Navel-Gazing at our I-ambilical Cord (2.22.09)

Yesterday while driving to work I was navel-gazing again. Yes, I was thinking about my belly button. For what is a belly button? I can see that Future Leader is already curious about his and fascinated by mine, and I well remember wondering about mine when I was a kit. No, I did not obsess over it, but it is interesting that the human body bears the permanent mark of its own incompleteness and its own previous life in another dimension. The human body is so perfect, and yet, no matter how perfect the body, there is always this odd "scar" we all carry right at the center of our physical being, the reminder of this other existence: "I once abided in the infinite, and all I got was this lousy belly button."

To continue our navel-gazing, what does this scar signify? Well, let's see. First, it memorializes our transition from life in a watery medium to life in a gaseous one. In this regard, life during our first nine months could not have been more different than life after the dramatic caesura of birth, as Bion called it. Our watery existence is hardly irrelevant to what comes later, as more and more research is documenting the importance of our intrauterine experience and how it "carries over" into the next world.

In our case, we did not just treat Future Leader as a human subject from the day of his birth -- with all the dignity and nobility entitled to any human being -- but from the day of his conception. I would guess that about a third of modern Western mothers do this, either consciously or unconsciously. (The percentage is far lower in non-Western cultures, where even the child is often not treated with dignity as a full subject.)

Our preparation for extrauterine life takes place under circumstances that are quite different from those that will later prevail. From the vantage point of the fetus, intrauterine life appears to be a "thing unto itself," and yet, it is actually pointing toward something beyond itself. The fetus cannot know that its intrauterine existence is actually a preparation for the "big event," which always comes as a bewildering and disorienting shock.

In this regard, our physical birth is not only a transition but a death, as are all births. It is the stark end of one way of life and the beginning of another. The navel is a reminder that we were once directly connected to the source of life, whereas now we must tolerate being separate from it and renegotiate a relationship with it. In fact, the key to early parenting is to try to foster the conditions of intrauterine life in order to ease the transition and make it less traumatic. Even though the baby has left the physical womb, he remains -- or should remain -- in an external one -- a womb with a view -- for some time, so that psychological "hatching" will gradually take place over many months.

Following the method of cosmic analogy -- as above, so below -- what can birth tell us about the spiritual life? It is interesting, is it not, that Christianity is so permeated with the archetypal iconography of womb and of birth? "Virgin," "word," "conception," "pregnant," "child of the Holy Spirit," the name "Immanuel," which means "God with us." Each of these has a deeply resonant archetypal meaning for the spiritual life.

Just like intrauterine life, extrauterine life is not merely a thing-in-itself but a preparation for something else. It too has a trajectory that points to its own end, although that end will come like a thief in the night and no one knows the hour or day. All the more reason not to waste time -- to work while it is Day, for the Night will come when no man can work.

Time is all we have in this life, and to waste time is to waste eternity. The First Thing -- all else pales in significance -- is naturally to avoid being an astral abortion. Odd, but there are abortionists everywhere who will eagerly help you end your pregnancy. If this happens, you will continue "living," but in the manner of a spiritual stillborn or "existentialist" whose existence does not point beyond itself. For what has specifically been aborted is essence from existence -- or spiritual seed from the womb of time.

While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Now, just as our physical body bears the scar of its incompleteness and separation, so too does our soul bears its own version of this. For it also has a "hole" at its center that we may spend our lives trying to fill in inappropriate and ultimately fruitless ways. But the hole is there for a reason. It is actually a theocentric hole, and there is no way to fill it unless one is properly oriented to the source of our being. We are connected to the source of our being by a vertical channel through which energies pass up and down -- we call these energies aspiration and grace.

How to find that I-ambilical cord through which we are spiritually nourished? Everyone is looking for it, and there are countless Spiritual Salesmen who will claim they can sell you one. But each of us must find the path of access that leads to the way: For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

In other words, He who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

We are either in the wilderness or on the path. But once on the path, there is no turning back. One cannot return to the wilderness but must continue pushing onward. In other words, you cannot be a little bit pregnant: Whoever has put his hand to the plough and then looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God.

As Boris Mouravieff writes, the world is constituted of "A" influences and "B" influences, and it is through the assimilation of the latter that our "psychic center" will grow. There are a number of ways to conceptualize the "A" influences, but let us say that they are horizontal, exterior, and ultimately random, canceling each other out and adding to the sum of zero, or physical death. Most men are subject to the rule of the illusory "A" influences, chasing after one or another until falling into the abyss. This is the way of the Exterior Man.

But the interior Coonman orients himself around the esoteric Center from which "B" influences enter the field of life. Unlike the "A" influences, these do not cancel each other out, but are all oriented in the same direction and are actually the only enduring reality. To quote Mouravieff,

"In life, every being is subjected to a sort of competitive test. If he discerns the existence of the 'B' influences; if he acquires a taste for gathering and absorbing them; if he continually aspires to assimilate them better; his mixed inner nature will slowly undergo a certain kind of evolution. And if the efforts which he makes to absorb the 'B' influences are constant and sufficient in force, a magnetic center can be formed within him."

If one is successful in forming this magnetic center, it will not just attract the "B" influences but actually deflect the "A" influences. I hope this is not sounding too esoteric or "gnostic," because it should be a common experience to most Raccoons in some form or fashion. It may be new to Kit Scouts, all the more reason to listen closely to your elders.

I have come to realize that one reason I enjoy blogging first thing in the morning is that I have unwittingly set up a situation in which I shut out virtually all "A" influences and instead attempt to gather and align myself with "B" influences. In so doing, I actually reinforce my own magnetic center, which then stays "strong" for the remainder of the day.

I thought of this yesterday in reading a comment Schuon once made to a disciple, emphasizing that

"What we do in the morning is very important for the whole day; it is good not to quit the morning japa before one is certain that it has determined our being and therefore also our entire day. The brain is a sponge that absorbs the stream of appearances [i.e., 'A' influences]; it is not enough to empty it of the images on which it feeds, one must also satisfy both its need to absorb and its habitual movement.... One must infuse into the mind, as far as it will carry it, a consciousness of the Real [i.e., 'B' influences] and of the unreal; this consciousness will provide the framework for the rest. The world is a multiplicity that disperses and divides; the divine Word... leads back to Unity [and] absorbs the soul and transposes it imperceptibly, by a sort of 'divine stratagem' into the calm and unchanging climate of the Absolute..."

Speaking of Schuon, Mouravieff also writes of the benefit of maintaining contact with men whose own magnetic center is stronger than ours. This is also the value of spiritual community -- including Coonland -- for what is One Cosmos but a spiritual pediatrician's office in which we can all -- myself included -- talk to the other moms, make sure that we are getting the proper nutrients, and be reassured that everything is proceeding normally in our pregnancy?

We'll meet again. Up ahead, 'round the bend. The circle unbroken, by and by. A Divine Child, a godsend, a touch of infanity, a bloomin' yes.... Blissfully floating before the fleeting flickering universe, stork naked in brahma daynight, worshiping in oneder in a weecosmic womb with a pew, it is finally... --Cosmobliteration, The Coonifesto

On Recovering the Point of Your Filmography Before it's Too Late

As I was about to say before I hijacked my own post, our films can get complicated because we obviously can't control all of the action, plus there are numberless other movies taking place simultaneously, with actors wandering on and off our stage. Remember, we aren't just acting in our film, but are probably the costar in others. Indeed, sometimes the whole point of our film may be to support someone else. Think, for example, of John the Baptist, and his important role in the Jesus film.

I think it was Adin Steinsaltz who said it -- here, let me find it -- can't find it at the moment, but it had something to do with how our souls are incomplete, and everyone is walking around with somebody's missing piece. No matter who you are, you are undoubtedly carrying a vital part that may mean nothing to you, but is everything to someone else.

Anyway, our films can get quite convoluted, to the point that they deviate from their original plot. In fact, Mouravieff says that a person most often enters the spiritual path only after his film has gotten out of hand. Therefore, true spiritual evolution "cannot occur except on the basis of the original film -- after all artificially added elements have been eliminated." This would apply not just to misbegotten relationships and activities, but more importantly, the mind parasites that have taken over your production.

This entails a return to what Mouravieff calls the "magnetic center," which we have discussed in the past. Here it is. I'll extract the relevant part. Well, frankly, I'm a bit short on time this morning -- it's Future Leader's fifth birthday -- so I'll toss in some irrelevant bits as well:

It is interesting that the human body bears the permanent mark of its own dependency and incompleteness, and its previous life in another dimension. The human form is so perfect, and yet, no matter how perfect the body, there is always this odd "scar" we all carry right at the very center of our physical being, the reminder of another mode of existence: "I once abided in the infinite, and all I got was this lousy belly button." [And yet, the body wouldn't look quite right without one. As far as I know, even Cher hasn't had her belly button surgically removed or enhanced, but you never know.]

