There have been a thousand holocausts, which have occurred in a thousand ways and will recur, both by fire and by water and by many other means - (Priests of Egypt to Solon)

The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality - one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.

It is some vision. However, as the movie points out, the price for the establishment of this glowing future utopia may be, and probably will be, the end of individuality.

To achieve world government, it is necessary to remove from the minds of men their individualism, loyalty to family traditions, national patriotism and religious dogmas - Dr. G. Brock Chisholm (psychiatrist and co-founder of the World Federation of Mental Health)

In any case, we cannot but wonder at the conspicuous difference of opinion that exists between the ancient elders and people of the modern world over the question of man's past. It is certainly not easy to reconcile the two disparate world views. It would seem that every human being is divided and classified by their ideas and prejudices regarding the problem of the past.

Man is perfect at his origin, a divine being who has degenerated into what we are - R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Egyptian Miracle)

Fallen, Lost and Imperfect

…primeval man was the truest model and representative of man, and that all human progress since, though upward in some things, has been in the main an unceasing deterioration…All the world that came next after primeval man honored and even worshipped their first fathers as very gods of light, knowledge and greatness - Joseph A. Seiss (Gospel of the Stars)

There is, however, a secondary question that arises in our minds after we hear about the strange perspectives of the elders. If they are correct, and if men have lost their way, it implies that they were once connected to and rooted in the real. It implies that man once stood at the font of all knowledge, the altar of truth. This is, indeed, what the ancient myths and legends report. They repeatedly emphasize that men fell from a state of spiritual, mental, and moral perfection:

Then she added a prophecy in which she foretold the approaching end of the Divine Age and the beginning of a new one, in which the summers would be flowerless, the cows milk less and women shameless and men strengthless, in which there will be trees without fruit and seas without fish, when old men would give false judgments and legislators make unjust laws, when warriors would betray one another and men would be thieves and there would be no more virtue in the world - (Prophesy of Badb, War Queen of Ireland)

Then saw she wade in heavy streams, men – foul murderers and perjurers, and them who others wives seduce to sin, brothers slay brothers; sisters’ children shed each others’ blood. Hard is the world, sensual sin grows huge. These are the sword-ages, axe-ages, shields are cleft in twain, storm ages, murder-ages – till the world falls dead – (The Norse Volupso, "The Wise-Woman’s Prophecy")

Given that men were once intimately connected to Truth, and in direct communion with the source of life, it is logical to ask how that state can again be reached and realized. Can it be reached via technology and science, or, as so many philosophers believed, by the exercise of reason? And we might question whether modern man is moving toward that communion and rapport or further away from it?

Tea and Taoism

There was something formless yet complete, that existed before heaven and earth, without sound, without substance, dependent on nothing, unchanging, all-pervading, unfailing, One may think of it is as the Mother of all things under heaven - Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

In the far east, the refrain of the sages is identical, although the moral and spiritual declination is framed and communicated differently. The ancient Taoists were, for example, dedicated to the veneration of their "ancestors." They speak of man's loss of virtue and loss of communion with the Tao, a Numina that must, according to the sages, remain unexplained. It is, they maintain, unnameable and unknowable. This sounds rather contradictory until we realize the profound wisdom that lies behind such ambiguous and poetic declarations.

Pythagoras was said to have been the first man to call himself a “philosopher;” in fact, the world is indebted to him for the word philosopher. Before that time the wise men had called themselves “sages,” which was interpreted to mean “those who know.” Pythagoras was more modest. He coined the word “philosopher,” which he defined as ”one who is attempting to find out” - Manly Palmer Hall

		Taoist sages refuse to direct a seeker toward the Tao. They merely ask us to seek it out for ourselves. They emphasize that man is the microcosm of the universe that he erroneously believes exists solely outside of his own being. The sages know that the Tao is a way or path, and not a goal or achievement in any accepted sense. The Taoist confines himself purely to apophatic and deconstructive critiques. His job is to Socratically point out the flaws in all systems that are not rooted in Tao. In other words, although we may not be able, through logic and argument, to prove what a thing is, we can discern what it is not. In short, the Taoist is a student of human folly. The first result of this illusion is that our attitude to the world “outside” us is largely hostile. We are forever “conquering” nature, space, mountains, deserts, bacteria, and insects instead of learning to cooperate with them in a harmonious order – Alan Watts The fool who persists in his folly will become wise – William Blake
Lao Tzu (600-427 BC), the Taoist sage and author of the Tao Te Ching

When we study the history of religion and philosophy, we commonly come across ambiguous references to the great Numina to which men were once directly connected. Indeed, whether this Numina be referred to as god, spirit, mind, life force, chi, or Tao, etc, it is always described as a great mystery. In philosophical terms, it is the "ground" of the world and of life.

The valley spirit never dies. It is called "the mysterious female." The gate of the mysterious female is called "the root of heaven and earth." It is there within us all the while; Draw upon it as you will, it never runs dry - Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

What we understand from a close reading of the great Tao Te Ching - "The Book of the Way and its Virtue" - is that the Tao is mysterious and everlasting. It is the root and gateway of all Existence. It might loosely be considered feminine in nature, although translators emphasize that it is a matter of personal choice as to whether the Tao is rendered feminine or masculine, since the Chinese script of author Lao Tzu does not specify gender.

Tao was the original name of The Fundamental Laws of Nature. The term was once used by all the peoples of the ancient world, included the Americas - Gene D. Matlock

The Taoist sage understands the nature of the Tao/Numina. But as we said, he neither explains its nature nor directs people to it. He knows that the Numina which speaks to him comes and goes according to its own desire, and is not summoned or directed by prayers or willpower. The Tao is transcendent and imminent, active and passive, strong and weak. In ambiguous words, the Taoists tell us of the Tao and the sages awakened to its presence:

The Pure Men of old acted without calculation, not seeking to secure results. They laid no plans. Therefore, failing, they had no cause for regret; succeeding, no cause for congratulation. And thus they could scale great heights without fear...They did not know what it was to love life and hate death. They did not rejoice in birth, nor strive to put off dissolution. Quickly come, and quickly go - Chuang Tzu

Ultimately, the Taoist is the Tao. He is himself Existence and Truth. Although this may sound heretical, it is nonetheless true. How long, we wonder, will it take for a man to understand that there is no enlightenment outside himself. How much time will pass before man realizes once and for all that there is no spiritual illumination or social perfection waiting for him in the future?

The plain fact is that unawakened men can never, regardless of how they try, build anything solvent and holistic. Only the awakened man can live perfectly and authentically and know all there is to know about himself and the world. However, such a Being cannot and will not live his life in an environment constructed and inhabited by unsane men transfixed by false ideas about Existence. He naturally prefers to live separately and alone, away from "civilized" communities and institutions. Their ways are not his ways. Their problems are not his problems, and their satori is not his satori. He remains profoundly unmutual and negative.

Everything understood by the term co-operation is in some sense an evil - William Godwin

...a "sannyasin"...a solitary being, a wanderer, absolutely happy in his aloneness. If somebody walks by his side it is okay, it is good. If somebody leaves it is also okay, it is good. He never waits for anybody, and he never looks back. Alone, he is whole - Osho (Love, Freedom and Aloneness)

Alas, I can see that you do not know what it means to be alone. Wherever there have been powerful societies, governments, religions, or public opinions - in short, wherever there was any kind of tyranny, it has hated the lonely philosopher; for philosophy opens up a refuge for man where no tyranny can reach: the cave of inwardness, the labyrinth of the breast; and that annoys all tyrants - Fredrick Nietzsche

A Mysterium is Born

That which is created by mind, is more real than matter – Charles Baudelaire

The Age of Catastrophe caused the ego of man to take birth. The ego arose like a ghost from the grave of a shattered consciousness. However, not only was the ego born from the flames of chaos, it was itself wounded by the trauma that fragmented man's ancestral psyche. The trauma that brought ruin to one form of consciousness, and crisis to the subsequent form, has not been healed. It remains a memory within the subconscious, and lies at the root of the peculiar psychological traits - the masochism, sadism, and psychopathic tendencies - found in the vast majority of human beings. The pain and scarring caused by ancestral trauma is the reason why the ego is so characteristically rigid and defensive. In fact, the ego's very existence is due to its capacity for exclusivity, autonomy, and differentiation. These tendencies, however, do not exist merely because the ego seeks to differentiate itself from the so-called "Id," or unconscious. They exist because the ancestral psyche experienced trauma and fragmentation, which in turn caused the ego to "contract" and "armor" itself. The destabilization eventually caused the ego to gradually section itself off from the rest of consciousness. It also caused the ego to develop an irrational antipathy toward Nature. Therefore, since the Age of Catastrophe, the traumatized ego has been wary of and hostile toward Nature. This fact has not been given the attention and thought it deserves. In short, the defensiveness of the ego complex is a direct result of psychic insecurity caused by elemental chaos.

What is more, the repressed antipathy felt by the ego toward Nature increases over time. One might say that the fear of Nature has, in Jungian parlance, become an "archetypal" idea. Man may not be consciously aware of his antipathy toward the natural world, but he does experience the consequences of it. In fact, man's well-recorded search for "meaning" - together with his "spiritual" ardor and aspiration - is an effect of his repressed antipathy and even animosity toward Nature and her processes. Man's search for the "essence" or "mystery" of life is his irrational method of regaining paradise, that is, the communion with "Allness" that was tragically lost in ages past.

The difficulty of egoic existence is that humanity has been gradually losing contact with reality. After all, animosity toward Nature is ultimately animosity toward the real. And reality includes man's physical body. Ergo, existentially and psychologically speaking, western man is largely estranged not only from Nature - his true creator - but from his physicality. In other words, he has become a mental and ultimately technological creature. Losing touch with his body and world causes man to lose touch with Existence, as the sages and philosophers of antiquity defined it. Instead of being attentive to his Existence, man has become infatuated with essence and mystery. In fact, as a few Existential philosophers and psychologists state, man has altogether lost interest in the significance of Existence. Since the dawn of history, he has been preoccupied with the "mystery" of life, rather than life itself. Simply put, man is infatuated with mystery, not Being.

Till now man has been up against Nature. From now he will be up against his own nature - Dennis Gabor

In Latin, the term “great mystery” is translated “Mysterium Magnum” and, as in the east, western philosophers and theologians generally regard the Mysterium in an abstract manner.

		In other words, the great mystery of the philosophers cannot be seen sensually. It is not hiding among the trees, behind the clouds, or skulking in a cave waiting to be trapped and put on display by some intrepid "Indiana Jones" type. In fact, depending upon which tradition a person comes from, the great Mysterium can be defined as god, spirit, essence, higher consciousness, nirvana, purpose or life meaning, physical excellence, intellectual supremacy, global peace, utopia, and so on. It apparently means different things to different people. Evidently, it is one idea in the heads of many. A review of religion shows us that the Mysterium has been given many insignias. The Mysterium is the reason for most people's lives, and the goal for which they seek. Every race and culture has cherished hieroglyphs to exemplify it.
Pharaoh Akhenaton - Disciple of the Mysterium.

For the ancient Pharaoh Akhenaton it was the solar disk, for Christians it is the cross or Bible, for Muslims the Koran, and for Jews it was and still is the Torah and Temple of Solomon.

Religious man's search for the Mysterium preoccupies his every thought. It determines his life, actions, and vision of the future, and apparently sets him aside from other human beings. His quest, determination, level of self-knowledge, depth of understanding, and vision of himself and others, are based on his everlasting journey and where it leads him.

The Mysterium of religious men is not, however, the same thing as the Tao. This is because it is a mental construct and not born from Nature. In fact, the curious thing to always remember when we deal with philosophical questions, is that the human mind is not responsible for creating humanity or the world. Very few people in the world give this fact the thought it deserves. Nevertheless, it is axiomatic that our bodies and minds are the creation of Nature and the world. Mind is born of Nature and bred by the world. Mind deludes itself and imagines itself superior to Nature. It imagines that Nature is separate and distinct from itself. This is of course nonsense. If it were true, it follows that we would have little to learn from Nature. If our minds came into the world knowing everything there was to know, Nature would not have much to teach us. And yet, we have learned everything from Nature. This is the fact, and it goes for the individual and the whole of humankind through time.

It is, therefore, axiomatic that mind is not all-knowing. From the instant a man is born he learns. Learning is equivalent to life. To not learn is to not grow, mature, and exist in a state of harmony with the world. Therefore, mind is metaphysically or ontologically subservient to Nature. Mind is compelled to learn from Nature and Existence, and to never be able to know everything there is to know about Nature and Existence.

The fallacy that mind created Nature does not infect the Taoist. He knows that the Tao is not the product of mind but of Nature. In fact, Tao may simply be a name for the creative power of Nature, a power that scientists and theologians are desperate to understand and control. However, the Taoist maintains that science will never understand the workings of the Tao, and we might question why they make this assertion.

The Mysterium is not the Tao. It is not the Numina. It is a simulacra of the Numina that lies concealed behind the façade of the mind-made Mysterium, concealed from man by his own mental architecture and cacophony. Like all-encompassing, concentrically-arranged, spherical veils around the mind of man, the Numina exists on the outside, and the Mysterium on the inside nearest man. As man expands or inflates the scope and size of the Mysterium, the size and scope of the Numina likewise inflates. Thus, man is never nearer to the Numina regardless of what he does or how long his seeking and ardor continues. His very activity ensures that the Numina ever remains beyond his reach. His seeking pushes the sought away. Of this predicament and fiasco man was long ago alerted. Force begets force, warned the Taoists.

If our knowledge were represented by the radius of a circle, as we increase our knowledge the circle becomes larger. What is beyond the circle is the unknown, so that the more we know, the more that is unknown and it goes on that way - Bear Heart

A lot of questions about the nature of the human world can be answered, and a lot of mysteries explained, once we realize that the Mysterium is a phantasm with the same date of birth as the ego. In fact, the original Mysterium is the ego, that is, a man's wholly unrealistic sense of identity. The Mysterium, like the ego, is an abstraction created by the mind of man, or more correctly, by the broken mind of man. It is a symptom of man’s bicamerality.  

The change to a more hostile stance toward nature began between five and ten thousand years ago and became more destructive and less accountable with the progress of civilization...In hindsight this change has been explained in terms of necessity or as the decline of ancient gods. But more likely it was irrational (though not unlogical) and unconscious, a kind of failure in some fundamental dimension of human existence, an irrationality beyond mistakenness, a kind of madness - Paul Shepard (A Kind of Madness)

		The presence and influence of the Mysterium causes the mind-body dilemma that has preoccupied and confounded so many philosophers throughout the ages. Dualism arises because man has been unable to decide whether the world is fundamentally physical or mental. Does the world exist beyond human perceptions, or is it there due to a mental projection? This question, which is a main one asked by philosophers, has never been satisfactorily resolved. Actually, the question to ask is why the dualism arose in the first place. Why does the mind question whether the world is physical or mental? Why can't the mind decide and resolve the problem simply and affirmatively? Is it because man's understanding is itself split? Is it because man's perspective on life is not singular but divided? Is man eternally doomed to flit between two exclusive perspectives when he views reality? It would appear so. Man does indeed view reality dualistically, and it is the presence of the Mysterium that causes the dilemma.

Man has the mask of the Mysterium over his face. And the mask has two eye sockets to see through. But over these sockets are dissimilar colored lenses. If man opens an eye and looks through a socket of the mask, he sees reality in one color, so to speak. When he looks through the other eye, reality appears to be colored differently. Either way, his vision is distorted. Even if both eyes are open his vision is not substantially improved. He cannot see reality as it truly is as long as he dons the mask of the Mysterium. To see what reality as it is, and to see what he himself as he is, the mask must be removed and cast to the ground.

The Self-Begotten Mind

Religion is the universal compulsive neurosis of mankind – Sigmund Freud

The false and fantastic notion that man created himself appears in the cosmologies of certain races. For instance, the chief progenitor god of the ancient Egyptians, Atum Ra, allegedly conjured himself into being parthenogenically. Ancient pyramid texts report that Atum arose from the primordial abyss, masturbated semen into his own hand, and gave himself birth. He is described as "self-born" or "self-begotten." Like Jehovah, Atum was "I am that I am," the "Alpha and Omega."

Atum created by his masturbation in Heliopolis. He put his phallus in his fist, to excite desire thereby. The twins were born, Shu and Tefnut – Pyramid Text (Utterance 527)

Of course, the story is no more logical than that of Adam giving birth to Eve in the Garden of Eden. Nevertheless, the self-begotten gods clearly represent the all too human delusion that all things are brought into being by mind. In truth, the great Mysterium sought by the mind of man is the mind's own creation. Once this is understood, many illusions are dispelled.

The thought that the male can create living beings by himself – with his mouth, through his word, out of his spirit – is the most unnatural fantasy conceivable; it denies all experience, all reality, every natural condition. It disregards all the laws of nature in order to attain the one goal of presenting the male as the perfect being per se, who possesses the ability life appears to have denied him, the ability to give birth - Erich Fromm

The idea that man's mind is creator of all came about due to trauma. Once, long ago, as the ancient sagas relate, the consciousness of human beings was truly whole. It experienced Allness and interacted directly and profoundly with Nature - the Numina. After the Age of Catastrophe, and as a result of it, man's consciousness suffered severe trauma. Consciousness fragmented and what we now know as the "ego" took birth. An instant later, the ego's evil twin - the Mysterium also arose from the flames of chaos. The Mysterium and ego were both born from trauma, and both have at their foundation a deep abiding distrust - one might even say - antipathy toward Nature. We believe that consciousness cannot be completely fathomed without an understanding of this particular form of psychic antipathy, and go so far as to say that this primal predisposition is the reason for human pathology.

