How could I have missed this exquisitely divine moment in July? Oh, that’s right 🤭—I was completely enveloped, heart and soul, with the presence of six grandchildren and daughter, wrapped in the warmth of a summer overflowing with love, joy, and connection.
There’s a deep oneness—a connection with the All, with the Universe, with the Everything that serenades us. Whether we resonate in harmony, in chaos, or somewhere in between, that connection is always there, waiting for us. In my quiet, still moments usually in nature, when I truly let go of perception in heightened meditation and open myself, even as fully as I am, to this divine presence, I’ve received profound light, clarity, deeply resonate emotions, and knowledge, as though just peeking behind, or into, the veil of reality.
It’s as though there’s an unseen thread, an invisible lifeline, that ties my soul to something far greater than me. When I plug into it, the skies seem to open, and vibrational waves of light, wisdom, emotion, and clarity pour into my being. The experience is so overwhelming at times, I’m left in awe, trying to absorb all that has been given. Though it may not be on the scale of ecstatic joy some find through mescaline, the resonance I feel in these moments is deeply soulful. It fills me with a tender, gentle peace, and an overwhelming sense of oneness—with others, with creation, and with the infinite creative spirit that exists in all of us.
These precious moments feel like sacred resonance with the divine, reminding me that I am not alone. I am woven into the fabric of all things, and everything is woven into me.
Thank you Mattias; I'm finding that everything you write is worth reading! In response to the very first sentence - I'm busy writing a book ostensibly on "How Do We Establish Truth?" - it's turning out to be quite a big work, & I refer to your book on the psychology of totalitarianism numerous times.. I really appreciate the insights you have provided us!
I was stunned into silence on first reading this. Seriously. I just sat and wondered about what I had just read. It will take time to absorb these thoughts, but I plan on re-reading this until some of it becomes part of me. I don't even know how to thank you, Mattias.
What a beautiful essay, which aligns with what I have been reading in Patrick Harpur, and Peter Kingsley. Mary LeCron Foster hypothesized that the earliest Indo-European phonemes were spatial metaphors, the geography of the world symbolized and miniaturized in the mouth. Merleau-Ponty stayed up all night saying "sleet," which if you speak very slowly, you can sense the metaphor. After reading that, I tried all of our favorite Anglo-Saxon swear word, which also imitates that which it originally meant. I am now reading Irreducible, by Federico Faggin, in which he says that our every cell participates in both classical physics and quantum physics, and that it is no doubt in our "junk dna" that much of what we are and have potential to be resides. This makes the transhumanists not only tyrannical, but clearly either stupid or evil or perhaps both, since they are preventing what could be, what is waiting to be discovered. These Dunning-Kruger despots are also inflated, perhaps dark triad, about AI, which probably does represent their left hemisphere plus psychopathy perspective on humans. AI and AI driven content is hollow and formulaic, and I genuinely think AI doesn't comprehend poetry, partly because it can't participate in the mystery of the source of creativity. It is that participation that makes truly creative people humble in that they know some of what they are creating does not come from themselves, or any aspect of their being that can be articulated or made explicit. In the greatest lyric metrical sonorous poems the voice of the mother, as you say, can be imbibed again, like floating, for a moment again, in amniotic fluid. Read Fern Hill or The Beautiful Changes aloud and you are immersed https://poets.org/poem/fern-hill, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43055/the-beautiful-changes
Reading your deep thoughts, my mind turned towards troops firing at each other, killing, wounding, crippling each other.........how must they feel......how must they feel ?
Those that survived the war generally never speak about what they did, how they felt; they remain numb for the rest of their lives.
A long way from The Paradise of their mothers voice.
You and Mattias have proposed that the question of truth cannot be answered.
I on the other hand submit that knowledge of truth (not just belief) is possible.
Let's take your statement, "To affirm that God exists or not is impossible, one cannot prove it..."
Is this a statement of what you know to be true or something that you just believe (your faith)? If it is knowledge then you should be able to communicate your thoughts and experience whereby that knowledge has been acquired.
No one is too interested in what someone simply believes but if they know something it is worth talking about. I know that God exists. I know more than that about God but let’s limit our discussion to this for now. Proving this statement is not difficult. Here I will present some thoughts that lead to this conclusion and you can tell me if you agree or if you think I have made a mistake.
First it is necessary to define what we mean by God. We are not talking here about the God of the Bible or the Koran or some other religious tradition although those traditions may not be opposed to the God that we are speaking of.
We live in a cosmos where much of what we observe follows the laws of physics(science). Now imagine that as you are drinking coffee one morning you look through the window and you see a leaf drop to the ground. If you are in a contemplative mood you might try to consider the string of events that led up to the particular event that you observed; the falling of a leaf. In this exercise of thought you attempt to trace back to the first thing that happened in the sequence of causes that led to the dropping of that leaf. The initial cause that started the sequence must be non-physical. For lack of a better word we will call that “God”. It(God) must be non-physical because if it was physical it would just be another physical cause as a result of previous physical causes.
