/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.11437595]

>tfw the goal of all mystical traditions is liberation from the rounds of earthly existence

how is it that the only reality we get can be so shitty? all these systems are about escape, flight, release, transcendence, overcoming, negation, moksha...

is this why so many pantheons are haunted by the specter of patricide? this dissatisfaction, sometimes bordering on murderous hatred, of what has come before, the brute given? isn't the entire motor of western progress nothing but this pining for 'something more', finally realized with technology? it's all so tiresome

[Anonymous No.11437610]

Nirvana is samsara. What differentiates them is the person. Man is a microcosm of the world. The symbology of escaping from the lower realms into the higher realms means escaping from the lower realms of your negative emotions and lack of self-awareness into positive emotions and greater self-awareness. Nirvana and samsara, heaven and hell, are within you. The entire world is within you, both psychologically (as the Buddhists put it — it’s a projection made up by your mind) and Hermetically/alchemically (you are made of the same matter of the whole world and of the same laws which govern the world).

[Anonymous No.11437616]

>>11437610
I know, what's disheartening is that the movement has to be performed in the first place, but neither is human life or even life in general conceivable in a perfect universe not beholden to thermodynamic law. so. idk.

[Anonymous No.11437620]

Life is an extremely rare fluke of the universe, there's barely any of it and it's very short lived. Basically a cosmic mistake. There's no reason for it not to be shitty.

It'll all be over soon though.

[Anonymous No.11437625]

>>11437595
that's why my mysticism is superior because it infuses our reality with the transcendental

[Anonymous No.11437636]

Are there any mystic/religious/philosophical traditions which emphasize a connection with the visible, the directly perceivable, and the consciousness which inhabits the world?

[Anonymous No.11437640]

>>11437616
My theory is the Absolute/God/Brahman/Dao/what-you-will is alive, organic, breathing. It is alive in contradistinction to the void of non-being which it fears. Being alive, it breathes. It has two motions: an outgoing and an ingoing motion. This outgoing motion (exhaling) is creative and devolutionary: it devolves, creating the entire universe. We’re at a low level of the universe, and can either go along with the outgoing (devolving, descending) force like most people and things around us are doing, devolving towards non-being, nothingness, entropy, decay, death, or we can align ourselves consciously with the ingoing (inhaling, ascending, anti-entropic) force.

The All must breathe to keep itself alive. It does this because the infinite must be manifested, because it is infinite. All potentialities must be actualized. However, being All, it also all adds up to zero — all positive and negative things balancing each other out. The Absolute is both the supremely positive, the creator, and the supremely void, the negative, the abyss of death it fears. Because nothingness is supreme potential. The world is the flux, the tension between absolute potential and absolute potential-lessness.

[Anonymous No.11437645]

>>11437636
literally all of them, but they use the material as a launchpad into the immaterial. the Self is understood as irreducible to its empirical properties and yet not independent of them, and this is the paradox that opens the way

[Anonymous No.11437649]

>>11437640
so process theology?

[Anonymous No.11437655]

>>11437640
I agree with this post, and it ties into the OP: the hatred Zeus manifested for his father (and Kronos for Ouranous) is, in a sense, the hatred or recoil of the Absolute from its own non-being, which of course is only intelligible as non-being to the positivity it itself is. Like Crowley says: it's only when Kether "opens" its eye in the void to see its own desolation that it is filled with horror, "seeing is distortion"

good post. I guess my question is just where this logic of 1 and the 0 came from, but we'll never know

[Anonymous No.11437663]

unusually good thread, guess i'll wait until tomorrow to kill myself

[Anonymous No.11437691]

>>11437649
I guess, I’ve never deliberately studied process theology though, just pieced it together from various mystical systems and contemplation. I’ll be back in this thread in about an hour if it’s still up because it seems there’s some interesting things to talk about. Perennialist mysticism is the way

[Anonymous No.11437710]

>>11437691
have you read Schelling? the self as reflexion is a mirror of the primordial self-diremption of the absolute, between God as living personality and God as the dark, unknowable ground of this personality

>A primordial act of unconscious Will causes the psychic split by which consciousness becomes aware of itself. The process of objectification – the division of subject from object – is initiated by the Self which turns, as it were, to face and view itself. We can say, as Schelling did, that a "space" is formed between the Self and its idea of itself. Because of this bifurcation and Self-reflexivity, we as humans are not able to remain static beings. Instead we are compelled to evolve to higher levels of Self-consciousness and world-awareness. In that space between Self and Idea nature becomes a reality for us. It is the essential background on which the temporal process of Self-awareness occurs.