To continue our navelgazing, what does this scar signify? Well, let's see. First, it memorializes our transition from life in a watery medium to life in a gaseous one. In this regard, life during our first nine months couldn't have been more different than life after the dramatic caesura of birth, as Bion called it. And yet, our watery existence is hardly irrelevant to what comes later, as more and more research is documenting the importance of our intrauterine experience and how it "carries over" into the next world, the fetal afterlife, as it were.

Now, in our case, we didn't just treat Future Leader as a human subject from the day of his birth -- with all the dignity and nobility to which any human being is entitled -- but from the day of his conception. I would guess that about a third of modern Western mothers do this, either consciously or unconsciously. The percentage is far lower in non-Western cultures, where children are often not treated with the dignity of an autonomous subject, but instead regarded as possessions, resources, or an extension of kin or cult. For that matter, it is a truism that the most dangerous place in the world for a black person to be -- or liberal, for that matter -- is inside their mother's womb.

Our preparation for extrauterine life takes place under circumstances that are quite different from those that will later prevail. From the vantage point of the fetus, intrauterine life appears to be a "thing unto itself," and yet, it is actually pointing toward something beyond itself. In other words, its reason does not abide in itself, but in a state that will only reveal itself later. The fetus cannot know that its intrauterine existence is actually a preparation for the "big event," which always comes as a bewildering and disorienting shock.

In this regard, our physical birth is not only a transition but a death, as are all births. It is the stark end of one way of life and the beginning of another. The navel is a reminder that we were once directly connected to the source of life, whereas now we must tolerate being separate from it and renegotiate a relationship with it. In fact, one key to early parenting is to try to foster the conditions of intrauterine life in order to ease the transition and make it less traumatic. Even though the baby has left the physical womb, he remains -- or should remain -- in an external one -- a womb with a view -- for some time, so that psychological "hatching" will gradually take place over a number of months.

Following the method of cosmic analogy -- as above, so below -- what can birth tell us about the spiritual life? It is interesting, is it not, that Christianity is so permeated with the archetypal iconography of womb and of birth? "Virgin," "seed," "conception," "born again," "Mother of God," "children of light," etc. Each of these has a deeply resonant archetypal meaning for the spiritual life.

Just like intrauterine life, extrauterine life is not merely a thing-in-itself but a preparation for something else. It too has a trajectory that points to its own end, although that end will come like a thief in the night and no one knows the hour or day. All the more reason not to waste time -- to work while it is Day, for the Night will come when no man can work.

Time is all we have in this life, so to waste time is to forego eternity. The First Thing -- all else pales in significance -- is naturally to avoid being an astral abortion. Odd, but there are abortionists everywhere who will eagerly help you end your earthly pregnancy. Many of them are called "professors."

If you should end your pregnancy, you will usually continue "living" -- occasionally an astral abortion ends in suicide -- but in the manner of a spiritual stillborn or "existentialist" whose existence no longer points beyond itself. For what has specifically been aborted is essence from mere existence -- or the spiritual seed from the womb of time.

While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Now, just as our physical body bears the scar of its incompleteness and separation, so too does our soul bear its own version of this. For it also has a "hole" at its center that we may spend our lives trying to deny or fill in inappropriate and ultimately fruitless ways. But the hole is there for a reason. It is actually a theomorphic and theocentric hole, and there is no way to fill it unless one is properly oriented to the source of one's being. We are connected to the source of our being by a vertical channel, or OMbilicus, through which energies pass up and down, in and out -- we call these energies aspiration (↑) and grace (↓) (the latter of which must be in-spired to become operative).

How to find that I-AMbilical cord through which we are spiritually nourished? Everyone is looking for it, and there are countless Spiritual Salesmen who will claim they can sell you one. But each of us must find the path of access that leads to the Way: For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

In other words, He who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

We are either in the wilderness or on the path. But once on the path, there is no turning back. One cannot return to the wilderness but must continue pushing onward, inward, and upward. In other words, you cannot be a little bit pregnant: Whoever has put his hand to the plough and then looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God.

As Boris Mouravieff writes, the world is constituted of "A" influences and "B" influences, and it is through the assimilation of the latter that our "psychic center" will grow. There are a number of ways to conceptualize the "A" influences, but let us say that they are horizontal, exterior, and ultimately random, canceling each other out and adding to the sum of zero, or the total entropy of both psychic and physical death. Most men are subject to the rule of the illusory "A" influences, chasing after one or another until falling into the abyss. This is the way of the Exterior Man who dwells in Flatland.

But the interior Coonman orients himself around the esoteric Center from which "B" influences enter the field of life. Unlike the "A" influences, these do not cancel each other out, but are all oriented in the same direction and are actually the only enduring reality. To quote Mouravieff,

"In life, every being is subjected to a sort of competitive test. If he discerns the existence of the 'B' influences; if he acquires a taste for gathering and absorbing them; if he continually aspires to assimilate them better; his mixed inner nature will slowly undergo a certain kind of evolution. And if the efforts which he makes to absorb the 'B' influences are constant and sufficient in force, a magnetic center can be formed within him."

If one is successful in forming this magnetic center, it will not just attract the "B" influences but actually deflect the "A" influences. I hope this is not sounding too esoteric or "gnostic," because it should be a common experience to most Raccoons in some form or fashion. It may be new to Kit Scouts, all the more reason to listen closely to your elders.

I have come to realize that one reason I enjoy blogging first thing in the morning is that I have unwittingly set up a situation in which I shut out virtually all "A" influences and instead attempt to gather and align myself with "B" influences. In so doing, I actually reinforce my own magnetic center, which then stays "strong" for the remainder of the day.

I thought of this yesterday in reading a comment Schuon once made to a disciple, emphasizing that

"What we do in the morning is very important for the whole day; it is good not to quit the morning japa before one is certain that it has determined our being and therefore also our entire day. The brain is a sponge that absorbs the stream of appearances [i.e., 'A' influences]; it is not enough to empty it of the images on which it feeds, one must also satisfy both its need to absorb and its habitual movement.... One must infuse into the mind, as far as it will carry it, a consciousness of the Real [i.e., 'B' influences] and of the unreal; this consciousness will provide the framework for the rest. The world is a multiplicity that disperses and divides; the divine Word... leads back to Unity [and] absorbs the soul and transposes it imperceptibly, by a sort of 'divine stratagem' into the calm and unchanging climate of the Absolute..."

Speaking of Schuon, Mouravieff also writes of the benefit of maintaining contact with those Real Men whose own magnetic center is stronger than ours. This is also the value of spiritual community -- including the Coonosphere -- for what is One Cosmos but a spiritual pediatrician's office in which we can all -- myself included -- talk to the other moms, make sure that we are getting the proper nutrients, and be reassured that everything is proceeding normally in our pregnancy, as we await our voidgin birth?

One of my favorite songs on tracking down that missing cast member:

Circumnavelgazing Our Cosmic Ombilicus

Another rerun from two years back. I really like this one. Call it a Coon Classic. Or, put it this way: if you don't like it, then at least you know that the eternal Way of the Raccoon is just not for you.

*****

Yesterday while driving to work I was navel-gazing again. Yes, I was thinking about my belly button. For what is a belly button? I can see that Future Leader is already curious about his -- he calls it his "baby button." But when he asks what it is, it's difficult to think of a concise answer. So consider this a Raccoon bedtime story about the cosmic significance of your baby button.

It is interesting that the human body bears the permanent mark of its own dependency and incompleteness, and its previous life in another dimension. The human form is so perfect, and yet, no matter how perfect the body, there is always this odd "scar" we all carry right at the very center of our physical being, the reminder of another mode of existence: "I once abided in the infinite, and all I got was this lousy belly button." [And yet, the body wouldn't look quite right without one. As far as I know, even Cher hasn't had her belly button surgically removed or enhanced, but you never know.]

To continue our navel-gazing, what does this scar signify? Well, let's see. First, it memorializes our transition from life in a watery medium to life in a gaseous one. In this regard, life during our first nine months couldn't have been more different than life after the dramatic caesura of birth, as Bion called it. And yet, our watery existence is hardly irrelevant to what comes later, as more and more research is documenting the importance of our intrauterine experience and how it "carries over" into the next world.

Now, in our case, we didn't just treat Future Leader as a human subject from the day of his birth -- with all the dignity and nobility to which any human being is entitled -- but from the day of his conception. I would guess that about a third of modern Western mothers do this, either consciously or unconsciously. The percentage is far lower in non-Western cultures, where children are often not treated with the dignity of an autonomous subject, and instead regarded as possessions, resources, or an extension of kin or cult. For that matter, it is a truism that the most dangerous place in the world for a black person -- or liberal, for that matter -- to be is inside their mother's womb.

