Books and Cities

 

76

The listless, nocturnal circling and wandering of drunken masses through sprawling, bleak quarters is a frightening scene, similar to those depicted by De Quincey and Jack London in their memoirs. A cheap bar beckons on every corner; people drink on their feet, and the strong potions have an almost violent effect on the weakened constitutions. Swarms of streetwalkers, among them children, drift along in the current with drunk women and homeless people. Lurking between them are the types whose livelihoods depend on the intoxicated and the will-less: pimps, smugglers, pickpockets, and villains of every kind.

They do not drink for nostalgia or to get closer to others here; they drink to escape and to forget, and the awakenings are terrifying. The demon is ever present; with his unsurpassable nose, Dostoyevsky sensed this almost physically. His travel journals are veritable demonologies, the wanderings of a ghost-seer through the world. With the same certainty that a Tocqueville captured the political structures, he captured their boundless backgrounds—as if the one had occupied himself with the musculature, the other with the pneuma of a being. In Paris, Dostoyevsky found a great “stillness of order, so to speak! . . . a colossal, internal, spiritual regimentation having its source in the very soul . . . ,” it could have been a “Heidelberg on a colossal scale.”22London seemed to him the titanic negative image of civilized Parisian humanity, reposing in itself despite all the outward movement. A “fear of something or other” began to seize him during his walks through London, a city in which “on Saturday nights half a million working men and women and their children spread like the ocean all over town, clustering particularly in certain districts, and celebrate their sabbath all night long until five o’clock in the morning, in other words, guzzle and drink like beasts to make up for a whole week. They bring with them their weekly savings, all that was earned by hard work and with many a curse. Great jets of gas burn in meat and food shops, brightly lighting up the streets. It is as if a grand reception were being held for these white negroes. Crowds throng the open taverns and streets. There they eat and drink. The beer houses are decorated like palaces. Everyone is drunk, but drunk joylessly, gloomily and heavily, and everyone is somehow strangely mute. Only curses and bloody brawls occasionally break that suspicious and oppressively sad silence. . . . Everyone is in a hurry to drink himself into insensibility . . . wives in no way lag behind their husbands and all get drunk together, while children crawl and run about among them.”23He then describes a walk through a glowing hellhole of lust. Léon Bloy expresses a similar aversion to London, vented in his extreme manner to the point of wishing for a cannon that could finish off the “capitale infâme” with one shot. Bloy comes at it from a different angle: that of a Spanish-flavored Catholicism observing Protestantism, analogous to the relationship between a cat and a dog.

Protestantism, without which our technological new world is unthinkable, finds it more difficult to spread into the wine-producing countries than into the northern ones. Transition zones often bring unexpected manifestations. Think of Geneva.

77

Dostoyevsky’s vision, which could penetrate into even the Parisian “stillness,” was nevertheless not confused by the storm of images that frightened and unsettled him in London. He might have called the chapter in which he describes these impressions something like “Splendor and Misery of the Machine World.” He chose a different title: “Baal.” Evidently, he had perceived something more there: a power enthroned in the midst of the crowd.

A person looking for a way out never exits into a void; something is waiting at every possible egress. Fleeing is a fatal movement in itself. We can include suicide in this, with the exception of its stoic forms, which should not be regarded as evasion. “In certain circumstances, exiting life may become a duty for the brave.”24

78

From the perspective of intoxication, scenes like those described by Dostoyevsky represent a meeting of narcotic and stimulating effects. Something gets forgotten, like a curtain with graying images painted on it being rolled up and away. Then another world appears behind it where a new master has been busy. The lights become harsher, the colors more vivid. Naked desires step forth. There were glowing embers deep under the ashes—now flames shoot up, as if stoked by bellows. The heart and lungs respond.

The senses also sharpen, for the smell of blood too. The masses scent blood on the wide streets and squares like ravenous predatory fish in a bend on the Amazon. There the river begins to boil; here it is the foaming of yeast. Twenty years before Dostoyevsky, Dickens had witnessed a similar scene: at the execution of the Manning couple who had been sentenced to death for a carefully planned murder and robbery. He presented his impressions in a letter to the Times:

“Sir, I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger Lane this morning. I went there with the intention of observing the crowd gathered to behold it, and I had excellent opportunities of doing so. . . .

“When I came upon the scene at midnight, the shrillness of the cries and howls that were raised from time to time, denoting that they came from a concourse of boys and girls already assembled in the best places, made my blood run cold. As the night went on, screeching, and laughing, and yelling in strong chorus of parodies on negro melodies, with substitutions of ‘Mrs. Manning’ for ‘Susannah’ and the like, were added to these. When the day dawned, thieves, low prostitutes, ruffians, and vagabonds of every kind, flocked on to the ground, with every variety of offensive and foul behaviour. Fightings, faintings, whistlings, imitations of Punch, brutal jokes, tumultuous demonstrations of indecent delight when swooning women were dragged out of the crowd by the police, with their dresses disordered, gave a new zest to the general entertainment. When the sun rose brightly—as it did—it gilded thousands upon thousands of upturned faces, so inexpressibly odious in their brutal mirth or callousness, that a man had cause to feel ashamed of the shape he wore and to shrink from himself, as fashioned in the image of the Devil.”2579

Nothing good emerges in this spectacle. Yet it cannot be attributed to intoxication, for the altered state only reveals, as if a curtain were lifted or the door to a deep crypt opened. It is one key among others.

In seeking out this event and spending the night there, Dickens obeyed a higher curiosity to which the author is not only entitled but even obliged. When, as he says, he felt shame, that also is part of the course and especially important in an era like the Victorian, during which everything always came up smelling of roses.

Such cannibalism is after all innate in man, and it does not need an execution to express itself. Cruelty is almost anatomically inborn in man, like the blind spot in our eyes, and it is just as little noticed. In every epoch, there is an ostracized element on which the general aversion concentrates. These elements are branded as heretics, it is considered commendable to persecute them, and when something bad happens to them people feel gratified. This kind of gratification is also present in good people, even in Pickwickians.26 It begins as early as kindergarten or first grade.

80

Here I need to resist the temptation of a long literary digression. Its theme would be the manner in which the attention of different writers focuses on these ostracized elements. It is significant whether this attention originates from outside—be it sympathetic or even benevolent—or from within. In this regard, the light that Dostoyevsky brings to bear on evil is fundamentally different from that of Dickens, Victor Hugo, or, to name an extreme case, Eugène Sue.

Dostoyevsky enters into Raskolnikov’s inner universe; he thinks, feels, and suffers with the murderer, and he is resurrected with him. He follows the great “Thou art that.”27 This is enlightening in the highest sense since the reader is included in the process of identification; but it does make the reading a purgatory for entire chapters—for instance, in Marmeladov’s confession or Raskolnikov’s plea of guilty.

This book, often described as a crime novel, is actually the opposite. The crime novel is fascinating because a human being is hunted in it; the chase, the clever tricks, the manhunt in the big city jungle: elements of a Great Hunt. Dostoyevsky takes us a floor deeper; the murderer appears as his own persecutor, but also his own self-conqueror. This touches us more intimately.

I also have to restrain myself here from bringing in Joseph Conrad: as a phenomenon of transition not only in East–West relations but also in the moral sphere, where his illumination of the ruined existence is unsurpassable. One might say that the roses begin to lose their sweet smell here. A ruined existence is an ambiguous case—a person no longer belongs to society, but he still recognizes its laws.

81

I don’t think we have strayed too far from the theme with this; at worst, it has been a circumscribing of it. The pure observation of man, also when accompanied by sympathy or even compassion, only ever nears its subject imperfectly.

Something entirely different occurs when the author begins to enter into his subjects, to identify with them. Lavater once said that to truly understand someone else one has to imitate their face28—we can agree, assuming that this does not stop at the mask. This is the touchstone that separates the authentic from the simulated—it can also be applied to actors. Blood will always be called for, and the most faithful imitation, the finest character study, will never achieve what passion can. Then art becomes identical with nature, the mask melts into the primordial substance. The distinction can be found in all the arts, including the healing arts, and it always involves what no school or technique can teach.

Raphael said, “Understanding means becoming one.” We should include the animal in this relation; the ancient hunters always knew this. It applies not only to blood forms of hunting but also to the higher hunt with its spiritual, deathless capture of the prey. Here again the religions of the Far East distinguish themselves from those of the Middle East. Many other eras, including the most ancient, were closer to and understood the animal more profoundly than our own, despite all the sophistications of modern-day zoology. And never have there been such shameful ways of treating animals as in our day.

The poet, too, knows the mystery of the Great Hunt. As the ancient hunters invoked the animal with masks and dances, so he invokes it with words that do not stop at impressions of movement and patches of color. Brothers should generally not sing each other’s praise; nevertheless, I cannot ignore Friedrich Georg’s success in this domain—with the peacock, the owl, the snake, the hare, and others.

We return here to early, pre-mythical times, to the transformative powers of the Great Mother. Her dress may have many patterns and pleats, but it is made of a single fabric. This unity becomes clear in fairy tales; poets and artists in general remind us of this. More important than what they make us see and hear is what they help us forget. If they succeed with this One, all else is left behind: the fragmentary, the disputable, the separate—that is, time and its shadings.

82

Dostoyevsky apparently saw something reassuring in the looser constitution of Paris and something frightening in the order of London. This attests to his penetrating but humane look. He saw Baal enthroned behind the spectacle on the Thames, and it frightened and fascinated him as it had inspired the portrayals of many others before and after him.

Dostoyevsky was likely thinking of the Bal or Bel who also appeared as a dragon and whom King Cyrus demanded of Daniel that he worship: “Thinkest thou not that Bel is a living God? Seest thou not how much he eats and drinks every day? . . . thou canst not say that he is no living god; therefore worship him.”29 Blake saw a green dragon manifesting in the form of the London Treasury Building.