In response, someone might propose that the sequence leading to the event that you observed is infinitely long (i.e. that there was no initial event); no event that is not simply the result of a prior infinite sequence of physical causes. This idea, however, is easily debunked. If there were an infinite number of prior physical causes in the sequence that led to what you observed, then you would still be waiting for that infinite sequence to arrive at the present event that you observe. It would not have happened yet. That is the nature of infinity.
This has proved that God, defined as the non-physical first-cause of the event that you observed, exists. It has not considered what God is like other than that he is not physical (we might use the word spiritual). If we are interested we will try to learn more but we will no longer question the existence of God.
If I may join in, you speak of God as the primordial origin, but it seems that He is still in time.
Let us go out of time. God is the necessary condition; He is that which conditions everything but has no condition itself. Only then is it easier to understand how nature and soul/consciousness are related. So, we are talking about a third element that conditions both; it is their source.
Consciousness is in the world, you are right, and we can look for physical causes of how it came to be, but there will always be an explanatory gap in relation to consciousness, to the qualities of consciousness. So, we have to understand there is also another truth: the world is in consciousness. Everything is in consciousness. This is where the opportunity to relate to Jesus opens up. We have to understand him in the context of the "symbolic" (Lacan), knowledge. Here spirituality acquires its "materiality", Lacan describes is it with the theory of the signifier. I would say that Mattias thinks in this context.
Isn't God something that acquires meaning in the context of knowledge and awareness? What can we know? What can we be absolutely sure of? What we cannot doubt, as Descartes would say.
In the study of consciousness, we collide with the necessary structure that makes consciousness itself possible (and with it everything that IS). Consciousness itself can ask what makes it possible, what is its condition. Where does consciousness stand in order to be able to think or be? This is why Lacan says that God is the unconscious. There is another place that speaks. There is a need for an inner split that makes us in the world but not part of the world. Don't you think the key question here is who am I? Do I really know myself? What am I (as Ramana Maharshi would ask)?
What if God is the answer to this question of existential uncertainty? God originally, I think in Sanskrit, means sacrificial smoke. So, it also refers to the sacrifice of illusions. Knowledge is within God, Spinoza would agree. We accept this (unconsciously) out of necessity, invoking the reality that He guarantees. He guarantees meaning. We have, on the one hand, states of ignorant consciousness and, on the other hand, an awakened consciousness - a God-consciousness that is aware of a certain necessary difference that is its source. God is important in this transition from ignorance to knowledge. He is a kind of reference point, an absolute ground, a ground of being.
But it is still not clear what its nature is. Mia, this is where your concern about the indeterminacy of the world comes in. Awareness of God is awareness of the inner split of the world, the necessary condition that makes the world finite but open to infinity. Awareness is always in relation to finitude/nothingness and infinity. In this sense there is no absolute place in the world, but there is a place of absolute division. The world is stateless, indeterminate... all that Mattias says.
Jesus affirms this difference, the God who is dying. We can say that he articulates the truth, we are talking about full speech (Lacan) and what Mattias associates with soul speech. Jesus is the subject of the new possibility, of impossible.
There may be many interpretations, but not all of them are good. Psychoanalysis and certain philosophies offer better concepts. But I am not here to lecture anyone; I am commenting to see if anyone will respond if they "vibrate" with what I am sharing. It is certainly possible to reflect without going into the specific philosophy of this or that author, but it is also possible to have a very fruitful dialogue with them.
Good reflection leads us to recognize the duties we have to the Universal. It is not just a question of wanting to help this or that person, the environment, etc. It is also about recognising that this is your/my duty.
When I post a comment I try to stick to one thing at a time.
Your question, Why did God send Jesus? , was answered in my initial comment to Mattias. I quoted Jesus speaking to Pilate where he said, "For this cause I was born and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth."
He came to answer the truth question. He did that with his life, his message, and again with his death and coming back to life.
His short answer to the reality question: The Kingdom of God
This is not an argument; it is just the historical record. You have been clear that you do not accept the Gospel stories as reliable and I can accept your doubts.
Do you think he was wrong?
When it comes to knowledge of the truth it is not just an academic exercise. Experience is required. This is true in all areas of life; not just in the spiritual.
Let's say you want to know about music. You start with an idea of how good it might be to be able to play. You might study about it and listen to music but at some point you form the intent to make plans and take steps to learn and experience. That's faith.
So knowledge of the truth requires action. I do not know much about God but I intend to act on the little I do know. This leads to the experience of seeing him act with me and ultimately to growing knowledge. That is my experience.
You start by asking Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?” and then immediately state your assumption that it cannot be answered. This makes one wonder: Do you have a basis for your assumption? and Are you hopeful that you can find the answer?
