Christianity

[Dubious]

I asked you if you had read Terrence McKenna. I have read some of his stuff. What he is into is one part, one aspect, of cultural phenomena that are going on in the time we are in. That time being when the conventional horizon had been erased and people have lost their ground and are forced to seek new ground.

You told me you had read Steppenwolf in English and German. Thus I assumed that you had some awareness of these processes. What work of literature could be more emblematic of breaking rules and violating established boundaries?

No, I have not read Terence McKenna, deciding it would be a complete waste of time after taking a "look inside" into one of his books. I forgot which, it was a while ago. There are many other good books that reward reading. Hallucinogenic perceptions of reality don't interest me...though in one instance I do agree when he writes the world is "a weird, weird place." You don't need drugs to make it any weirder! He comes across as an interesting fellow without much interesting to say.

Also, Steppenwolf is an extremely well-written novel which never made the mind deforming assumptions caused by a drug induced brain. At most, it refers only to casual drug use among other methods like sex to get Harry back on track to a normalcy, the lack of which he suffered from for most of his life. It's a complex novel, more psychological than psychedelic. Why you mention it as if it had any affiliation with Terrence McKenna seems to me a very much misplaced comparison.

Here's a more credible one for your perusal....
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cr ... -prophecy/

[RCSaunders]

Anyone who actually believes they are not the same conscious individual from the moment they are first conscious to the moment they are no longer conscious, is demented. There would be no person at all and nothing could possibly matter to an individual if what happened to them yesterday and what was going to happen to them tomorrow were not the same identical person. No plan or interest in the future, no memory or event of the past would be possible or matter or be true if it were not the same person both future and past.

If I present you with an alternative view — and there are lucid and coherent alternative views — it is because there is a wide range of ways that the self is viewed. Personally, I am not making any claims except the ones that I made in the post you are here responding to.

I’d also point out that you have paraphrased, and through paraphrasing, misstated what I think Nick is getting at. I said that I felt there was sense in what he is saying. And I explained what I think that sense is. But what I presented to you is, naturally and unavoidably, my own interpretation of what I think the position is. It is just a perspective — and by that I mean it is just a perspective to me. There is a wide range of perspectives about the nature of the self and it seems to me that you lack awareness about what those perspectives are.

Honestly it does not mean a great deal to me if you regard any particular perspective or any belief as demented. What I mean is that you certainly are within your right to make any sort of statement or judgment that you desire to. But I could suggest to you that you examine your rephrasing into something different what I actually say and what I mean. I spoke carefully and I do not have the impression that you read carefully. In this I see you inserting a sort of straw man and you are arguing, with a definite vehemence, which is certainly your style, against that and you are not really talking to me. And if doing so serves your purposes — and we all have purposes — I reckon you will carry on.

I have no idea what your motives actually are or what your objectives are (and actually think I'm better off not knowing). I only know, whatever they are they have prompted you to make totally unsubstantiated accusations about the motives and purposes or others. But, if that in some way satisfies some objective or your own I certainly will not judge or discourage it and hope the consequences are not too severe or difficult for you to bear.

In regard to objectives and intentions — mine that is — I continually state and restate what these are. I do not think you read very carefully. It seems absurd to say that any of us should avoid knowing what others think. Quite the opposite in fact — the object is to fully understand what others think and why.

A strategy to achieve what? Go talk to your evangelical and ideological friends. They are the ones who have a religion to sell and social/political program to put over and they say so. It's what evangelism and political activism are. I'm not interested in changing anything or anyone, politically or socially. What do you think my. "strategy," is meant to accomplish?

I have written extensively about this. Had you read more carefully or been interested you would not have to ask that question. I hope you will excuse me if I don’t bother to repeat what I have said so many times.

I would hope to have and maintain friendships and associations with people of strong religious convictions and among different faiths, as well as among those who do not and who hold to other perspectives. My own perspective, and one of my stated objectives, is ‘to preserve and defend a conceptual pathway to belief in and relationship to God’. But I have no doubt at all that this is a very thorny problem, given modern perspectives and predicates.

I am very interested in understanding why people differ so strongly in their views and opinions. I get bored with the fight itself and want to get to the heart of understanding what the differences really are. It is a much more interesting conversation than conventional bickering.

