From Gandhi and the One-Eyed Giant

Introduction by Thomas Merton

Tyranny, which makes a sagacious use of every human need and indeed artificially creates more of them in order to exploit them all to the limit, recognizes the importance of guilt. And modern tyrannies have all implicitly in one way or another emphasized the irreversibility of evil in order to build their power upon it.

Hitler’s world was built on the central dogma of the irreversibility of evil. Just as there could be no quarter for the Jews, so the acts that eliminated them were equally irreversible and there could really be no excuse for the Nazi’s themselves…

It is no accident that Hitler believed firmly in the unforgivableness of sin…”

In St. Thomas Aquinas, we find a totally different view of evil. Evil is not only reversible but it is the proper motive of that mercy by which it is overcome and changed into good. Replying to the objection that moral evil is not the motive for mercy since the evil of sin deserves indignation and punishment rather than mercy and forgiveness, St. Thomas says that on the contrary sin itself is already a punishment “and in this respect we feel sorrow and compassion for sinners.” (Summa Theologica) In order to do this we have to be able to experience this sin as if it were our own. (Original italics) But those who consider themselves happy and whose sense of power depends on the idea that they are beyond suffering any evil are not able to have mercy on others” by experiencing the evil of others as their own. Ibid.

Have I been a tyrant? Expecting inhuman perfection from myself, being so violent towards me, having spotted an unforgivableness of my being. I noticed my frigidity towards others, sometimes… holding them responsible to a stoic point of callousedness.

My turning point is compassion towards myself. Transformation. An inner peace exuding non-violence, not to myself, nor to anyone. Liberating the oppressed and the oppressor.

Gandhian non-violence-not the means and the ends, but a means to an end…

The Human Condition | 14.08.2008 22:43 | No Comments

Politics of Friendship

I have read and pretty much enjoyed Derrida’s work on democracy- Politics of Friendship (1997). His style is not at all straightforward, but his point is good as highlights oppositions and shows possibilities. The fun has been in the analysis.

We should continue to strive to have more friendship in our democratic community… it is a work in progress.

I find interesting the classifications Aristotle describes in friendships, including what struck me as a foundation for the concept of “best friends” (the sacred kind of childhood) and for the other various relationships there are such as the more mundane kind of friendship among people living together in a community. These Aristotelian distinctions have come to life in my experience, and so I thought I’d share the eloquent discussion on the topic.

The following is a synopsis of Aristotle’s commentary in Derrida’s words on friendship and the relationship among the three kinds of friendship. Derrida’s purpose is not to privilege the great discourses on friendship or to submit to their authority, but to question the process and logic of canonization… he wants to analyze forces and procedures that have created hegemonic concepts and marginalized others. He questions Aristotle’s axiomatic and hierarchy creating power. I will leave out his peppering of Greek terms, and embark from the observation that there are three kinds of friendship- friendship of virtue, of pleasure, and usefulness. Friendship of usefulness is political friendship, as in democracy, the goal is to yield as much friendship in the polis as possible.

Political friendship is attentive to equality as well as to the thing (the affair), to the former as much as the latter…(my italics) This is what political friendship ‘looks to’ and what concerns it. As in a market, in commerce between buyers and sellers. Equality and the thing, the equality of things, therefore the third party and the common measure: an account and a fixed wage [gage] are necessary: a salary, a fee. a counter -value. Aristotle quotes Hesoid: “A fixed wage for a friend”, which has sometimes been translated: “Short reckonings make long friends”. When it is grounded on consent, consensus, convention, this friendship is at once political and legal. It is then, a matter of homology or reciprocity, as in the case of a contract, an agreement between two subscribing parties. When, on the other hand, the parties leave the matter to each other’s discretion, in a sort of trust without contract, credit becoming an act of faith, then friendship ‘wants to be’ moral, ethical, and of the order of comradeship. Why is it that in this latter case recriminations and grievances abound? Because this ethical friendship is against nature. Indeed, those who associate themselves in this way wish to have both friendships at once, one in the service of interest (based on usefulness) and one appealing to virtue (the reliability of the other)…Aristotle thus describes a tragedy as much as a comedy, major and minor calculations: this irrepressible desire to overinvest in a friendship or a love, to count on a profit in renouncing profit, to expect a recompense, if only a narcissistic or symbolic one, from the most disinterested virtue or generosity. With the help of a distinction which should not be judged a summary one, Aristotle never gives up analysing the ruses that enable one friendship to be smuggled into another, the law of the useful into that of pleasure, one or the other into virtue’s mask. Those who prefer ‘ethical’ friendship believe it possible to dispense with the legal, nomic form of political friendship; they disregard the contract or mutual agreement, thus opening themselves up to disappointment. Moreover, it is in ‘useful’ friendship, and within it, then, political friendship, that the greatest number of grievances and recriminations are encountered. Friendship based on virtue is, by definition, impeccable. As for friendship based on pleasure, friends part and bonds unravel once the enjoyment has run its course: the friends have had their delight, they have given, received, offered; they have had, and do not request anything more. Of course, all the forms of ‘aporia’ then spring up — aporia is Aristotle’s word [logical impasse]– as to the criteria of the just, and when we must determine what is just from the vantage point of quantity or quality; the vantage point of the enjoyment of what is given or of the rendered service. On this count, how are we to get the person giving and the person receiving to agree? Who gives and who receives? It goes without saying that if political friendship considers the ‘homology’ (the contractual agreement) and the thing, it is less just, its justice is less ‘friendly’ than ethical frienship, which counts on intention, will, and choice. The fundamental conflict lies in the opposition of the beautiful and the useful: the ethical friendship is certainly ‘more beautiful’, but useful friendship is more necessary.

