Reclusland

Found another, more in depth, article on that ribbon of energy in space which I mentioned last week, but what caught my attention was the accompanying animation.  Completely blew my mind:

Here’s some pictures (and links, when possible, to more detailed info), as an attempt to explain my ideas on this in exactly 10,000 words :

As mentioned previously, I had recently a chance to see Thich Nhat Hanh give a dharma talk at the Beacon Theater (which is one of the most beautiful theaters I’ve ever been in).  On the surface, the talk was rather bland, typical new-agey, meditation advice. Between that and the fact that the speakers weren’t working on my side of the theater, I had a hard time getting into his talk.

But as I paid attention (and once the speakers got fixed) I could get into it a little deeper, and the depth of his wisdom began to became clear. He wasn’t mouthing platitudes, he was speaking from the truth that platitudes are trying to emulate.  As the Tao Te Ching says, “the greatest wisdom seems childish”.  The one that spoke to me the most was the phrase, “no mud, no lotus”.  That is, you can’t have enlightenment without suffering, and it’s out of the very mud of suffering that the lotus grows.

(TNH’s calligraphy, links to source)

I think the link between mud and suffering is fairly obvious, as I am sure we’re all very familiar with suffering.  But what’s the connection between the lotus and enlightenment?  The obvious answer is: it’s a flower!  It looks like an enlightened mind should look, opened to the world, it’s inner essence fully on display, living in immediacy with the world.

This is where we see Thich Nhat Hahn’s wisdom really begin to shine, in his ability to capture an entire teaching in a simple four word slogan.  He explains a little further in an interview:

“It’s like growing lotus flowers. You cannot grow lotus flowers on marble. You have to grow them on the mud. Without mud, you cannot have a lotus flower. Without suffering, you have no ways in order to learn how to be understanding and compassionate. That’s why my definition of the kingdom of God is not a place where suffering is not, where there is no suffering…”

And yeah, that’s true enough.  That kind of mind state definitely feels like enlightenment, for sure.  But then, the is true of all flowers, not just the lotus.  Why not, “No Mud, No Flower”?  That would work well enough for that comparison, but actually, there’s a deeper metaphor at work here.  The idea of equating the lotus isn’t a TNH original.  It goes all the way back to the Buddha himself:

As a blue or white lotus is born in the water,
grows up and is unpolluted by the water,
so too has the perfected one grown up in the world,
has risen above the world
and stands unpolluted by it.
- samyutta nikaya 22 94

So why does the lotus remain unpolluted by the waters?  It’s not actually the lotus flower that does this, it’s the leaves.  And it’s due to something called the lotus effect (which has come up here before).   Basically, due to the unique structure of the lotus leaves, water beads up and runs right off of it.

It’s not the water that pollutes the leaves, instead it cleans them of debris.  Because there is no clinging between the water droplets and the leaf’s surface, the water washes over them with no hindrance, cleaning away any filth or pollution that might have settled.  Scientifically speaking, “due to their high surface tension water droplets tend to minimize their surface trying to achieve a spherical shape. On contact with a surface, adhesion forces result in wetting  of the surface: either complete or incomplete wetting may occur depending on the structure of the surface and the fluid tension of the droplet .  The cause of self-cleaning properties is the hydrophobic water-repellent double structure of the surface.”

This is the basis for the technology behind those stain resistant pants from a few years back:

And now, “a NASA team is developing a transparent coating that mimics the self-cleaning properties of the lotus plant to prevent dirt from sticking to the surfaces of spaceflight gear and bacteria from growing inside astronaut living quarters.“   Awesome.  Now you really can tell that person you’ve had your eye on that they’re wearing space pants…

Anyway, so what’s the whole thing all about?  Well, if you combine those two metaphors, what you have is something that starts out as a seed hidden under the mud (suffering), which begins to grow from that mud and eventually sprouts leaves.  Those leaves, if any mud happens to get on them, simply do not cling to it and the mud washes easily away.  And from that, the flower blooms.   All life is suffering, as the Buddha teaches, and so all life is the opportunity for enlightenment.

But no mud, no lotus.

“No matter what god or doctrine you believe in, if you become attached to it, your belief will be based more-or-less on a self-centered idea.  You strive for a perfect faith in order to save yourself.  But it will take time to attain such a perfect faith.  You will be involved in an idealistic practice.  In constantly seeking to actualize your ideal, you will have no time for composure.”

“In our everyday life, we are usually trying to do something, trying to change something into something else, or trying to attain something.  Just this trying in itself is already our true nature.  The meaning lies in the effort itself.  We should find out the meaning of our effort before we attain something.  So Dogen said, ‘We should attain enlightenment before we attain enlightenment.’  It is not after attaining enlightenment that we find its true meaning.  The trying to do something in itself is enlightenment.  When we are in difficulty or distress, there we have enlightenment.  When we are in defilement, there we should have composure.”

“What is more important: to attain enlightenment, or to attain enlightenment before you attain enlightenment; to make a million dollars, or to enjoy your life in your effort, little by little, even though it is impossible to make that million; to be successful, or to find some meaning in your effort to be successful?  If you do not know the answer, you will not even be able to practice zazen; if you do know, you will have found the true treasure of life.”