Our preparation for extrauterine life takes place under circumstances that are quite different from those that will later prevail. From the vantage point of the fetus, intrauterine life appears to be a "thing unto itself," and yet, it is actually pointing toward something beyond itself. In other words, its reason does not abide in itself, but in a state that will only reveal itself later. The fetus cannot know that its intrauterine existence is actually a preparation for the "big event," which always comes as a bewildering and disorienting shock.

In this regard, our physical birth is not only a transition but a death, as are all births. It is the stark end of one way of life and the beginning of another. The navel is a reminder that we were once directly connected to the source of life, whereas now we must tolerate being separate from it and renegotiate a relationship with it. In fact, one key to early parenting is to try to foster the conditions of intrauterine life in order to ease the transition and make it less traumatic. Even though the baby has left the physical womb, he remains -- or should remain -- in an external one -- a womb with a view -- for some time, so that psychological "hatching" will gradually take place over a number of months.

Following the method of cosmic analogy -- as above, so below -- what can birth tell us about the spiritual life? It is interesting, is it not, that Christianity is so permeated with the archetypal iconography of womb and of birth? "Virgin," "seed," "conception," "born again," "Mother of God," "children of light," etc. Each of these has a deeply resonant archetypal meaning for the spiritual life.

Just like intrauterine life, extrauterine life is not merely a thing-in-itself but a preparation for something else. It too has a trajectory that points to its own end, although that end will come like a thief in the night and no one knows the hour or day. All the more reason not to waste time -- to work while it is Day, for the Night will come when no man can work.

Time is all we have in this life, so to waste time is to forego eternity. The First Thing -- all else pales in significance -- is naturally to avoid being an astral abortion. Odd, but there are abortionists everywhere who will eagerly help you end your earthly pregnancy. Many of them are called "professors."

If you should end your pregnancy, you will usually continue "living" -- occasionally an astral abortion ends in suicide -- but in the manner of a spiritual stillborn or "existentialist" whose existence no longer points beyond itself. For what has specifically been aborted is essence from mere existence -- or the spiritual seed from the womb of time.

While men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat and went his way.

Now, just as our physical body bears the scar of its incompleteness and separation, so too does our soul bear its own version of this. For it also has a "hole" at its center that we may spend our lives trying to deny or fill in inappropriate and ultimately fruitless ways. But the hole is there for a reason. It is actually a theomorphic and theocentric hole, and there is no way to fill it unless one is properly oriented to the source of our being. We are connected to the source of our being by a vertical channel, or ombilicus, through which energies pass up and down, in and out -- we call these energies aspiration (↑) and grace (↓) (the latter of which must be in-spired to become operative).

How to find that I-ambilical cord through which we are spiritually nourished? Everyone is looking for it, and there are countless Spiritual Salesmen who will claim they can sell you one. But each of us must find the path of access that leads to the Way: For whoever has, to him more will be given, and he will have abundance; but whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.

In other words, He who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

We are either in the wilderness or on the path. But once on the path, there is no turning back. One cannot return to the wilderness but must continue pushing onward, inward, and upward. In other words, you cannot be a little bit pregnant: Whoever has put his hand to the plough and then looks back is not fit for the kingdom of God.

As Boris Mouravieff writes, the world is constituted of "A" influences and "B" influences, and it is through the assimilation of the latter that our "psychic center" will grow. There are a number of ways to conceptualize the "A" influences, but let us say that they are horizontal, exterior, and ultimately random, canceling each other out and adding to the sum of zero, or the total entropy of both psychic and physical death. Most men are subject to the rule of the illusory "A" influences, chasing after one or another until falling into the abyss. This is the way of the Exterior Man.

But the interior Coonman orients himself around the esoteric Center from which "B" influences enter the field of life. Unlike the "A" influences, these do not cancel each other out, but are all oriented in the same direction and are actually the only enduring reality. To quote Mouravieff,

"In life, every being is subjected to a sort of competitive test. If he discerns the existence of the 'B' influences; if he acquires a taste for gathering and absorbing them; if he continually aspires to assimilate them better; his mixed inner nature will slowly undergo a certain kind of evolution. And if the efforts which he makes to absorb the 'B' influences are constant and sufficient in force, a magnetic center can be formed within him."

If one is successful in forming this magnetic center, it will not just attract the "B" influences but actually deflect the "A" influences. I hope this is not sounding too esoteric or "gnostic," because it should be a common experience to most Raccoons in some form or fashion. It may be new to Kit Scouts, all the more reason to listen closely to your elders.

I have come to realize that one reason I enjoy blogging first thing in the morning is that I have unwittingly set up a situation in which I shut out virtually all "A" influences and instead attempt to gather and align myself with "B" influences. In so doing, I actually reinforce my own magnetic center, which then stays "strong" for the remainder of the day.

I thought of this yesterday in reading a comment Schuon once made to a disciple, emphasizing that

"What we do in the morning is very important for the whole day; it is good not to quit the morning japa before one is certain that it has determined our being and therefore also our entire day. The brain is a sponge that absorbs the stream of appearances [i.e., 'A' influences]; it is not enough to empty it of the images on which it feeds, one must also satisfy both its need to absorb and its habitual movement.... One must infuse into the mind, as far as it will carry it, a consciousness of the Real [i.e., 'B' influences] and of the unreal; this consciousness will provide the framework for the rest. The world is a multiplicity that disperses and divides; the divine Word... leads back to Unity [and] absorbs the soul and transposes it imperceptibly, by a sort of 'divine stratagem' into the calm and unchanging climate of the Absolute..."

Speaking of Schuon, Mouravieff also writes of the benefit of maintaining contact with those Real Men whose own magnetic center is stronger than ours. This is also the value of spiritual community -- including the Coonosphere -- for what is One Cosmos but a spiritual pediatrician's office in which we can all -- myself included -- talk to the other moms, make sure that we are getting the proper nutrients, and be reassured that everything is proceeding normally in our pregnancy, as we await our voidgin birth?

Tossing Thoughtcrimes through the Overton Window

Mouravieff goes on to say that we inhabit a Mixtus Orbis, which seems to be a fancy way of saying that ours is an ambiguous world ruled by good and evil. Worse, it is a place "where we find real and imaginary facts and phenomena inextricably intermixed."

I say "worse," because every great manmade catastrophe is predicated on a foundation of lies. A great evil is usually the result of the ruthless application and pursuit of a lie. But the person who embraces the lie virtually never regards it as such.

Rather, his moral fervor results from the fact that he regards the lie as true. While I don't like the word "radicalized," this is pretty much what it means, i.e., to embrace the lie with all one's heart, intelligence, and will. In this regard, Islamists are no less radicalized than Obama.

How and why do people become so confused between the two? "The difficulty in separating them is due to the fact that the Imaginary resembles the Real in the same way that the space beyond a mirror reflects what is actually present on the facing side." In other words, when we look "into" the mirror we see a space, but it is the space behind us.

And "When surrounded by mirrors, we can easily lose all notion of what is real." The real problem is that the imaginary "closely resembles the real," a good example being "homosexual marriage." It does not exist and cannot exist, and yet, millions of people insist that it can and does. But it is only a fake image of the real thing.

In the past we have discussed the idea of 'A' and 'B' influences. You could say that 'A' influences are horizontal at best, imaginary or demonic at worst. For example, whenever I watch television with my son, I point out all of the 'A' influences that are going on. After all, that is why television exists: to influence you, and not just to part with your money by purchasing things you don't really need.

Rather, the most sinister part is the 'A' influences coming from "left wing culture," or whatever you want to call it. These influences are relentless, which is one of the reasons why they can appear "real." In other words, the bombardment is so constant, that it can eventually convince people that the imaginary is real.

Along these lines, yesterday on Ace of Spades I read of a useful concept, the Overton Window. It "refers to the range of acceptable political discourse on any given topic":

"The Left -- dominating the media, the academy, and pop culture -- is unmatched at moving the Overton Window. Consider gay marriage, a subject once so far outside the mainstream that less than 20 years ago, Republicans and Democrats united to pass the Defense of Marriage Act to define marriage under federal law as the union of one man and one woman. Now? That view is such an anathema that it’s difficult to get -- or retain -- a job in entire sectors of the economy if you openly hold to the traditionalist position on marriage."

So the left effectively moved the Overton Window to the point that the imaginary -- homosexual marriage -- is officially real.

With his comment about the dangers of Muslim immigration two days ago, Donald Trump tossed a brick through the Window, and look what happened -- complete hysteria in the media. It looked as if it were coordinated, but that is just an illusion, like when you lift a rock under which ants are living. Each ant knows only one thing, which is to protect the queen. It's the same with the liberal media. They run around like ants because they know only one thing: protect the (illusory) narrative.

So, if nothing else, Trump performs the vital service of vandalizing the Overton Window -- which is really more like a wall or prison: "he is useful for plowing through the... dead hulks of leftist thought that clog the trade-routes of political expression and debate."