A big theme question in the book was “How many friends?”

When virtue is at stake:

At stake is virtue, which is no longer in nature, this virtue whose name will remain suspended, without an assured concept, as long as these two laws of friendship will not have been thought. For the reliability of the stable that on which the virtue depends — therefore liberty, decision, and reflection — can no longer be only natural. No more so than time, which does not belong to nature when it puts primary friendship to the test. In the history of the concept of nature — and already in its Greek history — the virtue of friendship will have dug the trench of an opposition. For it obliges Aristotle himself to restrain the concept of nature: he must oppose it to its other — here to virtue — when he classes friendship among stable things, in the same way as happiness belongs to self-sufficient and autarkic things. It is the same immanence that provides shelter from external or random causalities… Since friendship does not — and above all must not — have the reliability of a natural thing or a machine; since its stability is not given by nature but is won, like constancy and ‘fidence’, through the endurance of a virtue, primary friendship… There may well be other forms of friendship (for example, says Aristotle, with children, animals, and the wicked), but they never imply virtue, nor equality in virtue. For if all the species of frienship (the three principal ones, according to virute, to usefulness, to pleasure) imply equality or equity, only primary friendship demands an equality of virtue between friends, in what assigns them reciprocally to one another.

“One soul in two bodies twain.” Indivisible. Can be found once in every three hundred years.

The Human Condition | 15.07.2008 13:50 | 1 Comment

Other Healing Techniques

The last time I went to see Dr. Schwartz for NMT (neuromodular technique) I commented how interesting it was, that when he cleared a pathway to release pathological negative emotions in my body I dreamed about my cat being boiled alive. How Freudian it was- perhaps it was so unacceptable to me that I had any sort of thought about killing the cat for repeatedly peeing on my bed in anger, that I repressed it down only to release it in a dream later. How psycho-somatic was this Crohn’s business? Schwartz remarked how clearly my inflammatory bowel thing is tied to my emotions. He went on to say that since we weren’t clearing out my problem thus far with NMT, there other modalities in the clinic that I could possible try- a Reiki master who does this thing called a Reconnection, hypnotherapy, there was a psychotherapist there who also is a nutritionist…

The Reconnection thing sounded the best in my gut (to my gut?) From the time I was quite young, I felt somewhat disconnected from the grand embrace of the universe. Just the idea of RECONNECTION brought tears to my eyes. I decided to let my intuition take over. More than anything I wanted to experience this.

The principles behind Reconnection are like those behind acupuncture- energetically and with meridian lines in the body… but goes beyond acupuncture. It is pretty out there even for me; I won’t go into the background of this process. But the woman facilitator I met in doing this is amazing. At our first appointment together, which was an intuitive session, when she told me about herself, she told me that she aligns herself with God, and her guides. She does not do astrology nor Tarot or anything like that. She has been an intuitive since she was little, and in her room at the office she had an alter set up with a picture of Jesus, Paramahansa Yogananda, and what I found out later was a man called Bruno Groening.

The Reconnection took two sessions with a day in between. During the first session, as I was lying on the table with my eyes closed and Josie worked over me with her hands, I noticed that she began moving rather quickly from one side of the table to the other. After further sensing, it just didn’t feel like she was the only one in the room. I heard Josie’s movements by my head, but there was someone or something, angelic even, by my foot, and it was there for a while. The second day, she asserts that she does not make physical contact during the session, but I felt a distinct, concrete touch on my hair- twice.

