Saturday, May 18, 2013

Anarchy and "I"


Advaita has been described as the ultimate anarchy: no "I", no boundaries, and a vista of total sensory liberation ...

Anarchism is perpetually dismissed as the ideology of choice for zit-raddled teens as they car crash through adolescence ... Our corporate media trots out the usual fear-based nightmare scenarios, spun from movies like Mad Max, as an example of the hell world that awaits us if we succumb to this dangerous and immature ideology. But what if anarchism is not a political "-ism" but a way of being where all the barriers of conditional existence have fled the stage and totally cease to impinge on our lives?

Some cite Taoism as the earliest form of anarchism, particularly in the figure of Chuang Tzu who famously remarked that the world does not need governing. He said it should be left alone to allow natural and spontaneous order to flower. Chuang Tzu lived during the Warring States period (4th century BCE) when China was in one of its peak phases of disintegration. The Taoist classic of the Tao Te Ching also roughly dated to this time states: "The world is ruled by letting things take their course. It cannot be ruled by interfering" (verse 48, lines 4 & 5). The core of Taoism is to focus on wu-wei, often translated as "non-doing." This is not the total absence of action. Rather, it is action wholly in accord with nature. In the early societies of ancient China, survival would have depended on intuiting and co-operating with the forces of nature in order to successfully grow food. Plants were found to grow best if they were left to follow their own nature. In the same way humans would flourish when least meddled with. In his Inner Chapters (No.11 entitled "Let It Be, Leave It Alone," verse 1), Chuang Tzu tells us that governance can even be dangerous:

I have heard of letting the world be, of leaving it alone; I have never heard of governing the world. You let it be for fear of corrupting the inborn nature of the world; you leave it alone for fear of distracting the virtue of the world. If the nature of the world is not corrupted, if the virtue of the world is not distracted, why should there be any governing of the world?

Here the prevailing ethos was not to forget the interests of others. This was not a sullen selfishness but a pursuit of personal good, which involved a concern for general well-being. The more a person does for others, the more he has. The more he gives to others, the greater his "" (德) or virtue ...

The similarity between wu-wei in ancient Chinese culture and an-archos in ancient Greek is quite striking. Wu-wei is being without "wei": that is, an absence of contrived behaviour. In the political context, the imposition of authority would be entirely absent. Meanwhile an-archos means "lack of a ruler." But anarchism is much more than this. Not just seeing governance as undesirable, unnecessary and even harmful, it entails opposing authority and hierarchy in human relations as well as politics and big business. Anarchism is therefore a reaction to the ego as represented by the machinery of society and the state. In the popular imagination (often encouraged by right wing discourse), this has fuelled images of rioting in the streets and violent insurrection. In fact anarchism is subtle, because it is so entirely anti-dogma. It does not offer a fixed doctrine; it draws on multiple currents of thought; and it weaves and flows as an ever evolving philosophy.

Modern anarchism as it is espoused by contemporary advocates such as Noam Chomsky is usually a form of libertarian communism. Here the needs of the individual and the collective flow seamlessly and organically together. Common ownership of the means of production predominates in a society whether there is neither state, capitalism, wages nor private property. Critically however, production and consumption are based on each person's precise needs and abilities. People still retain personal items and engage in pure democracy (voting directly on political policies without a political representative). These ideas developed out of the radical socialist currents of the French Revolution. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, was the first to call himself an "anarchist." He favoured workers' associations and co-operatives over nationalization of land and the workplace and is famous for the slogan, "property is theft." Meanwhile the Russian revolutionary, Mikhail Bakunin, laid down the foundation of collectivist anarchist theory. For him, workers should directly manage their own means of production with "equal means of subsistence, support, education, and opportunity for every child, boy or girl, until maturity, and equal resources and facilities in adulthood to create his own well-being by his own labour."

What would a libertarian communist society look like? During the Russian Civil War, in late 1918, a stateless society known as the Free Territory operated in the southeast of the Ukraine under the protection of Nestor Makhno's Black Army. This was organized according to the theories of Peter Kropotkin with voluntary associations and a type of free exchange occurring between rural and urban communities. He expanded the definition of libertarian communism by developing its pro-organizationalist and insurrectionary anti-organizationalist aspects. In particular, Kropotkin emphasised co-operation over competition alongside the gift economies and non-accumulation of private property practised by the indigenous peoples of Siberia. There were also the anarchist territories that operated during the Spanish Civil War. A social revolution in 1936 saw much of Spain's economy placed under worker control. Factories in the stronghold of Revolutionary Catalonia, most of Aragon, and parts of the Levante and Andalusia were run through worker committees; agrarian areas were collectivised and run as libertarian communes; and even shops, restaurants and hotels were managed by their workers.

