Thursday, July 21, 2011
Models, Metrics, and Measurement in Developmental Psychology - Integral Review - June 2009, Vol. 5, No. 1
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Fantastic Line from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row
"Nuts?" he asked. "Oh, yes, I guess so. Nuts about the same amount we are, only in a different way". Such a thing had never occurred to Hazel. He looked upon himself as a crystal pool of clarity and on his life as a troubled glass of misunderstood virtue".
How often do I feel like this! ;-D
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Another Deida line I really loved...
"Closing down in the midst of pain is a denial of a man's true nature. A superior man is free in feeling and action, even amidst great pain and hurt. If necessary, a man should live with a hurting heart rather than a closed one. He should learn to stay in the wound of pain and act with spontaneous skill and love even from that place".
- David Deida.
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Deida
"The superior man practices opening during these times of automatic closure. Open the front of your body so your chest and solar plexus are not tense. Sit or stand up straight and full, opening the front of your body, softening your chest and belly, wide and free. Breathe down through your chest and solar plexus, deep into your belly. Look directly into the eyes of whomever you are with, feeling your own pain as well as feeling the other person. Only when the front of your body is relaxed and opened, your breath full and deep, and your gaze unguarded and directly connected with another person's eyes, can your fullest intelligence manifest spontaneously in the situation".
- David Deida
David Deida
"This force of attraction, which flows between the two different poles of masculine and feminine, is the dynamism that often disappears in modern relationships. If you want real passion, you need a ravisher and a ravishee; otherwise, you just have two buddies who decide to rub genitals in bed". ;-D
- David Deida
Why are we afraid of male sexuality?
We may have gone a long way towards liberating women, but male desire is increasingly seen as a problem
Ally Fogg
Is there anything good to be said about male sexuality? That might seem a daft question. Apparently it brings a lot of pleasure and excitement to the lives of men and women alike, it's inspired some of the greatest art, music and literature through the ages and has played a fairly substantial role in sustaining our species and populating the planet. Nonetheless you'll need to search very, very hard to find any positive appraisal of male heterosexuality.
Since the era of the permissive society and the mainstreaming of modern feminism, western society has gone a long way towards liberating women's sexuality. Younger women have, to an unprecedented extent, been encouraged to believe they can be as sexual as they like and to experience and express their desires as they wish. Even the age-old proscriptions on female promiscuity have been largely broken down, exemplified by the glorious flowering of the SlutWalk movement.
Simultaneously, and perhaps not coincidentally, male sexuality has been increasingly seen as a problem. You can hear it in the gentle, dismissive mockery that says men are simple creatures who "only want one thing" or, at the extreme, outright vilification. The male gaze threatens, male desire is aggressive. Our primal instincts are pathologised with the jargon of gender studies. Righteous and necessary efforts to reduce sexual crimes have had the unwelcome effect of teaching generations of men that our sexuality can be dangerous and frightening.
Don't believe me? Look back at the Bailey review into the early sexualisation of children, and the surrounding media hoo-ha. Leaving aside any concerns about the veracity and accuracy of the report itself (and I have plenty myself) it is striking that acres of print were devoted to the impacts of these social trends on girls, their self-esteem and body image; their developing sexuality; their safety and security. Barely a word was spoken about boys, beyond fears that they are being turned into beasts.
Again and again the message came out: girls have problems. Boys are problems. And yet does anyone doubt that there should be concerns about how easy access to porn impacts upon boys' sexual development, their self-esteem, their body image or performance anxieties? It's not as if young men bask in perfect mental health and happiness ñ young men commit suicide at nearly four times the rate of young women, and sex and relationships rank high on their list of concerns.
At the other end of the age range, sexually active older women are now widely eroticised (albeit often with a rather misogynistic undertone) as "cougars" or (forgive me) "Milfs" while their male equivalents are disparaged as dirty old men. Observer columnist Viv Groskop recently went further, opining about any older man who has sex outside marriage, even the mild-mannered old janitor John Major, saying "Unfortunately it's not against the law to be an old lecher. Maybe it should be. Or at the very least you shouldn't be rewarded with the highest office in the land."
Perhaps the greatest concern for men and women alike should be the way male sexuality and sexual expressiveness balances on a narrow tightrope of acceptability. One step off the wire and you tumble into the realm of perversion. As feminist blogger Clarisse Thorn noted last year, any man who hits on a woman and gets it wrong risks being branded a "creep" ñ sometimes deservedly so, of course, but often for no greater sin than being insufficiently attractive or socially skilled, or having misread a perceived signal of invitation. I've never heard of a woman being stigmatised or disparaged for expressing an attraction to big men, rough men, geeky men or whatever. A man who expresses similar desires for women who don't conform to standard norms of beauty is a perv, a fetishist, a weirdo.
All of these prejudices are rehearsed and reiterated by men and women alike, they reside in the intangible web of social norms, conventions and culture, but they can and must be challenged and changed. If we can begin to openly and joyously celebrate the positives to male sexuality, it might become easier for men to be happy and confident sexual partners, and in turn become better lovers, and sometimes better people.
Male sexuality is no less diverse, complex and wonderful than women's or, for that matter, no more base, coarse and animalistic. Sure, most men might be slightly more likely to let our gaze linger on eye-catching curves, and slightly less likely to giggle about our lovers' proclivities with our friends, but in the grand picture women and men are surprisingly similar, in this respect as in so many others. Women have been entirely justified in asking that we blokes respect their rights, autonomy and wishes, that we respect them as sexual beings. It shouldn't be too much to ask for a little of the same in return.
Joe Bageant
"So stay strong. Transcend. Find reasons to love. Nobody ever gets out of this world alive, anyway".
- Joe Bageant.
RT@ChristiaanZuur
Monday, July 18, 2011
Stages of Sutra Mahamudra - Daniel P Brown
I. Motivational Practices
A. Generating interest
B. Causing faith to arise
II. Preparatory Practices
A. Preliminary Practices
1. Ordinary preliminaries
2. Extraordinary preliminaries
3. Advances preliminaries
B. The isolations
1. Body
2. Mind
3. Speech
III. Essential or ordinary meditation practice
A. Concentration with support
B. Concentration without support
C. Special insight
1. Emptiness of self
2. Emptiness of phenomena
3. Nonelaboration of time
IV. Extraordinary practice
A. One-taste yoga
B. Nonmeditation yoga
V. Enlightenment and post-enlightenment practices.
A. Generating interest
B. Causing faith to arise
II. Preparatory Practices
A. Preliminary Practices
1. Ordinary preliminaries
2. Extraordinary preliminaries
3. Advances preliminaries
B. The isolations
1. Body
2. Mind
3. Speech
III. Essential or ordinary meditation practice
A. Concentration with support
B. Concentration without support
C. Special insight
1. Emptiness of self
2. Emptiness of phenomena
3. Nonelaboration of time
IV. Extraordinary practice
A. One-taste yoga
B. Nonmeditation yoga
V. Enlightenment and post-enlightenment practices.
Daniel P Brown on Simultaneous Mind
"Understanding the nature of the mind in mahamudra is conveyed by the term 'simultaneous mind'. The term signifies that the mind's awareness and its manifest events literally "arise together" in each moment of experience. Another way to say this is that the mind's awareness and the events of ordinary consciousness form an inseparable pair, and that the perception of a duality is erroneous. Direct realisation of the mind's duality is an essential prerequisite to awakening the mind".
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Ajahn Chah
"The Buddha who passed into parinibbana 2,500 years ago is not the Buddha who is a refuge." - Ajahn Chah
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Friday, July 15, 2011
What is the Psy.D. Degree?
From: http://www.internationalgraduate.net/psyd.htm
The Psy.D. or Doctor of Psychology is a professional doctorate in Clinical Psychology. There are two models through which a student can be trained in Clinical Psychology ñ one is the Psy.D doctorate which places more emphasis on clinical practice, the other is the PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) which places more emphasis on research. Read more to discover what the Psy.D. degree entails and how it compares to the PhD in Clinical Psychology.
How was the PsyD degree established?
The Boulder Model
Until the late 1960s, professional training for psychologists followed the Boulder Model whereby a psychologist earned a PhD which qualified them as both a scientist and a professional. However, there was mounting concern that the PhD did not sufficiently prepare psychologists for clinical work.
The Vail Conference
In 1973, the Vail Conference recognized that the development of psychological science had sufficiently grown to warrant the introduction of explicitly professional programs, in addition to programs for training scientists and scientist-professionals. It was felt that professional training was required that would be responsive to societyís need for psychologists to function in a variety of practitioner roles.
The Ph.D. and the Psy.D. would now both be available as two different paths by which to be trained as a psychologist.
Both types of doctorate are growing in number, therefore it is important that you consider which degree is the most appealing to you.
PsyD and PhD Degree ñ Similarities
Both Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs require internship placements
All Ph.D. programs and most Psy.D. programs require a doctoral dissertation
Both programs take about 4-7 years of full-time study to complete.
In the USA - all States license Psychologists with a Psy.D. or Ph.D.
Depending on intended career goals, both Psy.D. and Ph.D. graduates work with individuals, groups, and families, in institutions, hospitals, and schools, and in the corporate, public, educational, and religious sectors as consultants. Graduates can also find work in applied research, academia, administration, and as psychotherapists.
PsyD and PhD Degree - Differences
Psy.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Psychology upon graduating, while Ph.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology.
The most important difference between the two degrees is that the Ph.D. program focuses more on research, whereas the Psy.D. focuses more on clinical training.
Most Psy.D. graduate students receive more training in psychological testing than do Ph.D. students.
A Psy.D. prepares the student to work in a variety of clinical settings.
A Ph.D. prepares the student to work as a researcher, teacher, and practitioner.
Another important difference is between the kinds of money that a Psy.D. and Ph.D. program can offer. PhD programs tend to be able to give greater financial aid as the research involved in the degree can count as working for the university.
Will I be able to teach or work in academia with a PsyD Degree?
Yes, you will have the opportunity to be a professor at a college or university; however, graduates of Ph.D. programs tend to find it easier to secure a job in academia.
Are internship placements easier to get with a PhD than a PsyD?
Absolutely not. Many internship sites are looking for students who are capable of handling a wide range of clinical responsibilities. As part of a Psy.D. program, you will gain extensive knowledge and experience in the areas of clinical assessment and treatment. This is the type of expertise and diversity that many internship sites seek in a candidate.