The ego is the ghost that rose from the grave of the self. It was all that remained of a consciousness that was once unadulterated and whole. Modern man's sense of identity is for the most part merely ego-identity. Man's ego is not, however, the totality of his being. Knowing this explains a great deal and answers many perplexing questions about life and existence.

Inasmuch as the ego is only the centrum of my field of consciousness, it is not identical with the totality of my psyche, being merely a complex among other complexes. Hence I discriminate between the ego and the Self, since the ego is only the subject of my consciousness, while the Self is the subject of my totality: hence it also includes the unconscious psyche. In this sense the Self would be an (ideal) factor which embraces and includes the ego – Carl Jung

It may be difficult for us to understand how primeval shell-shock caused the human ego and aberrational Mysterium to come into being. We rarely entertain the idea that the self is identical to Nature, or that what we think of as Nature is the self. On the contrary, the ego serves as our identity. Strangely, we don't find it contradictory that everyone else on earth entertains the same idea.

In the Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes argued that self-consciousness emerged even more recently – at the time of the Bronze Age, some five thousand years ago. According to Jaynes, there was no sense of “I” before this period. It was their first experience of the thinking mind’s internal monologue, Jaynes speculates, that ancient peoples attributed to hearing the voice of god, or being addressed by spirits - Gregg D. Jacobs (The Ancestral Mind)

The thinking of all men is traumatized and autistic, not the thinking of one or two men. All mankind suffered the shell-shock and fallout of the Age of Catastrophe. Otherwise, the derangement we find in the human mind would not be widespread. The perplexing idioms of man's world, and of his societies, are explained when we realize how man's present consciousness came into being.

		When humans genuflect before murderous leaders and wrathful gods; when they murder, maim, and mutilate in the name of some cause or deity, and tear out the hearts of victims atop blood-drenched pyramids, it is because their actions and behavior is directed by aberrant thinking. It is because they are under the influence of a deeply embedded compulsion. They are, as it were, Mysterium-possessed. As we said, the Mysterium came into being at the same time as the ego, and was an after-effect of the same trauma that gave rise to the ego. It is the basis of human neurosis. It is from within, out of the mind of man that all evil emerges - (Mark 7:21-23)

The Mysterium runs in a similar way to a computer program, one that is almost impossible to turn off, uninstall or delete. Man's world certainly affects his mind, and his mind affects the world in which he lives. The world changes because of thinking. However, if man's thinking is Mysterium-possessed, the world will take on a abhorrent complexion, as it has done. The Mysterium infects the world of man as it infects his mind. It is, so to speak, the poison in the blood of the mind.

…man does not possess creative powers, he is possessed by them – Carl Jung

Reality is Triality

The Tao gives birth to One. One gives birth to Two. Two gives birth to Three. Three gives birth to all things – Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

The philosophy of Taoists can be rightly regarded as dialectical monism. Strictly speaking, however, Taoists are not monists or dualists but trialists. They revere the number three, and see it as the true symbol or emblem of the Tao. Interestingly, in Hebrew, the number three is named daleth, meaning "doorway," "portal," or "entrance," and in Greek it is named delta, which means "mouth" or "opening."

Threeness was much more important to Taoists than Oneness. This is because there is no such thing as Oneness. Oneness is an abstraction. It exists as an idea in man's mind, but not in reality. The world does not have only one stone, oak, river, sea, star, or mountain. There is not only a single deer, eagle, woman, or man. Things may certainly have unique qualities, such as the snowflake and tree leaf, but Oneness does not exist in the world of Nature. Twoness is not an abstraction, and neither is Threeness. They exist. There are two orbs in the sky, and two peaks on the mountain. There are three rivers flowing into the lake, and three crows upon the branch. If one raven exists, we can be sure that other ravens exist. If a lotus exists, we can be sure that there are other lotus plants somewhere. Philosophically speaking, a single thing does not exist. Man thinks otherwise because of his capacity for subjective thought. However, as has now been proven by Julian Jaynes, man's sense of himself as a distinct entity - a subjective self - is a late historical phenomenon.

Jaynes has suggested that human consciousness has changed its character even in historical times, the ego as we know it was not really in existence, except under extreme stress. And then it presented itself almost as an exterior intrusion into consciousness, like the voice of a god – Terrence McKenna

Self-awareness, reason, and imagination have disrupted the “harmony” that characterizes animal existence. Their emergence has made man into an anomaly, the freak of the universe. He is part of nature, subject to her physical laws and unable to change them, yet he transcends nature. He is set apart while being a part; he is homeless, yet chained to the home he shares with all creatures. Cast into this world at an accidental place and time, he is forced out of it accidentally and against his will. Being aware of himself, he realizes his powerlessness and the limitations of his existence. He is never free from the dichotomy of his existence: he cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he would want to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive – and his body makes him want to be alive – Erich Fromm (Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)

Each human being is an expression of Threeness. Each child is born from a male and a female, a man and woman. Therefore, a newborn child is the amalgam of his two parents as well as being himself. He is an expression of Threeness. And it is Nature, not men, that decide on how birth takes place. Nature has ordained it that a liaison between one man and one woman creates a new human being. Therefore, life itself, as well as the creative intelligence of Nature, is symbolized by the number Three. The Taoist's symbolized the Tao/Nature/Man by a symbol known as the Tomoe, a figure strikingly similar to the triskellion found on the most prominent ancient temple sites in Ireland.

Taoist Tomoe

Druidic Triskellion

There are tears and there is laughter, and there is neither. Being and non-Being; I and Not I; Man and Nature, and the marriage of both in a third. Each frond of the Tomoe is Three in One: Tao, Nature, Man, or, alternatively, Being, Thinking, Time. In the language of the philosopher Martin Heidegger, nothing Exists alone. Everything stands in relation to that which is beside and around it. A flower's petals flutter in the wind while other leaves around the flower remain still, ergo we notice the petals. An acorn has soil to germinate in, hence we have an oak. The limbs and muscles of a mountain goat are supple and strong because of the steepness of mountain sides. The hawk's eyesight is superb because a mouse moves under cover of grass. A hammer was created because of the peculiar properties of wood, a pedal because of the shape of a foot. The needle implies the existence of thread, that implies the existence of wear, that implies the existence of garments, that implies the existence of people, and so on. Every particular thing that exists is entangled with everything else around it. Each thing is in special and intimate relationship with everything else in the world. There is no subject or object, no this and that. Each thing "knows" or "recognizes" another thing without being a subject per se. The Beingness (Existence) of one thing links it intimately with the Beingness of every other thing. And Being predates the thinking, conceiving subject. A man must Exist before he can think. Therefore, when it comes to understanding and relatedness, thought is one stage too late.

The Aryan Trimurti (Creator, Sustainer, Destroyer)

We have erroneous ideas about number. We habitually but falsely associate Allness with Oneness, and erroneously consider Oneness to exist. Lets look at the one to nine sequence with their common interpretations:

One - birth, beginnings, self, god
Two - division, duality, separation, opposites
Three - creativity, growth, pregnancy, abundance
Four - structure, order, discipline, practicality
Five - experience, learning, understanding, expansion, man/woman
Six - sexuality, harmony, unification
Seven - subjectivity, self-analysis, introversion, religion
Eight - achievement, success, extroversion, conquest
Nine - mastery, refinement, precision, humanity, completion

On the face of it, the number 1 appears to represent wholeness and selfhood. It is the monad that arises from nothingness. In this sense, it suffices as a significator for god. It suggests strength and allness. However, as we said, Oneness is an abstraction. It is not experienced sensually. In other words, it does not exist outside of man's mind. It is, therefore, a Mysterium. To speak of mankind coming to Oneness is therefore illusionary. To speak of god as "one," or of "one truth," and so on, is to speak only of illusions. Today, we hear a great many people speaking of "Oneness." The term is synonymous with globalism and multiculturalism. It is a new talismanic word encapsulating the ideology of those seeking to establish the so-called New World Order. However, the Oneness of the globalists and New Agers is not a holistic wholeness. It is merely the amalgamation of broken shards. In short, Oneness does not serve as a true and authentic significator for allness or selfhood. On the contrary, it is a affirmation of separation and a gateway to Mysteria. A man's sense of selfhood, then, is simply separateness not wholeness or allness. Oneness is merely division disguised as unity.

What is the fall? If it is unity become duality, is it not God who is fallen? - Charles Baudelaire

Interestingly, every human being has a personal sense of identity. Everyone thinks of themselves as unique. However, sociologically speaking, it is odd that each person contains an idea of their own uniqueness. It seems contradictory to say "everyone is unique." Does this statement make philosophical sense? Is it true or the product of self-delusion? If Oneness is an illusionary idea, then identity and individuality as we think of them are also illusions.

Till the false is seen as the false, truth is not – J. Krishnamurti

The philosopher Georg Wilhelm Fredrich Hegel considered the problem of identity and individualism, and concluded that a man is deluded to think of himself as unique. First of all, man is born from man. He is the child of male and female parents. He is not self-begotten. Secondly, man's thoughts are not his own. He may believe he thinks for himself, and that his ideas are his own, but they are not. The content of one man's consciousness is the content of every man's consciousness. The German philosopher emphasized that a man cannot think of himself - of his own identity - without thinking of others. Thought of oneself implies thought of other people, because, as philosophers such as Hegel, Marx, Habermas, and Wittgenstein and many others emphasized, a man's vision of himself is largely based upon how he is regarded by those around him. Man is always conscious of how he is viewed by his fellows. In psychological parlance, a man's "persona" is entirely based on approval ratings. It is based on fitting in and being liked. According to Hegel, personal identity is a working fallacy. It is an illusion because thought of oneself is automatically and necessarily thought of and about others. Hegelians would stress that every man's body is the body of his fellows. The components of one human body are found in every human body, given that a body is not abnormal in form. Additionally, human cells do not work according to an individual self-generated program of action. They work together in conformity to a general program of activity.

Twoness has been defined as a numeral of division and separation, and also relationship. Some thinkers interpret Twoness as signifying primal scission, that is, the moment when god divided his own being in order to experience his own nature more completely. Two represents god (or thought) contemplating or experiencing his own nature. Of course, we may rightly be puzzled as to where bizarre ideas of this kind come from. After all, logically, god must be the creator of his opposite, which means that he experiences himself by way of another part of himself. In this case, conceptually speaking, the number two can be said to represent two expressions of the same phenomenon. To become whole, Oneness reaches out to the "other," seeking to merge with someone or something else in order to experience itself fully, thus confirming that Oneness is hardly Allness. If Oneness was complete, it would not seek to find or know itself by way of something or someone separate from itself. Therefore, Twoness confirms the inherent separateness of Oneness. In this sense, creation as we know it should be more correctly signified by Twoness. Twoness signifies god and the creation he brings into being. In other words, to all intents and purposes, Twoness seems to be a creation or extension of Oneness, and whatever Oneness creates must surely be part of itself, which implies that Oneness is greater than Twoness. It implies that Oneness came into being before Twoness. It is difficult for the mind to see it any other way.

However, if that which god reaches out to, in order to know himself, is created by his own hand, so to speak, then the creation is certainly not separate from the creator. In this case, we may question how god sets about realizing his own nature via that which is ultimately himself? Obviously, the answer is that he cannot do so. The paradox is simply solved once man realizes that the creation he sees around him is not an extension of god. It is not part of god, nor is it created by him. Nature has its own existence. We need not think of Nature as part of a supernatural god, or as a "creation" at all. After all, it is illogical to say that the creation into which god descends to know himself, is in fact a part of himself. If this be so, then god simply seeks to know himself as himself, which makes no sense. Why manifest Creation simply to know what is already known and experience what is already experienced? Where is the magnificence, wonder, and progress in that?

Twoness is either a part of Oneness, or it is not. If it is part of Oneness, then Oneness and Twoness are essentially the same thing. If Oneness seeks to "know" itself through contact with Twoness, then logically Twoness must be altogether different in nature than Oneness. It cannot have arisen from Oneness as many have erroneously speculated. However, the problem is resolved once we realize that the problem is not with Twoness but with Oneness. Indeed, there is no such thing as Oneness. Twoness and Threeness exist. Oneness does not.

Threeness is geometrically expressed by the triangle, a shape that serves to divide inner space from outer space. Thus Threeness represents both wholeness and separation. Moreover, Threeness can be experienced, because as we said, every child born is an expression of Threeness.
 

Inner space, outer space Cube and Hexagram within the Triangle Pythagorean Tetractys

The central diagram above shows the cube and square within the triangle. (The cube is born from six triangles.) Therefore, metaphysically speaking, we can see that Threeness gives "birth" to its opposite, something which Oneness cannot accomplish, since Oneness does not exist. Threeness is, therefore, the gateway of birth and true insignia of Creation.

In the Christian canon, Yahweh is doctrinally defined as a Holy Trinity - God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is three in one.

	The Christian Trinity. Oneness is an abstraction, whereas Threeness is real. Christian theologians were compelled to co-opt the tripartite delineation of the pagans (Taoists, Hindus, Amenists, and Druids).

Three triangular pyramids. Why? Newgrange Tumulus
	The triskellion or three interlocking spirals can be found etched into the great stones at Newgrange Tumulus in County Meath, Ireland. Newgrange cairn lies near to two other similar cairns (Knowth and Dowth) that form a giant earthwork-triskellion when viewed from the air. The three spirals also exist at the back of the innermost chamber or sanctum at Newgrange. Clearly, the Megalithic Irish, like the Eastern Taoists, revered the number three. This is because the number is the gateway to the real, a portal to the Numina, the perfect expression of the Tao, or creative intelligence of Nature.

Threeness, then, is the true significator for wholeness and allness. It is the gateway to the Numina, which is why the Taoists employed the Tomoe to symbolize the nature of the Tao, or true way.

Oneness may not exist, but uniqueness does. However, uniqueness is not bestowed upon us externally. It is not attributed by someone or something else. It is a state of consciousness. If we truly come to understand the existential significance of our lives and Beingness, we can rightly say we live and experience life uniquely. But to justly proclaim uniqueness we must have a deep and reverent relationship with ourselves and the world. If that rapport is dulled or dampened, taken casually and flippantly, and if we merely function passively and carelessly, there can be no authentic declaration of personal uniqueness.

The number three is the number of man. All men are born from two parents. So has it been ordained by Nature. Therefore, Nature regards every man she brings into being as an expression of Threeness. What is more, from a psychological point of view, man is also defined by the number three. This is because a man can be himself as he truly is; as he imagines himself to be; and as other people view him.

The man who chooses to exist in conformity to his own distorted image of himself, or as others perceive him to be, lives inauthentically. He will not be Tomoe. He will not be Tao. He will be the schizoid man, fallen and lost in the world of shadows.

…the sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society – and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic – Erich Fromm (Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)

Why Something Rather Than Nothing?

Primitive man was not a hundredth part so likely to be the victim of hallucinations or diseased subjectivity as a modern man – Gerald Massey

It can be said then, that historic man’s search for meaning prevents him from discovering meaning. Mind examines the Mysterium created by mind. Therefore, mind can know nothing more than itself. It cannot hope to know anything true and absolute about Nature and the world. And man has not learned anything true about the world he occupies. He has been getting further and further away from the place of understanding. As time passes, he will further estrange himself. His reasoning and tautological philosophical excursions will lead him only to the vales of confusion.

Of course, our point is most iconoclastic. On the face of it, man has been assiduously seeking for answers to the great questions posed by his own mind. Every religion of the world, and every school of the mysteries apparently seeks for "meaning," and to find out why there is "something instead of nothing." That is what each profess. Actually, they have not provided answers or important insights into the true questions of philosophy. They have simply created a Mysterium - an essence, god, or over-arching quest, and then, like Don Quixote, gone in search of it, zealously seeking to understand the nature of the “windmills” they have conjured in their own delirium.

Trying to understand the Mysterium preoccupies thinking men. For centuries it has driven them to great physical and mental feats. Every cathedral on the planet, such as those at Salisbury, Cologne, and Chartres, were raised in praise of the Mysterium. However, this form of endeavor, be it rational, idealist, pragmatic, pluralist, monist, or relativist in complexion, is inauthentic. It cannot arrive at truth or provide answers to the dilemmas of existence. This is because the endeavor does not address Being, which is the prime datum and "ground" of philosophy.

This Logos holds always, but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep - Heraclitus (535-475)

In his metaphysics, Plato's divides reality into two modes, the true and the apparent. The latter mode is perceived by the five senses and the former by the reason. Moreover, for Plato, reality of either mode is ultimately composed of unchanging “Forms.” When men are sufficiently moral and rational enough, they come into contact with these unchanging, eternal, antetypes. Instead of seeing the world of constant flux and change as natural, good, and real, Plato chose to posit the existence of an unseen, unchanging reality behind apparent reality. He never questioned whether his search for large, over-arching, immutable values and philosophical solutions, was born from insecurity and uncertainty brought on by primal psychic disequilibrium. Plato's quest was Mysterium in action.

