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Thoughts on Desani’s Series of Articles “Very High and Very Low”

“The silence of a falling star
lights up a purple sky
and when I wonder where you are
I’m so lonesome I could die.”
Hank Williams

“Hello darkness my old friend
I’ve come to talk with you again…”
Paul Simon

Behold the rising sun – silence. Behold the setting moon – silence. Behold the eyes of your lover – silence. The fragrance of a rose – silence. Silence is that by which anything at all manifests, is intelligible. All phenomena originate in silence and there disappears, thus it is astride graves we give birth*. And Desani writes self-consciousness [is] the imposition of nothing on nothing at all. Ex nihilio nihil fit. (Out of nothing comes nothing.) And he quotes from an unpublished manuscript that “To shrink time into a circle and to be outside the circle” and so to know all, all.” God maintains silence so we can speak. True beneficence. Is he sustained by our effort, our brave folly? What is it to him, our trouble, tumult, turmoil, travail? Thunder clouds – lightening – wind – storming renewal, rejuvenation, respite, and new growth. I shake you, jolt-volt you into new life.

In a new post at Desani.net I link to Desani’s Very High and Very Low writings. I wanted to make some separate but personal comments about these without ‘meddling’ with the original. I’ve tried assimilating here, and in many other places too, the essence of his teaching. Its a fools errand, I know. I quote and summarize him and intersperse my own thinking freely. My efforts amount to nothing. Readers are advised to go to, rely on the source writings here at Todd Katz’s Desani.org.

Desani says one must surrender to art. Unpack that. To surrender to art is to be carried away by beauty. The same for Love, Liberty, Wisdom, Truth, any of the concomitants of consciousness. Pursuit – it is so that to intend to achieve the insight of the Buddha, of Jesus too, is a kind of pursuit – of these serves to push them over the horizon, puts them out of reach. It is quite different to have a strong intention. (One realizes along the way that the more you cling to something, a thing, an ideal, the more it slips from your grip. One fails to get water by grasping whereas cupping the hand and receiving that given is the contrasting view.) The same for enlightenment, Nirvana. “There’s nothing to be said that can do more for enlightenment than what a finger pointing at the moon can do for seeing the moon.” Zen proverb.

Desani writes that the Buddha decried the secrecy surrounding Indian spiritual practices of his time. He also writes that Indian teaching of Yoga and associated practices has degenerated into a for profit business. A Nadi text read to his acolytes in Austin Texas on June 21, 1980 says Desani is a “new [kind of] Yogi in the world”. I think he intended to make these spiritual practices freely available, at least more easily accessible, for people. He repeatedly tells of searching far and wide for a particular text or initiation into a technique and now he freely shares that with this audience. (In the “Yellow Text of Theravada Buddhism” he publishes instructions, e.g.) So we benefit from his efforts. He acts on our behalf – the people of the world. Yet, keep in mind he repeatedly says these practices are for the especially initiated, that dangers lie in the path of those who would go it alone, without a qualified teacher. That seems contradictory. Admittedly I’m unaware of how one would have esoteric religious and yoga techniques available generally without bypassing requirements for specialized instruction. Still, one should not expect to pay for instruction from a charlatan that could very well lead to a false, a bad outcome. My best thought is just to do Bhakti yoga, which is ‘love of the Lord’ and leave the arcane practices to the so-called experts. That was Desani’s fall back instruction if you can’t find honest and open teaching. If one follows Desani’s teachings one at least is aware of the pitfalls, the ubiquitous charlatanism, the lurking evil, and is better equipped to find the narrow path onward. He says that strong intention to do the practice necessary results mysteriously in doors being opened to one. If it is your destiny to find a good teacher, one will appear. Meanwhile lead a moral life. If one surrenders to art, to Beauty, one has largely learned how to surrender to God of which Beauty is one facet along with Love, Truth, the others.

