Essay: Man, Know Thyself

[Lou Gold]

The plants. Are they willfully communicating lessons to you or are you projecting a will onto them, or you are speaking metaphorically?

With due respect, your question is from outside of my direct experience, which you seem to be trying to fashion into some kind of an explanatory analytical or interpretive model. Let me offer a concrete example from this morning...

This Sunday morning (today) I participated in a Santo Daime healing session that was Zoomed from one of my spiritual families located in the forest of far-western Brazil (directly across the river from Peru). The session was dedicated to the special healing needs of folks with Covid-19 but, as is usual with Daime, other concerns or questions can appear in one's personal process. As you know, I've been dialoguing about this question of directionality and hierarchy recently, fishing for ways of presenting my intuition. Midway the the healing session, mostly based on singing received hymns, the directionality question arose in me. I suddenly felt the medicine come on much more strongly and I felt the call to use the bathroom. Entering it I passed a large mirror over the sink, looked into it, saw the Merkaba printed on my shirt blazing out colorfully and exclaimed (inwardly), "That's it! That's the representation I've been looking for." Completely satisfied, I returned to my laptop to participate in the Zooming daime session. At the end of the Zoom session, I posted the Merkaba symbol here to the forum.

You ask, "The plants. Are they willfully communicating lessons to you or are you projecting a will onto them, or you are speaking metaphorically?"

My response is that I asked a question, received a satisfying answer and was not further motivated to ask the question you are asking, which does not seem to serve any additional purpose meaningful to me in my process.

Of further interest, of course, is that I had already chosen this shirt to wear before the session and several hours ago I had seen the answer I just wrote above but had to await your question to have a context for it. So... dialoguing sure is fun. Thanks for joining in.

[Cleric K]

From what did you infer negativity?

I inferred it from the fact that you associated "... aggressiveness, cunningness, timidity, brutality, etc." as "Man has the animals within his inner nature." Why do you miss this clear demonstration? Why do you not see that gentle/brutal exist in all beings and that the extremes are often worse in domesticated humans. Can you offer examples of wild animals launching armies of genocidal intent such as humans are presently doing in China and Myanmar? You might consider the different understanding offered by animism. A good modern example would be "Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology" by David Abram.

I see. It seems to you that I equate animal nature with evil. But this is not at all the case.

We can speak of evil only in the context of freedom. The male lion does not kill the cubs because of wickedness. He doesn't think whether he should or should not kill them. He's following the inner compulsion of his instinctive nature. The Spirit is enchanted in the instinctive dream of the lion, it simply flows together with instinct.

Man becomes man because an additional layer of spiritual activity emerges in the form of thinking. This is where the Sprit is able to differentiate itself from the world of pure instinct. At this point man can begin to ask questions, to have ideas, to look for higher purpose of his existence. At this point he can say to himself: "Yes, instinctual dream life has led me up to the point where I find myself. I can see that formerly I've been unconsciously flowing together with blind urges. Now I can distinguish my thinking-self from this flow and I can choose to oppose this flow. To know what I should oppose and what I should go along, I must understand what I am and what's my place in the Universe."

This is the basic point where man becomes aware of the two natures within himself. On one hand - the lower, instinctive, animal-like nature, that has served him well for the longest time and kept him alive. But with the emergence of thinking, man gets in contact with his higher, spiritual nature. This nature has the mission to flow from above into the human-animal vessel and ennoble it, purify it, make it more and more perfect image of the Cosmic Man.

The animal nature is not in itself the source of evil. Evil comes to the stage when man, as thinking Spirit, uses his higher creativity for the satisfaction of his animal passions. This is where things get out of proportion. So you are perfectly right - genocide, world domination, etc. - all these are possible only within the human. The animal can't imagine such things. Its instincts are perfected by living Nature for very specific purposes. The animal can't go beyond itself and use its instinctive nature for other purposes. But man can do this.