When I speak of my impression of your *strategy* it is to hold to a sort of bullheadedness and in not being more circumspect. That bullheadedness tends to refer to ideas disliked or not understood — as you have done — with terms like demented, mentally ill, schizophrenic, etc. I am not sure how to define that as a strategy. Let me think it over. I note this as a common strategy or perhaps *tactic* is the word. And all of this I have also written about extensively and over some months now.

Well, I hope you feel better.

[henry quirk]

Have you ever struggled with a habit?

Sure. I have, from time to time, had conflicting agendas, goals, habits, and appetites. Not multiples of me contending for dominance, just me; singular, seamless, whole, me havin' to weigh the pros & cons of this against the pros & cons of that.

[Alexis Jacobi]

No, I have not read Terence McKenna, deciding it would be a complete waste of time after taking a "look inside" into one of his books. I forgot which, it was a while ago. There are many other good books that reward reading. Hallucinogenic perceptions of reality don't interest me...though in one instance I do agree when he writes the world is "a weird, weird place." You don't need drugs to make it any weirder! He comes across as an interesting fellow without much interesting to say.

In relation to the on-going conversation, which seems to hold our attention and also seems to be a conversation capable of a good deal of expansion, I find two ideas in those McKenna quotes to be of especial interest. One is his assertion that it is possible that *everything we know is wrong* and the other "You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms".

Taking that last idea and exploring it, the question I ask is what result would it have if a person internalized this idea? That is, believed and going further actually understood (since *belief* is fragile) that indeed they did come from something of that sort and would return to it. What I am getting at is, say, the psychological effect on the person. Because, obviously, what is communicated in that statement -- it is very declarative -- is a connection to something eternal.

Another part that interests me is related to what I had quoted on another page:

Nietzsche’s response to having lost faith,
but not being able to live without it,
was to invent the figure of a 'new creator'
someone who could bring together Man and World once again.
In order to do this, man had to begin to think through his own existence:
the heaviest burden of all.

What I take this to mean is that though the horizon had been erased, and as a result nihilism loomed, that people in many different fields and areas of concern and activity began to explore different, alternative and also contrasting and conflicting avenues of growth. I assume it is obvious to you that Hesse *encountered* Nietzsche, as so many arists and philosophers did, and that Steppenwolf is an extended conversation or exploration of Nietzschean admonitions (if you'll accept the sense of that word). I am not so much concerned what Pablo actually had in those vials as I am with the sense, which I think you also grasp, that Hesse is talking about a man who was imprisoned in a painful way. I am not sure how to characterize or condense the existential situation of the protagonist -- Hesse seems to do that all through this work (and much of his other literature).

So the more interesting idea is not so much that Terrence McKenna used psychedelics to explore aspects of being, but moreover that people in the 20th century, and possibly under the effect of a close reading of Nietzsche, began processes of what I have described as 'a return to the body'. You spoke of a realization (from your reading of Nietzsche) about an awakening to the extreme importance of protecting the Earth. Similarly, I would say that the same sense could only be applied to the person, and to *the body* -- to actual temporal incarnation as the venue for anything we could say is important. In this sense a transcendentalism, an otherworldliness, can be described as a neurotic escape. One rather plain meaning in Nietzsche is that we do not really have an alternative but to return to real life within our real frame -- the body, the Earth, our concrete being here. To think through our existence -- the heaviest burden of all.

The reason I referred to McKenna is because Castaneda had come up after Huxley had come up. And Huxley too, very strongly, encountered Nietzsche and pushed through in relation to many of Nietzsche's admonitions. I did not bring this up to condone or recommend the avenues that they explored necessarily, and my interest is wider: that all sorts of avenues did open up.

So in this sense both The Doors of Perception and Steppenwolf had a crucial, indeed an axial, influence on culture. Huxley wrote The Doors of Perception in 1954 and Hesse Steppenwolf in 1927. The ideas that later moved the culture (for good and for evil as is always the case!) originated in influential people who took their explorations seriously. So again ideas have consequences. While I am not attempting to intertwine whatever the intentions of these two writers were, I would certainly suggest that both of them became interested in processes of dissolving boundaries, confronting conventions that *imprison* or constrain, and who suggested the possibility of a wide range of avenues and alternatives for a given being to explore life, incarnation, being, reality, meaning and all the rest.