The enduring reputation of this god Bel is of a hard and merciless master. The name Babylon, its principal seat, became synonymous with the metropolis as such, especially in its night side. Beyond this, Dostoyevsky also saw something specific: the stamp of puritanism in which enormous deployments of energy were coupled with an unwavering conscience. Hence, it is no coincidence that it was precisely in those puritanical zones that machine technology and its related forms of exploitation brought forth the precedents and model cases for critical reflection on these same phenomena.

If we look closely at this picture of London, the night side that is present in every metropolis and even in every small city is particularly bleak here. Like everything on offer in big cities, the varieties of vice are also more specialized and openly marketed. While the streets and quarters used for the purpose are similar in their essence everywhere, there are variations according to time and place: they are different in the capitals than in harbor or garrison towns, different where Hogarth studied them than where Toulouse-Lautrec did. There are cities with the age-old reputation of a Capua, and others that were founded expressly as centers of intoxication, gambling, and the sex trade.

In his Paris days, Dostoyevsky was undoubtedly also in Montmartre, but it was not there that Baal appeared to him to reign. He saw an orderly fabric in the Parisian ambience, in London an obscene disorder. We might have suspected the opposite impression, yet it is precisely here that his artistic incorruptibility is demonstrated—the artist whose gaze penetrates through the social veneer, through the varnish on a masterpiece, to its ground.

83

Again, the question arises: why do the altered states produce sadder, gloomier images in northern countries than in the south? There is no wine of course, but that also has its reasons. The same is true for the sun and for the climate in general. Poe is from a southern state, but he is nonetheless the perfect example for all the horrors of the Anglo-Saxon “blackout.” Poe’s hells are different from Baudelaire’s because in Poe the machine appears no longer in its economic but in its demonic power. The enemy of the artist, indeed of man, is mechanical movement; Bosch had already seen that.

In the north, the separation from all that the altered state is supposed to provide is greater; much of the natural, innate cheerfulness is lacking. On the other hand, northerners have a greater talent to reflect this into skepticism; masters of irony, satire, and the grotesque thrive more naturally in the north.

The separation entails greater effort. To forget something, to flee from something, or, conversely, to want to achieve or gain something—the whole problem of intoxication moves between these two poles. The poorer the substance, the wider the gap to be bridged. The way home from a Victorian family dinner passed directly by a brothel. Works and doctrines become “edifying” when the foundations of the edifice have become too weak. What should be is reflected into the mere appearance of it.

The comparison with the desert keeps coming to mind. Nietzsche pondered the matter thoroughly and roamed the oases and mirages himself. His evaluation of crime is part of this picture, along with the historical projection into the Renaissance. But caution is called for here; optical illusions had already crept in with Jacob Burckhardt, a confounding of strengths and weaknesses the consequences of which are difficult to judge. This leads back to Gobineau. “Nostalgia for racial purity is a distinguishing trait of the half-breed”—another of those maxims by which I did myself no favors.

Nietzsche’s relationship with altered states is that of a hyper-sensitive; the sun, the air, even the barometric pressure can have euphoric effects on such constitutions. He shares this with his readers above all in The Dawn of Day. In its preface he speaks of the person who “desires a long period of darkness, an unintelligible, hidden, enigmatic something, knowing as he does that he will in time have his own morning, his own redemption, his own rosy dawn.”30

Here again we are in an approach.

84

When the separation has become very great and the supervening element that we depend on very rare, then the intermediary zones and underworlds become more alluring—because things do not become absolutely barren. Now demons inhabit the crumbling altars.

The desolation must be grasped in the depths and not in the symptoms, for our visible world has no lack of outward variety. But this variety is bound to time and place, is dynamic in nature. We fly to the poles and even to the moon, and we bring our wastelands with us. So long as we stay in motion, the flood of images presses upon us. Why is it so insatiable, this hunger for images? It is a sign that the images are ultimately not satisfying. A real deficiency drives us to get beyond time and space.

Only where this hunger is no longer perceived as such can the mere images suffice; there they will seem complete in themselves, lacking nothing over, under, or behind them. They will no longer reveal their secrets to us. At this stage, people enjoy the contentment of the “Last Man” described by Nietzsche and after him by Huxley.

85

Where life becomes very impoverished, intoxication is one of the last remaining resources. This is one reason why alcoholism also cannot be dealt with by priests. The alcoholic can be helped neither economically nor morally; it is a problem of being, something theology has become increasingly incapable of resolving.

The alcoholic drinks not only to escape his own misery. Above all, he yearns to approach a place in which not only hisneeds but need as such has been removed, where grief itself does not exist. His euphoria conceals more than comfort and the absence of pain. Dostoyevsky grasped this too with brilliant insight. How else could he have put this sentence in the mouth of his unhappy hero, Marmeladow: “I drink so that I may suffer twice as much.”31

86

Natural cycles with their ebbs and flows are opposed to technical monotony: here the beat of the heart, there the cadence of the motor; here the poem, there the machine. The impulse to celebratory self-dissolution operates on both base and sublime levels—as much in those who drink away their weekly salary in the tavern as in the person who wants to say, “Once I lived like the gods!”

The cyclical rhythms are perceived more strongly where people still know the meaning of festivals and their joys; they are thus felt more strongly in untouched, archaic regions than in urbanized ones, more strongly in the country than in the city. The city is a single continuous fairground, it is light day and night. For this reason, the return—the real mystery of periodic cycles—is limited to only very big occasions. A return happens when the unmoving appears in the moving, the invisible in the visible—that is, when it is intimated in them.

There are thus more addicts in the city than in the country. One characteristic of addiction is that it tries to reduce the periodicity of the pleasure to a minimum, or even better, to a continuum. This flattens the peaks.

Cities also conceal addicts better than the countryside. They can live more anonymously, find shelter, change territories; the drugs are also easier to find.

In a small town, the village drunkard or the morphine addict are quickly identified and known to most, even when they try to hide their condition. This succeeds only when the transition from a strong habit to an unconditional addiction is not yet manifest. This is simultaneously the passage from open and approved consumption to a secret and suspect one.

Soon enough there is nothing left to hide; an inevitable loss of reputation and respect follows, apart from the economic, social, and health costs. The degeneration in the subject’s usual social manifestation, observed and suffered by family and friends, is perceived by the sufferer himself in the irrevocability of his demon. This is one of the saddest spectacles, described perhaps nowhere better than in some of E. A. Poe’s short stories.

Approaches : drugs and altered states / Ernst Jünger

what is the real in this case?—a number of marks in black printer’s ink on a few white sheets of paper

 Books and Readers

An essential monument of any city of dreams is that dedicated by the unknown reader to the nameless author in gratitude for the inspiration that has helped him attain a second, brighter existence. For myself, in any case, it appears that for long stretches I lived more intensely in books than in the intervals between them. I was not moving from Leipzig to Halle but from one chapter to the next. Between them lay the synchronized cadence of rails and ties, punctuated by the passing telegraph poles—the emptiness of the technical world. This had been the case even at school and then as a soldier—a life “to be continued.”

The palace of readers is the most enduring of all. It survives peoples, cultures, religions, and even the languages themselves. Earthquakes and wars do not shake it, nor even the burning of libraries, like the one in Alexandria. Markets, fellah towns, colosseums, skyscrapers, islands, and countries grow up in it and disappear, as though washed away by rain. Reality is charmed; the dream becomes real. A door is opened to a magical world.

I think that I have somewhere already mentioned the mandarin waiting for his execution in a line of wrongdoers, engrossed in a book as the beheadings proceed ahead of him. A reader is generally distracted, not because he could not cope with the world but because he simply takes it less seriously. This happens even more when a world is cheapened and its offerings devalued.

The Trials and Tribulations of Fontane has a firm place in my memory. I can relate details from it more precisely than what happened on the day I came to know the book. It was the day the Otago Rifles, fresh arrivals from New Zealand, were sent in at us, and we shot and blew each other up. During the breaks in the battle, I returned to the Brandenburg lake district of the Wilhelminian times.

In June 1904, as a nine-year-old, I first began reading One Thousand and One Nights, that immortal gift of the magical world to the West. I had found the book that month among the gifts on my mother’s birthday table. It was Gustave Weil’s four-volume translation, to which I repeatedly fled as to an oasis in the desert—that is, until I moved on to Littmann’s twelve-volume edition. The fables engraved themselves profoundly in my memory, as did the pictures in the richly illustrated edition. I sensed them again now in Taroudant, a Moroccan city with a strong oriental character despite its proximity to the coast.

One Thousand and One Nights: the ideal model of an at once collective and anonymous authorship. The work could have been created by a demon—fashioned overnight like one of its phantom castles. We could also think of the mother-of-pearl in a seashell—of cerebral traces that hardened into iridescence.

From: Approaches : drugs and altered states / Ernst Jünger

**

(I know, for my own part, that I am far more strongly moved by episodes in books than by those in real life, which usually leave me cold. This, of course, is what the author of the book is aiming at when he uses what Kierkegaard calls ‘the foreshortened perspective of the aesthetic’, which leaves out unromantic details—the hero’s interview with his bank manager about his overdraft; the heroine’s visit to the dentist to have two decayed teeth stopped—in order to heighten the reader’s emotional tension. My emotional reaction is entirely in the sphere of the imaginary; for what is the real in this case?—a number of marks in black printer’s ink on a few white sheets of paper.)

Nanavira Thera

Liberations of mind

Godatta

On one occasion the Venerable Godatta was dwelling at Macchikāsaṇḍa in the Wild Mango Grove. Then Citta the householder approached the Venerable Godatta, paid homage to him, and sat down to one side. The Venerable Godatta then said to him as he was sitting to one side:

“Householder, the measureless liberation of mind, the liberation of mind by nothingness, the liberation of mind by emptiness, and the signless liberation of mind: are these things different in meaning and also different in phrasing, or are they one in meaning and different only in phrasing?”

“There is a method, venerable sir, by which these things are different in meaning and also different in phrasing, and there is a method by which they are one in meaning and different only in phrasing.

