"One of the essential aspects of every good mood is a sense of identification with something outside oneself, whether it be delight in meeting and establishing a rapport with someone, or delight in personal achievement (i.e. we have intervened in the world and world responded as we intended it to) or finally, delight in some kind of work or action. Things seem to have a perceivable meaning and thus we seem to be in a kind of harmony with the world. If I include feelings of alienation and absurdity among my bad moods, it's chiefly because this sense of identification is lacking in them. Indeed the impression that I'm deeply alienated from what goes on around me, that I don't understand its logic and meaning, the belief that it will remain, probably forever, distant, alien, and incompatible with everything I think and feel - this is neither pleasant nor uplifting. On the contrary, it is chilling and sometimes even terrifying....Still, I don't necessarily consider it a thoroughly negative mood.
First of all, the sensation of absurdity is never - at least not as I understand it - the expression of a loss of faith in the meaning of life. Quite the opposite: only someone whose very being thirsts after meaning, for whom 'meaning' is an integral dimension of his own existence, can experience the absence of meaning as something painful, or more precisely, can perceive it at all. In its tormenting absence, meaning may have a more urgent presence than when it is simply taken for granted, no questions asked - somewhat in the way someone who is sick may better understand what it means to be well than one who is healthy. I believe that genuine absence of meaning and genuine unbelief manifest themselves differently; as indifference, apathy, resignation and the decline of existence to the vegetative level. In other words: the experience of absurdity is inseparable from the experience of meaning; it is merely, in a manner of speaking, its 'obverse,' just as meaningfulness is the 'reverse' of absurdity. Absurdity, therefore, cannot be thought of as something a priori negative or even reprehensible.
Moreover, I would even say that on some levels, the experience of absurdity may seem to move things forward. In many cases, it is precisely this sensation of distance and alienation from the world, of having abandoned the conventional stereotypes of experience on which the superficial and mystified meaning of the world is based, that opens the door to genuinely fresh, sharp, and penetrating vision - vision that particularizes; and this particularizing vision is precisely what can put us face-to-face with truth and therefore - through its 'capacity for doubt' - can uncover as well the real weight that 'meaning' has. (Some may have wondered - to return to myself - at the apparent contradiction between my 'absurd' writing and my 'idealism' in other things; perhaps this explanation will be illuminating.)
My...mood, however unpleasant, has yet another (rather practical) positive side: by creating a gap between me and my surroundings, it protects me in a sense. When I observe my surroundings in this way, I am less superficially vulnerable than someone who is fully 'involved,' caught up in the turbulence of random events and his immediate response to them. In short, I am less submerged, and so can manage to keep my head above water, which enables me to see better and - perhaps - to bear witness more effectively."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Saturday, December 30, 2017
Secular Sundays
"Much has been written about the hopeless, desolate atmosphere of Sundays in large cities, and there are many evocative cabaret songs about it. Essentially, it is what sociologists call the problem of leisure time; modern man has lost touch with the original, mythical significance and substance of festive occasions, and all that remains is emptiness. Perhaps my Sunday depression in prison is merely an extreme form or a distorted echo of a common problem of civilization called Sunday. I personally see this mood as one of the typical fissures through which nothingness, the modern face of the devil, seeps into people's lives."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Friday, December 29, 2017
The Work of Art from the Point of View of the Artist
"Art in general is a little like playing with fire; the artist deals with something without knowing precisely what it is: he creates something without knowing precisely what it will 'mean.' The work, it seems to me, should always be somehow 'cleverer' than its author and he should ultimately be able to stand before it filled with the same sense of awe and with the same questions in his mind as someone seeing or reading it for the first time..."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
Havel on the 60's
