Concerning U Chan Htoon's paper on Buddhism

 Blaise Pascal, Pensee number 84: It is with rash insolence that we belittle the great to our own measure, as when talking of God.

Matthew 11:27 Neither doeth anyone know the Father, but the son, and he to whom it shall please the son to reveal him.

Matthew 7:7 Those who seek God find him.

We live on a planet orbiting what is known as a main sequence star, that is, rather common place. Our sun orbits the galactic center and is imbedded in a so called arm of its galaxy; the Milky Way galaxy. The Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. It has several arms and is disk shaped with a bulge at the center. The approximate distance from the sun to the center of the galaxy is about 26,600 light years. (When I studied astronomy some years ago that number was thought to be 30,000.) The diameter of the whole system is approximately 100,000 light years. It takes 225 million years for the sun to complete an orbit around the center of the galaxy. Now the sun, as a main sequence type star, has an expected life span of nine billion years of which it has lived about half. That means that it has completed about 20 orbits and has about the same number to go during its remaining life. The Milky Way contains between 100 and 400 billion stars.(A 2020 article on this.)

That gives a little perspective to what follows, I hope. Everything I know, understand, and so forth, is nothing more than a fly speck on the moon. So, as is said nowadays, your mileage may vary. I certainly have no more standing than anyone else to comment on the subject matter at hand. It is by the Lord's blessing, I suppose, that I have such inclinations in the first place.

U Chan Htoon, former Justice of the Burmese high court, spoke to the Sixteenth Congress of the International Association for Religious Freedom at the University of Chicago, August 12th, 1958. In 1961 G.V. Desani delivered the lecture "Vipassana Bhavana, Yoga, and Other Topics" to the diplomatic corp at the Israeli ambassador's residence in Rangoon, Burma. Justice Htoon was in attendance.

In Buddhism we try to avoid the use of the word "spirit" because this may be taken to imply some kind of enduring entity...

He then goes on to claim it should be understood, rather, as a psychic process. I take this to mean it does not endure except in a (local) relativity-complex in the same sense that for movement (of bodies) to exist there must be a multiplicity of "bodies", that is, more than one. Movement is relative only. More on this later.

It is further stated that "...rebirth is not the reincarnation of a "soul" after death, but more precisely it is the continuation of a current of cause and effect from one life to another. There is nothing in the universe that is not subject to change, and so there is no static entity which can be called a "soul". A being is the totality of five factors; material, the physical body, sensations, perceptions, volitions, and consciousness. "All these factors are undergoing change from moment to moment and are linked together only by the causal law - the law that 'this having been, that comes to be.' Hence Buddhist philosophy regards a being not as an enduring entity but as a dynamic process."

He goes on the claim that Nibbana is permanent and characterizes it as release from the realm of becoming, samsara. It has no qualities, no relative values which always require, what he calls a "relativity-complex". Positive and negative attributes depend on one another for their existence, for instance. Also, light(ness) and dark(ness) being opposite poles of a "relativity_complex" depend on one another for their existence, too. Neither is absolute. In the Desani lecture cited above the claim is also made that Nibbana (Nirvana) is permanent.

Michelson and his colleague Morely, tried to establsh the absolute existence of the aether. Many thought at the time that it was required to have a universal medium whereby light was propogated. He found instead that the aether did not exist. Subsequently Albert Einstein explained that the speed of light was dependent on the (an) observer. The speed of light is only relative to an observer. Einstein also said, relevant to this, that there is no natural rest-frame in the universe. This leads me to speculate that were the universe a single body light would not exist, just as movement wouldn't. There must be that relativty-complex. Also, I find it interesting that Einstein wrote, per Mr. Htoon, that "if there is any religion that is acceptable to the modern scientific mind, it is Buddhism." I tend to claim, however, that Buddhism is not a religion because there is no personal God. Buddha never claimed to be a Lord or God in the flesh. Jesus was circumspect in this. He did say "I am the truth, the life, and the way. No man cometh to the father except by me." Also, "Believest thou not that I am the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me..." John 14.