What comes through the ‘Very High and Very Low’ columns, and profoundly, too, is Desani the philosopher and man of religion and for a bonus, a man of the world. He addresses the main questions of philosophy, theology, and human society which, of course, are not amenable to final answers. He explains why saying that high attainments of the Buddha and Yogis, those like him must, must, be experienced; that language, words, are of this world and share with all else of this world the ultimate result of causing pain and suffering. You can’t get to ‘heaven’ by talking about it. Naturally that applies also to ‘enlightenment’, nirvana, and such. God might be the ‘Word’, but that doesn’t mean you can talk your way into his grace, or any of the great beings that reside in him, the Lords, Divine Mothers, Devis, and so on.

On pdf page sixty-two I’d point out this gem. Paraphrase. Reality, the word, is a symbol, can’t be defined, can be truly and absolutely experienced. Bliss above, beyond all sensing, pure consciousness, the substratum of all attributes yet devoid of any and all (attributes), the entire Presence, and the entire Absence.

Insight: Desani demonstrates again and again his great capacity for learned commentary based on his study and assimilation of ancient Indian writings, thought, religion, philosophy, history, and art. To say his knowledge, and more importantly, his understanding dates back to prehistory, say, at least 5000 years, is an understatement. His genius is to bring this to a focus for his readers in that when he writes something, makes an observation, there is behind that a synthesis of ancient thought and real life experience, plus practiced applications of extreme esoteric methods, rituals, and the like, into a finely cut gem that he presents with his assessment of a situation.

Desani created literature. When he describes in detail his country of origin, the people come alive on the page in all their sordid meanness, greed, their filth, their follies, their triumphs and failures, their beauty, cleverness – all of it is put on display. Yes, its a sordid mess mixed up with high art and beauty and love and hate….in short he shows humanity as it really is. Yet, in the end, he maintains his detachment and with a twist works in great Truths about Reality, Time, Space, Metaphysics and the like. In the end the alert reader having been completely wrung out, is dumped pell mell into profound silence known as Kaivalyam there to deal with it as best possible. Writes that Silence is G_d. Literally. That experiencing Kaivalya as the Buddha did is a kind of death. Further writes that Buddhism is India’s greatest export [contribution to the world].

Desani is acutely aware of the problems of the Indian people and freely compares other cultures. He pulls no punches and it comes across clearly that he considers India a third world country badly in need of reform focused on supplying the basic needs of communities beginning with sanitation. He considers the ways of western countries far superior when it comes to sanitation, governance in general, and methods to address problems that arise from explosive population growth.

I doubt there is anyone alive on Earth who is capable of dealing honestly, forthrightly, with the Nadi writings in the way that Desani did. The sad truth is these writings and most of the “world view” therein presented will pass into history unappreciated unless spiritual awareness and growth become ascendant. Consider that Desani.org has been in existence for decades and to my knowledge no one has come forward that has the capacity to appreciate and further Desani’s work – other than Mr. Katz himself, of course. People say diamonds, precious stones, life itself as we know it, existing on planets orbiting suns across the galaxy, the cosmos, are rarities. No! What is rare is appreciation for Truth itself, for the Real itself, for those concomitants of consciousness, Love, Beauty, Wisdom, Liberty, Truth, and, finally, for Love of God.

Finally, as I’ve mentioned several times there is a ‘lost’ manuscript of Desani’s called “Rissala“. I am reliably informed that the “Very High and Very Low” columns are a major part of that manuscript.

*Samuel Beckett “Waiting for Godot”

More on Cultural Epochs

God descends into matter in order to re-emerge a self realized being. This is transfiguration on a cosmic scale.


Just beyond the fringe of our understanding true faith waits to take us from the sound of silence to the brilliant resonance of God’s glory.

Consciousness’ refinement from art through religion, science, history and finally philosophy is the process of awakening spirit as it extrudes (extricates or frees or liberates) itself from matter.

______________________

These are the general modes of man’s being in the world, mere stages on life’s way*. They do exhibit a progression. One merges nicely into the others. They comingle and represent the transfiguration of (inert) matter into self realised consciousness which this writer postulates to be a sufficient meaning and purpose of the whole cosmic activity.

