This is my kind of weirdness - staying subscribed. Thank you for declaring who you are/not and what you're about. A society that has forgotten its connection to the spiritual world and the power of ritual purification practices to send possessive spirits on their way will destroy itself. I appreciate your mission!
I really appreciate you, Nathalie. Your encouragement means so much. I'm glad we've been able to connect here and look forward to learning more from you about narcissism and whatever other topics you choose to explore.
I wonder if we have a different understanding of Jewish mysticism. I've by no means made a careful study, but as far as I've ever understood it, Paul's description of God as He "in whom we live and move and have our being," and Rabbi Nachman's call for us to orient every moment of our lives as a sacrament in which we speak and act in surrender to the Divine Will (recognizing the "Divine spark" in ourselves and in all) captures the essence of it."
The first people I turned to after awakening to this recognition of God in all were ministers, rabbis and priests. If I had met one who had any idea what I was talking about, I might have felt that conventional religion was a place for fostering this kind of life. As it turned out, the integral yoga community of Sri Aurobindo appeared to me - and still does 50 years later - as the most powerful means of fostering this way of living.
I'll be interested in hearing what you find helpful about conventional religion that helps you to open to and align yourself with the Divine will.
The living one in particular who has had the biggest impact is @Douglas Rushkoff. His approach to Judaism as laid out in his book Nothing Sacred and his Testament comic series has been foundational to my approach, though I go in very different directions.
Have you engaged with Maimonides yet? His approach underlies Rushkoff’s and underlies mine.
I think we just have radically different views and can gently respect that. Maimonidies seems like a nice ethical thinker but I haven't seen anything of his that speaks to a yearning for union with the Beloved ("Beloved" is the Sufi term for God). And yes, I'm familiar with Rushkoff and haven't found it to be at all "spiritual" in the sense I'm talking about (union with god, surrender to the Divine, recognizing, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, 'the Divine is in all, all is in the Divine and the Divine is all."
But I assume, having written the above, that you would disagree with much of it. Which is fine!
So I "checked out" Maimonides. I watched a 30 minute video by an Israeli scholar who discussed the controversies regarding Maimonides as a rationalist vs mystic. I also got a copy of the book: Jewish Mysticism: Essays on Maimonides' The Guide of the Perplexed," by Yamin Levy.
Didn't seem to have much spiritual depth to me, sorry. Ethics yes, God's Presence, I didn't see it.
I guess I really don't understand your point. It sounds like you're saying the only legitimate religions are Islam, Christianity and Judaism, though if one had to choose religion or no religion, I suppose you would think that Buddhism, Hinduism etc would be better than nothing.
Then what did humanity do prior to five or six thousand years ago? We had another 244,000 years - did nobody find a legitimate relationship with God at that time?
Again, I admire your passion and scholarship, but we really seem to have a very different vision of spirituality, which again - is fine with me!
You have much deeper into Maimonides and Guide of the Perplexed to go. You have not gone deep enough yet into the Torah tradition. I have been in on this Jewish mystical prophetic path for 20 years now and I feel like I am still just beginning, just an amateur. There are so many who know much more than me and I barely know anything.
I've been studying Sri Aurobindo for 50 years and feel like I am just beginning, just an amateur. There are so many who know much more than me and I barely know anything.
If you want to recommend I consider your views, how much time do you want me to invest? I looked at it and found nothing inspiring about it. That doesn't necessarily reflect on it, but at least here in Asheville, we only have 24 hours in the day, and at least 8 of them I use for Dream Yoga. If I'm going to consider starting all over, there would need to be some indication that it's worthwhile to me.
From "The Hour of God"
The world is a movement of God in His own being; we are the centres and knots of divine consciousness which sum up and support the processes of His movement. The world is His play with His own self-conscious delight, He who alone exists, infinite, free and perfect; we are the self-multiplications of that conscious delight, thrown out into being to be His playmates. The world is a formula, a rhythm, a symbol-system expressing God to Himself in His own consciousness, — it has no material existence but exists only in His consciousness and self-expression; we, like God, are in our inward being That which is expressed, but in our outward being terms of that formula, notes of that rhythm, symbols of that system. Let us lead forward God’s movement, play out His play, work out His formula, execute His harmony, express Him through ourselves in His system. This is our joy and our self-fulfilment; to this end we who transcend & exceed the universe, have entered into universe-existence.