The War Against Oneself

Terry Kellog believes that abusive behaviors - whether we direct them towards ourselves, other people, or other species - are not natural to human beings. People enact such behavior because, “…something unnatural has happened to them. I and they have become deranged” - Chellis Glendenning

What is man able to do that animals cannot do? He is capable of observing and analysing the world around him, and capable of observing and analysing his own thoughts. He can think about himself in relation to the world. He can observe his own process of thinking. He can think about thought. Apparently, animals cannot think about the future or about their own being. They exist in this moment only and are not aware of what they might be or become in the future. Animals have memories of the past and do have great intelligence. However, they are not able to question whether there is a "meaning" to their Existence. This is the human being's province.

And because thinking about thought and reality is the province of human beings, we might ask if this special capacity has always been available to humanity. When did it begin? According to the findings of psychologist Julian Jaynes, it came into being recently. It is a concomitant of man's subjectivity, which was not always in existence. It was, in our opinion, the result of the terrible Age of Catastrophe, and is a result of the same trauma that formed the ego. In other words, man's subjectivity has a date of birth. As we said above, philosophers would have profited had they gave ancient cataclysm the consideration it deserves.

We reproduce catastrophe because we ourselves are traumatized – both as a species and individually, beginning at birth. Because we are wounded, we have put up psychic defences against reality and have become so cut off from direct participation in the multidimensional wilderness in which we are embedded, that all we can do is to navigate our way cautiously through a humanly designed day-to-day substitute world of symbols - a world of dollars, minutes, numbers, images and words that are constantly being manipulated to wring the most possible profit from every conceivable circumstance. The body and spirit both rebel - David Watson (The Pathology of Civilization)

With man's subjectivity came the ability to think about thought. However, the capacity for subjective cognition brings about serious problems. Firstly, because subjectivity is the state of man's ego, man is able to choose what to do and think. He is free to direct his own actions. He can choose whether to do this or that, and can decide whether his actions are wrong or right, good or bad. Man acts, but unlike an animal he must accept responsibility for his actions, and, if needs be, live with guilt. In other words, man must pay a heavy price for being conscious. Secondly, subjectivity means that not everything in consciousness falls under the dominion of the hierarchically-arranged and hierarchically-structured ego. What exists in the darkened landscape that stretches around and beyond the ego's ithyphallic ivory control tower is considered by the ego to be potentially threatening. In other words, the content of man's own unconscious is considered a threat to the suzerainty of the ego. This means that most human beings are subconsciously threatened by aspects of their own selves. Perhaps, when this monumental travesty is given the thought it deserves, we can understand why, for millennia, a state of chaos and decay has persisted on Earth.

	A diagram simplifying the Freudian schemata of the anatomy of consciousness. Freud's book titles, and the names of his psychological complexes (Id, Ego, Super Ego, etc), were deliberately mistranslated to give his theories a materialist-reductionist complexion. Freud's understanding of consciousness was far deeper and more "spiritually" intoned than most readers of his work guess. Freud was despised by the APA (American Psychiatric Association), who saw to it that his theories and image were drastically skewed to suit their own materialist ideology. Here for more information.

Thirdly, the ego is threatened by the phenomena of the external world. Fourthly, because the ego gives a man his subjective sense, he can set the parameters of how reality is registered. He can filter, censor, and distort whatever his senses perceive. In the end, the ideas formed by ego-consciousness about reality become more real than reality. As time goes by people lose all interest in the real as the real. Under the auspices of the ego, human beings are incarcerated within mental prisons. It is only a matter of time before they completely lose all sense of concern, not only for Nature, but for their own mortal Existence.

Fifthly, man's subjective ego-consciousness developed a conception of itself as distinct from the earth, moon, sun, and stars. There was self-awareness, so to speak. From its remote tower, the ego looked out over Nature in order to find its reflection there, but could no longer discern it. This is because Nature contains or "reflects" back the self of man, not the ego of man. And so, search as it might, the ego cannot find its own visage in the phenomena of the world. Primitive man could see his own reflection in Nature because he did not have the same level of subjectivity as his descendents. He and Nature were one. Historical man, on the other hand, subconsciously feels abandoned by Nature. Of course, it is the other way around. Man has abandoned Nature by uprooting himself and living in the tower built by his ego.

While granting that we do not have much direct knowledge of man’s psyche before the beginning of the Neolithic period, there are…good reasons to assume that the most primitive men…were not characterized by destructiveness of sadism. In fact, the negative qualities that are commonly attributed to human nature become more powerful and widespread as civilization developed - Erich Fromm (Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)

Man has been at war with Nature for millennia, and has armed with himself with religion and science to forcibly implant his image - his contorted image - onto Nature. Like Don Quixote, he has ridden out to battle against Nature's four elements and impenetrable secrets, hoping to bring Nature to her knees in submission. All the while it is man's blood that flows out. It is his arms that weaken with his fruitless combat. Man is simply destroying himself. His only hope is to throw down the sword.

Jehovah’s injunction is all-encompassing: no likeness of anything. Why would drawing a bird in flight or a fish leaping in sunlight represent a threat to Him? The second commandment forbids Israelites from conveying any iconic information: no illustrations, no colorful drawings, and no art. So far as we know, there had never before existed a culture that forbade representative art. Why should a prohibition against making images be the second most important rule for righteous living?…According to the Ten Commandments, art, therefore, is more dangerous than murder – Leonard Shlain (The Alphabet Versus the Goddess)

Rene Descartes: Disciple of the Mysterium

The mind is the greatest slayer of the real – Helena Petrovna Blavatsky

		One philosopher who asked many important questions about the human mind was Frenchman Rene Descartes. In his masterpiece entitled Meditations on First Philosophy, he set about questioning his own existence. His path to truth was pure scepticism. He chose to except nothing as "self-evident," but inclined to doubt everything he thought he knew about his mind, body, and world. After a long process of doubt and questioning, Descartes decided that the very doubting process proved his existence. If he could doubt, then he could think, and if he could think, he must exist. Descartes' maxim was cogito ergo sum, "I think therefore I am." However, what if Descartes kind of thinking was flawed? Would that still mean he existed? Or would it mean, given his own bent of philosophical reasoning, that he did not in fact exist, that is, he could not be sure of his existence? If his existence is proven by his capacity to think, we are probably meant to assume that the kind of thought is immaterial.

We are to take it that Descartes trusted in his own existence regardless of whether his thinking was flawed or not. But wait! Does this not seem rather contradictory? After all, Descartes relies on thinking as proof of his existence. But if his thinking about life, or anything, was flawed, then how can his thought be relied upon as a proof for existence? Descartes, it seems, was not to bothered about that kind of quandary. What did bother him was whether he could be certain about the world in which he existed. He conceived of the world as something extraneous to him. It was there, but perhaps he could be deceived about it. His five senses revealed a world around him full of things which look real enough. But a candle looks pretty solid until it turns to wax. Is the liquid wax the same thing as the solid candle? No it is not. So apparently, the senses can be deceived. This worried Descartes no end. Finally, his mind was put at rest. The answer was simple. Descartes believed he could trust his impressions of the world because that world was created by God, and God would never play silly games with his mind. God would not deceive him or lead him astray, and so the world was as it appears sensually. Problem solved. Now Descartes could be sure of his own existence and of the world in which he lived.

To Descartes, the world was separate from the body, as was the mind. Mind, body, and world were separate, and God was, yet again, outside the world and mind of man. It did not occur to Descartes the Deist, that God was made of mind - human mind. He believed in the Mysterium that his own mind had created and never bothered to question it. As far as he was concerned, God was the creator of man and world.

All Bibles or sacred codes have been the causes of the following errors…that man has two real existing principles…a Body and a Soul - William Blake (The Marriage of Heaven and Hell)

The notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged - ibid

If Descartes' thinking was not true thinking, then, by his own standards, his existence is not proven. His understanding of his existence was flawed. Indeed, man’s understanding of his own existence is flawed. Descartes chose to believe in a God (a Mysterium) who would never lead him astray when it came to the his perception and understanding of the physical world. Therefore, his vision of himself and of reality was distorted from point go. He chose to trust a Mysterium instead of himself. Doing so creates a contradiction, because the God in whom Descartes chose to believe, was an image fashioned by his own mind. God is believed in by many people, but each person's relationship to their God - or Mysterium - is exclusive. After all, who is to say that Descartes’ God is God, or that he acts in the way Descartes imagined? Descartes’ idea of God is not determined by reality or things seen and experienced. It is a mental abstraction that Descartes admits is separate from body and world.

The Haunted Mind

The world is my idea – Schopenhauer

Man’s consciousness is hindered from direct rapport with Nature by its own ideas about Nature. The communion that once existed is blocked by man's infatuation with the future and the Mysterium. Man’s mind has, in fact, become haunted or possessed by the Mysterium. Mind has theories about the world. Those theories rest upon the mind’s false concept of itself and its own thinking. A distorted mirror cannot reflect reality as it really is. This is the problem that underlines Cartesian Dualism, modern scientific "Uncertainty," and the mechanistic view of men who believe Nature is imperfect and dumb.

Until the rise of Existential philosophy, most thinkers and theologians have been preoccupied with the Mysterium. Philosophers of the west have been seeking God, truth, perfection, enlightenment, social justice, social harmony, peace of mind, and so on, for over two thousand years. They haven't found what they sought. We might ask why?

Of course, failing in one's quest is not a pleasant experience. No one likes to be wrong, especially to the degree of wrongness experienced by high-brow thinkers and theologians. However, as we can see from a study of history, when one school, college, cult, or sect fails, another one springs up to grab the baton. The race for answers and medals for excellence begins all over again. The succeeding school believes it will not make the same mistakes as the previous school which failed to avail the answers to life's mysteries. But what happens when the zealous sons have not correctly defined the mistakes of their fathers? What happens when, because of their misdiagnosis, they contract the same disease that infected their forebears?

When one school fails, another rises. When it also founders, yet another springs into action. On and on it goes. In the end, the merit of one school lies in their ability to critique the methods and findings of the previous school. Years are spent arguing over irrelevant minutiae. It is a case of Tweedledum versus Tweedledee. A case of “opposames.” This cacophony of voices, theories, belief systems, metaphysical speculations and ideologies, obscures the true philosophical adventure that has to do with Existence and Being.

Rationalists/Idealists
Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646–1716)	Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)	George Hegel (1770–1831)

Empiricists
John Locke (1632–1704)	Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753)	David Hume (1711–1766)

Waiting For Civilization

What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of understanding – Werner Heisenberg

We can see then that men create versions of reality. Minds create ideas, which inspire goals, which compel actions. Man's actions change the world he lives in. However, the world man changes, changes him. His mind was Nature-born, not mind-born.

Primordial man's mind took instruction directly from Nature. What mind once learned from Nature has been repressed. It makes up the content of what psychoanalysts refer to  as the "unconscious" mind, and what poet William Blake preferred to term "Imagination."

The Eternal Body of Man is the Imagination - William Blake

...the imagination rises from the mind's abyss and seeks more expanded senses than the five making up that abyss - ibid

Man has developed consciousness slowly and laboriously, in a process that took untold ages to reach the civilized state…And this evolution is far from complete, for large areas of the human mind are still shrouded in darkness. What we call the “psyche” is by no means identical with our consciousness and its contents - Carl Gustav Jung (Approaching the Unconscious)

The id is that very protohuman psychic core that our evolution has spent millions of years molding to fit the planetary environment. Its seeming unruliness deserves a deeper understanding...the id conserves from its long maturing process…our treasury of ecological intelligence. Its intractability stems from its deeply ingrained resistance to all social forms that endanger the harmony of the human and the natural; its untamed “selfishness” represents a bond between psyche and cosmos whose distant origins reach back to the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Just as there is a “wisdom of the body” which often has a better sense of health than medical science, so too there may be a “wisdom of the id” that knows what sanity is better than any school of psychiatry whose standard of normality is essentially a defense of misconceived social necessity - Theodore Roszak (Voice of the Earth)

		Man's senses provide him with raw data about the world. That data is taken in and processed by mental faculties. That data must pass the rational and critical censors and then be rejected, organized, or stored away. The process goes on continually. Eventually, however, the mind acquires a lot of mental furniture, so to speak. This furniture must be organized and arranged. Once this job is done, the arrangement is difficult to rearrange. It becomes quite fixed and rigid. In the end, men might not want their mental arrangement to be challenged and changed. They may project onto the world their own fixed paradigms of how things should be, and make the world conform to their own psychic content. As a result, man eventually ceases learning from the world.

He prevents Nature from shaping him truly. He becomes unnatural and existentially inauthentic. This is what we find happening today.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world – Arthur Schopenhauer

Man hath weaved out a net and this net thrown upon the Heavens, and now they are his own - John Donne

After all, if men allowed Nature to organically work its miracles upon their minds, they would not be so similar in kind. There is no sameness in Nature. Every star, atom, leaf, and snowflake is different and unique. If man allowed Nature to shape him, there would be no societies or civilizations as we know them. There would be no cities where man can hide or walls between man and Nature. This is subconsciously understood by men, which is why they defend themselves against Nature's organic processes. Man defends himself against the power of Nature, and also goes on the attack against Nature, his true Creator.

The industrial city might be seen as the collective “body armor” of our culture, a pathological effort to distance us from close contact with the natural continuum from which we evolve – Theodore Roszak (Voice of the Earth)

Technology Versus Nature

In your own bosom you bear your Heaven and Earth; and all you behold, though it appears without, it is within – William Blake

To successfully subordinate and emasculate Nature, man has become technological and mechanistic. His mind is hard, fixed, and unmutable, and his behavior toward the world has become defensive and threatening. He threatens Nature because he erroneously thinks of himself as being threatened by Nature. And, in a way, he is. Nature is mutable, spontaneous, and negentropic, or self-sustaining. It is not plugged in to a wall socket and does not run on a battery somewhere.

		Most importantly, Nature does not need man to exist. This is a fact that makes man feel rather small and insignificant. His technological ardor arose because of his subconscious rivalry toward Nature, which apparently does not require his services. Technology is man's way of bringing Nature into submission. When we look around at the world man has made for himself, we see its regularity. Everything he establishes is as fixed, rigid, and hierarchical as his own consciousness, and just as toxic. ...man is everywhere a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of Nature are turned to discords – George P. Marsh (The Earth As Modified By Human Action, 1907) The anti-Idealist, anti-Deist poet William Blake deeply understood the subconscious rivalry that man feels toward Nature. He knew that the human mind ardently sought to usurp Nature's dominion and reshape Nature in mind's twisted image. Blake knew this because he could see the unnaturalness of man's inventions all around him.
Urizen, as described by poet William Blake in The Four Zoas and other works.

He knew that the effluence of the inorganic "satanic mills" were not going to be confined to man's ugly, injustice-ridden cities and towns. In his iconography, Blake pictorialized the human mind as a giant who sought to measure the creation and bring everything under the control of reason. Blake named his giant Urizen, a name based on the word "reason."

Blake lived when Britain was at war with Napoleon and when there was an official embargo against literature from abroad. This included religious and mystical works. However, according to author and Druid Ross Nichols, Blake managed to read the works of the seventeenth century German mystic Jakob Boehme, and may have had access to various hermetic texts. Certainly, Blake's writings strongly resemble Gnostic conceptions of the creation and nature of human consciousness. In his masterly work entitled The Secret Teachings of all Ages, occultist Manly Palmer Hall summarizes Gnostic cosmology:

Out of the pleroma was individualized the Demiurgus, the immortal mortal, to whom we are responsible for our physical existence and the suffering we must go through in connection with it

It was affirmed by the Gnostic Christians that the redemption of humanity was assured through the descent of Nous (Universal Mind), who was a great spiritual being superior to the Demiurgus and who, entering into the constitution of man, conferred conscious immortality upon the Demiurgic fabrications

Martin Heidegger: Disciple of the Numina

...when the doors of perception are cleansed, everything appears to man as it is, infinite - William Blake

The only modern philosopher to deal correctly with the questions of Being and Existence, was Martin Heidegger. He was born in Germany in the year 1889, and spent most of his life in the Black Forest, in the south-western region of the country.

		Heidegger was born eleven years before the death of Frederick Nietzsche, and thirty four years after the death of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Arthur Schopenhauer, were, generally speaking, in the same tradition as Heidegger, as were Edmund Husserl, Franz Brentano, Jean Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus. However, Heidegger went into the question of Existence much more deeply than his contemporaries and predecessors. In the year 1927, when he was thirty eight, he published his ideas in his treatise entitled Sein und Zeit, or "Being and Time." Heidegger was of the opinion that most of the world’s philosophical speculations and theories have little to nothing to do with true philosophy. The impasses created by Rationalists and Idealists, such as Descartes, Locke, Berkeley, Hegel, Kant, and other philosophers, as well as the conundrums ostensibly resolved by Immanuel Kant, proved this beyond all doubt.
Heidegger at his desk.