The problem is, while Trump does a fine job of dropping bombs on the 'A' influnces, he has no 'B' influnces . Rather, unfortunately, he is, as Ace says, "a boorish and crude demagogue." We obviously need a candidate who does both: attacks the 'A' influences while channeling the 'B.' Now that I think about it, probably the only candidate who effectively does both is Ted Cruz.

Remind us, exactly what are 'B' influences? Here is a summary and contrast between the two:

"'A' influences are illusory in their nature, although the effect of each one of them is real, so that exterior man takes them for reality."

Importantly, they come at us from every which way and pull us in every direction, so that the sum total of their effect is zero. Think of the chaos of the left, which is chaotic because it is not oriented toward any telos and therefore undermines meaning, purpose, and real progress.

In reality, everything on the left cancels out something else on the left, which is what is going on, for example, with the left-on-left silliness of the campus crybully movement. Ultimately leftism is completely self-destructive and self-consuming. At least everywhere it has been tried.

Conversely, 'B' influences emanate from Celestial Central, AKA, the Great Attractor. They are not from this world, nor could they ever be. We are always subject to them, but only if we open ourselves to their influence. Few people are really completely cut off from them, or their souls would asphyxiate. Even atheists revere truth in their own way. Even materialists fall in love. Even Richard Dawkins transcends his genes. I think.

Now, "since 'A' influences neutralize each other, 'B' influences actually constitute the only reality." Thus, if a fellow should spend his days failing to distinguish between the two, then he has officially wasted his life, because it has added up to zero.

Also, as one assimilates the 'B' influences -- and this is very experience-near -- it is as if they accumulate and create their own "magnetic center" within, which is in turn magnetized toward the Great Attractor. Which is why, as we grow in spirit, we are less easily influenced and seduced by the 'A' influences and more drawn toward God -- just as the earth, small as it is, exerts a gravitational attraction on the sun.

Out of time.

Temporal Dilation, Cosmic Music, and Human Be-Who (11.12.10)

Any attempt to grapple with the concept of time must begin with the obvious fact that it has three equally mysterious modes, past, present and future (and this is not even to touch on the everlasting or the "eternal," the latter of which involves the instantaneous presence of the temporal whole). The present is the place where the past brings the future into being, but also where the the future flows into the now and becomes the past. As Bolton writes, "everything in the past was once future, and then present; everything present was future and will be past; and everything future will be present and then past."

Based upon this, the past would appear to be fixed, but is that really so? Not if the past is inherently entangled with the future. Future events can occur which will give the past an entirely different meaning. For example, if you wrote a history of the 19th century prior to World War I, it would look very different than a history written after World War I, because only as more of the future became the past could you understand events that were implicit in the past, but yet to play themselves out in time. In other words, the past had hidden potentials that were still playing themselves out in the future. As Bolton writes, "the contents of the past and present are thus in constant change by virtue of their changing relationship to the present."

In so many ways, MSM journalism really is an attempt to control the now, so as to control the past and therefore future....

In physics, there is only a one-way arrow of change, from past to future. But as Bolton explains, "to give the experience of change," time "must form a combination of static and dynamic elements. A time series which consisted of pure dynamism could not supply any kind of experience because every element in it would have become something else before it could be known." Alternatively, "a purely static time would not be temporal at all. Only a mingling of the changing with the unchanging can constitute time..."

This is why I not only think that music is the best analogy we have for time, but why we are so drawn to it: because it reveals the very form of time, which in turn brings inherent pleasure, similar to the epistemophilic pleasure of discovery. In short, the ear can tell us much more about time than the eye, but all of science is biased more toward the eye in its mapping of reality. Indeed, science ultimately aims to map all of reality in such a way that it specifically excludes time. For example, a "grand theory of everything" would consist of a single equation that unifies all of the forces in physics -- forces which result in the "illusion" of time. But what if the cosmos is more like a symphony, which has a complex vertical structure (i.e., the "spatial" chords) and a more open and horizontal "melodic" aspect that wends its way through the chords?

Zuckerkandl writes that "The knowledge of space that hand and eye possess is exactly matched by their ignorance of time.... A true image of time must be an image for the ear, an audible image made of tones.... Thanks to music, we are able to behold time."

Now, a work of serious music is obviously a "whole," but it is again a temporal whole with a complex array of vertical and horizontal relations. In fact, in rereading Eliot's Wasteland yesterday, I could hear how very "musical" it is, with complex motifs recurring and commenting upon one another as the poem unfolds, just as in a symphony. Thus, it seems that poetry in general would represent a closer approximation to the structure of reality than any ordinary linear prose.

I am sure this is what Schuon means when he says that a simple believer in literal creationism is surely closer to the truth than any form of materialism can ever be. To say that Genesis is "poetry" is hardly to denigrate it; rather, it is to point out that it employs the appropriate modality to even begin to talk about ultimate reality. It does not pretend to be able to capture the unsayable in language (unless you have no poetic sense and have missed the point), but to use what can be said to disclose what otherwise can't be said or even thought about.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Language, like music, is deployed in time. Because of this, you cannot comprehend the meaning of a statement by analyzing its constituent parts, i.e., by breaking it down into its individual words and letters. It is not that the words and letters additively reveal a meaning; rather, they are all in the service of a higher meaning, and were chosen for the very purpose of conveying it. Here again, much of the pleasure in writing is searching for and "discovering" the correct word or phrase for the meaning one wishes to convey, very much as a musician will try to find the proper notes to say what he wishes to say in a solo. This is one more reason there can never be "artificial intelligence" except in its linear sense, but never in the holistic way in which the human mind operates.

For example, I was reading just yesternow (National Review, 12.3.07) about the vast differences between a chess-playing computer program and a chess master. The computer program must consider trillions of possibilities before deciding on a single move, whereas "even the greatest human player considers at most a few thousand, and usually far fewer." Thus, this "billion-to-one advantage in calculating power is nullified by the human grandmaster's power of understanding." It is this depth of understanding that instantaneously excludes literally billions of blind alleys.

As does a profound philosophy of life. In particular, I'm thinking again of how revelation is intended to provide a musical structure with which one may adequately play the "cosmic suite." No computer program could ever do this, because in life, the choices multiply exponentially as compared to a chess match. How do we reduce the chaos to meaning, without reducing meaning to meaninglessness, as does science?

Relgion begins with the idea that ultimate meaning exists, and that it is this meaning that "sponsors," so to speak, all of the meaning we encounter on a moment-to-moment basis, no matter how trivial. Meaning is meaningful because Meaning is always there propping it up; or words are there (including everything from DNA to the mathematical constants that govern physical reality) because the Word is there "behind," "beneath" or "above" them. "Meaning" and "Wholeness" are two aspects of the same phenomena, since meaning is only grasped by sensing the wholeness of parts. In fact, in the absence of wholeness there could obviously be no parts, because they wouldn't be parts of anything.

This is patently true of "spatial" objects, but what about temporal ones? If we try to analyze time by dissecting it down to its constituent parts, do we not eliminate the very melody we are attempting to hear, the Song Supreme? This is the domain of metahistory, which is apparently no longer fashionable, except that it actually is, in the same way that the Left presents us with a counterfeit version of any profound truth. Leftism is like an inverted mirror of falsehood, in which deep truths are presented upside down and backwards, for example, the doctrine of materialism. Materialsm is just an ass-backward religion that starts at the wrong end of reality and proceeds to elevate its absurd error to an absolute.

But the moment you treat parts in an atomistic way, as if they are unrelated in time, you have falsified reality. This is precisely why physics is powerless to understand the most profound and shocking facts of the universe, i.e., life and consciousness. They cannot even discuss these things without a priori turning them into something they are not. But as I wrote in One Cosmos, "Only by changing our perspective to a 'top down' one, from spirit to mind to life to matter, does the cosmos become intelligble in its totality, a totality that unquestionably includes biological and psychological dimensions."

Thus, in the Raccoon view, "when we talk about a 'relationship' between Life and the cosmos, we are dealing quite literally with a tautology, a statement of equivalence." Given the temporal entanglement of the cosmos, in order to not mislead, we cannot refer only to "the universe," but to something along the lines of "the living universe" or "the universe in the process of becoming locally conscious," because only in such a way do we not exclude the most important fact of the cosmos, i.e, the observer making the statement.

It actually goes a lot deeper than this, as is explained in One Cosmos (which is the perfect stocking sopher for the Raccoon in your life who doesn't know he is one). That is, I believe it can be proven that the universe is intrinsically and not just accidentally conscious. It has never been unknown to human beings that this can be proven in mystical experience, but I believe it can also be proven by mere transrational logic. Certain things just must be, and one of them is that our individual consciousness partakes of a much greater consciousness, in the same way that our little ego relates to the cosmic Dreamer who dreams us. One image Alan Watts used to employ is that of a lampshade with hundreds of pinholes. Viewed from the outside, it will look as if there are hundreds of little lights, but in reality, there is only the one bulb at the center.

