Hi
Everybody. This is Leo Volont with Part
One of my four Part Series “The Material
Mechanics of Spirituality”.
(1)I
was re-reading that Classic on Spirituality, “Varieties of Religious Experience”,
by William James (1842-1910), who had been a Harvard Professor at the turn of
the 20th Century. The Book
represents the first and the last time that Science has carefully looked at
Religious Spiritual Phenomena. I developed
a few new insights and would like to share them with you.
(2)Firstly,
let’s understand what kind of experiences we’ll be talking about here.
full blown Mystical Experiences including: Enlightenment God-Realization Transcendental One-with-All-Things kind of things Kundalini
Awakening Satori Nirvana
Samadhi you might even say
Psychotic .
So,
yeah, that’s what we’re going to be talking about. But I already know that some people will feel
left out. In both the Traditional
Religious and the New Age Communities, we have, depending on how you
want to say it, “True Believers or Born
Againers with Faith” AND , on the New
Age side, “those who feel that Enlightenment is an Attitude or just being in
compliance with the New Age consensus on what they wish were True”. Well, that’s not what we’re going to be talking
about here. Yes, if I were to take on a
Blog such as that, well, I think I would first have to do a Public Survey
asking the question “Do you believe there is a difference between Being a Thing
and Claiming to Be a Thing?”, and see what kind of answers I’d get back from
the Christian and New Age Communities.
(3)We
may think of these Real Deal Enlightenment experiences as being entirely
Religious or Spiritual, but well, that’s not exactly their functional purpose
according to James. The inner
psychological intent for so effectively impacting and changing the Personality
is that the Body’s own Innate Wisdom fears that if left to
follow its present course that the Body would die because of it. So this sense of impending danger triggers
some Survival Mechanism that stops any
further destructive forward momentum. Of
course, we need to keep in mind two things, first, that our Innate Wisdom is
more generally an Animal instinctual intelligence than Higher Human,
and, secondly, that Human Beings evolved to live in Groups. So our Innate Wisdom would consider Life and
Death issues to be both threats to the person as well as serious threats to
one’s social standing. Yes, keep in
mind that in Primitive times to be banished from the Group would have
been tantamount to a death sentence. I
suppose that’s the reason why people can seem so “disproportionately”
distraught if all that happens is that they’re not invited to some party. Social “slights” really aren’t that slight…not
that I’m complaining.
(4)What
the Survival Mechanism does is it triggers the secretion of a very large dose
of some kind of neurochemical cocktail, which is probably heavy on Dopamine,
the Happiness Hormone. Well, THAT causes
a complete “nervous breakdown” which effectively washes away the dysfunctional
personality; and of course that must be followed by a rebuild of the
Personality intended to make it much better adapted for surviving in the given
circumstances. Here we need to keep in
mind that Survival Adaptation can go in one of three ways: one can change the Environment to make it
more accommodating, or one can change one’s own cognitive appraisal to
make the environment SEEM more subjectively acceptable, or one can
simply leave and find a more hospitable Environment somewhere else. Yes, it’s either Fix It, beFriend It, or Flee
from it.
(5)So, yeah, when we do encounter people in
the aftermath of their “Breakdowns”, we might prime ourselves to expect that
they might react in any combination of those three ways. The “Fixing it” option will present us with
an energized Personality confident in his or her own ability to control people
and events, and while their actual performance may be hit and miss, you can at
least rely upon them to stay on the job because it’s kind of a hardwired
obsession with them now. And it isn’t about money with these people, unless of
course it’s money they’re focusing on. But
generally, if they obsess about some legitimate ‘calling’, they’re the
sort that will accomplish a lot and still die broke, investing, investing,
investing out of their own pockets and never thinking to cash out for the Pay
Day. The best model for this Adaptation
Pattern, that I can think of, is Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), the dynamic
powerhouse that got the New Age Movement going, and the narrative quality of
her writings have yet to be surpassed… you know, I honestly don’t know how
they can sell ‘new’ New Age Books when you can get Madame Blavatsky’s
practically for free since they are all in the Public Domain now. But,
yeah, when she died, with projects she developed going on on 3 Continents,
well, they were hard pressed to find the money to bury her.