Commentary:
God can't have self experience without descending into matter and assuming corporeal form(s). The "Word" is made flesh in order that God, the Divine creative spirit can have self knowledge. That is, in this writer's mind, the purpose and meaning of life. The story of Jesus Christ is a metaphor for this. And, of course, the so called "relativity-complex" of Justice Htoon is required for this. This writer makes an assumption that the actual stuff of which we are made, the same as the sun, of course, has a kind of self awareness based on sentient forms compounded of the same stuff.

Furthermore, its my premise that U. Chan Htoon didn't fully understand Judaism and Christianity. Consider Exodus (the Bible), Moses asks God "Who shall I say sent me?" Tell them, God replies, "I Am sends you." Being itself sends you. I don't find anything corresponding to this in the lecture.

So, the meaning of Jesus; God descends into matter in order to "re-emerge" an enlightened (fully self realised) being. Why wouldn't one say the same of the Buddha? and that such beings, all sentient life for that matter, become, along the way, co-creators of the Real, the world. Certainly, it is put forward that Jesus was in hypostatic union with God, the Father. Why couldn't the same be said for Buddha; 100% man but 100% God, too? Wasn't he an Jagatguru? Having escaped impermanence in the permanence of Nibbana would one be considered to have also reached the seemingly impossible hypostatic union with the Divine creative spirit, or whatever you want to call it? Would that bit of the sun stuff of which we have the pleasure to be co-compounded realised once and for all exactly what it is? That fly speck? One would needs discover this for oneself.

Said another way, man (sentient life forms) supplies the cosmos with individuality while the cosmos gives man, in return, universality. Enlightened beings realise this whether said explicityly or no. This from my mentor. And this, too, seems relevant: "where the concentration is, there is the persistent, the lasting, the permanent. That to which attention goes is that which returns. In a sense to attend to something is to put consciousness into it, to bring it to life, to self awareness." Put another way, if there is no observer there is nothing. Also,the recursive process that results in rebirth must be said to gain in vitality by the concentration, self awareness, of the successive lives so attached.

Kamma or Karma, as well as the precept that nothing endures, is permanent, and thus, there is no "soul" that carries forward through successive lives, is best understood, I think, when the Real, the world, is considered as a recursive phenomenon. Recursion, the Fibonacci sequence is the best example I know - 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13..... - Zero is the still point, of course, wherefrom the "beginning". It is necessary for any meaning or understanding whatsoever. So, every instance of the Real is a product of the preceding (instances). It is a fractal wherein knowing the still point you know it all. Yes, its a mystery but, clearly, out of nothing comes nothing (Ex nihil, nihil fit). This is why its impossible to explain, why the talk about the ultimate having no attributes, why when the journey is completed one arrives at the beginning but knows the place for the first time. Something happens during the process, the journey! Consciousness? Moreso, all that is happening now added to all that has ever happened equals all that will ever happen. This is, to me, how karma can be grasped. To recap, the purpose of the existence of the elements of recursion in the "relativity-complex" is to source new instances which have no permanence in themselves. They are made to fade. The process, however, is a kind of permanence in the same sense that a river, though ever changing, remains the river, and the instances, drops of water, merge eventually into the sea through ever widening banks. Poetically, they widen to embrace the sea.

Further, as Desani puts it here, For whatever activity undertaken, there is a spirit for that doing and that spirit in time gets a life of its own, gets self awareness as it goes on. These acts eventually become forms of worship. Doing good enhances goodness. Goodness is the reservoir drawn from when acts of kindness are done. And it is thereby increased. These acts are like accretions. Charity grows by use. Doing right this time makes it easier the next and so forth. Of course, it works the same for evil doers. A murderer draws on a different kind of reservoir to do his evil. His evil adds to that and the next time it is easier to follow that path. Evil begats evil, one reaps what one sows. It works that way. Love, Beauty, Truth, begat more of the same, too.

The lecture's full title is Buddhism and the age of Science. I can't find it on the net except to purchase but my copy is a Wheel Publication No. 36/37.