In his conversation with Pilate, Jesus stated that his life purpose was to answer the question. “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.”
And that summarizes the story of what he did and the message he proclaimed. His view of reality (truth) has over the last 2000 years reliably transformed the lives of those who put their confidence in him by initiating in them a new kind of life. I do not know of any exceptions.
Perhaps you do not think his description of truth is consistent with reality as you have seen it? If so you should say so and point out where you see inconsistencies. In any case, in order to practice the sincere speech that you are advocating you can not simply ignore Jesus’ answer.
HI Mark, here is what I think: this question cannot be answered definitively at the rational level. There is no ultimate definition of what Truth is. But Truth resonates in language; it re-appears time and time again, always in a new linguistic dress. Much more about that in later substacks.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Thank you so much for this. How delicious is it that you wrote this just as Neptune is activating 29 Degrees of Pisces (its own sign) and Pluto is in Aquarius, touching on universal themes of self, unity, immersion, union, the numinous, art, poetry, humanity, Utopia(s), Utopian visions, technology, "progress," the dark side(s) of "progress" and more. Fascinating, really, how very many themes came out here -
I agree that it might get downright scary - both inside our own heads at times, or in the manifestation of visions of certain others. Let's tread with clear vision, as much as possible in this seminal point between the old world and the new, . . . like our lives depend on it . . .
I appreciate your clear vision and your voice in this world.
I will like you to touch more upon the ways in which a schizophrenic person is sometimes closer to the truth than her normal counterparts, despite the obvious shortcomings of her thinking. I have started to think, in lines with what Carl Jung perhaps also understood, is that the proclamations of schizophrenic person are often factually false, but sometimes valuable, as a story is often true and valuable despite being fictitious. In some ways, because they are unconstrained by the need to maintain logical consistency and relying on prevalent worldview, they become more attuned to some more obscure aspect of reality. Of course, this is not true for all their proclamations, but some can be of great value in the hands of the right listener. If this is true, it can bring some dignity and respect of these individuals and make them more understood.
I should have written that sentence more carefully. We all read and think about stories, which we know are false. It often stated right there in the preface of the novel. Yet, such stories are often of great relevance. Take for example Shakespeare's plays. Many of them are based on fictional or embellished accounts. They are not valued for being the narrative account of true events, rather for bringing to stand forth truths about life in general. Some of these truths cannot be compressed into a simple sentence and can only be understood with the full context of the story.
In my opinion, stories help us see some things more clearly than an actual account of events. In this way, a story presents truth, despite never taking place. By being able to flexibly build premises, sometimes even using imaginary constructs such as magic, they help us get clear view of otherwise obscure parts of experience.
This flexibility, I believe, is something people with schizophrenia also experience. Like playing story-time with real life. They are highly suggestive and have a different salience landscape. This may allow them to pick up on patterns others may miss. Since they are unencumbered by having to rely on the prevalent worldview, their delusions may seek connections freely between seemingly unrelated stimuli.
Of course, delusions in most patients will also follow the typical pattern which is seen with the disease. However, there is also other content, which might be valuable in the hands of the right listener.
A person with the disorder once told me, "I am being persecuted." I asked why. She replied "because I am a young girl. There are people in the world who hate young girls, who hate them for their youth, freshness and innocence. Once they have become married, and lose this trait, these people no longer hate them and respect them." I often think about this when thinking about patriarchy and feminism. It to me sheds some light on possible motivation behind patriarchy, at the same time, reveals something about the state of the subconscious of a feminist.
Thanks Mattias. The following statement you make resonates a lot with me since i think this was kind of my natural state.
"From this exploration, we derive a core characteristic of sincere speaking: in a sense, sincere speaking takes us back to the core of our Being, before it was covered by social conventions and meaning. Sincere speaking is done primarily from the feeling, animated body; much less from the head; it is an emotional speaking rather than a thinking-rational speaking. One who speaks before thinking is more sincere than one who first surrenders too much to considerations about what is right to say, about what must, may, and can be said."
That said being in the corporate world I have in the last time noticed that some kind of behavioral psychology is used to influence our emotions to basically train out this kind of sincere speaking out of you so you conform to the "Homo Deus" idea and conform to the souless corporate agenda which also connects to what you mentioned in your previous de-souling article. It is a known statement from Harari that "Humans are now hackable animals" and I think this is the implementation of what he means. I would be very interested if you could look into the corporate psychological methods and tell more if it is possible to keep your soul in such environments.
Beautiful essay on the power of words and what is expressed behind them. We can use it for connection, to experience we are all one, or we can use language to manipulate others and create fear and separateness.
Recognizing when you are under the spell of the ego illusion of separateness is the important first step to take before you can make contact with your true self and practice the art of sincere speech. 'Past Reality Integration' defines 5 defence mechanisms that form a concrete definition of the ego. Keeping them in mind is a necessary step to prevent errancy and delusion, because of the strong defensiveness of our ego. Our first reactions aren't allways from our true inner voice, like from the innocent, divine baby we once were, but often a defensive ego reaction or ego need we try to fulfill, without us consciously realizing it.