(6)Those
who Adapt by Fleeing the scene will run
away and you might never see them again.
But those who go the Way of the Cognitive Shift, well, the
only thing that changes is their minds.
Their original dysfunction could’ve been with their inability to accept
the ways of Society, or they never felt as though they belonged. But the Cognitive Shift turns all that around.
If you think that a “leopard can’t change their spots”, well, these Leopards
are Cats of a different stripe. The New
Personality won’t think the Old Situation and even their Old Enemies quite so
bad anymore and will probably even positively like everything and
everybody now. No, they’re not
pretending. Even if they still don’t fit
in, they’ll no longer pick up on rejection cues the way they did before,
and it’ll be even harder to make them go away.
It might be like you gotta friend whether you want one or not and, and
since they seem so harmless now, well, most people will do as much boundary
setting as they can and live with it. Yes,
their new cognitive shift “Rose Colored Glasses” will turn this old
thorn patch into a Rose Garden, and they’ll be looking at us all like we’re all
dressed in lace and silver buckles, being pushed on tree swings, up
against a back drop of blue skies and fluffy white clouds, with
ribbons rapped in our hair flapping in the breeze. Yeah, it’s crazy, because
that’s clearly not who we are, or it’s Unconditional Love being taken to an uncomfortably
irrational extreme, but it’s better than what they were before, right? Yeah, getting past our own feelings and thinking
empathetically towards them, we can only wonder at the depths of
the depression and despair that had previously enveloped them and be
glad for their new found happiness, keeping in mind that our own annoyance with
their super sweet cloyingness is trivial by comparison. But also we need
to keep in mind that their Delusionality and lack of True Discernment should
prevent us from ever entrusting them with any real responsibilities; you know, Put
them on the Decorations Committee. Yeah,
it does seem paradoxical but their being “Enlightened” may block them from
seeing how the Real World works.
Well,
that’s it for Part One and now on to Part Two of our Series.
………………….
………………….
Hi
Everybody, This is Leo Volont with part Two of my four part series “The
Material Mechanics of Spirituality”
(7)
In Part One we introduced the idea of seeing the Spiritual Enlightenment
Experience more in the worldly terms of being like a One-Two Combination Punch
of Breakdown followed by Adaptive Rebuild, and we focused largely on the
Adaptive Determiners and the three main Orientations for Adaptive Response… you
remember: ‘The Three F’s”: Fix It, Befriend it, or Flee from it. But now let’s take a closer look at the
initial Breakdown experience. Of course,
high-minded hard-core Spiritualists might have a problem with the
starkly materialistic terminology we’re using.
Well, remember that when William James, the Harvard Psychologist, uses
the word “breakdown”, well, that’s him insisting on using his own clinical jargon,
his “Shop Talk”, and, yeah, it’s not the word we would’ve used. We would’ve wanted to say ‘Meaning of
Life Crisis’ or something like that. But
the word “Breakdown” does fit the Bio-Psycho Model we are discussing so
let’s not waste time trying to think up a euphemism just to smooth down our
ruffled feathers. Let’s just lean
into it and get used to the word “breakdown”.
(8)Yeah,
we hear of people having “nervous breakdowns” but most of what we personally
know about these ‘breakdowns’ probably isn’t all that much, and might just be
limited to the events that lead up to the breakdowns, that is, the extreme
crisis plot line that precipitates the Breakdown and not the Breakdown Experience
itself. If we do hear of anything about the
actual Breakdown Phase, well, obviously they are very cathartic and we hear of these
people being described as going into fetal positions and sucking on their
thumbs, or whatever, and we think, well, that’s not OUR Spirituality, where we
would imagine ourselves attaining Enlightenment in a dignified ramrod-straight
Lotus Position with our fingers twisted into exactly the precisely correct
‘enlightenment’ mudras and intoning Om the whole time. But keep in mind that those broken down
“Normal People” may not actually feel all that broken or all that
‘down’. In the same way as a ‘good cry’
might actually feel good, well, a tremendously profound “cry” might feel
all that much better, right? Probably
shot through with Dopamine, right? And
then remember what happens to us during our blissfully ecstatic
rapturous experiences, you know, with drugs or whatever, and, yes, our rigorous
sense of decorum might also take a slip towards the Wild Side and we’d probably
also be sprawled on the floor in a fetal position with our thumbs
stuck in our mouths. It wouldn’t be
that much fun if we weren’t, right?