“And what, venerable sir, is the method by which these things are different in meaning and also different in phrasing? Here a bhikkhu dwells pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with lovingkindness, likewise the second quarter, the third quarter, and the fourth quarter. Thus above, below, across, and everywhere, and to all as to himself, he dwells pervading the entire world with a mind imbued with lovingkindness, vast, exalted, measureless, without hostility, without ill will. He dwells pervading one quarter with a mind imbued with compassion … with a mind imbued with altruistic joy … with a mind imbued with equanimity, likewise the second quarter, the third quarter, and the fourth quarter. Thus above, below, across, and everywhere, and to all as to himself, he dwells pervading the entire world with a mind imbued with equanimity, vast, exalted, measureless, without hostility, without ill will. This is called the measureless liberation of mind.

“And what, venerable sir, is the liberation of mind by nothingness? Here, by completely transcending the base of the infinity of consciousness, aware that ‘there is nothing,’ a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the base of nothingness. This is called the liberation of mind by nothingness.

“And what, venerable sir, is the liberation of mind by emptiness? Here a bhikkhu, gone to the forest or to the foot of a tree or to an empty hut, reflects thus: ‘Empty is this of self or of
what belongs to self.’ This is called the liberation of mind by emptiness.

“And what, venerable sir, is the signless liberation of mind? Here, with nonattention to all signs, a bhikkhu enters and dwells in the signless concentration of mind. This is called the signless liberation of mind.

“This, venerable sir, is the method by which these things are different in meaning and also different in phrasing. And what, venerable sir, is the method by which these things are one in meaning and different only in phrasing?

“Lust, venerable sir, is a maker of measurement, hatred is a maker of measurement, delusion is a maker of measurement. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, these have been abandoned, cut off at the root, made like palm stumps, obliterated so that they are no more subject to future arising. To whatever extent there are measureless liberations of mind, the unshakable liberation of mind is declared the chief among them. Now that unshakable liberation of mind is empty of lust, empty of hatred, empty of delusion.

“Lust, venerable sir, is a something, hatred is a something, delusion is a something. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, these have been abandoned, cut off at the root, made like palm stumps, obliterated so that they are no more subject to future arising. To whatever extent there are liberations of mind by nothingness, the unshakable liberation of mind is declared the chief among them. Now that unshakable liberation of mind is empty of lust, empty of hatred, empty of delusion.

“Lust, venerable sir, is a maker of signs, hatred is a maker of signs, delusion is a maker of signs. For a bhikkhu whose taints are destroyed, these have been abandoned, cut off at the root, made like palm stumps, obliterated so that they are no more subject to future arising. To whatever extent there are signless liberations of mind, the unshakable liberation of mind is declared the chief among them. Now that unshakable liberation of mind is empty of lust, empty of hatred, empty of delusion.

“This, venerable sir, is the method by which these things are one in meaning and different only in phrasing.”

“It is a gain for you, householder, it is well gained by you, householder, in that you have the eye of wisdom that ranges over the deep Word of the Buddha.”

SN 41: 7

measureless liberation of mind  - appamānā cetovimutti
liberation of mind by nothingness - ākiñcaññā cetovimutti
liberation of mind by emptiness - suññatā cetovimutti
signless liberation of mind - animittā cetovimutti
unshakable liberation of mind - akuppā cetovimutti

“Here, venerable sir, elder bhikkhus have come to me and said: ‘Householder, develop the immeasurable liberation of mind’; and some elders have said: ‘Householder, develop the exalted liberation of mind.’ Venerable sir, the immeasurable liberation of mind and the exalted liberation of mind— are these states different in meaning and different in name, or are they one in meaning and different only in name?”

“Explain it as you see it, householder. Afterwards it will be cleared up for you.”

“Venerable sir, I think thus: the immeasurable liberation of mind and the exalted liberation of mind—these states are one in meaning and different only in name.”

“Householder, the immeasurable liberation of mind and the exalted liberation of mind—these states are different in meaning and different in name. And it should be understood as follows how these states are different in meaning and different in name.

“What, householder, is the immeasurable liberation of mind? (See above ↑)

“And what, householder, is the exalted deliverance of mind? Here a bhikkhu abides resolved upon an area the size of the root of one tree, pervading it as exalted: this is called the exalted deliverance of mind. Here a bhikkhu abides resolved upon an area the size of the roots of two or three trees, pervading it as exalted: this too is called the exalted deliverance of mind. Here a bhikkhu abides resolved upon an area the size of one village, pervading it as exalted…an area the size of two or three villages…an area the size of one major kingdom… an area the size of two or three major kingdoms…an area the size of the earth bounded by the ocean, pervading it as exalted: this too is called the exalted deliverance of mind. It is in this way, householder, that it can be understood how these states are different in meaning and different in name.

“There are, householder, these four kinds of reappearance [in a future state of] being. What four? Here someone abides resolved upon and pervading ‘limited radiance’; on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the gods of Limited Radiance. Here someone abides resolved upon and pervading ‘immeasurable radiance’; on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the gods of Immeasurable Radiance. Here someone abides resolved upon and pervading ‘defiled radiance’; on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the gods of Defiled Radiance. Here someone abides resolved upon and pervading ‘pure radiance’; on the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the gods of Pure Radiance. These are the four kinds of reappearance [in a future state of] being.

“There is an occasion, householder, when those deities assemble in one place. When they have assembled in one place, a difference in their colour can be discerned but no difference in their radiance. Just as, if a man were to bring several oil-lamps into a house, a difference in the flames of the lamps might be discerned but no difference in their radiance; so too, there is an occasion when those deities assemble in one place…but no difference in their radiance.

“There is an occasion, householder, when those deities disperse from there. When they have dispersed, a difference in their colours can be discerned and also a difference in their radiance. Just as, if the man were to remove those several oil-lamps from that house, a difference might be discerned in the flames of the lamps and also a difference in their radiance; so too, there is an occasion when those deities disperse from there…and also a difference in their radiance.

“It does not occur to those deities: ‘This [life] of ours is permanent, everlasting, and eternal,’ yet wherever those deities settle down, there they find delight. Just as, when flies are being carried along on a carrying-pole or on a basket, it does not occur to them: ‘This [life] of ours is permanent, everlasting, or eternal,’ yet wherever those flies settle down, there they find delight; so too, it does not occur to those deities…yet wherever they settle down, there they find delight.”

When this was said, the venerable Abhiya Kaccāna said to the venerable Anuruddha: “Good, venerable Anuruddha, yet I have something further to ask: Are all those radiant ones deities of Limited Radiance, or are some of them deities of Immeasurable Radiance?”

“By reason of the factor [responsible for rebirth], friend Kaccāna, some are deities of Limited Radiance, some deities of Immeasurable Radiance.”

“Venerable Anuruddha, what is the cause and reason why among those deities that have reappeared in a single order of gods, [149] some are deities of Limited Radiance, some deities of Immeasurable Radiance?”

“As to that, friend Kaccāna, I shall ask you a question in return. Answer it as you choose. What do you think, friend Kaccāna? When one bhikkhu abides resolved upon an area the size of the root of one tree, pervading it as exalted, and another bhikkhu abides resolved upon the area the size of the roots of two or three trees, pervading it as exalted—which of these types of mental development is more exalted?”—“The second, venerable sir.”

“What do you think, friend Kaccāna? When one bhikkhu abides resolved upon an area the size of the roots of two or three trees, pervading it as exalted, and another bhikkhu abides resolved upon an area the size of one village, pervading it as exalted…an area the size of one village and an area the size of two or three villages…an area the size of two or three villages and an area the size of one major kingdom…an area the size of one major kingdom and an area the size of two or three major kingdoms…an area the size of two or three major kingdoms and an area the size of the earth bounded by the ocean, pervading it as exalted—which of these two types of mental development is more exalted?”—“The second, venerable sir.”

“This is the cause and reason, friend Kaccāna, why among those deities that have reappeared in a single order of gods, some are deities of Limited Radiance, some deities of Immeasurable Radiance.”

“Good, venerable Anuruddha, yet I have something further to ask: Are all those radiant ones deities of Defiled Radiance, or are some of them deities of Pure Radiance?”

“By reason of the factor [responsible for rebirth], friend Kaccāna, some are deities of Defiled Radiance, some deities of Pure Radiance.”

“Venerable Anuruddha, what is the cause and reason why among those deities that have reappeared in a single order of gods, some are deities of Defiled Radiance, some deities of Pure Radiance?”

“As to that, friend Kaccāna, I shall give a simile, for some wise men here understand the meaning of a statement by means of a simile. Suppose an oil-lamp is burning with impure oil and an impure wick; because of the impurity of its oil and its wick it burns dimly. So too, here a bhikkhu abides resolved upon and pervading [an area with] a defiled radiance. His bodily inertia has not fully subsided, his sloth and torpor have not been fully eliminated, his restlessness and remorse have not been fully removed; because of this he meditates, as it were, dimly. On the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the gods of Defiled Radiance.

“Suppose an oil-lamp is burning with pure oil and a pure wick; because of the purity of its oil and its wick it does not burn dimly. So too, here a bhikkhu abides resolved upon and pervading [an area with] a pure radiance. His bodily inertia has fully subsided, his sloth and torpor have been fully eliminated, his restlessness and remorse have been fully removed; because of this he meditates, as it were, brightly. On the dissolution of the body, after death, he reappears in the company of the gods of Pure Radiance.

“This is the cause and reason, friend Kaccāna, why among those deities that have reappeared in the same order of gods, some are deities of Defiled Radiance, some deities of Pure Radiance.”

When this was said, the venerable Abhiya Kaccāna said to the venerable Anuruddha: “Good, venerable Anuruddha. The venerable Anuruddha does not say: ‘Thus have I heard’ or ‘It should be thus.’ Rather, the venerable Anuruddha says: ‘These gods are thus and those gods are such.’ It occurs to me, venerable sir, that the venerable Anuruddha certainly has previously associated with those deities and talked with them and held conversations with them.”

“Certainly, friend Kaccāna, your words are offensive and discourteous, but still I will answer you. Over a long time I have previously associated with those deities and talked with them and held conversations with them.”