(taken from various parts of Zen Mind, Beginners Mind)

“A monk intent on heightened mind should attend periodically to three themes: he should attend periodically to the theme of concentration; he should attend periodically to the theme of uplifted energy; he should attend periodically to the theme of equanimity. If the monk intent on heightened mind were to attend solely to the theme of concentration, it is possible that his mind would tend to laziness. If he were to attend solely to the theme of uplifted energy, it is possible that his mind would tend to restlessness. If he were to attend solely to the theme of equanimity, it is possible that his mind would not be rightly centered for the stopping of the fermentations. But when he attends periodically to the theme of concentration, attends periodically to the theme of uplifted energy, attends periodically to the theme of equanimity, his mind is pliant, malleable, luminous, & not brittle. It is rightly centered for the stopping of the fermentations.”

Shakyamuni Buddha, from
Nimitta Sutta: Themes
translated from the Pali by
Thanissaro Bhikkhu

Go read the rest of it.  He talks about superpowers.  ;)

Going off and attaining superpowers doesn’t mean you won’t have to face your problems when you come back. Which is hard if you left because you’d failed at facing them the first time.  Especially if you mistakenly understood that failure as being a permanent part of your what-you-are.  Chances are, this is exactly what you did, since the problems were clearly serious enough for you to feel the need to run off and develop a higher, more perfected being  in order to deal with the great-terrible-whatevertheyares.

Unfortunately, you now not only have to face those problems again, but you also have to dredge them up from the past (within yourself), in order to do so.  You have to take them out of the space that holds forgotten (or willfully ignored) things and make them real again.  The brain has a way of blinding itself to things that you do not allow yourself to see change, regardless of whether you do so because of their perceived goodness or their perceived badness, and this is something that must be overcome before you can even begin to tackle the “forgotten” problems themselves.

This isn’t Final Fantasy.  That you boss you couldn’t beat in that one castle isn’t just going to sit there waiting for you to level up and come back to kick his ass.  He’s going to move somewhere else, turn into something else, level up himself.  You may not even recognize him when you run across him again, but when the battle begins, you will feel a sense of deja vu…  Pay attention to that.

So yes, it’s quite the mess you’ve gotten yourself into, but on the one hand, this is good.  If you hadn’t failed the first time, you wouldn’t have left to attain those powers, and you are stronger for having made the journey.  Often, such journeys prove to be a bounty of helpful experiences, above and beyond whatever may have been attained at their culmination.  They are adventures in-and-of themselves, and no one ever said this was a purely linear storyline, especially not for us post-modern adventurers.

But on the other hand, if you only developed those powers to cover up your sense failure, then really, you have nothing.  If they were only a mask to cover your wound, rather than a bandage to help in its healing, you’re going to have to remove that mask and face the purification that has developed underneath (before you die).  In such a case, the foundations of your power are as quicksand, and your hard won treasure is nothing but faerie’s gold, fading into dew as soon as it hits the light of true day.  For power built upon ignorance must be given up before that ignorance can be pierced through and dissolved.  And who can give up both power and accept their ignorance?  It’s quite the pressure drop.  Be careful, you don’t want to get the bends…

Nevertheless, if you do wish to do such a thing, or if you find yourself in the midst of doing such a thing, or if you have come back from doing such a thing to find a smiling mask covering an ache in your chest that is getting worse by the day, remember one thing: all that you need is yourself, and you have that already.

That sidetrack you took, that break in the narrative structure, did nothing but give that self back more fully into your own hands.   And now you can turn that enhanced self awareness towards the pain, towards the problems that chased you away to begin with, and you can finally begin to heal that one true wound which we all carry within us, and which only a few of us seem to be able to ever bring to a successful conclusion.

May we all become one of those few…

(links to source)

This is really exciting, seems to line up a lot of my thoughts on space, magnetism, and the heliosphere (check here, here, and the pictures here for a vague sort of explanation)

• In a discovery that took astronomers by surprise, the first full-sky map of the solar system‘s edge—more than 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away—has revealed a bright “ribbon” of atoms called ENAs.

• The solar system is surrounded by a protective “bubble” called the heliosphere. The narrow ribbon snakes along this bubble’s inner wall

• Astronomers aren’t yet sure how the ribbon formed, but it’s possible that the ribbon could be a result of pressure exerted on the heliosphere by our home galaxy‘s magnetic field.

• ENAs are created at the outer edges of the heliosphere, which is formed by solar wind—charged particles streaming rapidly outward in all directions from the sun. Some gases from outside the heliosphere are constantly leaking in, and when the fast-moving solar wind meets these slow-moving gases, ENAs are born.

• The ENA ribbon’s existence suggests the atoms are produced in higher densities in some parts of the outer heliosphere than others, McComas said, although scientists aren’t yet sure why that would be the case.  One idea is that, wherever the Milky Way’s magnetic field presses on the heliosphere, more ENAs are created.  “Exactly where the [galaxy's] magnetic field is most wrapped around the outer boundary of the heliosphere, that’s where the ribbon runs,” McComas said.  “That could be an unbelievably remarkable coincidence, or it could be a fabulous clue that somehow this external magnetic field is actually imprinting onto our heliosphere through some process that we don’t yet understand.”