I
can think of an example. Do a search for
Bernini’s “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa” and look where the arrow’s
pointing. Look how she’s slumped. Look at her Face. Peggy
Wren, a beautiful Blond Girl, an older student who mentored me back in
College, well, when I told her I was getting into Spirituality she showed me an
Art Book Quality Photo of a Painting based on Bernini’s Sculpture and said
“Yeah, Go For It! Looks like fun to me.” I suppose she was making the point that I
should remain grounded and not Idealize the process, whatever it would turn out
to be. And I never knew Peggy to be wrong
about anything. So, yes, Normal People
and Spiritual People are the same People, aren’t they? And so are the Experiences we have. They just
go by different names, depending on whether you’re an Insider or an Outsider.
(9)Oh,
we also see these Breakdowns for apparently other reasons than that the
person is living a dangerously unhealthy lifestyle or having a disastrously
abysmal social life. It might
just be the product of severe depression, mental conflicts, thoughts of guilt
or shame, or some, yeah, Meaning of Life crisis. What I think is happening with these is that the
body’s Innate Wisdom is sharp enough to discern when the Self is on the brink
of suicide. For instance, Leo Tolstoy
(1828 - 1910) had such a transformative experience. He had fallen into an almost debilitating
depression, which they called ‘melancholia’ back then… and this
was after he had finished his book “War and Peace” (published 1869). Yeah, it’s understandable that there can
be a sense of emptiness after achieving a much sought after goal, you know, the
“what am I supposed to do now?” feeling.
But anyway, I think Tolstoy’s Innate Animal Wisdom stepped in
before he could harm himself.
(10)
Oh, by the way, for those who think that Enlightenment might make a difference
with our objectively appraised performance levels, you know, actually BEING GOOD
FOR SOMETHING, well, just refer to Leo Tolstoy where we have very good
Before and After references: “War and Peace” for Before, and the novel “Anna
Karenina” [An-uh Kr-i-nuh-nuh] (published 1878) for the After. Yeah, some critics think that “Anna Karenina”
is the greatest novel ever written.
(11)Oh,
wait, before finishing up on this Part, we need to understand that James
himself recognized that there were some “Religious Conversion” experiences that
could not be accounted for using his Nervous Breakdown Model. Well, that gives me an opening to bring
up my favorite pet idea, the Collective Consciousness, and That brings
to mind my favorite YouTube Kundalini mentor, “Susu Ro”, a beautiful young
Spanish Woman, now working as an Artist, who had made, among her other videos, a
short video a few years back, which she took down, and I’ve been unable to
talk her into putting it back up, maybe because she can’t prove any of it, but
it presented a beautifully intriguing idea that each individual on Earth is a Hologram
of the World. To understand that
you need to understand how Holograms work, you know, that if you have a big Holographic
Glass Plate that contains a picture and then smash it into thousands of pieces,
well, each shard of that broken glass would contain the WHOLE COMPLETE ORIGINAL
holographic image, but in miniature. So
in Susu’s Vision we all have that Holographic
relationship to the World, that each of us is a microcosm, in exact precise detail,
of the Whole. So, when we think
it’s we ourselves who are becoming Enlightened, well, it’s actually the World
becoming Enlightened – through us and all around us.
(12)So,
yeah, THAT could account for the Spontaneous Instances of Enlightenment we hear
about, that unless there’s a lot of Synchronicity going on, well, the
personal details of one’s life may have nothing to do with becoming
Enlightened, but rather that the effective impulse is a kind of Planetary Life
Force Eruption and one just happened to be the one who got struck by its
Lightening. Really, we need to think
about this, that our believing in our own Personal Destiny may help us to get out of bed in the Mornings,
but may ultimately be delusional and that the World, if it does have its own
Consciousness, would consider its own far larger affairs to be almost
infinitely more important than anything we’d have going on for ourselves, right?