These two examples were birthed during the stress of war. One played out against the backdrop of the collapse of imperial power in Russia while the other was the product of the fight against Fascism in 1930s' Spain. This was a clear battle for dominion between known forces. Our globalist quagmire today is born of the Baby Boomer culture of narcissism. This is a society of supposed individualism where Freudian psychoanalysis has been used for decades to give the illusion of choice and freedom. In his documentary, The Century of the Self, the polemicist Adam Curtis exposes how from the 1920s onwards, the ideas of Edwards Bernays were used first by governments and then by big business and the CIA, to control "the dangerous crowd" in an age of mass democracy. Bernays invented public relations. He took the theories of his uncle Sigmund Freud and showed America's corporations how to make people want what they didn't need by linking mass produced goods to their unconscious mind. Freud introduced us to the notion of the control-complex named the ego. He believed that man had a monster lurking in his psyche in the form of hidden passions and dark instinctual drives, which must be repressed. His ideas were born out of a deep pessimism which only intensified with the mass slaughter of the First World War and they were taken further by his daughter, Anna Freud. She said that not only should the ego be strengthened in order to help repress our inner drives for the good of the individual and the stability of the society, but that those drives should be removed. Bernays therefore suggested that as passive recipients of material goods, man's irrational and aggressive tendencies could be managed and eventually eliminated. By stimulating the people's inner desires - then sating them with consumer products - they would be made happy and thus rendered docile.

This was the start of the all-consuming self, which has come to dominate our present world. In a later development in the history of psychoanalysis, the ideas of Wilhelm Reich came to the fore. Once a devoted disciple of Freud, Reich believed that rather than being bad, man's animal instincts were good. It was their repression by society that distorted human consciousness and made people dangerous. This led him to teach that sexuality was the primary energetic force of life. He named this orgone and said that if the libido was released and allowed to express itself, the human being would flourish. In the 1950s, Reich and his students were condemned as a "cult of sex and anarchy." But his ideas ultimately provided an even bigger opportunity for the political and corporate elite. Now there were unlimited feelings and desires, these could be satisfied by unlimited products. This cycle further intensified with the protests of the American Student Left against the illegal Vietnam War, segregation and Western consumerism. When the state proved simply too powerful and the activists were ruthlessly put down, they again invoked the Reichian self. The idea was that they would change society by changing themselves. Using new forms of therapy such as Gestalt and EST, they would unleash their "true self" and produce an "I" capable of overthrowing the old order. This fed the corporations even more. With the further expansion of the parameters of emotional expression, a much stronger sense of personal identity emerged. Now the companies could design more targeted products linked to people's values, attitudes and lifestyle (VALs). Today the battle lines have become blurred and we are led by the nose, victims of a sinister "engineering of consent." (What do you think Starbucks and Facebook are up to: quality coffee and a nice cosy chat?) The 60s was supposed to be a radical epoque, but gave birth to a ruthless Counter Reformation led by corporate elites fed on the milk of the Randian cult of supreme selfishness. Now all the old hippies have become rightwing CEOs!

The novel, Q, by Luther Blissett (a pseudonym for a collective, bizarrely named after the Watford and A.C. Milan footballer!) offers us a potential anarchist response to today's neo-liberal hegemony. The book has been interpreted as an allegory of the decline of European society after the 1960s and 1970s, based on what occurred during the Anabaptist Revolts and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, which repressed any heretical theological current or alternative social movement. This is a metaphor for the vengeful rebirth of conservative ideologies towards the close of the 20th century. An IMF-driven corporate globalization of the economy has been ruthlessly deployed to rout any form of resistance. The story chronicles the journey of a nameless Anabaptist radical across Europe in the first half of the 16th century. Over a 30 year period, he joins numerous causes which have grown out of the Protestant Reformation and each time adopts a new name. This is because he is constantly being stalked by a Catholic spy named "Q" who has infiltrated these revolutionary movements in a deliberate attempt to undermine them. Here the anarchist is a collective "phantom" of dynamic, transformative capacity with a subversive, shifting identity. The protagonist has no name. His influence reaches every part of society. He incites rebellious acts and organises hoaxes, swindles and mischief to undermine authority and its institutions.

The emphasis here is on anonymity. It is the act which is important - not the actor - and this act could be done by anyone. In contemporary terms Wikileaks is a prime example, publishing secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources. Its Twitter account provocatively promises: "We open governments. Everywhere." This is the world of the cyber attack and hacktivism: the work of the faceless saboteur who continually pokes our moral conscience. It can also be no coincidence that the Luther Blissett collective writing the book Q, later changed their name to Wu Ming. In Mandarin Chinese (无名), this translates as "without a name" or "nameless." It can also mean "anonymous." In China the term is used to pay tribute to dissidents and as a rejection of the machinery by which an author becomes a celebrity. It is also employed by Chinese citizens to demand democracy and freedom of speech. Further, in Literary Chinese, wu-ming (無名) alludes to the beginning of heaven and earth, mentioned in verse 1, line 3 of the Tao Te Ching (無名天地之始 - wúmíng tiāndì zhī shǐ). The collective may also be claiming a metaphysical status for their work, where writing itself is seen as an anarchic act.

But does anarchism really work? The evidence suggests not. First of all we are not ready for anarchism. In his current state, man cannot even engage in a simple act of sharing. One of the most persuasive descriptions of an anarchist world is provided by the science fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin in her novel, The Dispossessed. But even this puritanical and selfless utopia is riddled with jealousy and the corruption of subtle hierarchy. Le Guin writes of a planet named Urras and in particular its moon Anarres, where there are no government or coercive authoritarian institutions. The main character, Shevek, discovers that the revolution which brought his world into being, has resulted in massive stagnation with power structures relentlessly starting to creep back in. Meanwhile both the anarchist societies formed out of the Russian and Spanish Civil Wars were transient flashes in the pan, lasting in both cases no more than two or three years. Even the legendary Spanish anarchist, Durruti, was rumoured to have been murdered by one of his own men for imposing too much discipline on his militia.

