The following quote from a book review quotes Eliot's reaction to Gurdjieff. It seems like the reviewer has categorized Eliot's attitude well.
...
the publisher's reports - relaxed, unbuttoned, but (on the basis of the samples Schuchard gives) carefully thought out none the less - give insight into what Eliot thought about the barren shores of mysticism. "The addiction to Asiatic mysticism, separated from Asiatic religion, produced... something which to me is very much ... repellent in Gurdjieff and Ouspensky."
from
http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,,2212357,00.html
and more:
"Eliot's suspicions were aroused by any form of mysticism which had not evolved out of, and was not supported by, a religion."
Ah yes, mysticism not supported by a religion. What could this mean -- what could a mysticism be which was not supported by --- words. And yet what mysticism COULD be supported in any healthy way by ---words???
It is a barren place we seek, barren of the past, barren of words, ...
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Upcoming topics
in our blog about Jan Cox.
The arguments that suggest his significance is of the century defining kind.
A glance of a history of mysticism----what can such a phrase mean? His words on the subject
ref other mystics, his points about history
What is history---the nature of progress
Conspiracies -- their nature, the nonsense of thinking an ordinary person could pursue such, or that you as an ordinary thinker could detect such, his interest in, his hints about (Peru?)
His significance in terms of American history on the political level. Did he give Jimmy Carter the idea to run for president.
The arguments that suggest his significance is of the century defining kind.
A glance of a history of mysticism----what can such a phrase mean? His words on the subject
ref other mystics, his points about history
What is history---the nature of progress
Conspiracies -- their nature, the nonsense of thinking an ordinary person could pursue such, or that you as an ordinary thinker could detect such, his interest in, his hints about (Peru?)
His significance in terms of American history on the political level. Did he give Jimmy Carter the idea to run for president.
The Nature of Ordinary Thought
The nature of ordinary mentation
Ordinary thought, that mentation of which most people are unaware of an alternative, operates solely on the principle of polar opposition, and this is a main reason it cannot be relied upon to assess reality. There are uncountable and unaccountable so called causes for any (so-called) event. In these circumstances to single out ONE cause, and think something has been explained is illusory. The complexity of the surrounding and internals worlds of man is simplified by the mind or the ordinary intellect could not function. The intellect has a proper function, but that is not describing reality. The failure to understand the appropriate uses of the intellect is a source of pain ultimately.
The mind of man simplifies reality, and enables itself to function, by defining any and everything in terms of opposition. It never really specifies anything at all, in itself (the things self is what I mean). It uses words and these words only make sense at all if they are defined in contrast to something else. Take the word "table." A definition opposes this piece of furniture to a chair, or to the floor. This is called binary logic. It makes computers work fine. Computers do not assess reality either.
Ordinary thought, that mentation of which most people are unaware of an alternative, operates solely on the principle of polar opposition, and this is a main reason it cannot be relied upon to assess reality. There are uncountable and unaccountable so called causes for any (so-called) event. In these circumstances to single out ONE cause, and think something has been explained is illusory. The complexity of the surrounding and internals worlds of man is simplified by the mind or the ordinary intellect could not function. The intellect has a proper function, but that is not describing reality. The failure to understand the appropriate uses of the intellect is a source of pain ultimately.
The mind of man simplifies reality, and enables itself to function, by defining any and everything in terms of opposition. It never really specifies anything at all, in itself (the things self is what I mean). It uses words and these words only make sense at all if they are defined in contrast to something else. Take the word "table." A definition opposes this piece of furniture to a chair, or to the floor. This is called binary logic. It makes computers work fine. Computers do not assess reality either.
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Fanfare for the common dog
My dog belongs to the same pack as Dmitri Shostakovich and Aaron Copland. Both composers have inspired in Sunny the sing along urge. It is so cute, -- I did not say euphonious, I said cute. Last night on the telly we watched a special on wolves, and the sound of howling puzzled and riveted him. But only at the sound of the masters did he add his voice to the pack.
The sound of my dog gurgling to classical symphonies presents the spectre of gaps, gaps of which if we are unaware, we risk a punitive ignorance. The gap I mean is the gap between what you consider the known world and what the world actually is. The mystic participates in point blank reality, on occasion. The distance between ordinary humanity and someone like someone like Jan Cox is at least the distance between a canine and a classical composer.
This is not elitism. The world is as it is. I did not invent this planet. I am merely trying to point with fluffy words to a certain spotless reality. As inhabitants of this planet it behooves us to struggle to know what is. If for no other reason than to avoid getting our heads knocked through ignorance of the surrounding structure.
The sound of my dog gurgling to classical symphonies presents the spectre of gaps, gaps of which if we are unaware, we risk a punitive ignorance. The gap I mean is the gap between what you consider the known world and what the world actually is. The mystic participates in point blank reality, on occasion. The distance between ordinary humanity and someone like someone like Jan Cox is at least the distance between a canine and a classical composer.
This is not elitism. The world is as it is. I did not invent this planet. I am merely trying to point with fluffy words to a certain spotless reality. As inhabitants of this planet it behooves us to struggle to know what is. If for no other reason than to avoid getting our heads knocked through ignorance of the surrounding structure.
Monday, November 12, 2007
Walking the Plank
Jan Cox did not, to my recollection, ever dwell on a peculiar resistance to pursuing This Kind of Stuff, as he sometimes called the quest. Now perhaps he did in Magnus Machina, and I just missed it, but regardless, I am referring to what some mystical writers called the horror vacuii. The picture that came to mind is of walking across a wooden floor. Your feet may easily stay on one plank and your transit be the kind of mechanical repetition that vanishes without notice. But imagine this----your path is the same but you are crossing on a plank which has no adjoining lumber. You are not crossing a floor, but a narrow beam. For most, (not all) this would immediately change the stakes. For some a mechanical motion would become a challenging feat.
