GODS SEEING THROUGH OUR EYES

As I sat on my redwood perch in the deep Forest of Nisene Marks yesterday, I allowed my head to gently rest on my chest, and closing my eyes, I feel asleep in the absolute silent stillness of the forest, far off any electrical grid, surrounded by sixteen “offspring” of three mother redwood trunks, cut down between 160 and 100 years ago. I don’t remember what I dreamed but as I awoke, before opening my eyes, I realized that we are gods come down to the earth and in these bodies, seeing it all through these eyes, living it all in these bodies and their lives, which we forget are also our divine lives. I opened my eyes then and saw the forest as if I were a newborn babe and it was all absolutely new to me. I deeply inhaled in utter amazement at the beauty of the forest and moved my old, wrinkled hands before my eyes, as if I had never seen them before. They too were amazing to me. I climbed off the great tree trunk and, with my walking “stick,” clambered down the steep twenty-foot path, and then out of the forest to the fire trail and lot where my car was parked. Everything I saw and smelled stayed “new” pretty much until I got to the parking lot maybe twenty minutes. By then I was already thinking that I had to go by either Gayle’s or Dharma’s and get a nice meal for my wife and myself. Pesto pasta from Dharma’s, I decided. I could talk with my old friend, Josh, behind the counter, or exchange a joke with Bernie, the owner, whom I knew, what, 35 years ago, when he started McDharmas, and was sued by McDonalds and had to change the name. Babba Hari Dass, a teacher of Ram Dass, and guru of his ashram at Mt. Madonna, a few miles south of here, had died. Josh told me about his cremation and how he got to place a carnation on the exact spot of Babba’s heart before he was burned up. That’s why I like talking to Josh.

It would be good if we could remember just who we are. Gods, pure beings, are looking out through these eyes of ours. If we could realize this and keep realizing it in our lives, the world would be a much different place. I do not subscribe to religion or to such belief in religious gods, which are presented falsely but perhaps well-meaning clergies, who are nevertheless corporate-minded, bottom line in mind, which is a bit harsh because there are good people and aware people everywhere, including there. One has to trust the sorrow within oneself. We know on some level our plight as human beings. We feel the split between spirit and flesh as though the twain cannot meet, though we know also that it does and must, for here we are in the world of matter as most divine beings of pure spirit. We must learn to live as if all of us, each of us, were worthy of love and kindness. It would seem that trusting others in this kind of existence would be utterly impossible, for people do not even bother to know themselves enough to come even close to trusting or knowing themselves. Instead they allow themselves to be lead like sheep to the slaughter by those who would manipulate them to their own ends. Sometimes there are no reference points for us. Sometimes there is nothing online to explain our thoughts or what we know to us. There is no backup. We have to move forward in our thinking, our own thoughts—divine thoughts, if you will, that arise from some place within us of which we are totally unaware. These thoughts are which ultimately move the world to a better place. And we are thinking them and understanding them even now at this moment. We cannot give up on ourselves, on our ability to know things, to know what to do, to know what is right. Such is our destiny.

TECHNOLOGY, A-I, IMAGES & THE DEVOLUTION OF HUMANITY

The devolution of humanity. We do not necessarily regress into animalism; rather, we “progress” into technology and “artificial intelligence.” We become as machines, even seeing this as a good thing, as progress of the human race—a race we are bound to lose. We focus on, via technology, images, which we share with each other and the world without communicating to each other what it is that we actually see. We see only what we see; no one sees the same thing or even attempts to explain what we see to others. Everyone is particularly imprisoned in their own point of view, their own world. But we have even lost the awareness and self-understanding necessary to articulate our thoughts regarding what we see, how we see, or even how we feel about it. We are no longer aware that we are even meant to communicate our thoughts to others. We see and share an image, believing that we are all in agreement about what it is we are seeing, even though we do not know what others are thinking and feeling about the image we have all seen. We believe we are building a great ziggurat reaching up to God in Heaven, so progressive and artificially intelligenced and robotized, until we realize that the tower is collapsing and crumbling around us; until we realize that we have not been in communication whatsoever regarding any plan or understanding of what we are doing. For we have not only lose our ability to think for ourselves, we have lost our ability to think at all. This is the devolution of humanity who let the machines think for them.

Such are my initial thoughts. I think that the technological focus on image resulting in the loss of communicative skills and even the awareness of the need for communication may be worthy of thought. The devolution of humanity is already known as the Kali Yuga, but now we can see just how the unraveling is occurring. It is no accident that we are now governed, both literally and figuratively, though an increasing level of insanity.

JOKES, NIETZSCHE, ETERNAL RECURRENCE, AND "AMOR FATI"

Sometimes when I’m driving, I find myself noticing women drivers whom I find attractive or even beautiful. Any woman under 70 is lovely to me. However, when I was engaged in this distraction recently, I was pulled over by a policeman--who gave me a citation for erotic driving.

