The Myth of Estrangement

From the Immanence of Myth, available now through Weaponized Press.

“The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference…all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us. Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency.” Jean Baudrillard

    We stand “outside the Garden,” as we said, estranged from ourselves. What does this estrangement mean? Where does it originate? What mythic repercussions does it have?
    Amongst the multiplicity of myths that have played themselves out through the history of the so-called Western world, there is a single idea that seems a prerequisite for all of them. The ideological history we discussed in Pretty Suicide Machine is the legacy of this simple valuation: the priests, scientists, and even artists painted the natural order as something which must be overcome, restructured, and dominated for personal, economic, or even spiritual progress to take place. This prefiguring idea amounts to an underlying assumption that structures the world that we know today. It is not an assumption that lies under all cultural heritages: most Native Americans, for instance, had no such concept in their mythic DNA. However, it would appear that cultures that do not maintain the necessity of mastery, control, and possession quickly become the possession of cultures that do, or they are simply driven into obscurity or even oblivion.1
    This is one of the premises explored at length by Horkheimer and Adorno in Dialectic of Enlightenment, “In thought, human beings distance themselves from nature in order to arrange it in such a way that it can be mastered.” Though this thesis is arrived at in part through only considering the negative function of myth, their point is valid nevertheless. Mastery of nature is far from the only valuation that shapes our heritage, but it is a ubiquitous one. The myth of ownership, the myths of social hierarchies, the myth of capital, individuality, freedom, and so on are all the true backbone of our culture, for better and worse, and all of them are informed by this valuation.

The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick by R. Crumb from Weirdo #17

“I saw God,” Fat states, and Kevin and I and Sherri state, “No, you just saw something like God, exactly like God.” And having spoke, we do not stay to hear the answer, like jesting Pilate, upon his asking, “What is truth?”

–Philip K. Dick, VALIS

In the months of February and March, 1974, Philip K. Dick met God, or something like God, or what he thought was God, at least, in a hallucinatory experience he chronicled in several obsessively dense diaries that recently saw publication as The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, a work of deeply personal theo-philosophical reflection akin to Carl Jung’s The Red Book. Whatever it was he encountered—Dick was never too dogmatic about it—he ended up referring to it as Zebra, or by the acronym VALIS, Vast Active Living Intelligence System, also the title of a novel detailing the experiences of one very PKD-like character with the improbable name of “Horselover Fat.”

Article.

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Falling in love with Kali

By William Clark

It was on the night January 8th, 2000 that I fell in love with Kali. Despite having no previous introduction to Hinduism, I was graced with a vision of her which completely changed the course of my existence. Ever since that evening, I have sought to transmute my life into an offering for that black goddess who I saw dancing within my heart.

Traveling to India immediately became a top priority of mine. I found myself heading there within two years of my darshan (“divine vision”) and will undoubtedly be visiting this country again and again for as long as I am able. During this time, I have immersed myself in the study of Indian culture and religion, focusing primarily on the state of West Bengal where Kali enjoys a particularly exalted position of popularity and reverence. I have acquired a comfortable grasp of the Bengali language and my passionate interest in the folk music of that region has led to the attainment of some specialized knowledge in that area as well. While back home in the USA, I decided to spend some time learning the basics of field recording and photography in order to document the ongoing pilgrimage which has become the central pivot of my existence. During my last visit to India from 2011-2012, I began developing www.kalibhakti.com as a way to share my journey with those who might wish to come along for the ride.

Subjectivity?

Add sleeping, dreaming, and waking
to the list of our existential uncertainty. 

Centuries of thought have been directed toward subjectivity, which makes me feel like a bit of a fool to offer it up for consideration. But I'd like to share some of these videos with you, so here we are.

What is an obvious and immediate consideration when we recognize our own existence? Any question of our experience immediately brings up its existence separate from us. What is it? Which is 'more' real, the logical source of our experience that lies outside of experience (object) or that which recognizes and becomes aware of that occurrence.