The 5 illusion described by the Dutch psychologist Ingeborg Bosch, who developed PRI are
- fear
- self doubt
- stress
- anger
- indifference
PRI also provides a method to dismantle the illusions and become in a free state, just as the little child must have been in, just before the defense mechanism became active.
How do you see this Mattias? Maybe I state it too firmly that we first have to recognize our ego talk/the mind with its thought and stories. I think you are right that the first and far most important thing is that we listen to our first reaction. But it is not always a good idea to express them. It depends on in what part of your consciousness you are in.
I personally can be way too impulsive with my first reactions, leading to miscommunication or difficult situations.
But in an environment where people are truly listening, it is more easy to be with your true self and speak sincere.
You have contributed to my thinking about truth. Truth is a hard nut to crack, especially if we want to go beyond the theories of correspondence and coherence, but also beyond truth as event and unconcealment, where truth is no longer a correspondence with an event, but becomes an mismatch, becomes a revelation of the real? But what if we introduce another turn, a more structural one, what if truth is a place inscribed in every symbolic form? Then the question came to me: where is truth born? And this is where your essay comes in. Truth has a place, it is born in my body. But is it really about the body? Or is the body a metaphor, because the body is always in the mind. Truth is born in the intellect (nous), in what is sometimes called intuition, which is pre-reflective, which precedes conscious rational reflection. This is how it is. Rational reflection has to take into account what we know pre-reflectively to be true and what we may be deceiving ourselves. We need truthfulness, we need a radical consciousness that feels the vibration of the field we are in. Poetic language can capture the rays of being, the rays of conscious oneness with all that is. Truth is therefore the place where the unconscious is born as the intuition of the mind to "understand" what is happening. Speaking the truth is the articulation of the strings of being that connect us to the whole. I would say that truth is not something rational, not even "corporeal", but a description of the flesh of the world. The love of truth is the condition of all knowledge, and to articulate it is the procedure of truths: love, art, politics, science.
Merleau-Ponty said that phenomenological interrogation is never complete, and Lacan talked about the ontological non-completeness of the world, because there is no meta-language or big Other of the Other....
To accept that you don't have answers and that the world is torn and wounded, like the body of Christ... yes, that's really love.
I haven't read Schopenhauer yet. We are also limited here, by time.
You choose something, then you insist on being open to the openness of the world. You act. But then what, when the abyss opens up again - the emptiness, the loneliness - you touch that which keeps tripping up your life.
Kant already said it: think, then say it out loud (you act). That is the ethical principle. Then you say it, including everything that is unacceptable, that's why you suffer the consequences of not being accepted, people move away and you are left alone again. Honesty is dangerous. Who will you then call? You can only call your friend Loneliness, who is the only one who will not leave you, but also only friend you always want to avoid.
The hero speaks out, he is brave precisely because he suffers and is afraid.
There is a problem that Shunyamurti decribed as: Facing with emptiness ..."is the black hole that the ego isn’t strong enough to confront, and therefore would rather continue its vain fantasies of connections that aren’t real, and stay in a Peter Pan type of state, rather than to grow beyond the loneliness into the truth of what reality is."
What about infant male genital mutilation at birth. The young child often without pain medication has the end of his penis removed moments after entering air and before suckling and the sounds of his mother. It occurred in a very high amount of the population in Australia and to this day in many countries.
The bonding sounds of the mother you describe are grasped at through intense localised pain. Poor breast feeding a potential downside.
Give the baby boys the care they need lest they grow up triggered as an Iraq vet.
Let society allow more young males experience that paradise of the mothers voice free off pain and trauma.
There are too much things in our "rich society"; also too much art works and too much words without meaning (social networks etc.) and we are lost in that "forest" ... Is it possible for parents to start with "truth speech education" for themselves and for their children? Can that happen without a BIG CHANGE in the global society?
I have no answer but I understand what is truth speech; I remember I have felt the body-mind connection in a few occasions. Usually our talk (also mine!) is a small talk or only an information exchange.
How could I have missed this exquisitely divine moment in July? Oh, that’s right 🤭—I was completely enveloped, heart and soul, with the presence of six grandchildren and daughter, wrapped in the warmth of a summer overflowing with love, joy, and connection.
There’s a deep oneness—a connection with the All, with the Universe, with the Everything that serenades us. Whether we resonate in harmony, in chaos, or somewhere in between, that connection is always there, waiting for us. In my quiet, still moments usually in nature, when I truly let go of perception in heightened meditation and open myself, even as fully as I am, to this divine presence, I’ve received profound light, clarity, deeply resonate emotions, and knowledge, as though just peeking behind, or into, the veil of reality.
