/lit/ - Literature

Sri Aurobindo was both an Indian mystic and a poet. Henry Miller appreciated mysticism a lot, and has a great, relevant quote about this:

>Political leaders are never leaders. For leaders we have to look to the Awakeners! Lao Tse, Buddha, Socrates, Jesus, Milarepa, Gurdjiev, Krishnamurti.

And was particularly attracted to Buddhism in general, and Zen particularly. Hell, most of the Beat writers are the same -- having combined Buddhism with the counterculture/hippie/psychedelic movement of the day. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs and the like. Then there's Philip K. Dick, of course, with his mystical experiences. Robert Anton Wilson, too (Cosmic Trigger is still one of the greatest, most mind-blowing books I've ever read, being a mixture of memoir with forays into occultism, conspiracy theories, discussions of various mystical traditions, etc.). Since most of /lit/ has a stick up its arse I'll probably get people saying that a lot of these people are American trash and not great artists, and they may have a point, but it's an answer to the question anyway.

Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Gogol, too, of course, coming from the Christian angle. Rimbaud talked about "a deliberate derangement of the senses" and living a deliberately crude life in an attempt to make himself a "seer" or "poet." Honestly it all depends on how strictly you want to draw the line -- you could say some of these artists aren't really mystics just for being interested in mysticism or religions or saying some vaguely mystical stuff, but some of them (like Sri Aurobindo) fit this better, but you could say his poetry isn't as exceptional and outstanding as his contribution to Indian mysticism/philosophy was.

Then you have all the Sufi poets, of course, who fit this perfectly. Hafiz, Rumi, Attar of Nishapur (writer of "A Conference of Birds"), Kabir, Sarmad, and so forth (these latter two also straddling the line between Islam and Hinduism, as was common in Sufism around the regions of India and Persia, since Sufism is a complex phenomenon which isn't always strictly adherent to orthodox Islam).

>>18827504
For instance, of the ancient Greek saying "Know thyself", he believed this was analogous to Christ's saying, "Wake, for ye know not the day and hour." The reference is to internal, psychological processes, not necessarily to external things, to eschatology and so forth. In Tibetan Buddhism, we have the idea of pointing-out instruction (ngo sprod), in which the guru directly points out to the disciple their own mind. In Islam/Sufism, there is the distinction between ghaflah (the Arabic word for "heedlessness" or "negligence"), referring to forgetfulness of Allah and one's own divine origins. In Hinduism and Buddhism, to awaken to one's own self-nature is to get into the state of samadhi. A temporary powerful experience of this inspired usually by a guru or even something mundane like a pebble hitting a bamboo branch is called in Zen Buddhism "satori." And so forth.

So the idea is not to make a New Age pastiche of religions, but to draw what is authentic from these traditions, what was authentically said by authentic people (in Heidegger's terminology, authentic and resolute people, as opposed to the inauthentic and irresolute They-self just going blindly towards death with the masses), to oneself become authentic and awake. Gurdjieff calls all this "self-remembering", to put it as simply as possible, and also says remembrance of one's and everyone else's death is crucial for it. To remember the impermanence of all. In Heidegger, of course, this is Being-towards-death.

Also, in Gurdjieff's literature, what he calls "personality" corresponds to Heidegger's They-self, and what he calls "essence" (the authentic, true self) corresponds to Heidegger's authentic and resolute self. In Sufism, this is the difference between the nafs-i-ammara (commanding self, false personality) and the awakening of the qalb (heart) and ruh (spirit). In Christianity, this is to die to one's ordinary self and then to be risen in Christ. St. Paul: "Not I, but Christ lives in me."

Also cf. stuff like Pythagoras reputedly learning from the Egyptians, the Jews, the magis in Persia, Hindus in India, the Chaldeans, the Phoenicians, etc. This wasn't a "New Age" pastiche, but Pythagoras genuinely acquiring wisdom and self-knowledge from as many sources as possible until he became -- Pythagoras! An awakened sage. This is the gist of Gurdjieff's teachings, which he even says in Ouspensky's accounts could be called "esoteric Christianity." To become like Christ, Christ-like, through authenticity, rather than a member of the herd, going to church and blindly carrying out the motions without knowing what's behind the liturgy or the symbols or the prayers or the parables that are told to you.

So all this is itself a crude pastiche showing off my knowledge of world religions, but the point is that Gurdjieff claimed there's an underlying psychological truth behind these religions which can be accessed regardless of what religion one has or even if one has no religion.