The Magical Messiah

I seem always to be caught in a bit of a bind as far as ideological commitments go. On the one hand, I am a religious Traditionalist which, assumptions have it, ought to incline me toward social and economic Conservatism; on the other hand, I am a political Liberal. “Liberal” is, in my case, certainly not to say “secularist” as I am far from convinced that non-spiritual values can in any way serve as a firm foundation for an authentically ethical society.

I recently made known in a social medium my enjoyment of David Berlinski’s latest book, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions, an amusing and well-argued dismantling of the “new atheist” movement’s claim to scientific objectivity. I purchased, read, and enjoyed most of the book before discovering that Berlinski is a senior fellow of the conservative “intelligent design” think-tank “The Discovery Institute”, and his friendship with neo-con talking head—and professional bigot—Ann Coulter. Well, this just illustrates my point. I still agree with much of what Berlinski writes in The Devil’s Delusion. As long as he and I stay away from politics, we could have a rather fruitful friendship.

Yes, I am a religious Traditionalist or, to use my preferred terminology, a Perennialist. I see something inherently, even absolutely (in the “relative-absolute” sense of Schuon), valuable in the sacramental forms of the world’s great Revelations—a category, I hasten to clarify, which is not limited to the three major Abrahamic monotheisms. Somehow, though, my moral obligations within this framework have gone askew of those of many of my cohort. Or, just maybe, theirs have gone quite seriously askew.

Modern Conservatism has gone off to the impossible geography of the land of Ayn Rand-and-some-few-selective-readings-of-Leviticus-and-Paul and left us (not to mention Jesus) in a dust cloud wondering what the hell happened. Politics, at its best and at its core, is not a matter merely of convenient policy-making, nor of unscrupulous deal-making; an authentic political system is moral to its very soul, and is thus founded on the moral assumptions of those who create and recreate it. This being the case, the Conservative fairy-tale becomes, like an unvarnished Grimm story, quite disturbing: we see a narrative of blood and tears, God’s Justice and Mercy belonging only to a select few supermen who have managed effectively to invent a god in their own image. (“[S]o also in this world people make gods and worship what they have created. It would be more fitting for gods to worship people.” The Gospel of Philip) This free-market-god is a total inversion of the God spoken of by the Prophets and God-men; he is not the God of the Logos but, if the expression will be forgiven, the god worshiped by the devils and archons. But what more should we expect of the Age of Iron?

It is certainly not practical to enforce the same scheme individually and locally as on a very large national scale, and this is sometimes the excuse given (when any is proffered at all) by the more thoughtful among this sort of history- and doctrine-ignoring neo-Conservative for their extremely un-Christ-like political and economic ideals. The extremes to which this excuse is stretched, however, make a veritable non sequitur of what would ordinarily be a common-sense observation. Local and individual charity, whether helping people with their chores, donating blankets to homeless shelters, setting up a soup kitchen in your church, or whatever it happens to be, is absolutely vital, andall charity—in the sense of the biblical Virtue—manifests first and necessarily out of the individual’s deepest commitments. But there is no magical ring-pass-not at which, suddenly!, spontaneously!, Mercy must give way entirely to Justice and our judgments of people who are not ourselves need kick in at their very harshest. We may need to soften certain personal moral requirements in order to relate them to society—pacifism being a good example—but that is not the same thing as abandoning them as irrelevant at a certain numerical threshold of living human bodies, land measurement, or—most damning of all—dollar value.

Religion not only does not demand of us that we turn the unfortunate, diseased, orphaned, widowed, or even just irresponsible, out to the unkind elements, it outright condemns any such tendency inherent in earthly human nature. And let us not be coy on this point: “original sin”, at least in the sense of selfishness and schadenfreude within the human psyche, is an observable phenomenon whether or not we choose to attribute it to a primordial event or simply to a naturalistic evolution. To accept fiscal conservatism, then, is simply togive in entirely to the “fallenness” of the world.

Social conservatism is equally problematic, despite the seeming strength of the “religious” argument in favor of it. As fiscal conservatism turns people materially out into the cold, social conservatism does so psychologically and spiritually. If fiscal conservatism casually (or gleefully, as in the case of Ron Paul supporters) condemns people to disease and death from exposure or starvation, social conservatism forces them to despair and the brink of suicide. Combine the two, and you have a kenomic cocktail—a samsaric Screwdriver, if you will—of which Old Scratch himself would be proud.