In fact anarchism is a reaction to the state and subtly reinforces it. The two are hopelessly intertwined. The yin-yang symbol of Taoism expresses this dynamic. It depicts seemingly contrary and opposed forces as inseparable with one never being found without the other. This can be seen in the ironic juxtaposition of how an agent of the Catholic Counter-Reformation has become the modern cultural image of anarchist insurrection. Guy Fawkes unsuccessfully plotted to blow up the parliament of King James I of England but his mask - spawned by the 2005 movie, V for Vendetta - has become the accessory of choice for both the Occupy Movement and the Anonymous group. Separated from religion, Guy Fawkes' image has been usefully inverted from that of a traitor to a modern-day hero fighting an unjust state. But there's an even more ironic twist ... The mask is licensed by Time Warner, which released V for Vendetta. So anti-big-corporation protesters buying these masks are helping to enrich one of the targets of their demonstrations! Any attempt to challenge social and economic inequality is found to be hand-in-glove with the capitalist state. Who's fooling who?

Additionally, we seem to be confined to an endless swing between "inner" versus "outer" solutions to state domination. Neither solution seems to work. There are those committed to transforming the world through working internally on their fixations and emotions, while others attempt to build externally, the sustainable communities and cashless societies of the future. Anarchism offers an outer solution: a practical political alternative to the madness of a system which installs an all-powerful elite in order to force (so-called) democracy and capitalism on to the populace, ensuring they will never think or act for themselves. But exterior political forms reflect our interior worlds: so where shall we start, on the outside or on the inside? One thing is for sure: past revolutions have created a greater tyranny than the ones they replace. This sees us back once again with institutional oppression and the reinstatement of kings. As it is, in a world where everyone is reduced to being buried alive under the bullshit of hierarchy and authority, people retreat to their own private fascist universes, sculpting themselves in the image of exactly the same mindset of oppression ...

But isn't the biggest problem, fixed views: attempting to apply a formula to what is essentially, a mystery? Anarchism still presents us with a theory and a set of rules for solving a problem. Any formula is an imposition and not an organic arising (i.e. free from control and hierarchy). Returning to the Tao Te Ching, we have its timeless first line - 道可道非常道 - dào kě dào, fēi cháng dào. It means that anything which you can speak of, tell, express, describe or explain can never be living or eternal. That is, to attempt to encapsulate or grasp something is to lose it. Verse 1, line 9 describes life as 玄之又玄 - hsuán zhī yòu hsuán or "mystery and again mystery" - pointing to its wonder and the total impossibility of it ever being understood. The human tendency is always to form hierarchy and modes of dominance out of spontaneity and immediacy, fuelled as we all are by self-interest and personal ambition. While life is dynamic, fluid and ever changing, to be an anarchist is to preside over that dynamic and demand that certain things or actions do or do not occur. There is a belief system in place; a given way of thinking. Surely this is the act of violence: insisting that the world sees everything the same way that you do!

Anarchism is engaging in an act of oppression similar to that of the state. But despite its fundamental flaws, anarchism is an expression of what is best in us, an invocation of our hopes for a more open and inclusive society. It is an outburst of idealism in a dark world where nothing seems to be working and the relation between domination and subjugation is becoming ever more extreme. Anarchism is simply an outer materialist expression of an inner knowing: our fumbling attempt to know what cannot be known. Critically, from birth the human psyche is inducted into social and cultural straitjacketing. Layer upon layer of mental and emotional conditioning breaks our connection with the primal source. We've never had a chance: what links the inner and the outer and flows across them has never been left alone to flower. In the ancient Vedic cultures, for the first 40 days, a newborn baby was reared in nature without any human contact beyond that of its natural parents. This allowed the child to become strong in an unbroken communion with itself and the raw universal forces by which we are all shaped. The need for liberation was never envisaged because we were already born free.

Advaita also offers the promise of eternal freedom. Its strategy is to focus on the inner world at the expense of the outer. Through an internal journey of contemplation and self-enquiry, it negates the external world in order to surrender to the ultimate reality of the Self. Even Ramana upheld the basically Hindu belief in fatalism where everything unfolds according to a pre-ordained script. Steeped in predestination, he had nothing to say about the inequality of the caste system or the prolific sexual violence against Indian women. This was because as far as he was concerned, these things did not need to be any different from what they were. For him, political action constituted a conscious turning away from the Self in order to pursue a self-centred agenda, entirely ignoring the Self's plan. Change was only necessary or possible at the personal level, with Self realisation being the sole means of helping the world. This fission between politics and spirituality is well known in Indian society. The famous anecdote of Mahatma Gandhi's 'non-meeting' with Ramana is a good example. In the 1930s, Gandhi was scheduled to give a talk some 400 yards from Ramana Ashram and it was hoped he would first visit Ramana. But when the time came and the car stopped near the ashram gate for a few minutes, Rajagopalachari, an accompanying congress politician, ordered it to drive straight on. Ramana himself said that Gandhi had wanted to visit him but that Rajagopalachari had prevented him from doing so. Knowing that he was an advanced soul, Rajagopalachari feared that Gandhi would fall into samadhi and fail to fulfill the political destiny of the Indian nation.