Evil is not really an intrinsic part of man either. What is genocide? It's an idea. A person having the right position in society might be powerful and influential enough that he can turn this idea into physical reality. The idea itself is a living being in the spiritual world, the world of ideas. Here we come to the critical point. Man does not "invent" these ideas, just as we don't invent numbers. We discover numbers, we don't create them. Everyone is receptible for specific domains of the world of ideas. The mathematician is receptive to mathematical ideas, the artist - to artistic, the criminal - to criminal ideas.

Man steps on the path of self-conscious development only when he becomes aware that it is up to him and no one else, to choose his idea-nourishment wisely. For this he needs High Ideal. This Ideal is litmus paper for him that tells if certain idea, feeling, action leads towards the Ideal or away from it.

The animistic philosophy is a symptom of humans being unable to come to terms with their humanity. Being human comes with many responsibilities - one of which is to choose whether we use our humanity for good or evil. Animism becomes disillusioned with this humanity. That's why it seeks refuge back into the instinctive dream of Nature. The animist says "Human freedom leads only to evil. Man is not wise enough to handle this freedom. On the other hand, Nature is full of wisdom. Everything is balanced. We should forsake our striving for comprehending Nature and instead we should let Nature rule our lives, we should allow the Spirit of Nature carry us on her maternal waves, while we should simply not interfere and question her wisdom."

OK. This is one approach. We can certainly do that. We can completely entrust ourselves to Nature and allow her to give direction of our lives. But what is Nature? The big Me? The One? If this is the case we're simply saying "The big Me is wise, he created everything. I'm the eyes and ears of this big Me within the sensory realm. Yet I don't have His wisdom. When I try to be creative I only create evil. I can't take this responsibility. I'll entrust all my life-flow to the big Me. I'll be one with Him. I'll not see things from His eyes - that is, I won't see from His perspective how he creates Nature and Her flow. I'll just flow together with His essential nature, from the standpoint of my limited perspective. Only after death I can hope that I'll be able to see the whole Nature, the Body of His Being, from His perspective. While I'm on the incarnate side of Nature I'll forever remain separate from that perspective. The most I can do is to be one with the flow of that perspective, which externally carries me."

[Lou Gold]

If you create in your mind a hierarchy of Goodness, you will also create a hierarchy of Evil and epic wars at every level, all in the name of Choice.

If you adopt an ecological view, you will see turtles in every direction.

[Lou Gold]

Two pieces worth pondering and the thought of a great teacher:

The Ecology of Perception

Aphorisms on Nature

Near the end of the life of the world teacher Krishnamurti, who rejected religion in favor of self-inquiry, he was interviewed and asked if he thought his teachings had changed the world? K responded, "Of course not!" The interviewer then asked, "So why did you give your life to teaching?" K responded, "Why does the bird sing?"

[Lou Gold]

Oops, trying the image again...



The knowledge of the heart is in no book and is not to be found in the mouth of any teacher, but grows out of you like the green seed from the dark earth.

C.G. Jung

[Cleric K]

If you create in your mind a hierarchy of Goodness, you will also create a hierarchy of Evil and epic wars at every level, all in the name of Choice.

Good and evil appear as soon as man finds himself as a spiritual being that can think and trace the consequences of one or another action, before it's made.

If one ant colony attacks and destroys another colony you view that as the magnificent playout of Nature's hidden wisdom, always seeking balance. If one tribe attacks and destroys another tribe you view it in the same way - it's OK because Nature wills it, the tribes simply follow their innate instincts. Only when we come to modern man you stop viewing this as Nature playing out but as something else which threatens to destroy Nature. Somehow, out of Nature was born something which is no longer Nature.

When you speak of ecological view, you implicitly define that as the 'good' and colonial humanity as 'evil'. So whether we like it or not, as soon as we think what men should do with our civilization, the hierarchy of good and evil emerges, even if we don't call it that. In this sense, the the ultimate 'good' is considered the return to the instinctive state where Nature wills our life. Then, even if our tribe destroys another, our conscience will be clean because Nature willed it - we simply followed our instincts.

