A Religion Fit for the Secular Anthill and Progressive Hive

As we've mentioned before, there is more than one form of Vedanta. For our purposes, we are interested in the differences between Shankara and Ramanuja. Why do we always hear about the former, but not so much the latter? It just occurred to me over the weekend that there are several reasons for this.

First, the Upanishads weren't translated into english until the 19th century. More generally, we mainly learn of the Vedanta through its western interpreters, so if those interpreters have a particular bias or interest, then the interpretation will be filtered through that prismhouse.

Now, the discovery of, and interest in, the Upanishads coincides with several pathological trends in western civilization: the rise of scientism, the general hostility toward traditional religion, the search for a replacement for Christianity in particular, and the alternative gospel of progressive leftism.

It now occurs to me that these scholars idealize Shankara because his nondual approach is much more compatible with the unsophisticated monism of scientism and the illiberal anti-individualism of the left -- which explains why people such as Deepak Chopra and Ken Wilber are always men of the left. I know of no exceptions, although I'd be happy to hear of one. It can get a little lonely here.

Conversely, no one who actually understands Christianity could ever embrace leftism, scientism, or any other ideology. Rather, properly understood, it is the penultimate inoculation against such spiritual cancers and metastatic ideologies.

I say "penultimate" because it is possible to understand the ultimate principle by virtue of which Christianity effectively thwarts ideology. This principle has to do with the fact that the human drama always takes place in the space between immanence and transcendence.

Ideology of any kind collapses this space, which always leads to human catastrophe, because it forces immanent reality to conform to the eschatological fantasy, as we have most recently seen in Obama, e.g., the healthcare system isn't perfect, therefore it must be destroyed.

The goal of history is beyond history, but the left is defined by the absurd attempt to place the goal within history. This naturally redounds to absolute meaninglessness, but the leftist "cures" this with the intellectual swindle of forcing his idiosyncratic meaning upon history.

This has always been the Marxist strategy, i.e., to destroy existing institutions because they do not adequately reflect paradise on earth. In Niemeyer's succinct formulation, it is either nothingness or paradise.

Which makes it quite easy to be a leftist: since reality isn't paradise, their critique thereof is self-evident and self-validating -- an infantile strategy if ever there was one. Radicals such as Obama always appeal to an unarticulated but implicit order that never was and never will be -- except in the valid form of vertical recollection (or an eschatological memoir of the future, if you prefer).

This denial of existing reality is just part of a deeper "ontological negation" (ibid.), beginning with "the annihilation of God" and moving on to the eradication of the moral order, the destruction of human nature (which follows logically from the murder of God), and the effacement of both boundaries (e.g., male-female) and hierarchy (e.g., adult-child).

In short, the PermaRevolutuon of the left is founded upon a prior "metaphysical revolution" (ibid.).

Which is just one more reason why you cannot reason with a leftist. This is because the prerequisite of rational dialogue is "a common universe of reason, which is precisely what the ideologists have demolished." No nous is bad news, to put it wildly.

"A 'creatively destructive' activism," writes Niemeyer, "presupposes an intellectual destruction of present reality, as a result of which the believers of such ideas orient themselves no longer toward 'real possibilities' but rather toward 'possible realities.'"

One is reminded of what appears to have been the Kennedy brothers' favorite crack, to the effect that Some men see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?

Indeed. What an astonishing admission. Mental hospitals used to be full of such dreamers, at least until liberals deinstitutionalized them. Some schizophrenics are homeless and ask why? Others imagine the park is their home, and ask why not?

Oh, and from whom did the Kennedy's lift that line? Appropriately, it was originally "delivered by the Serpent in Shaw's play Back To Methuselah."

And while looking up the exact wording of that quote, I found another doozie by RFK, reflecting the same florid pneumopathology: Every society gets the kind of criminal it deserves.

Really? So, if, say, some creepy-ass cracka' is being assaulted by one of Obama's stoned and hoodied bastard sons, he deserves it? Come to think of it, RFK was murdered by a Palestinian activist, his brother by a leftwing radical. Oh well. Every society gets the kind of assassin it deserves.