"I once wrote about the particular significance I feel in the death of John Lennon....When a reactionary underworld decides to shoot a progressive president, that act has in itself - on its primary level. as it were - a determinable meaning, and therefore such a death does not cry out so powerfully for an investigation of its deeper, symbolic sense. Lennon's murder, however, is so nonsensical at that primary level that it is quite impossible to think about it other than as a symbol. And you can't help feeling that the shot was fired by the reality of the eighties at one of the departing dreams - the dream of the sixties for peace, freedom and brotherhood, the dream of the flower children, the communes, the LSD trips and 'making love not war,' a shot as it were in the face of that existential revolution of the 'third consciousness' and the 'greening of America.' As a symbol, Lennon's death has of course more aspects to it, and more complex ones at that, but this is the first one, the one that suggests itself most acutely. I do not believe that certain values and ideals of the sixties have been discredited as empty illusions and mistakes; certain things can never be called into question, either by time or by history, because they are simply and indivisible dimension of the Being of humanity and therefore of history as well, which though it is a history of repressions, murders, stupidities, wars and violence, is at the same time a history of magnificent dreams, longings and ideals. I only think that everything today is somehow harder and rougher, that one has to pay more dearly for things and that the dream of a freer, more meaningful life is no longer just a matter of running away from Mommy, as it were, but of a tough-minded, everyday confrontation with the dark powers of a new age. The fact that Lennon was shot by a psychopathic victim, of sorts, of the modern pop-cult created by the mass media, is also not without symbolic meaning: passive identification with an idol, replacing 'active faith,' finds its obscure climax in the schizophrenia of a man who shoots his idol to regain his own identity..."
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
(letter written March 1981)
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga
(letter written March 1981)
Tuesday, December 26, 2017
Spiritual Experiences - Similarities and Differences
Anyone who reads this blog will have noted that I'm fascinated by what James would term the "varieties of Religious Experiences." One of the things that is fascinating about studying other religions is the attempt to understand how their experiences differ from mine and what we have in common.
All of us express the spiritual experiences we have using the language we have available. And for each of us that language is embedded in a culture, a belief system, and a lifetime that (among other things) of a necessity forms the lens through which we view and by means of which we understand what happens to us. Add to this the fact recognized by almost all religions that human language seems to be incapable of fully expressing the contents of a religious experience and it becomes clear how difficult the task I have set myself can be.
It's odd, though. I'll be reading along through Nisargadatta explaining his experience from a Hindu point of view - alien and different as it is from mine - and then he'll drop a paragraph or a sentence or even a single phrase - and I have a sudden sense of recognition that lets me know that, different as our maps may be, they cover at least some of the same territory.
"You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
All of us express the spiritual experiences we have using the language we have available. And for each of us that language is embedded in a culture, a belief system, and a lifetime that (among other things) of a necessity forms the lens through which we view and by means of which we understand what happens to us. Add to this the fact recognized by almost all religions that human language seems to be incapable of fully expressing the contents of a religious experience and it becomes clear how difficult the task I have set myself can be.
It's odd, though. I'll be reading along through Nisargadatta explaining his experience from a Hindu point of view - alien and different as it is from mine - and then he'll drop a paragraph or a sentence or even a single phrase - and I have a sudden sense of recognition that lets me know that, different as our maps may be, they cover at least some of the same territory.
"You agree to be guided from within and life becomes a journey into the unknown."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
Atonement with the Father - Campbell's perspective
II - Initiation
4 - Atonement with the Father
"For the ogre aspect of the father is a reflex of the victim's own ego - derived from the sensational nursery scene that has been left behind, but projected before; and the fixating idolatry of that pedagogical nonthing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped in a sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of the world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster - the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed Id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy....
The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spots and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands - and the two are atoned.
....When the Lord himself answers Job out of the whirlwind, he makes no attempt to vindicate His work in ethical terms, but only magnifies His Presence, bidding Job do likewise on earth in human emulation of the way of heaven....Nevertheless, to Job himself the revelation appears to have made soul-satisfying sense. He was a hero who, by his courage in the fiery furnace, his unreadiness to break down and grovel before a popular conception of the character of the All Highest, had proven himself capable of facing a greater revelation than the one that satisfied his friends. We cannot interpret his words of the last chapter as those of a man merely intimidated. They are the words of one who has seen something surpassing anything that has been said by way of justification....
