Author: adrian

Vairāgya – The Nietzschean Nihilism

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Introduction

A few weeks ago, a young friend asked me a question about vairāgya, a somewhat obscure Hindu word, usually translated as ‘nonattachment’ or ‘renunciation’. He had previously read a post in a social media in which vairagya was translated (by the great Indian sage Sri Aurobindo) as the “disgust that awakens a thirst for the eternal”. He was wondering how that ‘disgust” differed from ordinary disgust and asking how a thirst for the eternal could arise from a disgust.

I though his question was rather profound and poignant, especially in light of the fact that he had been examining what the “dark night of the soul” experientially entailed. Today humanity is going through the collective dark night of the soul without any certainty of a new dawn. The conception of vairāgya, as translated as ‘disgust’, can be examined from this perspective—the perspective of the dark night of the soul, which Friedrich Nietzsche called ‘Nihilism’.

What is it that initiates the vairagya, disgust, dark night of the soul, or nihilism? What is it that liberates us therefrom? Nietzsche had a definitive insight that is relevant and applicable to us contemporary humans who live in the 21st century.

Nietzsche’s path, and therefore our path, is different from the mystical path of the 16th-century Spanish mystic St. John of the Cross who entitled one of his poems “Dark Night of the Soul (La noche oscura del alma)” from which the idea of the “dark night of the soul” originates. Our path is not the mystical path of revelation but the rational path of understanding.

Vairāgya – The Nietzschean Nihilism

Question: I read a post a while ago about vairāgya, a ‘disgust’ with the world that awakens a thirst for the eternal (a quote from Sri Aurobindo). For a few weeks now, I have been mulling over in my mind as to how a thirst for the eternal manifest itself from a disgust, as opposed to just disgust?

Answer: The Sanskrit etymology indicates that the term ‘vairāgya’ is an abstract noun derived from the word ‘virāga’, joining ‘vi’ meaning “without” with ‘rāga’ meaning “passion, feeling, emotion, or interest”. A regular translation of vairāgya is “renunciation” or “nonattachment”, which the modern Indian sage Sri Aurobindo insightfully translated as ‘disgust’.

Vairāgya connotes the psychological awakening from our culturally mimetic ego-logical preoccupations. Vairāgya signifies the renunciation of the delusional semi-dreamlike world of ego-logical preoccupations for the world of Awareness—of fully conscious partaking and enjoying of Reality without attachment.

Let us look at Vairāgya as a class of disgust by way of an analogy. A sweet dream is no different from a nightmarish dream in so far as it is the same dream state. Suppose you experience a disgust while having a nightmare, you would want to switch it to a sweet dream where the disgust is replaced by a pleasurable experience which you would relish.

The same happens in your so-called “waking” (in fact only a semi-waking) state. When you experience nightmarish suffering, you want a relief, a salvation, from that suffering. You feel a disgust toward the life of suffering and seek instead an experience of pleasure but still on the same level of semi-awake or sub-awake dreamlike consciousness in which suffering is bound to happen. You would not feel a disgust if you had pleasurable experiences, but that would not last long.

Vairāgya, as the “disgust with the world that awakens a thirst for the eternal”, is the disgust not only of the nightmare, but also of the sweet dream, that is, it is the disgust, aversion, toward the dream state as such. In one sense, it is similar to the “nausea” which Antoine Roquentin, the protagonist in Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea (La Nausée), experienced against the existential condition, insofar as his “nausea” is not specific to any particular existential situation, albeit initially, but the existential condition as such.

However, it is Friedrich Nietzsche who understands and captures the deepest essence of Vairāgya in the most comprehensive manner. Vairāgya begins with the psychological ‘dis-ease’ arising from a profound cognitive dissonance that cannot be tamed or subdued into a fallacious cognitive consonance. Nietzsche’s designation of Vairāgya is “Nihilism”.

In NIHILISM (the Chapter II of the First Book of THE WILL TO POWER), Nietzsche describes three kinds of Nihilism as psychological states and explicates three consecutive stages of emancipation therefrom through three radical liberational insights. Let me quote the pertinent sections (translation by Walter Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale):

12 (A)

Nihilism as a psychological state will have to be reached, first, when we have sought a “meaning” in all events that is not there: so the seeker eventually becomes discouraged. Nihilism, then, is the recognition of the long waste of strength, the agony of the “in vain,” insecurity, the lack of any opportunity to recover and to regain composure—being ashamed in front of oneself, as if one had deceived oneself all too long.— This meaning could have been: the “fulfillment” of some highest ethical canon in all events, the moral world order; or the growth of love and harmony in the intercourse of beings; or the gradual approximation of a state of universal happiness; or even the development toward a state of universal annihilation—any goal at least constitutes some meaning. What all these notions have in common is that something is to be achieved through the process—and now one realizes that becoming aims at nothing and achieves nothing.— Thus, disappointment regarding an alleged aim of becoming as a cause of nihilism: whether regarding a specific aim or, universalized, the realization that all previous hypotheses about aims that concern the whole “evolution” are inadequate (man no longer the collaborator, let alone the center, of becoming).