“…in Satori there is always what we may call a sense of the Beyond; the experience indeed is my own but I feel it to be rooted elsewhere. The individual shell in which my personality is so solidly encased explodes at the moment of Satori. Not, necessarily, that I get unified with a being greater than myself or absorbed in it, but that my individuality, which I found rigidly held together and definitely kept separate from other individual existences, becomes loosened somehow from its tightening grip and melts away into something indescribable, something which is of quite a different order from what I am accustomed to. The feeling that follows is that of complete release or a complete rest—the feeling that one has arrived finally at the destination…As far as the psychology of Satori is considered, a sense of the Beyond is all we can say about it; to call this the Beyond, the Absolute, or God, or a Person is to go further than the experience itself and to plunge into a theology or metaphysics.”

- D. T. Suzuki, from here (scroll up to “The following six points on Satori are from D.T. Suzuki’s An Introduction to Zen Buddhism” for more good stuff)

“It is said, ‘the camel can’t pass through the eye of the needle.”  The needle is the consciousness, the eye of the needle is intelligence, and the thread that you pass through the eye of the needle is the mind.  If the mind, the thread, is rough, can you push it through the needle?  What do you do?  You sharpen it.  So you have to sharpen the mind, for the thread to pass through the eye of the needle.  And the moment the tip of the thread passes through, do you think of the thread?  You only knit with the needle because the thread is moving the needle.”

- B. K. S. Iyengar, from an interview in Parabola Magazine.

A series of connected ponderings, from last summer.

Jul 02, 2009 – The mind is not a corrupt police department, it is more like an incorrectly connected machine.  Our parts just aren’t communicating.  To limit the function of the mind to only those functions it is capable of when fragmented in this manner is incorrect.  This is to consider a mind operating at 50% (for example) as  something broken-to-be-fixed, as opposed to seeing it as a still ongoing organic process of self correction.

The mind/body is built to house and develop spirit/self.  An incubator of sorts, it functions as a tuner/gatherer for consciousness/awareness.  It is through our becoming more and more conscious, through awareness becoming aware of itself through our own increase of awareness within our “self” , that creation can explore itself. And where the mind is incorrectly connected, awareness reaches and impasse, and awareness cannot join with awareness.

We are the budding fruit of a vast tree-of-all, and we collect awareness like sunlight.  Not collecting our awareness, but accepting awareness into ourselves, stop pretending we are not aware of what we actually are aware of.  Eating this awareness, almost, as a plant draws nourishment from the sun.  Perhaps this is similar to Gurdjieff’s ideas of eating impressions.  Again, this shows that we are not broken or evil, we just are not done developing awareness within ourselves, in a complete, contiguous whole-that-is-still-part-of-a-larger-whole.

Aug 11, 2009 – The building up and storing of knowledge limits this developing of awareness within the self.  By this, I mean knowledge about which we say “this is true, it is the way things are”. Such knowledge hems us in, limiting each new experience by forcing it to either relate to our previously accumulated knowledge or be discarded. The more knowledge we try to bring forward with us in this manner, the less new information we are able to absorb. Knowledge weighs us down, hardening our mind like death hardens the body. All knowledge is limited, and all knowledge therefore limits (the “larger you build the bonfire, the more darkness there is around it” metaphor).

We are trying to find completeness through amassing a definitive body of knowledge, but this will only end in failure.  Knowledge is really just stale information, when information should really be a temporary kind of thing.  Rather than eating and holding information as knowledge, we should digest it and let it pass away. By focusing on increasing our awareness rather than our knowledge, we can better reach into and unravel the details hidden within that very information.   Knowing it ahead of time does not matter at all, if we can truly see it when it happens.

But when caught, held on to, and built upon, layers and layers of knowledge rise up, a Tower of Babel. Even crabs and slugs abandon old shells. This is the source of the false sense of a separate ego. We think we are the information that we store as knowledge. Consumerism is merely a macro-level manifestation of this inner tendency. “More” and “more” and “more” and we’re never happy, because knowledge doesn’t equal happy. Paying attention to information as it becomes relatively important, and further refining of our ability to use that information (by increasing our awareness), while staying happily rooted in “none” all the while,  is much more satisfying.

Aug 13, 2009 – Thoughts do not create our reality, but they can help us to steer through it.  Added to this is the fact that, although “thoughts” < “beliefs”, the only difference there is in magnitude and concentration.  Thought/belief is a wedge, a rudder in the water of awareness as it passes around us.  The thoughts “I want that” is like putting a finger in the water.  The belief “I deserve that!” is like putting an oar in the water and paddling furiously (as long as you actually believe it and aren’t just thinking it).

Of course, to do this effectively, you have to be paying attention to the water.  Just as your rudder doesn’t make the side of the river come any closer to you, your thoughts do not make things happen.  But your thoughts can help you to steer through the myriad possibilities of what is happening, as long as you’re paying attention to them.