R.G. Collingwood, the original author of this scheme, thought philosophy the natural culmination of the stages. Art, Religion, Science, History are the foundations or building blocks of that over arching structure, a fractalization. That is, each epoch, stage, is a reiteration of its precedent, slightly altered, modified, as in a tree where the twig is a modification of the trunk.

The purpose of Art is beauty and it asks man’s first question of the world. Who am I, and why? The purpose of religion is transfiguration. Man is a kind of becoming. The incomplete reaches for an ever distant fulfillment. The purpose of science is the apotheosis of knowledge but science only and ever lacks answers for each answer leads to further questioning. The purpose of History is utopia. So, beauty becomes transfiguration becomes complete knowledge becomes utopia, which these share, always being just over an ever receding horizon.

Philosophy teaches that we stare into the abyss+ – and are surprised to find it stares back with what some would claim is a deathly grimace. That is, the world is strangely bereft of true hope as we are seemingly on our own here.

The biggest mistake is, in the western world, christianity simultaneously embraces and rejects God’s covenant with man by misunderstanding man enjoys co-creator status. We own this (world). Were we not given dominion over the earth, according to the christian faith? What this writer has noticed is that christians tend to ruin the present with dreams of the future. Some would call this a sickness unto death*. I ask, since you have this dominion, when are you going to take charge?

This fatal flaw of christian doctrine permeates all subsequent permutations of the epochs and underpins the western culture and is fundamentally why we lurch from crisis to crisis. We increasingly live in chaos because we don’t have a valid logic of the universe.

And, there may not even be a fathomable logic, at least not for humans. However, as the opening quotes are meant to illustrate, strip orthodoxy from christianity, or religion in general, and simply live by faith. That is the answer. Purpose and meaning will find you; they are self generating through the mechanism we call life.

Also, as learned through my mentor, G.V. Desani, if you only have one religion you have a partial view of reality. I’d expand on that to say that if you are stuck in one or another mode of being as described here as cultural epochs, you likewise only have a partial view.

We struggle not in vain and reaching one summit we ought all to be gratified there is always on the horizon an even greater mount.
__________________________

+ Friedrich Nietzsche

*Soren Kierkegaard

Cultural Epochs

There is nothing that can be said that can do more for understanding the full meaning and purpose of life (enlightenment) than what a finger pointing at the moon can do for ‘seeing’ the moon. Zen proverb

It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of man (kings). Proverbs 25:2

You ere if you mistake mere measurement for understanding. Acquarius

Paleolithic man saw the birth of Art. There is a premonition of Religion in all art but it was Neolithic man that saw its emergence. In our own social memory it was the Greeks that brought the epoch of Science into the world. History found its feet a mere century or two ago so the next phase can hardly have begun. The diagram serves to illustrate the phases of man’s becoming awareness, some would characterize it as his apotheosis.

Art doesn’t, can’t articulate that the real is a self manifesting first principle but beauty itself contains this germ. Being itself is a fundamental idea with the power to self manifest. It is potentiality with the power to actualize and the present is a realization or actualization of the past and future which are potentialities. Beauty is the primal element of the noosphere. Of art music lives in the moment but its yearning is for the next moment. It is the essence of restlessness, of finding completion in the infinite regress of the horizon beyond the now. This restlessness characterizes all subsequent modes of being discussed.

The christians generally can’t get past their feelings of guilt. Guilt is the father of anger, hatred, self loathing. Salvation is the undoing of guilt through forgiveness, redemption. Guilt is self loathing and makes it difficult if not impossible to achieve blamelessness through self sacrifice, to accept the self as sacred.

Speaking of science, if knowledge is always knowledge of something, then only reason leads to knowledge. All knowledge is through sense perception and memory. Direct knowledge, intuition, noesis, is not based on experience. So, science is strictly material in nature and its main flaw is in the non-material nature of understanding. There is understanding not based on knowledge. Science would never postulate or understand that matter conveys individuality and form universality.