When this was said, the venerable Abhiya Kaccāna said to the carpenter Pañcakanga: “It is a gain for you, householder, it is a great gain for you that you have abandoned your state of doubt and have had the opportunity to hear this discourse on the Dhamma.”

MN 127

The One Mind theory, or we are sense organs of the Infinite

 An underlying reason for the movement toward panpsychism is perhaps due to Thomas Nagel’s popular definition of consciousness from the 1970s: “Consciousness is what it’s like to be something.” In other words, consciousness is what it’s like to be a human or a dog or anything that has consciousness.

At first glance, this seems reasonable. But as noted by philosophers such as Rupert Spira, embedded in Nagel’s definition is a big, unwarranted assumption. It assumes that there exists a human that could be conscious—that there is a human from which consciousness arises. See the issue there? He’s assuming physicalism in his definition.

On the contrary, the One Mind model suggests that all reality is just one universal consciousness. There is no human or dog or insect or plant or stone that could be conscious. Rather, as Spira says, “Only consciousness is conscious.”8 And that one consciousness—the One Mind—experiences an apparently physical world through the vehicle of humans and other physical vessels.

The One Mind is the infinite, silent context underlying all experience—the field of reality and the ground of all being. Spira often compares it to an infinite screen. The screen’s pixels are colored when a movie is playing and various characters appear (for example, humans). But no matter what happens to the characters on the screen and no matter what colors light up the pixels, the screen is untouched.

The One Mind is the substrate of all experience. The apparent diversity in the world is a reflection of “modulations” of consciousness9—like waves appearing in an ocean.

Our Ultimate Identity Is Not Our Body

What are we? This answer seems obvious. Our everyday experience suggests to us that our identity is our body. That’s what our perceptions show us. It's also how our mind interprets reality and certainly what modern society teaches us. I’m a human being named Mark Gober. Easy.

But based on the One Mind model, our identity at the Absolute level is not our body or our personality; rather, it’s our consciousness—the one consciousness at the core of all existence. Our identity is the full “stream” itself, the One Mind. The body is just something that consciousness experiences. We inhabit the body, but we aren’t identified as the body.

That said, at the Relative level of reality, it sure feels as if we are a body and a personality. That’s the way we live day to day. So in order to buy into the One Mind model, we have to hold the paradox of feeling like an individual in the context of being the totality of existence. We are both a whirlpool and the stream simultaneously.

That is one of the most earth-shattering implications of the One Mind model: we’ve been thinking about our very own identity incorrectly! As is often stated: “We aren’t human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” Or alternatively, as author Suzanne Segal phrased it: “We are sense organs of the Infinite.”10The shift away from physicalism toward the One Mind is likely a bigger revolution in thinking than any other in human history. The realizations that Earth isn’t flat and that Earth isn’t at the center of the solar system were enormous paradigm shifts, but they pertained to how we viewed the external world around us while preserving our identity. What I’m talking about here is shifting how we think about who and what we fundamentally are.

The One Mind Could Be Likened to “God”

God is a term with lots of baggage. The Judeo-Christian cultural view anthropomorphizes God. God is often depicted as a white, bearded male in the sky who exists separately from us; and who often exhibits vengeful, judgmental, and bellicose behavior. We are here, and God is “up there” in the heavens. Obey “him”... or else. People throughout history have justified murder and mayhem in “his” name.

Debates rage on as to whether or not God exists. However, a first step that people often skip is to make certain we’re using a  consistent definition. Let’s be sure we’re talking about the same guy before we argue!

The model in this book is not claiming that there exists a separate God having the characteristics just described. Rather, I’m arguing that the One Mind—a genderless, impersonal, infinite field of consciousness—is the basis of reality. There is one infinite stream in which we are localized whirlpools. If one wanted, one might call the One Mind—the entire stream—“God.” Rick Archer has often stated as a rebuttal to atheistic views: “I don’t believe in the same God you don’t believe in.” Or as I like to say, “They got the wrong guy.”

If we were to employ this One Mind definition of God, there are some important implications. Since each us is made of the same water in the same stream, then it would logically follow that each of us is an aspect of God. This aligns with the spiritual notion that God is both immanent (within) and transcendent (beyond). There is no separation between God and us. And yet there is separation because we don’t access the full stream in daily living. Both are true. Another paradox.

Returning to our discussion about identity, we could reframe my previous comments using God-centric terminology. We could say that we are “tentacles of God” or “instruments of the Divine.” This is why spiritual author Ram Dass advised: “Treat everyone you meet like God in drag.”

Certainly in Eastern religions we see ideas like this. But they also appear in the West if we look closely. For example, consider Jesus Christ’s quote: “I and the father are one.” Translation: Jesus, as an individual whirlpool, is one with the stream. And consider his quote: “The kingdom of God is within you.” Translation: Even though you are an individual whirlpool, you are comprised of the same water that makes up the full stream of reality. Words such as father and God have become so culturally off-putting that we can overlook what’s actually being said.

In my life, the term God has been a turn-off. I used to immediately shut down when I heard it. Even when I began my explorations  several years ago, I would become viscerally disturbed anytime someone used the word, even if I knew they weren’t talking about a personal God. Now, I’ve come to terms with it as long as it’s being defined properly. Too often people use it without specifying what they mean.

So why not just do away with the term God to avoid possible confusion? Some claim that the “Ah” sound in the word God creates a frequency that keeps us in alignment with the greater stream of consciousness. Why that would be the case, I’m not sure. Interestingly, when we look at religions around the world, we find that the very same “Ah” sound is found in words that represent divinity: Allah (Islam), Brahman (Hinduism), Hashem ( Judaism), and so on.

As spiritual teacher Dr. Wayne Dyer said, “I was taught that the expression of the word or sound, which means God, brings us into contact with God. God is the basic fact of the universe, symbolized with this most natural and comprehensive of all sounds. It’s no accident that the words omnipotent, omniscience, and omnipresent contain the sound of God”11 [emphasis added].

However, regardless of whether or not that idea is true, I will generally use the term One Mind in this book—unless I’m making an explicit tie to religion.

The One Mind Is Intelligent

A basic fact of our individual existence as humans is that we are intelligent. The degree of intelligence can vary from person to person, but each of us has some intelligence.

If each of us is intelligent, and if we are individually part of the One Mind, it seems to follow logically that the One Mind is intelligent. Stated another way, if the whirlpools are intelligent, and the whirlpools are part of the stream, then by definition the stream has intelligence.

Let’s take a further logical step. If all reality is just the One Mind, then all reality—ourselves and everything around us—is  conceivably embedded with intelligence as well.

Everywhere we look in the universe—whether it’s a flower, a human being, mathematics, the greater cosmos, or anything—we find immense complexity. And in light of this unthinkable complexity, it seems reasonable to assume that the One Mind has unthinkable intelligence.

So perhaps this is what religious traditions mean when they make statements such as “God is omniscient” and that we should “see God in everything.” When we depersonalize “God,” it all starts to make more sense.

Randomness Is an Illusion

The universe

As previously discussed, the physicalist view of reality tends to view the universe as random. However, if the universe is embedded with unthinkable intelligence, should we question the “randomness” hypothesis? I think so.

We have to ask ourselves: Why is the universe exactly balanced for life? Robert Lanza, MD (a stem-cell researcher who was named one of TIME magazine’s top 100 most influential people in 2014), and physicist Bob Berman examine this question in their book Biocentrism (2009). In a chapter titled “Goldilocks’s Universe,” they state:

By the late sixties, it had become clear that if the Big Bang had been just one part in a million more powerful, the cosmos would have blown outward too fast to allow stars and worlds to form. Result: no us. Even more coincidentally, the universe’s four forces and all of its constants [tables follow] are just perfectly set up for atomic interactions, the existence of atoms and elements, planets, liquid water, and life. Tweak any of them and you never existed.12

List of Constants (as shown in Biocentrism)13

(...)

The universe is configured “just right” for life to exist. Somehow, life emerged from nonlife. Given what we’ve discussed about the One Mind, do we think the universe’s fine-tuned structure is a function of the One Mind’s inherent intelligence? Or do we think it’s a “jackpot” event that emerged from pure randomness?

Physicalists say it’s just chance. Lanza and Berman summarize what the physicalist perspective is asking us to believe:

The entire universe, exquisitely tailored for our existence, popped into existence out of absolute nothingness. Who in their right mind would accept such a thing? Has anyone offered any credible suggestion for how, some 14 billion years ago, we suddenly got a hundred trillion times more than a trillion trillion trillion tons of matter from—zilch? Has anyone explained how dumb  carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules could have, by combining accidentally, become sentient—aware!—then utilized this sentience to acquire a taste for hot dogs and the blues? How any possible natural random process could mix those molecules in a blender for a few billion years so that out would pop woodpeckers and George Clooney? Can anyone conceive of any edges to the cosmos? Infinity? Or how particles still spring out of nothingness? Or conceive of any of the many supposed extra dimensions that must exist everywhere in order for the cosmos to consist fundamentally of interlocking strings and loops? Or explain how ordinary elements can ever rearrange themselves so that they continue to acquire self-awareness and a loathing for macaroni salad? Or, again, how every one of dozens of forces and constants are precisely fine-tuned for the existence of life? Is it not obvious that science only pretends to explain the cosmos on its fundamental level?14 [emphasis in original]

It seems much simpler, to me, to explain the precision of the universe as a manifestation of the intelligent One Mind. While previously I was sympathetic to the randomness argument, I now see it as its own form of religion. It’s like a Hail Mary. Sure, it could be right. But it seems very, very unlikely.

An End to Upside Down Living

Mark Gober

Asmimāna – conceit ‘(I) am’ in Suttas

(‘Conceit’, māna, is to be understood as a cross between ‘concept’ and ‘pride’ – almost the French ‘orgueil’ suitably attenuated. Asmi is ‘I am’ without the pronoun, like the Latin ‘sum’; but plain ‘am’ is too weak to render asmi, and ahaü asmi (‘ego sum’) is too emphatic to be adequately rendered ‘I am’.)