****************
Mirra Alfassa studied Kabbalistic mysticism with Max Theon, before having a vision of an Indian man who she was to study with, and several years later recognizing him when she met Sri Aurobindo in 1914.
Sri Aurobindo worked daily on his epic poem, Savitri, from 1910 to 1950. Mirra used to come downstairs to visit Sri Aurobindo in the mornings, and find he had written about an experience she had had the night before.
Here is one of her experiences he wrote about (From Book 7, Canto 7)
************
Out of the infinitudes all came to her,
Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,
Infinity was her own natural home.
Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,
The distant constellations wheeled round her;
Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,
The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;
All Nature reproduced her in its lines,
Its movements were large copies of her own.
She was the single self of all these selves,
She was in them and they were all in her.
This first was an immense identity
In which her own identity was lost:
What seemed herself was an image of the Whole.
She was a subconscient life of tree and flower,
The outbreak of the honied buds of spring;
She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,
She was the red heart of the passion-flower,
The dream-white of the lotus in its pool.
Out of subconscient life she climbed to mind,
She was thought and the passion of the world's heart,
I really appreciate your encouragement. The working title for my book is “Thou Art Enoch” and it is sort of written in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure book minus the jumping from page to page.
I agree with some of your points and disagree with others.
My biggest point of disagreement is your assertion that the evil in the world is due to spirits and demons. While I agree that spiritual influence is more common than most people in "developed" societies now tend to believe, I feel that blaming such beings for the world's suffering takes away too much human agency and responsibility, rendering us bit players in our own story. Maybe that's a reflection of my own ego, but I think if someone is going to claim "God/the devil made me do it," there better be some pretty strong evidence presented.
On the responsibility side, I also feel that blaming demons and spirits can too easily encourage a sense of learned helplessness. This can lead all too easily to charismatic strongmen leading movements that end up being parasitic upon their own followers at best, actively dangerous to those around them at worst.
I need to get back to work, so I'll end here, but I look forward to seeing what else you have to say. "Last Temptation" is also one of my favorite movies for how it encourages people to question and discover instead of promoting the usual dogma.
Hi Greg, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. I’m not so much blaming spirits for fueling the evil in the world so much as reporting what I’ve come to understand. This is the way it works according to the many mystical experiences I’ve had encountering various “entities” that exist in realms intersecting with our own but beyond the full comprehension of normal consciousness. This stuff really cannot yet be proven at an objective, scientific level. To determine if such spirits do exist then the individual has to go out and have the subjective experience themselves. Sort of how one needs to hop in the ocean to know how it feels or eat a strawberry to know how it tastes.
I understand that these sorts of discussions about the supernatural are pretty difficult for a lot of people so no worries if this strain of my weirdness is too much. 👍
This is my kind of weirdness - staying subscribed. Thank you for declaring who you are/not and what you're about. A society that has forgotten its connection to the spiritual world and the power of ritual purification practices to send possessive spirits on their way will destroy itself. I appreciate your mission!
I really appreciate you, Nathalie. Your encouragement means so much. I'm glad we've been able to connect here and look forward to learning more from you about narcissism and whatever other topics you choose to explore.
I wonder if we have a different understanding of Jewish mysticism. I've by no means made a careful study, but as far as I've ever understood it, Paul's description of God as He "in whom we live and move and have our being," and Rabbi Nachman's call for us to orient every moment of our lives as a sacrament in which we speak and act in surrender to the Divine Will (recognizing the "Divine spark" in ourselves and in all) captures the essence of it."
The first people I turned to after awakening to this recognition of God in all were ministers, rabbis and priests. If I had met one who had any idea what I was talking about, I might have felt that conventional religion was a place for fostering this kind of life. As it turned out, the integral yoga community of Sri Aurobindo appeared to me - and still does 50 years later - as the most powerful means of fostering this way of living.
I'll be interested in hearing what you find helpful about conventional religion that helps you to open to and align yourself with the Divine will.
How much have you studied The Guide of the Perplexed?
Maimonides was not really a mystic but his methods and ideas are important and foundational for my approach. So just giving you the context.