One joke leads to another: A werewolf says to another werewolf, “Let’s go and get a burgher.”

Now to proceed to a new perspective (for me) on Nietzsche’s concept of “eternal recurrence,” which I believe I misunderstood even though I read Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return. I had mistakenly interpreted Nietzsche’s idea with the Hindu notion of reincarnation repeating itself in exactly identical cycles interrupted by pralaya, which might be seen as “the ending of all,” before a new “creation” in which all is repeated. Nietzsche doesn’t subscribe to any belief in God, reincarnation, or afterlife. Instead, he upholds a notion of “eternal recurrence” in which the life one is living is to be repeated endlessly, for which he says he has proofs but which I do not comprehend or would accept if I did. His aphorism is “amor fati,” or “love your fate,” which is to say, “choose you fate” as opposed to being at the mercy of it, or “live your life rather than having your life live you.” I believe that Nietzsche is speaking metaphorically in order to provoke the reader to come to terms and live his or her life as it is, rather than as it is not. In other words, BE WHO YOU ARE, which is the Socratic dictum, “To know thyself is the beginning of wisdom.” Take the plunge and start where you are, rather than pretending you are somewhere else or better. Such philosophizing becomes trite very quickly, but my point is that I’m glad I now have a better understanding of the notion of eternal recurrence and what it actually is meant to lead us to. This whole process of “being who you are” is, in my estimation, learning who you are not, piece by piece, until finally you realize “you” are not who you think you are and never will be. There is an absolute irony and one must learn to hold that reality of “being and not being” at the same time, which is right now. And my thought about that is: TOO MUCH IRONY MAKES ONE OVERWROUGHT.

          I arrived at this point of view regarding Nietzsche’s notion of eternal recurrence after reading a rather interesting “psychoanalytic” book, When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession by Yalom.

Here’re a few brief quotes:

“To live forever with the sense that I have not lived, have not tasted freedom—the idea fills me with horror.” Then … live in such a way that you love the idea.” (252)

“… we must live as though we were free. Even though we can’t escape fate, we must still butt our heads against it—we must will our destiny to happen. We must love our fate.” (274)

          Nietzsche emphasized the idea of “will to power,” which I “understood” but didn’t really understand. It is quite subtle and rather dark and untrusting, such as, when someone says “something nice” to someone else, it is a ploy to attain power over that person. Nietzsche sounds pretty paranoid and with am “inferiority complex” to me, though his understanding and analysis of our shadow aspect is spot on. He exhorts us to “live” so strongly, I think, because he was utterly afraid and alone. He noted that in order to live, one had to first die, and to be able to tell the truth required devastation of oneself first. I don’t mean to just touch on this and then stop but I will take up aspects of it in due time.

          This blog is called “fragments” and so it is.

SOURCES OF OUR THOUGHTS & OUR ABILITY TO RESPOND TO THEM

In reading about various modern philosophers, such as James, Dewey, and others, what appears is the notion of “our thoughts” as “ours” as distinct from “our thoughts” as “not ours” but, rather, as coming at us and into our minds, thus causing us to “reflect upon them,” to “think about such thoughts.” This reminds of James’s metaphor of consciousness or thinking as a flock of birds (or of thoughts) in flight, but only thinking when the flock stops and perches, thus “thinking about itself,” “gathering its thoughts,” as it were. One understanding, perhaps of the Greeks, is that our thoughts comes from the gods, who are seemingly interested to see what we will then do with them. Isn’t this supposed to be a great source of their entertainment in Olympus? So we receive the thoughts and then try to “make sense” out of them, try to determine how they might be best applied in our lives or even in the lives of humanity.

          These “thoughts that comes at us” seem like they very well could be sent to us by the gods or by God for those who “believe,” or that they are the thoughts, the overall penetrating collective consciousness of humanity as a whole, perhaps having been initiated by those overlording gods watching down. Having had many “organizing thoughts” that seeming came “out of the blue,” I am willing to subscribe to some overweening source of such thinking consciousness, be it divine, collective, or both. How many times in my life has “something” stood directly between me and impending death? How many times have I “sensed” danger and moved instantaneously in my muscular intelligence with nary a single thought? Is this the body’s wisdom of survival and preservation or could it be my literal auric “guardian angel”? Am I to find myself, an unbeliever in the manufactured “blue-eyes Jesus” or the “protector of the good Catholic (or even simply Christian) sheep,” paying homage to my guardian angel, who could very well be right here in some kind of fashion at my side? That something could so personally care about me brings tears to my eyes and a hope welling in my heart. And it could also be an inherent, even divine, part and aspect of myself. Could such a self-caring and self-protective aspect be a vital element of each of us? Is this seeming metaphysical reality a literal part of our physical being, seeking to protect and preserve us from harm? All I can honestly say is that I am clearly aware that I have been saved from harm and from death many times in my life, and it seems as if that protection was even external to me, or at least external to my awareness, my consciousness, my thinking of it.

