A (probably vain) Attempt to Restore a Nearly Forgotten Word to Popular Usage: Caitiff (1/6/16)

Anyone who’s spent a little time reading Shakespeare has surely come across this word—‘caitiff’—which basically translates as ‘coward.’ But ‘caitiff’ conveys even more contempt by the user than is normally conveyed by the word ‘coward,’ just as ‘knave’ conveys more contemptibility than its modern equivalents, ‘scoundrel’ and ‘loser.’ The caitiff is naturally disposed towards lying—first, to himself and, then, to everyone else. Why is this? For one thing, timidity sets strict limits to what is acceptable, endurable, or tolerable so far as what life throws at him—and life, lest we forget, is no ‘respecter of persons.’ Instead of honestly acknowledging that it is his fearfulness—and not the malicious will of life or of other persons—that paints him into a narrow mental corner of his own making, the caitiff simply blames ‘fortune’ and demonizes others while illegitimately rationalizing and justifying his own reality-distorting stratagems and opinions. If the caitiff, however, is sufficiently courageous to admit (again, first and foremost, to himself) that he is disposed to cowardice—and that he seeks chiefly to protect and insulate himself from life’s ‘slings and arrows’—then a certain measure of honesty can develop.

But alas, the honesty of clever caitiffs tends, like Hobbes’, to derive from a reductive, jaundiced—basically fearful—response to existence and to other human beings. This is the ‘nothing but’ breed of timid posers and pontificators who are always saying “this (or that) noble (or dignified) person (action, or ideal) is nothing but a base, self-serving (and/or deluded) so and so.” In making this sweeping, ‘categorically debunking’ move, the clever caitiff implicitly justifies his guarded, cynical, or pessimistic stance towards…well, just about everyone and everything. We all know the type. These are the ‘lily-livered,’ ‘yellow-bellied’ scaredy-cats whose formerly tender and precious sensitivity has been deeply wounded by the shrapnel regularly delivered by that superficially polite but profoundly hypocritical war zone otherwise known as ‘everyday life.’

Such caitiffs—regardless of how clever they may be—have souls that are simply too cramped and shallow for the deeper sort of suffering—which, as it turns out, is the only sort of suffering capable of bringing about a substantial moral-spiritual transformation of the personality, and of purging it of any lingering frivolity and residual frippery. More than a few jabbering, twittering, and supercilious ‘modern’ atheists belong to this carping camp of critical caitiffs. Such vain and voluble mediocrities are able to proliferate—and even preponderate—in a semi-barbaric and soulless ‘information age’ where they have few natural predators and plenty of protectors against the harsher, stinkier, and more honest realities of life from which they instinctively recoil. But as soon as such favorable and shielding conditions change for the worse—and, eventually, they always do—these imposters and pretenders are the first to be devoured and done away with by the first big wave of ‘corrective,’ order-restoring reality. And, of course, in being thus laid low, their worst fears and suspicions are thoroughly confirmed. But again, because genuine, redemptively transformative suffering can find no place to ‘conduct its business’ in the tiny, cramped soul of the caitiff, such blows and hardships only make him more bitter, resentful, and convinced that life is a cheat.

Caitiffs instinctively avoid genuine solitude, even when they retreat from society. This is not simply because they are deathly afraid of being deprived of the assistance and company of others—but because they desperately need to have persons close at hand who are even more cowardly and spineless than they are, in order to produce the optical illusion that they have an actual ‘pair’ growing down there between their legs. Thus, they seek the society of others not out of love, which actually requires and entails courage and generosity, but from self-interest and a need to feel superior to those who are even more fearful, needy, impotent, and helpless.

Those persons, on the other hand, who are naturally courageous—how do they instinctively respond to the veritable army of self-serving, lying, knavish, pea-souled caitiffs in their midst? Well, of course they cannot help but regard them with politely muted contempt or with the sort of forgivable indulgence that a compassionate, mature parent sometimes shows towards a silly, immature nincompoop of a child. The contempt that is felt is the natural response of real strength or virtue to what amounts to a cluster of interrelated vices and failings—all of which have their roots in a cowardly flight from reality and sobering truths. The indulgence—which, mind you, has its limits—stems from the sober acknowledgement that such born caitiffs and self-deceivers cannot be other than they are—and must simply be tolerated, just as other natural pests, nuisances, banes, and ‘skin irritations’ must be borne with patient forbearance. But to trust—and invest one’s hope—in a caitiff? The courageous person knows all too well what folly that would be!

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Seeing Beyond (8/25/17)

The ordinary human eye is capable of responding to visual stimuli or data within a certain range. We know, of course, that there is plenty of data beyond the visible light spectrum – beyond ultraviolet and infrared light—but such information transcends the bounds of ordinary human eyesight. Other instruments – electronic eyes – must be devised and utilized for such “transcendent” vision.

Likewise, each one of our psychological functions – thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensation – is naturally associated with a corresponding arena or domain of distinctive experience (thoughts, feelings, intuitions, sensations), just as the eye is associated with objects within the visible light spectrum. This is not to say that the thinking function cannot perceive/apprehend a feeling-content. It can acknowledge that something is there, but that something gets automatically translated into a thought-concept – the sort of content it is equipped to deal with in its own terms. And, as we know, a feeling that is “translated” into a concept is no longer a feeling, but something quite different. In being carried across the wide border between the two functions, the feeling has been transformed into something quite alien to its original form – like a light wave being transformed into a particle, a caterpillar into a moth.