For the son who has grown really to know the father, the agonies of the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale of tears but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Presence."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Why do I find Campbell so interesting?
Behind his invocation of mid 20th century psychoanalysis and Eastern spirituality to explain it all IS a genuine set of spiritual experiences that he, like all of us, is groping for words to explain.
4 - Atonement with the Father
"For the ogre aspect of the father is a reflex of the victim's own ego - derived from the sensational nursery scene that has been left behind, but projected before; and the fixating idolatry of that pedagogical nonthing is itself the fault that keeps one steeped in a sense of sin, sealing the potentially adult spirit from a better balanced, more realistic view of the father, and therewith of the world. Atonement (at-one-ment) consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster - the dragon thought to be God (superego) and the dragon thought to be Sin (repressed Id). But this requires an abandonment of the attachment to ego itself, and that is what is difficult. One must have a faith that the father is merciful, and then a reliance on that mercy....
The problem of the hero going to meet the father is to open his soul beyond terror to such a degree that he will be ripe to understand how the sickening and insane tragedies of this vast and ruthless cosmos are completely validated in the majesty of Being. The hero transcends life with its peculiar blind spots and for a moment rises to a glimpse of the source. He beholds the face of the father, understands - and the two are atoned.
....When the Lord himself answers Job out of the whirlwind, he makes no attempt to vindicate His work in ethical terms, but only magnifies His Presence, bidding Job do likewise on earth in human emulation of the way of heaven....Nevertheless, to Job himself the revelation appears to have made soul-satisfying sense. He was a hero who, by his courage in the fiery furnace, his unreadiness to break down and grovel before a popular conception of the character of the All Highest, had proven himself capable of facing a greater revelation than the one that satisfied his friends. We cannot interpret his words of the last chapter as those of a man merely intimidated. They are the words of one who has seen something surpassing anything that has been said by way of justification....
For the son who has grown really to know the father, the agonies of the ordeal are readily borne; the world is no longer a vale of tears but a bliss-yielding, perpetual manifestation of the Presence."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Why do I find Campbell so interesting?
Behind his invocation of mid 20th century psychoanalysis and Eastern spirituality to explain it all IS a genuine set of spiritual experiences that he, like all of us, is groping for words to explain.
The Ideal Mystagogue
II - Initiation
4 - Atonement with the Father
"Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father. And he is competent, consequently, now to enact himself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one may pass from infantile illusions of 'good' and 'evil' to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at peace in the understanding of the revelation of being."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 - Atonement with the Father
"Ideally, the invested one has been divested of his mere humanity and is representative of an impersonal cosmic force. He is the twice-born: he has become himself the father. And he is competent, consequently, now to enact himself the role of the initiator, the guide, the sun door, through whom one may pass from infantile illusions of 'good' and 'evil' to an experience of the majesty of cosmic law, purged of hope and fear, and at peace in the understanding of the revelation of being."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Function of Initiation
II - Initiation
4 - Antonement with the Father
"The traditional idea of intiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to the parental images. The mystagogue...is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectively purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes - for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious (or perhaps even conscious and rationalized ) motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 - Antonement with the Father
"The traditional idea of intiation combines an introduction of the candidate into the techniques, duties, and prerogatives of his vocation with a radical readjustment of his emotional relationship to the parental images. The mystagogue...is to entrust the symbols of office only to a son who has been effectively purged of all inappropriate infantile cathexes - for whom the just, impersonal exercise of the powers will not be rendered impossible by unconscious (or perhaps even conscious and rationalized ) motives of self-aggrandizement, personal preference, or resentment."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
The Father as Initiator
II - Initiation
4 - Atonement with the Father
"When the child outgrows the popular idyll of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the realm of the father - who becomes for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, of the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the 'good' and 'evil,' so now does he, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered universe."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
4 - Atonement with the Father
"When the child outgrows the popular idyll of the mother breast and turns to face the world of specialized adult action, it passes, spiritually, into the realm of the father - who becomes for his son, the sign of the future task, and for his daughter, of the future husband. Whether he knows it or not, and no matter what his position in society, the father is the initiating priest through whom the young being passes on into the larger world. And just as, formerly, the mother represented the 'good' and 'evil,' so now does he, but with this complication - that there is a new element of rivalry in the picture: the son against the father for the mastery of the universe, and the daughter against the mother to be the mastered universe."
Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces
Chief Characteristics of Satori - 7
"7. Feeling of Exaltation. That this feeling inevitably accompanies satori is due to the fact that it is the breaking-up of the restriction imposed on one as an individual being, and this breaking up is not a mere negative incident but quite a positive one fraught with signification because it means an infinite expansion of the individual....A wandering outcast maltreated everywhere finds that he is the possessor of all the wealth and power that is ever attainable in this world by a mortal being....But the Zen feeling of exaltation is rather a quiet feeling of self-contentment; it is not at al demonstrative, when the first glow of it passes away. The Unconscious does not proclaim itself so boisterously in the Zen Consciousness."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
Wednesday, December 13, 2017
Tenacity and Spiritual Insight
"M: ...Find what it is that never sleeps and never wakes, and whose pale reflection is our sense of 'I.'
Q: How do you go about finding this?
M: How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart on it. There must be interest and steady remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through earnestness.
Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough? Surely both qualifications and opportunities are needed.
M: These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions; the goal and the way must not be on different levels, life and light must not quarrel; behavior must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness, you must not go back, undo, uproot, and abandon conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty of pursuit will bring to your goal.
Q: Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! I do not have a trace of them.
M: All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. 'I am' you know. Be with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
Q: How do you go about finding this?
M: How do you go about finding anything? By keeping your mind and heart on it. There must be interest and steady remembrance. To remember what needs to be remembered is the secret of success. You come to it through earnestness.
Q: Do you mean to say that mere wanting to find out is enough? Surely both qualifications and opportunities are needed.
M: These will come with earnestness. What is supremely important is to be free from contradictions; the goal and the way must not be on different levels, life and light must not quarrel; behavior must not betray belief. Call it honesty, integrity, wholeness, you must not go back, undo, uproot, and abandon conquered ground. Tenacity of purpose and honesty of pursuit will bring to your goal.
Q: Tenacity and honesty are endowments, surely! I do not have a trace of them.
M: All will come as you go on. Take the first step first. All blessings come from within. Turn within. 'I am' you know. Be with it all the time you can spare, until you revert to it spontaneously. There is no simpler and easier way."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
Chief Characteristics of Satori - 6
"6. Impersonal Tone. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the Zen experience is that it ahs no personal note in it as is observable in Christian mystic experiences....Father, God, the Son of God, God's child, etc. We may say all of these terms are interpretations based on a definite system of thought....alike in India, China, and Japan, satori has remained thoroughly impersonal, or rather highly intellectual.
Is this owing to the peculiar character of Buddhist philosophy? Does the experience itself take its colors from the philosophy or theology? Whatever this is, there is no doubt that in spite of having some points of similitude to the Christian mystic experience, the Zen experience is singularly devoid of personal or human colorings."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
Is this owing to the peculiar character of Buddhist philosophy? Does the experience itself take its colors from the philosophy or theology? Whatever this is, there is no doubt that in spite of having some points of similitude to the Christian mystic experience, the Zen experience is singularly devoid of personal or human colorings."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
Monday, December 11, 2017
Love as the result of mystic insight
As I study Eastern mysticism I see much diversity. If I were to pull out two threads that seem to run through most of it, I would identify them as awareness and love. We've been looking a lot at the Buddhist point of view here. Here is a Hindu one
"Let go of your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, or attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and loveable."
