Some Words VII

The fox’s sermon continues.

Feh. You know what your problem is? It’s that you get all of your info from the worst possible source: other humans. I know, ain’t like you have a choice, but other humans are the most untrustworthy sources of information out there. All your religions, all your philosophies and governments and economies, they’re all because a couple of people are trying to pass along what they think are a good idea.

Hey, a lot of times, the ideas are great! But, a lot of times, they’re not. And, even the best information corrodes over time. Don’t you think information, at least down here, is just as subject to the Laws of Entropy as all the rest of that energy floating around? 

So I know you’re big into prophets, because you can’t know what’s gonna happen in the future, and it’s not like all the answers to your questions are in your breadbox every morning when you wake up. So it makes good sense to put your metaphorical money into Prophecy and find somebody who can tell you, when you do X, Y will happen. Maybe it’s like OT style, and it’s Jeremiah lamenting that “Ya’ll have made God ANGRY, so he’s gonna enslave you in Babylon!” Maybe it’s Paul saying, “Have faith in the resurrection, and you’re going to Heaven!” Maybe it’s Buddha, who said “Meditate and follow these Truths, and you’ll find inner peace.” Maybe it’s Muhammed, who said, “Submit and happiness is yours!” Don’t matter who it is; anybody who claims “do X and Y will happen” is acting the part, especially in matters of a more spiritual persuasion.

Oh, I know, I know. You can predict *some* things. That’s obvious, and it’s not what I’m talking about. I’m not talking about predicting stuff you know is going to happen, like dinner at 6 or an upcoming holiday. I’m not even talking about predicting stuff you know is probably going to happen, like how if you stick a seed in some dirt, it’ll grow into a plant. I’m talking about Prophecy. I’m talking about a devout and ideologically-based insistence that you know what’s gonna happen for somebody else.

Here’s the thing: The Age of Prophets is Over. Hell, there never really was an Age of Prophets. These guys, your Ezekiel and your Jesus and your Buddha and your Muhammed were delightful, and generally really helpful to the people in their vicinities, but what they said? It’s subject to this limited world we’re in, so the info goes bad. God’s not powerful enough to fix everything all at once based on our time-frame, so God does what God can when God can for who God can. 

Not to say the info is all bad. A lot of the information is good, and can’t help but stay good! It’s like the goose who laid the dozen regular eggs and one golden egg. The dozen regular eggs’ll be good for a while, ‘specially hard-boiled, but one by one they’ll eventually go bad. That golden egg, though, that’ll be good for as long as gold is nice to look at. All of the eggs are useful for a time, but only the golden one’ll stick around, right? Make sense?

Or, another thing can happen– good information can evolve and get even better, but it takes humans who are willing to let that information break out of its boundaries and change with the rest of everything. I mean, if that first guy or gal had chucked that fizzy mix of water and flour, we’d never have sourdough. How many schmucks missed the chance to invent sourdough because they saw some bubbles in the mix and threw it away? I honestly can’t believe how many humans are shaping their Worldviews based on information that doesn’t even apply to them any more.

And don’t get me started on astrology and divination and whatnot. Any insight you get from astrology and divination and “tarot” and such comes from you, not from the tools you’re using. And you’re a pretty bad source of information a lot of the time. I’m not saying that, for example, astrology doesn’t “work” if you do it right, any more than chemistry “works” if you do it right, but the information astrology gives you is like the output from a chemical reaction: pointless, unless you’re gonna do something neat with it. And, only true inasmuch it applies to this World of Forms! Astrology isn’t gonna give you any sort of Cosmic Truth, any more than the combination of sodium and chlorine is gonna give you anything more significant than table salt. (Table salt, by the way, is pretty fantastic stuff!)

And economics? Man, economists are just about the biggest sham prophets out there in this day and age. The “science” behind financial analysis turns out to be a bunch of math you have to learn and calculations you have to do and companies you have to study in order to make a guess. Seriously, trusting an economist with your money is about as useful as tossing your money into a box and shouting at it. At least if you shout at it, it’ll stick around in the box. If you give it to an economist, it’s just as likely to disappear.

