Does Mysticism Give Insight?

Russell, Bernard. (1961). Mysticism. Religion and Science. Oxford university press. Copyright © 2005 Scepsis.ru

In order to see how we could test the assertion that yoga [and other forms of mysticism] gives insight, let us artificially simplify this assertion. Let us suppose that a number of people assure us that if, for a certain time, we breathe in a certain way, we shall become convinced that time is unreal. Let us go further, and suppose that, having tried their recipe, we have ourselves experienced a state of mind such as they describe. Bu t now, having returned to our normal mode of respiration, we are not quite sure whether the vision was to be believed. How shall we investigate this question?

First of all, what can be meant by saying that time is unreal? If we really meant what we say, we must mean that such statements as "this is before that" are mere empty noise, like "twas brillig." If we suppose anything less than this - as, for example, that there is a relation between events which puts them in the same order s the relation of earlier and later, but that it is a different relation - we shall not have made any assertion that makes any real change in our outlook. It will be merely like supposing that the Iliad was not written by Homer, but by another man of the same name. We have to suppose that there are no "events" at all; there must be only the one vast whole of the universe, embracing whatever is real in the misleading appearance of a temporal procession. There must be nothing in reality corresponding to the apparent distinction between earlier and later events. To say that we are born, and then grow, and then die, must be just as false as to say that we die, then grow small, and finally are born. The truth of what seems an individual life is merely the illusory isolation of one element in the timeless and indivisible being of the universe. There is no distinction between improvement and deterioration, no difference between sorrows that end in happiness and happiness that ends in sorrow. If you find a corpse with a dagger in it, it makes no difference whether the man died of the wound or the dagger was plunged in after death. Such a view, if true, puts an end, not only to science, but to prudence, hope, and effort; it is incompatible with worldly wisdom, and - what is more important to religion - with morality.

Most mystics, of course, do not accept these conclusions in their entirety, but they urge doctrines from which these conclusions inevitably follow. Thus Dean Inge rejects the kind of religion that appeals to evolution, because it lays too much stress upon a temporal process. "There is no law of progress, and there is no universal progress," he says. And again: "The doctrine of automatic and universal progress, the lay religion of many Victorians, labours under the disadvantage of being almost the only philosophical theory which can be definitely disproved." On this matter, which I shall discuss at a later stage, I find myself in agreement with the Dean, for whom, on many grounds, I have a very high respect. But he naturally does not draw from his premisses all the inferences which seem to me to be warranted.

It is important not to caricature the doctrine of mysticism, in which there is, I think, a core of wisdom. Let us see how it seeks to avoid the extreme consequences which seem to follow from the denial of time.

The philosophy based on mysticism has a great tradition, from Parmenides to Hegel. Parmenides says: "What is, is uncreated and indestructible; for it is complete, immovable, and without end. Nor was it ever, nor will it be; for now it is, all at once, a continuous one."[2] He introduced into metaphysics the distinction between reality and appearance, or the way of truth and the way of opinion, as he calls them. It is clear that whoever denies the reality of time must introduce some such distinction, since obviously the world appears to be in time. It is also clear that, if everyday experience is not to be wholly illusory, there must be some relation between appearance and the reality behind it. It is at this point, however, that the greatest difficulties arise: if the relation between appearance and reality is made too intimate, all the unpleasant features of appearance will have their unpleasant counterparts in reality, while if the relation is made too remote, we shall be unable to make inferences from the character of appearance to that of reality, and reality will be left a vague Unknowable, as with Herbert Spencer. For Christians, there is the related difficulty of avoiding pantheism: if the world is only apparent, God created nothing, and the reality corresponding to the world is a part of God; but if the world is in any degree real and distinct from God, we abandon the wholeness of everything, which is an essential doctrine of mysticism, and we are compelled to suppose that, in so far as the world is real, the evil which it contains is also real. Such difficulties make thorough-going mysticism very difficult for an orthodox Christian. As the Bishop of Birmingham says: "All forms of pantheism … as it seems to me, must be rejected because, if man is actually a part of God, the evil in man is also in God."