Dubious wrote: "Also, Steppenwolf is an extremely well-written novel which never made the mind deforming assumptions caused by a drug induced brain. At most, it refers only to casual drug use among other methods like sex to get Harry back on track to a normalcy, the lack of which he suffered from for most of his life. It's a complex novel, more psychological than psychedelic. Why you mention it as if it had any affiliation with Terrence McKenna seems to me a very much misplaced comparison."

What I will mention to you, and I assume you will be able to discern that to say this is not advocacy, is that right now, today, there is a contemporary movement advocating for the use of psychedelics as a way to unblock people's blocked selves (?), to experience (as I recently read in the NYTs article about the use of the toad-poison hallucinogen) a 'complete reset' of one's operating system.

Now why is this coming up? Cannot that be examined independently of advocacy for this or that avenue? this or that action? Certainly it can. Now why is it that people seem to feel that they are at their wit's end and need such a dramatic 'reset' at a personal, psychological, internal, social, and existential level? Can that be talked about? And what constraints should be placed on the conversation in the largest sense?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Here's a more credible one for your perusal...

When you say more credible what is it more credible in relation to?

I read it and found it and many of the comments in the comment section quite interesting. One thing that stood out is the degree to which some physics theory has veered into *psychedelic* territory. That is, the speculations about the Universe, time, space and being, the nature of reality, even the new notion that reality is a 'simulation', are rephrasings of essentially mystical and also metaphysical ideas.

But the larger interest, in my case, has to do with the entire proposition about *breaking through boundaries* as well as the proposition about the conflict and contrast between conservatism (of perspective) and that of innovation. It is a curious idea to propose that if God is to be defined (as McKenna seems to do) then God is an innovator of the most outrageous sort.

It is curious that when people encounter expansive ideas of this sort that it is both energizing and *empowering* (though I dislike that word) but also inclines them to sometimes dopey and potentially false-belief that they are doing anything really innovative after-all.

In this connection I would agree with some who did point out that when Huxley took up residence in California (actually and symbolically) some of what his effect was (in the Human Potential Movement) to veer toward personalized, subjective dead-ends. But who can say if that is inevitable for a strong, committed individual?

[Nick_A]

Have you ever struggled with a habit?

Sure. I have, from time to time, had conflicting agendas, goals, habits, and appetites. Not multiples of me contending for dominance, just me; singular, seamless, whole, me havin' to weigh the pros & cons of this against the pros & cons of that.

This is the most basic philosophical question: What is I? When we say I AM we have a feeling of the plurality of AM but does I exist? St Paul describes the plurality of his being in Romans 7:

14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. 15 I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. 16 And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. 17 As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. 18 For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature.[c] For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.

21 So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22 For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; 23 but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. 24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? 25 Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature[d] a slave to the law of sin.

We say I to both our higher and lower natures not realizing that they are different. The purpose of Christianity is to reconcile these two natures so we exist as ONE at a higher quality of being.

In Buddhism it is the same way. There is no I but just five factors always changing creating the illusion of I.

anatta, (Pali: “non-self” or “substanceless”) Sanskrit anatman, in Buddhism, the doctrine that there is in humans no permanent, underlying substance that can be called the soul. Instead, the individual is compounded of five factors (Pali khandha; Sanskrit skandha) that are constantly changing. The concept of anatta, or anatman, is a departure from the Hindu belief in atman (“the self”). The absence of a self, anicca (the impermanence of all being), and dukkha (“suffering”) are the three characteristics of all existence (ti-lakkhana). Recognition of these three doctrines—anatta, anicca, and dukkha—constitutes “right understanding.”

Those like RC will fight this conception of our plurality to the death. I am weird so it answers my basic question on human conscious potential. "And the beat goes on, and the beat goes on"

[Alexis Jacobi]

I am not sure who, if any here, are interested in 'the larger issues' and the 'larger conversation' which, as I see it, has a great deal to do with the Christian religion and identity that was once central to European identity, and the collapse of *belief in* Christianity in a wide range of senses: in metaphysics, and also as social policy, in self-definition with a nod to rising sentiments in pro of nationalism (which has many inflections).

What I wish to suggest to all who read here is that the entire, and far larger picture, needs to be viewed and taken into consideration. And by "larger situation" I mean the political and geo-political -- and ideological -- struggles that are manifesting right in front of us, day by day, with rising intensity.