This 'split reality' is symptomatic of the problem inherent in both Hinduism and Advaita. Brahman alone is real so the rest of the world is unreal. Effectively this is saying that things like maiming Indian beggar children in order to make money doesn't really matter. Not only is this a clever control mechanism for diffusing dissent, it's a mandate for a dangerous passivity and enforced victimhood. It's a pitiful exploitation of the human being. Because the Self is an ultimate, unchanging state, it is the individual self which must always change - necessitating a theory of man's worthlessness and inner corruption to be corrected by spiritual practice. Advaita is rooted in a Manichaean mindset of moral dualism where the key to heaven is a stark choice between the forces of good and evil. Man is deeply flawed and nothing is ever perfect. Everything is hopeless and beyond salvation, derived of a dark, pessimistic mindset where only the internal spiritual world has value. This is the crucible in which Saint Augustine's ideas of original sin were formed: these have travelled to South India via British Colonialism irrevocably shaping 20th century Advaita. Thus today's Tiruvannamalai exhibits a highly disturbed blend of extreme Hindu moral conservatism. Upper class Indians and wannabe sadhaks alike, sneer at "low caste locals" and "inferior Westerners." Then they dismiss everything with their mantra of supremacy: "But who is the one who is doing/saying this?" You only have to take one look at the fucked up fanatics in town to see the future ain't so bright!

Advaita is a schizoid religious response born of a beguiling paradox: in order to be free we have to submit to the narcotic glamour of yet another control regime of domination, hierarchy and subjugation (a bit like a Stalinist dictatorship!) We're back in the sadomasochistic world of states of spiritual attainment and the deviant pleasures of sadhana and self-denial (see A prison without bars). Advaita will never be truly anarchic. It exists only to uphold the authority of the Upanishads: it is a secondhand philosophy featuring a set of rigid rules to be followed without question. Shankara was far from being a radical: he merely systematised Gaudapada's earlier attempts to patch up Vedanta, which was badly in need of rebranding. And he stole these ideas from Buddhism, corrupting them for the purposes of his new super-theology. Today's Advaita is actually produced out of two control regimes conjoined: the world of ancient Indian philosophy and spirituality and the modern corporate world of individualistic, commoditised desire. Just look at the cross-cultural disaster of Rajneesh's famous fuck factory/ashram in Pune, which has successfully manufactured some of the most self-obsessed, sociopathic entities in the known universe! Back in the tight assed world of Advaita, with its focus on the inner world so similar to the Freudian model, desire originates internally and is objectified as something evil and immoral. The Self is found within and Advaita's version of the ego - the small self - oversees final realisation. In the hell-hole of our hidden urges, we must repress our sexuality and turn celibate or risk succumbing to a Dionysian orgy of excess. According to Reich, all those dried up sadhaks need is one hell of a good orgasm!

Freedom can never be born out of oppression, whatever form it takes. Anarchism and advaita are not so different: they are both caught in the jaws of the infrastructure of the "above" and the "below." But surely the issue is no longer about coming up with new political or religious theories: in the end both are an epistle of "I" beholden to the apparatus of state domination. This is not about filling the never-ending inner void with the light of spiritual fixation. Neither is it about the feeding of our limitless desire for enlightenment in the outer world. It is about an end to the system of hierarchy and imposition which keeps these activities in place. The question is whether we wait for the inevitable collapse of the machine which so obviously enslaves us or whether we initiate for ourselves, a new way of being. To make the switch away from hierarchy and imposition, we are speaking to a different kind of human impulse. One that finally leaves behind the cacophony of mad ideas all serving to build up the illusion of a separate self, which must then be done away with. This would be to abandon the vicious circle of bondage and liberation: to never enter into it. It would require a quantum leap in consciousness with anarchism becoming a metaphor for primordial freedom - rather than a collectivist solution to the ills of society. All it takes is the 100th monkey ... What will be the evolutionary tipping point?

It's a glorious endeavour even if it is doomed to failure ... But just like Don Quixote, is it not better to dream the impossible dream than live a sham shadow life as slaves to the self? We may be chasing windmills but in our imaginations we are slaying dragons. When one fire is lit, it can start a conflagration ...



33 comments:

  1. Yes Master,

    All you have so elegantly laid out for us above is true. Reminds me of a process explained in detail by one of Ireland's native sons, who said "The gross and net result of it is that people who spent most of their natural lives riding iron bicycles over the rocky roadsteads of this parish get their personalities mixed up with the personalities of their bicycle as a result of the interchanging of the atoms of each of them and you would be surprised at the number of people in these parts who are nearly half people and half bicycles...when a man lets things go so far that he is more than half a bicycle, you will not see him so much because he spends a lot of his time leaning with one elbow on walls or standing propped by one foot at kerbstones."

    Aaaah yessss. And as the man has said at the end of the day,

    "When money's tight and is hard to get
    And your horse has also ran,
    When all you have is a heap of debt
    A PINT OF PLAIN IS YOUR ONLY MAN.”


    Yours faithfully,

    Myles O'Blarney





    ― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

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  2. The 100th monkey could refer to Aurobindo's emergence of an overman, a product of the upward ascent of consciousness ... Myles' man = bicycle hybrid may represent a stage in that spiritual evolution, also known as Synthesis of Yoga.

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  3. Yet again, His Holymess, the Very Keverand Ji-Spot, has excelled Himself in brilliant Gum-Flapping and Mental Jugglery.

    A truly well thought out, surgically written masterpiece of Eastern/Western, never-ending, catch 22, I-overthink-waaaayyyy too-much... utter cock.

    And the sheer SIZE of his cojones can be contested by no-one.

    Sure,any moron with a kindergarten education is capable of taking light-weight clowns such as Rajneesh to task.