Naturally, the reverse is true, as well. When a concept or thought enters the airspace of the feeling function, a feeling value is either consciously or unconsciously assigned. This is what the feeling function does, for this is its role within the psychic economy. What it does not do is evaluate and analyze the concept as a “thinking type” would. This is not a choice or a decision made by the feeling function. It is simply beyond its power or ability to make such an analysis or logical assessment. This incapacity, however, seldom prevents the feeling function – or the decided “feeling type” – from foisting all manner of feeling judgments upon thoughts, ideas, and arguments that he/she is incapable of understanding or appreciating in their own terms, within their own proper sphere or domain.

This analogy holds true for the ordinary human ego, as well – or so it would seem. Just as the human eye is confined to visual information within a certain limited range – and just as thinking and feeling cannot help but falsify and distort phenomena that they are unfit to deal with and to properly assess – ego-consciousness, as soon as it begins to arrogate authority and to pronounce judgments upon phenomena that lie beyond its purview, proves to be reliably inept.

There are almost as many definitions of “ego” as there are egos, but for the sake of discussion we will focus on two features of ego-consciousness that are widely agreed upon: a natural tendency to literalize and a more or less “heroic” drive to bring things under control within one’s sphere of influence – either by hook or by crook. And, to prevent any misunderstanding, let me say at the outset that my aim here is not to denigrate or disparage the ego, as such, but simply to explore and assess its proper sphere of activity and its rightful jurisdiction within the larger totality of the psyche. To be sure, the ego is vulnerable to various maladies and potentially dangerous excesses, but – like the human heart, brain or liver – it serves a vital and necessary function in the “psychic economy.” When the body is afflicted with congestive heart failure or a brain tumor – the diseased organ can bring the whole organism down with it. Analogously, a perilously inflated or stunted ego will often lead to serious trouble for the individual and for those under his/her sway and influence.

With these ideas in mind, let us glance quickly at the functional role played by the ego’s tendencies to literalize and to “heroically” establish a more or less stable and secure place in the world. If we can imagine for a moment the helpless vulnerability of the human infant – or the susceptibility to suggestion, “possession,” and overpowering terrors in the primitive – we get a glimpse of the condition that exists before the ego has developed properly. The infant and the primitive are, as it were, submerged or immersed in the enveloping sea of psyche with no solid platform upon which to land. In the case of the infant, a sense of security must be provided, initially, by the mother, the father, and the external circumstances within which its fledgling identity develops. For the primitive, rituals and social roles/duties provide the exoskeletal structures that serve in lieu of a differentiated ego-complex.

Thus, without a minimally developed ego, we are at the mercy, so to speak, of the Gods – or of the elements, or Fortuna, the unconscious, etc. – while a functional ego equips us with a kind of breathing space between our “selves” and the mysterious, enfolding whole. As it happens, some human beings appear to be more favorably disposed towards this surrounding, ineffable mysterium than others, who do everything within their limited power to block it out of their awareness – usually by clinging like barnacles to everyone and everything that is soothingly familiar, predictable, diverting, and reliable.

So, if the ordinary, run-of-the-mill human ego’s essential function is to provide a more or less stable foothold within an otherwise mysterious and uncanny world and/or psyche for the “individual consciousness,” should we therefore jump to the conclusion that the establishment, cultivation, and extension of the ego’s power and sway is the proper aim of human life – and that some persons, like great athletes or musicians, are simply better at ego-ism than others? Nietzsche, as I read him, certainly comes close to such a position – if we bear in mind the fact that he shows a decided preference for what he calls “spiritualized expressions of the will to power.” He is referring here to artistic, political, and intellectual – i.e., cultural – forms of excellence. Philosophy – for Nietzsche (as well as for Nietzsche’s Plato) – is regarded as the most spiritualized expression of the will to power because it has the responsibility for humanity’s future on its conscience.

So, what about those other persons for whom the strange, the unfamiliar, and the unknown exert greater attractive power than the known, the familiar, and the securely nailed down features of life? These are persons who are more likely to find the whole arena of “normal” and “commonplace” experiences boring, cramping, and even suffocating. This impatience and dissatisfaction with the generally lawful and stable surface of everyday experience do not come from some shallow hankering after novelty and diverting variety. Instead, such dissatisfaction seems to arise from a deep skepticism about the adequacy of the ego, alone, to guide us – as humans – to a full and rounded existence. Such seekers after the mystery – beyond the deceptive veil of the familiar – have made the crucial discovery that it is the questionable or illegitimate authority of the ego that is behind this tyrannical, leveling normalcy that is revered and kept on the throne by the many – now as ever. In effect, it is collective fear and loathing for the abnormal, the pathological, the paradoxical, the anomalous, the bizarre, the uncanny – the ever-unsettling mystery of existence – that is responsible for the sovereignty or tyranny of ego over soul.