Returning to the actual subject of our post, if one is looking for metaphysical support for the left's radical critique of existence, one could do a lot worse than Shankara, for whom existence is just maya, or illusion, anyway. Only Brahman is real, and you're not it -- unless you eliminate your individual self.

Reminds me of something Woody Allen once said: death doesn't bother me. I just don't want to be there when it happens. Likewise, for Shankara, you can know God. You just can't be there when it happens.

But for Ramanuja, "the highest kind of unity" would not be "the static unity of a solitary self-centered, self-determined Absolute, but a dynamic unity of a society of souls realizing their highest perfection in love and in mutually enriching fellowship."

And "this is only possible where each has a unique inner life of his own and respects the individuality of others, but yet where each does not lose but finds himself in others" (Davie).

Therefore, union with God is associated with both "increasing differentiation" and "increasingly intensive community and unity." Call it the Body of Christ, which can only be an interior body, nothing that could ever be accomplished -- which is to say, externally forced -- by the state. That would be an anonymous hive, not a unity of souls.

Gastrocosmology and Theophagy: Eat, Drink, and be Mary

New topic: Robert Bolton's very important The One and the Many, which I read a couple of months ago, but only now have time (I hope -- it's going to be a busy month) to review. This book made a huge impression on me at the time, and the least I can do is try to remember why.

That's no joke. As I've mentioned before, the purpose of reviewing these books -- some of which require ten, twenty, thirty or more posts -- is to actually assimilate their content. This is especially important with books of this caliber, which are not merely "books" but "transmissions," so to speak.

In other words, it is not just information that is being conveyed, but a whole plane of being, without which the information makes no sense. It's analogous to when you must first download an application in order to do something with your computer (and always be careful about what you download -- one must beware of hidden viruses, especially retroviruses that only manifest later).

And when I say "assimilate," I mean this quite literally. It is analogous to eating, which somehow results in the pizza or apple or broccoli weaving itself into your own substance.

How does this actually happen? Who knows. But there is a certain sequence one must follow: preparation, taking in, chewing, swallowing, breaking down, digesting, etc. And there are things that can go wrong -- deeply wrong -- at each one of these stages. It would require too much of a sidetrack to get into details, but this is one of the bases of Melanie Klein's theories of psychological development, which formed the basis of Bion's thought.

For example, in therapy, you give the patient an "interpretation," which is like a kind of psychic/emotional food intended to result in growth. But what will the patient do with it? You have no control over that. And you'd be amazed at the range of possibilities that deviate from "assimilating" and "understanding."

Some people spit it out immediately. Others swallow it so quickly without chewing, that there's no time to think about it, and then they ask for more (which excludes gratitude). Others are so emotionally starving that they just want to be fed more interpretations for the feelings of intimacy with the therapist-mother (thinking about the interpretation would imply too much separation). Others store it in their cheek, and then chew on it by themselves only after they have safely left the session. Others swallow it, but vomit it out afterwards. Some are hungry again an hour later ("Chinese psychiatry"). Some bring their own food to the session, and try to feed the therapist. Some pretend that they feed themselves, and that they do not require anything from the outside. Some accept the nutrition, but not the generous spirit in which it is given, splitting off the one from the other. Some devalue it as a toxic poison; others idealize it as manna; and so on.

Yes, it probably sounds crazy until you see it in practice. Then you realize that it is crazy.

The subtitle of Bolton's book is A Defense of Theistic Religion. Why "theistic religion?" Isn't that a pleonasm, a redundancy? No, not at all. For Bolton is a dissenter within the Traditionalist camp, which, as we have noted in the past, sees a "transcendent unity of religion," but at the cost of essentially downgrading the personal God to a secondary principle (if you're not yet familiar with Schuon's metaphysics, don't worry -- everything will become clear as we proceed).

That is, the Guenon-Schuon school of Traditionalism reconciles the major orthodox revelations by essentially situating them within a closet nondual (advaita) Vedanta. Therefore, their first principle is the "beyond being" of the nirguna brahman, in which personal identity is completely swallowed up and obliterated. If you dine with the Brahman, bring a long spoon!