Nihilism as a psychological state is reached, secondly, when one has posited a totality, a systematization, indeed any organization in all events, and underneath all events, and a soul that longs to admire and revere has wallowed in the idea of some supreme form of domination and administration (—if the soul be that of a logician, complete consistency and real dialectic are quite sufficient to reconcile it to everything). Some sort of unity, some form of “monism”: this faith suffices to give man a deep feeling of standing in the context of, and being dependent on, some whole that is infinitely superior to him, and he sees himself as a mode of the deity.— “The well-being of the universal demands the devotion of the individual”—but behold, there is no such universal! At bottom, man has lost the faith in his own value when no infinitely valuable whole works through him; i.e., he conceived such a whole in order to be able to believe in his own value.

Nihilism as psychological state has yet a third and last form. Given these two insights, that becoming has no goal and that underneath all becoming there is no grand unity in which the individual could immerse himself completely as in an element of supreme value, an escape remains: to pass sentence on this whole world of becoming as a deception and to invent a world beyond it, a true world. But as soon as man finds out how that world is fabricated solely from psychological needs, and how he has absolutely no right to it, the last form of nihilism comes into being: it includes disbelief in any metaphysical world and forbids itself any belief in a true world. Having reached this standpoint, one grants the reality of becoming as the only reality, forbids oneself every kind of clandestine access to afterworlds and false divinities — but cannot endure this world though one does not want to deny it.

What has happened, at bottom? The feeling of valuelessness was reached with the realization that the overall character of existence may not be interpreted by means of the concept of “aim,” the concept of “unity,” or the concept of “truth.” Existence has no goal or end; any comprehensive unity in the plurality of events is lacking: the character of existence is not “true,” is false. One simply lacks any reason for convincing oneself that there is a true world. Briefly: the categories “aim,” “unity,” “being” which we used to project some value into the world—we pull out again; so the world looks valueless.

12 (B)

Suppose we realize how the world may no longer be interpreted in terms of these three categories, and that the world begins to become valueless for us after this insight: then we have to ask about the sources of our faith in these three categories. Let us try if it is not possible to give up our faith in them. Once we have devaluated these three categories, the demonstration that they cannot be applied to the universe is no longer any reason for devaluating the universe.

Conclusion: The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world.

Final conclusion: All the values by means of which we have tried so far to render the world estimable for ourselves and which then proved inapplicable and therefore devaluated the world—all these values are, psychologically considered, the results of certain perspectives of utility, designed to maintain and increase human constructs of domination—and they have been falsely projected into the essence of things. What we find here is still the hyperbolic naivete of man: positing himself as the meaning and measure of the value of things.

15

What is a belief? How does it originate? Every belief is a considering-something-true.

The most extreme form of nihilism would be the view that every belief, every considering-something-true, is necessarily false because there simply is no true world. Thus: a perspectival appearance whose origin lies in us (in so far as we continually need a narrower, abbreviated, simplified world),

—That it is the measure of strength to what extent we can admit to ourselves, without perishing, the merely apparent character, the necessity of lies.

To this extent, nihilism, as the denial of a truthful world, of being, might be a divine way of thinking.

Nihilism, as a psychological state (which Nietzsche calls “pathological transitional stage”), is the radical belief- and believing-annihilating disillusionment. What we think and how we think what we think are programmed into our mind. The abecedarian conceptual categories of thought, such as meaning, value, aim or purpose, unity, and truth, that order our thinking and mold our behavior, are externally installed and unconsciously internalized. Therefore: “The faith in the categories of reason is the cause of nihilism. We have measured the value of the world according to categories that refer to a purely fictitious world.” In other words, we humans are confined in the mode of believing when we think we think, and are enclosed within our belief when we understand we understand the world.

Believing is modeling of reality, while belief is model of reality. Both are externally set and internally fixed. Both are mimetically acquired and recreated, and are designed to impede the natural, creative, and free movement of human cogitation (thinking) and cognition (knowing).

Believing is the mimetic, universally paradigmatic, cognitive-cogitative operating system, while belief is the mimetic, culturally paradigmatic, reality-conjuring narrative program. Believing impedes the natural evolution of the potential of human cognition and cogitation, while belief begets conceptual perversion, breeds perceptual illusion, and produces false notions about reality and the world. Our ego-logical self, our faux ego, is the avatar placed as the subject in the projected world of make-believe constructed by the mental operating system of believing. Our faux ego is a figment of belief. Our faux conceptual categories of values—such as aim, unity, and truth—are figments of belief.

