean? For we disagree with the man who said that poems are just "gay sentences." Maybe it has to do with this obscure footnote on p. 96 of Splendor of the True, on the nature of "inverse analogy":

"When a tree is mirrored in a lake, its top is at the bottom, but the image is always that of a tree; the analogy is inverse in the first relationship and parallel in the second. Analogies between the divine order and the cosmic order always contain one or the other of these relationships."

I know. Don't bother asking how he knows. He just does. He's a little like Petey in that way, who is all-knowing but quickly becomes either all-bristling or all-evasive when you try to find out how that's possible. Can't tell you how many times I've heard the word IMPUDENCE!

Davie suggests -- and Schuon would agree -- that there can be "only one sovereign subjectivity," a single I AM at the heart of things, and in which our own subjectivity must be grounded.

This parallels the idea that there is but one material world with diverse manifestations -- a view that is much easier to accept thanks to quantum physics, which reveals the field-like nature of material existence.

Looked at this way, we must, as it were, reverse figure and ground, and regard objects as analogous to, say, clouds, which are just local manifestations of a global order of weather.

So, let's posit the idea of a global climate of subjectivity, shall we? Just as in the film Avatar, when we are conceived, we plug into this matrix, not with our hair, but with filaments of desire, love, curiosity, and probably some other things I'm underlooking at the moment.

Bearing in mind Dickinson's poem and Schuon's footnote, Davie says that our subjectivity is actually the reverse of the sovereign subjectivity. That being the case, there will be parallels with God, but also "inverse parallels," so to speak; or just say "image and likeness," both operative simultaneously in vertical space and horizontal time.

For us it takes time to ascend in timeless vertical space, and the drama of our lives has to do with the choices that confront us on the way up -- or down.

Davie: because "it is man's power of self-determination that constitutes both his likeness to God and his unlikeness," the local self "must be capable of orienting itself... either towards self in forgetfulness of God, or towards God in forgetfulness of self..."

This sets up an interesting dynamic, i.e., self-love (or narcissism) = forgotten by God, versus self-abandonment (or -forgetfulness) = remembered by God.

Only one of these can be "real," even though the self-lover is always utterly convinced that he is following the only realistic path, and that the other path is for the credulous and weak.

I used to "think" that. But in hindsight it is clear to me that I only thought this because of a hypertrophied precritical pridefulness aggravated by years of more intense indoctrination in graduate school. Ideology eclipses IAMology.

By extension, I think we could say that the people who are most convinced that they are merely "of" the world are completely out of this world, in a kind of "inverse transcendence."

It is obviously not genuine transcendence (↑), but it also ceases to be mere immanence when it makes such a sweeping characterization of the nature of reality. Mere immanence could make no such statement, because it cannot take an objective stance toward anything.

But in a way -- and Schuon has spoken of this -- the miracle of objectivity is even more miraculous than the miracle of subjectivity. After all, all other animals -- and it can be argued objects -- contain an element of subjectivity. But man alone is capable of objectivity, of standing "outside" or "above" his subjectivity in a disinterested way.

As a matter of fact, Splendor of the True includes a (typically) profound essay called Consequences Flowing from the Mystery of Subjectivity. Reviewing this essay, I see that it flows right along with what we have thus far said about the subject.

The following is both lucidly and beautifully expressed, without a wasted word:

"The first thing that should strike us when we reflect on the nature of the Universe is the primacy of the miracle called intelligence -- or consciousness or subjectivity -- and hence its incommensurability with every material object..., or any creature whatever as an object of the senses."

He then speaks of "the absolute Consciousness, of which our thought is a distant reflection" -- which ought to be sufficient proof "that in the beginning was the Spirit."

And "an evolutionary leap from matter to intelligence is from every point of view the most inconceivable thing that could be." You need to take that quite literally, because it is strictly impossible for intelligence to conceive of its absolute negation (for to imagine it is to exercise intelligence).

This should be axiomatic even to the tenured. Which leads us to ask: just what kind of blindness afflicts them? For it isn't just sightlessness, but a substitution of illusion for vision -- which means a substitution of will or passion for intelligence. Which is again none other than the pride at the heart of man's Primordial Calamity (c.f. Obama).

Which in turn helps us understand the nature of this fall, and exonerates our intelligence as the culpable party (which some fideist approaches come close to blaming, or actually do blame). Yes, intelligence may choose -- hence our freedom -- and therefore choose wrongly. But there are usually identifiable reasons for this, which lie outside intelligence -- which is and must be a reflection of the truth it apprehends.

Schuon concedes that "intelligence can in fact fall into error," but that "for this to happen a volitional factor must intervene -- or more precisely a passional factor, namely, prejudice, sentimental bias, individualism in all its forms."