Here I have introduced a new term – soul – to denote the perspective that exists, imaginatively, in between the staleness of the habitual and the ineffability of the mystery. Jung, in attempting to give a name to this perspective that contrasts with the ego-perspective, spoke of the “transcendent function.” “Active imagination” was enjoined as a means of “dialoguing” with the “inner figures” or archetypal images that serve as the faces presented by the Mystery (of the unconscious). Of course such language and such activities – introduced at a time when positivism still had a strong purchase in most educated minds – sounded like a species of madness itself. Hence, quips like the famous maxim of Karl Kraus: “Psychoanalysis is a disease for which it purports to be the cure.”

An Idea whose Time Has Come? (10/26/14)

We can look back and see that the successful establishment and dissemination of Christianity as a major world religion first required the establishment of the Roman Empire, with its extensive network of roads and its political-economic organization—as well as the use of the Greek koine and Latin language throughout the sprawling realm. Because these crucial mundane factors were in place, the radically un-worldly message of Christianity was able to spread like a redemptive epidemic and to dramatically reorient Western values for about a thousand years.

Have globalization, air travel, 24-hour world news, and the ‘worldwide web’—a culmination of the worldly-materialistic phase that got rolling just prior to the ‘Renaissance’—similarly prepared the ground for yet another spiritual movement that will meaningfully link all human cultures for the first time?

Possibly. One might even go so far as to say ‘probably.’ If the frenetic, ruthlessly competitive predation of the planet’s limited resources continues at its present rate, it won’t be long before a bad situation worsens and exhausting wars and disasters devour humanity. The present course of events and policies must collide with the solid wall that is waiting ahead before a new course can be charted and then followed by the ‘remnants.’ A non-catastrophic scenario, whereby humanity sensibly ‘wakes up’ to its imperiled situation before it’s too late, and voluntarily submits to austerities and relatively draconian measures in order to circumvent that wall, is almost guaranteed not to arise, given the blind determination of the cunning ‘engineers’ who have commandeered the train we’re all on.

Genuine quality (of philosophical thought, of artistic excellence, of moral reasoning and action, of spiritual attainment) is almost invariably produced by human beings that are not boorish, loutish, or representative of ‘mass-mindedness.’ In other words, the coarse ‘mass mind’ (and the collective, quantitative terms and values the masses live by and through) seldom creates or authentically responds to true quality—whether it is understood spiritually, ethically, artistically, or politically.[1] By and large, the architects and exploiters of the present scheme of things know little or nothing of such quality—or, if they do, that mere knowledge is wholly insufficient, on its own, to transform them into courageous, self-sacrificing critics and opponents of the current lowbrow culture. All too often, these delinquent trustees of humanity’s future simply ‘milk’ the system for all it’s worth in order to enhance their own personal wealth, power, pleasure, comfort, etc.

Thus it will, of necessity, typically be a spiritual-philosophical-poetical-political-scientific elite that is responsible for whatever there is of the highest quality and the most enduring cultural value to humanity. It never springs up, as if by magic, out of the mass or from mass-mindedness—any more than sonnets and haiku issue from the mouths of kine and swine. What does all this mean to the ordinary, ‘well-educated’ American or European reader? Alas, it means nothing—or next to nothing.

And yet I will no doubt be denounced as an ‘elitist snob’ for holding such a position—for having bucked my egalitarian indoctrination and finally unearthed the sobering truth about the necessary combination of (fateful) genius and exceptional conditions that is required to produce cultural ideas and works of the highest and noblest rank. Interestingly, those who would dismiss my claim have no difficulty acknowledging the fact that the most precious diamonds are only produced under conditions of excruciating heat and pressure. This is just another instance of how anti-meritocratic, leveling ideals have possessed and deformed the minds of the many—and ‘many of the few,’ at that. But then, materialism (our prevailing metaphysical standpoint) has a natural propensity for leveling, and thereby discrediting, all such qualitative hierarchies—by reducing everything to mere stuff.

I bring up these uncomfortable points not in order to settle a score with naïve idealists (i.e., persons who still entertain untenable notions about the ultimate power of natural human goodness, rational self-restraint, and wisdom), but only to call into question the idea that a spiritual renewal (as it is presently conceived) aims to make life on earth more materially pleasurable and desirable. I ask you, the reader, simply to step back a bit from your busy personal affairs and absorbing commitments for an hour or two—and to look deep within the murky well of your heart and ask yourself: If there is any inherent purpose or higher meaning to human existence, is it likely that it consists in the single-minded pursuit of material goods and pleasures? Can that be all that we are here for?

And if ‘yes’ turns out to be the best or the only answer you can come up with—and you believe that armed competition for these limited goods and pleasures is indeed what our brief and fitful lives are all about—then how are we, as a species, any different from mere beasts, aside from the fact that our greater cleverness has permitted us to carry predation to inconceivable, ultimately self-annihilating lengths? The sky is the limit and enough is never enough. And if this is indeed the way of things—then it follows that life on earth have never been anything but a chamber of horrors for the great majority of human animals who have to struggle incessantly in order merely to survive. And, naturally, if this is indeed the stark and implacable ‘way of things,’ you would be an idiot to slacken off and risk losing your hard-won place or rank in the predatory pack, right? Apparently, a lot hinges on how we answer this question for ourselves—the question of what human life is really all about. Somewhere, deep inside each one of us, the answer we have settled upon is lurking—like a wolf or an angel (or a mixture of both)—behind every one of our thoughts, actions, and decisions. To hear people talk, one would think that philosophy is nothing but an esoteric and feckless pursuit engaged in by eggheads and impractical dreamers. But what could be clearer than the fact that there is nothing so intimately urgent or so far-reaching in its impact upon our lives as the answers we have consciously or unconsciously settled upon—answers, that is, to a handful of basic ethical questions, only one of which I have raised here.