Nihilism is the profound belief-annihilating cognitive dissonance (vairāgya/disgust) which the faux ego experiences in the Real Self’s Realization of the fallacy of believing as such in the categories of meaning or purpose, unity or oneness, and truth or true world. Nihilism is the self-recognition of the collapse of the edifice of believing and belief—of “The Matrix” of illusion, delusion, and collusion, within and without (vairāgya/renunciation). If you can endure all three stages of Nihilistic Crisis to the end—i.e., to the cessation (nirvāṇa) of Nihilism, you will be able to see aright Reality with the Eye of the I and to think freely your original thought with the I of the Mind.

You ask: “how a thirst for the eternal manifest itself from a disgust?” Now this “thirst for the eternal” can be another, subtler, ego-logical preoccupation, an ego trip as well as an ego trap!

As stated in the second paragraph of 12 (A): “Some sort of unity, some form of ‘monism’ [‘universal oneness with the eternal or the divine’]: this faith suffices to give man a deep feeling of standing in the context of, and being dependent on, some whole that is infinitely superior to him, and he sees himself as a mode of the deity.” Hence, this sentence is followed by: “The well-being of the universal demands the devotion of the individual”—but behold, there is no such universal! At bottom, man has lost the faith in his own value when no infinitely valuable whole works through him; i.e., he conceived such a whole in order to be able to believe in his own value.

This “thirst for the eternal” can also be genuine and authentic. It is a thirst for the real in disgust of the illusory. It is a thirst for the substantial in disgust of the phantom. Therefore, “nihilism, as the denial of a truthful world [so-believed], of being [so-believed], might be a divine [conatively fully human] way of thinking.

Here I am using “conative” instead of “authentic” because “the Will to Power” is Nietzsche’s translation of the concept of the Conatus—that power which causes a thing to persist in being itself—that power or will with which everything in Nature endeavors to persist in its own being. It is “Nature’s God” in The Declaration of Independence, where Nature is taken as a whole. The Conatus, “Nature’s God”, “the Will to Power”, is the evolutionary impulse, the syntropic thrust for self-optimization, seen in Nature and all things in Nature, because to be is to become and to become is to grow as a whole.

Vairāgya, a disgust or nausea that rouses a thirst for the eternal, for the real, is the total disillusionment with one’s own inauthenticity and errancy, unconatively seeking to attain self-worth in a place wherein the authentic self is categorically absent. It is the disillusionment with the utter futility of unceasing faux ego-logical preoccupations and of searching for meaning, aim, value, truth, and (ultimately) self-worth in the world of fallacious beliefs, of illusion, delusion, and collusion, effected by believing and belief wherein we can never find the real or the eternal.

Furthermore, psychologically, believing and having a belief structurally assume the existence of external authority. You believe in your external authority and you have a belief provided to you by your external authority, be it “God” or “guru” or “state” or “society”. You are dependent and unfree, psychologically and ideationally. This psychological structure is also that of victim consciousness (“human constructs of domination”), and hence you are self-admittedly psychologically and characterologically weak.

Vairāgya as disgust is thus also a disgust toward your own weakness. Therefore, “That it is the measure of strength to what extent we can admit to ourselves, without perishing, the merely apparent character, the necessity of lies.” In the crisis of nihilism, you are all alone in the universe. Your external authority is collapsing internally, and you have nowhere or nobody to which or to whom to turn. Thus, to endure the whole process of a nihilistic crisis requires a tremendous mental, emotional, and spiritual strength.

Elsewhere, you asked me about the top-down approach vs. the bottom-up approach. You need to come to this point of the Nietzschean Nihilism on your own (bottom-up) in order for a teacher (top-down) can be of any assistance. The bottom-up is the necessary condition (you must come to the point of nihilism) and it can also be a necessary and sufficient condition if you have a sufficient degree of strength. Nietzsche is a great example. The top-down, by itself, can be a sufficient condition but never a necessary and sufficient condition.

A teacher, even if authentic, cannot help a student who does not have the minimum requisite strength of character. Otherwise, the teacher is inevitably made into the student’s external authority. If the teacher is inauthentic, a “false guru” (of which there are many), the student can never go through the second stage of nihilism. Therefore, if you cannot relate to your teacher as a sovereign, independent, freethinking, and autonomous individual, without holding your teacher as an external authority, then you will fall into the same external authority psychological structure: “a soul that longs to admire and revere has wallowed in the idea of some supreme form of domination and administration.”

Therefore, as I wrote in “Self-Responsibility, Self-Integrity, and Freedom from the Guru”, paradoxical though it may sound, an authentic guru can help only those who do not need a guru. That is, the guru provides only for the students who provide for themselves.

