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..

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

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.

I think one of the difficult things about modern life is that not everyone can be right. There are well-intentioned people who are arguing on behalf of causes that you really actually ought to disagree with. Let's pick one: militant animal activism. There are animal activists who believe that killing animals is murder, and that animals should be treated as if they have the same rights as persons. Now, I will never agree with that. Coming to think of it, there are many opinions being put about that I don't agree with at all; one is constantly deluged by them via the diversified media nowadays. I don't agree that scientology is a religion, for instance.

So what to do? Retreat into solitary crankiness? Rail at the telly? I don't know - that is why it is difficult. But the answer is NOT that 'all opinions are equal', nor that everything is simply a matter of opinion. It's possible that large numbers of one's fellow citizens make flawed judgements about a number of things. Scary, but possible. — Way

Perhaps you'll agree that the "problem" is that everyone tends to think that they are right. Hence the quest for some neutral referee (pure reason or science or God's will or whatever). But then no one as a general rule can agree on this referee. Nor can they agree on a method for constructing such a referee. This for me is starting point. That's why rhetoric or sophistry has never left us. We don't have a referee, just a permanent revolution of the means of seduction. That's rhetoric, too, right? I'd say so.
Reason is the rhetoric we like?

There are sanctimonious and non-sanctimonious vegans, Buddhists, classical music afficionados and ascetics. To assume that somebody is sanctimonious just because some people that share a property with them are sanctimonious would be intellectual laziness. — andrewk

That is indeed true. From the action alone it is difficult to discern self-conscious posing from genuine enjoyment or genuine empathy. In case my own response seemed too cynical, I just wanted to clarify that. I'm particularly interested in posing as such. As I see it, we learn to become more natural and more ourselves, if we're lucky. (Lucky?) Now embattled rhetoric on a philosophy forum is something else, I think. I don't accuse it. I just like theories and to theorize about it.

Thanks for your comments. I'll look into some the leads. Re recognition, I'm trying to "dig deep" like all of them, I suppose, at least as this thing called a philosopher. What can I say? Nietzsche in my 20s...
I am curious however about some your own thoughts on these matters. For me any text is just a string of marks and noises to be recontextualized for the here and now, though I don't say everyone to treat them that way, of course. I depend on scholars, after all.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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'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

This is too good. Is it over the top a little? Yeah. Un-hip? Prolly so. But here lies that radical old time "religion" I was sniffing around for.

http://self-improvement-ebooks.com/books/tlog.php

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

Actually,I love that quote. Thanks for sharing.

I still value McMahon's interpretation, but I think we aim at something more than mastery. We want to escape being mastered by the concepts of mastery and of knowledge. I listened to Warpaint's new song about 6 times in a row and was filled with ecstasy. I don't care to master or to know in this state. All that is obliterated in beauty and the sense of play. But I think we can free ourselves from various games by seeing them in a more open space. We can't take the sunglasses off until we see that we are wearing them.

My favorite piece of what I quote is :
The analyst is a Daoist in the sense described by figures like Zhuangzi. The analyst occupies the position of the void that lies in all signifiers and at the back of all systems.

Try not to fall in love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T9Q1uKl-Qg

I think this is why I particularly am fond of Buddhism: it is an inner-worldly asceticism, better described as "Spartan" - maintain what you need to survive, refuse excess. It's not any of this wishy-washy transcendental other-worldlyness, which inevitably places attachment on the ascetic lifestyle to begin with. — darthbarracuda

I like what I know of it. I discovered this lately, and it reminds me of what I've read about Buddhism. The end (about the analyst) is especially good. I don't share this as if it's authoritative. As I see it, language discloses being. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that egoism is sublimated as it takes a look in the mirror and laughs at itself forgivingly ---and maybe becomes more like water than stone.

The master is the figure who leads and conducts. He is decisive and sure of himself in his role as master. In theoretical terms, he generates master signifiers, which consist of terms and slogans that represent his particular discipline.
...
The individual subject finds self-identity in the form of these signifiers, which serve as ideological rallying positions. At the extreme, the master is the one you will die for. Words like “God,” “country,” “freedom,” “free market,” “pro-choice,” and so forth are examples of such master signifiers.
............
The discourse of the university promotes knowledge and values on behalf of the master. The word university in this special sense includes far more than the actual university in the sense of college. Though acting on behalf of the master, the university pretends to be completely neutral and impersonal, as if merely carrying out its mission according to the basic facts and conditions of any given situation.
...................
The hysteric is engaged in radical doubt and questioning of his or her subjective position as dictated by the master. The hysteric is the alienated subject. She is divided and conflicted within herself between what she feels she is supposed to do and her resistance or failure to live up to what the order dictates. According to the discourses of the master and the university, the true subject should not be alienated and divided. One is supposed to conform easily and freely to the master discourse. Hysteria takes the form of resistance and protest, jealousy and rage, but also shame and sense of meaninglessness at one’s failure to live up to the ideals of the dominant discourse. In spite of her resistance, however, the hysteric is still in thrall to the demands of the master and university (Bracher, 123).