APA accreditation
The APA (American Psychological Association) offers accreditation to both PhD and PsyD programs provided they meet and maintain certain APA developed standards. Many internship sites and employers require or prefer that the psychologist they hire come from APA approved programs. When considering which programs to apply to, make sure you pay attention to APA accreditation status.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
The Psy.D. or Doctor of Psychology is a professional doctorate in Clinical Psychology. There are two models through which a student can be trained in Clinical Psychology ñ one is the Psy.D doctorate which places more emphasis on clinical practice, the other is the PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) which places more emphasis on research. Read more to discover what the Psy.D. degree entails and how it compares to the PhD in Clinical Psychology.
How was the PsyD degree established?
The Boulder Model
Until the late 1960s, professional training for psychologists followed the Boulder Model whereby a psychologist earned a PhD which qualified them as both a scientist and a professional. However, there was mounting concern that the PhD did not sufficiently prepare psychologists for clinical work.
The Vail Conference
In 1973, the Vail Conference recognized that the development of psychological science had sufficiently grown to warrant the introduction of explicitly professional programs, in addition to programs for training scientists and scientist-professionals. It was felt that professional training was required that would be responsive to societyís need for psychologists to function in a variety of practitioner roles.
The Ph.D. and the Psy.D. would now both be available as two different paths by which to be trained as a psychologist.
Both types of doctorate are growing in number, therefore it is important that you consider which degree is the most appealing to you.
PsyD and PhD Degree ñ Similarities
Both Psy.D. and Ph.D. programs require internship placements
All Ph.D. programs and most Psy.D. programs require a doctoral dissertation
Both programs take about 4-7 years of full-time study to complete.
In the USA - all States license Psychologists with a Psy.D. or Ph.D.
Depending on intended career goals, both Psy.D. and Ph.D. graduates work with individuals, groups, and families, in institutions, hospitals, and schools, and in the corporate, public, educational, and religious sectors as consultants. Graduates can also find work in applied research, academia, administration, and as psychotherapists.
PsyD and PhD Degree - Differences
Psy.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Psychology upon graduating, while Ph.D. graduates receive a Doctorate of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology.
The most important difference between the two degrees is that the Ph.D. program focuses more on research, whereas the Psy.D. focuses more on clinical training.
Most Psy.D. graduate students receive more training in psychological testing than do Ph.D. students.
A Psy.D. prepares the student to work in a variety of clinical settings.
A Ph.D. prepares the student to work as a researcher, teacher, and practitioner.
Another important difference is between the kinds of money that a Psy.D. and Ph.D. program can offer. PhD programs tend to be able to give greater financial aid as the research involved in the degree can count as working for the university.
Will I be able to teach or work in academia with a PsyD Degree?
Yes, you will have the opportunity to be a professor at a college or university; however, graduates of Ph.D. programs tend to find it easier to secure a job in academia.
Are internship placements easier to get with a PhD than a PsyD?
Absolutely not. Many internship sites are looking for students who are capable of handling a wide range of clinical responsibilities. As part of a Psy.D. program, you will gain extensive knowledge and experience in the areas of clinical assessment and treatment. This is the type of expertise and diversity that many internship sites seek in a candidate.
APA accreditation
The APA (American Psychological Association) offers accreditation to both PhD and PsyD programs provided they meet and maintain certain APA developed standards. Many internship sites and employers require or prefer that the psychologist they hire come from APA approved programs. When considering which programs to apply to, make sure you pay attention to APA accreditation status.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Hereafter - Parallel Lions - Redux
THURSDAY, APRIL 22, 2010
Hereafter - Parallel Lions
Long day
into a long night
Someway
through my life
Found you,
cold street,
cold hands,
cold feet.
You were so pale,
so lost
and lonely.
You said
“Someday,
someone
is gonna want me”.
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the places that you have been.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
.. and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
Long day
into long night.
Someway
through your life
You say,
“No way,
no one
could ever want me”
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it.
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the people that you’ve been seeing.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
We’re becoming less of ourselves it’s true.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you, talking isn’t something you do.
into a long night
Someway
through my life
Found you,
cold street,
cold hands,
cold feet.
You were so pale,
so lost
and lonely.
You said
“Someday,
someone
is gonna want me”.
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the places that you have been.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
.. and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
Long day
into long night.
Someway
through your life
You say,
“No way,
no one
could ever want me”
I tried to save your life,
but you’re always on the edge of it.
And every little comfort I found in you,
I’m becoming less of myself it’s true.
I don’t want to stumble in your hereafter.
I ask about the people that you’ve been seeing.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you,
talking isn’t something you do.
We’re becoming less of ourselves it’s true.
You tumble into silence, silence, silence.
… and you, talking isn’t something you do.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Solar Adoration
Extend thy light that I may see,
but dim thy glory that I be not blinded.
- Solar Adoration Practice: Aurum Solis Order
but dim thy glory that I be not blinded.
- Solar Adoration Practice: Aurum Solis Order
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
Daniel P. Brown
"... as Freud notes in Civilisation and Its Discontents, successful psychoanalysis merely alleviates neurotic suffering but does not address everyday unhappiness. Buddhism picks up where successful therapy leaves off, addressing ordinary unhappiness and how to overcome it".
- Daniel P. Brown, in his book Pointing Out The Great Way.
Journal: I've been adoring Offspring...
... and this still frame from where I paused it yesterday captured the kind of fresh, intelligent hilarity of the whole thing. Asher has a depth of expression which is simply captivating.Sunday, July 10, 2011
What Is Love?
"The infant must come to accept the ontological fact of dependency, neediness, and incompleteness in relation to his or her mother, father and siblings (family) and must learn to accept the humility of dependency and incompleteness as a fact of nature. Along with this recognition infants must learn to appreciate what they receive from their nurturing. They then introject, not the object, but the legacy of their experience with the object, the experience designating the appreciation. It may take us a lifetime to learn that we are unable to posess or really 'introject' a loved one. All we can hope for is continuingly meaningful experiences with the object, really the ineffable, unpossessable other. As we then incorporate the legacy of the object that has been appreciated, the appreciated object experience 'appreciates' within us, filling us with gratitude, the feeling of being profoundly loved and cared for. The infant grows, develops and matures, fed on the milk of loving kindness, the foundation for a sense of being real, alive, vital".
- James Grotstein in What Is Love?, a preface to Judith Pickering's book Being In Love: Therapeutic Pathways Through Psychological Obstacles to Love.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Great lines from Steppenwolf #15
"Hermine looked tenderly in my eyes with that dark look that could so suddenly come into her face. Lovely, fearful eyes! Picking her words one by one and piecing them together, and speaking slowly and so low that it was an effort to hear her, she said:
"I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the greater has your need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them. And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?"
I nodded again and again.
"You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in himóthe heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saintsóis a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritualóbut it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours"
She looked down and fell into meditation".
"I want to tell you something today, something that I have known for a long while, and you know it too; but perhaps you have never said it to yourself. I am going to tell you now what it is that I know about you and me and our fate. You, Harry, have been an artist and a thinker, a man full of joy and faith, always on the track of what is great and eternal, never content with the trivial and petty. But the more life has awakened you and brought you back to yourself, the greater has your need been and the deeper the sufferings and dread and despair that have overtaken you, till you were up to your neck in them. And all that you once knew and loved and revered as beautiful and sacred, all the belief you once had in mankind and our high destiny, has been of no avail and has lost its worth and gone to pieces. Your faith found no more air to breathe. And suffocation is a hard death. Is that true, Harry? Is that your fate?"
I nodded again and again.
"You have a picture of life within you, a faith, a challenge, and you were ready for deeds and sufferings and sacrifices, and then you became aware by degrees that the world asked no deeds and no sacrifices of you whatever, and that life is no poem of heroism with heroic parts to play and so on, but a comfortable room where people are quite content with eating and drinking, coffee and knitting, cards and wireless. And whoever wants more and has got it in himóthe heroic and the beautiful, and the reverence for the great poets or for the saintsóis a fool and a Don Quixote. Good. And it has been just the same for me, my friend. I was a gifted girl. I was meant to live up to a high standard, to expect much of myself and do great things. I could have played a great part. I could have been the wife of a king, the beloved of a revolutionary, the sister of a genius, the mother of a martyr. And life has allowed me just this, to be a courtesan of fairly good taste, and even that has been hard enough. That is how things have gone with me. For a while I was inconsolable and for a long time I put the blame on myself. Life, thought I, must in the end be in the right, and if life scorned my beautiful dreams, so I argued, it was my dreams that were stupid and wrong headed. But that did not help me at all. And as I had good eyes and ears and was a little inquisitive too, I took a good look at this so-called life and at my neighbors and acquaintances, fifty or so of them and their destinies, and then I saw you. And I knew that my dreams had been right a thousand times over, just as yours had been. It was life and reality that were wrong. It was as little right that a woman like me should have no other choice than to grow old in poverty and in a senseless way at a typewriter in the pay of a money-maker, or to marry such a man for his money's sake, or to become some kind of drudge, as for a man like you to be forced in his loneliness and despair to have recourse to a razor. Perhaps the trouble with me was more material and moral and with you more spiritualóbut it was the same road. Do you think I can't understand your horror of the fox trot, your dislike of bars and dancing floors, your loathing of jazz and the rest of it? I understand it only too well, and your dislike of politics as well, your despondence over the chatter and irresponsible antics of the parties and the press, your despair over the war, the one that has been and the one that is to be, over all that people nowadays think, read and build, over the music they play, the celebrations they hold, the education they carry on. You are right, Steppenwolf, right a thousand times over, and yet you must go to the wall. You are much too exacting and hungry for this simple, easygoing and easily contented world of today. You have a dimension too many. Whoever wants to live and enjoy his life today must not be like you and me. Whoever wants music instead of noise, joy instead of pleasure, soul instead of gold, creative work instead of business, passion instead of foolery, finds no home in this trivial world of ours"
She looked down and fell into meditation".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #14
"Just as the gramophone contaminated the esthetic and intellectual atmosphere of my study and just as the American dances broke in as strangers and disturbers, yes, and as destroyers, into my carefully tended garden of music, so, too, from all sides there broke in new and dreaded and disintegrating influences upon my life that, till now, bad been so sharply marked off and so deeply secluded. The Steppenwolf treatise, and Hermine too, were right in their doctrine of the thousand souls. Every day new souls kept springing up beside the host of old ones; making clamorous demands and creating confusion; and now I saw as clearly as in a picture what an illusion my former personality had been. The few capacities and pursuits in which I had happened to be strong had occupied all my attention, and I had painted a picture of myself as a person who was in fact nothing more than a most refined and educated specialist in poetry, music and philosophy; and as such I had lived, leaving all the rest of me to be a chaos of potentialities, instincts and impulses which I found an encumbrance and gave the label of Steppenwolf.