In other words, philosophy had, since the time of Plato and Aristotle, gone fearfully wrong. Heidegger was more forgiving to the pre-Socratic philosophers, but his critique of every theorist since their day was adamant and irrevocable. The world's philosophers had been interested in many things, but not Being. And by not being interested in the question of Being, or, as Heidegger termed it, "Dasein," they were haunted and possessed by their own brand of Mysteria. They each sought essences, forms, truths, archetypes, gods, and utopias, but failed to find and bequeath them to the world.

Millennia of philosophizing about the soul had resulted in no certitude about it, while those who pretended to know it, the priests, held power or influenced it, and corrupted politics as a result. Princes were rendered ineffective by their own or their subjects' opinions about the salvation of their souls, while men slaughtered each other wholesale because of differences of such opinion. The care of the soul crippled men in the conduct of their lives – Alan Bloom (Closing of the American Mind)

		Yes, the philosophers pursued their own versions of the Mysterium and came up relatively empty. In the end, shortly before the birth of Heidegger, the Idealists and Rationalists had to give up the ghost. By the time Immanuel Kant and William James appeared on the scene, philosophers of calibre came to realize that the pursuit of essences was futile. Kant argued that the mind of man could not know all there was to know, and James concluded that reality was whatever each person believed it to be. Kant introduced his theories of "transcendental idealism," and posited the existence of a "noumenon" that was completely beyond human senses and reason, utterly unseeable and unknowable. That shut the Idealist up for a while. Kant also surmised that the mind's content was not as real as that which the senses experienced. In his Prolegomena, he wrote:

All knowledge of things merely from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth

With these words Kant ostensibly ground the juggernaut of Idealists and Rationalists to a halt. Their god was simply an necessary idea. Nothing more, nothing less. For all his perspicacity, Kant did the unthinkable and endorsed the existence, albeit for practical purposes, of god. Everyone has an idea of god, and that is a necessary and good thing, stated Kant. Man needs god to give him security and happiness. One could not prove god's existence, but that did not matter. The idea of god had monumental importance, and that was the main thing. So Kant coaxed the world to believe in god who probably did not exist, and schmoozed the world into using reason even though reason was limited. He pacified the Empiricists who were delighted to hear him coyly declare god to be a figment of men's minds, and that reason was not going to lead man to absolute truths about mind and world. He pacified the Rationalists and Idealists by proving that the mind was not born tabula rasa, or a blank slate after all. Man did have innate ideas that were not "learned" from physical, sensual experience. Man had an inherent sense of time and space, and if two innate categories of conscious existed, it followed that there could be more.

Kant was one smart cookie. He was the diplomat of philosophers, the ambassador who reconciled antagonistic schools and ideas. He certainly criticized the Church, but not its essential dogma and doctrine. Apparently, he could not free the world from their Mysteria. Perhaps he too needed it. One way or another, after all is said and done, Kant's ideas had little impact on the real issue besetting man. After all his exhaustive efforts, the Mysterium still loomed as large and foreboding as ever. As the French philosopher Voltaire commented: "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." Few men have expressed the predicament of mankind more succinctly.

Along with this idea over reason and God, Kant places thought over religion and nature, i.e. the idea of religion being natural or naturalistic. Kant saw reason as natural, and as some part of Christianity is based on reason and morality, as Kant points out, this is major in the scriptures, it is inevitable that Christianity is 'natural.' However, it is not 'naturalistic' in the sense that the religion does include supernatural or transcendent belief. Aside from this, a key point is that Kant saw that the Bible should be seen as a source of natural morality no matter whether there is/was any truth behind the supernatural factor. Meaning that it is not necessary to know whether the supernatural part of Christianity has any truth to abide by and use the core Christian moral code - (Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia. Entry on Immanuel Kant)

Philosophy was never the same after Kant's revelations. Everyone smiled and shook hands. The bridge between the paradigms had been constructed and it stood strong and brightly lit until Heidegger appeared on the scene with the bad news.

Tea and Existentialism

All that we are is the result of what we have thought - (The Dhammapada)

Heidegger emphasized that the Idealists were mistaken in their inquiries into Existence. They did not deal with Existence itself, but with essences, that is, what supposedly lies behind reality and at the root of everything that Exists. Heidegger asserted that Existence was essence. And he was right. After all, how can a beam of light, a swan or panther have an "essence?" Plato sought for the forms or archetypes that supposedly exist behind physical phenomena. He could not explain them, or give a good account of what they are or where they are to be located. He did not realize that they were unreal objects of mind, not Nature. They were simply beautiful but arbitrary abstractions. The Christian theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, sought to prove the existence of God, whom they believed had created the universe. Of course, their God was yet again, a Mysterium, a phantasm concocted by their own minds. The only person who can be sure of the Existence of a God conjured by their own mind, is the owner of that mind. One does not have to be a member of Mensa to work that out.

Soren Kierkegaard (1813–1855)	Franz Brentano (1838–1917)	Edmund Husserl (1859–1938)

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860)	Frederick Nietzsche (1844–1900)	Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980)

In Heidegger's philosophy, essences and abstractions are dispensed with, along with gods, paths, metaphysical speculations, and tautological theological ideologies. His decision to dispense with previous theological and philosophical systems does not make Heidegger an atheist. Nor does it mean that atheists and positivists are right. From Heidegger's point of view, the Materialism of the atheists and atomists is just as misconceived as the essences of Idealists. They are Mysteria of a different sort, but Mysteria nonetheless. Such philosophies ignore the important question of Being, and are therefore unfounded.

For Heidegger, Being was the key to philosophy. Although men share it, most of them escape from it. They run here and there, into religion, idealism, metaphysics, science and technology, or whatever distracts them from facing the significance of Dasein, or their actual undeniable presence in the world. The philosophers were after power not truth. Their philosophy was in its own way aggressive and acquisitive. It was a means for attaining control over ideas and minds. It was born from a desire to know and understand what can never be transparent to mind. This is because Nature made mind, not the other way around. Therefore the mind can never work out or fathom the truth about the origin of Nature's negentropic systems. In attempting to scientifically and philosophically scrutinize Nature, the high-brow thinkers of history simply reinforced the subject-object dichotomy. They did not experience life, they spectated and thought about it in a way that was ultimately distorted and limited.

Technology...the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it - Max Frisch

Martin Heidegger follows in Nietzsche’s footsteps as a pivotal figure in the West’s attempt to grapple with its growing unease regarding metaphysics. Like his predecessor, he is critical of metaphysical attempts to predicate truth on the unchanging essence of things. Nietzsche sees philosophy as the means through which the subject attempts to assert control over the world and impose limitations on the limitless – Katrin Froese (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Taoist Thought)

Reality, for Heidegger, is not something to be probed and analysed. It is something to be wondered at and awed. As Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote: "Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

		Being is not to be escaped from or ignored. Indeed, as Heidegger pointed out repeatedly, there can be no thought without thought of Being. In other words, man knows he exists. He knows he lives and breathes but chooses to live in forgetfulness of the wonder of his own life. The man who fully realizes that Existence exists and happens, becomes truly philosophical and alive. Being matters to him. It matters because it is older than thought and cannot, therefore, be known by way of thought alone. Before a man can think, he must Exist. Or as Heidegger would put it, in order to Exist man must turn his thought to Existence or Being and consciously allow his thought to be directed by Being (as it is already directed), and collude in the process as directed. Existence must matter for man. He must care for Being, his own Being that is, rather than that of god or humanity. Being is only Being for Dasein – Heidegger Thinking is of time, but Being is not confined by time. Thinking becomes liberated and timeless when directed by Being, and when the nature of Being is contemplated. In one sense, Being and thought (time) are rooted in the same soil - the Tao or Numina.
Man thinks about that which gives rise to his thought, i.e., Being. Thinking provides a door through which Being enters to present itself to the mind of man. Being is not, however, simply an object of thought. It has given rise to thought, that is, thought it is the child of Being, of Existence.

Heidegger pointed out that man is aware of the many separate objects and individuals around him. He is also aware of the larger world of things that exist together in a totality. He is aware of particulars and the multiplicity of things that make up the world. Additionally, humans as a species are uniquely aware that Existence happens. The Existing man must know he Exists. And he must be able to marvel at the fact of his Existence. The man who contemplates that Existence exists, is Dasein - the Authentic Man. To know that Existence exists, and to know that Existence occurs, is to think truly and authentically. That kind of thinking is ultimately gratitude. In German the words for “thought” (denken) and “thanks” (danken) derive from the same root. According to Heidegger, it is Being that compels man to think. Being is the origin of thought and Being directs the truly thinking man to attend to the fact of his Existence. Thought is not something man does. Rather, thought is something that happens to man.

Heidegger insists that thinking is a kind of attunement, and he denies that the world lies prostrate before the philosopher who simply discloses its secrets. All things that are part of Being can only expose themselves in relation to others things, so the concept of a self-identical substance is thrown into question. Different aspects of an object’s being are revealed in different circumstances. A flower’s whiteness can only be exposed against a dark background. The lightness of its leaves becomes evident when they flutter about in the wind - Karin Froese (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Taoist Thought)

Man is not only a spectator of the world, he is part of it. Man and his world are made from the same stuff. In order to be able to think about the world, the world must be accessible to thought. In other words, thought and the world are not separate, and the subject and object are definitely less dissimilar than Rationalist philosophers insisted. After all, Heidegger asked, what propels thought? What propels interest in an object? What directs the so-called "subject" toward an object? The Rationalist would say that mind does the trick, but Heidegger disagrees. Surely it is the object that invites observation and analysis. The object we perceive commands the attention of our thought and cannot be passive in the way commonly imagined. Therefore, according to Heidegger, there is no strict difference or division between apparent subjects and objects. They are in deep relationship with one another. This relationship is a fact of Dasein or Being-in-the-World.

Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought – Heidegger (Being and Time)
 

Being, Thought, Time. Thought is the child of Being or Existence. Thought contemplates that which brought it into Existence. Thought contemplates Existence and becomes true thought by so doing. It becomes Dasein. What it contemplates is itself. No subject, no object, no spectator or fixed laws of observation and analysis. Change is the only law.

The Thrice Dead

Men go abroad to wonder at the heights of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motions of the stars: and they pass by themselves without wondering - St. Augustine of Hippo

Shortly before the time of Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, the Idealist schools foundered. Atheism, Agnosticism, and Existentialism predominated. "God is dead," declared Nietzsche. In other words, man had to finally realize that the Mysterium of theologians, Rationalists, and Idealists did not exist, or, as Kant had problematically theorized, could never be known.

The man for whom the Mysterium is dead does not necessarily awaken to the question of Being and Existence. He resides in a wasteland, derelict and vagrant, without a meaning for his Existence. He is left with nothing but himself and the world of Nature. And he appears to not want the latter, which he believes operates like a mechanism without consciousness. Rather, he craves a new updated Mysterium, even though he knows that the original version was an illusion. All that matters is that the Mysterium, in whatever guise, keeps man warm. It soothes his fears and gives him purpose. The problem of the Mysterium then, is merely one of version control. Oh the destroyed or never finished temple! How can we adore a god who takes such pleasure in ruins! - Rainer Maria Rilke

Nietzsche, a Mysterium-free zone. What Being was for Heidegger, Nature was to him.

Atheism and materialism are results and expressions of man’s dissatisfaction and exhaustion, not his achievement. They are marks of his existential failure. The technological man, as opposed to the poetic man, is the least interested in Being. He is thrice dead. He once died to Being/Dasein/Numina, and then dies to the Mysterium of his own manufacture. He eventually erects a new altar to an even more hideous Mysterium and re-incarcerates himself in a technological sepulchre in order to, yet again, slam the door leading to the temple of Being. Three deaths for man, three deaths for mankind.

What good the science that destroys itself? What purpose in awakening every morning for a wearisome daily struggle to reach the evening in a state of exhaustion, to reach the agony of such an empty life?…As long as cerebral intelligence governs the world, it will be dominated by beings of inferior mentality, for man’s life will be but struggle of force and power, struggle of vanity, struggle of wealth, struggle for an existence whose aim is warped…But man is not a beast; he is animated. Man is an epitome of the cosmos, a creature housing the divine spark. Man is not an evolved amphibian, an animal form that became what we are. Man is perfect at his origin, a divine being who has degenerated into what we are – R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (Egyptian Miracle)

Tea with Das Man

Beware the barrenness of a busy life – Socrates

Heidegger referred to the inauthentic man as Das Man. He is alienated and alone, but haunted by the Mysterium conjured by his mind. Heidegger did not agree that man's existential dilemmas were caused by a religious falling off or even by moral decline. The reason for man's plight went far deeper than that, and was not of concern to most thinkers. Man's plight was rooted in his lack of attention to the question of Being and inattention to the profundity of his own Existence. Man must care about Being, said Heidegger. From an existential point of view, it is by way of his Sorge or "care" of Being that man truly comes alive. It alone allows men to know themselves and the world around them.

Man is not the lord of beings. Man is the shepherd of Being. Man loses nothing in this "less;" rather, he gains in that he attains the truth of Being. He gains the essential poverty of the shepherd, whose dignity consists in being called by Being itself into the preservation of Being's truth - Heidegger

We might ask then, what is man’s occupation and state given that Being/Existence/Dasein/Numina is not his concern?

		Das Man is dead. His mind is not focused on truth. He is not involved directly with anything, not even his own Existence. He is "thrown into the world," but has no relationship with it. He has a relationship only with his inadequate and perverse ideas about the world. And these ideas are based entirely on the presence of the Mysterium, whether it be god, or some other mental abstraction such as Oneness, world peace, brotherhood of man, wealth, fame, power, and so on. Because Das Man has no true, deep, or real rapport with the world, everything he sees or interacts with remains undisclosed to him. The nature of things remains concealed. It is as if, Heidegger says, the objects of the world lie asleep. Hence, man is alienated and vagrant. What he sees are his ideas about what he sees, and not what actually exists. But his myopia is not, as Bishop Berkeley ridiculously postulated - because the world does not exist beyond our perception of it - but because the world is distorted by human minds. As Madame Blavatsky said, "Mind is the slayer of the real."

This is a condition diagnosed by the Vedic sages, who, thousands of years ago, wrote that Maya was not, as most believed, illusion, but that the ideas man had about Maya, or Prakriti (Nature), were illusionary. This certainly puts a new spin on the rhetoric of the world's priesthoods, be they of the eastern or western hemispheres.

The real Maya or illusion is not in the natural forms, but in the mind’s propensity to conceive or project forms created by its own inventiveness, but which do not agree with the truth extant or potential in nature - Alvin Boyd Kuhn (The Ultimate Canon of Knowledge)

The poet William Blake was preoccupied with the state of consciousness of inexistent or inauthentic men. He lamented their artifice and warned the world of their increasing dominion. He beautifully described how the perverse mind destroys and then justifies its necrophiliac acts. Blake emphasized that man does not accuse himself, or his own sadism, but chooses instead to paradoxically accuse natural beauty for bringing about it own destruction. Meditating on Blake's insights allows us to see just how deeply the perversity within a Mysterium-possessed mind goes:

O Rose thou are sick
The invisible worm
That flies in the night
In the howling storm
Has found out thy bed of crimson joy
And his dark secret love
Does thy life destroy
William Blake
(The Sick Rose)

It is not only Nature that suffers violation at the hands of the Mysterium-possessed man. Man himself is violated. His own thinking is prostituted by the Mysterium. This is because thinking has another more natural orientation. Thought's true object is the Numina and Dasein. It is Being and Existence that matter. The truly thinking mind understands that mind is not the creation of mind but of Nature. This means, of course, that mind and Nature are one and the same, or, as the Taoists taught, two expressions of the same thing, the third thing, or Tao.

Technology: The New Mysterium

When we lose the fundamentals, we supplant them with increasingly inferior values which we pretend are the true values – Taoist Saying

Once man is forced to admit the unthinkable and compelled to abandon his futile Mysterium-directed endeavors, he changes, but not for the better. Where one Mysterium existed, another rises in its place. Man refuses to inhabit the Mysterium-free space even when given the chance to do so. He perversely conjures yet another Mysterium to replace the one he outgrew or lost, and does so primarily out of habit. As long as man is dominated by his ego, he will remain under the control of one Mysterium or another. As we have emphasized, the ego and Mysterium took birth together. The Mysterium can be likened to a computer program that continues to run in the background long after a man believes it has been terminated and deleted. Existentially, man has learned through the ages to enjoy the meagre comforts provided by his self-incarceration. Even when the door to his damp dark cell is thrown open by the wind, he refuses to vacate. He has learned to adore the silence of the cemetery rather than the silence of the temple.

Humankind cannot bear very much reality - T. S. Eliot

The Mysterium-haunted man seeks his object in a similar manner as the pilot of a jumbo jet seeks his far off destination. The jet is the vehicle invented to cover the distance between the traveler and his goal. What happens, however, when the destination is found to not exist, or when the charts fly out the window? What is man without his search for the meaning that is no meaning? What does he become? Is he not condemned to fly round and round aimlessly, and condemned to maintain the plane in which he is trapped, that marvel of technological invention that has no destination? This is the present situation and predicament of men who are, existentially speaking, on autopilot.

Technological man, like the religious man, probes into what exists to find the Essence. He grabs the baton left by theologians. The difference, however, is that technological man’s Mysterium has become Nature, or more correctly, a perverse understanding of Nature.