The general indifference and aversion to philosophy seems merely to be an indication that most of us are dimly aware of just how disturbing and disruptive its probing questions are. We are frightened by these questions because we half-consciously recognize their power—once they’ve gotten under our skin and infected our minds—to dissolve all the treasured poppycock, sentimentality, and cant upon which our actual lives are solidly erected. And how many of us are ever prepared to be plunged into the sea of uncertainty and insecurity that a few well-aimed questions will unleash within us?

 

[1] My claim has nothing to do with one’s socio-economic status, origins, or formal education. Individuals who are both responsive to quality and capable of producing works, deeds, and thoughts of superior quality are inwardly compelled to find what they require from their environment—‘by hook or by crook’—in order to realize their ‘qualitative’ potentials. Perhaps in the majority of cases, it is the privations—the lack of educational, monetary, social, and other forms of SUPPORT—that call forth and bring fully to life the potentials for excellence that have been innate in these exceptional souls—from the start.

Wholeness and Time (8/15/17)

If I’m on the right track and supposing that “called or not, the Gods are present,” then the quest for wholeness – or the full unfoldment of the personality – may be somewhat less dependent upon actual or manifest cultural-historical conditions than is commonly assumed. How do I arrive at this view?

In the field of time, or history, the eternal archetypal drama must perforce be enacted in narrative form, as a kind of complex story-line. As a sequence of events, one episode, mood, or character conflict/resolution comes into prominence after another as the archetypes – like the colored bits of glass in the kaleidoscope – continually move into and out of new configurations. The primordial archetypal factors – like the colored chips in the kaleidoscope or the Greek Gods and Goddesses of Olympus – retain their distinctive characters, but the enacted dramas and kaleidoscopic permutations emphasize this and now that mythic situation, color scheme, mood, and set of opportunities/obstacles.

With these helpful analogies in mind, let us return to our original question about the quest for psychological wholeness within the field of space-time – or the present cultural-historical context. Out here on the surface of mundane experience – the flat screen, as it were, upon which the eternal (timeless) archetypal drama is continually being projected – we are granted only a partial, slit-like vision of the whole, since certain aspects are always being emphasized at the expense of others. Thus, our actual birth in space-time – say in prerevolutionary France or postwar America – inserts or embeds us in a particular scene or worldview within a very long play or, if we get stuck, into one frame of a motion picture. If perchance we allow ourselves to become too comfortably adapted or attached to that particular scene or frozen movie frame, all our little psychic tendrils groping for wholeness will gradually wither and die. To become fully invested in and stubbornly attached to one’s “day and age” – one’s particular cultural-historical setting – is to become a conscripted servant or slave to those particular limited terms, conditions, and role requirements. This would seem to be a rough description, now as ever, of upwards of 95% of humanity.

If we are denied the freedom to literally teleport or catapult ourselves into earlier or future eras and cultures – in our quest for an experience of the full drama underway in space-time via archetypal projection through humanity – we are not forcibly prevented from vicariously experiencing other “scenes,” stages, worldviews, aeons, etc., imaginally.

It will be apparent, then, to some readers that our incremental advances towards psychological wholeness will be dependent in large part upon our ability to loosen up the mental straitjackets and manacles that confine us to our limited/limiting scene – our day and age, our inherited worldview – so that we may regard our situation from fresh and different perspectives. Thus we are continually extricating ourselves from Plato’s cave, striving to get a glimpse or two of the drama as a whole – from start to restart, from soup to nuts! There can be no vision quest that is more comprehensive or demanding.

In my kaleidoscope analogy, a reversion or archetypal reduction process corresponds with attending primarily to the turning, reconfiguring colored ships that are the source of all the particular images appearing at the far end of the kaleidoscope through the peephole. Practically speaking, this is achieved by immersing ourselves in ongoing researches into mythology, history, comparative religion, philosophy, the visual arts, world literature, depth psychology, and other disciplines in and by means of which we are granted glimpses of these archetypal figures and motifs.

There are two points I want to get across here: 1.) The development of the individual towards wholeness is significantly but by no means exclusively dependent upon the prevailing cultural opportunities, collective preoccupations, and other outer factors – but has as much or more to do with the inner work involved in germinating those seed-potentials (for wholeness) within the psyche and tending to their growth. 2.) The distinctive seed-potentials, along with the peculiar cultural-political soil into which we are born, do not – by themselves – make us into conscious, whole personalities. Together they comprise the “original state” or “prima materia” with which we began our artful work.

If we look, say, at a hundred persons who receive the same splendid formal education and upbringing or thousand persons born with the same balanced, auspicious horoscope, we will find that perhaps one or two from both groups will make extraordinary use of these exceptional, given conditions, while the majority will have un-exceptional success. And conversely, a minority among those born into palpably adverse conditions will – precisely in their creative/heroic response to these hurdles and adversities – be spurred on to achievements that would otherwise lie beyond their grasp. What is being singled out for emphasis, of course, is the role played by our individual effort, imagination, and ingenuity in the alchemical-transformative process we are engaged in here.