Meanwhile, though cured of an illusion, I found this disintegration of the personality by no means a pleasant and amusing adventure. On the contrary, it was often exceedingly painful, often almost intolerable. Often the sound of the gramophone was truly fiendish to my ears in the midst of surroundings where everything was tuned to so very different a key. And many a time, when I danced my one step in a stylish restaurant among pleasure seekers and elegant rakes, I felt that I was a traitor to all that I was bound to hold most sacred. Had Hermine left me for one week alone I should have fled at once from this wearisome and laughable trafficking with the world of pleasure. Hermine, however, was always there. Though I might not see her every day, I was all the same continually under her eye, guided, guarded and counseled - besides, she read all my mad thoughts of rebellion and escape in my face, and smiled at them.
As the destruction of all that I had called my personality went on, I began to understand, too, why it was that I had feared death so horribly in spite of all my despair. I began to perceive that this ignoble horror in the face of death was a part of my old conventional and lying existence".
Meanwhile, though cured of an illusion, I found this disintegration of the personality by no means a pleasant and amusing adventure. On the contrary, it was often exceedingly painful, often almost intolerable. Often the sound of the gramophone was truly fiendish to my ears in the midst of surroundings where everything was tuned to so very different a key. And many a time, when I danced my one step in a stylish restaurant among pleasure seekers and elegant rakes, I felt that I was a traitor to all that I was bound to hold most sacred. Had Hermine left me for one week alone I should have fled at once from this wearisome and laughable trafficking with the world of pleasure. Hermine, however, was always there. Though I might not see her every day, I was all the same continually under her eye, guided, guarded and counseled - besides, she read all my mad thoughts of rebellion and escape in my face, and smiled at them.
As the destruction of all that I had called my personality went on, I began to understand, too, why it was that I had feared death so horribly in spite of all my despair. I began to perceive that this ignoble horror in the face of death was a part of my old conventional and lying existence".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
Great lines from Steppenwolf #13
"Hermine," I said, "an extraordinary thing happened to me the other day. An unknown man gave me a little book, the sort of thing you'd buy at a fair, and inside I found my whole story and everything about me. Rather remarkable, don't you think?"
"What was it called," she asked lightly.
"Treatise on the Steppenwolf!"
"Oh, Steppenwolf is magnificent! And are you the Steppenwolf? Is that meant for you?"
"Yes, it's me. I am one who is half-wolf and half-man, or thinks himself so at least."
She made no answer. She gave me a searching look in the eyes, then looked at my hands, and for a moment her face and expression had that deep seriousness and sinister passion of a few minutes before. Making a guess at her thoughts I felt she was wondering whether I were wolf enough to carry out her last command.
"That is, of course, your own fanciful idea," she said, becoming serene once more, "or a poetical one, if you like. But there's something in it. You're no wolf today, but the other day when you came in as if you had fallen from the moon there was really something of the beast about you. It is just what struck me at the time."
She broke off as though surprised by a sudden idea.
"How absurd those words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men."
"How do you meanóright?"
"Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a puma or a giraffe. You can't help seeing that all of them are right. They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don't you agree?"
I did.
"Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sadóI don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnestóhe always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That's how it is, and that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time."
"What was it called," she asked lightly.
"Treatise on the Steppenwolf!"
"Oh, Steppenwolf is magnificent! And are you the Steppenwolf? Is that meant for you?"
"Yes, it's me. I am one who is half-wolf and half-man, or thinks himself so at least."
She made no answer. She gave me a searching look in the eyes, then looked at my hands, and for a moment her face and expression had that deep seriousness and sinister passion of a few minutes before. Making a guess at her thoughts I felt she was wondering whether I were wolf enough to carry out her last command.
"That is, of course, your own fanciful idea," she said, becoming serene once more, "or a poetical one, if you like. But there's something in it. You're no wolf today, but the other day when you came in as if you had fallen from the moon there was really something of the beast about you. It is just what struck me at the time."
She broke off as though surprised by a sudden idea.
"How absurd those words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they're much more right than men."
"How do you meanóright?"
"Well, look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of those beautiful great beasts in the zoo, a puma or a giraffe. You can't help seeing that all of them are right. They're never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don't flatter and they don't intrude. They don't pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky. Don't you agree?"
I did.
"Animals are sad as a rule," she went on. "And when a man is sadóI don't mean because he has a toothache or has lost some money, but because he sees, for once in a way, how it all is with life and everything, and is sad in earnestóhe always looks a little like an animal. He looks not only sad, but more right and more beautiful than usual. That's how it is, and that's how you looked, Steppenwolf, when I saw you for the first time."
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #12
"It was for Tuesday evening that I had invited the charming and remarkable girl of the Black Eagle, and I was a good deal put to it to know how to pass the time till then; and when at last Tuesday came, the importance of my relation to this unknown girl had become alarmingly clear to me. I thought of nothing but her. I expected everything from her. I was ready to lay everything at her feet. I was not in the least in love with her. Yet I had only to imagine that she might fail to keep the appointment, or forget it, to see where I stood. Then the world would be a desert once more, one day as dreary and worthless as the last, and the deathly stillness and wretchedness would surround me once more on all sides with no way out from this hell of silence except the razor. And these few days had not made me think any the more fondly of the razor. It had lost none of its terror. This was indeed the hateful truth: I dreaded to cut my throat with a dread that crushed my heart. My fear was as wild and obstinate as though I were the healthiest of men and my life a paradise. I realised my situation recklessly and without a single illusion. I realised that it was the unendurable tension between inability to live and inability to die that made the unknown girl, the pretty dancer of the Black Eagle, so important to me. She was the one window, the one tiny crack of light in my black hole of dread. She was my release and my way to freedom. She had to teach me to live or teach me to die. She had to touch my deadened heart with her firm and pretty hand, and at the touch of life it would either leap again to flame or subside in ashes. I could not imagine whence she derived these powers, what the source of her magic was, in what secret soil this deep meaning she had for me had grown up; nor did it matter. I did not care to know. There was no longer the least importance for me in any knowledge or perception I might have. Indeed it was just in that line that I was overstocked, for the ignominy under which I suffered lay just in thisóthat I saw my own situation so clearly and was so very conscious, too, of hers. I saw this wretch, this brute beast of a Steppenwolf as a fly in a web, and saw too the approaching decision of his fate. Entangled and defenceless he hung in the web. The spider was ready to devour him, and further off was the rescuing hand. I might have made the most intelligent and penetrating remarks about the ramifications and the causes of my sufferings, my sickness of soul, my general bedevilment of neurosis. The mechanism was transparent to me. But what I needed was not knowledge and understanding. What I longed for in my despair was life and resolution, action and reaction, impulse and impetus".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse.
Great lines from Steppenwolf #11
"It did not altogether suit me to have the old gentleman avoid my questions and accusations in this sportive manner, and I looked at him reproachfully. At that he bent forward and brought his mouth, which had now become quite like a child's, close to my ear and whispered softly into it: "You take the old Goethe much too seriously, my young friend. You should not take old people who are already dead seriously. It does them injustice. We immortals do not like things to be taken seriously. We like joking. Seriousness, young man, is an accident of time. It consists, I don't mind telling you in confidence, in putting too high a value on time. I, too, once put too high a value on time. For that reason I wished to be a hundred years old. In eternity, however, there is no time, you see. Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #10
"The division into wolf and man, flesh and spirit, by means of which Harry tries to make his destiny more comprehensible to himself is a very great simplification. It is a forcing of the truth to suit a plausible, but erroneous, explanation of that contradiction which this man discovers in himself and which appears to himself to be the source of his by no means negligible sufferings. Harry finds in himself a human being, that is to say, a world of thoughts and feelings, of culture and tamed or sublimated nature, and besides this he finds within himself also a wolf, that is to say, a dark world of instinct, of savagery and cruelty, of unsublimated or raw nature. In spite of this apparently clear division of his being between two spheres, hostile to one another, he has known happy moments now and then when the man and the wolf for a short while were reconciled with one another. Suppose that Harry tried to ascertain in any single moment of his life, any single act, what part the man had in it and what part the wolf, he would find himself at once in a dilemma, and his whole beautiful wolf-theory would go to pieces. For there is not a single human being, not even the primitive Negro, not even the idiot, who is so conveniently simple that his being can be explained as the sum of two or three principal elements; and to explain so complex a man as Harry by the artless division into wolf and man is a hopelessly childish attempt. Harry consists of a hundred or a thousand selves, not of two. His life oscillates, as everyone's does, not merely between two poles, such as the body and the spirit, the saint and the sinner, but between thousand and thousands.
We need not be surprised that even so intelligent and educated a man as Harry should take himself for a Steppenwolf and reduce the rich and complex organism of his life to a formula so simple, so rudimentary and primitive. Man is not capable of thought in any high degree, and even the most spiritual and highly cultivated of men habitually sees the world and himself through the lenses of delusive formulas and artless simplificationsóand most of all himself. For it appears to be an inborn and imperative need of all men to regard the self as a unit. However often and however grievously this illusion is shattered, it always mends again. The judge who sits over the murderer and looks into his face, and at one moment recognizes all the emotions and potentialities and possibilities of the murderer in his own soul and hears the murderer's voice as his own, is at the next moment one and indivisible as the judge, and scuttles back into the shell of his cultivated self and does his duty and condemns the murderer to death. And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once the majority puts them under lock and key, calls science to aid, establishes schizomania and protects humanity from the necessity of hearing the cry of truth from the lips of these unfortunate persons. Why then waste words, why utter a thing that every thinking man accepts as self-evident, when the mere utterance of it is a breach of taste? A man, therefore, who gets so far as making the supposed unity of the self two-fold is already almost a genius, in any case a most exceptional and interesting person. In reality, however, every ego, so far from being a unity is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. It appears to be a necessity as imperative as eating and breathing for everyone to be forced to regard this chaos as a unity and to speak of his ego as though it were a one-fold and clearly detached and fixed phenomenon. Even the best of us shares the delusion.