This writer's view is quite different especially concerning what is said about Science. I think they fail to understand Science and its place in the total scheme of human endeavors. I see it, as did Philosopher R.G. Collingwood, as an emergent phenomenon along with art, religion, and other modalities of being in the world. Collingwood's scheme compares to Soren Kierkegaard's in that Kierkegaard views faith as such a mode of being. Art, religion, science, history, then philosophy is how Collingwood describes the recursion of these modalities.

It is philosophy that Collingwood thought was the natural culmination of the preceding elements. He describes them in detail, their successes and failings. Here, I write of his work in this regard. Soren Kierkegaard's work is much more difficult to grasp but I go into it to. Here.

I said above that Buddhism could be thought of as not being a religion in the sense of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, and so on. Perhaps it could be better understood as coming after philosophy in Collingwood's progression, after faith in Kierkegaard's. If these modes, art and the rest, are truly like the Fibonacci sequence then philosophy is not the final element; neither would Buddhism be were it included. The Sun is, after all, middle aged. Having 20 more orbits to make around the Milky Way, 20 more galactic years to live, I'd imagine we'll have ample opportunity to plumb the depths of Reality's infinite malleability.

Collingwood describes philosophy as "consciousness returning on itself"; like a fountain. Pretty image. I think it is a prototype of what Buddhism and, also, the esoteric teachings of the yogis, is. My mentor's writings give the best jumping off place for what might be the next big thing in mental culture.

In working this up I am indebted to David Warren and his piece on God's Existence, here. I love this quote: "For science, or human knowledge more broadly, God is not an hypothesis, but an Axiom. Start in Aristotle, if you will, to see that the world has no purchase on sense, without the Unmoved Mover. The “Five Ways” by which the inevitability of God was demonstrated by Thomas Aquinas, and the related ways in which this was done by others before and after him, are easily misunderstood, because they are not proofs of an hypothesis but recursions. They show, without the “God Axiom,” that there can be no causation, no change, no being in itself, no gradation, no direction to an end. We need a Still Point, from which to depart. It cannot be hypothesized. It is too simple for that. You need to assume it even to contradict it."

Finally, I write here about entelechy, the end within. According to Buddhist thought there is no end, no beginning, only the process has any claim on reality. So, any end within dependes on a local framework, a relativity-complex, in Mr. Htoon's usage. I'd put forward that if you must have a concept of the end within then go with Mr. T.S. Eliot's beautiful notion that after all our struggles, trouble, turmoil, conquests, losses, "we arrive where we started but know the place for the first time."

Notes extracted from my "A Plus Notebook" which also contains notes on Don Juanism from Poteat's class

 Desani, March 14, 1973

Burn the seeds (of deeds) by high samadhi only. The weakened klesa is stronger than the klesas/passion full blown because its expression is more subtle, harder to root out because they are harder to recognize.

Margin note here that I got Texas tags today; quit moving houses. March 21, 1973. This means I retagged the 72 Chevy yellow van that I bought in Virginia and that I no longer worked with Jerry Sires. This leaves some confusion in my mind because I thought we finished moving houses prior to my purchase in VA. of the van. Maybe it means I quit "leveling" houses with Jerry.

Now the notes.

Heavy Karma is in the mind. There is a diagram here, a circle with a small area at the top delineated as "fixed destiny" while the larger area is labeled "unseen karma". This unseen karma it is noted, consists of inumerable past deeds, words, lives.

The desiring of an object is animalistic.

Clinging to an object is equivalent to fear of losing same.

Fear is equivalent to guilt. Or rather, their natures are intimately entwined. (This is not attributable to Desani. It is mine.)

If one tends to animalism one eventually falls into violent experiences, employment, etc. For instance, the proliferation of armaments.

A sanskara is an unaccountable karmasaya.

Important: To have a spiritual mentor is a fixed destiny.

Attachment (is related to) revulsion.

A selfless action is a virtuous action.
Duty, not? intention, with love, with compassion.

Desani spent five years learning to walk without intention. It is exceedingly difficult, he said.

Restraints must be imposed on things that are easily overindulged in, for instance, sex.

My aside: Desani is a composer, a maestro, a conductor. He draws ideas, words, etc., into a mosaic.