Mere mimesis – or adaptive inculcation and imitation of given, prevalent cultural forms, values, and directives –serves only as a point of departure for the individuation process. If we get stuck there, the process of inner growth and differentiation comes to a halt. Naturally, such compliant and obedient adaptation and conscription into the prevalent system is always being encouraged by those who profit (materially, politically, socially, etc.) from such systems and schemes. As compliant servants – say, to an unscrupulous, profit-driven corporation or a reactionary political party – we may “gain the world and lose our souls.”

That being said, unless we initially adapt to and gain an “insider” understanding, as it were, of the scheme, system, or “day and age” into which fate has dropped us, we will thereafter be hampered in our most strenuous efforts to move beyond this preliminary level of acculturation. The more clearly and thoroughly we see and understand our limited and limiting beginnings – i.e., our peculiar insertion point into time-space – the greater will be our success, later, when it becomes necessary to push off from that first platform into terra incognita. If our understanding of our early formation and stamping is dim and sketchy, our attempts, later, to differentiate our consciousness from these horizons will be correspondingly sketchy and ineffectual. The platform against which we push will feel mushy and flimsy, giving way under our feet.

Gnosis and Projection (9/11/12)

The supremely triumphant effort of Irenaeus to stamp out Gnosticism, back in the second century—in his Against Heresies—displays a politically motivated, this-worldly stance that has been characteristic of Western Christianity ever since. Elaine Pagels has observed that, unlike Islam, Judaism, Coptic Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, Western Christianity lacks an esoteric branch or a generally recognized mystical tradition. This lamentable lack or gap within Christendom is due in large part, of course, to the relentless campaign of the Church Fathers (and their heirs up to the present day) to sniff out and eradicate all forms of imaginative or spiritually innovative alternatives to canonical dogma. Such alternatives, when they would arise, were categorically regarded as heresy and they were often punishable by excommunication or burning at the stake.

The Gnostics, in contrast to orthodox Christianity, were startlingly original, radically imaginative, deeply suspicious of ‘natural man,’ and thoroughly antinomian. They were a big, bracing breath (pneuma) of fresh, chilly air. In attaching a generally negative value to mundane affairs, to physical nature, to the ‘official’ God of this (sensually apprehensible) world, and to merely literal words and dogmatic concepts, the Gnostics posed a potentially subversive threat to the Church as a political and doctrinal institution. Perhaps if the Gnostics had been left alone, they would have fizzled out on their own—or perhaps they would have found a way to maintain their unorthodox values and perspectives while shielding themselves from persecution and misunderstanding by the worldly Church (as the Sufis have found a haven as a kind of esoteric branch of Islam).

Plato—according to Leo Strauss and Laurence Lampert—attempted to devise and to establish such a haven for philosophers. If Strauss was right, Plato employed his writings as a means of making philosophy tolerable to ‘the city’ and attractive to that select few who are potential candidates for the life of philosophical enquiry. (By ‘the city’ we mean ordinary society with its typically power-driven, conventionally religious, acquisitive, anti-philosophical tendencies). Plato’s marvelous writings did not aim so much to turn the reader into a philosopher, although they strove to pique his/her interest in philosophy as a way of life—as embodied in the career of Socrates, the fascinating central figure in most of Plato’s dialogues. It seems that one is born a potential gnostic or potential philosopher, or one is not—just as one is born a great poet or composer, or one is not. In order to actualize these potentials—which, again, do not seem to be conspicuously present in the majority of human beings, now or ever—a special form of education by a special kind of teacher seems to be required. In the course of becoming a gnostic, a genuine philosopher, a mystic, or a visionary, it is fair to say that the world (as we first come to know it and as it is presented to us by our parents, teachers, and peers) is turned inside out.

In order to survive this inversion of values and established norms—and avoid going insane or becoming swallowed up once and for all by an inescapable tar pit of pessimism and hopelessness—the candidate for initiation must be exceptionally strong (spiritually), exceptionally humble (in terms of personal ego desires and ambitions), and exceptionally imaginative/subtle (in terms of soul). Moreover, without an exceptional degree of compassion (for all beleaguered parties in the wars for domination that typify life among humans), there is a real danger that the initiate will have his insides eaten out by anger and his will snuffed out by exasperation. Such poise and compassion can be achieved and sustained only by the practice of detachment and cultivated neutrality towards the various contending forces and groups. Injustice—when it is recognized—excites anger in the breast of the ‘good’ man or woman. Where it is unacknowledged, there is apathy, confusion, and (oftentimes) unconscious complicity with the agents of injustice. The initiate understands that the only way injustice can be eliminated from human affairs is through a transformation of human consciousness—and this is not likely to happen on a grand scale anytime soon. It happens, when it does, one person at a time.

In having experienced the world being ‘turned inside out,’ however, the initiate’s psychological bearings have undergone a stunning reorientation. As a consequence of this stupendous inversion, a significant part of the initiate’s personality has, in effect, ‘died’ to the world. The ‘old,’ inverted or subverted world seems no longer to exert its formerly invincible spell. The initiate has partially seen through that world into the core behind its mask. What this means, psychologically, is that he has recognized that the value and meaning normally attributed to events, persons, objects, and public ideas is unconsciously projected by men and women everywhere and at all times. Because it is understood that it is the unconscious process of projection that underlies (and underwrites) the value and meaning that appear ‘out there’ in the world, it is also simultaneously understood that by getting control over our projections, we loosen the world’s sticky grip upon us.