The delusion rests simply upon a false analogy. As a body everyone is single, as a soul never. In literature, too, even in its ultimate achievement, we find this customary concern with apparently whole and single personalities. Of all literature up to our days the drama has been the most highly prized by writers and critics, and rightly, since it offers (or might offer) the greatest possibilities of representing the ego as a manifold entity, but for the optical illusion which makes us believe that the characters of the play are one-fold entities by lodging each one in an undeniable body, singly, separately and once and for all. An artless esthetic criticism, then, keeps its highest praise for this so-called character-drama in which each character makes his appearance unmistakably as a separate and single entity. Only from afar and by degrees the suspicion dawns here and there that all this is perhaps a cheap and superficial esthetic philosophy, and that we make a mistake in attributing to our great dramatists those magnificent conceptions of beauty that come to us from antiquity. These conceptions are not native to us, but are merely picked up at second hand, and it is in them, with their common source in the visible body, that the origin of the fiction of an ego, an individual, is really to be found. There is no trace of such a notion in the poems of ancient India. The heroes of the epics of India are not individuals, but whole reels of individualities in a series of incarnations. And in modern times there are poems, in which, behind the veil of a concern with individuality and character that is scarcely, indeed, in the author's mind, the motive is to present a manifold activity of soul. Whoever wishes to recognize this must resolve once and for all not to regard the characters of such a poem as separate beings, but as the various facets and aspects of a higher unity, in my opinion, of the poet's soul. If "Faust" is treated in this way, Faust, Mephistopheles, Wagner and the rest form a unity and a supreme individuality; and it is in this higher unity alone, not in the several characters, that something of the true nature of the soul is revealed. When Faust, in a line immortalized among schoolmasters and greeted with a shudder of astonishment by the Philistine, says: "Two souls, alas, do dwell within my breast!" he has forgotten Mephisto and a whole crowd of other souls that he has in his breast likewise. The Steppenwolf, too, believes that he bears two souls (wolf and man) in his breast and even so finds his breast disagreeably cramped because of them. The breast and the body are indeed one, but the souls that dwell in it are not two, nor five, but countless in number. Man is an onion made up of a hundred integuments, a texture made up of many threads. The ancient Asiatics knew this well enough, and in the Buddhist Yoga an exact technique was devised for unmasking the illusion of the personality. The human merry-go-round sees many changes: the illusion that cost India the efforts of thousands of years to unmask is the same illusion that the West has labored just as hard to maintain and strengthen.
If we consider the Steppenwolf from this standpoint it will be clear to us why he suffered so much under his ludicrous dual personality. He believes, like Faust, that two souls are far too many for a single breast and must tear the breast asunder. They are on the contrary far too few, and Harry does shocking violence to his poor soul when he endeavors to apprehend it by means of so primitive an image. Although he is a most cultivated person, he proceeds like a savage that cannot count further than two. He calls himself part wolf, part man, and with that he thinks he has come to an end and exhausted the matter. With the "man" he packs in everything spiritual and sublimated or even cultivated to be found in himself, and with the wolf all that is instinctive, savage and chaotic. But things are not so simple in life as in our thoughts, nor so rough and ready as in our poor idiotic language; and Harry lies about himself twice over when he employs this niggardly wolf-theory. He assigns, we fear, whole provinces of his soul to the "man" which are a long way from being human, and parts of his being to the wolf that long ago have left the wolf behind.
Like all men Harry believes that he knows very well what man is and yet does not know at all, although in dreams and other states not subject to control he often has his suspicions. If only he might not forget them, but keep them, as far as possible at least, for his own. Man is not by any means of fixed and enduring form (this, in spite of suspicions to the contrary on the part of their wise men, was the ideal of the ancients). He is much more an experiment and a transition. He is nothing else than the narrow and perilous bridge between nature and spirit. His innermost destiny drives him on to the spirit and to God. His innermost longing draws him back to nature, the mother. Between the two forces his life hangs tremulous and irresolute. "Man," whatever people think of him, is never anything more than a temporary bourgeois compromise. Convention rejects and bans certain of the more naked instincts, a little consciousness, morality and debestialization is called for, and a modicum of spirit is not only permitted but even thought necessary. The "man" of this concordat, like every other bourgeois ideal, is a compromise, a timid and artlessly sly experiment, with the aim of cheating both the angry primal mother Nature and the troublesome primal father Spirit of their pressing claims, and of living in a temperate zone between the two of them. For this reason the bourgeois today burns as heretics and hangs as criminals those to whom he erects monuments tomorrow.
That man is not yet a finished creation but rather a challenge of the spirit; a distant possibility dreaded as much as it is desired; that the way towards it has only been covered for a very short distance and with terrible agonies and ecstasies even by those few for whom it is the scaffold today and the monument tomorrow - all this the Steppenwolf, too, suspected. What, however, he calls the "man" in himself, as opposed to the wolf, is to a great extent nothing else than this very same average man of the bourgeois convention.
As for the way to true manhood, the way to the immortals, he has, it is true, an inkling of it and starts upon it now and then for a few hesitating steps and pays for them with much suffering and many pangs of loneliness. But as for striving with assurance, in response to that supreme demand, towards the genuine manhood of the spirit, and going the one narrow way to immortality, he is deeply afraid of it. He knows too well that it leads to still greater sufferings, to proscription, to the last renunciation, perhaps to the scaffold, and even though the enticement of immortality lies at the journey's end, he is still unwilling to suffer all these sufferings and to die all these deaths. Though the goal of manhood is better known to him than to the bourgeois, still he shuts his eyes. He is resolved to forget that the desperate clinging to the self and the desperate clinging to life are the surest way to eternal death, while the power to die, to strip one's self naked, and the eternal surrender of the self bring immortality with them. When he worships his favorites among the immortals, Mozart, perchance, he always looks at him in the long run through bourgeois eyes. His tendency is to explain Mozart's perfected being, just as a schoolmaster would, as a supreme and special gift rather than as the outcome of his immense powers of surrender and suffering, of his indifference to the ideals of the bourgeois, and of his patience under that last extremity of loneliness which rarefies the atmosphere of the bourgeois world to an ice-cold ether, around those who suffer to become men, that loneliness of the Garden of Gethsemane.
This Steppenwolf of ours has always been aware of at least the Faustian two-fold nature within him. He has discovered that the one-fold of the body is not inhabited by a one-fold of the soul, and that at best he is only at the beginning of a long pilgrimage towards this ideal harmony. He would like either to overcome the wolf and become wholly man or to renounce mankind and at last to live wholly a wolf's life. It may be presumed that he has never carefully watched a real wolf. Had he done so he would have seen, perhaps, that even animals are not undivided in spirit. With them, too, the well-knit beauty of the body hides a being of manifold states and strivings. The wolf, too, has his abysses. The wolf, too, suffers. No, back to nature is a false track that leads nowhere but to suffering and despair. Harry can never turn back again and become wholly wolf, and could he do so he would find that even the wolf is not of primeval simplicity, but already a creature of manifold complexity. Even the wolf has two, and more than two, souls in his wolf's breast, and he who desires to be a wolf falls into the same forgetfulness as the man who sings: "If I could be a child once more!" He who sentimentally sings of blessed childhood is thinking of the return to nature and innocence and the origin of things, and has quite forgotten that these blessed children are beset with conflict and complexities and capable of all suffering.
There is, in fact, no way back either to the wolf or to the child. From the very start there is no innocence and no singleness. Every created thing, even the simplest, is already guilty, already multiple. It has been thrown into the muddy stream of being and may never more swim back again to its source. The way to innocence, to the uncreated and to God leads on, not back, not back to the wolf or to the child, but ever further into sin, ever deeper into human life. Nor will suicide really solve your problem, unhappy Steppenwolf. You will, instead, embark on the longer and wearier and harder road of life. You will have to multiply many times your two-fold being and complicate your complexities still further. Instead of narrowing your world and simplifying your soul, you will have to absorb more and more of the world and at last take all of it up in your painfully expanded soul, if you are ever to find peace. This is the road that Buddha and every great man has gone, whether consciously or not, insofar as fortune favored his quest. All births mean separation from the All, the confinement within limitation, the separation from God, the pangs of being born ever anew. The return into the All, the dissolution of painful individuation, the reunion with God means the expansion of the soul until it is able once more to embrace the All".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #9
"... he was always recognising and affirming with one half of himself, in thought and act, what with the other half he fought against and denied. Brought up, as he was, in a cultivated home in the approved manner, he never tore part of his soul loose from its conventionalities even after he had long since individualised himself to a degree beyond its scope and freed himself from the substance of its ideals and beliefs.
Now what we call "bourgeois," when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up entirely to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surrender to God. The other path leads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surrender to corruption. Now it is between the two, in the middle of the road, that the bourgeois seeks to walk. He will never surrender himself either to lust or to asceticism. He will never be a martyr or agree to his own destruction. On the contrary, his ideal is not to give up but to maintain his own identity. He strives neither for the saintly nor its opposite. The absolute is his abhorrence. He may be ready to serve God, but not by giving up the fleshpots. He is ready to be virtuous, but likes to be easy and comfortable in this world as well. In short, his aim is to make a home for himself between two extremes in a temperate zone without violent storms and tempests; and in this he succeeds though it be at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility".
It is clear that this weak and anxious being, in whatever numbers he exists, cannot maintain himself, and that qualities such as his can play no other role in the world than that of a herd of sheep among free roving wolves. Yet we see that, though in times when commanding natures are uppermost, the bourgeois goes at once to the wall, he never goes under; indeed at times he even appears to rule the world. How is this possible? Neither the great numbers of the herd, nor virtue, nor common sense, nor organization could avail to save it from destruction. No medicine in the world can keep a pulse beating that from the outset was so weak. Nevertheless the bourgeoisie prospers. Why?