**
1 Conceit "I am" as root of suffering (cessation of suffering = nibbāna)

Pleasurable is dispassion in the world,
The getting beyond sensuality.
But the putting away of the conceit ‘I am’
—this is the highest pleasure.
Udāna 11

... eradication the conceit ‘I am,’  is nibbāna here and now.
AN IX 1

2 Conceit "I am" as responsible for rebirth:

...as long as there is the attitude ‘I am’ there is organization of the five faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body.
SN 22 : 47

3 Conceit "I am" as fundamental condition responsible for mental suffering and confusion:

“Then, a bhikkhu might say: ‘I have discarded [the notion] “I am,” and I do not regard [anything as] “This I am,” yet the dart of doubt and bewilderment still obsesses my mind.’ He should be told: ‘Not so! Do not speak thus. Do not misrepresent the Blessed One; for it is not good to misrepresent the Blessed One. The Blessed One would certainly not speak in such a way. It is impossible and inconceivable, friend, that when [the notion] “I am” has been discarded, and one does not regard [anything as] “This I am,” the dart of doubt and bewilderment could still obsess one’s mind. There is no such possibility. For this, friend, is the escape from the dart of doubt and bewilderment, namely, the uprooting of the conceit “I am.”’
AN VI 13

4 Conceit "I am" as a condition for three discriminations:

“When any monk or brahman, with form (and the rest) as the means, which is impermanent, suffering and subject to change, sees thus ‘I am superior’ or ‘I am equal’ or ‘I am inferior,’ what is that if not blindness to what actually is?”
SN 22:49

[The Blessed One:]

“One who conceives ‘I am equal, better, or worse,’
Might on that account engage in disputes.
But one not shaken in the three discriminations
Does not think, ‘I am equal or better.’
“If you understand, spirit, speak up.”

“In this case too, venerable sir, I do not understand in detail …
let the Blessed One explain it to me in such a way that I might understand in detail the meaning of what he stated in brief.”

[The Blessed One:]

“He abandoned reckoning, did not assume conceit;
He cut off craving here for name-and-form.
Though devas and humans search for him
Here and beyond, in the heavens and all abodes,
They do not find the one whose knots are cut,
The one untroubled, free of longing. (...)
SN 1 : 20

Khema

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling at Sāvatthī in Jeta’s Grove, Anāthapiṇḍika’s Park. Now on that occasion the Venerable Khema and the Venerable Sumana were dwelling at Sāvatthī  in the Blind Men’s Grove. Then they approached the Blessed One, paid homage to him, and sat down to one side. The Venerable Khema then said to the Blessed One:

“Bhante, when a bhikkhu is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, who has lived the spiritual life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached his own goal, utterly destroyed the fetters of existence, one completely liberated through final knowledge, it does not occur to him: (1) ‘There is someone better than me,’ or (2) ‘There is someone equal to me,’ or (3) ‘There is someone inferior to me.’”

This is what the Venerable Khema said. The Teacher agreed. Then the Venerable Khema, thinking, ‘The Teacher agrees with me,’ got up from his seat, paid homage to the Blessed One, circumambulated him keeping the right side toward him, and left.

Then, right after the Venerable Khema had left, the Venerable Sumana said to the Blessed One: “Bhante, when a bhikkhu is an arahant, one whose taints are destroyed, who has lived the spiritual life, done what had to be done, laid down the burden, reached his own goal, utterly destroyed the fetters of existence, one completely liberated through final knowledge, it does not occur to him: (4) ‘There is no one better than me,’ or (5) ‘There is no one equal to me,’ or (6) ‘There is no one inferior to me.’”

This is what the Venerable Sumana said. The Teacher agreed. Then the Venerable Sumana, thinking, ‘The Teacher agrees with me,’ got up from his seat, paid homage to the Blessed One, circumambulated him keeping the right side toward him, and left.

Then, soon after both monks had left, the Blessed One addressed the bhikkhus: “Bhikkhus, it is in such a way that clansmen declare final knowledge. They state the meaning but don’t bring themselves into the picture.[ Attho ca vutto attā ca anupanīto.]
AN VI 49

5 Conceit "I am" and upādāna (relationship)

I am’ is derivative, not underivative. Derivative upon what? Derivative upon form, feeling, perception, formations, and consciousness.”

“Friends, the Venerable Puṇṇa Mantāniputta was very helpful to us when we were newly ordained. He exhorted us with the following exhortation:

“It is by clinging, Ānanda, that [the notion] ‘I am’ occurs, not without clinging*. And by clinging to what does ‘I am’ occur, not without clinging? It is by clinging to form that ‘I am’ occurs, not without clinging. It is by clinging to feeling … to perception … to determinations … to consciousness that ‘I am’ occurs, not without clinging.

“Suppose, friend Ānanda, a young woman—or a man—youthful and fond of ornaments, would examine her own facial image in a mirror or in a bowl filled with pure, clear, clean water: she would look at it with clinging, not without clinging. So too, it is by clinging to form that ‘I am’ occurs, not without clinging. It is by clinging to feeling … to perception … to determinations … to consciousness that ‘I am’ occurs, not without clinging.

Bhikkhu Bodhi:

*Upādāya has a double meaning that is difficult to capture in translation. As absolutive of upādiyati it means “having clung to,” but it also has an idiomatic sense, “derived from, dependent on,” as in the expression catunnañ ca mahābhūtānaṃ upādāya rūpaṃ, “the form derived from the four great elements.” I have translated it here “by clinging to,” on the supposition that the literal meaning is primary, but the gloss of Spk emphasizes the idiomatic sense: Upādāyā ti āgamma ārabbha sandhāya paṭicca; “upādāya: contingent on, referring to, on the basis of, in dependence on.”

The mirror simile can support either meaning, and both are probably intended: The youth looks at his or her image with concern for his or her personal appearance (“with clinging”), and the image becomes manifest in dependence on the mirror. Similarly, a person conceives “I am” by clinging to the five aggregates, and it is in dependence on the five aggregates, i.e., with the aggregates as objective referents, that the notion “I am” arises. See 22:151, which again plays upon this dual meaning of upādāya.

“Here, bhikkhus, some recluse or brahmin, with the relinquishing of views about the past and the future, through complete lack of resolve upon the fetters of sensual pleasure, and with the surmounting of the rapture of seclusion, unworldly pleasure, and neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling, regards himself thus: ‘I am at peace, I have attained Nibbāna, I am without clinging.’

“The Tathāgata, bhikkhus, understands this thus: ‘This good recluse or brahmin, with the relinquishing of views about the past and the future…regards himself thus: “I am at peace, I have attained Nibbāna, I am without clinging.” Certainly this venerable one asserts the way directed to Nibbāna. Yet this good recluse or brahmin still clings, clinging either to a view about the past or to a view about the future or to a fetter of sensual pleasure or to the rapture of seclusion or to unworldly pleasure or to neither-painful-nor-pleasant feeling. And when this venerable one regards himself thus:

“I am at peace, I have attained Nibbāna, I am without clinging,” that too is declared to be clinging on the part of this good recluse or brahmin.

We have already mentioned that conceit "I am" is condition for rebirth. But since without upādāna there is no the attitude "I am" we can assune that without upādāna there is no rebirth. Is it so?

This ascetic Gotama—the leader of an order, the leader of a group, the teacher of a group, the well known and famous spiritual guide considered holy by many people—declares the rebirth
of a disciple who has passed away and died thus: “That one was reborn there, that one was reborn there.” But in the case of a disciple who was a person of the highest kind, a supreme person, one who had attained the supreme attainment, when that disciple has passed away and died he does not declare his rebirth thus: “That one was reborn there, that one was reborn there.” Rather, he declares of him: “He cut off craving, severed the fetter, and, by completely breaking through conceit, he has made an end to suffering.”’

“There was perplexity in me, Master Gotama, there was doubt: ‘How is the Dhamma of the ascetic Gotama to be understood?’”

“It is fitting for you to be perplexed, Vaccha, it is fitting for you to doubt. Doubt has arisen in you about a perplexing matter. I declare, Vaccha, rebirth for one with fuel, not for one without fuel. Just as a fire burns with fuel, but not without fuel, so, Vaccha, I declare rebirth for one with fuel, not for one without fuel.” *
SN 10 : 9

* Bhikkhu Bodhi:

Sa-upādānassa khvāhaṃ Vaccha upapattiṃ paññāpemi no anupādānassa. There is a double meaning here, with upādāna meaning both “fuel” and subjective “clinging,” but I have translated the sentence in consonance with the following simile. It was also in a discourse to Vacchagotta that the Buddha used his famous simile of the fire that goes out from lack of fuel to illustrate the status of one who has attained Nibbāna; see MN I 487,11–30.

Questions which arise due to ayoniso manisakara are questions provoked by asmimāna. These questions are questions about ones own being (bhava)

“This is how he attends unwisely: ‘Was I in the past? Was I not in the past? What was I in the past? How was I in the past? Having been what, what did I become in the past? Shall I be in the future? Shall I not be in the future? What shall I be in the future? How shall I be in the future? Having been what, what shall I become in the future?’ Or else he is inwardly perplexed about the present thus: ‘Am I? Am I not? What am I? How am I? Where has this creature come from? Where will it go?’
MN 2

These questions are asked by one who doesn't see dependent arising: with upādāna as condition bhava (being)

Puthujjana has a "direct knowledge" that "I am". It can be replaced by sotapanna direct knowledge, where the attitude "I am" is seen as dependently arisen on the present condition: ignorance, or more precisely upādāna. No past and future is involved, "my birth" depends on my  present self-identification with the body.

However with upādāna as condition, rebirth is beyond sotapanna's direct knowledge and it is a function of faith to take it as a valid and true description.

6 Conceit "I am" and sakkayaditthi & attavada 

The rationalized “self-theory,” which is called, in whatever form it may take, “both a view and a fetter,” is based upon a subtle fundamental distortion in the act of perceiving, the “conceit ‘I am,’ ” which is “a fetter, but not a view.” Now self-theories may or may not be actually formulated; but if they are, they cannot be described specifically without reference to the five aggregates. For that reason they can, when described, all be reduced to one of the types of what is called the “embodiment view,”* which is set out schematically. These are all given up by the stream-enterer, though the conceit “I am” is not.

