Non-Buddhism

A Call to Engage with the Mystery

By Akilesh Ayyar*

I am going to try to persuade you, at least those of you who will recognize what I am trying to express, that we live in the midst of a problem so deep and so all encompassing that we do not even know that it is there, and that making headway on it deserves the greatest effort. I cannot name it directly, this foe of mine (which may also be my deepest friend), for its very essence lies in its inability to be properly named. And yet I might throw a name on my inability to name it and call it the Problem, the Mystery, the Confusion, maya, the twisting paths of twistiness. The story of my life, and perhaps of everyone’s, might be described in some sense as the infuriating quest up and down cartoon staircases to catch this fedora-shielded villain. Precisely because this dastardly foe distorts the mind, I cannot think about what it is and then work backwards to figure out how best to describe it. I must simply talk around it and hope that you get at least something vaguely like my point.

There is a state of mind where a writer squirms after his topic like some particularly elusive eel. No sooner has he finally got it in his hands than it proves never to have been there in the first place: a shadow, an illusion. Lunge this way for it and it proves preternaturally fast, traveling backwards in time via some quantum mechanism to choose the alternate path, the path that never would have put his palm on track to close on it in the first place.

This happens not just to writers but to us all.

Deep in my heart – and, I suspect, in yours – there is a beating, pulsing Something. It is that which seeks expression; it is that which equally evades it. But what is it? I cannot see it, I cannot think it; I can only feel it, perhaps, and intuit it. I want to speak of and by it, from its place, from its power, for it. How?

We need a concerted effort to see within, to catch more comprehensive glimpses of this Thing. I cannot see. I cannot even see what I cannot see. I only know that I cannot see, that what was here a moment ago isn’t now. Was it there, or wasn’t it? That sparkle we sense in another that drives us mad, that luminous hope we felt about a project that hinted at unspeakable future glory, that certainty that here it was at last what we’d been looking for: and how each of these feelings, so standout, seemed so quickly and abruptly so utterly erased – until a flash of sunlight revealed it once again – and then the clouds moved and revealed that too to have been – mirage.

There are whirling phantasms in the deep pools from which our minds emerge. We have not the tools, the arsenals, the concepts to know, to comprehend them. These flashing lights, these déjà vus, these strange breathtaking and alien vistas glimpsed too quickly, this Something, is taking us all for a ride. Our contorted thoughts, our suffering emotions, our human conflicts, our inabilities to do what we supposedly know needs to be done – everything flows from this trickster wellspring of Deepest Desire, this entity which I will call, out of frustration, an entity only because I have no other name for it. We cannot grasp our true situation because we do not perceive it clearly. And it plays hide-and-seek with us.

I don’t know how to even to get a rhetorical grasp on the situation so as to best persuade you of the fact of our not-knowing something that is nevertheless, though perhaps on the borderlands of existing and not-existing, there to be known, and perhaps to be spoken with. Halfway even I cannot believe it myself, for I cannot understand it – cannot understand what it is that I am asking of you or of myself, either. I seem to be pleading for something that I have felt as out of a dream whose merest dregs remain in the morning. Something sits at the bottom, as of a well, in our minds and our hearts and our souls, or whatever word you choose. It may be monster and it may be god and it is certainly an artist, but it is no doubt the source of our personalities and the end of our quests. It is not the simply transcendental, not the simply beyond-this-world, though it may have one half of its being in that domain. It is intimately enmeshed with this world, whatever “this world” is. When we catch its reflection in someone, that someone glows with the fire of something realer than reality, and it is this which compels the seeker to abandon all else and drop down the rabbit hole in hot chase.

It is the source of desire and also the constructor of our perspectives, of our views of the world. It is the hearth which shelters that cunning and elusive fire whose object we try in vain to locate. And it is the lure of death. It is what calls us in moments of extraordinary and near-supernatural feeling.

I’m giving a list of attributes without elaborate justification because I’m trying to communicate, first and foremost, a feeling, an atmosphere, a phenomenon to which some people, I hope, will feel a kinship.

And on that basis I urge that we exert individual and collective efforts to invent new ways of better comprehending and contending with this great secret garden which is at the heart of whatever it is we long for. This Thing which veils itself surely will rebuff a complete view, but just as surely it must reward diligent effort: for as much as it wishes to hide, it also longs to be seen.

Why do I think this is a collective task? Why don’t we only sit by ourselves and try to figure it out as it applies to ourselves? And what might figuring it out even mean? Using what method might we advance things?

I have views on these matters; I have opinions. Yet the relevant truth is: I don’t know. I don’t know how to go about this. I only know that there is an issue, and that I can tend towards certain possibilities and away from others based on my intuition. But I know my own capacity is limited, and so my selfish hope is to enlist others who are perhaps on the same wavelength, or even perhaps not on the same wavelength, but whose investigations, directly or indirectly, might somehow shed light.

I want to interpret the entire cultural productions of humanity as in some sense, whether their creators knew it or not, a set of clues in a long-lived game, scraps of a treasure map which may be knitted back together. This Mystery, which is undoubtedly not a thing but a being, but even more than that something that breaks all the metaphors which are applied to it, nevertheless compels us to create better metaphors. For while a complete view may be impossible, a less partial view is possible, and is exhilarating to behold, exhilarating even to pursue. Or so I tell myself right now.

A great exploration! A great adventure! A collective call to action at the site of real change! A conversation with the Appalling and Awesome Intelligence!

Thoughts?

*Akilesh Ayyar is a writer in Brooklyn. He is interested in how literature, philosophy, religion, and psychoanalysis can help him figure out just what it is that he’s been trying to figure out. He can be contacted at ayyar@akilesh.com.