All this time, I have been supposing that we are a jury, listening to the testimony of the mystics, and trying to decide whether to accept or reject it. If, when they deny the reality of the world of sense, we took them to mean "reality" in the ordinary sense of law-courts, we should have no hesitation in rejecting what they say, since we would find that it runs counter to all other testimony, and even to their own in their mundane moments. We must therefore look for some other sense. I believe that, when the mystics contrast "reality" with "appearance," the word "reality" has not a logical, but an emotional, significance: it means what is, in some sense, important. When it is said that time is "unreal," what should be said is that, in some sense and on some occasions, it is important to conceive the universe as a whole, as the Creator, if He existed, must have conceived it in deciding to create it. When so conceived, all process is within one completed whole; past, present, and future, all exist, in some sense, together, and the present does not have that pre-eminent reality which it has to our usual ways of apprehending the world. It this interpretation is accepted, mysticism expresses an emotion, not a fact; it does not assert anything, and therefore can be neither confirmed nor contradicted by science. The fact that mystics do make assertions is owing to their inability to separate emotional importance from scientific validity. It is, of course, not to be expected that they will accept this view, but it is the only one, so far as I can see, which, while admitting something of their claim, is not repugnant to the scientific intelligence.

The certainty and partial unanimity of mystics is no conclusive reason for accepting their testimony on a matter of fact. The man of science, when he wishes others to see what he has seen, arranges his microscope or telescope; that is to say, he makes changes in the external world, but demands of the observer only normal eyesight. The mystic, on the other hand, demands changes in the observer, by fasting, by breathing exercises, and by a careful abstention from external observation. (Some object to such discipline, and think that the mystic illumination cannot be artificially achieved; from a scientific point of view, this makes their case more difficult to test than that of those who rely on yoga. But nearly all agree that fasting and an ascetic life are helpful.) We all know that opium, hashish, and alcohol produce certain effects on the observer, but as we do not think these effects admirable we take no account of them in our theory of the universe. They may even, sometimes, reveal fragments of truth; but we do not regard them as sources of general wisdom. The drunkard who sees snakes does not imagine, afterwards, that he has had a revelation of a reality hidden from others, though some not wholly dissimilar belief must have given rise to the worship of Bacchus. In our own day, as William James related,[3] there have been people who considered that the intoxication produced by laughing-gas revealed truths which are hidden at normal times. From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes. Each is in an abnormal physical condition, and therefore has abnormal perceptions. Normal perceptions, since they have to be useful in the struggle for life, must have some correspondence with fact; but in abnormal perceptions there is no reason to expect such correspondence, and their testimony, therefore, cannot outweigh that of normal perception.

The mystic emotion, if it is freed from unwarranted beliefs, and not so overwhelming as to remove a man wholly from the ordinary business of life, may give something of very great value - the same kind of thing, though in a heightened form, that is given by contemplation. Breadth and calm and profundity may all have their source in this emotion, in which, for the moment, all self-centred desire is dead, and the mind becomes a mirror for the vastness of the universe. Those who have had this experience, and believe it to be bound up unavoidably with assertions about the nature of the universe, naturally cling to these assertions. I believe myself that the assertions are inessential, and that there is no reason to believe them true. I cannot admit any method of arriving at truth except that of science, but in the realm of the emotions I do not deny the value of the experiences which have given rise to religion. Through association with false beliefs, they have led to much evil as well as good; freed from this association, it may be hoped that the good alone will remain.

Full Article &Source: http://scepsis.ru/eng/articles/id_4.php

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2. Quoted from Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, p. 199.

3. See his Varieties of Religious Experience.

The Liberating Death of Hope in a God-forsaken City

We're the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. – Fight Club

… What is our place and purpose in the universe? How did we arrive at something rather than nothing? Where are we heading? These are questions that lay at the center of every spiritual tradition. Since the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, Copernicus’s heliocentric model has shifted the way we think about our spatial orientation in the universe. Our feelings of centeredness and self importance have been pulled out from under us; only to leave the cold concrete floor of Modernity. Lyotard’s (1979) description of a postmodern era is partly characterized by skepticism toward meta-narratives. This skepticism toward all-encompassing narrative knowledge shifts our view of the universe away from a sense of centeredness, yet again. The egocentric perception of ourselves is threatened when we realize grand theories of a benevolent omnipotent creator fail to recognize the disorder and chaos within a vast universe. Our sense of feeling lost increases with the realization that the ‘True’ teleological value of the universe may never be uncovered. It is in this era, the wayward wanderer, lost in this eternal moment, must fight the great spiritual war. Constructed mental purgatories of dualistic thinking must be dissolved by letting go of hope and replacing it with will, replacing transcendence with imminence, and replacing nostalgia and salvation with presence. Without this shift in consciousness the great depression of our lives will prevail.