Afterwards, conversation turned to how I was seeking healing for my gut. This is when she told me about Bruno Groening, and the Healing Stream. Bruno was a spiritual healer who created quite a stir in the 40s in Germany, and this is what I was to do:

Play some beautiful music, classical, or something without words, and sit or lie down with palms facing up, which enables one to collect energy. Invoke God, the greatest healer. Visualize the Healing Stream flowing through the body, and the disease exiting the body, perhaps as little black dots. Imagine the dots being taken away by a waterfall, or a hot-air balloon then burning up in the sun… ask God to take it away. Then, when there are no more black dots or if you are ready to finish up for the time being, imagine, in every possible way you can think of, yourself in an optimal state of health. Connect to the Healing Stream every day. All disease is curable. For Josie, she did this meditation and after fifteen months (seems kind of long, doesn’t it?) her knees which had hurt her chronically due to injuries became free of pain. But hey- a lasting cure is worth hard work!

Two days later, after being reconnected and spending a lot of time at the healing stream, I feel invigorated and full of hope robust faith; and I mostly, I’m feeling kind of high! Visualization is easy, and so is changing my perspective.

Health, The Human Condition | 14.06.2008 23:38 | 2 Comments

Phenomenology of Shamanism

Altering consciousness, and taking the mind to the place that is a place of cessation of discursive thought, and being completely in the body. Sensate experience sometimes evokes an emotional one, and to be with that feeling, entering a stillness of mind, and waiting to see what comes and going with it- this is a shamanic state. It is a quest of knowledge, or healing. It is a state much like dreaming. It is like a waking dream, a sort of daydream, however with certain intent. That is to transform energy.

I’m not sure whether what is termed “energy” here is positively scientific or whether it is still Freud’s metaphor. Hasn’t quantum physics proven Freud’s hypothesis that there is energy at play in psychic life? Regardless, shamans say that it is energy, and one takes a shamanic journey in order to transform energy. This is a healing technique that I have begun to study.

It is impossible to study this phenomenon unless I, perhaps in a phenomenological fashion, I study my self as a subject in hopes of discovering a technique that is something that every human being is able to perform in order to heal themselves. Unfortunately, this flies in the face of scientific tradition. However, in certain intellectual circles, “objectivity” is over-rated by scientists of mind who wish to dig deeper into the profundity of the human being. It is impotent in areas laden with questions of meaning and value of human experience. This is an endeavor which is suited to the study of humanity, of human subjects, unobjectified in any way. What kind of a human life is one without meaning?

German philosophers have named us body and spirit- or geist. This spirit that geist refers to is mental, it is completely “natural” and of this world. It is psyche, it is consciousness. My goal is to write about shamanism in a phenomenological way in an attempt to circumvent the lack of hard science as of now to describe the dreams and visions used to transform energy which one feels in their emotions, present in illness.

I am in agreement with Freud’s theory in the science of mind, that sometimes energy in one’s psyche is bound up in a way that is not serving to the subject. This is not unlike a tenet within shamanism. This an ancient technique that functions on a very primary process, primordial, mythical level. In my study, building off of the work of theories of Freud, Jung, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and others, perhaps this healing technique will gain wider audience and be of service to more of my fellow human beings.

We are all animated by energy. We all have minds, emotions, physical bodies. Evidently these components interact, causing various degrees of well-being/illness. It is known that all illness is not merely physical, there are psycho-somatic disturbances. If we are to get at the depth of the interplay of these components, we must be willing to go beyond strictly empirical, objectivist science, to study the human geist, or spirit. When we get into realms of meaning and value, we often find spiritual questions hovering in the shadows as well.

Despite the boundary between metaphysics and natural science since the Enlightenment, it seems that lately science is coming upon quite metaphysical discoveries in quantum physics. This is an area which I still must explore in order to be knowledgable as far as the hardcore science of all this is concerned.

I could be my own test subject.

I feel a certain energy in my gut and in my altered state. I invite the memory of the first experience to come. I feel those feelings. I think through the experience in an intellectual way, guided by knowledge as to how to make the situation better. Sometimes, it involves telling myself that it’s okay, that I am safe. Perhaps my body will be sacrificed, but I will be okay. Sometimes, I need to call on some help, and help arrives. I see entities, faces, places, and what I do there with them, it helps me transform the energy.

After my journeys, I have felt like something within me has shifted. I will continue with myself on the operating table, and I will work with others in the future to see if they too can heal themselves using shamanistic techniques. Objectivist skeptics will then be hard pressed to argue, but they will.

Psychology, The Human Condition | 20.03.2008 21:37 | 3 Comments

A Theory

Consciousness is an expression of the subconscious and the vast inner worlds that it is part of, and it is the subconsciousness’s way of communicating with itself.

The Human Condition | 28.10.2007 12:57 | 1 Comment