ETERNAL RECURRENCE, FATE, AND ONESELF IN THE GREAT MIX

"Eternal return (also known as eternal recurrence) is a theory that the universe and all existence and energy has been recurring, and will continue to recur, in a self-similar form an infinite number of times across infinite time or space."

          This notion, in its "recent" form, was put forth by Nietzsche, but has its primary roots, at least in my own readings, in ancient Hindu belief, and also seems to be quite present in Daoism and Zen Buddhist thought. It relates to Fate as well, but what I would call a “fated fate.” I’ve had a copy of Eliade’s The Myth of the Eternal Return sitting in my library for many years; it has finally made its way to my desk to be read. Nietzsche ended up in a mental institution; I have to wonder if this notion of eternal recurrence with its absolute inevitability and no possible resolution (and all possible resolutions!) had anything to do with that.

          Eternal recurrence or Fated fate (as I see it) is the repetition of existence and all that it includes over epochs and epochs, ages and ages. It may begin at a “big bang” and end as it is reabsorbed into a black hole to nothingness. Hinduism presents it as a period of seemingly endless existence which begins and ends, and, after a period of absolute nothingness, begins again, repeating itself exactly the same over and over and over. From a view of reincarnation, one is born and dies myriad times in a cycle of existence, and then the whole show repeats itself like a TV re-run. In one cycle, one may perhaps evolve over millions or billions of years; Hinduism and Buddhism would say so. The “fated fatedness” presents the notion that whatever one “knows,” whatever one has learned makes no difference; it is one’s fate to know and perhaps to have fear or ignorance within the very fiber of one’s knowing. This is one of my doubts regarding the gnosis of Gnosticism or any approach to “spirituality,” for being “we as we are” is our own fate. As Krishnamurti said, somewhat paraphrased, “we are the path that unfolds with each step we take.” Such a “path,” or such “knowing,” is not “out there,” rather, it is “here.” We tend to see the universe as external but we are the universe; we are the very breath that breathes us. That sounds most strange, I know. Now I’m faced with having to tie that thought in with the notion of Eternal recurrence, and I could say something logical and clever, but I can only say what I have experienced (and then corrupted through some kind of interpretation) or what has “occurred” to me as insight or even a “cosmic logic.”

          “Fate” has interested me for most of my life. It is by no means a negative idea to me. Rather, it is what happens and it includes me as an agent in my happening, but not as an agent that changes anything because I am already included in the equation or logarithm, if you will, of what happens. What happens, happens, even if I know what it will be. Now that sounds very much like the concept of predestination, which is Gnostic (which is Hellenistic) and Calvinistic, but is preceded itself by Vedic thought and, so I’ve read, by Egyptian beliefs. This line of thought leads me into “magic,” or what I would call the manipulation of the natural energies of physical and perhaps emotional “substance.” This is the substance of most religious thought and teaching, especially Judaism, and including Christianity. Those Biblical “miracles” are magic, pure and simple. (Though, to be fair, Jesus does say something like "Blessed are those who--without all the miracles--have eyes to see and ears to hear".) But I don’t like magic or trust it, for it is of the “lower nature,” the dense, physical substance: it is devilish in other words. Thus, I prefer the “bare bones” of Zen and the acceptance of fate, of the “suchness of being,” as is said. I think that this is the only perspective that can be put in place and utilized for the best with the theory of Eternal recurrence. It can be seen as Existential but perhaps without the “shit sandwich” of Sartre. If everything is going to happen in the seemingly endless series of reincarnations, everything is going to happen exactly as it happens. This is not to imply a passivity or negativity or judgmentalness at all: one is as one is, be it positive or negative, accepting or nonaccepting, etc. It’s all going to happen at one time or another. What we think about it, or feel about it, or know about it, or don’t know about it makes no difference. I find it very strange to say that but it seems to be the closest to what is true that I can get to. It is not a choice; it is simply where I am, where I have gotten to at this point. I would simply love to be a “believer” but it’s not there for me; I don’t believe that way. But I’ve been thinking about this too. There is the notion of “God” as some kind of “supreme being” (probably from the Baltimore Catechism I had to memorize as a young child in Catholic school) but this same notion, to me, is seen as “the goodness of people.” That is not something I "believe,” but, rather, something that is just “true for me.” Eternal recurrence, then, is another ride on this very strange, profound and profane roller-coaster.

      Some people are quite articulate as well as intelligent. I am neither. However, I am also "compelled" (in too many respects) to convey my thoughts to the ethers as best I can. And so here it is... Perhaps these thoughts could even be etherial.