>Since freedom is unthinkable in opposition to omnipotence, is there any other escape from this argument than by placing man and his freedom in the divine being, by saying that man exists not outside God but in God, and that man's activity itself belongs to God's life? From this very point of view, mystics and religious temperaments in all ages have come to believe in the unity of man with God , a belief which seems to appeal to our inmost feelings as much as, or even more than, it does to reason and speculation –

[Anonymous No.11437736]

>>11437620
>and it's very short lived
Not really true, individual organisms are short-lived, but life on Earth itself is incredibly persistent and has continued for billions of years.

[Anonymous No.11437761]

>>11437640
gay manichaean dualism with the preface of the phenomenlogy dusted on top

[Anonymous No.11437766]

>>11437761
>he can't think the coincidence of being and non-being in the absolute

hah

[Anonymous No.11437768]

>>11437736
Compared to the age of the universe it's nothing.

[Anonymous No.11437782]

>>11437761
>i hate effortposting, show me dudes at the beach instead

gotchu senpai

[Anonymous No.11437791]

Reifying non-being as coequal with being is to posit strife as primordial, which leads to despair. The salve for man's woe is neither dissipation into the divine, nor dissolution into his components. It is the redemption of his very concreteness by hypostatic union with the divine, which does not compromise either. The possibility of an Incarnation, then, is the only hope of redemption for the world. Yet if it is possible, then the correct orientation is no longer mere escape, but the redemption of the cosmos.

[Anonymous No.11437814]

>>11437791
good post. hegel sees strife/antagonism at the heart of the absolute, while milbank tries break through to something of an "ontological peace" behind the dialectical movement.

man becoming individuated in/through the divine instead of dissolving back into the amniotic Nothing is obviously the goal of real mysticism. creating life just so it can return to nothingness is monstrous.

[Anonymous No.11437815]

The only thing you're supposed to transcend is your self. There is a whole world to miss if you don't.

[Anonymous No.11437832]

>>11437595
I was reading the accursed share by Bataille and he brings up this point about how the creation of work and tools subjected man to the order of objects. If you think about it, changing the circumstances from simply existing to producing output within a certain timeframe places man from a sacred position into one where he is just a means to an end. Thus it is necessary to restore the sacred link and put man above the objects and animals once again. I hear Bataille expands on this thought in Theory of Religion so I'm keen to give that a read.

[Anonymous No.11437842]

>>11437815
so as to transcend the irrationality/suffering inherent to unenlightened existence

>>11437832
he's completely right but I have no idea what a world like that would look. you need to create a shelter to get out of the rain, to get out of the cold, to eat, etc.

there's a gravity to the physical that seems unavoidable

[Anonymous No.11437886]

>>11437842
Unfortunately I don't think Bataille offers any solutions, he merely brings it up to offer an explanation for the Sacrificial/Potlach societies he analyses. His chapter on Tibetan Buddhism is actually quite interesting. Essentially the Tibetans live in a state where all their excess energy (which is the real thesis of the book) is directed towards Monasticism to the point where the country never needs to expand and conquer and it's citizens want for nothing as they don't keep excessive possessions. They have nearly no military budget which seems paradoxical because they are almost always beset by invaders. This leads to a situation where numerous conquerors come in and take over the state-body but the Monasticism is where the real power is and remains unchanged, leading to an attitude where the Tibetans are not bothered by invaders. They know that the invaders will come and go but their religious self will stay. Anyways it's not related specifically to the thread but it made me realize that a lot of woes in the west could be alleviated by a similar system of monasticism for excess wealth accumulation.

[Anonymous No.11437921]

>>11437886
yes I think Bataille's idea of excess actually ties into the thread very well, I think I read him say once that (in agreement with Sade) "life is most fully itself in the negation of its own principle", now the question becomes of how to achieve an "enlightened expenditure" of this excess, which seems like Tibetans have hit on: the negation of mysticism, instead sadomasochistic degeneracy or consumerist hedonism


we're afflicted by a positivity that is unbearable if we do not negate it. even in Hegel Mind is just the discursive negation of positive immediacy, the intolerable that-which-is which is just abstract emptiness for the living consciousness...

[Anonymous No.11437928]

>>11437886
was bataille secretly the endboss of 20C philosophy in europe?

[Anonymous No.11437968]

>>11437928
100%. Dude was way ahead of his time.

[Anonymous No.11438004]

>>11437921
When I think of Bataillean excess I think about Zapffe and his description of a deer whose antlers have grown too large for its head and weigh it down. In the same way evolutionary excess has given a primate a uniquely powerful intellect, which at first we dominated our environment with, but now we are weighed down by our intellect like the deer. Biology has blown past it's target and now we can separate from animality and enter a new world filled with dread and suffering. Our intellect is like a tumor that grows without reason and leads to toxicity, just how Bataille describe the accumulation of wealth.