Indeed, there's no way of getting around it: not only are you on the side of maya -- or cosmic illusion -- but so is the personal God. Both you and God are ultimately absorbed in the One; which, to extend our little gastrointestinal metaphor, is a little like eating the pizza and becoming the pizza instead of vice versa. For this is the ultimate goal of traditional yogic practice: to throw oneself under the cosmic bus, and merge with the Infinite. No self, no problem.

Now, I've greatly simplified the nondual position, but nevertheless, there is no way to reconcile it with a metaphysic that places the personal God at the top of the cosmic hierarchy. Only one approach can be the absolutely correct one. It is in this context that Bolton's book is "a defense of theistic religion." However, as we shall see, the arguments he puts forth cut both ways, into nondualism on the one hand, and materialism on the other.

In fact, one of Bolton's most provocative insights is that nondualism is ironically a kind of approach to religion that is intellectually acceptable to the soul who has been so shaped by modern materialism that it can no longer accept traditional religion. For nondualism and materialism share the underlying commonality of being intrinsically monistic, whereas Christianity is intrinsically dualistic (and actually trinitarian, but we'll get to that later). In a way, nondualism is a mirror image of materialism, for neither has a place for the individual human soul as a truly real reality.

Another important point raised by Bolton is that nondualism isn't actually the only interpretation of the Vedas, let alone the predominant one. That is, there are dualistic interpretations of the Vedas that are compatible with Western religion, most notably, in Ramanuja, who came a couple hundred years after Shankara, and disagreed with the latter's radical nondualism. I used to think that Ramanuja was a kind of degeneration from Shankara, whereas now I would consider him an evolution to a higher and deeper understanding.

Well, I don't think I have time to actually get into the book this morning. Just consider this a desultory preramble. To be continued...

I Am. Not Myself. But Maybe Somedeity...

Continuing with Davie's thesis that Christianity represents a synthesis of Judaism and Vedanta, he writes that under Christianity (C), the two different views of God -- continuous (V) and discontinuous (J), immanent (V) and transcendent (J), "are placed together in the perception of identity-in-difference."

This particular orthoparadox "informs the entire theology of C: thus, Christ is God and man; the bread is the body; One God is three persons, etc. In short, the boundary relations of absolute identity, on the one hand, and infinite difference, on the other, combine to yield identity-in-difference..."

And as mentioned a couple of posts ago, it is as if C embodies a balance between predominantly left (J) and right (V) cerebral hemispheric approaches to the divine.

Again, one doesn't want to oversimplify or push the analysis too far, but I think it is fair to say that a law-based approach is more exterior/objective, whereas the experiential approach of Vedanta (or Zen, or Mahayana Buddhism) is more subjective/interior.

Just as there is no monastic tradition in Judaism -- radical withdrawal from the world being considered mishuggah (except on the Sabbath, and even then the slaccent is on being with the world more intimately) -- Vedanta is in many ways a lawless religion, so to speak.

Or in other words, remove all of the laws from the cosmos -- which are ultimately spun from maya's web -- and what you are left with is God.

Along these lines, Davie goes on to suggest that Judaism's "main concern" lies with "finding an answer to the question, Who? (who is this God revealed to Abraham, Moses, and the prophets?...)," whereas the central concern of Vedanta "is identity-with" the ultimate principle. In Judaism there can be no identity with God, just as in Vedanta our apparent separation is only a stubborn illusion.

As it so happens, if we dig a little deeper, we see that the same dialectic obtains within Hinduism, between the rival ganges of Shankara and Ramanuja, or nondualism vs. qualified nondualism.

And Davie points out that in the Old Testament there are numerous references to the godmensch. Still, there is a certain line one cannot cross in Judaism, for which reason (among others) Jesus-as-God is a non-starter, and more generally, "what H takes to be saving truth, J regards as blasphemous."

Another interesting contrast between Judaism and Vedanta has to do with creation. J is famous for taking a lot of pointless speculation out of the grubby hands of the tenured, and insisting that creation has a beginning, so deal with it.