It may be true that the whole is in some sense the same thing repeated endlessly, as Nietzsche is said to have thought. After all, for instance, all words come from the same alphabet yet somehow its possible to infinitely rearrange them in order for the New to constantly emerge. It might be more accurate to say that every instance of the Real is an elaboration of its predecessor or antecedent, similar to fractals.

This scheme is of course the brain child of R.G. Collingwood. His book Speculum Mentis is a beautifully written discourse on the subject. I’ve written about him several times here. A search of Collingwood results in seven items so I won’t link to them. I’m doing this addendum because I wanted to include the above diagram.

What is suggested by the stages is that there is an end within, Aristotle’s entelechy. This end within manifests first as Art, then Religion, and so forth. With each stage the end within changes. The artist gives beauty while the religious aims at union with a deity. The scientist works for the most elegant theory, expression of understanding of the world. The idea of history is that by stages the culture of man is perfected over time. The original beauty of artistic expression is still there but has evolved to encompass all that culture entails.

The end within an acorn is, of course, an oak tree. But if you make boards of the oak then the end within the acorn becomes, for instance, a table, among myriad other possibilities. The end within an acorn is also a stump, or fire for the hearth. This is a decent metaphor for the cultural epochs which is our subject here. The oak dreams of the acorn. The acorn dreams of the oak. The stump lives in them both.

Sentient life forms are an end within. Of what is unknowable but some understanding might be possible. What is knowable, I guess, is that it just started [on this planet] and given the expected life span of the sun has 4.5 billion or so “years” to manifest. Who are we, or what? Where did we come from? Where are we going? What is our purpose? Meaning? Any certain knowledge of these is not attainable. What is attainable is a gradual revelation of beauty, of truth, of love, of the end within. Cultural Epochs are expressions of the emergence of these qualities. How are we different from a rose in bloom…”such frost white felicity to shame the moon” * . Consider that before the emergence of man, of sentient life forms, beauty, truth, wisdom, liberty, love, did not exist but were in the rocks crying out, as it were. The whole of creation is an aspiration, a yearning, longing, a church spire reaching, a pine pointing, to these concomitants of consciousness to be made explicit.

Plotinus is said to have thought that existence, life, is a flight from the alone to the alone. Alone to alone equals a null. Yet even in this nothing exists flight, flight from one make believe to a somewhat different make believe. Its a journey, a process, so flight is all, totally encompassing, the point of departure being the same as the point of arrival. The Real is not a state, it is a becoming. Every attempt to own it begins from a false premise. One only owns things.

Think of T.S. Eliot: “We shall arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” From Little Gidding

* G.V. Desani wrote this.

We are all Don Giovanni

Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or, Vol. I

The overture begins with certain deep, earnest, uniform notes. Then we hear for the first time, infinitely far away, a hint which yet, as if it had come too early, is instantly recalled, until later one hears again and again, bolder and bolder, louder and louder, that voice, which first subtly and coyly, and not without anxiety slipped in, but could not force its way through. Sometimes in nature one sees the horizon thus heavy and lowering; too heavy to support itself, it rests upon the earth, and hides everything in the blackness of night; a single hollow rumble is heard, not yet in movement, but a deep muttering within itself-then one sees at the farthest limit of the heavens, remote on the horizon, a flash; swiftly it runs along the earth, and is instantly gone. But soon it comes again, it grows stronger; for a moment it lights up the whole heaven with its flame, in the next the horizon seems darker than ever, but more swiftly, even more fiery it blazes up; it is as if the darkness itself had lost its tranquility and was coming into movement. As the eye in this first flash suspects a conflagration, so the ear in that dying strain of the violin has a foreboding of the whole intensity of passion. There is apprehension in that flash, it is as if it were born in anxiety in the deep darkness-such is Don Juan’s life. There is dread in him, but this dread is his energy. It is not a subjectively reflected dread, it is a substantial dread. We do not have in the overture-what we commonly say without realizing what we say-despair. Don Juan’s life is not despair; but it is a whole power of sensuousness, which is born in dread, and Don Juan himself is this dread, but this dread is precisely the daemonic joy of life. When Mozart has thus brought Don Juan into existence, then his life is developed for us in the dancing tones of the violin in which he lightly, casually hastens forward over the abyss. When one skims a stone over the surface of the water, it skips lightly for a time, but as soon as it ceases to skip, it instantly sinks down into the depths; so Don Juan dances over the abyss, jubilant in his brief respite.