In Lacanian terms, all subjects are ultimately hysterics. The hysteric is the ultimate model of subjectivity. This gets back to the idea of split subject: no one escapes the condition of being split. The master is oblivious to this fact but is nevertheless just as “split” as anyone else. If anyone, the hystericized subject is the most aware that the emperor wears no clothes, that is, that the master is equally split. Still, the hysteric has not made the final step to act on that awareness, but remains subjected to the discourse of the master.

The analyst observes that the hysteric experiences subjection to the master only because she treats the master as a master. The analyst says that the master is such because people believe he is such. They grant him his authority. Equally, they can withdraw it. In purest form, the analyst represents a position that denies all acts of mastery, especially self-mastery. The analyst elicits hysteria from the subject in order to expose the subject’s state of subjection to the dominant order. The end of therapy arrives when the subject sees through the fantasy of subjection and discovers new possibilities. In this summary, however, I am not interested in the
clinical techniques of the analyst, which can be found in other readings. I prefer to regard the analyst in philosophical terms as occupying the stance of the critical intellectual who, according to Žižek, always maintains “a distance toward every reigning Master-Signifier,” thus always in order to “render visible [the] ‘produced,’ artificial, contingent character” of every Master-Signifier (TN, 2). Žižek says that “philosophy begins the moment we do not simply accept what exists as given (“It’s like that!”, “Law is law!”, etc.), but raise the question of how is what we encounter as actual also possible. What characterizes philosophy is this ‘step back’ from actuality to possibility ....” (Ibid.). The difference between actual and possible is such that whatever is actual or certain is only so because another possibility did not take place. Stepping back from the actual means looking at what might have been, though not in a wishful way as if to recover some lost past. It is to disbelieve that what is so is because it must be so. In this sense, the theory of the analyst is absolutely anti-fatalistic.

The analyst represents a different kind of knowledge than the master or university. The analyst’s knowledge is dialectical, which in simplest terms means that truth is dynamic and paradoxical. It is a knowledge which knows how to examine the surface of a master discourse and through its splits and fissures discover its unconscious. The analyst is a Daoist in the sense described by figures like Zhuangzi. The analyst occupies the position of the void that lies in all signifiers and at the back of all systems. The analyst as human being, of course, is no different from anyone else in being equally caught up in his or her own pathology of subjectivization. — http://kmcmahon.faculty.ku.edu//LacanZizeksum.html

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

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

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 ascetic, in virtue of his actions, is essentially telling the rest of the rabble that what they like to do is inadequate, insufficient, or not worthy of praise. The ascetic isn't just not-participating, they're outright rejecting what everyone else is doing. "Stealing their thunder", so to speak, by not appreciating what others are doing. — darthbarracuda

It isn't just asceticism that steals or attempts to steal thunder. It's the general structure of imperial personality. I'm (one of) the best. I think this haunts just about any public performance of what one regards as virtue.

As far as altruism goes, this "everyone else" is itself composed of a thousand varying asceticisms as well as a thousand varying proposed objects of ultimate concern. True, we can sort these compound, idiosyncratic prohibitions and objects of desire into a few bins. But look closely at a life and you'll find quite an unstable mess of thou shalts and thou shalt nots. An absolute asceticism like life-denial is going to stand out, but at the cost of looking irrelevant to anyone without living doubt about the value of their own life.

Here's a great new Warpaint song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1BqwONm4TE

But, C, why not explore something like a synthesis for personal use? Why be bound by previous uses of strings of marks and noises? We stand as readers above various systems, contemplated side by side. It seems quite natural to see how we can read each of them in the light of the others and find something valuable and new in a curated set of analogies. Why not creative misreading that seeks to salvage an otherwise obsolete tradition or text?

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.

The Fall began in the Garden of Eden after we (collectively) obtained knowledge of good and evil and lost our obedience to 'God'. God, understood in Stoic terms, is nature, the logos, or universal reason. Stoic doctrine holds that, by living in accordance with nature, we are living according to universal reason. Part of my 'thesis' is that this knowledge of good and evil (in the Christian sense) that expelled us from the Garden/separated us from God (nature) is the mistaken view that good and evil exist in the external world, when in fact, they do not (the Stoic sense). "It is not things that trouble us, but our judgement about things". — WhiskeyWhiskers

This for me ties in with a reading of Job, which is a vision of God/Life/Nature as unjust, unfair --and yet to be affirmed nevertheless. I like we can also link living in accordance with nature or universal to the notion of ordinary mind or creative play. If we get out of the way of our guts, we can take real pleasure and interest in the things of the world. Absorption obliterates the anguished knowledge/assertion of good and evil. We can live beyond such aggressive abstractions, at least at our higher moments.

I was trying to tie together the idea of The Fall with the idea that God is equivalent to nature, meaning that, in returning to God in the Kingdom of Heaven, you also at the same time return to nature, hence 'in accordance' with it. I understand that The Fall means we are each born with original sin, but if you merge the two further you get a slightly different reading. Bear with me. — WhiskeyWhiskers

I like this. We can frame the original sin as the belief in sin itself (knowledge of good and evil). I associate this "belief in sin" with sitting in opposition to God/Nature/Life as its judge. From this perspective, most religion is the fruit of the forbidden tree. You can find this in Blake who contrasted (for him) true religion (creativity and forgiveness) with false (self-righteousness and accusation.) This tension runs right down the middle of Christianity.

I'd probably use "world" for "nature" to stress the interpersonal aspect of the Fall. (Ever read Camus' The Fall? Great stuff.)

Watts would agree with you that it was the mask being worn by the I. I think he's even used that phraseology before to make a similar point. If you accept his idea, it does beg the question of what, exactly, it means to die at all. It would be like the universe closing one aperture through which it knows itself only to open another. — WhiskeyWhiskers

This is how I see it. That which all apertures have in common is therefore deathless. "Mask" dies. Mask is beautiful. It provides for the massive variety of personalities. But masks/snowflakes keep falling to replace those that melt on the street. A bitter and defensive identification of the "deep I" with its mask simultaneously gives death its sting and takes from life a vision of its massive fecundity. "Do you want to fix the world? I don't think it can be done." As I see it, it's not about condemning any particular mask (including anti-pride or anti-egoism talk, itself an egoistic mask), but simply a matter of being (partially sometimes and completely at others) liberated from identification with 'mask.'

This looks interesting. Thanks, John.

An arcanum is a "ferment" or an "enzyme" whose presence stimulates the spiritual and the psychic life of man. And it is symbols that are the bearers of these "ferments" or "enzymes" and which communicate them -- if the mentality and morality of the recipient is ready...

Among Christian Hermeticists nobody assumes for himself the title and the function of "initiator" or "master."

The changing of work, which is duty, into play is effected as a consequence of the presence of the "zone of perpetual silence," where one draws from a sort of secret and intimate respiration, whose sweetness and freshness accomplishes the anointing of work and transforms it into play — Meditations on the Tarot

https://books.google.com/books?id=DR_IAgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Oh, of course. I wasn't trying to accuse you or anything. It's just strange to contemplate how badly programmed we can be by our home communities that were themselves so programmed. I brought the books into my book-less home as young, alienated, precocious lad. What a difference it can make to learn to read, pick out one's own books, follow the string. Can anything beat the drama of a sequence of "dangerous" ideas? I've felt pretty ripe for awhile. Life is better these days. But I can imagine the thrill of living it all again, this journey of self-consciousness and liberation. That alone helps justify death. "Play the scary drama again, please, and wipe my memory. " (But not yet!)

Imagine this. A demon or a god tells you that you are going to die in 24 hours. You have that time to think over whether you want to do it all again, every moment, with memory wiped. I imagine that 24 hours the second time around, when one knows that one had chose it all before. (Close to Nietzsche, of course, but I pondered this on a late night walk and it had a new vividness.)

I do find those ideas fascinating. I also like metaphysics as thermodynamics. It's not my game in particular, but it's nice to see something new. I don't worry much about the planet, myself. I "should." But I really don't. Largely because I don't see it in my control. I can't waste the effort in what would seem to amount to a fashion choice. Some "game theory stuff" may extinguish us along these lines. Oh well, we made some smoke.

Because art seeks to reveal and it applies itself to this in a magical manner.

One has to demechanize to become a mage. For sacred magic is through and through life --that life which is revealed in the Mystery of Blood....It is the fullness of voice with which sacred magic is concerned; it is the voice full of blood; it is the blood become voice. It is the being in which there is nothing mechanical and which is entirely living. — that book

Wow, this is my cup of tea, man. The blood become voice! The "demechanization" of the spiritual...