The Modern era of the West can be characterized by the centeredness of the individual and preoccupation with reason in a world made for the purposes of humans (Taylor, 1984). The idea of a sovereign God has been replaced with the sovereign self. This dualistic Master Slave relationship between the sacred and the profane has not been subverted, but rather inverted (Taylor, 1984). In this way, we remain slaves to our limited consciousness which continually tries to acquire a self through the acquisition of objects, while putting up walls of segregation from those who pose a threat to the ‘self’. Rampant capitalism reflects this shift toward the centered subject. Weber’s (1959) Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism, illustrates the shift in religious discourse toward individualization, personal autonomy, the use of material gain as the source of salvation in what he describes as the “protestant ethic”. Many people now find themselves seeking refuge from this hurricane of economic preoccupation. The problem occurs when one realizes there is no place to turn in this illusion of a society, where the sacredness of the church itself is under threat. Before the rise of modernism the crucifix on top the church steeple was the highest point in the city and therefore representing the power of the divine (Levitch, 2002). Compare this to the high-modernist sky-scraper which towers above the grid plan representing the power of capital. Miller (1991) begs the question:

And where is there room for God in the city? Though it is impossible to tell whether the great cities have been built because God has disappeared, in any case the two go together. Life in the city is the way in which men have experienced directly what it means to live without God in the world.

The classic notion of “centeredness” is turned upside-down when the former center, God, is replaced with humanity (Taylor, 1984). Many world religions once considered direct experiences of the divine most sacred. This often consisted of orgiastic drug induced states of ecstasy (Weber, 1920). Rationalist influenced Christianity broke connection to these direct experiences, and maintained social stratification through its focus on hierarchy and sacrament. (Weber, 1920). This function of the church mirrors the economic sphere since it strives to maximize capital. Spiritual capital becomes the copyright commodity of the church: violators are prosecuted. The church capitalizes on this sense of lack: lack of purity, lack of wholeness, and ultimately the lack of God in the everyday experience of the city.

With the transition from Medieval symbolism of analogical participation, toward modern poetic symbolism of reference at a distance, the image of God had largely shifted from imminence toward distant transcendence by the 18^th century (Miller, 1991). The modern symbols binding humans to God leaves humanity disconnected, isolated, and separate from God and the world itself. Miller (1991) calls this disconnect “spiritual poverty”. This alienation of spirit mirrors Marx’s (1964) notion the alienation in the workplace. This impoverished subject is left with a void that must be filled by consumption and through acquisition of objects (Taylor, 1984). This filling of the hole is an attempt to make the subject whole in order to produce a temporary measure of euphoria. This preoccupation with the commodity, the modern version of orgiastic ritual, takes the place of the divine. The commodity becomes a fetish and takes on a transcendent quality in the minds of the consumer (Marx, 1990). Furthermore, the commodity works within the modern economic system not only to keep the subject alienated from itself and the producer, but also works to keep the religious institutions full of longing followers seeking grace.

The idea of finite linear history, in the Christian sense, keeps the subject nostalgic for what has been, and looking forward to what has yet to come. Beginning... middle… end… between the ‘tick’ of Genesis and the ‘tock’ of the apocalypse, the history of the west runs its course” (Taylor, 1964). This anticipatory nostalgic state can be called the “unhappy consciousness” (Taylor, 1984). Satisfaction in this state is constantly delayed since the past and the future can never be the present. Comte-Sponville (2007) describes this same phenomenon as “cheerful despair”. He explains this state of despair as the following:

“You can hope only for what you do not have. Thus, to hope for happiness is to lack it. When you have it, on the other hand, what remains to be hoped for? For it to last? That would mean fearing its cessation, and as soon as you do that, you start feeling it dissolve into anxiety… with or without God – the hope for tomorrows happiness prevents you from experiencing today’s. (Comte-Sponville, 2007).