The problem is we haven’t figured out how to use thought properly yet.  We currently use thought to build this tower of knowledge, both about our self and about the world.  But this becomes the bushel basket over the lamp.

The alternative way of looking at this it to see all things as knowledge, all things, forms, sensations, thoughts, conceptions, as information.  It all is already, and you are already completely within-and-a-part-of-it.  The world is your external hardrive (or more correctly, you are it’s); there’s no separation there.  Feel this in your nervous system, it is jeweled mirror samadhi, it is the self as experienced through the knowing of the 1000 dharmas-things.

We need to be able to unify and integrate these two aspects, because really, there is no separation between the two.  Just as all magnets have both a north and a south pole, so too do we have both aspects withinour being.  Exist as the conduit between the two, the space where the two arrows meet.  That is your true self, your true identity.

From an article sent by a friend.  Says it all better than I have been able to:

• Jung had “spirit guides”, one of whom was named “Philemon”. Jung observed that “Philemon and other figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force that was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. […] Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight.” To anyone else, Philemon might be a figment of Jung’s imagination, or evidence of his madness. But Jung felt that Philemon was real – yet somehow dead, and somehow “talking” to Jung – to Jung’s mind.

• He had a life-long fascination with Nietzsche, but he realized the need to distance himself from Nietzsche for fear that he might be like him and therefore suffer the same fate: Nietzsche (1844-1900) became hopelessly insane. But more than 15 years later, Jung spoke to a “highly cultivated elderly Indian”, who told Jung that his experience was identical to many mystics. In his case, his “spirit guide” or guru had been a commentator on the Vedas who had died centuries ago. Rather than be mad, Jung felt that he had stepped into the same shoes as the ancient priests and others thought have experienced the divine.

• The text (the 7 Sermons to the Dead) is intriguing for several reasons. For one, he uses the name Abraxas to describe the Supreme Being that had first generated mind (nous) and then the other mental powers. Still, Jung did not teach the return of human essence to the Gnostic pleroma, where individuality was lost, but instead adhered to individuation, which maintained the fullness of human individuality. Most metaphysics today argue that both possibilities can be encountered – and are encountered in many religions: that the soul at its final stage can chose to melt with the One (the pleroma) or maintain its separate identity inside the One (individuation). The easiest parallel is with the hologram, in which each “replica” is unique, yet also the whole. If any “replica” was aware, and would at one point have to ask what it wanted, some would ask to surrender into the greater hologram, whereas other “replicas” would ask to retain their individual memories – even though they are part of the whole.

• As early as August, 1912, Jung had intimated in a letter to Freud that he had an intuition that the essentially feminine-toned archaic wisdom of the Gnostics, symbolically called Sophia, was destined to re-enter modern Western culture by way of depth-psychology. Of primary sources, the remarkable Pistis Sophia was one of very few available to Jung in translation, and his appreciation of this work was so great that he made a special effort to seek out the translator in London, the then aged and impecunious George R. S. Mead, to convey to him his great gratitude.
  Subsequently, he stated to Barbara Hannah that when he discovered the writings of the ancient Gnostics, “I felt as if I had at last found a circle of friends who understood me.”

• Jung believed that the cosmos contained the divine light or life, but this essence was enmeshed in a mechanical trap, presided over by a demiurge: Lucifer, the Bringer of the Light. He contained the light inside this reality, until a time when it would be set free. The first operation of alchemy therefore addressed itself to the dismemberment of this confining structure and reducing it to a condition of creative chaos. From this, in the process of transformation, the true, creative binaries emerge and begin their interaction designed to bring about the alchemical union. In this ultimate union, says Jung, the previously confined light is redeemed and brought to the point of its ultimate and redemptive fulfilment.

• In The Psychology of the Transference, Jung stated that in love, as in psychological growth, the key to success is the ability to endure the tension of the opposites without abandoning the process, even if the process and its result appear to have been brought to naught. In essence, it is the “stress” that allows one to grow – to transform.
  The union of opposites, the focus of the alchemist, was for Jung also the focus of the Gnostics, whom he felt had been incorrectly labelled as radical dualists, i.e. believing in the battle between good and evil – without any apparent union possible between the two. For Jung, dualism and monism were not mutually contradictory and exclusive, but complimentary aspects of reality. As such, there was no good or wrong, no order or chaos, just two opposites, who constantly created grey, and demanded of mankind to be united, transformed.

Did a tarot reading recently, asking for some advice, and I wanted to record/share the result here as a reminder to myself in the months/years to come.

The Twisting Path spread provides insight into the path ahead of you and the choices you must make. This is the spread for situations where more than one pitfall may lie ahead. The images of the Minchiate Tarot are drawn from a rare surviving 18th century deck of 97 cards – 19 more than the traditional Tarot. It is considered by many to be the single most powerful divination tool on the web, providing deep insight, rich in ancient symbolism, to any question you may pose.