28 responses to “A Call to Engage with the Mystery”

Mystery. | The Non-Buddhist

April 2, 2016

[…] Deep in my heart – and, I suspect, in yours – there is a beating, pulsing Something. It is that which seeks expression; it is that which equally evades it. But what is it? I cannot see it, I cannot think it; I can only feel it, perhaps, and intuit it. I want to speak of and by it, from its place, from its power, for it. How? Akilesh Ayyar […]
Glenn Wallis

April 2, 2016

Akilesh’s text hovers around a place that fascinates me. I see it as a place between positivism and transcendentalism. As I read it, the text thus occupies an extremely precarious position. An author of such a text could easily fall on the one side, positivism, in which case he’s ensnared in scientism, or at least in the delirious dream of empiricism. Even more easily, if you ask me, he could fall on the side of transcendentalism, in which case he’d be just another merchant of false hope. The text struggles with the difficulty of speaking of or from this place, or really, this non-place, itself. It also presupposes that this place has real consequences, like Lacan’s effective void at the heart of the symbolic order. But how do you speak it, from it, without lapsing into yet another insipid mysticism or unimaginative cognitivism? A text with the word “mystery” might suggest an erring on the side of the former. Akilesh’s text resists that move. I can imagine many people reading this text and thinking that it dreams, along with the New Materialists and the anatheist theologians, of the reemergence of the grand metaphysics of a vitalist force field. But I don’t think it does. Of course, you can never be quite sure with a text like this. That’s because it hovers so closely to the monstrous empty signifier of human existence.
thegreatdoubt

April 2, 2016

It is of a great embarrassment to all who wish to really communicate almost anything that we find that the symbols fall short and leave us with a broken heart….my attempt at fails also and may seem overly concerned with the issues of human interpretations of experience, but it is the way we loose our way…

Regards,

Bill W.
Patrick jennings

April 3, 2016

Hi Glenn,
When you talk of transcendentalism do you mean in the Kantian sense — an a priori something or other that organises out view of the world without itself being available to inspection—hence mysterious; or a transcendence exterior to the human altogether –God, or as you call it, a “vitalist force field”?

Isn’t there a real connection between the transcendental and Laruelle? My understanding is that Laruelle puts the whole of the human-in-person at the site of the Kantian a priori, but only axiomatically-that is without a positivist opening into the thing- in- itself, a metaphysics/ ontology arrived at by inference from science, or an intrusion from the ineffable realm of Grace/mystical insight.

This sounds horribly technical and jargonised but its the best I can do at formulating an aspect of Non-Buddhism that remains fuzzy to say the least.

It all seems to boil down to Laruelles idea of a “syntax of the real” — a way of speaking from the real without any absolutist pretensions. I tend to oscillate between this view, which seems to risk a sort of non-conceptual insight, and an axiomatic insistence on the a priori of the human-in-person, which seems to risk some sort of Nietzschean “will”.

I’ve been struggling with Laruelle for the last few years and cant crack this nut.

Either way though, a text like Akileshs need to be written – we need to skate close to the edge of “the monstrous empty signifier of human existence”.

I’m hoping your forthcoming book will shed some light on the above and also begin a serious dialogue with Althussers structuralism, which seems to say something unique about what Laruelle calls “The World” and what Althusser calls ideology or “ideological apparatus”. No doubt the question has been addressed in some way by Laruelle but I find it hard going indeed to articulate just what the relation is between these two. Throw Badiou into the mix and we have a knot I don’t think anyone alive can untie.

I’m asking a lot here I know. I would be happy with you view on whether I am asking some of the right questions or lost in the woods. My instinct says I am on track.
Max Francis

April 3, 2016

Thank you Akilesh for this powered utterance to engage the Mystery,
Impromptu thoughts in response and in honor of your inspired prompt.

The familiar emotional response when my eyes take in such a human. Beneath the jealousy and impetus to flee, there lies a dreadful confrontation with the conundrum of my own desire. The puzzle that I know at once: can’t be solved, can be acknowledged and must be respected. The thrust from a abyssal chasm into the world of objects, a movement of repressed contemplation suppressed due to fear of presentation as a couplet with silencing judgment, the incarnation of an already falsified theory toward conflict cessation, passive participation is not the pathway. Yet negation has its way to bubble up unto the surface from that impossible thrust, pulled forward by what-it-all-could-be yet held within a straightjacket of plausible rejection, the forbidden fantasy might become true, I am not able to stage a performance precious enough for this precarious pulsation. Yet in dyads this fantasy comes and putting our jouissance on the back burner also allows for curative fantasy to dwell, multiply and thrive-on in an ecology of cognitive and affective mythology with our desire somewhat the head of medusa, I know she’s there, I know there is something bigger than me in play, the outsider within me that can no longer hide, yet from this drive we shield our gaze in fear that if we look directly it wont be squared off like we imagine, more-akin-within-bile-of-birthing-kin surrounded in ragged and foaming edges, my once fluid and secure truths may be turned to falsified stone. The collision, between ones honest gaze and ones forbidden fantasy, the derision of a life lead by good intentions at the time yet in hindsight we see most actions as our methodology to disguise our symptoms, heuristics and ideologies adopted to shield our heart from our syndromes, in utter fear that in some way I am not leading a life laudable of this breath, or breathing air worthy of subjective interpretation. Then we see that person again, that one who embodies our dreams, that one who leads and never lodges, goes for the gold even though they know there’s no gold to be had. Collision, confided in confrontation we fear to acknowledge this thrust, call this impulse what you will, desire, soul, gnosis or the love-that-sews-this, conscience or pure drive, deem this yearn what you will, what we might agree upon is that there is a movement that won’t cease its motion, a pariah at our door that wont cease knocking, a lover outside our window that wont cease courting, a father imposing the law that wont cease demanding, a snake eating its own tail that will never get full. So when you see those who embody this, when you in-vision seeds that acknowledge this broken stitch that has never been mended, bulldoze forward for the sake of bulldozing, walk for the opportunity to walk, pay close attention to what occurs in experience, for in that intoxication of chimeraesque deleriousness, we collide with the oblige unto our drive, we crash into the nomad who ceases to be captured and tied down, we pull out our weapon and duel with the stranger who aggressively ceases to play the face game, face-to-faceless-space is they who remain the Other within me, we confront the inhuman who clenches our heart with the hand of our own doubt uttering the choiceless choice always happily never after, perpetually already and prior-to, the tacit dialogue of a thousand years taking place in the mind of insubstantial yet actual occasions. Swords or guns, pick your weapon, for our doublet has an impenetrable force-field in spherical orbit, never will it strike yet never it flee, unremitting in its hovering fully surrendered to novelty, whether telling time by moons or suns, the epoch is different yet the epic the same, can we tolerate the epochè of each and every as a priori an epicenter of apocalypse, undyingly and weathered for the sake of one thing, the no-thing nowhere to found except in two tinctured sound’s, the mirage of a goldfinch that will never cease to sing out loud or whistling of the village idiot about a forgotten ground bound to hound, thank you Akilesh, may your invitation abound.
Glenn Wallis

April 3, 2016

Thanks for your comment, Patrick. It actually touches on certain prickly points that were rubbed as I read Akilesh’s text. You’re right that this big issue of Laruelle’s idea of a “syntax of the real” will have to be addressed in my book. You’re also right that that has been an operative but fuzzy concept in non-buddhism (in non-philosophy, too, if you ask me) up to this point.