When sattva rises to its highest level illumination is produced (in a situation).

There is a need to rise above the sweet and the bitter experience; there is a reward.

Told story about being in Burma, about yogis, hills, snakes, very large mosquitoes, AHIMSA (non violence). Desani reformed - first "clean" room - for a smooth pursuit of practice.

"The Science of Yoga"
I.K. Taimini

Sutra is an aphorism. (Patanjali's Yoga Sutras are aphorisms.)

First sutra: Yoga is control of the vriti, modifications, of citta, consciousness.

Patanjali was the compiler of yoga, an ancient tradition. (Later note: He was a retainer of a King I expect somewhat like the European Kings retained astronomers, mathematicians, etc.)

The Gita notes there are many yogas. The sage Patanjali's yoga is a precursor of these:

Raja yoga
Dhyana/Zen yoga
Karma yoga - yoga of action (without desire)
Bhakti yoga - yoga of devotion - like a practiciing Christian's love for his God. This would be Krsna.
Hatha yoga - physical yoga
Kundalina yoga

Samkhya is the theoretical basis of yoga.

The yogi seeks quiesence in order to attain samadhi or satori.

The philosophy derived from the yoga sutras is outlined thus:

Here a chart is drawn showing two realities. On the left is Purusha or spirit and on the right is Prakriti or existential mass, the substance of the universe, nature. Prakriti consists, with reservations, of three elements known as the gunas. They are Sattva, Rajas, and Tamas. (see below)

A line extends downward through Mahat, cosmic intelligence and then to Ahamkara, the principle of individuality, of "I am".

A margin note here explains that the first product of the union of Purusha and Prakriti is Mahat.

Below Ahamkara comes Manas, the cosmic mind. Below Manas the chart branches into, on the left, Indriyas, the power of the senses, hearing, smelling, seeing, etc., and on the right the Tanmatras or subtle elements of sound, odor, visibility, etc.

Another margin note explains that it is from the Mahat that Patanjali intellectualized his compilaton. It is also the Mahat that westerners allude to when they speak of universal mind.

That is the chart.

Consciousness is made of, consists of (the) three gunas. A rose is made of the gunas. The "image" of a rose in one's mind is made of the gunas. The difference is, with some reservations, a matter of quantity.

Sattva is the most subtle substance in nature. It is mental substance. On the moral level it is goodness. On the aesthetic level it is the most beautiful.

Rajas is the animating element.

Tamas is the passive element, the tendency to procrastinate is tied in with Tamas. It is also the steadying element. It pulls toward sleep.

Yoga has to do with the second guna, with stopping the animating element so that Sattva can shine forth. This is the quieting of consciousness.

Samadhi grants mokti, freedom. There are different levels of Samadhi. (page 41 of book)

Incomplete note on Samprajnatta (sp.) Samadhi.

There are five kinds of citta vritis.
1. A person feels full of lethargy, sleepy. Sattva and rajas are conquered by tamas. (The god's never sleep and Desani, as monk, went ten or so days with no sleep. In this condition sattva reigns.)
2. Full of anger, tamas dominates.
3. Full of restlessness, rajas dominates.
4. Full of good works, Sattva dominates.
5. The highest Samadhi is the one that grants knowledge.

We have Purusha, or spirit on the one hand and Prakriti, cosmic substance on the other.

Yoga means union or yoke. The first result of the union or yoking of spirit and cosmic substance is cosmic intelligence.

On foreknowledge, a side note on the Nadi shastras, he said that two centuries ago on palm leaf [was written references] to Desani by name. It gives date of birth, place, and so forth. More on this here.

Qualities of Purusha: It is the Lord. It is not material. It is conscious.

Qualities of Prakriti: Sattva, mental substance, Raja, activating element, Tamas, inertia.

A 2500 year old commentary says that space and time are schemes for the understanding.

In Mahat Sattva dominates. Mahat is the source of wisdom. Mahat is the first evolute. Literally mahat means the great.

When Purusha and Prakriti are joined and the first evolute arises it is Purusha who sees this. It is Purusha that sees all.