    Anyone with both of his brain cells functioning in sync can instantly see the utter insanity of ALL religions and mind-made,political institutions. (Except for Myles of course. That Alchi piss-tank still believes that such a thing as "nationalities" actually exist and fancies himself "Irish". What a sad joke. Have another pint, Myles...the leprechauns will appear and make it all good).

    But one needs a real MAN-SIZED set of Balls to take on Bhagavan! Whoa! I LOVE it! Way to go Kevi!

    (You didn't mention that Dirt-Bag of a hill though! You don't seriously believe that a random pile of ...)...

    No, no...before all of you Tiru, Paki-wannabee wankers start burning all those photos of me...please understand that Bhagavan is my Guru. My Lord. My God.

    But times change. PROGRESS.

    And blasphemous, sacrilegious, feck-them-all talk is the first step towards emancipating oneself... completely and utterly... from ALL mind made mugglery and finally accepting... ALL THIS AS IT ACTUALLY ALREADY IS.

    But before I pull a Kev and start drooling...on and on and on... all over my mid-spiritual-life-crisis self...let me just ask y'all...

    SERIOUSLY now...

    What is not THIS?

    Who can SHUT HER MOUTH!!!...and BE It?

    Kevi boy...do what you do. It's good work. And let's face it...a sweet little mental tug-tug always feels good, n'est ce pas?

    Of what use is the Tao if It doesn't FLOW?

    Fuck all those kinky-ass Brahamacharyas and their primitive, backward-facing, prehistoric, utterly enslaving voodoo hallucinations.

    The proof, is always in the (nightmarishly filthy,leper-infested, poor and down-trodden,squalid suffering of humanity)pudding...India.

    Om Shanti and Much Peace and Love to y'all

    NMB

    p.s. ONLY Bhagavan did the WALK. All I hear is cheap TALK from everyone else.

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  4. Thanks for this insightful post. Reading it made me reflect on my long held view of a perfect universe, which now lies in tatters ... The Chi-Ting Master so ably disrupted the prevalent paradigm, shook me out of my consumeristic somnolence and made me ponder about what type of anarchistic hemlock in the form of various sadhanas is most effective in reducing me back to the nothingness of the original state .... Also the brevity with which Ramana is mentioned in the post ... Is he not an example, however anomalous, of the possibility of going beyond the INNER-OUTER conflicting dualism? Does he not offer a hint and potentially the KEY to the seemingly insoluble counundrums raised in the post?

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  5. I don't think Ramana does offer the solution. Whether he was a Great Master or not, you can't copy others.

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  6. This is a long and difficult - and therefore important - post on this delicate and usually deliberately misunderstood subject. I thank our Kevji for all the efforts he made to make it palatable for most people. However our American friends and comrades will find it hard, if not impossible, to digest, because of their limited reading capacity and brain pollution. Therefore I have summarized the quintessence of the post in a few lines:

    1) Is anarchism the highest and most desirable form of human society? ... Yes!
    2) Can it be superimposed on mankind as it exists right now? ... No!
    3) Is it worth striving for and chasing like Don Quixote? ... Absolutely.
    4) Are anarchism and advaita very different from each other? ... Maybe!
    5) Is Kali Baba the 100th monkey? ... Definitely not!

    So there you are folks, the post in a nutshell, in such a way that even a dumbass like Obesity Fighter can understand and discuss it with his fat friends at his next weight-watchers counselling session.

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  7. Anon at 8.30am ... I agree with you that Ramana was not in the business of offering solutions. And yet many a devotee had their doubts cleared by merely being in his presence - reporting great peace of mind - along with an end to all their previous worldly worries and anxieties. Often with nothing more than a glance or the deep inner silence which he projected. Those devotees were not out to copy Him. They happened to be receptive to the flow of grace and to them he was indeed a great Master.

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  8. In anarchism there is never a belief system in place nor is it engaging in an act of oppression. Actually there is no system at all. In an anarchist society nothing is fixed or stable or limited, it is open and flowing and ever-changing. That’s also the problem, as there are no samples of anarchist societies which actually worked for more then a very short time, because it can never be stabilized. Humans are not ready for it, yes! Will they ever be? We don’t know. We don’t even know how such a society looks, apart from what some philosophers tell us. It’s science fiction and only evolution can produce a humanity with the ability to form an anarchistic society. Looking at mankind’s state now, that might take a few yugas. I think even the first monkey has not been born! Why talk about the 100th?!

    For now I vote for the Ramana way: "Be still and know who you are!" Methinks that’s already difficult enough in this endless heatwave in Tamil Nadu ...

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  9. .

    My Dear Firefly:

    Though Anarchism’s merely science fiction now
    And all we have is wretched war and strife
    And evolution need at least a yuga’s time
    To evolve new beings capable of such life.
    A few will try and vote Ramana’s way,
    “Be still and know the truth of who you are ”
    But ‘til those first of humans may be born
    With nous and nerve to mount an anarchistic plan
    Until that time hath come, my friend,
    A PINT OF PLAIN WILL BE YOUR ONLY MAN.”

    Yours respectfully,

    Myles O’Blarney
    laterly of Tippleterry, Barony of Clanwilliam

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  10. wonderful post!

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  11. Dear Sister Klaus
    Thanks a ton for your kindness - explaining the post in a way that it is also available for minibrainers like me and the Missus - who actually make up 95% of the folks here. Though I think minibrainers exist not only here in the US, but probably there are also some in China and Germany.