The unhappy subject becomes immersed in the anxiety laden consciousness of the perceived imperfection of what is, against the idealized, what ought to be. (Taylor, 1984). The lack of fulfillment leads to a sense of guilt and desire to revolt against the self. This existential dilemma is the inability of the I to live with the self. This is often expressed by the subject uttering, “I can’t live with myself”. Viewing this dilemma in light of Sartre’s (1943) concept of “bad faith”, the relationship of the I to the self can be imaginary and self-deceiving. The ‘sinner’ must realize that deceiving oneself with this identity results in unnecessary self-inflicted guilt. In this sense, hell is merely a self inflicted state of mind constructed by the Church and internalized by the individual. Rather than hoping for better days, the individual must actively participate in the eternal moment through the use of one’s will. Hope is the passive version of will, since willing something to occur requires one to take action (Comte-Sponville, 2007).

The Modern era can also be characterized by the rise of humanistic atheism. For the humanistic atheist, traditional values are turned upside in the attempt to convert “lovers of god” into “lovers of man”. This worship of reason is not sufficient since it does not question the function of truth, and the value of value (Taylor, 1943). The same insufficient ontological proof which is used in reference to the existence of God, is insufficient in proving that truth is the product of reason. This kind of proof is the atheistic humanist inverse of nothing more than an empty tautology (Marx, 1975). With the death of God, comes the death of the self. For the modern humanistic atheist, nihilism becomes the crucifixion of selfhood (Taylor, 1943). For this reason, one must look beyond both types of rhetoric.

“Since there is no transcendental signified to anchor the activity of signification, freely floating signs cannot be tied down to any single meaning” (Taylor, 1943). The realization that God has been born of, and died as a result of humanity, calls into question the legitimacy of religious authority as a whole. There are various reactions to the death of God ranging from those who are disinterested, those who are troubled by the implications of modernism and postmodernism on theology, in addition to those who take the illegitimacy of traditional authority with great enthusiasm. For instance, “like servants released from bondage to a harsh master or children unbound from the rule of a domineering father, such individuals feel free to become themselves (Taylor, 1984)”. It is the space between the belief and unbelief that the wanderer makes its way. This wanderer finds itself like Kafka’s character K:

“…haunted by the feeling the he is losing himself or wandering into a strange country, farther than ever man had wandered before, a country so strange that not even the air had anything in common with his native air, where one might die of strangeness (Harman, 1988).

Levitch (2002) expresses that, “to be completely lost in ones consciousness is to know precisely ones place in the universe. We are vagabonds in the eternal. Language is but a process of signification that will always fall short of representing the real; since it is the world of words that creates the world of things in which the signifier can never fully grasp the true essence of the signified (Lacan, 1957). In this way, language is always imperfect; therefore, capturing the absolute in language is absurd. The absurdity of the absolute and the loss of our spatial orientation in history do not necessarily mean one must throw spirituality by the way-side. Rather, “the aimlessness of serpentine wandering liberates the drifter from obsessive preoccupation with the past and future” (Taylor, 1984). Such liberation provides the key to spiritual practice that is based on the universe rather than God, the world rather than the Church, and experience rather than faith. In this way, traditional Christian theology is largely challenged by this conception of a postmodern shift in consciousness. As well, the sovereignty of reason has shown its limitation. Lawlessness is the new grace that only arrives when God and self are dead and history is over (Taylor 1984).

The dilemma of existential meaning can now go beyond the binary codes of language that have plagued modern Christian theology. The death of dualism allows the absolute to be conceptualized as Epicurus's pan, Lucetius's summa summarum, and Spinoza's nature: necessarily all conditions, relationships, and points of view (Comte-Sponville 2007).

Kafka’s The Castle can be interpreted as a modern depiction of alienation within bureaucracy, and the futile quest for an unavailable God. This is motif of an unsuccessful explorer as opposed to a stray wanderer. The explorer with a goal feels incomplete if the goal is not met, while the wanderer accepts the absurdity of the search and feels at home in all locations. This is the death of hope and the acceptance of what is. Taylor (1984) illustrates this in the act of sauntering:

To saunter is to wander or travel about aimlessly and unprofitably. The wanderer moves to and fro, hither and thither, with neither fixed course nor certain end…having forsaken the straight and narrow and given up all thought of return, the wanderer appears to be a vagrant, a renegade, a pervert – an outcast who is irredeemable by law… erring is serpentine wandering that comes, if at all, by grace – grace that is mazing.