The card at the lower left, represents the first decision along your path. Four of Wands (Completion): A chance to rest and rejoice, having successfully resolved a matter of great import. The initial success of a business venture or creative project. The blossoming of a friendship or romantic relationship. Conclusions drawn based on hard won experience. Spiritual, material, or emotional rewards for diligent effort. May suggest marriage, childbirth, or a victory celebration.

The card to the far left represents the first false path that may lead you astray. Libra: Refinement and sophistication, abundant in urbane charm. A gift for diplomacy and social interaction. A romantic, filled with idealism and love of peace. The ability to understand both sides of an argument.

The card in the middle represents the second decision along your path. Page of Coins: The essence of earth, such as a mountain: The surprising appearance of new prosperity and opportunities for advance in the physical world. One who delights in the pleasures of the body, material things, and nature. The embrace of hard work, realistic goals, and scholarly perseverance as a means to create solid achievement. Dependability, trust, and a studious nature. May portend a new job or promotion.

The card at the lower right represents the second false path that may lead you astray. Earth: The established order and pattern by which the world is defined. The substance of all things, stable and resolute, resting firmly on the foundations of reality. The basis of all transactions, and hence of all value. The medium of sensual experience.

The card at the top represents one possible mask of your true destination. Four of Swords (Truce), when reversed: Restlessness and mental disharmony. Deserting a struggle in progress. A temporary retreat from stress that turns into a permanent rout. A lack of vigilance that could lead to disaster.

Decided to look up the reversal of the 4 of swords for further info, and found this:

Seek advise from your higher self – pull back into solitude and consider the details of your situation calmly. Put your thoughts in order and determine your priorities – suspend action on all issues but “one”, ask your unconscious to work on this one issue and then sleep on it. Centering and meditation practices can help you create the objectivity required to see all sides of an issue and from this experience something useful and powerful will emerge. You will soon be back into action again – there will be good opportunities ahead. Always take the time to think things out carefully before you commit yourself to anything.

Those of you out there who read the tarot can make what you will of it.  For everyone else, we will have to wait over the next several months and see how this turns out…

” Mr. G said that it would be necessary to develop oneself to such an extent that it would be possible to know and understand enough to be able to aid someone else in doing something necessary for himself, even when that person was not conscious of the need, and might work against you, that only in this sense was love properly responsible and worthy of the name of real love. He added that, even with the best of intentions, most people would be too afraid to love another person in an active sense, or even to attempt to do anything for them; and that one of the terrifying aspects of love was that while it was possible to help another person to a certain degree, it was not possible to actually “do” anything for them.  If see another man fall down, when he must walk, you can pick him up. But, although to take one more step is more necessary for him even than air, he must take this step alone; impossible for another person to take it for him.”

- via another twitter friend

Some quotes I came across recently, related to creativity as a spiritual path:

“One of the most significant features we notice in the practice of archery, and in fact of all the arts as they are studied in Japan and probably also other Far Eastern countries, is that they are not intended for utilitarian purposes only, or for purely aesthetic enjoyments, but are meant to train the mind; indeed, to bring it into contact with the ultimate reality.  Archery is, therefore, not practiced solely for hitting the target; the swordsman does not weild the sword just for the sake of outdoing his opponent; the dancer does not dance just to perform certain rhthymical movements with the body.  The mind has first to be attuned to the Unconcious.

If one really wishes to be master of an art, technical knowledge of it is not enough.  One has to transcend technique so that the art becomes an ‘artless art’ growing out of the unconscious.”

D. T. Suzuki, from the intro to Zen and the Art of Archery

“The images appeared in dreams, in meditation, or would suddenly appear on the canvas. What did they have to say? What did they mean? All I knew was I wanted to pain them as fearlessly as I could. I say ‘fearlessly’ because through the medium of painting I felt I had taken a deep dive into the subconscious and I didn’t want to spoil the connection by ‘civilizing’ them. I found myself, what I took to be myself, taken up into the mystery of painting, the experiencing of ‘being painted through,’ rather than the ‘me’ who was painting. To give these inner images the freedom to surface, that which took itself as ‘the painter’ had to step aside, become passively active. Painting in this way consciousness transcends the physical plane and, stepping out of psychological time, ‘enters’ the painting. In this merger the only content in consciousness is the process of painting itself. The ensuing silence allowed subconscious images to manifest. The connection strong enough, the images spoke, not in words but in their manifesting form and presence. They were not always pretty. Self-sincerity was demanded. Otherwise, the channel might close.”

- William Patrick Patterson, from his book “Eating the I”, found via a twitter friend’s website here.

“‘You have described only to well,’ replied the master, ‘where the difficulty lies.  Do you know why you cannot wait for the shot and why you get out of breath before it has come?  The right show at the right moment does not come because you cannot let yourself go.  You do not wait for fulfillment, but brace yourself for failure.  So long as that is so, you have no choice but to call forth something yourself that ought to happen independently of you, and so long as you call it forth your hand will not open in the right way – like the hand of a child.  Your hand does not burst open like the skin of a rope fruit.’”