Unfortunately we can never turn back time. We can't abolish our self-consciousness once it was gained (or at least not easily. It could be achieved by drugging ourselves in trance states, for example). Then the troubling question arises: "Now that my tribe has destroyed the other, is it really the case that I was following Nature's will or I'm simply ignorant of what lives in my subconsciousness. Couldn't it be that I'm following subconscious desires which is my duty to inspect, and instead I excuse myself by viewing them as coming from the wisdom of Nature?"

This is where animism becomes a questionable philosophy. It imagines that everything will be good, only if everyone trusted and acted out of their instincts. Then, even if we kill each other it'll be all good because it was not a thought out choice - it was Nature playing out. Of course David Abram will hardly suggest that. Some murderers kill out of instinct. It is common when these people are interviewed that they say they were in a daze, in something akin to a trance state, during the act. They didn't stop and pondered at the decision whether they should or should not do it. They were taken over by unconscious will - Nature acted. So do the tribes when they attack in a battle trance. It's a question whether the animist will observe happily how the enemy tribe destroys him while he thinks "That's OK. If Nature has willed it, it must be for good". Animism creates a paradox for itself because it can never find the dividing line where pure Nature-willed instinct ends and where non-Nature evil conscious or unconscious will begins. There's no clear way to tell if I kill an animal because Nature wants me to keep its population in check or if I simply follow my unconscious desire to satisfy my taste.

Nature becomes self-conscious in man - she becomes split in herself. One part of Nature has become self-conscious while the vaster part lies beneath the surface. Nature is creative, so is the self-conscious part. Once this self-consciousness is attained, Nature can no longer be certain that when she acts unconsciously, she is following her own deeper unconscious wisdom or she's created new kinds of desires, that are now acting subconsciously and are confused for deeper wisdom. The only solution would that Nature becomes more and more conscious of herself. She should be able to trace in full consciousness the processes on which the the self-conscious part, experienced as thinking ego, rest upon.

[David_Sundaram]

I wish to challenge the 'antropocentrism' of this statement by way of sharing what's clearly (IMO) demonstrated in this video;.

David, do you realize that your video presents a very romanticized 'Bambi-like' cutesy anthropocentric view of domesticated animal life? There's an Eskimo wisdom statement that I like a lot: "Gifts turn wolves into dogs."

I recognize your (romanticized?) preference for 'wildness', Lou. My view of 'love' is that it is 'tame' (meek?) and 'taming'. It is why you and I don't 'friend'-connect, I think.

I would rather be/engage with a dog and have a dog be/engage with me as a companion (instead of 'wild' 'wolf' (like you?).

[Soul_of_Shu]

This seems pertinent to the original topic ...

[David_Sundaram]

The post I made seems to have disappeared.

This is just to say that I am 100% in synch with what you have said , Cleric.

[Lou Gold]

Cleric,

Simple question: Have you actually read David Abram or contemplated Goethe? I ask only to discover if your rejection of them is informed? "The Spell of the Sensuous" is one of the few philosophy books I've read I've only tiny-dipped into Goethe but it was enough for me to grok an alignment with my direct experience.

Philosophers can surely disagree. Again, I'm not trying to convert you. My intent is only to show the biases of your model. You assert that Nature, She, He or God, becomes uniquely self-aware in Man. I assert that the Great Mysteriousness becomes self-aware through the dynamic interplay and checks-and-balance of all. I am not arguing that the 'eye' is not needed for seeing but that a disembodied 'eye' will not alone provide the reflective vision that you assert and this is what makes the network of biotic life essential. In brief, spirit needs bodies as much as bodies need spirit and thus God created them all connected and not separated. Mitakuye Oyasin or co-arising interbeing is the mutual foundation called reality. The mischief begins when something is left out or denied. It's a 'We' and not an 'I'.