The balance that was careless and effective, becomes a goal perhaps out of reach, and the failure to attain it has penalties. The awareness of emptiness can become debilitating. The surroundings which insulated one, but were unnoticed, become desirable in their absence. This physical picture also outlines a mental complexity when the action is not physical but mental---the action is maintaining one's attention, and the sketch just drawn can illuminate the resistance to keeping one's balance on the mental beam of focused attention. The barest glimpse of success, the diminishment of thought,can be repellent and the glimpse exemplify a meaning of the phrase horror vacuii. One reason Jan may not have mentioned it is that I am wrong. Regardless, my story points to a nice summary. Walking the plank, maintaining a focused attention, implies death: a death which may be scary, but the death talked about here is the death of the irrelevant and unnecessary, -- the death of the self.
Of course he did talk about the misconceptions surrounding this phrase, the death of the self, and we can discuss that soon. Of course you could just go to his web site, now. Soon I will be linking this blog to his site but for now you could just type, www.jancox.com.
The balance that was careless and effective, becomes a goal perhaps out of reach, and the failure to attain it has penalties. The awareness of emptiness can become debilitating. The surroundings which insulated one, but were unnoticed, become desirable in their absence. This physical picture also outlines a mental complexity when the action is not physical but mental---the action is maintaining one's attention, and the sketch just drawn can illuminate the resistance to keeping one's balance on the mental beam of focused attention. The barest glimpse of success, the diminishment of thought,can be repellent and the glimpse exemplify a meaning of the phrase horror vacuii. One reason Jan may not have mentioned it is that I am wrong. Regardless, my story points to a nice summary. Walking the plank, maintaining a focused attention, implies death: a death which may be scary, but the death talked about here is the death of the irrelevant and unnecessary, -- the death of the self.
Of course he did talk about the misconceptions surrounding this phrase, the death of the self, and we can discuss that soon. Of course you could just go to his web site, now. Soon I will be linking this blog to his site but for now you could just type, www.jancox.com.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Overlooking the obvious
Quoting again the New York Times (and Jason Epstein) to make a point about how the ordinary intellect operates:
"...A few weeks after being released, in June 1981, Mr. Abbott, now a darling in leftist literary circles, stabbed to death a waiter in a Lower East Side restaurant, and his champion [that is, Norman Mailer] became a target of national outrage...
"...A few weeks after being released, in June 1981, Mr. Abbott, now a darling in leftist literary circles, stabbed to death a waiter in a Lower East Side restaurant, and his champion [that is, Norman Mailer] became a target of national outrage...
The episode was the last great controversy of Mr. Mailer’s career. Chastened perhaps, and stabilized by what would prove to be a marriage with Ms. Church, a former model whom he wed in November 1980, Mr. Mailer mellowed and even turned sedate. The former hostess-baiter and scourge of parties became a regular guest at black-tie benefits and dinners given by the likes of William S. Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt ... His editor, Jason Epstein, said of this period, 'There are two sides to Norman Mailer, and the good side has won.'"
Friday, November 9, 2007
The Extreme Empiricism of Jan Cox
A radical empiricism underlies one of the tools Jan used to help people explore the world and themselves. What is often called 'self observation' was variously described by Jan to his students. Regardless of the emphasis in his descriptions, attention to the so-called inner world of man was critical. He carried the scientist's empiricism to the job of understanding one's internal thoughts.
This approach is unpopular in the scientific arena since often scientists are unwilling to credit this approach, labeling it as subjective. Had they tried it, the scientists of the physical external world would have realized that subjective is not a good adjective. Had they sincerely directed their curiosity on themselves they would have realized one's thoughts are not any kind of unique phenomena, in content, or in source.
The ordinary thoughts of one man are about as unique as one chicken in a noisy hen house.
The internal cackling is not subjective since it typifies a species. Is not the typical sound of species an interesting important and relevant field of study?? Just because with man there is an internal quieter side to the typical human chatter does not make it a less scientific subject. The internal chatter, if studied, reveals that man's internal life is not original, not autonomous, and not for the purpose the thinker assumes. The scientists of the external world miss these crucial facts, and since they have not turned a systematic attention to their own internal world, or wondering about the soundness of the positivistic aversion to internal study, their caveats about this approach lack intellectual weight.
There are complications to the intellectuals' interior experience also, which prevent them often pursuing the path of self-knowledge, but we can talk about that later. And later we can discuss Sagan's rather amazing contention that the human brain has stopped evolving. Oh really, and how could we test that statement? So check back.
This approach is unpopular in the scientific arena since often scientists are unwilling to credit this approach, labeling it as subjective. Had they tried it, the scientists of the physical external world would have realized that subjective is not a good adjective. Had they sincerely directed their curiosity on themselves they would have realized one's thoughts are not any kind of unique phenomena, in content, or in source.
The ordinary thoughts of one man are about as unique as one chicken in a noisy hen house.
The internal cackling is not subjective since it typifies a species. Is not the typical sound of species an interesting important and relevant field of study?? Just because with man there is an internal quieter side to the typical human chatter does not make it a less scientific subject. The internal chatter, if studied, reveals that man's internal life is not original, not autonomous, and not for the purpose the thinker assumes. The scientists of the external world miss these crucial facts, and since they have not turned a systematic attention to their own internal world, or wondering about the soundness of the positivistic aversion to internal study, their caveats about this approach lack intellectual weight.
There are complications to the intellectuals' interior experience also, which prevent them often pursuing the path of self-knowledge, but we can talk about that later. And later we can discuss Sagan's rather amazing contention that the human brain has stopped evolving. Oh really, and how could we test that statement? So check back.
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