That’s to say that our becoming
Enlightened may not even be about us.
Take
the Enlightenment of Joan of Arc for instance.
Joan of Arc (1412-1431) lived during the Hundred Years War
(1337-1453). Impressed with her Mission from
God, given to her at the age of 13 (and that’s too ‘early’ to be Early Adult
Onset Schizophrenia), well, she effectively saved France and was instrumental in
throwing Evil England off the “Continent” and therefore perhaps substantially
changing the direction of Human History, saving us from the Devil, but for
herself, she ended up being burned at the stake, which can hardly be considered
much of a “Survival Mechanism”. But then,
being Burned may have been the most pivotal of her influential contributions,
even after she had already set the King of France on his Throne. You see, France, collectively outraged and
priorly divided by Provincial Loyalties, now for the first time united as a
Nation and did for martyred Joan’s memory what they wouldn’t do for their King. They fought! So, yes, this whole Episode was way bigger
than just the angst of a Teenage Peasant Girl. Now wouldn’t that lead us to believe
that Holographic Mother Earth knew all along how this would all play out?
Yes,
that’s it for Part Two and now on to Part Three. Thanks everybody.
……………………….
……………………….
Hi
Everybody. This is Leo Volont with part Three
of my four part series “The Material
Mechanics of Spirituality”
(14)The
term ‘Enlightenment’ seems to suggest a sense of fullness and completeness
which is misleading in this context. We
should remind ourselves that James sees the “Conversion Personalities” as
simply being ‘emergency constructs’ and that they’re always simplistic
cartoonish caricatures and done in hard outlines. This is why James recommends NOT being
Enlightened because it robs us of our subtlety, deadens our sense for nuance,
and would shipwreck us if we should try to navigation through Life’s deep
fathoms of Complexities while having made ourselves fit only to be shallow. Ironically,
no Intellectual should ever be “enlightened”.
(15)Yes,
in the section of James’ “Varieties…” that discusses Saint Teresa of Avila
(1515-1582) we learn that emissaries from the Vatican, rather than locking her
up, decided that despite her innovative changes to the traditional
Monastic Rules she was actually in full compliance with basic Church doctrine. And so
Teresa was so grateful to her Inquisitors, for their reasonableness, that she
offered to take them under her personal tutelage so they could also attain
to Mystical Union with God. Well, they
didn’t need more than a moment to contemplate her offer. They instantly replied “No thank you. God
can wait until we’re dead but until then we have our jobs to do.” I think what they meant was that they needed
to stay sharp. And remember, this wasn’t
their first rodeo and she wasn’t the first Saint they ever met. We need to
assume that they knew what they were looking at and didn’t want to find
themselves in a position where some day they’d be looking at the same
thing looking back at them from the mirror, probably with some silly “Enlightened”
smirk on their face.
(16)But
while the Personality Reconstructions may all be simplistic, that
doesn’t mean they’re all the Same, and James’ “Varieties” pops the bubble of
delusion that maintains that ‘All Religions Are Basically the Same’. They’re not. You see, the Mind’s Randominity admits to no uniformity
and so the Restructuring Personality will Rebuild to form the best
fit to any troublesome and unique Life Situation. If there is ever any Uniformity, it must be
imposed using strict controls. Manifestations of Personality Recrystallizations
can cover a frightful range of bizarre Beliefs.
On the evil extreme, both Military and
Criminal Organizations use the Breakdown and Buildup Model, probably
straight out of James, to train Special Forces, Spies and Assassins. The first “assassins” were from some
crazed Sufi Religious Order that covered its expenses by hiring out very
competent and very expendable assassins who went joyfully on their suicide
missions expecting to wake up in Paradise. Then
there are the Martial Arts that pretend to be Spiritualized but
aren’t they just the Idealization of Belligerent Machismo? It’s the Rebuild Response of those who grew up
dysfunctionally unable to fit into normal peer status hierarchies and therefore
saw everybody as “Bullies” (“ohlook!theBullieskeeppickingonmesoI’m
thekaratikid”) and so they reoriented their lives making Reactive Violence
their Religion.