The very fact of mere existence as opposed to non-existence is why-less. In asking why a flower blooms, we are confronted with a host of contingencies that take us into eternity. Interdependence in this web-like why-less absurd universe is the mystery that cannot be put into words or explained away by any kind narrative. Comte-Sponville (2007) claims that in the face of reality, silence of sensation and attention are more appropriate than attempting to dispel the mystery. He relates this to the silence of prayer and meditation without an object. In Beckett’s (1952) Waiting for Godot,Vladimir and Estragen have the following conversation which illustrates the absurdity of their endeavors:

Vladimir: I’m curious to hear what he [Godot] has to offer. Then we’ll take it or leave it.

Estragon: What exactly did we ask him for?

Vladimir: Were you not there?

Estragon: I can’t have been listening.

Vladimir: Oh… nothing very definite.

Estragon: A kind of prayer.

Vladimir: Precisely.

Estragon: A vague supplication.

Vladimir: Exactly.

Estragon: And what did he reply?

Vladimir: That he’d see.

Estragon: That he couldn’t promise anything.

Vladimir: That he’d have to think it over.

They are not only waiting for something that never comes, but the waiting itself is damnation: “Waiting is the final loosing game” (Cavell, 1969). Suspended in history, waiting for salvation or damnation is damnation in itself. The void must be used for one’s own purpose, rather than be void of purpose (Carvell, 1969). Beckett’s (1952) Waiting for Godot is not a play demonstrating the meaninglessness of life, but rather that emptiness is not a state, it is an infinite task which calls one not to protest against the emptiness, but rather, to see what one is filled with (Carvell, 1969). Becoming must appear justified at every moment, without requiring reference to the past or the future (Taylor, 1984). The experience of being is above and beyond the banality of what is – it is beyond explanation and out of empirical reach (Comte-Sponville, 2007).

Lucky’s speech in Beckets (1952) Waiting for Godot gives insight into the shrinking nature of humanity as we discover our extreme insignificance within the vast universe:

…but time will tell |to shrink and dwindle / fades away| I resume Fulham Clapham in a word the dead loss per |caput / head| since the death of Bishop Berkeley being to the tune of one inch four ounce per |caput / head| approximately by and large more or less to the nearest decimal good measure round figures stark naked in the stockinged feet in Connemara in a word for reasons unknown no matter what matter the facts are there…

Beckett references Bishop Berkley, the idealist whose views on immaterialism consist of God as being the cosmic all-perceiver (Kroll, 1995). Beckett explores whether the cosmic observer is neglecting to pay attention to his creation. This metaphysical question, for Beckett, is the inverse of Bishop Berkeley's belief that God is benevolent and attentively omnipresent (Kroll, 1995). Opposed to Berkley’s beautiful and harmonious view of the universe, Beckett sets the scene with Vladimir and Estragon in a universe plagued by disjunctions which suggests that God's detachment has become so noticeable that it seems as if God is virtually powerless (Kroll, 1995). Lucky’s references of ‘shrinking’ and ‘dwindling’ may represent the shrinking of humanity’s significance as the world is imagined within an infinity of space. Not only is the shrinking of humanity seen, but the shrinking of Gods role in the minds and everyday experience of people. Comte-Sponville (2007) takes a materialist view of this shrinking phenomenon when he describes it as the following:

“We are in the universe, part of the All or of nature. And the contemplation of the immanency that contains us makes us all the more aware of how puny we are. This may be wounding to our ego, but it also enlarges our soul, because our ego has been put in its place at long last. It has stopped taking up all the room.

Spirituality in the materialist sense consists of living and experiencing as opposed to seeking supernatural transcendence. God is not in nature like water to a sponge, but rather is nature; therefore, instead of using the word 'God', the word 'nature' is sufficient. Spirituality of immanence cannot be given, attained, or bought. It is not magic or God given, but rather, an inner experience. The Jewish tradition calls it 'the breath of life', the Christian tradition calls it being 'filled with spirit', and the Buddhist tradition calls it 'being awake' (Comte-Sponville, 2007). The spiritual life must lead followers down the path of intimacy and connectedness with the richness of being, rather than alienating individuals from themselves and from other religious traditions. It is through this breaking down of dualistic and religious barriers that our sense of at-one-ness with all that exists may emerge. Freud (1929) used this term “Oceanic Feeling” in Civilization and its discontents when referring to limitlessness, eternity, and feeling of wholeness which is experienced when the boundary between ego and object is lost, blurred, or distorted. Although this experience is not intrinsically equated with religion, it is often described with religious language. Dr Jill Bolte Taylor (2009) in her book My Stroke of Insight illustrates the oceanic feeling in her description of having a stroke which temporarily impaired the functioning of her left brain hemisphere:

I felt as if I was trapped inside the perception of a meditation that I could neither stop nor escape… As the language centers in my left hemisphere grew increasingly silent and I became detached from the memories of my life, I was comforted by an expanding sense of grace… In this void of higher cognition and details pertaining to my normal life, my consciousness soared into an all-knowingness, a 'being at one' with the universe... I no longer perceived myself as a whole object separate from everything. Instead, I now blended in with the space and flow around me.