Ahamkara is the precondition for the mind's ability to discriminate. At Mahat there is no discrimination but just an ocean of light. (A thought that most people evolve to Ahamkara and stop, especially westerners.)

Yoga is the stilling of cita vritties, of modifications of consciousness.

(Yoga nirodha citta vritti.)

Consciousness is material so what we think effects others. Thought empinges on the object of thought: Highly advanced yogi might think of a person as dead that person will find his death. If I think good..... Desani has seen it.

Thought is substance. Think Sattva will increase, it will. Think Raja as increasing, it will. Think Tamas as increasing and it will. Example of a teacher at Cambridge hitting a student who questioned whether thought could be proved to be a substance in the stomach with a visualized (by thought) heavy object. Desmond hit his student, turned, whirled to face student. The student fell, was hospitalized, almost died. Desani said this was a petty trick. Also a man worked ten years to perfect a trick whereby he could not be moved by five men from a train he refused to pay for. He thought heavy object into existence at the base of his spine. That is, he cultivated Tamas at the base of his spine.

There are four states of consciousness. Awake, sleep, profound sleep, Samadhi.

One must practice and practice detachment.

The intellect is material. If it is mirror like, superior material, it is comprised mostly of Sattva.

Purusha is masculine, the divine father. Prakriti is feminine, the divine mother.

Gita and Rabbinic Philosophy, and Lieb, and others

 This is a workup which I might edit later.

Irwin Lieb, formerly Chairman of the University of Texas at Austin Philosophy Department, and my professor, stated that the only individual is the entire Universe itself. We are only nominally individuals, he said.

Vedas: Soul of man is same as soul of universe

(Svetasvatara) Upanishad: He is not a male, He is not a female,He is not a neuter. He neither is nor is not. When He is sought He will take the form in which He is sought, and again He will not come in such a form. ... It is indeed difficult to describe the Name of the Lord.

Buddhism: There is no soul; there is nothing permanent.

Christian Bible (Exodus): Tell them "I Am" sends you (to Moses)

Albert Einstein: Speed of light depends on the "observer".

(How to resolve these)

Rabbinic: Man is in partnership with "maker of heaven" in the continuing work of creation

Compare Rig Veda 10.129 with Parmenides (see David Goldman)

Compare this to Gita/Vedas: For the Greeks, time is the demarcation of events. But in Hebrew time, it is the moment itself that remains imperceptible. As Kohelet 3:15 states: “That which is, already has been; and that which is to be has already been; and only God can find the fleeting moment.” From David Goldman

Soloveitchik, "Lonely Man of Faith": at end, pgs. 59 on he succinctly characterizes the dilemma of modern man in terms that have a ring of truth. Could compare to Rougemont and Kierkegaard, e.g. Compare also with Bhagavad Gita's characterization of "man of faith", or, as Soloveitchik terms him, "Adam the second". "Faith is born of the intrusion of eternity upon temporality....Faith is experienced not as a product of some emergent evolutionary process..."

So I guess this might mean, contrary to what I have thought, it isn't a concomitant of consciousness?  I don't understand how eternity can be an an intrusion at all. I think the temporal is as likely as not designed to make eternity meaningful.

Goldman on Beethoven and the sublime: "The Sublime challenges us to conceive of something that transcends the way we process sense information. Because the Sublime demands our intellectual response, it evokes freedom: We are not the passive observer of fixed and limited phenomena, but the artist’s collaborator in the recreation of the art work. We must lift our spiritual level to engage it."

Goldman applies Soloveitchik's thesis here that "Man is in partnership with the "maker of heaven" in the continuing work of creation."

The Jews were brought out of Egypt, bondage, crossed a river via a miracle. Americans were brought out of the Old World, escaping servitude, crossed an ocean, resumed their journey across the continent, seeking an ever escaping redemption.

On reading Milton Rothman's "The Laws of Physics" and Bishop George Berkely's theories on motion:

"There is motion only in relation between objects."

Apply to understanding and knowledge.

Knowledge is always of the "other"; only in relation between objects.