- Master Awa Kenzô, from Zen and the Art of Archery

Seems that, whatever the result of Jung’s explorations, he was definitely on the correct path.  Then again, here’s what the Buddha had to say on the subject:

“Any beings who are not devoid of passion to begin with, who are bound by the bond of passion, focus with even more passion on things inspiring passion presented by an actor on stage in the midst of a festival. Any beings who are not devoid of aversion to begin with, who are bound by the bond of aversion, focus with even more aversion on things inspiring aversion presented by an actor on stage in the midst of a festival. Any beings who are not devoid of delusion to begin with, who are bound by the bond of delusion, focus with even more delusion on things inspiring delusion presented by an actor on stage in the midst of a festival. Thus the actor — himself intoxicated & heedless, having made others intoxicated & heedless — with the breakup of the body, after death, is reborn in what is called the hell of laughter. But if he holds such a view as this: ‘When an actor on the stage, in the midst of a festival, makes people laugh & gives them delight with his imitation of reality, then with the breakup of the body, after death, he is reborn in the company of the laughing devas,’ that is his wrong view. Now, there are two destinations for a person with wrong view, I tell you: either hell or the animal womb.”

Kind of harsh, yes, but the Buddha was nothing if not straightforward.  Of course, as the Buddha ephasizes, this only applies to artists who are intoxicated and heedless with passion, aversion, and delusion themselves.  He says nothing about the arts being used for other purposes…

As previously mentioned, I was lucky enough to get tickets to the first public talk on Jung’s Red Book, a discussion between Sonu Shamdasani, the book’s editor (and the man at least partially responsible for getting the book released to public) and Martin Brauen (the chief curator at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York).  Getting to hear Mr Shamdasani speak on the book, which he has been studying for about 10 years, was the real heart of the evening, and what follows are the notes I managed to take down, as well as some notes from the exhibition of the book, and a few of my own opinions (in italics) as well:

- The book’s creation came from an intense period of self experimentation for Jung.  In September of 1913, Jung began having strange visions, slipping into apocalyptic day dreams in which death and destruction were sweeping throughout Europe.  Years later, some have suggested this was precognitive visions of the terror that was to descend upon Europe during World War I.  To Jung, it was simply the realization that his soul had gone astray.

- He began a series of what he called “active imaginations”, where he would sit and bring himself into a visionary, hypnagogic state, and record the dreams and visions he had during those moments in a series of black books, known, appropriately enough, as “The Black Books”.  In here are his famous VII Sermones ad Mortuos.  From these sermons, Jung would draw what he later understood to be his first mandala.  For any Thelemites in the audience, a note of interest here is that at the center of the mandala were the letters AA (A large “A “, with a smaller “A” underneath it, with the point of the smaller coming up to the crossbar of the larger), but a bit more on that to come later…

• (normally, I’d include pictures here, but since no photography was allowed you’ll have to rely on your own active imaginations, with my apologies.)

- From that group of Black Books, as well as some daily sketches he made while on Swiss military service in 1917, Jung began the serious undertaking of recording all these in chronological order in a vast red leather-bound volume with creme pages, which would eventually become his Liber Novus.  It was pointed out by Mr. Shamdasani that the proper way to experience the Red Book would be to read the text first, and then to examine the accompanying paintings afterwords, as that is the order in which they were created.

- Throughout the text, Jung will say things such as “25 days later, I had a vision…”.  To the best of his knowledge, Mr. Shamdasani claims that these dates are to be taken as literal and not part of the dream narrative.  This is according to the chronology of Jung’s notes in the Black Books.

- Apparently, each character in the book has both their own color ink, and their own decorative font, whenever they speak.

- Each vision has a double layer to its recounting: the Active Imagination is presented, and then an explanation follows it.  This was Jung’s attempt to create a comparative study of the individuation process, something like “dear friends, this is how it worked for me”.  He wanted to develop the psychology behind the mysticism, and he very much hoped to translate his mythic insights into a comprehensible science, something with which he strained at the edge of language and meaning to express.

• (And, I will point out, he was not made mad in trying to do so.  In the highly karmic realm of myth, this says a lot.)

- The book is broken up into three parts, conveniently named “Liber Primus”, “Liber Secundus”, and “Liber Tertius” (or something along those lines).  In “Primus”, Jung begins an attempt to make sense out of the visions, in “Secondus”, he completes the major part of his exploration, and in “Tertius“, the active imaginations and the explanations are presented more holistically as one thing.  Although Jung never finished his book, it has been said that his tower at Bollingen, which he built himself, acted as a sort of “Liber Quaternus”, a continuation and possibly a completion the themes laid out in the three books.

- Jung worked during a period of great mystical searching, (which I was happy to hear Mr. Shamdasani say is captured quite well in P. D. Ouspensky’s “In Search of the Miraculous“.  Anything Gurdjieffian will make me smile), as well as during a period of great artistic expression, but although Jung could very well have become either a mystic or an artist, he valued science above both.  He was a fan of neither mysticism nor modern art, and although he saw similarities to these in his Red Book work (which was perhaps why he never published it in his lifetime), he considered it mainly an attempt to make a science from his journeys into the mythic/symbolic realm.