The answer runs: Because of the Steppenwolves. In fact, the vital force of the bourgeoisie resides by no means in the qualities of its normal members, but in those of its extremely numerous "outsiders" who by virtue of the extensiveness and elasticity of its ideals it can embrace. There is always a large number of strong and wild natures who share the life of the fold. Our Steppenwolf, Harry, is a characteristic example. He who is developed far beyond the level possible to the bourgeois, he who knows the bliss of meditation no less than the gloomy joys of hatred and self-hatred, he who despises law, virtue and common sense, is nevertheless captive to the bourgeoisie and cannot escape it. And so all through the mass of the real bourgeoisie are interposed numerous layers of humanity, many thousands of lives and minds, every one of whom, it is true, would have outgrown it and have obeyed the call to unconditioned life, were they not fastened to it by sentiments of their childhood and infected for the most part with its less intense life; and so they are kept lingering, obedient and bound by obligation and service. For with the bourgeoisie the opposite of the formula for the great is true: He who is not against me is with me.
If we now pause to test the soul of the Steppenwolf, we find him distinct from the bourgeois in the higher development of his individuality - for all extreme individuation turns against itself, intent upon its own destruction. We see that he had in him strong impulses both to be a saint and a profligate; and yet he could not, owing to some weakness or inertia, make the plunge into the untrammelled realms of space. The parent constellation of the bourgeoisie binds him with its spell. This is his place in the universe and this his bondage. Most intellectuals and most artists belong to the same type. Only the strongest of them force their way through the atmosphere of the bourgeois earth and attain to the cosmic. The others all resign themselves or make compromises. Despising the bourgeoisie, and yet belonging to it, they add to its strength and glory; for in the last resort they have to share their beliefs in order to live. The lives of these infinitely numerous persons make no claim to the tragic; but they live under an evil star in a quite considerable affliction; and in this hell their talents ripen and bear fruit. The few who break free seek their reward in the unconditioned and go down in splendor. They wear the thorn crown and their number is small. The others, however, who remain in the fold and from whose talents the bourgeoisie reaps much gain, have a third kingdom left open to them, an imaginary and yet a sovereign world, humor. The lone wolves who know no peace, these victims of unceasing pain to whom the urge for tragedy has been denied and who can never break through the starry space, who feel themselves summoned thither and yet cannot survive in its atmosphereófor them is reserved, provided suffering has made their spirits tough and elastic enough, a way of reconcilement and an escape into humor. Humor has always something bourgeois in it, although the true bourgeois is incapable of understanding it. In its imaginary realm the intricate and many-faceted ideal of all Steppenwolves finds its realisation. Here it is possible not only to extol the saint and the profligate in one breath and to make the poles meet, but to include the bourgeois, too, in the same affirmation. Now it is possible to be possessed by God and to affirm the sinner, and vice versa, but it is not possible for either saint or sinner (or for any other of the unconditioned) to affirm as well that lukewarm mean, the bourgeois. Humor alone, that magnificent discovery of those who are cut short in their calling to highest endeavor, those who falling short of tragedy are yet as rich in gifts as in affliction, humor alone (perhaps the most inborn and brilliant achievement of the spirit) attains to the impossible and brings every aspect of human existence within the rays of its prism. To live in the world as though it were not the world, to respect the law and yet to stand above it, to have possessions as though "one possessed nothing," to renounce as though it were no renunciation, all these favorite and often formulated propositions of an exalted worldly wisdom, it is in the power of humor alone to make efficacious.
And supposing the Steppenwolf were to succeed, and he has gifts and resources in plenty, in decocting this magic draught in the sultry mazes of his hell, his rescue would be assured. Yet there is much lacking. The possibility, the hope only are there. Whoever loves him and takes his part may wish him this rescue. It would, it is true, keep him forever tied to the bourgeois world, but his suffering would be bearable and productive. His relation to the bourgeois world would lose its sentimentality both in its love and in its hatred, and his bondage to it would cease to cause him the continual torture of shame.
To attain to this, or, perhaps it may be, to be able at least to dare the leap into the unknown, a Steppenwolf must once have a good look at himself. He must look deeply into the chaos of his own soul and plumb its depths. The riddle of his existence would then be revealed to him at once in all its changelessness, and it would be impossible for him ever after to escape first from the hell of the flesh to the comforts of a sentimental philosophy and then back to the blind orgy of his wolfishness. Man and wolf would then be compelled to recognise one another without the masks of false feeling and to look one another straight in the eye. Then they would either explode and separate forever, and there would be no more Steppenwolf, or else they would come to terms in the dawning light of humor.
It is possible that Harry will one day be led to this latter alternative. It is possible that he will learn one day to know himself. He may get hold of one of our little mirrors. He may encounter the Immortals. He may find in one of our magic theaters the very thing that is needed to free his neglected soul. A thousand such possibilities await him. His fate brings them on, leaving him no choice; for those outside of the bourgeoisie live in the atmosphere of these magic possibilities. A mere nothing suffices - and the lightning strikes.
And all this is very well known to the Steppenwolf, even though his eye may never fall on this fragment of his inner biography. He has a suspicion of his allotted place in the world, a suspicion of the Immortals, a suspicion that he may meet himself face to face; and he is aware of the existence of that mirror in which he has such bitter need to look and from which he shrinks in such deathly fear".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #8
"Now with our Steppenwolf it was so that in his conscious life he lived now as a wolf, now as a man, as indeed the case is with all mixed beings. But, when he was a wolf, the man in him lay in ambush, ever on the watch to interfere and condemn, while at those times that he was a man the wolf did just the same. For example, if Harry, as man, had a beautiful thought, felt a fine and noble emotion, or performed a so-called good act, then the wolf bared his teeth at him and laughed and showed him with bitter scorn how laughable this whole pantomime was in the eyes of a beast, of a wolf who knew well enough in his heart what suited him, namely, to trot alone over the Steppes and now and then to gorge himself with blood or to pursue a female wolf. Then, wolfishly seen, all human activities became horribly absurd and misplaced, stupid and vain. But it was exactly the same when Harry felt and behaved as a wolf and showed others his teeth and felt hatred and enmity against all human beings and their lying and degenerate manners and customs. For then the human part of him lay in ambush and watched the wolf, called him brute and beast, and spoiled and embittered for him all pleasure in his simple and healthy and wild wolf's being.
Thus it was then with the Steppenwolf, and one may well imagine that Harry did not have an exactly pleasant and happy life of it. This does not mean, however, that he was unhappy in any extraordinary degree (although it may have seemed so to himself all the same, inasmuch as every man takes the sufferings that fall to his share as the greatest). That cannot be said of any man. Even he who has no wolf in him, may be none the happier for that. And even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone. So it was, then, with the Steppenwolf too. It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they him. For all who got to love him, saw always only the one side in him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him. And they had to because Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be loved as a whole and therefore it was just with those whose love he most valued that he could least of all conceal and belie the wolf. There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals. Usually these were the most disappointed and angry of all; and so it was that the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them.
Now, whoever thinks that he knows the Steppenwolf and that he can imagine to himself his lamentably divided life is nevertheless in error. He does not know all by a long way. He does not know that, as there is no rule without an exception and as one sinner may under certain circumstances be dearer to God than ninety and nine righteous persons, with Harry too there were now and then exceptions and strokes of good luck, and that he could breathe and think and feel sometimes as the wolf, sometimes as the man, clearly and without confusion of the two; and even on very rare occasions, they made peace and lived for one another in such fashion that not merely did one keep watch whilst the other slept but each strengthened and confirmed the other. In the life of this man, too, as well as in all things else in the world, daily use and the accepted and common knowledge seemed sometimes to have no other aim than to be arrested now and again for an instant, and broken through, in order to yield the place of honor to the exceptional and miraculous. Now whether these short and occasional hours of happiness balanced and alleviated the lot of the Steppenwolf in such a fashion that in the upshot happiness and suffering held the scales even, or whether perhaps the short but intense happiness of those few hours outweighed all suffering and left a balance over is again a question over which idle persons may meditate to their hearts' content. Even the wolf brooded often over this, and those were his idle and unprofitable days.
In this connection one thing more must be said. There are a good many people of the same kind as Harry. Many artists are of his kind. These persons all have two souls, two beings within them. There is God and the devil in them; the mother's blood and the father's; the capacity for happiness and the capacity for suffering; and in just such a state of enmity and entanglement towards and within each other as were the wolf and man in Harry. And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. All these men, whatever their deeds and works may be, have really no life; that is to say, their lives are not their own and have no form. They are not heroes, artists or thinkers in the same way that other men are judges, doctors, shoemakers, or schoolmasters. Their life consists of a perpetual tide, unhappy and torn with pain, terrible and meaningless, unless one is ready to see its meaning in just those rare experiences, acts, thoughts and works that shine out above the chaos of such a life. To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature. To them, too, however, the other thought has come that man is perhaps not merely a half-rational animal but a child of the gods and destined to immortality".
Thus it was then with the Steppenwolf, and one may well imagine that Harry did not have an exactly pleasant and happy life of it. This does not mean, however, that he was unhappy in any extraordinary degree (although it may have seemed so to himself all the same, inasmuch as every man takes the sufferings that fall to his share as the greatest). That cannot be said of any man. Even he who has no wolf in him, may be none the happier for that. And even the unhappiest life has its sunny moments and its little flowers of happiness between sand and stone. So it was, then, with the Steppenwolf too. It cannot be denied that he was generally very unhappy; and he could make others unhappy also, that is, when he loved them or they him. For all who got to love him, saw always only the one side in him. Many loved him as a refined and clever and interesting man, and were horrified and disappointed when they had come upon the wolf in him. And they had to because Harry wished, as every sentient being does, to be loved as a whole and therefore it was just with those whose love he most valued that he could least of all conceal and belie the wolf. There were those, however, who loved precisely the wolf in him, the free, the savage, the untamable, the dangerous and strong, and these found it peculiarly disappointing and deplorable when suddenly the wild and wicked wolf was also a man, and had hankerings after goodness and refinement, and wanted to hear Mozart, to read poetry and to cherish human ideals. Usually these were the most disappointed and angry of all; and so it was that the Steppenwolf brought his own dual and divided nature into the destinies of others besides himself whenever he came into contact with them.