(17)Yes,
for training programs based on the Breakdown Rebuild Model of Personality
Restructuring, the Rebuild Phase must be
strictly controlled. But what about
spontaneous breakdowns, you know, if it should happen to you or I
while living our ordinary lives outside of any kind of cognitive structuring? Well, the results could end up being really strange. The way I would imagine it working is
that during the Meltdown Phase the sense of “normal” would go into reset
and all the old rules and safeguards would go into flux or hang in suspension. Then
as a new ‘Better Adjusted’ personality crystalizes, well, I think it
would be a very delicate time where even just passing thoughts and impressions could
be imprinted with the weight of Divine Imperatives.
(18)One
example in “Varieties” illustrates this point well: a young man had just
emerged from his Breakdown State of Bliss and he was regaining
the use of his faculties and so he reached for his pack of cigarettes and
lit one up when his sister barked “I thought I told you to quit that nasty
habit”, and so that’s what he immediately did… never touching another cigarette
for the rest of his life, which, of course, we’d think is a good thing, but
it seemed insanely disproportionate that he spent as much time then
onwards in preaching against tobacco as for the Kingdom of
God. Imagine what might have happened if
he had scratched himself instead of reaching for a Smoke! Those would have been
some pretty interesting Sermons, huh?
(19)I
myself ran across an example of radically extreme bizarreness: I saw a book being promoted and its title was
“Screw Everything”, but the author used the F word. Yes, the author tells a story of having had a
complete nervous breakdown in the course of which he gets a Quasi-Divine
Revelation. This Vision would be the
basis of his New World Order. We would only
have to sneer at whatever we had previously considered important, and
then in all future actions be dismissive and not care in the least
whether we meet our objectives or not.
Then Utopia would automatically roll out before us, shining in all
its splendor and glory, which of course we shouldn’t care a Fig about, as, yeah,
I think this is from his stupid book: “Caring
is just Worrying wearing a Pretty Lace Veil”. Really!?
But, yes, it’s easy to see the
footprints of his own personal Innate Wisdom in all that. His new disdainfully amoral Personal Ethos absolves
him of all responsibilities, relieves him of performance anxieties and
makes a virtue of his naturally sour and hateful disposition. Yeah, let me write a book. I’ll call it “Screw Him!” but I’ll use the F
word.
(20)But,
anyway, many of us in the Spiritual Community have been zealously striving for Enlightenment
for years or even decades. We’ve been Meditating,
doing Yoga, intoning Mantras or being Devoted to whatever the last book we read
said we needed to be Devoted to. We’ve
been chasing Gurus, signing up for Seminars, using our precious Vacation Time
to go on Pilgrimages to foreign 3rd World hell holes, and following
really stupid dress codes. And for What!?
We find out what really works best is just to go into a spinning
nose dive and hitting ‘Rock Bottom’!? Learning
that Enlightenment isn’t some Noble Quest after all but just some visceral response
to really rotten luck!? …… Yeap, that’s
about the size of it. Unfortunately,
if we can cope with our life situations, then Enlightenment is not only
unnecessary but functionally unattainable.
(21)The
real qualifier for Enlightenment is to FAIL, and to fail BIG. Yes, the Books talk of finding Enlightenment
by RENOUNCING the World. Well, first,
we need to understand that if it’s a ‘Guru’ telling you to ‘renounce the
World’, well, generally the Guru wants to be the recipient of all your
renounced goods, and then with nothing of your own left to live on, well
then your last refuge would be the Guru’s Cult, right? All
very convenient for the Guru, isn’t it?
He’ll be saying “Caught That Fish”. But if it’s a Book telling you to
Renounce the World, well, yeah, that would really work, wouldn’t
it? But not the way we’d intuitively
think. Renouncing the World is
effectively Planning to Fail and inviting the Crisis that will precipitate
our Breakdown. Think about it for a moment: you quit your job, ditch your smart phone, give
away all your money, change your name and walk away from all the friends and
family that could save you from yourself, and, then, where would you
find yourself? Well, you can’t get
any more “rock bottom” than that, can you?
First one’s health would go into decline because of malnutrition
and the stresses of homelessness, and then the
psychological snap! would soon follow.