Conversely, Vedanta maintains that creation has no beginning, and that this particular cosmos is just one in an endless series of emanations.

Likewise, with J, creation involves divine choice, whereas with V it is somewhat "automatic," in the sense that Brahman cannot not create, because this would violate its own nature.

Because of this, it seems that Judaism cannot help but be eschatological, or future-oriented, most particularly, with regard to the messiah or savior. But in Vedanta there can be no end, because any end will just be a new beginning. To be perfectly accurate, beginning and end are always now.

Davie reminds us that Jesus is called Alpha and Omega, first and last, beginning and end, which permits of two perspectives which are unified in the one person.

The whole thing becomes a little confusing because of our immersion in time. Because God is in eternity, beginning and end must by definition be the same in him; or, what we call beginning and end are the serial instantiation -- the "moving image" -- of eternity in time.

As we have said on a number of occasions, herebelow eternity takes time, whereas thereabove it takes all day to get nothing done. But nobody minds, because you've got forever to do it.

Now, a religion provides the cure for the particular spiritual disease it diagnoses. The cure is what we call redemption in Christianity, or holiness in Judaism, or moksha in Vedanta. But is there a way we can see these three as different symptoms of the same underlying disease?

At least superficially, it appears not. For what is the disease? In Judaism, identity with God would be a fatal spiritual sickness, whereas in Vedanta the very same thing is the cure!

But we need to make some more subtle linguistic distinctions, or at least find a way to bullshit our way out of this metaphysical nul-de-slack.

For example, in Vedanta the point is not to elevate the local ego to godhood. Rather, there is a lower self (jivatman, [•]) and a higher self (atman, [¶]), and we dis-identify with the former in order to identify with the latter. And for Davie, the lower self "approximates to the Hebrew nephesh," while ruah does duty for the higher, more subtle being. (And as always, we are happy to be corrected by brother Gandalin for our hamhanded analysis.)

There is also the distinction between local image and nonlocal likeness that is emphasized by both Judaism and (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity. Thus, our "fallenness" is essentially a measure of the distance between image and likeness, lower self and higher self, jivatman and atman, nephesh and ruah, slack and conspiracy, etc.

In each case, redemption, or sanctity, or liberation, or slack, is an eschatological movement from the one toward the other. There is an "immaculate manhood" (Davie), so to speak, at the end of our seeking, which "draws us on by offering glimpses of ourselves in our ideal nature."

And in the case of C, "the likeness which was lost through Adam is fully restored in Jesus," who is uniquely image and likeness; whereas for the subgenius, we would measure the same distance on a logarithmic scale of 1 to Bob.

In fact, I believe it was Schuon who said something to the effect that Jesus is both man's icon of God and God's icon of man (man-as-such).

And what -- or who -- is man-as-such?

Ah, that leads us into a deuscussion of this purusha character, more on whom tomorrow.

Common Nonsense: This is Heaven, but Heaven is Not This

So, is common sense rooted in principles, or do principles flow from common sense? And is common sense universal, or does it change from epoch to epoch, culture to culture, cable network to cable network?

First, we had better define the term. Before looking it up, I would say that it must have to do with knowledge accessible to every normal man by virtue of being one. It is preconceptual, or archetypal if you are Jung at heart -- not quite knowledge, but ready to become so: pre-knowledge.

In Bion's scheme, a preconception mates with experience in order to become a conception, and a conception goes on to become a grownup concept. But there can also be *bastard* concepts that are not the product of this proper union. Although this no doubt sounds abstract, it brings us right back to the left, for so many of their miscegenational ideas are infertile precisely because of this cognitive mismating.

"Homosexual marriage" would be as good an example as any, because this cannot be a preconception anchored in the nature of things, only a bastard of a concept imposed from above. And it surely cannot flow from common sense, unless every human until a few years ago lacked common sense. Among other things, the left is a war on common sense. And common decency. And our common heritage.