In short, instead of a humble adequation to reality, the will enlists the intelligence to produce and substitute its own version.

But if we examine these specious specimens, we will notice that they always "proceed from 'hardenings,'" from "forms of dryness," and from "intoxications." Thus, modern man is alternatively dense, desiccated, and/or drunk. He is either a buzzkilling, purse-lipped teetotalitarian know-it-all or just wasted on pride. A dry drunk or a wet drunk. You know them well: let's call them scientistic and pseudo-rational man and political-ideological man, respectively.

Hazy Cosmic Jive

I know. What else is new?

However -- fool disclosure -- I never pretend the haze is supposed to be helpful to anyone other than its jive author.

Davie draws the critical distinction between a garden variety mangod -- of whom there have been many, both genuine and fake -- and the one possible godman. Recall that this is the same distinction I made with the following two pneumaticons, the first signifying human ascent, the second signifying divine descent:

Note that I said one possible godman. Why only one? I would say because God is one, and because his absolute unicity is sufficiently revealed in this single Incarnation. It must somehow be complete in itself, so there can be nothing that could possibly be added to it: ∞ + ∞ = ∞.

One might say that in Christ, God says everything he wants to say to man -- while knowing that it might take centuries or even millennia for us to unpack the message. After all, we're still trying, aren't we? And has anyone really wrapped his mind around it yet? I don't think so -- which is one of its allures, so to speak. It's a feature, definitely not a bug.

True, there are plenty of explanations, but I have yet to discover one that fully satisfies. Which makes sense, because if we could "contain" this mystery -- or Mister O -- it wouldn't contain Mister I or U. Or in other words, we would be God.

It reminds me of a crack by Schuon to the effect that "the unicity of the divine Object requires the totality of the human subject" -- which is another way of saying "you shall have no other gods before me," and that one oughtta "love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" -- i.e., with emotion, will, and intellect, respectively.

Or just say totally. Accomplish this and you will be a certified (↑), but it would be a fundamental error to imagine one is therefore (↓). The former is sanctity -- sainthood -- the latter is the spiritual inflation of a malignant cosmic narcissism. (There is no key for the circle with the arrow, so assume for the purposes of this post that the parentheses above are closed).

Elsewhere Schuon suggests that "knowledge saves only on condition that it engages all that we are."

In other words, at the very minimum, knowledge must partake of being, else it is mere surface chatter, just more words. It must penetrate our every dark corner and infuse the will with its light (for the will itself has no light of its own, or perhaps only the "natural light" of survival and pleasure).

The real Word of God -- ironically -- "is not a word that can be pronounced" (Voegelin) -- at least by us. Rather, it is a Word that only God can speak.

Thus, not surprisingly, this nonlocal Word is going to be more "dimensionally dense" than anything a human can come up with, which is why it is accurate to say that no man could invent a religion, or even a good myth. The real myths are written by both no one and everyone, hence their power, their universality, and their timelessness.

Elsewhere Voegelin makes the gnomic remark that "the fact of revelation is its content."

Wha? This very much reminds me of another comment by someone -- can't recall who -- to the effect that all revelation is exodus -- or that the exodus embodies all revelation. This makes sense to me, because the exodus involves -- depending upon how you want to formulate it -- being lost, or fallen, or enslaved, or confused; and being found, redeemed, freed, or enlightened, respectively.

It happens. Nor can there be an effect without a cause. Therefore the cause of our redemption/salvation/freedom/illumination/sanctity is.... let's just call it O, for now.

Now, it is easy enough to destroy man. In order to do so, you need only remove the possibility of the prior term (O) in the causal equation. If there is no O (in the sense used here), then there is only permanent bewilderness, with no rational hope of exitus.

According to Cutsinger, a genuine religion involves "a salvific descent of the Real into the illusory," which for us redounds to a "discernment between the Real and illusory and a contemplative concentration on the Real." Doing so requires -- or results in -- a kind of "leaping spark," a "direct apprehension of being as object by virtue of being as subject..." (ibid.).

Thus, in the timeless vertical, Revelation = Exodus. Conversely, Ø revelation = Egypt in all its ghastly forms. That is to say, a sophisticated and complex mental slavery is no better than a simple and straightforward one. It's the same pasture. The fences are just spread out a little further. But in our day and age, "an extreme mental dexterity goes hand in hand with a no less excessive intellectual superficiality" (Schuon, ibid.).

The alternative to O is ideology. Not this or that ideology, but ideology per se. All ideology is Death. Voegelin makes the excellent point that ideology is hardly a nontoxic gastime for the tenured, but a disorder, a vice, and a deviance (from human nature). Ideology is an early symptom of what later occurs in death camps and IRS offices. One might say that the 19th century was a prodromal symptom of the 20th.

Why does ideology fail? First, because it is in no way adequate to the Absolute. Second, because it doesn't even try to be, denying it a priori. Which ends as "a psychological game without any relation to the unfolding of our higher states" (Schuon, in Cutsinger).

Nevertheless, (paraphrasing Schuon) to pretend to know the limits of knowledge is to have transcended those limits. Doy!

I'm out of time, so we'll wrap up this hazy cosmic jive with further testimony from today's star witness, Schuon:

"There is in every man an incorruptible star -- a substance called upon to become crystallized in Immortality and eternally prefigured in the luminous proximity of the Self. This star man can set free only in truth, in prayer, and in virtue."

There's a starman waiting in the sky / He's told us not to blow it / Cause he knows it's all worthwhile --David Bowie, Starman

On the Deep Structure of Religion

Davie speaks of "a Logos-echoing depth grammar" through which we are given a "matrix for proliferating surface-grammars." This is analogous to Chomsky's theory of a universal linguistic deep structure shared by all human beings, over which individual languages are superimposed.

These are intriguing notions: the idea that there is but a single Religion, that a particular faith is analogous to a particular language (or deilect), and that Chomsky is not wrong about everything.

Thus, for example, one may use English, or French, or German to say, "pass the salt, please" -- except of course in Manhattan, where Mayor Bloomberg has banned salt. Likewise, the Yiddish word for Bloomberg is "noodge."

This was more or less Schuon's Big Idea, as articulated in his first book, The Transcendent Unity of Religions. I'm not saying I agree with him -- at least in every detail -- but let's toy with this idea. I don't think he's 100% right, but I do believe he's on to something, and that he's more right than wrong.

First of all, let's see if I can mine any intelligent comments by amazon reviewers, in order to make my job easier.

This fellow is both lucid and accurate: "Schuon's thesis is that while the great religions of the world appear to be contradictory on the surface level (the 'exoteric'), when considered according to the inner reality of the spiritual strivings they embody (the 'esoteric' dimension), they present a unity."

But Schuon is no vulgar "integralist," let alone an uppertunistic Deepakian spiritual vulture. The opposite, rather:

"This kind of reasoning is often put forward on a superficial level to say that 'all religions lead to God,' but [Schuon] has a far more profound awareness of the issues involved. A simplistic pluralism of that kind misses the point, because it is only through following a religious tradition all the way to its inner depth that one reaches the 'transcendent unity' that Schuon is speaking about" (Prof. R.E. Viewer).

Precisely. It is not as if, just because there is a deep structure of language, one may somehow speak this phantom tongue in the absence of an actual, existing language. Rather, to speak the surface language is to explicate the deep structure; it is a complementarity, not a duality.

It is quite similar to Aristotle's idea that there are forms and there are substances, but -- contra Plato -- there is no invisible realm where all these forms may be found. Rather, forms are only found in substances (and vice versa). This is a fundamental orthoparadox.

Nor is Schuon depicting religion as a useful myth that may be dismissed by self-aggrandizing "esoterists."

Again, the opposite. For Schuon, there is no esoterism in the absence of exoterism. Yes, there is spirit and letter, but again, the two are always found together. A vague and gaseous spirituality -- devoid of letter, as it were -- is approximately as useful as a pure materialism. Both are blind, but in different ways.

One especially useful implication of Schuon's approach is that "The large number of religions is often used to argue for their falsity, but Schuon would say that we only approach God through symbols which are appropriate to our time and place, and that there is a unified reality behind these various manifestations. So the most particular religion is also the most universal" (ibid.).

If one is Christian, I think it's a valid objection to ask if everyone prior to, and outside, the Christian faith is therefore damned. Doesn't sound to me like a judge with an especially refined sense of justice. And in fact, it is an orthodox belief that...

Here, I'll just look up the actual passage from the Catechism. Let's see if it can be reconciled with Schuon.

There's quite a lot on this subject, actually:

"The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God," and because this Great Attractor "never ceases to draw man to himself." What we call "faith" is none other than "man's response to God."

Note that the Catechism first speaks of these realities -- God and faith -- in generic, which is to say, universal, terms.

"In many ways, throughout history down to the present day, men have given expression to their quest for God.... These forms of religious expression, despite the ambiguities they often bring with them, are so universal that one may well call man a religious being."

Precisely. Say what you want about man, but his standard equipment includes the (↑) instinct, which is as real to us as is the salmon's instinct to swim upstream or the Solomon's instinct to winter in Florida.

In Acts it is written that "From one ancestor [God] made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him..."

The search for God is just the other side of God's call to man. In my mind I picture a kind of whirling spiral that converges on the Center.

The Church has also declared that it "rejects nothing that is true and holy in these [other valid] religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men."

It got a little hectic around here, and now I've lost the thread. The point I wanted to make is that one needn't believe, with Schuon, that the deep structure of Religion is the nondualism of Vedanta. Personally, I believe the Trinity trumps nondualism every time, more on which tomorrow.

This Post: Looked Good Before It Was On Paper

"If we suppose that creation," supposes Davie, "starts with elementary particles, proceeds to sentient beings, and finishes with fully fledged persons," then "perhaps this is because we are victims of a theoptical illusion."

Now, this is an exquisitely coonlike sentiment -- and not just because "theoptical" is a neʘlʘgism, a made-upword.

I'm not sure if "theoptical" is the best way to express it, though. If I understand him rightly, then our Ocabulary word "cardiomyopia" (not to be confused with cardiomyopathy) expresses the same idea -- that our Adamic standpoint can deseeve us, and that perceiving such a deep truth requires a sabbath restoration of our 20/∞ heart-vision.

At any rate, Davie asks whether we are "to suppose that God begins creating with a minimum," or "does not God express, all at once, the fullness that he is, the maximum -- the Word, the Logos who comprehends the whole world, and around whom the world is organized?"

Good question. I suggest we inquire into how man creates, since there is always something of the likeness in the image. I can't think of the Latin phrase at the moment, but there's one that has to do with the first in thought being the last in execution -- something like that.

The point is, if I build a house, I begin with the finished idea, but I can't start there. Rather, I need to pour the foundation, build the frame, do the electric and plumbing, hang the dry wall, etc.

Why should God's creativity -- especially as expressed in time -- be any different? I mean, he created time. Now he's gotta deal with it, just like the restavus in this manisfestivus.

My desk happens to face the former backyard, and at the moment I'm staring into a terrainwreck. Pool torn up, holes and ditches everywhere, exposed pipes and rebar, piles of dirt and gravel, lots of chatter in Spanish. All I can say is I hope my wife knows what she's doing, because I have no idea what it's going to look like when it's done. Maybe God or the all-seeing, all-spending domestic godess knows, but I know I don't.

Interesting too that at every point along the line there are a thousand little decisions to make -- or, to be perfectly accurate, decisions involving thousands of design choices -- down to the size and color of the rocks.

But you can't possibly make the choices unless you have in mind some image of the finished product. Conversely, you can't see the finished project without the individual choices. And when the project is finished -- no more choices! You're stuck with it. It's like a huge window that shrinks exponentially with each decision, until the window closes forever.

Yes, just like life, for "the night is coming when no man can work on self-improvement." Then all that's left is the Judgment. We'll return to that theme later. At least that's the plan.

Did you hear that? Sounds like muffled giggling.

Continuing with Davie's analysis, he suggests that the Godman "recapitulates to himself all stages in the evolution of man," which necessitates that "the creative maximum be expressed through him, in the Beginning, and also that time flows from him, rather than round him, so to speak."

I think I mentioned at the start of this series that Davie can leave you wanting a little more exposition when he throws out something like that. What does he mean?

Well, the Godman is again the Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. But what looks to us like a beginning -- due to our theoptical illusion/cardiomyopia -- is actually a stage on the way to the end.

It must be somewhat like a temporal hologram. In a hologram, the whole is in each part. Thus, in a temporal hologram, each portion of time would contain the Omega, so to speak. Does that make sense? I hope so, because I can't explain it any more clearly than that.

Well, maybe. Think of a symphony. I don't know if it's just apocryphal, but they say Mozart would see -- or hear -- the symphony in a kind of holistic flash, and then transcribe it in linear fashion -- like a kind of declension from four dimensions (musical space/time) to two (on paper).

Thus -- if you follow -- "Where chronology has pride of place, theologians are faced with a problem of their own making, the problem of inserting Jesus into their time series" -- in particular, his divinity (as opposed to humanity).

More orthoparadox: "[F]or if time flows from the center, and if that center is Jesus... then the centrality of Jesus is such that he does not need to be inserted into the time series, because his temporality will then be the outflow of his eternal creativity, its visible enactment..."

I'll just continue, and then maybe attempt to clarify: "Such temporal evolution would... be directed to an End, which is already divinely realized 'In the Beginning.'"

So, in the vertical "Alpha is Omega," which is also the now "where time and eternity intersect, in the moment when Father and Son are eternally one in surrender, yet furthest apart in time." I want to say "eternal sophering," but I won't. In any event, this latter "stretch of time is shortened to the span of the Cross."

You might say that descent and ascent, immanence and transcendence, represent vertically what requires time to play out horizontally.

And now I'm all out of verticality. Hey, Who just giggled?