_______________________________

Dread is our energy. It is substantial dread. Despair is not what we feel it is our life powered by sensuousness born in dread. Our joy of life is the daemonic joy of life hastening over the abyss. On cessation we sink into the depths our joy not even a bright memory.

This is the gift of Christianity positing, as it does, personal fulfillment on an ever receding horizon infinitely removed from who we really are.

Without memory there is no Real.

Note on Epistemology

We’re not supposed to know. Its a blessing that we don’t. By Grace we are protected from knowing. Bliss depends on this. Such knowing that we would live our lives in its discovery vanishes the moment it is grasped. Because. Knowledge presumes object(s). What if there are no objects? Is knowledge always knowledge of? Grasping and knowing are similar. The desire to own. My knowledge! Certainty. Attraction. Who is the knower? The known? Are they the same? How to dissolve this clinging…

Discovery is the action of the unknown. The less you know the more you create.

Recent untitled poem

The rite of spring
riot of blooms
rout of cold winds, winter’s bane
shivering bones
clattering in dismal dungeons dark

Violets are gone now
and iris and lily
bluebonnets take the stage
peerless blue to shame a cloudless sky

Pretty pink primrose too
takes the eye and
pink petal’s secret promise folds
virgin thighs’ blissful path

See me touch me
feel me smell me
please don’t pick me
let me cast seed and wither and die

I’ll be here every spring
past winter’s baleful fling
and if you fail to come again
my bloom our last visit will ever contain

Of all I am the flowering sum
Pinnacle of the past
nadir of the future
purpose centered everywhere bounded nowhere

John Hinds
2017

History, Culture, Language, and Ethos

The Real takes shape in memory alone.
Marcel Proust

We are only individuals at present and the only real individual is the One, all that is. Our actions are only apparently real. Nothing really happens. Our actions are caused by the whole of things, not really by our will. Therefore, only the One is an individual.
Irwin Lieb

“Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? What shall I say unto them?”And God said unto Moses, “I AM That I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” 
Exodus 3

Proust wrote that in his monumental Remembrance of Things Past. It has always struck me as a profound observation and when I recently ran across a note from years ago it immediately came back into focus.

The note was that in getting a culture – language, ethos, that is – we get a past, we make it explicit. This is the common cultural, historical past.

That was from Irwin Lieb. We were studying R.G. Collingwood’s Speculum Mentis (Map of Knowledge). I’ve written here before about Collingwood and return often to contemplate his contribution to my contemplative life.

Plato observed that in thought we are always going “up” to principles, or “down” from them. Thought somehow puts one in touch with a higher order of things, a height from which we can enjoy a broader perspective. Socrates, Plato’s teacher, said the unexamined life is not worth living, it stunts one’s growth. But a life of thought is a life of reasoning writ large. The “Good” of Plato is the principle to be found in an examined life – the life of reason or thought. It is the bringing together of ideas and forming a synthesis of them.

We are considering history – memory, in Proust’s language, and its contribution to man’s place in the world, to his finding meaning and purpose. Language and culture exist because we have a past and the past exists because we have ideas or thought or reasons that give it shape. Without language we have no thought and no past or history. You see the synergy?