Oh yes, about that little "slot" where we dilate time and gain a more expansive view of the cosmic goings-on. Sorry that this post has been a bit chaotic -- I'm just free-associating under pressure, since I have to take over child-care responsibilities momentarily. But Mouravieff writes that this slot is like a keyhole -- or key to the whole -- that opens many mysteries.

I believe I've written about this before -- about the "A influences" and the "B influences," the former coming "from the world," the latter outside it. One of the first steps in any spiritual practice is, of course, to tap into a stream of B influences, through which you begin to liberate yourself from the chaotic A influences (which are alternatively coercive, seductive or hypnotic, and average out to "zero") and begin to actualize your very own latent esoteric center (which I symbolize as (¶) in my book) which then proceeds to operate as its own "magnetic center" which draws nonlocal help from other Coons, both living and technically dead. Now that you are "plugged in" to the Coon network, I am sure that this has become a basic fact of your day-to-dei life.

I can't possibly do justice to this topic in the alotted time, but let's just highlight the fact that spiritual knowledge can never be reduced to "know how" in the absence of "be who," for it always involves an expansion of being, not merely the accumulation of intellectual knowledge, or (k). Furthermore, once this be-who (n) is assimilated, it works on us in a way that (k) never can; in that regard, it is much more analogous to medicine, or perhaps a catalytic enzyme. But as it impregnates us, it.... impregnates us, and in spirituality you can definitely be "a little bit pregnant," as (¶) grows and expands within.

Now, the present can be so narrow as to be functionally non-existent for the average person. So distracted is he by the world of A-influences, that the slot of the present -- the only place where be-who can occur -- narrows down to nothing. It might as well be the past, which is why people in thrall to the A influences are technically dead, and why Jesus said that they should just bury their fallow travelers.

But there is another present -- I believe this is the present Petey was referring to on page 15, where it says, You haven't perceived the hologram to your private particle? Come in, open His presence, and report for karmic duty. Why, it's a Tree of Life for those whose wood beleaf.

Mouravieff writes that the present "necessarily has extension," but that for exterior man, "this extent is very short.... if we reduce this Present to the zero we think it is, it becomes purely and simply cessation of existence. It is thus that death actually occurs."

Ah ha! Life, therefore, has something do to with the expansion of the present. For someone who abandons himself to A influences, the present disappears. But all forms of concentration, meditation, intellection, and prayer, are aimed at enlarging the present, which is in reality the only "place" that is outside time -- or "above" it, so to speak. If time is a line, this allows us to exist at a right angle to it, where we can begin to perceive time in its fulness, exercise a more profound degree of free will, and make deeper connections with the non-temporal realities that vertically flow into time.

This is what Mouravieff believes Jesus meant when he cracked about the "strait gate": For wide is the door and broad is the path that leads to perdition. Many are they that enter it. For strait is the door and narrow is the Path that leads to life, and few are they that find them. And this is precisely where Jesus and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs merge, for this narrow path is the way back "upstream" to the source of our cosmic slack.

Time: What It Is and What To Do About It

Although we have a single word for it -- "time" -- it has three equally distinct and mysterious modes (past-present-future) which appear to be as different from each other as, say, mind is from matter. If one considers mind and matter apart from each other, it seems that there could be no way to put them together. And yet, there they are harmoniously entwined in Life, living in wholly matterimany.

The point is that mind and matter are human abstractions, just as are past, present and future. In fact, life is a kind of link between spirit and nature, just as the present is a link between past and future. But this is to speak only horizontally. There are also vertical links throughout (↓↑), both in time and space (another duality that can only be artificially abstracted, for if One is present, so too is the Other).

The present is the "place" where the past brings the future into being (→), but also where the the future flows into the now and becomes the past (←). As Bolton writes, "everything in the past was once future, and then present; everything present was future and will be past; and everything future will be present and then past."

Based upon this, the past would appear to be fixed, but is this really so? Not if the past is inherently entangled with the future. Future events can occur which will give the past an entirely different meaning, always predicated on human choices in the now. For example, if one wrote a history of the 19th century prior to World War I, it would look very different than a history written after World War I, because only as more of the future became the past could one understand events that were implicit in the past, but yet to play themselves out in time.

In other words, the past had hidden potentials that were still playing themselves out in the future. As Bolton writes, "the contents of the past are thus in constant change by virtue of their changing relationship to the present."

In so many ways, the mission of MSM state-run media is to enclose the now so as to define the past and therefore control the future. But that's a subject for a different post.

In physics, there is only a one-way arrow of change, from past to future. But as Bolton explains, "to give the experience of change," time "must form a combination of static and dynamic elements. A time series which consisted of pure dynamism could not supply any kind of experience because every element in it would have become something else before it could be known." Alternatively, "a purely static time would not be temporal at all. Only a mingling of the changing with the unchanging can constitute time..."

This is why I not only believe music to be the most adequate way available to us to think about time, but why we are so drawn to it: because it reveals the very form of time, which in turn brings inherent pleasure, similar to the epistemophilic pleasure of discovery, or "erotics of being." We love it because it is true, or conveys principial truth about the nature of things.

In short, the ear can tell us much more about time than the eye, but all of science is biased more toward the eye in its mapping of reality. Indeed, science ultimately aims to map all of reality in such a way that it specifically excludes time.

For example, a "grand theory of everything" would consist of a single equation that unifies all of the forces in physics -- forces which result in the "illusion" of time. But what if the cosmos is more like a grand symphony, which has a complex vertical structure (i.e., the "spatial" chords) and a more open and horizontal "melodic" aspect that wends its way through the chords, like a jazz soloist?

Zuckerkandl writes that "The knowledge of space that hand and eye possess is exactly matched by their ignorance of time.... A true image of time must be an image for the ear, an audible image made of tones.... Thanks to music, we are able to behold time."

Now, a work of serious music is obviously a "whole," but it is again a temporal whole with a complex array of vertical and horizontal relations. In fact, in rereading Eliot's Wasteland yesterday, I could hear how very "musical" it is, with complex motifs recurring and commenting upon one another as the poem unfolds, just as in a symphony. Thus, it seems that poetry in general would represent a closer approximation to the structure of reality than any ordinary linear prose.

I am sure this is what Schuon means when he says that a simple believer in literal creationism is surely closer to the truth than any form of materialism can ever be. To say that Genesis is "poetry" is hardly to denigrate it; rather, it is to point out that it employs the appropriate modality to even begin to talk about ultimate reality. It does not pretend to be able to capture the unsayable in language (unless you have no poetic sense and have missed the point), but to use what can be said to disclose what otherwise can't be said or even thought about.

The word became flesh and dwelt among us. Language, like music, is deployed in time. Because of this, you cannot comprehend the meaning of a statement by analyzing its constituent parts, i.e., by breaking it down into its individual words and letters. It is not that the words and letters additively reveal a meaning; rather, they are all in the service of a higher meaning, and were chosen for the very purpose of conveying it.

Here again, much of the pleasure in writing is searching for and "discovering" the correct word or phrase for the meaning one wishes to convey, very much as a musician will try to find the proper notes to say what he wishes to say in a solo. This is one more reason there can never be "artificial intelligence" except in its linear sense, but never in the holistic way in which the higher mind operates.

Consider the vast differences between a chess-playing computer program and a chess master. The computer program must consider trillions of possibilities before deciding on a single move, whereas "even the greatest human player considers at most a few thousand, and usually far fewer." Thus, this "billion-to-one advantage in calculating power is nullified by the human grandmaster's power of understanding" (National Review). It is this depth of understanding that instantaneously excludes literally billions of blind alleys.

As does a profound philosophy of life. In particular, I'm thinking again of how revelation is intended to provide a musical structure with which one may adequately play the "cosmic suite." No computer program could ever do this, because in life, the choices multiply exponentially as compared to a chess match. How do we reduce the chaos to meaning, without reducing meaning to meaninglessness, as does scientism?

Religion begins with the idea that ultimate meaning exists, and that it is this meaning that "sponsors," so to speak, all of the meaning we encounter on a moment-to-moment basis, no matter how trivial. Meaning is meaningful because Meaning is always there propping it up; or words are there (including everything from DNA to the mathematical constants that govern physical reality) because the Word is there "behind," "beneath," "within," or "above" them. "Meaning" and "Wholeness" are two aspects of the same principle, since meaning is only grasped by sensing the wholeness of parts.

In fact, in the absence of wholeness there could obviously be no parts, because they wouldn't be parts of anything. They would be their own wholes, which is what existentialism pretends to be on the human plane, in which each person is a total assoul.

