Aphorisms for the 21st Century Mystic
In Which the Discourse is Once Again Abandoned for Better, Weirder Things
The world as it is can no longer be understood right-side-up. Anyone who would try to understand the world must see it upside-down.
Everything the world assumes, I cannot assume.
Whatever I oppose will, before long, become the thing I need most.
So I will not oppose the world or the world’s assumptions. I will busy myself with what the world has forgotten.
Most of what is good has been forgotten by most people.
“I want to change the world.” No one can change the world. Only when I understand this can I begin to try.
In the same way, the mystic says: “It is impossible to improve myself, since all I have is the very thing which needs improving.” This is one argument for Grace.
The mystic is always an artist in her soul, and for this reason she loves Nature. For her, the two are perfectly intertwined: she sees that Art cannot be an imitation of Nature, because people are not truly apart from Nature.
Art is the Human Nature.
Art is a trick which deceives us into the truth.
The mystic is always an artist; the mystic is never a wise person.
A wise person came to God and asked what he ought to believe. God said, “Stop believing and discover it.”
All that can be done has been done. All that could happen has happened. Yet new things are always happening, everywhere.
Imagine knowing about the birth of children and denying the existence of miracles.
Imagine seeing a tree and believing the world is evil.
To fear death is to need it, since it is the only thing which can finally release me from the fear of death.
A life that cannot admit mystery will make one very smart. One will know everything and understand everything and nothing will ever be a surprise. And that will be it.
Despite our protests, the world insists on its reality.
The wind, mountains, birds never disagree on what they will do today.
The universe rests in cycles; repetition tends towards decay; yet by the very force of repetition—always without knowing why—it still produces something new.
So the artist understands that to be new is to live in harmony with the old. To make new things, but by accident, while busily continuing some ancient work.
So life sustains itself by doing what has always been done, and the new unfolds according to its own nature, without its even meaning to.
All that has happened—every event, each moment—had to happen exactly as it did for the world to be as it is now. Since the world is as it is now, everything had to happen exactly as it did.
So all things which exist create their own fate.
The paradox of true things: they contain their own opposite.
On the Modern World’s Assumptions
It’s said that everything is performance. Then even more so the performance of the absence of performing!
Be careful around those who desire freedom but require it be called by the names they choose.
If someone encourages you to learn your true history, while preaching that history is only horror, do not trust them. Yet don’t oppose them, or else risk devoting yourself to the horror. Instead, learn your true history.
No people are more important than children. This is a secret which must be kept from most children, and perhaps from some adults.
It is good to be radical, so we are told. But to be truly radical would mean denying the material supremacy over the spiritual. You will find few radicals capable of this.
In this way, if any of my radical beliefs can be restated by the most powerful people, I must admit defeat. But when I have finally found something they cannot say, I will have found the truly radical thing.
Be wary of those who love a nation, whether their own or another’s. It’s one thing to love a people, or a place. But the boundaries of my nation determine the boundaries of my mind.
A prevailing notion would have that we withhold all moral opinions. This is a doctrine of freedom which desires, above all, total freedom from the judgment of others. It shows only that we cannot deal with the voice in our own heads.
Yet if I could control other people’s thoughts of me, the responsibility would drive me insane! Freedom is freedom from controlling others.
Be careful around people who care too much for “reason.” Not only do they never agree on its meaning, they continually insist on its having vague, real-world powers, which no living person has yet seen.
In the same way, to be “spiritual” means to be reasonable. It is to say: “There are things I can’t know and things I can. But I would rather not pick between the two. So let the insane have the first, and the scientists the second. In this way, I’ll be like the Buddhist who meditates to become more enlightened, or the Contemplative who prays to become a better person. In this way, I’ll become so enlightened and so good, everyone will grow jealous of me and finally leave me alone, forever.”
A Few Esotericisms
The Theology of Nature implies God in the Bird. The Heron: beautiful. To the Heron, the apocalypse is a desert. To the Heron, the end of the world is a death of coming at last to the ground.
When humans fly, they are not God but God’s wings; they are not the Heron but the Heron’s end, which is the Heron’s beginning.
We make ourselves like animals. When we have finally made all our epistemology into a phylogeny, we will have reached our natural end.
Myth lives in the soul of every action. Reaction is only ever in spite of Myth. Spite swerves from the knowledge which Love makes necessary. Love returns us to Myth: it is where we live when we believe we are alive.
Every evening is a death: the end of the world. The world is most beautiful at sunset. Every morning is a birth: a new beginning. The world is most beautiful at sunrise.
Very interesting, very ambitious, very good (meaning some hit home for me). Bravo. Much more to say in due course, Deo volante, but has been a huge drive and otherwise long day, and in case I don't get there, keep up the good work!
When asked about how she feels about the influence her work has on other people, Hannah Arendt says in an interview that she doesn't consider the effect of her work much, but: "When other people understand in the same sense as I have understood, then that gives me a feeling of pacification, like a sense of belonging."
I felt that reading this. Thank you - by which I mean, because I know you only expressed what you had to, writing this - the universe is great and life is altogether, wonderful.