    The Missus came up with a good idea. Why don’t you write the posts in the future: you seem much nicer and more sympathetic than that dreadful Cheating Master who always sneers at us and call us Blubberguts and other names. You write far better in a way that we at least understand what it is all about. You are a lot more comprehensible than him. Can you not send him on a pilgrimage on foot around the world and take over the Chi-Ting site? That really would make us and millions of other devotees very happy.

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  12. So Lardass, you reveal your true face at last! Instead of being a dim and somewhat porky Chi-Ting devotee, you are in fact an agent provocateur acting on the orders of those fascist psycho-sisters Garbage Gal Bobby and Manic Maryjo! Your aim is to sow discord and counter revolution in the idyllic (if somewhat grubby) People's Republic of TV Malai!

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  13. I myself am a Hindu who has studied Advaita Vedanta, and have recently backed away from it.......I mean, FAR away. It claims, on the one hand, to be a 'non-dual philosophy', but on the other hand, I see dualities. for example, "Brahman (atman) versus the world" or "Brahman (atman) versus the induvidual self (jiva)", or the worst one, which is Brahman as either Nirguna or Sagunam. This last one has me mad, because you cannot claim Brahman to be "non-dual" and then divide it up into "Nirguna" and "Saguna".......that is contradictory.

    The highest realization is "Sarva, khalvidam brahma", which means that "All is Brahman" - meaning that the world (and everyone and everything in it) is Brahman - and hence, destroys any dualities whatsoever.

    As a Hindu, I no longer hold Advaita, let alone Advaita Vedanta, with any reverence whatsoever. I see contradictions and other things that make no spiritual or philosophical sense.

    Sorry, Shankaracharya, but yoru philosophy is not really "non-dual" at all. Not buying it.

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  14. Wow, there are signs of intelligent life out there! Someone who is asking questions and thinking for themselves instead of mindlessly regurgitating religious liturgies! Of course Advaita/Shankara is not nondual. -Firstly, for all the (excellent) reasons that you give. And secondly, if everything is Brahman, there is no need for "enlightenment." Demanding that everyone becomes enlightened is to say there are enlightened and unenlightened beings. Another "two"! Advaita, Shankara and self-enquiry are a FARCE.

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  15. First a response to Neerav .... glad to see you woke up and isn't "Sarva, khalvidam brahma" .... just another way of saying I AM, You Are, Source IS? Also the statement "I AM that I AM....are both non - dualistic truths.
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    as stated by Kevinji "... self-enquiry are a FARCE". Self inquiry methinks is not a farce because it is non dualistic leading one hopefully to the 'realization'(remembering) and then 'actualization'(at the cellular level...[light]) of "I AM That which 'IS'"! As stated by others 'Advaita Vedanta' is simply a reaction to Buddhism and Shankara is full of shit up to his ears.

    Wesak tomorrow folks. Light a candle; concentrate on the flame(yourself) and LISTEN.
    _______________

    I hope our Illustrious Kevinji did not rupture too many brain cells on this missive.
    A statement comes to mind about "casting yout pearls before swine".

    If you accept the definitions presented at the following site....

    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/anarchy
    then India is a prime example of an anarchical society and government...if you can call it a government .... 'live' and 'let live' .... so they say in India (which is total bullshit since everyone in India is into everyone else's business).
    The 'stone agers' where also an anarchical society.

    Is that what you want a World like India?

    An individual anarchist is a person who believes s/he has the inherent right to do unto others anything and at anytime whatever s/he chooses to satisfy their human repressed (animal) desires without having to accept responsibility for their actions. Do you want friends or a society like that? Is this the kind of person you want to be or have you already attained this 'exalted' state of consciousness?

    "FREEDOM" is about accepting complete responsibility for ALL your actions and inactions.

    Another possibility .... remove all laws governing humanity allowing the Law of Karma to Rule". This is not the same as Chuang Tzu proposition.
    Thanks

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  16. All Is Brahman. If one adds ANYTHING to that statement ... i.e. maya, atman, I, other, God, inside, outside, good, evil, body, mind, life, death, etc., then one has missed the point completely. Shankara missed the point (and he was a smart boy!) The yogis and the gurus, the rabbis and the popes, the dalai lamas and the politicians, the brahmins and the snake-oil salesmen ... have all missed the point. All Is Brahman. What part of "All" is so hard to understand? How Magnificent ... How Infinite ... How Wondrous and Beautiful Life is!!!

    P.S. Kevinandaji, self-enquiry is NOT a farce at all. If "I" abides as it has always been, All Is Brahman becomes instantly self-evident. Bhagavan was the only one that was natural and normal. Abiding spontaneously and instantly as his already fully-established Brahman Self. Be As You Are.

    Peace to All
    NMB

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  17. Self inquiry is dualistic. An I which is not-Self inquires in the hope that the Self will surge forward and destroy the I. Self and not-Self is two.If everything is truly Brahman, the I does not need to be destroyed nor does it need to self inquire. Likewise Be as You Are is the ultimate dualistic statement. It suggests there is an I set apart from what it is. That's two again. Advaita starts from the premise that the I is unenlightened. It excludes enlightenment, thereby creating a dualistic division. So Advaita is forced to build a path of practice to bridge the divide.