[Anonymous No.11438015]

>>11437620
all materialists should be lined up and shot

[Anonymous No.11438022]

>>11438004
I agree, and it seems like spirituality is the solution to an accident, itself an accident, and as such divorced from any transcendental appeals to its validity. Which is why it's all so tragic: once something opens its eyes in this universe it's overwhelmed by the reality of death and suffering.

Otherwise it's just unconscious/semi-conscious nature blissfully spinning its wheels

[Anonymous No.11438036]

>>11437620
So mysticism is essentially religion, where instead of eternal life you have the void.

[Anonymous No.11438039]

>>11438036
Mysticism is all about that void, though.

[Anonymous No.11438072]

>>11438022
Yeah you’re right, the solution is to have faith. My issue is I don’t have it and I don’t know how to get it haha. The more I try and make myself feel the less I believe it. I hope that one day I can make myself sacred.

[Anonymous No.11438075]

>>11438072
only thing that'll inspire it is the contemplation of beauty, harmony, love, all that feel-good Greek shit

it's the existence of these things in the void that makes them so inexplicable and miraculous

[Anonymous No.11438077]

>>11438015
>being this insecure and fragile in your sense of meaning

[Anonymous No.11438080]

>>11438039
How exactly do these mystics know anything about the void?

[Anonymous No.11438085]

>>11437610
This is not true. Buddhism opposes the hindu Atman-Brahman opposition. Also Nirvana and Samsara is not within you. This is bullshit. You've read bad sources.

[Anonymous No.11438091]

>>11438080
they just make shit up that sounds nice

[Anonymous No.11438092]

>>11438080
because mysticism is the contemplation of the void beyond/behind being, that which is the source of being irreducible to being itself. it's a void because for all intents and purposes it might as well be from the perspective of those inside the system


>>11438085
atman is positivized anatta (the positivity of the Self's identity with the One), anatta a de-substantialized atman (atman as pure consciousness, the negation of all content)

[Anonymous No.11438100]

>>11437595
Almost all of those systems are about learning to live without unnecessary burdens you place on yourself through unrealistic expectations, untenable desires, or refusal to move past history, not about literally escaping this world.

How does someone miss the point this hard?

[Anonymous No.11438112]

>>11438100
no friend, the seed of greek mysticism is orphic soteriology, where the entire goal is to escape the wheel of birth and death. what you posted is easily subsumed into that goal

[Anonymous No.11438119]

>>11438112
is this from algis uzdavinys? he's an interesting guy

[Anonymous No.11438122]

>>11438119
yes. and not to even mention the buddhist/hindu goals of liberation and the negation of all worldly attachments

[Anonymous No.11438124]

>>11438085
Not him but non-dualist traditions equate samsara and nirvana. Yogacara sees the world as mind-created. So I can see how he could have got to that idea.

[Anonymous No.11438128]

>>11437595
>implying
The goal is liberation. Not liberation from being human.

[Anonymous No.11438140]

>>11437595
It's time to take the neetchan pill, this is exactly the problem he's concerned with.

[Anonymous No.11438160]

>>11438085
Variants of Buddhism hold that the world we perceive is a projection made by the mind. They also have the formula that “nirvana = samsara”. This is consistent with the view that the same conditions can be nirvana or samsara based on how we perceive them. Also, the Zen speech of Buddha-nature and how all things have and are fundamentally Buddha-nature, of small monkey mind/little mind and big mind is pretty much indistinguishable from Hindu speech of the atman and Brahman.

[Anonymous No.11438161]

>>11438140
Nietzsche doesn't deny transcendence, just immanentizes it

[Anonymous No.11438162]

>>11438161
ok, what are you responding to exactly?

[Anonymous No.11438167]

>>11438162
apparently you were trying to conflate mysticism with life-denial

[Anonymous No.11438168]

Can someone recommend an introductory text to the concepts being presented ITT?

[Anonymous No.11438174]

>>11438168
which specifically, way too broad of a question

Three Pillars of Zen is a nice clean introduction to Zen principles that the rest of mysticism only really just articulates on

[Anonymous No.11438185]

>>11438167
sure

[Anonymous No.11438205]

>>11438085
*snap*

[Anonymous No.11438321]

So how does one attain this point of Being, and the point past Being and Becoming which is Nonbeing?
All I know is that it's a sevenfold path

[Anonymous No.11438353]

>>11438168
Not quite since this thread is talking about many forms of mysticism. This guys >>11438174 idea is alright though, Zen is important to this thread and mysticism in general. I’d say you need to study Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Heraclitus, Neoplatonism, and/or the Greek Mystery Schools to get a sense of it. Also a smattering of the relat Very recent Western philosophical tradition (Hegel, Schelling mentioned in this thread).