Thank you very much for your kindness. Here is a collection of the thinkers who have most shaped my journey. https://open.substack.com/pub/godofthedesert/p/the-40-counterculture-writers-who?r=14q4c&utm_medium=ios
The living one in particular who has had the biggest impact is @Douglas Rushkoff. His approach to Judaism as laid out in his book Nothing Sacred and his Testament comic series has been foundational to my approach, though I go in very different directions.
Have you engaged with Maimonides yet? His approach underlies Rushkoff’s and underlies mine.
This piece of mine too might be relevant to your interests for better understanding my approach. https://open.substack.com/pub/godofthedesert/p/the-10-worst-ways-to-misinterpret?r=14q4c&utm_medium=ios
I am sort of in the middle ground space between Judaism and Christianity. The prophetic books are where I’ve been hanging mostly the last few years.
It's been decades since I read Maimonides. I preferred E F Schumacher's "Guide for the perplexed, actually:>))
Hi David:
I think we just have radically different views and can gently respect that. Maimonidies seems like a nice ethical thinker but I haven't seen anything of his that speaks to a yearning for union with the Beloved ("Beloved" is the Sufi term for God). And yes, I'm familiar with Rushkoff and haven't found it to be at all "spiritual" in the sense I'm talking about (union with god, surrender to the Divine, recognizing, as Sri Aurobindo puts it, 'the Divine is in all, all is in the Divine and the Divine is all."
But I assume, having written the above, that you would disagree with much of it. Which is fine!
So I "checked out" Maimonides. I watched a 30 minute video by an Israeli scholar who discussed the controversies regarding Maimonides as a rationalist vs mystic. I also got a copy of the book: Jewish Mysticism: Essays on Maimonides' The Guide of the Perplexed," by Yamin Levy.
Didn't seem to have much spiritual depth to me, sorry. Ethics yes, God's Presence, I didn't see it.
I guess I really don't understand your point. It sounds like you're saying the only legitimate religions are Islam, Christianity and Judaism, though if one had to choose religion or no religion, I suppose you would think that Buddhism, Hinduism etc would be better than nothing.
Then what did humanity do prior to five or six thousand years ago? We had another 244,000 years - did nobody find a legitimate relationship with God at that time?
Again, I admire your passion and scholarship, but we really seem to have a very different vision of spirituality, which again - is fine with me!
You have much deeper into Maimonides and Guide of the Perplexed to go. You have not gone deep enough yet into the Torah tradition. I have been in on this Jewish mystical prophetic path for 20 years now and I feel like I am still just beginning, just an amateur. There are so many who know much more than me and I barely know anything.
Well, you have to choose, right?
I've been studying Sri Aurobindo for 50 years and feel like I am just beginning, just an amateur. There are so many who know much more than me and I barely know anything.
If you want to recommend I consider your views, how much time do you want me to invest? I looked at it and found nothing inspiring about it. That doesn't necessarily reflect on it, but at least here in Asheville, we only have 24 hours in the day, and at least 8 of them I use for Dream Yoga. If I'm going to consider starting all over, there would need to be some indication that it's worthwhile to me.
From "The Hour of God"
The world is a movement of God in His own being; we are the centres and knots of divine consciousness which sum up and support the processes of His movement. The world is His play with His own self-conscious delight, He who alone exists, infinite, free and perfect; we are the self-multiplications of that conscious delight, thrown out into being to be His playmates. The world is a formula, a rhythm, a symbol-system expressing God to Himself in His own consciousness, — it has no material existence but exists only in His consciousness and self-expression; we, like God, are in our inward being That which is expressed, but in our outward being terms of that formula, notes of that rhythm, symbols of that system. Let us lead forward God’s movement, play out His play, work out His formula, execute His harmony, express Him through ourselves in His system. This is our joy and our self-fulfilment; to this end we who transcend & exceed the universe, have entered into universe-existence.
****************
Mirra Alfassa studied Kabbalistic mysticism with Max Theon, before having a vision of an Indian man who she was to study with, and several years later recognizing him when she met Sri Aurobindo in 1914.
Sri Aurobindo worked daily on his epic poem, Savitri, from 1910 to 1950. Mirra used to come downstairs to visit Sri Aurobindo in the mornings, and find he had written about an experience she had had the night before.