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  18. @Anon 9:57pm, with all due respect ... This is a very elementary, hearsay understanding of the meaning of Advaita. The usual shallow interpretation that is peddled and sold at most satsang circles. Advaita excludes NOTHING! Acknowledging that waves exist, in no way suggests that they are not all actually none other than the Ocean. No sane person would propose that in order for the Ocean to exist, all waves should be eliminated! Waves and Ocean are not expressing a "duality". Surely they are ONE and the very same essence? Within "This Immediate Seamless Infinite Existence"... Life and Death are the very SAME timeline expressing itself. Countless trillions of Galaxies and the Infinite Space that enfolds them...are both of the very selfsame, undivided Universe. Sure...each wave is utterly convinced that it is separate from the Ocean...looking AT it. That hallucination is just another "wave" that is part and parcel of the same same Totality! There is no problem there.If it exists, it "belongs". Sometimes, the Totality ... LIFE ... is in the form of a fish. Sometimes a banana. Sometimes a religious fanatic. Sometimes a meditator. Giving it all these various names (which is necessary) in no way fragments or divides It ... other than conceptually. One does not meditate (Self Enquire) to arrive at something "else". Bhagavan repeated this till he was blue in the face. One looks directly to ones' immediate inherent nature (meditates) in order for this very same Self Nature ... which is already fully here... to become effortlessly more obvious. That's all. It is certainly not a "path" that suggests going from a "here" to an "over there". Meditation is simply abiding as one already is. Here ... right this moment ... THIS. Within this non-negotiable, Boundless Immensity... NOTHING is excluded. There is no other option! Forget ALL the translations and interpretations of what "I" is. None of them hit the mark. Practice "Being As You Are" ... it will become all too apparent.

    Om shanti
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  19. Dear Very Big (Ego), you do like the sound of your own voice, don't you? I suppose it's better than your racial insults against Pakistanis. Anon at 9.27pm is right. Ramana said the I must be destroyed in order to reveal the SELF, period. If everything is Brahman, that's not necessary. Self enquiry does have a goal: you do it in order to get enlightened because you're not. Sorry, your ocean and wave bullshit just doesn't cut it. And you can't practise Being Who You Are. That's so ridiculous, it isn't even funny! But I bet you try!

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  20. Ms Very Big ...
    Do you go to Jeff Foster? He talks about the ocean and the waves all the time. But I think you are mistaken: Jeff is saying there is no need to practise anything because the waves "are" the ocean ...

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  21. I think we need to distinguish between Ramana and Advaita here. Ramana used the religious and cultural ideas of his time - which were predominantly Hinduism/Advaita - to communicate with people. But he himself was something of an enigma which no one can understand (except for No...MUCH Bigger perhaps). If you look carefully at Ramana's words, he certainly was not an Advaitin nor did he entirely agree with Shankara.

    Ramana said "unnai vidamal iru" and "summa iru." Roughly translated this means: "be without leaving yourself" and "just be." These were used as an upadesa - a spiritual utterance meant to transform you on the spot - they were never meant to be a practice. So the highest meaning of self-enquiry is that it is a spontaneous way of being, seemingly brought about by the Self.

    Self-enquiry as a practice, meanwhile, is for the "wet wood." There is nothing wrong with this. Practices are for those still stuck in duality and that's why Ramana also gave practical instructions for self-enquiry. These instructions varied according to the level of the questioner. For some it was a more methodical, mechanical practice requiring intense discipline because of their tendency to forget to ask "Who Am I?" (due to the presence of vasanas). For others it was more simply the tranquility of abiding in consciousness until the Self consumes the ego and destroys it. The problem comes when someone tries to confine self-enquiry to one definition (No...MUCH Bigger again!) As we can see in the example of Ramana, it had many definitions according to the person concerned.

    That was Ramana. Now let's talk about Advaita, which loves all the talk of duality and non-duality. The nature of language will always be dualistic so statements such as "Be as You Are" can hardly be faulted for linguistically revealing "two." Non-duality simply cannot be put into words. However ... is Advaita non-dual? The answer emphatically has to be "no." Many examples why are given above but if we just take Shankara's Advaita (and there are so many types), we have Brahman which is absolutely real, unchanging and unborn. That is "one." Nonduality meanwhile means "not two." The absence of two can never be a "one." The absence of two essentially points to a mystery: not a defined object such as a permanent, ultimate reality. And you can't get round this by saying "Brahman is just a name" or "Brahman is a thing which is not a thing." "Not two" means going beyond the opposite poles of existence and thereby, the end of objectification and conceptualisation. Shankara conceives the object named Brahman and even gives it qualities - whereas "not two" means there are no longer any objects to be given a name or any qualities.

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  22. What a load of bullshit comments. Trying to outwit each other with statements they don’t even understand, hey? Aghori and Oh So Much BIGGER blah, blah, blah and even Lucrezia with her statement that self-inquiry practices are for those still stuck in duality. Ha, ha, do you know anybody who is NOT stuck in duality, apart from me of course? But then, all the Tiru sadhaks know about the way I apparently became a 'Maybe'!