I think your second paragraph nails the distinction perfectly between what I would call a strong and a weak version of transcendentalism. Laruelle’s, like Kant’s, is what I am calling weak. I understand it the way you present it here. The strong version is that putative threatening “intrusion” that you speak of: some looming, potentially catastrophic, yet irrevocably absent, big Other. My understanding of a strong transcendentalism comes from my involvement in academic religious studies.

I agree that “It all seems to boil down to Laruelles idea of a “syntax of the real” — a way of speaking from the real without any absolutist pretensions.” My grappling with this point explains in part, I think, my reception of Akilesh’s text. With every mention of “radical immanence,” “in-person,” “the One,” “the Real,” “the syntax of the Real,” and so on (lots of first terms for “it,” right?), Laruelle also comes dangerously close to falling into yet another false strong transcendentalism. I think that his move toward the axiomatic helps him avoid the kinds of trouble that an empiricist or positivist account of the Real-One would get him into. I also think his insistence that he is speaking of a form of experience, hence of the lived and of the in-human, is somewhat helpful; although mystics also claim for themselves some “experience” that is unavailable to the uninitiated. And with mysticism we’re right back in the shackles of the master’s brutal discourse.

I hope you’re on the right track, because these are the same questions I am currently asking.
Patrick jennings

April 3, 2016

Glenn,
Thanks. Enough said…until the book. Cant say I envy you.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 3, 2016

Thanks for the thought-provoking comments so far!

I want to agree with Glenn’s idea that I am trying for something between “strong transcendentalism” and empiricism. Currently I suspect the best candidate for that third way is art, though that requires a great deal of elaboration.

And I also want to note that the effort has very real human stakes. In a sense I am asking what grants us access to inner power, which I mean, roughly, a state in which we act with deep clarity and energy, in which we are profoundly creative, and in which our head and heart and gut, so to say, are all in sync.

As I posit this question, I posit too that trying to answer it tosses us into an abyss of confusion — to which there may nevertheless be a kind of bottom, a modus vivendi. Or so I hope.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 3, 2016

Thanks for the thought-provoking comments so far!

I want to agree with Glenn’s idea that I am trying for something between “strong transcendentalism” and empiricism. Currently I suspect the best candidate for that third way is art, though that requires a great deal of elaboration.

And I also want to note that the effort has very real human stakes. In a sense I am asking what grants us access to inner power, which I mean, roughly, a state in which we act with deep clarity and energy, in which we are profoundly creative, and in which our head and heart and gut, so to say, are all in sync.

As I posit this question, I posit too that trying to answer it tosses us into an abyss of confusion — to which there may nevertheless be a kind of bottom, a modus vivendi. Or so I hope.
Patrick jennings

April 4, 2016

Hi Akilesh,

“And I also want to note that the effort has very real human stakes. In a sense I am asking what grants us access to inner power, which I mean, roughly, a state in which we act with deep clarity and energy, in which we are profoundly creative, and in which our head and heart and gut, so to say, are all in sync.”

This is skating close to the abyss of self or even atman, horror of horrors. ( what Glenn calls “prickly points”) My alternative is to skate close to the abyss of social constructivism or structuralism, horror of horrors.

Both sports spawn monsters: ideologies of individualism and collectivism, with horrible consequences. But collectivism has self-imploded. Individualism , in the form of the ideology of Neo -Liberalism, is alive and kicking and in the process of driving us to perdition.

Which is why, despite the risk of spawning the collective monster, I try to skate close to the abyss of structuralism. I think that sport will yield an outcome better suited to tackling the dangers that beset us.

“Currently I suspect the best candidate for that third way is art, though that requires a great deal of elaboration. “

The rub is in the relation between art, knowledge and ethical action. I know of no instance where art, on its own, motivated an action to overturn conditions as they exist.. And overturning conditions as they exist seems to me to be the best way of practising compassion. And in one way or another compassion and mystery are connected.

Greater love hath no man than this : That he lay down his life for his friends. etc. etc.

But then that applies only to those skaters skating close to the structuralist abyss, or does it?

Sorry for speaking in riddles.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 4, 2016

“This is skating close to the abyss of self or even atman, horror of horrors.”

Heh, well I personally have no problem with the idea of atman, actually. I just don’t think it’s the answer to *all* the relevant questions.

“I know of no instance where art, on its own, motivated an action to overturn conditions as they exist.. And overturning conditions as they exist seems to me to be the best way of practising compassion. And in one way or another compassion and mystery are connected.”

Ah, but I’d say compassion happens only when the individual self is aligned with a certain internal energy. And I’m hypothesizing that art (in a certain broad sense) may be the crucial tool in achieving that alignment.
Patrick jennings

April 5, 2016

Hi Akilesh,
Well, these are big questions –-Individual self, Atman, “Internal energy, Art. I have problems with all of them. There is a connection between the idea of an individual substantial self, Neo-liberal individualism and suffering , capitalist exploitation, unending development , the destruction of the eco sphere, and a possible extinction of the species.

Your text seems to be situated between “strong transcendentalism” and empiricism, as you claim. I don’t see then how you can reconcile that with atman . And I wonder what could be the nature of the “internal energy” you speak of.

The problem for me is that all of these terms can be situated within a blatantly idealist/spiritualist stance that , to put it bluntly, has blood on its hands. On the other hand, recalibrated and set within another context, they can become signifiers for something other than the “the shackles of the master’s brutal discourse”

Of course, since this is not a sight specifically concerned with Non-Buddhism/ Non-philosophy as such I am probably expecting too much and reading into your text from another perspective, which Is always a danger with a text such as yours. Or should I say made easier, since we always read into texts to some extent.

I think it was Badiou, I cant remember where, who described the essence of spiritualism as the obsession to compulsively gaze upon the object of an empty signifier. Your text seems to me now, in the context of your comments, to be doing just that.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 5, 2016

“There is a connection between the idea of an individual substantial self, Neo-liberal individualism and suffering , capitalist exploitation, unending development , the destruction of the eco sphere, and a possible extinction of the species.”

Well I suppose atman is an immensely malleable and complicated concept, but in the way I’m using it is not about an individual substantial self but a universal self of some kind — something similar to what you talk about when you say that “My understanding is that Laruelle puts the whole of the human-in-person at the site of the Kantian a priori,”

‘Your text seems to be situated between “strong transcendentalism” and empiricism, as you claim. I don’t see then how you can reconcile that with atman .’