“Embodiment”: sakkāya = sa (either “existing” or “own”) plus kāya (body). The identification of self (attā) with one or more of the five aggregates thus constitutes an “embodiment” of that self, and that establishes a wrong view. (Note: Sakkāyadiṭṭhi is more usually rendered “personality view”)

“Whenever any monks or brahmans see self in its various forms, they all of them see the five aggregates affected by clinging, or one or another of them. Here an untaught ordinary man who disregards noble ones … sees form as self, or self as possessed of form, or form as in self, or self as in form (or he does likewise with the other four aggregates). So he has this (rationalized) seeing, and he has also this (fundamental) attitude ‘I am’; but as long as there is the attitude ‘I am’ there is organization of the five faculties of eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body. Then there is mind, and there are ideas, and there is the element of ignorance. When an untaught ordinary man is touched by feeling born of the contact of ignorance, it occurs to him ‘I am’ and ‘I am this’ and ‘I shall be’ and ‘I shall not be’ and ‘I shall be with form’ and ‘I shall be formless’ and ‘I shall be percipient’ and ‘I shall be unpercipient’ and ‘I shall be neither percipient nor unpercipient.’ But in the case of the well-taught noble disciple, while the five sense faculties remain as they are, his ignorance about them is abandoned and true knowledge arisen. With that it no more occurs to him ‘I am’ or … ‘I shall be neither percipient nor unpercipient.’ ”
SN 22:47

The ordinary man is unaware of the subtle fundamental attitude, the underlying tendency or conceit ‘I am.’ It   makes him, in perceiving a percept, automatically and simultaneously conceive in terms of ‘I,’ assuming an I-relationship to the percept, either as identical with it or as contained within it, or as separate from it, or as owning it. This attitude, this conceiving, is only given up with the attainment of Arahantship, not before. (See e.g. MN 1 and MN. 49.)

(Questioned by Elders, the Elder Khemaka said:) “I do not see in these five aggregates affected by clinging any self or self’s property … yet I am not an Arahant with taints exhausted. On the contrary, I still have the attitude ‘I am’ with respect to these five aggregates affected by clinging, although I do not see ‘I am this’ with respect to them …. I do not say ‘I am form’ or ‘I am feeling’ or ‘I am perception’ or ‘I am determinations’ or ‘I am consciousness,’ nor do I say ‘I am apart from form … apart from consciousness’; yet I still have the attitude ‘I am’ with respect to the five aggregates affected by clinging although I do not see ‘I am this’ with respect to them. Although a noble disciple may have abandoned the five more immediate fetters still his conceit ‘I am,’ desire ‘I am,’ underlying tendency ‘I am,’ with respect to the five aggregates affected by clinging remains as yet unabolished. Later he abides contemplating rise and fall thus: ‘Such is form, such is its origin, such its disappearance’ (and so with the other four), till by so doing, his conceit ‘I am’ eventually comes to be abolished.”
SN 22:89

From DN 1

“When, bhikkhus, a bhikkhu understands as they really are the origin and passing away of the six bases of contact, their satisfaction, unsatisfactoriness, and the escape from them, then he understands what transcends all these views.

“Whatever recluses or brahmins, bhikkhus, are speculators about the past, speculators about the future, speculators about the past and the future together, hold settled views about the past and the future, and assert various conceptual theorems referring to the past and the future—all are trapped in this net with its sixty-two divisions.

Whenever they emerge, they emerge caught within this net, trapped and contained within this very net.

Just as, bhikkhus, a skillful fisherman or a fisherman’s apprentice, after spreading a fine-meshed net over a small pool of water, might think: ‘Whatever sizeable creatures there are in this pool, all are trapped within this net, trapped and contained in this very net’—in the same way, all those recluses and brahmins are trapped in this net with its sixty-two divisions. Whenever they emerge, they emerge caught within this net, trapped and contained within this very net.

“The body of the Tathāgata, bhikkhus, stands with the leash that bound it to being (bhava) cut. As long as his body stands, gods and men shall see him. But with the breakup of the body and the exhaustion of the life-faculty, gods and men shall see him no more.

Just as, bhikkhus, when the stalk of a bunch of mangoes has been cut, all the mangoes connected to the stalk follow along with it, in the same way, the body of the Tathāgata stands with the leash that bound it to being cut. As long as his body stands, gods and men shall see  him. But with the breakup of the body and the exhaustion of the life-faculty, gods and men shall see him no more.

Nanamoli Thera:

One thing among many others to be noticed here is that he is careful to spread a net with which to intercept all speculative views.

This is the Brahmajāla, the “Divine Net,” which as the first discourse of the whole Sutta Piṭaka forms as it were a kind of filter for the mind; or to change the analogy, a tabulation by whose means (if rightly used) all speculative views can be identified, traced down to the fallacy or unjustified assumption from which they spring, and neutralized. This Net, in fact, classifies all possible speculative views (rationalist or irrationalist) under a scheme of sixty-two types.

These 62 types are not descriptions of individual philosophies of other individual teachers contemporary with the Buddha (a number of those are mentioned as well elsewhere in the Suttas), but are the comprehensive net (after revealing the basic assumptions on which these speculative views all grow) with which to catch any wrong viewpoints that can be put forward. (Ultimately, these must all be traceable to the contact of self-identification in some form, however misinterpreted, but that cannot be gone into here.)

“As to the various views that arise in the world, householder, ‘The world is eternal’ …—these as well as the sixty-two speculative views mentioned in the Brahmajāla: when there is identity view, these views come to be; when there is no identity view, these views do not come to be.”
SN 41: 3

In short: all imprisoned in Brahmajala are attavadins, the fundamental upādāna taught by the Buddha is attavadupadana. They are victims of upādāna. "The body of the Tathāgata stands with the leash that bound it to being cut", since free from upādāna Tathagata is not to be found even here and now.

Nanavira Thera: The reason why the Tathāgata is not to be found (even here and now) is that he is rūpa-, vedanā-, saññā-, sankhāra-, and viññāna-sankhāya vimutto (ibid. 1 <S.iv,378-9>), i.e. free from reckoning as matter, feeling, perception, determinations, or consciousness. This is precisely not the case with the puthujjana, who, in this sense, actually and in truth is to be found.

Conceit "I am" and conceiving

The Sheaf of Barley

“Bhikkhus, suppose a sheaf of barley were set down at a crossroads. Then six men would come along with flails in their hands and they would strike that sheaf of barley with the six flails. Thus that sheaf of barley would be well struck, having been struck by the six flails. Then a seventh man would come along with a flail in his hand and he would strike that sheaf of barley with the seventh flail. Thus that sheaf of barley would be struck even still more thoroughly, having been struck by the seventh flail.

“So too, bhikkhus, the uninstructed worldling is struck in the eye by agreeable and disagreeable forms; struck in the ear by agreeable and disagreeable sounds; struck in the nose by agreeable and disagreeable odours; struck in the tongue by agreeable and disagreeable tastes; struck in the body by agreeable and disagreeable tactile objects; struck in the mind by agreeable and disagreeable mental phenomena. If that uninstructed worldling sets his mind upon future renewed being [Āyatiṃ punabbhavāya ceteti.], then that senseless man is struck even still more thoroughly, just like the sheaf of barley struck by the seventh flail.

“Once in the past, bhikkhus, the devas and the asuras were arrayed for battle. Then Vepacitti, lord of the asuras, addressed the asuras thus: ‘Good sirs, if in this impending battle the asuras win and the devas are defeated, bind Sakka, lord of the devas, by his four limbs and neck and bring him to me in the city of the asuras.’ And Sakka, lord of the devas, addressed the Tāvatiṃsa devas: ‘Good sirs, if in this impending battle the devas win and the asuras are defeated, bind Vepacitti, lord of the asuras, by his four limbs and neck and bring him to me in Sudhamma, the assembly hall of the devas.’

“In that battle the devas won and the asuras were defeated. Then the Tāvatiṃsa devas bound Vepacitti by his four limbs and neck and brought him to Sakka in Sudhamma, the assembly hall of the devas. And there Vepacitti, lord of the asuras, was bound by his four limbs and neck.

“When it occurred to Vepacitti: ‘The devas are righteous, the asuras are unrighteous; now right here I have gone to the city of the devas,’ he then saw himself freed from the bonds around his limbs and neck and he enjoyed himself furnished and endowed with the five cords of divine sensual pleasure. But when it occurred to him: ‘The asuras are righteous, the devas are unrighteous; now I will go there to the city of the asuras,’ then he saw himself bound by his four limbs and neck and he was deprived of the five cords of divine sensual pleasure.

“So subtle, bhikkhus, was the bondage of Vepacitti, but even subtler than that is the bondage of Māra. In conceiving, one is bound by Māra; by not conceiving, one is freed from the Evil One.

“Bhikkhus, ‘I am’ is a conceiving; ‘I am this’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall not be’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall consist of form’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be formless’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be percipient’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be nonpercipient’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be neither percipient nor nonpercipient’ is a conceiving. Conceiving is a disease, conceiving is a tumour,
conceiving is a dart. Therefore, bhikkhus, you should train yourselves thus: ‘We will dwell with a mind devoid of conceiving.’ (...) SN 22: 248

The tides of conceiving do not sweep over one who stands upon these [foundations], and when the tides of conceiving no longer sweep over him he is called a sage at peace.’ So it was said. And with reference to what was this said?