- Jung understood that, throughout history,  man has always been embedded in a mythic system, and yet he felt that he himself had none.  This book was his attempt to rectify that situation.  For example, one piece that was displayed on the wall at the museum was of figure representing (or so the plaque said) Gilgamesh, who was found somewhere in the landscape of Jung’s unconscious, wandering around looking for Utnapishtim.  In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim is the counterpart of Noah, someone who has survived the Great Flood and who has the God’s secret of immortality.  In Jung’s painting, the plaque went on to say, this giant, lost on his quest for immortality, is saddened to hear from Jung that the land he seeks has been destroyed.

• (This is my recollection of a plaque on the wall at a museum, not any notes I taken from the talk or the book itself, so please excuse an misinterpretation.  However, I feel this paints an accurately tragic picture of how Jung viewed the mythic state of modern man.  Those mythic drives are still present within us, but we have destroyed the lands within which lies their fulfillment, and so they must be built anew.)

- “Jung was aware of his ability to fructify the growth process (individuation) in others.”

- The Red Book was Jung’s attempt at the creation of a new Cosmology.  As stated above, this can be seen in his mandala based on his Seven Sermons.  The first version of this he created before ever knowing what a mandala was, and this was the one with the large and small “A”s.  The large “A” was said to stand for Anthropos, and the smaller “A” for the ‘soul of man’.  A later version of this mandala is found in the Red Book (and hey, online as well!) but does not use the double A.  Instead, at the center, there is a star.  The original sketch was apparently later given to a woman by the name of Alice Crowley (no relation, I’m sure).

• (Although I do not have much interest in Aleister Crowley‘s work myself, Crowley’s plunge into the Western Alchemical/Symbolic Tradition happened right around the same time as Jung’s, and so any similarities between their work are worth mentioning, I feel, if only because they were both exploring the same psychic terrain.)

- It was pointed out that in Eastern Mandalas, the center is almost always occupied by a Divinity or a Buddha, whereas in the west the center is often occupied by a man.

• (Which seems important to me, since in the west we have Jesus Christ elevated to an officially divine position, whereas in the east, Buddha, although often prayed to as a god, is officially considered to have been a human like you are I.  The fact that this contradicts what is found at the center of the mandala interests me greatly…)

- However, Jung never felt that the Red Book was complete.  The last complete painting in the book is of a yellow castle, which to Jung (although I don’t see it myself) had a “Chinese” feel to it.  In 1928, while working on this painting, Jung received the text of “The Secret of the Golden Flower”, by Richard Wilhelm, a friend who was asking Jung to write an introduction to his book.  In this Taoist alchemical text from centuries past, Jung found references to the motifs in his Yellow Castle painting.

- After this, he broke of his work on the Red Book, took it up again in 1959 only to stop in mid-sentence.  Although it was not shown at the talk nor in the show, there is apparently also one last, unfinished painting in the book, which was characterized in the talk as Jung opening again to the outer world, rather than opening to his own inner world.

- Mr Shamdasani, who has studied this book in it’s raw form more than anyone else probably ever will, says that he thinks it will take at least a year and half of study for anyone to truly understand what Jung has put into the Red Book.

- Jung was quoted as saying that “the painting of mandalas increases one’s devotion to life”, a particularly beautiful way of phrasing it, and with that, I will end my notes.

For me, what I found most interesting (and infuriating) is that it was left unresolved whether or not Jung ever completed his process of Individuation.  Although it in no way damages the man’s work nor his scholarship, it does leaves me with the feeling of coming to the end of a great movie only to have the DVD skip and freeze, just before the climatic scene.  Given Jung’s dislike of mysticism and his description of the individuation process as “not linear, but a circumambulation around the center, the self, an approach to it that is approximate”, it is conceivable that it was simply not within his worldview to accept any kind of union with the godhead/numinous/enlightenment/whatever.

One painting from the exhibition in particular seemed (to me) to back up this line of reasoning.  Again, I could not take pictures, so you will have to bear with me until my copy arrives.  Although I will not post any other pieces from the book out of respect for the copyright, I do hope that this one image will be allowed, simply for the sake of clarification. Anyway, the plaque next to the painting read as follows: “In 1950, Jung anonymously reproduced a painting identical to this in his paper ‘Concerning Mandala Symbolism’, adding the following comment: ‘The center is symbolized by a star.  This very common image is consistent  with the previous pictures, where the sun represents the center.  The sun, too, is a star, a radiant cell in the ocean of the sky.  The picture shows the self appearing as a star out of chaos.  The four-rayed structure is emphasized by the use of four colors.  This picture is significant in that it sets the structure of the self as a principle of order against chaos.”

Yet, as any good mystic tradition will tell you, this sense of the self as something set against that which surrounds it, is a false sense of self.  This is the self that must “go out”, in order to reach enlightenment, to truly unravel the mystery of life and death and to clarify the great matter once and for all.  While I do not want to imply that Jung never made it to this point, that he failed in his quest for Individuation, I do feel saddened that the center of “The Mandala of the Life of Carl Gustav Jung” is left with such an infuriatingly blank center.