Well my text is not really about atman, whatever I might personally believe. My text is about the Quest and Question that drives humans.

‘And I wonder what could be the nature of the “internal energy” you speak of.’

It’s emotion, to put it crudely. The question is the alignment of emotion with thought: under what circumstances do they align, so that a person is in fact motivated to do what they think they should, instead of the two diverging as they usually do?

“I think it was Badiou, I cant remember where, who described the essence of spiritualism as the obsession to compulsively gaze upon the object of an empty signifier. Your text seems to me now, in the context of your comments, to be doing just that.”

Well obviously I don’t think it’s an empty signifier, but apart from that, my text isn’t advocating for a typical spiritualism, or even necessarily a spiritualism at all. The text isn’t about the transcendental (though this is a separate issue from the status of the transcendental), but about the immanent, or at least something that lies on the border.
Patrick jennings

April 6, 2016

Hi Akilesh,

Well, there’s lots to think about here.

I might be worthwhile to go on and see what develops eh?

I feel compelled to push you to clarify what you mean;when I examine that compulsion it seems to arise out of a wish not to displace mystery with, say, a definitive knowing, but to do something else: to bring to light what I feel to be a mistaken notion ( or the risk of a mistaken notion) about exactly where mystery lies- a mistaken notion about the object/process which is partly hidden from us and therefore in some way mysterious.

I don’t want the site of mystery to be where most people imagine it to be : at the site of a non-material , and in some way ineffable presence/being/force/ground— call it what you will- transcendent to the material/biological /social /individually unique human person.

It may seem that I am accusing you of a form of idealism/spiritualism and in response choosing materialism. But this just is the ploy of philosophy which splits a given unity and proclaims itself master arbitrator of the problem it has produced by its own action.

Lets cut the big question down to size; where does mystery lie? Isn’t this a trick question? No matter what you or I answer—in god, in the human being , in the unknown, in experience, in our heads, in material particles etc. – we fall into the arms of the philosopher who is expert at asking questions and who has even considered the possibility of there being no definitive answers to his questions; but that turns out to be philosophical too-in fact the whole universe is philosophisable precisely because it has been brought into being by philosophy.

Lets agree that we both value the mysterious. I, at least , see the mysterious as under attack in various ways and want to engage with it. I think your text needs to be defended as a sort of plea for mystery. I think Laruelle’s non-defence is more effective than any defence you or I could make. The game has already been won by philosophy and mystery is already philosophical par excellence.

What is to be done?

You quote me but leave out the important part:

“My understanding is that Laruelle puts the whole of the human-in-person at the site of the Kantian a priori but only axiomatically-that is without a positivist opening into the thing- in- itself, a metaphysics/ ontology arrived at by inference from science, or an intrusion from the ineffable realm of Grace/mystical insight.”

In other words Laruelle rules out a philosophical solution to the question”what is a human being”
In doing this he rules out empirical evidence that could be binding or absolute (what he calls a blend of science and philosophy), logical inference which could arrive by force of thought alone at some binding knowledge of the human, and religious, meditative or mystical insight/grace/revelation. Instead he makes a philosophically unjustifiable axiomatic move -he places the human before philosophical/Theological/Empirical claims as the ground of possibility of all of these human practices.

He wants to claim for the human all of the predicates appropriated by philosophy and projected back upon the merely animal body in the form of the the additional requirements needed to qualify as definitively human. It was not so long ago that humanity, thus inscribed by philosophy, was property owning, white, male, heterosexual, European and Christian . Now, under the regime of democratic materialism, to qualify you need only offer your body/life energy as instrument of labour- power to economy, to do with as it pleases.

One of the things Laruelle wants to claim for the human is mystery—what he calls foreclosure to representational capture. This mystery is not above or beyond or within the human but is its mode of becoming —what he calls a given-without-givenness. This is not a substantial self, or an empty self, or a universal self; nor is it a process of mind or matter or some combination of the two. It doesn’t even qualify as existing; and yet we have total access to it before the question even arises. It is complete before a philosophical word is spoken.

This assertion has no philosophical force. It is axiomatic. It is the minimum one needs to do an operation on philosophy –- to abase it and simultaneously elevate a mystery called the human by renaming it as beyond philosophical language –-as non-human. Why bother? Because all naming is, in philosophy’s hands, a form of harassment of the human structured into the very processes of social life.

Of course this is only one way of defending mystery or engaging with it; but it seems to me to be the most rigorous, most consistent, most democratic and most effective way I have come across yet. It doesn’t exclude dialogue with other stances. On the contrary it seems to thrive on such dialogue and morph in the process into something like an evolving “syntax of the real” that is neither exclusive , absolutist or relativist but manages to use all three as its material source of energy. Non-Buddhism is metabolic– it eats up transcendence and shits immanence .

Lets say that, following Laruelle, I am all for mystery but to inaugurate its rule we could abase philosophical knowledge and make it once more a predicate of the human. We could speak from mysteriousness against the definitive word concerning the human. Mystery needs our help. No amount of passive contemplation of the mysterious will do. How mysterious is that?
Akilesh Ayyar

April 6, 2016

It seems to me you’re saying two things via Laruelle:
1. The ultimate reality of the human being is transcendental and unknowable (noumenal).
2. To accept that axiomatically is to allow us to fight against any kind of substantive philosophical definition of the human or of ultimate reality, etc. This is valuable because it prevents us from falling into the philosophical naming that constitutes “harassment…structured into the very processes of social life.”

So your version of pro-mystery is essentially anti-philosophy. A tiny bit of philosophy is used to keep the rest out.

To some extent we’re working on different problems here, and that likely is because we each see our own problem as most crucial to the project of improving human life.

You’re working on the problem of how we should speak and think about humans and how that affects social life.
I’m working (at least in this piece) on the problem of how we should deal with and understand the depth of desire.

Now with respect to your problem, I agree that philosophy cannot get at the essence of the human being, and I certainly can see why you advocate a stance that is anti-philosophical. At the same time, I personally do not find it persuasive or satisfying to refrain from philosophizing on these topics. I find it utterly unsatisfying not to speculate, and I believe that what is utterly unsatisfying cannot be the right move. Though I realize that my speculation is speculation, I simultaneously think there is more satisfying and less satisfying speculation. At the same time, you note correctly that your position doesn’t exclude dialogue with other stances, and I am happy to reciprocate. Though I advocate metaphysics, I advocate it in the knowledge that it is strictly speaking inaccurate, that reality is beyond the ability of philosophy to reach it, and that there may be excellent reasons to blame philosophy. At the same time I think we all live by our inaccurate metaphysics. It’s an unfortunately inconsistent position, but c’est la vie.

