fragilekeys

In this post, I will try to spell out what makes “mainstream atheism” so loathsome in my eyes. Then, and throughout this post, I will offer a contrasting view of “atheism” that I think is more intellectually and spiritually respectable. Finally, I will try to show how atheism is not enough. To begin, I will take Alain de Botton as a case study. Since you are probably unfamiliar with him and his ideas, I’ve embedded a video of him at TED. But if you don’t feel like watching him (I don’t blame you!), don’t worry; I go over all the main points in my discussion.

I

As the title of the video indicates, Botton is interested in “Atheism 2.0,” that is, a new way of being an atheist. This is an atheism for those who are attracted to the “ritualistic, moral, communal side” of religion (as if there were any other side!), but do not jive with the “doctrine.” My initial question is this: has he ever talked to anyone who goes to church regularly? In my experience, the vast majority of church-goers go to church precisely for this ritualistic, moral, communal, and contemplative (or quiet) side of religion. To disagree with the Vatican or religious fundamentalists; to refrain from screaming “Jesus is my Savior” at the street corner; to recognize the violent and “dumb” parts of ones own religion — all of these are found in “believers” too, and not just atheists. This is just one example of what I would call Botton’s spiritual immaturity: it seems beyond his comprehension that “believers” would also be skeptical about their own religion, or that they would engage with doctrines and rituals from a measured distance. Once this is admitted, the “atheism” he is discussing would just be redundant. It seems to me that many (if not most) church-goers have their own personal understanding – relationship, connection — to “God,” and that is it this intimate relationship, not doctrine, which keeps them tied to their faith. In other words, being “free from religion” while “picking out its best parts” is something that religious people of all faiths already do. To not understand this means you haven’t ever really gone to church…

But let’s move on. Botton basic thesis is very simple: we have “secularized badly,” there are holes in our secular world, and we ought to go to religion in search of things we can use to plug these holes, to find things we can steal. We need “assistance” since we are “just barely holding it together.” “Of course we need help!” he screams. (The easy retort: “Speak for yourself, Alain!”) Botton wants us to get away from dry, unpersuasive university lectures and return to edifying, rousing, though atheistic, sermons. He wants us to get on our knees, to find rituals, to “synchronize encounters,” to build monuments to the universe, etc. And he wants an atheist morality that could be broadcast to all and “teach us how to live.” Now, I believe strongly that this view misses the entire point of “atheism” as a historical phenomenon, but we’ll get to that later. For now, let’s bring out some other parts of his argument.

Botton’s ignorance about church-goers is shockingly similar to his ignorance about artists. He chastises the notion of ‘art for art’s sake’ and the idea that artists shouldn’t explain their work — as if the absurdities of Dada, the link to the unconscious in Surrealism, the commodity aspects of Pop Art, etc., where somehow politically or socially neutral — as if they were just for the fun of it. As if every true artist weren’t led to art out of a dissatisfaction with the world around them. As if, for example, Van Gogh didn’t start his life out as a pastor, but found the only way to channel his dark passion was through painting. Etc. But Botton wants an art that transforms the world (supposing it hasn’t transformed it already, or isn’t still transforming it). He wants artworks to “cement ideas in our mind,” ideas like love and generosity. In other words, he wants a dumbed-down art that is perfectly communicable to all, which teaches us in a transparent way what is worth loving and hating. He wants it easy. For this to happen, museums ought to explain the art works, reduce their puzzling aspects, and break their spell. He then hits us with this doozy, around minute 12:30:

The people in the modern world… who are interested in matters of the spirit… tend to be isolated individuals. They’re poets, they’re philosophers, they’re photographers, they’re filmmakers, and they tend to be on their own. They are cottage industries. They are vulnerable single people. And they get depressed, they get sad on their own. And they don’t really change much.

I think we are justified asking, “How do you know?” since it is quite curious to assert that such individuals “don’t really change much.” For an artist, every day, every engagement with their art, is for the sake of transformation, not only of themselves but of the world around them. Art proceeds from an internal and external crisis which cannot be dealt with in any other way. The happy-go-lucky idea of “collaborating” is simply not an option for most. Botton goes on to tell us how little power these lone individuals have — as if the rejection of power weren’t intimately intertwined with art’s ‘political’ vocation. He says that we ought to admire the institutional aspect of how religion “sells” and “fights for” the things of the mind — as if art weren’t direly engaged with resisting its institutionalization and sale. He says that lone books are ineffectual (again, speak for yourself!), and that we need to group together if we are ever to change the world — as if group-think were unquestionably superior to individual creativity. Suffice it to say, I hardly know where to begin with such misunderstandings…

Finally, one comment on the hypocritical intention operative in all of these suggestions. Atheists chastise religion because it homogenizes people’s thought. It makes people think the same thing. But while Botton would surely never agree to authority figures or doctrines, he advocates that we “teach people how to live,” that we return to the lessons of morality, that we use multinational institutions or modern culture to spread secular ideas, etc., and thus, in a way, doing the same thing — as if a level of sameness were required for society to be healthy. (Or again: as if it was possible for society to be health, to be improved on a mass scale.) He thinks that it’s okay to do all this, once we’ve found the correct, non-religious ideas — as if agreement were the goal of communication itself. The intention to direct minds and lives along a common horizon is still there. The desire for immersion in a common body is still there, especially in his desire for “atheist temples.” But as I see it, the emergence of philosophical atheism in the specific time we call “modern” denotes precisely this: any and all common horizons are lost. The common body is corrupt. Being itself is cracked and breaking apart. We are abandoned to ourselves. No one can give us answers — and there are none. The world rests on nothing.

II

We have to take leave of Botton now and advance our own “view” of atheism — or rather, since atheism denotes the effacement of all views, we have to show how atheism responds to a crisis that is only made worse by ignoring its source.

It is my view that atheists like Botton simply vulgarize religious ideas while acting, on the whole, like priests (although without the uniform, they are hard to respect…). This is evidenced most clearly when they implicitly affirm “atheism” as a mind-set shared by a group of people. But how does this shared mind-set differ in any way from a religious community of believers? That this group is constituted in opposition to religion — as a community of scientists or secularists, for example — simply indicates that the model of “belief” has been displaced on to another mode of thinking, without undergoing any fundamental change. Belief-for is really not so different from belief-opposed. What I believe is irreversibly outdated is the whole idea that having a shared mind-set is good for us in the first place.

But the failure of mainstream atheism is worse that its innocent reliance on science or culture. This view of atheism entirely misses the fact that deep within religion itself there are mechanisms that imply a fundamental mutation in the structure of belief itself. These deep mechanisms are to be found in the works of theologians, philosophers, poets, mystics, ascetics, and artists across all time and in all faiths; and these works themselves are like “machines” that can change our pattern of thinking. In all, these deep mechanisms teach this: religion teaches “atheism.” Religion teaches the exit from religion. Without understanding this, the latter will never be accomplished, no matter how loud the mainstream atheist screams.