(image of said mandala to come soon, hopefully…)

Lastly, as a sort of postscript, a brief note about Mr. Shamdasani himself (whose name, I’m sure, you have grown a bit tired of reading here).  It seems he was raised in the British boarding school system, and at some point in his youth, went on a trip to India in search of a guru.  He never found a guru, but while in India, a book of Jung’s “fell into his hands” (as it was put by Mr. Brauen).  And it was this was what he brought back with him from India and which will, I can only assume, maintain him throughout the rest of his life.

FOR AN EXPLANATION OF THE CROSSED OUT SECTIONS, SEE THE COMMENTS.

A moment of silence in his honor.

Info from the Mountains and Rivers order here, and a memorial poem from his dharma brother, Bernard Glassman, here.

Funeral rites will likely take place in at Zen Mountain Monastery, on or around Nov 27  (traditionally held forty-nine days after death).

“I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can — in some beautifully bound book,” Jung instructed. “It will seem as if you were making the visions banal — but then you need to do that — then you are freed from the power of them. . . . Then when these things are in some precious book you can go to the book & turn over the pages & for you it will be your church — your cathedral — the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them — then you will lose your soul — for in that book is your soul.”

If you haven’t already heard, Jung’s Red Book is being released.  My copy is due to ship Oct 23rd, and I’ve got tickets to see the editor give a lecture on the book at the Rubin Museum of Art tonight.  I have not been so excited about anything since I was in elementary school and the Super Nintendo came out.  Seriously.

More from the NY Times article:

In 1913, Jung, who was then 38, got lost in the soup of his own psyche. He was haunted by troubling visions and heard inner voices. Grappling with the horror of some of what he saw, he worried in moments that he was, in his own words, “menaced by a psychosis” or “doing a schizophrenia.”  As a psychiatrist, and one with a decidedly maverick streak, he tried instead to tear down the wall between his rational self and his psyche. For about six years, Jung worked to prevent his conscious mind from blocking out what his unconscious mind wanted to show him.   Regarding the significance of what the book contained, however, Jung was unequivocal. “All my works, all my creative activity,” he would recall later, “has come from those initial fantasies and dreams.”

“I have many names, and none of them matter.  Names are not important.  To speak is to name names, but to speak is not important.  A thing happens once that has never happened before.  Seeing it, a man looks upon reality.  He cannot tell others what he has seen.  Others wish to know, however, so they question him saying “what is it like, this thing you have seen?”  So he tries to tell them.  Perhaps he has seen the very first fire in the world.  He tells them, “It is red, like a poppy, but through it dance other colors.  It has no form, like water flowing everywhere.  It is warm, like the sun of summer, only warmer.  It exists for a time on a piece of wood, then the piece of wood is gone, as though it were eaten, leaving behind that which is black and can be sifted like sand.  When the wood is gone, it too is gone.”  Therefore the hears must think that reality is like a poppy, like water, like the sun, like that which eats and excretes.  They think that it is like to anything they are told it is like by the man who has known it.  But they have not looked upon fire.  After a time, fire is as common as grass and clouds and the air they breathe.  They see that, while it is like a poppy, it is not a poppy, while it is like water, it is not water, while it is like the sun, it is not the sun, and while it is like that which eats and passes wastes, it is not that which eats and passes wastes, but something different from each of these apart or all of these together.  So they look upon this new thing and they make a new word to call it.  They call it ‘fire’.”

“If they come upon one who still has not seen it and they speak to him of fire, he does not know what they mean.  So they, in turn, fall back upon telling him what the fire is like.  As they do so, they know from their own experience that what they are telling him is not the truth, but only a part of it.  They know that this man will never know reality from their words, though all the words in the world are theirs to use.  He must look upon the fire, smell it, warm his hands on it, stare into its heart, or remain ever ignorant.  Therefore “fire” does not matter, “earth” and “air” and “water” do not matter.  “I” do not matter.  No word matters.  But man forgets reality and remembers words.  The more words he remembers, the cleverer do his fellows esteem him.  He looks upon the great transformations of the world, but he does not see them as they were seen when man looked upon reality for the first time.  Their names come to his lips and he smiles as he tastes them, thinking he knows them in the naming.  The thing that has never happened before is still happening.  It is still a miracle.  The great burning blossom squats, still flowing, upon the limb of the world, excreting the ash of the world, and being none of these things I have named and at the same time all of them, and this is reality – the Nameless.”

- from Roger Zelazny’s “Lord of Light” (pgs 31-33 )

(for what it’s worth, my take on Zelazny’s work is neatly summed up here.)

“The basic teaching of Buddhism is the teaching of transiency, or change.  That everything changes is the basic truth for each existence.  No one can deny this truth, and all the teaching of Buddhism is condensed within it.  This is the teaching for all of us.  Wherever we go, this teaching is true.  This teaching is also understood as the teaching of selflessness.  Because each existence is in constant change, there is no abiding self.  In fact, the self nature of each existence is nothing but change itself, the self nature of all existence.  There is no special, self-nature for each existence.  This is also called the teaching of Nirvana.  When we realize the everlasting truth of “everything changes”, and we find our composure in it, we find ourselves in Nirvana.”