I suspect that the solution to social injustice and historical atrocities depends most crucially not on working against philosophical naming but on addressing the problem of desire, which as noted is the problem I’m working on. The question is: what is it that lies at the bottom of what we desire? What is it that will align our heads and hearts? How can we feel the surge of energy within that allows for a profound creativity? This, it seems to me, is a profound mystery, but of a different kind — though certainly not unrelated — than the mystery of what a human being is. But I cannot rest content at calling it a mystery. There must be some way to make progress as well.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 6, 2016

Just fyi my last two sentences refer to the mystery of desire, not the mystery of what a human being is, though of course I *also* believe that of the other mystery.
Patrick jennings

April 7, 2016

Hi Akilesh

Just some clarifications:

“The ultimate reality of the human being is transcendental and unknowable (noumenal).”

No. there is no “ultimate reality of the human being”. The weak transcendentalism makes no claim beyond situating the human within a before that is purely an axiomatic space that enables an operation on Philosophy. There is no ontological content here.

“So your version of pro-mystery is essentially anti-philosophy. A tiny bit of philosophy is used to keep the rest out……Now with respect to your problem, I agree that philosophy cannot get at the essence of the human being, and I certainly can see why you advocate a stance that is anti-philosophical. “

Well, as you will see if you read at any of the non-buddhist blogs or read Laruelle, there is no question of an anti-philosophy. The Non in non-buddhism or non-philosophy references a very precise relation that is not rejectionist or oppositional but interrogative.

“To some extent we’re working on different problems here, and that likely is because we each see our own problem as most crucial to the project of improving human life.
You’re working on the problem of how we should speak and think about humans and how that affects social life.
I’m working (at least in this piece) on the problem of how we should deal with and understand the depth of desire.”

There is a difference of emphasis its true but the underlying overlap is crucial to an understanding of human-desire.

From my perspective our idea of the human is socially constructed . Since individual entities exist there can never be an actual correspondence between the social and the individual—a better model of understanding the relation between the individual and the social views the individual as a different level system -of- elements embedded within a larger system . Within those parameters, the human is conditioned on certain interactions which create dynamic feedback loops between the social and the individual. The most potent of these feedback loops are language and systems of discourse. These largely determine the parameters of our thinking about human desire, although there is always a friction between the individual interpretation and the social orthodoxy. This is the dynamic out of which new ideas about the human develop.

So , lets say that in place of an inner realm, which smacks of the trope of selfhood/soul/ I envision a dynamic interaction between the individual and the social. Each time we search within the human psyche for inner objects or essences we are in fact moving outward into the dynamic field of social interaction and not downward into an interior of some sort.

Granted, either way we are speaking metaphorically but the “exterior social space” metaphor is for me a better one because it has more libitatory potential. This is especially so if we regard all such metaphorical forms, which enable open-ended speculation, to be a non-absolutist invitation to explore a space that is one with its object. The act of exploration just is the practice of social interaction via language; the ground of human desire just is this interactive space which we collectively construct. Out of this interaction we create concepts, the bricks and mortar of our social world. How that in turn becomes a structure of oppression, philosophical harassment, exploitation and alienation is the essential question; “To be or not to be” is not a question about our nature but one about the nature of the world that seems to stand over us as a force against our desire.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 7, 2016

“There is no ontological content here.”
“The Non in non-buddhism or non-philosophy references a very precise relation that is not rejectionist or oppositional but interrogative.”

I suspect these points are arguable, but for the purposes of this discussion — fair enough.

“Each time we search within the human psyche for inner objects or essences we are in fact moving outward into the dynamic field of social interaction and not downward into an interior of some sort…Granted, either way we are speaking metaphorically but the “exterior social space” metaphor is for me a better one because it has more libitatory potential…The act of exploration just is the practice of social interaction via language; the ground of human desire just is this interactive space which we collectively construct.”

Well that’s intriguing. The question is how this works in practice. Let’s take these two contrasting metaphors: the “inner object” as part of a “dynamic field of social interaction” vs. as part of an “interior of some sort.” What’s the cash value, the difference in “liberatory” (I think that’s what you meant by “libitatory”?) potential of calling it one thing instead of another? If one has an emotional problem or question, would it be approached differently based on the metaphors? If one is searching for one’s own wellsprings of creativity and energy, would it be approached differently? Would solitary introspection not be as valuable, for instance, in the social case? Or are there other practical implications?
Patrick jennings

April 8, 2016

Hi Akilesh,

“Well that’s intriguing. The question is how this works in practice. Let’s take these two contrasting metaphors: the “inner object” as part of a “dynamic field of social interaction” vs. as part of an “interior of some sort.” What’s the cash value, the difference in “liberatory” (I think that’s what you meant by “libitatory”?) potential of calling it one thing instead of another?”

There is a world of difference between calling it one thing instead of another. I mean, literally, a world. “Inner object” and “dynamic field of social interaction” reference vastly contrasting philosophical positions, and closely connected to this, an assertion about the ontological status of the human with contrasting ideological, political and ethical consequences. It is not simply a matter of individual practice, although that affects the nature of our social experience. Philosophical tropes evolve over time in a sort of social/evolutionary process of selection in which some are reified as concepts and structured into the institutional and organisational processes which govern social life.

“What’s the cash value, the difference in “liberatory” (I think that’s what you meant by “libitatory”?) potential of calling it one thing instead of another?

You beautifully illustrate my point by equating “cash value” with “liberatory potential” . Such a use shows the way the processes of commodity exchange have permeated our day to day discourse to such an extent that the process to which “cash value “ refers is routinely deployed as referencing a “natural” or “given” of human activity instead of a particular organisational structure of economy. This surly illustrates the power of philosophical tropes functioning as concepts structuring our discourses and materialised as forms of social relation.

“If one has an emotional problem or question, would it be approached differently based on the metaphors?
Lets explore an extreme example. Consider the case of two women who suffer from a spell of post-natal depression, a common occurrence. One lives in the world of the protestant dissenter pilgrim community of 17 th century New England ; the other in the same geographic location but three centuries later. I use the term world to describe the totality of the philosophical tropes, ontological presumptions, ethical norms, political social and economic structures within which she tries to make meaningful her impulses, proclivities, compulsions and instinctive drives — her subjectivity.