This is patently true of "spatial" objects, but what about temporal ones? If we try to analyze time by dissecting it into its constituent parts, do we not eliminate the very melody we are attempting to hear, the Song Supreme? This is the domain of metahistory, which is apparently no longer fashionable, except that it actually is, in the same way that the Left presents us with a counterfeit version of any profound truth. Leftism is like an inverted mirror of falsehood, through which deep truths are presented upside down and backwards, for example, the doctrine of materialism. Materialsm is just an ass-backward religion that starts at the wrong end of reality and proceeds to elevate its absurd error to an absolute.

But the moment one treats parts in an atomistic way, as if they are unrelated in time, one has falsified reality. This is precisely why physicists are powerless to understand the most profound and shocking facts of the universe, e.g. Life, Mind and Spirit. They cannot even discuss these things without a priori turning them into something they are not. But as we wrote in OCUG, "Only by changing our perspective to a 'top down' one, from spirit to mind to life to matter, does the cosmos become intelligble in its totality, a totality that unquestionably includes biological and psychological dimensions."

Thus, in the Raccoon view, "when we talk about a 'relationship' between Life and the cosmos, we are dealing quite literally with a tautology, a statement of equivalence." Given the temporal entanglement of the cosmos, in order to not mislead, we cannot refer only to "the universe," but to something along the lines of "the living universe" or "the universe in the process of becoming locally conscious," because only in such a way do we not exclude the most important fact of the cosmos, i.e, the observer expressing this truthful statement.

The universe is intrinsically and not just accidentally conscious. It has never been unknown to human beings that this can be proven in mystical experience, but I believe it can also be proven through transrational logic. Certain things must be, and one of them is that our individual consciousness partakes of a much greater consciousness, in the same way that our little ego relates to the cosmic Dreamer who dreams us. One image Alan Watts used to employ is that of a lampshade with hundreds of pinholes. Viewed from the outside, it will look as if there are hundreds of little lights, but in reality, there is only the one bulb at the center.

Oh yes, about that little "slot" where we dilate time and gain a more expansive view of the cosmic goings-on. Mouravieff writes that this slot is like a keyhole -- or key to the whole -- that opens many mysteries.

I've written about this before -- about the "A influences" and the "B influences," the former coming "from the world," the latter from outside or "above" it.

One of the first steps in any spiritual practice is, of course, to tap into a stream of B influences, through which one begins to liberate oneself from the chaotic A influences (which are alternatively coercive, seductive or hypnotic, but always average out to "zero"). As one begins to actualize one's own latent esoteric center (which I symbolize as (¶) in my book), it proceeds to operate as its own "magnetic center" which draws nonlocal assistenance from other Coons, both living and technically dead. Now that you are plugged into Coon Central, I am sure this has become a basic fact of your day-to-deity life.

I can't possibly do justice to this topic in a slotted time, but let's just highlight the fact that spiritual knowledge can never be reduced to "know how" in the absence of "be who," for it always involves an expansion of being, not merely the accumulation of intellectual knowledge, or (k).

Furthermore, once this be-who (n) is assimilated, it works on us in a way that (k) never can; in this regard, it is much more analogous to medicine, or perhaps a catalytic enzyme. But as it figuratively impregnates us, it literally impregnates us, and in spirituality one can definitely be "a little bit pregnant," as (¶) grows and expands within our womb with a pew.

Now, the present can be so narrow as to be functionally non-existent for the average person. So distracted is he by the world of A-influences, that the slot of the present -- the only place where be-who can occur -- narrows down to nothing. It might as well be the past, which is why people in thrall to the A influences are technically dead, and why Jesus said that they should just bury their fallow trivialers.

But there is another present -- I believe this is the present Petey was referring to on page 15, where he axes, You haven't perceived the hologram to your private particle? Come in, open His presence, and report for karmic duty. Why, it's a Tree of Life for those whose wood beleaf!

Mouravieff writes that the present "necessarily has extension," but that for exterior man, "this extent is very short.... if we reduce this Present to the zero we think it is, it becomes purely and simply cessation of existence. It is thus that death actually occurs."

Ah ha! Life, therefore, has something do to with the expansion of the present. But for someone who abandons himself to A influences, the gift of the present is taken away. D'oh!

But all forms of concentration, meditation, intellection, and prayer, are aimed at enlarging the present, which is in reality the only "place" that is outside time -- or "above" it, so to speak. If time is a line, this allows us to exist at a right angle to it, where we can begin to perceive time in its fullness, exercise a more profound degree of free will (verticalisthenics), and make deeper connections with the non-temporal realities that vertically flow into time (gymgnostics).

This is what Mouravieff believes Jesus meant when he cracked about the "strait gate": For wide is the door and broad is the path that leads to perdition. Many are they that enter it. For strait is the door and narrow is the Path that leads to life, and few are they that find them.

And this is precisely where Jesus and J.R. "Bob" Dobbs merge, for this narrow path is the way back "upstream" to the source of our cosmic s'laq.

TOTAL CLARITY and PERFECT NONSENSE

Yesterday I had insufficient time to express what I was trying to say with TOTAL CLARITY. For me, the achievement of TOTAL CLARITY means that no honest, intellectually adequate, and sincere person could possibly disagree with me.

I am always trying to paint the reader -- beginning with myself -- into an airtight corner from which there is no escape but inscape. Or there is no way out but up. This we call UPWORLD MOBILITY.

There is a lucid mechanical determinism that inspires futility and an organic entelechial deiterminism that nourishes HOPE.

Or in other words, one must know what IS in order to know what CAN BE. It is how ultimate reality can be always THE SAME and yet EVER NEW, instead of an ABSURCULAR repetitititititititition populated by a bunch of UNCLE AUTOMOTONS.

Revelation is both CLOSED and OPEN, or an open and shut case, because it is composed of TRUTH and FREEDOM, so it is dyna-static or olden pneumagain. This is the cosmic edge where all the RAZORACTION occurs.

I am always aiming for TOTAL CLARITY except for when TOTAL CLARITY only obscures the issue, for example, in defining God. To achieve TOTAL CLARITY in that arena would result in a total lack of clarity, i.e., absurdity. Any discussion of God requires the judicious use of orthoparadox, which cannot attain TOTAL CLARITY, but rather, transclarity, or PERFECT NONSENSE.

This is how and why O can be "incomprehensible and yet the meaning of everything," and why knowledge of it "does no more than render the mystery immediate and inescapable" (Ware).

This does not mean we should get an apophathead or veer off into irrationalism. Rather, there is an irreducible and endless play of apophatic and cataphatic, or knowledge and mystery, (n) and O.

This yeoman's work -- or play rather -- is NEVER DONE. The best we can do is to never stop aiming at that which transcends and defines us, the goal we can perceive but never see. Or we see through things toward that to which they point or converge upon.

And how do we perceive it? Two ways. We can look back and see its unmistakable fruit tracks, or turn forward and feel its attraction and its nourishment: it simultaneously PULLS on our emptiness and GIVES of its riches.

This dynamic force "attracts creation into the eschatological condition," which means that history is the interval or gap during which progress towards its own fillfullment occurs. For the AWAKE or even ALERT, time itself is the KNOWA's ARK of salvation.

"To the extent that one ascends in the knowledge of God, he ascends at the same time in the understanding of the mystery of God as that which is not to be understood. 'This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness'" (Staniloae). We are always rising above meanings toward MEANING itself via the DARKLIGHT of faith.

God is like any other name. Just because I know your name, or have a name for you, it does not mean that I fully know you, much less contain you.

You could say that being born again from above is the EIGHTH DAY of creation, i.e., VERTICAL LIFTOFF. Since the liftoff never ends, we could symbolize it [8∞] GUFFAW-HA! If it ever ends, it will mean that time has become eternal, or finally caught up with itsoph. History will have healed the wounds it inflicted, and hopefully JUDGMENT will wound the heels history inflicted upon the restavus.

So there will be a final endless COMM-UNION of orthoparadoxes such as flesh and spirit. Or not, because the other direction ends "in isolation within one's own emptiness" (ibid). In between is the exodus in the bewilderness of time, Israel on one side, Egypt on the other, Life or Death. Endless novelty or endless monotony.

Once upon a time we spoke of A influences and B influences, as described by Mouravieff. You could say that these are horizontal and vertical -- or terrestrial and celestial -- influences, respectively. No real happiness can result from A influences only. These bring transient pleasures, to be sure, but no quantity of horizontal pleasure adds up to one qualitative vertical bealtitude.

In order to be happy, man must have a goal "that transcends the domain of 'A' influences," or is "beyond the mental horizon" of mere horizontaloids. In the world of pure A, "nothing lasts, everything breaks, and everything tires." So you end up OLD, BORED, and JADED, or full to the brim with emptiness.

Will you knock it off with the capitalizing already?

Besides, what was it you were unclear about yesterday?