Now, whoever thinks that he knows the Steppenwolf and that he can imagine to himself his lamentably divided life is nevertheless in error. He does not know all by a long way. He does not know that, as there is no rule without an exception and as one sinner may under certain circumstances be dearer to God than ninety and nine righteous persons, with Harry too there were now and then exceptions and strokes of good luck, and that he could breathe and think and feel sometimes as the wolf, sometimes as the man, clearly and without confusion of the two; and even on very rare occasions, they made peace and lived for one another in such fashion that not merely did one keep watch whilst the other slept but each strengthened and confirmed the other. In the life of this man, too, as well as in all things else in the world, daily use and the accepted and common knowledge seemed sometimes to have no other aim than to be arrested now and again for an instant, and broken through, in order to yield the place of honor to the exceptional and miraculous. Now whether these short and occasional hours of happiness balanced and alleviated the lot of the Steppenwolf in such a fashion that in the upshot happiness and suffering held the scales even, or whether perhaps the short but intense happiness of those few hours outweighed all suffering and left a balance over is again a question over which idle persons may meditate to their hearts' content. Even the wolf brooded often over this, and those were his idle and unprofitable days.
In this connection one thing more must be said. There are a good many people of the same kind as Harry. Many artists are of his kind. These persons all have two souls, two beings within them. There is God and the devil in them; the mother's blood and the father's; the capacity for happiness and the capacity for suffering; and in just such a state of enmity and entanglement towards and within each other as were the wolf and man in Harry. And these men, for whom life has no repose, live at times in their rare moments of happiness with such strength and indescribable beauty, the spray of their moment's happiness is flung so high and dazzlingly over the wide sea of suffering, that the light of it, spreading its radiance, touches others too with its enchantment. Thus, like a precious, fleeting foam over the sea of suffering arise all those works of art, in which a single individual lifts himself for an hour so high above his personal destiny that his happiness shines like a star and appears to all who see it as something eternal and as a happiness of their own. All these men, whatever their deeds and works may be, have really no life; that is to say, their lives are not their own and have no form. They are not heroes, artists or thinkers in the same way that other men are judges, doctors, shoemakers, or schoolmasters. Their life consists of a perpetual tide, unhappy and torn with pain, terrible and meaningless, unless one is ready to see its meaning in just those rare experiences, acts, thoughts and works that shine out above the chaos of such a life. To such men the desperate and horrible thought has come that perhaps the whole of human life is but a bad joke, a violent and ill-fated abortion of the primal mother, a savage and dismal catastrophe of nature. To them, too, however, the other thought has come that man is perhaps not merely a half-rational animal but a child of the gods and destined to immortality".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #7
"I might be a beast astray, with no sense of its environment, yet there was some meaning in my foolish life, something in me gave an answer and was the receiver of those distant calls from worlds far above. In my brain were stored a thousand pictures".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #6
"The best was the Elsasser. I am not fond, for everyday at least, of racy, heady wines that diffuse a potent charm and have their own particular flavor. What I like the best is a clean, light, modest country vintage of no special name. One can carry plenty of it and it has the good and homely flavor of the land, and of earth and sky and woods. A pint of Elsasser and a piece of good bread is the best of all meals. By this time, however, I had already eaten my portion of liver, an unusual indulgence for me, as I seldom eat meat, and the second pint had been set before me. And this too was odd: that somewhere in a green valley vines were tended by good, strong fellows and the wine pressed so that here and there in the world, far away, a few disappointed, quietly drinking townsfolk and dispirited Steppenwolves could sip a little heart and courage from their glasses".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #5
"I should hesitate to share them with others if I saw in them nothing but the pathological fancies of a single and isolated case of a diseased temperament. But I see something more in them. I see them as a document of the times, for Haller's sickness of the soul, as I now know, is not the eccentricity of a single individual, but the sickness of the times themselves, the neurosis of that generation to which Haller belongs, a sickness, it seems, that by no means attacks the weak and worthless only but, rather, precisely those who are strongest in spirit and richest in gifts.
These records, however much or however little of real life may lie at the back of them, are not an attempt to disguise or to palliate this widespread sickness of our times. They are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. They mean, literally, a journey through hell, a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of a world whose souls dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full.
A remark of Haller's gave me the key to this interpretation. He said to me once when we were talking of the so-called horrors of the Middle Ages: "These horrors were really nonexistent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present-day life as something far more than horrible, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilisation. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, every one does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche's had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today."
I often had to think of these words while reading the records. Haller belongs to those who have been caught between two ages, who are outside of all security and simple acquiescence. He belongs to those whose fate it is to live the whole riddle of human destiny heightened to the pitch of a personal torture, a personal hell.
Therein, it seems to me, lies the meaning these records can have for us, and because of this I decided to publish them. For the rest, I neither approve nor condemn them. Let every reader do as his conscience bids him".
These records, however much or however little of real life may lie at the back of them, are not an attempt to disguise or to palliate this widespread sickness of our times. They are an attempt to present the sickness itself in its actual manifestation. They mean, literally, a journey through hell, a sometimes fearful, sometimes courageous journey through the chaos of a world whose souls dwell in darkness, a journey undertaken with the determination to go through hell from one end to the other, to give battle to chaos, and to suffer torture to the full.
A remark of Haller's gave me the key to this interpretation. He said to me once when we were talking of the so-called horrors of the Middle Ages: "These horrors were really nonexistent. A man of the Middle Ages would detest the whole mode of our present-day life as something far more than horrible, far more than barbarous. Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its own weakness and its own strength, its beauties and ugliness; accepts certain sufferings as matters of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap. A man of the Classical Age who had to live in medieval times would suffocate miserably just as a savage does in the midst of our civilisation. Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, two modes of life, with the consequence that it loses all power to understand itself and has no standard, no security, no simple acquiescence. Naturally, every one does not feel this equally strongly. A nature such as Nietzsche's had to suffer our present ills more than a generation in advance. What he had to go through alone and misunderstood, thousands suffer today."
I often had to think of these words while reading the records. Haller belongs to those who have been caught between two ages, who are outside of all security and simple acquiescence. He belongs to those whose fate it is to live the whole riddle of human destiny heightened to the pitch of a personal torture, a personal hell.
Therein, it seems to me, lies the meaning these records can have for us, and because of this I decided to publish them. For the rest, I neither approve nor condemn them. Let every reader do as his conscience bids him".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #4
"It was not in my power to verify the truth of the experiences related in Haller's manuscript. I have no doubt that they are for the most part fictitious, not, however, in the sense of arbitrary invention. They are rather the deeply lived spiritual events which he has attempted to express by giving them the form of tangible experiences".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #3
"During that very first conversation, about the araucaria, he called himself the Steppenwolf, and this too estranged and disturbed me a little. What an expression! However, custom did not only reconcile me to it, but soon I never thought of him by any other name; nor could I today hit on a better description of him. A wolf of the Steppes that had lost its way and strayed into the towns and life of the herd, a more striking image could not be found for his shy loneliness, his savagery, his restlessness, his homesickness, his homelessness".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #2
"I have already given some account of the Steppenwolf's outward appearance. He gave at the very first glance the impression of a significant, an uncommon, an unusually gifted man. His face was intellectual, the abnormally delicate and mobile play of his features reflected a soul of extremely emotional and unusually delicate sensibility. When one spoke to him and he, as was not always the case, dropped conventionalities and said personal and individual things that came out of his own alien world, then a man like myself came under his spell on the spot. He had thought more than other men, and in matters of the intellect he had that calm objectivity, that certainty of thought and knowledge, such as only really intellectual men have, who have no axe to grind, who never wish to shine, or to tell others down, or to appear always in the right
I remember an instance of this in the last days he was here, if I can call a mere fleeting glance he gave me an example of what I mean. It was when a celebrated philosopher, and critic, a man of European fame, had announced a lecture in the school auditorium. I had succeeded in persuading the Steppenwolf to attend it, though at first he had little desire to do so. We went together and sat next to each other in the lecture hall. When the lecturer ascended the platform and began his address, many of his hearers, who had expected a sort of prophet, were disappointed by his rather dapper appearance and conceited air. And when he proceeded, by way of introduction, to say a few flattering things to the audience, thanking them for their attendance in such numbers, the Steppenwolf threw me a quick look, a look which criticized both the words and the speaker of them--an unforgettable and frightful look which spoke volumes! It was a look that did not simply criticize the lecturer, annihilating the famous man with its delicate but crushing irony. That was the least of it. It was more sad than ironical; it was indeed utterly and hopelessly sad; it conveyed a quiet despair, born partly of conviction, partly of a mode of thought which had become habitual of him. This despair of his not only unmasked the conceited lecturer and dismissed with its irony the matter at hand, the expectant attitude of the public, the somewhat presumptous title under which the lecture was announced--no, the Steppenwolf's look pierced our whole epoch, its whole overwrought activity, the whole surge and strife, the whole vanity, the whole superficial play of a shallow, opinionated intellectuality. And alas! the look went still deeper, went far below the faults, defects and hopelessness of our time, our intellect, our culture alone. It went right to the heart of all humanity, it bespoke eloquently in a single second the whole despair of a thinker, of one who knew the full worth and meaning of a man's life. It said: 'See what monkeys we are! Look, such is man!' and at once all renown, all intelligence, all the attainments of the spirit, all progress towards the sublime, the great and the enduring in man fell away and became a monkey's trick!".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Great lines from Steppenwolf #1
"He lived by himself very quietly, and but for the fact that our bedrooms were next door to each other--which occasioned a good many chance encounters on the stairs and in the passage--we should have remained practically unacquainted. For he was not a sociable man. Indeed, he was unsociable to a degree I had never before experienced in anybody. He was, in fact, as he called himself, a real wolf of the Steppes, a strange, wild, shy--very shy--being from another world than mine. How deep the loneliness into which his life had drifted on account of his disposition and destiny and how consciously he accepted this loneliness as his destiny, I certainly did not know until I read the records left behind him. Yet, before that, from our occasional talks and encounters, I became gradually acquainted with him, and I found that the portrait in his records was in substantial agreement with the paler and less complete one that our personal acquaintance had given me".
- Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse
Monday, July 4, 2011
Ubuntu
"A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed."
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Living Ferociously - Damien Echols
Someone once asked Oscar Wilde if he believed in God. He responded by saying, “No, I believe in something much bigger.” I feel much the same about reality.