“Bhikkhu, ‘I am’ is a conceiving; ‘I am this’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall not be’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be possessed of form’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be formless’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be percipient’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be non-percipient’ is a conceiving; ‘I shall be neither-percipient-nor-non-percipient’ is a conceiving. Conceiving is a disease, conceiving is a tumour, conceiving is a dart. By overcoming all conceivings, bhikkhu, one is called a sage at peace. And the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die; he is not shaken and does not yearn. For there is nothing present in him by which he might be born. Not being born, how could he age? Not ageing, how could he die? Not dying, how could he be shaken? Not being shaken, why should he yearn? MN 140

Nanavira Thera:

The Mūlapariyāyasutta is as follows. (i) The puthujjana ‘perceives X as X; perceiving X as X, he conceives X, he conceives In X, he conceives From X, he conceives “X is mine”; he delights in X…’. (ii) The sekha ‘recognizes X as X; recognizing X as X, he should not conceive X, he should not conceive In X, he should not conceive From X, he should not conceive “X is mine”; he should not delight in X…’. (iii) The arahat ‘recognizes X as X; recognizing X as X, he does not conceive X, he does not conceive In X, he does not conceive From X, he does not conceive “X is mine”; he does not delight in X…’.

This tetrad of maññanā, of ‘conceivings’, represents four progressive levels of explicitness in the basic structure of appropriation. The first, ‘he conceives X’, is so subtle that the appropriation is simply implicit in the verb.

Taking advantage of an extension of meaning (not, however, found in the Pali maññati), we can re-state ‘he conceives X’ as ‘X conceives’, and then understand this as ‘X is pregnant’—pregnant, that is to say, with subjectivity.

And, just as when a woman first conceives she has nothing to show for it, so at this most implicit level we can still only say ‘X’; but as the pregnancy advances, and it begins to be noticeable, we are obliged to say ‘In X’; then the third stage of the pregnancy, when we begin to suspect that a separation is eventually going to take place, can be described as ‘From X’; and the fourth stage, when the infant’s head makes a public appearance and the separation is on the point of becoming definite, is the explicit ‘X is mine (me, not mama)’. This separation is first actually realized in asmimāna, where I, as subject, am opposed to X, as object; and when the subject eventually grows up he becomes the ‘self’ of attavāda, face to face with the ‘world’ in which he exists. (In spite of the simile, what is described here is a single graded structure all implicated in the present, and not a development taking place in time. When there is attavāda, the rest of this edifice lies beneath it: thus attavāda requires asmimāna (and the rest), but there can be asmimāna without attavāda.) Note that it is only the sekha who has the ethical imperative ‘should not’: the puthujjana, not ‘recognizing X as X’ (he perceives X as X, but not as impermanent), does not see for himself that he should not conceive X; while the arahat, though ‘recognizing X as X’, no longer conceives X.

Nanamoli Thera:

‘Maññati – Conceives’: whatever the etymology maññati is semantically inseparable from māna (conceit) as well as manati(to measure) for other contexts see ‘Yena yena hi maññati tato taṃ hoti aññathā‘ (M. sutta __), maññussava (M. sutta 140,§§25-6), Yena kho āvuso lokasmiṃ lokasaññī hoti lokamānī ayaṃ vuccati ariyassa vinaye loko. kena c’āvuso lokasmiṃ lokasaññī hoti lokamānī? cakkhunā… (s. vol.4, 95=xxxv,116 – This closely concerns the present sutta), and ‘cakkhuṃ na maññeyya, cakkhusmiṃ na maññeyya, cakkhuto na maññeyya, cakkhu ‘me’ ti na maññeyya; rūpe na maññeyya… (etc. with the 4 modes up to vedanā) …sabbaṃ na maññeyya. so evam amaññamāne na kinci loke upādiyati… (s. vol.IV, 65=xxxv,90) See Vbh 355-6 and s.III,130 as to §29, etc. The prohibitive mā maññati can only signify that, in The Initiates case, he can, but ought not to, indulge in conceiving: he can still do so because he still has asmimanā, which is only eliminated by Arahantship. This should show that, in spite of what the commentary says, the fourfold sakkāyadiṭṭhi of sutta 44, is not directly connectable; for a sekha does not have skkāyadiṭṭhi at all.

In rendering the 4 maññati phrases, the first difficulty is the use of the transitive maññati with no object except in the first phrase (pathaviṃ maññati) (The same difficulty arises in sutta 49 where nāpahosiṃ is substituted for na maññati). The commentary suggests a rendering such ‘he conceives (self as) earth, he conceives (self as) in earth, he conceives (self as) apart from earth, he conceives earth as ‘Mine’,…, and it attempts an equation with the 4 modes of the sakkāyadiṭṭhi given for each of the 5 aggregates in sutta 44, §7). But this is perhaps rather procrustean. It may do for the ordinary man, who has sakkāyadiṭṭhi (embodiment view – see sutta 44), but that is abandoned by the Initiate, who, however still has asmi-māna (the conceit I am), which is only abandoned by the arahant. He shall secure of ‘being’ with ‘being self’. In sutta 44 the modes in which ideas of self (attā) already clearly formed are treatable is handled; but in the present sutta (and in sutta 49) the treatment is on a more general level and there is no specific mention of attā – The conceiving is simply done on the basis of the percept. Attā is no doubt implied here but not yet explicitly stated. Since, however, a subject is necessary in the rendering the only safe one seems to be one drawn from the sutta itself without introducing outside ideas, namely, the percept (also it makes sense not only here but throughout).

The conceiving can also be taken as showing the grammatical behaviour of the mind towards what it has (mis-)perceived: it conceives its earth-percept in the accusative, locative, or ablative relation, or as a possession (or as an object to take interest, positive or negative in).

But the most important aspect of this structure is the ontological one. The general question of ontology as desirable from the suttas is dealt with in the introduction. How it is relevant in this sutta appears more clearly from the use of nāpahosiṃin sutta 49 instead of namaññati; for it indicates that one of the functions of maññanā is to endow percepts with being.

Auden on Kierkegaard

Kierkegaard and Existential

However complicated and obscure in its developments it has become, Existentialism starts out from some quite simple observations.

a) All propositions presuppose the existence of their terms as a ground, i.e., one cannot ask, “Does X exist?” but only, “Has this existing X the character A or the character B?”

b) The subjective presupposition “I exist” is unique.

It is certainly not a proposition to be proven true or false by experiment, yet unlike all other presuppo-sitions it is indubitable and no rival belief is possible. It also appears compulsive to believe that other selves like mine exist: at least the contrary presupposition has never been historically made. To believe that a world of nature exists, i.e., of things which happen of themselves, is not howeverinvariably made. Magicians do not make it. (The Christian expression for this presupposition is the dogma, “In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth.”)

c) The absolute certainty with which I hold the belief that I exist is not its only unique characteristic. The awareness of existing is also absolutely private and incommunicable. My feelings, desires, etc., can be objects of my knowledge and hence I can imagine what other people feel. My existence cannot become an object of knowledge; hence while, if I have the necessary histrionic imagination and talent I can act the part of another in such a way that I deceive his best friends, I can never imagine what it would be like tobethat other person but must al-ways remain myself pretending to be him.

d) If I take away from my sense of existence all that can become an object of my consciousness, what is left?

(1) An awareness that my existence is not self-derived. I can legitimately speak of my feelings.
I cannot properly speak of my existence.

(2) An awareness that I am free to make choices. I cannot observe the act of choice objectively. If I try, I shall not choose. Doctor Johnson’s refutation of determinism, to kick the stone and say, “We know we are free and there’s an end of it” is correct, because the awareness of freedom is subjective, i.e., objectively undemonstrable.

(3) An awareness of being with time, i.e., experiencing time as an eternal present to which past and future refer, instead of my knowledge of my feelings and of the outer world as moving or changing intime.

(4) A state of anxiety (or dread), pride (in the theological sense), despair or faith. These are not emotions in the way that fear or lust or anger are, for I cannot know them objectively; I can viii   only know them when they have aroused such feelings as the above which are observable. For these states of anxiety or pride, etc., are anxiety about existing, pride in existing, etc., and I can-not stand outside them to observe them. Nor can I observe them in others. A gluttonous man may succeed when he is in my presence in concealing his gluttony, but if I could watch him all the time, I should catch him out. But I could watch a man all his life, and I should never know for certain whether or not he was proud, for the actions which we call proud or humble may have quite other causes. Pride is rightly called the root of all sin, because it is invisible to the one who is guilty of it and he can only infer it from results. (...)

Kierkegaard's three categories

Every man, says Kierkegaard, lives either aesthetically, ethically, or religiously. As he is concerned, for the most part, with describing the way in which these categories apply in Christian or post-Christian society, one can perhaps make his meaning clearer by approaching these categories historically, i.e., by considering the Aesthetic and the Ethical at stages when each was a religion, and then comparing them with the Christian faith in order to see the difference, first, between two rival and incompatible Natural Religions and, secondly, between them and a Revealed Religion in which neither is destroyed or ignored, but the Aesthetic is dethroned and the Ethical fulfilled.

The Aesthetic Religion (eg Greek Gods)

The experience from which the aesthetic religion starts, the facts which it sets out to overcome, is the experience of the physical weakness of the self in the face of an overwhelmingly powerful not-self. To survive I must act strongly and decisively. What gives me the power to do so? Passion. The aesthetic religion regards the passions not as belonging to the self, but as divine visitations, powers which it must find the means to attract or repel if the self is to survive.
So in the aesthetic cosmology, the gods are created by nature, ascend to heaven, are human in form, finite in number (like the passions) and interrelated by blood. Being images of passions, they themselves are not intheir passion—Aphrodite is not in love; Mars is not angry—or, if they do make an appearance of passionate behavior, it is frivolous; like actors, they do not suffer or change. They bestow, withhold or withdraw power from men as and when they choose. They are not interested in the majority of men, but only in a few exceptional individuals whom they specially favor and sometimes even beget on mortal mothers.These exceptional individuals with whom the gods enter into relation are heroes. How does one know that a man is a hero? By his acts of power, by his good fortune. The hero is glorious but not responsible for his successes or his failures. When Odysseus, for instance, succeeds, he has his friend Pallas Athene to thank; when he fails, he has his enemy Poseidon to blame. The aesthetic either/or is not good or bad but strong or weak, fortunate or unfortunate. The temporal succession of events has no meaning, for what happens is simply what the gods choose arbitrarily to will. The Greeks and the Trojans must fight because “hateful Ares bids.” To the aesthetic religion all art is ritual, acts designed to attract the divine favors which will make the self strong, and ritual is the only form of activity in which man has the freedom to act or refrain from acting and for which, therefore, he is responsible.