Understanding, on the other hand, does not require multiplicity. See (Nous) Noesis, intuition. Understanding is reflexive, consciousness returning on itself, R.G. Collingwood. Only when multiplicity is dropped can understanding arise. Apply this to Goldman on Beethoven, above. Understanding is sublime, is the finest exemplar of true Freedom. It is transcendence. It is not a thing but a verb. It is merging of the soul of man with the "I Am" of Exodus. The state of passive observation of "fixed and limited phenomena" must be dropped, pass away. Only then can the "I Am" take the forefront. Only then can we truly exercise collaboration with Being, with the Art of a Beethoven, the Philosophy of a Soloveitchik or a LIeb.

Rougemont finis

 M. de Rougemont intends with his analysis of the literature surrounding the Tristan and Isolde myth, its development through the centuries, to diagnose the breakdown of western civilisation, especially marriage. While he believes he succeeds he stops short of prescribing a solution thinking instead it would likely do more harm than good. He adopts the attitude that its best to just let it play out hoping along the way we don't destroy ourselves in the process. For, indeed, the morphology of the myth in its final stages invests our predatory nature with fantastic war making abilities augmented, it seems, with ever increasing machine, and now computerized, and it would seem biological, methods of killing vast numbers of people, whole populations, or segments thereof.

Though he makes no prescription for the culture as a whole he does embrace Soren Kierkegaard's views on coping with the madness.

Cite SK. Pg 315: Adopts Kierkegaard's view as his own that human life tends to proceed in stages from the aesthetic through the ethical, ending in faith. Passion, he thinks, is "the highest value in the aesthetic stage" while extolling marriage as the highest in the ethical. But marriage is claimed to be the highest obstruction in the religious stage for it fetters one to time whereas faith requires eternity.

In this writer's view the image of the sword placed between Tristan and Iseult as they sleep signifies what is said about renouncing marriage as an obstruction when entering life's final stage of faith. "Goal was no longer redemption through love but redemption through renunciation." One gives up passion, love, in favor of dissolving the little self with the eternal. This is why Tristan can say I am the whole world as Wagner has him do.

Doesn't this correspond nicely with Kierkegaard's attitude? Rougemont writes: "When the lover in the Manichaean legend has undergone the great ordeals of initiation he is met ... by a dazzling maiden who welcomes him with the words: 'I am thyself!' So with fidelity in the myth, and Tristan's. Fidelity is then a mystic narcissism ... imagining itself to be true love for the other. In analysing the courtly legends, however, we saw that Tristan is not in love with Iseult, but with love itself, and beyond love he is really in love with death - that is, with the only possible release there can be for a self guilty and enslaved. Tristan is true neither to a pledge nor to a symbolical being named Iseult. She is but a lovely pretext, and all the time he is being true to his most profound and secret passion. The myth seizes on 'the death instinct' inseparable from any form of created life, and transfigures it by bestowing upon it an essentially spiritual goal. To destroy oneself, to despise happiness is thereupon a way of salvation and of acceding to a higher life, to 'the highest bliss of being' sung of by the expiring Isolde (in Wagner's opera)." Life for the sake of death was Tristan's passion and "The love of Tristan and Iseult was the anguish of being two; and its culmination was a headlong fall into the limitless bosom of Night....Iseult is no more, Tristan no more, and no name can any longer part us!"

Kierkegaard's existential anguish, his fear and trembling (Frygt og Baevan) resulting from the lost love of his Regine brought him low and he ended as a "fatally unhappy" man which he equates with man's relation with an eternal and holy God from the standpoint of the finite and sinful human. He said "God creates everything ex nihilo." Whomsoever God elects by his love, "He begins by reducing to nothing." This, he said, makes God "my mortal enemy." M. de Rougement writes: "Here we are being brought up against the extreme limit, the pure springs of passion; and in the same moment we are thrust into the heart of the Christian faith! For, behold! the man now dead to the world, killed by infinite love, has to go forward and to live in the world....(such a man) has renounced all things with an infinite resignation, and .... is constantly leaping into the infinite, but faultlessly and with complete confidence, so that he drops back into the finite, and nothing is noticeable about him but the finite."