    More interesting is how I became an enlightened anarchist. It sounds unbelievable and for some fuckwits hilarious, but it was actually through listening to the music by that arschloch of a man called Richard Wagner. That he was an anarchist in his youth and fought with Bakunin in the Dresden 1848 Revolution and was expelled from Germany is well known. That he later weaved his anarchistic ideas brilliantly into his music, calling it the "music of the future" - i.e. an anarchistic society - is only known to the real Wagnerian. But this is easily understood by actually listening to it (for the ones not familiar with the works of the "der Meister.") In "Wagner as Anarchist," Carol van der Veer Hamilton writes: "Charges that Wagner was an anarchist may have been a response to the sensuality of his orchestration and the representation - even celebration - of adultery and incest, objectionable to many nineteenth century moralists. Josef Chytry writes of Wagner’s revolutionary commitment to the liberation of a sensuous-erotic core to humanity, that had been suppressed by a history of domination. But his anarchism has yet another and more important referent: that of Wagner’s formal musical innovations, his treatment of harmony, his dissonance and chromaticism and the resultant undermining of classical tonality with its 'centrist' (anarchists favored a dispersal of power) dependence on the tonic."

    There you are, can it be more transparent and crystal-clear? Just plug the first act of Tristan und Isolde into your ears and you will be transformed without any effort to the apparent state of eternal freedom and bliss called enlightened anarchism ... whether you like it or not, for fuck's sake!

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  23. My dearest Sister - 'Those still stuck in duality' referred to those who have not received upadesa ... It seems once again you have failed to read my comment properly ... But, this time I forgive you. I love to listen to Wagner while I watch my victims in their final death throes. I am a great admirer of his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk ("total work of art") and believe he was also influenced by Proudhon and Feuerbach who favoured the Spinozistic immortality of becoming reabsorbed in nature. Perhaps you should enlighten us with a composition - I'm sure your anarchic tones would inspire us to immediate revolution!

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  24. Ramana did point out that self-enquiry in its highest sense, cannot be practised but that nevertheless there are some for whom it is a practice and constitutes "sadhana":

    RAMANA: I never performed any pranayama or japa. I know no mantras. I had no rules of meditation or contemplation. Even when I came to hear of such things later, they never attracted me. Even now, my mind refuses to pay attention to them. Sadhana implies an object to be gained and the means of gaining it. What is there to be gained which we do not already possess? In meditation, concentration and contemplation, all we have to do is be still and not think of anything. Then we shall be in our natural state ... People seem to think that by practising some elaborate sadhana the Self will one day descend upon them as something very big and with tremendous glory, giving them what is called sakshataram [direct experience]. The Self is sakshat [direct] all right but there is no karam [one who performs actions] or kritam [action performed] about it. The word karam implies doing something. But the Self is realised not by doing something but by refraining from doing anything, by remaining still and being simply what one really is. [to G.V. Subbaramayya].

    and ...

    RAMANA: The nature of the mind is determined by its former activities, its samskaras. People are able to continue to do all their work and yet pursue their self-enquiry and ultimately become realised souls. Janaka, Vasishta, Rama, Krishna, and others like them are examples of this. Again, for some it would appear impossible for them to do this and they have to go to solitary places to become realised souls through self-enquiry ... Self-enquiry is essential for whomever it may be. [Letters, Vol 2, No.26].

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  25. If someone would supply with me with a delivery address I would buy SK a vibrator...then maybe some meaningful 'utterances' would cascade from her sometimes malevolent lips.

    To Lucrezia and here last remark at 2:27 PM:
    ....whereas "not two" means there are no longer any objects to be given a name or any qualities." The Buddha called this state of consciousness "Emptiness"; but not stopping at that awareness the Buddha experienced other 'revelations' as well.

    Blessings and Blissing to All

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  26. The Good Sister is over stimulated already and has a cupboard full of electronic toys that would make even Imelda Marcos blush! Salvation lies in extreme sedation and increasing her daily dosage of medication!

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  27. Kevinji
    Well then how about some Belladonna or Datura cookies for her.

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  28. Bori Aghori
    My address is Cave No.7 Arunachala, South Slope as everybody knows. But I see you are closing ranks with that silly Chi-Ting Master (shame on you) by persistently calling me a "she" while every sensible human being knows that the transgendered are properly addressed as "it". India, so much despised by you, is one of the very few countries in the world where you can enter on your passport if you are a he, a she or someone transgendered. That will never ever happen in Texas USA, oh no!!!

    And if you don’t like the chaos of India (foolishly and wrongly interpreted by you as anarchism, and definitely not the real anarchism the post is talking about) - why the fuck don’t you piss off home to Texas, where everything is so free and well organized and so safe, that you have to carry a gun to defend yourself. But be careful wearing your pink turban there, because some cowboy will think you are a Muslim or a homo or both and therefore a terrorist - and shoot you claiming self defence. That is the law of karma, you idiot!

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  29. This is the true face of the corporate branding of rebellion - see here. Just another opportunity to make money!

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  30. A short vid on Wilhelm Reich, definitely worth a look - click here.

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  31. I posted a link to this article on D8, a group art blog that I contribute to now and then.

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  32. Ramana did not talk against caste system because as a realised soul he was indifferent to both good and evil. It was his swadharma. This should not apply to others whose swadharma is based on their own level of emotional and spiritual state. I remember Ramana responding to a question regarding fatalism somewhere along these lines. Assume you are getting beaten up by someone, if you really dont feel the need to react, then you are consistent non-dualist, a realised soul. But if you feel the need to react, then it is your swadharma to protect yourself. Santan dharma is neither normative on the whole nor anarchial. It recognises subtle components of the society down to the indvidual when it comes to 'action'. Thats why we have Swadharma, kuladharma, Jatidharma and Rajadharma. Such distinction should be taken into account when encountering hindu paradigms.

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