Let’s begin with a rather obvious example of projection. If we learn that the chief reason an acquaintance of ours is averse to a particular political figure—or to an entire nation, for that matter—is because he is projecting prejudices and falsehoods that have been deliberately served up to him by the news media, then we are in a position to raise important questions about ‘orchestrated’ projections with him. We may, for example, begin to ask questions like ‘Is the media presenting a fair and comprehensive picture of the politician or nation, or is it distorted in a big way?’ ‘Who owns and controls the media and why might these interested parties want you and me and millions of others to dislike the political figure or this foreign nation?’ This is just an elementary example—one that most intelligent and/or honest persons can immediately appreciate—but there are far subtler and, therefore, far more powerfully determining prejudices and valuations that we unconsciously project into ‘the world’ with its entire cast of characters and contents.

The initiate has learned that the only truly effective way to make these projections conscious is by momentarily interrupting the process of projection itself—and stepping back from these projected values and half-baked ideas to the extent that he can. The effect of this sort of reflection—of arresting our projected assumptions and valuations and subjecting them to careful analysis—is precisely what enables us to ‘turn the world inside out.’ What we are doing, of course, is learning about the subtle and generally unconscious process by which the world—any ‘world’—is generated and kept more or less intact by the simultaneous, interrelated projections of all our fellow humans.

The quest for spiritual freedom is fundamentally bound up with the problems of projection. If we would be free, we must first make conscious our projections, for it is these projections that—taken all together—provide structure and the specific contents or furniture of our world. Into this structure and into these contents our psychic and physical energy is pumped as gasoline is pumped into the tank of our automobile—gasoline that fuels the combustion that drives the motor, propelling us down the road. And it goes without saying that unless and until we make a projection conscious, we are in no position to manage it (to raise serious questions about its right to be part of our ‘world-forming’—and ‘world in-forming’—internal apparatus) or to dismantle it. As soon as we begin to realize that the outer events, implements, possessions, and persons depend pretty much entirely upon this projected value and meaning for their perceived significance to us (though not their existence), then it is a short step to the rather sweeping realization that the ‘world’ itself as a meaningful cosmos—which is made up of the totality of these unconscious projections—‘hangs upon the slender thread of the human psyche,’ as Jung put it in one of his grimmer moments.

Now, we eventually come to see that spiritual release or liberation really consists in release from thralldom to limited versions of ‘the world’ as it has been constituted by these unconscious projections. There is, then, no authentic liberation from these limited notions of reality so long as we believe in the independent, self-standing reality of that world—i.e., that our psyches make no essential contribution to world-making. We must first recognize the dependency of the world upon the psyche—not our personal psyches, but the psyche as a whole, of which the personal unconscious is but a tiny segment. All efforts, therefore, to ‘fix’ our spiritual dilemma by trying to modify concrete conditions and circumstances in the outer world are, from one angle, misguided—backwards—since they are founded upon the erroneous assumption that our imprisonment and the way of our release are essentially to be found in the world.

Dozens of times I have employed this analogy (traceable, of course, back to Plato’s peerless allegory of the cave, found in Bk.VII of the Republic) of ordinary human affairs and doings as an elaborate, ongoing stage play. The initiate who suffers this momentous about-face breaks free—more or less completely—from his identification with various roles upon that stage. He dis-identifies with his stage personality—simultaneously acquiring the capacity to see through the masks and the scripted roles of everyone around him. The shock and disorientation occasioned by this revelatory psychic experience can mean little or nothing to those who have not experienced this fateful unmasking, for what it reveals is the enormous—nay, the incalculable—extent to which all of us are slaves to the stage, unconscious conscripts in a generally tragic (or farcical, or trivial, or absurd, or what have you!) drama that only a tiny minority of us ever truly and completely see through, let alone, escape from. And, as I have also observed many times before, the initial reward experienced by the newly liberated initiate is an utter and seemingly irremediable sense of his aloneness in having stepped of that stage! For let it be clear: it is not as if, in stepping off the accursed stage of blinkered sleepwalkers mouthing their unoriginal lines and pursuing their pre-plotted courses, he is suddenly welcomed and embraced by throngs of former escapees waiting just offstage—waiting to celebrate his anomalous and semi-miraculous success in breaking the almost invincible spell of ‘the world.’

In fact, if there is any celebrating at all, it occurs within the privacy of his own breast. He may be warmed by the sense of kinship he feels with that select number of (mostly) long-dead unveilers of the secret that always remains hidden from mere believers. I mean, of course, believers in the pageantry and pomp of the world as it presents itself. Men as different as the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Valentinus, and Jung all speak as one in their warning against believing in the world as it is predigested and pre-interpreted for us by our early environment. All of them were outstanding un-believers, mis-trusters, and reflective deconstructors of the dominant projections that held up the inflated bubble-worlds into which they were born.