Technological man also probes into himself, and is fascinated as to how his brain functions and body "ticks." He pays little attention to the god of the theologians, but he is Mysterium-haunted nonetheless. A perverse conception of Nature and Body have become his new Mysterium. It is the raison d'etre behind everything modern man thinks, does, and wishes to build. Infected by his new Mysterium, modern man seeks to know the secrets of brain and body. He probes, investigates, and experiments, but gets no nearer to the truth of life and Existence.

Death is no longer symbolically expressed by unpleasant-smelling faeces or corpses. Its symbols are now clean, shining machines…But the reality behind this antiseptic façade becomes increasingly visible. Man, in the name of progress, is transforming the world into a stinking and poisonous place…He pollutes the air, the water, the soil, the animals – and himself. He is doing this to a degree that has made it doubtful whether the earth will still be liveable within a hundred years from now – Erich Fromm

Man becomes technological in his thought and behavior because technology simulates the lost presence. As a clock in the cage of a hamster comforts that creature, so the whir and buzz of man’s engines and computers keeps him warm and secure in his social cage. And as man progresses he becomes more and more reliant on technology. As he moves further away from the Temple of the Numina, his sense of vacancy expands. As a result we find man’s life-space and consciousness cluttered with more and more stuff. Man's thinking is technological rather than philosophical, as Heidegger would define it. It was never wholesome, productive, and sane, just preoccupied with decorating the prison and adding more furniture to fill the existential void. As Christ said: It is easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle than to enter the kingdom of heaven.

The possessed character of our financial and industrial magnates...is psychologically evident from the very fact that they are at the mercy of a suprapersonal factor - "work," "power," "money," or whatever they like to call it - which, in the telling phrase, "consumes" them - Erich Neumann

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? - (Mark 8:36)

	Movies such as Zardoz, Dune, Solaris, Vanilla Sky, Being There, Paris Texas, Frankenstein, American Beauty, and Fearless, contain many Existentialist and Taoist elements, as well as philosophical speculations on the relationship between conscious and unconscious hemispheres.

	If technological man's insight and direction remains as it is today, the future will inevitably see the creation of the Being-less man. The wildest dream of Dr. Frankenstein will become reality, and the world of science will finally give birth to the perfect machine-man. The creature will walk, talk, and think. He will be have a higher degree of physical and mental perfection than humans. His eyesight will be exceptional, his speed formidable, and his durability and strength insurmountable. He will be a marvel, and eventually more of his kind will be conceived to populate tomorrow's Global Village. The post-human creature will be exceptional in practically every way and will outsmart and outperform his inventors. He will not, however, Exist.

Tea and Slavery

…every man shares the responsibility and the guilt of the society to which he belongs – Henrik Ibsen

Heidegger's analysis of the history of philosophy explains why Materialism, Atheism, Pragmatism, Logical Positivism, and technological scientism came into being after the age of Idealists and Rationalists. One Mysterium burned to death and another was born from its ashes. Under the shadow of the new Mysterium, technological man took birth. His life's purpose was explicated by the theologian John Calvin whose teachings erased from man's mind any deep sense or quality of selfhood. Steeped in his "Work Ethic" man did not have to be overly preoccupied with the nature or orientation of his mind, because the engineers of the Calvinist-Behaviorist societal model assured him that mind did not exist. What a relief for technological man to know that his sole purpose was simply to serve his brothers while ignoring what went on inside his own head and heart. Hail the New Mysterium that sets men free!

Anyone who is forced from his own course, either through not understanding himself, or through external imposition, comes into conflict with the order of the Universe, and suffers accordingly - Aleister Crowley (Magick in Theory and Practice)

The Calvinist-Behaviorist model alleviates man's existential anxiety. It allows him to doubt and neglect the true significance of thought and Existence. It gives him the panacea he needs to reduce the inner tension that arises if and when the true Spirit of Rebellion awakens to trouble him. By losing himself in his societal and domestic roles, man assuages his inner angst. Questions of life and death, mortality and meaning, Being and Existence become insignificant. Being accepted by his brothers, and being rewarded for services rendered and work well done, becomes Das Man's raison d'etre. Encouraging his sons and daughters to live as he lives - to forget about selfhood, to ignore antisocial impulses, to labor mechanically and repetitively within the social hive, and to replace one Mysterium with another equally contrived and false - is all that matters.

Freedom is the last thing he wants. He functions...according to the principle of pleasure in non freedom. To be sentenced to life long freedom is a worse fate than life long slavery. To put it another way: a man is always searching for someone or something to enslave him, for only as a slave does he feel secure - Esther Vilar (The Manipulated Man)

Throughout history, with every step they have taken, men have moved further and further away from the Numina. Man has become increasingly existentially estranged and psychically delinquent because his thinking continues to avoid the question of Being. As a result of his new and improved Mysterium, the world of Nature suffers ever worsening desecration. This is because man's technology is as morbid as he is himself. With his instruments and machines man seeks to dominate Nature, and yet, at the same time, to win her back. He behaves toward Nature as most rapists do toward their victims - to love and destroy at the same time.

The same derangement exists in the religious mind. The dogmas of theologians - regardless of whether they are orthodox or alternative in type - seek to explain and know the unknowable. They seek to penetrate the "great mystery." However, the mystery of life is only, as the Taoists knew, unknowable because of the perverse state of man’s understanding and consciousness. It is man's toxic thinking that serves to keep the truth well beyond his grasp. The few precepts in favor of animals that we encounter in the Bible have been interpreted by most of the outstanding religious thinkers, Paul, Thomas Aquinas, and Luther, as pertaining only to the moral education of man, and in no wise to any obligation of man to ward other creatures. Only man’s soul can be saved; animals have but the right to suffer…Pope Pius IX did not permit a society for the prevention of cruelty to animals to be founded in Rome because, as he declared, theology teaches that man owes no duty to any animal - Max Horkheimer (Eclipse of Reason)
		John Calvin (1509-1564), the French-born psychopath. Calvinism is the backbone of the so-called "Work Ethic," the form of Collectivism that leads straight to the Global Village. Here for more information.

Religious and technological Disciples of the Mysterium inhabit a flat world. They are part of a definable spectrum of insanity, and can be measured as being either farther away or nearer in proximity to the beginning or end of the spectrum. None are closer to Dasein. None are exorcized and sane. Scientists are Disciples of the Mysterium as are theologians. They are not objective and do not deal with physical facts as they pretend and claim. This much was conclusively proven by Scottish philosopher David Hume, in his masterpiece An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, published in 1748. The average scientist's standpoint may be anti-religious, but the inquiries of science are not rooted in true questions of Existence and Being. Scientists remain spectators, that is, subjects outside and apart from the world of Nature they scrutinize. Although science professes to seek truth, it is in the end merely an opposing school to that which previously exhausted itself seeking non-existent "forms" and "essences."

Despite superficial differences the scientist and theologian are still bed-fellows. No final and wrapped-up, all inclusive theory of reality will ever be perfected. The nature of all language, the forms of logic, the duality of matter beneath the surface we observe, the power of rules to generate new structures, the limits of knowledge, the special character of complex as opposed to simple systems, all point to this conclusion. In this respect, science and art, philosophy and politics, history and psychology, meet on common ground, so that the barriers between cultures break down under the recognition that all are incomplete and always will be; that no single discipline, no school of thought has a monopoly on the truth. The truth has itself become more difficult to define as a result of the last half-century of discoveries in what used to be known as the exact sciences, making them richer, but not necessarily more exact and disturbing them to their foundations - Jeremy Campbell (Grammatical Man)

Fundamentally, there is little difference between the thinking that brought religion into being and the thinking that brought scientism into being. Science is ostensibly preferable to theology because it apparently seeks to reveal Nature's secret ordinances so we might discover what lies behind the material world. But the attempt to know and understand the world is doomed to failure because man has projected his Mysterium onto the world. His perverse idea about Nature stands between him and a clear, direct communion with Nature. In other words, Nature remains undisclosed to the inauthentic man.

And that seals the matter, for unless Nature does give forth its secrets on its own terms, no man on earth will ever "crack" Nature's code. The mind that seeks to know Nature's secrets must be natural, that is, sanitary and sane. When the self of a man is awakened, Nature's voice will be heard. When the ego is in charge, the voice remains silent and the phenomena of Nature remain objects of the mind, rather than becoming the mind itself. They are thought about, but are never truly known. The great German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach understood that theology had wholly failed to explain the meaning of life. He finally rejected theology and said: "I can bring myself to study no more. I long to take nature to my heart, that nature before whose depth the faint-hearted theologian shrinks back..." Feuerbach concluded that god is simply human, that is, a projection of the human mind.

Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), the German philosopher and anthropologist.

To be sure, science has for the most part accepted that there is no theologically-posited Mysterium. It has, however, conjured its own Mysterium in the place of the one discarded. Science studies a dead world without meaning. Well, as we have seen, Descartes trusted that God existed and would not deceive him. Scientists do not believe in God, honest or otherwise, but are still left with the problem of being deceived as to what they see. This is because they analyze reality using concepts and systems that are not empirical. Mathematics, logic, and so on, by which men of science seek to comprehend the mysteries of Nature, are mental constructs unconnected to the phenomena found in Nature. Scientism is their new Mysterium.

Fascinated alike by scientific phenomena and by the erroneous conclusions he draws from them, man has ended by being submerged by his own creations; he will not realize that a traditional message is situated on quite a different plane or how much more real that plane is, and he allows himself to be dazzled all the more readily since scientism provides him with all the excuses he wants in order to justify his own attachment to the world of appearance and to his ego and his consequent flight from the presence of the Absolute - Frithjof Schuon

Nature is not working on the scientist. It is debarred. The scientist is not going to have his fixed ideas about the world altered by anything. He has imposed his understanding and perverse notions onto the world. As a result of this activity, there is absolutely no communion whatsoever with Nature as it is. It is as if man walks about dead in the world. And, it goes without saying that dead men will deaden the world if given the chance to do so. As poet William Wordsworth wrote "...our meddling intellect mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things: we murder to dissect."

The astronautical image of man-and it is nothing but the quintessence of urban-industrial society’s pursuit of the wholly controlled, wholly artificial environment - amounts to a spiritual revolution. This is man as he has never lived before; it draws the line through human history that almost assumes the dimensions of an evolutionary turning point. So it has been identified by Teilhard de Chardin, who has given us the concept of the “noosphere,” a level of existence that is to be permanently dominated by human intellect and planning, and which our species must now adapt if it is to fulfill its destiny - Theodore Roszak (Where the Wasteland Ends)

Technical Ecstasy

I am not denying that great gains have resulted from the evolution of civilized society. But these gains have been made at the price of enormous losses, whose extent we have scarcely begun to estimate - Carl Jung (Approaching the Unconscious)

The average scientist fails to understand that man changes by Existing. He is not the same being one day to the next and neither is the world around him. Neither man nor the universe in which he lives is static. Nevertheless, for the most part, men of science, like theologians and Rationalists of old, seek a fixed hierarchical systematization of reality. Science views the world with prejudice and an intent to “mend,” "improve," and “invent.” Moreover, as far as orthodox science is concerned, a right understanding of reality and a right relationship with the world is to come in the future. It is something attained in time, after ages of gradual mental and social progress and improvement. So, the scientist zealously works toward the bright tomorrow in which men of his sort will attain their full understanding of reality. This idea of progress is, however, based on a totalitarian mindset and agenda. It implies a hierarchical organization of knowledge and experience, and of matter itself. It maintains its status quo via overt and covert suppression of dissent and open domination and war. It is also a collectivist notion, since no one person living at any particular time in history can hope to be there at the end when the final scientific revelation occurs. The nirvana of scientists ostensibly occurs in an indistinct future arrived at by way of a road laid by innumerable men. The improbable final "revelations" of science are, therefore, not those of the individual but the multitude. In this respect, science is as disingenuous and collectivist as religion. Like the tower of Babel, the grotesque edifice of the scientist will rise no higher than that once erected by theologians before crashing heavily to the ground.

The reasons why social scientists have not considered the question of the optimal social conditions for man’s growth a matter of primary concern can be easily discerned if one recognizes the sad fact that, with a few outstanding exceptions, social scientists are essentially apologists for and not critics of the existing social system - Erich Fromm (The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness)

The promises and glowing future visions of scientists may look good on paper and make effective propaganda goading men into "hive-think." We must, however, never cease inquiring how a deeply and inherently flawed consciousness can attain true understanding just because time elapses. The mind that seeks to discover a systematic and fixed knowledge about the world it inhabits, is not directly participating in reality and will never know anything more than its own ideas about reality. Such a "phenomenological" mind simply abstracts certain principles from reality and organizes them according to its own warped predisposition. The data of the world is modified and arranged by the existing and pre-existing content of the conscious, preconscious, and unconscious hemispheres of mind (the conscious and preconscious hemispheres programmed during this life, the unconscious by programming that is age old). The new data is, therefore, drastically altered by mental processes and not apprehended directly. In short, the manner in which the mind organizes and arranges data, gleaned from experience, bears little to no relationship to reality as it is.

The arrogance of stewardship (as found in the Bible) consists in the idea of superiority which underlies the thought that we exist to watch over nature like a highly respected middleman between the Creator and Creation – Arne Naess (Founder of the Deep Ecology Movement)

The Taoist insists that existentially inauthentic men - Heidegger's das Man - make and shape the world into what they want it to be. Their gods are purely human gods, not Nature’s gods. The Taoist, however, does not condemn man's Mysterium-guided mental processes. He does does not interfere or attempt to fix perversity. He knows that evil bears within its heart the seed of its own destruction.

A man who does evil does not what he truly wills. For a man can truly will only what is good; if he commits evil acts in the mistaken belief that they serve his interest, he reveals thereby that he is powerless to do what he truly wills. Hence the tyrant is powerless – Socrates (Gorgias)

To harm another is to harm oneself - Socrates

We see then, that we can never affect anything outside ourselves save only as it is also within us. Whatever I do to another, I also do to myself. If I kill a man, I destroy my own life at the same time...Every vibration awakens all others of its particular pitch - Aleister Crowley (Magick in Theory and Practice)

The Taoist realizes that man has the right to manufacture his simulacra or analog reality. Man has the right to fashion his own prison, just as he has the right to live in one made by another. He has the right to conform or not conform, to live or commit suicide. If he does not wish to accept the illusions of other men, he can busy himself and make his own. In fact, it is not the Taoist who commissions laws and regulations or establishes civilizations. That job is not undertaken by the freest of men, but by those already in mental bondage. The Taoist despises all chains, be they of iron or gold. He knows that a man who cannot find a temple in his own heart will never find or make one in the world.

He who rules men lives in confusion: He who is ruled by men lives in sorrow. Tao therefore desired neither to influence others nor to be influenced by them. The way to get clear of confusion and free of sorrow is to live with Tao in the land of the great Void - Chuang Tzu

No, it is men of religion and science who are preoccupied with incarceration, conformity, and regimentation. Members of their order have imprisoned their minds in erroneous concepts about reality. They have strangled their minds and hearts in Blake's "mind-forged manacles," and sleep the "Newtonian Sleep."

May God us keep from single vision and Newton’s Sleep! - William Blake

		Technological man is indoctrinated and trained to perform and not think for himself. He worships the Mysterium of his betters. His time is spent improving himself and devising better methods to seek for the Mysterium that does not exist. He becomes more and more like his fellows because each and all are committed to the pursuit of the same delusion. They travel along the same road in lockstep and were born from the same unhallowed womb. Each institution of human learning is committed to the great task - the attainment and elucidation of the Mysterium.
Newton's Sleep, by William Blake.

Many would say, as Montaigne the French philosopher did, that the students of classical institutions of learning do not, for the most, apply what they’ve learned to their lives. What they learn is not translated into wisdom, and so on. However, this is not wholly accurate. In fact, educated men do translate what they have learned from school into their lives. And that is the problem. The student follows the teacher as one blind man follows another.

		Montaigne had a quotation etched into the ceiling of his study which reads: The happiest life is to be without thought. He was one of the first philosophers to realize that man was trapped by his inauthentic patterns and objects of learning. He did not realize, however, that thinking is not the problem, but that the direction of one’s thinking is. Thinking is not, in Heidegger’s estimation, “grounded in being.” Heidegger, who was opposed to all forms of abstraction, wrote: He who thinks great thoughts often makes great errors. He was speaking about the orientation of thought. Great thoughts about the illegitimate object – the Mysterium – are not truly great, but erroneous.
Three Blind Men, by Peter Breughel the Elder. (Detail from Parable of the Blind)

Heidegger insisted that man will never know all there is to know about himself or the world. Such knowing, cerebrally and verbally, is not the point of life. It is not the goal of science because the mind of man is simply not up to the job. Thinking does not occur so that the mysteries of Nature can be discovered. Man has turned his thought to such questions, but that does not mean his thought is rightly directed. In fact, the mind is in Existence to Exist, and, through its awareness of the significance of Existence, to live simply, directly, and authentically. Man's thought is a door through which Being emerges and presents itself, or whatever aspect of itself it desires to reveal to the individual mind it occupies. When Being makes an appearance, and occupies thought, it does not become an object of thought as a Rationalist would understand it. This is because Being is not static and therefore not "knowable" in any reductionist or fixed manner. Far from it. Thought and Being embark on a journey that is as individually construed as a snowflake or fingerprint. There is nothing collective about the relationship or journey, nothing a scientist would quantify or comprehend.