Philosophers have argued about reality for as long as there have been philosophers—what it is, how it is experienced, etc.—yet they are no closer to agreeing now than they ever were. Anyone who untangles themselves from all the theories, counter-theories, and general jibber-jabber can then see the obvious: if mankind were capable of thinking its way to enlightenment it would have happened long ago.
I still remember the exact moment that I ceased to believe in the existence of reality. It was when I discovered that scientists had proved it was absolutely impossible for the human body to run a mile in less than four minutes, yet despite the fact that it’s impossible people still do it on a regular basis. Suddenly there were two realities—the one in which it is impossible to run a four-minute mile, and the one in which it is done. A third alternative is created by rejecting both, so that there are then three realities. It was then that my bones began rustling and whispering to me that reality is an outdated concept that has outlived its usefulness.
There have always been those who sought to penetrate the illusion of mundane reality. The Buddha used meditation. Whirling dervishes use ecstatic trance. Hermetic esotericists use magic. Shamans consume consciousness-altering chemicals such as peyote. What they all have in common is the reliance upon direct experience to step beyond the boundaries imposed by the intellect.
One of the most famous hermetic esotericists, Aleister Crowley, said that when a person seeks to discover the true nature of reality he should do so “with the aim of religion, and the method of science.” In other words, seek unity with the First Cause, yet believe in nothing. If something is true, it does not require belief to remain so.
Through rigorous adherence to hermetic practices it’s possible to communicate directly with the intelligence behind what most perceive as reality, and in doing so we can become co-partners in the act of creation. We can discover that behind such outdated concepts as reality there lies only an eternal field of unlimited potential. The universe (and everything beyond it) becomes a computer that’s more than willing to accept whatever programs we enter into it. Anything becomes possible. Anything. However, before it’s possible to bring about external manifestations of our chosen reality it’s necessary to undergo a series of internal initiations. Alchemists say that any outward manifestation of transmutation they perform is secondary to the inner evolution that made it possible. My own experiences have taught me the truth of this, and I have made it my mantra and my prayer—“As above, so below. As within, so without. As in Heaven, so on Earth.”
I’ve come to view the Tarot card labeled “The Magician” as the perfect symbol of what is possible. Artists and mystics of all sorts have come to identify with The Magician, and I have taken him as my personal patron saint. The Magician faces the viewer, his right hand raised above his head and pointing a wand at Heaven. His left hand is extended to point at the ground. In essence he is acting as a lightning rod, drawing down the fire of Heaven and passing it through his body so that it can manifest on Earth. He has taken on the responsibility of shaping reality (or the outside world) to match the beauty he finds within himself. He is trading the mundane for the magical. It’s the same thing artists do when they give shape and form to their inspiration. Through that act the world becomes a slightly more magical place to live, and a little less mediocre. I’ve had several encounters with The Magician, and he always tells me the same thing: “Live ferociously.” I try to follow his advice, even trapped in this cell. It’s not that he encourages me to push beyond my boundaries; it’s more that he causes me to see they were never there in the first place.
Accepting a concept such as reality reeks of defeat to me. It means settling for less. Submitting to any form of reality is the opposite of living ferociously. Either I can accept reality, or I can storm the gates of Heaven and make off with its treasures. I have chosen the latter.
—Damien Echols
RT@LeoMars
Damien has been on death row for nearly two decades for a murder many believe he did not commit. He is now awaiting a new trial that supporters believe will set him free. See “Memphis 3” for more information on this amazing story.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Philosophers have argued about reality for as long as there have been philosophers—what it is, how it is experienced, etc.—yet they are no closer to agreeing now than they ever were. Anyone who untangles themselves from all the theories, counter-theories, and general jibber-jabber can then see the obvious: if mankind were capable of thinking its way to enlightenment it would have happened long ago.
I still remember the exact moment that I ceased to believe in the existence of reality. It was when I discovered that scientists had proved it was absolutely impossible for the human body to run a mile in less than four minutes, yet despite the fact that it’s impossible people still do it on a regular basis. Suddenly there were two realities—the one in which it is impossible to run a four-minute mile, and the one in which it is done. A third alternative is created by rejecting both, so that there are then three realities. It was then that my bones began rustling and whispering to me that reality is an outdated concept that has outlived its usefulness.
There have always been those who sought to penetrate the illusion of mundane reality. The Buddha used meditation. Whirling dervishes use ecstatic trance. Hermetic esotericists use magic. Shamans consume consciousness-altering chemicals such as peyote. What they all have in common is the reliance upon direct experience to step beyond the boundaries imposed by the intellect.
One of the most famous hermetic esotericists, Aleister Crowley, said that when a person seeks to discover the true nature of reality he should do so “with the aim of religion, and the method of science.” In other words, seek unity with the First Cause, yet believe in nothing. If something is true, it does not require belief to remain so.
Through rigorous adherence to hermetic practices it’s possible to communicate directly with the intelligence behind what most perceive as reality, and in doing so we can become co-partners in the act of creation. We can discover that behind such outdated concepts as reality there lies only an eternal field of unlimited potential. The universe (and everything beyond it) becomes a computer that’s more than willing to accept whatever programs we enter into it. Anything becomes possible. Anything. However, before it’s possible to bring about external manifestations of our chosen reality it’s necessary to undergo a series of internal initiations. Alchemists say that any outward manifestation of transmutation they perform is secondary to the inner evolution that made it possible. My own experiences have taught me the truth of this, and I have made it my mantra and my prayer—“As above, so below. As within, so without. As in Heaven, so on Earth.”
I’ve come to view the Tarot card labeled “The Magician” as the perfect symbol of what is possible. Artists and mystics of all sorts have come to identify with The Magician, and I have taken him as my personal patron saint. The Magician faces the viewer, his right hand raised above his head and pointing a wand at Heaven. His left hand is extended to point at the ground. In essence he is acting as a lightning rod, drawing down the fire of Heaven and passing it through his body so that it can manifest on Earth. He has taken on the responsibility of shaping reality (or the outside world) to match the beauty he finds within himself. He is trading the mundane for the magical. It’s the same thing artists do when they give shape and form to their inspiration. Through that act the world becomes a slightly more magical place to live, and a little less mediocre. I’ve had several encounters with The Magician, and he always tells me the same thing: “Live ferociously.” I try to follow his advice, even trapped in this cell. It’s not that he encourages me to push beyond my boundaries; it’s more that he causes me to see they were never there in the first place.
Accepting a concept such as reality reeks of defeat to me. It means settling for less. Submitting to any form of reality is the opposite of living ferociously. Either I can accept reality, or I can storm the gates of Heaven and make off with its treasures. I have chosen the latter.
—Damien Echols
RT@LeoMars
Damien has been on death row for nearly two decades for a murder many believe he did not commit. He is now awaiting a new trial that supporters believe will set him free. See “Memphis 3” for more information on this amazing story.
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Thomas Merton
"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?"
- Thomas Merton
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
- Thomas Merton
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Boys and Girls - Kerouac
"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk- real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious".
- Jack Kerouac - On The Road
- Jack Kerouac - On The Road
Sunday, July 3, 2011
An Antidote to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder The Creation of Secure Attachment in Couples Therapy - Sue Johnson - University of Ottawa
"Much of the literature details how a lack of secure connection with others adversely influences the optimal development of personality, including how people see the world, regulate affect, process information, and communicate with others. This theory is not just about belonging, however, it is also about how attachment bonds are evolutionary survival mechanisms that offer protection and a safe haven from life's adversities (Bowlby, 1969/1982). A sense of secure connection with others is most pertinent in the face of danger and loss. The lack of such connection not only leaves us unprotected in the storms of life and specifically influences how we deal with such storms, but can, in itself, be aversive and even traumatic. Attachment theory has been called "a theory of trauma emphasizing physical separation, whether threatened or actual, and extreme emotional adversity" (Atkinson, 1997, p. 3).
The field of couples and family therapy has focused on alleviating the distress of intimate bonds that have gone awry. This chapter addresses not only how a more satisfying connection with a life partner can be fostered in therapy, but how such therapy can help create a safe haven where old wounds and hurts can be healed and how a life partner can be a resource in this healing".
- An Antidote to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder The Creation of Secure Attachment in Couples Therapy. Sue Johnson - University of Ottawa
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Jung Face-to-Face interview
This is a lovely little exchange from a BBC Interview between Face-To-Face hose John Freeman and Carl Jung in March 1959.
BBC: And this leads me to the last question that I want to ask you. As the world becomes more technically efficient it seems increasingly necessary for people to behave communally and collectively. Now do you think it possible that the highest development of man may be to submerge his own individuality in a kind of collective consciousness?
Jung: That's hardly possible. I think there will be a reaction. A reaction will set in against this communal dissociation. You know, man doesn't stand for ever his nullification. Once there will be a reaction, and I see it setting in. You know, when I think of my patients, they all seek their own existence and to assure their existence against that complete atomization into nothingness, or into meaninglessness. Man cannot stand a meaningless life.
Daniel Brown on the 'The Great Way' (Mahamudra)
"We stay completely. Completely at any given point in time, and continuously over a given period of time. That is what concentration trianing does. It makes the mind stay more completely and continuously".
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Rochester Longitudinal
Just posting these from my uni notes.
Successful ageing findings from the Seattle Longitudinal Study
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Integral Psychotherapy and Spirituality - Mark Forman
This is 1 of 6 videos.
See the rest at this link: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL54E9A6DC73081E4C
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
See the rest at this link: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PL54E9A6DC73081E4C
http://www.thepresentparticiple.blogspot.com
Friday, June 10, 2011
Hermann Hesse on Wandering with Trees
"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life".
- Hermann Hesse, Wandering
Lovely quote from Yeats
"We can make our minds so like clear water that beings gather around us, that they might see their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even fiercer life because of our quiet".
- William Butler Yeats
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Walking - Henry David Thoreau
"I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering; which word is beautifully derived "from idle people who roved about the country, in the middle ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going ‡ la sainte terre" ó to the holy land, till the children exclaimed, "There goes a sainte-terrer", a saunterer ó a holy-lander. They who never go to the holy land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds, but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word from sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering. He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all, but the Saunterer, in the good sense, is no more vagrant than the meandering river, which is all the while sedulously seeking the shortest course to the sea."