>>11437710
No, I haven’t, but I’m not surprised if other philosophers and mystics and people in general have come to similar traditions. The Western philosophical tradition is admittedly something I’m relatively weak on.

>>11437761
Guy who wrote that here, you’re actually right in your characterizations of it but it’s not much of a critique, just classifying it into various labels. It could also equally be called Hindu (“God” as destructive (Shiva), creative (Brahma), and maintaining/neutral (Vishnu), also the idea of the universe being “the breath of Brahman”) , or Daoist (yin in yang and yang in yin, yin and yang balancing each other perfectly, opposites ultimately being the same, the ground of all being the featureless unconditioned potential/void, the Dao).

[Anonymous No.11438361]

>>11438321
lots of study and practice dude. suffering. solitude.

[Anonymous No.11438367]

>>11438353
Add to that Kabbalah, Hermeticism, Alchemy, the Chaldaean Oracles, and Parmenides

[Anonymous No.11438377]

>>11437595
>is this why so many pantheons are haunted by the specter of patricide? this dissatisfaction, sometimes bordering on murderous hatred, of what has come before, the brute given?

[Anonymous No.11438391]

>>11438377
>life is the confused, oedipal struggle to extricate itself from the primeval womb just as much as it is the desire for it

oh shit

[Anonymous No.11438398]

>>11438367
Yeah, these too, I knew I should have added more but I’m a bit slow and sleepy right now,

[Anonymous No.11438423]

>>11438391
leave freud to me

[Anonymous No.11438469]

So how does Alexander worship fit in with this?

[Anonymous No.11438555]

>>11437595
>tfw the goal of all mystical traditions is liberation from the rounds of earthly existence
Yeah, but we are still here. There are big moments of contemplation, but there is also the daily experience, being humble enough to enjoy a good life, mind and body in balance.

[Anonymous No.11438651]

>>11438555
What do you mean by being humble enough to enjoy a good life?
Are you saying that a focus on mystical thought can be a double-edged sword?

[Anonymous No.11438656]

>tfw the goal of all mystical traditions is liberation from the rounds of earthly existence
Only for those unwilling to sacrifice what it takes.

[Anonymous No.11438692]

>>11437595
ontological/psychic transformation can only come from going against the fatalistic nature of reality, willingly, ex mortus

[Anonymous No.11438697]

>>11438656
what sacrifice is that?

[Anonymous No.11438942]

>>11438697

[Anonymous No.11439039]

>>11438697
Odin, Yggdrasil, Ginnungagap, Mímir's well, Niflheim and Muspelheim, and I guess also sun and moon. Then the runes/wisdom/prescience/all knowledge.

[Anonymous No.11439057]

>>11437791

>>11437814
So I am new in philosophy and mysticism and your talk got me. What can you tell me to search for a good reading? Specific books are apreciated

[Anonymous No.11439141]

>>11439057
The Atlas of Reality: A Comprehensive Guide to Metaphysics
The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy
The Idea of the Holy
The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies
Mitra-Varuna: An Essay on Two Indo-European Representations of Sovereignty
The Seed of Yggdrasill: Deciphering the Hidden Messages in Old Norse Myths
The Ever-Present Origin
Work on Myth, and, Care Crosses the River by Hans Blumenberg
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind
The Enneads
Language and Myth
Landscape and Memory
The Doors of Perception & Heaven and Hell
The Life of the Cosmos
The Roots of Coincidence
>Thus Spoke Zarathustra
>Jung's "Nietzsche's "Zarathustra": Notes of the Seminar given in 1934-1939. Two Volumes: 1-2, unabridged"
Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension

[Anonymous No.11439182]

>>11439141
Thanks friend. Going to read some of those. Also happy for your Blake`s book sugestion,I really enjoyed reading it last year

[Anonymous No.11439596]

bump

[Anonymous No.11439604]

>>11437663
Pussy, I still see your IP in the logs

[Anonymous No.11439612]

>>11437595
>how is it that the only reality we get can be so shitty
>only reality
It's like you never even heard of psychedelics, anon.

[Anonymous No.11439887]

>>11439612
If it's just temporarily changing your sense of reality than it's still the same reality. There are much higher states one can reach without than those reached by psychedelics and unlike with drugs you can attain these permanently (however useful psychs may be as something to gain insight/motiavation early on)

>>11438321
Non-being is not the end stage. Pure being is but devoid of attributes and conditions, this may seem like non-being from the present perspective but part of reaching this stage is realizing that this is the truest and most real form of being, and that most of what occupies our mind during day-to-day life is transient non-being.