Collingwood postulated that history was one stage of being in the world. He taught us that art, religion, science, and history were part of a dialectic process, one being the foundation of the next in an emergence from primitive to refined modes of being of sentient life. It is said that because ignorance is bliss the artist can lead a full life. That is because art asks questions about the real for which it expects no answer. It lacks even the self awareness, consciousness, to understand its efforts to be questions about reality. Religion at least attains a level of self awareness where wonder about the nature of the world is seen as questions about existence itself. And science takes the next step but instead of positing answers in an absolute other as in the religious mode, it abstracts meaning and purpose as insubstantial, not concrete. It denies historicity by its very nature. Its abstraction leaves it without a basis in concrete reality to which we can relate. It thereby becomes uninteresting, unrevealing, and looses its relevance when it comes to the task of finding meaning and purpose.

In the particular there is buried generality (universality) we want to bring out. When it is extracted science is speaking of hypothetical if universal judgments. The language of science is mathematics which is closely akin to music. Is there a more abstract medium than music? Now, the medium of architecture, for instance, is existential mass. Language, the word, is closer to that substantiality. We can live by words. They can be grasped. They’re concrete, to make a pun. Mathematics, science, art, and religion, inform that life, enrich it, but without language the whole edifice crumbles into oblivion.

Having a memory of the past engages man in real existence. Whether that is something that persists is debatable. Likely it is as ephemeral – and maybe entirely an illusion – as the fleeting moment. But we can talk about the past, our history, and at least we seem to have the capacity to hold onto memories even if we can’t hold onto the instance out of which those memories forever flow into the reservoir of history. We desire a complete synthesis, a safe haven from tumult and its turmoil and trouble. But that ever escapes our grasp. We, while born astride our own graves, are given a glimpse of light during our plunge back into darkness. This brief yet precious beyond understanding moment is an instance of the Cosmos seeing into its very own nature. Take heart that we humans, all sentient life everywhere in the Universe, are the agency by which Reality, Existence itself – God, if you like – has self awareness. The world realizes itself through you and me and all like us. So, of course it is never ending, never complete, always escaping us on a distant horizon. Its somehow comforting, therefore, that the only real individual is the One.

Biblically speaking, God becomes an individual when the Word is made flesh, taking the form of Jesus the Christ. Accordingly, the thoughts expressed here bestow that same status on every sentient life form anywhere. “I am” sent Moses. “I am” sends All.

“G_d” is not a noun. Rather, “he’s” a verb. I am, you are, he, she, it IS. When he says I am sends you he is also saying, without being rude, don’t ask foolish questions. It’s obvious who I am and if you have to ask, well, I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t understand.

In memory of Judy Heckert Woehr

     Apotheosis

Black scape
Occupies space
on my wall
In my head
a door which is
itself
a doorless room
the mysterious whole
mysterious severed parts
come together
to hold nothing
but itself.
Tangibility
In my head – ideas
images
seethe around
it’s black edges
compelling me
to turn away.
I think of structures
their particular
rhythm
of destruction and renewal –
An apogee of atoms
tightly contained here
as a moment is held
solid it time
and at the last
totally grasped.

    Barbara Sturgell
    February, 1973, Austin, Texas

    In response to a piece of art I created, an assemblage named Apotheosis

Lovers

     My excited ideas carry me away to a place where my presence in you is eternally presupposed, where we first met, where the simplest of seeds, just a transparent offering of your eyes into mine – moist fecund penetration of shameless desire and receptiveness, took root. And what grows now in this ground through our common experience is a yet young growth seen through rapidly evolving configurations tumbling cataclysmicly in turmoil about each other in a kind of spontaneity, like an ever changing yet never changing waterfall of thought and emotional textures, like light playing on light in the abyss, like colliding stars; ecstatic revelations of the silent blackness behind that common nothingness around which our gazing into each others eyes plays like solar flares, and which alone could support my perpetual falling, falling, falling, falling, and simultaneously reflect, reflect, reflect, reflect, our faces back and forth to each other in an infinite regress of images metamorphosing into worlds of subtlety in infinite regress.

     Finally, hovering on the abyss, I am just a benumbed butterfly in the winter wind, chasing you, a fallen leaf blown into a fluttering enticement.

     Potentiality is to actuality as meaning is to purpose as love is to joining. As you are to me as I am to you. We are the same, only the perspective is different. I confer individuality. You confer universality.