FROM ROSE-COLORED LENSES TO SOMETHING ELSE

In my life I have had many beliefs and have seen existence through the lenses of such beliefs. One can believe so strongly and intensely that one’s own experiences are used as proofs of such beliefs. My systems of belief have been quite varied and often on different levels, as it were, simultaneously. I have believed in “God” from Christian, Hindu, Theosophical, Gnostic and other frameworks, as well as Buddhist, “natural” and American Indian perspectives. I have “followed” Jung, Trungpa, Blavatksy, Steiner, Bailey, Gurjieff, Krishnamurti, and others, and once interpreted life from an astrological perspective. At this point I don’t have belief in such “systems,” though some of them remain of interest. My view now is more “zen” in its focus on “emptiness of self” and what might be called the “falseness of thought, self-concept (or all concept), and so-called knowledge.” I now tend to observe everything, including what I call myself, more than to decide on the “truth” of anything, though I still do seek to “understand what life is,” what I am. To understand is to have greater control of life itself, which is to say to survive, the prime instinctual directive of existence. There is no getting around this, but rather getting right into it. To live our lives, we must live them, which is to say, we have to “get down and dirty” (a paradoxical Gnostic concept). We must know “impurity” to thus attain “purity,” or be able to actually experience and see our ego selves if we are to be able to get beyond it. And, to be quite honest, I wonder if it is simply foolishness to think or believe there is any “getting beyond it” at all. I don’t think it’s about “transcending ourselves” at all but rather just going through the stages or process of our existence(s) very much like a flower growing to maturity; Hinduism in particular sees the lotus is  as an apt metaphor: born in and of the earth, rising up through the waters of feeling and emotion, breaking the surface into the light, then opening, blossoming. Much more to this, obviously, but my point is that it’s all about being.

THE VIRTUE OF HOPING AGAINST HOPE

We expect much of life and of ourselves. Too much. Thus, life disappoints us and we disappoint ourselves. Life does not measure up to our expectations and we especially don’t measure up to our expectations, or perhaps, more importantly, our hopes. And so we find ourselves ultimately hoping against hope, which is to say that we still hope for an outcome in awareness that such an outcome is almost impossible, though still possible. It is the carrot that we hold before our eyes so that we asses may be on moving rather than stopping forever. We thus put a positive spin on the most dire of circumstances. I do, and I think almost all of us do since there is no choice but to keep on keeping on in light of our many responsibilities and choices and in light of our own responsibility to ourselves. We don’t have the option of walking away from, of abandoning, ourselves.

FINDING AND LOSING AND FINDING AND LOSING CONTEXT

That which has been most important to me in the living of my life is that I am “focused upon and engaged in that which is true, that which is real.” In so many words, that I do not waste my life. How does one measure the “value” of one’s self? I seem to think that a life spent in seclusion, “without distraction,” as a “focused spiritual being,” is best. I did spend time in a Buddhist monastery as a Zen Buddhist monk and also spent much time at a Benedictine hermitage in Big Sur once upon a time. I was not impressed with either. And I was especially not impressed with myself, for after a few days, I was not “peaceful and focused” at all but absolutely distracted. I had to face the fact that life itself, that living in itself, is distraction; that being in a physical body that is meant to survive and having to survive in it is a distraction; that thinking and thoughts and emotions are a distraction: a distraction from the “higher being,” the “spiritual being” which is the essence of life. I have often questioned my attitude towards existence in this body here and now; it would seem that I think I’m “above it all” in some way. I do somehow think this, however, I have also “made it in the world” by being successful in business once and making plenty of money, taking care of my familial and social responsibilities, and so on. While it may be true that I was a bit of a sanyassin in my 20s, I did find success by my 30’s and retired by 40 to take care of my children, one who was disabled and required active caregiving. Now, in my 70s, I am again an active caregiver (to my wife) but also see myself, appropriately, as a sanyassin, more or less, though I have to wonder rather than wander. I am glad I have responsibilities that are other than myself, for, to be honest, I am utterly boring and just about that bored with myself.

          I see my role as one of not only “finding context” for myself, but also being able to convey such context to those in need of it. “Knowing oneself” consists in knowing who you are, what you are, where you are, and perhaps even why you are. Of course, such knowing is probably impossible; we are as moving targets even as we ourselves move—there is no nailing anything down at all. I think the most we can do is take all these fragments and make some kind of interesting mosaic with them. We are an undulating jigsaw puzzle with unlimited pieces of no particular shapes that do not fit into each other. So we make these fragments into a fragmentary story of ourselves as best we can—which seems fine and good in itself but is actually detrimental to us because “our story” really isn’t like how we have put it together. We have created something that has taken on its own life and is now “me” as I see myself and believe myself to be. Upon death, all the pixels of seeming solidity and reality, dissolve into something else. But, even while alive, we do not quite live because we are only our (and our culture’s and our society’s) version of ourselves and not really who we are. We just don’t know who we are and, for the most part, would rather not know, instead using our opposable thumbs to send tweets about what we had for lunch, and taking selfies to prove to ourselves and others that we actually do exist and are not just figments of our own imaginations (which are actually no longer our own since we see only what we want to see and what is trending in the moment). Descartes proclaimed, “I think, therefore I am.” But once we are no longer able to think as ourselves, we no longer exist as ourselves but as units in the matrix, as it were. People now prefer to be cyborgs. Living is much more convenient and without real choices, much less consciousness.