What humans can’t seem to get is that nobody can ever really predict anything that works for everybody. This applies just as much to our relationship with God as it does with a damnable diet plan (your ‘diet plans’ are hilarious, by the way). Everybody’s different la la la, and you don’t seem to get that this means that something that works for you, or even for a big group of people, ain’t gonna work for everybody. Not everybody’s gonna get God angry and get enslaved in Babylon. Not everybody’s gonna be able to meditate and reach enlightenment. Not everybody’s gonna be able to have faith in the resurrection. Hell, these days, you can’t even tell how you’re gonna need to plant for next year. (Is there gonna be a drought/fires/storms?) And that’s all okay. In fact, it’s awesome. Because it means that’s a shitload of experiences God gets to have, which helps God help you!

Now, since the world is what it is, and there’s an internet and global travel and this is Modern Times (it’s always Modern Times somewhere), you’re gonna have to move past this one-size-fits-all approach. How? One good way is by working on self-knowledge. This ain’t the “knowledge of the heart” silliness, by the way; don’t trust your heart– your heart is kind of an idiot. This is really understanding what’s good for you and your family, and what makes you happy, which I keep telling you is also what makes God happy.

It’s also about renouncing Prophets. I don’t mean “don’t listen to predictions of what might happen,” or “don’t listen to smart people who obviously know what they’re talking about.” What I mean is, forget the person and focus on the information. What’s good and useful? Does it apply to you? What’s good for now, but might not be good forever?

Hell, the wisdom of past Prophets can be pretty good, but keep in mind that when a human says something, that human might be terribly wrong. This applies to all the humans, even Jesus and Paul and Gautama and Muhammed and Moses and the Founding Fathers of your Country and Nostradamus and your Ma and Pa and YOU. So learn to figure out what’s best for everybody, and be willing to revisit it every now and again. (If I was gonna found a movement of some kind, or start a country, or form a discipline, I’d make it mandatory that the basic teachings of that movement be revisited and redrafted every hunnerd years. And I’d make it mandatory that no prophets or “personalities” had their names attached to it. But I’m just a fox, so that’s rhetorical.)

AND, you’re gonna have to accept that a lot of things that work for you don’t work for everybody else. Doesn’t mean that everybody else is “just as right”– there are some absolutes I’m gonna tell you about. Not every sociopath on an ego trip is right just because they think they’re right, and there are some things that aren’t helpful to anybody. But it does mean that you should mostly leave other people alone about what they should or shouldn’t be doing, and should never rely on what somebody else says is good for you without thoroughly thinking it through.

Some Words I
Some Words II
Some Words III
Some Words IV
Some Words V
Some Words VI
Some Words VII
Some Words VIII
Some Words IX
Some Words X
Some Words XI
Some Words XII
Some Words XIII
Some Words XIV
Some Words XV
Some Words XVI
Some Words Epilogue

Christmas is About Presents!

Now that Christmas has begun (12 days, people!), I thought it might be interesting to talk about “the meaning of Christmas.” I was listening to NPR the other day, and a caller asked what seems like a really reasonable question: why Christmas, and not Easter? I mean, Easter is the BIG day, right? It’s the holiest of holidays on the Christian calendar, symbolizes the return of God to Earth, etc.– so why don’t we have months of Easter commercials and Easter lights and Easter carols and specials and movies about people finding love on Easter underneath the Easter tree?

The hosts answered with some rather underwhelming thoughts about how we all have birthdays and everybody thinks babies are cute and what a good story, but underlined that the history of the celebration as we know it is fairly complex. I think the reason is a little simpler, and a little more primal. I think that Christmas is about how awesome it is to get presents. 

 

Now wait, before you get all “yikes! Materialism, commercialism, Linus’s speech, you fiend!” let me explain what I mean.  Think about your best Christmas memories, and how amazing Christmas can be, and you’ll likely include at least a couple of things you remember from childhood. I remember, for instance, the old steamer trunk we used to store our decorations, and how exciting it would be to open it on the day the tree arrived, and the books it contained that only came out once a year. I remember caroling and driving around looking at lights. But, in a large way, I really remember the anticipation of waking up on Christmas morning and running out to the living room to see what was left under the tree.

That sense of anticipation, the sense of hope, was always sweeter than the actual revelation of the contents of the wrapped boxes and packages strewn across the living room floor.  And this is what I mean by Christmas is about how awesome it is to get presents. It’s about the entire season, the journey that begins on Thanksgiving and ends when the last present is opened. It’s about looking forward to a delightful dinner and a day off of work. It’s about having to wait without knowing *exactly* what you’ll get. Will it be disappointing? Will it be awesome? EEEE, I can’t sleep!!!

Because, you see, this is the message of the original Christmas story: a couple in the ancient Near East wander around because they’re ordered to by the government, and even though she’s pregnant, they keep getting turned away from inn to inn (what a nifty metaphor for life in the World of Forms!). Eventually, they find a place to stay, and it’s a place that’s pretty dirty, a stinky old stable full of animals (no matter what the current jerk of a pope says, there most certainly were donkeys and cows and camels and such), and then Mary gives birth to a tiny baby who will eventually… wait for it… WAIT FOR IT… SAVE THE WHOLE WORLD! Yow!

See, it’s all about anticipation! It’s all about hope! It’s intended to tell us that no matter how shitty things get down here in the World of Forms, no matter how long we have to wait, the True God has a plan. It may take some time, and it may not turn out exactly the way we expected it to, but for those of us in the know (wink wink I’m looking at you!), the sweetness of anticipation and the hope of the redemption of the World of Forms makes putting up with all of these Archons totally worthwhile.

Obvs people think that the three kings (who really should be called ‘the group of astrologers’) brought the first Christmas gifts– all that gold and incense (say, what happened to all of that stuff, anyhow? Wouldn’t that have been useful to a carpenter’s family in ancient Palestine? Did Joseph maybe keep it for himself, use it to supplement the family’s income for a while? Er, sorry, losing track here…)– all that gold and incense weren’t the first gift. The first Christmas present was the promise represented by that little baby resting in the animal’s food, the promise that even though his power is limited here in this realm of imperfection, he’s got a plan, and it just might work, so we have something to hope for.

So don’t get all uppity with kids who are really excited about getting stuff for Christmas. It’s okay to hope that something terrific is under the tree, wrapped in paper– in fact, that’s what it’s all about. 

Now get out there and enjoy the rest of your Christmas!

Anagoge VI: In the Beginning was the Question

Previously in the Premiseless Imperative Series:
Introduction
Kimetikos I: Foundations
Kimetikos II: Theory
Kimetikos III: Practice
Anagoge I: If You Want to be Saved, Admit That You’re A Sinner
Anagoge II: Achtung, Babies!
Anagoge III: Shooting For the Existential Buzz
Anagoge IV: The Perfect Home in Just an Hour
Anagoge V: Scattered Brains Are Better Brains

—————

“The capacity to be puzzled is the premise of all creation, be it in art or in science.”
– Erich Fromm

If you’ve been following this series, by now you’re probably wondering where it’s going. When, you may be asking, do I get to have this gnosis thing (if, of course, you haven’t yet experienced it by doing the previous exercises)?

If not, if you don’t have any questions about this process, congratulations! You’re either already enlightened, or you’re so content being unenlightened that you don’t need it. Or, you’re dead. Regardless, you should probably stop reading this and get back to work, especially if you’re dead.

Of course you have questions, though.  So far, each of these posts has been designed to get you to ask questions– that’s been my ultimate purpose here all along. You may, or may not, be familiar with the concept of the Via Negativa,  a spiritual method of knowing God by describing what it is not.  There’s an excellent example of this in the Secret Book of John (this is from the Davies translation):

The One is without boundaries
Nothing exists outside of it to border it
The One cannot be investigated
Nothing exists apart from it to investigate it
The One cannot be measured
Nothing exists external to it to measure it

The One cannot be seen
For no one can envision it
The One is eternal
For it exists forever
The One is inconceivable
For no one can comprehend it
The One is indescribable
For no one can put any words to it.

What you might not know, however, is that one of the definitions of the word “Logos” is Question. If this is the case, I like to apply this meaning to the opening lines of the Gospel of John: “In the Beginning was the Question, and the Question was with God, and the Question was God.” The methodology I’m trying to employ is the Path of Radical Inquiry, the Via Paradoxia, salvation through the Double Bind.

You can’t know anything without asking about it; the question must precede the answer, so it seems to me that God itself is a Question, and its act of asking about itself is the basis of creation and emanation.

I’ve named this series “The Premiseless Imperative” because to succeed, to experience gnosis, we absolutely must try to cultivate an absence of premise, an absence of assumption. We must try to approach every situation, every interaction with the world of forms, without premise. We must try to experience pure Being, communion with the Great Objective Deity (GOD!), but to do so, we must eliminate all prior states of individuation by constantly and deliberately asking questions.

An example: we might think, “such-and-such a politician is evil. Therefore I hate him.” But, if he’s acting according to his concept of good, is he still evil? What are the circumstances surronding him that may have made him evil? Without knowing experiencing every single circumstance surrounding him, does anything other than our own mind make him evil? What about this “mind” thing? What exactly is “mind”? Does “mind” exist as an ideal, or simply as a series of chemical reactions? If it’s the latter, what caused the reactions that made me think so-and-so is evil?

Is it ever possible for us to know something, definitively? And, isn’t there a danger of falling into the error of solipsism, in which we consider ourselves the only mind that exists? Yes, and yes, but the answer to either of these questions is the answer to both. This Answer, a Great and Terrible Secret Mystery, is Gnosis itself.

The act of inquiry is the single definitive act of conciousness. Every great thought, every great philosophy, spirituality, movement, etc. began with a question. Asking questions is also the most radical act one can perform, and the most essential skill needed to live within the confines of the world of forms. Many of the great teachers of enlightenment– Jesus, Socrates, Gautama Buddha and their adherents, for example– chose the dialectic form, question and answer, to impart information to their students. Information doesn’t “stick” if it doesn’t come in response to honest questions.

The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us, how will our end come?”
Jesus said, “Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end?
—–
Mayo: “What is Zen?”
Patriarch: “What is your original face before you were born?”
—–
Socrates: And when he remembered his old habitation, and the wisdom of the den and his fellow-prisoners, do you not suppose that he would felicitate himself on the change, and pity them?

Again, according to our interpretation of Gnostic creation mythology, existence began when God asked itself a question, which we might express as “So?” In asking, God began the process of creating distinctions between objective and subjective, self and other. This act of questioning led the God to continue investigating itself, researching itself, learning about itself. Each Aeon God manifested is an additional question, coupled with its own answer. What is Peace? What is Perfection? Where does Understanding come from? What is God? In contrast, the Demiurge never asked about himself; he proceeded under the assumption that he already knew exactly what the heck was going on when he sprang into existence. Remind you of anyone?

Asking questions is Godlike. When we ask questions we fulfill our roles as sensory organs of God in its eternal quest to come to know itself. Let’s look at another way of reading the passage from The Secret Book of John we quoted above:

What bounds the One?
The One is without boundaries
Nothing exists outside of it to border it
How can we investigate it?
The One cannot be investigated
Nothing exists apart from it to investigate it
How big is it?
The One cannot be measured
Nothing exists external to it to measure it

What does it look like?
The One cannot be seen
For no one can envision it
How old is it?
The One is eternal
For it exists forever
What’s the best way to understand it?
The One is inconceivable
For no one can comprehend it
How do you describe it?
The One is indescribable
For no one can put any words to it.

In Gnostic tradition, the Path of Radical Inquiry can be summarized by the second saying from the Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said, “He or she who seeks should not stop seeking until he or she finds what he or she is seeking. When they find what they are seeking, they will be troubled. When they are troubled, they will be amazed, and will become king over the All.”

Your exercise: read the Gnostic text “The Interpretation of Knowledge.” You’ll notice that the section beginning, “But he was being pursued in that place….” and ending with “…destroyed the arrogant teacher by teaching her to die”contains tons of those little lacunae […] indicating an area in which the text was destroyed.

Once you’ve read through the text, fill in each of the lacunae with a possible reconstruction of what might have been there originally. This probably seems like a crazy and impossible task, but don’t worry about that. Instead, for each lacuna, ask yourself questions, writing your questions as you go. Take the questions as far as you can. You might ask, what should go here? What might this have said? How does this fit into Gnostic doctrine? What is meant here? Who is filling in these lacunae? Try to come up with a dozen or so core questions you can ask about each one.