Walking by Henry David Thoreau - 1862
RT@IanDrummond
Friday, June 3, 2011
Longing for Recognition: Commentary on the Work of Jessica Benjamin by Judith Butler
"One of the distinctive contributions of her theory is to insist that intersubjectivity is not the same as object relations, and that 'intersubjectivity' adds to object relations the notion of an external Other, one who exceeds the psychic construction of the object in complementary terms. What this means is that whatever the psychic and fantasmatic relation to the object may be, it ought to be understood in terms of the larger dynamic of recognition. the relation to the object is not the same as the relation to the Other, but the relation to the Other provides a framework for understanding the relation to the object. The subject not only forms certain psychic relations to objects, but the subject is formed by and through those psychic relations. Moreover, these various forms are implicitly structured by a struggle for recognition in which the Other does and does not become dissociable from the object which is psychically represented. This struggle is represented by a desire to enter into a communicative practice with the Other in which recognition takes place neither as an event nor a set of events, but as an onging process, one that also poses the psychic risk of destruction. Whereas Hegel refers to a 'negation' as the risk that recognition always runs, Benjamin retains this term to describe the differentiated aspect of rationality: the other is not me, and from this distinction, certain psychic consequences follow....For Benjamin, humans form psychic relations with Others on the basis of a necessary negation, but not all of those relations must be destructive. Whereas the psychic response that seeks to master and dispel that negation is destructive, that destruction is precisely what needs to be worked through in the process of recognition".
Longing for Recognition: Commentary on the Work of Jessica Benjamin by Judith Butler
Reference:
Judith Butler (2010). Longing for Recognition. In Kimberly Hutchings & Tuija Pulkkinen (eds.), Hegel's Philosophy and Feminist Thought: Beyond Antigone? Palgrave Macmillan.
RT @ Trish Nowland
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
Nice Quote in Contemporary Definitional Approaches to Intelligence
Sternberg
et
al.
(2008)
have
recently
described
intelligence
as:
"…
encompassing
many
diverse
concepts,
including
critical
thinking,
being
able
to
know
how
much
you
know
(metacognition),
common
sense,
practical
intelligence,
creativity,
and
logic.
We
believe
that
an
intelligent
person
is
someone
who
can
tell
(or
knows
how
to
check)
if
a
forwarded
email
is
truth
or
an
urban
legend;
someone
who
can
recognise
propaganda
versus
more
convincing
arguments;
someone
who
usually
has
a
good
idea
of
how
much
he
or
she
knows
about
something;
someone
who
can
adapt
to
new
situations;
and
someone who
can
learn
new
things".
Monday, May 30, 2011
Liking Is for Cowards. Go for What Hurts. - Jonathan Franzen
From (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/opinion/29franzen.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)
A COUPLE of weeks ago, I replaced my three-year-old BlackBerry Pearl with a much more powerful BlackBerry Bold. Needless to say, I was impressed with how far the technology had advanced in three years. Even when I didn't have anybody to call or text or e-mail, I wanted to keep fondling my new Bold and experiencing the marvelous clarity of its screen, the silky action of its track pad, the shocking speed of its responses, the beguiling elegance of its graphics.
I was, in short, infatuated with my new device. I'd been similarly infatuated with my old device, of course; but over the years the bloom had faded from our relationship. I'd developed trust issues with my Pearl, accountability issues, compatibility issues and even, toward the end, some doubts about my Pearl's very sanity, until I'd finally had to admit to myself that I'd outgrown the relationship.
Do I need to point out that — absent some wild, anthropomorphizing projection in which my old BlackBerry felt sad about the waning of my love for it — our relationship was entirely one-sided? Let me point it out anyway.
Let me further point out how ubiquitously the word "sexy" is used to describe late-model gadgets; and how the extremely cool things that we can do now with these gadgets — like impelling them to action with voice commands, or doing that spreading-the-fingers iPhone thing that makes images get bigger — would have looked, to people a hundred years ago, like a magician's incantations, a magician's hand gestures; and how, when we want to describe an erotic relationship that's working perfectly, we speak, indeed, of magic.
Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn't throw terrible scenes when it's replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.
To speak more generally, the ultimate goal of technology, the telos of techne, is to replace a natural world that's indifferent to our wishes — a world of hurricanes and hardships and breakable hearts, a world of resistance — with a world so responsive to our wishes as to be, effectively, a mere extension of the self.
Let me suggest, finally, that the world of techno-consumerism is therefore troubled by real love, and that it has no choice but to trouble love in turn.
Its first line of defense is to commodify its enemy. You can all supply your own favorite, most nauseating examples of the commodification of love. Mine include the wedding industry, TV ads that feature cute young children or the giving of automobiles as Christmas presents, and the particularly grotesque equation of diamond jewelry with everlasting devotion. The message, in each case, is that if you love somebody you should buy stuff.
A related phenomenon is the transformation, courtesy of Facebook, of the verb "to like" from a state of mind to an action that you perform with your computer mouse, from a feeling to an assertion of consumer choice. And liking, in general, is commercial culture's substitute for loving. The striking thing about all consumer products — and none more so than electronic devices and applications — is that they're designed to be immensely likable. This is, in fact, the definition of a consumer product, in contrast to the product that is simply itself and whose makers aren't fixated on your liking it. (I'm thinking here of jet engines, laboratory equipment, serious art and literature.)
But if you consider this in human terms, and you imagine a person defined by a desperation to be liked, what do you see? You see a person without integrity, without a center. In more pathological cases, you see a narcissist — a person who can't tolerate the tarnishing of his or her self-image that not being liked represents, and who therefore either withdraws from human contact or goes to extreme, integrity-sacrificing lengths to be likable.
If you dedicate your existence to being likable, however, and if you adopt whatever cool persona is necessary to make it happen, it suggests that you've despaired of being loved for who you really are. And if you succeed in manipulating other people into liking you, it will be hard not to feel, at some level, contempt for those people, because they've fallen for your shtick. You may find yourself becoming depressed, or alcoholic, or, if you're Donald Trump, running for president (and then quitting).
Consumer technology products would never do anything this unattractive, because they aren't people. They are, however, great allies and enablers of narcissism. Alongside their built-in eagerness to be liked is a built-in eagerness to reflect well on us. Our lives look a lot more interesting when they're filtered through the sexy Facebook interface. We star in our own movies, we photograph ourselves incessantly, we click the mouse and a machine confirms our sense of mastery.
And, since our technology is really just an extension of ourselves, we don't have to have contempt for its manipulability in the way we might with actual people. It's all one big endless loop. We like the mirror and the mirror likes us. To friend a person is merely to include the person in our private hall of flattering mirrors.
I may be overstating the case, a little bit. Very probably, you're sick to death of hearing social media disrespected by cranky 51-year-olds. My aim here is mainly to set up a contrast between the narcissistic tendencies of technology and the problem of actual love. My friend Alice Sebold likes to talk about "getting down in the pit and loving somebody." She has in mind the dirt that love inevitably splatters on the mirror of our self-regard.
The simple fact of the matter is that trying to be perfectly likable is incompatible with loving relationships. Sooner or later, for example, you're going to find yourself in a hideous, screaming fight, and you'll hear coming out of your mouth things that you yourself don't like at all, things that shatter your self-image as a fair, kind, cool, attractive, in-control, funny, likable person. Something realer than likability has come out in you, and suddenly you're having an actual life.
Suddenly there's a real choice to be made, not a fake consumer choice between a BlackBerry and an iPhone, but a question: Do I love this person? And, for the other person, does this person love me?
There is no such thing as a person whose real self you like every particle of. This is why a world of liking is ultimately a lie. But there is such a thing as a person whose real self you love every particle of. And this is why love is such an existential threat to the techno-consumerist order: it exposes the lie.
This is not to say that love is only about fighting. Love is about bottomless empathy, born out of the heart's revelation that another person is every bit as real as you are. And this is why love, as I understand it, is always specific. Trying to love all of humanity may be a worthy endeavor, but, in a funny way, it keeps the focus on the self, on the self's own moral or spiritual well-being. Whereas, to love a specific person, and to identify with his or her struggles and joys as if they were your own, you have to surrender some of your self.
The big risk here, of course, is rejection. We can all handle being disliked now and then, because there's such an infinitely big pool of potential likers. But to expose your whole self, not just the likable surface, and to have it rejected, can be catastrophically painful. The prospect of pain generally, the pain of loss, of breakup, of death, is what makes it so tempting to avoid love and stay safely in the world of liking.
And yet pain hurts but it doesn't kill. When you consider the alternative — an anesthetized dream of self-sufficiency, abetted by technology — pain emerges as the natural product and natural indicator of being alive in a resistant world. To go through a life painlessly is to have not lived. Even just to say to yourself, "Oh, I'll get to that love and pain stuff later, maybe in my 30s" is to consign yourself to 10 years of merely taking up space on the planet and burning up its resources. Of being (and I mean this in the most damning sense of the word) a consumer.
When I was in college, and for many years after, I liked the natural world. Didn't love it, but definitely liked it. It can be very pretty, nature. And since I was looking for things to find wrong with the world, I naturally gravitated to environmentalism, because there were certainly plenty of things wrong with the environment. And the more I looked at what was wrong — an exploding world population, exploding levels of resource consumption, rising global temperatures, the trashing of the oceans, the logging of our last old-growth forests — the angrier I became.
Finally, in the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair.
BUT then a funny thing happened to me. It's a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. I did this not without significant resistance, because it's very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love.
And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I'd seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. And love, as I've been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.
Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. The news on that front was no better than when I'd decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren't just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. They were the home of animals I loved.
And here's where a curious paradox emerged. My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain.
How does this happen? I think, for one thing, that my love of birds became a portal to an important, less self-centered part of myself that I'd never even known existed. Instead of continuing to drift forward through my life as a global citizen, liking and disliking and withholding my commitment for some later date, I was forced to confront a self that I had to either straight-up accept or flat-out reject.
Which is what love will do to a person. Because the fundamental fact about all of us is that we're alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.
When you stay in your room and rage or sneer or shrug your shoulders, as I did for many years, the world and its problems are impossibly daunting. But when you go out and put yourself in real relation to real people, or even just real animals, there's a very real danger that you might love some of them.
And who knows what might happen to you then?
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