Let us take the social-argument-du jour—homosexuality—as our example. And, let us say for the sake of argument that homosexuality is, in fact, sinful by its very nature. Well! How does it differ in kind from the sort of sex which produces children? Christianity, to mention the religion most commonly seen as vocally opposed to any sort of “gay civil rights”, has no traditional claim to a positive view of either reproduction or heterosexual sex-as-such. The idea that Christianity is all about “family values” is an entirely modern development, and one quite at odds with its theological and ethical roots. This is not to say that Jesus was totally anti-family, but He certainly taught that family is of secondary importance (at best!) when compared to our deeper (that is to say, non-biolgically-dependent) commitments. The body, in Christianity, is not to be intentionally harmed, but is also not meant to be venerated; what is family, really, but a biological commitment? Family is very important, biologically, but what makes members of one’s family morally and spiritually important is not the shared DNA, but the brute fact of their humanity. If we happen to share values and interests with them, more’s the better! So, it is hard to make a case for homosexual sex being significantly worse than heterosexual sex. What needs to be placed front and center in both cases is simply this: human love is a lower-order analogy (in the esoteric sense of the word) to Divine Love and, at its best, sex is a specific flowering of love (vide traditional—non-fundamentalist—Muslim, Hindu, and Jewish teachings about sex). And this flows nicely into the other common “Christian” argument made in favor of homophobia: It just isn’t natural!

An “argument from nature” can hold no water with a Christian for the simple fact that “nature” is fallen. Nature is not morally evil, so let’s not be throwing any “world-hating Gnostic” accusations around, here, but it is broken and flawed from the perspective of the relative-absolute (which is to say, the personal God to whom most religions turn when they pray). So, while it is possible to draw metaphysical/esoteric/symbolic conclusions from Nature-as-Scripture, this is a process of higher-order epistemic sublation, of intellectual adequation, or of out-and-out Revelation; it does not follow from this essentially intellectual-intuitive process that nature-as-form is completely good and, thus, useful as a standard of moral guidance. If that were the case, we would have ample examples to follow in eating our own babies, or at least just taking craps wherever we happen to be when we feel the urge. In other words, moral arguments-from-nature simply do not hold in the Christian mind (when that mind is sincere and well-informed, that is). This is all, of course, leaving well aside the fact that homosexuality and bisexuality are quite well-attested and frequently observed in the natural world. If arguments-from-nature do not work in the puerile “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” intellectual miscarriage, they cannot work the other way round, either.

What are most important in both arguments are the points of Love and of Humanity as Archetypes, as platonic Ideals. Whether or not homosexuality is a sin (to return to my initial assumption in service to the greater point), it is nevertheless an infinitely greater sin to assume that we are then in a position to devalue the central humanity and love which is being expressed by it. If it is incumbent upon me to not be gay, well, I’ve already succeeded; but it is in any case far more pressing that I stop caring so much about who a person loves and care more about Love Itself.

The Revelations place great, not to say exclusive, emphasis on morality. This is in part because we are fallen; we require, to some extent, rules to abide by. That is, until we are more fully able to live from the Real—that which is not and cannot be touched by the Fall, by samsara, by kenoma—at which point, morality falls away not because it is wrong within its own limits, but because the Love which lies at the heart of Justice-oriented morality may live through us more spontaneously. The law is transcended by the Law; the spiritual Torah floats above the written Torah. In just such a way, our own psychic narrowness must give way, sooner rather than later, to God’s Fullness.

This Way: Gnosis Beyond ‘Gnosticism’
Jeremy Puma
2011, self-published
108 pages

This is a good book.

Though I gladly belong to one of the 19th century “occult” Gnostic churches (namely, l’Eglise Gnostique Apostolique) which Jeremy Puma softly but clearly maligns in the beginning of his book, I acknowledge all of his criticisms of said organizations. There are many who make harmful false historical claims, whose “leadership” consist mostly of those who want power and prestige in religion because they cannot have it elsewhere. There are, however, plenty of individuals and groups of the “Gnostic revival movement” who are truly doing God’s work. I am involved with the EGA, for instance, not because of any claims of privilege, but because Tau Vincent II (Bishop Phillip Garver), who baptized and confirmed me into the Church, is a wonderful human being with a soft heart, a powerful mind, and spiritual gifts which I cannot begin to put into words. To Puma’s credit, he acknowledges that these groups are not “all bad” and that there are “good people” in them, but I do believe that his criticisms of the Gnostic churches is not altogether fair.