Well, it had to do with that penultimate crack to the effect that "homosexuality is rooted in the concrete pseudo-principle of selfish pleasure, which is then converted into the abstractions of freedom and equality."

Reilly expresses it more clearly, writing of how nature "is teleologically ordered to ends that inhere in their essence and make them what they are." In short, there is a truth and a reality that we do not invent and to which we graciously defer.

Conversely, the first principle of the homosexual activists is that "things are nothing in themselves, but are only what we make them to be according to our wills and desires" (emphasis mine). Here we see how one man's metaphysical trash is another man's libidinous pleasure, the pleasure of dominating reality with the will to POWER.

Searching for Absurdity in an Intelligible World

So, yesterday's post was just a roundabout way of saying that in order to take back control of one's film, one must first get back to Magnetic Center by eliminating the A influences and assimilating the B influences:

"The heart must therefore be pure, and if not already pure it must be purified. This is the sine qua non of success" (Mouravieff). You know, wise as serpents, innocent as doves. Or, unless you are coonverted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven (which is, of course, within).

And when we say innocent, one must especially be innocent of lying, in particular, to oneself. Just this morning Mrs. G. and I were talking about how (cautiously!) pleased we are with how Future Leader is turning out, in that he is completely unrepressed and full of life, and yet, polite, compassionate, and well-mannered. All along, we've been working with the idea of not allowing the "civilizing process" to succeed at the cost of having to repress and deny critical parts of himself. When that happens, it sets the stage for secret lives, unarticulated agendas, psychic envelopes, emotional blockages, barriers to thought, attacks on linking, etc. Mind parasites.

Mouravieff points out that the admonition to be as little children has often been taken "as a restriction of the intellectual life," which is obviously an error of the first magnitude. Indeed, it leads to nonsense such as this: an atheist group calling for a "national day of reason" -- as if there is anything reasonable in not knowing the limits of reason. When Jesus said to be as little children, he certainly didn't mean that we should all think like childish atheists.

Paul clarified the issue when he said that one should be mature in intelligence, understanding, and judgment, but be "babes" in terms of malice.

Skipping ahead a little, Mouravieff makes a provocative point that "Our lives often resemble a well-conceived theatre play in which the roles are upset by a person searching for an absurdity; each of us is this mischievous or comic being." Emphasis mine. But why the emphasis? I think because this goes to the issue of mind parasites, which can almost be defined as a "(sub)person in search of an absurdity."

For what is a mind parasite, ultimately? It is a semi-autonomous bit of consciousness that has split off from the central self, and has an agenda all its own. This agenda is never rational from our point of view, but is usually rational on its own plane.

Take, for example, the routine case a girl who is sexually abused or traumatized in some way, and then grows up to think she is a "lesbian." Unconsciously there is a fear and rejection of men, but it comes out as a pre-oedipal attraction to women (in the pre-oedipal stage we are still merged with Mother). In other words, it is a movement back in developmental time to before men -- and sexual differences -- even existed (and with it, a confusion of sex and mothering).

But in any event, mind parasites are always seeking an absurdity, whether it is the fantasy of complete safety, escape from death, omniscience or intellectual certainty on the plane of reason (like the above atheist group), freedom from sexual differences, suspension (or reversal) of time, etc. Freud focused on the denial of sexual differences, but modern psychoanalysis has revealed many more.

And this also goes to what I was saying above about Future Leader. When it comes right down to it, we are trying to raise a child who is free of mind parasites, but who is also, and most importantly, good. Think of an extreme case, say, Tiger Woods. He had very "hands on" parenting, but what did it result in? An absurd compulsion to spend 16 hours a day seeking a kind of meaningless perfection that is impossible anyway, while spending the rest of his time living out the secret lives of his sexual mind parasites. He's truly a miserable, pathetic human being, an utter failure. And if I had a child like that, I would never recover from the shame.

When mind parasites hijack the script, "Life then takes on the character of perpetual compromise with oneself," causing "changes in the intellectual center due to cheating and lying; heart disease if the emotional center is sensitive and still aspires to the truth," other diseases of "obscure origin," and a general "accelerated aging" and premature death. Living a lie takes its toll, as there can be no peace within the self, only temporary cessations of hostilities.

The works of Allan Shore -- and I'm not necessarily recommending them, as they are more for professionals; for a more popularized but still sound presentation, try this -- describe the cascade of neurobiological changes that take place in the child exposed to stress. If the stress is chronic, it leads to permanent changes in the brain. It is as if the mind parasites are etched into our nervous system.

What is so fascinating about Schore's work is that it actually documents the existence of mind parasites with hard science, and even pinpoints the main areas where they take root and affect in the brain. For example, the deepest mind parasites are contained in the preverbal right brain, since it develops ahead of the left brain during the first two years of life. But since this hemisphere is nonverbal, this helps to explain why these mind parasites are beyond the reach of language, and can live out their dramas in such puzzling and self-defeating ways.

This is an extreme case, but many years ago I evaluated a man with a shoe fetish. In fact, he even wore a pair of women's hi-heeled shoes during the evaluation -- which was quite a sight, since he was a bearded, grizzled elderly man otherwise attired in a pair of soiled overalls.

I don't have time to get into the details, but it turned out that his mother had died when he was three or four years old, and that in order to cope with his grief, he would snuggle with her shoes. Quite sad, but a vivid example of "searching for an absurdity."

Pickin' Up God Vibrations (12.21.11)

Whereas the Moon has to do with reflected knowledge, the Sun has to do with the "union of intelligence and spontaneous wisdom." I found that this chapter had a lot of information that spoke to me quite directly, perhaps more than any other card with the exception of the Hermit.

For example, it goes into what I refer to in my book as "the helpful nonlocal operators standing by, ready to assist you." How does that work? UF explains in the following extended passage. Please read it carefully, because I would say that if there is a reigning dogma or catechism among Raccoons, this is one of its most important precipitates. But unlike conventional dogma, this can only be experienced subjectively, or not at all, so bring an ombrella:

"You venerate (i.e., love and respect) a non-incarnated being -- a departed person, a saint, a hierarchical being -- in a disinterested manner. Your veneration -- which includes love, respect, gratitude, the desire to conform, etc. -- cannot fail to create an invisible link of sympathy with its object. It may be in a subtle and dramatic way, or rather in a slow, gradual and almost imperceptible way -- this does not matter -- the day will come when you will experience the presence."

This is nothing like a "phantom," "ghost," or some other apparition, but rather, it is "a breath of radiant serenity, of which you know with certain knowledge that the source from which it emanates is not at all in you. It influences and fills you but does not take its origin in you; it comes from outside you. Just as in drawing near to a fireplace, that the warmth that you feel does not arise from you, but rather from the fireplace, so also do you feel that the breath of serenity in question is due to an objective presence."

Once this nonlocal relationship is established, "it is up to you to remain silently concentrated so that the relationship established is subsequently developed, i.e., that it gains in intensity and clarity -- that it becomes a meeting in full consciousness."

This is covered on pp. 228-229 of my book. The discussion may seem brief, but that was the point of the whole chapter, in that there was no point in "saturating" mysteries that can only be experienced and understood on a first hand basis.

I can't reproduce all of the symbols here, but the circle with the downward arrow inside obviously represents Christ, or more generally, the "Christ-principle," or "divine descent," whereas the circle with the upward arrow would represent authentic saints and spiritual masters, who, although few and far between, now number in the hundreds, if not thousands -- at least those who were kind enough to throw us a bone and leave behind some writings, so that we may know about them (or, more to the point, know them).

Of these, only a handful are truly first string, while many are second or third string. Nevertheless, like any third string professional athlete, they can still kick your ass. In this regard, variety is important, being that it takes all kinds to make a world, and relationships are tricky things. For example, the MSM is in love with Michelle Obama, but for me, being around her would be a verrrry looooong day, let alone life.

Let's see if there's anything else useful on pp. 228-229.... Yes, I think it pretty much sums up the situation with the minimum amount of fluff. The rest is up to you. Think of the "charge" that flows between you and your loved one. It has to be like that, only transposed to a different key of love (just as parental love is different than marital love).

For those of you who unproblematically grew up in the Christian tradition, then Christ is your master, and that's that. Even so, Catholicism and Orthodoxy obviously provide numerous other nonlocal operators with whom one may fall in love. For example, I don't want to be presumptuous, but I'll bet that Just Thomism is "in love" with Aquinas, which is precisely why they have such a vibrant and fruitful relationship.

In such a case, it is again so much more than the mere transmission of exterior knowledge, for it is simultaneously the transmission of the "container" or "matrix" of the knowledge, without which the knowledge will fall on barren soil. For example, no matter how long our scientistic jester reads my blog, none of my writing will "take root" in him, because he manifestly does not love me. Rather, he is here to resist me, so he obviously has a compelling relationship with me, but it is a perverse one -- similar, say, to a man who only wants to be around women who will reject him.

For the neurotic person, such a bond can be every bit as strong as a healthy one; in fact, in a sense, even stronger, since healthy love eventually transcends its immediate object and leads all the way back up to its divine source, whereas the unhealthy kind is solely focused on its local object, which leads to all sorts of other secondary and tertiary pathologies. (It is the same with art, by the way -- the real thing automatically transcends itself and provokes a love of the beautiful per se.)

That last paragraph on p. 228 of my book is pretty accurate. Again, I cannot reproduce all of the symbols, but these nonlocal relationships do indeed transmit a powerful (≈) that can shatter (•), give (?!) or (-?!), and bring (¶) forward from the background. What more could a fellow ask of a celestial relationship?

When I judge the merits of a spiritual teacher, I am solely guided by an intuitive sense of their ability to facilitate these critical transformations. This is why there is such an infinite difference between, say, Frithjof Schuon and Deepak Chopra. If they were here, I could ask them both to go into separate rooms and write for me an essay on, I don't know, the goal of the spiritual journey. They could even convey the identical "information," but the words of the former would be infused with light, while the words of the latter would be infused with mud (to put it mildly).

I thought Merrell-Wolff expressed it well in his classic Pathways Through to Space, which is a real-time journal of the spiritual transformation that took place once he formed an intense relationship with a nonlocal master, in his case, Shankara. He wrote of the "induction" that occurs, "a condition such that the latent and indigenous Inner Light of the individual is aroused sympathetically into pulsation and thus, ultimately, 'catches on,' as it were, for Itself."

Such an experience is obviously a pearl of great price, so we should "seize every opportunity available to come within the sphere of Those who can serve as Centers of induction," for each of them is like a mini-sun that provides light, warmth, and a center of gravity.

In book one of Gnosis, Boris Mouravieff also has a helpful discussion of this in chapter XVI, with his explanation of the 'A' and 'B' influences. One of our tasks is to form a relationship with a person who gives off the 'B' influences.

Sorry to end so suddenly, but that's it for today.

Everybody's In Show Biz

We left off with Balthasar's irrefutable observation that "The animal represents a completely new fact that radically changes the situation of epistemology: the new object is now itself a subject. The revolution that this new fact brings with it is fraught with immense consequences."

That living animals exist is obviously an empirical fact. However, the materialist necessarily treats it as any other fact, and therefore fails to appreciate its ontological and epistemological consequences, for a living cosmos can no longer be treated as a dead one and still be considered remotely "understood." Rather, it is an example of a fact that changes everything -- like, say, meeting a girl named Lola at club in old Soho and discovering almost too late that she is a he.

Or, it's like a good film that reveals a mystery at the very end that suddenly recasts everything you've been watching for the previous two hours. What was that movie.... Oh yes. The two-parter, Jean de Florette and Manon of the Spring. You watch it for four hours, but don't find out what you were actually watching until the last scene. Although, let it be noted that, even of you don't make it that far, the film nevertheless has the intrinsic merit of that scene of Emmanuelle Béart prancing around naked by the mountain spring.

I wonder if the cosmos is like that? I mean, I wonder if one must get to the end in order to know the beginning? Actually, I wonder how it can't be like that. I have a feeling that this will be one of central points of the Theo-Drama, but we'll just have to wait and see. We're still in the middle of the film right now. But one reason why murder is unforgivable is that it's like someone ripping your film out of the projector, so you never get to see its end, and therefore its ultimate meaning.

Speaking of which. That reminds me. One other theologian who talks about life-as-film is Boris Mouravieff, in his Gnosis. He says that the present is actually situated outside time, which, when you think about it, makes perfect sense, otherwise we couldn't be aware of time. The idea is to lift ourselves "higher" above the river of time, so to speak, so that we can better see what's going on with our lives.

In a way, this is what psychoanalytic therapy attempts to do. Instead of just being caught up in our life and merged with the unconscious, we're going to try to "rise above" and consider it like a sort of object. It's analogous to two trains that are about to collide. The engineers in the trains can't see what's about to happen up ahead, but if you were sitting on a hill above the scene, you could "see the future" -- even though you're still in the "same place" as the two trains.

Speaking of witch and wiccan, this is what it is like for me and our trolls. I know their every move, their every line of attack, in advance. Does this mean that I am omniscient? Hardly! It just means that their life is on a train track and that they have relinquished their true vertical freedom (as opposed to horizontal license). You don't have to be sitting on a very high hill to see this.

This, of course, is the secret of God's omniscience, and how it may be reconciled with free will. That is, just as I can predict the thoughts of trolls before they occur, this does not mean that the troll doesn't still have free will, much less that I have "taken it away."

By the way, this problem is more serious in intelligent trolls than unintelligent ones, since the latter at least have the virtue of a kind of "crazy spontaneity," being that they are unable to think in any systematic way. But the most wearisome trolls combine the worst aspects of intelligence and predictability.

Anyway, Mouravieff writes that the present is analogous to a kind of "slot" through which we view the film of life. The present has no measure -- again, it is outside time -- but the slot does. In Raccoon terminology, I would express it this way: one of the fundamental purposes of a spiritual practice is to "dilate" the slot through which we live the film of our life. This dilation is none other than slack.

Some of you are no doubt struggling to understand the point, so I'll try to bring it down to concrete examples. We're all familiar with the opposite of slack -- let's just call it "stress." Stress is when you are so dragged along by the conspiracy that you have no breathing room whatsoever. It is as if there is no gap between you and the world.

Rather, you are simply a function of the latter, being dragged along in its wake. It's as if some thug has carjacked your life and tossed you out of the driver's seat, except that your sleeve gets caught in the door, so you're being dragged through the street like a rag doll.

I hate when that happens.

Many, if not most, people simply grow accustomed to this situation, as if it is natural to live in this manner. Such a person doesn't really know the present. Rather, it is as if they are living on a two dimensional line. The past is behind and the future is ahead, but there is really no present, because they are too enmeshed in the line to appreciate it.

Shocking, I realize, but you may have no idea how many human beings not only live this way, but do so by choice. It's like a life without insight, because insight can only occur as you ascend further up that hill and dilate your slot.

Sometimes it takes a kind of brutal instance of (?!) to wake up and wrench oneself out of time. I think that in the past, these kinds of "moments" were more or less ubiquitous. Disaster in one form or another was always just around the corner -- plague, famine, deadly infection, war, etc. -- so there was simply no way to comfortably assume that the present would continue indefinitely in its present predictable mode. (For those of you who have done your part to keep the Coonifesto in print, I discuss this in slightly different terms in pp. 214-216.)

Mouravieff points out that "exterior man" lives his life on that two-dimensional line. It is as if he is always in the "now," and yet, not "present." Presence is what occurs when we dilate the slot, instead of living our lives like a slot machine.

Now, speaking of gambling, life itself is a gamble, a wager that places everything on the line (or above it, to be exact). It is the first attempt by the cosmos to lift itself above the line and dilate the now. That little "hole" is again where everything takes place. It is surely the only "place" where eternity rushes into time and time returns to eternity. It is the place of meaning, of love, of beauty, you name it.

Therefore, the now is ultimately a kind of "circle of return," for which we use the symbols (↓) and (↑). Bear in mind that these occur outside time and inside eternity, at least ideally. When you pray, or meditate, or coontemplate, or engage in bloggio divina, you are really trying to "ease your way into heaven," so to speak, are you not?

And what is heaven? Well, for one thing, it's like existence seen with no slot at all. Or, it's like taking off a tight pair of shoes. I forget which.

In any event, as we proceed on The Way, one of the first fruits will be this dilation of time which opens onto the real present, or more precisely, presence, for there is no real present in the absence of presence or presence of absence. Obviously you have to at least be here in order to be here. As a therapist, I cannot begin to tell you how many people aren't actually here at all. If they were here, they wouldn't be here in therapy.

Here's the bottom line. When you start out on the path, your life is a bad B-movie, in which you are the star. But you want to change this into a Be movie. As Mouravieff explains, "Each human being, then, is born with his own particular film." But exterior man never really sees the film, because he's too much a part of it.

The "second birth" is none other than an escape from "bondage to the film" and entrance into "the domain of redemption." This is when you recognize your membership in the Scattered Brotherhood of the Transdimensional Raccoons, and go from being merely "anthropoid" to true anthropos, i.e., Pontifical Man, the vertical cosmic ladder out of the otherwise oppressive dope opera of the now.

The latter folks are "the dead who, in the words of Jesus, 'believe themselves to be alive.' Esoteric evolution starts when man... proves capable of breaking the circle and transforming it into an ascending spiral" (Mouravieff). Of course, other factors come into play -- grace, the recognition and assimilation of 'B' influences, assistance from other members of the Scattered Brotherhood, etc.

Well, my slot is contracting. See you tomorrow in the balcony!