(22)
But, then remember the Adaptive
Second Step to the Enlightenment Experience.
These Enlightened Individuals, the Followers of the Path of
Renunciation, well, if the Pre-Breakdown Crisis doesn’t kill them, then they
rise up and become, for the sake of survival and as an exact and precise
adaptive response, well, they become quintessentially
the most skilled and adept Beggars on the face of the Earth. Just look at India… at the most acclaimed
Super Star Gurus. Aren’t they just Super
Specialized World Class Major League Beggars? Yeah, instead of bowing at their feet we
should just toss a dollar on the floor and say “Hey Swami, how ‘bout a little
Song and Dance”. That’s basically what
we get from them anyway, right?
Well,
that’s it for Part Three. Now on to the
final Part… Part Four. Thanks
everybody. See ya later.
………………
………………
Hi
Everybody. This is Leo Volont with Part Four,
the final part, of my series “The Material Mechanics of Spirituality”
(23)
When I first read James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience” back in College,
well, the materialistic analysis of the schema stunned me. It probably
took me decades to thoroughly work through the denial and digest
what I’d read. I suppose one of my
first insights in this regards occurred to me when I came across a Buddhist
Monastery in the Far East during my earliest stint of World Travels. I found that in the whole establishment
there wasn’t a single monk who had himself voluntarily enrolled into
the Monastery. They had all been there
since infancy, having either been left on the doorstep in a basket or
been endowed for life and then walked away from. You see, they were largely illegitimate
children born to girls who had committed youthful indiscretions, and if
the resultant babies could be taken off their hands then perhaps they
could once again pass for virgins, marry, and enjoy a normal life. But, anyway, essentially these Monasteries were,
in functional terms, warehouses for people who had no place in the larger
society.
(24)But,
yes, I had read of both Monastic
Traditions in Catholic Europe and Monastic Traditions in Asia, where it really had
seemed that the pursuit of Religious Enlightenment had been the point of it
all. Was there along the line some change
in Mission or a reordering of Purpose? Or are both aspects true in their
separate contexts? Well, yes, I suppose
we need to take a closer look.
(25)Okay,
first, how do you even run a Monastery? Even if some of the children are dropped off with
endowments, we could expect most to depend upon charity. Food, clothing and firewood would always come
at a cost. Also, we must wonder about the convenience of
the Caregivers. Yes, children would be
easy enough to manage, because if they misbehaved they could literally be handled.
But what about regulating the
behaviors of the adults? Remember that
these Monks are not just orphans as children, but orphans for life. So, no, they couldn’t be allowed to grow into
adults full of self will, with their own opinions on how to run everything,
arguing, talking back, and even bursting out into angry violent fits of rage
in reaction to their lives of tedium, privation and endless frustrations. No!...that
kinda stuff’s not permitted.
(26)So the whole system would be impossible
if a way couldn’t be found to contain and pacify these inmates. Remember that back in Ancient Times
they didn’t even have Jails or Prisons because of the prohibitive
expense of supplying food and maintaining guards. So they simply killed criminals. But surely the Ancient World would draw the line at killing babies, right? Well, let’s look at it. We read of “nose pinching” babies that don’t
pass their initial Health and Heartiness Inspections and that some cultures
would put off birth registration ceremonies until the seventh day in order to determine
whether or not the infants qualified as “keepers”… but what happens to the
Non-Keepers, right? So, yes, the Ancient World was NOT above
killing babies. So these Monastic Babies
we’re talking about, being allowed to live and grow to be Adults, well, what
made them so different that the Cruel Hard Cold Heart of the Ancient World
softened for them? Well, the way I
figured it is the compromised but still beloved Daughters of Good Families
would have been outraged if their “babies” had been snuffed out by
those “nose-pinches”. I imagine that these
Young Girls would only agree to return to Virtue and play their parts in
reflecting well upon the Honor of their Families if their Babies were given a respectable
place somewhere in Society, and Religiously oriented Monasteries would
fit that bill perfectly, and from that there developed the Religious Monastic
Ascetic Ideal.