To a woman experiencing post natal depression — aversion to her baby , to her husband and the world at large and subject to mysterious psychical torments of body and mind – it might seem as if she were bedevilled. (No doubt she would use such a phrase in exactly the same way as we use cash value—as illustrating a “natural “ or “given” state ). I don’t think I need to go into detail about how the available discourses limit her understanding of her condition and poison both her own view of her predicament and the quality of her relations with those around her.
Nor do I need to describe the much better subjective and social outcomes for the woman born today. Living in different worlds created by the interaction of ideas, concepts ,social structures and culture, she has access to a more humane and rational diagnosis of her problem. She lives in a different social world and consequently has a very different take on her subjective experience.

Granted this is an extreme example and granted there are other problems to be encountered by our imaginary woman of today. For one thing her experience depends to a large extent on her class position-access to health care , education, family support etc. If she is unfortunate enough to live in areas of the world where the benefits of modernism are yet to accrue, she will suffer much the same fate as our 17th century woman and for reasons that are, paradoxically, inseparably connected with the rise of modernism.

As I said above the modern extremes of these two philosophical and ontological stances, idealism and materialism, have produced monsters. And even the more benign version of both extremes , has produced a neo-liberal nightmare.

We have to choose between the alternatives though, since, inevitably, we find ourselves “ thrown into a world” and do not have any say in its constitution; further, when we become adults and are able to exercise our capacity for national enquiry , our freedom to act and our notion of why that is, is disastrously curtailed by the nature of existing discourses and social structures.

Which is why we need some form of axiomatic declaration of the nature of the human that undermines the grip of all absolutist and liberal philosophic tropes and their reified structures, discursive and socio/economic. For me this axiomatic is realised in its most rigorous and effective form in Laruelle’s non-philosophy, It enables a recalibration of useful philosophical tropes and frees us from a form of economic determinism while defending a notion of the human that is open, radical, pluralist, democratic, dialogic and compatible with science.

Having said that there are, for me, certain difficulties with what I have just said. ( I referred to them above in my question to Glenn about his forthcoming book). They revolve around the question of the relation between ubiquitous social conditioning and the exercise of subjective freedom. They do not bear directly on our discussion , since they involve a dialogue with materialism, which , from my point of view, is the only ontological view compatible with science. It needs to be curtailed, though, in its tendency to absolutism and/or scientism.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 8, 2016

‘Such a use shows the way the processes of commodity exchange have permeated our day to day discourse to such an extent that the process to which “cash value “ refers is routinely deployed as referencing a “natural” or “given” of human activity instead of a particular organisational structure of economy.’

I don’t really see that my use of this phrase implies that it is a natural or given of anything. It’s simply something that in our culture can zestily indicate “sharply practical consequence,” but I don’t think this means anyone takes such a connection literally or views it as inevitable.

“Living in different worlds created by the interaction of ideas, concepts ,social structures and culture, she has access to a more humane and rational diagnosis of her problem.”

Right, but I don’t see how that has to do with seeing inner objects as social instead of interior. It seems far more to do with an advanced state of science. Indeed, a large part of the advances in therapy over the centuries has been to take seriously the specific interior emotions and thoughts that are involved in depression. Now the understanding of the causes of those emotions and thoughts has changed over time, and yes, to a more “humane and rational diagnosis.” But it’s not because today we see depression as a social rather than an interior phenomenon. Mental health practitioners and researchers clearly see it as both. They consider depression to have crucial interior phenomenological components that cannot be understood merely as effects of the social field. There is rather an interaction between the interior and the social. In other words, I don’t see from this example how the social is actually opposed to the interior here, or how, if an emphasis has to be placed one way or the other, placing it on the social is a revolutionary step for the better. Have I missed something?

“As I said above the modern extremes of these two philosophical and ontological stances, idealism and materialism, have produced monsters. And even the more benign version of both extremes , has produced a neo-liberal nightmare.”

Why is it the ontological stances that are blamed for the monsters and nightmares rather than a host of other physical conditions, psychological factors, and cultural knowledge? It seems to me that materialism and idealism are both entirely compatible with angelic consequences — when they are stances held by angels in utopia.

“Which is why we need some form of axiomatic declaration of the nature of the human that undermines the grip of all absolutist and liberal philosophic tropes and their reified structures, discursive and socio/economic.”

As one stance or lens among many, I have no problem with this. I just suspect that, as a primary lens with which to view the world, it is not going to fulfill humanity’s emotional needs. People need something more.
Patrick jennings

April 9, 2016

“I don’t really see that my use of this phrase implies that it is a natural or given of anything. It’s simply something that in our culture can zestily indicate “sharply practical consequence,” but I don’t think this means anyone takes such a connection literally or views it as inevitable.”

On the contrary. We routinely use such phrases in day to day life without examining their implications. They show us our unstated pre-suppositions. They are like jokes or slips of the tongue, but here the site of the unconscious is not within but exterior to the biological individual in the sphere of language and the collectively constructed mind.

“Right, but I don’t see how that has to do with seeing inner objects as social instead of interior.”

My example tries to show how ones interior life is conditioned on ones social milieu. That in turn is conditioned on complex feedback loops of philosophical, ideological, and ethical ideas interacting with economic and biological factors in a complex evolving dynamic. It would take too long to go into the complexities of this model of interior subjectivity . Suffice to say it sees the mind as a complex of conscious and unconscious dispositions , drives and processes which are enabled not by an inner essence but by a dynamic of biological, social and cultural interactions, all of which are exterior to the person.

The mind of this person is a shared process of discourse via language. This just is a “chicken and egg” situation, since any attempt to decide on which determines which will inevitably founder on the problem of complex interaction over thousands of years of evolution. Suffice to say that it is impossible to conceive of a mind that does not imply the presence of language, a social sphere and a biological individual, all of which are exterior to the person/subject/or subjectivity.

A person/subject in contrast to a biological individual, is a nexus point arising out of the interaction between biological individuals via language and bodily social interaction A biological individual is a nexus point arising out of the interaction of the individual and the environment.
This model though is inadequate to account for the ontological status of either the person or the individual, because, as stated, it arises out of the interaction of persons and is subject to the constraints that follow from that. Even if this was not the case , the complexity of all of the existing interactions would make it impossible to account in absolute terms for the dynamic of the real.

But we can make useful models based on scientific investigation and experiment and by inference and use these to intervene in conscious ways both in the biological and social sphere, as proved empirically by the practice of scientists and by our capacity to create and recreate the social sphere according to different philosophical, ideological and religious systems in interaction with certain givens of economy.