The body is characterized by the natural flow of “eating, drinking, pissing, shitting, and fucking” (Taylor, 1984). Without these bodily flows of substance in, substance out, our body would be lifeless like a deserted city sitting like a set of bare bones on a dusty plain. The eyes of a proper ‘straight’ world have been averted from such bodily flows of life which are seen as vulgar to the city. The modern city’s grid-plan is a monument to the ideals of progress, efficiency, and linear thought which are on display for the corporate executive looking out onto this skilled attempt to become ‘civilized’. Even within this machine, the human spirit will not be caged. One may easily wander through the city, flabbergasted to be in the presence of such life. Wandering by foot is the chosen method of the saunter to lose one’s self amongst the cities flow: life’s flow. “Time and space of graceful erring are opened by the death of God, the loss of self, and the end of history. In uncertain, insecure, and vertiginous postmodern worlds, wanderers repeatedly ask: ‘Whither are we moving?’…” (Taylor, 1984).

When the dominoes of theological deconstruction fall into an eternal abyss, the question of what is the role of religion still stands. If religion will survive under the scrutiny of the postmodernist gaze it will need to re-open the book. The sacred book of Christianity has been left far behind by the wanderer in the infinite mirror maze of the library. The modern humanistic atheist may claim the library is not infinite, but is mistaken because they have merely stepped in front of the mirror and can only see a reflection of themselves. Stepping aside, one will realize the infinite reflection of signifiers which shows the library can never be complete.

Many people enjoy the fun house [or mirror maze] so long as they are convinced that there is an exit. Such people believe the book prescribes a cure. The nausea that vertiginous uncertainty creates is settled by the promise of certainty… [but] the only thing more disconcerting than uncertainty is certainty. A world in which every person has a number on his or her forehead is not a world in which there is no fun; it is a world plagued by oppressive despair. (Taylor, 1984).

As a result of lacking an absolute transcendent signifier, language and the book are open into the eternity in which meaning is ambiguous: appearing and disappearing at the threshold of interrelated perspectives (Taylor, 1984). In this way the words of the pages will never fully capture the essence of what is signified. This imperfection can perhaps act not only as a metaphor to the human condition, but as a metaphor to the condition of the chaotic universe(s) as a whole. Letting go of hope to allow for acceptance may be the only way for the wanderer to obtain a temporary measure of grace in a time where God is dead…

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References:

Beckett. S, (1952). Waiting for Godot. 1st English edition. Grove Press.

Cavell, S. (1969) Must we mean what we say?. Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom.

Comte-Sponville, A.(2007). The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. Viking. New York.

Freud , S.(1929). Civilization and its Discontents. London: Penguin, 2002

Harman, M. (1998) The Castle, Schocken Books, New York, New York,

Kroll, N. (1995). Berkeley inside out: existence and destiny in 'Waiting for Godot'. The Journal …………of English and Germanic Philology.

Lacan, J., The Function and Field of Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis in Écrits (1957)

Levitch, T. (2002). Speedology: Speed on New York on Speed. Context Books. 2002

Marx, K. (1990) Capital, Volume I. Trans. Ben Fowkes. London: Penguin, 1990.

Marx, K. (1975). Marx/Engels Collected Works. International Publishers. Vol 1, pg 683-685.

Marx, K. (1964) Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, New York City, International …………Publishers.

Miller, J. (1991). The disappearance of God: five nineteenth-century writers. The University of …………Illinois Press.

Sartre, J (1943). Being and Nothingness.Washington Square Press edition

Taylor, J. (2008). My stroke of insight. Plume; 1 edition. 2009

Taylor, M. (1984). A Postmodern A/theology. University of Chicago Press. 1984.

Weber, (1959). Weber, Max The Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism. Dover …………Publications. 2003.