THE CURSE OF TECHNOLOGY (IN TWO PARAGRAPHS)

Technology moves us ever closer to the machine of ourselves, that is, to ourselves as machines, albeit fleshy and organic ones, as beings to be fixed and repaired, as cogs in a still greater technological framework. Technology moves us ever further from the soul and the spirit of ourselves as human beings. In its movement for control, which may be seen as improved and better physical and perhaps mental function, technology leads away from the heart of ourselves. Many might say that technology, like guns, is used as the possessor sees fit, for better or for worse social function; that technology is innocent of any blame by those Luddites who cannot fathom it. But this is not so true at all, for loaded guns are not to be put in the hands of infants; not that they will do evil with them, but that they might inadvertently pull the trigger and hurt themselves or others. “Forgive them Father, for they know now what they do.”

But that is not the essence of this conversation. Humans now have technology as a great convenience and as an improvement in many fields, such a medicine and statistics of all kinds. Technology “crunches numbers” far faster than any human mind could do so in lifetimes. And it promotes both the notion while creating the reality that we are human machines. But technology aims outward and expands; it does not lead us inward in order to discover just who and what we are in this order of human being. Worse than being loaded guns in the hands of infants, it is a distraction from our discovery of ourselves, of ourselves as far more inner (or greater) beings which we must find if we are ever to be truly human and be able to live accordingly. Our inability to live accordingly makes us as infants—with no understanding of our world or mastery or control of ourselves. Humanity still lives in utter ignorance of itself, though now possessing the technological means to destroy itself.  Technology wonderfully leads us away from ourselves as human beings into a cyborg reality in which we are as machines. And most people LOVE that this is happening.

ONE MUST HAVE "FAITH IN HUMANITY" AND IN ONESELF

I see that we are “occupied by our thoughts” and, depending on where they “come from,” we are just this side of absolutely insane, having created and now living in a world which is seen as “normal.” If I were a “proper Christian” with a particular Christian point of view, I would rightfully say that “the world is evil and the devil rules.” It would even seem, given the ground of being of a President who uses mind control by constantly interjecting his own sick and insane thoughts to create a mindset and a direction and a confusion (a “direction of confusion and divisiveness”) and instructs his circle also to do this, that what the Christians call Antichrist is quite alive and well and very active in the minds of the masses and the elite in this country and also throughout the world. The sane and the holy are diminished, while the insane and the unholy are becoming rampant. Witness not only Trump’s followers but 92% of the Republican Party itself at a recent count. Minds—and souls—are being subverted by evil. People have not learned as children how to be humane and sane in their humanness, and to behave with a sense of self-respect and respect of others, with a self-controlling sense of basic morality. Michael Novak, in Belief and Unbelief, touches on this: “As Aristotle remarks, unless a man is in his youth taught to feel correctly pleasure and pain, and shame and pride, he will not even have the data for correct moral judgment of the noble and the ignoble; he will never have tasted the one, nor have been taught to recognize the other” (64).          

          Stupidity-as-normal and hate-as-normal are a most dangerous mix, and not specific to either right-wing or left-wing. The normalizing of such ignorance and its repetition that acts to brainwash whole populations is most dangerous indeed. And propagandists both feed and fan fires of stupidity and hatred, unleashing violence upon us through both the masses and the elite. It has probably always been like this throughout human history with the difference being that now we have instant worldwide web and instant technological weaponry, the perfect mix for profound destruction and death.

          I don’t see that great numbers of people will necessarily “come around” at this point; this is surely not the norm. After the social fabric was all but destroyed in “the Terror” of the French Revolution, after the best were guillotined, most realized that it was again time for national order and safety for all. I hope Americans have enough basic sanity to realize what is going on and make the necessary changes without resorting to extremes that escalate, creating their own infernos that burn everything to the ground. I don’t see that “public education” will affect those who make themselves “blind followers.” However, I am of the belief that large number of people are capable of “seeing the light,” as it were, of having the cover pulled from their eyes. In the meantime, I for one can do what I can do. For me that translates as writing and sharing what I write as best I can, but perhaps more to the point, observing myself and the “thoughts that occupy me and thus direct my actions” through my personal practice of zazen. To be able to see oneself is to be able to see how oneself is in the world, and what one contributes to or detracts from existence as a whole on the planet. We each make it better or worse—for ourselves and everyone else.