Finally, Rougemont continues: "Thus the extremity of passion - death in love -introduces a new life, where passion never ceases to be present, but is under the most jealous incognito; for it is now far more than regal, it is divine." (This is in contradiction to his former exegesis of the myth, in this writer's opinion, but is in reality much nearer the actual Truth. While all that goes before goads the reader into plumbing the myth's and western civilization's morbidity his final summation and recap is rather uplifting, offers some hope.)

This makes sense, I think, of Tristan's "I am the world" attitude. Whereas mystic union, the explanation thereof, fails completely one can nevertheless circumscribe it, though perhaps only in increasingly vague terms. While it admittedly is a slippery matter perhaps one learns that though it evades our attempts to grasp or hold it we can gain somewhat by just accepting it (with cupped hands, so to speak). Receive instead of take, in other words. Denis de Rougemont is a master of all this, as was Soren Kierkegaard, and for that matter Socrates, Jesus, the Buddha - its a long list. Suffice to say, Rougemont continues: "We are unendingly and incessantly in the thick of the struggle between nature and grace; unendingly and incessantly unhappy and then happy. But the horizon has not remained the same. A fidelity maintained in the name of what does not change as we change will gradually disclose some of its mystery: beyond tragedy another happiness waits. A happiness resembling the old, but no longer belonging to the form of the world, for this new happiness transforms the world.

As said elsewhere Beauty is infinite, eternal, ever increasing, ever glorifying the divine. To get a little taste of this is man's lot gained by living in the finite, as intended, but from an eternal perspective. And, quoting Mr. T.S. Eliot, "when arriving at our destination we see it as our beginning but know it for the first time."

Infinite resignation is like total surrender to God......only then can we live perfectly in imperfection. Also said elsewhere in this blog, though its in error to ascribe to G_d anything at all, not even being itself (after all, Soren Kierkegaard himself, and he was and is known as a Christian philosopher, actually stood in the pulpit and expounding on faith, said that God does not exist. Why? Simplicity itself - "He is eternal" - that's why. That should need no explanation. And yet, in Exodus, appearing in a burning bush before Moses, asked "who shall I say sent me?", he replies, " Say that 'I am' sends you.")  it nevertheless dips into the limitless vastness of Beauty and Love and Truth to say that we sentient life forms, human beings on planet Earth, are the eyes and ears of the Cosmos, that simple device whereby G_d, if you like, has, or gains self realization, self understanding. The horizon of discovery is thus ever and anon pushed into infinity with we humans in endless renewal making pursuit. At the very least, I think, we are of the same stuff as the Sun, so our perception is no doubt the Sun's way of knowing itself. As stated this can not be explained for it is a matter of direct knowledge, Noesis, from which derives the noosphere wherein we find the concomitants of consciousness.

more thoughts

 self manifesting first principle

fundamental idea with the power to self manifest

potentiality with the power to actualize

The present is a realization or actualization of the past and future which are potentialities.

 

Music lives in the moment but its yearning is for the next moment. It is the essence of restlessness, of finding completion in the infinite regress of the horizon beyond the now.

 

If knowledge is always knowledge of something, then only reason leads to knowledge. All knowledge is through sense perception and memory. Direct knowledge, intuition, noesis, is not based on experience.

 

The oak dreams of the acorn. The acorn dreams of the oak. The stump lives in them both.

 

There is nothing that can be said that can do more for understanding the full meaning and purpose of life (enlightenment) than what a finger pointing at the moon can do for 'seeing' the moon.

 

Matter conveys individuality, form universality.

 

Guilt is the father of anger, hatred, self loathing. Salvation is the undoing of guilt through forgiveness, redemption. Guilt is self loathing. Achieve blamelessness through self sacrifice...accept the self as sacred.

More on Rougemont

 I'm on page 269. I wish I could recall which university course this book goes with. Of course it was philosophy, but don't recall which one. Perhaps William Poteat's course on "Eroticism, Music, and Madness". Seems fitting.