In each of the three Nihilistic Crises, the faux ego along with its illusory world faces death. If the real ego, or the authentic self, with the real world is not simultaneously aborning, then the faux ego will resurrect, that is, redream, with heightened cleverness and more sophisticated belief, or the host (the body-mind of the real self) will commit suicide. The three stages of the Nietzschean Nihilistic Crisis are, therefore, three stages of the faux ego’s death and of the real ego’s birth.

If we equate Vairāgya with Nietzschean Nihilism, then there are three stages of disgust and renunciation. You come to experience Freedom that is Becoming wherein the Present is the Eternal and the Eternal is the Present. If the disgust is only of the faux ego, then there is no renunciation. It is when the origination of the disgust is coextensive with the conative power of renunciation that the Crisis of Nihilism becomes the Blessing of Freedom.

Restlessness

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Q: There is some restlessness inside I fear I will never be able to shake.

A: We are each a multidimensional microcosm inside and in interaction with a multidimensional macrocosm or a universe. Our search for authentic selfhood and inner fulfillment is synonymous with the search for finding our uniquely right place in the universe and in the world. No one but you can know that right place for yourself, while society has no interest at all in you finding your rightful place in the universe. The restlessness of which you speak will continue until you find that place in the ceaselessly moving dynamic ocean of existence.

The great majority of human beings, however, eventually settle down to having some positions (e.g., CEO of a company or a professor of a university) and roles (e.g., a mother, a father, a wife, or a husband) without ever finding their uniquely right places in the universe. Their sense of restlessness becomes suppressed, repressed, numbed, and then forgotten. This is a kind of self-deception and a form of inauthenticity.

This restlessness is not something that we should shake but an inner guidance that leads us to our own legitimate and proper dwelling place in the universe. The universe being in flux, this legitimate dwelling place, this uniquely rightful place, of yours is not static, and yet when you find it, you will find a dynamically immovable place, and a dynamically still point, of existence that is your cosmic property, unexchangeable with any other property.

When you find your rightful place in the universe, you will then become completely at home in the universe. You experience the at-one-ness or at-one-ment (atonement) with the universe and with everything in the universe. You will experience a cosmic reconciliation, cosmic we-ness, by residing in the cosmically singular dwelling place that is uniquely yours and yours only—that is, in the uniqueness or singularity of your being. This I call ‘Singular We-ness’.

Humility

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Humility is a consequential virtue. Humility is a consequence of having real intellectual honesty and integrity, which in turn is a manifestation of unswerving commitment to truth. It is a fragrance, as it were, coming from the blossoming of intellectual honesty and integrity growing out of the root that is commitment to truth.

Thus, the antidote for arrogance is not humility, for being a consequential virtue, humility cannot be directly pursued. If you directly pursue or practice, that is, pretend, humility, you will only become a hypocrite, pretending to be humble but in reality arrogant or conceited. The only true antidote to arrogance is commitment to truth, and intellectual honesty and integrity you develop therefrom.

Another consequential virtue of your commitment to truth and intellectual honesty and integrity is wisdom—the discerning acumen with which you know what you know, what you don’t know, and the difference between the two. Therefore, you who are truly wise are also really humble, remaining always an eternal student of life.

Endorcism, Courage, and Love

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All nature is but art, unknown to thee
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see
All discord, harmony not understood
All partial evil, universal good

– Alexander Pope, Essay On Man

There exists a duality and dialectic of courage and cowardice (or “sensitivity”), but you are never 100% courageous or 100% sensitive. As the one becomes more actualized, the other becomes more potentialized. While the duality, the polarity, the tension between courage and cowardice exists on one level of reality and of consciousness, on a contiguously higher (or deeper) level of reality and of consciousness, there exists neither courage nor cowardice.

You are, and your reality is, the ternarity or tri-unity of courage, cowardice, and the beyond or that which is transcendental thereof. This is not the same as the Hegelian synthesis that takes place in the sequential time frame on the same level of reality. This ternary structure across any two contiguous levels of reality exists at every moment of your life.

Endorcism means to be present to this tri-unity and to be and to live as this tri-unity. That which evolves is this tri-unity into ever-higher levels of reality and consciousness (cognition-cogitation or perception-conception-mentation-intellection).

Love as an emotion exists in the polarity or the bidirectional continuum of love-hate or of love-fear, whereas Love as a state of consciousness includes and centered in the third element on the contiguously higher (or deeper) level of reality and perception.

This third element is neither love nor hate. It is not an emotion. It is the awareness or the higher feeling or sense that recognizes the duality, the polarity, and the tension between love and hate, and yet inclusively transcends it.

In the total experience of this triune reality in the triune consciousness, the love-hate or the love-fear polarity continuum is transmuted to become an ecstatic intensity on the higher emotional or affective level. It ceases to be an (infinite) spectral continuum of colors and become a white light, metaphorically speaking. Then, there will be no emotional attachment, which arises only when the emotional experience is partial and localized within the whole continuum.