So, what handicaps atheists most is that they have nothing intelligent to say about God. In remaining effectively ignorant about philosophical atheism as it is bestowed to us through various sources — especially through what is called “negative theology” — folks like Botton remains as clueless about “God” as most religious people do. But where religious folks recognize that cluelessness as part of their faith in God — how God’s “mystery” is co-extensive with God’s “being” — atheists jump to the conclusion any idea that cannot be understood by science or understood rationally is ridiculous. (Let’s note in passing that “God” is not an idea, nor is “God” in any way subject to proof or disproof for reasons we will explain below…)

Botton’s difficulties comes to the surface when he’s forced to mince his words — for example, when he tries to differentiate between “having spiritual experiences” and “believing in spirit,” or between “wonderment at the mystery of the universe” (which science evidently shows us) and “mystical experience” (which is evidently too religiony for him to stomach). But his basic fallacy is shared by most mainstream atheists: they toss “God” aside as though they were the first people to doubt the idea of the fairy-God. As if the deep teaching of religion actually had anything to do with this simple notion of God. They seem to think that just by discarding this idea, all mental immaturity suddenly vanishes!

Of course, the vast majority of religious people do not delve into all the complexities that are huddled around God as a word, as an idea, as a historical phenomenon, as a textual operator in theologies and poems, etc. But in religious people, it would be a bit unfair to count this as a fault, even if it frustrates those who affirm the necessity of delving deeper (as I do): for many of them, religion does serve as a regulator of time, as a way to gather with the community, etc., and in this sense, theological questions are somewhat secondary. But for atheists, the omission to delve deeper is more inexcusable. It is an act of intellectual and historical carelessness, “reactionary” in the worst sense. Furthermore, I just don’t see how atheists will ever effectively combat religion if they don’t first grapple with religion’s deep, “atheistic” teachings. (Of course it is regrettable that religions themselves don’t grapple with these deeper structures.) Without engaging the history of philosophy and/or metaphysics on some level – the concepts of presence, Being, etc. — there is really no way to understand what is at stake with “atheism” or “modernity.” Why? Because these concepts have guided us to today. Without engaging them — and I don’t say “understanding” them — it will remain very hard to know where we are headed.

The atheistic core of religion startled society long ago, and the mutation it initiated is far from over. Once upon a time, Greek logos met Jewish exile. The Word was made Flesh. Obviously, this is much more than we could ever cover in a blog post. And yet we will try to say something about God, because we must say something, even in the absence of answers and adequate words. The following assertions are not meant to be proofs, but indications toward a different way of conceiving of God:

Above all, God has to do with the “outside of the world in the world”: the outside of the world that is inside of the world as that which exceeds the world. ”God” has to do with the opening of the world to the outside of the world — i.e., its creation – although without referencing any kind of nether-world or beyond-world. ”God” has to do with upper limits of thought itself, and with thought thinking beyond thought itself. “God” has to do with an address that stretches me beyond myself. “God” is the address I make to your ”beyond yourself.” “God” is the encounter between us, between all beings and things, between what is incomprehensible between us everything else. And this encounter cannot be conceptualized. It cannot be proven, it cannot be turned into a propositions, it does not indoctrinate us. On the contrary, it opens us to the outside. “God” is this relation of all things to their ownmost other sides. And this relation gives access to what cannot be accessed: the infinitely other, the different, the altered. For God is not dead, but death itself: a name for the immeasureable, the impossible, the inconceivable, the distant. The name for that which absolutely surpasses “me” in me, that which absolutely surpasses “you” in you. “God” is the common name that designates the unnameable, which itself designates the relation of all things to all things. And God speaks to this strange encounter, this enigmatic connection (made possible by “words”; more on that below).

God, the unknown, the terrifying, the uncertain. God, the leap and the blessing. God, the abject, the abandoned, the alone. God, nudity, undressing. All of these expressions gloss the incomprehensible, the rapturous, the passionate. They gloss the abyss of nonmeaning into which God descends so as to be God. 

“God” addresses you from elsewhere (here?). “God” is (the) elsewhere (here?). “God” is (the) nowhere —  which is where we are. ”God” is the opening of the here and now to this elsewhere, which is nowhere else but here. And this opening, right here, is infinite…

Thinking itself quite clever, mainstream atheism tries to escape the conceptual matrix of God-ideas through sleight of hand. But in doing so, it only tightens the secular noose around its own neck. What is most “idiotic” about mainstream atheism, in my view, is its narrow definition or conceptualization of the “self” or of “personal consciousness,” precisely to the extent that it looses sight of this dimension of “me in excess of me,” this “absolute outside of me inside of me.” This dimension is not “knowledge,” nor is it strictly “conscious,” and in relying solely on what we can know and cognize, mainstream atheism leaves unquestioned the most hideous biases of secular society. The religious matrix of God-ideas and the secular matrix of self-ideas are, in fact, intimately intertwined. Transforming the one implies a transformation of the other because they came about together. Whether we point to Augustine or Descartes, the existence of God has always underpinned the existence of the subject. Any atheism that does not recognize this not only fails to understand God, but it fails to understand its self. Thus, it comes as no surprise when it goes looking for answers in religion since, in effect, it has never even left religious territory.

I affirm along with the atheists that we must leave religious territory. But we cannot persist in thinking we can do this with a simple disavowal.

III

This carelessness could frustrate me, but instead I laugh — or write, which exacerbates me to the point of fainting. I inevitably contradict myself, since my words rest on nothing. I’m in a position of powerlessness, too, because the writing produces nonsense by refusing to coalesce into a doctrine or a system. But the crux of this issue has to do with language itself, which I would now briefly like to go over.

Religion as a global institution remains ignorant of this issue in language, but mystics, theologians, and atheists (among many others of course) have understood it throughout history in singular ways that, each in their turn, gave them their unique voices — that is, put them each in a unique relationship with “God,” with the outside-of-time that presented itself to them in their time. It’s hard to parse, and we can only gloss it here, but we have to differentiate between language when it is “used” as an instrument for coercion, persuasion, or sales, and language that adores existence as such.

Language-as-instrument would seek to make a unity out of language and the world, to systematize or totalize beings, to reduce things to their simply identity-with-themselves, to establish some kind of hierarchy of meaning, to “schedule,” etc. In contrast, language-as-adoration opens us to the outside of being, the outside of hierarchy, and in a sense, to the outside of language. It opens us to the outside of our selves (God?), to the outside of this time. Language-as-adoration sings, ecstatic like a sonata or the movement of Van Gogh’s brush. Rather than defining, it addresses — and it address us to the ‘outside’ of any empirical address that could be given in the world. Language-as-adoration seeks out those places that cannot be empirically proven or found. It seeks out, infinitely, another.

One example of language-as-adoration is negative theology, which always had to proceed “negatively” because, at every turn, the words of its discourse had to be turned to their outside, to what exceeded everything given in the world or the discourse, including what is supposedly “given” about God. Every predicate of God is stripped away in negative theology. In Indian thought, this is the idea of neti, neti: God is “not this, not that.” In this way, God was not defined, but addressed. God was pointed to by stressing what God was not.

Quite to the contrary, both secular and “religious” discourse seek to enclose, to encompass, to make an identity out of God. And in this sense, they are one and the same: whether they affirm or denounce this Ideal Identity or Presence or Being, what matters is that they assume it. Both take this ideality to be something, rather than nothing at all. But for the “true” atheist — the negative theologian — “God” is not something assured. God’s ideality is yet to be established, there is no proof. God’s ideality can be addressed, but this does not guarantee its existence. God’s ideality is suspended over the abyss of trembling words. This ideality is constituted in the play between words. God’s reality is in the reception of these words — which is the reception of this trembling and play. “God” is not: the not that makes a world possible, the minimal difference that lets me breath, fall down, touch, and be free. Because I too am nothing. To share in this nothing is… to share God.