...............................
"The mind, by its very nature divides and opposes. Can there be some other mind which unites and harmonizes, which sees the whole in the part and the part as totally related to the whole?....In that mind...it becomes rather a question of love seeking expression and meeting with obstacles. The inclusive mind is love in action, battling against circumstances: initially frustrated, ultimately victorious."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
"Let go of your attachment to the unreal and the real will swiftly and smoothly step into its own. Stop imagining yourself being or doing this or that and the realization that you are the source and heart of all will dawn upon you. With this will come great love which is not choice or predilection, or attachment, but a power which makes all things love-worthy and loveable."
...............................
"The mind, by its very nature divides and opposes. Can there be some other mind which unites and harmonizes, which sees the whole in the part and the part as totally related to the whole?....In that mind...it becomes rather a question of love seeking expression and meeting with obstacles. The inclusive mind is love in action, battling against circumstances: initially frustrated, ultimately victorious."
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj
I Am That
Chief Characteristics of Satori - 5
"5. Sense of the Beyond. ...in satori there is always what we may call a sense of the Beyond; the experience is indeed 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 into 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."
................................
"To call this Beyond, the Absolute, or God, or a Person is to go further than the experience itself."
.................................
"The feeling that follows is that of a complete release or a complete rest - the feeling that one has arrived finally at the destination. 'coming home and quietly resting' is the expression generally used....The story of the prodigal son...points to the same feeling one has at the moment of a satori experience."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
................................
"To call this Beyond, the Absolute, or God, or a Person is to go further than the experience itself."
.................................
"The feeling that follows is that of a complete release or a complete rest - the feeling that one has arrived finally at the destination. 'coming home and quietly resting' is the expression generally used....The story of the prodigal son...points to the same feeling one has at the moment of a satori experience."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
Thursday, December 7, 2017
Two Modes of Puritanism
"There was a strong assumption of superiority in this Puritanic toleration, hardly less trying to the blond flesh of an unenthusiastic sister than a Puritanic persecution."
George Eliot
Middlemarch
It is all fine and nice to recognize, as the quote before this one does, that "souls have complexions" and that what might not be alright for me might be alright for someone else, but if it is accompanied by the assumption that what is right for me, though, is superior, the insight loses most of its force.
George Eliot
Middlemarch
It is all fine and nice to recognize, as the quote before this one does, that "souls have complexions" and that what might not be alright for me might be alright for someone else, but if it is accompanied by the assumption that what is right for me, though, is superior, the insight loses most of its force.
Souls Have Complexions
"Souls have complexions too: what will suit one will not suit another."
George Eliot
Middlemarch
George Eliot
Middlemarch
Dorothea in Middlemarch
"she was enamoured of intensity and greatness, and rash in embracing whatever seemed to her to have those aspects;"
George Eliot
Middlemarch
Much the same could have been said of my younger self.
George Eliot
Middlemarch
Much the same could have been said of my younger self.
Chief Characteristics of Satori - 4
"4. Affirmation. What is authoritative and final can never be negative. For negation has no value for our life, it leads us nowhere; it is not a power that urges, nor does it give one a place to rest. Though the satori experience is sometimes expressed in negative terms, it is essentially an affirmative attitude towards all things that exist; it accepts them as they come along regardless of their moral values. Buddhists call this kshanti, 'patience', or more properly 'acceptance', that is, acceptance of things in their suprarelative or transcendental aspect where no dualism of whatever sort avails."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhims
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhims
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
The Worth of a Man
"Every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself."