It’s as though there’s an unseen thread, an invisible lifeline, that ties my soul to something far greater than me. When I plug into it, the skies seem to open, and vibrational waves of light, wisdom, emotion, and clarity pour into my being. The experience is so overwhelming at times, I’m left in awe, trying to absorb all that has been given. Though it may not be on the scale of ecstatic joy some find through mescaline, the resonance I feel in these moments is deeply soulful. It fills me with a tender, gentle peace, and an overwhelming sense of oneness—with others, with creation, and with the infinite creative spirit that exists in all of us.
These precious moments feel like sacred resonance with the divine, reminding me that I am not alone. I am woven into the fabric of all things, and everything is woven into me.
Thank you Mattias; I'm finding that everything you write is worth reading! In response to the very first sentence - I'm busy writing a book ostensibly on "How Do We Establish Truth?" - it's turning out to be quite a big work, & I refer to your book on the psychology of totalitarianism numerous times.. I really appreciate the insights you have provided us!
I was stunned into silence on first reading this. Seriously. I just sat and wondered about what I had just read. It will take time to absorb these thoughts, but I plan on re-reading this until some of it becomes part of me. I don't even know how to thank you, Mattias.
What a beautiful essay, which aligns with what I have been reading in Patrick Harpur, and Peter Kingsley. Mary LeCron Foster hypothesized that the earliest Indo-European phonemes were spatial metaphors, the geography of the world symbolized and miniaturized in the mouth. Merleau-Ponty stayed up all night saying "sleet," which if you speak very slowly, you can sense the metaphor. After reading that, I tried all of our favorite Anglo-Saxon swear word, which also imitates that which it originally meant. I am now reading Irreducible, by Federico Faggin, in which he says that our every cell participates in both classical physics and quantum physics, and that it is no doubt in our "junk dna" that much of what we are and have potential to be resides. This makes the transhumanists not only tyrannical, but clearly either stupid or evil or perhaps both, since they are preventing what could be, what is waiting to be discovered. These Dunning-Kruger despots are also inflated, perhaps dark triad, about AI, which probably does represent their left hemisphere plus psychopathy perspective on humans. AI and AI driven content is hollow and formulaic, and I genuinely think AI doesn't comprehend poetry, partly because it can't participate in the mystery of the source of creativity. It is that participation that makes truly creative people humble in that they know some of what they are creating does not come from themselves, or any aspect of their being that can be articulated or made explicit. In the greatest lyric metrical sonorous poems the voice of the mother, as you say, can be imbibed again, like floating, for a moment again, in amniotic fluid. Read Fern Hill or The Beautiful Changes aloud and you are immersed https://poets.org/poem/fern-hill, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43055/the-beautiful-changes
Can't wait to read your book.
Reading your deep thoughts, my mind turned towards troops firing at each other, killing, wounding, crippling each other.........how must they feel......how must they feel ?
Those that survived the war generally never speak about what they did, how they felt; they remain numb for the rest of their lives.
A long way from The Paradise of their mothers voice.
Thank-you Mia for your sincere response.
You and Mattias have proposed that the question of truth cannot be answered.
I on the other hand submit that knowledge of truth (not just belief) is possible.
Let's take your statement, "To affirm that God exists or not is impossible, one cannot prove it..."
Is this a statement of what you know to be true or something that you just believe (your faith)? If it is knowledge then you should be able to communicate your thoughts and experience whereby that knowledge has been acquired.
No one is too interested in what someone simply believes but if they know something it is worth talking about. I know that God exists. I know more than that about God but let’s limit our discussion to this for now. Proving this statement is not difficult. Here I will present some thoughts that lead to this conclusion and you can tell me if you agree or if you think I have made a mistake.
First it is necessary to define what we mean by God. We are not talking here about the God of the Bible or the Koran or some other religious tradition although those traditions may not be opposed to the God that we are speaking of.
We live in a cosmos where much of what we observe follows the laws of physics(science). Now imagine that as you are drinking coffee one morning you look through the window and you see a leaf drop to the ground. If you are in a contemplative mood you might try to consider the string of events that led up to the particular event that you observed; the falling of a leaf. In this exercise of thought you attempt to trace back to the first thing that happened in the sequence of causes that led to the dropping of that leaf. The initial cause that started the sequence must be non-physical. For lack of a better word we will call that “God”. It(God) must be non-physical because if it was physical it would just be another physical cause as a result of previous physical causes.
In response, someone might propose that the sequence leading to the event that you observed is infinitely long (i.e. that there was no initial event); no event that is not simply the result of a prior infinite sequence of physical causes. This idea, however, is easily debunked. If there were an infinite number of prior physical causes in the sequence that led to what you observed, then you would still be waiting for that infinite sequence to arrive at the present event that you observe. It would not have happened yet. That is the nature of infinity.