For instance, Puma makes the assertion that because these Gnostic churches are based in 19th century occultism (which is true) they are therefore somehow uniquely artificial or without some sort of more appropriate foundation. This does not follow. Valentinian and Sethian teachings—like the Hermetism of the same periods—were quite esoteric, possibly intentionally so. Occultism is by its very nature syncretic. The Valentinians and Sethians (referred to collectively hereafter as “Gnostics” for simplicity, though it may not be strictly correct) certainly had their own unique private rituals, their own secret teachings available only to those who proved their commitment, and their own reinterpretations of various religious symbols and myths. All of these traits smack of the charge of “occultism”. It is not mere fancy to point out that they were, in a sense, facets of the esoteric movements of their own place and time. This does not in any way degrade their value as sources of spiritual guidance. So why should it do so for modern reconstructions?

The next important criticism which I would like to briefly rebut is that these groups are somehow not Christ-centered enough. This may be true in many cases, and we would be quite justified in brushing-off such groups’ claims to being Christian in any meaningful sense. However, l’Eglise Gnostique Apostolique and her fraternal twin sister the Ecclesia Gnostica are about as Christian (in the sense of being Christ-centered) as you can get. Jeremy Puma is himself proof positive that one can be a sincere Christian without being closed-off to non-Christian sources of wisdom. So, too, are the aforementioned churches. Of course, I do not think that Puma intended to claim that all Gnostic churches are insufficiently Christian, but I believe the point bears some clarification.

Now to a major point of agreement in this opening, critical chapter of Puma’s book: we, whether within or without these Gnostic churches, are far better served by honesty as to our institutional origins than we are by asserting unbroken lineages. The same goes, however, for the Roman Catholic and various Orthodox churches. Bishop Garver is himself quite honest about the origins of the EGA, of what truth and tall tales there are behind claims of apostolic succession, and so forth. One of the EGA’s claims is that its foundation came on the heels of a revelatory visit from a Cathar’s spirit to a Christian occultist in France in the 1800s. It is reasonable to question whether or not this event was actually a spiritual visitation, but there is no evidence to suggest that the story is basically a lie; either the spiritual visitation occurred and we thus got our first Bishop, or else our first Bishop hallucinated and was inspired thereby. Either way, I take that Bishop at his word that he had the experience, whatever it may have been “in reality”. Perhaps it is an example of how, as Jeremy Puma put it in This Way, Gnosis is the same for everybody but everybody who experiences it expresses it differently.

In the following chapters, Puma’s main efforts move close to my own. He seeks an interpretation of Christian myth and poetic imagery which does not chafe the rational intellect, nor cut against compassionate morality, and which presents us with the possibility of practical steps for incorporating their message into our day-in-day-out lives. Puma’s main focus, at least in This Way, is on the primary Sethian mythical rereading of the first few chapters of Genesis embodied in The Secret Book of John. Though I generally consider this particular myth to be cumbersome at its best, Puma does an admirable job of mining it for inspiration and, more impressive still, constructing from it a coherent philosophical edifice for spiritual living and practice. A big part of his methodology is to borrow ideas and techniques from Zen Buddhism. This is a common enough approach to applicably reconstructing Nag Hammadi Library materials in our own time, but Puma does it with a refreshing clarity and honesty. At no point does he attempt to hide what he is doing, but rather points it out very early. He is unafraid of using Buddhist terms alongside Christian ones when the two can suitably clarify one another for the modern reader.

Chapter 4 of the book, ”Moving from Emptiness to Fullness”, is a truly exceptional essay which does a better job than almost any other recent source of making clear the methods and goals of the spiritual life. It seems a crime to attempt a summary of it, so I will instead quote a particularly illustrative bit of the text:

The Pleromic Worldview, the goal of this Way, manifests as a sense and knowledge of purpose and spiritual fullness in the face of the imperfection of the world of Forms. In the Pleromic individual, body, soul and spirit are aligned with the Aeons, or higher aspects of the self, as a manifestation of the perfected human. In contrast to the Kenomic person, whose actions and life seem aimless and listless, the Pleromic person has a heightened sense of purpose. This certainty may not be discernible or recognizable; it may dwell beneath the surface of one’s day-to-day activities. As the hallmark of the Pleroma is shared experience, the sense of purpose of the Pleromic person never materializes as megalomaniacism or egocentricity. There is never a need to “take over the world” or become material [sic] successful in the physical realm. The Pleromic Worldview decreases, instead of increases, a need for power of any kind. (page 43)