The fact that Nature and Being remain elusive is central to Taoism. The Taoist knows that the mind that seeks to know the secret of everything will simply fail in the undertaking.

While Being makes philosophy possible, it can never be grasped by philosophy – Karin Froese (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Taoist Thought)

Heidegger’s form of philosophizing can be seen as a celebration of Being rather than a grasping of it. In both the "Dao de Jing", and "Being and Time," philosophizing is a spiritual experience - ibid

Heidegger, as Nietzsche did before him, emphasized that it is the individual mind that is inhabited by Being.

Only an individual can provide a portal for Being to enter and express itself. And in a world where individuality becomes less apparent, Being itself diminishes. The less individuality, the less reality.  As man becomes more collective in his thought and behavior, he distances himself from himself and the real. Eventually, instead of becoming something, man becomes nothing. As a Disciple of the Mysterium, one man's difference from another Disciple is slight and his significance negligible. As far as the world goes, inauthentic man is superfluous and replaceable. In the nihilistic world he inhabits, a world of conveyor-belts, high rises, and cubicles, das Man becomes a simulacra, a duplicate, a replica. He is not replaced by the machine, he becomes one. With whatever is left of their vitality, Disciples of the Mysterium move to make their world a authenticity-free zone. In their perfect Global Village a truly self-interested and self-aware individual has little to no chance of asserting himself or going his own way. He must join in the ritual and conform to society's expectations.

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the French philosopher whose ideas were largely influenced by Heidegger.

If he does so, then he is deemed good and moral. If he refuses to do so, he is branded an iconoclast and punished for his greatness; crucified on the stake of his selfhood. 

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people – Schopenhauer

I entreat you, my brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not. They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned - Nietzsche

Tea and Simulacra

In history the way of annihilation is invariably prepared by inward degeneration - Jakob Burckhardt

If we examine the people of the world, we see that their existential predicament and ennui is very deep. So much so that most commentators fall short of explanations for it. We also see that man is filling his abscess with more and more things. However, the problem of his fallenness is not improved or ended. Why? The answer is because even if man had infinite power, time, inventiveness, and resources, he could never create enough mental and physical junk to fill the void left by the absence of Being, which is precious and invaluable. As was said of the Tao - it is “older than god.”

Man is left with what Jean Baudrillard referred to as a “simulacra.” In fact, man has become a simulacra himself. He is, in fact, a pale shadow or replica of MAN. His voice says nothing of importance. His eyes see nothing of importance. His attention is on nothing of importance. His ideas are not his own. His consciousness is the dust bin of society. His bloodstream is poisoned by toxic food, his stomach a graveyard full of the flesh of cruelly slaughtered animals. His thoughts are deranged, his relationships dysfunctional and hypocritical. So stands the marvellous creature who fills the world with his detritus: the music, magazines, television programs, pop icons, billboards, gossip, and mind-corroding drivel. Das Man is alienated from himself because even  his conception of self is a lie. He is a victim of Freud's so-called Thanatos Instinct, which psychologist Otto Rank defined as the state of man living unconsciously in the world, immersed in endless domestic minutiae and doing everything he can to avoid the call of his own soul.

Starting from speculations on the beginning of life and from biological parallels I drew the conclusion that, besides the instinct to preserve living substance, there must exist another, contrary instinct, seeking to dissolve those units and to bring them back to their primeval, inorganic state. That is to say, as well as Eros, there was an Instinct of death – Sigmund Freud (The Ego and the Id)

So long as we remain in the womb of the this externalized and public existence, we are spared the terror and the dignity of becoming a self – William Barrett (Irrational Man)

The Athenian philosopher Aristotle questioned what makes man human. Everything on earth has a certain property or capacity that distinguishes it. What distinguishes man? What does he do supremely well? What is his purpose? Philosophers such as Aristotle decided that man’s highest purpose is thinking and philosophizing. After all, man is the only creature who can think about Existence and thought. Doing so makes him unique under the stars.

Heidegger would, however, take this philosophical premise somewhat further. It is not only thinking that makes man unique, it is his ability to think about Being. That is what makes man truly human.

What Are You Thinking About?

Of course, at this point in history man is not human in the full philosophical sense. He is not authentic. He is a facsimile of Man. This is the reason why men now toy with ideas of cyborgs and robotoids. This is why his science is moving toward organic computering and human replication. Man is getting ready to upgrade the Mysterium yet again. It needs renovation and must be reinvigorated if man is to save himself from complete destruction. That at least is the theory.

Ours is the age which is proud of machines which think and suspicious of men who try to – H. M. Jones

	Animals do not possess reason. However, they think and have memories. They do not appear to conceive of their future and certainly do not engage in psychic repression, which means that they do not possess an "unconscious" as we would understand it. Animals are not rational because they do not need to be. Their consciousness is guided directly and intimately by Nature's profound intelligence, which men of religion and science seem incapable of comprehending. Animals have no conception of mortality and do not live in fear of death. Their lives have meaning without the need of anxiety or morbid thoughts to bring that sense of meaning about. Grotesquely, men attempt to train elephants to paint canvases and do back flips, whales to leap from swimming pools, pit bulls to tear at each other, and dolphins to carry explosives. Evidently, humans sorely wish that members of the animal kingdom were as "rational" as they are.

Pseudo-Individuality

The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make them virtuous, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make them sane - Erich Fromm (Escape From Freedom)

Inauthentic man - Das Man - is pseudo-sane. He is a pseudo-individual who genuflects before pseudo-individualistic icons conjured into being by those who wish to maintain man's conformity to the Collective. This policy is aided and abetted by man's ego, which is itself a product of the Collective. Man's ego is not personal but social. This much was surmised by philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and later confirmed by psychologist Sigmund Freud. The ego is simply a pseudo-self, a construct of the world in which man lives, an amalgam of the Collective's image of what a man should be. It is a symptom of the presence and influence of the Mysterium. Without the Mysterium the ego of man would dissolve, and without the ego the Mysterium could not permanently obstruct the rapport between man and Nature. It too would fade into nothingness. Until the ego is dissolved and the Mysterium uprooted, the ego will continue to fantasize that what it creates is more real than reality itself. As a result, man will remain estranged and fallen, his identity based on the approval rating of the world, and little about him will be truly free, true, or sane.

…the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination which accords neither with Western science nor with the experimental philosophy-religions of the East…This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction ­– Alan Watts (The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are)

You will feel like an onion: skin after skin, subterfuge after subterfuge, is pulled off to find no kernel at the center. Which is the whole point: to find out that the ego is indeed a fake – a wall of defence around a wall of defence…around nothing - ibid

Modern man may no longer be subject to an outdated theological Mysterium, but he has replaced that with a myriad Mysteria of his own making. He may not require a global church or centrally imposed ideology, but he can choose instead from a thousand brands of the new improved Mysterium. He can design his very own special phantasm, and believe himself freer because he has been granted something his forbears were forbidden.

Modern man does not understand how much his “rationalism”…has put him at the mercy of the psychic “underworld.” He has freed himself from “superstition” (or so he believes), but in the process he has lost his spiritual values to a positively dangerous degree. His moral and spiritual tradition has disintegrated and he is now paying the price for this break-up in world-wide disorientation and disassociation - Carl Jung (Approaching the Unconscious)

Under the delusion of pseudo-freedom, modern man makes straight for the Global Village - the pipe dream of his controllers. Man has great antipathy to freedom and the men who seek to steer him toward it. He prefers to vote in every kind of devil and hand them the reins of control. He prefers to identity with the objects of his hatred and fall into lockstep with the social engineers who know just how to drag his attention outward by promising him all kinds of shining future utopias. The misleaders, however, only lead man where he wants to go. They know that humans will, as Carl Jung said, "do anything, no mater how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls."

"Everybody votes for a dictator"

Authentic man, in touch with his Existence, is in perpetual conflict with his unawakened fellows in the world. He responds to the impulse for freedom that exists within him and tries to keep himself from falling back into the collective hive. He seeks to maintain his own ideas and understanding of reality. He knows how he is changed by the world of men, and how his own mind in turn effects the world around him. He knows that the "World Order" seeks to stamp out his instinct for individuality and freedom. He knows how the world seeks to colonize his mind and heart and drag him back into group-think. He realizes that the content of his mind does not Exist. It is not alive and real in the full sense of these words. His ideas are abstractions and constructs of mind, not born from direct experience but contemplation on experience. In other words, his thoughts and ideas are less real than the phenomena of the world, that is not hierarchically structured or everlastingly fixed and static.

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will often be lonely, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself – Fredrick Nietzsche

The deepest problems of modern life flow from the attempt of the individual to maintain the independence and individuality of his existence against the sovereign powers of society, against the weight of the historical heritage and the external culture and technique of life. The antagonism represents the most modern form of the conflict which primitive man must carry on with nature for his own bodily existence. The eighteenth century may have called for liberation from all the ties which grew up historically in politics, in religion, in morality and in economics in order to permit the original natural virtue of man, which is equal in everyone, to develop without inhibition; the nineteenth century may have sought to promote, in addition to man's freedom, his individuality (which is connected with the division of labor) and his achievements which make him unique and indispensable but which at the same time make him so much the more dependent on the complementary activity of others; Nietzsche may have seen the relentless struggle of the individual as the prerequisite for his full development, while socialism found the same thing in the suppression of all competition - but in each of these the same fundamental motive was at work, namely the resistance of the individual to being leveled, swallowed up in the social-technological mechanism – Georg Simmel (The Metropolis of Modern Life)

The Individual. The world’s origin and order is beyond conception and beyond mind. It is not there to be mentally known and understood like a mathematical problem. It is there to be experienced. The truth is not "out there." It is that which man contemplates within himself during his experience of the world, and as his psyche is changed by experience. The only experience a man can have is his own, and the only truth a man can know will be his own. A man’s truth is an expression of his uniqueness and individuality. The less unique an individual is, the less truth he will know. Science and religion are for the most part anti-individualist and therefore anti-truth.

Illusion Exists

Nothing so eludes conscious inspection as consciousness itself. This is why the root of consciousness has been called, paradoxically, the unconscious - Alan Watts (The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are)

The Mysterium is mind made. It is then projected onto the world and taken for something that exists independently of the human mind. The presence of the Mysterium ensures that man cannot see or interact with reality as it is. It was born from trauma and man foolishly sought safety and security under its shadow. Nothing much has changed down through the ages, despite the laudable work of many perceptive philosophers and psychologists.

For Freud, the historical process is essentially tragic. The more man creates cultures the more does he frustrate his instinctual drives, the more unhappy and neurotic does he become – Erich Fromm (Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy)

Not only does the Mysterium prevent man from seeing the world aright, it also prevents him from seeing himself aright. The ideas man has about man are distorted and skewed. The most important fallacy is that man is separate from Nature. In fact, man and Nature are one. Nature is man's extended consciousness, and man is the microcosm of Nature's being. In place of man's direct rapport with Nature stands the Mysterium, or the perverse thoughts and ideas man possesses about Nature. These thoughts and ideas are the creation of his ego, that part of consciousness split off from the ancestral oracle now referred to as the unconscious.

You yourself are even another little world and have within you the sun and the moon and also the stars – Origen (3rd Century Church Father)

Thoughts do not exist...

...The body does!

Heidegger's work warns man about the presence of Mysteria. It warns man not to believe that the content of his own mind is something substantial and real. It is not. Man's body certainly exists, but not his thoughts. Man's ideas about Existence are not his Existence. Man's ideas have, however, assumed greater significance than the actual life he lives and experiences. Heidegger warned that science and technology were man's illegitimate means of enhancing his relationship with Nature, given that his original and sane rapport has been lost. By probing and dissecting Nature, man believes he is getting to "know" Nature. He is quite mistaken. He suffers under a delusion caused by the Mysterium that directs his thinking and behavior.

Most of our so-called reasoning consists in finding arguments for going on believing as we already do - James Harvey Robinson

What are man's truths? Merely his irrefutable errors - Frederick Nietzsche

Having lost his selfhood, man believes he can get to know himself and other people once he has established a "perfect" community and attained global peace and other chimeras. Man does not deal with men as they are, only with his ideas of what they should be tomorrow. What a clever game the ego plays. These notions are simply the result of the Mysterium that directs the ego. Man's scientism and collectivism are the evil twins spawned by the Mysterium that men can sorely do without. Finding the remedy to the human affliction can only occur when men see their predicament correctly and objectively, without distortion or bias.

Psychologists know that man represses the content of his consciousness which threatens his image of himself. They also know that society decides what man thinks about himself. Whatever it is about a man that brings him into conflict with other people, and whatever is disapproved of, gets repressed into the unconscious. However, psychologists also know that whatever gets repressed continues to act upon the conscious mind. It also continues to act upon and affect the world. In other words, the world is shaped by mind, and mind in return is shaped by the world. The ego of man is condemned to interact not only with the world but with the content of the unconscious that presses upon it. To avoid being flooded and consumed by content from the inner and outer worlds, the ego must continually remain on alert. Psychologists have rightly described the ego as a mass of defences.

Below the repressed content, in the deepest and oldest hemispheres of the unconscious is the Self of a man, his true unadulterated identity that cannot emerge as long as the suppression of society and repression of the ego persist. Deep within man's mind - even that of an inveterate conformist - lies an impulse for true expression and individuality. Occasionally, given the right circumstances, this impulse may make itself known to the conscious mind and violently erupt to the surface. If it does, a man's life will not only change, it will become much harder. He will now be at odds with the world and the people in it. His ego will no longer be in charge of his life and he will not allow himself to be waylaid or pressed into narrow moulds of life for the sake of material security and physical comfort.

Although the self is my origin, it is also the goal of my quest – Jung (Letters, Vol. 1)

That Self, smaller than small, greater than great, is hidden in the heart of this creature here - (Katha Upanishad)

The man possessed by the Spirit of Rebellion quickly finds himself in perpetual conflict not only with society, but with himself. The impulse of individuality will be countermanded by the collectivist conditioning that dominates man's conscious expression and behavior. This is one of the main reasons why men conform. They do so to avoid the inner tension (or existential angst) that arises when and if the Spirit of Rebellion awakens within them. In Heidegger's view, man turns away from Being and lives in forgetfulness of it. He becomes "fallen" and inauthentic, and prefers to think in terms of "we," "us," and "our." His identity is ultimately of "oneself" rather than of "myself," his desires those of his fellows. His vision of the world is shared by people who have likewise repressed their authentic natures.

Men have been taught that it is a virtue to agree with others. But the creator is the man who disagrees. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to swim with the current. But the creator is the man who goes against the current. Men have been taught that it is a virtue to stand together. But the creator is the man who stands alone – Ayn Rand

Unless man tears the mask of the Mysterium from his face, he will remain unsane and deluded about himself and the world around him. His unsound vision of the world will continue to be fabricated by the Mysterium, and everything he sees will be through its vile lens. What is more, everything man thinks about will continue to receive his attention only after it appears beneath the shadow of the Mysterium. Therefore, nothing man sees is seen aright. Everything stands before him darkly. The world is concealed and undisclosed, and the mystery of Existence remains ever beyond his reach. Under the shadow of the Mysterium, no "perfect" society or utopia will ever germinate and flower, for as the sages have warned, social republics are constructed not from bricks alone, but from thought.

States are as men, they grow out of human characters – Plato

To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character – Thomas Paine (Rights of Man)

The more perfect civilisation is, the less occasion has it for government – ibid

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters – Benjamin Franklin

		There is nothing social, scientific, or collectivist about Being. It cannot be institutionalized or set up as an object of worship. It is the sum total of what everyone could think and say of it, and yet infinitely more than any human being could ever say of it or imagine it to be. The tongue that speaks and communicates thoughts to the world is incapable of explaining Being. Dasein is not subject to thought because it was not brought into being by thought. In fact, human thought is far more limited than people are wont to admit or imagine. After all, we have a limited lifespan and unlimited things to know. Therefore, it follows that thought is not enough for the task. In other words, mind is not enough. The mind of man simply cannot experience everything there is to experience.

Moreover, the mind of man cannot possibly understand everything there is to know about its own nature. Mind will always know less than there is to know about itself. How then can a mind logically posit the existence of a supernatural mind that does know all things? It seems to be a rather illogical supposition.

A human mind supposes the existence of an eternal mind that has given it birth. Inwardly, the mind knows it is the creator of the phantasmic "eternal mind" that is nothing more than an idea. The mind prides itself on its unique ability to create a Mysterium that directs its activities and oversees its work. In the end, there is nothing amiss in this. All that has happened, is that the mind has forgotten that it has created the idea of the supernatural mind that men call God. The mind has inverted the reality and, as a consequence of its artifice, believes that it has been created by the supernatural mind. Mind believes it has been created by what it has created, and does not concern itself with the paradoxical and illogical nature of this idea. The mind does not worry about what it might be sacrificing in order to believe in the presence of a supernatural mind responsible for creating everything that exists. It does not care to discover whether insanity has followed in the wake of its delusional adventure.