Weber, M. (1920). Sociology of World Religions. http://www.ne.jp. April 18^th 2010

Living a Life of Passion

You know the saying ‘live every day as if it’s your last’? We have all heard it but forget soon after and go about our daily business. I’ve realized that we can’t be certain about life after death; this impending nothingness, a the world continuing on without me in it, the impending eternal black empowers me to live each day with passion. Here is a poem I wrote conveying my feelings on the mysteries that confront us.

Eternity went by without me knowing,
I did not feel, I did not see,
More nothing than black
Time limitless and unfelt
A thing of a world I do not yet belong to
But where was I?
The vary things now my body are scattered
Consciousness yet to be uncovered
Then like a spark from a flint it exists
But why in this speck of history?
Why in this space?
Only to be put out by time, unstoppable as the wind
Going on into eternity just as it has come from
What happens to my consciousness than?
A nothing that is less than black just as before?
No sight, no sense, no memory
From stardust, to earth-dust, back to stardust
This fate of body unavoidable
The fate of soul unknowable
But what is the origin of this soul?
Did it only exist as humans existed?
What was the threshold in evolution that sparked the soul?
The unanswerable ‘why is everything’ gives hope
For why would everything be anything if not for something?
The destiny of the body is clear, while the destiny of our consciousness is not
Will the recognition of an I fade with the body?
The I that I know does not know enough to know the answer.

          The moment is forever fleeting, eternal and real. As stated in the movie ‘Waking Life’; Life is not a dream; many of us are sleep walking in out waking state and wake walking in our dreams (either way won’t do us any good). As Speed Levich states in this same film: The world may very well be an exam to see whether we can rise to our direct experiences. Our ‘eyesight’ for us to see beyond, ‘matter’ for our curiosity, ‘doubt’ a test of our vitality.

          One of Richard Dawkins’s finest lines conveys a sense of his passion very beautifully:

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it?

          Co-authoring this thing we call life, we must choose to write passionately. That is why life and all its mysteries are my passion.

          Time must not be wasted.

Technorati Tags: Life,Existance,Soul,Spirituality

Parkour: Godless Spiritual Experience

   
Recently I have been practicing a lot of parkour (free-running) and have realized its potential as a spiritual experience. Atkinson (2009) describes his experience of free-runners as the following:

We took turns shepherding one another through the city, practicing speed and stealth in our movement at times as we made our way across the rolling and varied architectural terrain. The movement, and our underlying orientation in the session, encouraged me to let go of all conscious thought and simply be present with my breath, movement, and the physical environment. Lines separating roads, buildings, cultures, selves, and bodies disappeared. I had never experienced the city, or running for that matter, in this way. And even though I felt exhausted at the end of the session, a strange peace descended upon me.

Parkour can be a liberating spiritual experience standing in stark contrast to a sterile structured landscape in which it is practiced. The capitalist influenced modern urban space suffocates the human spirit while liberating those who transcend it. Rather than a sport focusing on strategies, goals, or outcomes, parkour focuses the mind like a lazar beam onto the present moment in order to transcend built structure with grace and precision. During a session the traceur holistically connects with the environment, yet transcends it altogether; the body and the mind merge and become 'one' beyond the grips of sterilizing dualisms casting the physical world as unholy. This 'one' may be Nietzsche's 'superman'. In the modern era, Nietzsche writes about the autonomous subject and the death of God. I like to think of this subject as a person unbound by the idea of a traditional catholic deity; a person who refuses to be disciplined by the heavy hand of sovereignty.     Along side high-modernist concrete structures within an urban environment, parkour can serve as a powerful form of meditation that liberates the spirit. 

Here is a secular 'parkour prayer' I have to privilege to share thanks to Amos (a reader and parkour blogger):

Let us rewire our muscle memory in accordance to the way of nature; let us have communion with God. Let us transcend mundane sidewalks, make a jungle of this oppressive urban architecture. No longer will we clumsily stumble through our existence, we will embrace obstacles as challenges and tools for rewriting our natural reactions. In a safe environment, we will force ourselves into the uncommon and unnatural, forcing ourselves to fall. Now, when hit with the ripples of events outside of our control, our natural reaction will be an adaptation, from the second of falling to the moment we’re safely back on our feet, it will have been as if we didn’t miss a step walking

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Atkinson, m. (2009). Parkour, Anarcho-Environmentalism, and Poiesis. Journal of Sport and Social Issues. Volume, 33. Number, 2. 169 – 194

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