This has proved that God, defined as the non-physical first-cause of the event that you observed, exists. It has not considered what God is like other than that he is not physical (we might use the word spiritual). If we are interested we will try to learn more but we will no longer question the existence of God.
If I may join in, you speak of God as the primordial origin, but it seems that He is still in time.
Let us go out of time. God is the necessary condition; He is that which conditions everything but has no condition itself. Only then is it easier to understand how nature and soul/consciousness are related. So, we are talking about a third element that conditions both; it is their source.
Consciousness is in the world, you are right, and we can look for physical causes of how it came to be, but there will always be an explanatory gap in relation to consciousness, to the qualities of consciousness. So, we have to understand there is also another truth: the world is in consciousness. Everything is in consciousness. This is where the opportunity to relate to Jesus opens up. We have to understand him in the context of the "symbolic" (Lacan), knowledge. Here spirituality acquires its "materiality", Lacan describes is it with the theory of the signifier. I would say that Mattias thinks in this context.
Isn't God something that acquires meaning in the context of knowledge and awareness? What can we know? What can we be absolutely sure of? What we cannot doubt, as Descartes would say.
In the study of consciousness, we collide with the necessary structure that makes consciousness itself possible (and with it everything that IS). Consciousness itself can ask what makes it possible, what is its condition. Where does consciousness stand in order to be able to think or be? This is why Lacan says that God is the unconscious. There is another place that speaks. There is a need for an inner split that makes us in the world but not part of the world. Don't you think the key question here is who am I? Do I really know myself? What am I (as Ramana Maharshi would ask)?
What if God is the answer to this question of existential uncertainty? God originally, I think in Sanskrit, means sacrificial smoke. So, it also refers to the sacrifice of illusions. Knowledge is within God, Spinoza would agree. We accept this (unconsciously) out of necessity, invoking the reality that He guarantees. He guarantees meaning. We have, on the one hand, states of ignorant consciousness and, on the other hand, an awakened consciousness - a God-consciousness that is aware of a certain necessary difference that is its source. God is important in this transition from ignorance to knowledge. He is a kind of reference point, an absolute ground, a ground of being.
But it is still not clear what its nature is. Mia, this is where your concern about the indeterminacy of the world comes in. Awareness of God is awareness of the inner split of the world, the necessary condition that makes the world finite but open to infinity. Awareness is always in relation to finitude/nothingness and infinity. In this sense there is no absolute place in the world, but there is a place of absolute division. The world is stateless, indeterminate... all that Mattias says.
Jesus affirms this difference, the God who is dying. We can say that he articulates the truth, we are talking about full speech (Lacan) and what Mattias associates with soul speech. Jesus is the subject of the new possibility, of impossible.
I'm not saying I know what Mattias thinks. But I know the approximate context because I have read his books, including the one on Lacan.
Hi Mia,
There may be many interpretations, but not all of them are good. Psychoanalysis and certain philosophies offer better concepts. But I am not here to lecture anyone; I am commenting to see if anyone will respond if they "vibrate" with what I am sharing. It is certainly possible to reflect without going into the specific philosophy of this or that author, but it is also possible to have a very fruitful dialogue with them.
Good reflection leads us to recognize the duties we have to the Universal. It is not just a question of wanting to help this or that person, the environment, etc. It is also about recognising that this is your/my duty.
How to learn more about the spiritual God?
Observation of the world is not enough but that is where we start.
I see 3 great masterpieces
- Physics, mathematics, precision, power, matter, light
- The phenomenon of life, diversity, fun all inexplainable by physics
- The human race, creativity, art, music, language, love, laughter, and a yearning for transcendent meaning all inexplainable by biology.
All of this shouts day and night of a person who creates, speaks, loves, laughs.
It does not explain everything but it is enough to compel us to look for more.
Hi Mia,
When I post a comment I try to stick to one thing at a time.
Your question, Why did God send Jesus? , was answered in my initial comment to Mattias. I quoted Jesus speaking to Pilate where he said, "For this cause I was born and for this cause I came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth."
He came to answer the truth question. He did that with his life, his message, and again with his death and coming back to life.
His short answer to the reality question: The Kingdom of God
This is not an argument; it is just the historical record. You have been clear that you do not accept the Gospel stories as reliable and I can accept your doubts.
Do you think he was wrong?
When it comes to knowledge of the truth it is not just an academic exercise. Experience is required. This is true in all areas of life; not just in the spiritual.
Let's say you want to know about music. You start with an idea of how good it might be to be able to play. You might study about it and listen to music but at some point you form the intent to make plans and take steps to learn and experience. That's faith.
So knowledge of the truth requires action. I do not know much about God but I intend to act on the little I do know. This leads to the experience of seeing him act with me and ultimately to growing knowledge. That is my experience.
You start by asking Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?” and then immediately state your assumption that it cannot be answered. This makes one wonder: Do you have a basis for your assumption? and Are you hopeful that you can find the answer?