Duality & Nonduality

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There exists a profound misunderstanding regarding duality and nonduality. Duality is not the opposite or the negation of nonduality; nonduality is not the opposite or the negation of duality. There is duality in nonduality; there is nonduality in duality.

The world of form or form principle is binary and hence dual and multiple. The world of the formless or formless principle is singular and hence nondual and one. Therefore, the universe is at once a universe and a biverse.

Further, duality, and hence differentiation or distinction, is not the same as separation. Reality is differentiation or distinction without separation, while separation as such is an illusion.

The Second Coming – Spiritual and Social

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The Second Coming of the Christ is a Christian eschatological concept. Buddhism also has a kind of eschatology and a concept similar to the Second Coming—a concept of the future Buddha named Maitreya. There exist several standard interpretations of both the Second Coming and the future Buddha Maitreya. Here we are not interested in the academic study of these concepts but their existential significance to us, the humans living in the 21st century.

Today we face an unprecedent challenge of change. Two and half millennia ago, Heraclitus said: “The only thing that is constant is change.” What is unique today is the exponential rate of change, which results in the change in the nature of change itself.

The unprecedented evolutionary challenge that the human species faces is twofold: (1) the challenge of nonlinear exponential change and (2) the challenge of geometrically increasing complexity (structure) and abundance (quantity).

Stress is known as one of prime catalysts of biological evolution. This twofold challenge is placing upon humanity a great evolutionary stress that can and probably will catalyze an evolutionary transformation or transmutation on the species level.

The visionary psychologist Julian Jaynes in his The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) describes a radical shift that took place three millennia ago to human consciousness in order to meet the challenge of increasing social complexity. A similar but even more radical transformation can take place in meeting the evolutionary challenge of change and complexity.

The Second Coming of the Christ or the Future Buddha Maitreya can be conceived in this evolutionary context. Human consciousness and society have evolved in the last three millennia to the level that neither the “Divine Savior” model of the Christ nor the “World Teacher” model of the Buddha applies to the present and the future humanity.

The new model that is proper to us is the ‘Authentic Sovereign’ model, instead of “Divine Savior” model, and the ‘Awakened Friend’ model, instead of the “World Teacher” model (etymological root of Maitreya is “friend” or “friendship”).

The Christ Consciousness is within us as the Cosmic Sovereignty, which is the spiritual essence of our awakened individual sovereignty that distinguishes us as individulas. The Buddha Nature is within us as the Cosmic Awareness, which is the essence of our awakened individual consciousness that unites us as friends.

Now, the world in which we live is extremely complex and its complexity is non-linearly increasing. All of its parts, complex in and by themselves, are interconnected and interdependent. No problem in the world exists in isolation from other problems. Therefore, all possible solutions are also interdependent and interrelated. Thus, solving one complex problem involves simultaneously or synchronously solving all the other problems.

Solution is an evolutionary movement towards the ultimate resolution, where no ultimate resolution ever exists except as the evolutionary ‘strange attractor’. Solution is an integral evolutionary movement itself towards ever greater wholeness, coherence, and integrity of the whole. In one of my essays (2000) I stated the following:

“We may long for a utopian state of life, ‘heaven’, wherein no problems exist at all, but in point of fact, heaven without evolutionary tension is tantamount to hell. Problems are a manifestation of evolutionary tension inherent in life. Heaven is not a static cloister wherein problems never arise but a dynamic field wherein we consciously create new problems as an expression of our creative vision and evolutionary passion.”

This evolutionary movement is a synergetic movement that emerges out of multitudinous revolutions of its subsystems all the way down to the consciousness of every individual constituting the world. From a different perspective, the consciousness of each individual contains the world, and that world changes as the consciousness evolves. This is where social transformation and spiritual transformation meet. These two perspectives together create a unified vision of social and spiritual transformation.

The phenomenal universe is binary through and through. Therefore, the dyadic dialectics will always exist. In fact, a real dyadical dialectic is the very pulse of freedom. That of which we must be aware and cognizant is false dyads, false dichotomies. The Right vs. the Left, the Conservative vs. the Liberal, the Republican vs. the Democrat—all of those dyads or dichotomies are false because no real meaning is contained by any of those terms that are mere labels or names without real significations.

The real dyad with meaning is Liberty versus Tyranny. The Right and the Left, the Conservative and the Liberal, or the Republican and the Democrat all share elements of liberty and tyranny, though the balance is heavily towards tyranny. The Libertarians originally intended to be the party of Liberty but ended up being a mere academic exercise without any real strategy for the achievement of Liberty. They lack both the mind and the will.

The degree of evolution of individual consciousness or collective consciousness (society) is proportional to the degree of freedom or liberty the individual or society has. The more evolved the individual and the society is, the freer the individual is and the more liberty the society has. Therefore, when you evaluate yourself and your society in terms of evolution (development/advancement), you want to measure the degree of internal freedom and external liberty.