We can see that we take a lot for granted when we suppose the existence of an all-knowing god. This is because, in our present state of being, the only thing we can be remotely sure of, is that our thoughts and ideas are ours. A man can be sure of only one thing - that what occurs in his head at least belong to him. He can know his own idea of god because that idea belongs to his mind. However, he cannot know, or presume to know, god himself, should god exist. Indeed, a sane man must suppose that if something all-knowing exists, it is Nature, not god. After all, Nature created mind and not the other way round. The sane man will realize that Nature created mind which created god, with god being the projection of a damaged and perverse mind secretly wishing to rival and surpass Nature's sovereign power. So, it is not a case of everyone who believes in god truly knowing that god exists. It is a case of similarly deranged minds behaving an irrational idea in a similar irrational manner.

Of course, if we knew of only a single case of such mental delinquency, things would not look so bleak. However, when we realize that millions of delinquent minds exist, we cannot but fear for the future of mankind.

Accomplishment Without Action

The Sage is occupied with the unspoken and acts without effort. Teaching without verbosity, producing without possessing, creating without regard to result, claiming nothing, the Sage has nothing to lose - (Tao Te Ching)

Thought is not enough. And since mind is dependent on time and experience, it follows that time is not enough. The scientist looks to the future and to progress, and that sounds good on paper. However, in reality it poses a major problem. After all, as we discussed above, because a single man’s life is so brief, the scientific journey must be collectivist in nature, extending over the lives of countless men. By default, the individual is merely a link in a never ending chain of discovery and re-discovery. No single individual is in charge of the whole process, or recipient of the final illumination.

To change this state of affairs for the better, one must develop a new relationship with time, as well as with Existence. Man must learn to economize his time, and live qualitatively. This is the idea behind the concept of “wei wu wei” - that is, accomplishment without action. Thought and time as we know them to be, as we presently experience them, are not sufficient to bring us into the presence of truth. They can be as much a distraction from truth as paths to it. In themselves they are not important. What is important is attitude. We can’t change time itself, but we can change our attitude toward it, as well as our personal relationship with it. We would do well to realize, for instance, that the time that passes is the time that marks out our own lifespan. We might also realize that life is time and time is life. Additionally, thought makes time, not the other way around. Man's concept of duration is largely a mental construct. His understanding of time is altered by his mood and fluctuating level of concentration. So again, it is one's conscious attitude toward time and Existence that matter. When and if the "care" (Sorge) is there, we have a vital and deep relationship with life and time. When it is not there, time merely marks the minutes and hours of our inauthenticity and fallenness, our incarceration in the world of Das Man.

In order to cultivate a new vital relationship with thought, time, and Existence, a man must be his own master. He must be in charge of his mind, and his thoughts must be his and his alone. This is a tall order in a Collectivist world. In any case, science, the state, and other people will never teach a man how to do change his relationship to the real. Each man must make the transition for himself. He must accomplish it without action and without formal instruction. If he does not come upon the Way - the Tao - alone and free of all coercion. Once the process begins, the Tao becomes the guide. Nothing else is required except openness, mutability, and ever-increasing care for Existence.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us - Marcel Proust

The soul is not something one finds...it is something one creates - Thomas Szasz

Tea of Avidya

Mankind’s self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order - Jerry Mander

If something can be destroyed, or if it is destroyed, it probably needs to be. As said above, evil contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. However, one need not directly engage a tyrant in order to have him fall. The Taoist does not confront evil so that it may be invigorated by his energy. No! He knows that is not the way. Instead, the Taoist gives evil a lot of room. He disengages and well stands back. He has no interest in attending round table discussions with the Disciples of the Mysterium.

He who fights too long against dragons, becomes a dragon himself - Fredrick Nietzsche

The Taoist knows how precious the Mysterium is to the men who are haunted by it. He does not wish to take their beloved bride from their side. He knows what religion and technology are. He knows they are methods for conceiving, birthing, and nurturing Mysteria. The Taoist also knows how much man has sacrificed on the altar of the Mysterium, and the price he has paid to be a Disciple. He knows that man has succeeded in putting the natural world up for sale, and that he has built a world of lies above the ancestral sanctum that houses his true self. The Taoist knows that man must face whatever is left of himself and the world. Humans must now live with the hollow, vacant, anaemic world and its stuff, a world left naked by the devouring Mysterium that has cast its shadow so broadly. Humans must live with their shallow relationships and hostile attitude toward those few who remain sane and attentive to Dasein.

Das Man must live in forgetfulness of Being and cohabit with his self-hate. He must remain aggressive, acquisitive, and self-sadistic. He must continue to push himself, seek excellence, overcome obstacles, work out, and shape up. He must invent more fitness machines, regimens, and pastimes, and continue to pump it 'till it hurts. He must work ceaselessly to devise technologies to fill the void left by the insatiable Mysterium that has devoured and obliterated his psyche and planet.

By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed - Lewis Mumford

Chemycal Divorce

Bodies cannot be changed except by reduction into their first matter – Figulus (Alchemist)

The question arises as to whether man can return to the place of knowing, and stand again at the font of truth? Can he return to the zero degrees longitude, zero degrees latitude of a holistic consciousness, and sit once again beneath the shade of the great tree whose fruit once nurtured his soul?

		Can he find his way back to the beginning and know the place for the first time? Can he awaken from his "Newtonian Sleep" by emptying himself into nothingness and casting off his "mind-forged manacles?" Can he once again fall in love with the silence of the temple rather than the silence of the cemetery, and care for his own Existence as much as he has learned to care for the hollow approval of humanity? Can he remember the hymn of resurrection and sing himself alive? Mystery and imagination arise from the same source. This source is called darkness…Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding – Lao Tzu It is important for high initiation to regard light not as the perfect manifestation of the Eternal Spirit, but rather as the veil which hides that spirit - Aleister Crowley
Angel of Revelation, by William Blake

Darkness is the root of all light, light is matter, darkness pure spirit. Darkness is metaphysically absolute light. Light is merely a mass of shadows as it can never be eternal and is simply an illusion or Maya - Madame Helena Blavatsky

Truly it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow then the light is nearest of all to us - Meister Johannes Eckhart

The answer is yes. Man can do anything he desires to do. He can certainly end his delusion and tear the mask of the Mysterium from his face. He can raise himself from his slumber and emerge from the shadows and the cave. He can train his eyes on the stars and walk free amid the gardens of the Earth as the Shepherd of Being. First, however, he must empty his consciousness of all its accumulated furniture, and purge his blood of the poison that has caused him to act like a deranged beast. He must experience his "Chemycal Divorce" before he can undergo the great "Chemycal Wedding." He must be reduced to his basic elements and burned to ash if he is to ever rise as a phoenix above the flames of oblivion. He must dissolve his egotism and become as innocent as a dove.

Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost, amid the masses of men? He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home. Simple he is, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool. His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation. Since he judges no one no one judges him. Such is the perfect man. His boat is empty – Chuang Tzu

Only when all crutches and props are broken, and no cover from the rear offers even the slightest hope of security, does it become possible for us to experience an archetype that up till then had lain hidden...this is the archetype of meaning – Carl Gustav Jung

Are you willing to be sponged out, erased, cancelled, made nothing? Are you willing to be made nothing, dipped into oblivion? If not, you will never really change – D. H. Lawrence

In being alive to Being, man enters into a true relationship with everything around him. The apparently inanimate things of the world are no longer concealed. One speaks the correct language and will be answered. The world awakens and man communes with everything around him, the trees, rivers, wind, and animals. He gets to know the voices and story of everything around him. Once the things in the world become his, he in turn becomes theirs. His mind attends to and communes with them, but is also changed during and after that communion. Both man and world are set free. Both can enter into and enjoy a legitimate and everlasting communion. There is no master-slave dynamic or inner-outer schism. He has partaken of the wine of true freedom and is as open, deep, and changing as the sky.

The captured elements and ancient laws of earth run astray like horses. There is a constant yearning for all that is unconfined - Fredrich Holderlin (Mnemosyne)

The man for whom Dasein/Being is a concern harms nothing. This is because he does not seek the essence of anything, least of all himself. He is in the world or – as Heidegger put it – he experiences “Being in the World.”

I looked at the star and it gazed at me
I touched it, it was a flower, Don Mirabilis.
And its fragrance clung to my fingers,
Piercing my soul
Pablo Neruda
(Ode to a Mirabilis Jalapa)

The only thing asked of men is "Gnothi Seuthon" or Know Thyself. In knowing himself man knows all. This is the message found in every scripture and sacred text of importance. It was inscribed at the site of the Delphic Oracle, written in the Book of John and Gospel of Thomas, and uttered by sages, prophets, and philosophers the world over.

The greatest of all lessons is to know your Self, for when a man knows himself he knows God – Clement of Alexandria (3rd Century Christian Theologian)

The first step toward knowing oneself is care  (Sorge) for Being. One must care about their own Existence. And one's Existence must never be confused with the existence of other men in the world. There is nothing more precious to a man than his own Existence. One man cannot breathe for another. Each man must use his own lungs and breathe for himself.

A man may be able to donate a body part to another human being after he is dead, but while he lives he cannot donate his body to another man. A man's blood, cells, eyes, brain, and heart are his, and his alone. And a man's body Exists. It is the prime datum. It links him to the corporeal world and is made from the same stuff as the stars. To think about a thing is ultimately to become that thing. Thinking about something makes that thing part of a man's mind. To care for a thing makes it part of a man's soul or true self. It is to enter into deep communion with that thing, a level of knowingness that initiates an everlasting rapport with the world. Care for Being awakens an understanding of Being's true nature, the same nature as that of Nature and man. What we discover - what is revealed - is unfathomable to the average scientist or theologian. The reason why was well known to the Taoists who knew that whatever Being awakens within us, whatever it reveals and discloses, is ours alone. It is ideothetic and can never be collectivized. It cannot be shared, explained, or set up as an object of common worship. Dasein lives and therefore changes. It is never the same from one moment to the next. It has, therefore, nothing to do with science. Dasein is not something a second person can grasp and understand. Each person comes to it and ascertains it on their own, with their own particular perspective and insight. This is the reason why Dasein remains precious and unsullied. It cannot be adulterated by the language and commentary of men.
		Martin Heidegger's reputation suffered attack in a similar way as Nietzsche's reputation. His ideas and life story were deliberately misrepresented by his contemporaries who did their best to professionally assassinate him by labelling him a Nazi Party goon. A man's Existence (Dasein) predates thinking and Reason. Reason therefore is incapable of answering the questions of Being. As we can see, Heidegger's ideas strike at the root of academic philosophical traditions.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens - Carl Gustav Jung

The healing and restoration of man cannot come about until these facts are seen and understood aright. Healing means turning back toward Being and Sorge (the "care of Being"). Existence must not be seen as something that happens to man, but something man is. The man who realizes this fact begins to care for and about his own Existence in a very profound way. What happens to others - and what others say, think, and do - is much less important. The awakened man knows why men do what they do. He does not worry about it or react to the destruction of corruption as others are wont to do. His care opens the world to him and he realizes that the Numina/Tao arose from the same soil as his own Being. In the end, as the Tao Te Ching explains, the “mystery” - the Tao or Numina - and the man seeking to understand the mystery, arise from the same source. This is what is truly meant by “oneness is allness.”

I salute the light within your eyes where the whole universe dwells. For when you are at the center within yourself and I within mine, we shall be as one - Crazy Horse (Lakota Shaman)

The Earth and myself are of one mind - Chief Joseph (Nez Perce)

The Allness experienced by the Taoist and Man of Dasein is, however, not the same as the Oneness craved by the theologian and New Age smiling depressive. His is not the oneness of a million broken shards brought together in a heap. On the contrary, his oneness is Allness and Wholeness. It is made from complete things seen and received in their whole state. This idea makes greater sense once we contemplate the manner in which we have misconstrued the meaning of the terms “one” and “oneness.” They have been defined by dogmatists and mathematicians with a technological understanding of the universe. Remember, the mind that is impaired and diseased by its fallenness cannot see anything as it is. As Tennyson wrote, man is capable of seeing a straight stick bent in a pool.

…the term employed by Heidegger, “Dasein,” underscores our embeddedness within the world and is meant to differentiate his thought from that of his predecessors. It constitutes a sharp repudiation of Cartesian notions of subjectivity. Da means there, and thus Dasein refers to a being that cannot extricate itself from its particular mooring in order to maintain an objective Cartesian posture towards the world – Karin Froese (Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Taoist Thought)

The existentially awakened man sees oneness as allness not because he is a monist, but because he is aware of how division, duality, and diversity came about. He understands that man’s sense of dualism is a symptom of his age old impaired attitude toward Being. Because man's consciousness is broken, man is possessed by false ideas of separateness and duality. His mind is fractured and so the world he inhabits appears fractured. His mind is dualistic and so the world takes on a dualistic complexion. Every thought, idea, concept, and system is infected in the same way as the mind that formed them is infected. The moment man realizes that mind did not create mind, the game ends and the restoration and rehabilitation of his psyche begins.

Our exile has not only been from the Goddess, but also from Nature. It is not surprising, considering that most Westerners live apart from their environment, protected by concrete roadways, consuming machine-processed foods and filled with media information to the detriment of the experience of our own senses. The seasons go unnoticed, we seldom touch the earth, eat fresh food or observe the world personally...The sacred is a forgotten dimension in our society which we ignore at our peril - Caitlin Matthews (Sophia: Goddess of Wisdom)

Imaginatio

…the archetypes are, as it were, the hidden foundations of the conscious mind. They are inherited with the brain-structure – indeed, they are its psychic aspect. They are then, essentially, the chthonic portion of the psyche, that portion through which the psyche is attached to nature - Carl Gustav Jung (Civilization in Transition)

In the deepest recesses of consciousness, that William Blake termed the "Imagination," lies a man's imperishable self. That self is deeply connected to Nature because it is a product of Nature.

According to the new physics, observer and observed are somehow connected, and the inner domain of subjective thought turns out to be intimately conjoined to the external sphere of objective facts - Leonard Shlain (Art and Physics)

That self is not superior to Nature, nor is it inferior to it. The self does not look up to any authority, or down on anything in creation. It is the root of man's Being, the part of a him that Exists, and has a vital relationship with the so-called "inanimate" phenomena of the planet. It is the part of a man that can never be destroyed. It can only be unheeded and ignored, usurped and replaced, as it has been. In its place we have the ego of man, that part of consciousness that remained somewhat intact after the Age of Catastrophe. Having taken birth in chaos and flames, the ego is defensive and self-protecting. Hard and resolute as it is, however, the ego of man is not invulnerable. Its energy is finite and it can be overthrown and destroyed.

It has many enemies, so to speak, and many threats to its dominion. It must defend itself against hostile content from the world and the unconscious.

However, that which seeks to enter the ego's domain from the sanctum sanctorum - the holy of holies deep within man's Being - is not inherently destructive. It is only perceived to be a danger by the fragile, self-sustaining ego. Actually, the unconscious content does not seek to destroy but to assimilate. It seeks to bring the ego back into itself, not to devour but empower in a way vexatiously misunderstood by the ego. In fact, so defensive is the ego, it would rather self-destruct than have its boundaries crossed by content it prefers to debar. This is what is generally known as disassociation and insanity. However, insanity is not necessarily caused by content from the Id (or unconscious) flowing in and drenching the ego's conscious and unconscious systems. No, it can also be caused by the ego automatically shutting down, partly as a defensive measure and partly because of its "no surrender" policy.

Who Are You?

This auto-destructive tendency of the ego has not been given the thought it deserves. It is, we believe, one more facet of Freud's Thanatos Instinct, and was discussed by the Scottish psychologist R. D. Laing who concluded that schizophrenics, for example, choose their presumed ailment. Their dementia is not a disease, per se, but is in many cases perfectly controllable by the individual who sado-masochistically prefers to disassociate and "go to pieces," rather than answer the call of selfhood.

The foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering – Carl Jung

There is no anti-depressant that will cure a depression that's spiritually based, for the malaise doesn't originate from brain dysfunction, but from an accurate response to the desecration of life - David R. Hawkins (Power Vs. Force)

		In order to maintain its suzerainty, the ego slams the doors leading to the hallowed halls of the deep unconscious or Imagination. It has turned off the lights and keeps the unconscious hemispheres in darkness so that its treasures cannot be discerned or utilized. The stronger the light of ego burns, the darker the sky becomes over the unconscious realm. The more outer-directed the ego, the more the unconscious content is forced to retreat into shadow. The more man conforms to the dictates of the collective, the more stifled the unconscious becomes. The predicament will not abate until man regards his own unconscious truly. He must realize that it is his misguided fear and apprehension that serves to alienate his own selfhood that is condemned to remain dormant in the caves of inner darkness.

The self lies hidden in shadow...the "keeper of the gate," the guardian at the threshold. The way to the self lies through him - Erich Neumann (The Origin and Evolution of Consciousness)

Whereas the fragmentary ego finds itself a mere atom tossed between the vast collective worlds of the objective psyche and objective physis, ego united with the self experiences itself anthropomorphically as the center of the universe - ibid

True sanity entails, in one way or another, the dissolution of the normal ego, that false self competently adjusted to our alienated social reality: the emergence of the “inner” archetypal mediators of divine power, through the death and rebirth, and the eventual re-establishment of a new kind of ego-functioning, the ego now being the servant of the divine, no longer its betrayer – R. D. Laing (The Politics of Experience)

Until man turns his face toward the inner world he will never resolve the problems that have plagued him for millennia. He must take counsel from the sages of the present and the past, and learn about the implicit connections between the external world of Nature and the phenomena of his own psyche. He must understand that there is little difference between world and self. His core Being and the world around him are made, as it were, of the same material. Nature made man - his body and his mind - in her own image. At the root of man's Being is Nature's spark, Nature's brain, Nature's law - one that man must begin to obediently serve and love.

