4:04 AM Wednesday, 31 October 2012

Today I am writing as always for spiritual awakening. It is not as if I really have choices although I am free to choose. I do as I please and I am pleased to write although I could choose to do something else like wash the car or make some money, hunt some rabbits or tend to crops. Were I to be guided by rational calculations I might well do something else other than write but long ago I discovered the divinity of inner guidance so that I value whatever it is I feel pleased to do because I know what I please is of divine origin and not necessarily what my ego would understand to be in my best interests. I have at times compared my method of choosing to the act of walking on an unknown trail taking each step knowing the trail is a path of divine intention like Gods will not my own egocentric will - it is as if I am following a divine pathway. I recall with great acuteness becoming aware in the year 1984 of the amazing transformation in my method of choosing what to do and think. At that time I was content to describe the change in words from the language used by D.T. Suzuki in a book on Zen Buddhism. He used the terminology of ratiocination and transcendental intuition to describe the before and after mental

orientation applicable to Buddhist enlightenment. Ratiocination was the English word Suzuki chose to describe the mentality of intellectuality which he elaborated as climbing a pinnacle of intellect until the end is reached and then with no hope of going back down the only viable choice is to leap into the emptiness of the void of intuition. At that time, these metaphors seemed to me to fit my own previous experiences of radical psychic mutation so intimately I was quite convinced of their divine origin and uncanny accuracy. My own experiences of psychic mutation had taken place quite independently and autonomously without even the least influence of any intellectual or spiritual tradition but strictly as a consequence of a series of events involving women and changes in my personal circumstances that had combined in a most unexpected way to create new opportunities for me to engage spontaneously in prolonged pleasant sessions of introspection which in turn led to joyful awakening of awareness of previously hidden purposefulness behind those events all of which I considered to be the most amazing gift of spiritual liberation including my initiation into secret knowledge beyond anything Id previously imagined possible. From that time onwards, more than thirty years now, I was convinced that divine intelligence shapes the path I take in life even when I am unaware that purposes beyond my perception are guiding my choices intuitively.

In recent years Ive often compared these experiences of mine with the statement attributed to GWF Hegel in a letter he wrote about seeing Napoleon Bonaparte on horseback riding through the city of Jena in 1806, the day before the great battle that finally brought the long awaited European revolution from France to Prussia and to the whole German speaking world. I interpret Hegels words as meaning that he saw Napoleon as an unconscious unwitting instrument of the divine purposefulness behind the revolutionary changes in society leading towards a more-democratic constitutional social structure in which the absolute freedom necessary for philosophical autonomy is defended and protected by the collective power of the social aggregate a new type of government quite distinct from the ancien regime designed to protect and defend private interest of a tiny micro-minority of the rich dynastic families and their allied senior clergymen. Others have interpreted Hegels statement as a sign of his Chauvinistic admiration of Napoleon the mass murderer of the person rather than admiration of the worldsoul which Hegel understood to be using Napoleon like a whore to achieve the goals of divine purposefulness of processes of cultural evolutionary mutation. It was only a year or two at most before I read Suzukis words on ratiocination versus transcendental intuition that Id read Hegels Philosophy of History in

the great books series edited by Mortimer Adler borrowed from the local municipal library in Tucson, Arizona. I knew nothing then of Hegels letter about Napoleon. Nor did I know that The Philosophy of History was published after he died by his followers collecting together notes of his lectures on the subject. It was not one of the literary works he himself chose to publish. From my reading I immediately concluded that Hegel and I were in harmony regarding what I then called integral consciousness. It was from my own experiences of integration of my own experiences, in my introspection, that I first became aware of the previously concealed divine purposefulness perceptible in the integration of the events of my life. My conclusion from reading Hegels Philosophy of History was that Hegel had experienced a similar awakening of divine purposefulness in the events of human history and the evolution of human society, culture and civilization. I found in Hegel perhaps the first legitimate confirmation of my own amazing discovery of the secrets of integral consciousness. From that time onwards I have considered Hegel to be one of the very few kindred spirits I have discovered. In early 1984, after that surprize discovery of my spiritual kinship with Hegel, I accidentally stumbled on another spiritual kinship that would prove to be even more influential one that remains still the most powerful of all such fortuitous harmonious resonances. I rediscovered Plato in the Symposium and the Phaedrus. I had earlier but very superficial exposure

to both the Republic (1978) and the Phaedo (1980) but my reading of those books did not have any immediate noticeable memorable effects that I can recall. My reading of the Symposium and the Phaedrus both had an immediate and momentous and memorable, enduring effect that continues to this day. Perhaps the phrase that was most influential then in early 1984 after my first reading was the sentence from the Phaedrus which concerns how authentic Socratic/Platonic philosophers go about their practice of philosophy a quest powered by their love of all knowledge for the specific purpose of emancipation from and transcendence of delusional opinion and experience of the illuminating divine truth of enlightenment. The three words that leapt out of that sentence due to their exceptional resonance with my own independent ad autonomous experiences of integral consciousness and psychic mutation were these three words:

PERFECT MYSTIC VISION

I felt an immense resonance between these words and my own experiences in integral consciousness - a state of being in which I felt as if I was able to see through opaque barriers that limited my awareness in ordinary consciousness. It was like seeing through space previously obscured by clouds or like the removal of a veil or a wall of fog. And what I saw was that unlike

ordinary awareness which was full of awareness of flaws and mistakes, errors and depravities in the integral conscious state of being everything was divinely intended and meant to be precisely as it is that is perfect flawlessly perfect and complete. Upon my first reading I was certain that Plato had experienced precisely the same sort of illuminating experiences I had quite spontaneously and autonomously experienced. It has taken years for me to more fully understand what Plato was saying in addition to the obvious implied truth that he and some knowledge of the reality of the amazing experience of the universe and all of reality being divinely intended and perfect in even the least detail. In the context that Plato used the three words were embedded in a statement about methods that comprise the practices of philosophers who are possessed by Gods and regarded by ordinary people as mad or insane because they apply themselves to philosophy and the experiences of the perfect mystic vision instead of the common objects of human ambition making money, gratifying physical urges, exercising power, collecting food etcetera. The sentence that forms the context is a sentence intended to communicate to readers that it is a mistake to give in to promises from other people who want to use you for sex instead of using your time to engage in introspection directed at experiencing the perfect mystic vision. Instead of being deceived and

used by other cunning and deceptive people for their selfish sexual purposes a young person is advised that they will be much better served by choosing to become perfect by practicing specific philosophical methods which are also described in the paragraph that forms the context of the sentence in which three three words are embedded. That sentence is:

It is only by the right use of such aids to recollection, which form a continual initiation into the PERFECT MYSTIC VISION that a human can become perfect in the true sense of the word
The method to be practiced instead of indulging in having sex with human predators who seek to seduce you is the method involving the right use of aids to recollecting. What is it that is being recollected. Some clues can be gleaned from exploring the whole paragraph in which this sentence is embedded.
It is impossible for a soul that has never seen the truth to enter into our human shape; it takes a man to understand by the use of universals, and to collect out of the multiplicity

of sense-impressions a unity arrived at by a process of reason. Such a process is simply the recollection of the things which our soul once perceived when it took its journey with a god, looking down from above on the things to which we now ascribe reality and gazing upwards towards what is truly real. That is why it is right that the soul of the philosopher alone should regain its wings; for it is always dwelling in memory as best it may upon those things which a god owes his divinity to dwelling upon. IT IS ONLY BY THE RIGHT USE OF SUCH AIDS TO RECOLLECTION WHICH FORM A CONTINUAL INITIATION INTO THE PERFECT MYSTIC VISION THAT A MAN CAN BECOME PERFECT IN THE TRUE SENSE OF THE WORD Because he stands apart from the common objects of human ambition and applies himself to the divine, he is reproached by most men for being out of his wits; they do not realize that he is in fact possessed by a god.

What is recollected is knowledge of the psyche spiritual knowledge of past life experiences of journeys

with gods where we saw both true reality and the delusional reality of ordinary awareness. This was far more comprehensive fit of an authors words and my own independent experience than Id experienced with Hegels integral method of awakening awareness of divine purposefulness. From the time of my first chance encounter with Platos Phaedrus until about a decade ago Plato became the dominant writer with whom I identified and was interested in in contrast all of the other candidates for greatness did not even come anywhere near being interesting enough for me to study comprehensively especially the modern (post Cartesian) and contemporary writers. The brilliant radiance of Plato for me, like the sun, outshone the more distant stars of. I dont recall exactly yet the sequence of events that re-awakened my interest in Hegel in the last decade and more specifically in the last five or six years. A search just now using the software tools available turned up a review of Francis Fukuyamas The End of History and The Last Man - which I wrote on April 16th of the year 2001. It was in 2007 that I undertook a more comprehensive reading of the whole body of work of Plato and in so doing discovered so many new harmonies that I experienced awakening of new spiritual insights including possibilities of having been exposed to Platos

literary works in past lives and/or being an avatar of a reincarnating transmigrating psyche/soul/spirit who has been been a Platonist scholar in a past life or perhaps even Plato. As I recall some details of my philosophical journey under divine guidance it was in 2007 and 2008 that I began to feel some reluctant attraction to improving my understanding of the intellectual context in which my teachers in schools and at the universities I attended in the fifties sixties and seventies were educated and thus I hoped to come to a better understanding of the intellectual influences that shaped the world view into which I was initiated along with the many other children born in 1948 who were my classmates at Como Primary School and Applecross Senior High School, at the University of Western Australia and John Curtin University where I studied prior to entering the work force as a professional mineral processing engineer in the natural resources extraction industries. In the process of studying the intellectual context of that world view into which I was initiated in my primary secondary and tertiary schooling I have explored the literary works of many authors including Friedrich Nietzsche, Noam Chomsky, Jean Gebser, Carl Jung, Eric Fromm, Karl Marx, Edmund Husserl, Abraham Maslow, Theodore Roszak, Thomas Berry, Fritjof Capra, Richard Rorty, Walt Whitman, Max Weber, Friedrich Hayek, William James, D.T. Suzuki, Karl Popper, Peter Drucker, Carlos Castaneda and many many others. All of these roads seem to

converge in a renewed interest in GWF Hegel. Not Immanmnuel Kant nor Johann Goethe, not William Blake of David Hume. Not Baruch Spinoza or Rene Descartes. GWF Hegel. Be that as it may be it does not diminish the overwhelming importance of Plato in my understanding of my own experiences of indoctrination and my emancipation beginning in about 1981-1984. If governments are best run like a business then government should maximize its profits rather than operating at a loss and financing the loss by raising debt financing. Maximizing profits for a government is easily accomplished by maximizing sales revenue for goods and services using the unique advantage of legitimate force to compel taxation of fifty percent of all income and sales tax of 100 percent on all goods and services. But governments may not be best run like a business since it is by definition a monopoly and must be a monopoly. The better question is then how is a monopoly business like government best run? I think the answer is very obvious. Government should be run to maximize aggregate revenue to maximize tax revenue by maximizing GNP and that is best done by maximizing freedom of speech and of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness

-fin-