I believe in what I would call “the fatefulness of each moment,” in one’s responsiveness to “what happens” in each moment. It’s not that things are “meant to happen,” but rather that we can mean ourselves to respond accordingly, which is to say, to comprehend ourselves enough to know how to respond in the moment. In other words, we learn from whatever occurs; we learn to respond in a way that enables us to be who we are in life. It is as though, when something happens, we ask “What is this that’s occurring?” “What is happening right now?” And we take it in as though we were observing it not so much as ourselves, but from a distance. “How best do I respond to this if I do not have to be limited to being myself with all my known responses?” So whatever happens, we are able to transcend our reactions, our limited responses, and incorporate a more knowing, a more inclusive response that is therefore more effective, more appropriate, wiser. Thus, I am able to truly learn from whatever happens how to be a better human being, on a personal scale and also on an interpersonal, collective scale. “Not-self” becomes a very good vantage point from which to respond. If “I” am not there to react emotionally in anger, hatred, vengeance, fear, desire, craving, habit, etc., the response does not cause one more chain reaction. I may attain a level of acceptance and of understanding, even appreciation, or even wonder and mastery. There is no “hope,” no “God,” no expectation that the outcome or result must be any particular way. It is as it is. To attain this level of understanding is profound.

THE ERSATZ BODHISATTVA

Did I “give up nirvana out of compassion for humanity”? Perhaps. Or else I simply had to choose to return for my own karmic purposes. But a “poor substitute” still may somewhat suffice in a world lacking even that.

          Well, let’s start at the beginning. But, hmmm, which one, and was that a beginning, an end, or a replay? At what point, then, to plunge in? Suddenly, great waves of sorrow even at the thought of “going there” once again. I am sometimes hammered by desperate dreams of repetition in which I present the same series of numbers or letters endlessly in an attempt to finally “get it right” even though it really is exactly the same as it was endlessly before. Nietzsche’s eternal recurrence all over again. There is no “doing it over and over until we get it right”; there is simply do it over and over, the eternal sameness. This would drive anyone insane.

          Is it that we all inherently know this, and so choose to be born into the distraction of being in bodies, in flesh, identifying with such, dying to such, and then again choosing to repeat the cycle until bodies themselves as potential forms end, but then finding another form in which we might find almost ultimate distraction, until finally the pralaya occurs, and we are once again absorbed into ourselves-as-nothingness?

WHEN I CREATED ALL AND INHALED IT BACK TO NOTHINGNESS

In the early 90s I was engaged in practicing Buddhist vipassana meditation. In those days I actually had various “experiences” during my meditation. Some were rather literally phenomenal. This is one to be noted:

I suddenly realized that when I exhaled, I was literally creating not just the universe but All. My mouth was the mouth of God literally creating all Life, all Being in one exhalation. I was not aware of myself as God, nor was God aware of itself as God; it was a literal experience, not a conceptual one. “God” was simply a function of “creating” in itself. In that exhalation, All was created, All was breathed into beingness. That exhalation lasted an endless eternity. Then, just as suddenly, I inhaled, and when I did so, all life and being, was drawn back into nothingness, and ceased.

It was that simple.

WISDOM

The gods gave me challenges in my life to which I had to find the proper responses. One must make the wise and right choices or be doomed to fear, anger, and belief. There is nothing to cling to for safety. It is a maelstrom. But one learns that even the maelstrom in all its undeniable power moves in certain ways. One learns how to respond by going with the flow and rolling with the punches. One learns that to be hardened is to be brittle, unable to move, unable to see and recognize what is happening in the moment. One learns to be supple and quick, soft and caring, and no longer stupid and oafish. One learns compassion that stands up to all in its selflessness, for if I am not here, you cannot stop me. I learned to put others first after the gods gave me others who needed me to put them first for their own survival. To do so, another gift from the gods, was easy for me, for the gods taught me love and, for those I loved it was second nature for me to put them before me, or at least know them as myself, for they had already become an integral part of me. I found and expressed the proper responses to that which the gods imposed and graced me in my life and thus attained a level of self-understanding and of life itself and my role in it that comprised a degree of what might be called wisdom. Wisdom is simply a response to what is happening that does no harm but may actually help to bring relief to the situation. Wisdom only comes in the absence of oneself, when there is not an “I” to be attended to. Wisdom is a selfless occurrence, therefore possible to anyone who is no one, at least in that moment.

Such “wisdom” therefore necessarily leaves one rather deflated, even sad, when it finally comes to mind, for it does not suffer pride of accomplishment or love or caring or anything. Wisdom is not a self-reflective act but rather a non-self-reflective occurrence; there is no self, no sense of self, at all in wisdom.