Here is one of her experiences he wrote about (From Book 7, Canto 7)
************
Out of the infinitudes all came to her,
Into the infinitudes sentient she spread,
Infinity was her own natural home.
Nowhere she dwelt, her spirit was everywhere,
The distant constellations wheeled round her;
Earth saw her born, all worlds were her colonies,
The greater worlds of life and mind were hers;
All Nature reproduced her in its lines,
Its movements were large copies of her own.
She was the single self of all these selves,
She was in them and they were all in her.
This first was an immense identity
In which her own identity was lost:
What seemed herself was an image of the Whole.
She was a subconscient life of tree and flower,
The outbreak of the honied buds of spring;
She burned in the passion and splendour of the rose,
She was the red heart of the passion-flower,
The dream-white of the lotus in its pool.
Out of subconscient life she climbed to mind,
She was thought and the passion of the world's heart,
She was the godhead hid in the heart of man,
She was the climbing of his soul to God.
The cosmos flowered in her, she was its bed.
She was Time and the dreams of God in Time;
She was Space and the wideness of his days.
From this she rose where Time and Space were not;
The superconscient was her native air,
Infinity was her movement's natural space;
Eternity looked out from her on Time.
“If I'm going to consider starting all over, there would need to be some indication that it's worthwhile to me.”
Yes, you should consider starting over and there is plenty to indicate it would be worthwhile for you.
But I feel no need to persuade you over to this path.
This is much more unpleasant than the path you are on now. Yours is the easier path. So if you are content with it then stay on it.
I might not agree with everything you say or think, but I'm intrigued.
Thanks. Any questions?
like a thousand... but not really any other than I'll continue to read your posts and think about what you're writing.
I appreciate that a lot. If there’s ever anything you’d like me to write about then feel free to reach out.
Keep being you! Cannot wait for your Book of Enoch novel.
I really appreciate your encouragement. The working title for my book is “Thou Art Enoch” and it is sort of written in the style of a choose-your-own-adventure book minus the jumping from page to page.
Groovy
Now I'm kind of wondering what would have happened if you had ever met my cousin Tzaddik, of blessed memory.
What was he like?
Literal shaman and peace organizer. Deeply peace-loving, deeply troubled, ended up taking his own life about a year ago.
Very sorry to hear. I can certainly relate on that last point too.
Wow! That's amazing and so happy for you!
Keep up all your amazing work
I agree with some of your points and disagree with others.
My biggest point of disagreement is your assertion that the evil in the world is due to spirits and demons. While I agree that spiritual influence is more common than most people in "developed" societies now tend to believe, I feel that blaming such beings for the world's suffering takes away too much human agency and responsibility, rendering us bit players in our own story. Maybe that's a reflection of my own ego, but I think if someone is going to claim "God/the devil made me do it," there better be some pretty strong evidence presented.
On the responsibility side, I also feel that blaming demons and spirits can too easily encourage a sense of learned helplessness. This can lead all too easily to charismatic strongmen leading movements that end up being parasitic upon their own followers at best, actively dangerous to those around them at worst.
I need to get back to work, so I'll end here, but I look forward to seeing what else you have to say. "Last Temptation" is also one of my favorite movies for how it encourages people to question and discover instead of promoting the usual dogma.
Hi Greg, thanks for reading and sharing your thoughts. I’m not so much blaming spirits for fueling the evil in the world so much as reporting what I’ve come to understand. This is the way it works according to the many mystical experiences I’ve had encountering various “entities” that exist in realms intersecting with our own but beyond the full comprehension of normal consciousness. This stuff really cannot yet be proven at an objective, scientific level. To determine if such spirits do exist then the individual has to go out and have the subjective experience themselves. Sort of how one needs to hop in the ocean to know how it feels or eat a strawberry to know how it tastes.
This piece here further explains my views and experiences here: https://open.substack.com/pub/godofthedesert/p/the-absurd-way-i-accidentally-cured?r=14q4c&utm_medium=ios
I understand that these sorts of discussions about the supernatural are pretty difficult for a lot of people so no worries if this strain of my weirdness is too much. 👍
This seems very odd
Guilty as charged.