I myself am Heaven and Hell – Omar Khayyam

In your own bosom you bear your heaven and earth; and all you behold, though it appears without, it is within, in your Imagination, of which this world of mortality is but a shadow – William Blake (Jerusalem)

God only acts and is, in existing beings or men - Blake

He who, dwelling in all things, Yet is other than all things, Whom all things do not know, Whose body all things are, Who controls all things from within—He is your Soul, the Inner Controller, the Immortal - (Brihad-Aranyaka Upanishad)

Man must also discover how the truth has been kept from him. He must become aware of the forces that have preyed upon his mind and heart and kept him from breaking free of the Mysterium that has lead him to ruin. He must see through the lies and deceit that have caused him to betray his selfhood and adore the unhallowed silence of the cemetery rather than the vital silence of the Temple.

From the earliest days of western philosophy, man was told that his capacity to reason was what his life was all about. Reason, said the Athenian philosophers, was the faculty that made man unique. Reason sets man apart and explains the cosmos. It provides man with answers to the questions that vex him. Two thousand years after the age of Plato and Aristotle men continue to believe that reason is their salvation. And practically speaking we cannot doubt that reason is indeed essential to human Existence. After all, without reason where would we be? However, as Heidegger rightly surmised, reason does not give a man answers to the mystery of his Existence. This is because the content of the Reason does not itself Exist. Reason does not make the world and did not bring Nature into being. On the contrary, Nature brought the mind of man into Being. Man's Beingness - his Dasein or "Being in the World" - gives him the capacity to think and reason. One must have soil before they can garden and air to breathe before they can walk and talk. One must Exist before they can think. Therefore, reason is the child of Dasein.

If reason was up to the job of revealing the truth about Being, there would be no such thing as the impenetrable unconscious mind. Every hemisphere of consciousness would be revealed and comprehended. There would be no mystery or Mysterium. Man would stand at the center of himself - at the zero degrees longitude and zero degrees latitude of his psyche - and all doors that divide the inner world from the outer would be flung wide. Man would finally find his rightful place in the universe, not as master and captain, but as shepherd and poet.

Do you deny me entrance to heaven, I who have at last learned the mystery of myself? – (Egyptian Book of the Dead)

	William Blake (1757-1827). Great artists and poets live in closer psychic proximity to the unconscious realm, which means they are in closer proximity to the Mysterium, and more likely to be assailed by it than other men. In fact, their strength of character is measured by how successfully they resist the power of the Mysterium. This proximity to the unconscious, and to the Mysterium, accounts for why the lives of great artists, poets, and philosophers, are so fraught with angst. Deep existential suffering is less prevalent in the lives of those who are Mysterium-possessed, i.e., theologians, scientists, materialists, and socialites. As history reveals, mental and emotional suffering is much more prevalent in the lives of iconoclasts who seek to tear off the mask of the Mysterium in order to see themselves and the world without distortion. They must do battle with an unseen enemy that haunts their minds, and, as the philosopher Nietzsche discovered, the battle within the self, for the self, is not always won. It is no wonder then that William Blake asked of men such as himself: "How is it we have walked through fires and yet are not consumed?"

The Sage-King

Philosophy gets under way only by a peculiar insertion of our own existence into the fundamental possibilities of Dasein as a whole. For this insertion it is of decisive importance, first, that we allow space for beings as a whole; second, that we release ourselves into the nothing, which is to say, that we liberate ourselves from those idols everyone has and to which they are wont to go on cringing before - Martin Heidegger (What is Metaphysics?)

Heidegger lauded the poets, musicians, and artists. They are the keepers of Being, and reside within the embrace of Being. Their works deal with the question of Being and remind men to realize and acknowledge their Existence. The poets are the antithesis of the technological man, whose world is devoid of Being. The artist and poet have Sorge or "care." Their works have the ability to raise the dead, that is, to awaken men from their Newtonian Sleep. And that awakening can happen at any time and place. Once the voice of Being calls, man is changed. He does not need to wait for future revelations and utopias. He does not need to die to find his bliss in some indistinct and unlikely heaven.

Time is not involved. The truth of his Existence appears in front of him spontaneously and irrevocably. It is immanent and implicit. Regardless of a man's level of conformity or the thickness of the walls he has placed between himself and the real, the Voice of Being cannot be mistaken, ignored, silenced, or debarred.

Sometimes a man stands up during supper,
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.
And another man, who remains inside his own house
stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world,
toward that same church which he forgot.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Henri Rousseau	Salvador Dali	Rene Magritte	Georgio de Chirico

The Disciples of the Numina - the artists and poets - walk the winding and crooked paths of imagination, not the straight roads of invention. They are prolific rather than devouring, nagual rather than tonal, polyphrenic rather than monophrenic, pneumatic rather than hylic. They allow Nature to work on their minds, never deluding themselves that mind has created Nature. They do not allow their minds to change the world. On the contrary, they know that greater magic occurs when man allows himself to be changed by the world.

…thinking which does not start from and continue in close relation to its foundations in the physical universe must lead to falsity - Alvin Boyd Kuhn

Come to the center of the earth and there you will find the Philosopher's Stone - Alchemical Adage

	Each thing we see hides something else we want to see - Rene Magritte

The world does not lead man wrongly. It is man who witlessly leads the world down wrong paths. His mind darkens reality, not the other way around. Sartre was wrong and Heidegger was right. Sartre claimed that human life had no meaning. All was "nausea" and "angst," and man is condemned to face the meaninglessness of Existence, and in so doing find inner strength. Heidegger was not so pessimistic. He officially distanced himself from Sartre's brand of negative Existentialism because he knew all to well that life has meaning. The right kind of life that is, one infused with a care for Existence.

Man's simple awareness and care for Dasein frees him from futility. It cleanses the doors of perception so that he can see himself and his world as they are. Care opens the world like a flower and restores to man the deep direct communion with Nature and the Real that was lost when the ego took birth. Without subconscious fear and animosity blocking the road between them, Man and World enter and occupy the future together at the same instant, free and unmolested by "single vision."

From those most holy waters, born anew I came, like trees by change of calendars, Renewed with new sprung foliage through and through, Pure and prepared to leap up to the stars - Dante (Puragtorio)

Your eyes will become the sun and your breath the wind. In your turn you will go to the sky and the earth and the waters. Your limbs will become the roots of plants - (The Rig Veda)

There no sun shines, no moon, nor glimmering star, Nor yonder lightening, the fire of earth is quenched. From him, who alone shines, all else borrows its brightness, The whole world bursts forth into splendour at his shining - (Kathhaka Upanishad)

Destroyed is my badness; annihilated is my evil. Put away is the sin which was my own. I wander on the path that I know, in the direction of the island of justification. I arrive in the land of the heavenly horizon; I pass through the holy portal. O Gods who come to meet me! Stretch out your hands toward me! I have become a god, one among you. I have restored the eye of the sun. After it had been injured on the day of battle by the two adversaries – (Egyptian Book of the Dead)

Jean Cocteau	Ayn Rand	T. S. Eliot

Conclusion

She gently took the self-forgetting soul by the hand...and showed him all the experiences in the universe, all manifestation, bringing him higher and higher through various bodies, 'till his lost glory came back, and he remembered his own nature - Swami Vivekananda (Raja Yoga)

The theories that Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung espoused about man's so-called unconscious mind are not as dissimilar as many "experts" assert. Both men knew that the contents of the unconscious were Nature-born. However, unlike Heidegger's poets and artists, psychologists generally have an ambivalent attitude toward the unconscious and its content. Freud believed it was a dumping ground for man's repressions, and Jung believed his "archetypes" had immoral and even evil, as well as healthy and good inclinations. In other words, unlike the poets, psychologists warn that the unconscious (or Id) has a threatening aspect.

	Sigmund Freud proposed the existence of an unapprehended monster who subversively controlled the actions behind the scenes the civilized workings of daily intercourse, much like the charlatan operating the levers behind the facade in the Wizard of Oz - Leonard Shlain (Art and Physics)

In our opinion, Carl Jung's ideas, in this regard, were not wholly accurate. It is not content from the unconscious recesses that necessarily threatens the ego, but the Mysterium that stands, so to speak, in front of the archetypes so to impersonate them. Man's contact with his unconscious and true Selfhood is drastically occluded by the sinister presence of the parasitical Mysterium, the would-be ally, but also deceiver, of the ego that acts as a ersatz archetypal presence within consciousness. Remove the Mysterium, and the archetypes (Imagination) "speak" for themselves. Their supposed threat will trouble man not a moment longer. As Jung elsewhere revealed, the unconscious - like the Quantum Universe - cannot be apprehended directly because it apparently reflects back whatever "visage" is projected into it. The projected visages of fear, trepidation, uncertainty, prejudice, bemusement, shallow curiosity, expectation, and false hope, etc, are entirely the result of the Mysterium's presence and intrigue. They are Mysterium-manufactured and Mysterium-directed states of consciousness that are nothing less than barriers blocking the rapport between ego and Self.

The two-faced ambassador between the worlds surreptitiously intercedes and gives "false counsel" so that ego and self remain forever estranged. Therefore, if unconscious content invades and crosses the limen (the border line between the conscious and unconscious hemispheres) to threaten and potentially overwhelm the ego's dominion, it is because that content and energy (libido) is maliciously directed to do so by the ego's would-be "Enforcer." By misinforming the ego about the unconscious, the Mysterium initiates and perpetuates a deadly feedback loop. The ego and Super Ego act on the "counsel" of the impersonating Mysterium and continue to falsely regard the unconscious as a threat. Hence, psychic unification never occurs, and the "mind-forged manacles" foisted upon consciousness remain unbroken.

The psychological "Transcendent Function" arises from the union of conscious and unconscious content - Carl Jung

	The ego is the child of a traumatized consciousness. It is the "hero" seeking to free itself from the all-encompassing embrace of the Mysterium. It alone seeks differentiation and individuation. The Mysterium is Thanatos. It is regression and insanity. Its perverse power strives to prevent the ego from attaining freedom. It encircles the ego and prevents a clear dynamic interactivity or mergence between the conscious and unconscious hemispheres of being.

The "program" of the Mysterium has been running the "computer" of the mind for centuries. Fortunately, as Heidegger emphasized, the artists and poets are for the most part ardently sceptical of reason and are, therefore, not as susceptible as the Disciples of the Mysterium, the rationalists, scientists, and theologians. Their minds are not as infected by the viral propaganda of the Mysterium. Consequently, like Taoists, the poets and artists are not as likely to project a negative visage toward the unconscious. Theologians, philosophers, and scientists are Disciples of Reason - of Blake's "single vision." They are under the spell of the pre-rational Mysterium, and will never resolve the existential predicaments of humanity. The Reason employed by Rationalists to gain understanding about man and the world is itself nothing more than the poisoned myopic child of the Mysterium, which came into being before reason and thought. Therefore reason cannot hope to fathom the nature of that which existed before its own advent. This is the great paradox that has held back the tide of true progress. In short, the presence of the Mysterium occludes a healthy communion between ego and self, mind and Nature. It is the architect of all human neurosis, the engineer of all pathology.

Born in Flames

According to Heidegger, man must endeavor to still the trembling mirror of the mind that casts distorted reflections of Man and Nature. He must tear down the mask of the Mysterium so that the Numina - the world as it is without Mysteria - can be viewed and known directly. When this is accomplished, there is no longer any question of subject versus object, belief and doubt. There is only Experience, Existence, and Knowing. There is only the journey, the Muse, and the inviolate communion between oneself and the everlasting flow of Tao.

Troubling I sit, day and night. My friends are astonished at me: They forgive my wanderings. I rest not from my great task: To open the eternal worlds! To open the immortal eyes of man inward: into the worlds of thought: into eternity. Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the human imagination - William Blake

I am the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity - Igor Stravinsky

Everything that is dead quivers. Not only the things of poetry, stars, moon, wood, flowers, but even a white trouser button glittering out of a puddle in the street...Everything has a secret soul which is silent more often than it speaks - Wassily Kandinsky

		Heidegger's Authentic Man must rise from three deaths and resurrect his true sense of selfhood. In his world nothing must be borrowed, copied, decayed, or desecrated by utility. The knob of the door, the leg of the table and socket in the wall; the dust that gathers and rust that forms; the pebbles under foot and wet tiles on the roof; the litter carried by the wind along the avenue, the dew on a black horse's mane in the morning, are human too, as human as a man imagines himself to be, perhaps even more so. ...Each grain of sand every stone on the land, each rock and each hill, each fountain and rill, each herb and each tree, mountain, hill, earth and sea, cloud, meteor and star, are Men seen afar - William Blake
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

The man who Exists is a Sage-King. No one, not even a god, towers above him. He has no need for fiery chariots and archangels. He is fascinated by how a single sip of water changes him and how drunk with beauty his soul can be even while drowned in unspeakable sorrow. His first greeting every morning is to the light that fills his pupils and welcomes him back to the world. His boat has no oars because he trusts the waters of the endlessly winding river that flows eternally below and around the orbs of creation. The timeless music of that river, unheard by most, fills his ears and reverberates through his Being. Upon its lava-like current he is borne to the place he needs to be - the center of himself.

Out beyond ideas
Of wrong doing and right doing
There lies a field
I’ll meet you there
When the soul lies down in that grass
The world is too full to talk about
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
Doesn’t make any sense
Rumi

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Here - Disciples of the Mysterium Interview I
Here - Disciples of the Mysterium Interview II

Reference Works (Selected)

Tao Te Ching (translation by Stephen Mitchell)
The Book of Tea, by Okakura Kakuzo
Sein Und Zeit (Being and Time), by Martin Heidegger
What is Metaphysics?, by Martin Heidegger
Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception, by M. Merleau-Ponty
The Embers and the Stars, by Erazim Kohak
The Pathology of Civilization, by David Watson
Voice of the Earth, by Theodore Roszak
Where the Wasteland Ends, by Theodore Roszak
The Earth As Modified By Human Action, by George P. Marsh
The Metropolis of Modern Life, by George Simmel
Why Freud Hated America, by Howard L. Kaye
Freud and Man's Soul, by Bruno Bettelheim
The Republic, by Plato
The Timaeus, by Plato
Ethics, by Aristotle
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, by Max Weber
The Rights of Man, by Thomas Paine
Prolegomena, by Immanuel Kant
The Critique of Pure Reason, by Immanuel Kant
Meditations on First Philosophy, by Rene Descartes
Phenomenology of Mind, by George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
The Social Contract, by Jean Jacques Rousseau
The Birth of Tragedy, by Friedrich Nietzsche
On the Genealogy of Morality, by Friedrich Nietzsche
The Antichrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche
The World as Will and Idea, by Arthur Schopenhauer
The Complete Works, by Michel de Montaigne
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, by John Locke
Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
Hyperion, by Friedrich Holderlin
Mnemosyne, by Friedrich Holderlin
Sonnets to Orpheus, by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Book of Hours, by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Book of Images, by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Briggs, by R. M. Rilke
Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, by Burton Watson
Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Taoist Thought - Katrin Froese
Demian, by Herman Hesse
Steppenwolf, by Herman Hesse
The Outsider, by Colin Wilson
Beyond the Outsider, by Colin Wilson
The Book of Mirdad, by Mikhail Naimy
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, by William Blake
The Four Zoas, by William Blake
Songs of Innocence and Experience, by William Blake
William Blake's Circle of Destiny, by Milton Perceval
The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake, by Erdman
The Portable William Blake, by Alfred Kazin
A Blake Dictionary, by S. Foster Damon
Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, by Northrop Frye
The Portable Jung (translation by R. F. C. Hull)
The Gnostic Jung, by Stephen Hoeller
Nature Has a Soul - Carl Gustav Jung
The Origin and Evolution of Consciousness, by Erich Neumann
Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes
Psychiatry: The Science of Lies, by Thomas Szasz
The Myth of Mental Illness, by Thomas Szasz
Love, Sexuality and Matriarchy, by Erich Fromm
The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, by Erich Fromm
Escape From Freedom, by Erich Fromm
Betrayal of the Self - by Arno Gruen
The Abnormality of Normalcy, by Arno Gruen
The Divided Self, by R. D. Laing
The Politics of Experience, by R. D. Laing
Sanity, Madness, and the Family, by R. D. Laing
The Book, by Alan Watts
Love, Freedom, and Aloneness, by Osho
The Ancestral Mind, by Gregg D. Jacobs
Closing of the American Mind, by Alan Bloom
The Ultimate Canon of Knowledge, by Alvin Boyd Kuhn

The Works of Sigmund Freud
The Works of Carl Gustav Jung
The Works of Martin Heidegger
The Works of J. Krishnamurti
The Works of Ayn Rand
Poetry of Friedrich Holderlin
Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke
Poetry of William Blake
Poetry of T. S. Eliot
Poetry of Lao Tzu
Poetry of Chuang Tzu