          

WHY LIFE IS BEST SEEN AS "FRAGMENTS" WITHOUT LABEL OR INTERPRETATION

I previously noted that life should rightfully be seen and experienced as “fragmentary,” as pieces of existence experienced by each of us. We humans tend to be afflicted with a “need for meaning,” a need to understand everything in terms of ourselves, our beliefs, and what we think we “know.” This is considered to be quite normal. However, it presents the profound problem of creating ourselves as false identities, and, as such false identities, merging with other larger forces of false identity, and proceeding to oppose other false identities whom we identify as enemies, to the point that we do our best to destroy and massacre with the permission of our “divine sources.”

          Let me give a prime example. One has a sudden sense of clarity or of feeling a sense of joy and peace, or of seeing the “beauty of nature” in its myriad forms, or feeling a “close bonding” with another person or even oneself, or of “understanding” an abstraction of mathematics or physics in which there seems to be an “expansion of insight or awareness.” Such occurrences do happen to us, but the problem arises instantly when we feel compelled to interpret what such experiences “mean,” for, when we do this, as we all do, we infect and corrupt the original experience with our cultural and social beliefs in which we have been raised and have come to identify as consisting of our “own” beliefs. Depending on the culture and society in which one lives and whose beliefs have been informed, it may be a “message from God” and that God may be Jesus, Allah, Vishnu, Satan, etc., or a “message from the ancestors,” and it could therefore be telling us whatever the prevailing beliefs or messages of that particular religious perspective may be. Or, one may take it as a message that one is the Avatar, or world savior, or, at the very least, has attained enlightenment. Or, if one is not particularly religious, but is more of a psychological or medical or philosophical bent, it may be taken to be a sign that one is becoming senile or perhaps wise or has a chemical imbalance in the brain or a disease of the eyes. In all honesty, I would give some of the latter medical and psychological and philosophical approaches some attention since medicine could possibly though not necessarily explain such experiences. I know people who were delusional and paranoid and who were “cured” by taking an antipsychotic med. So I seem to argue against my own point at least on the physical level of being.

          When one believes, one naturally interprets one’s experiences in ways that will affirm that belief, so that the belief becomes more and more “real” in one’s life. We have an insecure need to affirm ourselves, to prove that we exist, as it were. In this same manner we create ourselves, our own personality and other various traits, including appearance. But, in our interpretation of our experiences as proof that our beliefs are not only right but true, we create a tautology, which is to say, a circular loop of self-deceit, of falseness. And this enforces what can become a deadly matrix of difference between us—as individuals, as clans, as nations. So naturally, a believer in God and/or religion sees “divine messages” or perhaps devilish ones, thus also creating a dilemma of belief and trust in oneself, perhaps then leading one to external authorities for “proper interpretation.” A similar process often occurs in the vast field of psychology; there are numerous “specialists” and “priests” to tell us “what it all means,” and further, what to do to solve the problem.

          What if we had our experience, which might be “transcendent” in the sense that it brings us beyond a normal awareness of ourselves and/or our world, and just were able to be with it as it is, without having to instantly label it and determine what it “means”? As I say this, I become aware that I have been practicing this process of “non-identification” in the practice of zazen over the last forty plus years. This is exactly what zazen is about: non-identification with one’s self-defined notion of oneself. But that has been my own path; each finds his or her own way, as I see it.

          What if we could simply experience ourselves, with our thoughts and our feelings and bodily sensations, without having to instantly react with self-serving or self-loathing, for that matter, interpretations? What if we just let all interpretations go? And what if we went a step further and even let the experience itself go, no matter how great and profound the insight or understanding it might bring? What if we didn’t go down that rabbit hole of the self? What if we just let even the notion of “myself” go? Interestingly, if the thought of self or “me” vanishes from our mind, “I” cease to exist. At that point I do not get in my way, though at this point I think I am going beyond my original intent in being able to see “reality” as fragmentary rather than as “solid and full of meaning.”

          If we do not have to add our “personal veneer” of belief to that which we experience in its pure form and are able to just “be with it as it is,” we come closer to ourselves as “we are,” that is, without preconceived notions of who we are “supposed” to be, both socially and in our own minds. I’ve been reading, Novak’s Belief and Unbelief: a Philosophy of Self-Knowledge, in which he states: “For when a man (or woman, I add) knows that he (or she) knows, and knows better what his (or her) knowing is, then there is every likelihood that he (or she) will avoid many mistakes in what he (or she) claims to know; his (or her) epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, art, and politics, and his (or her) ethics flow from a clearer stream” (29).