IV

In the end, “God” is just a word; what matters is the constellation of them, which indicates the space between them and their distance from us. We might be better off talking about the trauma of death, of self-effacement, of disappearance.

In this post, I’ve tried to show what I feel “atheism” is all about. But I am not an atheist — I am not anything – for reasons that must now be explained.

I have tried to show throughout that atheism – insofar as it is a common mind-set, a shared perspective, a group of people (atheists), etc. — is really no different than theism or any other “ism.” Whether nationalism, communism, fascism, all of these are ways of turning many people into a homogeneous mass that might move “together.” Like I said earlier, although Botton would explicitly reject this, he nevertheless calls for a common horizon of morals and culture, a “temple for atheists,” etc., which all seem to me to represent the model of communal immersion that ought to be rejected. Such immersion expresses the desire to neutralize my abandonment — the infinite distance between me and you which constitutes each of us as our own “person” in the first place.

I’ve said that this abandonment is irreversible and “incurable.” To avoid it is to avoid ourselves, our historical predicament, and, in general, the crisis of sense itself. This crisis indicates the need to avoid taking any hard-line positions. This doesn’t mean we ought not take a stand; quite the contrary. But we have to take a stand on nothing. We have to find and lose ourselves over the abyss that we, the world, and all existents are. We’ve got to open ourselves to the “otherwise-than-that.” While there’s no way to prove this, or even to tell you precisely what it means, I can testify for it, and I can attest to its power. It is a kind of transformation that transforms (me into) nothing. From here on out, we need testaments, testaments to nothing–  not proofs. As Jean-Luc Nancy writes,

There’s not even “atheism”; “atheist” doesn’t cut it! It’s the very principle of “position” that must be avoided. It’s not enough to say that God absents himself, withdraws himself or even that he’s incommensurable. It has even less to do with placing another principle at the throne – Man, Reason, Society. It’s a matter of tackling bodily the fact that the world rests on nothing – and that its most lively sense lies therein.

We began with the idea that we are abandoned, that there are no answers, and we end there again. The world rests on nothing.

V

In closing: The idea that someone could tell me how to live or change my life should be the object of any real “atheist” attack. Only I can do that — make a change, live my life. The responsibility for the whole ordeal of existence falls squarely on me. But let’s be clear: this doesn’t mean we figure it all out “on our own.” On the contrary, we have to re-think this “own” starting from an original difference, starting from an initial reach outside. I will continue to read Nietzsche, Cioran, Bataille (some of the greatest atheists to have ever lived), and I will learn a great deal from them each time. But in the end, it’s all just a mirror for “myself” — stretched out.

It is impossible to call yourself an atheist if you still believe that herd-behavior or group-think is in any way still valuable. Communal immersion only leads to us-them thinking, which in turn leads only to war. We are abandoned to ourselves in “isolation” and must grapple with this fact. We have to be strong and accept the fact that a response to our testament may never or will never come. And we have to testify nonetheless.

It is impossible to call yourself atheist if you are still looking for assurances or consolations of any sort, whether in this world or in a beyond world. It’s not to be found in enjoyment or philanthropy or even ‘creativity.’ Death, the fact of our finitude, prevents this outright. Nothing assures sense. We have to risk everything, with no guarantee of reward, accomplishment or compensation. We have to give up the very idea of “end.”

And it’s impossible to call yourself atheist if you still believe in a Reason for existence. Whether you find it in science, religion, sex, or culture, it’s all the same clouded illusion. For there is no reason for existence — at any rate, there is no common one. For existence is its own reason, in and of itself, each time. In ex-isting, existence gives itself its reason. The reason for existence is found in the “not” that existence is.

Life itself is infinite stupidity, unreasonable, without purpose or end in sight. Just like the idea of “God,” just like us. Let us learn how to say that it is so.

Life would become endurable only among a humanity which would no longer have any illusions in reserve, a humanity completely disabused and delighted to be so. — Emile Cioran

So goes the deceptively straightforward guidepost for the following expressions of disgust. I constrain myself to none of them, and deliberately betray myself.

*

There comes a time in a man’s life when he tires of apologizing for his impassioned and cruel outbursts. In my case, this coincides with increasing disappointment in my compatriots and the need to be rid of the conviviality that my encounters with them encourage. It coincides with a rising sense of urgency to speak out and the emptying of the object of that urgency. The feeling of fatality and futility coincide: it’s not worth taking anything back when, in fact, whatever you’d take back falls on deaf ears anyhow. But what has come to sicken me most is any notion of consolation or reassurance (only in such contexts does an apology serve any function). This sickness will inevitably ugly my formerly kind and measured words. Comforting discourse has reached its end. I would rather send you away revolted by me. I would rather expose them to their own abandonment, and so I must abandon them. Unapologetically. It seems to me that nothing demands more courage — and in the end, nothing could be more kind. 

*

There can be no “right answer” any longer. There can be no “lightness.” And yet I concede nothing to the darkness, I say nothing wrong whatsoever. We need a severe grace made up entirely of hatred, if only to disabuse ourselves of the illusions of philanthropy and “laudable intentions.”

*

The thinker is wooed by one of two illusions. Both stem from his feeling of his own powerlessness, his own cursory status in relation to the “job creators.” One can easily be wooed into martyrdom by this, thinking that in the end, from the perspective of the last man, my discourse will be justified, my thought will make sense, and my effort will not have been a waste. It will be worth more than the joy I experienced when creating it. It will be “consecrated” to all those minds who choose to bask in its warmth, in the light of its truth, which, coming at the end of times, redeems every injustice of the past, as well as every omission. This is what we call “hope.” The second illusion is called “active nihilism,” whereby one sobers up and, to cut straight to the point, no longer dialectizes ones own ineffectuality (powerlessness) as the negative moment in a temporal process of effectuation (such that powerlessness would prove to be the most powerful), such that what was pointless would, at a later time, prove to be an integral aspect in the realization of Ultimate Meaning. This refusal turns the whole of ones existence into an Interminable Torment — but also a Living Farce. If I privilege the second illusion, it is because it gives me the best chance to view soberly the emptiness of my own experience.

*

Of all the moral prejudices which we have yet to wean ourselves off of, the most sickly and clever is that prejudice which says, “I ought to do something good for the world, for someone, or at the very least, for myself.” What confused trajectories and guffaws this causes us! What precious, self-serving memories! But doing good for someone always means doing evil to another. Intimacy is exclusion. It is preference that we have to do away with, and we have to do so totally. In this sense I advocate a ruthless inhumanity. I ought to regard nothing so highly that I wouldn’t trade it in for ball of snow. Ouch! But this is the only principle of fairness that has a fighting chance in the battle against the maniac drive for the “center,” for the prejudices of the “important,” and moreover, against the many privileges accorded to the imaginary center in potentia before it is even found (it cannot be found), against the bias toward the important before situating the context of that importance (it cannot be situated). And a good conscience is the worst of all its imagined privileges: in its gesture, it accomplishes no less than the banishment of what’s actually important.

