LaceWing wrote: It's a relief to move on from such ideas and find acceptance and fulfillment in being a PART of the Universe along with all the other parts. The scary nonsense stories no longer serve a purpose for many people (as they did for early man), rather, like all of nature, it's enough to BE and EXPLORE and CREATE in this moment... and as humans, we can enjoy it and do it with gratitude.
If done well, this moment is enough.
Dubious wrote: ↑Tue Sep 20, 2022 9:28 pmThanks for the reply! As you expressed it, I can only agree. I don't know if you ever read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. It was, I admit, never one of my favorite stories - actually more like a novella in length - but there are parts in it which really makes one think and reflect which your post reminds me of.
I'm specifically referring to its final chapter called Govinda, a highly philosophic summary of insights which Siddharta was striving for all along and finally came to know fully as an old man. It's extremely well-written as always with Hesse, even in translation, with many fine poetic nuances. It conforms a lot with the sentiments expressed in your final paragraph.
Biographically, reading about Hesse and reading also what Hesse wrote in essays during the time he was writing Demian and Siddhartha, the *real picture* of what Hesse dealt with and how he, as a European man, confronted himself through his projections into Indian lore and Eastern abstraction, needs of course (for those inclined) to be remembered and considered.
The long excerpt quoted by LaceWing can be seen as a somewhat typical epiphany which is repeated in numerous of his novels and stories. I would not detract from its beauty and artfulness -- we are dealing with philosophical and mystical poetry -- yet still Hesse himself was aware that his confrontation with the East could only bear fruit when he resolved to *come back into himself*.
As much as I can appreciate the enthusiasm LaceWing expresses for these mystic excursions (transports) -- a poetic reverie serves a purpose of unbinding oneself from internal strapping, no? -- I am (personally) inclined to remember that we are not going to be able to escape ourselves.
In respect to Hesse, which is to say in respect to a group of European intellectuals who needed, genuinely & authentically, to launch out into new and different paths of discovery, it is wise to remember that some part of the longing for lost (European)
childhood innocence was not to be found in what can be described as poetic escapist strategies.
Those
epiphanies of Hesse, the mystic poem, and then the somewhat escapist strategies presented as viable possibilities by those *vials* (drug transports) which Pablo administered to Harry Haller in
Steppenwolf became seductions and stumbling-blocks for numerous generations. I only mention it because it is
an aspect of what we deal with contemporaneously.
In the worst-case scenario our unlinking from the reality of the situation of the Occidental person -- our own situation and it is our fate to be in that situation -- can lead to untoward results.
One of my criticisms of LaceWing has been that she repeats the same epiphanic sermon at every juncture. Her declarations have an odd correspondence to the rigidity of that, or those, which she opposes with such adamancy. We are on a philosophy forum and the more serious we take these discussion (and the less we veer into personal, egoic sentiments about our own ideas & views) the better the result will be. So, as always, I offer my comments in that spirit. Nothing should be taken personally!
To recommend a 'drunken dance' sums it up, for me in any case. Next comes low thread-count clothing; crystals with imagined powers; candles & incense; and a relaxing of the critical, organized mind have come forth as means of avoiding responsibility . . . I refer again to Bork's
Slouching Toward Gomorrah which I have cited a few times. He critically outlines some of the
outcomes I refer to.
Here is a quote from Ortega y Gasset which had a strong effect on my thinking -- and still does. Despite opposition to the sheer stupidity and jackassery of Immanuel Can, who does not in any sense serve sound philosophical thought nor responsible cultural critique nor in any sense a recovery of a strong position within the Self (given all that operates to remove one from that solidity) I have
in no sense acquiesced to the easy dismissal of the value & meaning presented in our own traditions. But that is my own personal decision (or realization).
"Professional noisemakers of every class will always prefer the anarchy of intoxication of the mystics to the clear and ordered intelligence of the priests, that is, of the Church. I regret at not being able to join them in this preference either. I am prevented by a matter of truthfulness. It is this: I think that any theology transmits to us much more of God, greater insights and ideas about divinity, than the combined ecstasies of all the mystics; because, instead of approaching the ecstatic skeptically, we must take the mystic at his word, accept what he brings us from his transcendental immersions, and then see if what he offers us is worth while. The truth is that, after we accompany him on his sublime voyage, what he succeeds in communicating to us is a thing of little consequence. I think that the European soul is approaching a new experience of God and new inquiries into that most important of all realities. I doubt very much, however, if the enrichment of our ideas about divine matters will emerge from the mystic's subterranean roads rather than from the luminous paths of discursive thought. Theology---not ecstasy!"