In evaluating a policy proposed or enacted by the elected officials, we should ask the question: Does this policy move our society more towards liberty or more towards tyranny?

In evaluating a politician, we should ask the questions: (1) Is his/her basic ideological orientation more aligned with liberty or tyranny? (2) Has he/she shown the integrity and the strategic acumen to fulfill his/her promises?

In evaluating your spiritual path, you should ask: Has this path helped increase my inner freedom? Am I freer, in my being and thinking, as a result of pursuing this path?

Tyranny exists everywhere, and within as well as without. Tyrants come in many guises and disguises. They first indoctrinate you so that you become a victim of the Mass Stockholm Syndrome. That is, they make you a supporter of the tyrannical ideology and system.

An insidiously clever part of the indoctrination is that by virtue of subscribing to the particular ideology and supporting the particular system, you are morally more superior to those who do not. By virtue of belonging, of your “membership”, you gain a high moral status, and if you prove your greater loyalty, then you gain a higher career/professional status as well.

People must wake up from their indoctrination and recover from the Mass Stockholm Syndrome. The mass indoctrination or “hypnosis” happens collectively, but the awakening happens only individually. And yet, this individual awakening, when it gains a critical mass, will impact societal transformation.

That will be the time of the collective Second Coming when we meet and work together as friends, as Maitreyas—fellow revolutionaries of consciousness and society.

Transcending Dualism

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Humanity has come to a point in the evolution of consciousness and thought where a significant percentage of people can transcend the dualistic mode of cognition and cogitation. Many bright people—philosophers and intellectuals—are working on it as though they can control the process by their thought but what they do not realize is that they need to go out of their mind, literally, to accomplish the evolution for themselves because it is the Existential Logic beyond the mental logic that needs to be transformed first. Once they authentically transcend their dualistic or dialectic mode of existence, cognition, and cogitation, their mind, their intellect, will become reconfigured to reflect the new existential logic into a mental logic.

The Omnicentric World

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In the process of enculturation your mind becomes socialized. Your mental identity is a collectivist, and your ego is a socialist, by nature. You have a society in your mind and your ego exists only in relation to other egos appearing in your mental consciousness.

On top of being existentially collectivist-socialists, many egos become ideologically collectivist-socialists, by believing in, that is, by being indoctrinated with, various collectivist ideologies (such as communism, socialism, fascism, “liberalism”, and “progressivism”).

Even if you believe in individualism or capitalism, so long as your mental self-identification is with your ego, you remain a collectivist-socialist at heart.

Your ego exists in a herd of minds. Your ego can “think” only inside a collective hive mind, which is not thinking—authentic, independent, and free thinking—at all. Your thinking is a personalized groupthink so long as you are identified with your ego and live inside the hive mind with your fellow mental slaves in the herd.

To break free from your herd, from your hive mind, is to become a free, integrated individual, a true free thinker, and this break from the herd, which is tantamount to a break from your socialized ego, signifies the breakthrough transformation (real transubstantiation) from the first tier to the second tier in the Spiral Dynamics or AQAL model.

Then, you are free and sovereign. You are existentially integral with reality beyond intellectual cognitive integration of reality in a conceptual model. You are a world. Your self-identity is with the universe. Your individuality or I-ness is cosmic. Your We-ness is cosmically singular and sovereign.

Further, there is a Universe or a Kosmos existing beyond, which Buckminster Fuller described as “the aggregate of all humanity’s consciously apprehended and communicated nonsimultaneous and partially overrapping experiences.”

This is what I call the Omnicentric Universe. To explore this Universe is to explore the inner and outer universes beyond your own.

Other humans become the portals to their worlds of experience, their universes. Those who are thus awakened to the Omnicentric Consciousness, will someday create an Omnicentric World on the planet earth.

Primacy of Difference over Identity

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The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze is credited to have expressly identified the primacy of difference over identity. The primacy of difference over identity, however, is deeply implicit in our experience and thought.

For example, we ask, “Who am I?” not “What am I?” For, the “I” exists in relationship to the other “I’s”—in a differential, relational context of the self and all the other selves. Your identity—who you are—is defined by the difference that you are from others.

The more differentiated or individuated you are, the more distinguished or more unique in self-identity you are. Humanity as a whole is a whole field of such differences and differentiations, and the unity of humanity or human-unity is this dynamic field of differentiation and difference.

By being differentiated and different, you find your place and locate your self in the whole field of human-unity. By being unique (from ‘unicus’ = one), you attain oneness with humanity, and with the universe amongst every unique thing or event that exists therein.

The Logic Behind My Thought

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Prologue

We are used to think in terms of classical Aristotelian logic. Much of the problems in thought arises because of the inherent limitation of Aristotelian logic of the excluded middle.