*

Upon closer inspection, the favoritism that we display towards ourselves and our kin is totally without function in the world considered globally. This favoritism is founded or modeled on a principle of war that, pushed to its logical extreme, means the annihilation of each and all, except perhaps for the last one (or family, country, whatever) standing. Even if our criteria for favoring is, say, an inclination toward Truth, or Art, it does not follow that we club everyone who does not show this inclination. But then again, short of death, the outcome is much worse, if only because then we exist in a network of virtual and veiled biases, rather than simply having done with them at once. We then tolerate an atmosphere of uselessness parading as social utility, insisting that everything be viewed from the standpoint of the “present.” But public shaming is a fate much worse than public execution, and “office politics” are just as bad as internment camps. The humiliation of the drunkard at night, while disguised beneath a fake courage, is much worse than his embarrassment the next day because he had no chance of becoming aware of his own foolishness. At a beheading there is at least an outlet, an end to the frustrations, perhaps even an opportunity for laughter, ecstasy. As we chuck bloodied rocks against the dumb foreheads of those we’ve refused to tolerate any longer, at least the insanity of favoritism has a chance of revealing itself. In the office, there is just its infinite stupidity and its covert avatar: human preference.

*

Who could persuade someone convinced of the futility of “humanity” that there was, in fact, a reason for his own existence? Who could tell them that his own ordeal was actually “working toward something”? I have tarried with this option, internally, too often. Not only have I rationalized my own behavior (as an isolated writer) from a global context of dialog, counter-point, and intervention; not only have I told myself that I was undergoing this “ordeal” for the sake of something (if not “me,” then my “work” or the “world”); but I have gone so far, in the past, as to imagine that “humanity” would be an unfinished product without my contribution; that somehow it required me; that ultimately I undergo my individual drama only to get closer to the universal problems at hand. Amazing, the audacity of this! But when this paradigm of “hope” is spelled out so clearly, what can a person do but laugh and discard it? Let us annihilate every notion of help, consecration to humanity, and salvation. The idea of a “cure” for civilization is as dreamy as the idea of civilization itself — as dreamy as the idea of “me.”

*

There is no consecrating purpose. There is no redemption forthcoming. There is no God, no guarantee, no future happiness. From here on out, you would to better to forget me, to cease listening, if you want to uphold your self-consistency and your sacred pursuits, if you want to remain “upstanding.” I immediately see through your games and laugh at your disgusting vanity. For I preach the pointlessness of life, of intervention, of progress, of change. From here on out, I preach the Devil, I preach Inexistence, not by choice, but because I myself am dead, a useless excess, a cancer on all life and all faith. Perhaps no one living can read this or understand what I have to say, but either way, I don’t care any longer. Have at me, or put me away. Either way, it’s no use. You’re caught in the mesh of your own impossibility, and whether you choose to accede to it or not, it is undoing you. From this abyss, this nonsense, in the end there is no reprieve. And yet this alone — all this — is what we cannot live with — or without.

*

What differentiates the hatred I’m calling for from the hatred inspired by favoritism is the element of indifference — to the past and the future, to one or the other, but above all to reward, dividend, accolade, good standing, “favors,” etc. In a word, where favoritism is motivated towards some end, my hatred is pure, easy, and above all, unmotivated. I spare myself, my life and my plans, least of all. And since I have no good reason to cast aspersions on my own life, my hatred for it can be total. I can laugh forever in a prison of my own making, once I’ve decided once and for all to throw away the key, to drown in self-defeating contradictions and absurdities. What is this, then, if not freedom? No, perhaps it is much worse: no one can stop the absolutely indifferent.

*

We have to become aware of one thing: humanity does not improve. If anything, humanity bears the sign of a general devolution, if only because it heaps up more and more evidence of its own unconsciousness, its own incredulity. Perhaps “humanity” is also the sign of a more general disease in the cosmos. Perhaps future civilizations will put our history to good use, but up to now, our behavior as a whole gives us no reason to believe that society is getting “better” over time. Nothing good has come of humanity but the proliferation of ever more questions and impasses. At any rate, nothing like a good will has ever surfaced. With this in mind, we can be sure that humanity will continue to crusade in the name of the good unto eternity — and its effects will be that of a general desensitization to what might really be meant by the word “good.” The reason to emphasize all this is simple: the truly creative act is destructive, and the only thing worth destroying is oneself. Don’t look to humanity for the culprit. Look to yourself.

For those who wish to get clear of the difficulties it is advantageous to discuss the difficulties well; for the subsequent free play of thought implies the solution of the previous difficulties, and it is not possible to untie the knot of which one does not know. But the difficulty of our thinking points to a ‘knot’ in the object; for insofar as our thought is in difficulties, it is in like case with those who are bound; for in either case it is impossible to go forward. Hence one should have surveyed all the difficulties beforehand, both for the purposes we have stated and because people who inquire without first stating the difficulties are like those who do not know where they have to go; besides, a man does not otherwise know even whether he has at any given time found what he is looking for or not; for the end is not clear to such a man, while to him who has first discussed the difficulties it is clear. (Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book B, 1)

It is hard not to admire the courage and confidence Aristotle displays in this passage. Let us only enumerate the difficulties, one by one, in order of ascending complexity, and not only will the path to the truth become clear, but the difficulties themselves will dissolve, and the mind will be set free to roam unencumbered through the halls of speculative thought. But in our day and age — though I can only speak for myself — this attitude not only seems superhuman, but naive. Aristotle had Thales and Pythagoras to deal with, Heraclitus and Plato. What do we have? All these and more: Augustine, Adorno, Bataille, Barthes, Blake, Bonhoeffer, Carrol, Chesterton, Coleridge, Confucius, Derrida, Dostoevsky, Einstein, Eliot, Eliade, Feuerbach, Fichte, Goethe, Habermas, Heidegger, Huxley, Hume, Hippolyte, Ibn Arabi, Jung, Jefferson, St. John, Kant, King Jr., Kristeva, Kripke, Levinas, Lacan, Lao Tzu, Lucretius, Luxemburg, Lyotard, Malebranche, Malraux, Machiavelli, Marx, Nagarjuna, Novalis, Nietzsche, Ockham, Origen, Pascal, Pierce, Rorty, Rilke, Ramana, Ricoeur, Sartre, Shestov, Schleiermacher, Spinoza, Tolstoy, Tillich, Unamuno, Vasubandu, Vico, Whitehead, Wittgenstein…

There is something blissfully easy about Aristotle’s difficulties. Who but a man of leisure could take up the question of metaphysics at such length, proclaiming his science free, existing only for its own sake? In what subsequent time in history could any such “for its own sake” exist? There is too much at stake these days; and while all artists seek immortality in their art, even if it’s just the kind won through an inert book or canvas, only this master and manipulator of ancient thought could have imagined a Good following from, causing, and active in all things. Only he could have imagined a doctrine so consolidated around an “unmoved mover.” But is this not the whole mystery of our Greek and Roman heritage, this vague place from whence we came? In a world measured by weekly popularity polls, new television episodes, where the daily struggle for true freedom is stripped of its universally applicable prescriptions, where conquest-structuring narratives are so absent, doesn’t “the past” itself become a kind of “unmoved mover”? A past as fragmented in purpose and direction as the writers just listed, including their epochs? A glorious but imaginary past, which we will never really encounter or access, save perhaps in its trembling prosopopeia, and whose real message was only vaguely known by those who sent it? I would not begrudge the modern man for being angry with these Greeks, these careless orators and rhetoricians whose ideas, at least in part, gave birth the Western world, whose scale was so monstrous that even Napoleon became its exile. Aristotle — did he really know where he was going? Had the difficulties really been cleared away?

Of course, we cannot revoke what our own Empire has caused. There is no better or worse starting point or proving ground. There is nothing else to respond to. And yet we share in an oblivion that Aristotle could have never imagined. His thought bears no trace of oppression. Whatever he says, he is not responsible for anything. Free play is the rule — that is, when the difficulties foreseeably give in. We are not, and will never be, so sure of this. We regard ourselves with a hard-won suspicion; we dare not exorcise it. But unless we ignore our trepidation, we will not see anything and the future will not see us. We cannot wait to know, or to clear up the difficulties, before acting. And yet action seems futile as ever…

Aristotle’s mind could not have been so different from ours; and yet it seems to us that, for this philosopher of the eternal, time itself had not even gotten going yet. Aristotle did not see Auschwitz. His pool of priors was so sufficiently similar for him, his Plato so simply located in this lineage of thought (really, the only one available, even if it had absorbed elements from abroad), that the question of unity and being was of course a primary one. But if it was a question of a universal then, this is only because something manifestly historical was first erupting. That Aristotle could take up the question of the source of this movement, and not only that of the substrate for material processes, seems to be elementary evidence that, just then, the very source deemed eternal was invented into existence. And at that very moment, this same universal was democratized, made local. Demythologized just then, God was born and died in the same blow, even if we are still under the spell of universalizing intentions. One glance at the voluminous writing required to prove Him — see Aquinas — shows that this invention was and remains no easy task. But after Nietzsche — or after Christ? — we know that the only way to really invent God is to destroy him. What these latter two did willingly, consciously, or at least submissively, all the systematizers from Aristotle to Hegel did the same. Who has more faith, the believer or the crucified? Who, among us, could tell the difference?

Do we know any better how do deal with the weight of our own novelty? Have we any better strategy for preservation? Have we any more foresight? Perhaps what unites all of us is the fact that our own work forms us by steering us in its own direction. Perhaps this is also what makes us all forgiven sinners: we know not what we do. Now, at least, we’ve begun to register this, if not globally, then at least one-by-one, as time marches on, discovering each of us. That one is led to the system and the other to the aphorism is not the result of personal proclivities, nor of any collective unconscious. It has to do with the unfolding of an aimless history whose boundaries and beginnings we ourselves invent, in a time whose calendars are arbitrary, with pens whose ink we bought.

Aristotle, whose opinions are airtight and fruitful, is now just another thinker. The “unmoved mover” is just another theory whose evolution we can trace through time, another model to compare with Eckart’s or Niebuhr’s. Let’s never doubt Aristotle’s writing under the auspices of Absolute Knowledge; but at the same time, he shewed how expendable thinking really is, or rather, how it can only be conducted with an aim to its own end. The relationship forged between a writer and his writing is like that forged between the unmoved mover and the cosmos. The latter turns out to betray you and its laws prove arbitrary; but the former is much worse off, since it proves to be a mute construct, a negligible part in the process of becoming, required only in the production of the work, and then just long enough to get the ball rolling. Once the thing gets moving, you can count first principles out.

We know this because of how unstable our daily situation is. My invention implies my emptying. But back then, the menacing and irreversible solidity of “the past” of humanity had not yet taken on such massive proportions. Oblivion, so to speak, had not yet congealed. It had not yet started seeping out around the now-blurry edges of reality– in fact, it had just started its preliminary exercises, playing with reason (λόγος) and writing (γράμμα). It had not yet been trained with the rough facts of Terror and Tycoon. Drafting constitutions had not yet proved interminable. But before these, something like a “first cause and principle” could seem perfectly in order: how else could I say anything, how else could we be here, without such a grounding?

In Aristotle, something like a genuine beginning can be noticed. The subsequent “splintering of sense” — which is how Jean-Luc Nancy characterizes the mutation of civilization that began at least with the Greeks — makes no sense without this imagined initial cause and motivator for universal Good. Truth is, we still presuppose it, if only to get ourselves motivated to act. But these days, we’ve got to do so differently. We’ve got to recognize that our excursions do not carry an external guarantee from God, Goodness, or any other justifying Reason. The world is senseless; this we’ve got to know. The cosmos was not set into motion by anything; in fact, perhaps the only appropriate attitude is one that affirms, paradoxically, that it has not even been set in motion yet. For the purpose for all this remains to be seen. Perhaps Aristotle’s one blind spot regarded his own role in the movement: so convincing was the splendor of his own thought, or his own writing, it was impossible to imagine it empty and unfounded. Perhaps it was impossible for him to grasp his own motivation. Then again, does anyone really know what is genuinely beginning with them?

Causes change daily; we “contribute.” No one asserts a “first principle” without appearing dubious; the rest are deemed too-serious or maniac. Generally speaking, we live in an age where one thing is for certain: none of us know for certain what time it is. Such a problem would have never occurred to wise Aristotle. But as Borges has one of his self-refractions say in his story The Library of Babel, ”I have known what the Greeks do not know, incertitude.” Elsewhere he writes, “Time is the substance I am made of.” Freud’s discovery or invention of the unconscious also attests to this strange shift in the topos of human reality. With this creation, time becomes our own to create: we live in imaginary countries, we are each our own highest purpose and dead end. But if our civilization and the philosophy that shaped it could emerge from the question of Number (Pythagoras), or of Being (Parmenides), or of Form (Plato), or of Flux (Heraclitus), or of Reason (Anaxagoras), it was not only to provide us with a multiplicity of models that we might later choose from at our own behest; and Aristotle did not just come along to dismiss those precocious beginnings as the mere kindling for a unified system of Science, whose branches could be neatly divvied up in to the theoretical, practical, and productive. On the contrary, all of this transpires, and continues to, in an imaginary land of our own, i.e., the landscape of whoever reads them. Along the way, one view leads to the next whether or not the progression makes sense, whether we are led to conflict, clarification, or culmination (and between these we can hardly judge). Detours become necessary, an excess of words something, and we take joy in this; but in the end, our imagined time drops out, and we cannot rely on any supra-temporal Good to get us out of this. This is an oblivion we’ve got to face. 

Aristotle — literally, “the best end”– sits eternally in his helpless position, unmoved. Both the systematic nature of his works and the fact that they come down to us in such volume– as opposed to those who came before him, whose thoughts are often anecdotal and limited to a few fragments — all of this signals to me that his world knew something terrible was about to happen to it, something that would truly tear it in two, far beyond the comparatively boring plight of Oedipus. Aristotle, the best himself, had no way of knowing what was coming. While he doesn’t admit this, and in fact denies it, in hindsight, the anxiety is too visible. Our harsh consciousness of history knows that a good chunk of this anxiety has already exploded out; but also that, in all likelihood, it has only just begun, it is always just beginning. And it is as if we become more conscious of this to the very degree we feel helpless to act to counter it — as if, in our descent from our past, we were destined to become ever more occluded as to the “reason” for our existence. The place we ourselves hold becomes more empty. And yet our language, the expression of our “abandonment,” becomes ever more precise, just as we become ever more blind in it, condemned to writing, that futility par excellence. For man is erased, writes Foucault, just as the horizon of the being of language becomes more dazzling. Paradoxically, this means the disappearance of Discourse. We are not sure who it dazzles for. 

I envision an age when thinkers will be so perceptive to what is shaking in them, in their time, that the very question of the unity of their person vanishes altogether; where the very drive for “unity” will vanish in the eternity, not of the mover, but of the Library; and they will sign work after work in total ignorance of who signs it, ignorant of the very question. Perhaps halfway through their life, they will sway into a new dialect, medium or genre. Unawares of the change and no longer needing to register it, they’ll shift from writing treatises to graffiti poems to computer programs. They won’t be lost, not because they had a direction, but because the very index for being lost will have ceased to exist. Their thought will sit unified in each fragment and the fragments will not dare come together. They will write for anyone and there will be consequences. They’ll be unable to assume Aristotle’s embarrassing position, even though, for all practical purposes, they’ll be doing nothing different than he did, repeating the same desire for knowledge with the same gesture, ignorant of its own scope and power. They will all share in that lineage of universals, pursuing the “truth” — or whatever they end up calling it.

Not unlike Aristotle, we’ve all got our own private Greece, which, like it or not, now includes Tunisia, North Asia, Brazil. We’ve no better grasp on our day than he could have had of his. The questions are pertinent, but asking them yield little: How do you know when to stop studying and start acting? Where does the border between observation and understanding, and creation and risk-taking lie? Where the past, where the present? Where my ambition, where the common impetus? I can but imagine a sanctum for these and watch them grow. I can prevent my invention from being haphazard, even if a series of beginnings does not a progression make. Even if starting over and over ends up being meaningless. In fact, let’s admit it, nothing ever gets easier. The conditions of inquiry do not get better. The beforehand difficulty will not be cleared away.

I am curious how you view things.

I could say that writing is often like manning the shutter valve on a high-pressure pipe. There never seems to be an end to the water that might gush out of it once it’s opened, but the ground outside only needs to be watered so much. I don’t know the exact amount, and so wait anxiously to discover when to shut the lock. But somehow (I can’t figure how it works) there is always the exact amount of water anyway, no matter what I “do.” In this somewhat pointless game, waged against myself, the trick is to turn the valve off right after the last drop drips out. Of course, the ground has been watered appropriately either way; but if you time it just right, you can almost succeed in convincing yourself you had something to do with it. This is the fragile moment of realization and consciousness: “I am doing this.” If you miss the mark, the whole thing looks like one big accident, one big beautiful accident. And after the water’s soaked in for a while, this always seems to be the unavoidable conclusion. I can’t expect it, but predict this to be true: the well will fill up again, I will irrigate another land. But still the sensation of being a part of it too often seems too feigned — a ruse of time, some game I played with myself to pretend I was involved. And yet somehow, the whole acreage went by my name.

Some people create a cozy nook to write in, or go by a schedule. I can’t imagine this. My greatest weakness is a lack of organization. Or rather, it is as if once the water has poured on to the plot, I have to take leave of it. Only in another spot can another well be divined (astoundingly, I show up again and again with ready hands). So I have to move around my house, mimicking the moves around myself. Anger — some remnant of human history — might take a hold of me, and have me running to rearrange various objects in the house. But there are too many and in frustration I’d like to crush something. I take myself aback. I blame the velocity of my contrary delights, as if there were a price to pay for seeing God. And you payed it by witnessing how much of a monster a human can be. Sensing our inner capability for strength. This frustration inevitably leads me to catch my reflection in a mirror. And the mystery of what I see casts me infinitely back into myself. I wander outside, visibly nobody anymore, muscle around like this for a few minutes like a child, take a few breaths. I remind myself that all of this is due to a lack of sleep. I end up reading, whatever that means. I spark up eventually and decide to share something. Another well has been echolocated in the dark, calling out to me and demanding to be declared and opened up. Something arrives, and then…… By the end the well’s abandoned, and you go on.

Personally, it’s almost impossible to write in a state of torture. I admit, I’ve done quite a bit of it, but have largely given up. I used to thrust myself randomly into foreign places, let my anxiety and paranoia surmount, sometimes aid the process with substances, and then scribble on the napkins at the table to alleviate what I had caused in myself. Somewhere in those foreign trashcans is some hack poetry, some elements of a theory I’ll be working on until my dying day, a theory of used tires and infinite nothings. Other days, most often, quietly and isolated, I’d tuck the terror neatly away in journals, letting the nothing test out its own waters. Letting my life unravel itself, to the point of no return, where — scary — the pages don’t run out.

Now it seems as if not a single word is possible without joy, freedom, and release accompanying it, no matter what the “content” is. Perhaps torture is the only content, but I don’t think so. There is nothing inherently profound about a well. The content is in fact largely irrelevant, unimproveable, as if the whole thing (?) were just an “absent-minded” doodle on the parked car called “our life.”

You cannot feel that all the time, of course — the freedom I mean. Perhaps we “become what we are” simply to get better at sustaining that, sustaining that praxis whose main contact with reality takes place through the release of ourselves. Which just amounts to some water dripping out of a hose. Sometimes it’s hard not to feel like I am just sitting around, waiting to write. Waiting for that semblance of control, creativity, intention at the valve — when really all I am doing is just looking after some mute objects in a house. And in general, waiting to figure out how to unconditionally accept that love is an impersonal thing, bestowed out of nowhere upon us, not-wielded, i.e., that the whole orgiastic confusion called nature-culture is one big gift that never sticks around long enough to be considered “given.” You twist the lever as if you had to kick start the whole thing, as if not a thing had ever yet been started. Art/life/freedom– isn’t it always that way? Having to begin again, right when it’s over?

John from Australia has asked me, quite unexpectedly, what I might say in response to Adi Da Samraj and His Divine Transmission. What a splendid oppurtunity! I am not sure if he meant this as a challenge to what I’ve set up elsewhere, or if he, more innocently, was simply curious how His Transmission might fit in to my Nontology. You can read my initial response in the comment section of the previous post, which is more personal (I mean narrative and historical) than this post will be. The purpose of this post is to introduce Adi Da while venturing an “interpretation” of his work along the way; and then to zoom out and add my own “spin” to all this, to open up some new avenues of inquiries. Again, what praise to chance that John would make his inquiry! It is as if Adi Da Himself had intervened…

I

As John pointed out in his comment, Adi Da is someone who knows what He is Communicating. In another sense, He Is His Transmission, and vice versa. For those unfamiliar with our Author, here is a taste from his text The Way Becomes Conscious:

I have most perfectly Realized, and I teach (and reveal, and give), the inherently perfect Truth of the “Who,” or the “What,” or the Transcendental, inherently Spiritual, intrinsically egoless, and Self-Evidently Divine (or most perfectly non-dual, non-excluding, all-including, and, yet, all-and-All transcending) Self-Nature, Self Condition, Source-Condition, and Self-State that is both Self-Existing and Self-Radiant, and Which Is the “Who,” and the “What,” and the (Self-Evidently) Divine Condition that is Realized (or most perfectly Found) to Be that Which is always already the case, if and when “self”-contraction (or the action that is, itself, the ego-”I”) is (“root” and all) utterly transcended in the (Self-Evidently Divine) Realization of the “Bright” (Itself), Which Is the inherent Love-Bliss-Radiance (or the centerless and boundless Self-Radiance) of the Self-Existing (and Self-Evidently Divine) “Self” (or Self-Nature, Self-Condition, Source-Condition, and Self-State) Itself.

How’s that for an introduction! I quote this passage because it exemplifies what is so interesting about Adi Da, as well as what can be so troubling. Suffice it to say, this is not an easy thing to read, not an easy thing to “understand.” But is that what’s being called for? I mean, are we supposed to understand what He is saying to us? Or are we supposed to understand ourselves instead? What is at stake in this passage? In other words, “Who” or “What” can even read Adi Da, if not the Heart Itself? Here is another passage, a bit more “self-revealing”:

When I finally understood, I only “Knew” myself (most perfectly). And never after that have I ceased to “Know” myself (most perfectly). Thereafter, I am simply (apparently) active as my own Form– Which (as Atma Nadi) rises from the bodily apparent heart to the Matrix of Light, and Which (apparently) generates every conditional center, every conditional body (or functional sheath), every conditional realm, and every conditional “experience,” and Which eternally sacrifices all Its apparently extended (or terminal) energies to the heart. In every apparent conditional state, I remain Aware at the Free “Point” in the bodily apparent heart, unbounded in the right side– non-separate and indivisible. Prior to every apparent conditional state, I remain As the One and Only and inherently indivisible Conscious Light, always already above and beyond all-and-All (and As That in and of Which all-and-All potentially arises). Everything only appears to me– and I remain As I Am. There is no end to This.

The key question is still this: who or what can possibly speak this way, if not a Fully Realized Being? But if I can read, understand, and resonate with these words, aren’t I also this Being? What does this engagement imply for and require of us? How are we to understand “Adi Da Himself,” the place of the “Am” from which He Speaks? Can we do so without an experience of the “Bright,” for which Adi Da is the Direct Transmission? But remaining true to the text, the “Bright” is That Which Is, unconditionally. How could we avoid it?

This is a kind of methodological difficulty that I can only surmount in freedom, capitalizing as I see fit, juxtaposing, and playing as only God Himself (Adi Da Samraj? Me?) could play. Because to read Adi Da is to speak With Him and As Him. In a certain sense, if I take what he says to heart and to its logical limit, it is unavoidable that I speak in His Name. Whenever I speak, the “Bright” speaks. How could this be reserved for Adi Da Himself, when the whole Reality He evokes is pre-egoic?

Both the search for ego-based Spiritual “effects” and the ego-based exploitation of life on a sensual or mental level are traps. The search for “experience” and the search for liberation from the bondage to “experience” are the same activity– born out of the absence of “radical self-understanding,” the un-”creative” movement that is not Reality. Reality Itself is the only unique matter in the adventure of life, and It stands prior to all egoic efforts and all less-than-most-perfect-discoveries…

Now, I want to quote a few more passages that show Adi Da is or was a “real human being,” since certain of these passages might leave this in doubt. Here, the Venerable Adi Da Samraj reminds us that the Terms of His Transmission came to him, that these Terms were not set by any egoic or intentional effort of His Own, but in fact came from “nowhere,” Divinely Avatarically, that is, from Reality (Itself), which unconditionally precedes all conditionality, and yet finds no disruption in anything conditioned:

My life has involved an intentional embrace of “experiencing” and seeking, for the sake of “radical self-understanding” (and the Transcendental Spiritual Transmission of its Realization to all-and-All). Therefore, I have known the extreme enjoyments of both the libertine and the saint. And I have known all the most ordinary (“middle”) states of life. But there is also “radical self-understanding,” which is Reality Itself– and, by means of “radical self-understanding,” I Divinely Self-Recognize every form of suffering.

In this book [The Knee of Listening], I have had to confront a most difficult means of instruction. I have had to fully illustrate the course of life, even in order to demonstrate the factuality of the extraordinary phenomena that humankind is presently in the habit of denying. But, in the end, in order to speak the Truth, I have also had to argue against the ultimacy of many of the very things I have proven in my life.

Because all of that was and is the case with me, a unique Reality-Way has here-”Emerged”– which is the Way of “radical” (or always priorly ego-transcending) devotional relationship to me, demonstrated (on that basis) as right (or Really ego-transcending) life, always (from the beginning) participating in the egoless indivisible Conscious Light of the only-by-me Divinely Avatarically revealed and given “Bright” of Reality Itself.

Ever so slightly, Adi Da admits to the “difficulty” he encountered when trying to articulate the “Way” that was without way, without accomplishment, and without any emphasis on spiritual experience and “salvation”– a way that becomes and that can only become conscious. This becoming-conscious had to take place right on the level of the “text,” by acknowledging with utmost vigilance the “outside of the text,” i.e., his readers’ and His Own Heart (which are One-and-the-Same?). He struggled to articulate his own path as a Coming To Himself As God, As Reality Itself. He struggled (of course this is the wrong verb to use) to articulate Himself As the Itself of Reality, the Itself of the Heart, the Itself of the “Bright,” so as to stay True to the Divine Self-Condition (Itself) which He (most perfectly) “Found out” after searching in countless spiritual methods and experiencing countless “middle” states. And so to articulate It-All (Itself). (To anticipate where I’m headed, Kafka too admitted his longing to “say everything”…) Ultimately, this means that He becomes His Text, which, after all, is where John started us off (pun intended).

Again, there is a paradox or riddle shot through all of these text, which does not detract from their “power” in any way. Adi Da has said that His Way involves a “devotional relationship to me” and that the “Bright” is revealed and given “only-by-me.” But who is this “me” that we are talking about, especially considering how, in the same sentence, we are told that all of this is “priorly ego-transcending” and “Really ego-transcending”? What is Adi Da trying to get us to see about ourselves? How can he ask anything of us when, at the core of this document at least, he seems to be saying that “life need not be tied to seeking, or the pursuit of its own Self-Nature as a goal”?

I don’t want to draw any spiritual-mystic conclusions from all this — and, anyway, yours are the only conclusions that matter in this field. But I will say one thing. In my eyes, these words — Adi Da’s Entire Transmission — comes from a place of Real Genuineness. He wrote profusely, and created art profusely, because He knew that in His Works, He was There, the Heart Itself was There. But these works remind you that You, too, are There. You too are the (always priorly ego-transcending) Heart-Reality. You too are always already Free, Transcendentally Real, “Bright,” because, “Real life is limitlessly (or non-conditionally) Free, Present, Active, ‘Creative,’ and Alive.” The Matrix of Light shines on.

II

Contrary to what I said above, there is no way for me to talk “about” Adi Da except on my own terms. But insofar as He and I are together — or are One — we share terms, we share insights, we share influences, we share Life, that Free and Active “Point” where the all-and-All is Radiant and Self-Evidently Divine. So it goes with you and I as well, whoever we are, whenever we are. This is the Truth Adi Da Speaks. In any case, whatever I say about him says more about me and my motivations than it says about “Him.” But again, the question arises: whose “me” do I speak in the name of? This is a delicate balance between self and other, navigated right on the surface of the text, that is, right in the very event of reading/writing.

It would be wrong to assume that Adi Da has set up some kind of “theory” in these texts, even if that first passage I shared strikes of the worst kind of “hermeticism.” The sheer amount of his works– many of which contain thousands upon thousands of pages, including poems and fictional elements — show to us that, for as long as he lived, in maintaining His Openness to what was (in Him) here-Emerging, He upheld the promise that He had made to Himself and All Beings (even long before the Great Event of his Divine re-Awakening) to hold firm to the “Radical” Reality-Way of the Heart Itself, Adidam, which required all this “work.” But can’t we say that of every writer or artist who takes his charge seriously? Certainly, there is specific terminology in Adi Da, unique only to Him (I will stop copping and playing around in it shortly; it clearly doesn’t suit me in the long run). But even this terminology, as air-tight as it seems, changed over time. It was a free expression, not Mr. Da’s “self-expression,” but the Self-Expression of the Self-Existing “Self” Itself. I can recall from texts that pre-date this one how he focused on critiquing the “self-contraction,” which is a theme that his disciple Ken Wilber took up on. It shows up in this text, but seems to have lost some clout. Surely, we could look up texts that followed this one and find other slight shifts in terms. This is the nature of the terminological endeavor, the difficulty in expressing something that, in a way, need not be expressed at all. But for the reader, those older text may be precisely what’s called for at the time. There’s beauty and another level of insight to be gained by the evolution of terms; but that doesn’t mean the core Truth-Reality isn’t present at every “step.”

It is always a matter of what resonates with you: follow what resonates with you, what strikes a cord with you, and you will never go wrong. The “guide” that Adi Da sets up reminds you that you don’t need a guide. Devotion to Him means devotion to Reality Itself, no more, no less, which means: “Real life is free of any goal of liberation or salvation.” Quite the admission from a holy man! When every page of his works remind us that “Reality Is All The God There Is,” we can safely assume that the criteria for Realization is not “devotion to me” in the banal sense. He is not calling for his followers to worship him as an Idol or a Guru: the “theory” or logic of realization he sets up explicitly excludes this. When reading Adi Da through the years, I have always read phrases like “the only-by-me” in a way quite particular to me myself, particular to my reading, and particular to My Own “Radical” Heart-Awakening. Otherwise, it’d be like asking Adi Da to live my life-adventure for me, and that is something that neither Adi Da nor I would approve of.

Why do we write? Why am I here? What good are all these words? Since Adi Da has guided this post, I can only answer spiritually: the point of all this is to realize What We Are (the Active, Living, Aware, Free “Point”). Truth is, it would be easy for some to critique Adi Da in some philosophical way, saying that he relies too heavily on Being as underlying substance, or some other non-sense. But I will leave that critique to those who, in point of fact, don’t know how to read Adi Da in the first place. Not only is Adi Da’s Transmission inherently Self-Validating, but it seems to validate any attempt that is not rooted in egoic ploys, and even those that are, since, for Him, All Of This participates (or Is) the Reality that God Is. Perhaps His Uniqueness even stems from the affirmation that there is nothing per se to “accomplish” in the spiritual or experiential realm. Even withdrawal into the Heart, or the mystic exclusion of the world, is secondary. “Not withdrawal into the Heart Itself, but Existence As the Heart Itself, is True (and Is Truth Itself).”

My hope for this post, before anything, was to introduce Adi Da to those who might not have heard of Him. Second, it was to suggest how to read, or to admit to how I read, these often dazzling works that — it’s an unavoidable perception — often seem pretty pretentious. Of course, I’ve not even scratched the surface of their “content”; but perhaps that precisely is the point. I Am, You Are the Content, the “Bright,” the Love-Bliss-Radiance evoked by all the Scriptures since Time Immemorial; and you are so without effort, without spiritual striving, without any need of “experience” or “knowledge” or “salvation.” Adi Da admits that we are clouded, and that he himself had to pass through some cloudy stages. I believe that He wrote endlessly because He knew and intuited that there can be no “end” to The Testimony of God. Thus, in a sense, All Is the De-Clouding. That we are called to be conscious of this and to participate in this is the simple call to “wake up,” to see for ourselves how, “Reality Itself Is Consciousness Itself, Present as no-seeking in the heart.” If we don’t, Adi Da suggests, all of this is nevertheless the case, because ”There is no dilemma inherent in conditionally manifested existence.” Adi Da’s Writings exemplify this “no dilemma” in a rather staggering way. God will continue to speak like This, through us and with us, pre-egoically always, never precluding or excluding any form of life or world; and I will have always-already spoken this way too. Who could read these texts and not be totally, even if subtly, transformed?

Let me pull a quotation from an author who is seemingly on the opposite side of the spectrum, Emile Cioran, in an attempt to bring this post to its final “point” (as if we hadn’t said enough about Reality Itself already). This comes from some interview snippets appended to his Oeuvres, and the topic of this one is “Reader”:

I believe that a book ought really to be a wound, that it has to change the life of the reader in one way or another. My idea, when I write a book, is to wake someone up, to lambast them. Because my books spring from my own malaise, if not my suffering, they must somehow communicate these to the reader. [...] A book must turn everything on its head, put everything back into question.

In the final sentence, I’ve translated the verb bouleverser as “turn everything on its head,” but the sense of this verb runs deep: disrupt, distress, wreak havoc, change, move (emotionally), shatter, topple, overwhelm. I share this passage to make a rather simple point: what we’ve said about Adi Da’s Work — that in order to read it, one has to take it to heart absolutely, and, in a sense, identify totally with Its Author, i.e., Reality Itself — holds true of all good reading. Every good book, whether Adi Da or Emile Cioran, asks that you enter into the “Bright” or the “wound” that the book (fleetingly, although without failure) records; and to let it Brighten and wound you accordingly, on the way to your “radical self-understanding.” I believe that a piece of writing must come from such a place, such a Bright wound, in order to truly speak to any other, to speak to the all-and-All. The field of validation set up in these works, to finish, is you– not “you” how you understand yourself already, per se, but the You that is True, Your Existence As the Heart Itself. The part of “you” that, taking leave of the homogenous and horizontal, topples over into the heterogeneous and the vertical, into the Real, the Nothing, the Now-Here, or whatever you’d like to call it. In the end, neither I, nor Cioran, nor Adi Da can do this for you; but we can try to craft something that will respond to you if you respond to it, and we can try to make our words resonate with this Vertical, with our wound, with our “Bright.”

So there is nothing to “accomplish” in all this. Adi Da says as much in denouncing the quest for “liberation” and “salvation” (I would point interested parties to Jean-Luc Nancy’s work, his Adoration especially, where this “beyond-salvation” is articulated in strikingly similar ways). I could truly go on forever like this, and I often have trouble telling “where to stop.” But why would I want to? What is there, really, to start or stop? All that I know is that each of us resonate with ourselves, others, and the world in unique ways, ways largely beyond us. For some folks, Adi Da’s style may simply be too much. For others, Cioran may paint a picture too bleak. Time will pass and new voices will erupt. But in any case, I know that these two humans were humans; and even if only Adi Da claims the status of God, I would have a hard time denying that each of them are of “equal” value for humanity as a whole, insofar as each of us require different things, insofar as each of us “wake up” with different ballistics.

Personally, I have been moved to realization by Adi Da no less than Cioran, and as a living and breathing being, I give thanks for them both. Others may attempt a hierarchy of beings and their truths, but I know what “works” for me. If there’s anything these two writers have in common — and truly, on a textual level, they don’t share much of anything — it is that one must stare down ones dilemmas without crutches, without gurus, without theories, without answers. One must courageously face the day or remain mired in sore ways of thinking (admittedly, we don’t need books to tell us that, as Krishnamurti would readily point out). I pursue my own path as a “writer,” not to match up to Adi Da (who could ever do so?) or to be as troubled as Cioran (that is not in my nature), but to remain true to myself and my word, true to the ‘only-by-me’ revealed way, which, for me, keeps on revealing itself. To that end, I strive far ahead of myself, leave myself behind, and hope to put it all on the table, knowing that there will always be new paths to passionately cross. Truly, above all else, I cannot deny the evidence: the way becomes conscious. This really is Something to be thankful for.