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
Meditations
Chief Characteristics of Satori - 3
"3. Authoritativeness. By this I mean that the knowledge realized by satori is final, that no amount of logical argument can refute it. Being direct and personal it is sufficient unto itself. All that logic can do here is to explain it, to interpret it in connection with other kinds of knowledge with which our minds are filled. Satori is thus a form of perception, an inner perception, which takes place in the most interior part of consciousness....So, it is generally said that Zen is like drinking water, for it is by one's self that one knows whether it is warm or cold."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Characteristics of Initiation into the Mysteries in 2nd Century A.D.
Lucius, the protagonist of Apuleis' Golden Ass, is initiated into pagan mysteries (specifically those of Isis and Osiris) three separate times. Some interesting characteristics emerge -
1) Divine Authorization
When Lucius first sought initiation he was told to patiently wait for divine approval to be given to the priest who would officiate. For those in charge would not do so "unless personally ordered to do so" by the authorizing divinity.
2) Washing and anointing
"...when the priest said the moment had come, he led me to the nearest baths, escorted by the faithful in a body, and there, after I had bathed in the usual way, having invoked the blessing of the gods he ceremoniously aspersed and purified me." Asper is an unusual verb in 21st century English, meaning to sprinkle - mostly used in reference to the Catholic practice of sprinkling Holy Water.
3) Ceremonial Garments
"Then the uninitiated were all made to leave, I was dressed in a brand new linen robe, and the priest took me by the hand and conducted me to the very innermost part of the sanctuary."
At the end of the ceremony Lucius had assumed a somewhat more elaborate costume -
"...though my dress was only of fine linen it was colorfully embroidered, and from my shoulders there fell behind me to my ankles a costly cloak....This is what initiates call an Olympic robe....and my head was encircled with a beautiful crown of palm..."
"The very next night I dreamed that there appeared to me one of the faithful dressed in linen and carrying a wand tipped with ivy and other things I may not mention."
In a dream that urges him to be initiated a third time Lucius is reminded "the goddess's holy symbols which you received at Cenchreae are still in the temple there where you left them, so that here in Rome you cannot wear them to worship in on feast days or receive illumination from that happy attire when ordered to do so."
4) A Sacred Journey Towards Salvation
"the initiation ceremony itself took the form of a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace."
"I came to the boundary of death and after treading Proserpine's threshold I returned having traversed all the elements; at midnight I saw the sun shining with brilliant light; I approached the gods below and the gods above face to face and worshiped them in their actual presence."
5) Sacred Saving Truth Imparted.
Lucius undertook religious disciplined to prepare himself to "better attain to the secret mysteries of this purest of religions." The information given was centered on "the keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation."
6) Content Points Towards a Regeneration of Life
Those who passed through initiation "had been as it were reborn."
"I celebrated my rebirth as an initiate..."
7) Content of Ceremony is a Sacred Mystery
In other words it is kept secret. The priest of Lucius' first initiation calls them the "holy mysteries of our faith."
"...he made me to stand at the goddess's feet and privately gave me certain instructions which are too sacred to divulge."
"I dare say, attentive reader, that you are all agog to know what was then said and done. I should tell you if it were lawful to tell it; you should learn it if it were lawful to hear it. But then your ears and my tongue would both incur equal guilt, the one for sacrilegious loquacity, the other for importunate curiosity."
"So all that can without sin be revealed to the understanding of the uninitiated, that and no more I shall relate."
"The very next night I dreamed that there appeared to me one of the faithful dressed in linen and carrying a wand tipped with ivy and other things I may not mention."
Quotations from
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Translated by E. J. Kinney
1) Divine Authorization
When Lucius first sought initiation he was told to patiently wait for divine approval to be given to the priest who would officiate. For those in charge would not do so "unless personally ordered to do so" by the authorizing divinity.
2) Washing and anointing
"...when the priest said the moment had come, he led me to the nearest baths, escorted by the faithful in a body, and there, after I had bathed in the usual way, having invoked the blessing of the gods he ceremoniously aspersed and purified me." Asper is an unusual verb in 21st century English, meaning to sprinkle - mostly used in reference to the Catholic practice of sprinkling Holy Water.