(27)Now
think about how convenient the Ascetic part of the Religious Monastic Ascetic
Ideal is for the Monastery’s Management. First we have the Vows of
Poverty. Well, poverty’s easily
arranged. Then in regards to boarding, the
food budget would be easier to handle if Vegetarianism and periodic Fasting became
the norms. To cover for self will,
arguing and talking back, well, there we have the Vows of Obedience and
Humility. Many Religious Orders had Vows
of Silence, which is effectively “Shut Up! We don’t wanna hear it”. Finally we have the Vows of Celibacy. Of course they couldn’t be allowed to
reproduce. But they needed to be given
some excuse to cover for their inevitable sexual frustrations, and so
they literally made a Virtue of Necessity.
(28)Now,
let’s think about these “Ideals” for a moment. Imagine if any one of us were to be put into
a situation like that, subjected to rules that seemed designed to make our
lives utterly miserable, well, how do you think we would cope? Well, most likely we wouldn’t. The body’s autonomic nervous
system would be dysfunctional if it didn’t click in to provide some
kind of an accommodation to make a hell-hole like the typical Monastery seem
in some way bearable. And so, of
course, these places are the Source of all of our classically described
Religious Spiritual Realizations, our Enlightenments, our Nirvanas and Satori’s.
Monasteries were the Nervous Breakdown
Capitals of World. That they weren’t
just veritable Insane Asylums manufacturing their own Insanity is
attributable to the care they took to structure the adaptive rebuilds
around a respectably ideal Religious Model.
(29)
In these Monasteries Religion permeates everything and no other cognitive
distractions are permitted. Prayers are
scheduled morning, noon, and night and there are Chapel Services several times
a day. Religious Iconography is
all over the place. So of course when
they finally ‘Melt Down’ they’ll naturally pour themselves into the
Religious Molds that sit waiting for them. Yes, in reading of these Saints we are expected
to suppose that they were speaking and writing from Divine Revelation,
but now we find it much more likely that they only ‘reveal’ what had
been echoing in their ears since childhood.
(30)Yes,
this Medieval Monastic Model explains a lot.
Decades ago I read a book about Zen Buddhism by D.T. Suzuki (1870 to 1966),
and he was talking about a Zen Buddhist Conference that had recently been held
in Japan, a big one that convenes only once every Generation, and he remarked
that everybody was collectively embarrassed to find that nobody attained
Satori Enlightenment this time around. So,
yeah, he wondered what went wrong. Well,
duh! These are modern times and Japan was becoming prosperous with a high
standard of living. There were no longer
any Monastic Warehouses with their pressurized Privations and Miseries to react
to. So of course nobody
at that swanky resort conference could be expected to have some quasi-spiritual
“nervous breakdown”. The kind of Satori Experience they wanted
could only be accessed through a bio-psychological Escape Hatch. And Optimistically forward looking Japan,
tracing its upward arc to having the highest standard of living in the World, well,
that was Not the Kinda Place anybody would want to escape from…well, not unless
they were a live fish flopping around on a table in a Sushi Restaurant.
(31)So,
yes, when the Status Quo of Normal Life is already like sailing on pallid blue
waters, then isn’t an Obsessive Goal Oriented Spirituality only making waves
and rocking the boat? So shouldn’t we
all just focus on learning to cope well with Life and just be Happy. But if things ever do go sour, well, we
can assume that Spirituality would automatically assert itself,
wouldn’t it? Crisis and Breakdown would be our Silver Linings around any significantly
Dark Cloud, right?
(32)But, yes, as a kind of an Insurance
Plan it probably would be wise to recommend that we educate ourselves in the Social Moral and Aesthetic Ideals
in order to give one’s self the proper Cognitive Foundation so that if Crisis
ever did Strike and we were to be broken down and reduced to Enlightenment,
well, our Adaptive Response would turn out to be a commendable one and
not just either some bazaar transcendental nihilistic dress code fashion embarrassment
or some Idealization of Reactive Hate. Maybe Our Ideal should be to make
each other happy by making our World a better place to live in.
Well,
that’s it for the Series. Thanks everybody.
If I can think of anything else, I’ll let you all know. Bye!