In his conversation with Pilate, Jesus stated that his life purpose was to answer the question. “For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth.”
And that summarizes the story of what he did and the message he proclaimed. His view of reality (truth) has over the last 2000 years reliably transformed the lives of those who put their confidence in him by initiating in them a new kind of life. I do not know of any exceptions.
Perhaps you do not think his description of truth is consistent with reality as you have seen it? If so you should say so and point out where you see inconsistencies. In any case, in order to practice the sincere speech that you are advocating you can not simply ignore Jesus’ answer.
HI Mark, here is what I think: this question cannot be answered definitively at the rational level. There is no ultimate definition of what Truth is. But Truth resonates in language; it re-appears time and time again, always in a new linguistic dress. Much more about that in later substacks.
Here is an example: a fisherman's insight.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him and without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.
Thank you so much for this. How delicious is it that you wrote this just as Neptune is activating 29 Degrees of Pisces (its own sign) and Pluto is in Aquarius, touching on universal themes of self, unity, immersion, union, the numinous, art, poetry, humanity, Utopia(s), Utopian visions, technology, "progress," the dark side(s) of "progress" and more. Fascinating, really, how very many themes came out here -
I agree that it might get downright scary - both inside our own heads at times, or in the manifestation of visions of certain others. Let's tread with clear vision, as much as possible in this seminal point between the old world and the new, . . . like our lives depend on it . . .
I appreciate your clear vision and your voice in this world.
I will like you to touch more upon the ways in which a schizophrenic person is sometimes closer to the truth than her normal counterparts, despite the obvious shortcomings of her thinking. I have started to think, in lines with what Carl Jung perhaps also understood, is that the proclamations of schizophrenic person are often factually false, but sometimes valuable, as a story is often true and valuable despite being fictitious. In some ways, because they are unconstrained by the need to maintain logical consistency and relying on prevalent worldview, they become more attuned to some more obscure aspect of reality. Of course, this is not true for all their proclamations, but some can be of great value in the hands of the right listener. If this is true, it can bring some dignity and respect of these individuals and make them more understood.
I should have written that sentence more carefully. We all read and think about stories, which we know are false. It often stated right there in the preface of the novel. Yet, such stories are often of great relevance. Take for example Shakespeare's plays. Many of them are based on fictional or embellished accounts. They are not valued for being the narrative account of true events, rather for bringing to stand forth truths about life in general. Some of these truths cannot be compressed into a simple sentence and can only be understood with the full context of the story.
In my opinion, stories help us see some things more clearly than an actual account of events. In this way, a story presents truth, despite never taking place. By being able to flexibly build premises, sometimes even using imaginary constructs such as magic, they help us get clear view of otherwise obscure parts of experience.
This flexibility, I believe, is something people with schizophrenia also experience. Like playing story-time with real life. They are highly suggestive and have a different salience landscape. This may allow them to pick up on patterns others may miss. Since they are unencumbered by having to rely on the prevalent worldview, their delusions may seek connections freely between seemingly unrelated stimuli.
Of course, delusions in most patients will also follow the typical pattern which is seen with the disease. However, there is also other content, which might be valuable in the hands of the right listener.
A person with the disorder once told me, "I am being persecuted." I asked why. She replied "because I am a young girl. There are people in the world who hate young girls, who hate them for their youth, freshness and innocence. Once they have become married, and lose this trait, these people no longer hate them and respect them." I often think about this when thinking about patriarchy and feminism. It to me sheds some light on possible motivation behind patriarchy, at the same time, reveals something about the state of the subconscious of a feminist.
Yes, I think not obsessing over one's gender and living one's life freely is very sensible.
Thanks Mattias. The following statement you make resonates a lot with me since i think this was kind of my natural state.
"From this exploration, we derive a core characteristic of sincere speaking: in a sense, sincere speaking takes us back to the core of our Being, before it was covered by social conventions and meaning. Sincere speaking is done primarily from the feeling, animated body; much less from the head; it is an emotional speaking rather than a thinking-rational speaking. One who speaks before thinking is more sincere than one who first surrenders too much to considerations about what is right to say, about what must, may, and can be said."
That said being in the corporate world I have in the last time noticed that some kind of behavioral psychology is used to influence our emotions to basically train out this kind of sincere speaking out of you so you conform to the "Homo Deus" idea and conform to the souless corporate agenda which also connects to what you mentioned in your previous de-souling article. It is a known statement from Harari that "Humans are now hackable animals" and I think this is the implementation of what he means. I would be very interested if you could look into the corporate psychological methods and tell more if it is possible to keep your soul in such environments.
Impressive! Thanks… 🙏🏼
Beautiful essay on the power of words and what is expressed behind them. We can use it for connection, to experience we are all one, or we can use language to manipulate others and create fear and separateness.