The Romanian-French philosopher and logician Stephan Lupasco (1900 -1 988) developed a new system of non-Aristotelian logic of the Included Middle, inspired by quantum physics wherein logical paradox is one of its main features (e.g. the wave-particle duality).

Lupasco’s logic includes classical Aristotelian logic as a special case, which can be used when we deal with simple and consistent situations in gross reality, which is similar in the way in which Einsteinian physics includes Newtonian physics as a special case approximation for the local universe.

Stephan Lupasco’s Logic of the Included Middle

A. Fundamental Postulate

The key postulate, as formulated by Lupasco, is that every real phenomenon, element or event e is always associated with an anti-phenomenon, anti-element or anti-event non-e, such that the actualization of e entails the potentialization of non-e and vice versa, alternatively, without either ever disappearing completely.

The logic is the Logic of the Included Middle, which consists of axioms and rules of inference for determining the state of the three dynamic elements involved in a phenomenon (“dynamic” in the physical sense, related to real change rather than to formal change, e.g. of conclusions).

B. Classical Aristotelian Axioms

The three fundamental axioms of classical Aristotelian logic, in one version, are the following:

1. The axiom of identity: A is A.

2. The axiom of non-contradiction: A is not non-A.

3. The axiom of the excluded middle: there exists no third term ‘T’ (‘T’ from third) that is at the same time A and non-A.

Based on his quantum worldview, Lupasco rewrote the three major axioms of classical logic as follows:

C. The Philosophical Logic of Stéphane Lupasco

1. (Physical) Non-Identity: There is no A at a given time that is identical to A at another time.

2. Conditional Contradiction: A and non-A both exist at the same time, but only in the sense that when A is actual, non-A is potential, reciprocally and alternatively, but never to the limit of 100%.

3. Included Middle: An included or additional third element or ‘T-state’ exists (‘T’ for ‘tiers inclus’, included third) [at a contiguously higher level of reality or complexity].

The evolution of real processes is therefore asymptotically toward a non-contradiction of identity or toward contradiction.

The mid-point of semi-actualization and semi-potentialization of both is a point of maximum contradiction, a ‘T-state’ resolving the contradiction (or ‘counter-action’) at a higher level of reality or complexity.

Lupasco’s Logic of the Included Middle is a valid multivalent logic, with the indicated terms. At a single level of reality, the second and third axioms are essentially equivalent.

The T-state emerges from the point of maximum contradiction at which A and non-A are equally actualized and potentialized, but at a higher level of reality or complexity, at which the contradiction is resolved.

A paradigm example is the unification in the quanton (T) of the apparently contradictory elements of particle (A) and wave (non-A).

In contrast to the Hegelian triad, the three terms here coexist at the same moment of time. The Logic of the Included Middle does not abolish that of the excluded middle, which remains valid for simple, consistent situations. However, the former is the privileged logic of complexity, of the real mental, social and political world.

The Logic of the Included Middle is capable of describing the coherence between levels of reality. A given T-state (which operates the unification of A and non-A) is associated with another couple of contradictory terms at its higher level (A1 , non-A1 ), which are in turn resolved at another level by T1 .

The action of the Logic of the Included Middle induces an open structure of the set of all possible levels of reality, similar to that defined by Gödel for formal systems.

In relating and dealing with the phenomenal world, which is binary through and through, I use Lupasco’s logic, when thinking, so that I can look at the world of duality from the perspective of the Included Middle on a higher and more complex level of reality and consciousness (conception/perception), but when deciding (to decide = to cut off/to kill the alternative), I commit to what I consider to be the better hypothesis out of the binary alternative from the perspective of the Included Middle.

To commit to what I consider to be the better hypothesis is not the same as to believe or to be convinced. With new information and observation accumulating relative to the same level of reality or complexity, I may continue to recommit (commit again) to the same hypothesis or recommit (commit anew) to the other alternative or a new (modified) hypothesis.

Therefore, while I am committed, I am not attached, to my hypothesis. Because commitment has a thought-power, people may think that I am convinced, but I am not convinced of anything or I do not believe (in) anything. My views and opinions concerning the binary phenomenal world are all hypotheses that are in constant and continual modification and revision.

This commitment constitutes what is called trust.

Significance of Masculinity in Spiritual Development

Posted on by adrian

Question: What is your idea around integrating the warrior-yang energy in the post-modern spiritual education of young people? Primordial energies related to power, will, life drives…they are so often placed in shadow.

Answer: Gender is different from sex. Sex is given biologically while gender is self-generated or “en-gendered.” In the process of integrating the primordial masculine/yang and feminine/yin energies in our spiritual self-development program, we transform, transmute, or transubstantiate sexual energies to engender our own self, being, and consciousness consistent with our sex.

