Scatterbrains and Nonlocal Pests

Now that I'm a full-time gentleman loaffeur and vertical hedonist, the reading tends to run way ahead of the blogging. By the time I get around to writing about this or that matter, the spirit has moved on to the next shiny squirrel. 

This subject of demons is a case in point. Two weeks ago I was babbling over with enthusiasm about naughty angels, while this week it's Maximus the Confessor and Mexican garage rock (https://open.spotify.com/album/2IgygCCKlFvGdG6FGQwDmg).

Who can keep up with such impulsive zigs of zagsy?

As you know, the blog is one man's struggle to somehow keep it together, but it's an ongrowing challenge, and where does Artie Shaw fit in? Oddly enough he does fit in, and not just because he lived a few exurban blocks away in Newbury Park. Rather, he was a true oddball, and not just because he divorced Ava Gardner. He also divorced Lana Turner (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artie_Shaw#Personal_life).

Now, what do demons do all day with their idle hands? According to Bonino, they basically oppose man and God, and in particular, the former's journey to the latter.

Or, we can begin the analysis at our end, and ask: just what is it that interferes with the vertical adventure? Clearly, something gets in the way, or this would be heaven. Why can't a man even pretend to get along with Ava Gardner? 

There's a kind of jihad going on, and like the more familiar one, it's an unholy war, or a war on holiness. Again, this is just an empirical fact, the question being, who or what's behind it? Is it organized? And who's in charge?

It reminds me of when you see the seeming coordination of the propagaslight media mob. Last week they were all using the phrase viral blizzard. Who put this cliché in their ears, and why did they all repeat it? 

I mean, at least come up with your own way of expressing it, like viralanch or scarenado. It's the same with insurrection. What happened to mostly peaceful protest?

Anyway, the hostile forces. I first began taking these forces seriously in 1995 or so, because that's when I began opposing them. Little did I know that embarking on the Spiritual Path is a formal declaration of war against them -- whoever or whatever they are.  

Back then I would have regarded Christian ideas about Satan as naive and superstitious. But Vedantic ideas about demonic hostile forces? Sophisticated. 

Here's a passage from an old favorite, The Adventure of Consciousness, nor do I necessarily disagree with the description: The adverse forces

are highly conscious forces whose sole aim, apparently, is to discourage the seeker and divert him from the path he has chosen.... With remarkable skill, they take apart the whole system of our quest to prove that we are deluding ourselves and that our efforts will come to nothing....

These nonlocal pests  

have a thousand and one ways of attacking us -- for it is indeed an attack -- and the more determined we are, the more relentless they become....

But if you stay in the matrix, they mostly leave you alone:

As long as we march with the common herd, life is relatively easy.... however, as soon as we want to get out of the rut, a thousand forces rise up, suddenly very interested that we behave "like everybody else"; we discover how well organized the imprisonment is.

Interesting, the very same reality was described in my thoroughly secular training in psychoanalysis, but in that religion it's called resistance. That is, the moment the patient tries to improve, resistance gets in the way. 

But who or what are the resistors? Here's one definition, from A Dictionary of Kleinian Thought:

Resistance is an attack upon the capacity of the mind to think and know (the epistemophilic instinct) which Bion referred to as "attacks on linking."

Attacks on linking? Is this what demons do?

Of course. It's even in the name, for diabolos is the scatterer, is he not?

Back to Bonino: while the intention is to sow division -- both extra- and intrapsychic -- the demonic world "is not sheer chaos. It exhibits a certain form of unity and social cohesion." For

Just as evil is a parasite of the good, anarchy is a parasite of order. If anarchy were to triumph, it would immediately self-destruct. Among the demons, therefore, a certain order remains that continues, at the very heart of their chaos, to give testimony to the divine wisdom and goodness.

So, demons are a left-handed compliment to God; we don't say complement, because that implies a Manichaean dualism.

Now, here is something I did not know, but the moment you hear it, you say of course: despite their "order," it turns out that "the demons detest one another" as much as, say, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. They agree on the ends -- destruction and regression -- but theirs is "a confederation welded together by a common hatred of God and men." 

Same with the demons.