In the excellent Book of Absolutes, Gairdner has academically incorrect and therefore instructive chapters on the universals of human life and culture, the constants of nature, the universals of human sex and biology, the universals of language, and the universals of law. I am tempted to just say Read the Book, because that's an awful lot to cover in the spacetime of a post, especially because it's been five years since I read it.

Oh, and Gairdner has a new book coming out next year called The Great Divide: Why Liberals and Conservatives Will Never, Ever Agree. This second book is no doubt a logical extension of the first, for what is leftism but the political implications of relativism and rejection of absolutes, i.e., a deeply principled political stupidity at war with Reason?

I'm going to try to skim that book later today and maybe get back to it tomorrow. Meanwhile, another book we haven't discussed but which I can heartily endorse is Frithjof Schuon and the Perennial Philosophy, which is an introductory guide to his trans-thinking.

It is especially recommended to those of you who are a little intimidated by the master, but hey, who would be intimidated by this easygoing and nonjudgmental visage?:

Chapter five condenses his system to the very essence of what we might call Metacosmic Common Sense -- although he would hasten to add that this is no more "his system" than the sun can be private property. Rather, it shines equally upon the good and evil, the intelligent and stupid, the gifted and the tenured.

I realize this is controversial, but I am highly attracted to the idea that truth is anterior to revelation, or in other words, that we do not necessarily need the supplement of revelation to fill in the lacunae that result from our being mere creatures, or middling relativities of the Father.

On the other hand, revelation is sufficient to put us in contact with these necessary metacosmic truths, which is why, for example, a simple person of faith can be so much wiser than a brilliant scientist when it pertains to essential human truths beyond the scope of science -- and why we would prefer to be governed by the first 500 people in the Boston phonebook than the Harvard faculty.

Well, maybe not Boston...

I would also add that the metacosmic truths we are about to discuss are highly abstract, and that in the absence of revelation they are like forms with no content or a soul with no body. Also, revelation adds many details that cannot be captured in the abstract, nor can one have an intimate personal relationship with an abstraction.

Here is an example of a first principle that seems to me unassailable, that "God is ineffable," such that "nothing can describe Him or enclose Him in words." What mischief results from believing otherwise!

For it is not as if we are faced with a binary choice between a conceptual absolute posited by the mind and a paltry relativism that implicitly elevates man to God. Rather, we simultaneously posit the existence of the Absolute and our inability to contain it/him; or, if you can contain it, it is not God. (We could say that an "it" can be contained by the mind, whereas a person can never be.)

Before starting this post, the thought popped into my head: any valid knowledge of God is obviously already God and must come from God. However, the converse is not true: God is not that knowledge.

A map is not the territory, but nor is it other than the territory, in the sense that it provides points of reference on a human scale. Just so, metaphysics and revelation provide us with humanly realizable points of reference that permit us, say, to orient ourselves to eternity via time, or heaven via earth, or the celestial via the terrestrial, etc.

Indeed you could say that earth is heaven, but that of course heaven is not earth. Thus, Jesus can rightly affirm in the Gospel of Thomas that the kingdom "is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it" (#113). Some men, anyway. But we couldn't even know of paradise if we didn't sometimes catch glimpses of it herebelow.

For Schuon, "metaphysical doctrine is nothing other than the science of Reality and illusion." The postmodern secular leftist type will usually say that we can only know appearances and not reality, but we respond that we can know appearances precisely because they are appearances of a reality anterior to them; optical illusions only exist because of optical realities.

Now, the same doctrine "might be articulated in a number of ways, from a variety of viewpoints," for the same reason a truth can be expressed in different languages. You could say that a valid religion is a richly symbolic "metaphysical vocabulary" -- or that, conversely, a religion that fails to embody and communicate these truths is no religion at all.

I suppose where I differ from Schuon is that his preferred vocabulary is ultimately Advaita Vedanta, whereas I believe this fails to adequately convey certain fine points that are better expressed in the language of Christianity (although Ramanuja's interpretation of Vedanta gets the job done where Shankara fails, and is easily assimilated to Christianity).

It's getting late, isn't it? To be continued...

"Oy, what is it with these anonymous bonehead trolls?"