To this end I will mention an article in the NYTs by Ezra Klein (though I can't imagine there are subscribers here) -- certainly a formidable exponent and apologist for American Liberalism -- which deals on a whole slew of unconventional, radical, and counter-propositional ideas that have, quite literally, exploded into the American scene as well as the European scene. These are ideas by so-called Radical Right thinkers and philosophers.

Here is a quote of one paragraph in the article. He references the recent book A World After Liberalism by Matthew Rose:

“A World After Liberalism” is a bracing place to begin this rediscovery, in part because so much of it takes place in liberalism’s era of ascendance, even as it came under violent threat. In the book, Rose profiles Oswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Alain de Benoist and Samuel Francis, five thinkers of the 20th century far right who are experiencing a revival in today’s — increasingly near — right. Some of them reach into our world directly. To take one example, Evola, a not-quite-fascist Italian theorist, has been cited by Steve Bannon and was translated into Russian by Aleksandr Dugin, the philosopher and mystic now sometimes known as “Putin’s Rasputin.”

The argument of the anti-liberals goes something like this: Our truest identities are rooted in the land in which we’re born and the kin among whom we’re raised. Our lives are given order and meaning because they are embedded in the larger structure and struggle of our people. Liberalism and, to some degree, Christianity have poisoned our cultural soil, setting us adrift in a world that prizes pleasure and derides tradition. Multiculturalism, in this telling, becomes a conservative ideal: We should celebrate the strength in cultural difference, reject the hollow universalist pieties of liberals and insist on the preservation of what sets people apart.

Here he quotes Rose himself:

In theory, liberalism protects individuals from unjust authority, allowing them to pursue fulfilling lives apart from government coercion. In reality, it severs deep bonds of belonging, leaving isolated individuals exposed to, and dependent on, the power of the state. In theory, liberalism proposes a neutral vision of human nature, cleansed of historical residues and free of ideological distortions. In reality, it promotes a bourgeois view of life, placing a higher value on acquisition than virtue. In theory, liberalism makes politics more peaceful by focusing on the mundane rather than the metaphysical. In reality, it makes political life chaotic by splintering communities into rival factions and parties.

So while we are, here, discussing the merit or non-merit of Christianity, around us, in fact, we are in the midst of tremendous upheavals in ideation about what Christianity means and indeed what purpose religion, and certainly the metaphysical idealism, has for all of us. In this reading then the collapse of Christian certainties, let's say, has opened our worlds (inside and outside) to mounting chaos and confusion. And struggle -- social conflict and even war -- looms as a prospect.

The reason this all interests me definitely ties-in to the Larger Conversation here.

So it seems to me relevant and necessary to keep in mind that just as all *spiritual* ideas and religious ideas (and religious praxis) are undergoing on-going changes, these are mirrored in events circling around us.

Perhaps this is spinning out too far from the topic (?)

[henry quirk]

we have a feeling of the plurality

I can only speak for myself in this: no, I don't.

[Immanuel Can]

I can act as mediator if you wish.

IC doesn't get it.

There is nobody to "get it," apparently.

I do understand the point that "identity" is both one thing and a changing thing. But both are true, depending on the perspective. If by "identity," we mean "an unchanged entity," then there is no particular point at which we find one; but if, by "identity," we mean "an entity whose essential unity is preserved over the course of changes," then there IS such a thing.

So it's a silly point. It is simply not true that "there is no Nick." There is. He's just an entity that is changing in tiny ways, over a very long period of time.

[Nick_A]

IC doesn't get it.

There is nobody to "get it," apparently.

I do understand the point that "identity" is both one thing and a changing thing. But both are true, depending on the perspective. If by "identity," we mean "an unchanged entity," then there is no particular point at which we find one; but if, by "identity," we mean "an entity whose essential unity is preserved over the course of changes," then there IS such a thing.

So it's a silly point. It is simply not true that "there is no Nick." There is. He's just an entity that is changing in tiny ways, over a very long period of time.

You can call the old man and the new man by the same name but they are different qualities of being. Do you really know what Christian rebirth is?

Matthew 11:11

Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist; yet whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.

Who can make the transition from the old man into the beginnings of the New Man?

[Immanuel Can]

Do you really know what Christian rebirth is?

Yes. John 1:12-13 is one key.

Do you?

Matthew 11:11

Well, sort of, tangentially; but it says nothing about how it comes about, or how it works.

I suggest that that would be the wrong verse to pull. It hasn't got enough information about the concept in it to form a clear conception. But there are whole passages that would be better. 1 Peter 1:3-9, for example.

[Immanuel Can]

Here he quotes Rose himself:
...In theory, liberalism proposes a neutral vision of human nature, cleansed of historical residues and free of ideological distortions. In reality, it promotes a bourgeois view of life, placing a higher value on acquisition than virtue.

No, I think this is wrong.

I don't disagree that the outcome of secular liberalism has been a kind of bourgeois consumerism, but that, itself is what happens when one combines Materialism with liberalism -- the Material becomes the primary value, and liberalism frees up and legitimizes the acquisitive instinct inherent in Materialism.

But the fault is in Materialism, not in the Liberalism.

In this pathology, Liberalism has a sort of "adjectival" role, and Materialism the power of defining the noun: liberating only strengthens and intenstifies whatever one believes to be the basic instinct occupying the noun role. In Materialism, the noun role is believed to be occupied by the "will to power," or "maximal acquisition of property," or some other such Materialist value.

The actual assumption in Liberalism itself is not Materialism, but rather the untrustworthiness of human nature. Liberal values like "free speech" are warranted not because free speaking always works out to be the best speaking, but rather because NOT allowing free speech promptly issues in partisan censorship and tyranny. The Liberal right to property is not because people always do the right thing with their property, but because NOT allowing people to hold property deprives them of the means to actualize their values, and thus results in tyranny again. (You can find all this in Locke, if you look.)

Seen this way, Liberalism is a practical concession to the wicked impulses in mankind; by giving freedom to others, we are prevented from tyrannizing them ourselves -- even if they don't always do what we want. And likewise, we are preserved from the will-to-power in others, who would otherwise begin to dominate us and start "making plans for Nigel," so to speak.

So while we are, here, discussing the merit or non-merit of Christianity, around us, in fact, we are in the midst of tremendous upheavals in ideation about what Christianity means and indeed what purpose religion...

I don't think this is a question that occupies anybody who's not actually "religious," or genuinely Christian. Neither Biden nor Putin is operating on anything like Christian principles, and what little use they make of "religious" language is clearly for no more than propaganda purposes, on both sides. Neither man is devout to anything.

So those "upheavals" aren't actually "tremendous" at all. In that conflict, they're irrelevant to the big players.

[Dubious]

In relation to the on-going conversation, which seems to hold our attention and also seems to be a conversation capable of a good deal of expansion,....

I hope not! That would be like adding a ton of calories to someone who’s already overweight. That’s why I intend to keep the answers short.

I find two ideas in those McKenna quotes to be of especial interest. One is his assertion that it is possible that *everything we know is wrong* and the other "You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms".

There’s nothing special about it. He’s one among many who have made those assertions! Ever notice the gaps in logic? If everything we know is wrong then how can he know You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.

What you find interesting I find absurd in the extreme, not worth talking about. Your only escape into the void of eternity is to once again become the non-entity you were before you became. Divine beings! who manged to make the earth a cesspool with themselves being the cause. But that’s how magic mushrooms do their magic, by hallucinating realities...a way of forcing the brain to fool itself.

Taking that last idea and exploring it, the question I ask is what result would it have if a person internalized this idea? That is, believed and going further actually understood (since *belief* is fragile) that indeed they did come from something of that sort and would return to it. What I am getting at is, say, the psychological effect on the person. Because, obviously, what is communicated in that statement -- it is very declarative -- is a connection to something eternal.

Making a declarative statement doesn’t transmute into that which it declares but wishful thinking has always been a great influencer regardless of how cracked it is.

What I take this to mean is that though the horizon had been erased, and as a result nihilism loomed, that people in many different fields and areas of concern and activity began to explore different, alternative and also contrasting and conflicting avenues of growth. I assume it is obvious to you that Hesse *encountered* Nietzsche, as so many arists and philosophers did, and that Steppenwolf is an extended conversation or exploration of Nietzschean admonitions (if you'll accept the sense of that word). I am not so much concerned what Pablo actually had in those vials as I am with the sense, which I think you also grasp, that Hesse is talking about a man who was imprisoned in a painful way. I am not sure how to characterize or condense the existential situation of the protagonist -- Hesse seems to do that all through this work (and much of his other literature).

A work like Steppenwolf can’t help being subject to all kinds of interpretations including the ones we make ourselves. I don’t see as much Nietzsche in it as you do...which doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Jung appears in it at least as much.

In this sense a transcendentalism, an otherworldliness, can be described as a neurotic escape. One rather plain meaning in Nietzsche is that we do not really have an alternative but to return to real life within our real frame -- the body, the Earth, our concrete being here. To think through our existence -- the heaviest burden of all.

Yes! He was a complete materialist while at the same time aware of the mysteries which the material contains. All mysteries start and expand from there in which transcendentalism itself is expressed as a kind of emergence from the grounds of its origin which it cannot escape from or exist without.

Transcendentalism is not a separation but an expansion of the material.

So again ideas have consequences. While I am not attempting to intertwine whatever the intentions of these two writers were, I would certainly suggest that both of them became interested in processes of dissolving boundaries, confronting conventions that *imprison* or constrain, and who suggested the possibility of a wide range of avenues and alternatives for a given being to explore life, incarnation, being, reality, meaning and all the rest.

Yes, and in that sense some stories are more compelling than others while never ceasing to be stories.

What I will mention to you, and I assume you will be able to discern that to say this is not advocacy, is that right now, today, there is a contemporary movement advocating for the use of psychedelics as a way to unblock people's blocked selves (?), to experience (as I recently read in the NYTs article about the use of the toad-poison hallucinogen) a 'complete reset' of one's operating system.

I don’t know enough about those kinds of experiments or its consequences to comment further. For one thing, what does a 'complete reset' of one's operating system actually mean. Such an assertion demands an explanation.

[Alexis Jacobi]

There’s nothing special about it. He’s one among many who have made those assertions! Ever notice the gaps in logic? If everything we know is wrong then how can he know You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.

I said it was of 'especial interest'. I did not say it was a new or a revolutionary idea. And when one speaks in those terms of *what one knows* it is very much less about material facts and much more about *the living of life*. So what you have done is to have heard what I said, refashioned it, and now you are having an argument against your refashioned subject.

Having some experience with people who have described their experiences, with psychedelics and with other modes that do not involve entheogens, I have heard many people speak of having to unlearn habits of perception and understanding. Of themselves, of the world around them. It is likely that this is what McKenna was referring to. So for people who find themselves living in ruts -- here we might reference Harry Haller -- there usually is a sort of crisis through which one must release or one chooses to release old patterns of behavior and perception. All people, including your fine self surely, can testify to those moments. There is a therapeutic undertone in Steppenwolf and certainly in other works from that period.

Apparently, some people find that the psychedelic experience helps them to make changes. I do not advocate it and I do not recommend it. I simply note that it occurs.

What you find interesting I find absurd in the extreme, not worth talking about. Your only escape into the void of eternity is to once again become the non-entity you were before you became. Divine beings! who manged to make the earth a cesspool with themselves being the cause. But that’s how magic mushrooms do their magic, by hallucinating realities...a way of forcing the brain to fool itself.

You could just have said *absurd*. The additional qualifier is redundant. And note that once again you are taking something said, embellishing it, and twisting the sense over to something very different from anything I said or meant.

The rest of this quoted paragraph is *purely you*. I have nothing to do with it and thus no comment to offer!

Taking that last idea and exploring it, the question I ask is what result would it have if a person internalized this idea? That is, believed and going further actually understood (since *belief* is fragile) that indeed they did come from something of that sort and would return to it. What I am getting at is, say, the psychological effect on the person. Because, obviously, what is communicated in that statement -- it is very declarative -- is a connection to something eternal.

Dubious: "Making a declarative statement doesn’t transmute into that which it declares but wishful thinking has always been a great influencer regardless of how cracked it is.

You are again merely making hyped-up statements and, more or less, talking with yourself. I wish that you would see that this is not a good use of your time, my time, and does not really help advance this conversation.