On Individuality (4/2/12)

There is some part of my nature that has always displayed a mysterious reluctance to treat my family members—and my two sons—with more tender regard than I would a non-family person, just because they are my kin. Of course I am not altogether immune to those instinctive and societal promptings to show favoritism towards family members. Nevertheless, for some time now, the degree of concern and warmth that I feel for my immediate family members has not been decided principally by the fact that they are blood relations. Rather, the quality of my regard for them is influenced chiefly by the sort of natural ‘chemistry’ I feel for each one of them. Their actual merits and individual qualities…how much they give of themselves to life and to those around them…their sense of justice and their honesty with themselves and with others—these and other factors play a part in shaping my regard for them, just as these factors shape and influence my regard for persons to whom I am not related by blood and shared history. In this way, I seem to differ from many persons, the quality and depth of whose relationships with blood ties appears to be determined to a much larger extent by these collectively inherited—one might almost say archetypal—structures. This peculiarity of mine has its pluses and its minuses, its benefits and its drawbacks.

My partial liberation from these inherited collective structures (and the conventionally-dictated obligations that accompany them) has developed slowly and gradually over the years, though I strongly suspect that I entered the world already blessed (or cursed) with the seeds of ‘impersonality’ that were germinated under my peculiar biographical circumstances. I would be reluctant to claim that all persons are born with this predisposition towards impersonality, along with the greater degree of immunity from collective or ‘herd’ instincts that allows such impersonality to grow and develop in the soul. But I was, and it has always inwardly set me somewhat apart from most persons I’ve known, read about, or seen on TV. In other words, my sense of being a peculiar sort of creature has not been foisted onto me primarily by others, or entirely because of the way they have treated me. It is innate and, so far as I can tell, it is no more separable from my ‘core being’ than my DNA or my brain are from my body.

Does this preclude the possibility of my ever truly experiencing an enduring and completely unconditional heart-and-soul bond with another human being—blood relation or otherwise? Such a complete and utter marriage of hearts and souls would require the suspension or transcendence of this seemingly intractable seed of individuality—or uniqueness—would it not? Truth be told, it has often proven to be a problematic factor in my relations with others, at least when things move beyond the persona level—whether they acknowledged it or not.

Now, as I see it, genuine individuals (who will probably always constitute a small minority—if only because of the solitary inner work, leisure time, and freedom from ordinary distractions, preoccupations, and burdens that seem to be required for the cultivation of this individuality) are not engaged in some secret conspiracy or relentless campaign against members of the collective. But those persons who, either knowingly or unknowingly, have suppressed and betrayed their ‘weirdness’—their fragile and delicate seeds of genuine individuality—in order to conform with the herd, or the collective, in exchange for its conditional protections and its membership benefits—such persons are necessarily engaged in guerrilla warfare against genuine individuals—and vice versa. That ‘weirdness’ that I just confessed to about myself—my innate resistances to treating my blood ties and my own sons with greater (or lesser) regard than I would extend to someone I’m not related to by blood—might alone be enough to win the scorn and hostility of perfect strangers. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of my weirdness!

Because the exceedingly collective person tends to be disturbed by, or disparaging of, anything ‘weird’ or truly individual about him- or her-self, the more I open up to my own weirdness and my own elusive individuality, the more I am induced from within to conceal that individuality from those around me—or, at least, to underplay it. A goodly number of my friends and old acquaintances don’t really know what to make of my peculiar ideas—when they bother to read them at all, so far as I can tell. Their very different lifestyle choices and priorities make it plainly evident that our paths began to diverge quite some time ago. I am a tolerably affable enigma to them, just as their own precious (but largely buried and repressed) strangeness is perplexing to them. But I am also (sometimes) an ambivalent reminder that such stubborn and lonely individual consciousness has not been completely annulled in the otherwise anti-individual matrix of contemporary collective consciousness. I said ‘ambivalent’ because the faint voice of authentic consciousness is always as irksome and unnerving in its impact upon the herd-like elements of the responding psyche as it is reinforcing and inspiring to the repressed individual buried deep beneath the thick, muffling layers of white noise that constitute collective consciousness.

But surely such a claim must sound preposterous to many ears—the claim that authentically individual consciousness is inherently ‘disturbing’ and even ‘frightening’ to most persons. And it must sound preposterous whether or not these persons happen to have been ancient Athenians, or Hebrews in old Jerusalem, or contemporary Americans. For most persons, individuality is professed to be a prized quality, right? Cookie-cutter replicas of the ‘same old, same old’ are boring and put us to sleep, right? But perhaps we need to make an important distinction between ‘novelty,’ on the one hand, and genuine individuality, on the other. Or between a fresh approach to the same old themes, patterns, and routines—and an altogether radical or revolutionary re-visioning of everything.

True individuality of consciousness is not achieved by a ‘face-lift’ intended to cosmetically enhance the ordinary, to remove its crow’s feet and pockmarks to make it easier to gaze upon. Rather, individual consciousness—like a scalpel or a corrosive acid—slices or burns away the smiling or scowling, comely or homely face altogether. It exposes all the musculature, nerve endings, oozing veins and capillaries behind the mask of ordinary life and consciousness. Such tepid life, such skin-deep consciousness, is thereby shown its true face in the unforgiving but more revealing mirror of a deeper consciousness, a starker life. Rare is the soul, indeed, that can withstand such honest reflections without flinching—without turning tail and fleeing back into the warm, soft, milky bosom of family and friends. Better to heroically slaughter a hundred ‘official’ enemies on authorized battlefields than to FACE MY TRUE FACE in the mirror of lonely, individual consciousness! Only then do I step off the stage and stand alone before the temporal spectacle—out of the river of programmed human affairs—out of the narrative in which I have been embedded for as long as I can remember. If I can retain my sanity, my compassion, and my sense of humor after repeated encounters with scalpel and acid, I may qualify and prove myself as a candidate for initiation—initiation into authentic individuality.