Well, hell, I may have to look into that book myself. (I'll google it now) I love Bosch.

On the maggots: I despise their position, but I remember being raised around racism and homophobia. It's the air one breaths. There's no awareness of the cruelty one participates in, especially if the black people are just on the news and the gay people are shrewd enough to hide or move away. At my small town high school, gay slurs were the most aggressive insult. You just had to fight at that point or...fufill the "prophecy" that you were d*ckless. I'm very fascinated by this sex/power connection and the "religion" of being a Man (not being a woman, and yet desiring one exclusively). How does even porn or fantasy intersect with the sacred? I like this about Norman O. Brown,a prudently living man who was in theory "polymorphously perverse." Camille Paglia reads Western literature and art as a sort of flight from the Mother. Jung reads the cross as a matrix or mother. Hence my association of Christ with primal energies (an ocean of ancient blood). I think of the two Mary's at the foot of the cross (symbolically) the mother and the prostitute.

I'm not complaining here, but I would like to point out how hard it seems to be to keep even talk of mysticism from becoming political. 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.

I can't tell if you got where I was coming from. I was trying to paint a picture of world-denying, world-accusing morality as an expression of what is supposedly hated about this world (violence, self-assertion, motion). Of course there is the other song and dance, too, which is far more popular. Explaining how life could pose as anti-life is the challenge.

I never said otherwise. The Incarnation idea is profound. Generally, religious myth is profound. It's a deep well, worth serious consideration. But it's valuable to see how religion could look exclusively "bad" to someone not yet exposed to more sophisticated traditions/interpretations. I was really into T.S. Eliot and Auden (in their Christian phases) as my cruder notions of God were fading. I knew there was still something in the tradition. These great poets were looking for that, holding to that.

I agree that we can err on the other side, too. But I wonder whether the sophisticated defender of religion really wants to hang out with an evangelical voting for Trump, for instance. Worse, you have people holding up "God hates f*gs" signs. They don't have the guts to hate in their own name. That's the sort of dude they worship, and they want their big guy to toss strangers in a lake of fire for getting off the way that their ancient instruction manual, inherited thoughtlessly and apparently by chance, prohibits.

Never said you did, but let's not pretend that religion has been so innocent.

Yes, we progressives ought not only eliminate ourselves, but eliminate all animals (as they are barbaric consumers too), and even all plants (as they too show no respect for minerals and gases). — apokrisis

Yes, "life is sin." Movement is sin. There's a religion of stasis in our guts somewhere that just reaches out and grabs us now and then. Not life-death but un-life, un-death. And yet this religion itself looks like some modulation of the killer instinct and quest for a position at the apex that it condemns in a sort of sublimated verbal violence. It seeks to bring guilt and humiliation to everything self-assured and at home in our flesh-eating flesh.

We are finite mortal creatures, the meaning we give to events are not in the events, the meanings are in us and as such morals are fictive, stories we tell our self. In spite of this willfully acting with a good conscience means acting in accordance with laws we give to our self which is, I think, the only way we can act freely. — Cavacava

Good points. I'd say the freedom is also about being able to change these self-given laws. Philosophy at its best is just this sort of freedom at work. It's personality editing at its most radical.

I wouldn't be so smug about it, but, yes, I think with the proper education and a little bit of honesty, people can see the errors of their ways — darthbarracuda

I don't think this identification with moral leadership and a vision of the world as not worth the trouble are the least bit separated. If one desires recognition in a world that will not give it, then to hell with the world. I'm too good for it. No one can take that away from you, but you might get tired of it. As I see it, there is violence and not saintly love at the heart of it, though I'm sure empathy is involved, too.

Still, I'm glad you're around to make your case. You have the wit and the guts to argue.

We feel compelled to act ethically. Ethics is not egoistic, ethics do not necessarily align with our preferences. Only in the "virtuous" man does this occur. — darthbarracuda

It's not self-consciously egoistic, but you are talking about individual compulsions. In the end, it's a matter of I want it this way. But usually the rhetorical appeal is made to something the tribe holds sacred, perhaps one established principle against another. The individual sometimes experiences the pain of being torn between two compulsions, perhaps between the "ego ideal" and the lust or the hunger of the body. Our self seems more or less constituted by the "spiritual instinct," so that is given the superior position. That compulsion is the one we want recognized as adults. The self projects itself as a universal and therefore conceals its egoism from itself (which may run counter to an investment the so-called anti-egoistic.)