Details on the book: A Fawcett Premier Book copyright 1940, Harcourt, Brace and Company. This augmented edition copyrighted 1956, Pantheon Books, Inc., published by Fawcett World Library. Translated by Montgomery Belgion.

M. Rougemont was born in 1906 in Neuchatel, Switzerland. I once knew people there, interestingly, had a girl friend. Francoise Tschudin. They lived on the lake in Hauterive, Neuchatel. Beside the point, I know.

Rougemont views human relations through the lens of the Tristan and Isolde myth which dates from about the twelfth century. He cites multiple versions, multiple authors, with the troubadours playing the major part, at least in the beginning. He writes that the underlying theme of the myth is that Passion is Love perverted, is narcissistic. Literature of that time, and he cites many following works, is an expression of this perversion. The myth coincides with the beginning of civilization's departure into this gross error. His thesis, in part, is that this myth promotes common or acceptable behavior in the culture. Rougemont really gets down in the weeds. His genius, pg. 275: "...passion of love is at bottom narcissism, the lover's self-magnification, far more than it is a relation with the beloved. Tristan wanted the branding of love more than he wanted the possession of Iseult (Isolde). For he believed that the intense and devouring flame of passion would make him divine; and, as Wagner grasped, the equal of the world. See here.

Eyes with joy are blinded ...I myself am the world.

Whatever obstructs love actually consolidates, intensifies it, he writes. (Pg 43) The ultimate obstruction of love is the aim of the romantic who seeks the ultimate intensity, passion, consolidation. The romantic seeks unity. What expresses this better than  "I myself am the world?" The ultimate obstruction of love is death. The romantic seeks death but calls it passion. So, if obstruction is the true object of passion, the beloved is a mere substitute. And if peril brings obstruction the affinity for the thrilling arises. M. Rougemount describes enlightenment and redemption as "passing from existence into being." The desire to exceed our limits is "fatal but divinizing."

As mentioned earlier he works Mozart's Don Giovanni into his thesis but doesn't mention Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855). Kierkegaard thought of passion as a force of nature calling it the Daemonic in Nature, a sensuous-erotic principle. M. Rougemont agrees but doesn't acknowledge this profound idea - at least not directly. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. (Edit: at end of book he brings SK in.)

As an aside gravity is a force of nature, too, and spin, without which there is no vector, direction, or for that matter, congruence. Life too is a force of nature.

Rougemont strives mightily to quantify literature so that it confirms this thinking. There is some obfuscation there but his genius prevails though it is a bit messy at times. As I say, he really gets down in the weeds. There is a confirmation bias with him and, I'd note that the more we cling to our pet ideas the more we exclude the real truth. [And, what is true locally may be false universally.] Kierkegaard quickly elevates perverted Christian love to the universal daemonic in nature. So does M. Rougemont. Pg. 275: "Passion requires that the self shall become greater than all things, as solitary and powerful as God. Without knowing it, passion also requires that beyond its apotheosis death shall indeed be the end of all things."

Death is made an enervating force, finally making of war the inevitable outcome of passion's grip on humanity. William Poteat, and G.V. Desani also spoke of this. Desani said that the end of the development of war making machines, devices, ended necessarily in man's annihilation. Kierkegaard also thought annihilation was the natural end of the development of the "sensuous-erotic" principle.

We do hug and kiss our self destruction, the spokes of the wheel whose turning returns us again and again to our beloved suffering because of which we feel alive. The more we suffer passion's pains the more intense our lives. Passionate love is for the sake of pain. And the more we pursue our passions the faster their fulfillment recedes on an ever disappearing horizon.

There's no escape. Eastern religion and philosophy address these root causes and while Rougemont brings them into his subject he fails to address the reality of their suggested remedies. Neither does he acknowledge the esoteric teachings of the ancient rabbinic Jews. While he and Kierkegaard advance the notion that Christianity is not what we are led to believe it is, that it is in reality a destructive force, as it is popularized, they provide no insights as to the path one must take to escape the enumerated conundrums. (Editor: see next post)

On the Daemonic in nature. Love is in the noosphere so passion is too but not naturally in that created man puts it there. True love enhances life. Passion destroys. True love is selfless.