This is a materialist stance , compatible with the practice of scientific investigation, speculation and inference, but constrained in ways I have described above by the need to avoid absolutist philosophical tropes and/or scientism.

“Why is it the ontological stances that are blamed for the monsters and nightmares rather than a host of other physical conditions, psychological factors, and cultural knowledge?”

I think if you review what I have written you will see that I emphasise the interaction of many factors, but I also insist on the decisive role of philosophical/ideological tropes which enable the concepts structuring social relations. It seems obvious to me that , for example, the puritanical , authoritarian, patriarchal nature of social formations organised according to extreme forms of religion , reflect the philosophical/theological tropes which enable a certain sort of religious subject, and a certain sort of subjectivity. These in turn interact with givens of economy to produce particular societies .

“It seems to me that materialism and idealism are both entirely compatible with angelic consequences — when they are stances held by angels in utopia.”

This statement was incomprehensible to me until I read you essay “A new aesthetic for inner explorers”. It articulates a vision of mind exactly as an ineffable essence transcending social historical and biological realities succinctly expressed here:

“Social, historical, technological, economic, and other factors play a role in explanation, but only a subsidiary one. The real ever-lasting question – meaning the name of that thing that actually plagues us, that endless itch we wish to scratch – as to why things turn out as they do, the inextricable pebble in our shoe, always comes back to the mind and to the mind alone, and in fact to the case of each of our own, individual minds, which is the first and final source of interest.”

This precisely situates mystery within an ineffable core which is transcendent to our material existence. This is, of course, diametrically opposed to my understanding of the mind as arising on the basis of the social interaction of biological individuals. For me , the site of mystery exists between persons; it is a conceptual construction whose object is the inevitable aporia which accompany our discourses as their dark underbelly.

Confronted with mystery my impulse is to interrogate it via these discourses; the history of ideas just is the history of the interrogation of the gaps in our knowledge in order to limit them and an interrogation of how exactly we go about that process and its implications for our life. Out of this process we evolve socially and culturally. This does not threaten the experience of mystery since every advance in knowledge conditions a new set of questions and since we can, as an act of curtailment of any attempt at absolute capture of the human, place ourselves axiomatically as the condition for this knowledge process and defend ourselves against any so called transcending Authorities, philosophical, theological or ideological.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 9, 2016

“My example tries to show how ones interior life is conditioned on ones social milieu.”

Right, but the question was why a) we should think of the interior as *opposed* to the social and b) why this would be an improvement in anything (in the case of the post-natal depression, the interior is today taken seriously as an important factor in the healing process). There is still an interior, conditioned by the social though it may be (and conditioning the social in turn), and it doesn’t really seem opposed to the social but as something that interacts with it, and is irreducible to it.

Doesn’t each person have their own thoughts and feelings and desires? Aren’t these sometimes subtle and complex? Aren’t they impossible to fully communicate to others in their entirety? This is the realm of the interior. I don’t see how we’re going to be able to reduce these phenomena to social systems or biology ever, nor do I see why we should try.

“This precisely situates mystery within an ineffable core which is transcendent to our material existence. This is, of course, diametrically opposed to my understanding of the mind as arising on the basis of the social interaction of biological individuals.”

Actually what I speak of there is not necessarily an ineffable core transcendent to material existence; it simply posits mind as a separate and independent field of investigation irreducible to the social, the biological, etc. One could still think of mind as material if one liked, as somehow arising from matter. The point is that the mode of *investigation* is, for our purposes, separate.

The important thing is that there is an introspective reality which must be investigated introspectively, and which has causal power over human satisfaction and dissatisfaction. One can think of it as a science which takes subjective experience seriously as a channel of information that can be obtained no other way. The argument there was that this introspective interrogation of emotion and thought was the most critical path to radical change of the individual human — and of humanity. It’s technically quite compatible with a materialist ideology (though, as it happens, I find materialism utterly implausible).

There as here, the question of the nature of the transcendent (materialist vs. idealist, etc.) is a separate but related question from the most effective way to understand and change ourselves. On this latter point, I don’t see how or why the interior should be dissolved away in the social.
Stephan

April 9, 2016

Akilesh, I hear you and answer your call to adventure into the mystery, together! Lets fish for the “elusive eel”! Lets coordinate our hearts to the beating heart of the mystery! I’ve heard its out there, (I’ve even once caught a glimpse of it in Hegel’s Logic!)

I like the image of gathering to pick up all the clues, as if an original was shattered, and we’re reassembling it, like archeologists. Most of your metaphors imply that you have faith we can do this. Any hesitant formulations are overshadowed by your optimism. And I’m with you there.
I probably should end it on this note, but I’ll contribute something more, since so many have been generous in their responses.

In the debate above, Kant and Heidegger are silent but very present – also Adorno – three thinkers I’m spending lots of time with lately. Akilesh, your vision of art and openness has a lot in common with Adorno; his sense of keeping the dialectic open, resisting positivism in all its forms, the faith in Art as potentially liberating. But, perhaps your piece resounds more of Heidegger, and in many ways. I’ll mention one. The main point of the your piece, as I read it, are straight out of the opening of Being and Time (You haven’t read BT so I know this is just the serendipity of great minds!): Heidegger spends the opening few pages describing a problem so central that it has become invisible and unknown to us – a mystery that has lost its mysteriousness. He asks us, like you, to join him into an investigation of that mystery. 500 pages later, its a whole lot more mysterious (and that’s good, no?), but some things have been made more clear – and one of them is “transcendence” (the Kantian synthetic a priori) and the relation of the noumenal to the phenomenal (the ontological difference) which is something I think is a bit confused in your usage. But like your piece, Heidegger begins with “fascination” and the exhortation to a journey. He never stopped asking the same simple question, like you. He never gave a completely satisfying answer either but what can you expect of a guy who became a Nazi. This is not, by the way, to suggest any affiliation with you and national socialism!
Patrick jennings

April 10, 2016

“There is still an interior, conditioned by the social though it may be (and conditioning the social in turn), and it doesn’t really seem opposed to the social but as something that interacts with it, and is irreducible to it.”

I would never say the person was reducible to the social. The whole trust of what I have said vis via Laruelle and many references to the person and to level of interaction establish my non-reductionist perspective. Levels of increasing complexity are not simply reducible to the elements that make them up. On a more general level common observation shows us that in every instance the real manifests as individual entities. This is totally compatible with entities being composite. Philosophy creates these fundamental divisions and then sets itself up as the transcendent arbitrator on their solution. Which is why philosophy cold be abased and made the predicate of human action and enquiry and not the other way around. This is especially true , as I said earlier, of certain forms of materialism.

Speaking metaphorically I am quite willing to accept that the metaphor of the interior says something valuable about persons,. For me though it is burdened with religious, mystical and idealist associations which in there extreme form produce feedback loops of suffering and oppression. I think that is indisputable. I prefer to think in terms of the person as a unique manifestation of natural and social patterns of evolutionary development .

“Doesn’t each person have their own thoughts and feelings and desires? Aren’t these sometimes subtle and complex? Aren’t they impossible to fully communicate to others in their entirety? This is the realm of the interior. I don’t see how we’re going to be able to reduce these phenomena to social systems or biology ever, nor do I see why we should try.”

Yes to everything you say here, but taking into account my problem with the interior metaphor. Perhaps though you use interior in more than a metaphorical way. If so I cannot see how there can be any such place or entity. I presume you are not referencing the interior of the brain? Surely, from your perspective the term transcendent or transcendental (depending on the form of idealism you are defending) is more appropriate?

“Actually what I speak of there is not necessarily an ineffable core transcendent to material existence; it simply posits mind as a separate and independent field of investigation irreducible to the social, the biological, etc. One could still think of mind as material if one liked, as somehow arising from matter. The point is that the mode of *investigation* is, for our purposes, separate.”

Again yes to everything here. I have never contended that the person could be accounted for by the practices of science. Quite the opposite. I fully accept that there are certain modes or procedures of enquiry depending on the object. The application of science to the realm of the social, the artistic or the spiritual involve either a crude reductionism or a pseudo-scientific theoretical critique of social structures and processes which , in its extreme form, produced the excesses of Stalinist, behavioural theory and other blends of quasi-scientific methodology and philosophy.

I like Badious Model very much, in which he offers love, science, art and politics as truth procedures irreducible to each other. From my perspective nothing is lost in shifting the way we conceive of the person from an interior/idealist to a social/biological model. Much is to be gained though. Such a model is compatible with empirical science; it sheds light on the way our composite make-up enables the continuum of choices that are available to us as persons; it undermines inflexible claims about essences, unchanging souls and pre-givin qualities of mind, all of which shift desire, impulse and responsibility to the nature of the individual rather that the composite world that produces her limited choices.

A pertinent example of this inflexibility is the recent encyclical by Pope Francis which is incapable of moving away from preordained concepts of the person grounded in dogmatic assumptions about interiors. I grew up in an era when such ideas held sway . They find there most virulent expression today in Islamic fundamentalism, and the response of neo-liberal regimes intimately connected with its rise.

Taking into account the excesses of both model of the person, I think both should be relativised and subsumed under a new authority made possible by an axiomatic proclamation of the foreclosure of the human real to all absolutist formulations, scientific, theological and philosophical.

“The argument there was that this introspective interrogation of emotion and thought was the most critical path to radical change of the individual human — and of humanity.”

This is an excessive claim for introspection. Do you seriously think its practice was more beneficial to humanity that the emergence of science and technology, or the establishment of universal education , democracy, equality before the law and , most of all, a form of medicine based on a scientific model of human physiology (and especially the discovery of methods of curtailment of infectious diseases)
I
ntrospection has a role perhaps in helping with forms of reactive cycles of emotional suffering but , for me, that is about the most it can do.( a lot, I grant, from the perspective of individuals caught up in such cycles of suffering. ) Unless, of course, you are contending that it can offer us some sort of knowledge not available to us in any other way. I would be interested in hearing about that.
Akilesh Ayyar

April 10, 2016

“Again yes to everything here. I have never contended that the person could be accounted for by the practices of science. Quite the opposite. I fully accept that there are certain modes or procedures of enquiry depending on the object.”

Excellent. It sounds like we are about 80-90% on the same page.

“A pertinent example of this inflexibility is the recent encyclical by Pope Francis which is incapable of moving away from preordained concepts of the person grounded in dogmatic assumptions about interiors.”

I think the problem there is the dogmatic and ill-grounded assumptions rather than the belief in the value of the interior.

“This is an excessive claim for introspection. Do you seriously think its practice was more beneficial to humanity that the emergence of science and technology, or the establishment of universal education , democracy, equality before the law and , most of all, a form of medicine based on a scientific model of human physiology (and especially the discovery of methods of curtailment of infectious diseases)”

Interesting question. The answer, in a nutshell, is yes. Because introspection and the concomitant symbolization of what has been introspected carved out the areas of self-awareness that in turn enabled all these other developments. It was introspection which imagined the possibilities of these fields in the first place. It is introspection that finds new concepts, new ways of looking at the world.

And it is within introspection, I would contend, that human tendencies towards destructiveness and/or apathy must be understood. And that’s the biggest problem of all.
Swami Bodhananda.

April 13, 2016

: I instinctively rebel against the idea that I am a product of language and social interactions, though they are tools for my expression. The act of rebellion signifies the mystery.that I am. I realize and reveal the mystery through social interactions ( which requires language) by choosing a variety of focussed activities, that includes art.( a social product) My being couldn’t be apart from my doing–to be is to do–hence the exterior social space is the theatre where I play out my desire and touch, taste and feel me and be myself. But all these is my shadow, the real me will remain ever a mystery. .
Akilesh Ayyar

April 13, 2016

“500 pages later, its a whole lot more mysterious”

Damn it! Fascinating food for thought, though, Stephan… Adorno and Heidegger, eh? Minima Moralia, here I come?

—
“But all these is my shadow, the real me will remain ever a mystery.”

And that’s its charm and frustration…
Dmirtri Dream

June 14, 2016

whoa Patrick. you have no chill.

i feel Ayyar so much. that enlightenment.

humans are going to kill themselves off & we need to look within to find clarity to this infinite reality, we all gotta start meditating, and we need to self surrender, let go of our egos and become beings of nature.

this world is in a bad position & i think Ayyar is explaining that in a beautiful way. but you guys are missing the point.

Sorry I’m foolish. I’m young & have realized the reality we are in, through meditation & psychedelic use.

“oh psychedelics cause delusion blah, all fabricated by the mind”

i mean, the mind is the ultimate bridge between your reality & the universe. so look at LSD use in relation to depression, and look at the MRIs that show parts of the brain interacting seemlessly, using parts never used before, bringing your mind deeper into this reality purely by increasing the ability of the brain to perceive reality. once you control this feeling, no more hallucinations on LSD. just a clear view of reality, and a strong sense of ego dissolution. beautiful, really.