The branch of philosophy retroactively entitled "continental philosophy" could be seen as deriving itself from this single issue. In asking that one question we are forced to consider not only our experience, old our existence and finite, and the apparent cleavage between representation and source, numinon and phenomenon. We must also crack open a dank can of "What the Fuck" (it comes in regular and diet) in contemplating the limits of the methods we might use to explore these issues. And so epistemology joins cosmology.  Is the real real? Emphasis floats in one philosophy, and one generation, and the next.

Frankly, the words start to sound just like noise being made by flapping lips.

Be that as it may, here are some different perspectives:

Taoism and Chuang-Tzu

Many people think of Taoism as being restricted to Lao Tzu, the Tao Teh Ching, and possibly some hand-wavy interpretation of the yin-yang symbol. However, it is a very old shamanistic tradition that, in its explicit origins, came into being both to expound upon and also contradict the Confucian idea of order in celestial bureaucracy. Taoism confuses many Westerners as it is a religion that is not a religion, a philosophy that is not a philosophy, and the practices and beliefs that have followed from its sources are as divergent as Catholicism and Satanism. (Which is to say, opposed and yet tied -- much like Taoism and Confucianism.)

I'd like to provide some more resources on those interested on exploring Taoism beyond Lao Tzu, and even Chaung Tzu, though some of you might like to begin there.

• First, Sasha's blog "Shaman Science" has many ruminations on the 5 element system.
• My health video playlist contains many Taoist based practices and martial arts. I will continue adding to this -- it is already over 8 hours long! 
• Simple breakdown of the 5 elements.
• Motion sensors attached to a Baguazhang practicioner demonstrating one of the most common movements in the form. 
• Taiwan Bagua Documentary
• Internal alchemy. 

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]

Agnosticism - not for dummies

I was having a conversation with William Clark just now while watching Baraka and a number of things I've been thinking about lately all gelled at once.

So let me try to lay out the pieces.

I was talking earlier with another friend, Matthew Grossman, about the role of belief in our lives. Both of us agreed that belief is actually fairly inconsequential. It doesn't much matter what any of us believe. If someone thinks their beliefs are important, they're giving our thoughts too much value. I know plenty of people that change their beliefs and then think they have changed. But they are the same person from the outside. And when people change, it isn't as a result of belief that change comes about.

The next piece of this thought process -- many athiests and religious folk alike have attacked me or looked down on me for saying that if I have to be pushed into a corner on defining my relationship to the divine, it is as an agnostic. "The basis of that is a-gnosis - not knowing," they say. And that's quite right. But who wants to admit that they don't know?

Let me explain. The base religious experience is awe, even terror, or ecstacy (being beside or outside of ones self), and all of it is in the face of an infinity that is beyond measure and comprehension. It is precisely this a-gnosis, not knowing, that is the base of spirituality in a positive sense. This isn't exactly negative theology- that derives from an intellectualization that comes as a reaction or result of religious experience, as a way of defending the psyche from that yawning abyss against which we must profess complete ignorance. If you don't encase yourself in belief (which as I said is unimportant) or the pretension of knowledge about the existence or non-existence of your idea of divinity -- that is, the objective nature of things which transcends all categories of thought -- then you must profess your agnosticism.

Thus may also explain why I say I'm a Taoist when asked what I "am" in this regard. (Though does our relationship to the transcendent define us? I remain agnostic on that matter...) Because Taoism is a religion/philosophy that is defined on the human level by valuing flow, of getting out of the way of ourselves, of allowing ourselves to come into accord with what naturally is, in any situation, of dissolving or even emphasizing loss, and on the divine level it professes a complete lack of knowledge, because knowledge is not the right thing to bring into the house of God.

This is what I believe. Though, as I said, it couldn't matter less.

More on God and the Problem of Certainty.

[Where is the fucking counterculture? Mythos Media.]