Could it be true that this individuality has less to do with our egos than many of us suppose? Could it be true that the ego is to the deeper individuality what the persona is to the ego? A kind of mask, trained servant, or instrument? An ambassador or envoy, if you like, from an altogether different plane of consciousness—from which perspective concrete, literal earth-events are no more than coagulated fictions or shadows on the wall of Plato’s allegory of the cave?

But for whom would any of this make familiar sense? Unless and until such accounts and descriptions are drunk down like cool water after a long desert journey—they are perhaps not fit to be imbibed. Could it be that we are not ready to drink from this cup until we are prepared to stand completely alone with no more than one remote (angelic) witness?

Scalpels and corrosive acids! These are certainly violent metaphors for the agents or tools required for this job of meeting our true, unique selves! But to what do such melodramatic ‘horror movie’ images refer? The scalpel is the knife edge of discrimination that assists us in differentiating the scripted from the authentic ‘parts’ that we act out; the pre-established and prescribed factors that are received from our cultural and educational environments, on the one hand, and those deeper psychic factors that arise spontaneously from within, on the other. The acid is the fiery solvent that breaks down this ‘composite’ of intrinsic and extrinsic factors into elements that can be separated and sorted out. This whole process of discrimination, conscious differentiation, and chemical transformation may be called analysis in the full and proper sense. When we emerge from such an analysis, we are not the same as we were before we entered. We are more and we are a good deal less. What has changed most dramatically is our inner relationship to our ‘vehicles.’ We are no longer simply identified with our bodies, feelings, and thoughts. They are now our instruments—our less than perfect means of interacting with a world that has also been transformed (in our consciousness of it) from a literal into a symbolic field of activity.

 

Glimpses (6/27/13)

That drive to discover and then to abide in some inviolable ‘palace of truth’—a drive that certainly had its way with my mind and soul for many years—was gradually whittled down to a trickle of intermittent ejaculations after my grudging recognition that such a palace appears only in fairy tales, but not in reality, or at least not in the reality I have precariously and gradually come to inhabit. And when the target of one’s restless yearnings is seen to be a phantasm or, worse, an elaborate deception willed into (fictional) existence out of the yearning itself, then honesty counsels us to temper rather than inflame and nurture that drive.

It was by such a circuitous course that I arrived at a more pluralistic—or polytheistic—view of that most elusive of mirages, the Truth. At bottom, it may very well be ‘true’ that eventually all roads lead to some privileged center that is synonymous with Truth (deserving of a capital T) in some thoroughly comprehensive or complete sense. But, in all honesty, from where I am presently situated on my journey, my understanding is infused more with the sense of polycentricity, variety, and complexity than with unity, simplicity, or oneness. I am not saying that oneness is not implied, but as of now, such implied, ultimate unity registers far more faintly to my mind than the image of multiple inner galaxies, each with its own abundant supply of distinctive solar systems, composed, in turn, of various planets—all of which dwarf in size and complexity the individual creatures (or features) found thereupon.

I have spontaneously employed a cosmic analogy to express my point here. In the enormity of its scale, this cosmic image underscores the puniness and the restrictedness of the individual human ego’s field of vision, or range of experience. Always keeping this image of the puniness and restrictedness of the ego’s range of experience clearly in mind helps me to maintain my salutary mistrust of convenient ‘unitary models’ and all simple, self-consistent schemes. As far as I can see, all such models and schemes ultimately do more to hamper and slacken my thinking (and the questioning behind such thinking) than to invigorate and push that thought as far as it can go. It may be different for other thinkers, but for this one, the seductions of oneness and of all-embracing unity are a bit like the pull of a so-called ‘mother-complex’—a hankering to return to mother’s breast—or even to climb back up into her warm and watery belly. Of course, we could just as easily invoke the ‘father complex’ here, insofar as it stands for the urge to submit, in complete, selfless obedience, to the will of the All-Seeing Nobodaddy. At any event, nothing so successfully collapses or ‘shorts’ the electrical tension that is the sine qua non for soaring (or deep-delving) thought than such pat unities and crude simplifications.

I would suggest that a glimpse of authentic unity is possible only after we have courageously weathered and withstood this profound electrical tension—and emerged, as it were, on the other side of the charged field. Note that such glimpses are fleeting—even if the ‘mark’ they leave behind is as indelible as a tattoo. If I may be permitted to employ an erotic metaphor, such a ‘mark’ is like the memory of a supremely satisfying consummation of love with an ardently pursued partner—after many struggles and frustrations have been endured.

By way of contrast, the crude and spurious unities resorted to by the impatient, the careless, the shallow, and the negligent are like a doorbell or telephone ringing just as we are about to achieve our ‘climax.’ They ruin everything!