The other most noteworthy sections of the book are chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 6, “Porosis: The Opposite of Gnosis”, quite cleverly demonstrates the moral dimension of Gnosis and its opposite. This is a point which is often given short shrift in studies of Gnosis, but which is of such singular importance that it is good to see somebody giving it proper emphasis. Chapter 7 follows from 6 quite nicely. It is entitled “Word: The Gate of the Nous”, and serves as a sparkling corrective of the common tendency to equate spirituality with strong emotions and irrationality. Here, Puma brings to the fore the fact that study, thinking, asking questions, and intellectual rigor are all major parts of the Way. While it may be true that there have been people who have attained enlightenment without having read a single book, it is incumbent upon us to seek out answers from as many angles as we can in our own process; we are not all such ripe fruits as to fall from the branch unbidden. “Touchy-feely” sentimentalism needs must give way to the intellect not so that “brain” can overpower “heart”, but because “mind” and “heart” are not two different things! The intellect gives meaning to sensation by interpreting it.

Chapters 10 and 13 are, I believe, some of the book’s weakest points. Chapter 10—”The Self”—is not poorly written or without substance, but is simply far too short to really explore the subject at its center. The concepts of “self” and of “identity” are simply far too layered to be slammed through in about five pages. This is not the fault of Jeremy Puma’s thought or writing, but rather of space allotment, and I would like to see him try his hand at a fuller treatment of the topic.

Chapter 13—”Make Your Life Your Practice”—begins with a great premise, but falls flat by what I take to be a lack of clarity. The essential point, with which I heartily agree, is this: that spiritual practice is only important relative to the way in which we live the rest of our lives, and we cannot judge the spirituality of a person by how regularly or frequently they attend Mass or how long they meditate each day. Puma’s wording goes a bit too far in the opposite direction, however, by seeming to claim that these things are totally unimportant. He obviously does not mean this, or else he would not have devoted the entirety of chapter 9 to a contemplative technique. A better way of making the point, I think, would have been to say simply that our dedicated spiritual practices, such as meditation and sacraments, are important only insofar as they serve as foundations for bringing our spiritual ideals into the rest of our time and activities. This is a point made explicit in Vedanta, most forms of Buddhism, and of course in many “orthodox” Christian contemplative traditions.

All told, this is a really great little book with a lot to say. It definitely has the feel of a “preliminary sketch”, however, and many of the big ideas brought to bear within it could certainly handle quite a bit of fleshing-out. Those who are searching for a pocket guide to the “practical application” of Nag Hammadi Library-inspired Christian spirituality (which, I think, can still usefully be described as “Gnostic”, let Mr. Puma and others object as they may) have indeed found a treasure. Most of my criticisms above really come down to one big request: I would love to see, one day, a much-expanded version of this book, or perhaps a series of sequels which delve much more profoundly into the many topics only skimmed-over in This Way. As it stands, though, Jeremy Puma’s This Way has already earned its place on my bookshelves and a strong recommendation from me, for what that’s worth.

ATTENTION: Religious and spiritual folks who read this blog, I have a question for you and I am very interested in your responses. This is more than idle curiosity, however, for it cuts to the core of both spirituality-as-such and of what I plan on studying in my return to college.

What is your response to (and/or explanation of) the strongly apparent necessity of the physical brain to metaphysical mind? Neuroscience more and more finds direct correlates between brain states and mental states; how does this affect you and your worldview? Do you have any particular religious and/or philosophical responses? In short, what does this seemingly causative relationship from “brain” to “mind” mean?

I have my own ideas, here, but I’m looking for the ideas of others. Please share!

There is no need to uncritically accept conspiracy theories, and it is high time that “spiritual” people in the United States bring the light of reason to their socio-political views. There is no worldwide organization in total control of the world’s economic and political structures. The Illuminati was a short-lived attempt by a Bavarian atheist to infiltrate occultism and use it as a tool for popularizing secularism (a worthless effort, given that occultism was already largely in favor of political secularism, at the time). The Freemasons do not rule the world’s banking system; if they did, I would not be working retail and worrying over going into debt for college. The Bilderberg Group is just a group of big business and high finance gamers trying to get in on more and more successful business investments; it may be crass and selfish, but it isn’t shadowy or sinister.

Even the “1%” are not in a deliberate conspiracy of social or economic control. The fact is, they don’t need to hide what they’re doing or why. Who’s going to stop them? All it has ever taken is a little political nudge here and there and most people will pretty naturally fall in line with a pro-business agenda. Why? Because a pro-business agenda looks exactly like a pro-individualist agenda, and who doesn’t love freedom?

The principle of parsimony (popularly known as Occam’s razor) states, quite simply, that all other things being equal, the explanation which requires the fewest assumptions is the correct one. This means that an explanation which takes account of all evidence without injecting unnecessary assumptions is the correct explanation, while its neighbor which has added even one assumption above and beyond the evidence is at least partially wrong.

With this in mind, we simply do not need the Illuminati, or the New World Order, or the Grays cloaked in near-earth orbit to explain the problems in this world. A healthy mix of greed, fear, and incompetence are more than enough to cause an economic collapse, tyrannical laws and social instability. And, quite honestly, aren’t these enough to worry about without dragging unrealistic paranoia into it?

I have a hypothesis. It seems to me that many “conspiracy theories” work in two directions at once: on one hand, they provide a scapegoat, which is everybody’s favorite mechanism for avoiding blame for the state of the world; on the other hand, conspiracy theories provide an ersatz consolation in that they send the message that, “Well, at least somebody is in control of this mess!” The fact is that people (and societies) are more often buffeted by the winds of fate, pushed around by the tides of luck, and bogged-down by the flotsam and jetsam of good, old-fashioned human incompetence. Still, even if everything is going wrong, it is somewhat comforting to think that some understandable, human agency is both maintaining and benefiting from the seemingly implacable scenario of earthly life. And, to some extent, there are plenty of humans who do benefit from such things. But these aren’t shadowy cabals; they’re us. Even the “99%” in America (with the obvious exceptions of the extremely poor and the homeless)—the middle and upper-middle classes especially, but not exclusively by any means—benefit directly from the hellish conditions of other parts of the world. This isn’t a reason to merely feel guilty, but is worthy of serious attention. Even the “1%”—who do rule the world, after a fashion—aren’t evil sorcerers committing intentional human sacrifice; they certainly do evil, but not out of a will to do evil; they, like all imperfect people, are doing what they think is best for themselves and their families. Almost nobody does something “bad” because they want to do “bad”; usually, evil is committed out of a misguided and narrowly-focused zeal to do good.

So, let’s stop with the black helicopters, the Illuminati, and the like, and face the very real, very serious problems which we do have before us—problems which are spoken of not in shadowy, pentagram-laden grottoes, but openly in board rooms, congresses and parliaments, shareholder meetings, and trade conventions. The problems may arise from nature, but they are bound-up and intensified by ignorance, irrationality, and a callous disregard for the broader needs of others.

I just started reading Advaita Vedanta: A Philosophical Reconstruction by Eliot Deutsch. Read it? Interested in the subject matter? Let me know what you think!

This book kept popping-up in my Amazon.com shopping trips, as well as in various bibliographies and the like, so I finally ordered a copy (along with two jars of Branston Pickle, because Amazon.com doesn’t want me to ever leave my house again). It just came in today, and I’ve started my usual pre-read skimming, and just finished reading the preface.

The subject is of particular interest for me, as I have spent a lot of time over the past several years pondering similar philosophical problems in relation to Gnosticism, Christian mysticism, and Hermeticism. The author’s main objective—one which I stand behind on principle—is a reconstruction of Advaita-as-philosophical-school according to a modern Westerner’s view of universal philosophical problems. How does Advaita address “problems” such as God’s existence and nature, the nature of consciousness and unconsciousness (or, more precisely, nonconsciousness), karma and morality, experiential (direct) and observational & studied (indirect) epistemology, and so forth.

As up-my-alley as this book seems, I must say that I’m somewhat skeptical of the author’s ability (really anybody’s ability) to fully deconstruct the cultural and historical context of Advaita in order to put it clearly in view of the broad strokes of Western philosophy. I certainly intend on giving Deutsch enough of the benefit of the doubt to read the book and see how much I can learn from it, but “religious systems” and “spiritual philosophies” (for lack of more precise terms) more than not defy this sort of deconstruction-and-reconstruction; please accept as evidence the utter failure of so-called “Neopaganism” to produce a viable path of spiritual growth. (Apparent examples to the contrary are almost always practicing some combination of Christian, Jewish, Islamic, and Hermetic methods with a light dusting of Neopagan terminology on top, leading an astute observer to the realization that they would be much better off dropping the Neopagan trappings altogether and devoting themselves to that which is of real worth in their systems.) Deutsch’s approach remains to be seen by this reader, though, so he could very well still surprise me.

I just started The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose (2004, Vintage Books). Read it? Interested in the subject matter? Let me know what you think!

I’ve only ever read short pieces by Penrose, before, or else excerpts from his stuff quoted in other peoples’ works. It seemed like a good move to begin with this approximately 1050 page leviathan before diving into his other books for the simple reason that The Road to Reality is sometimes considered to be Penrose’s magnum opus.

The first 16 chapters, according to Penrose’s brutally honest preface, are devoted to the ideas of modern mathematics, and the entire book is peppered with mathematical exercises to help the reader to understand what mathematicians and physicists think about a lot of the important and profound ideas of cutting-edge science. It is also, he says, his humble attempt at demonstrating the beauty of maths to a population largely terrified of the subject. I welcome this sort of approach from a popular science book for the same reason I appreciated Brian Greene’s inclusion of maths in the endnotes of his books: I’m one of those people who was brutalized by mathematics early in life, but instead of resenting maths I have chosen instead to resent the presentation of it which I suffered. As a rationalist-at-heart, I know that maths are vital to understanding the reality with which we are presented daily; as something of a Platonist (a self-identification I share with Sir Roger Penrose), I also understand that mathematics have a beauty, even a poetry, all their own, and an independent self-existence, which all speak to the very nature of the cosmos more directly than most certainly any other language. So, I relish the anticipation of digging-in and trying my hand at Penrose’s exercises all the while enjoying his flowing prose explanations of the ideas the maths embody.

So here, it seems, is an exercise in not just popularizing science (though certainly that), but also in respecting the intelligence of the readership enough to challenge them in multiple levels. No mere Dawkins-esque “Everything you know is wrong, which is why I am a better man than you,” Penrose seeks not to bully us with his ideas but to use them as tools for treating us as his equals. I would expect no less from a man often called “one of the world’s most original thinkers.”

I just finished The Mystery of Consciousness by John R. Searle (1997, New York Review of Books, Inc.). Have you read it? Interested in the subject matter? Let me know what you think!

This little book is constituted of some revised and expanded articles of John Searle’s from the New York Review of Books, circa the mid-1990s, each being an extended review-and-response to a major philosophical and/or scientific book on consciousness studies. Its an interesting read, and a pretty quick one, and serves as an excellent introduction or refresher on a number of influential viewpoints and important modern thinkers in the area of the nature of consciousness and conscious experience. It is especially good as a quick introduction to Searle’s own position: briefly, Searle is of the mind(!) that consciousness is an irreducible feature of the universe (unlike traditional materialism), but that it is entirely biological in nature (unlike traditional dualism). He often compares consciousness to digestion or photosynthesis, and considers it to be sourced in equally physical/chemical processes of the brain, though he also emphasizes that unlike digestion or photosynthesis it is not reducible to those biological processes for the simple reason that the appearance of consciousness (ie, the fact that you and I each think that we are conscious) is the fact of consciousness (that is to say, if a being thinks it is conscious, it necessarily is because the thought, “I am conscious,” requires consciousness). The contrast, here, is that consciousness, while arising from biology, cannot be reduced to biology, while in the case of digestion we can reduce it to the individual chemical and physical processes which go into the breaking-down of food and the extraction of nutrients, etc., without risking the loss of subjective, first-person experience. In analyzing conscious experience, you can only look so far down into the biological underpinnings before you find that you are no longer dealing with conscious experience but instead with peptides, calcium ions, electrical impulses, synaptic knobs, clefts, and post-synaptic receptors, etc., etc., and have forgotten “first-person consciousness” back a few layers up the causal chain.

Whether or not one agrees with this position, it is at least logically consistent, as far as I can see, and certainly has longer legs than, say, Daniel Dennet’s or Patricia & Paul Churchland’s “functionalist” (a sort of “post-behaviorist” behaviorism) view which says simply (and naively) that all that exists are the physical brain-states, but there is no consciousness at all in reality. Searle is at least intellectually honest enough to acknowledge that “consciousness is as consciousness does”, and if we think we have it, well then we do. If nothing else, The Mystery of Consciousness is of value for pointing-out just how wrong Dennet, et al, really are.

Sorry to those who occasionally look around here in hopes of finding some new yammering out of me. I’ve been spending all of my mental energy working on a large writing project and an even larger research project (with an eye toward getting a large-scale writing project out of it!), so there really just hasn’t been much to devote to this little blog of mine.

So in the meantime, while I work on the bigger stuff, I’d rather not leave the Magical Messiah to totally languish. In that spirit, I’m going to start posting short descriptions of books I’m reading (or have just finished reading) in the hopes that those others who have read it may tell me what they think, or those who have not read it can post questions or comments about the book or its subject matter. That way, even though the blog itself won’t have a ton of new content (until a shorter article idea pops-up, anyway) there might still be a little bit of discussion here and there to keep things interesting.

Thanks in advance to anybody who chooses to participate!

Stargazer
Miguel Conner
2011, Aeon Byte Press
280 pages

When I was looking for a good beach read, my instincts immediately pointed me toward a novel I’d been meaning to read for a while: Miguel Conner’s vampire sci-fi dystopia, Stargazer. The tagline says it all: “The future is paradise. But not for humans.”

Let’s start with a quick look at the modern vampire. Popular fiction has done the famous bloodsucker to Final Death over the course of several decades. Everybody points to Ann Rice as the last good example of vampire fiction, but if we’re being honest with ourselves she only produced one good one: Interview with the Vampire. It had a sense of romance to it, but never forgot that vampires are basically horrible supernatural parasites. Since then, it has been a downhill slide in which vampires have become more and more romantic, less and less threatening. And now we find ourselves with the totally, er, defanged Twilight. But the Twilight vampires aren’t merely overly romanticized; worse, they are symbolic (probably not intentionally, given how self-absorbed and unreflective Stephanie Meyer comes off in interviews) of the severe emotional abuse which many women suffer through at some point in their lives. The couple of Bella and Edward are the very picture of co-dependency, and Edward (the vampire, for those unfamiliar) is obviously experienced enough to be doing it on purpose, for his own ends. (Bella has no better options on her hands, as her other love interest is the werewolf Jacob, who appears to represent physical abuse, given what is revealed about the relationships habits of werewolves.) So, vampires are still symbolic of the darkest tendencies in humanity, only our contemporaries don’t seem to notice! Stephanie Meyer and her ilk have not stripped vampires of that which makes them frightening, but have instead instilled those qualities with an ersatz romanticism; Bella loves Edward because he manipulates her feelings. Anybody who has been in an abusive relationship, or who has even looked into the dynamics of them, will tell you that this is a common psychological state to find oneself in: the abused often want to return to their abuser for any number of reasons, not least of which are the need to feel needed, fear of the abuser’s retribution, and a sense that the abuser can be “saved”.

Compare the semi-conscious mindgames of Twilight, however, with the vampires of Stargazer: predatory violence hidden behind a veneer of civilization, wanton cruelty masked by “necessity”. In Miguel Conner’s literary hellscape, humans are little more than talking livestock, cattle with culture. Vampires—who refer to themselves by the more romantic title of “Stargazers”—raise them on farms, herd them into slaughterhouses, and kill them in an industrialized fashion. The Stargazers took the land over by destruction: they unleashed military power on humanity and reworked the world so that it was only by their vampiric will and technology that humanity could survive at all. Sound familiar at all? Miguel Conner, in the grand tradition of Phillip K. Dick, uses weird horror, sci-fi, supernatural tropes not to pull us away from the world, but to point us back toward it. Conner’s “vampires” are simply the worst elements of ourselves, of humanity, of intelligence and culture. We pretend to be civilized, but we are killers. We insist that we are unique among all of creation, and yet we behave toward one another and the other creatures of this planet no better than the lowest of beasts. And yet, there is no room for pessimism. Even if everything is terrible, if we look deeply within and bring with us the full force of both intellect and intuition, we will find a rationally workable something which, if we identify ourselves with that instead of with our animal bodies and passions will save us. And if we first can save ourselves, perhaps we can help others, too. And this time, really help them—unselfishly, not merely because it aids our own survival but because the Good demands it!

The Gnostic themes in Stargazer are thick but not heavy; if you know what to look for, they’re mostly pretty obvious, although by and large they are woven into the narrative such that they don’t jar you out of the action. And there is plenty of action. As a vacation read, Stargazer works: there is enough going on all the time that even without any interest in the overt Gnostic ideas, there is still plenty of story to keep the reader hooked. In fact, I passed my copy off to my father, who has no real religious leaning at all, and he’s presently enjoying it as a great sci-fi romp! It is a rare novel which can facilitate the transfer of ideas while still flowing like a story should.

The one problem with Stargazer is a mechanical one: though Conner’s style is good, the book could have lived through another cycle or two of editing. I’d say: one cycle of editing (as there are a small handful of stylistic issues which could easily be resolved), and a follow-up copy-edit (to pick up the remaining grammatical mistakes). Even these aren’t deal-breakers, but they do sometimes grab one’s attention away from the story itself.

All in all, Stargazer is a very good novel, with plenty of action and no dearth of big ideas, but it could have used just a tad more polishing. Even with that one complaint, I recommend it whole-heartedly for Gnostics in search of their own “inspirational fiction”, as well as fans of sci-fi action and new takes on the tropes of horror. Fun, intense, and thought-provoking, it provides something no matter what you’re looking for, even a bit of romance!

Gnosticism is not a religious movement easily politicized; anybody with a genuine understanding of the “nature of Gnosis”, whether they accept it or not, can see that Gnosticism is an enemy to temporal power in all of its forms, natural as well as supernatural. We aren’t likely to lay ourselves down for a politician or a god who makes us promises we know they cannot keep. Still, this is not an argument for isolationism or quietism. An equally important aspect of Gnosticism’s rejection of authority is its general insistence on courage in the face—or jaws—of authority. The early Christians who got branded as Gnostics by heresy-hunters (a name which we moderns have taken up proudly, but which we must remember was rarely, if ever, used by our predecessors to describe themselves) were largely no big fans of martyrdom, but understood that it was necessary to be ready to suffer and die with dignity and faith. But not only do we not want to walk into the grinding maw of suffering, but most especially we do not want others to be forced into that position.

Gnosticism is not a faith of elitism, but neither are we populists. Really, we refuse to limit ourselves to such categories, as if we had to leave behind our suffering sisters and brothers in order to accept scholarship, ideas, and personal experience. And that’s the rub: our fellow humans, our fellow life-forms generally, are suffering just by virtue of living in this world-system. And so are we, personally. Neither is the problem purely collective, nor purely individual; it cuts across such simplistic notions. And so does salvation. Fundamentalists are all about the individual, while liberals are all about the Group. Gnostics don’t see a conflict, there, but only a confusing array of artificial barriers which are designed such that to break one down another one must be erected; to get rid of racial tensions, we must substitute religious ones, to evoke a particularly successful (read: pernicious) example from American society. (This is not to say that racism doesn’t still exist, and strongly, but only to point toward one of the strategies of social integration.)

If you put a gun to my head, I would call myself a “social democrat”, but that hardly encapsulates my entire socio-political worldview. It just gives you an idea. Similarly, many Gnostics of my acquaintance identify as “libertarian”, but I would never try to argue with them as if they were simply Tea Party stooges. That would miss the point. Just like everybody else, Gnostics try to ally themselves with whichever mass movement seems to be aiming in the direction of the Good; the difference is, we also try to remind ourselves that the Good, in the Enlightenment sense, is inherently unattainable in this world. We aren’t caught by empty promises quite as often because of it. Of course, we often fall off the opposite edge into raw and bleeding pessimism, a possibility we must try to guard against by invoking the Romantic sensibility of the inherent divinity of each and every human and of humankind as a manifestation of a profound spiritual totality.

That is the crux of the Gnostic worldview in the modern world, especially as concerns politics and society: we are neither wholly of the Enlightenment, nor wholly of the Romantic, but both speak to us deeply. We are truly children of the Greeks, for we see the bare pathos of existence while trying to reason-out an ethical response to it.We lop-off the nihilistic relativism of postmodern culture with one edge of the blade while slicing through the prefab truths of absolutism with the other. We live with contradictions and seeming-paradoxes until resolution comes, always by a drop of reason, a bucket of sweat, and a downpour of Grace.

So, when we Gnostics enter into political discourse, we do so not as liberals or conservatives, not as progressives or libertarians, certainly not as Democrats or Republicans; we enter in as smiling-faced Siddharthas, as laughing Jesuses, as Strangers to the Powers of this world-system, who aren’t willing to play by those rules for the brute fact that they have been decreed. No empty iconoclasm, here; it isn’t by whim that we ignore the rules to the game of life, but because it is by those rules that we are made sinners, while freedom from them allows us the chance to be truly moral, truly good, truly loving. And that won’t mean the same thing from this moment to the next.