Spiritually developed, well-integrated mature individuals, regardless of their physical sex, have integrated both of the masculine and feminine energetic aspects in the engendered constitution of their being and consciousness.

What is the essence of masculinity (‘yang’)? What is the essence of femininity (‘yin’)? What does it mean to integrate the masculine energy and the feminine energy for men and for women of the post-post-modern age?

We cannot in the real sense look at and think about masculinity or femininity separate from or independent of the other, even as we cannot conceive of matter and motion separately from one another. In fact, the inseparability of matter-motion can be viewed as the primordial binary yin-yang/feminine-masculine complementarity of the cosmos. (Matter/Material = Mother/Maternal; Motion/Pattern = Father/Paternal.)

That is to say, nothing is ever purely one hundred per cent masculine or feminine; every existent, individually and in combination, consists of a varying proportion of the masculine and feminine elements that are coextensive and coterminous. When applied to the humans, in this sense, we are all “androgynous (combined male and female/yin and yang energies)” to a varying degree.

The characteristic features that are ascribed to the masculine, such as the “primordial energies related to power, will, life drives,” indicate only the preponderance of the masculine element or energy within the binary totality (of the masculine and feminine) that constitutes a living human being.

In order for a masculine preponderance to create a balanced complementarity, there needs to be a feminine preponderance in another aspect of being within the totality of a human being. Further, the masculine preponderance in one aspect of being should not become extreme; that is, it should remain to be dominant (preponderant) but not dominating (oppressive of the other element).

Post-modern extremist feminist orientation emasculated men and defeminized women through the disintegration of masculinity in men and the misintegration of masculinity in women. As the result, men have become unnecessarily softened and thus weakened, while women have become unnaturally hardened and thus weakened.

What is the essence of masculinity as represented by the warrior-yang energy? It is the strength of character that is expressed as courage, valor, and fortitude. It is the spiritual essence, the true spirit, of the samurai warrior characterized by his indestructible inner peace and resolve arising from his real inner strength.

To integrate the masculine energy in men’s and women’s spiritual development and evolution means to transmute it to a mental-spiritual force that becomes the moral and spiritual character strength as experienced and expressed as courage, valor, and fortitude.

The same applies to the feminine energy: To integrate the feminine energy in men’s and women’s spiritual development means to transmute it to a mental-spiritual force that becomes the moral and spiritual character strength as experienced and expressed as tenderheartedness, kindness, and compassion.

The true samurai warrior has both courage and compassion, both valor and tenderheartedness, and both fortitude and kindness, for one cannot integrate the masculine without integrating the feminine if the integration is to be authentic, balanced, and transmutationally engendering.

The physical sexual difference plays a decisive role in the engendering of selfhood as a man or woman. Living in this physical world, a man lives with a male physical body and a woman with a female physical body, which significantly colors many aspects of their experiences in life. For instance, in sexual relationship, the man is the penetrator while the woman is the penetrated, and this difference has a deep impact on their psychological differences.

We are all simply reproduced through our parents. It is we each alone who can give birth to his or her own authentic self. This giving birth to oneself is what transformational self-engendering means, which in turn entails one’s gender-engendering in which one transmutatively integrates both the masculine and feminine energies. We are all only reproduced as male or female sexes; we engender and give birth to our own self as a man or a woman.

Post-modern spirituality (and culture) has devalued morality and ethics, in large part owing to its relativistic orientation to morality and ethics and to its predilection and propensity towards over-psychologizing, and as a result lost sight of the critical importance and essential role of the moral and ethical character development in the whole evolutionary process of integral human spiritual development.

Moral and ethical character development is an essential evolutionary stream within the whole integral developmental stream of spiritual self-development. What is the post-postmodern or “cosmodern” integral morality-ethics, or moral-ethical character development? What is the post-postmodern or cosmodern integral self-engendering through which to transmutationally integrate the masculine and feminine energies?

The spiritual essence of the transmuted masculine energy is the conscious detachment to that which is impermanent and transitory and the authentic loyalty to that which is permanent or eternal held categorically higher in value than his own self and life which is impermanent and transitory. This essence expresses itself as courage, valor, fortitude, loyalty, and integrity.

The difference between the medieval samurai and the post-post-modern samurai is the difference in what he considers himself to be, his self-identity, which is impermanent, and in what he deems to be categorically higher in value than his impermanent self and life.

The spiritual essence of the transmuted feminine energy is the conscious attendance and loyalty to that which is impermanent and transitory in the light of Love that is uncreated, unconditional, and eternal. This essence is expressed as tenderheartedness, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, and warmth.

The feminine energy is felt to have come from the higher source, the eternal, while the masculine energy is felt to move towards the higher source, the eternal. In this regard, I find it interesting and instructive that Goethe ends FAUST with the following lines:

All past the humanly
Wrought here in love;
The Eternal-Womanly
Draws us above.

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