A work like Steppenwolf can’t help being subject to all kinds of interpretations including the ones we make ourselves. I don’t see as much Nietzsche in it as you do...which doesn’t mean there isn’t any. Jung appears in it at least as much.

Interesting. I see his sense of division within himself as, at least possibly, a reference to, say, the person of power or overman Nietzsche spoke of, in opposition to what he describes as his bourgeois self: conditioned, somewhat meek, comfortable in the bourgeois world.

In any case I do not wish to make absolute interpretive statements. Still Hesse was certainly influenced by Nietzsche and so was Jung for that matter.

In this sense a transcendentalism, an otherworldliness, can be described as a neurotic escape. One rather plain meaning in Nietzsche is that we do not really have an alternative but to return to real life within our real frame -- the body, the Earth, our concrete being here. To think through our existence -- the heaviest burden of all.

Dubious: "Yes! He was a complete materialist while at the same time aware of the mysteries which the material contains. All mysteries start and expand from there in which transcendentalism itself is expressed as a kind of emergence from the grounds of its origin which it cannot escape from or exist without.

Personally I do not think Nietzsche ever worked out his dramatic self-conflict. So I really cannot trust Nietzsche to offer anything really decisive. At the same time he is just a point of reference.

Transcendentalism is not a separation but an expansion of the material.

I see why you structured the phrase in that way. It asserts its own truth and then confirms it.

What I will mention to you, and I assume you will be able to discern that to say this is not advocacy, is that right now, today, there is a contemporary movement advocating for the use of psychedelics as a way to unblock people's blocked selves (?), to experience (as I recently read in the NYTs article about the use of the toad-poison hallucinogen) a 'complete reset' of one's operating system.

Dubious: "I don’t know enough about those kinds of experiments or its consequences to comment further. For one thing, what does a 'complete reset' of one's operating system actually mean. Such an assertion demands an explanation.

Oh I do not think this is so hard. Have you ever encountered and talked to someone who'd been through a thoroughly devastating life-crisis and described how they had to *begin all over again and from scratch*? Or what about people who describe psychological death and then rebirth?

I can defeinitely assert that in some circles these sorts of events happen. Rarely do people seek them out and they often seem to fall upon one.

A complete reset would be -- let me use you for an example and let us imagine a Christian someone who believed in the "leprechauns" you referred to some post back (nice one BTW) . According to you these are false-beliefs. They are the beliefs of the dumbed-down herd if I captured your meaning. You teach awakening from such childish nonsense. And if someone close to you who came under your influence went through a personal-growth crisis in relation to your deep teaching they would have to abandon all that structure of (false) belief and in this sense 'start all over again'. It would be like dying. And you would administer the healing balms of *return to reality*!

People like you who really know have a great deal of power and effect on those around them. (I am riffing off your sense of certainty just in good fun).

That might be an example of a 'complete reset'. But I'd imagine that if you were really interested in the entheogen experience (I looked into it but years ago) you could find such detailed and personal stories on the forums where these people write.

[Dubious]

You could just have said *absurd*. The additional qualifier is redundant.

Absurdity has an index of its own. It can be what it is to a greater or lesser degree. Qualifiers denote magnitude. But why be so petty?

You are again merely making hyped-up statements and, more or less, talking with yourself. I wish that you would see that this is not a good use of your time, my time, and does not really help advance this conversation.

Do you really believe anything can advance this or any other conversation since whatever is said by me, by you or anyone else simply gets denied or filtered into something divergent to what was meant or implied? If there were mutual approval, what's left to talk about?

But I agree. This conversation is helping neither of us out.

Dubious wrote:
Transcendentalism is not a separation but an expansion of the material.

I see why you structured the phrase in that way. It asserts its own truth and then confirms it.

Nothing of the kind! It was just an observation that the transcendental resides in the material. Most sentences are declarative in the sense of declaring one's views. Every sentence you've written does exactly that and so does everyone else's.

People like you who really know have a great deal of power and effect on those around them. (I am riffing off your sense of certainty just in good fun).

My sense of certainty comes from deleting - based on what I measure as real or bogus - a plethora of dumb abstractions having no reference to reality. What's left after that, I'm no-longer so sure of. The only thing I do know for certain is that the 1st half is easy.

In spite of your riffing there is not the least probability that whatever I say would have any power or effect on others. Having no knowledge of such preempts any concern I could possibly have.