Recognizing when you are under the spell of the ego illusion of separateness is the important first step to take before you can make contact with your true self and practice the art of sincere speech. 'Past Reality Integration' defines 5 defence mechanisms that form a concrete definition of the ego. Keeping them in mind is a necessary step to prevent errancy and delusion, because of the strong defensiveness of our ego. Our first reactions aren't allways from our true inner voice, like from the innocent, divine baby we once were, but often a defensive ego reaction or ego need we try to fulfill, without us consciously realizing it.
The 5 illusion described by the Dutch psychologist Ingeborg Bosch, who developed PRI are
- fear
- self doubt
- stress
- anger
- indifference
PRI also provides a method to dismantle the illusions and become in a free state, just as the little child must have been in, just before the defense mechanism became active.
How do you see this Mattias? Maybe I state it too firmly that we first have to recognize our ego talk/the mind with its thought and stories. I think you are right that the first and far most important thing is that we listen to our first reaction. But it is not always a good idea to express them. It depends on in what part of your consciousness you are in.
I personally can be way too impulsive with my first reactions, leading to miscommunication or difficult situations.
But in an environment where people are truly listening, it is more easy to be with your true self and speak sincere.
Mattias, please write something about ethical principles on the one hand and singularity on the other.
Do you follow the flow of singular events, which can change all the time, or do you follow the principles, which are eternal?
You have contributed to my thinking about truth. Truth is a hard nut to crack, especially if we want to go beyond the theories of correspondence and coherence, but also beyond truth as event and unconcealment, where truth is no longer a correspondence with an event, but becomes an mismatch, becomes a revelation of the real? But what if we introduce another turn, a more structural one, what if truth is a place inscribed in every symbolic form? Then the question came to me: where is truth born? And this is where your essay comes in. Truth has a place, it is born in my body. But is it really about the body? Or is the body a metaphor, because the body is always in the mind. Truth is born in the intellect (nous), in what is sometimes called intuition, which is pre-reflective, which precedes conscious rational reflection. This is how it is. Rational reflection has to take into account what we know pre-reflectively to be true and what we may be deceiving ourselves. We need truthfulness, we need a radical consciousness that feels the vibration of the field we are in. Poetic language can capture the rays of being, the rays of conscious oneness with all that is. Truth is therefore the place where the unconscious is born as the intuition of the mind to "understand" what is happening. Speaking the truth is the articulation of the strings of being that connect us to the whole. I would say that truth is not something rational, not even "corporeal", but a description of the flesh of the world. The love of truth is the condition of all knowledge, and to articulate it is the procedure of truths: love, art, politics, science.
Oh, yeah.
Merleau-Ponty said that phenomenological interrogation is never complete, and Lacan talked about the ontological non-completeness of the world, because there is no meta-language or big Other of the Other....
To accept that you don't have answers and that the world is torn and wounded, like the body of Christ... yes, that's really love.
I haven't read Schopenhauer yet. We are also limited here, by time.
You choose something, then you insist on being open to the openness of the world. You act. But then what, when the abyss opens up again - the emptiness, the loneliness - you touch that which keeps tripping up your life.
Dylan Evans in a blog (https://medium.com/@evansd66/the-immortal-life-of-ida-bauer-300093fb4040) talks about what a hero is all about: speaking honestly in public.
Kant already said it: think, then say it out loud (you act). That is the ethical principle. Then you say it, including everything that is unacceptable, that's why you suffer the consequences of not being accepted, people move away and you are left alone again. Honesty is dangerous. Who will you then call? You can only call your friend Loneliness, who is the only one who will not leave you, but also only friend you always want to avoid.
The hero speaks out, he is brave precisely because he suffers and is afraid.
There is a problem that Shunyamurti decribed as: Facing with emptiness ..."is the black hole that the ego isn’t strong enough to confront, and therefore would rather continue its vain fantasies of connections that aren’t real, and stay in a Peter Pan type of state, rather than to grow beyond the loneliness into the truth of what reality is."
What about infant male genital mutilation at birth. The young child often without pain medication has the end of his penis removed moments after entering air and before suckling and the sounds of his mother. It occurred in a very high amount of the population in Australia and to this day in many countries.
The bonding sounds of the mother you describe are grasped at through intense localised pain. Poor breast feeding a potential downside.
Give the baby boys the care they need lest they grow up triggered as an Iraq vet.
Let society allow more young males experience that paradise of the mothers voice free off pain and trauma.
It’s become thoughtless tradition. The health benefits have all been debunked. No other mammal does it.
There are too much things in our "rich society"; also too much art works and too much words without meaning (social networks etc.) and we are lost in that "forest" ... Is it possible for parents to start with "truth speech education" for themselves and for their children? Can that happen without a BIG CHANGE in the global society?
I have no answer but I understand what is truth speech; I remember I have felt the body-mind connection in a few occasions. Usually our talk (also mine!) is a small talk or only an information exchange.