The facts on which the aesthetic religion is shattered and despairs, producing in its death agony Tragic Drama, are two: man’s knowledge of good and evil, and his certainty that death comes to all men, i.e., that ultimately there is no either/or of strength or weakness, but even for the exceptional individual the doom of absolute weakness. Both facts it tries to explain in its own terms and fails. It tries to relate good and evil to fortune and misfortune, strength and weakness, and concludes that if a man is unfortunate, he must be guilty. Oedipus’ parricide and incest are not really his sins but his punishment for his sin of hubris. The Homeric hero cannot sin, the tragic hero must sin, but neither is tempted. Presently the observation that some evil men are fortunate and some good men unfortunate brings forth a doubt as to whether the gods are really good, till in the Prometheus of Aeschylus it is openly stated that power and goodness are not identical. Again, the aesthetic religion tries to express the consciousness of universal death aesthetically, that is, individually, as the Fates to which even the gods must bow, and betrays its failure to imagine the universal by having to have three of them.

The Ethical Religion (God of Greek Philosophy)

To solve the problem of human death and weakness, the ethical religion begins by asking, “Is there anything man knows which does not come and go like his passions?” Yes, the concepts of his reason which are both certain and independent of time or space or individual, for the certainty is the same whether a man be sick or well, a king or a slave.

In place of the magnified passions of the aesthetic religion, the ethical sets up as God, the Ideas, the First Cause, the Universal. While to the former, the world begot the gods who then ruled over it because they were stronger than any other creature, in the latter God and the world are coeternal. God did not create the world of matter; he is only the cause of the order in it, and this not by any act of his—the neuter gender would be more fitting to him— for to be divine means to be self-sufficient, “to have no need of friends.” Rather it is matter which, wishing to escape from the innate disorder of its temporal flux, “falls in love” with God and imitates his unchangeableness in such ways as it can, namely by adopting regular movements. (Plato’s introduction of a mysterious third party, the Demiurge who loves the Ideas and then imposes them on matter, complicates but does not essentially alter the cosmology.) Man, however, being endowed with reason, can apprehend God directly as Idea and Law, transcend his finite bodily passions, and become like God.

For the aesthetic either/or of strength or weakness, fortune or misfortune, the ethical religion substitutes the either/or of Knowledge of the Good or Ignorance of the Good. To the aesthetic, evil was lack of power over the finite world, for all finiteness, all passion is weakness, as goodness is gained by transcending the finite world, by a knowledge of the eternal and universal truths of reason which cannot be known without being obeyed. To the aesthetic, time was unmeaning and overwhelming; to the ethical, it is an appearance which can be seen through. The aesthetic worshipper was dependent on his gods who entered into relationship with him if and when he chose; the ethical worshipper enters into relationship with his god through his own efforts and, once he has done so, the relationship is eternal, neither can break it. The ethical hero is not the man of power, the man who does, but the philosopher, the man who knows.

Like his predecessor, however, he is not tempted and does not choose, for so long as he is ignorant he is at the mercy of his passions, i.e., hemustyield to the passion of the moment, but so soon as he knows the good, he must will it; he can no more refuse assent to the good than he can to the truths of geometry.

As in the case of the aesthetic religion, there are facts with which the ethical religion cannot deal and on which it founders. Its premise “Sin is ignorance; to know the good is to will it” is faced with the fact that all men are born ignorant and hence each individual requires a will to know the universal good in order to will it. This will cannot be explained ethically, first because it is not a rational idea so that the ethical has to fall back on the aesthetic idea of a heavenly Eros to account for it. Secondly, it is not a universal; it is present or appeals to some individuals and not to others, so that the ethical has to call in the aesthetic hero whom it instructs in the good, and who then imposes justice by force. Art to the elect is no longer a religious ritual, but an immoral sham, useful only as a fraudulent but pragmatically effective method of making the ignorant masses conform to the law of virtue which they do not understand.

Lastly, there comes the discovery that knowledge of the good does not automatically cause the knower to will it. He may know the law and yet not only be tempted to disobey but yield to the temptation. He may even disobey deliberately out of spite, just to show that he is free. (...)

Preaching to Nonbeliever

“It is,” Newman observed, “as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.” However convincing the argument, however holy the arguer, the act of faith remains an act of choice which no one can do for another.

Pascal’s “wager” and Kierkegaard’s “leap” are neither of them quite adequate descriptions, for the one suggests prudent calculation and the other perverse arbitrariness.

Both, however, have some value: the first calls men’s attention to the fact that in all other spheres of life they are constantly acting on faith and quite willingly, so that they have no right to expect religion to be an exception; the second reminds them that they cannot live without faith in something, and that when the faith which they have breaks down, when the ground crumbles under their feet, they have to leap even into uncertainty if they are to avoid certain destruction.
There are only two Christian propositions about which it is therefore possible to argue with a non-believer:

(1) That Jesus existed; (2) That a man who does not believe that Jesus is the Christ is in despair.

It is probably true that nobody was ever genuinely converted to Christianity who had not lost his “nerve,” either because he was aesthetically unfortunate or because he was ethically powerless, i.e., unable to do what he knew to be his duty. A great deal of Kierkegaard’s work is addressed to the man who has already become uneasy about himself, and by encouraging him to look more closely at himself, shows him that his condition is more serious than he thought. The points that Kierkegaard stresses most are, firstly, that no one, believer or not, who has once been exposed to Christianity can return to either the aesthetic or the ethical religion as if nothing had happened. Return he will, if he lose his Christian faith, for he cannot exist without some faith, but he will no longer be a naive believer, but a rusé one compelled to excess by the need to hide from himself the fact that he does not really believe in the idols he sets up.

Thus the aesthetic individual is no longer content with the passive moderation of paganism; he will no longer simply obey the passions of his nature, but will have by will power to arouse his passions constantly in order to have something to obey. The fickle lover of paganism who fell in and out of love turns into Don Giovanni, the seducer who keeps a list so as not to forget. Similarly, the ethical philosopher will no longer be content to remain a simple scientist content to understand as much and no more than he can discover; he must turn into the systematic philosopher who has an explanation for everything in existence except, of course, his own existence which defeats him.

Nothing must occur except what he can explain. The multitude of ordinary men and women cannot return to the contented community of the Greek chorus for they cannot lose the sense that they are individuals; they can only try to drown that sense by merging themselves into an abstraction, the crowd, the public ruled by fashion. As Rudolf Kassner says in his fascinating book, Zahl und Gesicht:

The pre-christian man with his Mean (Mitte) bore a charmed life against mediocrity. The Christian stands in greater danger of becoming mediocre. If we bear in mind the idea, the absolute to which the Christian claims to be related, a mediocre Christian becomes comic. The pre-christian man could still be mediocre without becoming comic because for him his mediocrity was the Mean. The Christian cannot.

To show the non-believer that he is in despair because he cannot believe in his gods and then show him that Christ cannot be a man-made God because in every respect he is offensive to the natural man is for Kierkegaard the only true kind of Christian apologetics. The false kind of apologetics of which he accuses his contemporary Christ-iansis the attempt to soft-pedal the distinction between Christianity and the Natural Religions, either by trying to show that what Christians believe is really just what everybody believes, or by suggesting that Christianity pays in a worldly sense, that it makes men healthy, wealthy, and wise, keeps society stable, and the young in order, etc. Apart from its falsehood, Kierkegaard says, this method will not work because those who are satisfied with this world will not be interested and those who are not satisfied are looking for a faith whose values are not those of this world.

Preaching to Believers

The danger for the Christian in an officially Christian so-ciety is that he may think he is a Christian. But nobody except Christ and, at the end of their lives perhaps, the saints are Christian. To say “I am a Christian” really means “I who am a sinner am required to become like Christ.” He may think he believes as an individual when all he is doing is believing what his parents said, so that he would be a Mohammedan if they had been. The task of the Christian preacher is therefore first to affirm the Christian commands and arouse the consciousness of sin, and secondly to make the individual’s relationship with Christ real, that is, contemporary.

The world has changed greatly since Kierkegaard’s time and all too many of his prophetic insights have come to pass. The smug bourgeois Christendom he denounced has crumbled and what is left is an amorphous, despairing mass of displaced persons and paralyzed Hamlets. The ubiquitous violence of the present age is not truly passionate, but a desperate attempt to regress from reflection into passion instead of leaping forward into faith. (...)

It is almost bound to be the fate of Kierkegaard, as of so many polemical writers, to be read in the wrong way or by the wrong people. The contented will not read him or read him only scientifically as an interesting case history.

The unhappy and, for the most part, agnostic intellectuals who will read him, will confine themselves to his psychological analyses likeThe Sickness unto Deathor his philosophical polemics like Concluding Unscientific Postscript, which they will read poetically as sympathetic and stimulating reflections of their feelings and thoughts, but they will fight shy of books like Training in Christianity or The Works of Love, either because they are not as unhappy as they pretend or because they really despair of comfort and cling in defiance to their suffering.

Kierkegaard is particularly vulnerable to such misunderstanding because the only force which can compel us to read an author as he intends is some action of his which becomes inexplicable if we read him any other way, e.g.,Newman’s conversion to Roman Catholicism. In Kierkegaard’s case there is indeed such an action, but the action is another book,The Attack upon “Christendom.” The whole of his writings up to this one, written in the last year of his life, even the sermons, are really “poetical,” i.e., Kierkegaard speaks in them as a genius not as an apostle, so that they all might have been published, as many of them were, anonymously. The Attack upon “Christendom,” on the other hand, is that contradiction in terms, an “existential” book. What for the author was the most important book of his life is for us, as readers, the least, for to us the important point is not what it contains, but the fact that Kierkegaard wrote it. For this reason, no selection from it appears here.

—W. H. AUDEN

The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard