Yes it is a complex subject and the truth of it is currently veiled from us. For me what is of interest is seeking a broader wisdom of the nature of existence rather than the detail, which we will only know when the veil is lifted. Also I am not interested in the specifics of my own development, or what will happen to me, I passed the point of affirming "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" many years ago. So in a very real sense, my development is out of my hands, but this does not prevent me from fully developing my interests, such as the pursuit of wisdom and creativity.

I want to elaborate (via a quote) on an earlier point:

Personality is a throbbing 8=====> that wants to jam itself in to the center and become law. To condemn this would be hypocrisy. To "zoom out" and contemplate this structure is something else, which is not to say innocent or pure but perhaps the opposite: a desire for incarnation. — Hoo

I've quoted this same different paper in three posts. That's how rich I find this content. In short, I'm presenting idolatry in terms of "god's dick."

Lacan ties the theory of sexual difference to the four discourses named above through his “formulae of sexuation.” ... Master and university are masculine; hysteric and analyst are feminine... — http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html

The cult leader is sometimes the master. He is the truth. But most debate, as I see it, is "university" discourse. We've been doing that here. No one claims to be the thing itself, but all make indirect claims on this center via a knowledge of it from the outside. There is a right way to get what we are looking for, we might say, even if we won't quite claim that we have got there. Why not claim mastery or possession outright? First, this may just feel like a lie. Second, we don't expect recognition that way, for we ourselves refuse to recognize outright claims that are beyond the control of our own method-as-substitute-for-object. (That's my hypothesis.)

The basic concept of sexual difference is that the sexual relation can only be experienced in symbolic terms. Two people form a relationship and have sex because they both agree to a similar set of signifiers that define the story of their conjunction. Lacan likes to say that there is no sexual relationship. By this he means that there is no such thing as sexual harmony, no perfect balance of sexual partners. He uses a special term to name the female side, “not-all” or “pas tout.” Not all can also mean not whole. The woman is the not all to the man. This means that she represents the fact that she can never be totalized, summed up, or contained. There is no one perfect woman; nor can the man resist that fact by having or containing all the women. The series of women is infinite, each single woman representing the fact that she is “not all,” like the series of numbers in mathematics --they are infinite, always one after another.

There is a logical sense to the relation between the masculine and feminine positions. If one, the masculine, insists on specifying the attributes of the perfect woman, then there must be a position, the feminine one, which denies that such specification is possible. Nevertheless, the woman cannot claim thereby that she occupies a place of true enjoyment. Such a claim would return us to the master’s discourse of full self presence, but a self presence couched in even more abstract terms, as if that were possible. Still, the main advantage of the feminine position --and Lacan definitely favors the feminine over the masculine at least in this logical sense --is that the concept of not-all resonates with the idea of the void at the center of the signifier, the split in the subject, the inherent impossibility of self-mastery and fixed definition.

Another way of summarizing sexual difference is to say that the masculine side seeks to totalize from the perspective of a single exception, the master. The position of the exceptional male implies that all other subjects must work in order to be part of the totality or universal order, which is ruled by the master who, unlike the rest, is exempted from having to work for his inclusion in the totality. He is the exception because he is what he is by nature and special privilege, because it is so. The feminine side, however, comprises the infinity of subjects with no exceptions. That is, there are no exceptional people who alone enjoy special privilege. There is no one who is not a split subject. There is no neutral zero point from which to conceive of or rule over the whole.

Man’s relation to woman is like the subject’s relation to the body. There is a real body, but we are only in it as linguistic subjects, that is, we experience it only through language. Its realness is something we experience as external and impenetrable. — http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html

"Life is a woman." Perhaps the Christ symbol points beneath the linguistic subject. But that part of us that builds and worships idols is forced to deny the real in its "translinguistic" fullness. To let go of such idol-making and idol-polishing (perhaps only occasionally possible) is perhaps to find a new ecstasy in a joyful, incarnate freedom that is the negation altogether of the magic word as such.

I think we're kindred spirits.

I don't get all that modern Euro philosophy, it's basically psychologistic, but without any actual spirituality about it. It's either Freudian, or marxist, but in either case, materialist. So again there's an entire dimension absent, but one which can't be articulated to those who don't see it. Of course it doesn't do any good saying it, but there it is.

But why must we have this gap you insist upon between psychology and "actual spirituality"? What of "know thyself"?

Buddhism includes an analysis of human psychology, emotion, cognition, behavior and motivation along with therapeutic practices. A unique feature of Buddhist psychology is that it is embedded within the greater Buddhist ethical and philosophical system, and its psychological terminology is colored by ethical overtones.[1] Buddhist psychology has two therapeutic goals: the healthy and virtuous life of a householder (samacariya, "harmonious living") and the ultimate goal of nirvana, the total cessation of dissatisfaction and suffering (dukkha).[2]

Buddhism and the modern discipline of Psychology have multiple parallels and points of overlap. This includes a descriptive phenomenology of mental states, emotions and behaviors, as well as theories of perception and unconscious mental factors. Psychotherapists such as Erich Fromm have found in Buddhist enlightenment experiences (e.g. kensho) the potential for transformation, healing and finding existential meaning. Some contemporary mental-health practitioners such as Jon Kabat-Zinn increasingly find ancient Buddhist practices (such as the development of mindfulness) of empirically proven therapeutic value,[3] while Buddhist teachers such as Jack Kornfield see Western Psychology as providing complementary practices for Buddhists. — wiki

The usual process of sense cognition is entangled with what the Buddha terms "papañca" (conceptual proliferation), a distortion and elaboration in the cognitive process of the raw sensation or feeling (vedana).[9] This process of confabulation feeds back into the perceptual process itself. Therefore, perception for the Buddhists is not just based on the senses, but also on our desires, interests and concepts and hence it is in a way unrealistic and misleading.[10] The goal of Buddhist practice is then to remove these distractions and gain knowledge of things as they are (yatha-bhuta nadassanam).

This psycho-physical process is further linked with psychological craving, manas (conceit) and ditthi (dogmas, views). One of the most problematic views according to the Buddha, is the notion of a permanent and solid Self or 'pure ego'. This is because in early Buddhist psychology, there is no fixed self (atta; Sanskrit atman) but the delusion of self and clinging to a self concept affects all one's behaviors and leads to suffering.[9] For the Buddha, there is nothing uniform or substantial about a person, only a constantly changing stream of events or processes categorized under five categories called skandhas (heaps, aggregates), which includes the stream of consciousness (Vijñāna-sotam). False belief and attachment to an abiding ego-entity is at the root of most negative emotions. — Wiki

Zen is the art of seeing into the nature of one's being; it is a way from bondage to freedom; it liberates our natural energies; ... and it impels us to express our faculty for happiness and love.[44] [...] [W]hat can be said with more certainty is that the knowledge of Zen, and a concern with it, can have a most fertile and clarifying influence on the theory and technique of psychoanalysis. Zen, different as it is in its method from psychoanalysis, can sharpen the focus, throw new light on the nature of insight, and heighten the sense of what it is to see, what it is to be creative, what it is to overcome the affective contaminations and false intellectualizations which are the necessary results of experience based on the subject-object split"[45] — Fromm

So again there's an entire dimension absent, but one which can't be articulated to those who don't see it. — Wayfarer

Perhaps, but how can that dimension be linguistic? Which is to say meaningful beyond feeling? I thought you'd like the notion of the barred or split subject. It seems Buddhist to me. Are you sure your not just biased against the West?

Subject connotes the idea of being subjected to something external, in particular, the rules of the social-symbolic order. Subject contrasts with individual, which implies self-determination and uniqueness. The subject is inherently split between the range of conscious knowledge and the unconscious. Symbolic order is the term for designating the social world in which the subject lives and functions. I will define this further below, but for now will say that the symbolic order consists of language and its rules of sound and grammar, laws, and social structures having to do with the family, schools, religion, and government institutions. In general it consists of all the rules that govern social and subjective existence. The subject has no choice but to be born into the symbolic order. We occupy the subjective roles that are made available to us by the social order in which we live. Hence the idea of the subject-self being subjected to that order.

The subject is a speaker of language. Language is the key link between all subjects; it is the core network of social existence. The subject is only a subject in language. Reality only exists through language. We can never escape the process of expression through language and what can be called subjectivization through language. No pure self-consciousness exists outside of language, even if the subject is simply sitting still and not speaking. Consciousness is only possible through the mediation of other consciousnesses. This is the central meaning of Lacan’s statement that the unconscious is structured like a language.

The subject in this sense of a speaker of language is fundamentally split. This is simply a way of referring to the impossibility of full and present self-consciousness or self-understanding. There will always be a gap between what one thinks one knows of oneself and what is hidden from view. The split or divided subject “is operative in all of the various ways in which we fail to identify ourselves, grasp ourselves, or coincide with ourselves” (Bracher, 113). This is also understood in terms of the split between the “I” who speaks and the contents of the statement
3
that is spoken. In Lacanian terminology, the distinction is between the subject of enunciation -the I who speaks --and the subject of the enunciated, that is, the statement. There is the empty I that is the subject and there is the self that is part of concrete reality. Descartes said “I think therefore I am,” where “I think” supposedly designates a pure transcendental point of self-consciousness removed from the real world. But Kant (and also Lacan/ Žižek) would say that there is no way to say “I think” without attachment to the whole of reality. The “I” is “an empty, nonsubstantial logical variable” (Žižek, TN, 14) which is inherently inaccessible, is only purely possible, not concretely real. The I is a pure void, an empty void or frame only knowable through the predicates that make up the contents of what I think. I cannot acquire consciousness of myself except through the endless series of predicates and statements that fill out what the I thinks.

This may be one of the hardest notions to accept by anyone first studying Lacanian theory, but it is important in terms of undermining the sense of the human being possessing ultimate self-knowledge or possessing an essence which bestows innate authority over self or others. In short, all master figures are emperor’s without clothes. — http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html

I was responding to 'God's dick' and your subsequent foray into psychoanalytic analysis. I mentioned Freud and Marx, and said those kinds of analyses assume a materialist philosophy, which they do. Freudian analysis could not envisage anything beyond eros and thanatos - that was the reason Jung broke with Freud.

I have read, and have a lot of respect for, Eric Fromm. I often mention Eric Fromm and Victor Frankl as exemplary modern existentialists. Fromm spent time with D T Suzuki when he lectured in the US and indeed found some common ground with Zen. There is a kind of Buddhist-psychotherapist genre nowadays, people like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Mark Epstein, and others, that grew out of that way of thinking. Generally a pretty good school of thought in my view.

Are you sure your not just biased against the West? — Hoo

I am of the view that the western secular intelligentsia are generally 'assumptively materialist' that is, they assume a scientific (or 'scientistic') attitude. Sometimes it is 'methodologically naturalist', but in many other cases is ideologically materialistic. So a lot of psychoanalytic theory assumes that, although there might be individuals that dissent from it.

Buddhism falls outside much of the debate because it evolved in a separate cultural domain until very recently in historical terms. So the debates about mind and body, spirit and matter, God and the world, and so on, which gave rise to the 'modern worldview', were generally absent from the Buddhist tradition. They had debates of their own, principally against Hindus, Jains,and so on, but it was a different culture altogether.

The 'I' is a pure void, an empty void or frame only knowable through the predicates that make up the contents of what I think. I cannot acquire consciousness of myself except through the endless series of predicates and statements that fill out what the I thinks

Modern philosophers are verbally adroit when it comes to conceptual analysis, and the 'I' as an 'empty void' might sound at first blush somewhat Buddhistic.But the actual 'transcendence of self' which is at the heart of Buddhism, is a complete re-orientation of the personality, a totally different mode of existence, not simply a form of therapy, except for perhaps by analogy. That's why at the end of the day Buddhism is a religion, although what it conceives as religion is fundamentally different in important respects to the Semitic (i.e. biblical) religions. But the Nirvāṇa of which it speaks is not simply a mater of adjustment to the world.

Here's an excerpt from a recent Theravadin (i.e. 'conservative') Buddhist scholar about Buddhism and atheism (from Buddhism and the God Idea):

Buddhism has sometimes been called an atheistic teaching, either in an approving sense by freethinkers and rationalists, or in a derogatory sense by people of theistic persuasion. Only in one way can Buddhism be described as atheistic, namely, in so far as it denies the existence of an eternal, omnipotent God or godhead who is the creator and ordainer of the world. The word "atheism," however, like the word "godless," frequently carries a number of disparaging overtones or implications, which in no way apply to the Buddha's teaching.

Those who use the word "atheism" often associate it with a materialistic doctrine that knows nothing higher than this world of the senses and the slight happiness it can bestow. Buddhism is nothing of that sort. In this respect it agrees with the teachings of other religions, that true lasting happiness cannot be found in this world; nor, the Buddha adds, can it be found on any higher plane of existence, conceived as a heavenly or divine world, since all planes of existence are impermanent and thus incapable of giving lasting bliss. The spiritual values advocated by Buddhism are directed, not towards a new life in some higher world, but towards a state utterly transcending the world, namely, Nibbana.

I think modern western thinking has on the whole been innoculated against the transcendent by it's collective reaction against religion. Accordingly you have people trying to appropriate Buddhism into secular western culture by purging it of what they regard as 'supernatural elements', but what they can't acknowledge is that the Buddha has always been 'lokuttara', meaning, 'world-transcending'.

So I am not 'biased against' the West; I am wanting to get away from characteristically Western ways of being altogether.

Perhaps, but how can that dimension be linguistic? Which is to say meaningful beyond feeling? — Hoo

I hope you don't mind me interjecting here. Whatever we say is by definition, linguistic, but it does not follow from that, that the things we talk about; whether those things be empirical objects, feelings or spiritual experiences are themselves merely linguistic. So, I don't think that the linguistic nature of everything we say provides a good argument for collapsing the spiritual or the mystical into 'mere feeling'. I too have thought that the mystical is collapsible into mere feeling at various times during my life, but never for too long; I always seem to find fresh reasons to think that view is greatly mistaken.

I'll answer you guys in just a moment. But I think this belongs here, because it's just about exactly what I've been getting at in my own, weird way.

What of this race that speaks of the Kingdom and doing the Fathers work, and uses all the language of the Truth, and at the same time sows seeds of fear and hellish inventions? What is this race that is always seeking evil to destroy, like a weasel seeks out a rat? What is the hopelessness they preach that on one hand, you are the sons of God, and on the other, that you must fight against evil of every sort and nature? Ah, yes, but, if, and maybe they roll these stumbling-blocks under their tongues with a wise twinkle in their eyes, as much as to say, "Yes it is all true, but it comes only with hard labor and long study, and it is not for such as you, sinner and worm of the dust that you are, until you have purified yourself in the fount of my wisdom and paid me personal homage."

It is then that the Magdalene hears the Laughter of God and is clean and free; and in an instant too; and it is when the cripple hears the Laughter of God that he leaps to his feet and runs away praising the living God. It is when you, no matter where you are or what you are, no matter what you have done or left undone, hear the Laughter of the God within and the God without, that you will crash through the gates of hell and find heaven, no matter what these gates may be—person, place, or thing.

One moments recognition that you are the son of the Living God, and you have attuned your ear for the Laughter of God which will put to flight all the stupid ideas, of my and yours, free you into an expression that you have not dreamed of. How can you restrain the joy that fills you when you hear this laughter which, when it is heard, causes the winter of your discontent to break into full fruition, which causes you to see literally see that " before they call, I will answer," is not a bit of euphonious language, but a positive living, glowing fact.

"I was afraid," and therefore you were driven out of the Garden of Life. You have been afraid that God will punish you, that it is too good to be true, that you are not ready, that it comes by great learning; and so you are still without the portals of your own kingdom, trying every way but the only way to re-enter. Many there be who try the way of violence, and many who expect to ride in on the skirts of another. There are some so foolish as to invite this.

Why do you not stop trying to get things, trying to learn how to get power place? Why do you not come away from the man whose breath is in his nostrils? You who read this page, and go within and hear the Laughter of God, and know that " it does not matter"- that the things which gave you great concern are all swept away into the dump heap? The sooner you learn this the sooner you will see they have no value. Finally, one time, when you take away their value, they are possible of attainment to you. You profess to be a follower of the Master. If you in any way believe this, you will begin to listen for the Laughter of God through your whole being, and you will know that the Laughter of God sets you free from the snarling discontent of the tower of Babel in which you have been living.

Presently, as you listen for this Laughter, you will hear it, and gradually you will begin laughing—billows of laughter, silently-audible laughter that will shatter one limitation after another; laughter filled with the divine indifference which knows that the Universe is filled with God and only God, and to recognize this will cause this laughter to flow into expression and shatter the belief in sin, sickness, and death. When this belief is shattered in you, the pictures of this on your universe are dissipated and are no more, and even the place thereof is no more. You will know how there can be naught but laughter in the Kingdom of Heaven. What good of words or arguments? What in humans’ sense is a lecture worth on the subject of Laughter, as compared to one glorious sudden peal of joy released by a God soul and picked up be all those in hearing distance?

Gradually, as you learn the Laughter of God and join in with the glory of the Sons of the Living God, then you will laugh at yourself. You will perhaps go back and laugh all the mistakes and faults and limitations out of existence You will stand with your glorious feet on the mountain-tops of Self-Revelation, laughing at your universe and with your universe, and laughing in words: "It is wonderful, it is wonderful, it is wonderful."

"Let the filthy be filthy still." Some may read into the Laughter of God a belief in carelessness and indifference, and some consecrated souls may rail and tear their hair and say that it is encouraging license and making nothing of sin, in order that one may indulge in sin, and so on; and for them this message is not. — The Laughter of the Gods

To my the best psychoanalysis looks into the radiance of myth, the transformative power of symbol. I know of the Freud and Jung fallout. I took more from Jung in the end, but I personally valued burning down my childhood concept of God entirely to the ground.

As to God's Dick, I think the maleness of God and of most philosophers is significant. The myth goes that Jesus was a man. He had a dick. He had wet dreams. Probably certain gnostics really wanted to insist that he had a spiritual pseudo-body. As a young Catholic, I was told that "Jesus never got sick." Ah, so he is executed like a rapist or a murderer but never got sick? Jesus took sh*ts, no? I'm sure this sounds impious, but I'd say instead that the Incarnation myth is something that has been snowed over. We've fallen asleep to this notion of God as flesh. And I think we instead project an unworldly "dick" or center of transmission. As I see it, the Incarnation myth points down not up. God came down and died like the rest of us. God died. We are the resurrection, not him. We can no more offend God than we can hurt our own feelings--which we do in self-terror and alienation quite enough already. Or to one another as bearers of the Christ image or Christ potential. But that's just my take! I state it bluntly in the name of clarity and exuberance.

As to bringing in the psychology, I treat no one, no text, as authoritative. I don't care what context these texts were created within unless I'm contemplating the genesis rather than the possible recontextualization of the text. For me, there's got to be something beyond mere books, mere authorities. Perhaps you see me as scientistic or something, simply because I am skeptical about afterlife and resurrection from the dead. But this doesn't require scientism. They are miracles precisely because they violate commonsense experience (if also the ideology of certain Western intellectuals.) But I'm trying to "zoom out" from the idea of religion as knowledge and science, so I don't think I fall into your objection towards the West. I think I'm a counter-example (and not the only one).

This is a great conversation. I really don't want to offend, just participate sincerely. Else we'd be wasting this format...

I hope you don't mind me interjecting here. Whatever we say is by definition, linguistic, but it does not follow from that, that the things we talk about; whether those things be empirical objects, feelings or spiritual experiences are themselves merely linguistic. So, I don't think that the linguistic nature of everything we say provides a good argument for collapsing the spiritual or the mystical into 'mere feeling'. I too have thought that the mystical is collapsible into mere feeling at various times during my life, but never for too long; I always seem to find fresh reasons to think that view is greatly mistaken. — John

I respect what you have to say. Still, I currently can't make sense of that which is neither linguistic nor sensual nor emotional (or viewed through such means). These categories do of course strip what is a whole into parts. The lovers in the OP aren't experiencing one another as concept-sensation-emotion but perhaps through concept-sensation-emotion. Maybe somewhere along those lines is a place we can agree.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1BqwONm4TE

To me that's sacred music. We just live in an era of negative theology. The millennials (the best of them) get it.

Thinking about hallucinatory or entheogenic experiences you may have had; how would you class those? They obviously have content, well, at least according to my own experience, in fact often, contra what Hume says about thought, dreams and memories as compared to sensory experience, they have content of a vividness that so-called empirical experiences cannot nearly match, so they are not merely affective. The content is not empirical, so it can't be sensual.

The popular word 'entheogenic' refers properly to organisms, plants or substances that give rise, when they are ingested, to spiritual or mystical experiences, experiences with vivid, even profound, content, experiences that are not merely emotional experiences. It is also well acknowledged that consciousness can be altered in similar ways by means of spiritual disciplines, prayer, meditation,sensory deprivation, fasting, and so on. So, what are we to make of. what are we to believe about, the real origin of such experiences?

I don't know, I guess it's a matter of taste. For me if you want a music replete with sexualized sacred or mystical undertones you can't go past this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJqem6ek4CI

Or this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vg1jyL3cr60

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Thinking about hallucinatory or entheogenic experiences you may have had; how would you class those? They obviously have content, well, at least according to my own experience, in fact often, contra what Hume says about thought, dreams and memories as compared to sensory experience, they have content of a vividness that so-called empirical experiences cannot nearly match, so they are not merely affective. The content is not empirical, so it can't be sensual. — John

When I was younger (starting at 10), I would occasionally get the type of experience mentioned by Sartre (sober ) with a positive feeling, wonder. I was shocked and delighted that all this existed. The PSR broke down. There was no sufficient reason for it all. I didn't have those words then. I scribbled things like "all existence is a miracle." I typed up a manifesto once (at 14). I don't have it now, but it was basically "space is miracle, time is a miracle, color is a miracle, shape is a miracle." I couldn't stay in that state for long. Did thought open this up? But the world was usually beautiful at the time, too.

A much different experience involved an hallucinogenic substance (among others). It started with the most intense death terror. It was like the floor was a piece of paper over the abyss, nothingness, erasure. But I reasoned with myself and was able to let go, affirm my death. Then suddenly I felt a river of love rushing through my chest. I felt "like Christ." Those Catholic pictures with hearts on fire and all of that, but there was nothing the least bit alien or sacred about it. It was great warmth and homecoming. I understood "praise God" as gratitude toward being itself or love.

As to their origin, I really don't know. Truly, existence remains a "miracle" to me. As a whole it's in some strange sense a violation of expectation.

And what really is the unconscious? I've been fascinating with the "id" and the "primal" for a long time, so perhaps I organized my peak experiences in those terms. It just felt right to chalk it up to the ancient "magic" symbols of the "million-year-old man." Where he came from I cannot say. I can certainly respect others who have their own reasons/experience to interpret things another way.

I love Portishead. I'm a huge music guy, a damned hipster. Those "red nights" featured Dummy quite often. These days FKA Twigs sometimes touches that sort of thing, but even more sexual and less eerie/sacred.

Thanks for your explanation, Hoo. So it seems you are saying that when you experience such things you have no accompanying sense of coming into touch with an immanent order of truth, love, goodness, beauty, in touch with what feels like the primordial essence and origin of all things? Something more than anything merely empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual although the empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual may be suffused with it? Something that is so much more than any mere interpretation, emotion, thought, or object could ever be?

Hey! Portishead Dummy is one of my favourite albums. Get some good speakers and turn up the volume and you're away. An ocean of emotion.

So it seems you are saying that when you experience such things you have no accompanying sense of coming into touch with an immanent order of truth, love, goodness, beauty, in touch with what feels like the primordial essence and origin of all things? Something more than anything merely empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual although the empirical, sensual, emotional, intellectual may be suffused with it? Something that is so much more than any mere interpretation, emotion, thought, or object could ever be? — John

The love, goodness, and beauty were intense, to put it mildly. I didn't get a sense of a temporal origin, though I'm tempted to speak of eternity or timelessness. You might say it was Christ without God. The world was new and beautiful, but it was lit by a love that radiated outward. Yet this same love was reflected in the eyes of my friends. It was very human, very "incarnate." As I walk around in my usual happy state, there's lots of benevolent but not dutiful pride and confidence--but certainly not innocence. As a matter of principle, I try to hide from no "evil" thought, no "base" motive. I put them in quotes because they are part of the whole. They are "fate." They are (one version of) God. I study the "monster baby" in self and others. "Wise as a serpent, gentle as a dove." But I'm not a pacifist or a "good" man. I'm a "popular" guy, I suppose. I mention this to provide a "halo" or context around the peak experiences, so you can see how they've influenced my life and deduce further.

I suspect that I haven't had the sort of experience you hint at with your words.

Oh, man, there was nothing like that at the end of the night. I've seen some wild parties, nasty and glorious and yet sacred. The sublimated lust in Dummy is great. That eerie voice in the presence of the numinous...This one was maybe my favorite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDpzYfyT-kQ

I ride the bus and blare all of the best music I've found in 25 years of taking music seriously. I suppose my religion is "Dionysion." Those great poems set to music ---that is human expression at its peak for me, I guess. I think of Nietzsche's first book as an analysis of "rock and roll" (which is a broad and almost mystic term for me.) The chorus of this song really just nails it for me:
https://youtu.be/CfPGqXxdrfk?t=1m30s

Thanks for the links, I'll listen to them later today. And thanks for giving some idea of what you're about, it's interesting. I know a guy like you, I spent a lot of time (24/7 at times) with him in the 90's we went questing in the Himalayas too, some wild times. As I see it you folks are at a certain stage in your "spiritual"* awakening where the intensity of experience is greatly heightened. There is a sense of breaking out, hitting out at walls, recoiling into the shadows etc...

It is a great experience provided you are able to avoid getting into trouble. However you will I expect, and certainly in the case of my friend, not find it easy to get into disciplines like meditation and quiet contemplative periods. If this is the case (I can't tell without meeting you in person), then that is ok, just enjoy the ride. You shouldn't struggle to achieve what your body is not in the right phase of activity to engage with. I return to what I said earlier, our bodies are finely tuned machines(spiritually as well as materially) you have to learn to work with your body, rather than struggling against it. Many folk have to struggle against it to get some impetus, but in your case the intensity comes naturally. For me the stillness and contemplative phase comes naturally at the moment and I did have to struggle to gain intensity when I was younger.

* by spiritual, I am using to word loosely to refer to a deeper part of yourself than the material, but not in any sense tying it to any precise spiritual school or belief system.

Interesting how people vary. Yes, I've always felt "yang" and intensity, so maybe my spiritual view (not far from Blake's) is founded on that. These days it's mostly just my mind that is wild. After all, I'm a mathematician these days...But philosophy calls to me like a vice. I still love the poetry..

I just want to say a word for the people of Aleppo who are literally experiencing hell right now. There are news reports that as of this morning there are 2 million people in a desert without water, being attacked with barrel bombs.

Please join me and say a prayer and think of them.

Here's one of my favourite Portishead tracks, Roads. A suitable prayer for those suffering in Syria right now.

http://youtu.be/Vg1jyL3cr60

Oops! I didn't intend to put the cybosh on the thread. I will discuss the war in the thread on the Third World War in the politics section.

It deserved to be put out of its misery.