3) Ceremonial Garments
"Then the uninitiated were all made to leave, I was dressed in a brand new linen robe, and the priest took me by the hand and conducted me to the very innermost part of the sanctuary."
At the end of the ceremony Lucius had assumed a somewhat more elaborate costume -
"...though my dress was only of fine linen it was colorfully embroidered, and from my shoulders there fell behind me to my ankles a costly cloak....This is what initiates call an Olympic robe....and my head was encircled with a beautiful crown of palm..."
"The very next night I dreamed that there appeared to me one of the faithful dressed in linen and carrying a wand tipped with ivy and other things I may not mention."
In a dream that urges him to be initiated a third time Lucius is reminded "the goddess's holy symbols which you received at Cenchreae are still in the temple there where you left them, so that here in Rome you cannot wear them to worship in on feast days or receive illumination from that happy attire when ordered to do so."
4) A Sacred Journey Towards Salvation
"the initiation ceremony itself took the form of a kind of voluntary death and salvation through divine grace."
"I came to the boundary of death and after treading Proserpine's threshold I returned having traversed all the elements; at midnight I saw the sun shining with brilliant light; I approached the gods below and the gods above face to face and worshiped them in their actual presence."
5) Sacred Saving Truth Imparted.
Lucius undertook religious disciplined to prepare himself to "better attain to the secret mysteries of this purest of religions." The information given was centered on "the keys of hell and the guarantee of salvation."
6) Content Points Towards a Regeneration of Life
Those who passed through initiation "had been as it were reborn."
"I celebrated my rebirth as an initiate..."
7) Content of Ceremony is a Sacred Mystery
In other words it is kept secret. The priest of Lucius' first initiation calls them the "holy mysteries of our faith."
"...he made me to stand at the goddess's feet and privately gave me certain instructions which are too sacred to divulge."
"I dare say, attentive reader, that you are all agog to know what was then said and done. I should tell you if it were lawful to tell it; you should learn it if it were lawful to hear it. But then your ears and my tongue would both incur equal guilt, the one for sacrilegious loquacity, the other for importunate curiosity."
"So all that can without sin be revealed to the understanding of the uninitiated, that and no more I shall relate."
"The very next night I dreamed that there appeared to me one of the faithful dressed in linen and carrying a wand tipped with ivy and other things I may not mention."
Quotations from
Apuleius
The Golden Ass
Translated by E. J. Kinney
Chief Characteristics of Satori - 2
"2. Intuitive Insight. That there is a noetic quality in mystic experiences has been pointed out by James in his Varieties of Religious Experience, and this applies also to the Zen experience known as satori. Another name for satori is 'ken-sho'...meaning 'to see essence or nature'....That this seeing is of quite a different quality from what is ordinarily designated as knowledge need not be specifically noticed. Hui-k'e is reported to have made this statement concerning his satori..."it is not a total annihilation; it is knowledge of the most adequate kind; only it cannot be expressed in words...."
Without this noetic quality satori will lose all its pungency, for it is really the reason of satori itself. It is noteworthy that the knowledge contained in satori is concerned with something universal and at the same time with the individual aspect of existence. When a finger is lifted, the lifting means, from the viewpoint of satori, far more than the act of lifting. Some may call it symbolic, but satori does not point to anything beyond itself, being final as it is. Satori is the knowledge of an individual object and also that of Reality, which is, if I may so, at the back of it."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
Without this noetic quality satori will lose all its pungency, for it is really the reason of satori itself. It is noteworthy that the knowledge contained in satori is concerned with something universal and at the same time with the individual aspect of existence. When a finger is lifted, the lifting means, from the viewpoint of satori, far more than the act of lifting. Some may call it symbolic, but satori does not point to anything beyond itself, being final as it is. Satori is the knowledge of an individual object and also that of Reality, which is, if I may so, at the back of it."
D. T. Suzuki
Zen Buddhism
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